When her consort guided Kerrigen's daughter round on top of him, Mara could stand it no longer. The druids knew, or guessed, to taunt her like this. Maturity was all they waited for. That consort was skilful, well trained. What people saw, they believed. The warning she'd given Skaaha in the cavern should have rendered the fearful blacksmith powerless and pitiful in that ring. Now the girl was led where she could not go, the crowds ecstatic. Cursing, Mara left the Bracadale warriors, working her way round the crowds, looking for the one man who could help.
She found him further up the hill, on the outskirts of the crowd. Her instruction barely caused a blink. He stared down at the copulating couple spread-eagled over the altar, the girl now upright astride the man.
‘You'll know her again,’ she said.
‘Naked,’ her companion grunted, slurping mead.
‘Then get closer,’ she snapped. ‘There will be no mistake this time.’
‘I lost half my men, trying to find what you wanted.’ He paused, craned his neck. Another couple in the ring shuddered to a climax. His thick fingers scratched his crotch. ‘She'll be easier to get, one thing in one place.’
‘You should hope so. Fail again and this time I will hunt you with the druids' blessing.’ Threatening him meant glaring at his fleshy face. He disgusted her enough to die for it, if she'd had no use for him. ‘Go familiarize yourself with the place again while they're all here.’
‘And miss Beltane? Outsiders don't get much welcome from women, except now, when they're full of this.’ He waved the horn of mead, leering at her. ‘A good fuck might work better than threats.’
Swallowing her distaste, Mara grabbed his hand and shoved it down her leggings. ‘Feel that, Bartok,’ she said, making sure he did. ‘Bring me her head in a sack, and that’ – she pushed her face as close to his stinking beard as she could bear – ‘will fuck you to the grave and beyond.’ She yanked his hand back up, slapping it away before he got ideas she'd have to kill him for.
‘A man should die happy,’ he said, sniffing her sex on his fingers. ‘Yes, indeed, happy, happy.’
In front of the Kyerheans, chanting the ululation for Danu with her own cell, Yona found it difficult to keep the smile from her face. How much Ruan performed, how much was instinct, was impossible to tell. Moving Skaaha on top for a time was genius. It fulfilled the legend, a rare sight at the ceremony with inexperienced girls. The crowd loved it, as did the goddess – moving astride him as if born to subdue her mate, till he slid down to put his head between her thighs instead.
When he turned her again, on to her back, it was to hold them both in the state of bliss until the time came. Now, to cheers from the crowd for the last of the six novice couples to finish and leave the ring, he moved into the final act. Intended or not, he played out the mythic copulation – outlasting all the others, with all the tributes to the goddess made.
Around the ring of fire, leading the chant, Nechta and the druids of Bride felt excitement rise. Boom… boom… Boom… boom… the drummer beat the strokes to the rise and fall of the consort's naked backside. Next Beltane, someone else could drum. His own hips thrust the rhythm. He was developing a quite unnatural and misplaced passion for his instruments. With a nod towards them, the smaller drums came in, picking up the beat. The crowd began to shriek in time.
‘Bel-tane! Bel-tane! Bel-tane!’
High above, the moon had long passed midnight. Ruan ran the tip of his tongue round Skaaha's parted lips then raised himself to watch her face while his fingers coaxed her clitoris to the point of no return. Just as it was about to tip, her breath a gasp, he entered her again, the firm warmth of wet, muscular flesh surrounding, gripping, drawing him in. Her feet moved from around his waist to between his knees, pressing down on stone, locking their legs together. She trembled, her whole body throbbing under and around him, uttering mindless sounds. Leaning on one arm, he raised her buttocks with the other till she was tight up against him.
He was losing himself. Her flesh clenched on his with every thrust. It must be now, for nothing in him could hold on. Orgiastic blindness darkened her eyes. Her head tipped back, fingers dug into his shoulders, and she cried out, over and over, as wave after wave broke around and through him, drawing him into her, over the edge into the shuddering oblivion of pure sensation. All sense of self was lost. Involuntarily, the name of his goddess uttered from his mouth as his seed was given into her womb, and he was absorbed into the bright source of ecstasy, beyond life or death or loneliness, at the end and beginning of time.
