The Dawn Stag: Book Two of the Dalriada Trilogy

by Jules Watson

  ‘Yet you fought for us,’ Rhiann said, wondering. ‘You turned your back on the chance you had waited for …’

  Eremon nodded painfully. ‘And I still don’t want it, not now. I don’t ever want to see that Hall again.’

  Rhiann’s breath rushed out of her, and she smiled. ‘Nor will you, cariad. We will find the quiet place instead, the safe place. It waits for us, too.’ Slowly, she pressed her mouth to Eremon’s cold lips, sensing the uncertain melting of him towards the comfort of her warmth. ‘Come, husband. It is time to show me your green Erin. Show me your home.’

  And at last Eremon’s arms came slowly out to hold her close.

  The sea lapped softly beneath the dipping bow, silent as the night above, and Rhiann stared back at the receding shore, the touch of Caitlin’s lips still warm on her brow, the scent of Gabran’s hair on her skin. She could no longer see the dark figures on the beach, and she gripped the sides of the boat with effort, cradling the keening grief inside her with the greater light of what she now knew.

  As the curragh slipped between the dark islands and the white-crested rocks, the splash of the men at the oars was muted suddenly by the voice of Aedan’s harp, its first notes soaring to the stars above. He sang for Rhiann the lament of the beautiful Deirdre of Erin, who had loved Alba well before she was drawn home against her will.

  Farewell to fair Alba, high home of the sun

  Farewell to mountain, the cliff, and the dun

  Where roebucks run free, and dappled does roam

  Where my true love did dwell, and the sun made his home

  Farewell!

  Farewell!

  In the darkness, it was not long before the land fell away out of sight, and all they could see was the silvered glitter of the stars on the black water, leading them on to the west.

  THE TALE OF RHIANN AND EREMON

  For years, Rhiann watched him, eyes bright as a hawk guarding its nest.

  For she worried that the denial of Eremon’s kingship would be a loss too great to bear after all that had been. And for a long time it was, as, broken and dispirited, they gathered those few supporters still loyal to him and built their own quiet homes far away from royal duns, in a soft, green valley that ran down to the sea.

  Yet babes came, and they lived and thrived, and something was healed in them both the moment they held their firstborn son Conor in their arms, and he blinked milky eyes up at Eremon while he lay on his broad chest.

  Leaf-buds came and wheeled to leaf-fall and wheeled again, and on the day that Eremon taught their second son Dáire to swim, Rhiann heard the high, tinkling laughter of boys, and saw the three of them – Eremon and their two sons – jumping off the rocks below the village and twirling through the water like seals, brown skin gleaming. And as Eremon’s laughter rang out the loudest, Rhiann knew that what they had found would be enough for him.

  As each babe came, Rhiann herself looked into their faces to discern their fates, and never once did the face of a king look back at her, as it had on the long ago birth day of Gabran. She thought Eremon would sorrow at that, too, but he never did, for though their sons’ eyes did not blaze with kingship, they shone with laughter, kindness and strength, and their daughters’ eyes with wisdom, loyalty and grace.

  And perhaps it was better that way, for never would those sons ride off to war, and come back on a bier, rent and bloody. Instead they turned their hands to the earth, to growing grain and husbanding the swelling band of cattle. And those sons were beside Eremon all the days of his life, learning his sword skill, though they might never use it; mending harness beside the fire on snowy nights; birthing lambs in coursing rain; breaking the muddy ground with the plough.

  And the day that Conor at last grew taller than his father, Rhiann watched them both walking back from the marshes, late in a golden afternoon, geese draped over their spears. They both threw back their heads as they laughed, and the son slung his arm around his father’s shoulder, and they were friends. And if, as the dying sun shimmered, the boy’s hair seemed to light for a moment into pure blond, like ripe barley, who was she to ask why?

  All Rhiann knew was that from her body and his had come soul friends as great as those who had been lost, and she knew also that in that moment, Eremon was at last truly content.

  Time was a wheel ever turning, however; and ever closer now they came to the end of their path. Yet many good years had passed.

