Epona, busy trying to arrange her living space, turned over a bag of meal and caught the distinct smell of something rotting underneath, unmasked by kinnamon or any wholesome scent. “Ugh!”
Ro-An leaned forward to see, and Epona got a good whiff of the girl’s own body odor, which was goatish.
Now was as good a time as any to ask the question that had been on her mind since leaving the Blue Mountains, the question that had occurred to her again and again when she thought of her approaching existence with the horse people. Now her need was imperative.
“Ro-An, how do women … clean themselves here?” She knew it was no good to ask for a cauldron of heated water for washing, though that image had tantalized her mind many times throughout the journey. One good, hot bath … the small courtesy the Kelti traditionally offered to any newly arrived traveler. But not here, on the Sea of Grass. Here there were obviously other ways, though she doubted they could be as pleasant.
“Epona wants to clean?” Ro-An asked with surprise.
“Very much,” Epona assured her. “Epona is not happy with the feeling of her skin.”
A brief friendliness and understanding looked out of Ro-An’s eyes. A warm spirit was there, if artfully hidden. Epona longed to reach out to it as she reached out to the spirits of the horses.
“Ro-An help you clean,” the Scythian woman said. Pulling a fold of fabric across her face, she left the tent.
Epona waited, alone. She could hear the voices of men outside, shouting to one another and the animals. She heard horses whinny; goats bleat; the ubiquitous wind blowing. Life went on outside the tent, but within it she was the only representative of life, and all alone. Perhaps all the spirits she knew had been left far behind.
Never, said the voice within. We go with you.
Ro-An returned with an assortment of bowls and jars. She was apologetic. “Epona should have two women help her clean, not just Ro-An,” she said, eyes downcast. “But other woman would not come.”
Two shamans; two women to perform a ritual. Was this customary with the nomads? Did they not realize two was an asymmetrical number, having no center? Once again the alien quality of her new life was made clear to Epona.
Ro-An brought an additional bronze brazier, smoldering with something that smelled like horse dung, but it was powerless to lift the gloom within the tent. “We could go outside where there is good light,” Epona suggested, but Ro-An recoiled with shock.
“Men would see!”
“What is wrong with that? I am not deformed.”
“Your body belongs to Kazhak; no one else must see.”
“My body belongs to myself,” Epona corrected her. “I am born of the Kelti.”
“What is this thing, this Kelti?”
“The tribe of my birth,” Epona answered, but that did not seem to be sufficient explanation. “It is more than a tribe, it is what we are. To be Kelt is to be free. I came to Kazhak as a free woman of the Kelti, of my own choice.”
Ro-An’s dark eyes were blank with lack of understanding. “What means this free?” she asked.
Across the barrier of language, there was no way to reach with an explanation.
Ro-an busied herself with her jars and bowls. As Eponawatched, the other woman used a stone bulb to pound a combination of cypress, cedar, and frankincense into a fragrant paste. Epona could not determine what this had to do with washing. On the long journey she had sneaked opportunities to bathe herself whenever she could, by going on foot through the rivers and streams they crossed, letting the cold water wash her body. But it was not the same; not what she remembered and desired. Watching Ro-An with her paste, she felt she would die if she could not get really clean, and how could that be done with a compound of beaten wood?
Ro-An signaled that she was to remove her clothes. As Epona uncovered her body, the other woman looked away. “Is body of Kazhak; is not mine to see,” she explained timidly. Epona’s words had meant nothing to her.
With averted head but skilled and experienced fingers she plastered the thick white paste onto Epona’s flesh, covering her face and body thoroughly. Epona felt a tingling sensation. The paste began to harden like drying mud. It was soon difficult to speak, and she realized that she was in a vulnerable situation. With anyone more aggressive than the timorous Ro-An she might have anticipated some sort of attack.
The two women waited. Epona would have liked to talk more with the Scythian, but the paste cracked unpleasantly on her face when she tried to move her lips, and Ro-An volunteered nothing.
At last the Scythian woman grunted to herself and began to pull the plaster away from Epona’s skin. The young woman’s body hair came with it, making her wince at first, but then she bit her lip and bore the ordeal with fortitude. Only the first moment of discomfort had startled her sufficiently to make her forget her heritage.
It took a long time to get all the paste off her body, but when it was done, Ro-An gave her a folded pad of goats’ hair and instructed her to rub herself all over with it to remove the last traces. That done, Epona looked down at her bare skin with astonishment. It glowed rosily in the light of the lamps. It was clean and glossy as polished stone, with a sweet fragrance as good as any bath in perfumed oil might have imparted.
“Do the men do this also?” she could not help asking.
Ro-An giggled and put both hands over her mouth, but her eyes sparkled merrily. “No, is not so good for men. But do not tell. Men make little felt tent, put dish inside full of red-hot stones. Throw hemp seed on stones. Makes vapor; men get very happy, shout for joy. But skin does not feel like this.”
Epona had to agree that her skin felt marvelous. Nevertheless, she was curious about the bath of hemp-seed vapor the men took; it sounded almost like a druii ritual to her.
