Songwoman

by Ilka Tampke

  ‘What you hold in your hands,’ he told the fighters, ‘is nothing less than the future of Albion. Tomorrow you will either win back our freedom or mark the beginning of our eternal slavery. By your swords, Rome will either claim these lands or be banished forever. Which do you desire?’

  Every tribesman was enflamed.

  I stood in full journeywoman’s regalia, Albion’s highest knowledge-bearer beside Albion’s highest king. But my knowledge was a wound and my task was to bear it. Across the blazing campfire I met Rhain’s eye. How glad I was that he had deemed me unready to sing. What lay within me could not be voiced.

  Later, I sat alone in darkness outside my tent. Voices drifted from the war camps, where the men took their last meal before battle.

  I could not eat. Tomorrow I would fight and scream the journeywoman’s curses. But tonight I was the wife of a man who may not live beyond Lleu’s next fall. I had seen Albion defeated. I had not seen what would become of the man I loved.

  Beneath his kingship, Caradog was human flesh, a beating heart and a tangled mind that knew me better than any other. Love had made us kin. If he survived our defeat, we might yet live wild, or in the sanctuary of Môn, exiled but together. Even his death in battle I could accept. But for him to be captured, to be carried to Rome, tortured and mocked there as the trophy I knew Scapula so desperately sought, this I could not endure.

  I hoped I would be killed and spared any knowledge of it. But I feared the Mothers would not be so kind.

  ‘Ailia?’ Caradog had found my refuge. ‘Why are you hiding? We are still at the fire…’ He crouched before me, then noticed my face. ‘My love, what’s wrong?’

  ‘I…I do not know what will happen tomorrow.’

  ‘But you do…’ He frowned. ‘The Mothers have told you we will succeed.’

  ‘Ay,’ I said. ‘But what if you are lost in the success?’

  He laughed. ‘Faithless! I have not been war king of Albion for seven years because I cannot swing a sword.’

  ‘And what if the Mothers’ prediction was wrong, and it is we who are defeated?’ The falsehood, the trickery, sat like iron in my belly. I wanted to vomit it out, yet this was my task, to ensure this cursed battle was fought.

  ‘It may be so,’ said Caradog. ‘This is why the Mothers have sent the Brigantes to my war.’

  ‘What is your meaning?’ I asked, suspicious.

  ‘The Brigantes are ripe to rise,’ he said. ‘We have already planned paths of retreat that lead to the north. If Scapula’s army is stronger tomorrow, I will not push my men into a needless sacrifice. I will pull them back…’

  ‘And then?’ I asked, dreading what I knew he would say.

  ‘I will go to Tir Brigantes. I will raise another war band there—’

  ‘No!’ I cried. ‘Were you deaf to Cartimandua’s promise? She will give you to Scapula.’

  ‘I can evade Cartimandua. I will speak to Venutius. For every fighter who came here from the Brigantes today, there will be one hundred more who are hungry to rise. I need only to ignite them.’

  I stared at his face, just visible in the moon’s glow. When would be enough? ‘You have told the men that this is the final battle,’ I said. ‘But now you say you will go on.’

  ‘Of course I will,’ he said, frowning again. ‘What warrior am I if I cease to stand against this enemy?’

  I fought a swelling anger. ‘Is this your concern?’ I asked. ‘Your warrior’s name? What of us? What of the men and women you drag with you through this endless river of war?’

  He stared at me, then said slowly, ‘You speak as if we were damned. And yet it was you who foresaw our success.’

  ‘Yes…’ Please do not ask me to confirm it, I begged him silently. I had no strength to uphold the lie.

  He took hold of my fingers. ‘Worry not, Ailia. Trust in your vision.’

  I pulled my hand free. ‘You should sleep,’ I said.

  ‘I know.’ He looked towards the camps. ‘The men have gone quiet. I’ll stay here now.’

  We sat in the darkness, each with our own thoughts of the morrow.

  Beyond the clearing, frogs beat a steady trill, tiny drums of bone and skin, marking the passing of the hours, yet knowing nothing of time’s threat. We, in all our learned stupidity, were the only creatures who lived in terror of time.

