During the snowbound time of winter, while adult women were weaving and sewing, little girls had done their own very important work. They braided basketfuls of patiently collected animal hair into the hard round balls that would be sent slashing across the commonground by the swiftly running competitors of sunseason.
From snowmelt until first frost the village rang in the evenings with the shouts of the players. The game began as soon as the first crew of miners returned and exchanged their heavy clothing for nothing more than battle aprons and war jewelry. It often continued until the moon was high in the sky, which made it so difficult to determine the winning side that the contest then disintegrated into a rousing kin-fight, cheered on and sometimes joined by the women.
After first frost, those same kaman would be employed for beating through upland meadow grass to start and strike small game for the salting house, putting to practical use the coordination of hand and eye perfected on the sports field.
Epona enjoyed the games, though she did not enter into them as wholeheartedly as Mahka, who dreamed of playing on a team with the men. Once Epona had shouted and cheered for Taranis and Okelos, but more recently she had gone only to watch Goibban, to see his rippling muscles gleam with sweat and admire the white teeth laughing through his golden beard as he raced across the commonground, warding off the opposition with a backhand slam to the throat or a crack over the head from his kaman.
Unfortunately, Goibban never paid any attention to Epona during kamanaht, though she waved shyly whenever his face was turned her way. She sometimes saw older, married women sidle up to him and murmur suggestions, and sometimes it hurt so much she could not watch at all.
On a day of soft clouds and gentle breezes she turned her back on the games entirely and went off to visit a more reliable love, the spotted hound bitch who was Taranis’ favorite hunting dog. The hound had a litter of puppies nestled with her in a shallow depression she had dug for herself under the edge of Taranis’ lodge. As Epona approached, the bitch raised her head and wagged her tail in welcome.
Playing with the puppies was a gentle joy. Their eyes were not yet open, but they were already curious and bold beyond their physical limitations, clambering over one another to investigate the scent of the newcomer with their uneducated little noses; pressing their milky-scented bodies close to hers. Epona lay down on her side at the edge of the nest and she and the hound exchanged amused glances, enjoying the young together.
One little dog, more precocious than his siblings, wriggled his fat body out of the hollow and found his way into the open space between lodges. The bitch whined anxiously. Epona scrambled to her feet to retrieve him before he strayed too far and was killed by one of the half-wild pigs that wandered loose in the village, rooting for food and awaiting the spear.
As she grabbed the puppy she saw Brydda come out of the chief’s lodge with her baby slung on her hip and hurry toward the crowd of spectators watching kamanaht. The game was a particularly noisy one, and Okelos was leading the winning team. Brydda had found she could not bear to stay in the lodge, tending the fire, for one more moment, while the crowd was cheering her man.
But someone should be tending the fire; it should never be left for more than a very short time. When a woman was newly married and entered her husband’s house for the first time, a gutuiter kindled the sacred lodgefire for her and expected her to keep it alive for the entire cycle of seasons. It must never be allowed to go out. It was an insult to the spirit of fire—the benevolent and dangerous spirit—to leave a lodgefire unwatched for longer than it took to go to the squatting pit. One of a woman’s most important duties was to care for and feed the bright power that warmed and fed her family in return.
With Brydda’s arrival in her household, Rigantona had at last been freed, to some extent, of that constant duty, and now she could turn it over to the younger woman whenever she wished to leave the lodge for something important, such as watching Toutorix referee kamanaht. Unmarried Epona was of course not allowed to tend a wifefire. But for Brydda it was a sacred trust.
The hound bitch barked, recalling Epona’s attention. Surely Brydda would watch the game for only a little while and then return to the lodge. Epona carried the venturesome puppy back to his mother, the incident already forgotten, and settled down to enjoy the company of her friends.
Clouds eventually cloaked the setting sun. The sky turned dark. Night ran toward the village on swift feet. The sounds from the commonground told Epona the game was over and the brawling had begun, and soon the men would return to their lodges for food and drink and bedsports. Her own stomach was growling as she gave the bitch a last pat on the head and scrambled to her feet, headed for home.
