by Ilka Tampke
‘No,’ said the rider. ‘He is not suspected. He accepts the affirmation of your bond and returns it. He too awaits the moment when you both will join in arms against Scapula.’
Caradog nodded, but all who were present knew that the chance for this moment had been all but destroyed.
‘Has Scapula left the Deceangli guarded?’ I asked.
‘Heavily,’ said the rider. ‘It is dangerous to carry messages. There will be few willing to ride those routes now.’
‘Yet good reward for those who do.’ Caradog smiled, but something had changed in him. He sat back down. The possibility of harnessing the Brigantes to this war had sustained his hope for many moon turns. Now his strongest supporters there were slain, and all others would be weakened by fear. ‘The Brigantes are lost to us,’ he said.
‘The Deceangli also,’ said Hefin.
He was right. If Scapula had maimed those settlements as my own township had been maimed, then their tribespeople—what remained of them—would have no more spirit to fight than a speared fawn.
‘Perhaps you can explain the Mothers’ intention to me, Kendra,’ said Caradog. ‘For I am unable to see it.’
‘As you yourself have said,’ I answered, ‘they test the strongest of souls.’
There was both stone and liquid in his gaze.
‘There is some good news,’ said Prydd. ‘I have received word from Môn this morning, in response to my request.’
I looked at him in surprise. He had not spoken of any request.
‘Speak, journeyman.’ Caradog was frowning, clearly also unaware.
Prydd raised his chin. I saw how greatly he savoured the possession of knowledge that others desired. ‘I asked my journeybrother Sulien whether I might convene the summer Arbitration here in Llanmelin…’
I straightened my shoulders. It was not well that Prydd had steered such communications with Môn outside the knowledge of both Caradog and myself.
‘And what did he say?’ said Caradog.
‘He honours me with agreement.’
‘That means grain!’ said Hefin.
‘Much grain. Some gold. And weapons. Those who host the Arbitration are given rich reimbursement.’ Prydd knew the importance of this yearly gathering of the tribes, where disputes were heard and judgements given.
Caradog laughed, shaking his head in admiration. ‘This is welcome news after a long winter.’
‘If you fail in this war, Caradog,’ said Prydd. ‘It will not be because I have not secured you the funds to win it.’
No one spoke further but Prydd’s meaning hung clear. Môn was the mother that fed this war, Caradog was her favoured child, and Prydd the bridge between them.
I may have been Kendra, but I had earned my title alone. I had not trained at Môn. I could not influence its journeymen with long-woven ropes of friendship. No matter how greatly Caradog had come to esteem me, he could not afford to put Prydd at a distance.
‘So what now, Horse-end?’ said Hefin.
Caradog inhaled. ‘Now we make them wish they had never started this war.’
After council I walked with Caradog and his wife back to their house. Euvrain turned to me at the doorway. ‘We shall see you on the morrow, Kendra.’
I stopped, shocked at the sudden banishment. I had hoped to take bread and broth at their fire, as I often did after council.
Caradog had gone inside. Euvrain smiled at me with light blue eyes as cold as frost. How foolish I had been to think she did not see me.
Manacca was poking a dead sparrow around in the embers of a street fire outside her hut. She was still too thin, but I had brought enough bread and soft cheese to feed a farmer. She would eat it. And her hunger would not end with food. She had shown herself to have as great an appetite to learn as I had plantcraft to fill it.
She did not leap up today or call my name. Instead her mother came out of the hut. ‘Be gone,’ she said, her toothless face full of fear. ‘You cannot take the child.’
‘Why not?’ I asked, pulling bread from my basket to sweeten her temper.
‘The journeyman was here this morn. He has forbade it.’
My hands stilled. ‘Which journeyman?’
‘The hairless one.’
‘Do you think you are so different from this child?’ I asked Prydd as he questioned me in the Great Hall. I had returned to my hut to find a servant waiting to bear me to my hearing. Now I sat alone on a bench, with Prydd and Caradog opposite me. Rhain sat between us at the north.