  Inside our tent, I held Caradog’s naked warmth against me, sucking his scent into my lungs as if it were my last breath of him.

  By dawn’s first light, I prepared to paint the war king’s face. He sat on a log before me.

  Into a tiny pot of his seed, freshly milked upon waking, I tipped the powdered woad, stirring it quickly to make a binding paste. I dipped a sharpened twig into the colour and brought it to his cheek. ‘Look up!’

  He turned his face to the sky.

  Carefully, I marked a blue line across his cheekbone. The potent colour had only moments to soak into the pores of his skin, before it dried crisp. Working deftly across his nose and brow, I drew the arcs and spirals that would make him seem monstrous and inhuman in battle, terrifying the Romans, while heartening his fighters, who understood the swirling symbols of kinship.

  I patterned the translucent skin of his temples, working down to where his beard sprouted in wiry curls. His breath was warm on my cheek. What a privilege it was to know so intimately the furrows and textures of this mighty face.

  ‘Ailia—?’ His voice was quiet.

  ‘Yes, my love.’

  He hesitated, then said, ‘Am I noble? Do I fight for what is true?’

  I turned back to him. Never had I loved him more. ‘Yes,’ I said, with all my heart. ‘The fact that you ask it means the answer is yes.’

  A soft wind stirred the air around us.

  ‘You have…’ he faltered, ‘… accused me of fighting for my own glory.’

  ‘And so you do.’

  Here, between the brightening horizon and the moon sunk low in the western sky, the oppositions were in perfect balance. He was indeed fed by power, enlivened by pride, yet whatever he claimed of Lleu’s splendour, he gave back to Albion a hundredfold in the radiance of his vision. His glory was ours.

  ‘In three thousand summers they will tell your story,’ I said. ‘You are giving Albion her future.’ I pressed my lips against his, before taking the twig to his shaven chest.

  He was the eye of the animal that would meet sacrifice this day. He did not know how noble he was.

  Within an hour of sunrise we were positioned on the mountain. The warriors were shirtless, their skin painted, their wrists wrapped with fur, their hair spiked with limewater. The mountain was strewn with skulls and poles tied with ribbons of fur that flapped in the wind.

  I stood at the crest of the hill with a hundred other journeypeople, ready to pour down curses as the soldiers approached. I wore a dog-skull headdress, unbraided hair and ropes of knuckles, bells and feathers around my hips. All our totemic power was invoked to meet this enemy.

  Caradog stood midway down the mountain, positioned on a ledge that was visible to the warriors both above and below him.

  Please Mothers, I prayed, looking to the empty clearing where Scapula had been camped, let them come soon. Let our defeat be swift if it cannot be altered. But I knew, even as I made my silent call, that we must fight as long and hard as we had ever fought. For this would be the strength of the story.

  The sun rose higher, yet there was no cry from the watchmen to tell us Scapula approached. He had drawn his army into the thick forests behind our closest hill and appeared to have stopped there.

  Lleu reached his peak then began his descent, and still the watchman was silent.

  For the full arc of the sun, we stood in wait.

  Scapula did not come.

  ‘It is but a strategy,’ said Caradog to the warriors as they gathered at the camp after dusk. ‘He seeks us to become wearied from our own readiness. They will come tomorrow.’

  But they did not come the next day.
<
br />   Nor the next.

  Nor the one after that.

  What was their intent? I anguished as we returned from our positions for the fourth time. Were they approaching from another direction? No watchman had seen them cross the river.

  ‘He’s not going to march,’ said the Brigantes chief as Caradog and I visited his fire. ‘He is mocking us as we await him, while he prepares an attack at a ground of his choosing.’

  ‘Do not kindle this falsehood among the men,’ said Caradog. ‘I know this general’s pride. He will not evade battle.’

  But it was too late. The war band was hungry from the camp’s spare rations and worn from the tension of being four days poised for attack. They were used to stealth fighting: quick, brutal and set to their timing.

  The rumbling doubt of the Brigantes spread like fire among the men. Scapula would not come. He would have us wait like hopeful pups, each day belittling us further. Warriors of Albion waited for no one.

