by Jules Watson
She raised her gaze to his face, and her heart gave a thump. The pain there was as finely drawn as Conaire’s tenderness had been. Flushing, she looked down at her feet. She knew that she had glimpsed something private.
Something she was not meant to see.
Later, under a clear, frosted sky, Rhiann found herself pushed close against Eremon around the bonfire as they watched the dancing. And she realized, suddenly, that they had not spoken properly for moons.
At first she’d been so angry about his lie, but by the time she forgot to be angry, he was deeply involved in the rebuilding of Crìanan and the strengthening of their tribal boundaries, and often away from the dun. She had been busy with the storing of grain, the preserving of the berries and roots, the meat and cheese and honey. At night, she was too exhausted to sit with his men in the hall, and more often than not she left him to sleep in her own house.
‘You never dance,’ she said now, as they watched Caitlin and Conaire leading the whirling couples. ‘Could it be that the shining prince of Erin lacks one skill?’
She said it lightly, with a smile in her voice. But he barely turned his head. ‘No one has ever asked me.’
She searched his hard profile, black against the fire. ‘Well, then, dance with me.’
A pause. ‘I do not need to be pitied.’
‘Don’t be silly!’ she retorted, stung. When he did not answer, she snapped, ‘Don’t dance with me, then!’
‘As you will.’ He folded his arms.
They stood for some time in silence, as the music swirled around them, and then, with an impatient movement, Eremon turned. ‘Come then, and dance.’ He sounded angry, and his grip on her arm was hard as he pulled her into the mass of twirling bodies and stamping feet.
The musicians were just ending one dance, and she and Eremon stood for a moment facing each other. His face was flushed, but Rhiann recognized the challenge there, and when the next song started, she raised her chin and held his eyes, as they circled each other to a slow drumbeat. He was surprisingly graceful, although since he rode and fought and spoke with grace, it should not have come as the surprise it did.
Now the beats quickened, and Rhiann had to hold her skirts up with both hands to free her feet for the intricate steps. But she did not look down, and as Eremon danced faster, nor did he. Her blood pounded from the exertion, but that was nothing to the lurch of her belly when he took her around the waist to turn her. He did not laugh down at her, like the other men. His mouth was a grim line scoring his face, and his arms were iron bands, bruising her skin.
Her hands came up against his chest, and she could smell the sweat on him, the scent of his hair …
Then someone grabbed her hand, and someone else took Eremon’s hand, and they were all spinning in a great, linked circle around the bonfire. When the circle broke up again, Rhiann had lost him in the crowd. With trembling legs, she pushed her way to the mead barrels, trying to catch her breath. No wonder he never danced!
But it was long before her heart calmed, and when she at last sought the bed in her own house, still sleep was elusive. Every time she closed her eyes, flashes of memory crossed her mind.
Last Beltaine, when he lay at ease on the mound in the firelight and smiled at her. When he held her head and gave her water. When he looked down at her with such gentleness in his face …
Mother! Do not venture down that path, Rhiann. Only pain waits there.
And he had not been gentle tonight. In fact, he’d looked on her with nothing less than dislike. The journey to Calgacus had changed him. Perhaps he felt more secure in his position now, and no longer needed her. Perhaps he knew all about Drust, and thought her foolish.
But the look of pain on his face as he watched Conaire and Caitlin came back to her, and she lay and wondered far into the night.
Cù shivered, and curled closer around Eremon’s thighs. His master’s hand came down and gently stroked his head. ‘I’m sorry, boy. I try your patience at times.’
At the sound of Eremon’s voice, Cù raised his head and licked his hand. Eremon shifted so that he could wrap his cloak around both of them. It was ridiculous to be here in a workshed at this time of year, with no fire. But the coldness was somehow comforting; it helped to scour out his heart, to numb it.
He leaned back on the straw, watching the starlight through a crumbling gap in the wall under the eaves. Samhain. The long dark was nearly upon them. He’d dealt with the attack on Crìanan as well as he could. He had done as much as possible to ward their borders. The training was continuing under Finan’s care. The tribal meeting would go ahead.
