Songwoman

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by Ilka Tampke


  ‘Now you,’ he said when he had finished.

  Hesitantly, I repeated what I could of the first verse. Rhain chuckled, corrected me and bade me do it once more, then a third time. By the fourth time I spoke it without error and looked at him for praise.

  ‘The words are correct,’ he said. ‘But you are dancing only on their surface: the names, the places, the happenings. You need to bring forth what is within the words.’

  I looked him. ‘But it is a simple praise poem, Songman.’

  ‘The first glance tells of one thing. Deeper scrutiny reveals another.’ He leaned closer. ‘It is your authority that will release the meaning of the poem.’ He was beaming.

  I frowned, frustrated by his incessant playfulness, his inscrutability.

  ‘Laugh!’ he commanded, and at that, I did.

  Immediately the flow of breath in my laughter released the coils of effort that had drawn taut within me. I started reciting again, letting my thoughts flow over the shape of the words, seeking the qualities that lived within the ancestral names: courage, nobility, a deep love of the land. As I spoke, this time fluidly and freely, I began to sense another truth emerging from the poem, a rhythm that was familiar to me, for I had sung it with the Mothers.

  I felt the cold, granular stone beneath my palms and how it entwined with the words I spoke, as if they were one thing. My poem was just a different utterance of the same source that had wrought this rock. I gasped, delighted, with the force of it.

  Then Rhain smiled as he saw me understand. ‘Do it again.’

  The days grew shorter.

  Over the weeks before we left for Môn, I walked daily with Rhain into the forests to embed his poems in the trunks, springs, caves and stones. I stood for hours of recitation, my nose streaming with cold, my cloak soaking with river spray, until my memory held songs of a number that surprised even Rhain.

  Once I had walked the poem’s forest path and knew it perfectly, he taught me how to use devices to ignite my memory within the walls of the temple: a staff scored with lines, a pouch of stones, a string of bronze bells. With a glance at these tools, I could call forth histories of kings, warrior lineages, and the laws that bound them, as well as savage, dizzying stories of men wrought to animals, murderous giants, women made of flowers: stories of revenge, honour, love, trickery and, above all else, our kinship with this moist, black earth.

  There was nourishment in the songs. My memory grew as lean and muscular as the legs that walked it. I learned how the web of language was spun and used it to entrap the succulent new words and pairings that Rhain taught me every day. I learned how breath and posture could render character and marvelled as Rhain conjured heartbroken maidens and enraged kings with only his face and voice.

  He was pleased with my learning, yet burst into laughter when I suggested, at the successful completion of a most difficult piece, that I might be ready to forge a song of my own. ‘Your memory of the poems is without flaw,’ he said, as his laughter subsided, ‘and your inflection in telling them is as artful as any I have taught.’ He took a sip from his ale cup and closed his eyes with the pleasure of it. ‘But when you speak, I still hear deference.’

  ‘To what?’ I asked.

  ‘Indeed…to what?’ He grinned at me. ‘The time must come when you are the only authority.’

  Scapula continued his disarmaments. There were further messages from the east that whole townships had been burnt in the search for weapons, that the Roman soldiers were relishing the chance to unleash their fists on the people, who over four years had submitted in body but never in spirit.

  Several chiefs called for Caradog’s aid, claiming treaties had been broken and must be avenged. He sent messages back that he was gathering an army of sufficient greatness to restore Albion to the tribes if they would only wait. But we all knew they were warrior chiefs, and they would act as they determined, just as he would in their place.

  We learned more of Scapula. He invoked the meaning of his name—‘sharpened spade’—in his pledge to dig the war chief from this soil. His speeches were relayed to us in full: he would not rest until the head of the resistance—the man he called Caratacus—had been severed from the body of Albion.

  Rhain took great pleasure in satirising him as crowing rooster, making us all roar with laughter with his strutting and preening. We mocked his pride, but beneath our ridicule we were beginning to understand that Scapula was as powerful an enemy as Caradog would ever meet and we would need our greatest courage to defeat him.

