by H. Barnard
Sorsha sunk deeper into the water, ensuring her tattooed arm was submerged. “Yes, they do. But it’s not like slaves. The symbols are for honour.”
“What do the symbols mean?” the tanned woman asked.
“There’s a symbol that looks like a broken arrow on a shield. All the warriors have it. I think it means victory. But there are others, such as a snake curled around an arrow, which is a territorial marking.”
The women’s eyes widened, and they made collective “ooh” sounds.
“I’ve heard they are like the Gauls and are absolutely dripping in gold and silver,” the youngest in the group said.
“Well, the nobles are. I think a lot of the farmers and workers also like to wear brooches and bracelets, but they are not allowed to wear the Torcs.”
“What is a Torc?” the dark-eyed woman asked, and Sorsha noticed her staring through the water at her arm. Why didn’t I cover up my tattoo?
“It’s a crescent-shaped necklace made from twisted ropes of gold. It sits around your neck like this,” she motioned to her clavicles. “Two golden orbs sit at either end.”
“You know such an awful lot about them,” the tanned woman said.
“Yes, I was lost up there and…a family looked after me. But I am back now.”
“What’s that on your arm?” the mousy-haired woman asked.
Sorsha glanced down. “It’s… That is to say, they painted one on me.” She lifted her bicep out of the water.
They gasped and ran their fingers over the design. “It’s beautiful!” the dark-haired woman said.
The mousy-haired woman’s finger traced the circles. “Beautiful but so barbaric!”
Sorsha also studied the tattoo. It is beautiful.
“Was it terrible?”
Sorsha looked up. “Was what terrible?”
The dark-haired woman was inches from her. “Being lost up there, having to rely on those barbarians.”
“It was terrible, yes, but not because of the people…not all of them anyway. Some of them were very nice. It was terrible because I was so far away from my home, from my mother. But I think I would feel that no matter where I was, even if it was in the heart of civilised Rome. It would feel terrible to be away from my family in a strange land.”
The dark-haired woman nodded. “I think I know what you mean. Britannia is not my home, either. In fact, it feels quite barbaric to me, so foreign!”
“Does it not go away, though?” Sorsha asked. “That feeling like a part of you is where you grew up, and you’re not really whole anymore?”
The dark-haired woman smiled. “Yes, there will always be a part of you where you grew up, where your family are, but I think I have found that you have so many parts, there is so much of you that to lose a small part is not so bad.”
“But you are not going back there, are you?” the youngest woman asked Sorsha.
She hesitated before answering. “No.” She slipped further into the water until it reached her chin. Invisible hands slithered up her chest and grasped around her neck until she coughed.
“I’m Cecily, by the way,” the dark-haired woman said, sliding down next to her. “Where are you staying while you are here?”
Sorsha gazed up at the vaulted ceiling and rubbed her throat. “I haven’t decided yet, actually.”
“Then it’s settled. You must stay with us. We have plenty of room in our little dwelling here.” Cecily winked at her friends. “My husband is the Provost of the Storehouses of London, in the service of the illustrious Count of the Sacred Bounties. We know the count personally.”
A dolphin and two seahorses swam together in a sea of tessellating stone tiles. Sorsha admired the mosaic that clung to the wall above the elaborate dinning table, piled high with delicate treats.
“Tell him, Lucia, how you got there. Oh, it is the most thrilling tale, Marc,” Cecily said to her husband across the table. Marcus, a grey-haired man with red cheeks, was perhaps twice the age of his glamourous wife. Their “little dwelling” was a whitewashed manor house on the main street. It was vast and made for entertaining lavish summer parties.
Sorsha inhaled, before recounting the lie she had told Cecily in the baths. “My father was a merchant, and I went with him on a trading voyage. But there was a storm, and the ship was wrecked. Everyone drowned, but I managed to come ashore. If the Caledones hadn’t–”
“The who?” Marcus interrupted.
“The Caledones, the people from the Kingdom of Caledon. They are one of the kingdoms above the Great Wall.”
“You mean the Picti?”
