“Almost the entire month of Nion has passed. In fact, the alder tree is about to flower. Your brother, Terkinos, has never taken so long to return from his business travels. Have you heard anything from him?”
“No,” I lied. “I’m a bit concerned, too. Where did he tell you he was headed?”
“To Massalia.”
“Then he should have returned by now.” I turned toward her, pretending to be worried, and uttered the sentence that I’d repeated so many times before. “It’s quite likely that something bad has happened to him and he’s not coming back at all. I’ve heard that trading has been interrupted in the south. You can’t make so much money anymore, and everyone is nervous. Tales of brawls and the settling of scores among traders are daily reaching the village.”
“And that’s that?” she shouted at me, beside herself, perhaps because she was expecting it. “That’s all there is to it? Should I consider myself a widow as of now?”
“Maybe you should, yes.”
Is there a less painful way to say it? I asked myself. I didn’t have much time left either. I had spent almost ten years in the village and it was time to move on. I hadn’t disappeared with my father when Nagorno had come looking for us. I still couldn’t stand my half brother’s presence, so I decided to stay on a bit longer and had arranged with my father to meet in our cave in thirty years’ time—a Celtic century—on the night of the summer solstice, the shortest night of the year. We’d always done it like that. If one of us was held up, my father would stay in the area and return to the cave every year on that same day. Sooner or later we always ended up getting together again.
“You should also go down to the village more often. It’s not a good idea for a woman to live so isolated, now that your husband has gone.”
“They don’t want me in the village. My uncle has made it his business to turn everyone against me. Now that he’s the druid, no one dares oppose him.”
“I’ve heard rumors about that,” I commented absentmindedly. “What exactly happened when your father died?”
“It was before he died, actually,” she said, breaking off a nearby sprig of lavender. “In fact, it began when I was born. My father needed a son to carry on the office of druid that my family had practiced for several generations, but I was the only one of his children not to die at birth. The poor fool gave me a boy’s name and initiated me into all the mysteries, as if I would be the one to carry on his legacy. As a matter of fact, I had won over almost the entire village.”
“It’s exceptional for a woman to carry out all the druid rites, but not impossible. They talk of a highly respected female druid north of here, among the tribe of the Leuci.”
“That may be, but not here. During my father’s funeral, my uncle took responsibility for rallying villagers and appropriated my father’s baton of authority. Since that day, nobody dares to change anything. I’ve continued to live in my father’s cabin, up on the hill.”
Then she turned to me and spent some time examining me. “What about you? Why don’t you take a wife?”
I laughed heartily. “No woman will approach me while I stink of cowhide.” For once I was honest with her. “I should have thought of that before I took on my father’s trade.”
“Then we are two outcasts,” she concluded.
“So it would seem.”
After that day, Bryan sought me out in the lavender field every evening, and it was then, at the start of the month of Feam, that it happened. She came down to the edge of the river with me on the pretext of helping me get rid of the stink of the hides that had infiltrated my skin like a tick. She brought oils that she herself had prepared using lavender and chamomile. She washed my hair with the chalky water and brushed it until it looked like a horse’s mane. These Celtic customs had long ago given my dark hair a reddish tinge. She also tidied up my whiskers with the help of a comb made from the wood of a beech tree. Then I let her scrub my naked body until the sweet fragrance of the herbs replaced the stink of animal hides. It was at this point—after so many years without receiving any caresses from a woman—that my body became aroused. And so it was that I allowed that small woman to mount me, because, apart from her loneliness and desolation, Bryan was also tender, and her quiet company did me good. A twinge of guilt did nevertheless pinch my soul.
“Bryan, we shouldn’t do this again,” I said to her as I was pulling on my breeches. “We still don’t know what’s happened to my brother . . .”
“You told me I should consider myself a widow, and that’s what I’ve done,” she said, turning her back to me as she retied her heavy skirt. “You know that among my people it’s not uncommon for an unmarried brother of a dead man to wed the widow. You should look after me.”
I have no more than two years left here before they start to mutter that I’m not aging, and then what? I won’t let you go through the same thing again.
“I know of your customs, but believe me, it’s not a good idea. I’m not sure if I’ll stay in this village much longer. The work of a tanner is hard and barely provides me with enough to live. I wouldn’t be able to support a family. I’m thinking of moving on to the coast, but on my own.”
“With nothing to tie you down; I understand now,” she whispered with a frown.
“You know what happens to the wives of travelers, and you’ve grown up here. Your uncle is a decrepit old man and has no offspring, so it may be that when he dies, you could assume the position that belongs to you.” I pronounced my final sentence as if it was an exhortation. I gazed at the river, which was flowing swiftly, dragging along branches broken off during the last storm. “It would be better if we agree this never happened, all right?”
I turned in her direction, but she’d already gone, with her inaudible, light step, as if she’d never lain with me beside the riverbed, and it had all been the wishful dream of a bachelor.