  Caradog slept fitfully and emerged from his tent in the pre-dawn light to find warriors packing their carts. Some were already departing down the valley pathway.

  Caradog strode among them, commanding them to stay, shaming them for their disloyalty, imploring them to honour their oaths.

  ‘We will fight beside you when there is an enemy to fight,’ they cried. ‘We are no toy for the Romans.’ More and more were walking away.

  Blood pounded in my head as I walked behind him and watched this unravelling. This could not happen. The battle had to be as the Mothers had foretold it. This was our future.

  ‘Follow me,’ I said to Caradog, catching his hand. ‘There is a place from where they will hear you.’ I began climbing up the rear of the mountain as fast as I could.

  Breathless, we reached a vantage that overlooked the northern valley. A narrow ledge of rock jutted over the pathway along which the war band was trailing away.

  I waited behind in an open hollow as Caradog walked out to the precipice. Wind flapped his tunic against his torso. It would surely drown his voice.

  ‘War King!’ I hissed. ‘Call on the ancestors—’

  He nodded and, again, called forth the lineages of the warriors that had so heartened the men on the eve of the first day, shouting their names into the skin-coloured sky. But they fell unheard on the backs of the tribespeople.

  Our war band was retreating.

  I leaned back against the mountain stone. We were destined to lose this mighty place. But if it fell without sacrifice—unbound to us by battle or story—then how could it ever again be ours?

  Caradog stood unspeaking.

  Suddenly the sun lifted over the eastern ridgeline, casting a flood of light into the valley. I looked down against the brightness, and there—translucent between sandstone pebbles—was the ghost of a snake: a sheath as pale and delicate as river froth. I crouched to look closer. Every contour of its form was intact. Even its eyes had been shed. I touched its brittle surface. How faithfully it evoked the adder, yet it was not the adder. It was skin, emptied of flesh. Against it, my own hands were blood pink—something in their simple, human power, no greater or lesser than any other’s, allowed me, at last, to see what I was.

  I surged forward, pulling Caradog back and taking his place on the thin lip of rock. The wind threatened to topple me, but I shouted, with all my strength to the warriors below. ‘Hear me speak.’

  I saw the fighters halt, tribe by tribe, and turn to face me.

  Rhain had joined Caradog. ‘Ailia!’ he hissed from behind me. ‘The war king must address them.’

  I no longer cared for Rhain’s permission. Wind tore through my hair. The Mothers’ song flowed up through my feet, anchoring me. ‘Hear this,’ I commanded, ‘that you will return.’

  Every face was now uplifted to behold me. ‘The Romans will come,’ I began. ‘The Mothers have foretold it. It may be this day. It may be on the next moon. But whenever they come, they will find us waiting. Because this land, this mountain, has asked for battle. A battle that will decide our sovereignty.’

  I did not shout or roar, but my voice seemed to reach every crevice of the landscape.

  ‘This land wants to taste sacrifice,’ I continued. ‘But whose blood will sate it? The Mothers say Scapula’s. I have doubted it, as I know every one of you has doubted it too. This is why you have turned away. And you are right to doubt it. For in truth we may fail—’

  ‘Enough, Ailia!’ said Caradog, ‘Speak not of failure—’

  I glanced back at him. ‘Trust me…’

  His face was dark with unease.

  ‘Let her speak,’ said Rhain, touching his arm.

  Caradog paused, then nodded, and I turned back to my people.

  ‘But if we must fail,’ I said, ‘let us fail because Rome defeated us in a fight to the death, not because we abandoned our Mothers before we even raised a spear.’

  The war band listened, unmoving.

  I sensed Caradog had moved to my side, though I did not lift my gaze from the tribespeople before me. ‘Whether we win or lose, let us fight!’ I cried. ‘For our fight will forge a story that will endure beyond the oldest oak. And all will know, by this song, by this battle, how deeply the Mothers of Albion are loved and will always be loved.’

  Caradog reached for my hand. I squeezed it once, then let it go. I was not yet finished. I took a deep breath. ‘I am Ailia, witness to the Singing. Voice of the Mothers. I ask you to honour your war king. I ask you to fight.’

