by Manda Scott
As a smith, she could admire the skill that had made it. As Breaca, as the Boudica, as first born of the royal line, come at last to her heritage, she sought to meet and to match what it might bring, and was surprised and a little disappointed to find no challenge or threat, but only a slight lurch in her abdomen and a sigh, as of a hound returning to the fireside.
Presently, when the ancestor did not come either to greet or to harangue, Breaca rose from the fire and lifted back the door-flap. Outside, the world was white; driven snow piled thigh high against the walls of the hut and the cold bit sharply.
Another threshold had been crossed. Nothing had changed, and everything. Airmid came to stand at her shoulder and it was good to remember those things that would never change.
To Airmid, staring out at the snow, Breaca said, “You were right, the gods are with us. If Philus has been missed in Camulodunum, those left in charge will never risk sending a patrol out now to come and look for him. At the very least, we are safe until spring. We can use the time to think of ways to keep the legions at bay for longer.”
Snow fell for the remainder of the month, sealing the land in a blanket of ice so that the legions stayed in their winter billets and the tribes in their steadings and the land slept in a semblance of peace.
Three days before the year’s-end, a month and a half before the winter solstice, the gods sent the easterly wind to blow southerly and warm, scouring the snow from the land. On the third day, when it was safe to ride, Breaca took a bay colt of Cygfa’s, not long broken to saddle, and rode with Cunomar out to the gully in which Philus and his men had made their last, indefensible camp.
The snow lay thin and patchy, running to mud. The air smelled of damp and rotting leaves and, as they reached the valley, of meat hung past its best. The bay colt shied at the stench and had to be coaxed forward, but that was why he had been brought; a battle horse cannot fear the scents of carnage. Breaca tethered him to some willows, and followed Cunomar into the gully.
Winter had covered the corpses, keeping them whole so that only in the last days had the carrion feeders found them. Breaca had not made any conscious effort to remember the lie of the dead after the battle, but the pattern was easy enough to pace out: here, behind the wicker sheep folds, lay the twelve of Philus’ merchants, all fallen face down and with wounds in the back or sides as they had tried to run; here in front, the mercenaries had died fighting. The black-haired one who went for Cygfa and lost his arm lay under his smaller, grey-haired companion, who had been Breaca’s kill. Pulled tight by ice, their flesh had melted back onto their faces, and their blood had washed away with the snow, leaving them whitely sodden, as the leaf litter was sodden and the drips from the overhanging branches.
“He’s here.” Cunomar crouched by a body a dozen paces away. “You were right. He’s not wearing the king-band.”
Breaca crossed to where ’Tagos lay in a puddle of melted snow. In death, he was composed and neat with his cloak wrapped about his shoulders and his one good arm across his chest, his blade still in his hand. A crow had taken his eyes and a fox had begun to feast on his face, but what was left held a peace that it had rarely done in life and it was still possible to see the authority and integrity of the man he might have been, and had tried to become.
Only his king-band was missing, the clamour of red gold, enamel and copper that Breaca had made for him in their first winter, the better to impress a governor with a taste for Eceni art. She knelt at his side and lifted the sodden wool of his cloak away from his one good arm. The band was gone and had been so while he still lived—anyone taking it from his corpse would have disturbed his peace too clearly.
Aloud, she said, “It won’t have fallen. He can only have given it away.”
“Philus is behind you,” Cunomar said, quietly.
Breaca turned. The slave trader lay as he had fallen, untidy and unmourned. His pack was not beside him, but she found it wedged in the roots of an oak, broken open by the weight of snow and stirred by rats and mice. She turned it upside down and the king-band spilled out, wrapped about in lamb’s wool to keep it untarnished.
“Well done.” Cunomar grinned. “I owe you a belt buckle.”
“Which you don’t have to give me. I only bet because it was obvious.” Breaca picked up the cold metal and teased open the wool. “No-one but Philus would have had the audacity to ask for this, and even if they had, ’Tagos would not have felt himself beholden to give it to anyone less threatening.”