The interior of the lodge, the haven that had glowed an unfailing welcome in every season, was black. The door was a yawning mouth, opening on darkness. Rigantona had just arrived and stood within the doorway; as Epona hurried up she raised her voice in an eerie wail. “The fire has died! The spirit has starved under my own roof! Our family will be punished!” The tall woman bent double in the gloom, moaning with grief.
Darkness lived in the lodge. The dark of the night beyond the rim of firelight, the night of the wolf and the bear; the dark of millennia past, pushed back and held at bay only by the spirit of the fire.
Epona shrank back, unwilling to enter. She felt her near-kin crowding behind her and heard their exclamations of shock and disapproval. Then Brydda’s voice, crying out, “What’s happened? Why don’t you go in … The fire! What’s happened to the fire?”
Rigantona controlled herself and straightened up, her eyes as cold as lake water. She came out of the lodge and grabbed Brydda by the elbow. “You should know,” Rigantona hissed. “You let it die. In my memory, no wife in this tribe has let a lodgefire die. You are an enemy now.”
Brydda cowered before the upraised fist of the older woman. “I didn’t mean …”
“You didn’t mean!” Rigantona roared in anger. “You let the fire spirit starve to death and you didn’t mean! What if we had no gutuiter to rekindle it for us? What if we were alone and without fire stones? We would die, and our unborn children within us would die; many might be lost to the tribe because of your carelessness.” Her voice was shaking. “You are an enemy, Brydda,” she accused again. “Epona, go to the commonground and bring Toutorix here at once; then summon Tena.”
Ignoring the throbbing in her arm when she ran, Epona raced over the footpounded earth in search of Toutorix. Once she would have found him in the center of a joyous battle, but now he stood to one side with his arm around his brother Taranis, shouting encouragement as Goibban trounced two of the miners simultaneously. When Epona tugged at his sleeve he looked down with annoyance, but even in the twilight he could see the trouble in her face. He followed her without hesitation.
His family was huddled together outside the lodge. Within the lodge was nothingness; anything could happen to a person in that darkness.
Epona left Toutorix with Rigantona and the now-sobbing Brydda and went to bring Tena, She Who Summons Fire.
The matter was very serious. A tribal council must be convened immediately, with all the druii in attendance, since the spirits were involved; but before anything else the chief’s lodgefire must be relit. To leave the lord of the tribe in darkness might bring a similar darkness on all his people. The tribe crowded around outside as Tena, already chanting incantations, entered the lodge alone. Other families had joined Rigantona and her children and jostled one another for vantage points, peering inside, anxious to see the expected birth. Toutorix stood off to one side, holding Brydda’s arm in a relentless grip. Okelos had come at the run, angry at first but then as shocked as the others, and now he stood as far away from his wife as possible. If she had brought the fury of the spirits down upon them, it was better not to call attention to the fact that she was his wife.
The damage Brydda had done was already evident. The sky, in sympathy with the spirit of the fire, was showing no star
s. Black clouds had piled up over the lake and a distant flicker of starfire warned of a coming storm. The Kelti murmured uneasily; the angered spirits might call down the starfire to attack their lodges and burn them. Such things had been known to happen; starfire had struck and killed people where they stood.
A tiny spark, a faint glow, flared into life within the lodge, and then flame blossomed. The watchers sighed in unison. Crowding close to the doorway, those in front could see Tena’s face, golden above the firepit, as she sang to the newborn flame and nurtured it.
Now it was safe for the chief’s family to re-enter, but Brydda was not allowed through the doorway. Wrapped in blankets, she spent the night huddled outside the lodge, and Rigantona brought the child to her for nursing without speaking to her.
