by Manda Scott
The silence held them tight. A log shifted slightly on the fire. Outside, the rain, which had been falling for some time, began to beat more heavily on the roof tiles. Inside, they stood in a place of utter quiet, broken only by the soft sounds of breathing. The Sun Hound leaned forward a little, moving into the light, the better to see and be seen. His features displayed just the right proportions of sorrow and dignified regret—the mix of a man who has lost a woman he loved, of a war leader who must maintain the dignity of his station and of a father who cares for his son’s welfare.
Only knowing the nature of the game was it possible to see deeper, and Breaca was not certain she knew enough to see it all. Cunobelin had not done this on the spur of the moment; coin moulds are not drawn and cut in a morning. He must have known of the death since the end of winter and he could readily have sent someone north to the Eceni lands with news. He had not kept it a secret until now without a reason. In this dance, the final winner was the one who found that reason first.
“Who else knows this?” asked Caradoc, quietly. His thinking was faster than hers and there were other things at stake. Odras had told him the name of her son and the identity of its father but not the news of his mother; he would need to know why she had not spoken.
“Heffydd knows. No-one else. The messenger who brought the news is dead.”
Gods. The thought rocked Breaca as nothing else had done. He has killed to keep this silent.
“Who?” They were not playing games now. The layers of pretence had curled back like bark from a birch log, laid wet on a fire. Cunobelin was frowning and watchful. Caradoc stood upright, his fingers splayed on the forging block. Strands of hair, dark with sweat, clung to his brow. He asked his question again, spacing the words, giving each one due weight. “What was the name of the rider who brought the message?”
His father said, swiftly, “It was a woman. One of your mother’s sister’s kin. She died in a fall from her horse as she was returning with my death-gifts and news of your safety. The warriors of my honour guard who had accompanied her rode on to complete her journey.”
Breaca thought, I have seen Caradoc ride. The Ordovices fall from their horses no more than do the Eceni. And then, His father has oath-sworn men in the land of the Ordovices. Why?
Caradoc said merely, “Her name?”
“Cygfa. Her mark was the swan.”
The swan was a powerful dreaming; the bird carried word from the gods of light and sun to Nemain of the waters, and those who dreamed it were favoured by both. By itself, the name meant nothing to Breaca and she regretted that she had not listened harder to the kin-deeds of the Ordovices when they were told by the fire. Caradoc closed his eyes and she believed that he prayed. The firelight played on his cheeks, cutting deeper shadows in the hollows beneath the bones. The spark of danger was gone from him and it seemed certain that his father had just made the killing move. Time, then, for the Eceni to enter the game.
Letting go of the doorpost, Breaca stepped forward into the circle of torchlight. She played the game openly, after the manner of Togodubnos. In this place, it was not safe to do otherwise.
“Why did you tell him now?” she asked. “It would surely have been possible sooner.”
She was a guest. She could appear naïve and could display, even, a little righteous anger. The guest-laws limited how he could answer.
The Sun Hound turned, frowning. He had counted her an observer, not a player. “My lady,” he said, “to receive news like this, I felt it best that my son be amongst his own people.”
Caradoc laughed, harshly. The smith had left the bellows beside the fire. The young warrior pumped the handles, raising the heat in the core. With his face turned away from her, he said, “He had to tell me himself to make the right impact. He needed me malleable and open to direction. My father has dreams that one day the house of the Sun Hound will extend from the eastern shore to the west and that his grandsons will rule it together. He wishes me now to ride west and take leadership of my people.”
My people, not my mother’s people. It was not said by accident. The fire lit him harshly from below. His face became a skull, flaring with the gods’ light. His hair, this once, was not the brightest part of him. He looked up at his father. “Is that not so?”
“Close enough. Will you do it?”
“No, and if I did, they would not accept me. You forget that the people of the war hammer pass the line of their rule through the women, as do the Eceni. It is not a question of a man stepping in to take over before they choose another woman; it will be done already. Cygfa has younger sisters who will have succeeded her, and even if she had none, I am your son and I carry the blood-guilt for her death. From the moment I cross the border, I am dead.”
