by Ilka Tampke
‘Manacca?’ I said. ‘I am returned…’
She gave no response. Had she lost her wits with an illness or a blow to the head? No. The only blow she had received was mine.
She turned back to her puddle.
I stood unmoving, while she played as if I were not there. Then I handed her mother the basket of silver, salt and a bottle of honey mead that I had brought in the hope of securing Manacca’s fosterage. She might as well have it anyway.
The mother’s thanks was barely more than a snarl.
Walking back into the township, I clung to my resolve to bear what I had done, reeling at how brutally it could be tested.
As dusk drew near, I prepared in my hut for the evening invocation. I spread a worn pigskin on the floor and began the postures that would settle my mind before prayer. But I could not banish Manacca from my thoughts as I bent and twisted, recalling how she would watch me, enthralled, as I performed this sequence, hopping up to mimic my shapes. I remembered the smell of her skin after a tallow bath and the sound of her giggling at Neha’s whimpery dreams. Then I thought of Caradog, and marvelled that the Mothers could take and bestow so much in the gesture of one day.
Neha startled beside me as the door bell was struck.
‘Enter,’ I called, expecting Rhain.
But it was Euvrain who pushed through the doorskins. By her face, I knew that Caradog had spoken to her.
I invited her to sit and poured her a cup of ale.
She did not lift her gaze as I sat beside her.
‘I am sorry, Euvrain.’ I said. ‘I had dreamt of a friendship between us.’
Her pale hair hung loose, a veil between us, and her eyes remained downcast. ‘And I believed there was one.’
We sat in quietness as she rested one hand on her well-swollen belly, only two or three moons from birth. She sipped her ale then began to speak.
‘After the Romans first landed and defeated us at the Medway, we could not return to Camulodunum. We took refuge in the forests of Tir Catuvellauni. Caradog asked me if I would leave my tribelands and follow him west to continue the war.’
I waited as she paused.
‘When I returned to the township to farewell my mother and father, Plautius himself came to my house.’ Now she looked at me. ‘He offered me citizenship, gold, guarded protection, servants, a safe home, in return for me telling him where my husband hid.’ Her pale eyes darkened. ‘I could have been a Roman queen. But instead I have lived in mud and manure and birthed two children in a broken cart as we hid like frightened deer for seven summers. I did not betray him.’
‘And now he betrays you,’ I whispered, voiceless with shame.
She sipped again. ‘I did not come to chastise you.’
‘Why then?’
‘To give you my blessing.’ Her voice was cold. ‘I am loyal to my husband and I love him still, but you are the only one who can steer him. For Albion’s sake I release him to you. I will not attend the feast tonight. You will take my place at his side.’
‘Does he ask this of you?’
She shook her head. ‘Your love is Mother-chosen. I will not stand in its path.’
She had the nobility of the moon. How could Caradog have chosen any above her? ‘I… I have admired your marriage to the War King.’
‘And yet it is yours that will save us.’
I stared at her in awe. ‘You are stronger than he or I.’
She laughed. ‘I do not feel it. Just promise me that you will guide him well—and ensure that my children’s homeland is safe.’
‘I promise you this.’ My shoulders fell with the weight of my truthfulness.
She rose to leave.
‘Euvrain—’
She looked back.
‘I am…so wanting of sisterhood. Might we yet spin or weave together when…when all is settled?’
She frowned. ‘No. We will not weave or spin together.’
I bowed my head.
After the feast, Caradog came to my bed. Strong as earth, he rocked above me. Fire and water were the sweat that bound us. Our desire for each other was our desire for Albion: a soul’s yearning that claimed its object with the imperative of breath.
When we had quieted, he propped himself on his elbow to face me, tracing my scars with the tip of his finger. Were they ugly to him? ‘Are you proud that it is you who was chosen?’ he asked.
‘There is power in it,’ I answered, ‘but this is not what I am glad of.’
‘What then?’
‘I am glad of the memory of when they were cut.’