So, there was little for him to do for many moons.
And that prospect yawned before him like a black pit. As his responsibilities had lessened, so the feelings that he had successfully buried since their journey north were surfacing. Gods! When he saw the way Conaire and Caitlin looked at each other … that stab of despair had taken him by surprise. For Rhiann would never turn such eyes on him.
How could his heart be so treacherous? He had never asked for these feelings, never wanted them. A hundred other women were yielding and pliant and warm – and interested in him. Yet out of them all, he had to feel this way for her!
And when he tried to freeze her out, tried desperately to maintain the distance between them, what did she do? She taunted him, using her fine eyes in the firelight, pressing her soft body up against him in the crowd …
She did not even care for him, so why did she do it? She loved Drust, for some unknown reason, and had never shown Eremon even a grain of affection. He must be mad to feel this way. And yet … gods! Nothing he thought or said to himself made any difference. He could wrench at his heart, stamp on it, curse it, squeeze it, and tear it until it bled. But it would not surrender. It was the first thing in his life he had been unable to conquer.
Cù heard the harshness of his breathing and whimpered, and Eremon buried himself deeper in his cloak, turning his head to look at the hound.
‘I can’t stay here through the long dark,’ he whispered. ‘I’ll ride out as often as I can, stay in the other duns. You’d like that, wouldn’t you? We can keep moving. Perhaps it will be better then.’
At the word ‘ride’ the hound’s ears pricked up.
Eremon sighed. Maybe that was all he needed.
Women. Hard riding. Cold.
Silence.
Chapter 56
LONG DARK AD 80
From that day on, as the light took on a steely edge, and the wind tore the leaves from the trees, Rhiann realized that Eremon’s presence was growing increasingly scarce.
After much urging, Conaire and Caitlin accepted the offer of a honeymoon. As marriages were traditionally made in sunseason, the couple would be cloistered away in a hut for one moon, with liberal supplies of honey mead. Even though it was now grey and cold, the newly-weds took over one of the guest lodges in the village, and were installed there in a shower of innuendo and scented rose-hips.
So it was that Eremon left to ride the border defences without Conaire’s customary companionship. He returned on a day that Rhiann was attending a birth in a nearby dun. By the time she came back, he had gathered some supplies and gone again.
‘I don’t like it,’ she heard Finan mutter to Colum one night in the King’s Hall.
‘The Romans are all tucked away,’ Colum replied, yawning. ‘Likely he’s just restless. He’s a young lad; we forget that, eh?’
‘He has not been himself. If you can’t see it, you’re more stupid than I thought.’
When Conaire and Caitlin eventually emerged from their lodge, they both floated around in such a daze that Rhiann had to turn away from the light in their eyes. She knew what brought such love to their faces, what consumed them through the endless dark. And the fear that she would never have it was a wound on her soul.
Life in the village below tumbled on towards the longest night, but high in the King’s Hall the atmosphere for Rhiann was as barren as the la
ndscape, slowly freezing day by day.
Once she managed to be in the dun at the same time as Eremon, and she heard him arguing with Conaire in the stables.
‘I’m not happy about you patrolling the lands on your own,’ Conaire was grumbling.
‘Well, come with me, then!’ Eremon tossed back. There was a silence, and then Eremon’s chuckle. ‘I didn’t think so. You stay and enjoy yourself with your new wife. I can see in your face how hard it would be to tear you away.’
‘You don’t need to be out there.’ Conaire sounded ashamed, and angry. ‘That’s why I let you be. You are doing it for your own strange reasons.’
‘Someone must keep an eye on the Romans. Let the men enjoy their food and fires, for next year we may not have them to enjoy at all.’
‘Just promise me you’ll stay well within our borders. Don’t do anything reckless.’
‘And since when have you known me to act like that?’
‘Never. But a blind man can see you’re not yourself.’