When Epona’s cleansing was completed and she had dressed herself again, Ro-An left the tent, her arms laden with things Epona wished to discard. She glanced back once and managed a shy smile before disappearing from Epona’s view.
The young woman was alone again. She thought of leaving the tent and exploring the camp, but she could not make herself do it. The pleasant interlude with Ro-An had made her more aware than ever of her isolation among these people, the great differences between them and her own kind that would serve as barriers. She did not have the energy, just then, to attempt to scale those barriers.
It would have been much easier for me to stay and go into the magic house, she thought ruefully. The otherworlds were not so unfamiliar as this place.
Night was descending on the steppe. By pushing aside a flap, Epona could watch as the Scythians prepared for the dying of the sun. The tents and wagons were arranged in a large irregular circle, and within this area certain animals were held for the night and cooking fires were also built. Women were in evidence now, scurrying back and forth, faces covered, as they prepared the main meal of the nomadic day.
Was Epona expected to join them, to take part in making the food? Whom should she ask?
She waited, uncertain, and at last she began to wonder if she would even be fed at all. She saw food carried into the big tents where the nobles of the tribe gathered, and then distributed among the herders who crouched in circles close to their animals. What scraps remained the women carried away to the wagons, for themselves and the children.
Epona’s stomach began to growl, making demands. It would soon turn into a tyrant. Better take care of it now, she thought, and started to leave the tent just as she saw Kazhak coming toward her at last.
“Where you go?” he demanded to know.
“I’m hungry.”
“Hungry.” He said the word as if it had no meaning for him. He had never thought ahead to feeding Epona in the Scythian camp; he had never thought about feeding women in camp at all. That was the sort of thing women took care of; yet obviously no one had done anything about the Kelti woman.
It was a deliberate insult. He glowered, and his voice dropped to a growl. “Wait here,” he told her. “T
here will be food.” He marched away like a warrior going out to do battle. Epona watched him, bemused.
Soon he was back, with a dripping piece of meat and a bowl of fermented milk, as well as a pouch containing some unidentifiable and inedible sweet. He returned to the tent with her and sat watching as she ate. “Is very good, is it so?” he asked several times.
Epona, with her mouth full, was spared the necessity of lying.
When her hunger died down and she began chewing more slowly Kazhak started to talk to her, leaning forward earnestly, his elbows on his knees, his eyes watching her face.
“In tent of Kolaxais you would have fought for Kazhak, is so?”
“Is so,” she agreed.
“For why? Kazhak and you, both would have been killed.”
“What about it?” She wiped her fingers on her sleeve and dipped them into the sticky sweetmeat he had brought, then licked one finger tip tentatively. Ugh. The concoction seemed to be composed of smashed insects roasted with honey.
“We be dead, that is what,” Kazhak answered. “And you were willing? You would do that for Kazhak?”
She could not understand his surprise. “Of course. I am your wife, you are my husband. A woman’s duty is to fight for her man if he needs her to protect his life, just as she protects that life by feeding his belly and warming his back with clothes.”
“Kazhak does not know this custom. A wife or favorite woman can be strangled to go into log house with dead man, that makes sense, is good custom. But a woman, fighting with weapons? Is like savages. Who tells you to do that?”
“No one has to tell me to do anything,” she said haughtily.
“Kazhak will tell you to do things, and you must, because you are Kazhak’s woman.”
Her mood changed. “What if I do not do what you order me to do? Will you strike me?” Suddenly her hand was on the hilt of her knife. Kazhak watched her with disbelief.
“Woman would never!” the Scythian exclaimed.
“This woman would,” she assured him. “Do not try to make me into what your other women are, Kazhak. I was born Kelt. I am my own person.”
Her words rang in Kazhak’s head like bells. I am my own person, she had said. A person who belonged to himself—or herself—and was not a minion of Kolaxais, or a slave to be bought and sold. Could such things be?
The woman excited him. She had had the paste cleansing, he could smell it on her skin and see it in the shine of her cheeks. Her yellow hair—reddish yellow, in this light—lay in waves across her shoulders and down her back. Her face was strong and defiant, and yet he remembered her lying soft beneath him, her body boneless and agile.
He remembered her standing at his shoulder, brandishing the knife in his defense.
“Epona,” he said.
He reached out for her because he could not help himself. She was magic; she might have greater power than he could guess; she might wither him away like dead grass, or cause him to be attacked by an evil spirit, or suck the life out of him as the priests sucked it from Kolaxais. It did not matter.
She had said she was his woman. The part of him that was wary of her was not as strong as the part of him that desired her.
“Epona,” he said again, letting his voice be soft, holding out his hand.
It had been a long day, and a trying one. Epona’s eyes felt gritty with the need for sleep, and there was no hunger in her body for the body of the man. But everything around her was strange, and disturbing; the society with which she would be forcibly joined had already begun rejecting her and she knew it. The coming days would be hard ones, and it was possible she would never learn to feel that this place was home, or these people hers. Only two things here were known and familiar: the horses, and the man.
She did not want to sleep amid the musty rugs and the filthy furs of the Scythian tent, but she thought she could sleep in Kazhak’s arms, at least. That would have to be her home, for now.