He stared at me, flame light dancing on his face. ‘Tell me.’
‘It was rapture.’ I held his stare. ‘I was as the Mothers. I was immortal.’
‘I would love to know such a moment.’
‘That is my task,’ I whispered. ‘To know it for you.’
Slowly he moved his mouth to the scars and anointed them with his lips and tongue.
They throbbed and sang between my nipples.
The memory was mine, but he made it stronger.
After three summers in the fields of Llanmelin, it took only four days for Caradog’s camp to be struck, the grain barrels filled, the carts loaded, the cattle roped and the warriors weaponed and readied to ride. Caradog was determined that not one of the several thousand should remain behind.
Hefin had resisted all efforts to convince him to ride with us, even bidding his best warriors to ride with Caradog. I knew this was the way of the tribes—a question of honour. Caradog commanded the greater war, but Hefin was chieftain to this tribeland by a long rope of blood. He was ready to give himself as its sacrifice.
I wept as I kissed him farewell on the morning of our departure. ‘Show courage,’ I whispered into his bristly ear. ‘Thank you for your loyalty. The war king would have stood no chance without you.’
We were standing at the edge of the camp field where it met the road, an ocean of people behind us, ready to ride. Caradog and Rhain were tightening the straps on their saddle packs. Euvrain was mounted beside them, wretched with pregnancy, staring, without expression, toward the east. The sky was colourless, the wind sharp on our skin.
Hefin steadied my mare as I mounted. ‘Make sure you keep one of Scapula’s balls for my trophy shelf,’ he said, and I laughed.
While Caradog gave Hefin his final suggestions for ambushes to lay for Scapula, I turned to the war band. They waited, shifting and uneasy. They knew they were moving into more rugged landscapes, where few crops would grow and only strong cattle would survive. They knew that the war was nearing its end.
I had never seen such weariness. Even the Mothers seemed to sigh in the wind’s thin wail. I raised my hand before them, and smiled to reassure them that we fought for the Mothers, who needed us all to be strong.
Caradog called, the carnyx was blown, and we surged forward: one great, heaving beast of tribespeople, horses, cattle and carts. The war camp was moving again and I was at its head.
The road circled the township, passing the northern gateway. As we entered the forest, a small figure darted out from behind the trees.
My heart lurched. She had forgiven me and had come to say goodbye. I pulled my mare to the side of the road.
Manacca stepped forward, silent as a sparrow, and held up a small leather parcel, a talisman to ensure a safe reunion. I undid the leather fastening and took a deep breath of the fragrant herbs. Comfrey, nettle, rosemary, properly dried and in beautiful proportions. She had learnt the craft perfectly.
She stared up at me, wide-eyed, in wordless, proud delight. My heart clenched, I could not leave her here. She could ride in the front of my saddle with no strain on my mare.
I called Caradog to halt so I could rearrange my saddle packs, but he could not hear me. When I looked down again, Manacca had disappeared, slipped back into the woodland.
‘Move on!’ The call came from behind me.
I stuffed the pouch into the bodice of my under-robe and kicked my mare forw
ard.
Four days later, Scapula attacked Llanmelin.
The first message came to us as we were unpacking by the river Usk. Caradog and I were gathering tinder when we heard the rider approach. He wore a Silures tartan, but not that of Llanmelin, and by the pallor of his young face I knew the message was grave. Caradog ushered him to a clearing by the river’s edge, where we could listen to his words in privacy. After a long draught of water, the rider spoke.
Scapula had sent two separate legions into Tir Silures within the space of a day. As we had predicted, one—the Fourteenth—had come from the north, marching into the Forest of Dean, then turning south toward Llanmelin.
Hefin had taken his warriors to ambush this northern force before it cleared the forest. A few hours later a second legion had crossed the Habren estuary by boat, to march on the township from the south. They had found it defenceless as a child.
‘What of the townspeople?’ said Caradog.
The rider paused and blinked. He was scarcely more than a boy. Our messengers were trained to bear news without response, but there were some stories that could leave no soul untouched.