  The wind had dropped. The entire valley, its trees and the great swell of its mountains, were poised in silence.

  ‘Do not be still!’ I called to the warriors. ‘Raise your weapons if you have heard me. Sound your voices if you will stay.’

  There was a moment as brief as a breath—though it seemed as if it would last forever—and then, by the grace of the Mothers, the tribespeople began to lift their swords.

  With a surge, as sure as the tide, a shifting ocean of iron and bronze emerged from the upheld hands of the men and women before me. A sound, first low and growling, then gathering in strength, broke from their throats in an eruption of noise—an animal bellow from the land itself.

  Now I sought Caradog’s hand. The poem would be told.

  Leaving Caradog to command the warriors back to their positions, I staggered, faint with relief, back to the shelter where Rhain steadied me with a draught of ale.

  ‘Now,’ he said, smiling. ‘Now you have the authority. Now you are ready to forge.’

  Just as I opened my mouth to respond, the sharp blast of the watchman’s carnyx rang through the valley.

  ‘The enemy is sighted,’ called the eastern guard. ‘Two leagues to the east.’

  My stomach dropped as Rhain and I locked eyes.

  Scapula was on his way.

  11

  Death

  Death divides our seasons, our day, our home.

  Our rituals enact it. Our gates and lintels wear its skulls.

  What are we but that which must die?

  WE WERE ready. Our scouts had been tracking Scapula’s approach for the past few hours, galloping back and forth between Caradog and the watchmen positioned along the ridgelines.

  The sky had filled with low, grey cloud that made the mountains appear to rise without limit. The river Glaslyn was a torrent, coursing at our feet—the first great warrior of our band.

  Again the carnyx blasted. I felt the collective tightening of fists around spear shafts. They had passed the final watchman. They were moments away.

  All eyes stared at the shivering forest.

  I had seen the Roman army at rest after slaughter. I had seen them in ambush and in twos or fours on the roadway. But nothing could have prepared me for the sight of Scapula’s Fourteenth Legion—twelve thousand men—flooding forth from the tree line in breathtaking unison, three abreast, they emerged, identical forms in bronze and red, each a sinew, a muscle, of a greater beast.

  My belly twisted in terror. It was beauty and power
I had not expected.

  Behind the legions came the auxilia, more disparate in dress, yet lacking none of the discipline and unity that had carried these men through weeks of marching through mud and marshes.

  The warriors stiffened, as though the mountain itself had raised its hackles, and watched, unmoving, as the soldiers made formation on the Glaslyn’s south bank. It took a full hour for the force to assemble, the legion in tight rows, the auxilia at their rear and flanks, mostly on foot, perhaps a quarter on horses. Even once they had come to formation, the soldiers did not lift their gaze to look at us, but stared straight ahead, as if we were not there.

  A commander, on a chestnut stallion, rode back and forth before them.

  ‘Is it him?’ I whispered to Rhain.

  ‘Ay. He wears the governor’s plume. That is Scapula.’

  He was smaller than I had imagined and I knew his cough-weary chest could not have filled the gilded swell of the breastplate that covered it, but even from this distance, I could see the fury that brimmed in his muscles. And although he was Roman from his costume to his hairless cheeks, I recognised the assurance with which he paced the ground. It was the same as Caradog’s.

  For several hours he and his scouts rode the bank of the river in both directions, surveying the ground beyond it, looking for other ways to approach the mountain.

  But Caradog had chosen well. The sides of the mountain were too steep to ascend and the terrain at the rear was impassable, save for the narrow paths through the gullies, which were heavily guarded.

  Scapula had no choice but to approach head on.

  He came to stand before his men and, for the first time, faced his enemy. His stare drank in every one of us, lingering on our war king with a twitch of recognition.

  Caradog lifted his arm. In a low, steady voice he called, ‘Begin the cry!’

  With their next breath, the warriors commenced the guttural ululations that preceded battle. The volume rose and echoed off the surrounding cliffs, filling the valley with noise as if the mountains themselves were screaming their protest. As it reached its peak the journeypeople started to curse, screeching one atop another in a deluge of wrath: