Skin

by Ilka Tampke

  ‘Yes, but he had his father to blunt his words.’

  ‘True,’ Llwyd nodded. ‘Belinus was an artful leader, equally skilled with word and sword. But Caradog has his own strengths. He is a tribesman, a lover of our Albion.’ His voice had the warmth of a long-burned fire.

  Fraid placed her bowl on the bench beside her. ‘Do you suggest that we offer an alliance with Caradog? Should I send an envoy to pledge our fighting men and our coinage?’

  Llwyd glanced at me and I turned back to the fire, embarrassed that he had caught me listening. ‘No,’ he said. ‘You have worked hard to protect the independence of this tribe.’

  ‘Caradog may seek to bring us into an alliance by force,’ said Fraid. ‘After all, he already controls the tribes on three sides of Durotriga.’

  ‘Caradog will seek to subdue the tribes whose leaders hold Roman sympathies,’ said Llwyd, ‘and that, good Tribequeen, is not us.’

  I unhooked the simmering pot and poured the steaming water into a clay bowl, sweetening it with a pinch of dog-rose from a pot on Fraid’s shelf.

  She winced at the heat as her feet slid in. ‘Nevertheless it will not hurt to keep the tradelines strong. After Beltane, I will send an envoy with new samples. I will send the knave Ruther.’

  I glanced up as I rubbed her feet with a slippery slab of tallow.

  ‘Why him?’ asked Llwyd. I could not read the tone that had darkened his voice.

  ‘He’s been Roman-taught. He knows their ways. Perhaps he can help smooth what Caradog upsets.’

  ‘Be at peace, Fraid,’ said Llwyd, lightening again. ‘Caradog is a man of fire, but he is fuelled by love of the Mothers. If he leads us to war with Rome it will be an honourable war.’

  ‘But can we win such a war?’

  Llwyd paused. ‘We will win it if the Mothers desire it.’

  ‘We will win it if our armies are strong enough,’ said Fraid.

  I looked to her. It was not her way to speak so irreverently.

  Llwyd frowned.

  ‘Forgive me,’ Fraid sighed. ‘It is only my worry speaking. But I cannot share your good faith, Journeyman. The messengers have long spoken that the fool Emperor Claudius searches for glory. The Romans are awaiting the right moment to strike, and this time they will not allow themselves to fail.’

  As I dried Fraid’s feet, I could not tell if it was her words or Beltane nerves that made my belly clench. I loosened her night braid, setting her dark hair tumbling down her back. As I retied it, the pulse in her neck throbbed under my fingers.

  ‘You speak freely in front of this girl.’ Llwyd stared at me.

  ‘She can be trusted,’ Fraid said. ‘What do you think, Ailia? How will we fare under another Roman attack?’

  My mouth fell open in surprise. I knew nothing of statecraft or the arts of war. I could not read omens in the night sky or the spilled innards of a slain lamb. I shook my head. ‘I don’t know.’

  Fraid laughed. ‘Of course you don’t. It is festival eve, not the time for such questions.’ She turned to Llwyd. ‘I will speak on this with the council when the fires have burned down.’ She held out her fingers to be cleaned and I gathered my sticks and brushes. It was a mark of shame for nails to be ragged or dirty and I was the only one she permitted to tend them.

  Fraid was bold in keeping me as her attendant. She chose me because she liked my touch and she said that, of all the girls, I was the most at ease with a woman of power.

  I was fortunate beyond words. Privileged in ways others without skin can only dream of.

  Why was it not enough?

  I walked down to the well near the southern gate, murmuring thanks to the Mothers before I cast my bucket into the long, dark drop.

  The passage from womb to world was only half a birth—the body’s birth. Our souls were born when we were plunged, as babes, into river water, screaming at the cold shock of it, given our name and called to skin.

  Deer. Salmon. Stone. Beetle. The North wind. Skin was our greeting, our mother, our ancestors, our land. Nothing existed outside its reach.

  Beyond skin there was only darkness. Only chaos.

  Because I was without skin I could not be plunged or named. I was half-born, born in body but not in soul. Born to the world but not to the tribe. I could never marry lest skin taboos were unknowingly betrayed. Deer did not marry well to owl. Owl to oak. At Ceremony I had to be silent, and keep to the edges. For where would I stand? What would I chant?

  I lived with these losses, but the one that hollowed my chest was that I was not permitted to learn. All learning began and ended with the songs of skin. I ached to learn. Weaponcraft, oak-lore, the knowledge of the stars. I hungered for the poems that brought shape to this world of earth and water—the hardworld—and mapped the spirit places of the Mothers’ realm. Poems that told us what had come before, what made a life right and true.

  I pulled up the bucket brimming with water from deep in the mountain.

  When Fraid gave me my freedom, I would find my family. I did not know how, but there would be a way. I would find my birthplace, my kin and my skinsong, and then I would be able to learn.

  Then I would be born.

  We eat enough, but pay fines if our belts become too large.

