The Forgotten Kingdom

by Signe Pike

  The words brought her some comfort, but her anger remained. Stealing from a child. Let the woman and man reap what they sowed. At the far end of the currach, the trader stood, lifting his arms to take in a deep breath of river air. Then, reaching into his vest, he drew out Brother Thomas’s cross and, with a careless flick of his wrist, tossed it into the water. Angharad watched as it sank beneath the surface, disappearing from sight.

  “Your carving,” she said.

  Brother Thomas regarded him in silence. “It does not matter. I will make another.”

  “But you labored so long over it.”

  “It was a possession, nothing more. I am made of God, and God is within me, always. That is something no river can drown in its current.”

  They carried on in silence. The Bernicians spoke little, but when they did, Angharad thought their tongue sounded lisping and thin, wanting of meat. Clouds gathered, obscuring the sun, and a fine mist settled. She watched as the trees drifted by, their bare fingers eerie in the billowing mist, her body so worn she could no longer tell if the currach was gliding or idling in an eddy while the trees drew up their roots and moved on instead. Her eyelids grew heavy, and she slumped against the hull, the sound of sloshing water lulling her to sleep.

  She was startled awake sometime later by a clank, heavy and certain, like metal on wood. She opened her eyes to find it was twilight. What had been mist had become a dense and impenetrable fog while she slept.

  Clank.

  Angharad spun round, then saw it. A grappling hook, gripping the currach’s edge only an arm’s length away. She blinked. The river was silent. But then a sharp jerk rocked the boat, icy river water rushing onto Angharad’s lap. She gasped as the currach lurched, tipping perilously, and Brother Thomas threw his arms out to shield her.

  “What’s happening?” she cried.

  “Keep down, Angharad, we are under attack!” he said. The Bernicians scrambled as the trader shouted what sounded like orders.

  Clank.

  Behind them, an oarsman cried out, and Angharad twisted in Brother Thomas’s arms to see the barb of a grappling hook piercing the man’s thigh, pinning his body to the currach. He flailed against the siding, leg pulsing blood, and still more hooks were sailing.

  Clank.

  Clank.

  Two more sank home through the fog, slamming Angharad and Brother Thomas to the boat bottom as the currach was yanked from its course. The traders dropped their useless oars, provisions scattering as they snatched up weapons hidden amidst the cargo. A sword, a dirk, and a bow and quiver—this, one of the women took up, drawing it tight as she peered into the gloom. Water slapped into the currach as they were hauled helplessly against the current, closer and closer to the banks of the river. It was not until the trees were nearly upon them that any of them could see. But then Brother Thomas looked up, his eyes going wide. “God save us,” he said.

  Half hidden by mist, men with spears were hunched like vultures in the trees, their grappling ropes wrapped round boughs as they yanked the boat through the water.

  “Raiders!” Brother Thomas said. “Keep your head down! Keep your head down and pray.”

  Angharad’s stomach dropped as a raider perched overhead drew back his arm. The spear struck before she even saw it fly, a scream echoing as the Bernician woman at their back lurched forward, clutching wildly at the space in between, the wooden shaft of the spear protruding from her eye. Angharad screeched. Blood soaked the boat. The woman she had cursed was choking, flailing. Angharad saw the panic on her face before she dropped to the vessel bottom like a boulder.

  The trader glanced back, surveying the craft as his archer loosed arrows into the tops of the trees, sending a raider tumbling from the branches into the water with a splash. One woman dead and a man pinned to the gunwale, howling with each yank of the hook as the raiders took hold.

  The trader shouted something to the archer, then hurried to the injured man, crouching before him, cradling his face between his hands. They looked at each other. The oarsman stopped struggling and nodded. With one violent jerk, the trader snapped the oarsman’s neck. The man’s head dropped, lolling against his chest. Without a backward glance, the trader leapt onto the gunwale and launched himself into the river, the archer and last remaining oarsman splashing in behind him. Spears shot in a storm from the trees as the raiders sought to impale the Bernicians in the water, and Brother Thomas pushed Angharad flat into the sloshing cold, shielding her with his body. She was blinded beneath the bulk of him but closed her eyes all the same, sobbing at the thwack and thunk as spears plummeted from above, knowing the next would pierce their bodies like salmon in a pool.