Cunomar nodded. “It’s still the most beautiful thing you have made, and he treasured it. He would not have given it away if he had not felt it necessary.”
“I would like to think not.”
Unwrapped, the band lay across her hands, as bright as the day she had made it. Red gold caught the flat light of the morning, warming it; oval plates of blue enamel swam across like fish in summer water; copper roundels at the end pieces glimmered green in their fissures where sweat and man-heat had stained the metal. Lanolin greased her fingers, lightly pleasant, and made it easier to slip around ’Tagos’ one good arm without tearing the fragile skin or flesh beneath. He looked more complete with it on, more obviously regal.
Breaca sat back on her heels and swept the sodden, crow-torn hair from his face. “Made a king by gold and copper. He deserved better, at the end, at least.”
“If he serves us in death, he’ll be glad of it.”
Cunomar spoke absently, his attention no longer on the dead, but on Cygfa’s bay colt, which had been spooked by some crows. He was still dressed as he had been in the summer, in a sleeveless deerskin jerkin that made mockery of the cold and showed well the bear scars on his upper arms. At his left temple hung a hank of woven red horse hair with a single bear’s tooth dangling, which had been a gift from Ardacos to mark the last day of the old year.
Breaca said, “Cunomar? I, too, have a gift for you.”
He had not expected that, and was pleased. The elders of the Caledonii had taught him how to hide whatever he felt, but she saw the spark of surprise and the flush that followed and was glad she could still move him. She saw, too, and more openly, the consternation that followed. “I brought nothing for you,” he said.
“I didn’t expect you to. And you may not wish to accept what I offer, which is why we are speaking of it here, where we are overheard only by the dead. If you decide you don’t want it, no-one living will know.”
That drew his full attention. Reaching into her belt pouch, she drew out a circlet of red gold, silver and copper. It was not exactly like ’Tagos’ king-band, but so close that only a smith would know the difference.
“This is the first part,” she said. “You should know that it was not only made for you. If we hadn’t found ’Tagos’ band, I would have given him this to hold in death through the winter; the Romans would never have known it wasn’t his.” She held it out. “Knowing that, if I offered it to you, would you still take it?”
“Gladly.” A smile lit his eyes so that, briefly, he was very much his father. “I did say it was the most beautiful thing you ever made. I had always thought it wasted on ’Tagos.”
The band slid into place above his elbow. It was heavier than ’Tagos’ and the end pieces were not enamelled discs, but fashioned in the shape of a bear’s paw with room to fasten the kill-feathers, as had been done in the days of the far-distant ancestors.
Cunomar sat in silence as his mother fixed the five feathers of his kills on the left side. He would not look down when she had finished; he was too proud for that.
“You look more regal than ’Tagos has ever done,” Breaca said, and then, “Cygfa painted and bound the feathers. Airmid helped me draw the wire. Graine carved the shapes for the end pieces. This is from all of us, to mark the start of a year that will be different from anything we have ever known.”
His head came up sharply. “And so this is not the gift you feared I might turn down?”
“No.”
The wind was moving ea
sterly again, and growing colder. Breaca blew on her hands to warm them.
Presently she said, “After ’Tagos’ death, it was agreed that we would wait until the bodies of the dead were found, and that I would go to Camulodunum in spring when the snow melts, to tell them of the tragedy of the king’s death and how it has blighted our lives, to ask their help in returning his body so that we may mourn him properly, and to ask for their help in finding those responsible for his death. If the Romans believe us bereaved and not at fault, they will not send the legions to destroy the steading in revenge for Philus’ death.”
Cunomar grinned, wryly. “I don’t think it was agreed. I think it was argued for three days and three nights and you had your way because you are the Boudica and even Ardacos, Cygfa, Dubornos and Airmid together cannot sway you when you set your mind to something so obviously dangerous.”
“You were the only one who didn’t speak against it. Did you not agree with them?”
