by Jules Watson
‘You would have done it if you could,’ Cahir persisted. ‘The Picts have never given the Romans quarter, and I admire that.’ He spoke with a dignity that robbed his words of any weakness. ‘What we need is the strength for a strike which knocks out the northern command, to cripple them so greatly they cannot strike back. We need them so terrified, so riven and harried, that they leave Alba for ever. It has happened before, in Germania, when the tribes there repelled Rome. It can be done; we just need the numbers.’ He stepped forward, his eyes blazing with thoughts of war and armies.
Unwillingly, Gede felt himself drawn into that excitement. How the man spoke! What he saw in his face was just what Gede felt when the falcon landed on his arm, screaming to the sky – the same foolish pride he had brought under control on the ride back to the dun. ‘I have allies among the Saxons.’
‘Yes. And I among the Attacotti and in Erin. But never have we all acted together.’ Cahir’s eyes bored into Gede, making it hard to turn away. ‘Never have we acted as one. And this is what I offer you. To set aside our differences and the pain of our past—’
‘You presume too much!’ Gede retorted, gripping the back of his carved chair.
Cahir was relentless. ‘Set it aside for now,’ he emphasized. ‘Just long enough to form the greatest army Alba has known – indeed, perhaps that the whole isle of Britain has known!’ He leaned forward, his hand contracting into a fist before Gede’s face. ‘Long enough to win.’
The man had taken command of the situation, and Gede would not have it. He strode to the edge of the hall, so all eyes had to follow him. There his gaze roamed over those shields, battered and nicked from fights long past; and the swords, each one a hero’s, polished to a high shine. What else did a Pict king exist for but to fight when a challenge was thrown down? He had come to the same conclusions as this king on the windy cliff-edge, but for slightly different reasons.
For the great Calgacus was still lodged in druid memory, in the memory of the stones, even though he lost. Gede, though, would win, and rid this land of the Romans. Then his legend would eclipse that of Calgacus of the Caledonii. Gede would have no other king’s name above his own.
He composed his features and turned, glimpsing a shadow of pain and anxiety on the Dalriadan king’s face. So he had his weaknesses, too. ‘I have thought long on this,’ Gede said, his voice raised. ‘I have consulted my warriors.’ He glanced at Garnat, hungry, too, for war. ‘If I can bring the Saxons, and you can bring the Attacotti and the Erin men, then yes, we will have a force that the Romans cannot repel. This is an opportunity that only a fool would let slip through his fingers, whether it is with old enemies or not. And I am no fool.’
Cahir bowed his head in gracious acknowledgement. But he was breathing hard.
Gede strode back to the hearth, and though it made his flesh crawl – so ingrained was the long hatred of the gael – he held out his open wrist for Cahir to clasp. It was a gesture that said the opponent was unarmed; it spoke of trust, however tenuous.
Cahir took the proffered wrist, their arm-bands grating together. Their faces were close, and Gede made sure his eyelids did not so much as flicker. ‘Then you have your alliance, King Cahir. For the benefit of both our peoples.’
Darine’s hut nestled in low dunes by a salt marsh, a dome of branches and earth, its thatch roof weighted with nets and stones. Driftwood branches were arranged in a circle before the door, decorated with strips of seaweed like the banners on a king’s hall. Bird skulls lined the roof, staring down from gaping eyeholes.
Inside there was no lamp, but by the light of a smoky fire Minna saw the walls were stuffed with moss and dried grass, and bunches of herbs were tied to the roof beams. It smelled of salt and fish.
Still muttering to herself, Darine put water on to boil. ‘Get the dried blackberries from that pot there, gael child.’
Minna was reaching over the barrels in the indicated corner when she knocked the lid off a tall basket, then exclaimed and stood back. The basket was brimming with bronze torcs, arm-rings and finger-rings, ropes of amber and glass beads. She merely stared, wondering if this was another vision, then clapped the lid back on.
‘You found my treasure,’ Darine said, when she sat down.
‘Yes. You have so much. Are they gifts?’
‘Gifts, yes.’
