by Manda Scott
“And the risk is enormous, and still you have to let him take it.” Airmid’s foot reached to touch the side of her knee; a small thing, and a world of comfort. “He’s your son as much as Caradoc’s. He has grown into what you both have given him, but he has things he needs to prove, to himself as much as to you.”
“I know. He said as much. But he’s travelling and fighting alone, and shouldn’t be. It’s the care of the dreamer that makes the warrior. The elder grandmother taught us that and we have lived it since. Cunomar has no dreamer.”
“Graine would dream for him, willingly. She’s almost old enough to sit her long-nights. It could be done in the spring and she could ride with him after.”
“Hardly.” Breaca laughed shortly. “Graine hates violence. I can’t imagine her riding into any battle willingly. In any case, Cunomar needs someone in whose shadow he has not spent his life.” The burdock was working its way into her blood, sharpening sight and sound and touch. She leaned back on a wall and felt the weave of her tunic as a lattice across her back, and the dry serpent’s weight of the torc at her neck, and the press of Airmid’s foot which was against her calf now, not her knee, because she had moved back.
She let her hand rest on the dreamer’s ankle, feeling the small pulse across the top. It was regular and rhythmic and speeded a little under her touch. Not entirely steadily, she said, “He needs someone who can be for him what you were to me. And have always been.”
From the dark, after a pause, Airmid said, “Thank you.”
Suddenly, they were shy as children in each other’s company, and had never been. Both stirred the fire and added wood, shifting the balance so that it had more fuel but burned less brightly.
Presently, because she needed to speak, Breaca said, “Cygfa sleeps alone still. I had thought Braint might have been killed and might come to her as Eneit came to Cunomar, but there was no-one.”
Airmid said, “Cygfa carries her wounds deeper than her brother. And Dubornos carries his wounds openly, the greatest of which is that he loves Cygfa and she does not love him. They lived closely together in Rome and she cares for him as she cares for Cunomar. I think she will not see him hurt further and so keeps chaste because of it.”
“And yet if she loved another, she would find ways not to hurt Dubornos. That alone would not stop her.”
“I know, but she doesn’t allow herself to love. Cunomar is desperate for it, and seeks only one who can match him. Cygfa hurts still, deeply, and seeks no-one, believing herself stronger like that.”
“Could you heal her?”
Airmid grimaced. “Only if she asked for it, and she will not. I spoke to her while we were on Mona, when you were hunting legionaries and we were alone. She walked away and I haven’t tried again since. Her pain is her own, to heal as she chooses. As is ours.”
Such a small phrase, to open the world. The pulse under Breaca’s fingers remained steady. The burdock had cleared the day’s clutter from her mind, perhaps the year’s clutter, or longer. For a night—for this night—she had no need to lie awake and plan the future. She poured some of the melt-water onto her cupped palms and rinsed her face with it, then set down the beaker, carefully, away from the fire.
Speaking slowly, navigating among the rocks of her words, she said, “It was not to avoid hurting ’Tagos that I have slept alone these past years, but because of Caradoc.”
“I know.”
“And you the same because of Gwyddhien.”
“Yes.”
Through the three years since Gwyddhien’s death, they had never spoken of this. Breaca nudged a log deeper into the fire. Lit by new flames, she asked, “Does she expect it of you still?”
“She has never expected it at all. As I am certain Caradoc never expected it of you.”
Airmid’s eyes were entirely black. They searched Breaca’s face, across and across. She said, “It takes time to heal the pain of loss, and then it takes time to heal the memory of the pain, and the belief that honour requires us to hold that pain for ever. Then it takes more time to find that the loves of our past can still be loved, that something new—or something old, rewoven—does not diminish them. And then while we may know that to be true for others, while we see it in others and want to speak of it daily, it is harder to see it equally in ourselves.”
They had gone too far, now, to pretend. Breaca said, “Did you think I should take someone else to bed after Caradoc?”
Airmid laughed. “It surprises me daily that you have not.”
“But are you glad of it?”
