A Painted Winter

by H. Barnard

  “But you and Neesh can’t fight them on your own.” Dylan blanched again.

  Naoise grabbed a fistful of his brother’s hair. “Get the fuck over there now.”

  “Okay, okay!” Dylan squealed.

  They watched as the boy stood on the saddle and jumped over the wall.

  “Are you ready, Neesh?” Brei asked.

  “Let’s do this, Brei-Brei.”

  They rode along the southern edge of the fort at a walk. The noise of battle grew louder. The thunder of metal scraping on metal, and men wailing as their insides were pierced and emptied of blood. Wood exploded in flames and horses screamed.

  A mass of Roman soldiers, wearing golden helmets and chain armour tunics, thrust spears up the walls as warriors clambered over.

  Brei pulled his sword from his scabbard. “Aim for their necks and legs,” Brei yelled and squeezed his boots into Rhuad’s stomach, urging him up into a gallop. Naoise held his sword over his head and screamed, “Revenge or Tirscath!”

  The soldiers stumbled and turned to face them as Brei charged forwards and slashed down at the neck of the closest soldier. Blood sprayed up onto Brei’s leg as the soldier fell. Naoise swung manically, left and right, pushing his horse into the Roman spears and knocking them over.

  Along the top of the wall, warrior after warrior heaved himself up and dropped into the battle. The air was hot and thick with smoke and the smell of blood. A soldier launched a spear in the air, and Brei ducked to avoid it. He glanced over his shoulder and saw a warrior on the wall tumble forwards, the spear pierced through his stomach. Brei roared and spurred Rhuad towards the soldier and wrenched his sword through the Roman’s neck. The soldier spluttered, blood spewing from his mouth as Brei kicked him in the chest to dislodge his sword.

  Soon the ground was littered with Roman bodies and blood. The faces of the dead squelched into the bloodied mud beneath the warriors’ boots as they streamed into the fort.

  To the north Brei could see rows of Roman archers standing two hundred yards in front of them between burning buildings, firing on Taran and his men.

  “Kill the archers!” Brei screamed. “Embrace Tirscath and slaughter them all!”

  Brei spurred Rhuad on but kept him in line with the sprinting men. He raised his sword into the air above his head and screamed until his lungs felt like they would burst. The archers turned and fired on the mass of screaming warriors, but many fell before they had time to identify their assailant. Rhuad hurtled into an archer, knocking him to the ground, and Brei brought his sword down on the head of another soldier beneath him. The blow hit the helmet and knocked the soldier to his knees. Brei pushed Rhuad forwards as soldiers within the compacted shield wall struggled to turn. He slashed at another Roman, and a jet of red blood oozed from his neck. Brei grinned into the faces of men fighting for their lives. He gazed behind him through the myriad of warriors, the flames glistening in their sweaty faces. Naoise hacked at a Roman’s neck with a square cut axe until the head fell to the ground.

  The footmen swarmed into the battle, covering the Romans like locusts. Metal clashed against metal, and men groaned as they fell in a blur of anarchy. Brei’s shoulders soon ached as he slashed his way to the middle. The warriors crushing in on the Roman soldiers from the other side were close enough for Brei to recognise their faces. Where is Taran? Brei pushed Rhuad forwards and thrust his sword deep into the neck of a soldier who stood weeping with his arms raised. Brei glanced around as other Roman soldiers dropped their swords and shields.

  “No prisoners,” Brei yelled. “Kill them all!”

  The warriors surged past him and slaughtered the unarmed soldiers until they were reunited with the other half of the Caledon warriors at the end. Brei watched a body twitching on the ground below him, blood pouring from a deep gash in the soldier’s exposed neck. The man’s eyes stared up at him. Brei leaned forwards in the saddle and rested his arms on Rhuad’s neck while he watched the Roman die.

  “Brei!”

  Naoise swaggered towards him, blood smeared across his beaming face. He grasped Brei’s forearm and embraced him. Brei turned back to the dying soldier, savouring the man’s contorted face as he struggled to breathe.

  He scanned the crowd for Taran, but the fort was a sea of bodies, bounded by flames. He twisted in his seat to search behind him, his heart quickening as the minutes went by, and his stomach sank.

