by Jules Watson
Crooning came in her ear, speaking words of love in a broken, grief-filled voice. Rhiann. Mother. Minna smelled her honey scent mingled with the sweat of hard travel and fear. But she was held tenderly, rocked to a warm breast, as stumbling, exhausted steps took Rhiann up the mountain path.
Amid the searing pain, Minna felt the baby’s strength of will; the instinctive struggle for life, the grasping for one more breath, to taste a few more moments of sensory experience. But each life has its own season.
Now she was in Rhiann’s lap, at the peak of the hill under a wide sky. And she was lifting, growing brighter as the small body could struggle no longer. With a sweet rush of regret her soul slipped its bonds and broke free, filling the mountains with a surge of luminescence. With her soul-eyes opened Minna hovered then in that other time, and watched as Rhiann collapsed to her knees, clutching the child’s body. She heard her anguished plea to the Goddess: Why?
Broken by grief, Rhiann’s own spirit wrenched free of its shell as if yearning to follow the child, give up on life, only a vulnerable silver thread anchoring her to the mountain. But Minna-in-soul reached out to her mother in that moment, wrapping her in love, her spirit-light dancing around Rhiann so she could see; so she could know it was not the end.
Yes, Rhiann said now, in the hollow. When I faltered, you were there. You held me, as I had held you; you gave me the strength to endure, to find meaning in what would otherwise have been unbearable.
Then, and now, the love radiated one to the other, Minna and Rhiann, growing thus stronger, and in that glow Minna was able to feel their ancient bond reaching far back into time, through many lives they had shared. It soared beyond the mountain dell, beyond Alba, beyond Thisworld itself and out into the space between, illuminated by flame and light. Other souls joined them, too, the stars that were the Sisters, filling the limitless ether with song. The song that was the universe itself.
And now, daughter, there is one answer you have long sought, but you have never asked the right question.
There was only one, and many others had asked it except for Minna herself. The words floated up from inside her, one by one.
Who. Am. I.
The words were taken in like precious jewels by the lights, and, as they shimmered and danced, the knowing flowed through Minna’s soul: what was revealed to Rhiann on that mountain long ago to heal her heart from the loss of the child. There was meaning in so brief a life, a reason for her to come into this world, to make Rhiann love her only to lose her.
She was the vessel of the Sisters.
Not a song, a treasure, or a pool. Minna was the vessel that had survived the ages.
So the missing parts of Darine’s story were revealed. Knowing they would die, the two eldest Sisters placed the knowledge of the Source – the songs, stories, healings and herb-lore – into Rhiann’s body in a secret rite before they were slaughtered by Rome. Unknowingly, she carried that eternal light, that energy, long enough for that infinite pattern to be imprinted on the vessel: a baby she bore inside her.
In the time Rhiann held her within, the lore wove its way into the tiny threads of Minna’s memory and knowing, the meshed pieces that make up a soul and which, when it is born, are remembered by the body. Minna held this through ages in the Otherworld until Rome’s strength was weakened and it was safe enough to bring the Source alive again in Alba; until it was time for her to be born again.
The cloth unfurled, the colours bright, all the threads alive. She saw the truth.
She must birth the Sisterhood once more.
Only it was all different now. Long before, in the Otherworld, she had chosen to be a living bridge. Where once the lore was passed on by voice and deed, each generation re-learning, she had taken it into her very essence. Now she would do the same: pass it on to other women through soul and blood, so the life of Alba would endure.
Through her there would be priestesses again, and they would hold the Source strong for wheeling years, sharing it with many others, man and woman, bedding it into the very bones of the land – into the very bodies and souls of the people. And though at times in the cycle of ages women might forget how they once gathered together to summon the Source, the cloth woven by Rhiann and Minna meant they would pass the sleeping lore on to their babes, even unknowing.
So what was wrought by bravery and honour, grief and pain, valour and hardship would never be lost. It would be there, waiting to be discovered by any soul willing to surrender, to open – and, in risking all, to remember.
