Songwoman

by Ilka Tampke

  Prydd looked at me. ‘Against Ailia of Caer Cad.’

  I stilled.

  ‘What is the grievance against our Kendra?’ Sulien looked bewildered.

  ‘I contest that she is not the Kendra.’

  Now the crowd drew silent.

  My heart was thrashing.

  ‘On what grounds?’ demanded Caradog.

  Prydd lifted his hand to quiet him. None were permitted to speak until the complaint had been made. ‘I spoke with Ruther, son of Orgilos, when he came to Llanmelin—’

  ‘The traitor?’ Caradog’s face was furious.

  ‘Perhaps now,’ said Prydd. ‘But he was chieftain of Caer Cad when Rome took that township. He told me the story of Ailia’s past…It is not as we have thought it.’

  My fingers gripped the sides of the stool. My heart beat so violently I could barely hear. The day had come.

  Prydd walked forward to speak to the gathering. Now his voice was not thin or shrill. It was as powerful as I had ever heard it. ‘Do you know that this woman—whom you call Kendra—decreed that every soul in Caer Cad be slain by Vespasian’s soldiers.’

  A cold wind began to lash the banners.

  ‘She commanded them to stand against the attack, while she secured herself in a hidden shelter beneath the ground.’

  The crowd listened, mute.

  ‘I did not hide,’ I whispered. ‘I was held against my wishes…’

  ‘She claims she was forcibly hidden,’ repeated Prydd to his audience. ‘That is one explanation. Another is that she knew Ruther was planning to concede his township to the Romans and that they would kill the journeypeople. She protected herself and let her tribespeople be slain. Once the soldiers were resting from their slaughter, Ruther says, she crept away under cover of secrecy.’

  He had opened the belly of my shame.

  The crowd chewed the story in frantic whispers.

  ‘It was an error…’ I murmured in a voice barely loud enough for Prydd to hear, let alone Caradog or any others who might judge me.

  ‘“An error” is her defence!’ cried Prydd. ‘I ask you, Sulien, would the Mothers permit such a terrible error from their chosen knowledge-bearer?’

  The crowd quieted again, awaiting Sulien’s answer.

  ‘I wanted to protect them,’ I said feebly.

  ‘If you, in truth, wanted to protect them,’ answered Prydd, ‘then why did the Mothers not stand with you? What should we make of your Kendrahood? Are we to expect the same error, the same misfortune, as you lead us into war?’

  I had no answer. The error had been made when I was newly made Kendra. The elders of Caer Cad had asked me to vision, to tell them whether to fight or succumb to the approaching army. No vision had come to me, and, terrified of my inadequacy, I pretended it had. I told the townspeople that I had seen them successful and I commanded them to fight. I thought the command would strengthen them. It had caused the death of every man and woman in Caer Cad.

  ‘She does not answer,’ said Prydd. ‘Because she cannot. She is not the Kendra. She has been falsely placed. I propose we supplant her.’

  ‘Journeyman—’ called Caradog. ‘She is a valuable advisor. Kendra or not, we cannot lose her.’

  ‘She is almost entirely untrained,’ said Prydd. ‘Without her title, she has no place to sit at your council.’

  ‘Why do we accept the testimony of a traitor?’ It was Rhain who spoke. He had been buried deep in the back of the crowd, always wary of displaying his disfigurement among strangers. Now every face turned to look at him. ‘Ruther fights for Rome. But he was born of Albion—he knows where to strike. It is in his interest to weaken our faith in our knowledge-keepers. He has lied.’

  ‘No,’ I interrupted, my voice clear at last. ‘Ruther has not lied.’

  The people turned to me. Slowly I stood to address the men seated on the bench and the crowd before them. ‘I did not hide myself, as Ruther claims, but was trapped by him against my will so I could not right my error and call the warriors back.’ I saw Caradog slump with relief. ‘But the deeper claim he makes is true. I commanded the people of Caer Cad to fight under a false vision. I did not intend harm, but that is of no consequence now. I am responsible for their deaths.’

  Sulien and Caradog both stared at me in incomprehension.

  How had I ever imagined I was forgiven?