There was the clanking of harness being tightened. When Eremon spoke, it was the harshest that Rhiann had ever heard him talk to Conaire. ‘I did not come back to be questioned. I will let you know where I am.’
After the feast on the longest night, the druids held a ceremony to call the sun back from the south. Rhiann and Linnet conducted their own at the sacred spring above Linnet’s house, on a day so cold that the rime on the branches cracked and fell in showers of ice, and they must gather close to the need-fire, lit to show the sun its path home.
Yet as they chanted the long dark prayer, Rhiann felt, faintly, the throb of the Mother pulsing up through her feet. It did not envelop her as it used to do, but its touch did more to warm her than any fire.
Afterwards, Dercca was waiting in the house with hot, spiced mead, and while Linnet spun, Rhiann at last unburdened herself about Drust, for the pain and humiliation had faded enough for her to speak of it.
Linnet listened to the whole tale, saying nothing, but her eyes were deep with shadowed thoughts. ‘It is well that you saw Drust for what he is,’ she said at last.
‘But I was so foolish!’
‘No!’ Linnet shook her head. ‘You loved a memory, and that can be one of the most powerful forms of love. In memory, all faults are stripped away, and all that is left is a reflection of your own divine; perfection, a dream.’
‘Well, I soon woke up,’ Rhiann muttered, prodding the burning logs with an iron poker.
‘That matters little. You felt love, passion, desire. These are as important to life in Thisworld as bread and meat.’
Rhiann swallowed, suddenly realizing that she could not speak of what happened in Drust’s arms – how she had failed. The shame of that ran too deep. She had never been able to tell Linnet that she was no longer a true priestess. How could she tell her that she was not a true woman, either?
‘And what of Eremon?’ Linnet busied herself with the wool in her lap.
Rhiann sighed. ‘Who can tell?’
‘Do you not know your own heart?’
‘I admire him … we have become friends. But beyond that he makes me feel confused and annoyed. That is all I can say.’
‘And do you know his regard for you?’
‘It became like a friend; no, more like a brother to a sister, I think. But even that is no longer. He looks at me with such coldness now.’
‘Why?’
‘Because he despises me for dallying with Drust! Because I was so horrid to him! Because he will return home one day …’
‘And have you spoken to him?’
Rhiann snorted delicately. ‘He is hardly ever here: his feelings are plain.’ She looked up, forcing a smile. ‘Aunt, do not confuse me any more by asking such questions. Now, give me another spindle and tell me a tale of some warmer land. This night will be long.’
As Rhiann entered the Dunadd stables the next day, she surprised Eremon, who was leading Dòrn out. Cù was at his heels, and came immediately to Rhiann, his feathery tail wagging.
‘Oh!’ Rhiann stopped, as her belly gave a peculiar lurch. ‘Are you leaving already? When did you come back?’
‘Yesterday.’ Eremon’s trousers, tied tight around the ankle for riding, were crusted with mud up to the knees, and his face was wind-bitten, flushed across his high cheekbones. His braids had been left uncombed for days, and dark wisps, torn free by the wind, curled about his forehead.
‘And … will you not stay for some days?’ She attempted a smile. ‘I know your men miss you.’
He looked down his nose at her, and his eyes were glacial. ‘Do they now? But life goes on unhindered, otherwise?’
She fell back a step at the lash of his voice. ‘Well, of course. But is your place not here?’
‘There is little for me to do here now. And since I am here only to serve your people, I should be out among them, don’t you think?’
She let out her breath, ruffling Cù’s head between both hands. Eremon was spoiling for a fight; he had the same look in his eyes as on the night they danced. Plainly, he did not wish to be near her at all.
‘Whatever you think is best,’ she answered, her heart sinking. Without a word he led Dòrn past her, and whistled for Cù. The dog gave one backwards look at Rhiann, then scampered after his master.