  “Please!” Brother Thomas shouted. “Please, there’s a child! She is only a child!” He needn’t have shouted, for it had gone quiet now. His voice echoed through the dim.

  Angharad listened, still robbed of her sight.

  A shower of feet dropping onto grass from some height. The tipping and sift of water on earth as their currach was hauled up onto the shore. A man barking orders in another unfamiliar tongue. Angharad might have placed it, but she was terrified and shivering, soaking in blood and damp. Brother Thomas drew back and she clutched at him, mute and blinking. Only now could Angharad see the raiders clearly. They were clad in short gray cloaks and tunics, belted at the waist, with tight woolen breeches and stout leather boots oiled against water. It was their bare places that made Angharad stare—their faces and arms were covered in secrets branded in ink: wolves and sea eagles, horses and serpents, or markings like stick figures with limbs blazing fire.

  “Picts,” Thomas whispered. “They have a reverence for women, and you are a child. If they wished to kill us, they would have done so already. Look. He must be their commander.”

  Angharad leaned against Brother Thomas as a broad-shouldered man with black hair and a drooping mustache strode toward them. His blue eyes were piercing, and two blue-black fish were tattooed upon his forehead, arcing to meet in the middle of his brow.

  “This child is a noble,” Brother Thomas said. Yet the man carried on as if he’d heard nothing, nodding at his men to take Angharad and Brother Thomas in hand as they claimed their stolen cargo. But as the commander’s eyes swept the lifeless bodies of the traders, they caught upon the woman. He took in her cheekbones, the curves of her womanhood beneath her tunic, and his expression darkened with something that looked like regret. Bending, he touched his hands to her hair and murmured words that felt like a prayer. Then, bracing her head, the commander retrieved his spear with a sickening squelch.

  Within moments the currach was emptied, save for the bodies of the dead. Angharad watched as the raiders strode to the underbrush, tossing aside branches to reveal a vessel hidden upon the forest floor. A raiding ship, bigger than the Bernician currach and built to move in deeper waters. With some effort, they got behind it, pushing it toward the water’s edge, where it slapped with a great splash into the river’s draft.

  The raiders nudged the two of them toward the waiting vessel with the tips of their spears.

  Brother Thomas hoisted her into his arms, and she clung like a limpet as he stepped toward the boat, but the raider nearest them frowned, reaching to yank her from Brother Thomas’s grip.

  “Stop, please! She’s frightened,” he insisted. Angharad kicked at the raider, and the commander’s face hardened. In two strides, he was before them.

  “Please, allow me to carry her,” Brother Thomas said. The commander answered with his fist. The blow knocked Brother Thomas to his knees, sending Angharad spilling from his arms, and she clambered to her feet as the commander drew his fist back again.

  “No, no,” she cried. He stopped short, eyes fixed on Brother Thomas. The monk’s skin had split just above his brow, but he did not flinch, only blinked, as blood trickled down. Satisfied, the commander stepped back and Brother Thomas stood. They waited, soaked and shaking in the river’s dank as the raiders bound their hands.

  “This gir
l is a noble,” Thomas said again, wincing as they yanked the coarse rope too tight. “She is Angharad of Strathclyde, daughter of Rhydderch.”

  At this the commander stopped. He turned, scrutinizing Angharad as if to ascertain her worth.

  “He speaks our tongue, he understands! Please, take me to my father!” Angharad cried. “Please! I want to go home!”

  The man only turned, stepping lightly aboard the boat. Angharad’s eyes stung with tears as the raider she’d kicked took up their ropes to pull them roughly on board. He sat down heavily on the nearest oar bench, watching them with interest. There was blood beneath his fingernails, and his hands were soiled with dirt. As he shifted to adjust his belt, his cloak slipped up his arm, revealing an ox charging in a whorling sinew of dark blues and blacks from forearm to wrist.

  Angharad had never met a Pict, save her own nain, Elufed. She searched for the words Elufed had whispered at her bedside at night. The language was lilting, filled with earth and light. But her nain did not speak it often, if she spoke it at all.