  We couple freely, but never with force.

  We observe the rise and set, the wax and wane, the winter and summer.

  What we take from the forest, we give back.

  ‘SALT FOR THE grain cakes. Mustard.’ Cookmother called out the list for market as she fossicked through the pots crammed on the shelves and floor. She was always promising to tidy her stores but never did, and refused to let anyone else. ‘Honey, of course. Not the watered-down sap from that cheat with four fingers. Get the elder honey from that nice Dobunnii girl with a bit of a rump.’ Cookmother grunted as she got up. ‘Don’t forget the goat, of course, and Ailia, on the way back, pick some yellow dock and meadowsweet from the marshes.’

  I nodded as I sharpened my harvest knife and slipped it into my belt. Cookmother’s knees could no longer abide the steep walk, so Bebin and I went to market each moonturn, though Cookmother was always convinced we’d be fiddled.

  Following the sound of market drums and bleating livestock, we made our way down to the flatlands from the southern gate. Sellers from all of Summer were gathered below, on the banks of our largest river, the Cam. We quickened our pace. The best pickings went early at market.

  Neha tore ahead toward the sprawling pens of lambs and goat kids, where we found her wolfing a fresh-cut calf’s tail from our favourite seller. We haggled over the fattest of his young goats and walked on, dragging it on a rope past the ponies and hunt dogs.

  Dried salmon and geese hung above tables laden with fresh carcasses. Beyond the flesh stalls were sacks brimming with salt and herbs from the trade routes, and waist-high baskets of grain and fruit. The air teemed with smells of blood, sweetcakes, dung and smoke, and the shouts of sellers calling their wares. Bebin and I wove among them, making our greetings and stopping to gossip. News of the Great Bear’s death had spread through the township, but it could not dampen the thrill of the upcoming festival and the
whispers of who would be paired at the fires.

  Two young men jostled to watch us pass. ‘Hold the bulls,’ one called, ‘we have found our Beltane lovers!’

  ‘Do you hear cocks crowing?’ Bebin asked me loudly as she pushed past them.

  It was only this spring that the men of market had been noticing me. I had grown taller. Bebin came only to my shoulder, though she was as curved as a goddess, whereas I had the chest of a knave. My bloods had flowed for almost a year, but I would never be one with a wet nurse’s chest and I was glad of it. I was fair enough of face, but too strong-nosed and sharp-chinned to be called sweet, unlike Bebin, who was as succulent and wet-eyed as a baby calf. She was dark like our first people, whereas I was of middling colour, with hair the hue of beech wood and eyes as green as moss. Though I loved Bebin dearly, I would not have traded my strong shoulders for her round hips. I could not help thinking there was more use in the first.

  We moved swiftly past the jewellers, toolwrights and potters to reach the sellers of cloth. As well as honey, salt and a goat, I needed to buy ribbon for my hair at Beltane. I had always worn blue. Tonight I would wear red.

  As I was stuffing the loops of ribbon into my basket, I heard Bebin yelp. I looked up to see her darting around the next corner. The stubborn kid slowed me in following her, but when I had cajoled it past the medicine sellers (and paid for the pots of resin it kicked to the ground), I found her on the far side of the market, standing with Uaine, watching the young men and women practising for the games tomorrow.

  I lingered, allowing them their whispers and laughter, as I watched the threshold maidens shooting archery targets. A pang of envy shot through me as a fair-haired girl raised her bow and drew back a sinewy arm. Ribbons of deerskin hung off the belt around her narrow hips. She released the arrow and hit the trunk at its centre, smiling as the crowd applauded. I marvelled at her mastery.

  Fraid had come down to observe the play, for the results of this contest would help her choose which of the fresh-bled maidens would run first through the fires tonight.

  Neha nosed my palm and I rubbed her cheek. If it were a contest of commanding a wayward dog I would win without rival.

  ‘Do you not join the games, Doorstep?’

  I jumped at the voice so close to my ear. Neha growled.

  In a tartan tunic pinned by a silver brooch, Ruther held himself as though the gates to the Otherworld would fly open at his command.

  ‘Don’t call me that. It is no kindness to be reminded so.’

  ‘Is it not a compliment? Are not the thresholds sacred?’

  My gaze snagged on the bow of his lip, before I turned back to the games without answering.

  ‘Why are you not among them?’ he asked.

  ‘I am not permitted.’

  ‘Have you not bled?’ He was as forthright as a siring bull.

  ‘Ay, I am aged for my first Beltane, but you know as well as I that I cannot contest the Maiden’s crown.’

  ‘Because you are without skin?’

  I frowned. ‘Yes. Because I have not been taught any of the contest skills.’

  He snorted. ‘Foolish waste.’

  I turned to him in surprise. ‘It is not for us to judge the laws of the tribe.’

  ‘Why not? Do they stand above questioning?’ He leaned closer. ‘I am recently returned from travel where I found a world greatly different from this.’ He paused, his breath warm on my ear. ‘I have seen cities where men claim their place by merit alone. Where they are no more bound by clan than the eagle by ground.’