Darine wore no jewellery but for the pierced shell beads on a thong and the feathers in her hair, but gathered in that one basket was the wealth of a mighty chieftain. ‘You are given valuable gifts.’
Darine’s smile turned sly. ‘I do valuable things.’
Minna thought about that. ‘You mean things people don’t want others to know you’ve done.’
Darine beamed. ‘Quick, too.’ She poked at the tea-pot. ‘The men come to me to curse an enemy, make a woman open her legs, put a poison on their blade. The women come to make a babe nest in the womb – or to rid themselves of one.’
Minna frowned, and Darine laughed. ‘When you open to the Source, girl, you must accept its light and dark both. You want to help people, then you risk the terrible along with the great. There may be beauty, noble deeds and honour, but also guilt, frustration and terror. You can feel the flight, the freedom – aye, I see you have! – but the journey there can wander through some barren valleys. You must be able to push through fear, doubt, illusion and weariness, or you will see no visions. Find your courage, or turn your back on it altogether.’ She cackled, sucking the gap in her teeth. ‘And if so, get fat with puppies instead, mend your man’s shirts by the fire, grind grain until your back bows. It’s your choice.’
Minna’s snatches of vision were full of blood and pain, but she would never forget the love and grief she saw mingled in Eremon’s face as he held that tiny body on the mountain. She knew what she would choose.
Darine poured the blackberry tea into two horn cups, her mossy eyes sharp across the fire. ‘Who are you, then, and why do the voices want you here?’
Minna curved her hands about the cup. ‘I’m from Britannia, not Alba. I was enslaved and sold to the gaels.’
The old woman arched sparse, white brows. ‘You bear the blood of the red-crests?’
‘My grandmother said we were of the old blood, too. She taught me how to speak and told me the old tales.’ She smiled encouragingly at Darine. ‘Tales of Deirdre and Cuchulainn of Erin—’
‘Ah, Cuchulainn!’ Darine’s eyes misted over. ‘ “For dread of me,” ’ she murmured, quoting the famous hero, ‘ “fighting men avoid fords and battles. Armies go backward from the fear of my face.” ’
Mamo had told Minna the very same thing. The room was silent as Darine searched Minna’s eyes, and though she felt as she did when Brónach probed her, this was not sickening. ‘Power you have,’ the wise-woman whispered. ‘Aye! The flame is in you, child, burning bright.’ Then in an eerie sing-song, Darine began to chant:
Three times three the king’s sword fell
And bright was the blood on the plain of spears.
One eye taken, one eye blazing
Yet the bard was the blind one
As tears took him
His song branded on his throat.
Calgacus’s death. For a moment Minna was transported back to the Water of Seeing.
‘I am not supposed to know,’ Darine whispered, conspiratorially. ‘The priests keep it to themselves. But I have lived long, so long that when I was small the memory of the battle was sharper. I heard the druids then, as I crawled into the groves at night when they whispered their secrets. I gleaned many things that women weren’t supposed to know. Slowly, I gathered them and kept them here.’ She tapped her head.
Minna blinked the steam away. ‘Then you must know much about plants. About … voices. And visions.’
Darine rocked, nodding. ‘I am the oldest, child, the last to remember anything. The plants have voices, too, did you know? They sing to me of their life, snatches of chants, things to hum over the fevered babe, the dying man.’ She sighe
d. ‘But it all leaks away from me year by year, and soon I will lie down and let the long dark take me.’
The cup burned Minna’s fingers. The knowledge could not just leach away into nothing. ‘But … but there were shepherds of the Source,’ she murmured, the knowing flooding her. ‘There were … women … who held and nurtured it, sang it alive, sang it to sleep through the long dark. Many women together, chanting, holding the vision as one—’
Darine cried out and clamped her hands over her ears, scuttling back. ‘How can you speak of this pain? Now they cry out to me. They fill my head and make it burn.’
Minna stared, alarmed, until the wise-woman raised her face, tears welling in her eyes. ‘You make me ache for them,‘ she whispered.
Minna placed the cup down. ‘Ache for who?’ But she knew.
