by Ilka Tampke
‘There is no choice in it.’
‘There is always a choice.’
He turned to me, his face twisted. ‘Do you not think this is hard for me also, Ailia? It is harder than you could know.’
His words caught in my chest. Suddenly he was softer than a pup and I could not kick him again. ‘I am weary of these questions without answer,’ I said quietly. ‘If you wish to see me you will leave the Oldforest. I cannot come here again.’
His eyes closed then opened slowly. ‘As you wish.’
I stared at him in despair. Then, beneath the indifference that masked him, I saw such anguish in his dark eyes that I could do nothing but pull him toward me, cradling his head as it dropped on my shoulder. ‘What strange and magical creature are you?’ I murmured into his hair. ‘I did not mean it. I will not stop coming, I cannot. But there is one thing that you must tell me at the very least. One question that cannot be left unanswered…’
He lifted his head and met my gaze.
‘Is it love that we have in the chasm between us?’ I whispered. ‘Tell me. This alone I need to know.’
He did not speak.
My hands dropped from his shoulders and fell to my sides. I waited but still he did not answer.
He did not love me. This was the truth he had found so hard to share.
We stood like this, each staring at the ground, as I reeled with the pain of it. At least now it was known.
Finally he took my hand and led me through the mist to a boulder by the river’s edge, where we sat down. The flow was quiet in the dawn, and shafts of salmon-coloured light spun off the water’s surface. A hazel branch dropped one red berry and we watched it drift downward.
In the breaking day, Taliesin began to sing. His voice was piercingly tender. But as soon as I heard it my belly flooded with dread. I braced my palms against the cold rock.
He was singing me his skinsong.
Human kin, hear my skinsong,
The song of my mother,
The song that has made me born.
I heard its first cycle in silence. I was not expected to sing here, only to listen. His song told of a childhood lost to the rivers and forests, a lonely life, a father unknown, and a mother’s betrayal. Its sadness shifted the fluids of my heart.
He began the last verse. The music of the skinsong was always gifted by the mother, but this—the summation—was where Taliesin must shape his own words:
I was born in the waters of wisdom,
Spawned of knowledge more ancient than creation
But I was wrong-born: half here, half there
Swimming forward and yet backward tears the soul,
Lets memories out and chaos in,
But the smell of my birthplace is in my flesh.
My love, I call to you
I’ve swum oceans searching,
Now I catch your scent
I am destined to find you, but it will be a fight,
My flesh will ebb, my bones will crumble,
but I will not sleep until I have reached the pool where you swim.
Your scent is in my flesh
and I will search the world to find it.
When we had finished, we both stared into the water, the silence bleeding between us.
He loved me utterly and I could not return it.
‘Why do you not sing?’ he whispered.
In his eyes I saw his slow understanding that I would not join with him. And I was horrified that he should think this, because I had never yearned for kinship with anyone so deeply in my life.
For this reason, I could not tell him why I did not sing. I loved him too much to speak the truth: that I was unmarriageable, unloved by the Mothers. That I had no song. It was better he thought I withheld it than know I did not possess it. While he believed I had a song, at least, he might continue to hope for me, continue to love me.
I could not bear the disbelief in his face. I had never felt so treacherous, so ignorant. For the first time it was I who stood and left without farewell.
The rising sun was clearing the mists as I pounded over the forest path. But though I ran swiftly, the edge did not come. I stopped to check I had not led myself awry, but no—the river was still close. As I entered by her, I would exit by her, so I held tight to her banks. Taliesin’s song pushed into my thoughts, but I drove it out, running yet faster to be free of this forest and into the open where I could think in the light.
I stopped, motionless, at the smell of woodsmoke. There was a fire nearby, downstream. I crept forward. If there was a camp or worse—a journeymen’s grove—I had to pass unseen.
The smoke thickened and I wondered, with a gust of hope, if somehow Taliesin had lit this fire—if I had discovered his home. Then I froze again. Through the dense trunks I glimpsed a hutgroup on the other side of the river.