I didn’t see her again until halfway through the summer months, when I caught sight of her leaving the village stockade with a heavy basket loaded with fabric that she’d just received in exchange for who knows which of her remedies. I picked up on her altered state without any need for her to turn and face me. Her waist had disappeared and her tired walk suggested the worst. I ran up the hill after her as she made her way toward the forest.
“Bryan, wait!” I shouted as I hurried after her. “We have to talk.”
She ignored my calls and kept walking, so I had to get rid of my stiff leather apron and leave it by the path’s steep embankment before I could catch up with her. I bit my lip when I saw her face. It was swollen, as was the rest of her body.
“Whose child are you carrying?” I wanted to know.
“Your dead brother’s, since nothing ever happened between us, as you yourself put it,” she said without looking at me or coming to a halt.
“This is not the moment to be proud,” I said, grabbing her by the arm. “Tell me, is there any possibility it could be mine?”
“The night he was leaving—the last night of the month of Luis—your brother and I took pleasure in each other, so my child is the fruit of the rowan tree. I’ve been pregnant since Nion started.”
Her words burned like acid.
“Are you sure? What happened in the river took place shortly afterward.”
“I’m sure!” she shouted at me, freeing herself from my grip. “My biggest problem isn’t knowing which one of you is the father of my child. I see reality much more clearly than you.”
“Explain yourself,” I urged her.
“My child will be born well into the winter, when the snow will be lying on the ground,” she said in a tired voice. “I won’t survive the last few months of my pregnancy. I’m already feeling heavy, and I can barely lay out the rabbit traps. I’m living off berries, but I get weaker by the day. Even if I manage to make it to the day of the birth, I doubt my child and I would survive the winter
on our own in the forest.”
She was right in everything she had said.
“I’ll stay with you.”
“No, you already rejected me once. I don’t want to be your wife.”
“And I won’t be your husband if you don’t want me, but your child has my blood, whether it’s mine or my brother’s. I’ll make sure you aren’t lacking in food during these months, and after the birth I’ll help you with all that’s necessary until the two of you no longer need me.”
Bryan didn’t say yes, but she didn’t say no either, so I grabbed the basket with the fabric and walked beside her until we were well inside the forest. I looked at her from time to time and thought I noticed a certain relief in her heavy walk.
In the months that followed I became accustomed to bringing her the results of my hunting forays several times a week: small foxes and badgers; the occasional wild boar, if I was in luck; nuts and honey to provide energy to a body overwhelmed by the demands of the baby growing inside her and that forced her to stay in the cabin in the forest more and more. Little by little, her mood improved, and she occasionally allowed me to stay and eat with her.
“This child will restore my father’s line,” she’d say, more to herself than to me. “It will learn to distinguish between days of good and bad omen, and to recite the canticles, as my ancestors have done.”
I was there when her labor began. A tiny blue infant slipped out between Bryan’s legs, and I needed only one hand to grab it and show it to her.
“Is it a boy?” shrieked Bryan between gasps. “Let me see him.”
“It’s a girl. She’s very . . . small,” I said with concern as I brought her up close to her mother. I’d helped thousands of children to be born in my seven thousand years of life, but none had been so wrinkled, so transparent, so fragile.
“You’ve got to keep her warm and give her your breast right away,” I urged her, although even I didn’t think the baby would survive.
“What’s this?” Bryan shrieked in horror without touching her. “This isn’t the son I was expecting. I don’t want her. She’s too tiny, and look at the mark on her face. It’s not a good omen.”
“Bryan, I’ve seen other babies like her, just as tiny, and born before their time, not fully formed. That’s the case with your daughter, and I don’t know how it happens, but some do survive. So please put her to your breast and let her drink your milk. I’m going into the forest in search of more firewood, because this fire won’t last the night and the child needs more warmth.”
I placed the tiny girl in her lap and grabbed the small ax hanging behind the door. My footsteps were lost in the blizzard that was punishing the forest that freezing night, the first of the month of Beth. When I returned hours later, exhausted from my effort and loaded with firewood, I found Bryan sweating and semiconscious.
“Where’s the baby?” I shouted, looking around me.
She didn’t answer, and then I saw a bundle surrounded by rags lying on the floor, barely moving. I picked her up and checked that she was still breathing, although her chin was trembling. She was deathly cold. I ran to warm my hands by the fireside and then massaged her to warm her.
“What’s happened? You still haven’t breast-fed her?” I asked Bryan.
“I don’t intend to feed her. It’s better if she dies tonight. I don’t want to raise a little girl who’s so weak. Leave her on the floor and go.”
“She’s carrying my blood, too, and I have no intention of abandoning her. And you should give her a name quickly. You know better than anyone what happens to souls that have no name.”
“I haven’t thought of any names for a girl. You name her, if it pleases you.”
I studied the baby for a moment. I had to choose quickly. The marks on her left cheek reminded me of the patterns the stars made in the firmament. Many generations ago, when I was in the Sumerian city of Ur, in the ancient land between two rivers, a wise man called Utnapishtim taught me to name them.
“She’ll be called Lyra, then.”