The old woman’s breath laboured. ‘The Sisters. The priestesses. The Order of the Goddess that once was.’
Sister, the whisper came again.
‘Darine, what happened to them? Where are they?’ Her words spilled out, sharp with grief. ‘Why do they speak to me?’
‘They … they reach to you?’
She nodded, and Darine stared into the fire, rocking. ‘It is … hard to speak. I … cannot … it hurts too much … I cannot speak.’
Minna shuffled closer on her knees. ‘One who walks in the Otherworld used to come to me in vision,’ she said urgently. ‘But now she has fallen silent, and I don’t know everything she was trying to tell me. I need to reach her.’
The room was still, as Darine curled up like a mouse in the nest of her white hair. ‘There used to be a way,’ the old woman forced out eventually, ‘to journey among the visions, to step into the Otherworld at will.’
‘What way?’ She was leaning forward.
Darine shook her head. ‘I know only a memory of long ago, my grandmother. Saor, it is called. It frees the spirit.’
Saor. The word rang through Minna. ‘But what is it?’
Darine gasped in pain, her fingers pressed over her ears. ‘No … it hurts …’
Minna firmly took both her elbows and drew them down, held her forearms. Their eyes locked. ‘You are not alone any more.’ That grief was terrible to see, and almost instinctively the healer in Minna surrendered and allowed Darine’s pain to flow through her own heart, to ease her. A grief of ages. A mountain of loneliness bearing down, squeezing the life out of old flesh, the fire out of a weary soul. An unbearable loss that should have been shared by many, not one alone.
Instantly, Minna found Darine’s unshed tears flowing down her own face, and the old woman stared in wonder, touching them with her finger. Her wrinkled lips moved, her throat at last released. ‘The herbs, they have plant-souls … Saor is six mingled … just the right amounts … They help the spirit and body part, so that the spirit can journey far.’
Minna could hardly breathe, tasting the tears on her lips. She sat back on her heels, releasing Darine.
‘But saor is very dangerous,’ Darine whispered, her eyes huge and glazed with memory. ‘There must be skill, training, to ensure the silver cord of the spirit does not break and the body die. You must breathe life into the cord … breathe, and never let it break.’
She was absorbing this when the old woman suddenly twisted, pointing up at the roof. ‘There, the one with the little blue flowers, like teardrops, and the woody stem there, with no flowers, the leaves grey and shiny.’
Minna swiped at her cheek and staggered up, touching each plant as the wise-woman named it. She had seen many of these at Dunadd, yet never felt they were anything but medicinal. Freedom, something sang in her veins, sweeping away grief. Saor.
‘And the one with the leaves like a cow’s ear, but not all of it … just the seeds … and … and …’ Darine’s voice faded. ‘There is more, but I don’t know them.’ She slapped her cheek in frustration. ‘I don’t know them all!’
‘It doesn’t matter; it is a start.’ Minna pressed the leaves to her nose, and folded each one in the hide pouch at her waist. Three, of six. The doorway beckoned. She knelt before the wise-woman. ‘You have done me the greatest honour. I didn’t know there was such a thing as saor, but now—’ She stopped herself. Now I remember.
Darine’s wrinkled cheeks were wet. She dragged herself up and, moving stiffly now, traced the branches of the herbs on the rafters, lingering over the designs carved in the posts. Minna’s gaze followed her fingers and paused. There in the wood was the same design as on Rhiann’s priestess ring: the three faces of the Mother.
‘If your heart knows, then it is only fitting, they are telling me, that you also know the story of the Sisters.’ She glanced at Minna, her eyes bleak. ‘For it is not only the druids who have their secrets. There is another story. Many may have told it once, but under kings like Gede women were no longer welcome as holders of the Source, and gradually the knowledge was lost. Almost lost.’ Her voice was so faint Minna strained to hear her. ‘My great-grandmother knew, and her daughter, my grandmother. And me.’ She turned away. ‘I will tell you how the Sisters met their end.’
Chapter 38
Minna walked back along the darkening beach at dusk, all feeling scoured from her. Darine’s tale had burned her heart to cold ash.