  It was Eremon, hale and sound even in his later years, who was the first to grow weary of Thisworld. After a particularly bad fever, and in defiance of every tonic Rhiann could brew, his cough settled in his chest, and his eyes grew bright, his skin tight and burning over his bones. She fought to the last, but even she knew when to admit defeat.

  She stayed by Eremon’s bed for three nights, dry-eyed with a deep grief that cleaved her in two. Yet she merely nodded when he asked to be taken to the headland above the village, for he wanted his last sight to be the sea.

  Rhiann walked beside the men as they carried him out to where the green turf fell away to the sea-rocks below, and there on the edge they laid him, propped in Rhiann’s arms. At her request they left them then, alone. The evening wind gusted strong and fresh off the water, as sure as they had been in the leaf-bud of their youth. But leaf-bud was no more, or sunseason, and even the leaf-fall years were long over. The wheel turns, death follows life, and the womb of the long dark beckons once more.

  Rhiann had been taught these cycles since before she could walk, and understood these truths to the depths of her being. Yet as she held Eremon’s burning body in her arms, she was gripped with a pain that left her gasping. For all she cared about was that he would not be here with her.

  Now Eremon felt her shaking, and reached up with one hand to lay it alongside her cheek. Rhiann looked down at his wasting arm, and she remembered how wide and strong it had always been, how it had held her safe and warm through years uncounted.

  Yet glancing further to the little crescent of bay beyond, Rhiann could see the tide was on the ebb, and she knew the time of passing was near. So she stilled her sobs, and held Eremon closer, singing the songs she had breathed into his ear all the times he lay in fevers, the songs she had chanted atop the ancestor mounds, when she looked down at his face bright in the Beltaine fires, and the songs she murmured in the honeymoon hut above Dunadd, as their bodies lay spent.

  The sun was low in the west now, so low that Rhiann could look right into its flaming heart, and the whole of the sky had become a sheet of burnished bronze. ‘A stór,’ she whispered, ‘the sun is so golden, as golden as you appeared to me the first day I saw you, rising from the west into the morning light. Do you remember how you dazzled us, how clever you were?’

  ‘I remember,’ Eremon wheezed.

  ‘Of course, I was not taken in.’ Rhiann smiled, and Eremon’s hand tightened on her own where it lay curled in her lap.

  ‘Not then, anyway,’ he croaked, but the brief spark of mischief died in a fit of coughing.

  Rhiann’s mind ranged then beyond the time of blood and Roman death, to days spent on this beach collecting shellfish, and the laughter of tottering baby steps, and mead and stories by the village fire. And she knew that though their sorrows had been great, their joys had been greater. Truly, she should not begrudge Eremon his place in the Blessed Isles, at the table of the gods. And yet, and yet …

  ‘Rhiann,’ Eremon whispered, and she leaned closer, ‘in every act of love have we said all that we need to say.’ He paused, wheezing, then gathered himself again. ‘I have not the strength to speak much. All I want you to know, a stór, is that our love has made this a blessed life for me.’

  Rhiann broke then, and the tears, dammed behind walls of honour and duty, flowed unchecked. ‘Oh, Eremon, I cannot bear it, I cannot!’

  Eremon reached up to cup the back of her head. ‘Hush, love. You will be brave, as you always have been. And you will be strong, for when I leave this body I need you, only you, to see me safely
to the next life.’ His voice grew soft. ‘For the first time, I am afraid.’

  Rhiann hugged him to her fiercely. ‘I will see you safely away,’ she whispered. ‘Do not worry, for you will not be lost in the space between worlds. The light will guide you on.’

  And I – I will be left in darkness! Oh, Eremon!

  The sun was down now, but its glow lingered on. And the purple sky soon spread above them like a great upturned shield, rimmed in silver. For one last time, Rhiann gathered Eremon close to breathe the scent of his skin, the youth and maleness that still lingered beneath the sickness. And through her fingers she ran the lengths of his hair, still full, though laced with silver, and he rested his head back and she kissed his lips, and they burned her own with fever. ‘Eremon, Eremon!’ she whispered fiercely, mouth pressed to mouth, suddenly desperate to breathe his last breaths with him, as if that way they could not be parted.

  Yet Eremon reached out his arm, and cried into her, The ship comes! Now it comes!’ And the last of his breath faded from her, and his hand fell lifeless into her lap.

  It was hours before they came for him, for her children asked for her to have this time. As the crowd approached in respectful silence to do due honour to their lord, they could see their lady kneeling beside his prone body, her head bowed.

  Rhiann had her back to them, but she heard their murmuring as they grew closer. In a moment they would be here – they would break the spell, and Eremon would be truly gone from her, his body returning to his tribe.

  In that last moment Rhiann looked down and saw in the starlight that Eremon had become a prince once more. The lines had fled from his skin, the underlying bones spoke again of his strength and courage, and a great light of peace was in his face. She bent down to kiss his cheek. ‘I will see you safely, my lord,’ she whispered. ‘But do not set sail across the Western Sea just yet. Wait, wait for me!’

  Then Rhiann rose and turned to face the people, as they came to a stop and stood still and silent in an arc around her, heads bowed in sorrow. Rori the Red was there, with his wife, Eithne of Alba, and Fergus the Bold with his children, and Aedan the bard to sing his lord’s lament from the cliffs out to sea.

  Yet before anyone could speak, for she could not bear words, Rhiann drew herself up and walked slowly away from Eremon towards the village. Only her daughters’ hands came out as she passed, and she paused as they kissed her fingers, and she stroked their faces for one moment before she continued walking. Her back was as straight as a girl’s, her step as graceful as a young doe. Her man had always loved the way she walked, and for this she would not bow to grief, though her heart lay broken within her.

  Rhiann reached the village, which was now deserted, as all had gone to the headland. The houses lay under a great silence, and even the beasts were still in their pens. In Rhiann’s hut the embers of the fire were now cold, but she did not notice. In the dark she sat on their bed and looked around her, not needing light to see the symbols of their life together: the cradle Eremon carved for their children that first, bitter, long dark; Rhiann’s loom, threaded with a tunic he would no longer need; Eremon’s sword and shield, long idle yet lovingly burnished; and his farm tools up against the wall.

  As if in a dream, Rhiann moved to the shelves lining the wall, her fingers seeking the birch-bark packet of herbs that she had hidden there against this day. And when she sank back on the bed, the bark crackling in her hand, that was when the guilt assailed her.

  So she pictured her children’s faces, holding each up to the light of her heart.

  They were all grown now; all strong and fair. Her daughters’ eyes shimmered in her mind, and Rhiann knew she had taught them well, and all the lore of the Source had been passed into their safety, as was foretold. They were young women now: Maeve was wise, just like Linnet; Nessa was compassionate, just like Fola; and Emer, the youngest, shared a full measure of Caitlin’s fire. Would they begrudge their mother now, putting love before duty, at last? She did not think so, for their hearts had always beaten with her own in perfect time, as they had in the womb.

  Yet there was one more to whom Rhiann must speak.

  She lay back on the furs, and looked at the roof, the birch packet held to her breast. ‘My Mother,’ she whispered, ‘only you have the right to take life as you give it. I wish to be released … I need to be released to his side. Will you let me go?’

  And the answer came in vision, for it seemed to Rhiann that the roof was no more, and she looked out on an arch of stars, brilliant against the black heavens.

  The priestess daughters sensed the change and hurried from the headland, the eldest through the door first, a torch held high against the growing darkness.

  They all stood for a moment, seeing the shape of her flung across the bed furs, and the youngest, Emer, sprang forward with a cry. ‘Mother, no!’

  ‘Hush!’ said Maeve, and they moved towards the bed, shoulder to shoulder for comfort.

  The middle girl Nessa, she of tender heart, reached out to where a white hand lay, and she unfurled the fingers, and within was a fold of birch-bark, and they all knew from the sharp scent what it contained, for they had been taught well.

  Yet the fold was unopened and unused.

  And Rhiann was young again and running, though she seemed to fly, and there up ahead a familiar soul-flame burned, sailing on a sea of light, in a boat drawn by the god’s horses.

  ‘Wait for me!’ she cried. ‘My love, wait for me!’

  The boat slowed and stilled, and turned back for the shore.

  HISTORICAL NOTE

  The Dalriada Trilogy is based on what archaeology and history tell us about the time and place in which it is set. However, while I have stuck to the facts if they are known and accepted, there is much that we don’t know, or which is the subject of debate among scholars. In these cases, I have made suggestions based on Celtic evidence elsewhere, or common sense. At other times the story itself takes precedence.

  Dalriada

  Later Irish and Scottish annals speak of a people who came from a part of Ulster in northern Ireland called Dalriada, to colonize Argyll in western Scotland sometime in the sixth century AD. This colony of Gaels, as they were known, established their king’s seat at the fort of Dunadd. However, most scholars agree that, because of their close coastlines, the northern Irish were probably in contact with western Scotland centuries before the accepted colonization. So the first blood mixing could easily have occurred in the first century, as Linnet proclaims. A note of interest: Gabran was a Dalriada king, though he lived later than Conaire’s son.

  Dunadd

  Dunadd was the royal seat of the Dalriada kings from the fifth to tenth centuries AD. However, excavations have proven that people were living on, or at least visiting the site for thousands of years before that, including the time around the Roman invasions. Excavations have focused on the later stone walls, yet it is entirely possible that traces of earlier timber houses were destroyed by this later building. To my knowledge, the plain around the crag’s feet has not been excavated.

  People

  The term ‘Pict’ was not used by Roman writers for the peoples of Scotland until the fourth century, and may come from a Roman term meaning ‘painted people’ – possibly because they tattooed themselves. However, although my Scottish characters obviously ‘became’ the Picts, we don’t know what they called themselves, and so I’ve fallen back on an old name for Scotland – Alba – and called them Albans.

  The Sacred Isle

  I equate the Sacred Isle with the Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides, because here, on a lonely headland facing the Atlantic Ocean, stands the greatest British stone circle after Stonehenge and Avebury: Callanish. The broch tower where Rhiann once lived is mostly still standing nearby; it is called Dun Carloway. Interestingly, the historian Plutarch relates the story of a traveller, Demetrius of Tarsus, who visited a ‘holy island’ probably in the Hebrides, during Agricola’s campaigns.

  Places

>   The fort of Dunadd in Argyll and the Sacred Isle exist as described, as do the tombs and stones in the ‘ancestor valley’ at Kilmartin. Calgacus’s Dun of the Waves is an invention, sited near present-day Inverness. The spiral carvings that Rhiann visits to mourn Didius are the carvings at Achnabreck; the stone circle she visits with Linnet is Temple Wood; and the standing stones among which she says her farewell to Linnet before the last battle are the Nether Largie stones. All are in Kilmartin valley. The first loch the priestesses reach on their missionary journey is Loch Tay, which is well known for the remains of its ‘crannogs’ – man-made island forts. The sacred mountain of Argyll is Ben Cruachan, and it does lie at the head of Loch Awe, which means something like ‘Loch of the Waters’. This loch leads from Cruachan to the Kilmartin valley, and Dunadd.

  The Sisterhood

  We have evidence of a Celtic priestly caste called druids. However, I’m proposing that a female-centred religion of the Bronze Age peoples survived in Alba as a relic, involving an order of priestesses. There is no historical evidence for this.

  Herb Use

  With some simple research, anyone can discover the medicinal properties of British native plants. Untrained use of such preparations can be, of course, very dangerous, and I do not advocate that anyone try them. Many plants have psychoactive properties, and some people believe the druids used such plants in their rites. For safety reasons I didn’t detail what saor might have contained, for many plants could have produced this ‘out of body’ effect. Likewise, the ancient peoples knew of both contraceptive herbs, and those which could produce abortions; I haven’t named them. The Romans apparently over-used one contraceptive plant to the extent it was made extinct.