I had dreaded this moment, but it was freeing to at last speak my heart. ‘We should learn from her,’ I said. ‘She is one who already lives the anguish that we ourselves face if Rome is successful in cutting us from this land. You know how fiercely Rome forbids the journeypeople to ritual in the unfree tribes. If there were to come a time that we cannot honour the skin laws, then we will all need to be as wily as I am with Manacca.’
Caradog scrutinised me as I spoke. ‘Perhaps you are right,’ he said.
I exhaled with relief.
‘She is not,’ said Prydd. ‘The very opposite is true. It is precisely when we are threatened that we must adhere to our laws. To transgress them will anger the Mothers and weaken our war.’ He wore a full wolf-skin cloak and a neckpiece of bone. It was difficult to imagine that he did not speak for our land’s spirits.
‘Yet Ailia has brought only strength to the war,’ said Caradog.
‘Certainly,’ said Prydd. ‘But there have been some disappointments since her arrival. Cartimandua failed to hear us, and now the Brigantes are lost. Could it be that the Mothers are displeased?’ He paused, then looked at me with an expression of concern. ‘I seek only the best for the war. I wonder whether your teaching of this skinless child has angered them, and this is their punishment.’
Now my heart took up a harder beat. Prydd’s words were not true. Yet doubt had begun to spread across Caradog’s face. He sighed. ‘Perhaps it would be simplest for us all if you stopped teaching the child, Ailia.’
I shook my head. ‘I cannot.’ I would not forsake her. But more than this, her brown eyes saw beneath the surface of whatever I showed her. Only such a gaze could see the Mothers. We needed that vision now.
Prydd drew breath. ‘I approved Rhain to teach you song because you promised it would improve your judgement. It has done the reverse. Cease teaching this wretch, or your learning with Rhain is forbidden.’
Caradog flinched. ‘Are such harsh penalties needed, journeyman?’
‘Without doubt,’ said Prydd. ‘How can I invite Sulien here, where there is such disrespect shown to the laws he honours?’
He positioned us all like the figures of a war game. It drained us for the true fight. He did not love Albion, he loved his own power.
‘Did you know of this, Songman?’ asked Caradog. He seemed suddenly weary and I hated Prydd more for loading his burden so needlessly.
‘No.’ Rhain smiled.
‘And do you condemn it now?’ said Caradog.
He shook his head. ‘The war forces our rivers to flow into stranger distributaries.’
‘Then answer, Kendra,’ said Prydd, impatient with Rhain’s riddles. ‘Which path will the river now take? Will you cease this wrongdoing?’
I stared back. I would not dance to his drumbeat any longer. ‘Manacca will remain my student. I will cease learning song.’
‘No,’ said Caradog. ‘Your singing is—’ He turned to the Songman. ‘Surely you will not allow this?
‘It is the Kendra’s judgement, not mine,’ he said, though I saw his shock.
I rubbed my eyes. I knew what it was to abandon my people. I would not abandon this little girl. Her strength would have to be my song.
As the days grew longer, we continued to tear at the periphery of the Roman army, retrieving heads, destroying roads, making scabs on its limbs, whilst avoiding its core.
Caradog voiced a hunger to meet Scapula in open battle, but I argued strongly in the council that he must not. It was better to stab
at their edges, bleed them, confuse them, hold our boundary, until they tired of defending against an enemy they could never quite see. In a contest of will and patience, we could win, for we had been with this land since it was sung into form. Time was a weapon we understood.
All—even Prydd—agreed.
Still I wondered, as Caradog rode into Hefin’s courtyard with another tribal warrior laid limp across his mare, just how long this resistance could endure.
We sowed the first crops, turned out the cattle, repaired thatch, wove cloth and warmed our hands by the forge fires. But it was a half-life we were living beneath the violet spring skies, neither beaten nor victorious, neither captured nor free.
I kept close watch of Caradog as the days unfolded, to ensure that our loss of the Brigantes had not stolen his hope. But he remained strong, training his fighters through the heaviest spring rains, leading out the attacks whenever council could spare him.
I taught Manacca every day, now openly in the cookhouse, and took joy in the fattening of her legs and knowledge. But the sacrifice of song was a greater cost than I had predicted. Without its daily nourishment, I felt myself weakening, as if it were not just poems that drained from my muscles, but blood.