I stole through the trees until I reached an old willow at the water’s edge. Hidden behind its trunk, I peered over at the settlement, amazed that I had run this very path yesterday and seen nothing.
It was a small hut group, the huts built in a circle amid pens of dark sheep. But at the centre of the hutgroup burned the largest fire I had ever seen. It was tended by tribespeople I thought at first to be men. But they worked half-clad in the fireheat, and soon I saw they were women’s shoulders that carried fuel to the firepit and women’s arms that cast it in.
Propped against the huts were many swords and knives. This was forge fire. But who were these women who worked fire without men? They were young, barely past maidenhood, but steady and formed as grown oak. Even at a distance, their dark eyes burned.
I stood transfixed by their stature, their purpose. I squinted to see the talismans and cloth patterns that would mark their tribe, but the smoke was settling over the river, veiling my sight.
A wren whistled behind me. The forest grew ever lighter. If I did not return home in time with bread, then I would be forced to confess my disgrace to Cookmother and my broken promise to Bebin.
I took a last look at the women, then turned back to my path. When I emerged from the forest, Neha was still standing guard at the entrance. She whimpered as I greeted her, more anxious than usual to rekindle our bond. Something was not right as I cast my eye around the fields. The sky was too bright. With a horrified glance at the sun, I realised that the day had almost reached highsun. It had been dawn only moments hence! Had I watched the women of the fire for so long? I began to run. There would be no explaining this lateness now.
An icy silence greeted me as I entered the kitchen.
Bebin’s eyes flickered a warning as she hurried out at Cookmother’s command. Ianna and Cah were at lessons.
Cookmother sat at the hearth, facing the door. ‘Sit,’ she said.
I walked to her and sat on the floor at her feet.
‘Bebin went to the bakehouse,’ she began, ‘as you were not here to make the errand.’
‘I am sorry—’
‘Silence,’ she spat. ‘While she was at the bakehouse, Bebin saw Dun’s wife, wasted with worry. Dun has worsened, is near gone.’
My stomach curdled as I realised what I had done.
Cookmother sat unmoving. ‘She asked Bebin why the herbs never came.’ Her mouth was rigid. ‘Why did the herbs never come?’
‘Is it too late?’ I whispered. ‘Let me take them to her this moment.’
‘Bebin brought her here and I gave her the herbs. Tomorrow will tell us whether they came too late. Now I ask you a second time: why were the herbs not taken?’
In all my days with Cookmother, I had never once failed to do her bidding. Not one life had been lost at my hand. I had served her craft tirelessly and the thought that I had breached it now was too much to bear. The wrongness of this neglect, Taliesin’s unanswered song, and all that had befallen me since Beltane surged within me and I could carry it no longer. ‘I have been swept up in a tide of change since the fires,’ I wept. ‘I have been wronged, and oddly powered, and then seduced into the Oldfore
st—’
She inhaled sharply. ‘What is this? You have walked the forest?’
In truth, it was a relief to be caught. ‘Yes.’
‘That which I have entirely forbidden?’
There was to be no more hiding. ‘Ay. It was a fish, a crimson-skinned fish that magicked me in. Then this morning, there were women with a great fire—’
Cookmother flinched as if physically struck. Her voice, when it came, was trembling. ‘Tell me what you have seen.’
‘Only a hutgroup,’ I said. ‘And women of such grace working the fire…’
Cookmother’s hands flew to her mouth. When she lowered them they were shaking. ‘Did you walk among them? Touch them or speak with them?’
‘No.’ I was becoming frightened. ‘They were across the river, hidden by smoke. I just saw the shape of them. I did not call.’
Her shoulders dropped with relief. ‘Thanks be,’ she breathed.
‘Cookmother?’ I said, unnerved. ‘Who were the women?’
She would not meet my eye. ‘They were outcasts, dirt-dwellers not permitted even to fringe the towns,’ she said. ‘They’ll slit your throat for your sandals.’ She fingered the carved bone talisman at her belt as she spoke.
I frowned. ‘I would swear they were no outcasts.’
