I went down to the harbor near the headland where the battle had been fought, and we climbed aboard the ship to see the jewelry and spices laid out on the deck for sale. Sometimes there were books, paper, and writing materials. When Dugald found these things, he bought them. I never asked after the jewelry or even the weapons.
Gray made me a sax, the single-edged blade the Frisians carry. It was about ten inches long, forged all of a piece, tang and blade together. The hilt was wrapped first with wire and then leather. I’d had my own spear since I was ten. The Gray Watcher had lately given me a beautiful compound bow that, as he said, was similar to the ones carried by Roman cavalry men. So I felt no need for any other weapons.
On this ship I saw no books. There were many people aboard. Issa was nagging her father and Bain for another necklace, this one gold. Gray was present, haggling with the captain over some scrap iron in a sack. Things were getting pretty bloody, because Gray was determined he was not going to pay the man’s price and the captain was determined he was.
A young man, one of the crew, spoke to me. “Not interested in any of the jewelry?” he asked with seeming casualness.
I laughed. “I can’t afford it,” I told him. “I have no money. I’m just here with Kyra.” She was also haggling with a withered-looking merchant, who had a dark gray beard and was becoming very dramatic.
“The woman with one eye?”
“Yes.”
“She your mother?”
“No. My mother is long dead.”
“I didn’t think so. She is so dark, and you are very, very fair. So blond is your hair, it is almost white. I haven’t seen someone so blond since I left my country. Most of the people here are dark, and if they aren’t dark, they’re red. But you, you’re beautiful.”
“Thank you.”
He took my hand, drawing me away from the crowd around the goods set out for sale on the ship’s deck. “Would you care to walk with me up into the rocks?”
He gestured at the headland against which the shallow-draft ship was moored. The ground was very broken there, flat clearings, then giant boulders. In a few steps you would be hidden from the folk on the ship, wandering in a maze with small clearings ablaze with green grass and wildflowers and barren spots covered with sun-warmed stone. He was still holding my hand. I looked into his eyes. They were gray-blue and his hair was a dark honey blond.
But I wondered what the reason was for his strange scrutiny and why he would want me to go off alone with him. Uneasy, I tried to pull my hand from his. He wouldn’t let go.
“No,” I said. “I don’t think I want to—”
“Why not? Am I ugly?”
“No.” I was conscious that he still had my hand. “You are quite pleasant to look upon.”
“Then see.” He pointed to a necklace of garnet and amber. “If you walk out with me, I’ll give you that. It will look beautiful on someone with your coloring, so blond and fair skinned. I’ll get it now and we can take it along with us. Let me show you how the red stones and butter amber will glow against that milky skin of yours. Come with me.”
He was still holding my hand and made as if to put his other arm around my waist. I snatched my hand away and backed up. “Why would you want me to go with you and offer me presents?”
“Yes! Why indeed?”
The voice was the Gray Watcher’s, and he was standing behind the young man, looking down at me over his head. The young man turned and found himself looking at the Gray Watcher’s chest. In all the years I had lived with Dugald and the Gray Watcher, I had never seen him really angry. Not even during the battle with the pirates. But I sensed that he was angry now. The fair boy was one inch from dead. That was just his distance from Maeniel.
“He did no harm,” I said.
“Not for want of trying,” Maeniel said. “She is virgin and still a child. Now get out of my sight before I snap your neck like a rabbit’s.”
The boy left, easing away with remarkable quickness.
“What did he do?” I asked, wide-eyed at Maeniel’s fury.
“You really don’t understand, do you?”
“Oh,” I gasped. And then, of course, I did. First I blushed and then I began to laugh.
The tension went out of Maeniel’s body. He wound up buying me the garnet-and-amber necklace. I didn’t know he had such a thing as money, but he did.
Later we stopped at the chief’s hall. He wasn’t there, but Issa greeted us respectfully. She was now head of the household, being married to Bain, her mother having died in the last year. Her father seemed to have aged greatly. She was her father’s only surviving child, which explained Bain’s deep interest in her when she was only a young girl.