Sorsha swallowed. “Yes. If the Painted People had not found me, I would not have survived.”
A serving girl offered her more wine, grapes, cheese, and olives. The meal seemed exotic, and Sorsha had to remind herself that it was nothing out of the ordinary here.
“They cared for her, darling. Can you imagine that?”
Marcus nodded. “The civilised savage. It is true then, what Tacitus wrote about the barbarians?”
“What do you mean, darling?” Cecily purred.
“Tacitus, sweet one, the stories about the barbarians by Tacitus.”
“I’m afraid I don’t think I’ve read Tacitus.”
“I’m afraid you neither think nor read, darling,” Marcus said as he kissed her jewelled hand.
“My father used to read Tacitus’s stories to me,” Sorsha said as Cecily poked her tongue out at her husband.
“Will you tell me the story then, Lucia?”
“It’s the story of General Agricola, and his battles around the empire. But I think you mean the part where he was fighting in the northern wilds of Britannia?” Sorsha glanced at Marcus, and he nodded with a smile. He picked up a silver goblet and held it aloft for the serving girl to refill. Sorsha noticed the girl’s red hair and pale skin. I wonder where she is from?
“Go on, dear,” Cecily said, patting Sorsha’s arm.
“Ah, Agricola, yes. Agricola had control of Britannia, and he led an exploration to discover the north. He was so clever… It took him several years, but slowly he pushed up into the north, building forts all the way along and garrisoning them in case of attack. He was almost unopposed until there was a great battle in the mountains. At the battle, the barbarians’ leader, Calgacus, said ‘If we don’t fight the Romans, we will be enslaved because the Romans are everywhere, and everywhere they go they massacre the people and ruin nations. And yet they call the result a success.’ Calgacus was much more eloquent than I, of course, or Tacitus rather. He is portrayed as rather civilised for a savage, and Tacitus clearly respected him and wrote that he was brave and exotic, with his fearsome warriors with chariots. Of course, the story goes that Agricola massacred them and sent them running for the hills. If it wasn’t for the general being called back by the emperor, Rome would have turned the entire island into Britannia. That and, I suppose, the discovery that the climate was so terrible no one would want to live there anyway.” Sorsha paused and sipped wine from her goblet.
Cecily snorted. “Well, I don’t understand. How does unjustly criticising Rome make someone civilised? He just sounds like a savage. Now tell me, is it true that they are cannibals?”
Sorsha thought about the sacrifice at Imbolc and the smell of human flesh burning on the fire. “Not that I ever saw.”
Cecily’s nostrils flared. “You know, I have never understood why the barbarians, not just the ones on this island, but the Alamatti too, why they insist on fighting against us, fighting against civilisation. Their lives would be happier with Roman order.”
“Well, I think that was what Tacitus was trying to point out, my dear, through the words of Calgacus, that perhaps the imposition of foreign rule, no matter how civilised it looks to us, perhaps to those who are being colonised, it is akin to slavery.” Marcus sipped his wine and studied Sorsha. “Did you think the Painted People were happy, Lucia?”
Sorsha frowned. “I think so, yes. At the most basic level they were no
different to us, and their domestic lives are much like ours. They have cities and houses made of stone, but the buildings are round and they do not shine white in the sun. They are religious, like the people here were before the Romans came. When it comes to it, they are the same people. I could speak their language because my mother taught me the Ancient Tongue. The people there were not without their troubles, in the same way that people in Aquae Sulis are not without their complaints.”
Cecily leant forwards. “The people are happy in Aquae Sulis.”
Sorsha smiled and bowed her head towards Marcus. “I think people can have troubles and complaints and still be ‘happy’. The curse stones thrown in the water to the Goddess Sulis Minerva are a testament to the troubles and complaints of the people of Aquae Sulis, and yet I would agree with you that people here, on the whole, are happy. You will also agree, I am sure, that crop yields continue to decline, that the plague affects you here too. The Painted People have their own troubles and complaints, and yet I would also say they are happy.”