As dawn broke over the mountains, the elders of the tribe and the members of the druii met together in solemn council to discuss the fate of the unfortunate young woman. She was the mother of a living child, which weighed in her favor, though her firstborn was a girl and that was a negative sign. She might never bear warriors.
Poel spoke for the druii. “The spirits make existence possible for us; they provide us with fire and water and meat; they guide every step of our lives. If one of the people insults a spirit, all of the people are held responsible. We must act for the good of the tribe.”
“For the good of the tribe,” echoed the council.
Toutorix stood and held aloft the staff of authority that had been used just the evening before to referee kamanaht. Now it must serve a more serious function. Struck three times upon the ground as urged by the spirit within, it would make his word law that no member of the tribe dared break.
“The woman Brydda has insulted the spirit of the fire,” he intoned. “She must go to the land of the spirits and apologize on behalf of all of us.”
The council voted in unanimous assent. Okelos, waiting outside the council ring, heard the words of the lord of the tribe and saw the others raise their hands in agreement. He thought then of Brydda as she had been when he first brought her from the riverlands, a merry girl, laughing at everything he said, taking nothing seriously, bursting with life like a sapling tree. When she submitted to him he had felt like the strongest man alive.
I chose a foolish woman to be the mother of my children, he thought now, with regret. He wanted to smash his fist into something: the wall of the lodge or the face of an enemy.
The women set to work immediately to build a huge wicker basket. Kernunnos oversaw the work. “It must be in the shape of a flame,” he told them, “large at the bottom and narrow at the top. It will become the flame, in token of the sacrifice.”
Building the wicker basket took a full day. Meanwhile, Brydda crouched outside the lodge of the chief and no one spoke to her. No one met her eyes. She was given food and water but nothing else. Sirona, wife of Taranis, came to take her baby away, though there was an argument over that.
“We can raise the infant in our lodge or expose it, if that is what my son wishes,” Rigantona told Sirona. “This child is part of our family.”
“If you keep it, you have no human milk to give it,” Sirona pointed out.
“I might soon.”
Sirona raised her feathery dark eyebrows. Her hair was a pale silvery white, which had earned her the name of Star, but her brows were dark clouds over smoke-gray eyes. Epona had always thought her very beautiful, though she never said so within her mother’s hearing. “You will not have milk,” Sirona told Rigantona now. “You measure your age in winters, your breasts will not fill again. But look! I have plenty.” She pushed down the neck of her gown and lifted one plump breast for inspection, squeezing it so a few rich drops dribbled out. She was haughty in her triumph.
“Let her have it.” Okelos sighed wearily. He did not want the baby of a foolish woman. “Just don’t let Brydda see you taking it away.”
Rigantona gave up; she had not really looked forward to raising another infant anyway. “The child is yours, then,” she told Sirona. “By the time she is grown enough to be worth the gifts of young men I will probably be safely in the nextworld; I would get no benefit from her.”
When the wicker basket was finished the druii began their work. Throughout the night they burned fires and chanted. They danced the ancient patterns and sang the ancient songs. Their voices carried across the village and many a woman lay awake in the night, glancing at her own wifefire occasionally to be certain the coals were still glowing.
At dawn the full tribe assembled except for the women who guarded the fires. On this day of all days, no fire would die for lack of attention.
The sun rose through a hazy sky. “It is a bad omen,” Kernunnos commented to Poel. “We must hurry, before something happens.”
The wicker cage was set up in the center of the commonground. It was lashed together with leather thongs and constructed in the unmistakable shape of a flame. One side was left open so Brydda could enter.
Kernunnos, dressed in a feathered cloak and wearing an eagle headdress, circled the cage nine times to the knife hand, whispering in the spirit language. Tena stood beside the cage, her coppery hair glinting in the sunrise, her arms lifted above her head.
