Paths of Exile

by Carla Nayland

  Not to be outdone, Gwen launched into a tipsy rendition of the Maiden’s Lament, a traditional song whose title was a mystery since it was not a lament and its protagonist was not a maiden, at least not for very long. Everyone had had a little too much to drink by now, and the circle round the fire was starting to separate into couples – or rather, three couples and two left over.

  Severa gazed at Steeleye over the rim of her cup, watching the play of the firelight on his sharp hawk’s face, the soft fall of his dark hair across his forehead, the way his eyes crinkled at the corners just before he laughed. He reached to hand the mead jug on, and she thought how gracefully he moved, and how beautiful his hands were, and how much she would like to snuggle up beside him and to kiss the little hollow at the base of his throat. Sitting opposite him had started out as a sensible precaution, but now it seemed more like a lost opportunity. She remembered his fingers on her wrist and the tender thrill in his voice. She wanted to feel the touch of his hands, and the warmth of his skin against hers in the quiet dark. The mead coursed through her veins like liquid fire. Never mind that his heart was given to some other woman. Never mind that he would soon be gone and she would never see him again. He could spare one night for her. One night that would last a lifetime.

  Without warning, his glance flicked to meet hers across the fire. She looked away hastily, afraid that she had made a fool of herself, afraid that he did not want her, afraid that he would think her ridiculous or, worse, pitiful. But when she ventured to steal another glance at him, he was still looking at her, caressing her with his eyes, and nothing else in the world mattered.

  Gwen lost her place in the song and collapsed into Ashhere’s lap in a heap of incoherent giggles, and someone had the bright idea of sharing the celebration with the local water-goddess, to thank her for a successful summer and ask her to keep the hafod under her protection over the winter. As they were all feeling very well-disposed to the world in general, it did seem a shame not to include the goddess, so they all reeled giddily out to the glade where the stream emerged from the woods and gathered round while Blodwen poured a libation and mumbled a heartfelt, if somewhat slurred, petition. It was a beautiful night, clear but not too cold, with a bright gibbous moon sailing high amid a sky full of stars. Under its light the rapids and little waterfalls on the stream became a skein of silk and pearls framed by black velvet shadows, a fitting abode for a water-goddess. Eadwine lingered by the stream after the others had turned away, adding his own silent prayer. Whatever power the goddess possessed probably extended no further than the hafod, but all deities were worthy of respect and a homeless exile with a murder to avenge was likely to need any friends he could find.

  “Steeleye –” murmured a woman’s voice close behind him.

  The tone was low, husky, inviting. He turned.

  The three couples had disappeared, and he and Severa were alone in the glade.

  Her face was silvered in the moonlight. He reached out, traced the line of her cheek with a gentle finger. She tensed at his touch, and for a moment he feared he had misread the signal, feared she would take flight like a startled deer. Then, very deliberately, she reached for her braid and shook her hair loose about her shoulders.

  He had never seen her hair unbraided before. It swirled to her waist like a cloud of shadow netted with moonlight, dark as charcoal, soft as velvet. He lifted it in his hands, astonished at its weight, ran a strand through his fingers. Her eyes were wide, her lips warm and inviting. She might have been the water-goddess herself risen from the stream. His heart leaped, and more than his heart. He took her hands and drew her closer. She tilted back her head and smiled up into his eyes. The invitation was as clear as it was irresistible, and there was no possible response but to kiss her.

  Her mouth was warm, tasting faintly of mead, and her arms went up around his neck, her hands twining in his hair. He pulled her close, saw her eyes widen as she felt the rising proof of his desire, and then her hands moved to his hips and pulled him closer still, before sliding up his back under his cloak. Every nerve in his body tingled with flame. He slipped the clasp of her cloak, trailed kisses down her throat and along her shoulder above the neckline of her dress, and was rewarded by a little gasp and shudder of startled ecstasy. Her hands were trying to find their way under his tunic, balked by the belt around his waist, and with a pleasurable jolt he felt her fingers struggling to unfasten the buckle. She lifted her face to be kissed again, murmuring some words he could not catch, and a name.