  Then he heard warriors cheering and saw them pointing to the ramparts on the northern side of the fort. Brei looked up. Taran was engaged with a Roman soldier in a sword fight on top of the wall. The soldier lunged forwards with his broad sword, aiming for Taran’s stomach. Taran stepped forwards and swung his long sword against the soldier’s with a reverberating clang. The warriors below, standing knee-deep among the bloodied bodies, watched Taran. Brei pressed through the men to get a closer view. That soldier is stronger than Taran. The sword slid free from Taran’s grip with a sickening scrape. Lunging again, the Roman stabbed his sword into Taran’s leather-covered chest. The warriors groaned and jeered.

  Brei leant forwards in the saddle, his heart racing.

  Taran hunched and stepped backwards. But he picked up his sword where it fell and screamed at the soldier, lurching left to the edge of the wall. The soldier stepped back, and Taran swung his sword into the soldier’s neck, slicing from ear to chin. The soldier fell to his knees and grasped at the gushing wound in his neck.

  Taran glared at the soldier and kicked the broad sword out of his hand. The warriors cheered. Taran stepped closer and ripped the helmet off the soldier’s head. He threw it off the wall, and it crashed with a dull clang to the ground. “Kill, kill, kill!” the warriors screamed.

  Taran grinned beneath a film of blood and raised his sword in the air. “I am Taran, Prince of Caledon, and this, brothers,” he paused, his chest heaving. “This is just the beginning!”

  Taran turned back to the kneeling soldier as the warriors roared his name. Clutching the hilt with both hands, he swung his sword behind his shoulder. Flames flashed in the iron blade as it arched through the air and cut the Roman soldier’s head clean from its body. The head spun in the air and thudded against the ground, rolling until it was caked thick with blood and dirt.

  Author’s Note

  In the author’s note to her début historical novel The Sunne in Splendour, the late Sharon Kay Penman said that “[w]hile imagination is the heart of any novel, historical fiction needs a strong factual foundation”. I am not a historian or archaeologist, but I have written a novel inspired by the work of historians and archaeologists.

  A Painted Winter draws on works in the study of Iron Age Scotland, the Picts, the Celts, the Romans, archaeology, mythology, and linguistics. However, this research could only take me so far, as the period suffers from a lack of contemporary historical records. Further, the records that survive are told from the Roman perspective, meaning the Pictish view is not reflected.

  “The Pictish Conspiracy” series is inspired by an event recorded by Roman historian Ammianus Marcellinus in the late fourth century of the Common Era (c.e.), which is referred to as the “barbarian conspiracy”. I will not relay that account here, as it is full of spoilers for this series. However, it is a fascinating and little-known event in British history.

  These events sit on the cusp of the so-called Dark Ages, and many details about the events and people of the time are unclear or unknown. However, as in any age, the people would have spanned the spectrum of humanity, with good people and bad people, sensitive people and brash people, introverts and extroverts and everything in between.

  Roman Britain

  This book is set in the late fourth century, when Roman power in Britannia was in decline, and this is reflected by the weakening presence at Hadrian’s Wall and the abandonment of some buildings in the cities. However, the Roman presence in the British islands dates back to the year 43 c.e., when Emperor Claudius led an army into Britannia with the purpose of conquest and occupation.
By 87 c.e. the Romans occupied southern Britannia. From the fortresses the Romans built, cities flourished, such as Londinium (London), Corinium Dobunnorum (Cirencester) and Eburucum (York). The Romans’ investment in public works still marks England today, with their stone city walls, amphitheatres, and baths.

  Between 79 c.e. and 84 c.e. the Roman general Agricola led an invasion into modern-day Scotland. However, the invasion was not a success. Emperor Hadrian realised the north could not be conquered and instead set about defending the Romanised south from the northern ‘barbarians’ by building a wall. In 122 c.e. the construction of Hadrian’s Wall commenced, leading to a mammoth structure across Britain that survives almost entirely nearly two thousand years later.

