‘The Fairy Hills, or Druim’s village. It is all the same.’
‘It is a bad place!’ she cried. ‘They are all bad places, the Fairy Hills!’
‘Not to me and mine,’ I said. ‘Listen, Guenhumara, I have been inside this place. It is only a living place, as your father’s hall. I have drunk heather beer in there, and no harm came to me. Druim Dhu and his kin are our friends.’
She made no more protest, but I do not think the fear left her; it was only swallowed up in the urgent needs of her body.
Thank God, the village was on the near side of the water; I rode down toward it, Pharic and Conn just behind me. A small dark man dragging a sheep hurdle staggered past us, with dazed eyes that seemed not to see us until he was almost past. Then he turned about, not knowing me even then, and demanded fiercely, ‘What do you here, big man on a big horse? This is our place; go home to yours!’
‘Great God, man, I had better welcome last time I came here,’ I said, and as though his eyes cleared, I saw the recognition come into them.
‘Artos – my Lord Artos!’
‘As to what I do here – the way into the Place of Three Hills is cut off by the burns in spate, and my woman is far gone in labor, therefore I have brought her to Itha. Is she in the houseplace?’
He shook his head, then jerked it in the direction of the straining figures about the dam.
‘The water’ll be in the houseplace soon, if we can’t turn it.’
‘Meanwhile I take my woman there. Send Itha to me – I’ll come back and take her place as soon as may be.’ I had dismounted by that time, Guenhumara scarcely conscious in my arms, and called to the other two, as the little man staggered on toward the desperate struggle that was being fought out around the dividing of the burn. ‘Tie up the horses and then go down and help with that dam. I’ll be with you in a while.’
I found the houseplace by the feather of smoke rising from the crest of its bush-grown roof, and the smell which came from it, and ducking low under the lintel, carried Guenhumara down the four turf steps into the smoky darkness. In the first moment I thought no one was there but the Old Woman on her stool, looking as though she had never risen from it, and a handful of children huddled about her, staring at me under their brows like little wild things. And then from behind her came a small fretful wailing, and I saw another woman crouched against the far wall and bending over a child in her lap.
At sight of me, Old Woman cackled with laughter that set her enormous belly heaving. ‘Artos the Bear! So you come back, Sun Lord. Maybe those that drink in the Fairy Hills must always come back.’ And she nodded at Guenhumara in my arms. ‘No need to ask what ails that one.’
‘No,’ I said. ‘Her time is on her two moons early, and the burns in spate, even as yours, between us and the gate of the Place of Three Hills. Where may I lay her down?’
‘Over there.’ She jerked her head toward a pile of skins against the wall, and I carried Guenhumara over and laid her on it. I had scarcely done so when, with no sound of her coming, the girl Itha was at the foot of the steps, standing there like something drowned, to wring the water from her long black hair. Not that she was a girl now, but worn and weather-lined. They are beautiful young, but they age quickly, the women of the Ancient People. Some of the children ran to her, clinging to her drenched skirts, but she paid no heed to them. ‘Istoreth told me that you were here, and your woman needing my help.’
‘As you see,’ I said. ‘I am going now, Itha. Your menfolk need help too, with the burn.’
‘You trust me?’ she said, looking up from where she already knelt by Guenhumara. ‘I that am a woman of the Hollow Hills?’
‘The water of the little well was good and sweet, and the faces in the fort were still the faces I knew, when I got back to them. I trust you.’
And I went out into the wild evening, down to join the men by the parting of the burn. The sun was set by now and some of the women had brought out torches, and in their flaring light the rush of water was fired with gold over swirling depths of immeasurable darkness, and the alder trees stood up gaunt and black against the last bright rags of the stormy afterglow. Pharic and Conn had joined those who were fighting to clear the dam of uptorn bushes, and I joined another band, who, waist-deep in the racing water, were striving with hurdles and sods and uprooted furze bushes to guide the threatening flood away from the village and turn it back into its true course. Again and again we saw our work torn away and the water pouring through the breach; again and again we restarted the desperate struggle to make good the damage. Most of that night, by the windy torch flare, I worked thigh-deep in the racing flood, one with the Little Dark Men about me, as I had not been even at Cit Coit Caledon. I lost all count of time, all my world was the white fury of water that must be fought like a killer horse, and the strength of my own body pitted against it; and Guenhumara in the turf house, fighting as I was fighting.
