by Manda Scott
She followed his lead, glancing outwards to left and right, nodding at those who hailed her. “I’ll call the others up as soon as we’re all through. If any of us gets through. Gods curse these people. Why do they all have to get in the way?”
Caradoc grinned at a man selling ale and signalled that he had nothing to trade. “It may be they have orders to do so. This is the first time I have known a cattle fair to be called before the first day of summer.” A he-goat ran at the walls of his pen, splitting the wood, and the dun colt shied at the noise of it. He fought to bring it under control.
Breaca said, “If the horses bolt, it will not look good.”
“If the horses bolt, it will be taken as an excuse to attack.” Caradoc laughed, breathlessly. He did not seem unhappy with the thought of battle. Seeing her, he sobered, biting his lip. “We must hope that your brother is handling his mare well.”
“I am praying for it.” Breaca turned back from a minor altercation with a potter and saw why her own horse had faltered. “We’ll know soon if he isn’t. That bull doesn’t like horses.”
Two men straddled the track in front of her, arguing over the price of a tall, blue roan bull. The animal had not wintered well; ribs and hipbones showed sharp-edged with no padding of fat or muscle to cushion them and the white tracks of scars showed where it had fought and, perhaps, not won. Its horns were the length of her forearm and gracefully curved. The tips tapered to fine points and had been capped in silver. It was not a decoration she knew but she had heard that the Romans marked their beasts thus for feast days.
“Does your father worship the bull?”
“My father worships power. If he believed a bull would lend it to him, he would take it, but that is not one of his. Say something pleasant. They think you’re angry.”
“They’re right. But not with them.” She smiled a false greeting to the handlers and edged the mare to the left, away from the loop of the horns. The bull eyed her malevolently. The mare jigged forward, snoring. A bawling calf, left alone in a pen built for many, lifted its tail and gave vent to a liquid jet of hot, sour faeces. In the pen beside it, a sow rooted at the wicker walls, endeavouring, with apparent success, to dig her way out. The smell was overpowering and the noise worse but the horses passed it and suddenly they were clear of the pens and had been neither gored nor goaded into unseemly action.
With her eyes on Cunobelin and her face set, Breaca lengthened the mare’s stride, counting the paces as she walked across the plain; three forward: Macha and Eburovic were past the bull and safe; six: Luain mac Calma and Segoventos the Gaul came within reach. The latter was not a good horseman; she heard his curse and the chink of his harness mounts but nothing more. Nine: Airmid and—Nemain help them all—Dubornos with his excess of armbands and gaudy dress came within reach of the bull. Since leaving Eceni heartlands, he had placed himself on Airmid’s left as if by right. If Breaca thought about that for too long, she would be too angry to think of anything else.
She smoothed the front of her tunic for something to do. She had not known, until that moment, how much of her rode three rows behind. Her mind counted the twelfth pace and Airmid was safely past the calf and the penned pig and riding in open land. Relief plumbed the depths of her, clouding her vision. She lost count of the strides and had to measure the gaps between tufts of grass or the fat, spreading cattle turds. The remaining seamen and warriors were all of a stature to handle their mounts. It was Bán, riding at the end, for whom she held her breath now.
Caradoc sensed it. Without turning, he said, “The mare is behaving better than she was in the forest. He has a spear’s throw to go, maybe two. I’ll tell you when he’s through. Look to your right; someone brings you a gift.”
Breaca looked down. A woman walked by her knee. A dark woollen cloak covered her hair and most of her face. Underneath it, she was young and had recently given birth. Milk stains darkened her tunic at both breasts although there was no sign of a child. The gift she offered was a slate-grey whelp of less than weaning age. It squirmed blindly in her upturned palms. Breaca glanced behind her; to refuse it would be an insult but she had no intention at all of riding forward to meet her country’s most powerful war leader cradling a puking, whining whelp on her lap. Airmid could have been trusted to take it but she was too far away, pushing her horse past a man herding a brace of ewes and lambs. No-one else was within reach.
Breaca leaned down. “Thank you. I am honoured, but I have nowhere to carry such a gift. If you could perhaps give it to—”
“I’ll take it.”