That was when she knew, when she felt the steady beat of Airmid’s pulse become unsteady, telling a truth that she might not have believed in words, or perhaps never dared to ask.
Shakily, Airmid said, “Before tonight, I would have told myself not. Tonight I am very glad. Very glad indeed,” and reached a hand across the fire.
It was hard to breathe then, or to think with any clarity. The fire was between them, and then not between them, and then the beakers, so carefully put out of the way, were spilled onto the rushes of the floor, and neither of them cared because they were no longer dressed and cool water on one side balanced the heat of the fires from the other and in between was the endless mystery and wonder of touch, of skin on skin, of palms meeting, and hips and breasts and lips and teeth and hair and all of life resting in the blink of another’s eye.
Breaca had forgotten how it could be, and, remembering, could not imagine how it had been possible to forget, as if the parched could forget water, or the starving forget the feast laid out for the taking. Her fingers traced contours her memory had long discarded, and brought them back again, renewed, with taste and touch and the heaviness of another body above her, and then below her, and the honey-salt slickness, binding them close.
They stayed awake through the night of the un-year, rediscovering what was old and inventing what could be new, and came to morning wound together like hound whelps among the sleeping-hides, drowsily.
Breaca drifted into sleep, and woke again and lay watching the thread of smoke coil up through the hole in the thatch, closing one eye and then the other, to make it shift back and forth, as her mind shifted with it, caught in the tangles of old images.
Airmid leaned over and kissed her. “Good morning. May the year grow well within you.”
Breaca smiled into the kiss. “And in you.” All lovers said that on the first morning of the child-year. Tradition demanded it.
Airmid laid her hand, splay-fingered, on Breaca’s belly and tipped her head, as if listening. “Something has taken seed in the night and it can’t be a child, so it must be a dream. Can it be told?”
“Easily, but I’m not sure there’s anything you can do.” Breaca took the hand and kissed the fingers, and then the knuckles, and then the soft place in the centre of the palm where her tongue stayed to trace shapes onto the lines the gods had put there. “Unless you can become an iron-seeker and find me raw iron in Eceni lands and then learn to be a smith and help me turn the iron into blades for the war host, and can find a way to keep the legions from the great-house while we—”
“Breaca, stop. Don’t think of that. Today, this morning, for now, don’t think.” Airmid’s hands gripped tight, folding fingers into fingers, holding her close. “You are not alone in this. You don’t have to fight the wars and arm the warriors and plan everything alone. You know that. Cunomar will go to Camulodunum and he will do well. We have ways to find iron and a smith and I can help with that. And for now, we have this, a gift of the gods. It doesn’t have to be squandered.” Airmid kissed her forehead and her temples, and her eyelids, slowly, dizzyingly, with a different hunger from the night.
The last kiss landed carefully, placed in the hollow of her neck, where the two ends of the torc stood apart. “Whatever happens, I will love you. For today, for now, can we let that be enough?”
CHAPTER 28
“I BRING GIFTS. GIFTS FOR THE BOUDICA’S ARMY. LET ME IN! ” The hammering on
the gates matched the hammering in the forge and it was only by chance that Graine passed the knot hole and saw the shape silhouetted against the snow outside. She hauled the oak bar from its sockets and stood back as a broad, grey-haired woman drove a team of five broad horses through the gates. Allowed to stop, the beasts stood buckle-kneed and steaming in the falling snow. The wagon they had drawn rolled half a hand forward and then sank to its axles in ground that was not overly soft.
“Thank you. I was beginning to think the Eceni had abandoned the guest laws in their quest to be free of Rome.”
The broad wagonwoman leered her thanks. Her face twisted unpleasantly and she swayed as she sat. When she threw the reins at the head of her lead horse and jumped down, she stumbled as she landed.
Not since the worst of ’Tagos’ winters had Graine seen anyone walk abroad the worse for drink. The guest laws made no provision for a drunken woman driving her horses into the steading.