  “Iddon –”

  Her husband’s name.

  The shock was like being doused with icy water. If it was vaguely hurtful to be forgotten afterwards, to be used as a substitute for another man was utterly humiliating. He had not known she was so drunk. He released her as if he had been slapped.

  “He will come back to you,” he said unsteadily. “He will come back –”

  Not trusting himself to say more, he turned from her and left the glade, not caring in what direction.

  Severa dropped to her knees, sobbing.

  “Blessed Lady,” she whispered to the stream, “oh, Blessed Lady, forgive my sin, forgive me. How could I help it –? Oh, Blessed Lady – forgive me –” An anguished wail. “It was never like that with Iddon –!”

  Any bad temper or unhappiness the next morning was easily attributed to the hafod’s collective hangover. Even the dog was snappish and out of sorts. A multitude of tasks had to be done, making the hafod weathertight for winter, mending casks and barrels and baskets, and packing up the fleeces, the spun wool, and the food stores to be taken back to the village for the winter. There was more packing than usual, for there was a lot of dried and smoked meat as well as the usual sacks of cheese and barrels of butter and honey and mead, and Severa also had to put aside travelling provisions – biscuit, dried meat and smoked fish – for her departing guests. The chickens fluttered into everything, the cat made a nuisance of itself, and it was very easy to avoid anyone you did not feel ready to talk to.

  Some time after noon, Severa finally found the courage to approach Steeleye. She had failed to sort out her confused thoughts, but she felt she owed him an apology, although exactly what for she was not sure. For trying to seduce him? For failing? For not being to his liking?

  She found him in the wool shed, patiently unknotting a tangle of rope and looking very pale, very tense and very tired.

  “About last night –” she began uncertainly.

  His smile was kind, assured, and entirely natural. “You were drunk, lass. Nothing happened. Forget it.”

  Severa was not sure whether to be relieved or disappointed, and decided it was much more sensible to be relieved. Whatever foolishness she had felt was all the fault of the mead – sweet ensnaring mead, as the poets called it, with good reason – and was therefore not real. She had stayed true to her husband. She could keep her old life.

  Eadwine saw the look of relief cross her face, and knew he had said the right thing. Poor lass, how desperately she must love her husband to be so devoted to him after so long, and how hideously ashamed she would have been in the morning. He shuddered inwardly at the thought. Last night had been a lucky escape, although it hadn’t felt like it at the time.

  “Samhain Eve,” Severa said didactically, “is outside time. It belongs to neither the old year nor the new. The boundaries between the worlds break down, the dead walk the earth, and the gods may take on human form. The gates to the Otherworld open, and Arawn Lord of the Dead rides out at the head of a great host of ghosts and spirits. Like a wild storm they sweep over the earth, scouring the worlds for the Great Mother. Eventually they capture her, and in her absence all things on the mortal earth begin to fade and die. But also at Samhain Arawn couples with the Great Mother, and in the spring, at Beltane, a child of fire is born, who releases the Great Mother from Arawn’s clutches and with her return all things on the earth are reborn. So Samhain Eve is the greatest festival of the year, because without it there would be
no rebirth.”

