The Soul of Time

by Jennifer Macaire

  ‘I’ll name him Perilous,’ said Paul, hugging him tightly. The puppy gave a happy yap and licked his face then snuggled under his chin. ‘I’ll make sure he’s well trained. I’ll take good care of him.’ His eyes were bright with joy, and he kissed his new dog.

  Alexander’s expression softened. ‘I know you will. You have a way with dogs. You’ll love it in Egypt, they have at least twenty different breeds of hound dog, and they come in all shapes, sizes, and colours.’

  Paul grinned. ‘And in Gaul they have huge mastiffs to hunt the wild boars. Wouldn’t you like one of those?’

  Alexander had shaken his head. ‘I’ll leave you the dogs. I have enough trouble with a wife and children to have any pets.’

  ‘Ha, ha, ha. So says the man who had twenty-five elephants,’ I’d said, and kissed him soundly.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  I managed to fall asleep. On the morning of the fourth day I felt better. I was getting my sea legs, or my sea stomach, whatever. I dressed warmly and went up on deck. Paul was sitting next to the mast where he kept his puppy tied so he didn’t fall off the boat. The puppy was a fuzzy creature. He looked vaguely like a husky, perhaps bigger and more wolf-like, with a tail that curled over his back in a tight coil. He saw me and yapped. A guard dog then, good.

  I sat next to my son and tousled his hair. ‘How are you?’ I asked.

  ‘I should ask you that,’ he said. ‘But I don’t have to. You look back to normal. Your skin isn’t green any more.’

  ‘I feel fine. I’m hungry,’ I said, surprising myself. ‘I think I’ll go see Erati and beg for a piece of bread.’

  ‘Phaleria and Demos are getting married,’ Paul said smugly.

  ‘Oh?’ I raised my eyebrows. ‘And how do you know that?’

  ‘She told me. We’re going to stop in the place you called Britain and they’re going to get a druid to marry them.’

  ‘A druid?’ I made a face. ‘I don’t think I want to see another druid as long as I live.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ said Paul. ‘You killed the most dangerous one; the others won’t dare touch me when you’re around.’

  I peered closely at him, trying to see if he was being funny or not.

  Phaleria wandered over. When we were at sea she was all business, completely in charge of her ship. Now her face had softened, and I was sure I knew why.

  ‘Up and around? Feeling better, are you?’ she asked. Her hair was tightly braided and coiled on top of her head, she wore a short skirt of wool and a linen tunic, over which was a brightly coloured woollen vest. The colourful clothes and houses people lived in had surprised me. When I was living in my own time, I was used to seeing buildings made of steel and concrete, of course. A decree, voted in the Year 85 after the Great Division, stipulated that all houses had to conform with their environment and be ninety-eight per cent non-polluting, which meant solar energy panels and thermal electrical installations. Our houses were all painted subdued colours to blend with the landscape. Not here. People loved colour. Whatever could be painted was painted bright red, yellow, blue, or green, and clothes were no different. The Celts loved patterns and colours, the hems of their sleeves and tunics often had intricately woven borders, and their clothes were rainbow bright. They layered their clothes, wearing vests, leggings, and tunics, and the more colours and stripes the merrier.

  Whenever I’d seen a fiction-3D video depicting a tribe in the Iron Age – such as the Celts, or the Vikings -the people had been portrayed as living in plain wooden houses, wearing simple cotton or wool clothes, and looking drab in their monochrome world. The reality was different.

  Phaleria was lovely in her butter-yellow tunic with blue and green concentric circles woven into the hem. Her vest was blue with green trim, and her hair had yellow ribbons braided into it. She sat next to me, smoothing the skirt over her knees. She didn’t blink when Plexis sat down with us and kissed me. In a time when men often had several wives, I suppose it wasn’t unusual for a woman to have two husbands. Human relations were still mutable. Women were freer in Gaul than in Greece. Besides, I was happy. Alexander and Plexis were happy. What else mattered?

  ‘I hear you’re going to marry Demos,’ I said, snuggling into Plexis’s arms.

  ‘We’re going to the village where my father was born. I want to marry under the sacred oak.’

