Songwoman

by Ilka Tampke

  ‘No we are not. But if we stand on new land, we must honour its spirits and its laws. The Romans will never be loved by this land, because they do not love its creators.’

  ‘They don’t need to.’ A frown twitched in his face and I knew I had unsettled him. ‘Their strength is not hidden, nor cloaked in riddles that none may learn except by secret rites. Their strength is real. They are free of the curse of journey-law.’

  I flinched. ‘On this land, none are free of journey-law.’ I rose, our discussion over.

  ‘Ailia—’ he caught my wrist as I stood. ‘I don’t know what you have seen since we last met, but I can tell you something about the law to which you are so wedded. The journeymen of Môn are fuelling this war. They are not noble-hearted as you are. They control the chiefs with the cunning of wolves. They incite hatred of Rome, despite that many tribes within the new province are grateful for the peace she has brought.’

  I shook free my arm. ‘The peace of a caged animal.’

  ‘Do you think they are any less free under the journeymen than under the Roman governors? Do not deceive yourself. Both seek control of the tribes, yet one brings the light of modernity—’

  I drew myself tall. ‘Ruther, I am not under the command of the journeymen. I am their Kendra.’

  ‘No you are not.’ He stood up, his eyes glittering in the half-light. ‘You are their trophy, their amulet—’ He paused to draw breath, then shot the words like a sharpened spear, ‘—you have no true power.’

  I opened my mouth but could not speak. My voice was empty, soundless. There was something in his certainty that forged its own truth. Any refutation I made would only strengthen his claim.

  Ruther walked once more to the altar and gazed at the smoking pots. ‘Do your new tribespeople know?’ he said, without turning to face me. ‘Do they know what you did in Caer Cad?’

  ‘I have kept no secrets,’ I murmured.

  Still he did not turn. ‘But do they understand how grave was your failure?’

  The council were gathered at the Great Hall to hear Ruther’s proposal to the war king. Silver cups and thick gold arm rings from Ruther’s saddlebags were spread on the bench between them.

  ‘Scapula understands that you are a king, and that you must be honoured as a king,’ Ruther said, passing Caradog a cylinder of papyrus, sealed with wax. ‘He offers a full pardon for your crimes against Claudius. He offers horses, cattle, slaves and your choice of available territory if you choose to commit the Silures to Roman friendship.’

  ‘It is Hefin, not I, who is chief of the Silures,’ said Caradog. ‘Scapula should learn who commands his enemies.’

  ‘He knows who commands his enemies,’ said Ruther. ‘Read the treaty.’

  Caradog unrolled the document and read it with bemusement.

  ‘If you hunger to fight, Caradog, then you could have the command of forces in Aegypt or Numidia…’

  ‘He wants me at any cost,’ said Caradog to his council. ‘But no prize will turn a war king to a traitor.’

  Ruther’s eyes narrowed. ‘Do you not already betray your tribesmen by sacrificing them to a war without purpose? Claudius desires only to welcome you into the most powerful empire the world has ever known. It would bring wealth and comfort to the people you claim you protect, and yet you prefer to see them die for your own pride.’

  I flinched. The words were shocking in their ignorance of what Albion stood to lose, but even more so for their kernel of truth. I knew how deeply Caradog feared this accusation.

  ‘You are an auxiliary,’ said Caradog, staring at Ruther. ‘My first encounter with your kind was at the Medway, just after the Romans arrived. The Batvians of Gaul swam upstream to my war camp, emerged from the water in silence, and slashed the hind leg tendons of hundreds of my finest war horses. The air rang with the screeches of horses bleeding to death.’

  Ruther held his gaze. ‘The Batvians are very skilled in river crossings.’

  Caradog stood slowly, held the treaty aloft, then let it fall into the fire, where it flared into white flames. ‘Tell your governor that I have not fought the Roman army for six summers in order to make terms. Tell him that he will withdraw from the border of Tir Silures by Winter’s Eve, or my warriors will fuck his men till they bleed.’

  The second soldier rose, but Ruther waved him still. ‘Scapula is the most feared general in the Roman Empire. He was sent here to destroy you.’