The crowd screamed with delirium. ‘Aye-yie-yaaa! Aye-yie-yaaa!’ The drums thundered on and on and on. Even the druids cheered, and wept. There had never been such a magnificent copulation. It would live for ever, as long as the great wheel turned, remembered in song and story and verse.
In front of the twin fires, Suli paced, stabbing the ground with her staff, clenching her fist. ‘Yes,’ she muttered. ‘Yes!’ It was done, magnificently done. Reborn clinging to her consort, the young goddess would find her way forward when the time came. Tears spilled down the old woman's age-softened cheeks.
22
Skaaha's eyelids flickered, blinking as sight returned. In the blackness, the net of sharp stars she had fallen from pinned itself back into place. Above, Danu the Warrior strode the heavens, sword sparkling from her belt. Beyond, the moon stared, amazed. The weight of man began to tell. Tentatively, Skaaha caressed his shoulders. He raised himself up to look at her. Awed, she stared back, scanning his features in wonder, touching her fingertips against his mouth, tracing the shape of it. He tilted his head, in that familiar serious way, as if considering a question.
‘The adoration is the wrong way round,’ he said softly. ‘You're beautiful, woman and goddess.’
‘I am a woman now,’ she grinned.
‘Oh yes.’ He eased himself up, reached to his waist. The warmth of him slid wetly out of her, making her gasp, soundless with disappointment.
‘What are you doing?’
His fingers unbelted the scabbard. ‘There needs to be blood…’
‘It will be your own,’ she interrupted, quickly.
He started to laugh. ‘And there is,’ he chuckled, standing up beside the stone. ‘So the blade is yours.’ He helped her rise. ‘Do you ever let me finish?’
‘I thought you did,’ she said, smiling again, ‘and very fine.’
‘Then you'll have no use for this.’ On his knees, still chuckling, he fastened belt and scabbard round her hips.
Eefay and the old priest returned with their cloaks, Skaaha's reversed, red side out. The crowd kept yelling, though the drummer was beyond help, a quivering heap behind his instruments. Arin rose from the ring of druids and took his place. Boom… Cloaked in red, Danu and her consort left the ring to wild applause. Hawthorn blossom showered them as they headed downhill to the tented hut inside the standing stones, beside the grove. Eefay followed behind, carrying the goblet of mead.
Boom… In the ring of fire, the senior priest held up the altar cloth, stretched between his hands, to show the people. ‘Witness the blood of Danu,’ he called, at all four corners of the circle. Booboom… the cloth of Bride was ceremonially burned in the well of her sacred flame. ‘Beltane is begun!’
Inside the ring of stones, Ruan took the goblet from Eefay's hands. ‘Thank you.’ He barred her entrance to the tent. ‘This is for Skaaha alone to do,’ he said.
‘But I have questions.’
‘Which will keep. Live the day well.’ He stepped inside, closed the flap.
Outside, on the slopes, the party raged, with food, drink, songs and dancing round the great fires. As the warrior chapters broke up, looking for friends and relatives, Mara stood on the rim of a rise, alone, looking towards the shadowed trees of the grove. That druid consort might be worth attention. Danu was legendary, but the girl he mounted would be no more than that now, a blacksmith whose time had just run out. The warrior queen's eye found Eefay, shield and helmet glittering i
n the firelight as she marched back to Donal's school. That one could be the greater threat, but easier, far easier, to reel in.
In the tented hut, even after Ruan and Skaaha had eaten their fill from the waiting feast, he still chuckled.
‘Will you tell me what is funny?’ she asked.
‘You, so quick to rise in anger, so languid in your pleasuring.’ He kissed her nose. ‘It would have been my own blood shed. The sign of Danu should be seen, but I could not have cut you.’
‘This is good, because I would have killed you.’
He chuckled again, going over to the hearth, where a cauldron of water steamed. Skaaha stretched luxuriously on the cushions, sprawling on her stomach to watch him. Tiny white blossoms still stuck to her skin.
‘Who was Bride?’
‘Is Bride,’ he corrected. ‘Is Danu, is Carlin.’ He was washing himself, all over. ‘What do you learn from that?’
