by Manda Scott
He gave up the struggle. She held him tightly, as he had held Hail, pressing her lips to his hair and then everywhere, kissing his forehead, his face, his neck. This, too, was something that would have brightened any other day. Since her mother died, they had not been this close. He was her brother; he had always known that he would have to share her. Then, through the spring, seeing the change in her, he had thought her lost to Airmid and had turned to Hail and the filly in her place. Now he found he had never lost his sister but instead was losing half his heart. He began to sob then, feeling himself a child again in her arms, forgetting that he was a warrior and had vowed not to weep.
She held him for a long time until the crying had stopped. His head hurt again and she brought him clean water and a hank of wool to clean his face. She held him on her knee and ran her fingers across his scalp, untangling his hair. When she found the sheared ends of the newly cut lock and ran over it without comment, he knew that Efnís had told of all that had happened in the great-house. He looked up at her for the first time. She had taken off the torc and the blue cloak, and the warrior’s braids had been combed from her hair so that it hung loose in a fine sheen to her shoulders like the vixen’s pelt of his horse-dreams. She looked entirely unlike the warrior he had seen wield the red-marked shield and the broken spear in the forest. “I saw you,” he whispered. “You were leading the spears. You had a sword-cut on your arm and there was blood on the back of your tunic, all the way down.”
“I know. Macha told me.” She stood, staring out at the sunset. In the odd, lurid light, her face and her hair were the same shade of red gold. She looked strained, as she had in the winter, and he looked quickly at her hand, to make sure that the wound on the palm had not opened. It did not seem that it had. He looked up again. With her eyes still on the sunset, she said, “I don’t want to be a warrior, Bán. That’s for you.”
She wanted so badly to be a dreamer and go to Mona with Airmid. He knew that. He had always known. He did not think it would happen but today was not the time to say it. “I didn’t make up the vision,” he said. “It was so.”
“I believe you. So does the elder grandmother.” She squatted down beside him again, out of the light, wrapping her hands in his. “She told it to the other dreamers so they would know ahead of the gathering. This one will be a bigger council than the one in the winter; the dreamers and singers and war leaders of the entire Eceni nation will all come together with our elders and the grandmothers. Togodubnos has asked leave to put a question: a ‘representation’ from his father.”
“Have they allowed it?”
“Yes. They have to. It is the gods’ day and anyone who comes can put a question.”
Over by the great-house, a horn brayed, mournfully. Breaca untangled her fingers from his. “I have to go. The council will meet when the horn sounds a second time and I must dress properly.”
She kissed him again, on his eyelids, making him squint. He giggled and, just for a moment, forgot the filly. When he looked again, his sister was standing straight and sober. She said, “It is not why I came, but I have a message from the grandmothers.”
For a heartbeat, he dared to hope. But if it was a reprieve, she would not have waited so long to tell him. Reading him, she shook her head. “No. Not that. But I am to tell you that, if you want it, they would allow you to sit with the council. You could hear the Trinovantian put his question and there would be time for you to speak afterwards.” She smiled, wryly. “It is the greatest honour they can give. You would be the youngest person ever to sit as a member of the elder council. The singers would tell it in your hero-tales after you died.” She spread her hands. “They cannot go against the laws, but they are doing what they can to make it better.”
It was a great honour but it did not make it better. She knew that as well as he did. He said nothing. After a moment, Breaca nodded. “I told them you would prefer to stay here but I had to offer. Will you light the fire? Please? Tonight is not a night to spend in darkness.”
His throat was becoming tight again. He said, “I will light a fire. For you.”
“Thank you.” She hugged him a final time, as she might were he going to war. Releasing him, she said, “Stay warm, little brother. I will be back before morning.” She left before he could weep again.
The night was warm and not dark. The sun sank below the horizon but the light remained, muting the stars. Bats and evening insects flittered in perpetual dusk. Horses grazed as they would of an evening, cropping the grass in circles around where he sat. The greater mass of the people, those not engaged in council in the great-house, cleared away the trade stands and the benches, the ropes and the marker stones, returning the fairground to the flat, open fenland it had been before they came. In due course, they lit fires and sat round them, talking. Only the youngest and oldest slept.
