by Signe Pike
“You told me once that my mother was sad when you left. You spoke of fate and the Gods and listening. But you had counselled her as a child and seen her become a young woman. Did you not love her?”
At the mention of the word, Ariane’s mouth turned down in disdain. “In the place I come from, we do not speak of love in this way.”
“Rather like the Picts, I suppose.” Angharad looked across at Muirenn and Talorcan. But Angharad could read Ariane as one looked at clouds and understood weather.
Ariane had loved Languoreth very much. And now Ariane had devoted her life to Angharad’s training.
“Is it finished, then?” Ariane gestured to the garment in her lap.
Angharad looked down in surprise to find that, indeed, her work was at last done. She had become so accustomed to her fingers affixing feathers to her great bird while she sat, nearly dreaming, that she hadn’t even noticed she’d just tied off the thread at the hem of the cloak. The last feather covering the cloth belonged to a crow, black as beginning.
“I suppose it is done,” she said.
“Have you put it about yourself yet?” Ariane asked, knowing Angharad hadn’t.
“Tomorrow, perhaps. I’d only sully it now.” She set aside the cloak.
Later, the atmosphere in Muirenn’s hut was somber as everyone drifted in search of sleep, but Angharad sat awake by the fire.
Behind a woven reed screen, Muirenn’s servants had laid out two spare bedrolls. Ariane already lay there, sleeping. But thoughts of war kept Angharad awake.
Tomorrow they would begin their journey into the land of the Britons.
They were marching toward a battle that had not yet begun, hoping Angharad’s vision would not lead them astray.
The thought of war was a terror that threatened the peace Angharad had worked so diligently to reclaim, ever since the battle of Arderydd, waged by her own father.
Angharad’s legs threatened to buckle from exhaustion. She sighed and stood, moving across the hut to find her bedroll.
But as she began to lie down, she saw something other than a sheep’s fleece covered her makeshift bed. Her fingers searched and touched feathers in the dark.
Upon Angharad’s bed, Ariane had spread Angharad’s feather cloak.
I am only a woman of seventeen winters, she told the Gods, willing them to hear as she refolded the cloak gently, tucking it aside.
As Angharad drifted into slumber, the creak and crackle of turf blazing in the hearth were as ominous as war carts.
The warriors in the hut rolled over, dreaming of blood in their sleep.
CHAPTER 41
Languoreth
Dùn Meldred
Southern Kingdom of Gododdin
27th of June, AD 580
The fortress of Meldred was a desolate, silent place. Another world from the lands of the Selgovae.
It is the trees, I realized as we drew nearer to the fort. Meldred had butchered large swaths of wood in fear of invaders, and in so doing, he’d fashioned a haunting expanse. Still, a burn ran through, and the pastures were green with the richness of summer. Men could not conceal themselves in such low-hovering plants as heather and myrtle, so those also yet thrived, and the scent of their blossoms caught on the breeze.
Perhaps it was I who was desolate, for I knew what waited within.
Mungo, with his guards and his company of monks.
And then there was Meldred, a young lord of Gododdin. His father was Lot, his mother was Ana—daughter of Aedan mac Gabhran. Both mother and father were of the Old Way, but Meldred had married a daughter of Caw, one of the most devoted Christians of Strathclyde.
I held no fondness for Meldred’s wife, Cywyllog. I had met her at court. And though she was kind to Rhian, she was cold to me. After all, her family was enamored of Mungo. There was no one in all of Strathclyde who did not know of the feud between Mungo and my family. How uncomfortable for them that I was now queen.
The hills of the fortress were folded close, like two hounds sleeping side by side. The more distant hill arched higher than the front mound, where the fortress was built. I felt eyes upon me and looked up at the guard tower perched high atop the back hill.
Aye, I am here, I wanted to call out. The unclean Lioness of Strathclyde. I had heard what they said of me, the staunch supporters of the Christian way.
“Do not eat ’til I taste it first,” Torin warned, his eyes trailing to the wooden hall peeking overtop a towering oaken rampart.