At last I became aware of a slackening in the rush of water, and shouted to the others that the spate was passing. And later still, I was standing only knee-deep in the flood, steadying myself by an alder branch and drawing in great gulps of air that I seemed to have no time for before, and looking about me. It was not yet dawn, but through the rents in the still tattered sky I could see the morning star that we call the Cock’s Lantern; and the world was spent and quiet all about me, and the level of the flood was going down, down; our dams and brushwood walls had held at last, and the water, its fury spent, was turned back into its old course.
There would be a heartbreaking deal of damage to make good, but the village was safe. I left the rest to finish the work, and crawled back, blind weary, to the turf house within the hawthorn hedge.
Itha met me in the entrance that looked, in the first light, to be no more than a dark burrow mouth in the side of the bush-grown mound. ‘It was in my mind that the voice of the burn was sinking, and soon you would come.’
‘Itha, is the babe born? How is it with them?’
A bleating cry like that of a newborn lamb came out of the gloom behind her, to answer my question before she spoke.
‘The babe is born,’ she said, ‘and it is well with them both.’ She drew wider the heavy skin apron behind her, and the dim flicker of burning peat came to meet me, and the usual smell of such places, mingled with another, sharper smell that I had met with in stables when one of my mares had foaled.
I ducked under the lintel and stumbled down the steps. The place was more crowded than it had been last night, for some of the women were back, and through the throat-catching peat reek I could just make out Guenhumara lying on the pile of skins where I had laid her down last night. I would have gone to her at once, but Old Woman sat on her stool across my path and looked up at me through the fronding smoke of the hearth, and I stopped as though she had caught me by the hair, and waited for whatever it was she had to say to me, suddenly afraid.
I remembered the woman I had seen before, still crouched against the far wall, nursing the child in her lap. And I heard the child cry, not the young bleating that had reached me on the threshold, but the dim tired wailing of something sick.
‘It is a girl child,’ Old Woman said, and the little bright-filmed eyes went searching in through mine, to read my inmost answer.
And I could have laughed aloud in relief. I believe I had never thought of it being anything but a son; but Old Woman’s news was not bad, to me, only surprising. And she saw that, and scorned me for it, with the slantwise scorn of her people; and spat into the fire. ‘Aiee, aiee, and so you will keep it. Now we, the Dark People, are wiser. When we have a girl child too many we put it out on the hill for the Wolf-People. It is not good to have a daughter before a son, it is a sign that the Great Ones are angry, and it should be put out for the Wolf-People. But she would not have it so.’
‘She was right,’ I said, ‘for this is not a girl child too many, but a daughter greatly longed for.’
I would have gone on, then, but her eyes still held m
e from the last few steps, and suddenly I saw that there was trouble in them. The words came so softly, so mumblingly out of the toothless toad’s mouth, that I could scarcely catch them. ‘There was a time – the Sun Lord knows it, when I made the patterns in sand and water and learned certain things concerning the Sun Lord, and forbade Druim Dhu the Young Man of my house to bring a certain word up to the Place of Three Hills, accordingly.’
I nodded, bending toward the small bright eyes. ‘You told him that there are taller crops than mouse grass, I think. Something of more matter than the easing of our minds?’
‘So, the Sun Lord remembers and understands ... But there was a grayness about the Sun Lord, a mist between me and him, and I could see into it a little way, but not enough. I could not see whether the child would be of the holly or the ivy; only that there would be a child, if Druim Dhu took no message to the Place of Three Hills. But now it is on my heart that the child had best be given to the Wolf-People.’
