by Manda Scott
On the second day of the funeral, the dead man was lifted from his bier, carried outside and laid on a pyre of dried oak and ash. Cunomar, the three-year-old son of Togodubnos, lit it with the studied solemnity of the very young. The spaces between the logs had been packed with straw and tinder and small nuggets of minerals sent by Maroc from Mona so that the flames leaped up in scarlet and gold and bright green, and those few amongst the crowd who might have forgotten they stood in the presence of majesty were reminded once again that they had never seen his like.
On the third day, the ashes from the fire were lifted from the pit beneath the burned-out pyre, placed in a jar of baked, unfinished clay and returned to the heart of the mound. Everything inside the chamber—the shields, the blades, the spears, the food, the wine, the caskets of clothing—was broken, torn or ground underfoot. Their spirit forms had been carried across the river by the departing soul, and there was no need now for them to remain whole in the land of the living, as temptation for any who might desecrate the grave. The tomb was left open for the day, to be closed at the rising of the moon, under Luain’s command. Those who wished to do so were encouraged to spend time in the presence of the dead. The walls between the worlds were thinned here and now, the words of the gods more easily heard.
Through it all, one name ranked alongside that of the dead man. Caradoc, warrior of three tribes, had not chosen to honour his father’s passing, and his absence left a bigger gap than his presence might have filled. In a gathering of this size, rumours buzzed and spread like flies on a carcass: he was said to be in Gaul, assaulting Amminios’s holdings there while his brother paid homage to their sire; he was in the far western toe of the land, forging alliance with the Dumnonii who controlled the tin mines, persuading them to cut back on their trade with Rome; he was in Hibernia, the vast island beyond the mists at the western edge of the world, raising warriors to sail east and challenge both of his brothers; he was in the wild lands of the north, paying court again to Cartimandua of the Brigantes, who held the spear-oaths of more warriors than any man, including the one recently departed.
This last was both true and demonstrably false: Cartimandua did hold more warriors than Cunobelin had done but Caradoc was not in her company. The leader of the Brigantes had led her own delegation south and had been conspicuous both by the size of the offerings left at the grave—she had given a chariot bound in gold and a shield of the same metal—and by her conduct. She was not a subtle woman and, whereas Caradoc was manifestly not in her retinue, she let it widely be known that he had spent a recent winter in her great-house, “paying court” as assiduously as his father had ever done to any woman.
Breaca, who had more reason than most to know which of the stories were false, watched from a distance. She had known little of Cartimandua until the day of her choosing, when it had become clear that the Brigantian woman was, indirectly, the reason for Venutios’s recall.
It had been an odd time, that hazy period when the mantle of Warrior had not fully left one or passed to the other and neither the past incumbent nor the present had grown used to the change. In the days immediately afterwards, Venutios had taken Breaca into Talla’s great-house and given all he knew of the Warrior’s teaching, passed down in an unbroken line since the days of the oldest ancestors. He had, without difficulty, named two hundred of his predecessors, each of whom had held the title for a decade or more, and under his tutelage Breaca had learned not only the names, but also the dreams and the power each had held and the stories of their choosing-nights, going back through uncounted generations. The sense of age and veneration and the responsibility it embodied had left her silent with awe. There were things she knew now that even Talla had never heard, nor would she ever do so.
On the first day, the day of the choosing, it had been different and less easy. Breaca had come across Venutios in mid-afternoon, sitting in the shade of the hazel trees by the stream eating an apple. From a distance, he had looked content enough; closer, the grief and dragging resignation had been clear and Breaca would have walked away had he not hailed her and invited her to join him. They had sat quietly and she had tried to gauge the limitations of his peace and had found it whole, but thinly so. She had not known, then, that she would not be required to carry it as he had.