Chewing her lip, Graine looked at the ground, and then to the forge, but her mother was hammering sword blades and was too far away to reach. In any case, she was too busy to be disturbed by the minor difficulty of a drunken guest; they were two months from spring and the gathering of the war host and there was the limited stock of iron to be made into blades and the Boudica the only smith in the steading. She could not be called from the forge for anything less than the sight of a legion marching up the trackways.
The problem must be dealt with by other means, therefore. Looking again, Graine saw that the woman did not smell of either ale or wine, but of wet wool and wetter leather and spent, sweating horses. She leaned against the side of the wagon for support, holding it with her left hand. Her right hand, shoulder and hip were all crooked, as if they had once been broken and then set later, badly. Her hair was not entirely grey; threads ran through that were as richly red as the Boudica’s.
Without the leer, her face would have been handsome. On the shoulder of her cloak, hidden in folds of sodden wool, was a brooch in the shape of the boar, the sign of the Dumnonii, who fought Rome in the far south-west with all the tenacity and savagery of the beast from which they took their mark.
Put together, all these things gave a name as clearly as if it had been spoken aloud. Graine felt herself flush. Shamefully late, she gave the salute of an apprentice to an elder dreamer of great power and said, “Welcome to Gunovar, daughter to Gunovic, who gave his life for Macha at the invasion battles.”
The rest of what she knew ran silently in her mind, and doubtless could be read on her face: “You were one of the foremost dreamers of your people until you spent four days under the care of the legions’ inquisitors. Your warriors stormed the fortress to free you, losing half their number in the battle. The songs of that have reached us, but not the tales of how the legions acted afterwards, or of how you dream now, with your body broken.”
“Indeed.”
The woman’s leer was weighted now with irony, all turned inward, none of it for Graine. It was not clear if she answered the salute, the welcome, or all that had not been said.
It was hard to look at her face, knowing how it might have been before the burns; easier to watch her eyes, where the pain and the humour met and each became more mellow. There was a great deal of humour. It occurred to Graine that Ardacos would like this woman, and not for the dryness of her humour alone.
Gunovar returned the dreamers’ salute with some elegance, managing in a single movement to acknowledge Graine’s relative youth, while implying a depth of dreaming equal to her own.
She said, “And you are Graine, hare-dreamer and daughter to the Boudica. I am honoured to meet you. Could you see to my horses while I talk to your mother? They’ve drawn me bravely for nearly a month and I would not have them die for lack of care now that—Ah, you’re here, finally. I wondered how long it would take for you to notice you had company.”
Very few people spoke to the Boudica in that tone of voice. Fewer, since she had taken the torc after ’Tagos’ death. Airmid might have done so still when they were alone, but nobody else that Graine knew of. She looked to her mother, and saw that she was grinning, and that the incomer, therefore, was that rarity to be treasured: a genuine friend.
“Did you? That would be why you announced yourself so fulsomely.” Breaca had reached the cart horses and was rubbing them behind the ears where the harness had chafed. Stooping, she ran her hand down the legs of the sweat-riven bay that was closest.
“I thought my daughter was greeting you admirably. She’s too well mannered to tell you that you’ve ruined a good horse and it will take us until halfway through summer to heal it.”
“And you’re not.”
Breaca hoisted herself up on the spoke of a wheel, reaching into the wagon. “No. The draught horses of the Dumnonii are legend. What have you brought that makes it worth harming one of your greatest—Ah. Did the gods whisper in your ear or has news of our need reached the south-west?”
The sides of the cart were too tall for Graine to look inside directly. All she could see in those first moments after the oiled cover slid away was the wash of dull blue-grey reflected in her mother’s eyes and the gratitude and reverent joy, as of a lifetime’s prayers answered, in her voice. She did not have to be a dreamer to know what was inside.
Gunovar waved a hand lightly, as if driving a year’s worth of iron across the land past two legions in the dead of winter were nothing of note. “I’m not so closed to the dreaming as you might think. Airmid sent whisperings and I heard them, but in any case, word of war travels on the wind and the wind has been strong this winter. News of the Boudica’s army has reached those who would support it. To fight Rome and win, you need iron; so much is obvious even had Nemain not walked through my nights. This is all we have. The rest we need for our own battles. Will it be enough?”