As I watched Rhain leave for the apple grove each day, to forge new songs under its budding canopy, I ached to go with him. And more than this, I could not silence the soft hum of this threatened earth, which seemed to call for my voice to join it in unison.
I had chosen to betray this call.
I did not betray the child who trusted me.
Within the quietness of my thoughts, as I lay alone in my sleephut each night, I missed Neha, who was still at Môn. I missed Rhain. But mostly I missed the man who slept no more than forty paces from me.
Caradog’s respect for my counsel had grown firm, but since our discussion of Manacca, he had avoided both my eye and my company. Was it only my song, I wondered, as I stared sleeplessly at the firelight on my roof beams, that had bidden his affection? Had I relinquished that which he most admired in me?
Sensing my yearning, Euvrain had tightened her hold on her husband. She no longer asked me to her fire for a meal nor invited me to the women’s hut to spin or dye. I accepted the walls she erected for she was Caradog’s chosen wife.
I was the Kendra, testament and mirror to his kingship, but this was merely a shimmering design on the surface of our true lives. Behind it was a bony-shouldered woman of nineteen summers, with bruised knees from harvesting, fingers that smelled of pig fat and a stupid, guileless dog of a heart, that had fixed to a man who had no want of it.
I bore this truth with silence, as I did the relinquishing of song. I knew it was deserved. For the suffering I had caused.
I had thought the Mothers called for my song. I had thought they called for my joining with the war king. Perhaps I did not hear them as clearly as I thought.
‘Soldiers approach!’ The watch bell rang through the township as I walked with Manacca in the early morning. It was the first week of summer.
‘Run home,’ I told her, pushing her toward the northern gate.
I hurried to the main entrance, where I joined Caradog and Hefin on the viewing platform.
Sun glinted on the helmets of two distant soldiers riding towards us. They were brave men to enter enemy territory. By the time they had reached the base of the hill, the full length of the entrance path was flanked with warriors standing in hastily-donned skin cloaks and talismans, their spears poised.
We descended the platform as the soldiers rode past the lines of tribesmen. They wore the uniform of the auxilia, foreign soldiers who had sworn to Rome. But as they dismounted and stood before us, I gasped in disbelief. One of them was not foreign at all.
‘Ruther?’ I stepped forward, staring in amazement.
He kissed my hand. ‘Tidings, journeywoman.’
Caradog put his hand to his sword hilt.
‘Hold,’ I told him. ‘This man is known to me.’
His broad, blond face was of my home. This was a man who had betrayed me. This was Ruther, warrior of Caer Cad, or so he used to be.
‘How?’ said Caradog.
‘He was a tribesman. Once.’ I glanced at Ruther’s armour and shield. ‘He fights for Scapula now.’
‘I am Ruther, son of Orgilos, Ninth Auxilia. I fight for what I have always fought for.’
‘Payment?’ said Hefin.
Ruther ran his gaze over the chieftain whose long moustache was crusted with porridge. ‘Albion’s future.’
‘You are a traitor,’ said Caradog.
Ruther stood unflinching. ‘If I were, would I have advised Scapula to withhold his attack until diplomacy had been attempted? Would I have offered myself as the envoy, knowing that I, above all others, would understand the will of the tribes?’
Caradog scowled. In his eyes, there could be no greater disloyalty than a warrior donning the enemy’s uniform. Even Cartimandua, for all her adherence to Rome, looked and smelled like a woman of the tribes. ‘Come to the fire then,’ he said. ‘Let us see if you can still drink like a tribesman and I will hear your proposition.’ He looked at the second soldier. ‘Bring your shit-bucket carrier.’
The warriors laughed.
‘I will,’ said Ruther. ‘But first, Ailia—would you take me to offer at your temple? It has been many seasons since I have stood within a journey-shrine and poured ale at its altar.’
I knew Prydd would not want a Roman uniform in the temple. But I wanted the chance to speak to Ruther alone. Traitor or not, he shared my past. ‘Follow me.’
We were followed at a distance by several of Caradog’s fighters as we walked to the temple. But I knew Ruther would not harm me.