‘You forgot Telsha?’ she said brightly. She could tell he smiled by the half-turn of his head, the brief hesitation before deciding not to rise to her cheek.
‘Telsha's part of Danu, when she's a foster-mother. The goddess is the sacred three, the tri-unity of sun, earth and moon. So what do her festivals say?’
‘That she grows old and new again, as they do.’ She threw the shell of an oyster at him. ‘Don't tell me stories. I'm grown up now.’
He glanced over his shoulder. ‘Time,’ he said. ‘She's time, the beginning and end of all things, the bringer of life, without whom nothing is, before whom nothing was. Unless she passes, nothing lives.’
‘So she never was a person and can't be reborn. Why say she is?’
‘Every moment dies and is reborn, yet time is. Bride gave birth to the sun, forged the world from a ball of flame then fashioned the moon. They speak her truth.’ He turned to her, began to wash her feet and legs with a warm, wet cloth. ‘But what you ask can only be told through stories. There are many Brides – Gaia, Isis, Ishtar, Kali, Amaterasu, Inanna, Toci.’ He wrung out the cloth, and continued to wash her bottom, back and shoulders. ‘Annait, whose stones stand outside, came with the ancients, the winged warrior of time. Her spirit enters Bride when she becomes Danu.’ A kiss dropped between her shoulderblades. ‘Turn over.’
She rolled over. The cloth washed around her throat and breasts, down her arms. ‘But Danu was the first warrior.’
‘Is the warrior,’ he corrected again, ‘who first became after women began to farm and keep herds so their children would never starve. While men hunted, another tribe tried to take cattle from the mothers.’ The cloth was wrung again in warm water, washed over her belly. ‘Bride turned the blade which had been used to cut corn against these raiders, becoming Danu, the warrior who protected her clan from loss and harm.’ The wet, warm cloth washed between her thighs.
‘What are you doing?’
‘Removing Nechta's oil.’ The cloth dropped in the bowl. ‘Out there was for them, for show.’ The bowl returned to the hearth. ‘In here is for you.’ On his knees, he came over to recline at her side. ‘For us.’
‘You mean we can do it again?’
‘Oh yes.’ Flickering lamplight reflected in his eyes as he looked down at her. A grin that was truly wicked lit his face. ‘There is always more to learn.’
When day broke, Yona arrived with her needles to tattoo the mark of maturity on Skaaha's neck, the thumbnail design applied below the left ear. Ruan squatted beside her so that she could rest her head on his thigh.
‘You must keep still,’ he warned, ‘and it will hurt a little.’
It hurt less than she expected; a cool, soothing cream was applied before the repeat short jabs from the bone needle. All adults wore the sign of maturity, according to their trade. Farm women bore the triple spiral triskele, their men the cord of life. Priests, blacksmiths and warriors all had different designs. But when Yona had finished and handed Skaaha a mirror, the pattern inside the blue ring on her neck was the triquetra of druid faith. It represented the triple nature of all things: mind, body and spirit; earth, sea and sky; sun, moon and earth. It was the same mark worn by her mother, the sign of the goddess: maiden, mother and crone.
‘I can't have this,’ she said. ‘It's Bride's.’
‘Danu's,’ Ruan corrected, splitting hairs. ‘And you earned it.’
‘It's yours by right,’ Yona said. ‘Only one living person can wear it. If you disagree, argue with Suli. But you have work to do now, and should get dressed.’
Outside, the twin bonfires were stoked up to begin the blessing of the beasts. Skaaha, dressed in red, drove the first cow between the fires, slapping its hindquarters with a birch switch to bless it with fertility. Long lines of beasts followed, ceremonially whacked through by druids bearing similar switches while the smoky heat and crackling flame cleansed the animals of pests.
The goddess and her consort were in great demand, hailed and congratulated in turn wherever they went, Danu's blessing sought for every activity. Skaaha bound the wrists of couples wanting to leap the broomstick between the fires. Those handfasting till next Beltane went first, then marriages. Ruan untied those already coupled who jumped to separate. Cows in milk were put to bulls for next spring's calves, the shaggy island ponies bred. Deals were struck for the services of boars, rams, bucks and cockerels, the coarse wool stripped by hand from native sheep, young stock traded. Beltane ensured the healthy cross-fertilization of the island herds.
