Songwoman

by Ilka Tampke

  Many chieftans and their families had already arrived, on the advice of their journeymen, ready to forswear their territories to a greater power—one they believed the Mothers had chosen, one they believed would protect them: a sacred king.

  All day I was fasted, washed, and sung over in the temple by the journeypeople. Now, many hours after sunset, I stood on the stony rise before the lake with a flaming bonfire next to me.

  A gathering of many hundreds of people rimmed the lower shore, huddling around lesser fires and jostling for a better vantage. Sulien, Prydd and a throng of other journeypeople milled around me, readying the cups and oil for ritual. Beside me was a mighty archway wrought of leafless branches of apple and oak, and woven with sprigs of our holiest winter fruit: the translucent, moon-pale berries of the mistle.

  Standing within the arch, obscured from my sight by the sprays of mistle, was Caradog. I could not see him, but I knew he was unclothed, so that all could be certain he bore no imperfection.

  I wore only a white, horse-skin cloak over my own nakedness and a garland of mistle in my hair. Mare’s blood had been painted across my cheeks and breasts, as well as sitting heavy in my churning belly. My flesh and the land were as one. Tonight Caradog would be joined to both.

  A steady drum beat and a journeyman’s chant lapped against my skin.

  Sulien stepped forward and quieted them both. The crowd hushed. The ritual was beginning.

  ‘Check that he is unblemished, Kendra,’ Sulien commanded in a voice that carried far over the lake.

  I walked to the archway and turned to face Caradog, hiding my shock at the force of his nakedness. He was paler-skinned, less haired than I had imagined him to be, but somehow, unrobed and unmetalled, adorned only by the light of the torches, he looked more noble, more commanding, more of a king, than I had ever seen him.

  I placed my palms on his chest. I could not meet his eye.

  Perhaps it was that I had neither eaten nor drunk all day, but I felt suddenly unsteady as I stood before him. I was not prepared for him to be so beautiful.

  He saw me falter and took hold of my arm to brace me.

  In accordance with my instruction, I ran my hands over the length and breath of his body. His chest muscles twitched as I brushed them with my fingers and his skin pimpled in the cold. I felt his strong arms and his powerful legs, as firm and straight as carved wood. His penis hung long and soft, its crown of curls stirring in the wind. I checked his back, his buttocks, the sole of each foot. I had not touched a man’s skin since I’d lain with Taliesin. I stood upright. ‘He is perfect,’ I said in a voice thin with desire.

  ‘Then robe him and stand by his side,’ said Sulien, handing me a heavy cloak.

  I fastened the pin at his throat, yet still I could not meet his eye. As I stepped into the archway, my nostrils flooded with the scent of oak sap and Caradog’s sweat.

  Sulien was speaking. ‘We gather under the gaze of the Mothers of Môn, first spirits of Albion, to bind the Kendra to her chosen consort. By this marriage, he will be sovereign to the land she carries.’ Sulien walked to stand in front of both of us. ‘Caradog of the Catuvellauni, son of Belinus, skin to the wren, will you honour the three duties of a king?’

  ‘Name me the duties,’ said Caradog, with the clear diction of ritual speech. Nerves, if he had them, did not disturb his voice.

  ‘Will you bestow grain and ale on the farmers with generosity?’

  ‘I will.’

  ‘Will you lead the warriors in battle with courage?’

  ‘I will.’

  ‘Will you serve the Mothers and the journeypeople who uphold their knowledge with reverence?’

  ‘Yes.’ He glanced toward me. ‘All this, I promise to do.’

  The gathering was silent, waiting.

  Sulien turned to me. ‘Kendra of Albion, skin to the dog, you bear knowledge in origin. Your flesh is Albion. Your breath is Annwyn. Your voice is our Mothers’ song in perpetual renewal.’

  He handed me a pair of deep bronze spoons, one within the other, and another journeyman filled it with a dark, slippery liquid. ‘With this holy oil, blood of the Mothers, anoint the high king of Albion, sovereign protector of all that you uphold.’

  I turned to Caradog. He held out his broad hands in the shape of a cup.