Surprisingly, Caradoc reined back the dun to ride behind her. Smiling shyly, the woman dropped back to greet him, or, perhaps, to engage him in proper talk. She spoke rapidly and her words were too fast to follow, exhorting, possibly, and admonishing. Her accent was highborn and did not accord with the quality of her dress. Breaca heard Caradoc’s amused reply and the heavy sound of bronze tapping iron. Three strides on, the warrior was back at her side, bearing his gift and lacking his armband.
“Did you know her?” Breaca asked. The armband had been a gift from her father. It was worth more than any whelp.
“A little.” His grin glittered more brightly than it had done, over a bedrock of sudden, unexplained anger. She had expected there to be undercurrents here—enmities, old feuds and loyalties of which she knew nothing—but the sight of them so readily exposed left her uneasy. She would have asked for an explanation but the sharp edge to his smile did not allow it. He was closed to her, as he had been on the headland, still wet from the sea.
Caradoc tucked the whelp into the crook of his elbow, wrapping it in a fold of his cloak. Warm and dark after the chill of the morning, it fell silent. “It’s a good whelp,” he said. “Odras is the last of the old royal line of the Trinovantes. She is niece to Togodubnos’s mother through whom my father rules. She is known throughout the land for the quality of her hounds. Your brother will like this one when it grows. Just don’t expect me to care for it if there’s fighting.”
“There will be no fighting. I will not allow it.”
An oath sounded in Latin and she turned in time to see Bán’s mare face the bull. The men had changed sides and the beast stood four square on the track, its head lowered so that the silver points were horizontal. The Roman, blessedly, had got past. He waited on the far side, giving advice in low Gaulish that was ignored by both men and boy. The bull-men had given up all pretence of trading; the coming sport was too good. At a prod from the larger of the two, the bull took a step forward and scored the ground with its horns. The silver bent at the ends, twisting inwards.
“Bán—” Breaca reached for her sword. She had never yet drawn it in anger. Her palm itched at the thought.
“No. Watch. He can do it.”
Her brother laughed brightly and called something that she didn’t hear to the Roman. The red mare spun on her hocks and sprang like a deer, passing over the scouring calf and into the pig pen. They paused for less than a heartbeat, only enough to raise a flurry of outraged squealing that drew eyes from the four corners of the market, and then the mare was out again onto clear land, and Bán was riding her neatly at a hand canter to join his sister. There were cheers from the less constrained, or less tactful, amongst the traders.
“Isn’t she good?” He rode up to Breaca’s right, the side of the dreamer. Airmid held back to let him through. “Do you think they set it up for us to show what she can do?” His eyes were alive, his smile brilliant. In many ways, he was a mirror to Caradoc, lacking only the simmering anger.
“Assuredly.” She tried to be sober, as befitted the greater occasion, and failed. “Caradoc has been honoured with a gift from his people. If you are good and do not offend any more of the Sun Hound’s prize swine, he may let you have it.”
They had left Hail behind for an assortment of good reasons, not least of which was the fear that Amminios would harm him, but the parting had not been easy. Bán saw the whelp and his eyes grew round.
Bán’s eyes grew wide. “Can I have her? Really?” He was a child still. She forgot that sometimes.
“Later. If we survive the meeting. Just now, we have something more important to do.” Breaca looked left to Caradoc. “Are you ready?”
“Of course. We are all ready.”
“Good.” She raised her arm above her head. Forty-two riders spread out in a line on either side: seamen to the left, dreamers to the right, warriors on either end. They moved in something close to silence. She felt the hiss of their breathing and the pressure of concentration. New bridles creaked and harness mounts clashed mutely, but the curses and oaths of practise were absent. For days they had worked through this—on the meadow at the roundhouse, on the flat plains of the horse lands and, later, on the open stretches before and after the tracts of woodland that marked Trinovantian territory. She had planned it, remembering Togodubnos’s arrival at the roundhouse. Caradoc and the Roman had helped make it happen. Between them they had achieved something remarkable: A group of seamen who were not riders had learned to mesh with men and women who had ridden alone or in competition with others for all of their lives. Each of them had learned something, if only how to work as part of a team with those they despised. Even Dubornos had accepted his part in it. They lined up now with a precision and pride that made Breaca’s heart ache and her hand clench on the reins.