Stirred with smells of dung and cooking, the wood-smoked air filled with calls of beasts, birds and, as artisans set out their stalls, of barter. Pots, cloth, implements of bone or horn, and ironware were laid out on grassy plots alongside stalls with dripping honeycombs, cod and salmon roe, lobsters and sea kelp, birch wine, skins, fleeces and spare wool. Everybody worked, but it was different work from usual. Jugglers, tumblers and fire-eaters entertained. The warriors put on fierce displays. There were games of chance and skill, and when darkness fell, opportunities for exchanges of other kinds: to hear stories, old and new, from less familiar tellers; listen to the legends and tales of heroism sung by the druid bards; drink, or dance or sleep.
*
By the sixth day, the Kylerheans had exchanged most of their goods for produce, clay pots and the services of bulls, with credit accrued towards new thatch and future matings. But Skaaha's best piece, a dagger with bronze hilt and decorated leather scabbard, still lay in the centre of the remaining display.
‘Because your father refuses every offer,’ Erith explained. ‘We've had double for everything made by Danu, and could have had three times what that is worth.’
‘I'll trade it next Beltane,’ Ard excused himself to his daughter. ‘You'll have made something finer to replace it by then.’
Even as they spoke, a man crouched beside Skaaha, examining the knife. Thick-set, with lank hair and greasy beard, he stood to draw it from the sheath.
‘Sharp,’ he said, testing with his thumb. He began to slide the blade slowly into then out from its scabbard. ‘Goes in and out easy.’ His eyes watched Skaaha as he spoke. ‘Nice work for a goddess.’
‘And it's not for trade,’ Ard said, standing to take it.
Ruan steered Skaaha away to her next blessing, of the hunting dogs.
‘Pity.’ The man reached out, handed the dagger back, though he still gazed after the festival couple.
‘You from round here?’ Ard asked. Something about him was familiar.
The man shook his head. ‘Raasay.’ Having given the name of a small island between them and the mainland, he turned away, going in the opposite direction.
‘That wasn't a Raasay voice,’ Erith said at Ard's elbow.
Ard still watched the head bobbing away in the crowds. ‘Might have married to it.’ He knew the man from somewhere.
‘That's never married,’ Erith snorted. ‘He stinks, and that's never Raasay cloth he's wearing either, even under the dirt.’
‘The tattoo.’ Ard finally got it. ‘I know that design.’ He'd seen
it before, but couldn't recall from where.
*
Skaaha petted the huge bitch, fondling its ears before guiding it into the mating pen. The owner was a warrior from the north. He'd chosen three good dogs from other chapters to mate with his bitch. He and Ruan each held one back while the first was engaged. Unlike cows, which came into heat within days of scenting bull, the bitch's season coinciding with Beltane was luck. The warrior expected great pups.
‘And many of them,’ he added. ‘If she's two or three by each in her, I can breed new lines into the others back home.’
‘So one dog won't be the only father?’ Skaaha asked.
‘Nah,’ the man said, giving the dog he held to her to hang on to while he went to turn the one with the bitch, to tie them back to back. ‘It's not like women, where the best seed wins out however many you mate with. Hounds can give out young to all of them.’ He held the bitch to stop her wandering off, dragging the poor dog behind her, still tied. ‘Can't you, my beauty?’ He crouched, face level with the massive beast, petting it.
‘Doesn't mean she will, though,’ Ruan added, nodding to Skaaha as the mounted dog released himself. ‘You can let that one go in now.’
She was glad to. It had taken all her strength to hold the struggling dog from leaping the flimsy fence to get to the bitch.
Gern returned to the Kylerhean stand from carrying salted pork back to the cart for Lethra. Ard was crouched, scratching in the dirt with his knife.
‘You're not thinking of using that on something?’ Gern asked, peering down at the pattern; a row of six slithering snakes, their ascending and descending sizes forming a rough circle.
‘Trying to jog my memory,’ Ard said. ‘I've seen it somewhere.’
‘Other than in the forge?’
Ard looked up at the older man. ‘The forge?’
‘It was you hung it there,’ Gern said. ‘About four suns ago.’
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