“That is not so. The woman died in an accident. My men will attest to it.”
“Your men, I am sure, will say what they have been ordered to say, but faced with the dreamer’s death even they may find it in them to tell the truth. If you are guilty, I am guilty. It is the law.”
Breaca said, “Caradoc, you were with us through the winter. You had no idea what was happening and no means to stop it. Luain carries the authority of Mona. He will absolve you of the blood-guilt.”
It might not have been the right thing to say but she had witnessed Caradoc’s sense of honour, and it was too easy to imagine him riding west to pay the price in his father’s stead for an act he could not have prevented.
“Thank you. We may have need of that.” Speaking to her, Cunobelin said, “Caradoc misreads my dream. I am not so enamoured of Roman ways that I think only of grandsons ruling. If the Ordovices pass their line through the women, that is their choice. But they will still need a man to sire their daughters. I may have only sons, but there is no reason why I should not have granddaughters.”
Caradoc laughed, openly. “So I am to be a studhorse for hire to the highest bidder? I don’t think so. Togodubnos may accept that and Odras may have allowed it, but the women of the war hammer choose their own men and I doubt they would choose me even were I there to make the offer.”
Three of the nine coins were his. He scooped them up now and dropped them, one at a time, like falling sunlight, into the white-hot core of the fire. They held their shape for a moment and she saw the war hammer, rendered better than the ship or the horse had been, and the outline of a head drawn from the side in the Roman fashion. It lengthened as the coin melted and then, with one last pump of the bellows, burst into flames. The air was filled once more with the bite of burning metal. Breaca sneezed.
Caradoc pushed himself away from the fire. His composure had returned, however thinly. He addressed his father with the formality of a singer in the place of the elders. “Thank you for your news. I will leave it to you to pass it on to my brothers and…those others who might wish to know. I will discuss my position with the dreamer from Mona. If Breaca is correct, I will accept his absolution. I have no wish to die early, nor by that manner. But I will not return to the Ordovices. Cygfa’s sisters will make their own choice when the time comes to bear children. I will have no part in it.”
“You would become landless, without kin?” It was said baldly, the ultimate threat.
“Yes, if the gods will it.” In a gesture as clear as any in the convoluted figure they had danced, Caradoc stepped past Breaca towards the door. To his father, he bowed. “With your leave, and that of Segoventos, I will pursue my career as a merchant seaman, as you advised me.” His smile mocked. “You have, after all, just given us a boat.”
In the stunned silence that followed, he looked out of the doorway and turned back frowning. “Bán’s gone,” he said to Breaca. “And the horses.”
CHAPTER 13
The weather was not good. A light rain began to fall shortly after Breaca and the others ducked under the low lintel of the coin forge. The door-skin fell into place behind them and blocked the warmth of the fire. Bán reined the red mare back under the shelter of an aging, fire-struck oak tree,
tugging the dun colt after him. The horse-boy joined them soon after, squatting down on the edge of the track where the mud was least and his tunic would not stain. They sat for a while, not speaking. Bán thought of his new hound whelp and what he might do with her. She was special, a prize worth five days’ uncomfortable riding, more tangible and therefore more valuable than the look in Amminios’s eyes when he had seen the red mare.
Bán had seen the bitch who was the dam, and that was very good because it let him see how well she would turn out. It had happened in the morning, shortly after they had arrived. They had been walking towards the dining hall when Caradoc had taken him aside and given him the whelp, pointing out a wicker-walled hut in which the dam was likely kept. He had been right; the hound bitch lay inside on a bed of fine straw and her pups stumbled and play-fought around her. She was an elderly bitch but not too old and her milk ran well. The whelp, when returned to the bed, had found its feet and pushed its way through her litter-mates to the teats. It took after its dam; both the colour of aged slate with a scattering of white hairs along the flanks and a white flash at the chest. The head was good and broad and the ears well set on top of it. The dam had a rough, thorn-defeating coat and the whelp showed the first signs of it in the bristle around her muzzle. She was not Hail, but she would be an excellent brood bitch for later; better than the young brindle he had traded at the horse fair who had proved good on the hunt but barren to the dog. He had been about to pick up the whelp to look in her mouth and check that she was whole when the door had opened suddenly. The hound bitch had raised her head and thumped her tail on the ground in greeting.