  Emperors Antonius and Septimus Severus ordered invasions beyond the wall in 142 c.e. and 209 c.e. to conquer northern Britannia, but they were also unsuccessful. The Romans managed to hold the south of modern-day Scotland for a time, but they incited the ire of the natives, who defended their territory ferociously and initiated revenge attacks. Therefore, Emperor Antonius commissioned the building of another wall – the Antonine Wall – in 142 c.e. between modern-day Edinburgh and Glasgow. This enabled a short period of Roman occupation in Scotland, but the Antonine Wall was quickly abandoned, and the Romans withdrew to Hadrian’s Wall.

  For those interested in a more comprehensive analysis of Roman Britain’s archaeology and history, there is a wide range of sources. I recommend Guy de la Bedoyere’s Roman Britain, Birgitta Hoffmann’s The Roman Invasion of Britain, and Adrian Goldsworthy’s Hadrian’s Wall.

  The Picts

  The people of ancient Scotland were, broadly speaking, Celtic and made up of many different Iron Age tribes or kingdoms. These diverse peoples were referred to collectively by the Romans as the Picti, meaning “the Painted People”. This name is traditionally thought to refer to the practice of tattooing or painting the body.

  Ammianus said that the Picts were made up of two main groups, the Dicalydones and the Verturiones. In earlier records, Roman Cassius Dio referred to the Picts as being made up of the Maitai and the Caledonii. As such, A Painted Winter reflects a number of different tribes operating across the area encompassing modern Scotland.

  For a general and accessible overview of the Picts, I recommend Tim Clarkson’s The Picts: A History or Julianna Grigg’s The Picts Re-Imagined. For a deeper dive, with a specific focus on the north-eastern Picts and up-to-date archaeological insights, I recommend Gordon Noble and Nicholas Evans’s The King in the North or James Fraser’s From Caledonia to Pictland.

  Language

  The Iron Age peoples of Scotland most likely spoke a dialect of Old Welsh. On occasion I use Celtic language, and my interpretations are based on a linguistic estimate of the appropriate proto-Celtic word, based on the commonalities of Celtic languages such as Gaelic, Welsh, and Gaulish. But the specific language that would have been used is, of course, unclear. For example, the word for the underworld that I use in my books is “Tirscath”, which incorporates the proto-Celtic estimate of Tir, for “land”, and scath, which can mean “shadow”.

  In England, modern place names are typically derived from Saxon or French origins, so I use the earlier Latin names for these locations. For example, Bath in Somerset was known as the spring of Sulis, which is translated to “Aquae Sulis” in Latin.

  In Scotland, place names are typically now based on Gaelic, and I have therefore adapted names to have stronger links to the Old Welsh language. For example, the Gaelic word dun, which means “castle” or “fort” in Gaelic, is replaced with the Old Welsh word caer. The Scottish town of Dunkeld, for example, means “fort of the Caledonians” in Gaelic, and I have changed it to Caercaled. “Caledonia” is a Latinised word, and “Caledones” or “Caledon” may be closer to the original.

  In Britannia, the people had been colonised for a few hundred years by the Romans and would have spoken Latin. However, there is evidence for the retention of the indigenous Brythonic language in places such as the former Dobunni tribes’ lands where Sorsha is from.

  The Saxons spoke an old dialect of German and would not have had a good understanding of the Celtic languages. Having said that, the Saxons had contact with the British people, and there is some suggestion that they were already colonising the eastern coastline even before the Romans withdrew from the island. Given the likely contact between the Saxons and the inhabitants of Britain, I have proposed that translators would exist and have used one for Prince Aelfric.

  Prince Fergus may have also required a translator. I did not include one as it was already cumbersome enough for Prince Aelfric. Due to geographic and language family proximity, and the royal inter-breeding, the Ulster characters are likely to have understood the Welsh dialect better than the Saxons, and I make a distinction on this basis.