I touched his arm. ‘It is not easy to carry the messages of war,’ I said. ‘Tell us your news.’
Scapula had led the force that had come by boat. Some of the townspeople had fled through the northern gate before he blocked it, but most had not been swift enough.
I gasped. Manacca lived near the northern gate. By the Mothers, let her be safe, I prayed. ‘Go on…’ I urged.
Scapula had searched the township, settlements and forests for Caradog. When he learned that his prize had evaded him, he was so enraged that he slit the throat of his own soldier who had borne the news of the fruitless search. He then embarked on the most frenzied campaign of killing any Roman general had yet inflicted.
This was their atrocitas; the deliberate obliteration of homes, livestock, crops, equipment, temples and life. It was not a strategy designed to meet a threat—Rome was not threatened by children or animals, or the old or ill. It was designed to tell us that we did not exist, that we had no authority over our lives or our land, that we were forsaken and nothing could protect us.
‘Who told you all this?’ I asked.
‘Scapula kept some alive to watch, then cast them free to spread the story to the other townships of the Silures. He means to weaken them with fear before he attacks.’
I stared at the shallow water gliding over pebbles at the river’s edge, as the rider recounted the scenes that were described to him: the charred stumps of our dwellings, the smoking grain fields, the ravens that tugged at the bodies growing putrid in the summer sun.
He was igniting my own memories. But this time I could hold myself firm. We were protecting Môn and we were luring Scapula to his defeat. Llanmelin was the price of the greater goal. I was learning the truth of war.
‘What of Hefin and his warriors?’ said Caradog.
‘They did not survive the forest ambush,’ said the rider. ‘Their bodies swing from the trees in which they had hidden to make their attack.’
Caradog took my hand.
By the next full moon, we were deep enough in the mountains of Tir Ordovices to camp for several days at a time. West ocean winds kept the rounded peaks bare and we needed to nestle in the wooded valleys to ensure we were not seen by Roman scouts. Our own riders traversed the country like darting minnows, bringing us news of the new Roman front.
With his newly-captured territory behind him, Scapula had established a line at the lower Usk, north of Llanmelin. The Twentieth Legion remained in Tir Silures, guarding the townships at sword point to ensure no tribespeople escaped to join the war band. The Fourteenth Legion, with Scapula at its head, had marched into Tir Ordovices in pursuit of Caradog.
We sang no reaping songs and crowned no maiden with a wreath of wheat sheaves when the first harvest moon showed its round white cheek above the mountains. We were far from our crops and we could not afford to addle our minds with feasting and ale. We needed to be ever-watchful for the parties of ten or twelve soldiers that Scapula sent ahead to find us. We needed to kill them before they could betray our location.
On the narrow valley paths, it was not difficult for our warriors to ambush the Roman scouts from well-disguised vantages, our spears shooting from trees, as if the forest itself cast the weapons. Caradog rode with these fight bands, who cloaked themselves in the dawn or dusk, and were not averse to plunging a sword through a soldier’s kidney as his morning piss steamed from the cold ground. Each time he would return, flushed, excited, and with a mood of invincibility that worried me almost as much as its opposite, for I knew one preceded the other, and neither were anchored in truth.
‘Be careful, my love,’ I cautioned one evening as we lay in our tent.
He had not long returned from an ambush on a band of fifteen auxiliaries who had come within half a day’s march of our camp.
‘Of what?’ he said, with a smile that told me he was only partly in earnest.
‘Of Scapula, you rooster. It is clear that he grows more determined…’ The auxilia had traversed marshlands we had thought unpassable by those without knowledge of where the ground hardened enough to hold hooves.
He kissed my shoulder. Fifteen fresh Roman heads were draining on stakes at the entrance to our camp. He was aroused by the kill. ‘But only I have you to advise me…’
‘Why must it be you who leads the ambush? It is you Scapula seeks above all others. Why wave his quarry right under his nose?’