Bán drew his hand back from the straw and turned to see his visitor. The woman on the threshold had recently given birth but she was slim again and she held herself well. She had black hair that hung past her shoulders and wide, oak-brown eyes. Her hair was braided in a way he did not recognize, she wore rings on three fingers and the cut of her tunic showed white skin at her shoulders. She was the first woman he had seen, barring Arosted’s daughter, who was not of the Eceni and he made an effort not to stare. She came in and crouched at the head of the hound bitch and spoke to her, warmly, as he might with Hail.
“I brought back the whelp,” said Bán. His presence needed some explanation.
“I know.” Her voice was smooth and flowed over him the way Airmid’s did. The whelp had sucked itself to sleep and lay mouthing at the nipple with white milk dribbling from the corner of its mouth. The woman reached in and picked it up. The pup squirmed lazily at her touch but did not wake—a sign of good handling.
“You are of the Eceni?” she asked. “The boy with the red mare?”
“Yes.” If it was a label, it was a good one. With luck Amminios would have heard it.
“Togodubnos told me of you. He said you had a good hound already.”
“Thank you. I have. But we have need of a good brood bitch to go with him.”
“Of course. One always needs a good brood bitch for the hound. She doesn’t always have to be good at the hunt.” Her smile was tight and showed fine, white teeth. Had she been Eceni, Bán would have thought he heard irony in her answer and strands of other, more bitter things beneath it, but she was Trinovantian and he was not certain. He said nothing and the moment passed.
The whelp was persuaded to wake. She stood at the edge of the straw, blinking. One of her siblings took it as provocation and fell on her, growling ferociously. She threw off the torpor and fought back with commendable courage. They fell apart presently and both wandered off to find others to spar with.
“She is a good whelp,” said Bán. “Stronger than the others.”
“She is the best I have ever bred. Tell Caradoc that. And return this to him.” The woman straightened her arm and drew a band from above her elbow. Holding it out, she said, “Give him my thanks. Tell him I mean no disrespect, but too many will notice if he is seen without it and as many will know where it came from if they see it on my arm.”
The band was twin to the one Bán wore above his own elbow. His father had melted down three of his own and others collected from the Eceni warriors to garner enough bronze to cast a simple band for his family and each of their guests. It was something to unite them, more tangible than the quality of the horses, and the mariners had taken them up as a badge to be worn with pride. Bán had not considered that they might be used for barter, or that one might become a message in its own right. He took the thing and fitted it on his right arm, which had no decoration.
“Caradoc shall have it,” he said. He had not needed to add that he would make the transfer covertly. That much was obvious, together with the fact that he had been trusted to do it well. The weight of it pressed on him, pleasantly.
The return of the band had been achieved as the warriors and the mariners milled around the midden before the start of the meal. Bán had joined them, slipping between Curaunios, the ship’s mate, and Caradoc, and it had been easy in all the swirl of cloaks and tunics to return the band. The grin and the clap on the shoulder and the warmth of shared secrecy sustained him through the meal. It was coming to Bán, slowly, that he liked Caradoc a lot and that his approval was worth more than that of most men. He had begun to dream of travelling west, to the land of the Ordovices, of taking and passing their warrior tests—after those of the Eceni—and being pledged to Caradoc in the way Breaca was. The sharing of the whelp between them had been a step along the way and it had left him buzzing with an excitement that the rain did not dampen.