  Noticing Angharad’s stare, the raider frowned, pulling his cloak to cover his markings. Still, the smallest spark of hope lit, and she turned to Brother Thomas. “My nain is a Pict,” she said. “Surely that must count for something. She’s the queen of Strathclyde. We need only explain, if only he’d listen!”

  “Your grandmother,” Thomas said. “But what of your mother? She’s a Briton, is she not?”

  “Yes.”

  “Angharad, surely you remember. The Picts trace their blood from the mother’s side. Your father, Rhydderch, would be counted a Pict to this day, should he so choose to claim it. But you come from the belly of a Briton.”

  “But surely—”

  “Nay, Angharad. In their eyes, you are foreign as any other.” He sighed, rubbing his face with bound hands. “I am sorry, Angharad. But your grandmother’s blood is no help to us here.”

  The Picts offered them no sheepskins for warmth. As the wind picked up and night fell in earnest, Brother Thomas gave the commander a stormy look, lifting his bound arms round Angharad to warm her, but his own robes were damp, his skin wet and clammy. “You mustn’t fall sick,” he said. Angharad’s body shook. She willed herself to become a snail, seeking a new shell, but the cold had sharp teeth, and try as she might, she could not slip from her body.

  The Picts knew the river’s course like the track of their veins. The night was moonless and still choked with fog, yet their vessel raced on. As the craft cut through the water, they passed the eerie orange glow of a lantern marking a ferryman’s dock, and Angharad saw the murky forms of huts. Here, the huts had not been burned to cinders. But the raider’s eyes darted nonetheless as they stroked at their oars, letting Angharad know the land they traveled was not that of a friend.

  “Where are we?” she whispered.

  Brother Thomas looked round. “Lloegr,” he answered. “We must be, by now.”

  “The Lost Lands.”

  “The same,” Thomas said. “Not long ago, these lands belonged to the Britons. Now they are claimed by the Angles of Bernicia.”

  So this was the reason the Picts rowed in silence, using fog as their cloak. Angharad stared at the rope sawing her skin as she shifted her bottom. Her nain was so beautiful and mysterious. Angharad had once longed to meet the First People. Now she was their captive, wrists chafing in their bonds.

  She took a breath and tasted salt on her tongue. Angharad might not be able to see in the dark, but at least she could feel. She spoke to the water. Tell me, she said.

  The river had no worries. She felt its narrow body rushing toward the freedom of a broad saltwater bay. But beyond the river, Angharad sensed a watery world of terrifying new gods, ancient and algae-covered. Deadly in their deep.

  Then through the fog came a soft, blinking light. The Picts changed their course, heading toward the beacon. A voice called out from a distance, and the raiders pushed against the oars, slowing their boat. Angharad clutched Thomas’s hand as a small Pictish fleet emerged from the mist, proud sails tethered as the vessels bobbed ominously in the dark. They stood thrice as tall as the boat that now carried them. Seafaring longships, awaiting the raiders’ return. Angharad heard the efficient sound of sheeting as the sails were loosed. Together the vessels traveled onward, carried by the wind, and they slipped into the mist, disappearing into another world.

  III.

  From a secluded place

  rise up and declare

  books of inspiration without fear,

  and a tale of a maiden

  and a dream in sleep.

  —“The Prophecy of Myrddin and Gwenddydd, His Sister,” The Red Book of Hergest, translated by John K. Bollard

  CHAPTER 22

  Lailoken

  Caledonian Wood

  Kingdom of the Selgovae

  January, 574 AD

  Archer and I forded the river. I’d whittled a walking stick from a fallen oak and beat its rhythm steadily upon the ground.

  “I can only take you as far as the burn,” he said.

  “Then that is where you’ll leave me. It was kind enough for you to leave your hearth.”

  “It’s no bother, Lailoken. Winter is a friend.”

  To undergo the Bull’s Sleep alone was a danger. With no one to stir me, I might never return. So I was going to the temple of the fallen keeper to descend into madness. I was going to the cursed pile of stones to die. For either would I die or, in dying, I would somehow be reborn.

  Archer stopped as the burn came into sight, bowing his head. “Gods keep you, Lailoken. If you do go mad, I should hate to end you with an arrow upon your return.”