  My hair whipped my face in the wind. I turned to Prydd who was smiling in his triumph. ‘I am your Kendra. I have known the Mothers. I have heard them sing. Yet you have doubted me and disrespected me. I wish, more than any, that I was not so tarnished a Kendra, but there is no other. Condemn me if you will, but do not say that I am falsely placed.’

  ‘I will say it,’ said Prydd. ‘No true Kendra would cause her people such harm.’

  The wind lulled. The crowd was silent.

  Intuitively, my hand rose to my chest and I felt, through my dress, the coiled scars of the Mothers’ knife. I could continue to argue. I could show them my wound and hope it might still carry a faint trace of song if it were pressed. But I did not.

  For suddenly it barely mattered if I was Kendra or not. Finally I had seen that I had no place here. Caradog did not love me. Prydd did not want me. I had caused Euvrain to suffer, and I could not learn song without abandoning a child who had grown to need me.

  I had called on every shred of my strength to convince Caradog that I was more than a figurehead. And now, just as he had begun to esteem me, my failing was exposed. I had no further weapons against his doubt. Nor against my own. Prydd’s accusation echoed my own suspicion that there was something askew in me. If I had made such an error once, could I make it again?

  I stared at the faces around me, tired and worn by war. They doubted me. But not only this. They doubted my title. They doubted the land. They doubted themselves.

  ‘Ailia?’ said Sulien gently. ‘Do you refute Prydd’s accusation? Do you claim that you are Kendra?’

  ‘I will always claim it,’ I said. ‘But I cannot prove to you what you no longer have the faith to believe.’

  The first fat drops of rain fell from the sky, but no one moved.

  I unfastened my Kendra’s sword and walked to the bench to stand before Sulien. ‘I wish that I could have helped you,’ I said as I laid the sword at his feet. ‘Strength and courage in the war.’

  9

  The Shape of All Things

  The rise of the sun,

  The contour of the oak leaf,

  The paths across our land

  Are bound by the same angles.

  Their pattern is in all things

  But not all can see it.

  CARADOG CAME to my hut as I was packing a saddle bag. He paced back and forth in agitation. ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘North.’

  ‘Where?’

  I did not know. I wanted only to be within the forest again. To merge, like a beast, with the mountain and know the simple success of the hunt. To be where I could bring no harm and feel no shame. ‘Perhaps, in time, to Môn…’

  ‘But you will return to join me when I leave Llanmelin?’

  I looked up from the blanket I was folding. ‘No, Caradog. I will not return.’

  Now he stood still. ‘We may go to war this season. I will need you to stand beside me, to augur the right time and battle place—’

  I began to cry. ‘I will not tell anyone to fight again.’

  ‘Why not?’ he demanded.

  ‘Because I am no longer Kendra. Were you not there at Arbitration? Why do you taunt me?’

  ‘I do not care if you are called Kendra or pig-herd. The soldiers hear you because you are clear-eyed and you understand this war. They trust you.’ He paused. ‘I trust you.’

  ‘But I do not trust myself. How can I be certain that I would not command them falsely again?’ I broke from his gaze and stuffed the blanket into my bag.

  ‘Ailia.’

  I looked up. He used my name so infrequently.

  ‘When y
ou came to Llanmelin last autumn, you said you wanted to aid me in war.’

  I looked back at the ground.

  He crouched before me and took both my shoulders in a firm grip, almost shaking me. ‘This is war, Ailia. Many tribespeople have died because of my war calls, many settlements have been burned. Many people will die yet. This is the currency of war. You were not responsible for the deaths at Caer Cad—it was war.’

  I stood, pulling free of his grasp, and turned away. If there were any truth in his words I could not acknowledge them. I had lost my township. I had lost Taliesin. I had lost my sister dog. Now I had caused the war king’s council to doubt their Kendra. To be in bond to me was to be condemned. I would not subject Rhain or Hefin or Manacca to the risk of it. And especially not Caradog. He, more than any other, needed to be free of me. We had no greater hope against the Romans than him. This was how I would aid his war—by leaving.

  I picked up my bag and tied it closed. My eyes were dry now. My endless practice in ignoring the voice of my heart had finally borne fruit. I felt nothing. Just the cold, howling call of the mountains. They would tell me what I was.

  Caradog put his hand on my shoulder, more gently, as I went to pass. ‘Stay, Kendra.’

  ‘I am not she.’

  ‘Whatever you are, stay.’

  ‘Mothers bless you,’ I whispered, as I walked out the door.

  ‘Aya!’

  I knew that lilting mispronunciation of my name and I did not turn. I had taken the northern gate because it was less watched, but it required that I walk past the fringe huts.

  ‘Stop, Aya!’

  The voice was shrill with panic. I had to turn.

  She was running down the path towards me with all the speed her legs would allow. Darkness had almost fallen, but I could see the worry in her face. ‘Where are you going?’ she gasped when she reached me.

  ‘Walking…harvesting,’ I stammered.

  ‘By night?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I will come!’

  ‘No, Manacca.’

  ‘Why not?’ She took my hand as if to lead me onwards, but I pulled it away.

  ‘No. You can’t come this time.’

  Her dark eyes searched my face then dropped to my sack. ‘Are you leaving?’

  ‘I have to, my pup.’

  She flung her arms around my waist. ‘You cannot!’ she cried. ‘You cannot go!’

  I softened at her touch and yearned to embrace her, but I would not. ‘Let me go, Manacca,’ I said, prising her hands from my waist. Her desperate grip would not release me.

  I cursed the muscles that had served us so well in harvesting and pounding—she had great strength, but mine was greater. With a rough jerk, I pulled her wrist free.

  She yelped in pain then fell upon me again, grabbing hold of my thigh. ‘Don’t leave, Aya.’

  ‘Stop it,’ I said, growing angry. We struggled. She would not let go. A fury rose. I took her small shoulders, wrenched her from my leg, and threw her hard to the ground. ‘Leave me!’ I bellowed.

  She looked up at me from the road, her eyes huge with shock. She did not run at me again.

  I turned away and began walking. I did not look back.

  Her bitter crying followed me deep into the forest.

  In all that I had done, I had never known greater shame.

  Wet ground. Narrow paths. Dense trunks. The forest by night forced out all other thoughts. The air was livelier, tighter, charged with the spirits that rose off the trees. I sucked deep breaths of the peppery coldness. It was intoxicating, addictive as any mead. I grew drunk on its wildness. My edges softened; I was altered.

  I walked through the darkness until my legs felt as though they had been absorbed into the earth and I was gliding, by scent, across the skin of the mountain. The forest would heal me. It would give me my strength.

  As the moon set, I stopped at a crevice that was sheltered by a jut of rock in the hillside. By the pungent scent, I knew it had once housed a litter of wolf pups, who would have moved off with the summer, leaving me their hair-lined den. I slipped inside and ran my hands around the walls. There was barely room enough to stand, and I would have to lie curled, but it would keep me dry and protected as I slept.

  From the loose stones I felt underfoot I selected one that was flat enough to suffice for an ember-catcher and placed it just within the entrance so the smoke could draw out. I crushed a few dry leaves as tinder, then pulled my fire bow and spindle from my bag. Working by touch, for the darkness was total, I turned the bow steadily, until a small cone of ember began to glow on the stone. My breath and a handful of tinder completed the task. The spider-strewn edges of my chamber were lit.

  There was scant dry wood in the sodden forest, but I gathered what I could and propped it around the flames to dry. The fallen branches beneath the lip of shelter outside would be enough for the night.

  I had enough smoked mutton and bread to last several days. My sling would feed me after that and here would be burdock and mallow, whose roots would be tender in tomorrow’s coals.

  When I had eaten, I lay down, curving my body around the fire, the heat from the embers soaking my muscles. Here alone, undistracted, I could hear the Mothers’ heartbeat. It was right that I had come. I did not belong to Llanmelin, to the tribes. I belonged to this low and steady pulse.

  Rain pattered again outside my nest. The fire spat as droplets flew in on gusts of wind. My face was hot, but my back was cold. I stretched out, then wrapped my body into a circle. Around and around I coiled on myself, until my head lay softly on my full belly and my tail tickled my cheek. I rippled in pleasure and faint surprise. So gently, so tenderly, the Mothers bestowed their grace. Rather than witness me struggle, in my human shape, to hunt and stay warm, they had quietly wrought me to serpent. Here I could be safe from Prydd, from Roman swords, and from the ceaseless enthralment of my own failure.

  My eyes closed. My breath slowed. There was just the heat now, sloughing my skin.

  Below me, the roots of the forest were listening, thinking, readying their change.

  I was grateful to be wild again, to have my every thought consumed by survival.

  Each day I arose before dawn and sat on the edges of streams or springs, chanting my devotion to the Mothers, who sang back in the gurgling water. Once Lleu had shown his face in the eastern sky, I hunted and harvested, taking pleasure in a life where the stakes of my labour were a missed meal or a lost sling stone, and not the murder and rape of my townspeople.

  After highsun, I walked along the windy crests of the mountains, where paths sheered away to dizzying cliffs, huge hunting birds hovered, and plants grew low and hardy in the cracks of limestone. I spent many hours gathering mossy meadow and roseroot to dry and powder in my shelter, taking comfort in the solitude and wide horizons. I felt a kinship with the stubborn, woody shrubs that grew almost out of bare rock, defiant of the legions bearing down on their home.

  At dusk, I sat at my fire, pulled out my song belt, and sang through the poems Rhain had taught me. Though I had gained no more since Prydd’s forbidding, I already held more than I could recite in a week of evenings. Through steady declamation, I affirmed my knowledge of measurement, medicine, history and plantcraft, and was surprised how much I held in my memory.

  I thought of Manacca, of Rhain, and especially of the war king. I did not think of returning to them. It could serve no purpose. The Kendra’s title was a gleaming vessel that Prydd had cracked open. There was nothing within but my error. The only being I wished to be close to was Neha. I longed for her wordless presence.

  The weeks carried me to the height of summer. The beech trees, in thick growth, offered bountiful sweet leaves and would yield oily nuts in the autumn. The forest heaved its ancient sigh as Lleu’s mighty wheel tilted to begin its slow return towards darkness. Never had I loved this land of Albion so deeply. Never had I feared its loss so greatly.

  Every day, I listened to the crumbling soil beneath my finge
rs. I asked what it needed, what would keep it strong. Despite my mistakes, the memory of the Mothers still glimmered within me—the Kendra’s memory. Where could I take it? How could I wield it, that it might protect this land?

  But as I laid my head each night on the cave’s hard ground, I heard no answer.

  My dreams were dark and confusing, full of underground tunnels that never reached light. Had even the Mothers lost faith in me now? Did the land itself renounce its Kendra?

  Then slowly, gradually, as I walked the narrow pathways back from the summits with my skirt gathered up and heavy with hawkweed, I came to hear the land’s voice.

  It did not call for its Kendra. It called for its song.

  I walked, I dug, I pounded, I slept. And finally, deep in unaltered forest, I understood. As our land had been changed by invasion, so must our knowledge change if it was to survive. It could no longer remain within the vessel of the Kendra’s title, for this was too shining, too easily seen.

  In a threatened land, such brightness would reveal us.

  In a threatened land, our knowledge must be hidden where no Roman could find it.

  As I harvested and hunted, I felt the land’s sadness, core-deep, in the marrow of the stone. It was mourning its sovereign people. And yet its spirits were indestructible.

  Then what of me? Whatever I was, I held the voice of the Mothers.

  I could not voice it as Kendra. The title belonged to our innocence, when our bonds to this earth were uncontested.

  No. If my memory was to endure now, I needed to be stealthy, ever-changing, closer to the earth. Serpent-like.

  I needed to be Songwoman.

  I understood all this, but I could not return.

  For I was still she who was gifted knowledge, and yet had wrought unspeakable destruction. And there was none with the authority to pardon me.

  At first she could not rouse me.

  I was sleeping late, after a windy night had kept me awake.

  Her hot breath and rough tongue became part of my dreams, but as she barked and whimpered, I swiftly rose through the waters of sleep and opened my eyes. ‘By the Mothers!’ I gasped, sitting up. I clutched at her face and forelegs to assure myself she was no conjuring, no vision. ‘How have you come here?’ I had never felt her back so thin or seen her flanks so wasted. She must have walked the length of Albion to find me. But how? By scent? By magic?