Hadrian's wall

by William Dietrich

  "It's still a novelty to you," grumbled the archer, groaning as she massaged her feet. "I've been harvesting since I could walk. I'd rather practice archery."

  "It's astonishing to work together. Rome is so crowded that you're never together with anyone."

  "That makes no sense."

  "Cities don't, sometimes."

  "I've never been to one, and from your description, I don't care to."

  Valeria found herself eating like a wolf and never gaining any girth. Her skin tanned a common, scandalous brown; her endurance increased. She noticed things she'd never really seen before: the curve of windswept grass that signaled a change to rain or sun, the progressive migration of birds, the heaviness of dew, the twin half-moons of a deer print in the mud, the hiss of rain on straw. After harvest, Arden took her riding up into highlands so windswept that they were stripped at their tops to raw rock, the lichen like spilled paint. The view seemed endless, and yet never a glimpse of the Wall! Then he took her down into narrow, shadowed valleys to fish. She caught some, their scales slick as oil and their muscles jumping.

  He never touched her, yet never stopped looking at her.

  She was haunted by him.

  Brisa continued to teach her to shoot. Valeria's fingertips callused to pull the bowstring, and her aim became good enough to hit a target. Once, in a meadow, her rival Asa set a sewing basket on a rock, and Valeria impulsively put an arrow through it, pinioning the wicker against the ground and making her tormentor jump. The Roman didn't say a word, but her message was plain enough. She was becoming dangerous.

  Asa's tricks stopped.

  Inside the hill fort, Valeria weaved tartan on the clan looms and traded recipes with her captors. At night she listened to the stories of their gods and heroes, and told her own of Hercules and Ulysses and the court of Jupiter.

  At Harvest Home, the animals came down from high pastures to winter barns. Vegetables were pickled and meat salted. Fruit was stacked in fat casks. New beer was fermented in vats smelling of malt and barley. Night overtook the day, the first frosts and bitter winds came, and leaves came showering down from the trees. Here was a breath of winter far deeper and more enduring than Italy's, and, despairing of rescue, she braced herself for a harsh season. Now, at Samhain-the end of autumn and beginning of winter, that time when the dead can walk and the faery kings emerge from their barrows-the clan would celebrate the New Year.

  She'd been chosen by lot to play the central role.

  At Kalin's command, each young woman had woven a tassel of individual pattern. Brisa taught Valeria a swirling Celtic design of saffron and cobalt. As they wove, the Roman admitted to herself that by now she was captive in name only; she could ride away at any time with a rough understanding of which direction the Wall must be. Yet the failure of Marcus to rescue her, the seasonal cycle, and her interest in Arden had all conspired to still impatience.

  She was still gathering intelligence on these Celts!

  She was still disturbed by her abductor.

  Her tassel went with the others in a covered wicker basket.

  Three nights before Samhain, Kalin stood before the clan to choose the woman who would play the role of the good and terrible Morrigan, and drew Valeria.

  There was a confused and knowing murmur.

  "She doesn't even believe in the goddess she's to represent!" Asa protested.

  "How can a Roman play a Celt?" added Luca.

  Kalin listened judiciously to their complaints. Valeria was horrified at her selection; she'd planned to watch the ceremony from the shadows! Why had fortune selected her for a central role? She glanced at her maidservant. Savia's eye avoided hers.

  "The goddess herself guides my hand," Kalin said. "This year, for whatever reason, Morrigan has decided to be danced by the Roman."

  Valeria felt trapped. This new honor picked her out again just as she was fitting in. She feared she'd embarrass herself at the pagan festival, or make new jealousies.

  Brisa tried to reassure her. "Morrigan will inhabit and guide you. She's honoring you because of the boar."

  "You must tell me what to do!"

  "Ask the goddess."

  "I'm asking you!"

  "Calm yourself. I'll come the evening before Samhain and make things plain."

  Brisa came as promised and found Valeria worriedly combing her long dark hair before a mirror of polished bronze.

  "I don't want to dance the part, Brisa."