Three hundred years ago, the elders of the priestess order lived together on an isle in the western sea, the Attacotti homeland. The Sisters warded the Source that ran through the earth; the male druids the power that fired the sun and stars. Earth was for women, because of its tides and cycles. Sun and sky were for men, for the rain that seeded the soil, the sun that energized all growth. That was balance, but it was gone now.
The Roman general Agricola grew afraid of the reverence in which the Sisters were held by the Alban people. He resolved to attack the island and kill them.
But the elder sisters had foreseen the Roman attack. They knew that only a great outrage would bring together all the warring tribes of Alba in alliance, and so they stood with compassion in their hearts and let the Romans destroy them, because that sacrifice would lead the tribes to become one. All came to pass, and because of that slaughter, Eremon and Calgacus were able to bring the tribes together at the Hill of a Thousand Spears.
But the Albans were defeated, Minna had cried.
Even that was foreseen by the Sisters, Darine replied. They knew that Roman strength and greed would need to come to its zenith and be on the wane for them to be banished, and it was the gradual strengthening of the tribes into one people over many centuries that mattered most, not one battle. After all, she said, it is many threads that make a cloth; many lives that make a fate for a nation. But the story of the Sisters and the Source was not over yet.
They knew their order in its ancient form would not long remain intact. It would be crushed by the great battle, and lost during the dark years afterwards. The priestesses would die out, and, in time, women would forget what they held buried in their souls.
Here Darine’s voice dropped to a whisper.
So the wisest ones took all the knowledge of the Source – the memories of other lives, the rites and songs, the knowledge of plants and of people’s hearts, the ways to journey between worlds, the skills of vision and prophecy built up since the dawn of time – and they kept it safe in the only vessel that would survive time itself.
Darine did not know what that was. It could be a secret pool that held the images of times gone by. It could be an object made of gold or crystal. It could be an old story remembered by some distant bard. Was Minna supposed to find that, too? It was too daunting to contemplate.
‘So,’ Darine finished, ‘the Alban tribes became the Pictish nation. The land made way also for the Dalriadans who came from Erin, linked by blood to Dunadd. Now the warriors of Alba are strong again, but riven by enmity and suspicion. Athough they do not know it, they are waiting for the one to unite them once more, take them forth again with a vision of the gods on their banners. And this time, the Romans will be vanquished from Alba, and Alba will b
e freed.’
Waiting for someone. The sea-wind brushed over Minna’s cold cheek, and she shivered as she ploughed through the sand, pulling her cloak closed.
Cahir.
The dun was flaming with torches. As Minna passed the king’s hall she saw servants dashing back and forth with bowls and baskets, harried.
Nessa was waiting for her in the women’s house. ‘Hurry!’ she cried, when Minna came in with the sea-wind in her hair, her eyes far away. ‘Gede has called a feast and we are meant to attend him.’
‘Why?’ She whirled to Nessa. ‘Is there news about the alliance?’
‘I have no news. They tell me nothing besides the fact we have to attend Gede. And we are late!’
Making no mention of Darine, Nessa made Minna sit so the serving maids could brush her hair, threading gold braid through the black plaits and pinning it around her head. They dressed her in another of Nessa’s robes, deep-blue wool bound by a gilded leather belt, and both she and the queen hastened to the hall.
Inside, Minna barely heard King Gede murmur a rebuke to his wife, for she could not look away from Cahir standing at his side.
Someone had lent him clothes fit for a king. His green tunic was ornately embroidered around the hem and sleeves, elegantly framing his broad shoulders. His trousers were of close-fitting leather, outlining his long thighs, and his dark hair was gleaming, braided at the sides to reveal his sun-browned, lean face that bore a new strength, a certainty. Most of all, when his golden eyes met Minna’s they were euphoric.
Nessa scuttled behind Gede’s chair, drawing Minna to the women’s side of the hall. They sat on a bench half in the shadows. Ale cups were being filled by maids hurrying about with stone jugs, and others bore platters of oysters, mussels, fried fish and roast pig from the beast spitted over the fire. Fat dripped from its flanks, sizzling in the flames.