Rhiann stood frozen for a moment, until she was suddenly seized with an urge to call Eremon back, to draw him to the fire and give him a cup of ale, to let him warm himself, take off his boots. She cast about for the words that would draw that crooked smile to his face; something to take the chill out of his eyes.
At the last moment she nearly did cry out; it sprang to her lips, and her feet came to life under her. But by the time she reached the gates Eremon had already kicked Dòrn up into a gallop, and now was only a dark speck against the pale hill-slopes, crusted with new snow.
She gazed after him, feeling strangely empty.
Next time she would make a better effort to reach him. There must be something she could say to bring him back.
The forest was hushed.
Cù’s pawprints embroidered the ground all around, as he raced first one way and then the other. But Eremon hardly noticed the hound’s playful yapping. He was all but blind to the tracery of black branches above, the glimpses of white-capped hills, the crunching of Dòrn’s hooves beneath. All he could see were Rhiann’s eyes: the sheen of them like sun on clear water, the faint veins throbbing at her temples.
He gripped his reins harder. The time away had healed nothing, but just made it worse. The women at the southern duns, their soft hands stroking him, their hair trailing over his bare chest in strands of black or gold or red – they had not quenched the fire, but stoked it. They were just bodies in his bed, because on every one of them he transposed finer features: a long nose, tip-tilted eyes, high cheekbones.
There were no fiery depths in those women to be explored, no dry jests to be deciphered, no smile lifting so wryly at the corners. They were not maddening or changeable or elusive. They were just available.
There was a moment when he cried out his ecstasy, that the pain was burned away. But all it took was one glimpse of her in a stableyard, and every shred of that peace was destroyed all over again.
He came out on top of a ridge and reined in, whistling for Cù. The hound burst out of a mass of tangled hawthorns and raced up, panting. Ahead to the south, the snowy peaks were lost in dark banks of storm.
Beyond, lay the newly-conquered territory of the Romans.
Eremon chewed the scar on his lip. The trips from dun to dun, the long nights of mead with the chieftains, the deer roasting over open fires at scouting posts – all of these served a purpose. He had strengthened more ties with more people than ever before.
But it wasn’t helping him. He must push himself to his limits, if he was ever to exorcise Rhiann from his heart. Only in great cold and weariness might he find peace.
He looked down at Cù. ‘We must go further, little brother. Come.
’
He nudged Dòrn over the ridge and down the other side.
‘Lady, I think you should come.’
Eithne was standing at the door of Rhiann’s house, strangely pale.
‘What is it?’
Eithne opened her mouth and closed it, and something cold gripped Rhiann’s heart.
‘Come where?’ she cried, flinging on her cloak. ‘The gate, the hall, where?’
Eithne just pointed down to the gate, and Rhiann was flying, her feet crunching on the snow.
When she got there, guards were crowding around something at the steps of the gate tower. She frantically pushed through the wall of burly shoulders. ‘Get out of my way!’
The men fell back, until she was at the centre of the circle. She looked down, and her breath froze in her throat.
It was Cù, matted, lean and rangy, shivering as he stared up at her with mournful eyes.
Alone.
Chapter 57
‘There is no time to lose!’ Conaire was throwing random pieces of clothing and weapons – two daggers, a sling, slingshot – into a leather pack beside his bed. ‘Get someone to prepare my horse!’
‘We must move swiftly,’ Rhiann agreed. ‘But I just need a little time to make sure we have enough clothing and food – it is madness to rush out at this time of year—’
‘We?’ Conaire stared at her wildly. ‘What we?’ He looked from Rhiann to Caitlin, who was standing by the bed, her hand at her mouth. ‘No one is coming with me. I’m going alone. I did this to him, I should have been by his side—’ His voice cracked.
Rhiann had expected the cold mask of a warrior, but that was not what she saw. Instead, someone stricken to the core looked out of Conaire’s eyes. The anguish was so raw she had to look away, realizing that it was mirrored in her own body. That was why her hands were trembling so. Goddess! Take control, Rhiann. If he can’t, you must.