Daughters of Fire

by Barbara Erskine

  Riach leaped from his chariot and came to the side of the wagon. With a bow he reached up to help Carta down. ‘You will be anxious to rest and change your clothes,’ he said, solemnly looking down at her. ‘Later my father will greet you and we will all eat together this evening. A huge feast is being prepared to welcome the lady of the Brigantes and her brother.’ He grinned at Bran, who had reined in his pony beside them and beckoned him closer. Bran and his companions would lodge in the house of the warriors, where the unmarried aristocratic young men of the tribe and leaders of visiting war bands slept.

  The guest house was larger than her father’s feasting hall. She stared round in awe. The hearth was piled high with logs and crackled merrily and the interior of the building was lit with dozens of lamps. The central area was well provided with benches and sumptuous cushions and behind them the small sleeping chambers around the walls were furnished with bed boxes piled high with heather mattresses, woollen blankets and soft silky furs. Carta continued to stare open-mouthed as slaves carried in her belongings before moving the wagon-load of gifts sent by her father further up the hill to the king’s house.

  ‘Look, Carta.’ Mellia was standing in front of the table in the largest of the small chambers, much more cheerful now the long journey was over. ‘This must be where you are to sleep. Look at the things they have put here for you.’ Her voice was full of awe. There was a delicately worked bronze wash basin, exquisitely carved bone combs, a bronze mirror inlaid with coloured enamels. Already slaves were bringing jugs of hot water for her from the cauldron hanging over the central fire.

  Carta was impressed and for once struck dumb. Meekly she allowed Pacata and Éabha to strip off her mud-caked clothes and wash her body with the sweet-scented soapwort solution they found waiting in a jug beside the basin. Then they dressed her in a clean linen gown and a plaid woollen mantle quickly dug from one of the packs and threaded pretty glass beads through her hair. They slipped on her best soft leather shoes and stood back to admire their handiwork. She looked almost respectable.

  Lugaid, King of the Votadini, was a short, thick-set man of nearly forty summers, his long dark hair, bleached and stiffened with lye, caught back behind his head and tied with a leather thong. His face was scarred from a long-ago battle encounter which had made his eyebrow twist into a permanent quizzical loop and it said much for his strength and regal manner that this had not disqualified him from sacred kingship. He was terrifying. From his four wives he had fifteen children. Riach was the youngest of four sons by his senior and favourite wife, Brigit.

  Brigit greeted Carta with a hug. ‘So, my new foster daughter, you are welcome here.’ Her arms clanked with silver bangles that caught the firelight in the great feasting hall.

  Glancing up shyly, Carta noticed that the hall boasted a huge gallery, screened with wattle and hung with woven curtains. Brigit followed the girl’s glance.

  ‘That is the women’s chamber. We will withdraw there after the feast, but meanwhile you will sit with me and Riach.’ Taking her hand, Brigit drew Carta close beside her and led her to a bench, where she sat down amongst the warriors and the nobles and their wives and the dozens of strangers who all seemed to be casting covert glances in their direction.

  From the shadows a harper began to play as the doors were flung wide and a succession of huge trays of food were carried in.

  She had not expected she would have lessons. King Lugaid insisted that his children, foster children and those of his warriors who wished it, learn to speak and write the language of Rome.

  ‘Why?’ Her hands on her hips, her eyes flashing, her small feet planted firmly apart, Cartimandua of the Brigantes faced the king of the Votadini in fury. She was no longer afraid of him.

  He hid a smile. He had a soft spot for the little wild cat he had imported for his favourite son.

  ‘Because it is sensible.’ He folded his arms, settling back onto his cushioned bench. She was the only one of all of them to question his decision. ‘Our trading links with the Empire are good. It is a language which is beginning to be spoken all over the trading world. Your great-grandfather visited Rome, did he not? Did he not leave stories of its marvels to his bards so that all might hear about them?’

  Besides, his Druids had advised him that it was expedient. Rome was restless. Its conquests and trade routes spread ever towards the setting sun. One day the eagle of Rome would fly once more across the seas, plump with greed and aggression, and then those that understood the invader and spoke their language would be at an advantage.