“Perhaps you are familiar with Cicero, Lucia? He thought happiness comes from moral goodness. Do you think the barbarians can be happy in the same way we can be?” Marcus asked and then deposited a plump grape into his mouth.
“My father had a copy, but it’s been a long time since I read it. If I remember it correctly, Cicero thought that happiness is based on the goodness or morality of an individual, is that not so? Happiness does not belong to any race. Even the citizens of Rome were good and bad. So if Romans can be bad people and therefore not happy, then I would think the test is down to the individual rather than the race. And so you must forgive me, but I do not know you, and so I do not know if you are moral yourself. Therefore, I cannot say if you are any happier than anyone from within the Painted People.”
Marcus laughed. “Well, perhaps we need not examine it further. I take the point, though, that we cannot paint all barbarians with the same brush. But they certainly do not seem to be capable of the same happiness that I could be capable of when I have reason and law and live in an aesthetic city.”
“But they do have reason and law.” Sorsha leant forwards. “Yes, it is different from ours, but they still have it. And their city was…harsh and unrefined. But it was within nature. They incorporated the trees into their city in a way no one would have the patience for here. I hated it at first, the lack of grand public buildings and art. But it wasn’t that they didn’t have those things. They did. Their art is carved into their skin, and their grand public buildings were not basilicas and forums but standing stone circles within the woods. Just because it is different does not mean it doesn’t exist. Perhaps we are afraid of the Painted People because they are different and we do not understand them. It is not because they are fearsome or immoral or unhappy. It is because we allow our fear of difference and the unknown to blind us from recognising that, when it comes down to it, we are all the same. We live, we love, we feel sad, and we die. And so do they.”
Cecily drummed her manicured nails on the table. “But if what you say is true, if they are not so different from us, that does not fit with what I’ve always been taught. They are barbarians who need civilising. Enemies who must be kept at bay.”
“It is convenient, though, isn’t it?” Sorsha said. Why am I defending them? She pressed her nails into her palms. “If we call them barbarians, then they are unquestionably not like us. And so when we invade their lands, there is no awkwardness. We invade their lands, and when the barbarians fight back, they are called the enemy. I am not experienced in politics or warfare, but it seems to me that we first create a barbarian, an enemy, and then we take away their lands.”
Twenty–Six
Spring, 367 C.E., Vortriu
“If we get an agreement, will you lead the men from Caercaled?” Talorc asked Taran, handing him another goblet of wine.
“That will be our uncle’s job,” Brei said.
Talorc glanced around the hall at the few stragglers remaining and dropped his voice to a whisper. “He looks almost too weak to carry on.”
“He got better, but lately he got sick again,” Dylan said.
“Gartnait needs a Healer,” Talorc said, taking a swig from his goblet. “We have two here in Caertarwos. Maybe I’ll send one back with you.”
“A Healer?” Dylan said. “Like the Gallar? Are they real? I’ve never seen one.”
“Haven’t you?” Talorc grinned. His brother, Drest, rolled his eyes as Talorc pulled a dagger from his belt. Dylan inhaled as Talorc drew the blade down his arm from wrist to elbow. Brei stared as the blood pooled and dribbled onto the red hairs on his arm. From the corner of his eye he saw Taran and Naoise looking concerned. It was as if none of them had ever seen blood before.
“Get Branwen,” Talorc said to a serving boy. “They just arrived, out of nowhere. The first one, Morrigan, was sent to us from the Druwydds at Rīgonīn, and a few months ago Branwen arrived. Warriors found her lying in a stone circle a short ride from here to the east. With no clothes. And they both have green eyes like you’ve never seen.”
Brei looked at Taran, but he seemed to avoid Brei’s eyes. The servant returned, followed by a young woman with light brown hair that fell long and wavy about her shoulders. She wore a black tunic with flowing sleeves that rustled against her skirt. She walked to Talorc and stood behind him, her eyes lingering on his wound.
“Branwen, meet my cousins, Taran, Brei, Naoise, and Dylan.”
She looked at them with her head angled down. Her eyes were the same startling green as Sorsha’s. Taran lowered his goblet to the table with a thud.