  Caradog laughed. ‘I am honoured by the respect.’

  Ruther stood and fastened his cloak. ‘This was Scapula’s final offer of peaceful terms. The next time he comes will be to claim these miserable bog lands. He hates the Silures with every drop of his blood.’ Hefin rose with his hand at his hilt. ‘Tell him we await him.’ ‘The chieftain speaks at last,’ said Ruther, smirking.

  Hefin stood firm. ‘You are mistaken if you think this tribe is merely Horse-end’s attack dog. We will never lay down for a Roman, no matter who rides at the head of our war band. We are free people and every one of us will die before we see a Roman flag in this soil.’

  ‘See?’ said Caradog, smiling. ‘This is why I have found my home here. And that is why Scapula will not destroy me.’

  ‘Oh, he will destroy you. You attack his army by stealth, like a furtive dog, because you do not have the courage to meet him in the light. But he will drive you to battle and he will defeat you.’

  ‘How do you know that…soldier?’ Caradog stood in the doorway of my hut after Ruther had gone.

  ‘I told you. He was a warrior from Caer Cad.’

  ‘Is that all? A fellow townsman?’

  ‘No.’ I stepped aside that he might enter, then poured two cups of ale and handed him one. ‘He ran the fires with me when I came to womanhood.’

  ‘I saw that he desired you.’

  ‘Once,’ I said. ‘And I was glad of it. He loved me when I was without skin, with none of the Kendra’s power.’ I picked up my whorl and began to spin.

  Caradog sat and watched me. We had not been alone for several weeks. ‘Why do you not spin with the women?’ he asked.

  ‘I am not asked,’ I said. ‘Perhaps they do not find the presence of the Kendra restful.’ I spun without speaking for a few moments, the whorl turning in the silence.

  ‘Do you admire him?’

  I teased out a stream of brown wool that had become too thick. ‘He obeys his own conscience,’ I said. ‘I admire his certainty, but not his purpose.’

  Caradog shifted on the bench, his limbs too big for this tiny hut. ‘And in me?’ he asked. ‘Is it certainty or purpose that you admire?’

  I set my whorl in my lap and looked at him. ‘Is that not better asked of your wife?’

  ‘I ask you.’

  ‘Why?’ I whispered. He had not sought my company beyond council since we bathed at the pool. Yet he must have sensed the longing that consumed me. And now he called for my testament as if I were a mirror to be picked up and put down at his whim.

  He slipped from his bench and crouched before me. ‘Because you see what’s true in me. For better or worse.’

  I stared at his face, uplifted to mine. The truth was that he was magnificent. I admired all in him and what I did not admire, I loved anyway. My heart yearned to tell him this, but it was not Kendra’s business and I was furious that he should ask for my comfort, with no thought of its cost to me. ‘No,’ I said. ‘I will give you my Kendra’s council, but I will not flatter your vanity as if I were your dress servant.’

  ‘I do not ask for flattery,’ he said.

  My gaze was steady. ‘Then tell me, War King, what do you ask of me?’

  It took a moment before he looked away.

  My nostrils twitched at the sudden scent, one I had not smelled for many months, and had almost forgotten, the scent of what was needful in him, what he could not hide, the teeming fragrance of threshed wheat and a tended wound—the smell of his love. But it was meaningless if he could not claim it. ‘If it is my affection you seek, then y
ou must offer yours in return.’

  He stared at the floor. ‘I cannot.’

  ‘Then leave my hut,’ I said gently. ‘Do not ask me to cut open my heart and show you how full it is of your courage and beauty.’

  He looked back to me.

  I sat tall. He wished for my appraisal. Seeing Ruther had only made it clearer. I would speak now and let the truth know some air to toughen its edges. ‘I love you, Caradog of Cunobelinus, War King of Albion. I love you as I have loved no other. For I love what is weak in you, as well as what is strong. But you will not abandon your marriage and nor must you.’ I squeezed the fleece in my lap into a tight ball bound by a length of yarn. ‘Unless you are betraying your own heart,’ I said, as I broke the yarn and rose, ‘and then you are a fool. For if we do not fight for the freedom of our hearts, then why are we fighting?’