‘That is not our way, among the Sun Folk, Old Mother, and I believe that in this thing at least, the Great Ones are not angry.’ And I felt myself released and I took the last few steps to Guenhumara.
For the moment I thought she was asleep, but when I knelt down beside her she opened her eyes – enormous eyes whose grayness seemed to shadow her whole drained face. The hair on her forehead was darkened with sweat, but the work was now over. Her body lay so flat that it scarcely raised the otter-skin robe that covered her, and something moved and bleated again, infinitely small, in the curve of her arm. She put the sun covering back without a word, and showed me the babe. It was very crumpled, but the crumpling was no more than the damp crumpling of a newly opened poppy bud that will unfurl to silken softness in the sun. It was almost as red as a poppy bud, too, with a little fine dark down on its head, and dark eyes, when it opened them, that wandered as the newly opened eyes of a kitten do. It yawned, the triangular smile of a kitten, and went to sleep again, one small hand outside the otter skins, and when I touched it in the palm the thing curled around my finger seemingly of its own accord, and bonelessly as a sea anemone. A foolish whimpering delight woke in me, because my daughter was clinging to my finger in her sleep.
‘How is it with you, Guenhumara?’
‘I am tired, but it is well with me now,’ she said, and then, ‘You see that it is a girl child?’
‘I see; and Old Woman told me.’
‘It is strange, I never thought of it being a daughter – I suppose that is because I wanted so sorely to give you a son to train up to handle a horse and a sword and be a great warrior by your side.’
‘I would as lief have a daughter,’ I said. I was a little drunk. ‘A small soft daughter to hold in my heart. She shall have a Saxon bracelet to cut her teeth on – the Saxons weave very pretty jewels out of gold wire for their women – and a white wolfhound puppy to grow up with; and a great warrior one day to sweep her into the Chain Dance at Midsummer ... ’
Guenhumara laughed the soft shadow of a laugh. ‘Foolish, you are – my Lord Artos the Bear of Britain is no more than a foolish cub himself, when he is pleased!’
Neither of us said, ‘Next time it will be a son: next time ... ’ But the contentment of the moment was enough for us, without looking forward or back to stress or strain or joy or heartbreak.
Guenhumara reached out and touched my sleeve. ‘You are as wet as though you had been drawn up out of the sea.’
‘I have been in the burn all night with the men of the village, working to turn it back into its own course.’
‘And now that is done?’
‘Now that is done, and the water is sinking. There has been much damage to the grazing land, but the village is safe, and I think none of the cattle have been lost.’
‘You must be weary, too. This has been a hard night’s work for both of us, my dear.’
Presently I heard the voices of the men outside, and Itha’s voice, and a grumbling as they turned away to make themselves a fire and dry off elsewhere, and the living hut began to empty as the women went out to tend their menfolk. I had forgotten that no man save myself who owned other gods than theirs might enter here again until the place had been purified, lest the nearness of a woman who had newly given birth should rob the warriors of their fighting powers. Truly, I had laid a burden on these people. Well, maybe my help and Pharic’s and Conn’s in the matter of the burn might repay a little. Later I would bring them a gift – the fort’s biggest copper pot, perhaps; and meanwhile the least that I could do was to take myself out of the women’s way as quickly as might be.
I took my finger from the small clinging grasp, and said to the enormous figure on the stool beside the hearth, ‘Old Woman, when may I come for her?’
‘In three days,’ she said. ‘In three days she and the child – since you are set on keeping it – will have gained strength enough for the way, and you may take them safely. Also in three days her purification will be accomplished.’
‘In three days, then,’ I said.
But in the same instant Guenhumara’s free hand was on my arm, clutching at me as though I were the only thing between her and drowning; and I saw that her peace had broken all asunder and she was afraid. ‘Artos, you are not – Artos, don’t leave me here! You must not – you must take me with you—’
‘In three days,’ I said. ‘In only three days.’
‘No, now! I shall do well enough on your saddlebow, and Pharic can carry the babe.’