She offered us wine and mead, but as was proper on a casual visit, we took only beer. Others were in the hall. The Romans say we have no seats but sit on the floor, but this isn’t true. We have benches and low tables arranged around the fire pit, and since wood carving has become a high art among us, these are often very beautiful, cherished heirlooms. So they were in Dunnel’s hall, fragrant cedar and the stone-hard pine that grows in the mountains battered by wind from the sea. These were twined with sea life. Seal, whale, porpoise, dulse, samphire, sloke, and sea spinach mingled with the beasts and long-necked dragons; eels, mackerel, and hake were braided together with the knots of eternal renewal.
The hall was a beautiful place with the fire blazing brightly on the central hearth. Its glow was thrown back by the jewel-like colors of the many wall hangings tracing the ancestral accomplishments of both town and family, flaming in the deep polish of the old oiled wood of its furniture. I sat where a proper girl should sit, among her male kin. Quite a few people were here visiting, to take advantage of the trade ship’s stop. But we were all surprised when the young man who had propositioned me on the ship appeared before us.
“My name is Farry,” he said, “and I am the son of the captain, Cuan. The request I made of the young lady here was an honorable one. The jewels were valuable and a seafaring man is not in a position to marry.”
Maeniel’s face didn’t change. “Then it should have been made in Kyra’s presence,” he said.
“Yes,” Farry said, “but I was in a hurry and I was afraid some other might snare her. And I didn’t know she was a noble. She dresses so … so … plainly. The jewels were mine to dispose of and I would have made good the gift. But that’s not why I come here today.”
“What is it then that you want?” the Gray Watcher asked. “She is not for you, however much you offer. She is too young as yet, and most noble.”
“I know. I know,” Farry said. “Her line has numbered many kings and queens, and that is why she is in danger. Lord Merlin still hunts her, and there is a price on her head. I was told this by one of my crew, who said I should try to snare her and carry her off to Cornwall, where she would command a huge sum from the chief druid and other British princes. She is a great prize, and I can see why. That was the reason I took her hand and behaved foolishly, but I am here to say I had no bad intent.”
Maeniel was about to answer, but I placed my hand on his and spoke to Farry. “I thank you for the compliment of your esteem and admiration, and I value your friendship. I thank you for your warning. I had not thought the memories of my mother’s influence still lingered and had believed myself all but forgotten.” Then I rose and took his hand.
He looked at me for a long time, as though sealing me in his mind that he might remember my face. “I wish,” he said, then gave a little laugh. “I don’t know what I wish. That you were less or I were more, perhaps. Yes, just possibly that’s it. The jewels do look beautiful on you. I wish I had had the pleasure of making a gift of them to you. Good-bye.”
Then he turned and walked away, and I gazed after him in sorrow.
“Don’t look so, girl. He’s the first to fall at your feet; he will not be the last. Amore disturbing thing is what he had to say,” the Gray Watcher said.
“Yes,” Dugald said. “I
had hoped the hue and cry had been forgotten or Merlin believed she was lost or had died in my care.”
“No,” the Gray Watcher said. “His kind don’t forget things. Not things of her sort. And, make no mistake, when the ship makes its way back to the kingdoms below the Roman wall, someone—this Farry even or his father or his shipmates—will bring word to the British druid that this child has grown into a woman and that she is dangerously beautiful and intelligent.”
“What should we do?”
“I cannot think any here would betray us,” I said.
“No?” Dugald answered. “Then you have a better opinion of most people than I have.”
Mother and Black Leg were at my side. I could see they and Maeniel and Kyra agreed with Dugald.
“Then what should I do?” I asked.
“You? You do nothing,” Maeniel said. “It is what we will all do. We are a family. I swore I would never let myself be drawn into the human struggle again, but here I am.”