  The grain stores ran low and Caradog was forced to go to a neighbouring chieftain to purchase more wheat. He would not allow Hefin to relinquish any cattle, but bore the cost of feeding his war camp from his own herds and metals. He walked among his men daily, renewing his promise that he would deliver them their sovereignty. He spoke jubilantly to his warriors of his betrothal to me, describing the yet stronger bonds he would forge with the tribes once he was king. He kissed my fingers as we stood at the camp fires. But outside of our duties, we barely spoke. Once or twice, I noticed him bearing the dark cast I had seen after the news of disarmaments, but whenever it came he took pains to hide it. I settled to the fact that ours was an association of tribecraft, and that friendship would play little part in it.

  I took Manacca food and sat with her by the stream whenever there were spare hours and I could evade Prydd’s gaze. Her sweet spirit and eagerness to learn were a comfort, but it pained me that I could not bring her openly to the temple.

  Lying alone in my Kendra’s hut each evening, I was brutally lonely, as rootless and kinless as I had ever been. But as I drew Neha close beneath the blankets, I told myself that this must not matter now. I had my songs, my teacher, and the business of war. These were enough. My purpose was not to know closeness to another soul. I lived for the tribes now, for all of Albion.

  As the day of our departure drew near, Caradog had an armband wrought for Cartimandua. Its many silver strands were twisted into a thick rope, and its terminals wrought into the heads of a horse and a wren. Although he had charged the silversmiths to make the gift, the final and most detailed etching he completed himself. I knew as I watched him toil over the work, making himself humble before the craft, how much it meant that she would come to him.

  We had allowed three quarter moons to reach the island of Môn by midwinter.

  The travel band was small: Caradog, myself, Rhain and Prydd as well as a lesser journeyman, Caradog’s first warrior and two servants to attend us. Hefin would remain with his tribe. Euvrain had requested to join us, but Caradog had counselled her against it and I was relieved that she would not be there when I was made wife to her husband.

  Our journey was blessed by low winds and dry skies, and we made good time, even as the mountains grew steeper and the paths less known.

  Caradog rode with a hawk’s gaze, constantly appraising the rivers and cliffs for where strong defences could be made and safe war camps struck should the war ever drive us further north. He spoke little by day, but among the farmers that hosted us by night he was goodhumoured and curious about which crops had grown well and the merits of their breeds of sheep.

  As we drew further northward, we reached country like none I had seen before. Forests gave way to windswept, stony slopes and vast, ice-clad mountains reared on every side of us. These were the mountains of Eryr, named for the eagles that soared at their crests.

  I rode beside Rhain, staring up at the jagged peaks dissolving into cloud. There was no soil or woodland to soften the Mothers’ temper. They did not whisper here. They bellowed. I smiled at the thought of Rome imagining that they might claim this ground. ‘If these are Môn’s guardians, then she should fear no intrusion,’ I said to Rhain.

  The slow terrain forced us to make camp wherever we could not bridge the distance between one settlement and the next. I savoured these wild nights when the sky’s milk emerged in startling brightness. As we sat by a small campfire and Rhain sang into the black sky, I knew a
kinship with this ground that knew no breach. And when I joined him in song, our voices in the darkness were a peace and purpose that even a Kendra’s duty could not equal.

  Caradog said little on these evenings, but took pleasure in our song, surprised at first that I had knowledge of the craft. Often I sensed him sleepless while the others snored, but if he saw me rise to pass water or lay fuel on the fire, he did not acknowledge our shared wakefulness. By day, also, he would kick his mare forward if I tried to ride abreast of him. I was patient at first, then angry. I was giving him all I had to this marriage, this war. The least he could do was speak to me.

  Two days before midwinter, on a clear afternoon, we reached the north coast. Before us, over a wide stretch of churning tidewater, the island of Môn rose out of the ocean. Its treed shores swirled with mists, making it hard to see where water ended and earth began. This isle was of Albion and yet not of Albion. It was our last remaining training place, a threshold place, possessing all the power and risk of ground that spanned two worlds.