“Go.” The Roman spoke softly from further down the line. She dropped her arm to the horizontal, pointing forward, and sent the grey from a standing start to a full gallop. The entire line matched her pace. She felt the Roman pushing his gelding at the same time as Bán held back on the red mare and Caradoc tempered the dun. All three kept their noses level with the grey. As Togodubnos had once attempted to do with a smaller band in front of a deserted steading, she swept her people forward in a level line towards the warriors of the Trinovantes. At the last possible moment, she threw up her arm and called the halt.
It was good, possibly perfect. She reined in the grey opposite Togodubnos and not his father. The Sun Hound, lover of all things imperial, faced the Roman. Caradoc, smiling warmly, looked down from the height of the dun colt on Amminios. To his right, Bán sat taller than any of them and the red mare shone like the setting sun with the blue of his Eceni cloak making the sky about her. In the beginning, it was impossible to look elsewhere.
“Brother.” Breaca addressed the man opposite as he had addressed her when he came to offer armed aid in their war against the Coritani.
Togodubnos acknowledged it, nodding. “Sister. What brings you here?”
He would know that; he would have known for days if not months. Trinovantian spies were everywhere. Nevertheless, he required a reply, given and heard in public.
Formally, she said, “The gods have seen fit to honour us with a number of shipwrecked seamen. It is the wish of our elders that they be delivered to a suitable trading ship bound for Gaul. We have pledged their safety until such time as they board ship. As you have spoken at our council on behalf of your father, we would ask your leave to pass beyond your gates and south to the sea river.”
“And you return to us our brother, Caratacos.” It was the first time she had heard the Gaulish rendering of the name. Togodubnos made it a statement, not a question, and a means not to answer her request.
Caradoc himself answered. “I was on the Greylag,” he said, and they had known that, too. “I am alive only with the aid of Breaca and her family. They are, as you have long said, our close kin in all but name.”
“Indeed.”
“And I hear I have other kin—that you have sired a son. My congratulations.”
He spoke lightly, with only the barest edge of the earlier glitter, but she was not alone in hearing the sting in the words. She held the grey still. It was the steady brown mare opposite her that flinched, and Amminios’s bay. Togodubnos himself was good. Had she not known him before, she would not have seen the sudden brush of colour high on his cheeks, nor recognized the warning in his eyes.
Evenly he said, “Odras sends you her highest regards and her apologies that she could not be present to greet you in person.”
“I should think so, when she can ride better than the rest of you put together.” His smile was tight and the mockery was directed inwards as much as out. “Nevertheless, I am honoured. And I trust your son is in better health than his late sister?”
It might have been a genuine question. Togodubnos took time to gather an answer. Another, harsher voice filled the void he had left. “He is very well. The succession is secured. You are free, therefore, to continue your career as a merchant seaman.”
The words fell into the still air like a thunderclap, rocking through Breaca’s chest, pushing the beat of her heart from its rhythm. Because she was of the royal line and the pride of her people rested more heavily on her than on the others, she made herself look left to their source, to the man whose name had been both a threat and a promise since her childhood: to Cunobelin, Hound of the Sun, guardian of his people, pitiless destroyer of his enemies, hawk of diplomacy and wolf of the trade routes.
“Greetings, princess.” He had grey eyes, exactly like his youngest son, and they were laughing at her.
He was not a broad man—both Togodubnos and Heffydd, his dreamer, were broader—nor was he especially tall. His hair was a nondescript, late-harvest straw, streaked with the white badger stripes of age. His torc and his shield were of gold, intricately worked, and the bands arrayed up both arms were studded with pink coral and enamels in colours she had never seen. Beyond that he had not chosen to turn himself out with particular ostentation; Dubornos had outdressed him without effort and Bán was by far the better mounted. What he had was a presence that allowed no room for manoeuvre, that inspired not so much fear as a certainty that his will was law and could not be gainsaid; that she was nothing and he was the world. Like his stronghold, he was everything she had been told and more. It will be bigger than anything you have ever imagined. How could the man who had taken it by force of character and held it for thirty years without recourse to war have been anything else? And he had called her princess.
