The White Mare: The Dalraida Trilogy, Book One

by Jules Watson

  Eremon did not return the grin, and the twinkle in Conaire’s eyes faded as he wiped his mouth. ‘Come now! They are expecting an heir, and that is all you must give them. If it’s like that, then grit your teeth once a week with her and think of Erin. Meanwhile, there are plenty of women willing to have some fun. That maid Garda says you are the talk of the dun – the fact that you have not partaken of their charms is driving the women even wilder for you. I say enjoy it.’

  Eremon drank, his eyes far away. Then he came back to himself, his face relaxing into a proper smile. ‘You’re right, of course. And anyway, we have more important things to think about. Come.’

  They continued down the path that ran between the tussocks of red moss, rimed with frost in the dawn shadows. ‘I’ve decided to ask the council to call in levies from all the Epidii chieftains,’ Eremon announced. ‘We can house the extra warriors here at Dunadd.’

  ‘But that’s a standing warband – and not how things are done here, Eremon. Just like at home, each chieftain keeps his own retinue of men.’

  Upright, they were in the full force of the bitter wind soughing across the marshes, and Eremon tucked his sling in his armpit and blew on his hands again. ‘That is all well and good for cattle raiding, brother, but the Romans are an invading army! The Epidii will have to adapt – or die.’

  ‘From what I understand, the council won’t be happy to bring in warriors from the other clans. They’ve been concerned about a challenge to the kingship, remember.’

  ‘And this is the best way to avoid such a challenge!’ Eremon halted, scanning the reeds. ‘Look! Are they swans?’ For a few moments they searched for a path to the south, until they found one and set off, talking more quietly now.

  ‘The best way to take control is to weaken the clan divisions,’ Eremon pointed out. ‘We bring the young warriors here, and work on making them loyal to me. They won’t have a chance to get embroiled in any conspiracies. Not only will they be cut off from their own elders, but they’ll all spy on each other, which saves me doing it.’

  ‘As usual, you’ve thought this through.’

  Eremon snorted. And there’s not much else to do on these long nights, when my wife lays with her back to me. ‘There’s another reason,’ he continued aloud. ‘I have to meld them into some sort of coherent fighting force. That Greek treatise was clear: the Romans fight as one. We don’t.’

  Conaire sighed. ‘I hear you, but what happened when we tried it in Erin? Everyone broke formation and scattered, but by the Boar we fought like devils! Who thinks of strategy when hungry for blood? For honour, a man fights alone.’

  ‘Then we’ll all die alone, too.’

  Now it was Conaire’s turn to halt in his tracks. ‘There are swans! Quick.’ He pulled Eremon down beside him. ‘Steady now. Let’s take it slow and sweet.’

  ‘You don’t need to tell me that, you great lumbering bear!’

  They wound their slings around their hands, and began to creep along the path. Through a gap in the reeds, four white shapes sailed across a dark pool.

  Eremon carefully loaded the sling with a ball from the pouch on his belt. Out of the corner of his mouth he whispered, ‘How many women was Garda talking about?’

  They returned to the gates of Dunadd at full morning, a swan slung across each back, fingers raw with cold, bellies growling. As they neared the King’s Hall, Eremon caught the arm of one of a passing pair of servants.

  ‘Girl!’ Eremon untied the swan from his shoulders and shrugged it to the ground, gesturing to the girl and her companion. ‘I want you to take both these birds to the Lady Rhiann. The feathers are a gift, tell her, from me. From me, do you understand?’

  ‘Yes, lord.’ The girls giggled, glancing covertly between the swansdown and Conaire.

  As he and Conaire strode away, Eremon caught his brother’s raised eyebrow, and in answer he shrugged. ‘No harm in trying. She is a woman, after all.’

  The festival of Samhain had arrived at last; the greatest of the four fire festivals, for it marked the dying of the old year and the renewal of the new.

  For days beforehand, the herders drove great streams of cattle down from the summer pastures to gather on the fields about Dunadd. There they were penned, until the druids had made the choices of which would be kept for breeding, and which would be slaughtered. The air was filled with the sound of their lowing, and the rich smell of their dung.