Presently, he had split another apple and given her half and, as if to the water, had said, “My people are the northern Brigantes, the smaller part of that nation. It is the wish of my elders that, together with Cartimandua, who rules the larger, southern part, we make a whole which is greater than either alone. This is why I have been called home.” He had thrown the apple core into the stream. His blunt, open face had been closed. “Cartimandua has never set foot on Mona, nor will she ever do so. She believes that her will and Briga’s are one and that she needs no dreamers to interpret or to intervene. She teaches this to her people and has them treat her as a god.”
Breaca had said quietly, “No-one rules for ever.”
“No. And it is the wish of our elders that her child, if she has one, be brought up with an understanding of the difference between the gods’ will and the urgings of the human heart. This I will do with all my strength while there is still breath in my body.” And so she had seen the full extent of the task he had accepted on the jetty, had felt the weight of it dragging him down. It had seemed then, and did so still, unbelievable that the one who had been Warrior could be shackled so easily.
“If there is war,” she had asked, “will you lead your people south against Amminios and his allies?”
“I believe the people of the north—my people—will listen to me, and, yes, if it is necessary, I will lead them in support of the Trinovantes. As to Cartimandua’s people—” He had stopped. Soft feet had brushed the grass behind her. Venutios had pitched his voice beyond Breaca’s shoulder. “Caradoc has seen her more recently than I. Caradoc, in the event of war between your brothers, will Cartimandua of the Brigantes lead her warriors south, do you think?”
There had been quiet. That Caradoc had spent a winter with the Brigantes was well known. No word had spread to Mona of his activities there. Breaca had turned and found him lying back on the grass at her side with his head cushioned on his hands. His eyes, empty of feeling, had reflected the sky. With uncharacteristic venom, he had said, “That one will do whatever suits her and that is not something any of us can predict.” Sitting up, he had softened his voice, but not his eyes. “Cartimandua is one who believes respect is earned by an accident of birth. In consequence, she demands it unearned and does not give it, even to those of her people who act with greatest honour and courage on her behalf. She will act as impulse drives her and there is none can say how that will be, not even herself.” His gaze had met Venutios’s and what passed between them had been private. “I don’t envy you your place.”
The man who had been Warrior had smiled, thinly. “No. Neither you, nor any man. I wouldn’t wish it on another, but I will make of it what I can.”
Venutios had not been part of the Brigantian delegation to the Sun Hound’s funeral and what he made of Cartimandua remained open to conjecture. Breaca found very quickly that she shared Caradoc’s opinion, and her pity for the one who had been her predecessor deepened over the days. Irritatingly, she had found herself more than once caught at table listening to descriptions of Caradoc’s physical attainments. On the most recent occasion, she had been with Odras, who had waited quietly for a gap in the talk before asking, in a clear, carrying voice, how, after an entire winter spent in rampant coitus, the Brigantian ruler had managed to avoid conceiving a child. The laughter was loud and had lasted longer than perhaps it should have done and the topic of conversation had been abandoned, never to return in Odras’s or Breaca’s hearing.
It was in the lull after that, privately, that Odras told Breaca the last of the rumours, the one that had gained least circulation and that seemed, on the face of it, most likely to be true. Breaca left and sought out Airmid, who should have been able to
tell her the truth of it but had not. In the absence of answers from the living, Breaca walked up to the grave mound to consult with the dead.
The burial chamber faced east, but Luain had constructed a second opening tunnelled out to the west, by which the mellow light of the setting sun might enter and warm the remains. Breaca arrived near dusk and found the place empty of the living, filled only with still air and the single square-edged beam of light that fell onto the funerary urn and the torn yellow cloak below it. The chamber within the grave mound was larger than she had imagined, and smelled of timber, not earth and stone. Newly planed oak lined the walls and ceiling, carved on all surfaces by the whorls and lines and strange dancing beasts of the ancestors. She rested her back against the mark of a running deer and untied her belt pouch, tipping the contents onto her palm.