She gave the salute of one royal line to another. “Cunobelin. Sire of the Catuvellauni and caregiver to the Trinovantes. Your presence honours us.” It was the most formal greeting she knew. She spoke in the neutral dialect with which Togodubnos had opened, forsaking the broader vowels and softer consonants of her homelands.
“No more than yours honours us.” He smiled now with more than his eyes. Like Caradoc, it changed his being and the air around him so that the sun grazing her skin seemed warmer. “We have a ship in dock at the southern harbour. She has neither the speed nor the oarage of the Greylag but she is believed to be a good vessel none the less. We would be honoured if your mariners would accept her as our gift.”
He means to give them a ship? As a gift? A whole ship?
She was speechless and doubtless meant to be so. Segoventos was well within earshot; half the meadow was within earshot. She heard the rattle of harness mounts and the jig of a hard-held horse towards the far right-hand end of her line where the Gaul sat his pied cob. Opposite her, and out of his father’s eye, Togodubnos inclined his head and raised it again in an unmistakable nod. She could have loved him for that.
Raising her voice, she said, “I am sure the Greylag’s master would be overwhelmed with gratitude at such a gift.”
It was the right answer. The glitter of excess fell from the morning. At her side, she heard Caradoc’s soft snort of amusement. His father simply nodded.
“Good.” Still smiling, if more thoughtfully, the Sun Hound swung his horse. “The ship has not yet been named. She is in dock at the deep river berth. We will visit her later to ensure that she is acceptable to those who will sail her. Perhaps then they would like to name her. Before that, my people have prepared a meal
. You will accept our hospitality and join us?”
That, too, was not a question. Breaca bowed her head. With consummate dignity, she said, “We would be honoured.”
She had expected Rome, or Gaul, in counterfeit. She had prepared to be offered wine and to refuse it, to be faced with fish and waterfowl and other of Nemain’s beasts and to refuse those, too; to be served by slaves and to refuse their service. She had done what she could, with the help of Caradoc, Luain mac Calma and, latterly, the Roman, to understand what it was to eat from a single platter, leaning sideways on a bench raised from the floor, and had readied herself to eat with apparent enjoyment the fruits and vegetables, sauces and spices of another continent. She had seen the vulgarity of southern jewellery and was braced to see it reproduced in the hangings and carvings, the pottery and the dress of those who greeted her.
What she was given was home—a magnificent, understated, perfectly replicated version of home.
The great-house of the Sun Hound could have been that of the Eceni, had they chosen to build it with the door facing south and yellow hangings on the walls, and to have only the sign of one dreamer carved on the doorposts. Because she needed to find fault, she decided that the carvings of bears were oppressive and oddly inept, as if drawn from the outside by one who feared what he saw, rather than from the inside with the understanding and soul-mingling of the dream. She watched Airmid and saw her note it, and saw her, too, pick through the meal with care, testing and tasting for other evidence of failure. There was none to be found. Everything else was in order, and more than that. The Sun Hound displayed his wealth with restrained good taste, letting the quality and quantity of the fare speak for him. At the end of a good harvest, the Eceni could have prepared a meal of this size for numbers such as this but not in early spring, at the end of the hardest winter in the grandmothers’ memory. They were given oatcakes and honey—honey, in spring—and malted barley and good, fresh ale that had not soured with storage and a whole roasted boar with a bull calf for those who preferred it and salted hams that had not yet dried. There was more meat than she would have liked but it was served as a courtesy and they would have done the same, if they could, had the Sun Hound paid visit to the roundhouse. The only clear difference was the absence of women. Togodubnos’s mother was there, a quiet, watchful woman with the height and dark colouring of her son, and a younger woman who fawned on Amminios, but no others.