  It was here that the journeypeople returned every year to renew their vows. It was here that the advisors to the most powerful chiefs in Albion determined where funds were best spent in the ongoing resistance. It was here that shipments of gold flowed into Albion from Erin across the western sea, ensuring Môn was as fertile in coin as it was in soil and knowledge. All our other learning places, including my own, had been claimed by the legions. Now there was only Môn, Albion’s soul, its deep, singing heart. It stood at the farthermost edge of the world, so remote, so well-hidden, that Rome would never reach it.

  After a night’s rest we walked down onto the muddy beach, where the ferrymen stood by their carved longboats, awaiting passengers. I sat frontmost in the vessel, as Neha trembled at my feet, refusing to sit and floundering to her keep footing as the ferryman pushed us out. Our passage was slow and rough in the surging winter currents.

  The tide was low as we pulled into the shallows and we had to walk over the black, stony sandflats to reach the bank.

  I waited beside Caradog and Rhain as our attendants procured horses and a guide to take us to the settlement of Cerrig. Môn was not large, easily traversed in a full day’s journey. We would reach our destination by late afternoon, if we rode at good pace.

  The vast sky and glittering ocean on the western horizon cast the whole isle in a searing brightness that made my eyes stream. After a lifetime of low cloud and dappled forests, I felt immersed in light.

  The streets of the settlement gave way to vast fields of winter wheat. Môn’s soil was renowned for its fecundity, yielding crops far in excess of its needs. There were clan tartans from the breadth of Albion among the field workers, for Môn was a sanctuary, a refuge, for those who had fled the Roman occupation. Between the small settlements and farmhouses along the road were huddles of tents and wagons. Several times over the day, Caradog called us to stop, dismounted and spoke to these displaced people. It was clear that Môn had sufficient grain to absorb such homelessness, yet still I was unsettled by the extent of it. Western Albion relied on this island to supply wheat to those tribelands whose crops had failed, and demand had increased since farmers had been pulled into war bands. Môn was Albion’s grain store, but even she was not limitless.

  Fields subsided to woodlands. These were the learning forests and the groves nested within them were among the most sacred in all of Albion. I felt a body hunger to kneel at their shrines.

  The day drew late. My back ached from the saddle. At last our guide announced that we would ride only one more hill before we reached our destination. I strained to glimpse Cerrig’s sacred lake as we crested the peak, but it was so hidden by the blaze of sun on the ocean, that we were almost at its edge before I saw it.

  Lake Cerrig. Albion’s holiest water, place of pilgrimage for the journeypeople. Its bed lay dense with offerings of gold, bronze and silver from every corner of Albion and the Gaulish lands beyond. Even as we arrived it was thronged with song-walkers, murmuring their chants and casting in metal. No place in Albion was closer to Annwyn.

  Prydd dismounted and walked up a rocky rise that bordered the lake. From its edge, he cast an iron knife into the water. I slipped from my horse to offer my own greeting to the Mothers. No sooner had my feet touched the ground than I felt their song in the tremor of my legs. I closed my eyes against the roll of emotion that threatened to engulf me. This island place would heal me. It would make me strong.

  Caradog stared at me as I remounted. Had he seen how I softened at the brink of the Mothers’ realm? His face held an expression I could not read.

  We arrived at a settlement of round houses and craft huts noisy with penned goats and sheep. There were no ramparts here, for there was no fighting. Neha bounded to join three other hounds that had been thrown the scraps of a carcass. I watched her with surprise for she was usually wary of other dogs.

  As we dismounted, three journeymen strode towards us, their robes billowing behind them.

  ‘Greetings Prydd,’ said the first and eldest of them, kissing his journeybrother. He turned to me. ‘This must be she.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Prydd, his voice thick with false pride. ‘Our Kendra.’

  ‘Welcome.’ The elder kissed my fingers and pressed his forehead to the back of my hand. ‘I am Sulien, head journeyman of Môn,’ he said as he straightened.

  His hair and beard were grey as ash and I could see his smile was well-worn in his face. He motioned forward one of his companions who handed me a bronze cup filled with ale.

  All three bowed as I drank the strong liquid.

  ‘It has taken far too long for you to come to us,’ Sulien said as he took the cup.