Rhiann’s voice joined Minna’s thoughts, as they had in that eternal moment on the mountain. So hold the memory of this knowing inside you, my daughter, my sister, my friend. There is no death, and love has no limits of time and place.
Next time, you will have longer with him.
Remember the endless spiral.
Chapter 64
SUNSEASON, AD 368
‘He’ll get cold!’ Nessa smiled, cross-legged on a hide in the sunshine, at the place of the spiral rocks above Dunadd.
Minna nuzzled the folds of skin on her baby’s thigh, blowing. The little boy gurgled at the noise, kicking his legs. ‘No, he won’t.’ She crooked her chin on one hand and tickled her son’s foot. His tiny sole curled up. ‘He loves being naked, and it was such a long winter.’
Rórdán graced his mother with a gummy grin, rolling over and pushing up on his arms. The summer sun lit him from within, his skin translucent, his few tufts of hair a shining copper. As she smiled at him, Minna felt the weight of Nessa’s worried gaze on her.
The moons of the dark time had passed in a blur of grief; she had felt imprisoned in permanent winter, as if the sun would never come again. She retreated from all human feeling, curling around her swelling belly, floating in wordless silence with her child as the freezing winds roared about Cahir’s hall. When at last she gave him birth, the pain brought her some release in tears and fury along with blood, and love. It would have been harder to face death if the land had been greening. Minna had needed the world to grieve for Cahir as she did.
So the moons slipped by, until one day in leaf-bud the clawing pain eased enough for her to take a true breath. Now, in sunseason, it sometimes receded long enough for her to draw in lungfuls of scented air and smile, at least when Rórdán was awake.
‘Minna!’ She glanced up, squinting in the sunshine as Orla and Finola tore up the path from the greenwoods, Keeva trailing in their wake. The cluster of warriors standing guard at a respectful distance parted to let them by. Behind, a fully-grown Lia bounded out of the underbrush, scattering leaves and snuffling.
Finola bounced up to Minna, arms full of honeysuckle blossoms, while Orla followed more slowly. She had shot up in height in the last year, and was all awkward, gangly limbs.
‘Wherever have you been?’ Minna plucked a twig from Finola’s hair as the little girl squatted beside Rórdán.
Intently, Finola placed the flowers on the mound of his belly. ‘All over!’ she whispered, so as not to startle her brother. Rórdán’s dark blue eyes shifted from Minna’s face to Finola’s, and the girl caught his fist and kissed it passionately.
Keeva threw Minna a wry look, cupping her own swelling belly as she awkwardly sank down. Minna cocked her head at Orla. The girl’s frown sharpened the intensity of her slanting eyes in just the way of her father, and her heart caught, before Orla shrugged. ‘We took the path past the old man birch, and over the stream. We saw a vixen with her cubs, and yes,’ she raised her chin, ‘we ran away when she barked.’
‘All well and good.’ Minna hid a smile as Rórdán began fussing, and she scooped up his plump body. ‘Tell Queen Nessa what you got for your birthday, then.’
Orla’s stern little face transformed, glowing with pride. ‘A harp! And Davin is going to teach me every day now I’m old enough.’
Nessa was suitably impressed.
Minna cupped her son’s buttocks. ‘I think you’d better put another breech-clout on your brother, and somethin
g warm. Lay him down here; can you do that?’
Orla immediately darted over and knelt down, and Minna placed the baby in her arms. ‘I will watch them,’ Keeva volunteered. ‘Though they won’t let me get anywhere near him!’
Minna rose slowly, feeling old and leached of life by her grief. A few yards away, the great hump of rock curved from the ground, and she stood before it, gazing down at the new spiral carved near the top of the hill.
Cahir’s soul symbol.
She knelt and placed her palm over the carving, closing her eyes. Since leaf-bud, she had been drawn almost unwillingly from her cocoon of grief to find she had taken on a new form, like a butterfly. Just as she saw on the mountain, all she had to do was breathe and surrender, and the knowing of the Source was there, flowing through her like an underground stream. All she had to do was focus her will, and it came.