“They would not dare,” I said. “I hold far too much sway. We need each other now, they and I. Never fear, Torin. I shall set it all right.”
Cywyllog stood waiting in the sun. Her servants, at the sight of me, all dropped to one knee, but Cywyllog’s bow was abrupt, only what was required. “My Lady Queen.”
“It is so gracious for you to host such a Gathering,” I said, reaching warmly to clasp both her hands. Snow melted in sun. That was the way of things. If only by outer appearance.
Cywyllog was a dun-haired beauty with thick brows and acorn-colored eyes, slight in stature but quick in wit. “My children,” she said, gesturing to a boy and a girl who clung to her skirts.
I nodded kindly and looked to the hall. “And your husband. Is he not at home?”
“Oh!” Cywyllog made a show of looking well shamed. “Meldred and the bishop must yet be inside, speaking of holy things. So enraptured are they, they must not have heard our Lady Queen’s horses.”
An insult, not to be met by the lord of the hall, but I gathered a smile. “We must look to your good husband’s manners, for soon his king shall arrive, and then what would we do?”
I pushed back my light riding hood and adjusted the exquisite golden torque that gleamed at my neck, leveling her with my gaze. Careful, my look said.
For a moment Cywyllog seemed nearly nervous before she brushed it away. “Come, then, Lady Queen. We have prepared this little hut for you, nearest the hall. You will, I hope, pardon its roughness. We were not expecting any such visit. We have done what we can, what with warriors, monks, and Wisdom Keepers alike all arriving to stay.”
“I am certain I’ll be well suited,” I assured her, ducking through the door. A bed, a hearth stacked for lighting, a bowl with well water to wash.
She had entered, but now paused and turned. Beyond the walls of the hut, I startled at the angry barking of dogs. “Apologies,” she said. “My husband keeps his hounds in the enclosure nearby. I will instruct the hound master to keep them quiet during your stay. In any case, I am sure you will want to wash away your journey. Have you traveled very far? And with no trunks along with you—no trunks at all?” Her dark lashes blinked, but her motives were clear. I had arrived with only six riders. As she was hosting, she was most certainly privy to the fact that my brother would soon be here, and no doubt she expected I had visited him in hiding. She wanted to know where the settlement lay.
“I have come ahead of the king only to be sooner reunited with my brother. They will arrive in haste and with all my belongings. I have no need of washing, but would be admitted into your hall.”
“Of course, my Lady Queen. Without further delay.”
All stood at once as I strode into their great room. It had been bright in the sun, and in the moment before my eyes became accustomed to the dim, the figures rising from fleece couches and chairs appeared shadowed and sinister.
“Your lady assures me you were deaf to the sound of our horses,” I said as Meldred came forward, bowing his head.
“It is as my wife says, Lady Queen. I pray you accept my apology, for I assure you, your presence is most welcome. I was speaking with the bishop.” Meldred stepped aside. Mungo stood before me, brown eyes piercing and bearded face stern.
“I was not aware he had regained such a title,” I said, alluding to his exile. “But if all goes well at this Gathering, counsellor of Strathclyde may be his to share. Greetings, Kentigern.”
Mungo gave a cursory nod. Time had not been kind—the gaunt features that mad
e him appear skeletal had only stretched the more taut. I heard he oft fasted, depriving himself of food, yet never failed to eat in the company of kings. His desire to eschew his practice in order to please those in power made it all the more insulting that he would not make himself supplicant to me.
When I was young, I had thought him simply vile. But now I’d grown wiser. I understood the danger of Mungo to be something far worse. Mungo believed himself to be one of Christ’s holiest men. It was his very devotion to his god that drove him to illogical and violent acts. My brother and I alone, it seemed, had borne witness to his menace. He’d delighted in my fear of him when I was but a child and had encountered him trespassing on the slopes of Bright Hill. He had desecrated a site sacred to my people. He had murdered his rival, Brother Telleyr. He had incited a mob to scar my brother and steal my father’s grain. He had hired assassins to murder Cathan, our most beloved friend.