  “So it’s a big party, then?” pressed Ashhere, getting to the point of interest. His enquiry had been prompted by the invitation from the village headman to celebrate Samhain Eve with the villagers that night, and he wanted to know if ‘celebrate’ meant what it said. Eadwine had been unhappy about accepting the invitation, having originally intended to make half a day’s travel before dark, but it was becoming clear that getting from the hafod to the village was going to take all day. The drove was headed by the village headman and two other men, who had arrived late the previous day with a string of dispirited pack ponies that were now plodding along laden with sacks, barrels, bundles, baskets of protesting chickens and the hafod’s cat. Behind them came the cows, some of them garlanded with wreaths of leaves and berries ‘to give the brownies somewhere to ride’, as Luned shyly explained, and behind them came the pigs, then the sheep and finally the dog. The older cows paced with ponderous dignity, having made the journey numerous times before, but the sheep were always stopping to graze particularly succulent-looking weeds, and the pigs were always trying to dash into the woods to root for nuts and fungi. Keeping the whole ungainly cavalcade together and moving, even with eight people to share the herding, required much breathless running up and down and wielding of sticks and butt-ends of spears. The day was bright, dry and cold, with a stiff breeze sending down showers of russet oak leaves, the exercise kept everyone warm, and the prospect of another feast at journey’s end could only add to the holiday atmosphere.

  Severa prodded an errant cow back into line with the dexterity of long practice. “It is the greatest feast of the year,” she called back. “All six villages gather together on Shivering Mountain – some people also call it the Mother Mountain – and cattle and pigs and lambs are killed in honour of the wedding of Arawn and the Great Mother. It is a lucky night to conceive a child, even if the father is unknown, because the child might have been fathered by Arawn himself in disguise. So many men wear masks, and a man who chose his wife for her dowry may seek out the woman he would rather have had. There is feasting and drinking and music and dancing all night until the dawn comes and the Host of Annwn returns to the Underworld, taking with them the Great Mother and sometimes even living people who have been overtaken by the Host. It is a dangerous night to travel abroad. Or so it is said.” She crossed herself. “I am glad you are staying.”

  “So am I,” grinned Ashhere.

  “We leave at dawn,” Eadwine warned, shouting from across the river of livestock. “And I mean dawn, no matter how bad your hangovers are.”

  Derwent Bridge was an untidy cluster of houses and barns on the east bank of the Derwent, a respectful distance upstream from the solid-looking timber bridge that carried the army-path over the river and gave the village its name. The settlement had probably once been grouped around the crossing itself, but had prudently migrated further and further away as armies became less and less disciplined. It was surrounded by a scruffy thorn hedge, which served to keep the animals inside rather than as any form of defence, and ploughed fields and hay meadows spread out across the valley floor. The great forests of the upper valley had been largely cleared here, leaving only small woods managed for timber and firewood, and steep pastures swept up to a gritstone edge high above the village. A smithy and pungent-smelling tanning pits occupied the extreme eastern edge of the village – since the prevailing wind was from the west, most of the village was upwind of the sparks from one and the smell from the other – and the rest of the space was dotted with wattle or timber houses thatched with moor grass, each with its attached barn and a little colony of sheds and outbuildings. Cattle lowed from some of the barns, greeting their returning relatives, and the inevitable flock of squawking chickens scratched about underfoot. Villagers claimed their livestock and began catching up on six months’ worth of gossip, the pack ponies were unloaded into the headman’s house, and Severa was immediately accosted by half a dozen people wanting advice on ailments ranging from skin rashes to suspected pregnancies. The four strangers were initially regarded with suspicion and some alarm, until the sack of smoked venison had been produced and the tale of the bandit raid recounted – with far more poetic license than Eadwine had ever dared apply in verse – after which they were urged to stay not just for Samhain but for the whole winter if they liked. There was only one problem.

  “You must leave your weapons here if you are going to the feast,” Severa explained, amid giggles from the village women and a chorus of jokes that a man needed only one kind of weapon at Samhain. Drust had made some more conquests. “Otherwise the gods will be offended and you will bring us all a year of bad luck. Or so it is said. And it is certainly a sensible custom, for drinking tends to mean fighting, and less damage is done with fists than with blades. Leave them in my house if you like. No-one will go in there.”

  There was no option, so Eadwine reluctantly agreed. A guest had to follow the customs of the country, like it or not. Severa’s house was much like the others, a simple structure of wattle and thatch. As they approached, a man came lounging out and leaned against the door jamb, blocking the entrance. He was a comely fellow of about thirty, with a discontented expression as though life had treated him badly, though when he saw Severa he mustered an unconvincing smile and held out a hand.

  “Sweet sister,” he greeted her. “I’ve come to take you home.”

  Severa folded her arms, ignoring the proffered hand. “As I have told you many times, my home is here. I do not need a place as a household drudge, especially not from you, brother dear. Kindly move out of the doorway.”

  The man let his hand drop, scowling, but did not move out of the way. “A childless widow has no claim on her husband’s family. Your place is with us now.”

  “But I am not a widow,” Severa told him coolly. “Unless you have news of Iddon? No? I thought not. He will come back to me one day, and when he does he will expect to find me here. In his house, waiting for him. As a wife should.”

  “You loyalty does you credit, dear,” put in a blonde woman, patting Severa’s arm as she might pat a dog. “But it is four years since he went away. Four years! Face it, dear, he must have met with some accident. You are young, you should start a new life –”

  Severa looked contemptuously at the hand on her arm until the older woman, embarrassed, removed it. “If by that you mean you want your husband made headman instead of acting headman, and you want to take my place as headman’s wife, say so.”

  “I’m thinking only of what’s best for you, dear –” the woman began.

  “How kind,” Severa said, in a tone so dry that it could have preserved meat for a season. “Thank you for your concern, dear good-sister, but what is best for me is to stay here.”

  “Don’t think you’re going to hook another man!” snapped the brother. “You’ll find nobody to take used goods with no dowry. Our father had to pay handsomely to buy you a husband. If you couldn’t keep him and he ran off with the money for some other woman, that’s not my problem. I’ll not buy you another!”

  Severa went very pale at the jibe, but answered steadily, “I am not in need of another man, brother dear. I have a husband, as I keep telling you. If you need a household slave because you married a pretty scatterbrain who can’t run a dairy, then pay for one.” She swept a challenging glance round the crowd and raised her voice a little. “Have you proof that Iddon is dead, or that I have been unfaithful to him?”

  No-one spoke. Eadwine saw the village headman exchange a glance with his blonde wife and shrug his shoulders, evidently reluctant to get involved in women’s quarrels. Severa’s brother swore. The other villagers looked on with indifference - no, not quite indifference, more a latent hostility. Although no-one spoke against Severa, none spoke in her support either. Even the three other women from the hafod were silent. As the herbwife and doctor she had the villagers’ respect, but as an outsider they recognised her as different and mistrusted her for it. Eadwine thought it would take ve
ry little to tip the silence into hate, and realised for the first time that Severa’s position was as precarious as his own.

  Severa turned back to her brother and her sister-in-law. “Until you have proof, I remain Iddon’s wife, not his widow, and my place is here. Now kindly move out of the doorway of my home.”

  “You should be grateful,” the brother blustered, moving out of the way as Severa stared him down. “You’ll beg me to take you in one day! You’ll beg –!”

  Severa ignored him, turning her shoulder to him in careless dismissal, and led the way into the house. Apart from a summer’s worth of dust and cobwebs it seemed tidy and well-kept, but its most striking features were the constant reminders of a man’s presence. A bowl, a jug and a shaving knife on a shelf under the single window. A man’s tunic, lovingly mended, hanging on a peg. A pair of well-worn house shoes set by the hearth to warm. You would think the man of the house had just stepped out to see to a chore and would be back at any moment. Eadwine swallowed hard as he propped his spear in a dusty corner. What must it be like, living with the constant presence of a ghost? Did Severa wake every morning, surrounded by her husband’s possessions, and hope that today would be the day he returned to her? He felt like a guilty trespasser, even though he had almost convinced himself that all he felt for Severa was a temporary lust brought on by too much mead. Just as well that he was leaving in the morning, and only had to avoid her for the Samhain feast.