  I threw my ball of fleece at the ground and left the hut.

  Rhain found me in the temple.

  He sat beside me as I finished the many-versed chant to the Mothers.

  ‘You did not stand witness to the departure of the soldiers,’ he said.

  ‘I could not farewell the knave, Ruther,’ I told him. ‘To see him so poisoned by Rome was too great a sadness.’

  ‘Perhaps you should have done so, despite your sadness.’

  ‘Why so?’ I asked.

  ‘Prydd accompanied them to the outer gateway, so that no tribesmen would attack.’ Rhain paused.

  I frowned. ‘Did they speak.’

  ‘They must have,’ said Rhain. ‘But only the Mothers know what about.’

  I looked away, unsettled.

  ‘Do you miss training?’ His whisper was furtive. If Prydd found us here, he would be furious.

  ‘Like breath,’ I answered.

  ‘Beware,’ he said. ‘You are no use to the child, or Albion, without breath.’

  We made no more incursions into Roman territory. We were now preparing to meet an attack.

  Scapula was amassing a force along the banks of the Habren that was mightier and better guarded than any before it. As midsummer approached, our scouts told us that he had withdrawn all elderly and war-injured men from the front, and sent a vast army of fresh soldiers forward from the east of the province to replace them—Rome’s Twentieth Legion—stronger and with a youth’s lust for combat. They would move this season. But when and where and how we should meet them were questions we could not answer.

  Caradog spoke more insistently about open battle. But all agreed with the messages from Môn that this must be avoided at any cost. We would not defeat them on their terms. Instead they urged him to move his war camp deeper into Silures forests to evade Scapula’s grasp.

  ‘Well may they say this…’ grumbled Caradog at council. ‘They are not fighting this war. They sit safe on their isle and milk feed us weapons…’

  ‘Weapons we need,’ said Prydd.

  ‘Scapula has been scorned. He will act rashly,’ I said. ‘We must forge our strategy of a different metal—more stable, calmer—and we may trip him as he dances.’

  ‘As you wish,’ Caradog declared to the council after many moments thought. ‘After Arbitration I will ride to determine a new location to settle the camp.’

  Although I exhaled with relief that he had seen this wisdom, I understood his desire to fight. We had all grown weary of standing at the brink of war and I knew we could not evade Scapula forever.

  When the council had closed, I rushed from the Great Hall before Caradog could speak to me. Since my declaration to him, I had avoided all contact outside the boundaries of war-craft. My heart was grateful for the comfort of distance. And so, I am sure, was Euvrain.

  Caradog asked me to make sight of the attack, to predict its time and place. Prydd pushed me to perform this augury by the spilled innards of those who had broken our laws, but I had no patience for this grotesque and showy theatre, designed to silence the township with its slit bellies and thrashing limbs, as much as to reveal what lay ahead.

  I preferred to fast and chant day-long in the temple, until my senses slowly altered and opened, and my mind warped towards other places, other moments, sometimes rowdy and vivid with battle scenes, other times filled with fainter, older memories of voices, forests, salmon and deer. Though my visions were alive with the Mothers, I could gain no clarity about how and when Scapula would move.

  Prydd was displeased when I told him, yet again, that I had found no certainty. ‘A Kendra who cannot augur…’ he would murmur, frowning as he left the temple. But it was not a failure of Kendra’s knowledge that was blinding me. It was the absence of song.

  Day by day soldiers marshalled to the Roman front. By the week of Arbitration, almost half of Scapula’s troops were assembled along the Habren. It was the largest Roman force ever gathered on Albion’s land.

  As I stood on the eastern platform on a warm evening, staring towards the Romans, so close, I remembered when I had last stood on war’s threshold—when I had made a mistake.

  I had thought, perhaps, that I was pardoned.

  But as I felt the weight of our enemy tipping the earth, I knew I was not.

  People began to arrive from throughout the free tribes.