  It was not only cattle gathering in from the far glens. People, too, were coming, for all the tribe must participate in Samhain. Now, the veil between the Otherworld and Thisworld grew thin, and it was a dangerous time: mortals could be drawn into the arms of the faery-people, the dead walked again among the living, shape-shifting beasts stalked the land.

  Against this, the people must come together to be renewed by the Goddess, to commune with their ancestors and placate the forces that threatened to bring them into chaos.

  On Samhain eve, Rhiann sat by her own fire in silence. This night she wore only one robe of undyed wool, and no ornaments beside a crown of rowan-berries. Her body felt lighter than it had at the betrothal, weighed down as it was then with gold and heavy wool. That had been an earthly rite, and as such needed the material things to bind her. Tonight, she must have as little as possible between her and the Otherworld.

  ‘Mistress.’ Brica was by her side, holding out an earthen cup of a dark liquid. The saor.

  Rhiann drank deeply, fighting down the sickness in her belly. Samhain was the most sacred of nights, the start of the new year. The Goddess must be able to manifest, to calm Her people’s fear at the coming of the long dark. But would this be the night when Rhiann was unmasked? When all would know that she no longer felt the Goddess within? That she could no longer see?

  Rhiann sighed and rose, standing before the sacred figurines on their shelf. Then her fingers closed over one, the image of Ceridwen in her guise of Crone, the cauldron of rebirth in her hands. Tenderly, Rhiann placed the tiny figure in her waist pouch, under her robe, close to her skin.

  Brica lifted the door cover and peered out, and Rhiann saw the triangle of black above her head, spangled with stars. Her escort would be here soon.

  Now Brica came back to the hearth with the kettle in her hands, and she doused the last coals still glowing in the fire-pit. The house was plunged into blackness, and with the light went the old year. The new year would begin when Rhiann lit the great fire in the valley of ancestors, to the north, and the riders returned with flaming torches to ignite every hearth-fire at Dunadd.

  There was the triple rap of a staff on the wall beside her door.

  ‘Mother of the Land, rider of the White Mare. Your people need you to renew the fire. Come!’

  Meron’s voice soared to the cold stars above. From her position atop the old mound, Rhiann could see the black hole of the fire-pit yawning below, filled with the nine sacred woods, unlit. Although the moon was dark, and the crowd of hundreds silent, she could sense them on the plain around her, their breath rising in the frosted air.

  The saor began to throb through her veins in time to the single drumbeat that accompanied Meron, and when his song ended, Gelert took up the chant to the dead, who this night walked in Thisworld as if alive.

  By now, Rhiann was in the floating place where she saw little, and felt even less. Even so, a fleeting sorrow brushed her, light as a swallow wing, when she laid down a honey-cake for her foster-family in the feast of the dead. Yet that was all that came.

  She sensed the Goddess presence on the fringes of her consciousness, just beyond her finger-tips. But the burning that used to envelop her was no more than a feeble warmth now that did little to thaw her heart. She hoped that the people could not see this; that to them she appeared as she used to, the priestess glamour swathing her like a cloak, making her taller, straighter, greater …

  Linnet’s touch came at her elbow. At her feet, two druids had kindled the need-fire, and were handing her a pitch-soaked brand. She held the torch in
the fire until it burst into flame, and straightened, the sparks streaming away above her head.

  And then, through her fear, words came, and the priestess voice to carry them, more resonant than her own, more ancient.

  ‘My people!’ she cried. ‘The land returns to My womb, there to be renewed. All will sleep the long sleep, but in My Darkness, old shall be made new again. As you shall be. Take this fire as a symbol of the light that will continue to glow, ready to flower once more when the sun returns. Fear not! For I am with you in all the turns of the days!’

  From the flat valley bottom, Eremon watched the brand arc high in the air as Rhiann threw it into the great fire-pit. But he could not take his eyes off her, not even when the crowd parted to make way for the cloaked riders who, crying to the Mare, streamed back towards Dunadd with flaming torches.