At the temple’s threshold, I stopped to chant the skin blessings that would permit my entry. Standing beside me, Ruther took off his helmet and murmured his own greeting to the deer.
‘You still honour skin?’ I whispered, incredulous, for he had betrayed it so wholly. His companion lurked close behind. Did Ruther not worry what this soldier might report to their Roman command?
He stared at me and shrugged. ‘I do not forget my history.’
‘You cannot enter,’ I called in Latin to the soldier who paced by the outer posts.
‘I have no wish to,’ he said, staring at the angle of the temple’s south corner. ‘By Mithras,’ I heard him chuckle as I turned to go in, ‘can they not even build four walls straight?’
I pushed into the temple with Ruther at my heel.
No sooner had the doorskins closed behind us, than he grabbed both my arms. ‘How do you fare, Ailia? There has not been a day that I have not wondered of you.’
‘How do you think I fare?’ I said, pulling free. ‘My land is threatened. My tribeskin are slaughtered for no greater sin than living as they always lived. Should I be well?’
He smiled. ‘You are as I remember you.’
I stared at his short blond hair, his shaven jaw, his skin weathered by foreign sun. ‘You are not.’
Ruther walked to the shrine and frowned in disgust. ‘By Claudius, I’d forgotten the stench of my childhood. Worse than a Roman sewer.’ Pungent herb smoke mingled with the thick scent of decaying spring lamb that seeped from the altar.
‘Is that where you live?’ I asked. ‘In Rome?’
‘Sometimes,’ he said. ‘I was stationed for two summers in Anatolia. Then I requested to join Scapula’s forces in Albion.’
‘To aid our destruction?’
‘To help you,’ he said. He stood at the altar but had poured no libation from his ale skin.
‘I thought you wanted to make an offering,’ I said.
‘I do. But not to these perished gods.’
I gasped. His skin greeting had been a ruse, but for what? ‘Then to whom?’ I asked. I had not moved from the doorway.
He walked back and stood before me. ‘I am here to offer terms to Caradog. Terms that will prevent further killing.’
‘He won’t ac
cept.’
‘I am sure that he listens to the word of his Kendra. You must tell him to accept.’
‘You say I am unchanged. Then you already know that I will never betray the tribes.’
His face softened and he shook his head. ‘Perhaps I would esteem you less if you did.’
‘We are at war. Your esteem is of no consequence now.’
‘It is always of consequence.’
‘Are you not yet married?’ I asked.
‘Yes. To a Cantii woman who waits for me with our first child.’ He paused. ‘But I would divorce her before Lleu’s next rise if you said you would return with me.’
I laughed. ‘You are still a faithless dog. As you always were.’
He stiffened. ‘Steady, Ailia. You speak to a soldier of Claudius.’
‘Do you think I care for your title?’
‘You should. Scapula will command these tribelands by the end of the season, and then you will kneel to those of my title.’
Suddenly weary, I lowered myself to a bench before the altar. Ruther sat beside me. Despite all that had passed, there had always been a flow of truth between us. I turned to him. ‘Why do you betray us, Ruther?’
‘I do not betray you. I want you to taste the wealth and glory of Rome.’
‘I am a journeywoman. Wealth and glory are a hindrance to what I seek.’
‘Yet no hindrance for Caradog,’ said Ruther. ‘He is as greedy for power as any emperor.’
‘Perhaps he is,’ I said. ‘But he has what no Roman will ever have.’
‘Ale that tastes like piss?’ said Ruther.
‘No…’ I paused. ‘Sovereignty.’
His smile dropped away.
Suddenly I no longer saw the short hair, the Roman tunic. I saw the bright blue eyes of a man who had grown on the meat and grain of Albion’s earth. He could not have forgotten what made this land ours. ‘You were born here,’ I continued. ‘You know as well as I do that when they mark this ground with their flags, they may have glory, but they do not have sovereignty. They hold no stories, no totems, to tie them to this land. They carry no residue of the Mothers in their blood.’
‘Should no man ever stray ten paces from the soil of his birth then? Are we all to be so tethered?’