  I slid the bottom spoon out, and a small piercing in the upper spoon allowed a thin stream of oil to fall onto his palms. I spoke in a clear voice, though my body still trembled. ‘Let your hands be anointed.’

  I lifted the spoons and poured onto his chest. ‘Let your breast be anointed.’

  Lastly he lowered himself to one knee and I poured a smooth trickle onto the topmost part of his head. He looked up. A copper-coloured rivulet ran down the side of his face.

  I felt a moment’s panic. Was this, in truth, the will of the Mothers? Did I have this authority? Was I enough to make him king?

  Sulien proclaimed, ‘He is anointed. Stand.’

  The crowd roared as Caradog stood and I felt the great wash of hope that this marriage gave them. This marriage would turn the war. It would bring Cartimandua to Caradog’s command. My breath steadied. This was enough, this image of our union. What lay within it did not matter.

  Sulien took the spoons and said to me, ‘You have chosen this man as king. Let me now bind him to you as husband so none may deny the truth of his rule.’ He turned to Caradog. ‘Make your promise.’

  Caradog and I took hold of each other’s wrists. Ours were to be as any other marriage vows of the tribes: simple and plainly spoken. But unlike other vows, these would be spoken by our titles and not by the hearts that lay beneath them. Caradog began with words I had heard for all the summers of my life.

  I fixed my eyes firmly to our hands as he spoke.

  You are the pure love of the moon,

  you are the pure love of the sun, the dew, and the rain,

  I tightened my grip on his forearms. These words were too sharp, too wanted. I could not admit them.

  You cannot possess me, for I am sovereign to myself,

  You cannot command me, for I am free.

  Yet freely and willingly, I pledge you the first bite of my meat.

  I pledge you the first sip from my cup.

  From this day, it will be only your name I cry in the night,

  I was not prepared for my response to his words of love. They were as spears piercing whatever covering had grown over my longing. His promises were spoken in the service of statecraft, of war. Yet my heart drank them in like a thirsty child.

  This is not Taliesin, I said silently to myself, forcing my ears to shun his voice. You do not love this man.

  I shivered in a sudden breeze. Through the roar of my thoughts I was barely aware of Caradog finishing and Sulien commanding me to begin. With my mouth dry, I stepped dutifully through the same words of promise. But as I neared the end of the verse, I could no longer stem the tremor that rose in my voice, nor the meaning that spilt from the poem;

  You are blood of my blood.

  Bone of my bone.

  I will cherish and honour you through this life

  and into the next.

  By Lleu’s faithful course, may you follow me.

  By the power of the Mothers, may you love me.

  As I love you.

  At the uttering of the words, they were true.

  I was making a marriage to a man I had no business to love beyond the surface of ritual, and yet, as I stood here in the dark of winter on our most sacred shore, grasping his wrists before half the tribal heads of western Albion, I realised that I did love him. As much as I had ever loved. For it was a love of hope.

  I could not hold the realisation within my own form. Emotion rose in my throat. The adder’s shape stirred within me.

  ‘Bow to the King!’ cried Sulien to the gathering. ‘Bow to the King and his Kendra. May they bring grain to our fields, milk to our cattle, fruit to our trees and victory to our battles.’

  As the crowd
roared and dropped to their knees, I allowed myself, for the first time, to look directly at my husband’s face. With the strike of his stare, all resistance to the serpent fell away. Light distorted and sound grew distant. Only his face was clear.

  ‘Embrace!’ called Sulien from somewhere behind me. ‘Let them see your union.’

  Caradog stepped closer and the force of his scent robbed me of all other senses.

  My legs swayed. He drew me firm against his chest.

  I heard then, with the serpent’s instinct coursing through me, the will of the Mothers. They called for our joining, not in likeness, but in truth. They called for our love.

  I did not wish this to be true, but it was.

  Our love would strengthen the tribes. Our love would sustain the land.

  Prydd’s angry whisper roused me. ‘Set him a prohibition, Kendra.’ ‘A geas…’ I murmured, tumbling back to an awareness of the gathering.