She would not draw up a vision of Cahir now, though, for that was the own knowing of her heart, her love, and not ancient lore. Her finger traced another much more ancient cluster of circles instead, half-afraid, half-wondering. And drifting up through her soul came a glimpse of what it was carved for: chanting druids with their arms held to a rising sun.
Nessa lingered behind her, wanting to help and not knowing how. ‘They are slowly coming right again,’ she said, shading her eyes from the sun to watch the girls. ‘You have done so well.’
‘I think that is Rórdán’s gift, not mine.’ Minna turned to sink back against Cahir’s carving, the rock warm against her skin. She felt his energy here, and came up often when dusk was falling. ‘And it is you who have done well.’ She forced a smile. ‘You have all my gratitude.’
Nessa blushed, but she was no longer stooped. Her body was strong again, her eyes clear. ‘I’m not sure I did anything, Minna!’ she laughed, picking the leaves off a stalk of bracken. ‘It was my father and cousin’s doing.’ As Cahir had feared, the Roman Emperor had sent another army from Gaul in the spring, and Garnat and his warriors were caught too far from home on the coast and decimated. When the straggling remnants of the Pict army returned, it was to a dun now ruled by Nessa’s kin – her cousin as king and Drustan as heir. This new rule would safeguard Minna’s task, and that is why Nessa had come here; to give Minna her kin’s oath of protection for the chosen home of the new Sisterhood, in the mountains between Pictland and Dalriada. So the spiral turns.
‘Goddess!’ Nessa suddenly exclaimed, throwing down the bracken. ‘I have a message for you, and in the chaos of the last few days I keep forgetting to give it. Just before I left, Darine came striding into the dun.’
‘Inside your hall?’
Nessa smiled. ‘She said she saw something in the fire; a royal baby. And she gave me a message: tell the gael lass to look for me when the heather blooms.’ Nessa’s face sobered. ‘She said she would come to you wherever you were, that she wasn’t going to die alone but with her Sisters.’
Minna’s eyes blurred in the sun, for the relief of having Darine by her side when she undertook this task, and for the loneliness that there was no one to hold her when she felt weak. She pulled up her knees, brushing that away. She must be strong for all of them.
Orla carried Rórdán over to her on outstretched arms, like an offering. He was dressed now in a tunic and wool wrap, grizzling with hunger, but fell silent as he and his mother fell into that fathomless gaze they always shared.
Rórdán, Minna crooned in her mind, her love so fierce it choked. Little bard-king. She’d thought Cahir would like the name: the bard, the dreamer, for her; the king for him. Part of them both.
Finola jolted her out of her reverie. ‘Who is that man?’
Chapter 65
Minna handed Rórdán to Nessa and slowly got to her feet, shading her eyes to see the figure who had appeared at the edge of the trees. The guards were brandishing their spears, demanding his name.
His hands were up away from his sword, but then he looked past them directly at Minna, and she couldn’t breathe. His tunic was stained, his riding boots caked with mud, long hair caught in a black horse-tail that left a ragged fringe framing each cheekbone. New muscles squared his jaw and widened his shoulders, and at first her frozen mind refused to recognize him. But he was balanced gracefully on the balls of his feet despite his weariness, and she knew that stance too well.
She had to brace herself to meet his eyes, their vivid blue leaping to catch hold of her, dragging her forward so she stumbled. Distantly, she gestured at the guards to let him through. The men lowered their spears and suddenly she and he were facing each other alone.
‘I know,’ was all he said, and there in his face was the sorrow of a man.
Her voice cracked. ‘I thought I would die; I wanted to.’
‘And yet you are here, Minna. Alive.’
A pause, as her hands rose and dropped at her side, helpless to express. ‘I gave him all of me,’ she whispered.
‘I know, Tiger.’ His voice broke on the name, but his gaze was tender, implacable. ‘He is gone, though, and you are alone.’
She flinched at that. ‘I have my son, and something great to accomplish, something I must do.’
He took another step forward, holding her with that brilliant gaze. ‘And what about the end of each day, when you are wearied and heartsick? What will fill those hours by the fire?’ That clever face, that knowing mouth were touched now by sadness and wisdom, and his eyes were entirely open. He let her see in, and the understanding came through her like a ray of sun. He had travelled far and hard for many long months; he had been through the fire and annealed. Just like her.
