The persons around struggled to appear at ease. Dahut whitened. “I do what I choose in my own home,” she clipped. “Show me the law that forbids.”
Niall made an almost imperceptible negative motion at her. To Vindilis he said, “Sure, and I fretted about my lady’s good name, but she would have her own way. In Ériu there would be no shame, and if any man spoke ill of her, he would soon be speaking never again.”
Vindilis nodded. “Aye. No affront intended, King Niall. It must be weighty matters that brought you to us.”
“I have more than trade in mind,” he answered, “but that is best talked of elsewhere.”
“True. I’ve no wish to mar your festivities, Dahut. Indulge me, though, for a few moments. I make no doubt these young people are as ardent as the Nine to know everything that our visitor cares to tell about himself.”
The tension lightened. Perhaps only Dahut was aware of the undercurrent between priestess and seafarer. Niall’s laugh seemed quite unforced.
“Now that would be a long tale, and not all of it fit for the hearing,” he said. “We are barbarians in my country.”
“Where in the Hivernian island does it lie?” Vindilis inquired.
He hesitated the barest bit. “Mide, if that conveys aught to you. Understand, I am indeed royal, but among us that has another meaning from here. You would call… most of our kings… mere war-chiefs of their tribes.”
“And yet, I believe, sacral, as is the King of Ys,” Vindilis murmured.
His tone stiffened. “We too uphold what is holy. We too give the wronged man justice and the murdered man vengeance.”
“I see… How long will you favor us with your company?”
“As long as need be, my lady.”
“We must talk further.”
“Indeed we should. I am at my lady’s service.”
“But not at once,” Vindilis decided. Again she smiled, this time at Dahut. “’Twould spoil your merriment to have an old raven croaking away at your friend. Goodnight, sea-child. Belisama watch over you.”
She turned and departed. More people arrived. The celebration grew hectic. Throughout it, Niall stayed affable but ever inwardly aloof.
—Vindilis followed the crooked streets of Hightown down to Taranis Way. Little traffic was on it at this hour, and the city wall enveloped it in dusk. When she came out Aurochs Gate there was more light across headland and waters, but it too was fading. The sun was a flattened coal among purple-black cloud banks. Out on the end of Cape Rach, beyond the ancient graves, the pharos flame had been kindled; as yet it was nearly invisible against the greenish sky. Wind whined over grass and boulders. Vindilis sought the side road down the southern edge of land. Mired and gouged though it was, she never stumbled.
At the foot of the cliff, it gave on Ghost Quay. Two craft lay moored there. The rest awaited launching when it would be safe to make for the fishing grounds. This pair were kept against the next summons to the Ferriers of the Dead. She recognized Osprey, newly refurbished, replacing another vessel now in drydock. The tide was out, the rocks of the strands shone wet and kelp-strewn. Ocean growled. It was cold down here, rank with salty odors, windy, shadowy.
Vindilis picked her way along the trail to the row of rammed-earth cottages. While she had not visited them for many years, since girlhood, she knew which one she wanted. She made it her business to know things. Her knuckles rapped the door. In the chill, that barked them. She paid no heed.
The door opened. Maeloch’s burliness filled its frame. He gaped. “My lady—my lady Vindilis! Be that truly ye? What’s happened?”
She gestured. He stood quickly aside. She entered. He closed the door. The single room was lighted by a blubber lamp and the hearthfire over which his wife squatted, cooking the eventide’s pottage. She gasped. Two young boys stared; two smaller children shrank back, obscurely frightened; an infant in a rude crib slept on. The place was warm, smoky, full of smells, cluttered with gear and the family’s meager belongings.
“Let me take your cloak, Queen,” Maeloch said. Vindilis nodded and he fumbled it off after she unfastened the brooch. Meanwhile self-possession returned to him. He was a free man, owner and captain of a taut little ship, and himself a familiar of certain beings and mysteries. “Be seated, pray.” He indicated a stool. “I fear our wine’s thin and sour till we can lay in more, and the ale not much better, but ye’re very welcome; or my Betha brews a strong herbal cup.”
“I will take that,” Vindilis said, also accepting the seat. “But do not let your supper scorch.” She beckoned. “Come and hearken. I’ll be brief. Daylight is failing fast.”
“Oh, I’ll bring ye home, Queen, with a lantern—”
“No need, if you’re as quick of understanding as repute has it.”
Maeloch sat down on the clay floor at her feet. Betha whispered cookery instructions to the boys and started heating water.
“Have you heard of the Scotic stranger, Niall?” Vindilis asked.
Maeloch frowned. “Who has nay?”
“Have you seen him yourself?”
“From afar when I was up in town.”
“Was Queen Dahut with him?”
Maeloch nodded reluctantly. “Methought it best nay to hail her.”