  ‘Ay,’ hissed Prydd. ‘Otherwise he is too great, too wayward.’

  I released Caradog and looked to Sulien. I had not prepared a geas, though I knew, of course, it was essential to kingship. Without a prohibition, a king’s power was too unbridled. Sulien nodded. I had to create one.

  I stared at my husband. He needed no geas. He was already firmly restrained by the iron rings of self-questioning. What should I say?

  Prydd stood close, hastening me with increasing annoyance. As it had done before, his displeasure began to blur my thoughts and steal my words. I grasped for what was close in my mind. ‘I bid that…’ I stuttered, ‘…for fear of your death, you shall never consume the flesh of an adder.’

  Caradog’s brows lifted with bemusement. ‘It should not trouble me to keep such a geas.’

  ‘It is not enough,’ said Prydd, scowling. ‘Set a stronger geas.’

  With the serpent’s awareness still alive within me, I saw something in Prydd that I had not yet seen. He was frightened. Despite his desire to see the war chief triumph, he was frightened of Caradog’s power, that it might swell beyond his control.

  No sooner had I seen this than my voice grew clear.

  ‘No,’ I answered. ‘It is enough.’

  The bonfires had been kept. All had eaten of a mighty feast. We had drunk the mistle’s milk, as potent as the seed of men.

  Now it was midnight. The darkest moment. The air in the tent was hot and close. The mare-hide walls admitted no firelight. It was here that our marriage would be made irrevocable.

  I sat naked on a buck-pelt spread over thick straw.

  Journeypeople encircled the tent outside, chanting, beating their staffs on the ground, shaking their rattles. They were readying Caradog to enter.

  Beyond them, the gathering stood witness. I sensed the hope in their ululations, their stamping feet. This joining would save them. When the true king ruled, the land was strong.

  I anchored my heartbeat to the pulse of the chant.

  At last the tent’s opening was held apart. For a moment, Caradog was silhouetted against the blaze of the fires. All around me was voice, rhythm, fire and intention, all converging to change man to king.

  The door skins fell closed behind him as he entered, leaving only darkness between us.

  I heard him lower himself to his knees and shed his cloak. Outside, the journeypeople lifted their chant.

  I feared my ribs would crack with the violence of my heart.

  This was the man I loved. Did he feel as I did? Had he heard the Mothers’ cry as I had?

  I sensed him come close. He was kneeling before me, only a thin channel of air between us.

  ‘Tidings,’ he whispered. Was there a tremor in his breath?

  ‘And to you.’

  He paused, unmoving. ‘Is this your desire? For if it is not, I shall not force it.’

  I lifted my face and found his lips. He tasted of mead and mistle, his mouth warm and hungry.

  I brought my palms to his chest to feel his body for a second time. This time, free of the gaze of the crowd, I touched him slowly, tracing the curve of his muscles, the hollows of his throat, the corrugations of his ribs. I squeezed his lean waist, his strong buttocks, seeking to know the shape and texture of every part of him. ‘Yes,’ I breathed over his most tender skin, ‘this is my desire.’

  I lay back onto the deer pelt as he positioned himself above me.

  Outside, the journeymen kept their steady pounding, calling and rattling, hungry to know that the land had received its king.

  It was too dark to see his face. I could only smell him: leather, dried blood, and the ocean salt that infused his skin. He had the scent of a king, but within it, the deeper, ruptured smell of a man.

  I parted my legs and lifted my hips.

  He groaned as he pierced me.

  Wordless with pleasure, I yielded to his rhythm.

  The tent opened, and a torch was held briefly within so that the journeymen could know the joining had taken place.

  There was no shame. It was not Caradog and me now; we were greater things.

  Our bodies beat an immortal pulse. I was making him king.

  With each slow thrust he claimed his authority.

  Then, gripping the span of his shoulders, I rolled him onto his back and swung myself atop him to claim my own.

  He moaned an urgent cry that hastened me.

  The drums and chants beat ever louder around us. Within and without me was an eruption of rhythm.

  My muscles quickened. I held still, I did not wish it to end, but the pleasure was too great, it knew its own momentum.