I looked down at her questioningly. ‘What is it, Angharad, Heart-of-my-heart?’
‘I – we must not be left here, the bairn and I – Artos, I am afraid!’
‘Of what?’ I bent close over her, and her words came muffled against my shoulder, so that I hoped Old Woman would not hear. I did not clearly hear myself, but I caught something about the babe, about three days in the Hollow Hills. And I tried to soothe and reassure her, putting back the damp hair from her forehead. ‘Listen, listen to me, love. These people are my friends; there is nothing here for you to be afraid of.’
‘For me, maybe no – but for the babe. You heard what She said: you can hear the other one wailing now – over there against the wall. Artos, they hate this one because it is a girl child and strong, and comes of the Sun People, and theirs is a son and sickly—’
I dared not listen to any more. I kissed her and got up, refusing to see the look in her eyes. I had told her not to be afraid, but I knew that she was still afraid, though she made no more pleading; and there was nothing that I could do about it. I could not pass on to her my own certainty of friendship in this place, nor could I carry her off with me now, unless I wished to likely kill both her and the babe. A gray wave of helplessness broke over me, so that all my peace, like hers, was broken, as I turned to the entrance.
chapter twenty-two
The Last of the North
AT THE APPOINTED TIME, I TOOK MY GIFTS OF GRATITUDE TO Druim Dhu’s village, and brought Guenhumara back to Trimontium.
Itha had tended her well, and she was already able to stand on her feet again and even walk a little, with my arm around her. Only she had a strange unchancy look about her eyes. She said nothing as to the three days and nights that I had left her there against her pleading; indeed for the rest of that day she scarcely spoke at all, but often seemed to be listening, and once I saw her bend her head to the babe as she was suckling it, and snuff the little warm body as a bitch snuffs the puppy against her flank to be sure that it is her own.
That night, when the lamp was out and the moon patterning the beaver skins across the bed, I remember asking her how it had gone with the sick child – for she had been waiting for me in the curve of the windbreak before the entrance hole, and I had not gone into the houseplace at all.
‘Better,’ she said. ‘It began to gather strength in the night, and Old Woman says that it will live now. Children mend so quickly. At sunrise they are in the doorway of death, and the next they are sitting up and crying for honey cake.’ He
r voice was hurried and breathless, the words tumbling a little over each other, running on: ‘So quickly – they mend so quickly – often I have seen it happen among the bairns in the women’s quarters ... ’ And I knew that she was telling it to herself rather than to me, and that she was still afraid.
But when I asked her what was amiss, she only laughed and said Nothing – Nothing – Nothing, and shivered, though the night was not cold. I could feel the faint tense quivering under my outstretched hand on her flank, and wanted to draw her close and warm it away against my own body, but the bairn in the curve of her arm was between her and me.
Whatever the thing was, it passed – or Guenhumara locked it away in some inner place and buried the key; and by the ninth day, the bairn’s naming day, she seemed almost as she had been before it was born.
We called the little thing Hylin; there is almost always a Hylin among the women of the Royal House. And old Blanid, who had by then rejoined us, wept a good deal and talked of the day that Guenhumara had been named; and the whole of Trimontium demanded extra beer in which to wet the baby’s head, on promise of not burning down the fortress a second time. And I wondered if any of the women of the baggage train remembered a babe of her own, put out for the wolves. If they did, at least it did not prevent them from taking their full pleasure of the heather beer.
Indeed the last sore heads were scarcely sound again when the supply train came up from Corstopitum, bringing the winter stores.
Bringing also, letters and news of the outside world. It was strange how, between the supply wagons, one first hungered after the world beyond the southern hills, and then almost forgot that it was there at all, until the next train got through. This one brought me letters from Ambrosius as usual, and one (he generally wrote about once a year) from Aquila; and both told the same story of increasing Saxon pressure, a new tide rising, a new wind setting from the Barbarian quarter, upon the Icenian coasts; a new restlessness among the southern settlements.
Sword at Sunset Page 37