Protests tangled in her throat, but then she heard Cahir’s whisper. Don’t dishonour me by dying, too. Did he say it before he faded? Did he say it now?
Suddenly Cian was turning away … Was he leaving? Minna staggered forward, her hand at her mouth. But he was only digging in his pack, dropping it back on the ground. ‘I brought something for you,’ he said unsteadily. ‘I brought it a long way.’ His long fingers were holding it on his palms.
‘Not … a fig,’ she gasped.
Cian released a breathless laugh. ‘I couldn’t find a fig, Tiger. It’s only a plum, and a very dried-up, wrung-out plum it is, too.’
Guilt turned in Minna, but life crested over it all – life demanding she heed it, and a love that would hold fast over long years, a steady glow to warm her. There was more than one fate.
‘Do you want it?’ Cian asked. The plum came flying through the air, brown and withered but gleaming, and suddenly Minna was back in the bright sun of the Eboracum marketplace.
She didn’t even bother trying to catch it, her feet taking her onwards without her mind’s say, and with every step her heart beat a lifetime of moments to come. She stopped, hovering a hand’s breath from him. ‘I am not ready.’
‘I will wait,’ he said.
EPILOGUE
AD 410
On a windy ridge above the great Roman Wall, two men sat silently on their horses. Behind them in the hollow of the hills milled the rest of their company, shining with polished iron and bronze in the cold leaf-fall sun. One held aloft a standard that streamed out in the wind above their heads. A scarlet boar on a white background.
‘So it is true then, brother,’ one rider said. His horse danced forward a few steps, as restless and high-blooded as its master.
The other man did not move. He was just past forty, but tall and well-muscled with no sign of bowing in his broad shoulders. On his flowing auburn hair sat a gilded helm, boasting a magnificent crest in the shape of a boar. He thrust his chin into the wind, staring down at the dark line of the Wall snaking across the bare moors. ‘We have been watching them for a long time. They were drifting away gradually, some here and there, but now it seems some call has come, and … well, you can see for yourself.’
‘I would have to, otherwise I would not believe it.’ The first man was younger than his brother, his lithe build and quick hands on the reins belying the threads of grey i
n his black hair.
Ahead, on the other side of the low moor, smoke streamed above the little Roman fort, drifting away to join the greater haze above the windy plateau. To the east, fading spires marked out other forts. At each there was a burning, but it wasn’t cooksmoke.
For months, ragged Roman soldiers had been heading away from the Wall south and east on foot, but now the nearby fort was clustered with carts, and the small figures of men and women holding babes were gathered about, loading in their belongings.
Watching from the hills, the armoured men of Alba had seen the same thing repeated all along the Wall: buildings being dismantled, vital parts salvaged and the rest piled on bonfires and burned. There was no panic. There was no fighting. There was just abandonment.
An exodus that those in Alba had yearned for, hoped for, dreamed of for so many hundreds of years.
Rórdán, King of Dalriada, narrowed his green eyes, his calm exterior hiding the excitement beating in his heart. He knew the tales of his ancestors as well as the calluses on his palm, rubbed there by his sword.
And it had been his fate to see this: the ending of Rome’s authority not just over Alba, but over the whole isle of Britannia.
For his scouts told him the army, the laws and taxes were all disappearing from its shores, as the Emperor deserted the Province. The people who were left would have to live beside his own, and make what they would of this land. A land unto itself, at last.
Rórdán could not speak. In his usual way, it was when things burned his soul that he was most silent, most still. His brother was of a different cast, however. ‘By Manannán’s balls and breath!’ Lassar jerked the horse around again, his vivid blue eyes alight. He wore no helmet, preferring the freedom of the wind in his long, black hair. ‘If this is true, then I must fly home to the mountains as fast as I can! Mother has to know about this immediately.’ With one kick, he was by Rórdán’s side. ‘It has all come to pass,’ he cried, his voice betraying the passion his brother held inside. ‘Just as she said; just as she told us!’