She smiled at him and took his hand, pressing it against her breasts.
Chapter 22
In the morning, Epona’s life as one of the Scythian tribe must really begin. She awoke alone in the tent, Kazhak having left sometime during the darkness. She would learn that to be a Scythian custom; men who stayed in women’s company all night were suspect. A man who had been away, among savages, might have acquired some alien customs, such as sleeping weak as an infant in a woman’s bed. All such foreign ideas were despised. Only the gold and the skills of non-Scythians were welcome on the Sea of Grass. These, and the bodies of their stolen women, who would vanish into the tents and behind the veils, never to be seen again.
Epona had no intention of being such a woman.
Face bare, head uncovered, she emerged from the tent and looked around the encampment. Other women were abroad this morning, tending small cooking fires or caring for the goats that ambled among the wagons. They glanced up as Epona appeared and quickly checked to be sure the lower part of their faces was covered. They watched her through guarded eyes, the spirit locked behind them.
The Scythian women wore felt tunics like the men’s, though longer, with a bib over the chest and cumbersome felt leggings. Their clothing was plain by comparison with their men’s, though each woman had an ornamented belt trimmed in bronze, and Epona caught glimpses of the flash of gold jewelry as they moved about. She was discouraged to realize they all looked alike to her. How could she ever tell which one was Ro-An, the only person she could hope to claim as a sort of friend?
The women watched her, but no one invited her to approach a cooking fire.
Ignoring her gnawing morning hunger, she lounged across the campground as if she were merely out for a stroll in her own home place; her head was high and proud, her expression was assured to the point of indifference. Let no one know how you feel inside, she told herself. Her eyes, meanwhile, devoured every detail of her new environment. She saw women she determined must be senior wives, because they were more colorfully dressed and seemed to do nothing but boss the younger women. These principal wives tended to sit in little groups around cooking fires or in front of their tents, talking and chewing on strips of crisp fat. As she walked by one such group, Epona noted that these women of superior status wore boots of spotted fur, elaborately embroidered and trimmed on the sole with beading, making walking impractical. They sat with their feet turned to display the decorated soles to one another, comfortably idle while the newer wives did the labor of the camp.
On their heads were various headdresses: caps and scarves with detachable veils to cover the lower part of the face. When they unfastened these veils to talk to one another—a symbolic relinquishment of privacy—Epona saw that many of them had blackened and broken or missing teeth.
She felt contempt for the useless women in beaded shoes, the women who had no work to do.
But what kind of work will I do here? she wondered. How will I fit into this tribe?
The men had been up since the first light streaked the eastem horizon, and most of them were already gone from the camp, out with the grazing herds of horses or off hunting. The women had taken over the community they deserted, maintaining it on the sufferance of the males until the true owners returned.
Smoke emerged from the smoke holes of the large tents, and Epona wondered if Kazhak might be inside one of those tents with his kinsmen; with Kolaxais, perhaps. She saw that the gray stallion waited, in hobbles, close to her own brown gelding, and she went to release them both and watch them as they grazed so they would not mingle with someone else’s herd. The stallion was sniffing the wind for mares in season, though no mare would welcome him in the winter. But hope never left his heart; he was a stallion.
Someone came out of one of the royal tents and walked toward Epona, but it was not Kazhak. Dasadas approached her with his eyes fixed on the space immediately above her head and the faintest trace of a smile on his face, obviously intending to be pleasant.
“Epona has had food?” he inquired.
“Did Kazhak send you to ask about me?”
He hesitated. “No, Kazhak is busy, but Dasadas is not too busy to think of Epona. Are you hungry?”
Epona answered him in his own language, as she had spoken to Ro-An. “Epona is hungry. No one has offered to share food with me.”
“They do not know what to think of you,” Dasadas told her. “You are not like other captured women; it is already known that shamans want others to ignore you. But come, Dasadas will give you food.”
He put a gentle hand on her arm to guide her, a gesture far removed from his violent attempt to possess her body a few days before. Now he seemed anxious to please, a friend in a strange environment, and his offer of food made Epona’s stomach growl. She accompanied him eagerly toward a cluster of women surrounding a cooking fire, but their progress was halted by Kazhak’s angry voice, ringing across the encampment.
“The hand of Dasadas is on Kazhak’s woman!” the Scythian bellowed. “If Kazhak cuts off that hand, no one protests!”
Dasadas abandoned his hold on her arm as abruptly as if Epona’s flesh burned him. “She was hungry …” he tried to explain, but Kazhak trotted toward them wearing such a fierce expression that he gave up hope of explaining and backed away, keeping his eyes down.
Epona was angry. If Kazhak had not thought to see that she was fed, what was wrong with Dasadas showing her that courtesy? She started to say as much to Kazhak but he brushed her words aside and hustled her back to the privacy of the tent, where her words and his, would not be overheard.
“No man can put his hand on you now you live in Kazhak’s tent,” he admonished her. “You should have screamed.”
“That is foolishness. He wasn’t hurting me; he was only going to get me something to eat. I was very hungry.”
The Horse Goddess (Celtic World of Morgan Llywelyn) Page 31