  She was bright. She learned to read and to carve her letters on the wax tablets, smooth them over and write again. She learned to write with liquid soot on fine leaves of wood, drawing and forming her letters and exchanging notes with the other students with ease both in her native Celtic language and in the lingua Latina. And she learned to count and calculate. The Druid teachers at the college on the eastern side of the great hill were pleased with her. From the bards she learned ever more stories and songs - she already had a fund of these from her father’s fireside, and she learned to play the harp. She would never play well, she was too impatient, but she had a good singing voice and would sing to her companions as the women sat sewing in their gallery or out in the sun sheltered from the wind by the great stone walls. She still did not sew. She preferred to work with the horses.

  Her intelligent questions and gentle hands were welcomed in the stables. She was quick to learn which herbs to add to a horse’s feed to calm it down or increase its strength. She could soothe the most fretful stallion with her small hands and pull sharp stones from a huge and shaggy hoof without need for twitch or whip.

  Viv stirred. Unconsciously she stretched her cramped fingers, but the story was racing on. Picking up her pen again she wrote on, the pages filling quickly under her uneven, untidy scribbled notes. When her doorbell rang once, echoing through her silent flat, she did not hear it.

  Cartimandua was universally liked. One pair of eyes alone watched her balefully from the shadows and as she grew, so the resentment behind those eyes deepened. Their owner was careful, hiding her dislike and jealousy, but as the Brigantian girl blossomed into a beautiful young woman so dislike deepened into hatred.

  It started with small things. Carta’s favourite pottery bowl was found broken. Then a string of freshwater pearls disappeared. Her best shoes were found thrown into a latrine pit behind the house and the smooth surface of her precious mirror was viciously scratched. Sadly she surveyed the faces of the women around her, wondering, but as yet not angry enough to go to the king.

  ‘Take care, Carta.’ Mellia had brought her own small mirror as a replacement. ‘Someone is jealous of you.’

  ‘Who?’ Carta sat down on the stool near her lamp stand. The fluttering wick needed tending and automatically Mellia moved across to see to it, the light reflecting on the girl’s pale hair.

  Mellia shrugged. ‘None of the women in this house. They all love you.’ She was speaking softly, while glancing quickly over her shoulder towards the screened doorway into the central chamber where Pacata was singing to the others. The slave girl had a pure gentle voice and was often excused her other duties so she could sing them the sad beautiful songs of her native Erin.

  ‘I haven’t done anything to make people jealous of me.’ Carta was genuinely bewildered.

  Mellia sat down beside her and fondled Catia’s head as the dog lay next to her young mistress. The two pups had gone. One, Carta had shyly presented to Riach, the other had returned to Dun Righ with her brother, Bran, a link between them as they made their tearful farewells.

  In her loneliness after his departure she had turned more and more to Mellia as a friend and confidante and the two girls had grown close in their time at Dun Pelder, often whispering their hopes and dreams to one another. ‘You’re too pretty!’ Mellia smiled. ‘And you’re going to marry Prince Riach, everyone knows that. That would make most women jealous.’

  ‘I don’t know I’
m going to marry him!’ Carta protested, colouring slightly. ‘No one has ever said anything. Not officially.’ The thought made her feel tingly and embarrassed, scared and excited, all at the same time. ‘If I did, you wouldn’t be jealous?’

  ‘No. I’d be happy for you. If it was what you wanted.’

  ‘Because you’re in love with someone else!’ Carta raised an eyebrow. ‘Don’t tell me you haven’t been flirting with Conaire.’

  Conaire had accompanied them from her father’s hall as a young and inexperienced musician and had been studying hard at the bardic school which nestled on the northern flank of Dun Pelder, between the stonemasons and the goldsmith’s workshop, and he had done well. He was nearly halfway through his seven years’ course and had already learned a vast stock of songs and poems as well as being an acknowledged master in composing his own.

  Mellia blushed scarlet. ‘That’s not true!’