The keepsakes of her life were here, such as could be carried: a ring in gold, a piece of carved amber that had been a gift from Airmid when they first crossed the straits to Mona, a fragment of leather cut in haste from the end of her father’s belt before they had left him by the river, the dried foot from the first hare that Hail had killed for her after Bán had gone. She tipped them all back again, keeping only the ring. It lay cool on her palm. She stood for a while, feeling the imprint of it, then leaned forward and laid it on the centre of the yellow cloak in the last of the slanting evening light. The small, engraved image of the sun hound showed black in a sea of gold.
Footsteps whispered on the grass outside. A shadow fell in from the entrance. A voice she would have recognized in the midst of battle, or in the blindness of a closed grave, said, “Of all the gifts he ever gave, he would not have wished that one to be returned.”
She lifted her head. The chamber became colder. The skin on her face stretched tighter across the bones. “Caradoc.” She made herself turn to face him. “I hear you are sire to a child by Cwmfen, who leads the Ordovices. I had thought you followed only Maroc’s urgings but it seems not. Your father will go happy into the lands of the dead with his dearest wish fulfilled.”
“Not by me.” He stepped further into the room. His voice was stilted and oddly formal. “Yes, I have a daughter, newly born. I stayed to see her first breath before I rode east; it is why I am late. We have named her Cygfa. Bán had a hound whelp of the same name and for the same reason. She will grow knowing why her mother and not her aunt leads the people of the war hammer. It will not make of her a vassal of the Trinovantes.”
“And what will she know of her father?”
“As much as you knew of yours. More, I hope, than I knew of mine. Or, at least, what she knows will be different.”
He moved to the far side of the bier to face her. In the resinous air of the chamber, he smelled of travel, of horse and harness and mud and clothes worn too long. He had taken the time to wash the dirt from his hands and face and to throw on a fresh cloak, creased from the saddlebag but clean and crisply unweathered. It was white, the colour of the Ordovices, and brooched with a war hammer in silver. His face was worn and lined from lack of sleep. It was a man’s face, not a boy’s dragged wet from the sea, but then that had long been the case. Still, she could not imagine him a father.
I have a daughter. Pain twisted inside her as it had not done at their parting on Mona’s jetty when she had taken it as a passing fancy, and had said so, and, in pity, he had not told her differently. Lovers may come and go, but fatherhood does not. Caradoc was not one to sire a child by accident; to have done so spoke of a bond as great as any warrior’s oath. She knew him well enough to know that, if nothing else.
We have named her Cygfa.
We.
Cartimandua, at least, would be silenced by that.
It was best that she leave. Nodding down at the bier, she said, “I will leave you alone with him.”
“No.” His hand stopped her. “Don’t go. It was you I came to see. My father and I have said everything we were ever going to say.”
He lifted the ring from the dead man’s cloak. It lay on his palm, warm in the sunlight. The gold became something for them both to watch. “He would not want you to renounce him now,” he said.
“I didn’t intend to. He valued his alliances more highly than that. I would not stoop to do less.” She spoke of the dead in words for the living and the living understood.
The grey eyes were wide, holding hers. “We are still oath-sworn.”
“I know. Did you wish to renounce that?”
“Never. Did you?”
“No.” She took the ring and slid it onto her finger, studying the carved image on its surface. She was the Warrior, a pupil of Mona. She did not believe he could know how she felt.
“How did you know I was here?” she asked.
“Airmid told me. I would not have disturbed you but Amminios has gathered those loyal to him and left the dun.”
“What?” She raised her head, sharply. For a moment, she was only the Warrior. “He has rejected Togodubnos’s offer?”
“It would seem so.”
“Then he must be stopped. If he reaches the southlands and takes the oaths of the warriors, there will be war. Unless…” Even given the day’s news, she still believed she knew Caradoc better than most. By consent of the elders, he had command of five thousand spears of the Ordovices; he would have brought at least some of those and yet she had not heard the horns sounding greeting nor the chaos that the arrival of many horses would have caused. An appalling certainty beat into her mind. “Where are your warriors?” she asked.