A naked woman was led forward with a strong warrior on either side to hold her up if her strength failed. Okelos found it difficult to watch; he expected Brydda to embarrass him further. But from some unguessed reservoir of strength she managed to walk forward steadily, though she was very pale. Death was not to be feared, but the prospect of pain terrified her. As everyone knew and Rigantona had never let her forget, she had screamed during childbirth.
When she saw the wicker basket she closed her eyes and swayed on her feet.
They put her in the cage and lashed it closed. The head of each family of the Kelti came forward in turn, to lay one piece of wood at the base of the wicker as that family’s offering to the fire spirit.
Brydda crouched in the cage, though it had been built high enough to allow her to stand proudly upright. Her arms were wrapped protectively around her body.
Kernunnos began playing the priest drum. One single beat, repeated again and again in a gradually increasing tempo.
Tena bent over and laid her hands on the wood, open palms downward. She moved slowly around the cage, touching every log or branch she could reach. Then she stepped back and waited, eyes closed, arms outstretched, calling on the spirit of the fire.
Tiny red eyes began to wink deep within the pyre. A spiral of smoke twisted upward. Something crackled, like ice breaking up at the edge of the lake, but no flames showed yet.
Brydda moaned.
The druii, chanting, commanded her to speak to the spirits in the otherworlds on behalf of all the tribe, to beg forgiveness and ask that no harm come to the Kelti, no fire consume their lodges, no fever burn their flesh. The people joined in the chant, leaning toward the fire and the cage in its center, willing the woman to be strong for her journey.
The fire came alive and leaped upward. It twined like ivy around the wicker bars, outlining them in red and gold. Brydda drew back with a gasp but there was no place to go beyond their reach, not in thisworld. The gutuiters had instructed her to swallow the smoke, that she might be freed more quickly, but she was now too panicked to remember. She threw herself back and forth in the cage, thrusting out her white arms, the heat crisping the gold hairs on them.
“Okelos, where are you? Help me; I’m afraid!”
Okelos turned his head away. He met the eyes of the lord of the tribe; commanding eyes. He made himself turn back and watch.
Brydda screamed. The smoke billowed and the air stank of burning flesh.
The people of the Kelti waited.
When at last the wicker burned through and collapsed, a great shower of sparks shot into the sky and the massed spectators sighed, one deep groan of relief.
It was time to get on with the tasks of the living.
Chapter 6
A guard with a torch was posted at t
he smoldering pyre that night to keep the dogs and pigs away until the ashes were thoroughly cooled and the gutuiters could collect them.
Brydda had not undergone the ritual of the house of the dead before her burning, and therefore her ashes would not be stored in an urn and buried with the ancestors. She had gone directly to the spirits; her ashes had much power. They would be saved until next sunseason and then worked into the earth, to whisper to new growing things of the warm sun waiting for them.
It was the first such sacrifice Epona had witnessed—a member of her own lodge, burning. Esus of the Marcomanni, the Silver Bull, believed that sacrifices should be hung in trees, having been taught this ritual by his tribe’s druii, but Toutorix was known for his use of the wicker basket.
“Fire liberates the spirit sooner,” he explained, “and the shape of the basket helps keep it mindful of its purpose in being sent to the otherworlds. If we were not blessed with a shapechanger, we would attempt to communicate directly with the spirits of the game by building baskets to resemble the bear and the stag.”
After the burning, Epona returned to the lodge in a pensive mood. She knew Brydda was gone, body and spirit, and yet she could not quite believe it. Was it possible that laughing face would not toss her a wink across the cooking pots anymore? How could it be that no Brydda would share little jokes or giggle over gossip with her? Who would be Epona’s ally in the silent tugging of the personalities within the family of the chief?
The atmosphere in the lodge was tense. Okelos was sullen; Toutorix was quiet and withdrawn. He was rubbing his chest again and he had no appetite. Rigantona had already appropriated Brydda’s possessions and was railing at Okelos for having married a girl who was not only irresponsible, but possessed little property.
The Horse Goddess (Celtic World of Morgan Llywelyn) Page 8