In the field, Bán laid and lit his fire and was surrounded by moths. Hail lay curled tight, dreaming of hares. The dun foal grazed and sucked from her dam and in between came to lie on the other side of him, sharing her warmth with his. He talked to her of the constellations as they passed overhead: the Hunter and the Serpent, the Bear, the Otter and the Spear. She dozed with her muzzle resting on his thigh. A horn sounded faintly in the great-house and raised voices answered in chorus, falling away to a distant murmur, like the sea.
The footsteps came shortly after that, a quiet scuffing on the grass that could have been a horse grazing but was not.
“May I join you?” The accent was rounded, from the far south. A man squatted down at his fire and, without asking further leave, laid a piece of wood on the flames. That was unfortunate; it was not permitted to turn away someone who shares a fire. Bán looked down at the filly’s head, resting on his knee, and said nothing. Hail, perversely, raised his head to look but made no attempt to drive the incomer away.
“It is a beautiful night.” It was an inconsequential statement, but the tone of it made him look up. The man was young, not much older than ’Tagos, but taller and more loose-limbed, like a colt that will be big but has not yet grown into its body. His hair was black and curled like lamb’s wool and his nose, which was too big to go with the rest of him, had been recently broken and reset on the angle. The effect was comical. One could imagine, were he younger and not so big, that he would be taunted for that. Dubornos, for instance, would not let him forget it. As an adult, it marked him out so that his face was one that others would remember. He had discarded his sun-cloak. In its place, he wore a dark, sober tunic and a new cloak of undyed sheep’s wool, marking him as neutral, of no tribe. Perhaps, on this night, it was a necessary deceit. Or perhaps the elders had required it.
The man held his palms to the fire, savouring the heat. His presence was an insult and clearly deliberate. If he stayed, it would be necessary to move. Bán looked out across the field, seeking out other places where he could build another fire.
“Who is Mandubracios?”
The words were slipped in between one crackle of the fire and the next so that Bán was not sure he had heard them at all. He looked up. The man’s eyes were on his face. They were brown and wide and free of guile. “The traitor Mandubracios,” he said again. “I have not heard of him. Can you tell me?”
“I am not a singer.”
“I know, but I did not ask for a song, just the bare bones of a story. Was he Eceni?”
“No!” That one could think so was appalling and added to the insult. “He was Trinovantian. He betrayed Cassivellaunos to Caesar’s legions. It was because of him they crucified the hound Belin, who was named for the sun.”
“Ah.” The man reached over and held his hand for Hail to smell. The whelp raised his head, gave the proffered knuckle a perfunctory lick and fell asleep again. The man stroked him as one who cares for his hounds. He said, “I can see that would be a bad thing.”
“It was worse than bad. It was against the gods and the people.”
It was then that Bán decided not to move. If he was going to be made to tal
k, he would do so, whether his audience liked the tale or not. He could not make the shadow pictures with his hands in the way that Gunovic had done but he could make the story real, with the colours and the smells and the feelings of the people. He began at the beginning and told it all. When the death of the hound came, he did not weep, because he knew it was coming, but he saw by the sudden stillness in the man’s features that he had told it well. “But the gods have exacted their price,” he said. “The traitor was cursed by the dreamers. His people are ruled over by the Sun Hound, who is of the line of Cassivellaunos…” And, because the stranger raised his brows but did not interrupt, he went on to tell him the tales of the three brothers: of Togodubnos, who was weak and let his father rule in his stead when the leadership should be his of right through his mother; of Amminios, who was without honour and plucked his nostrils to keep in with the Romans; and of the third son, Caradoc, who carried the fighting blood of the Ordovices and was going to be made warrior of three different tribes. He had intended to tell how this last one was a firebrand and despised his father but he remembered Gunovic’s warning that the Sun Hound did not deal lightly with treachery and so did not. The enemy of my enemy is my friend. Already, he considered Caradoc a possible ally.