  ‘It is!’ Carta teased. ‘And why not. He’s going to be a great bard one day. He will need a very special wife.’

  Mellia looked down at her feet. ‘He wouldn’t look at me.’

  Carta stared at her. ‘Why not?’

  ‘I’m not good enough.’

  For once Carta was speechless. She stared for several moments at Mellia then she shook her head. ‘How can you be so silly! You are beautiful. Far more beautiful than me.’ She was surveying the other girl critically. ‘Your hair is gorgeous. Much nicer than mine. Your eyes are prettier. You can sew and stuff like that.’ Carta was being scrupulously honest. As Catia sat up and rested her head trustingly on Carta’s knee, she leaned forward and hugged the dog and kissed her forehead. ‘Next to Catia you’re my best friend, Mellia. I couldn’t have lived here without you. And I want you to marry someone really special. If Conaire becomes my head bard he will travel everywhere with me, and that means you can too. We’ll be together forever. I’d like that.’

  Behind them a shadow crossed the doorway and vanished. As Pacata’s pure voice soared to the roof, whoever had been standing there tiptoed across the central chamber behind the silent women spinning and sewing beside the fire and disappeared out into the night.

  Two days later Carta found her beloved dog, Catia, lying dead in the passage between the feasting hall and the kitchens, a dirty froth of vomit around her mouth, the remains of a meat sauce in a bowl nearby.

  She knelt there on the cold stones beside the dog, her hand on the cold matted fur, tears pouring down her face. For a long time she would not let anyone touch Catia. Her despair and her misery were too raw. Even Mellia could not come near her. When at last she stood up, it was to go straight to Lugaid, interrupting his consultation with his Druid advisers.

  ‘You have to do something!’ Her eyes were bright with tears still but somehow she held her anguish back, concentrating only on her anger. ‘Someone is trying to chase me away. A woman. It is a woman’s trick to resort to poison.’ She looked from one solemn face to another. Did these men understand? Did they even care?

  Truthac, one of the oldest and most senior Druids in the community held up his hand to forestall her passionate accusations. ‘I don’t think we would disagree with you, Cartimandua. However, what is needed is subtlety and study to find out who is doing this to you.’

  ‘And why,’ his colleague Vivios put in. ‘Have you angered some-one, child?’

  They were taking her seriously. She was not going to have to convince them of her accusations.

  ‘I am not aware of angering anyone. The people here are my friends.’ She was speaking to the king, her eyes clear of tears now and focussed on his.

  She had her suspicions. She had had them for a while now, but without proof, as the Druid said, there was little she could do.

  Truthac was watching her shrewdly and she found herself looking away quickly. He can read my thoughts, she realised. He knows I suspect someone.

  As if answering her unspoken statement, he gave her a grave smile. ‘Suspicions are not enough, child. There must be proof. Have you consulted the gods?’

  She bit her lip. The gods were a part of her life, of course they were, as they were a part of everybody’s, but in this matter she preferred to rely on her native wit.

  He was watching her again. As was the king, who leaned back on his bench with his arms folded. ‘Go and make offerings, child, and search for omens to see what they say to you,’ the king put in. ‘And ask someone to help you to the temple with the dog’s body. She was your friend and companion. It is right to offer her to the gods so she may live again, is that not true, Truthac?’

  The Druid nodded. ‘Go, child. Be steadfast in your prayers and your actions and remember,’ he held up his hand as she turned away. ‘Tears are the offerings we give to our departed friends and loved ones, and rightly so. Never be ashamed to cry. But tears dry and disappear. Justice is what will serve best here. Be canny.’ He tapped his nose with a gnarled finger.

  Dun Pelder was a sacred hill. Upon it there were temples and offering pits and a healing centre as well as an open space, surrounded by a high hedge of yew, where the gods came to the sacred lochan beneath an ancient oak tree.