He paused a moment, looking at his father’s urn. The sun shining through the western port bisected his face, making it difficult to read. With a studied neutrality, he said, “They are already in the southlands. Those warriors who were previously sworn to my father have transferred their spear-oaths to me. It is the other reason I was late.”
“Gods—” She gaped at him. “And Amminios? What do you think he will do now?”
“He will ride into the southlands believing them to be a safe haven and he will find it is not so. My warriors will take him and hold him alive until we reach them. If we ride now, we will not be far behind.”
We. The casual assumption that Mona was at his disposal. Anger was too easy, too near the surface; it became important to leave. Caradoc stood in the way and caught her arm as she passed.
“Breaca, don’t. It was necessary. The warriors of the southlands are Berikos’s Atrebates, only lately sworn to my father. Their loyalty is anything but certain. You know this, you said it yourself. If Amminios had reached them ahead of us, we would have ridden into a battlefield with the ground not of our choosing.”
“And instead, if you are wrong, we may ride into a war. Did Togodubnos know you were going to do this?”
“No.”
“So he, too, does not play the Dance as well as the masters?” The control of Mona was gone. Anger scorched the air between them—a just and righteous fury, given cause by his actions in war, not in love. She said, “What if Amminios plays the game better than you? What if he does not ride into the waiting arms of your Ordovices? What if he sees them, or is warned and takes fright and seeks refuge with Berikos behind the borders of the Atrebates, or sails for Gaul and his Roman friends, what will you do then?”
He had ridden too far, too hard and was too tired to match her. Wearily he said, “It’s nearly winter, the seas are too uncertain for him to sail for Gaul now. As to Berikos, I think my brother’s pride will not let him seek help so early. He still believes he can win on his own.”
“Does he? Do you believe that? Or will your pride not let you consider defeat?”
It was not a question that allowed an answer. He let go of her wrist, suddenly, and stood in silence as she walked past him into the clamour of the evening.
Airmid, who knew her best and held strong opinions on the matter of Caradoc, had saddled the grey battle mare and slung the serpent-spear shield from the cantle. The honour guard were already mounted awaiting word to leave, all except
Ardacos, who rested on Mona, nursing a broken arm. She would have liked him here now, for the strength of his silence. The rest felt the heat of her anger and thought it was for Amminios. In good heart, they mounted and followed her towards the gate to join the queue of those waiting to retrieve their weapons. Hail ran at her side, eager to hunt. Of them all, he was the only one to look back at the grave mound.
——
Rain fell at a slanting angle, driven by the wind. The grey mare stood with her tail to the worst of the weather. Breaca sat tall in the saddle, held erect by anger. Without turning her head, she said, “So much for Amminios’s pride. It does not outweigh the sight of five hundred spears and the white cloaks that wield them.”
Caradoc was at her left. He too kept his eyes on the enemy. “It was a gamble. We lost. I still say it was a necessary risk.”
“And is it part of that necessary risk that we now face the combined warriors of the Atrebates and their allies, the Dobunni, and that we are outnumbered eight or nine to one? You can fight them. I would not ask the spears of Mona to die for the sake of another man’s pride. We are going home. Send word if you win. I am sure I will hear if you die.”
Rage had sustained her for the two days’ hard ride and the crossing of the sea-river at the end; it did so still. She sat the grey mare on a long, low slope looking down into an empty valley. Behind her waited the honour guard of Mona and seventy additional warriors plus the two hundred of the Trinovantes, supported by Caradoc’s Ordovices. They were nearly a thousand in all, not an inconsiderable force, but they were as cockles in a cornfield compared to the thousands upon thousands who filled the slope opposite. Even those spears who had sworn to Caradoc were ranged against them; it had taken less than half a day for them to forswear and change sides. The Atrebates wore pale brown cloaks, the colour of sand; the Dobunni, on the left flank, wore green checked with grey, like lichen on rocks. At their heart, between the two, Breaca could see a single splash of gorse-flower yellow. Across the gulf that divided them, she could hear Amminios laugh.