‘Be assured, that’s what they are. And hear this, Ailia—’ Now she held my gaze. ‘If the threat of the forest alone is not enough to repel you, then let me promise you this: if you go to the forest again, I will cast you from this kitchen.’
My mouth dropped open in shock.
‘Unlawful contact with the forest invites darkness and I will not permit it near my kitchen.’
Never had she threatened such a thing and the fear of it conjured a fresh batch of silent tears.
‘Ach, come,’ she grumbled, pulling my head to her lap. ‘This is your path, by me,’ she murmured as she stroked my hair. ‘You are meant for my learning. Hear me please, Lamb. Never go to the forest again.’
‘But what of the fish?’ I hiccupped into her skirts.
‘Stay clear of the place where you saw it.’
And what of Taliesin? cried my heart, but as when I spoke with Bebin, I could not find the voice to name him to Cookmother. Her comfort was all I had. I could not risk it.
There were footsteps outside, the girls returning.
‘Speak not of the forest to anyone,’ Cookmother hissed. ‘Anyone!’ Then she pushed me off her lap and rose to her feet.
Cah burst in, flushed with excitement. Ianna trailed behind.
‘There is news in the township,’ said Cah, her eyes alight. ‘Verica, the Tribeking of the Artrebates has fled to Rome. He protests Caradog’s theft of his kingdom and asks for Rome’s help to retrieve it. The Emperor Claudius has agreed. War is coming.’
13
Truth
Truth is life-giving, the sustaining power of creation.
The realm of the Mothers is a place of truth.
By truth the hardworld endures.
FROM THIS MOMENT, there was little else but Rome on the lips of the town.
Messengers arrived every few days telling of Roman forces amassing on the shores of Boulogne. Some said they were ready to sail, hungry to reinstate Verica and the other exiled British kings who would rule by Roman law. Others reported that these soldiers were scared, that the General Plautius could not rally them, that they feared the thick mists of this island and called it a place of dark magic, of hurricanes and creatures half-human, half-beast.
We heard that the brothers Caradog and Togodumnus held an army poised at Cantia to fight back the legions. Then we heard that they had gone home to their wives and children, assured that the Romans were still months from sailing.
The moon fattened and thinned twice. Cookmother permitted me to take no medicine outside the township walls. I could not even fetch the bread alone. Only to serve Fraid did she release me from her sight.
Nightly Fraid argued with Llwyd as to the best way to proceed. Send forces straightaway? Wait to see whether Rome would move into the west after they landed? And always the Kendra. The Kendra who bore the power of the Mothers. Who would weave the spells that would confound and frighten the invaders. Who would guard the precious heart of Britain—its knowledge, its skin.
I knew that Llwyd sat in silence for hours of each day calling for the Kendra to come. Over and over, he opened the bellies of wild hares and studied the entrails that fell steaming onto the crisp dawn ground. He watched the sky: by day reading birdflight, and by night, the stars, looking for omens that would lead him to her. He grew thin and wasted, fasting as offering for her revelation, drinking only the bark teas that I brought him for his vision as he sat in the temple.
The arguments between Fraid and Llwyd were echoed among the townspeople. Some spat on Verica’s name, calling him a Roman-loving dog. Others claimed Caradog was too hostile, too greedy in broadening his rule, and needed Rome’s firm rebuke. It was the division in the town that most disturbed Fraid as I brushed and shined her hair each night with oil. How could we fight them when we were fighting ourselves?
She ordered the works on the hill’s defences to be hastened. The ramparts were fortified and lined with a dazzling new layer of chalk. All was built in precise alignment with the sun’s path, ensuring a strength far beyond what a craftsman’s hand alone could bestow. When our structures echoed the order of the skies, they harnessed the power of the Mothers themselves.
All this pleased Llwyd but it was not enough. Only the Kendra, he said—often with tears in his eyes as days without food made him weak—would bring us to unity and truth.
And I lived with my own war between the ache to see Taliesin and the forces that held me from him. I was bound every waking hour to Cookmother’s tasks, shackled by a gaze that gripped me tighter than a prisoner’s neckring. Only by night was I free to be with him in my thoughts, where I relived every memory of his touch, and imagined those that might come. Like Llwyd, I did not eat; my belly battled food and I grew thinner. Like Llwyd, I was yearning for the one who would deliver me from this hunger.