  ‘I think that sounds very romantic,’ I said.

  She shrugged. In those days romance was not an important part of a marriage. That would happen in the Middle Ages, with the advent of chivalry. People were more practical in this century. Traditions were important, pleasing the gods was vital, and the rest was left up to fate. Que sera, sera. Ut fata trahunt.

  ‘We’ll arrive in six days on the great island where my family has lived for four generations. They’re part of the Iceni tribe.’

  ‘That’s great!’ I was dying to go to the British Isles and see for myself the Iceni, the best known tribe of Celts in that time. They had organized a revolt against the Romans, and although it failed, it was interesting for several reasons. One was the fact that the leader of the revolt had been a woman, Boadicea. She was the wife of the tribe’s king, and she had committed suicide rather than endure Roman domination. That would take place in AD 61, in three centuries. Until then, the Celts were the masters of what would become England. I was also looking forward to buying some belt buckles as gifts for everyone in Alexandria. The Celts were marvellous metalworkers.

  I eyed Phaleria with new interest. She was a member of the Iceni. Who could tell, perhaps it would be one of her direct descendants who would lead the rebellion.

  By the time we arrived in Britain, Alexander was feeling better. It must be said that the sea was calm and we hardly felt the swells. A brisk wind filled our sails and we made good time, arriving in the evening of the sixth day.

  My first glimpse was a disappointment. The beach where we docked was practically uninhabited. There were a few low, thatched huts and a sales counter where a man was doing his best to sell a basket of fish. However, the actual village was an hour’s walk inland. We followed a well-worn path through a dense forest, arriving in a valley where fields and pastures surrounded a fortified village. In the pasture grazed sheep – they had black and white spots and, to Alexander’s amazement, four curly horns sprouted from their heads. Small black pigs lived in pens under oak trees and shaggy red cattle raised their heads as we approached, setting the bells around their necks ringing. Dogs ran out and barked at us, and the children who tended the flocks of geese cried out in shrill voices.

  The village was large, surrounded by a tall wooden fence girded with iron, and the gate was a massive affair that was raised and lowered like a drawbridge. The houses were mostly wooden and shaped like enormous tepees. They were covered with thatch and had no windows in the wintertime. In the summer, several windows were cut out of the thatch and covered with stiff parchment to let in some light. One entered the hut through a door leading directly into a small shed-like hallway where boots, weapons, and cloaks were stored. Inside the huts a fire burned in the centre of the floor, and a caldron hung from a very long metal chain above it. A hole in the roof let out the smoke. Beds were stored on shelves during the day and pulled out at night. A second storey covered half of the hut, with a ladder leading upstairs. Smoked hams and cooking utensils hung from the rafters. Wicker baskets held the family’s belongings, and a loom occupied an important place under one of the windows. Near the doorway was a domed clay oven used for cooking the family’s bread. The houses were less comfortable, I thought, than the wooden houses in Scandinavia, but they were nice enough, and the people spent more time out of doors here than in the foggy, cold villages on the North Sea.

  The hamlet was small but prosperous, and the people were all well fed and healthy. I’d rarely seen such robust children, and I admired the chubby toddler holding onto Phaleria’s cousin’s skirt.

  Her father’s family had stayed in the village, while he had left to beco
me a seafaring trader. Phaleria stopped by twice a year to see everyone, to trade, and to deliver mail.

  She introduced us, starting with Demos, her future husband. She didn’t say anything about Alexander being Alexander the Great, even though the villagers, eager for gossip, asked her if she’d heard anything about what was happening in Greece and Persia. Everyone had heard of Iskander, the great ruler, and Alexander was hard put to stay silent when some of the people started arguing about his accomplishments.

  We stayed in a common room, sort of an inn, set aside for travellers. The Celts weren’t like the Romans or the Greeks who lived for commerce. The Celts of Britain liked to trade, but they were more interested in their own internal affairs than with the rest of the world. They were insular and independent, not bothering about government or rulers except within their own tribes or villages. And they didn’t form a coherent nation, keeping their tribes separate. The leader of each tribe was called a king, but he didn’t have as much power as the kings in Egypt or Persia. The tribes didn’t pay taxes to anyone, and they minded their own business. To settle disputes concerning land, livestock, or stolen women, they fought between themselves.