  There had been discussion within council that it may be unwise to gather at this time, but Prydd convinced us that now, more than ever, our festivals must be maintained. The tribes had a great passion for justice and the judgements of the Arbitration were Albion’s most revered pronouncements. Travellers lodged in the township or camped in the pastures at the base of the hill. Llanmelin was alive with the milling, baking and preparing of meat to be served at the festival.

  On the day before the hearings, Prydd informed us that Sulien of Môn would sit in attendance at this year’s gathering and would arrive that evening.

  Curious, I asked him which dispute Môn’s highest journeyman was required to arbitrate. (I had walked among the visiting travellers and had heard their complaints; there were few more serious than a contested field boundary, a stolen calf or an unlawful harvest of bog ore.)

  ‘One of the utmost seriousness,’ he answered, but said no more.

  Despite my ignorance of Sulien’s purpose, I felt a great joy when I saw him arrive at the gateway with his two lesser journeymen. I aided him from his mount and embraced him warmly.

  ‘Do you know why Prydd has called for you?’ I asked as we walked towards the journey-huts.

  ‘I was expecting you would tell me,’ he said, surprised.

  I shook my head. ‘He has only said that it is a matter of journey-law that has bearing on the war.’

  ‘Then why has he not spoken to you of it?’ Sulien asked.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘But we shall find out soon enough.’

  We walked a few paces in silence, then I asked, ‘How fares my dogess?’

  He turned to me. ‘I do not have good news.’

  ‘By Lleu, has she leapt to Annwyn?’ I stopped, my heart thumping.

  ‘I cannot be certain. She disappeared from Cerrig not long before I departed to come here. I called many times as I rode, but I did not sight her.’

  Neha’s disappearance left me distracted on the morning of Arbitration. I thought only of her as I pulled on my dress, a short mantle of deerskin, and my sword. She would be twelve summers old now and surely growing frail. I wondered if her coat was still thick enough to endure a forest winter, if there were still enough power in her haunches to make a kill. She was searching for me, I was sure of it. Why had I left her?

  The sky was stone grey with summer cloud. A mighty crowd had gathered in the town centre, jostling to gain a better view. Before them, the journeypeople sat on a long bench between two flaming pots. Sulien wore a simple crown of summer oak but Prydd wore the full horn headdress of the mountain ram and a dark leather cloak that hung to his feet. Silures banners flapped in the wind from the poles behind them.

  Two warriors stood guard either side of the judges in case a complainant needed subduing
. I sat alone on a carved stool to their west. Without training in law, I would offer no judgements, but my Kendra’s presence would lend weight to the decisions.

  Caradog sat beside Hefin in the first row. His stare was unfocused and I knew his thoughts were consumed by the war.

  ‘Begin,’ called Prydd, when the blessings had been made.

  One by one farmers, miners, craftsmen and warriors came forward, spoke their grievances, and nodded in silence as Prydd made his judgements. Where the cases were intricate, Sulien or the other journeymen asked questions and offered counsel on details of law.

  ‘I complain against my neighbour who has felled four trees at the boundary of my pasture,’ said a grain farmer with an Ordovices accent.

  The accused neighbour made his case for the urgent need of building timber but, when asked by Sulien of the type of trees he had brought down, confessed to there being two young oaks among them. Prydd’s punishment for the unsanctioned removal of Albion’s most sacred wood was the removal, by axe, of his first finger.

  The crowd gasped. This verdict was not in the spirit of restoration that flowed through our laws. The guards had to carry the accused away.

  The day stretched on, growing steadily cooler as storm clouds darkened the sky. Several times Prydd’s judgements seemed so poorly-made that I wondered whether there were unseen currents directing them, whether the stream of visitors he had taken in his hut over the past few days may have sweetened their cases with coin.

  Finally the last of the complainants turned away from the bench. We were all exhausted, eager to break for the meat and ale of festival. One of the lesser journeymen stood and asked if anyone else wished to speak.

  A roll of thunder stirred on the western horizon. The air sharpened with charge.

  Prydd took off his headdress, laid it on the bench and turned to Sulien. ‘I have a case to bring and I have called you here to judge it.’

  ‘Against whom?’ asked Sulien.

  Another low rumble seemed to rise from the earth. The crowd were restless.