“I think we should go home by another than our usual route. Some of the rest of the ship’s crew may be harboring foolish ideas about earning a pile of gold from this Merlin,” Kyra said. “When the ship is gone, nothing will happen for a time. Soon it will be autumn and we must question Cymry.”
We took Kyra’s advice, and the Gray Watcher turned wolf and led us by a route only he knew back to our steading.
The ship brought illness with it. We didn’t know it at the time, but not long after they left, sickness spread through the village. As usual it took the oldest and youngest first. Dugald came down with it and was affected badly, as was Issa’s first child, who died. I had only a mild case, since I was usually healthy; and, of course, the Gray Watcher and his son Black Leg never got any illness. But Mother fell ill then, not with whatever afflicted the humans, but with a congestion of the lungs. The Gray Watcher and Black Leg left to hunt, since the crops were poor this year. Not only our house but also the rest of the village was in need of meat. Kyra, who is never sick either, remained home with me to care for Dugald and Mother.
I made a bed of soft grass for Mother near the fire and slept beside her with my arms around her. Kyra made medicine. She would not tell Dugald what was in it, and he swore at her when she tried to pour it down his throat.
“Woman, I will send you boils and the flux if you don’t leave me alone!” he yelled as he lay shivering in his blankets.
“Be quiet, you old fool, and drink this. It will break your fever.”
“Fever. Fever. I have no fever!” Dugald yelled. “You left the door open. I’m just cold.”
“A plague on you for a two-legged jackass,” Kyra screamed. “If I ever saw a case of the ague, it’s the one you have now. Shut up and drink before I hold your nose and pour it down your throat.”
“She will, too,” I said from my place beside Mother near the fire. “And I’ll help her. You know her remedies always make you better.”
“If I heave till my toenails come up, it will be all you women’s fault!” he screamed.
“You won’t. Now, dammit, drink,” she told him.
He did, swallowing the contents of the bowl in one draught. Then Kyra wrapped him in woolens. He began to perspire, and in no little time his fever was broken. Then she came over to check Mother.
“How is she?” Kyra asked.
“Not good,” I said. “I can hear her breathe.” And I could. The empty and fill of her lungs made a gurgling, rasping sound.
Kyra knelt down and put her ear against Mother’s ribs. “I cannot think what else to do,” she told me. “I dosed her with the same drugs I did Dugald, but her tribe doesn’t perspire the way humans do, and her nose is dry and hot. Besides,” Kyra said and made the sign of the cross, “I think she is much sicker than Dugald.”
Mother opened her eyes and looked at me. “I am old,” she said. “Old for one of my kind. You have been a good daughter to me. She has been a good friend. Tell her to go to sleep. Her potion took away the pain in my chest. In the morning, I will be better.”
I told Kyra what Mother said. She nodded, then dipped a small bowl of stew from a pot on the hearth and gave it to me with some bread. The oatcake that is cooked on a griddle or flat stone near an open fire is hard but softens when it is dipped in broth. She got some for herself and offered Mother some, but Mother refused it and placed her head on my lap and slept.
Dugald snored on his bed against the wall.
I didn’t realize I was weeping until I tasted the tears on the bread. Kyra brushed the tears from my cheeks.
“I’m afraid. I’m afraid for Mother. I cannot remember when she has not been near me. I remember her better than my human mother, and her teat in my mouth with its warm flow was my first comfort.”
“You have led a strange life for a woman, but I cannot think it has done you any harm,” Kyra said. “And, yes, I would rather offer you the comfort of kindly lies, but I know you would see through them. I believe you are very right to be afraid for Mother. She is old, after the fashion of wolves, and I have no recipes for healing her. I wish I could do more, but perhaps she is the best judge of her state, and she will be better in the morning.” Then she kissed me on the forehead and went to bed.
I finished eating, lay down beside Mother, and closed my eyes. The next memory I have is of white roses, the smell of them and the feel of petals with my fingers. I was walking among bushes filled with them. Each plant had long, trailing canes that rose from the top and fell away toward the ground; and each long branch was covered with white roses, pale without any trace of color, not even at the heart. The stamens and pistils were as white as the petals.