  One of their favourite pastimes was raiding, don’t ask me why. Men just seem incapable of living a tranquil life. They have to stir things up. To keep everyone on their toes, the Celt tribes of Britain would raid each other regularly, stealing sheep, cattle, pigs, or women. Most stolen women ended up marrying their captors, and wars were not usually declared for that reason, more often it was an excuse to have a wedding feast and invite everyone to a fête. If the woman in question was married, that was another problem, a good fight was often the result, and good fights were incredibly bloody.

  Cattle were an excellent excuse for a fight, and sheep also, if enough of them disappeared. Pigs were hardly missed, and they were usually smart enough to escape and find their way home anyway. The woods were full of wild and half-wild pigs; they were raided just for practice, often by the children.

  Besides raiding, there were the druids who insisted on sacrifices every winter solstice. Then everyone made the journey to Stonehenge, where the druids killed a few virgins, shooting them with arrows made of mistletoe. From what I gathered, this was the winter entertainment. In the summer people went to Stonehenge again. They danced, got drunk, smoked, and generally had a good time in front of huge bonfires. There they killed a few sacrificial victims, usually criminals or people who made trouble for the community. I suppose it was an effective way to encourage good behaviour.

  We had learned this from Phaleria as she showed us around. She was a good storyteller, like most people of that time. Our coming to the village was like a new movie coming to the cinema nearest you, after six months of playing the same holo-film. We were expected to provide the entertainment. It was a fair expectation. In a world without instant communication it was important that everyone be proficient in storytelling and entertainment, otherwise boredom set in, winters dragged on and on, and raiding degenerated into a bloody civil war.

  We were happy to comply, especially Plexis and Alexander who were both excellent storytellers. Nearchus was shy for a man of his time, and standoffish. However, he was an excellent writer. He wrote about his travels, and as far as I could remember they were still being read three thousand years after he first published them. Not bad for a guy who had trouble playing charades.

  My stories were appreciated for their content; I could remember books I’d read nearly verbatim, but I was not an entertaining storyteller. Yovanix had some good tales, he could make people laugh or cry. Demos, I think, was the best. He could tell stories in a way that made you believe you were there with him.

  The first evening we ate dinner in the inn, then everyone gathered in the sacred grove and we told stories all night. We sat on a grassy knoll in the form of a natural amphitheatre, with the storyteller at the bottom facing us, his words carrying easily up the slope to our ears. Tall ash trees leaned overhead. I leaned back against Alexander’s chest and gazed at the stars just visible through the canopy of leaves.

  Paul was sitting next to me holding his puppy in his lap. Plexis sat behind him leaning back on his elbows, his arm fully healed now, his face back to its old puckish expression, his amber eyes dreamy. Yovanix was sitting next to Paul. They had become inseparable. Paul was his guide, leading him everywhere, describing everything with a rare precision. Paul’s patience astounded me until I realized that he was truly happy. He had always had an unworldly sweetness about him, and helping others was his vocation in life. With my help, he had decided to train Perilous to be a guide dog for Yovanix. The idea had struck Paul like a revelation, and now he pestered me for hours, begging me to tell him more stories about the dogs that led the blind.

  In my time, seeing eye dogs were obsolete; the electronic eye, an implant that enables blind people to ‘see’, had replaced them. However, I had read about such dogs in my history classes. I had no idea how to go about training such a dog, but I thought if anyone could figure it out, it would be Plexis. He could train any horse, no matter how wild, in a matter of days. When Paul and I had approached him about training Perilous to be a seeing eye dog, he was at first dubious, then enthusiastic. Now half the time his eyes were resting on the puppy, a calculating expression in them.

  ‘The Thief of Souls is dead,’ began Demos, and I stiffened in Alexander’s arms.

  ‘Shh,’ he said. ‘Don’t worry, it’s just a story now. You’re safe here with me.’ His voice was a soothing whisper in my ear, and I settled back against his broad chest. My heart was thumping though, and I’m sure my expression was as rapt as those of the children sitting cross-legged in the front row.