Branwen leant forwards and put one arm around Talorc’s shoulder. She positioned her other hand onto his wound. She looked up again, and Brei felt like he had plunged into a dark tunnel, and at the end, in the dark, she was waiting for him, her eyes glimmering green in the gloom. Branwen removed her hand from the wound and stepped behind Talorc again.
Brei could see that all the colour had drained from Taran’s face. Talorc smiled and wiped the blood off his arm in one deft motion to reveal a thin, healed scar.
No one said anything. Even Naoise was still.
“Thank you, Branwen,” Talorc said, taking her hand and kissing it. Her eyes were cold, but she smiled.
“I was thinking of sending Morrigan to Caercaled. How do you think she would like that?” Talorc asked, without releasing her hand.
Branwen’s smile disappeared. Unblinking, she bent forwards, so her face was in line with Talorc’s, and she whispered, “Only the Gods may command us.” She straightened and pulled her hand from his grasp, then retreated from the hall.
Talorc laughed and shook his head. “They would as soon as kill you as heal you. But great in a tight spot, they can’t help but heal us. The Eldar Druwydd says they are descendants of the Gallar from Tirscath.”
Naoise shook himself as though covered in cobwebs. “She reminds me of Sorsha. Is she a Healer, Taran?”
Taran cleared his throat. “Sorsha is no one’s concern but mine.”
“But in the stories of the Gallar they are sent to all people, all the Ancient People,” Dylan said.
Taran made a fist on the table, his knuckles turning white. “She is not your concern.”
Talorc chuckled. “You got yourself a Healer? Clever lad! You’ll be invincible!”
“They’re only bound in obligation,” Naoise smirked. “If you were truly clever, you’d have yourself bound in protection.”
Brei remembered how eager Taran had been to rescue her at Sorsha’s trial. Had he known what she was? When the Bandruwydds pulled down her tunic to inspect something on her chest, what did they see?
The following day the welcoming festivities began. Talorc had been eager to get to business and had delayed the usual welcoming celebration until the next morning. The day began bright, but a sea wind soon blew clouds over the sun.
The grassland at the centre of the lower rampart was transformed with wooden tables, so that
the villagers and farmers could join the celebrations too. Inside the upper rampart, the long table inside the hall was laden with meats and bread and wine. An enormous bonfire had been prepared on the land near where the workers and farmers had gathered and where they would later dance. At midday, the drummers and horn blowers arrived and set up around the fire.
Brei sat in the hall with Taran, sipping wine. The sound of drums, periodic horns, and cheering echoed into the dark, smokey hall. Naoise had left them as soon as he could, to follow Talorc and Drest’s sister, Eithne, who was helping them to open the dancing.
“Do you feel like dancing?” Brei asked Taran.
“Do you?”
“Almost never, but I’ll watch if you want to dance with the Princess of Cait, she would be quite a prize.”
“Indeed, but I care more about getting Caledon than I do for getting a throne for my sons.”
Brei smiled. “At least you’re honest in your self-interest.”
“Naoise doesn’t care about his children. He just knows that the closest he’ll get to being king is being bound to Eithne and fathering one,” Taran said and gulped the rest of the wine from his goblet.
“I think we should get out of this room, at least. Maybe we could just watch?”
“It is said that the Romans kill their kings when the ambition of the younger men boils over. There was a son who killed his father and he became their king,” Taran continued, with no sign he had heard Brei.
Brei grimaced. He must be drunk. “Let’s get some fresh air.”
“Do you think the Gods will favour us? I am eager to get down there, to break some Roman skulls.”
“Who knows? But as eager as I am for an answer from the Druwydds, I don’t think we’ll march out any time soon. Summer is the wrong time for an attack. It leaves our families and farms too exposed. We need the insurance of winter before we can strike. You know this,” Brei said.
Taran didn’t reply, instead barking at a servant to bring wine. The boy poured wine into Taran’s cup and reached for Brei’s goblet, but Brei raised his hand. “No, I’m fine.” The boy nodded and skulked back to his corner.