The air around me was thick with mist, and I could see no more than a few feet in any direction. These are the roses of fairy tales, and this is no dream, I thought. And when I looked down at my feet treading the white petals into dewy emerald grass, I knew it was no dream. And then a mound twined with white roses was before me and an opening that was a door to darkness.
I knew there was danger should I meet anyone, but I entered and found myself in a forest at night. I remembered Maeniel telling me about it, about trees, giants so wide the arms of many men outstretched could not span them and so tall they seemed to have caught the stars like flowers in their branches. It was a pathless forest, floored with ferns, and they were soft under my feet. I walked toward a waterfall that fell from a cliff even higher than the trees. In the darkness the water was silvered, glowing as though illuminated from within. It fell foaming into a basin, where it sparkled with a glow that reminded me of the star blaze of the sky on a mountain night, where the eye looks into diffuse clouds of distant light.
I came close to the basin and looked into the light that was sparkling, dancing, foaming, leaping in endless, ever-changing patterns, flowing into a lower basin, then into a stream, where it lost itself among the trees. Abruptly, I was back in our home, and Mother was no longer beside me. I lifted my head and saw she was standing in the door.
“I came to say good-bye.”
“No, Mother,” I said as I sat up. “No.”
“I don’t fear death,” she said. “None of us do. It is God’s gift to us. We don’t really ever even think about it. Not the way you do. I look forward to plunging into the stream, being carried on by the rapids out toward the shore and into the weir of stars of the eternal sea.”
Then I found myself back in the forest at the pool of light with Mother. She looked up at me. “I will always come when you need me,” she said. “As long as life lasts.”
She lowered her muzzle to the pool of stars, drank, and vanished.
I found myself back in our home. I still held her, but she was cold in my arms.
We made a pyre for her on a headland, one of those empty ones made only of windswept rock. Not everyone receives a pyre. Some are abandoned to the birds and the sea eagles, who clean the bones that they may be burned or returned to the houses to be kept and buried near the sleeping places. There are many different storie
s. The Christians say they must be buried to lie in the ground so they can find all their parts on the last day. Dugald was somewhat of this opinion. But Kyra, Maeniel, Black Leg, and I believed in doing it the old way, setting the spirit free to wander the stars and look for a new home. Besides, Maeniel pointed out, Mother was a wolf and maybe she didn’t want to go to a place where there were humans. I could understand that—we humans have a bad history with each other and a worse one with animals.
Others want to bring the bones back so that the spirits can guard the hearth and return to a woman’s womb, so they won’t go somewhere strange and join another family but be with their own people. And, considering the way some children become small copies of their parents, I can believe this works. Empirically speaking, of course. This is what Maeniel calls such conclusions—empirical—or as derived from observation. Wolf or not, I can believe he has a better education than Dugald. But we must do honor to Mother’s spirit and to her accomplishment—me! Because Maeniel, Black Leg, and Dugald all believe I would have died had not Mother been willing to give me her milk and for no short time. A wolf pup would have been far less of a trial.
Black Leg came in as we were making the body ready for the pyre. I wrapped Mother in a clean, undyed linen cloth and scented the bundle with juniper, cedar, and rose. Black Leg was wearing pants and carried a roe deer over his shoulder, and he said to the rest of us, “I am now a man. I remained in the other shape for her comfort and ease, but she told me I would be free to choose my state when she died.”
Maeniel went over and kissed him on the forehead. They smiled at one another. Kyra wept. Then she kissed Black Leg, and so did I. He looked at me strangely when I did. Maeniel frowned, then put his hand on his son’s shoulder. “She’s your sister,” he said.
“I know,” Black Leg answered, but his look was still intense.
Dugald threw up his hands. “I cannot believe this,” he said.
“I can,” Kyra told him. “Shut up. Don’t give either one of them ideas.”
The Dragon Queen Page 10