  ‘Not too late, I pray,’ I said.

  ‘Perhaps just in time.’ He passed the cup to Caradog. ‘We received riders two days ago…’

  ‘With what message?’ said Caradog.

  ‘The Iceni have risen,’ said Sulien. ‘They no longer tolerate the disarmaments. Chiefs from the Coritani have made a war bond with them and they are gathering at the edges of Tir Iceni to prepare for battle.’

  ‘It is too soon!’ said Caradog. ‘Does Scapula call back his men from the Sun Road to meet them?’

  ‘No, War Chief. He prepares his legions. He leaves the auxilia in place along the Sun Road to watch over the west.’

  Caradog smiled. ‘He is no fool.’

  We spoke no further for it was not correct to conduct statecraft before meat and bread had been taken.

  Sulien walked beside me as we went to the guest huts, querying my training and my history with the lively curiosity of a true journeyman. ‘Does it please you so far, our precious isle?’ he asked.

  ‘Very much,’ I said. I loved this place: the light, the lake, the endless glinting freedom of the ocean. But this was not all. This was a place unbound to any tribe. It belonged to the Mothers. It belonged to everyone and no one. This was why it could be home to the homeless. Why, perhaps, it could be home to me.

  I sat beside Caradog as the fire burned low in the guest hut.

  The rest of our party were asleep behind woollen curtains that screened the beds.

  Caradog was sleepless, preoccupied by the evening’s discussion with Sulien and the other journeypeople. He had asked the elders whether he should take his fighters to join the Iceni, despite his displeasure at their timing. ‘If I do not go to them now,’ he had said, ‘I cannot hope for their friendship when I require it.’

  But the elders had been clear. ‘Leave the eastern tribes. They are lost to us,’ said Sulien. ‘Our purpose now is to protect Môn and the tribelands around it, the mountain country. Let this be your kingdom. Give the Iceni to Rome.’

  Caradog had yielded to this wisdom but I saw now how it pained him. He was born of the east. The Iceni and the Coritani were tribes that bordered his homeland. But he could not defy the elders of Môn. In exchange for his protection, his tireless fight, they gave him grain and weapons and metals for trade. They paid for h
is war.

  I looked at him in the flickering light. He gave himself willingly to fight for our freedom, but he was not free. He had been bought as all things are bought. As my own Kendra’s title had been bought by a far simpler contentment.

  I stared at my hands, calloused from the reins. As a child, I had known many things to be pure and bestowed without cost: the sweetness of a wild grown apple, the icy thrill of spring’s first river bath, our belonging to the land we stood on. But the Romans had robbed us of this innocence. Now there was nothing untouched or unquestioned.

  ‘Tomorrow night, we will be wed.’

  I looked up. It was the first time Caradog had made mention of our betrothal since we had left Llanmelin. ‘I thought you had forgotten…’

  He ignored my jibe. ‘You are Kendra of Albion—’

  ‘So I am called…’ I ventured, wondering what he meant by stating it.

  ‘You have been asked by the journeymen to name me as high king.’ He paused. ‘It is not them, but I, who asks you now… do you think I am worthy to be king?’

  I stared at him. He was not asking me as Kendra. He was asking for my judgement, my authority. He had never done so before. What should I say? He was flawed. Prideful. But he had a love of Albion that I had never known and he had the courage to defend it.

  ‘Yes,’ I whispered.

  Without words, he reached for my hand.

  I looked down at the worn leather plait that circled his wrist, his marriage band. This was the marriage he had made by choice. Beside it was a much newer band, by which he was betrothed to me.

  I closed my eyes and pulled my hand away. I had to silence the stirrings of my heart before it was too late. My task was Albion’s protection. If I loved again, as I had loved Taliesin, it would destroy me.

  The next day commenced the final preparations for the solstice and the marriage ceremony.

  Midwinter was the fulcrum of the year. Caradog and I would be wed in the belly of the year’s longest night, so that when Lleu rose in the east—if our rituals had been strong enough to turn him back—we would know that the marriage had been blessed, that the king was true.

 

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