  ‘If the laws are not held,’ I whispered, ‘then what protects us?’

  His eyebrows shot skyward. ‘This is what I seek to learn.’

  There was something that angered me in these words and in the smile that accompanied them. ‘Is it not tribal law that has placed you as nobleman?’

  His smile fell away. ‘Have you not seen me fight? I will earn my position by my sword against any warrior of Albion.’

  ‘And a nobleman’s schooling has bought you that skill.’

  He stared at me and I looked straight back. His eyes were as blue as flame. ‘So are you permitted, at least, to attend this night?’ His voice was low. ‘After all, even cows and pigs run the fires.’

  I reddened. ‘Of course.’

  ‘And will you dance?’

  ‘Ay.’ No one was denied the dance.

  ‘And take a fire lover at your will?’

  The hairs on my arm rose to stand. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Good then,’ he said, suddenly too jovial. ‘Perhaps I shall meet you there.’ He stepped forward, draping his arm around Uaine’s shoulder. ‘Good brother!’ he exclaimed. ‘I did not see you there, and who is this delicious sweetmeat with you?’

  I stared as he laughed with Uaine, gathering the ravel of my wits. It did not take one any more learned than myself to see that he was not to be trusted.

  The afternoon was busy with preparation for tomorrow’s feast.

  Ianna and Cah helped Cookmother to knead the barley cakes while Bebin and I decanted the barrels of beer and lined the roasting pit with straw.

  All had to be completed before our kitchen fire was doused at sunset. Our hearths burned ceaselessly throughout the year, except at Beltane, when they were extinguished, to be re-lit, reborn, by a flaming tallow stick carried back from the fires after the dance.

  We were deep in work when the horn call from the shrine announced the late-day hunt.

  I ran back to the kitchen and gathered the pots and vials from the medicine table. Cookmother packed her tools and we left for the shrine. She gripped my arm as we wound through the back streets. The shrine lay at the midpoint of Cad’s central roadway, but we took a less visible path so that fewer would see it was I who accompanied her. ‘My knees cannot bear the distance,’ she panted. ‘Next time you will have to go alone.’

  Although I could not be taught, for years, at Cookmother’s skirts I had watched and gathered, unsanctioned, the arts of healing. Because her hands had become gnarled by labour and her back twisted with age, it was I who had ground the heavy medicine stone, wrapped marsh reed tight around a cut, and pressed deep into a swollen belly to discover the lay of a babe. By the time I was nine summers old I had dressed hunt wounds open to the bone and sewn a man’s flesh with an iron needle while five men held him down.

  There were physicians among the journeymen of Summer, but none as trusted as Cookmother. And none she trusted more than me to assist her, as I had until late last night, distilling the frog poisons and bud essences that would aid the hunt.

  We passed the last of the roundhouses and emerged back onto the open street. Turned earth surrounded the entrance to the shrine, where calves and foals, offerings for Beltane, lay in shallow graves, their bones safeguarding the shrine.

  A lone journeywoman, barely older than me, left the hall as we entered, the green robe of the novice seer billowing behind her. Cookmother stopped, offering the greeting of the salmon, and the journeywoman murmured the deer skin greeting in response.

  I stood, head lowered, saying nothing, but I turned to watch as she walked away. Her
s was the path of hard learning: long days in the groves, listening and questioning, twenty summers gleaning the sacred truths and rites of our country. Many sought this path, but only those who showed great fire of mind could begin it. For women of knowledge could travel far further than even their journeybrothers. The journeywomen were those who could cross—mostly by spirit but sometimes by flesh—beyond the hardworld to the spirit realm, the place of the Mothers.

  ‘Is she Isle-trained?’ I whispered to Cookmother.

  ‘I have heard she will go this summer.’

  I fought a wave of envy. While the men went to the Island of Mona, the most gifted journeywomen from all of Albion trained their craft at the Glass Isle. I knew little else of it. Only that it was water-bound, protected by mists, and closer than anywhere else to the Mothers’ realm.

  Within the cool darkness of the shrine, the men of the hunt were seated on rows of benches, giving thanks before the altar. Ruther was not among them and I was relieved not to be distracted as I worked the plants.

  Fibor, Fraid’s brother and first of her warriors, stood waiting to dedicate the hunt, but first Cookmother had to ready their eyes and arrows with juices. She worked quickly, brushing frog poison over their upheld spear tips.

  The men began the low chant to ready themselves.

  Strong like a bear

  Strong like a bear

  I followed behind Cookmother, holding the bottles as she tipped droplets of goldenseal into their eyes to bring them clear vision.

  See like a bird

  See like a bird

  She turned to me in annoyance. ‘Bah, Ailia, my own eyes are failing me. You finish it,’ she said, thrusting the bronze pipette into my hand.

  ‘Are you sure?’ I whispered. Only ever within the walls of the kitchen did she charge me with treatment.