“I’ll make it enough.” Breaca jumped down to stand in the wagon, ankle deep in iron. She lifted a bar and held it up to the wind and the snow, sighting along its length as if it were already a blade.
Gunovar stood by, watching, and was watched in her turn by Graine. The broad woman was broken and not fully mended, but she had the strength of mind and flesh to drive a wagon train through mud and ice alone. She had, in fact, the build of a smith.
Breaca already knew it. She crouched at the edge of the wagon and held the raw iron across her hands, like a blade. Passing it down to the woman below, she said, “Gunovar, your father was one of the greatest smiths of his day. I have seen your work and you have his skill, if not more so. Will you stay and help me in the making? As much as iron, I need another smith. The legions slaughtered ours when they broke the blades in Scapula’s time. I can’t make all this into swords and spears before the fighting begins in spring.”
Gunovar smiled, and her face was almost even. “If you listen to the hero tales, you could fashion an army of blades in one day from the fires of your forge and then fight Rome single-handed. Fortunately, I don’t believe all of the tales, only those parts I hear first hand. Of course you can’t arm your war host on your own. Why else do you think I have come?”
With Gunovar’s help, the production of weapons resumed faster than before, although with pauses now to train the she-bears in their use. Graine had been right: Ardacos did like the broad woman with the broken body, and not only for the dryness of her wit. Together, these two took Cunomar’s honour guard and began to fashion them into the core of an army.
Two months after the midwinter night of the all-dark, Breaca took a break from her hammering and called the honour guard into council. Forty-nine youths gathered in the great-house where they had taken their spear-trials, flushed with the promise of action. They were not disappointed when each was given an armband, made precisely to fit, with the she-bear stamped on one side and the serpent-spear that was the mark of the Boudica on the other. With this as their sign of surety, she sent each back to the village, steading or settlement that had once been home, and thence on to all those neighbouring.
Each bore the same message: “Breaca nic Graine, first born of the royal line, summons the warriors of the Eceni nation to gather at the site of the horse fair by the first new moon after the spring equinox. The she-bears will guide those who do not know the way, or are wary of winter travel. Snow is your best protection. Travel early and in small numbers and pray that the winter holds and the legions do not move early from their forts.”
Thus was called into being the first war host of the Eceni to gather since the Roman invasion.
CHAPTER 29
IN THE WESTERN MOUNTAINS, CLOSE TO THE DREAMERS’ ISLE of Mona, the fighting began before the end of winter.
Snow lay knee deep; thicker in the valleys and thinner on the shoulders of the mountains where the wind carved it close. The peaks were frozen ice caps, inaccessible to man and beast. None of these prevented Rome’s auxiliary cavalry from making increasingly wide-ranging forays into the mountain ranges west of their fortress base, or the warriors of Mona from attacking them whenever and wherever possible.
Wrapped in an oiled cloak for warmth, Valerius lay face down on packed ice under the notional cover of a wind-stripped hawthorn and looked down on the valley below where a Gaulish cavalry wing had made camp the night before. Dawn was breaking, bright and cold, so that the light was silver, with tints of blue and gold as the sun burned the horizon. A late mist rose and thinned and what had been a sea of grey became, slowly, lines of tents in perfect order, with two larger ones for the officers at one end.
At the end opposite these, nearer the neck of the valley, fifty riderless horses milled restlessly in a makeshift enclosure. To either side, small moments of violence made flurries in the mist and presently, when Valerius looked, two sentries of the Gaulish cavalry lay supine in the snow, leaking redly from throat and groin.
A white cloth flapped once near the tents behind the enclosure. To Valerius’ left, a figure edged out from the lee of a boulder and lifted a knife blade high. There was barely light enough to see by; the polished iron flickered, greyly, but enough, signalling safety, and permission to proceed.