  It was the first time he had seen his new wife as Goddess, and when her voice changed as she made her proclamation, growing sonorous, deeper, the hairs on the back of his neck rose. Yet as the drums and pipes began, and figures began to dance around the roaring fire, he also saw that she was untouched by the crowd’s release of tension, the renewal of laughter and talk. She remained unmoving atop the mound, and in her pale robe, her hair bleached by the starlight, she was a shard of ice: detached, unreachable, untouchable.

  His heart chilled, he turned away.

  There was mead and ale flowing now, and he drew a drink from the barrels, content to wrap himself in his cloak on the frosted slopes of the narrow valley that cupped the line of ancestor mounds. So much had happened in such a short time, that he took any opportunity he could to sit and think. It was, after all, the thing he did best.

  The dancing had become wilder now, to chase away the restless Samhain spirits, and Eremon chuckled to see Conaire being pulled enthusiastically into the fray by the girl called Garda. She had been stalking his poor foster-brother for weeks now.

  ‘My lord.’

  He jumped and looked up. There, next to him, was another girl. He’d certainly noticed her around the dun, mainly because of the way that her eyes always followed him. Round, blue eyes, they were, and she had a lush figure and thick, yellow hair. He smiled, not knowing her name.

  ‘I am Aiveen, my lord, Talorc’s daughter. I have been wishing to speak with you.’

  A bold one, she was, then. No woman had yet dared to approach him, though tonight, for the first time, he was ready for them to do so. The mood of the dancing was infectious, and he had not forgotten Conaire’s words on the marsh that day. He took a sip of mead, and then, impulsively, held the cup out to her. ‘Then speak with me, daughter of Talorc.’

  She sank down next to him and held her hands for the cup, drinking, holding his gaze while she did so. ‘Are you enjoying our feast, my lord?’

  ‘Most certainly. And more so now I have some company.’

  She dimpled, lowered her eyes with false modesty and turned her cheek away. Ah, there it was. So the games begin. First the coyness, then the suggestive comments, and then her leg would brush his … All of a sudden, he reconsidered whether he could be bothered with the predictability of it all. And it’s an attitude like that, my lad, that will keep your balls blue for many moons to come.

  His eyes roved down her cheek, to where full breasts swelled against the neck of her gown. And then, in the light of the nearby fire, he noticed something. The hood of her cloak was fringed with feathers. Swan feathers.

  He frowned. ‘Where did you get those?’ He flicked one with a finger.

  For the first time, she looked uncertain. ‘My mother received them as a gift for me. I thought …’

  Abruptly, he laughed, raking his fingers through his hair. ‘I see.’

  So that’s what Rhiann did with his gifts. On the far mound he could just see her, outlined against the fire, still and pale. So far away. Maybe there was no point in trying after all.

  Aiveen’s leg brushed his, and he decided to put Rhiann out of his mind. He leaned back, his elbows pillowed on the cold ground by his cloak, and smiled at the girl. ‘The feathers become you very much.’

  She dimpled once more, sure of him again. ‘Thank you, my lord.’

  ‘And no more of this “my lord”’. He brushed her cheek slowly with a finger. ‘My name is Eremon. You may use it.’

  ‘Thank you, Eremon.’ She rolled his name around her tongue with obvious relish, and he felt an answering stab of warmth between his legs. She sipped the mead and gave it back to him. ‘So, do you celebrate Samhain in the same way that we do?’

  ‘Mostly.’ He looked around at the dancing and the firepits, the small bands of musicians. ‘But we don’t have priestesses.’

  A frown touched her brow at that; she would not want to be reminded of Rhiann. Cursing himself, he reached out and ran the back of his hand down her arm, and felt her answering quiver. Then she lay back on one elbow, near to the circle of his body. The movement made her breasts press even more tightly against the fine wool of the dress. When he raised his eyes to her face, her saw her knowing smile.

  ‘And what do you do when the feast is over?’ Her voice was low, throaty.

  He knew that note well. This was proving much easier than he’d anticipated. A little too easy, if truth be told, but it made things simpler. If he did not have to win her, then she would expect nothing from him. ‘We honour the gods with our bodies. What do you do?’