  I clasped the chieftain’s arm. “I should hate to be ended. Thank you, Archer. Truly.”

  I stood on the stream bank with no small sense of foreboding as Archer turned, heading back into the hills. But then, only a short distance away, I saw it. I scarcely noticed the pain in my wounds as I quickened my pace.

  The waterfall seemed to tumble from a break in the sky. Cloud-white water cascaded in sprays from a craggy split between the forbidding hills. It looked like the magnificent tail of a white horse, or the silvery flow of a maiden’s hair. Here some goddess had lain down her head, spilling her locks over the edge of the earth. I stopped and stood before it, unmoving. Its beauty was entrancing. It cracked something within me. I wanted to laugh.

  I wanted to weep.

  Beyond the bank of the burn, the old settlement stood silent, its stony rampart covered in snow. Ice groaned beneath my feet as I navigated the rocks that yet forded the burn. The Selgovae had robbed no rocks from the fortress, so concerned were they with inviting ill luck. The outer wall stood four men high. There would have been watchmen once, posted on platforms raised inside the stone, or perhaps, as elsewhere in the Caledonian Wood, they relied upon more hidden eyes.

  Leaning on my stick, I descended the snow-filled ditch and climbed the slope toward the gap in the stone that once would have held the gate.

  Reaching out, I pressed my palms to the weatherworn stone of the entrance, making myself known. Doorways persist long after wood rots away.

  After a moment, I felt an easing, a giving way. A wet, pelting snow began to fall. I stepped through the threshold of the cursed fortress.

  Inside the ring of stone, my ears burned with silence, but a feeling of peace prevailed. Remnants of roundhouses lay like discarded cocoons where wattle and daub had fallen away. I looked across the enclosure and saw only one structure intact. It was a small building the shape of a bee’s hive. There was good reason this structure had stood up to the elements—unlike the others, it was built entirely of stone. The pieces had been dry-stacked, increasingly inward and up, until a single smoke stone could cap the top, to be shifted aside for hearth smoke. Such structures were kept only by holy men. I’d sleep this night in the Mad Keeper’s home.

  I crouched to duck through the child-size doorway. The dead winter grasses were free of snow and bedded in pebbl
e. It brought to mind the hollow hills of the north, where bones were kept to speak with the dead—grandmothers and chieftains. Infants, birdlike, their spirits flown too soon. Yet such places were grand. This was little more than a cell.

  A cell built for dreaming. The thought came unbidden.

  There was room enough to sleep if I tucked my long legs. I unbound my bedroll and set out my cook pot and single cup. Not far from the door lay the charred remains of a fire. So the Selgovae had not forsaken this place, not altogether. For herders in need, shelter was shelter.

  Satisfied, I left my belongings and struck out in search of fuel.

  Night closed in, and soon I found myself in darkness, hurrying back to the cell where my stiff fingers fumbled with the flint. When the spark came, instead of casting the dim cell in a welcome glow, it made me feel ill at ease.

  I am Lailoken. I, too, am a Keeper of the Robe.

  But my words did not shift the air that surrounded me. I’d spent days upon end in chambers and caves far closer than this, but suddenly the cell felt confined, as though someone were behind me, standing too close. One who did not wish me there.

  A voice came. Or had the words indeed been spoken?

  Mine.

  The fire cracked, then sputtered. My hackles raised. I would not be put off. This was my land, that of the living. It was the lingering shades who trespassed, not I.

  What happened, brother? Did you indeed go mad?

  No answer came. Beyond the cell’s doorway, snow fell in earnest. By morning I might find myself half buried within. A sudden wind gusted, scattering sparks, and I stamped out an ember that sank with a burned smell into my fleece.

  “I’ll thank you not to burn my bedding,” I said.

  Perhaps I should not have spoken, for the next moment, another gust whipped through the cell and the fire snuffed out.

  I cursed. Hovering over the wood, I rebuilt my tinder and struck at the flint ’til my fingers cramped, but no fire would catch. I stood, straightening to my full height in the hive. I was a warrior of Pendragon. This icy cell was a luxury. With the heft of my sheepskin and the nearness of the cell, I’d have warmth enough to last through the night.