  "Kalin believes you touched with magic. As Asa said, it's peculiar the goddess would pick you. Maybe she wants you to understand the ways of the Caledonii, should you ever go back to your wall."

  "Of course I'll go back! Soon! I must!"

  "Yet will you?"

  Valeria wasn't sure of the answer anymore. Tiranen was a cruder place: its rooms colder, its courtyard mud, its latrines mere pits in the ground, its food plainer, its conversations less witty and knowledgeable. She missed many things. And yet all the restrictions that had bound her old life had fallen away. Instead of feeling captive she felt strangely liberated. A woman was more equal with these people. Her life could be less calculated. Friendship simpler. Pleasure quicker. Worries less complicated. And yet this wasn't her. Was it?

  "Look." Brisa held up a carefully selected and polished apple. "To tap Morrigan's magic, you need the fruit of the gods. Slice this with your dagger to reveal your future."

  "My future? I paid for that in Londinium, and little of it has come true."

  "Sometimes the future takes time. Slice it."

  Valeria reluctantly started to.

  "Not that way! Crossways, the blade level."

  She cut horizontally as directed, and Brisa gestured at the five-pointed star that the core made in the severed halves. "Here is a fruit of the earth that reflects the stars. It's one more sign that all is one. Can you see it?"

  "Yes."

  "Now take a bite as you look in the mirror. Legend has it that over your shoulder you'll see the image of your future husband."

  "Future husband?"

  "It's Celtic custom."

  "Brisa, I have a husband."

  "Then what are you hesitating for? Take a bite."

  Valeria lifted the apple to her lips. There was no one in the mirror but herself and the warrior woman, of course. No Marcus, just as he'd been absent all summer. No husband at all. Was that what the goddess meant? She bit. "I see nothing."

  "Swallow."

  She did so. The fruit was crisp and sweet. Her eyes closed to remember her soldier husband, and she was surprised that her picture of Marcus had become cloudy. She remembered the stolid sense of him more than his appearance. So odd…

  "Valeria?" It was a male voice.

  Her eyelids fluttered open in alarm.

  There was a figure in her mirror, she realized, dimly reflected from the doorway, but it wasn't her Roman. She whirled around in her seat.

  Arden.

  His mouth was open to speak, but he'd stopped in surprise at her shocked expression. He noticed she was holding something shiny in her hand.

  "I didn't mean to surprise you," he said, looking confused. "I came to speak about Samhain. It's important for the clan that it goes well. Are you all right?"

  Valeria turned away in alarm.

  Brisa spoke softly. "It's all right, Arden Caratacus. Valeria will play her part well. Leave now, for you've done what you must. We'll see you at the fire."

  Valeria wouldn't look back at him. She dropped what she was holding, and he saw it was half an apple, a bite taken. It rolled under her stool.

  He swiftly disappeared.

  "I saw him," Valeria whispered.

  "You saw what Morrigan wanted you to see."

  The celebration would take place at midnight on the horse meadows below the hill fort. It would give time for a banquet in the Great House by the legions of the dead, who could return this one night from the realm of Tirnan Og and feast as if still living. Oakwood platters, eating knives, and pewter cups were
set in neat ranks for the restless ghosts, the cups filled with milk and the platters graced with an apple and a sheaf of barley. The benches were empty, the shadows deep. If the dead truly came-on this one night between past and future when time became meaningless and distant events could be foretold-then they'd celebrate in Tiranen and leave the living, who would be dancing in the meadow, alone.

  The clan left the hill fort in procession, descending to the waiting bonfire that would keep them safe. Every third member held a torch, the march of light reminding Valeria of her impossibly distant wedding. How different and yet alike the two worlds were! Instead of stern cavalrymen lining their way, there were horn lanterns stuck on upright poles, each frame carved into a grotesque face, grinning or hideous. Candles lit them with an eerie glow, making the succession of lanterns like an arc of orange fireflies, or a tendril of glowing salmon eggs.

  "What do all these images mean?" Valeria asked Brisa as they walked together. Savia, just ahead, was crossing herself.

  "These lanterns become our guardians this night, lighting our way to Samhain and frightening away roaming spirits. They're the luck to see us through to the next year that comes at dawn, when the old crone Cailleach strikes the ground with her hammer and makes it hard with frost."

  "We Romans believe the year begins with the spring."

  "And we Celts believe the spring begins with the triumph of winter. Death is a necessary prelude to birth, and darkness the herald of the coming sun."

  It was frosty this night. A full moon was up, making plain the shapes of the hills that surrounded them. Great trees lifted bare beseeching branches to heaven, and all color was leached from the world. Valeria had come to like the forest, but on this night she could once more imagine ghosts marching through it, the stone dolmens of the dead yawning open and slain warriors issuing forth. Old women would be reborn as young maidens. Drowned children would be given the adult bodies they'd never enjoyed. All would glide across the ground and up the mist to the hill fort, there to sit in the banquet hall and feast for one night in the world of the living.

  She shivered, wrapping her cloak more tightly against the cold.

  The Celts sang a song as they marched, a saga of a legendary chieftain who sought the gold of the dragon Brengatha, and the warrior queen he freed from the dragon's lair. Then a song of thanks to the gods for giving the clan another year, another harvest, another cycle of life. And then a ribald song about the maiden Rowena, so beautiful and tempting that she'd made fools of three men, and lover of a fourth.

  In the clearing was stacked an immense cone of wood, ready for firing. The procession circled, stopped, and looked back up the hill at Tiranen. Gurn, who at the ceremony of Lugh had passed from boy to man and was thus, at fourteen, their youngest warrior, was still up there watching them-a test of his young courage against the imminent approach of ghosts. At their halt he disappeared from the gate and hurriedly went into the emptied Great House, the hair on his neck rising at its strange chill. A burning fire seemed to give little heat, casting a dance of shadow on the peaked ceiling. He lit the final torch from its flame and then sprinted in relief from the deserted hill fort, running to the others below. They watched his descending flame draw gold filigree against the night, its arc like the vine and rainbow of Celtic artisans. Finally the youth came dashing into their circle, breathless and triumphant, a young maiden named Alita already watching him with covetous eyes. He thrust the torch into the base of the pyramid of wood, its tinder caught, and fire began reaching up the cone.

  The clan held hands, singing a song of the departing and returning sun as flames licked the cold sky.

  Then there was quiet again, the Celts tensely waiting as the fire heated them on one side and the approaching winter chilled them on the other. Finally the circle broke to let in Kalin, his hood back, his eyes bright, and his arms bearing a trembling animal.

  It was a sheep, black as winter night.

  The druid stood inside the circle of Celts, the column of sparks behind him a roiling funnel. His face beaded with sweat, he called in a deep and steady voice. "Who speaks for the clan of Caratacus, of the tribe of the Attacotti and alliance of Caledonia?"

  "I do!" Arden replied. He stood straight, his sword by his side, his cloak thrown back, his hair plaited, and his tunic open to the golden torque at his throat. "I'm chieftain of this clan, confirmed by combat and acclamation."

  "Does your clan appreciate what the gods of wood and water have given them, chieftain Caratacus? Do they have thanks and humility in their hearts?"

  "The clan thanks the good god Dagda, who knows all crafts and all hearts, and who gave us the harvest to see us through the coming winter."

  "And who speaks for the great god Dagda?"

  "I do," Arden replied.

  "And will the god accept sacrifice from the Caledonii?"

  "The god demands it. The god desires it."

  With surprising strength, Kalin lifted the trussed sheep up above his head. The Celts roared their approval. Then the druid lowered the animal to the dry grass at his feet and took out a golden dagger.

  "Accept back some of the fruit you have given us, Dagda!" The knife plunged; the sheep kicked and was still. The blade came out red, and Kalin turned the animal to efficiently slit its throat. Then he walked in stately circle around the fire so that the drain of the animal's neck left a splattered circle of blood.

  Finally he came back to where he'd started and hurled the carcass into the fire.

  A great shout went up. "To Dagda and all the gods!"

  Then, amid the acrid smell of burning wool and flesh, the celebration began.

  There was sour-sweet mead scooped by cups out of cauldrons, the skull drinking bowls passed from lip to lip. There was wine, traded or stolen from the Romans. There was beer in oaken casks. Cooking pits were uncovered and meat unwrapped from steaming leaves. Pork and beef were stabbed by daggers, dribbles of grease wiped clean by warm bread. There were fresh-picked apples, late-autumn greens, and honeyed cakes, all consumed under moon, stars, and sparks, laughter making white clouds in the night. Occasionally they'd glance more apprehensively at their fortress on its hill, wondering at the dark banquet going on there.

  Arden kept a careful distance from Valeria, but his eye was almost always on her, watching her eat with the others, a kiss on her cheek here, a cheerful insult about her Roman origins there. She moved with quiet aura like the goddess she was about to play. What did she think of them now, in her secret heart? What would she do when her husband finally came for her, as someday he surely must?

  She had her own goblet. "I'm learning to like their mead and beer," Valeria confessed to Savia, even while discreetly keeping her own eye on Arden.

  "Don't drink so much that you forget who you are."

  At length, Brisa touched Valeria's arm to escort her away. Arden disappeared as well. The merriment and feasting went on in their absence, more logs hurled onto the fire. Finally there was the low, long call of a horn, echoing down the pasture, and the crowd quieted somewhat, most of them drunk now.

  Kalin's voice came out of the dark. "Make way for the good god Dagda!"

  Music began, the beat of drums and swirl of pipes, men and women tapping and swaying to its rhythm. Out of the darkness a stag appeared: five-pointed antlers, muzzled head, shoulders draped with dressed deerskin. It was a stag with two legs, human and yet not human, quick and strong. The animal darted, stopped, stepped hesitantly, and stopped again-and then, its head up, it recognized the clan and the fire that welcomed it every year, and danced ahead. Blue human eyes looked out from the holes in its head, the great rack of antlers dipping up and down like a god in rut.

  It was looking for its mate.

  "Dagda!" the assembly cried. "Lord of all the gods!"

  Round the fire the stag danced, three times. Then the horn sounded again.

  "Morrigan of the horse roams free on the pasture," Brisa cried. "Now she comes into the circle of fire!"

  The go
ddess ran headlong into the circle as if pushed, rearing to a halt just before crashing into the flames. The horse-goddess whirled in confusion as if bewildered or intoxicated. In truth, of course, she was both. Her head was that of the horse, a framework of hide and free-flowing mane, and her body, freed of its cloak, showed a goddess's form. A light dress was belted in an X across her breasts, and the firelight through the tunic silhouetted slim, muscular legs. A belt of gold cinched her narrow waist, its ends tied over and dropping into the grotto between her thighs. The tusks of a boar gleamed at her neck. The goddess-pony dashed this way and that, every attempt at escape blocked by the surrounding corral of laughing humans. Giving up, she danced light and carefree as a filly around the tower of flames, the antlered stag following half a circle behind, the drums pounding harder and the pipes swirling toward some kind of climax.

  "Morrigan of the horse! Her belly promises spring!" Fearing that something irrevocable was about to happen, the goddess kept darting ahead. She'd pause, allow Dagda to approach, and then bolt. Around and around they danced, Dagda ducking and rearing in feigned impatience, Morrigan whirling to give a glimpse of her thighs. The heat made them sweat, and the night made them shiver.

  The drums were accompanied by pounding feet and clapping hands in rhythmic thunder, the pace accelerating as Dagda drew ever nearer to the goddess whose fecundity would bring back light and food. She was slowing from exhaustion, looking over her shoulder at the antlered buck, her movements becoming more liquid and seductive as her soul was swallowed by her costume. Her hips were in rhythm with the music, her bare feet skipping on heat-curled grass. The sweat and heat picked out the points of her breasts, the geometry of her hips. The stag's arms were bare and powerfully muscled, a bone necklace rattling on his chest as he danced.