How it must pain him now, that I was Strathclyde’s high queen, and that the end of his banishment rested upon his ability to make peace with me and my brother. No. It was Mungo who suffered. I would not allow him to injure me now.
Mungo and his monks ate with reserve but supped nonetheless. I watched Melred, the deft son of a king, playing at both sides of the gaming board, neither Old Way nor new. I watched Cywyllog, in all other ways the clear sovereign of her hall, gaze at the exiled priest with the honor and reverence an initiate gave to one’s master.
I made my excuses far before sunset, Torin and I following the servants back to the hut. I’d rather sit with Torin for company. Soon Lailoken would be traveling in darkness along the Thieves’ Road. He would arrive before sunrise and keep hidden until Rhydderch was spotted. Only then would he come.
And I, for my part, had lasted more than a moment in the company of Mungo. Once I had imagined the very act of seeing the man would flatten me. Though he still turned my stomach, watching him for an evening had inspired a new idea altogether.
“Torin,” I said as I lay down my head.
“Yes?” he asked, averting his eyes, laying out his bedroll facing the door.
“I do not think it so ill now to have Mungo at court.”
“Is that so?” There was surprise in his voice.
“No, I do not. For I have been thinking. Surely we can find a man worthy of trust who might be persuaded to take up the hood of the monk.”
“You wish to spy upon Mungo.” Torin thought a moment. “It cannot be a warrior from your retinue. He would never be believed.”
“Of course. I agree. But then who? If only we could find a youth already in training. Brother Telleyr would have delighted in selecting such a man. If only we had known… We were fools not to think of spies and treachery. If we had, Brother Telleyr might have died an aged man.”
Our minds turned in silence, mine rather sadly. Then Torin spoke. “There may be just such a man who dwells in the wood beyond Partick, though he is not young. He is a culdee, and I have heard some visit him for wisdom, though he is mostly occupied with the carving of crosses.”
“Thank you, Torin. When we return, I will visit him there.”
We had been unprepared for Mungo’s maneuverings, my family and I. Each torturous act had arrived, more unexpected than the last.
But I would be outmaneuvered no longer. The Lioness, they called me. Then a lioness I would be.
CHAPTER 42
Lailoken
Dùn Meldred
Southern Kingdom of Gododdin
27th of June, AD 580
I lay on my stomach in the grass, watching the torches of the guard tower flicker in the distance.
Their voices carried in the dark, drunk and inattentive. I contemplated somehow getting myself over the rampart and finding my sister, so that I might sleep at least a short time before the day’s unpleasant events began.
I had thought long about what I might do should I ever again lay eyes upon Mungo. There were many nights when I was young, a boy of nearly sixteen winters, when the blisters from burning shut the open gash upon my face filled with liquid and I woke in the night crying out, my fists clenched with rage.
Mungo was a zealot, dangerous and irrational.
I was to share a counsellorship with this man?
I spent time in contemplation. But I needed no Bull’s Sleep to divine that I would rather be a wart on a cock than allow that man any measure of power. And the only way to ensure that Mungo did no harm was to accept Rhydderch’s terms. Once I returned to Strathclyde, the way forward would be clear. He had his Christians, yet I had an equal faction of Britons and Scots, Wisdom Keepers and warriors all, brutally punished for worshipping in our ancestral way.
The sun rose.
I foraged some bilberries, keeping from sight. Then at last I heard the horn from the watchmen. There was Rhydderch’s standard, followed by the new king himself and a retinue of nearly eighty men. I stood and stripped, rolling up my tunic and stuffing it in my satchel and donning instead the freshly sewn robes of white given me by my sister.
It had been seven winters since I had worn the white robes of a Keeper. In that time, I had been a warrior, a seeker, a wild son of the wood.
I was all those men still.
I stood at my full height. The warrior at the front of Rhydderch’s guard barked out a warning as he spotted me.
Lifting my hands in a gesture of peace, I looked once more at the tower and the fortress ramparts with a sigh.
Then I strode slowly downhill, the unseen shades of my fallen brothers following solemnly behind me.