“A strange name for a little girl who won’t live,” Bryan grunted. “But I don’t care what you name her.”
“Come on, feed her!” I beseeched her, pulling aside the woolen blanket that was covering her.
What I saw made my blood run cold. Her breasts were full of shapeless lumps like rocks. I touched them and she howled with pain. Stupid woman, I thought in exasperation.
“You can’t cut off the milk like that. Your body will become feverish, and you’ll die within a few hours. I have to extract it.”
“Don’t even think about it,” she shrieked.
I ignored her and began to squeeze until finally a fatty yellow liquid began to flow. I placed the child next to her and helped her to latch onto her mother’s breast. However, the baby didn’t even have the strength to suck. Bryan stopped resisting. She was going to lose consciousness any moment.
I rushed to the bunch of herbs hanging from hooks in the roof of the cabin and pulled out some verbena. I threw it into the water bubbling in the copper pot over the fire and forced Bryan to drink the infusion. It would lower her fever and make her sleep for a few hours. Then I took the child, opened my shirt, and held her against my body. I grabbed a piece of cloth and tied it around me so that it would hold her to my chest. Then I wrapped myself in my cape and left the cabin.
“I’m sorry about the smell, Lyra,” I whispered to her as I stumbled down the slope to the village.
I knew the man who was on guard duty at the stockade that night. He was a metalworker in the workshop next door to mine, and he was precisely the person I was after. I gestured to him to open the gate and come down to talk to me.
“What emergency brings you here at this hour, Yennego?”
“Your wife gave birth in Ostara, didn’t she?” I asked him as I tried to catch my breath.
“Yes, and my son is growing big and strong,” he said with the pride of a Gallic father.
“My dead brother’s daughter has just been born and her mother has no milk to feed her. I need your wife’s milk. I’ll pay you well for it.”
“How many skins?” he asked quickly.
“Three pigskins.”
“Three pigskins for rousing her at this hour?” he said, raising an eyebrow.
“All right, I’m finishing off a cowhide. It will suit you well, and now, please, let’s go and feed the little one.”
Gervas nodded in agreement, satisfied with the small treasure that had fallen from the sky into his lap, and I followed him to his home. That night the infant had a feed, and it continued like that for months. During the day I worked myself to death tanning hides to pay for the milk, and at night I looked after the infant and the mother who refused even to hold her.
The time passed too quickly for me to keep track. The same day that Lyra began to walk without holding on to any furniture, some unexpected visitors came to my workshop.
“What are you doing here?” I asked as soon as I recognized them, despite the fur hoods that were hiding their faces.
“We came for you. You have to get away from here with us, Son.”
“What’s happened?”
“We made a bad business deal in Massalia—a consignment of wine-filled amphoras we promised to deliver that never arrived,” said Nagorno. “They’re Carthaginians, and they want to recover their money. You know full well what that means.”
“Fine. Get going, then. We’ll catch up in thirty years’ time, as we’d agreed. I still have a few things pending here before I leave.”
“That’s why we came. Nagorno overheard that they would come for you. Someone told them that my brother works as an artisan in this village. They think you’ll have something valuable to offer to offset their losses.”
“Well, I don’t. I have scarcely enough to get by. But I don’t understand the problem. We’ve buried v
aluable pieces up north. Go there, retrieve them, and pay. That’s why they’re there.”
“You still don’t understand,” said Nagorno, looking out of the window impatiently. “When we say that they’re coming for you, it means they’re coming right now. We almost killed our horses getting here to warn you. Pack your belongings. We’re leaving.”
I ignored the bastard and confronted my father. “You should be aware that your wife, Bryan, has given you a daughter. She’s just had her first birthday.”
“A daughter? You’re sure?” Surprise flashed across his face. “Why didn’t she say anything to me before I left on my last trip?”
“Because, according to her, the child was conceived that last night.”
“Oh, that passionate night,” he remembered as my jaw tensed.
“How many months did the pregnancy last? You know what I mean . . .”
“I know perfectly well what you want to know, and it was a normal pregnancy of ten lunar months.” Or nine, if she is my daughter. “She’s not one of us, if that’s what concerns you. She’ll grow old and she’ll die, but even so, she’s your daughter. I’ve taken care of your widow and the child. They’ve needed my help to survive these two winters.”
My father seemed distraught, but I could see that the urgency of the present situation was more critical.
“In that case I thank you, but you can no longer do anything more for them. We have to leave now.”
“Let me say good-bye to the little girl, retrieve some of our stores, and leave them something of value so that their life won’t be so tough.” I hung up my apron and reached for my cape. “I’m going into the forest to get her. I’ll bring her here to you so that you’ll at least meet her.”
My father grabbed me by the arm, preventing me from going outside. “Leave it,” he whispered. “Let’s go.”
“Fine. Wait for me behind the stockade by the river. I’ll take the child with us. I don’t trust her mother. She might abandon her or not feed her.”
The Immortal Collection (A Saga of the Ancient Family Book 1) Page 22