  Demos told how the Queen of Ice and Darkness rose from her home in the underworld and struck down the Thief of Souls as he prepared to sacrifice a child to the blind gods of the Eaters of the Dead. I shuddered in the beginning, but Demos was such a consummate storyteller that I lost myself in his tale. It was a story that happened to someone else, in some other time. The night grew deeper, and still Demos spoke. He told about his journey to the island of ice and fire, where volcanoes spewed white-hot lava into the black sea and at night, the sky was lit by a red glow.

  I fell asleep to the sound of his voice, secure in the arms of my husband, with the soft breeze of a late summer night caressing my cheek.

  We stayed for one week. Long enough for the resident druid to make the proper sacrifices so Phaleria could marry Demos, and for me to buy plenty of beautiful fibulas and belt buckles for everyone back home.

  Fibulas were what people used to keep their cloaks fastened, in case you never saw one. I hadn’t seen one before I’d time-travelled; usually I had a magneto-charm on my clothing. Fibulas came in two parts; you sewed one half on one side of the cloak and the other half on the other side. The fibula fit together like the hinge on a door, and you slid a pin down the middle fastening it shut. A chain held the pin, and the fibula could be very simple or extremely ornate. The ones I found in Britain were made of bronze with intricate patterns enamelled in glowing, jewel-like colours.

  I saved money to buy pewter from the Iberians and mosaics from Carthage, both of which were on the itinerary on our way back.

  We were nearly out of cash. Luckily, Phaleria had offered to sail us back to Alexandria for free; we would have been unable to pay our way on a commercial ship.

  Axiom paid the two remaining Roman soldiers generously for their efforts, and he paid the innkeeper at Orce. He paid some of the village men who’d fought, and Alexander insisted on giving money to the widows and orphans Voltarrix had made. Axiom also paid the Phoenician trader who’d taken Plexis aboard his ship. Axiom peered into his money belt and sighed.

  ‘Do you think we should take the green one for Chirpa?’ I asked, pointing to a particularly lovely enamelled belt buckle.

  ‘I think it’s beautiful,’ said Axiom cautiously. ‘But it’s very expensive. The red one would go better with her hair, and it’
s half the price of the other.’

  I examined the buckle he was pointing at and nodded. ‘You’re right. We’ll take the red one for Chirpa and the green one for Usse. Look at the yellow one; it’s just the thing for Brazza!’

  Axiom sighed again and paid the merchant. ‘I wish you’d bargain more,’ he said.

  ‘You know very well I’m hopeless at bargaining. That’s why I brought you shopping with me,’ I said, watching as the merchant gift-wrapped my packages in soft leather. ‘Thank you,’ I said, tucking them in my purse. ‘Now where? See, over there is a stand with woollen cloaks. Don’t they look lovely? Shall we go inspect them? I think I’ll get one for Paul, he’s growing so fast.’

  ‘Fine, but let me do the talking.’ Axiom said, taking me by the elbow and steering me through the market day crowd.

  People for miles around had come to the market. Sheep baa’d, cows mooed, pigs squealed, shrieking children ran around everywhere. A newscaster stood on a large stump and called out the news in a loud voice. Merchants hawked their wares, men and women bargained for goods, acquaintances met and exclaimed. Dogs barked and geese honked, and Axiom bargained for a cloak at the top of his lungs, getting a fine, warm one for Paul – at a greatly reduced price !. I bought one for Yovanix. He needed a warm cape, and these were woven with soft wool and sported intricate black and white patterns.

  Axiom counted the coins again. I took the cloaks and put them in the basket I held hooked over my arm, my missing hand hidden by a long sleeve. The clothes the Celts wore were voluminous and comfortable. I liked the way they layered their outfits, and everyone wore beautiful belts and lots of jewellery. The Celts loved jewellery. They made it from silver, bronze, and gold, adding amber, precious and semi-precious stones, pearls, and enamel. Men and women wore necklaces, bracelets, rings, and earrings. The Gauls wore torques around their necks, and all the tribes made richly decorated armour. I saw Alexander staring longingly at a helmet made of iron and gold with coral and enamel inlays.