  She laughed, throwing back her head to expose her white throat. Her teeth were pearly and even in the firelight. ‘We, too, do this.’

  ‘And how long until such – diversions – begin?’

  She smiled and looked at him directly. ‘The women have wondered about you. They said you would be difficult; that you must not like girls.’

  ‘No one has tried.’

  ‘Well, I am brave.’

  ‘Yes, you are.’ He stroked her hand again. ‘And what will you say to these women now?’

  ‘I will tell them that you don’t like girls, of course.’

  He laughed. At least she had some wit; it made things slightly more interesting. ‘You did not answer my question.’

  ‘And that was?’

  ‘How long?’

  She took the mead cup from him and rested it on the ground, then rose. In her eyes was triumph. Ah, yes. Being the first would matter to a girl like this. For a moment, he wondered about her father, but then put the thought out of his mind. He was a prince: it was an honour for her to find favour with him, and Talorc would be pleased at the connection.

  ‘Eremon of Erin should wait for nothing.’ Her hand was out, and she pulled him to his feet. ‘Is that cloak of yours warm?’

  He leaned in, his hands resting lightly on her waist. He could feel the curve of it, the burning of the skin through the cloth. ‘The cloak is not so, but I am.’

  As they left the firelight for the darkness of the valley slopes beyond, Eremon cast one look back over his shoulder. The lonely figure on the mound had not moved, and even in the midst of all that swirling, ruddy firelight and flickering heat, she was silver and still.

  ‘Eremon.’ The whisper came out of the dark. He turned and followed it.

  Chapter 18

  LONG DARK, AD 79

  There was the taste of first snow in the air on the day they began the curing of meat for the coming season. It was heavy work, and bloody, too, but Rhiann relished the sheer physical effort of it.

  She was supervising the women in the curing shed. One side was open to the slaughter yards, and the thin air was filled with the steam of cattle breath, the curses of men and the stumbling and pushing of beasts being driven in from the gates.

  ‘Here, my lady.’ One of the servants handed her a cloth to wipe her fingers, as she finished pressing a haunch of flesh into a pan of sea-salt.

  She didn’t really need to be here. She’d already blessed the cattle for slaughter, and the older women of the dun knew better than she how to cure the meat. But soon the snows would close in, and she would be trapped insi
de with little but sewing to do for many moons.

  She stifled a sudden yawn, and saw the servants looking at her sidewise. The last thing she wanted was to give them more to talk about. The dark rings under her eyes and her exhaustion meant only one thing when one was new-wed. If only they knew the truth.

  She barely saw her husband, in between gathering the last berries, skimming and curdling the last milk, and blessing the grain pits as they were sealed with their caps of clay. She ensured that the prince and his men had food, but often did not eat with them, excusing herself to attend the sick in her own house. Even if she did eat in the King’s Hall, she and Brica sat on the women’s side of the central fire, keeping to themselves. It was only at night that he was near her, for they must share a bed in an alcove on the hall’s upper gallery.

  But – and she still could not believe it – he never touched her. He never even came close to touching her. After sitting late with his men, he pulled back the screen around their bedplace to find her hunched against the wall, and in return, when he lay down, he kept close to the pallet’s edge. She could not even feel the warmth of his body.

  At first she had lain there awake, rigid with tension, waiting for the hand on her shoulder once more, and not knowing what she would do when it came, for the hall was full of people now. Every night, she heard him shift and turn, and knew that he lay awake, too. But the touch never came. Subsequently, their shadowed eyes and short tempers triggered many knowing glances around the dun, and speculation about what was keeping them awake. It was an unbearable torture for Rhiann, but there was worse.

  For now, she really had no choice but to admit to herself that Eremon of Dalriada had some honour after all.

  Her eyes were gritty and weeping from the sharp, snow-tainted wind, and now she blinked to clear them. More glances came her way. Dear Goddess.

  She dipped her fingers into one of the pickling barrels and touched them to her tongue. ‘Maire,’ she said to the servant standing by, ‘add five more ladles of salt. And Anga, we need extra bulls smoked this year: one hundred altogether.’