CHAPTER 43
Angharad
Dùn Déagh
Kingdom of the Picts
25th of June, AD 580
Muirenn’s fleet of twelve warships set sail at dawn.
With twenty-four warriors at oar in each vessel, it made a force of 288 men. In two days’ time, they would dock their boats at the port of Din Eidyn in the land of the northern Gododdin.
“I am grateful to you, Talorcan,” Angharad told him.
The warrior frowned at her Pictish, answering in Brythonic. “You would be wise to keep your gratitude. To even reach your Caledonian Wood, we must earn entry through Gododdin lands. I sent messengers ahead to plead our passage, but the Gododdin are rich and warlike, and not always clever. They may kill our messengers just for the pleasure of it.”
“They will not slay the messengers.” Angharad continued in Pictish. “They may be proud, but they cannot be foolish enough to turn away warriors who seek to help their people.” She paused. “Why do you insist on speaking to me in Brythonic? I speak Pictish as if it were my first tongue.”
Talorcan raised his dark brows, making the fish etched into the skin of his forehead seem as if they were laughing. “Seven more winters. Then you might speak like a Cruithni.”
“Seven, you say?” Angharad asked.
But Talorcan’s humor had faded in the shadow of their task. “We must hope the Gododdin have faith in your cause,” he said. “We will need provisions along the way. The Caledonian Wood is at least three days’ travel south by foot.” He risked a glance at Angharad. “Tell me. In your vision of this war, did you see victory?”
Angharad looked to the dark, cresting water. “I cannot command my visions as such. I understood it to be a warning. The rest is uncertain.”
“Perhaps there is no certainty,” Talorcan said. “Picts aiding Britons. Such things are beyond thought. Perhaps even the Gods cannot fathom it.”
At this Angharad could not help but smile. Just then Talorcan looked past her shoulder. Muirenn, who’d been walking the length of the ship, came to stand beside them, watching the water companionably. After a while, she turned to Angharad. “You never told me why you left Fortingall,” she said.
“Eachna lied to me. She betrayed me. You warned me that day when she took me away.”
“I feared Eachna had forgotten how to be pure in her service to the Gods,” Muirenn said. “She had also dashed my dreams of becoming a pries
tess. It broke my heart. Only now do I see the truth of it. The people of my line have been called yet again. Had I stayed beneath the yew at Fortingall, I would not possess any warships to lead. And had you returned to your mother when you wished…”
“Eachna should have given me a choice,” Angharad said, hearing her own anger.
“You were but a child. Torn by war and alone. What would you have chosen?”
Angharad fell quiet. She thought of the cloak of feathers she had folded in her satchel. Its bulk was cumbersome, the weight of its wool oppressive.
“Do you not find it so very heavy at times such as these?” Angharad asked, gesturing to Muirenn’s torque.
Muirenn touched it, her fingers tracing the place where the silver links met with the fire inked upon her throat.
“No, Princess,” she said. “At times such as these, I remember how all the days it felt heavy in the past are the very days that have made me grow strong.”
CHAPTER 44
Lailoken
Dùn Meldred
Southern Kingdom of Gododdin
28th of June, AD 580
The warriors brought me to Rhydderch, still mounted upon his horse.
“Brother.” Though I bowed, my voice spoke another tale. One of betrayal.
“Release him. He is no prisoner,” Rhydderch said, swinging down from his horse. As he made to come toward me, his men gripped their weapons, ready to protect their king, but Rhydderch lifted a hand, bidding them stay back. We looked at each other, and I remembered the look of vengeance I’d seen flash in his eyes on the battlefield. Only now did I wonder: What had he seen flash in mine?
“You must know, all this time I have conspired to bring you back home,” he said.
“Aye. I know what you have done. I’m grateful,” I said, the last rather gruff.
“I lost a daughter and a son.” Rhydderch stood erect, eyes matter-of-fact. But I’d known him long enough to hear the sorrow in his tone.
“I could not save them.”
“An impossible task,” he allowed. “If we are to reunite, I must know all can be forgiven.”