  Names

  I have largely used linguistically appropriate names for the characters in my book. The majority of Pictish men have names taken from, or derived from, Pictish kingslist. Brei is a shortening of the common Pictish King name of Bridei. Likewise, Cailtram, Nechtan, Gartnait, Uradech, Alpin, Cailtram and Drest are all on the Pictish Kings list. Taran is also listed as a Pictish King, and is derived from the Celtic God Taranis, the God of Thunder. Eithne and Derelei are documented Pictish female names. Naoise is the son of the King of Ulster’s younger brother, and his name is therefore based on Irish mythology. For characters who are not ‘of the Blood’ I have largely used Welsh names, with a few who are intentionally named from Irish mythology rather than Welsh, such as Morrigan and Maeve.

  Sorsha is the key outlier. Lucia’s birth name is a Latin name, given she was born and raised in Roman-occupied Britannia. However, the name Sorsha has no historical basis whatsoever, reflecting Sorsha’s self-perception of being an outsider in all the communities of Britannia.

  Women

  There is limited evidence about the role of women in Iron Age Scotland. The Pictish symbol stones tend to depict abstract objects and when they clearly depict humans, it is usually men.

  However, I have utilised one interesting historical quirk in relation to the Picts, the concept of matrilineal succession. In the Pictish King list, the line of succession does not pass from father to son, but rather seems to pass based on a man’s relationship to royal women. Under matrilineal succession, brothers can be kings if their sister and mother are of the royal line, but sons of kings cannot become kings. Whether matrilineal succession occurred is the subject of debate. As Tim Clarkson argues, the Pictish king list indicates that patrilineal did not occur and conforms with what would be expected for a matrilineal society. Clarkson further argues that matrilineal succession remains the simplest interpretation, and I find these arguments persuasive. Personally, I cannot think of a better way in ancient times of ascertaining with 100% accuracy the royal blood of a child than that it is related to its mother.

  There is no evidence of anything close to the modern-day concept of marriage. Roman sources describe the Iron Age Scottish people as being polygamous. I am not convinced by this, as it seems more like propaganda to justify treating them as “barbarians”. In A Painted Winter, the concept of “binding in protection and provision” is the closest thing to a modern-day marriage (and is inspired by the medieval Scottish practice of “handfasting”), but it is entirely fictional. Likewise, the concept of “binding in obligation” is fictional and is a very basic form of contract.

  There is some evidence from Roman records and Irish myths of female Celtic priestesses or Druids. I have used this to form my Bandruwydds (bann is the Celtic word for “woman”, and Druwydd is the Old Welsh word for “Druid”). Finally, without giving away spoilers, Sorsha is based on aspects of female representation in the Welsh and Irish myths, as well as the Gaulish Celtic Goddesses.

  Sites

  As you can see from the list of sites provided at the end of the book, the places visited in A Painted Winter are real archaeological sites. I have sought to describe sites in a manner
that is faithful to the growing and exciting body of archaeological work in relation to the Picts.

  On many occasions I have utilised poetic licence to bring sites to life, such as for Caercaled. There is a tiered fort in Dunkeld as described, and it faces west toward the River Tay. However, it is unclear if there was a tower (broch) on top, but I have placed a large one there based on the Moussa Broch from Shetland. I have also estimated the population size based on the recent excavations on Tap o’ Noth in Moray, which suggest a Pictish population of up to 4,000 people living on that hill fort, but there is no evidence that the site in Dunkeld was that large. There is evidence of metalworking on the site, however, so we do know that it was an important place. A much more realistic interpretation of the site has been produced by the Perth & Kinross Heritage Trust’s Kings Seat Hillfort archaeology project.

  My description of Rīgonīn (Rhynie) is hopefully quite accurate, as there had been some amazing work by the University of Aberdeen’s Northern Picts Project on this site, including a 3D model.

  Our understanding of the Picts is constantly changing as new sites are excavated. After attending a 2020 lecture by Professor Gordon Noble about the site of Caertarwos (Burghead), it is evident that my description is a tad too advanced for the reality. Initial carbon dating suggested that the site was active in the fourth century and earlier, but more recent work suggests that it was active from the seventh century. However, work on the site continues, and more findings may show that the site was fortified in the fourth century or earlier. Certainly, neighbouring sites like Tap o’ Noth and Rhynie were active during the fourth century so I think it is not a stretch to assume that Burghead, on the strategic promontory, would have also been in use.