He finished and they lapsed into silence. The fire hissed and spat. The big man stroked his fingers thoughtfully down the length of his nose. “Is it possible, do you think, that Togodubnos is not weak but recognizes that his father and his grandfather and all his ancestors before that worked throughout their lives to bring two tribes together, and that to take his rulership of the Trinovantes now, when the endeavour has just succeeded, might serve only to split them apart again?”
“Then when will he take the oath of his spears? Will he stay for ever in the shadow of his father? Is that the way of a warrior?”
“No. But a man may be a warrior and also a diplomat. And fathers do not live for ever. Cunobelin is of middling age; he may live for ten or twenty years yet, but when he dies his land will be split between his three sons. If they do not see eye to eye about how to rule it, there will be war and other people will die. You have grown listening to and admiring the great deeds of your warrior ancestors, yet it is not the duty of a warrior to make war for the sake of it but only to protect his people, or to avenge the deaths of others.”
“Then why will there be war when the sons take the land?”
“There may not be. But suppose one brother—let us say, Amminios—has spent many years living amongst traders and statesmen in Gaul and believes strongly that his fortunes lie with Rome.” Bán looked at him, shocked. Even Gunovic had not stated it so clearly. “And suppose that one of the others—Caradoc, perhaps—hates everything Roman with a passion that boils his blood and will do all he can to remove them and their allies from any place and any people over which he holds sway. Then the third brother—Togodubnos—unless he is a good diplomat may not be able to prevent these two from waging a prolonged and bloody war as each tries to enforce his wishes on the other. At best, there would be unnecessary slaughter. At worst, the legions of Rome might be called upon to intervene as they were by Mandubracios and we would find ourselves facing another invasion such as our ancestors faced. That would be unthinkable.”
“And is the third brother a good diplomat?”
“I don’t know. I am not the best person to say that. He tries to be. I am not sure that he succeeds.”
“Was it diplomacy that brought him here to put his question to the council?” Bán asked it directly, with his eyes on the stranger’s face. The man nodded, slowly. He did not look unfriendly.
“Not entirely. In that, he acted as his father wished. His father believes…” He trailed off and began again, differently. “Let me tell it as the council heard it. See”—he lifted a stick from the pile by the fire—“here is a stick. We will call it the branch of friendship between two peoples, the Trinovantes and the Eceni.”
“It is bare. There are no leaves on it.”
“Exactly. The tree from which it came has been allowed to wither, which is not good. The Trinovantes—the Sun Hound—would be as a brother to the Eceni and he is grieving that he has allowed this tree of friendship to go unwatered so that it bears no fruit. He has heard of the loss suffered by the royal house of the Eceni…” He looked sideways at Bán, who nodded to show he understood—the man could not name Breaca’s mother any more than an Eceni could. The man went on, “Cunobelin grieves most bitterly at this loss but grieving is not enough. A brother who is a true warrior does not simply grieve for the murder of his sister, he rides out and takes vengeance. And so the question put to the council was this: when the Eceni spears ride out to avenge the death of the woman of their royal line, the Sun Hound asks that he be allowed to bring the combined spears of the Trinovantes and the Catuvellauni to aid them in their battle against the warriors of the red kite. Only thus, he believes, may the tree of friendship be brought to bear fruit once more.”
Bán had been watching the fire and not the stick. When the man raised his hand again, in place of the bare twig he held a small branch of newly cut hazel, most sacred of trees. Leaves hung about it, and a single crow’s feather with the quill painted black, for war. He gave it to Bán, who laid it on the fire. He was not yet ready for gifts from this man.
He said, “Did Togodubnos make a stick turn into living hazel for the council?”
“Yes. They knew it to be a piece of trickery—sleight of hand—but it served to make the point and to ask the question that needed to be asked.”