  She wrapped Catia’s body herself in a softly woven sheet and sprinkled it with flowers. Then a servant lifted it for her and carried it to the place of offerings where it was lowered down the deep shaft to the otherworld of Annwn from where the animal would find her way into the land of everlasting summer. After the body went her leash and collar, her food bowl and her mistress’s best comb. Then Carta went to the shrine of the goddess.

  At home she had prayed at the sacred spring near the waterfalls. It was her nemeton, her special shrine, deep in the woods on the edge of the fells and very near the gods. It felt strange, here, amongst so many people, to seek for the other world, but there was a complex of temples sacred to the gods of the Votadini and she found her way to the shrine to Brigantia, the goddess of her own people and their land, known to her hosts and her new family as Brigit, after whom the king’s wife was named.

  Slipping into the darkness, she sat quietly watching a Druidess sprinkling herbs as she tended the sacred flame. The smoke from the vervain and juniper made her cough and she saw the Druidess glance at her, frowning. She sat there for a long time, without a sound, then at last, standing up, she crept into one of the two tiny sleeping chambers off the main temple. It was here that people came to pray, to ask for healing, and to seek solutions to their problems. Lying down on the couch, she closed her eyes and tried to empty her mind as she had been taught by the Druids. ‘Sweet goddess hear me. Help me.’

  Eventually she slept. The answer of the goddess would come in her dreams.

  III

  Viv sat up with a start. She could still smell the smoky incense in her nostrils, still hear the intense miserable young voice in her ears.

  It was nearly dark in the room and she was extremely cold. She focussed on the table in front of her, confused, and then slowly she reached for the switch of the table lamp and throwing down her pen, stared at the notebook. Switching off the Dictaphone she wound it back a little way and pressed the play button. Silence. Then she made out a slight scratching sound. The sound of her writing. ‘Damn.’ She had so hoped she would speak out loud. Had tried to tell herself to speak out loud, to describe what was happening in her dream.

  Or trance.

  Or imagination, at last given free rein.

  Or whatever it was.

  It hadn’t worked. She wound back the tape a whole lot further. Still silence. Just the endless automatic scribbling. With a groan she turned back in her notebook to the beginning and pulling the lamp closer, she tried to read what she had said.

  Frustratingly she found there were long passages where she appeared to have been writing so fast the words had turned into long undecipherable lines and were lost forever, but in others, for instance as Carta lay silently waiting for the goddess to speak to her, the script was clear and unambiguous:

  Carta beware.

  Who h
ad said that?

  She wants to kill you. She does not want you to marry. She does not want you to bear children. She does not want her own seed usurped.

  And who was she?

  Medb of the White Hands, the king’s youngest wife.

  ‘Oh God!’ Viv bit her lip, totally engrossed. ‘Does she know? Did I warn her?’

  It didn’t matter of course. Nothing she did or said mattered. She couldn’t change the course of history.

  Could she?

  5

  I

  Pat turned over in bed with a groan and glanced at the small alarm clock near the lamp on the table beside her. It was ten past three and she was still reading. With a sigh she laid down the book and sat up. She couldn’t stop now. Padding down the stairs in her royal-blue pyjamas, she made her way through the silent flat to the kitchen. Turning on the light she reached for a glass and went across to the sink for some water.

  She frowned. There was no mention of Medb in the book. None at all. She took a sip from her glass.

  Medb.

  Where had that name come from?

  It had swum up from her subconscious while she was reading. Or had she dozed off without realising it and dreamed it?

  ‘Pat? Are you OK?’ Cathy appeared in the doorway behind her. She was wearing a dark red nightshirt.

  ‘Yes, sorry. Did I wake you?’ Pat leaned against the worktop, sipping from the glass. ‘I was reading Viv’s book. I didn’t realise it was so late.’

  ‘Is it any good?’ Cathy went over to the kettle. ‘I haven’t started it yet. No, I was awake anyway, worrying about Tasha.’

  Pat glanced at Cathy across her glass. ‘Is she a problem? I thought you liked her.’

  ‘I do. It’s her mother I’m not so keen on. It’s such an issue each time she comes over. Pete’s got a meeting next time she brings Tasha so I’ve got to entertain the woman.’