He raised his head and looked into my eyes. ‘How can I call on the warriors’ courage without showing my own?’
And I knew that he was right. His willingness to dance so close to the gates of Annwyn, to dangle himself before the Mothers as sacrifice to their war, was the very reason that the warriors followed him, that we all followed him.
I touched his face. ‘Just do not underestimate Scapula.’
Caradog laughed. ‘I do not.’
With the Fourteenth Legion edging forward through country we had thought would surely impede it, we needed to focus less on our attacks, and more on remaining hidden. Each week we could keep the soldiers trudging over sodden ground would further exhaust them. If we could elude Scapula until the end of the summer, he would be forced to either retreat or endure a bitter winter in the mountains.
Twice in the next few weeks, we struck camp and moved after only hours, as Scapula’s scouts—clumsy and obvious as they crashed through the forest’s late summer growth—came too close to our sanctuary. Our watchmen were deft and silent in knitted costumes of browns and greens that rendered them invisible in the foliage. They easily spied the enemy and planted decoys to paths that led scouts in false directions for days.
But to ensure our concealment, Caradog was forced to drive the war camp further north into steeper mountains, where our carts and cattle struggled through pathways barely wide enough for a single horse. He sent messages to Môn from each new location, requesting grain sacks, swords, tents, wheels and new horses when ours had stumbled to their death, or gone lame from too rugged a descent.
The small mountain townships gave us what they could, but if we did not find somewhere to settle soon, somewhere easily defended, where we could lease fields, sow a late summer crop, smoke meat, and aid the cows in birthing their calves, we would soon grow hungry.
It seemed that we had no choice but to move yet further north, back into the mountains of Eryr, where we had been told of a remote valley settlement called Branovi that was prepared to host us.
Caradog was hesitant. ‘The walking will be slow,’ he said, as the council met at our fire.
‘The paths are not easy,’ I agreed. ‘But what is difficult for us, must surely be impossible for Scapula.’
We left the next day.
I rejoiced in the familiar landscape of Eryr; the towering, treeless slopes and the clefts of dense growth that nestled between them. Deep inland lakes mirrored the mountains, their
chill waters flavoured with copper and iron. The forces of Annwyn brimmed beneath us. We would find protection here.
Caradog and I had yet not spoken it, but I knew we were not just looking for sanctuary. We were looking for country where we could stand strong in battle. These mountains were the guardians of Môn, proud, formidable, steeped in the hallucinatory mists of the holy isle. Luring Scapula here to fight would bring him close to our sacred stronghold, but the risk was worth taking. The treacherous peaks unsteadied the eye, the swirling mists deceived the senses. We understood these tricks of the Mothers. The Romans would not.
After five days we reached Branovi, where there was water and paddocks enough to sustain our livestock, and we were protected by escarpments on three sides. There had been no reports of Roman scouts at our heels since we had entered the mountains of Eryr. Caradog said we would stay.
We set about unloading the carts and preparing to slaughter one of our bulls, now that we had time enough to skin and butcher it. It was a relief to fully unpack the baskets, to set up bread ovens and looms.
But no sooner had we licked the roasted bull fat from our fingers one day later, than one of our watchmen cantered into the camp with word that a group of Scapula’s scouts had breached the foothills of Eryr’s slopes.
‘Did you not break their path?’ said Caradog, springing to his feet. ‘There were nine men at that watch.’
‘Of course,’ gasped the breathless watchman. ‘But all, save I, were slain.’
‘Then they still approach—’
‘And swiftly.’
Caradog immediately summoned a band of five warriors, who gathered spears, swords and rope, and thundered into the haze of dusk to sever this Roman hand before it felt out our hiding place.
By dawn they had returned, blood-splattered and shadow-eyed, with two of their number hanging limp across their horses’ backs. The Roman soldiers were already halfway through the second pass of Eryr, when Caradog’s men had found them on a lesser path that led directly to Branovi. They had ambushed the Roman scouts and captured their horses, but two of Scapula’s men had escaped on foot.