“Of course I agreed. It’s madness you’re going. If Rome does not believe you, you’ll be the first to die and then who will lead the war host? Do you think the warriors will gather for Ardacos, or for the son of the Boudica whom they have never seen lead a single spear into battle? I don’t. No king-band, however beautifully made, could make them trust me that much.”
He was not bitter, only speaking the truth as he saw it, and was probably right. He picked up a pebble and threw it at a crow that was teasing the bay colt. “I would have argued against with the rest of them, but I’m your son. I can tell when your mind is set beyond changing. The Caledonii taught me never to waste my breath on arguments that couldn’t be won.” He was not grinning any longer, and he did know her well. “Is that your gift?” he asked. “That you would not go?”
She nodded. “That I would not go, and would ask you to go in my stead. You are the king’s son. You speak Latin as well as I do. You have the courage and steadiness to say what is needful. If I can’t go, and it does seem as if the gods and dreams—and common sense—are against it, then you are the best alternative. It may be that you were always the best anyway. If I asked it of you, would you risk your life in Camulodunum for us? For me?”
The elders of the Caledonii had done their job well. Only because he was her son did she see the blaze of unshaded joy behind Cunomar’s eyes. Outwardly, his face was schooled to stillness, his answer measured. “I would be more grateful than I have words to express,” he said. “Can you tell me what made you change your mind?”
“Airmid. And then Ardacos, and then Dubornos and Cygfa together, and then Airmid again. They have all known me since before you were born, which perhaps gives them reason to believe that when my mind is set, it may still be altered.”
“Did they suggest I should go in your place?”
“Hardly. Each of them offered to do it alone, as I had done. It may be death, we all know that; no-one would ask that of anyone else. Except that now I ask it of you.”
“No. Now you offer it as the greatest gift you have ever given, or could give, to your son who still stands in the shadow of his parents and would prove himself a warrior. Which is why I accept, with great thanks.”
The rites of the year’s-end passed quietly that year.
Once, the Eceni would have marked the end of autumn and the birth of the new child-winter with a killed ram and malted barley and games on river ice for the youths coming up to their long-nights and a ceremony afterwards in the roundhouse with all the dreamers and singers present to keep it safe.
’Tagos’ steading—now Breaca’s—had no roundhouse in which to gather and there had not been time to build one. It had also, by force of circumstance, become winter home to the forty-nine she-bear warriors who made Cunomar’s new honour guard and even had they wished it, there was little food to spare for feasting. Thus, those who would fit gathered in Airmid’s hut on the western edge of the steading, that was built most like a roundhouse and could take thirty seated if each did not mind rubbing knees tightly with the other.
They made a spiral, with Ardacos at the outer rim near the door, and Airmid in the centre by the only fire not yet extinguished. As the night progressed, the flames were allowed to die so that it seemed the dark leached in from the margins, pressing the light and the heat inwards and downwards to a dull, red glow in the base of the fire pit.
Close to midnight, Airmid cast a handful of leaves and roots on the embers, and more, until they smothered the last of the light and the harsh, heady smoke of their burning rose into the dark and spread out, touching the furthest of them, offering protection against the thinning boundaries of the night. When she spoke, her voice came from above, or behind, or echoed in both ears together.
“The year dies and is not yet reborn. In the space between is no-time, Briga’s time, when she opens the gateways to the lands beyond life and the trackways from there to here lie clear. This night, of all nights, those who are gone may return without harm or censure, to meet again those who remain within life. Greet them, hear them, and, when the fire is relit, allow them to return whence they came.”
A collective shudder passed along the spiral, from centre to edge. The air became full, and emptied again, and where had been walls and a sense of safety was suddenly the hollowness of open space, as if each of those present had been walking in fog along a path, and had found themselves suddenly in clear skies on a narrow bridge across a mountain pass, with no handholds and a fathomless drop on either side to the ground below.