Sitting in the rain with the horses, he had been considering the journey west when the smith emerged from the forge. The man was ill, clearly; his skin was the colour of old tallow and his eyes had the fixed, unseeing quality of a cornered deer. But he was not open to the offer of help, nor did he seem prepared to stay and talk of what was happening inside. When the horse-boy hailed him by name, he flinched as if struck and sprinted away from them to vanish amongst the huddle of smaller, less tidy workshops that flanked the track. Watching his departing back, Bán considered the possibilities and decided on action.
“Here.” He slid down from the mare and passed the reins to the horse-boy. “I’m going inside. Breaca and Caradoc might need help.”
The child stared at him blankly. Bán said it again, pointing, and took a step towards the door of the forge. The boy fell on him, grabbing at his tunic with both hands, gabbling in a frantic, incomprehensible patois. His gestures made more sense than his words. One of them, or both, would die if the door-flap were lifted.
“That’s not true.” Bán prised the clutching fingers from his forearms. Some of the words sounded Gaulish. In that language, speaking slowly, he said, “I am a guest. I can go where I wish.”
“No.” The possibility of common understanding calmed the lad. A measure of terror left his eyes. In stilted Gaulish, he said, “The Sun Hound will not permit it. You may not go inside.”
“My sister is in there, and my friend. They may be in trouble. I have a duty to help them.”
“No.” The boy could not have been more than eight but he was fierce for his age. His fingers gripped with the strength of one much older and his mouth was set firm. “The smith was the only one in the forge when we came. If he has been dismissed it is because they wish to be alone.”
“You mean Cunobelin wishes to be alone.”
“It is the same thing.” The boy was very blond, paler than Caradoc or any of the southern Gaulish mariners, and his eyes were an intense, vibrant blue. He smiled, tentatively, offering consolation. “Your sister is armed, your friend also. If there is trouble, you will hear it. Besides, the young lord is a warrior like no other. Even his father would not attack him without other warriors at his back.”
It was true. Bán had forgotten that Caradoc’s reputation would have preceded him, particularly here. He relaxed and, after a moment, the lad calmed and withdrew his hand. “We will wait here,” he said. He sat down on the grass by the feet of Cunobelin’s horse and, reaching up, pu
lled Bán with him. “My name is Iccius. My people are the Belgae. You are Eceni?”
“Yes.” Bán edged in under the shelter of the red mare’s belly. “I am Bán mac Eburovic, also known as harehunter.” His belt buckle was cast in the image of a running hare. The elder grandmother had made it for him. He loosened it to show it off.
The boy admired it, shyly. “And this mare, she is yours?” The question was tentative, as if the mere suggestion was ridiculous.
“Yes. She was Luain’s guest-gift to my father after the shipwreck of the Greylag. Eburovic passed her on to me.”
It was a long story and it had to be told from the beginning, with interruptions for Iccius’s wide-eyed questions. The rain fell more heavily as it progressed and they both moved further under the shelter of the horses. Even so, by the end of it, they were drenched, the horses with them. Rain ran in a continuous stream from the mare’s hocks. It dripped under her belly and spilled in sheets onto Bán’s hair and shoulders. Wiping the water from his eyes, he considered the welfare of his mare, his harness and his new friend, in that order. He leaned over and tapped the Belgic boy on the shoulder.
“How far to the stables?” he asked. “We should get the horses in before the saddles are ruined.”
The lad gasped. “No! We—I—cannot leave…” He gestured towards the forge.
“Not even if I asked you to take me? I am a guest. I might get lost. Is it not your duty to direct me?” It would have been so in Eceni lands, but then, in Eceni lands, no child would have been left out in the rain holding another man’s horses.
“No.” Iccius was emphatic. “But you can go. I can tell you the way.”
Bán knew the way; that had not been the point. He chewed his lip, considering the options. Thunder rang overhead and the mare sighed, shifting her weight onto her other hip. The gods spoke, occasionally, in ways even he could hear. Grinning, he lifted his shoulder in an exaggerated shrug. “If you have to stay here, then I should stay, too,” he said. “We should keep each other company. And the rain might pass soon.”