“Togodubnos, speaking for his father, asked the council to make an alliance with the Trinovantes and the Catuvellauni against the Coritani?”
“He did, yes.”
“What did they say?”
“Nothing. They asked him to leave that they might discuss it fully amongst themselves. The answer will be given tomorrow after the ceremony of the sunrise. After you have given the light of your heart to my brother.”
He understood her worth. That, in itself, was a gift, if not enough to dull the pain. In a while Togodubnos said gently, “Did you know that your sister offered Amminios her grey filly in place of yours?”
Bán had suspected it but had not been sure. He shook his head, dumbly. It did not need to be said that Amminios had refused it.
The man said, “It is a great thing when two who share the same father care so deeply for each other. You should treasure it.”
“I do.”
There was a long silence. They both looked into the flames.
“The elders will refuse your request,” said Bán, eventually. He felt regret, even knowing it was true, and was surprised by it.
“I know. I knew it the moment you attacked Amminios. Until now, I did not know why.”
Togodubnos rose. Standing, he seemed bigger than he had when seated by the fire. One or other was a trick of the light. He smiled. “It is almost dawn. I will leave you with your filly. I think I will not tell my brother the council’s answer. It will be enough that he hears it in the morning. He will not be pleased.”
“He has not been named a warrior. Would he have ridden against the Coritani?”
“He would have led the right wing of the Trinovantian attack. It would have been his best chance to win honours in battle.”
The ceremony of the sunrise was brief and very beautiful. It did not involve the relighting of dead fires as at the beginning of summer, nor the opening of the new year as at the start of winter. Now, at the height of the sun, the people lined the river that ran foaming past the great-house and, as the first light struck the water, they gave back to the gods their gifts of grain and gold and asked the questions for which they needed answers. Bán was not at the riverside. His gift was different. Breaca had come as she had promised and helped him to prepare the filly and her dam, but the giving of them was his alone. The elders signalled the time of it. As the sun rose free of the horizon, the elder grandmother lifted a horn and blew it, strongly. The people moved
back, making a semicircle round a small knot of grandmothers and elders who gathered in the centre. Togodubnos was called out to join them and, after a moment, Amminios. Both wore their sun-cloaks and their torcs. Both had been seen to give armbands of solid gold to the water.
Bán came at the second signal. He walked forward, leading the mare on his shield side and the dun filly on his sword side, as he had been taught. Both walked out well, aware of all the eyes turned their way. The people stepped back to make a corridor along which they walked. It was not done to cheer on the day of the gods, but each adult carried a belt knife and most of them, by chance, had picked up a stick or a small log from the fire piles as they left for the river. The noise they made, beating the blades on the wood, was that of returning warriors, beating their sword-blades on their shields to signal victory. It began softly and built in waves to a thunder over which the voice of one boy could not be heard. The elders let it roll until the point was made and then the grandmother raised her horn and blew a third time. The silence that came after hurt the ears more than the noise had done.
Bán felt himself empty, as if his soul still sat by the fire and only his body were moving. He walked the mare and the foal forward the last steps to the elders. The grandmother stood perfectly erect. In the sunlight, her eyes were white, as if poured of mare’s milk. The others behind her stood straight and stone-faced. Only Togodubnos smiled—warmly, with some sorrow, as he had by the fire. Amminios’s smile was poison, marred only by three scored nail marks down the side of his face. Bán had only Dubornos as his example of what it was to inflict pain and take joy in it. Standing alone before his enemy, he had some understanding of how shallow that experience was. For a frantic, fleeting moment, he wondered if it might not be kinder to take his knife from his belt and kill the filly cleanly, now, before the assembled people.
“Bán, son of Macha, harehunter and horsedreamer.” The elder grandmother stepped forward. She had never used his full name before. She had never, as far as he could remember, spoken his name at all and now she was giving him titles he had not earned. “You come before us to make your apologies and to give your gift, the gods’ gift, to one who will receive it in the gods’ name. You will do so now.”