Breaca had met the dead too often to fear them, but on this night alone there was the chance she might find that Caradoc no longer lived, that he had died without her knowing and she would discover it only when his shade appeared, mourning the turning of her heart from the single-minded search for vengeance that had once consumed her. She feared that still, above many other things. Sitting in the black night with Graine pressed tight against her on one side, and sweat beading onto her arm from Cunomar on the other, she made herself breathe in Airmid’s harsh smoke, the better to see the approaching dead.
The night remained empty. None of her dead appeared, not Caradoc, nor any of the ancestors who might have been drawn by the torc at her neck. Darkness stretched like a tunnel, punctuated by hollow inhalations of those who had been visited. In the dark, she heard someone say, “Eneit?” and thought it was Lanis, until Cunomar shuddered and she realized that he was weeping, and was glad that he could do so.
No-one else spoke, neither human nor once-human, and, in time, the fire came again. At a signal felt but not heard, Cunomar cleared the embers of the last year’s blaze and Graine, as youngest present, laid tinder on the stone base for the new one. Airmid struck a spark and fanned it and the flames ate shaved bark and dried grass and the hanks of ewe’s wool and the tail hairs of brood mares that were sent to Briga to ask for good birthings.
Women who thought they might be pregnant, or who planned to become so that night, leaned forward and gave three of their own hairs to the fire. The men who thought they might father such children cut a nail paring from the first finger of each hand and gave that, to ask for health in their seed. There were many such pairings; a child conceived on the night of the un-year was fortunate. Born after midsummer, when the harvest had been taken in, it would find no hardship until winter when everyone suffered similarly—or might not, if the coming year turned as Breaca intended.
Airmid said, “Next year’s-end, we may see us free of Rome and all it carries,” and gave voice to everyone’s thought.
Those gathered left soon after that, carrying lit torches of hawthorn staves dipped in sheep’s fat, and shavings of oak bark and dried rowan leaves with which to start their own fires, never to let them out until the next year’s turning.
Breaca alone remained behind. She banked the fire for morning, and called in Stone, who had been left outside for fear the dead would not approach him.
Airmid came back with the water carriers, and then both brought in the accumulation of urns and beakers and
sealed jugs of plants and berries that had been moved outside, the better to accommodate the she-bears.
They sat a while by the firelight, not ready to sleep. The after-taste of dream smoke flavoured the air. Airmid cast on other leaves, sparingly; rosemary and sage and sharp mint, so that the scents freshened and the walls between the worlds began to feel secure again. She was wearing her neckpiece of silvered frog’s bones that was older than Cunomar, older than Cygfa, older even than the presence of Rome. Smoke coiled about it, and her, so that she could have been a girl again, or infinitely old; a long-dead ancestor keeping care of the still-living.
She poured water, and something else, into a beaker and offered it across the fire to Breaca.
“Caradoc did not come to you?” she asked.
“No.” Only Airmid would ask, only Airmid could fully be answered. “I would like to think that I would know before this if he were dead, but each year I am never sure until the night is over. Then I can forget for half a year, and worry again before the next time.” Breaca fed Stone the leavings of a roast hare and let him lick the grease from her fingers. He lay across her feet, a solid reassurance. She said, “Did Gwyddhien come for you?”
“Yes. She has come each year since her death. But less now than she did.”
There was pain in that, in the asking of it and hearing the answer. They both moved to lay a stick on the fire so that for a moment they were close. The light became a little stronger, the night a little warmer, the dead a little farther away.
After a while, Airmid said, “Cunomar wears well his new armband. Did you ask him to go to Camulodunum in spring?”
“Yes, and he accepted.” Breaca drank the flavoured water Airmid had given her. It tasted of mugwort and burdock and melted snow. Letting the bitterness and the cold settle on her teeth, she said, “He’s the best choice, I do know that. He’s the king’s son, and such things matter to Rome. He speaks Latin well and has met the Emperor Claudius, which means he knows how the Romans conduct their formalities, and—”