  Caradog pushed upwards and I shuddered with an explosion of heat and light so powerful that it rendered me into a simpler form of spine and muscle. Now I did not resist the serpent, but let it come, strong and powerful, through my body, writhing and twisting, as Caradog spasmed with his own release.

  Our bodies spiralled, awash with sweat.

  The entwining of our forms was a new creation.

  A new birth.

  A new king.

  A voice whispered through the opening of the tent. ‘Awaken, Kendra. One hour until rise.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I murmured. ‘We will come.’

  The journeyman hung a torch from the door pole and withdrew.

  We must have slept for several hours while the gathering celebrated through the night. Now we had to ready ourselves for the final and most important moment of the ceremony. I turned to my husband, still sleeping.

  For this moment he was mine, his face gentle. I studied the ridge of his cheekbone, the raised vein on his forehead and the first faint silvering at his temple. Within this fragile parcel of flesh lay a spirit strong enough to hold back an empire.

  His eyes flickered beneath closed lids. What worlds was he visiting? What armies was he slaying? He exhaled and shifted in his sleep.

  I dipped my face closer and drank in the brine tang that lingered on his skin. He had shown me, this night, that he felt the same need for me as I for him.

  I thought of Euvrain with anguish. Would she relinquish him? Could we ask it of her? She had said that the war must not fall to the eddies of love. But what if love were the very force that the war demanded?

  I stretched against him, resting my cheek on his shoulder.

  ‘Tidings, queen,’ he murmured, hoarse from the celebration.

  I propped on my elbow to look at him. ‘Tidings.’ Would we be shy of each other?

  He frowned through bloodshot eyes. ‘What hour is it? I must arise—’

  ‘An hour until dawn. There is time.’

  He sat up. ‘I need to prepare, find my metals…’

  Would he leave so quickly? ‘Caradog—’

  He turned to face me, stared for a few moments, then leaned forward to kiss my mouth. Our limbs coiled and our hunger surged, but he broke from the embrace to sit, straight-backed.

  ‘What is it?’ I asked.

  He faced the doorway and would not meet my eye. ‘I have promised Euvrain that I would lie with you once
to make the marriage and not again.’

  I stared at his broad, freckled back. ‘That cannot be your wish?’

  ‘She has stood beside me as I have dragged her, through mud and snow, from one side of Albion to the other. Her wishes are mine.’

  ‘I, too, care for the wishes of Euvrain. But here, in this tent, can you not speak of the desires that are yours alone?’

  Still he would not face me. ‘I desire you,’ he said coldly, ‘as any man would desire a woman of your beauty and power. But I have my greatest task ahead and I cannot be drawn from it.’

  I stared at him in shock. It was not possible. He loved me. I had heard it when he cried my name. Why did he deny it now?

  The scent of sea mist closed in through the tent’s leather walls. ‘Are these Euvrain’s words, War Chief? Did she warn you, as she did me?’

  Now he turned to look at me. His gaze was guarded. ‘In one hour I will be crowned high king. My task is to build a war band strong enough to defeat Rome. I must be free and clear-minded to do this. And I cannot betray my wife. She is beloved by my warriors. And by me.’

  My voice was thin, my heart buckling. ‘So this marriage is nothing more than the making of your kingship.’

  ‘As has always been discussed.’ He frowned, and said in a tone that felt more cruel for its kindness, ‘Did you expect otherwise?’

  I had expected nothing. Least of all to realise that I loved this man with the fierceness of the sun.

  I had thought I heard the land itself cry out for our joining. Perhaps I had misheard.

  I stared at my hands, resting on my bare thighs. The same drowning sadness I had known with Taliesin began to rise within me. I had misjudged Caradog. He knew no love for me. He feared that I would burden him. Two nights ago, he had asked me if I chose him truly. I had confused his intention. It was only my choice—not me—he wanted.

  He was reaching for his cloak.

  ‘Is it still your wish that I come to the Brigantes with you?’

  ‘Of course. The chiefs will want to see the Kendra and her chosen king. And Cartimandua will like you, I am sure of it.’ He slipped through the doorway.