‘Get up, Ailia.’ Manacca shook me awake.
It was midsummer eve, the night of the southern solstice. I had drifted to sleep on the floor of the Great House, though we were all supposed to keep vigil through this, the shortest night. Now dawn approached and we had to walk to Sister Hill to watch the break of the year’s longest day. Despite Rome’s encroachment, or perhaps because of it, we clung even more tightly to our rituals.
Bebin and Cah tugged on their cloaks as I helped Manacca tie hers, blinking tiredness from my eyes. ‘Do you come, Cookmother?’ I asked, prodding the mound snoring beside me.
‘Soon, soon,’ she murmured, breaking wind as she rolled over.
I smiled at Bebin as we headed through the door and out of the compound to join the river of torches streaming through Cad’s southern gateway. I took a deep breath of the warm air and tightened my hold of Manacca’s hand. This was the first time I would walk beyond the town walls in more than two moons.
The solstice fire was beginning to die down as we reached the top of Sister Hill. Young knaves took up hoops of branch and reed, doused them in grain spirit, then held them to the embers to ignite. We all chanted for the wheels to be sent forth, cheering and laughing as each flaming circle reeled down the slope, tumbling into the Cam below.
‘They’re like shooting stars,’ I whispered to Bebin.
Manacca squealed as another was launched.
The fire had been lit at dusk and had burned through the night, with Llwyd and the lesser journeymen keeping vigil. Now, as the hour of light drew closer, they allowed it to die down so that the solstice sun would know no contest as it banished the darkness.
Fraid stood flanked by her high warriors at the western point of the fire, wearing her diadem and a thick gold torque. She would be first to hear the visiting seer’s predictions, first to be touched by the year’s strongest light.
&nbs
p; With their shoulders wreathed in summer oak leaves, the journeymen chanted by the dwindling fire. Their low, rumbling drone invoked the fire spirits to yield their truths to the seer who sat in trance beside them. When they had sung, the seer would scry the firebed and read the embers.
The ground under my sandals was sticky from a wild mare’s slaughter. Her bones, flesh and white pelt had bubbled through the night in a cauldron on the solstice fire. Llwyd ladled the broth into a bowl and passed it to the Tribequeen. She drank to renew her place as first consort to these tribelands, then passed the bowl to her warriors, and finally to the seer.
When all had drunk, Llwyd brought us to silence with his raised staff. Despite his frailty, he was still majestic in Ceremony. ‘The solstice fire has burned tirelessly through this night,’ he called. ‘This promises an early ripening and a plentiful harvest!’
We cheered. Good news was greatly needed now.
‘It is time for the fire to speak,’ Llwyd continued. ‘But first look to the west.’
Sinking into the horizon was a moon that was one day from fullness.
‘Today our mighty solstice sun will set against the full moon’s rise,’ Llwyd said.
A murmur rippled through the gathering. There had been unease in the township about the sky patterns as we approached midsummer, but only the journeypeople could speak directly of such things.
‘Such a constellation occurs only once in many lifeturns,’ said Llwyd. ‘The two great sky spirits are each at their most powerful. As they oppose one another in the east and west, the skin of our tribelands will be stretched between them. We may be held in perfect balance,’ he paused, ‘or we may tear.’
A rumble of panic rose in the crowd.
‘Be still,’ said Llwyd. ‘Keep to your houses at sunfall this day, that you will not be caught by the force of the pull. That you will not tear the skin. But now—’ he looked to the seer, ‘—it is the hour for augury. The coming sun, so challenged by the moon, will speak only its truest messages through the fire. Come forth if you would hear the fire speak.’
The tribespeople surged forward, eager to learn what was foretold for them in fortune or marriage. They would need to be swift; there was less than an hour before sunrise. Among the milling bodies, I noticed a familiar hunched form, standing with her back to me. Almost as if she could feel my stare, Heka turned, meeting my eye. Her skin was still pocked with the scars of the blisters.