“Then you must know he’s now a guest in her house. ’Tis a byword through all Ys.”
“Nay in my mouth. Yestre’en in a tavern, I loosened the teeth of a lout who dared snigger about her.”
Vindilis gave the man a long look before saying, “Well, she is… defiant. Recklessly so. Would you wish a daughter of yours behaving thus?”
Maeloch sighed. “Our older girl be long since wedded. But—’tis nay for the likes of me to speak, but, aye, had the maiden asked me, my rede would ha’ been dead against this.”
“When her father comes back, he cannot shut his eyes to it, much though he might wish to.”
“What’s this to do with me, Queen?” Maeloch grated.
“You folk of Scot’s Landing have dealt with those tribes for as long as history remembers. Often ’twas without knowledge of us in the city, who might have forbidden it.”
“We’ve fought them when we had to.”
“Granted. Today trade goes peacefully, for the most part. Conual Corcc in Mumu is amicable. Still, visiting Scoti usually mingle with ordinary Ysans like you. And sometimes, whether on purpose or because of being blown off course, you fishers call on them. So you know somewhat about them—it may well be, more than we disdainful Suffetes and royalty imagine.”
Maeloch hunched his shoulders. “Ye want to hear what I can say about this Niall.”
Vindilis nodded.
Maeloch tugged his beard. “’Tis scant, I fear. And I did ask around as well as ransacking my own mind, soon’s the tales started flying about him and, and her. Niall be a common name amongst the Scoti. Mide be one of their kingdoms, tribes banded together. Its top King has made himself as mighty in the north of the island as Conual be in the south—nay, mightier yet, I hear. His name be Niall too. Niall of the Nine Hostages, they call him. He be so hostile to civilized folk that hardly a keel of ours has ventured nigh, and we have only third-hand yarns—My lady?”
Vindilis looked beyond him. “Niall of the Nine Hostages,” she whispered. “Yea, we have heard. Gratillonius’s man Rufmus could tell us more, for he fared into those parts…. Niall.” She shook her head. “Nay, scarcely possible.”
“Mean ye we might have yon devil in our midst, seeking to snatch off yet another kingdom?” A laugh clanked from Maeloch.
Vindilis quirked a smile with still less mirth in it. “Scarcely possible, I said. A successful warlord like that must needs be mad to abandon his gains and come risk death in order to win, at best, exile among aliens. The King of Ys is the prisoner of Ys. This must be a lone adventurer, with his few followers left behind in Roman territory.” She frowned. “Yet somehow that cannot be quite true either. He is more.”
Maeloch pondered. “They’ve a strong pride and
honor, the Scoti. They reckon it unmanly to lie. If Niall says that’s his name—common enough, remember—and Mide’s his home, I’d lay to it.”
“But what has he left unsaid? What questions will he evade if they be put to him directly? He can always claim gess.”
“Hoy?” Startled, Maeloch raised his head.
“Come, now.” Vindilis’s tone was impatient. “Because he is unlettered and has a stern code of behavior, a barbarian is not necessarily stupid, nor without wiliness. Too often have civilized people made that mistake.”
She leaned forward. Her voice intensified. “This day I encountered Niall,” she declared. “’Twas at a celebration Dahut gives for him, brazenly, in the very palace. She’s lost in love. There’s no missing it. Nor is the reason far to seek. He’s handsome, virile, commanding, intelligent, and… utterly charming. I could count on my fingers the women of Ys who’d refuse him if he moved in on them.”
“The Nine,” Maeloch said, almost desperately.
“Of course. But Dahut is not—yet—in truth—one of the Gallicenae. Well! I sensed his pleasure as we exchanged our few words. We were sparring, and he had at once recognized a worthy opponent.
“He’s fearless. Else he would never dare to do what he has already done. Yet he is no rash youth who does not comprehend his own mortality. He is a seasoned warrior and leader of men, coolly staking his life in a game whose rules are ice-clear to him.
“They are not to me. Why is he playing? How? And for what?”
“The Kingship of Ys,” rumbled from deep in Maeloch’s throat.
“Mayhap. I do wonder how he can escape a death-fight with Grallon. Yet he has not gone to the Wood and smitten the Shield. There is something else in his intent, something—even if he does win, even if he makes himself our new Lord—” Aghast, Maeloch saw her shiver. “Our magics fail us. Our Gods brood angry. What shall become of Ys?”
“If good King Grallon falls at his hands—” Maeloch sagged. “We’d be forbidden to avenge him, nay?”
“Someday he must fall,” Vindilis reminded. “So is the law we live by. Let us be frank. Niall would do for Dahut what her father will not. It may be he would do for Ys what Grallon cannot. We are unknowing of what to await, what to hope for or to fear.”
Maeloch sat a while in the flickery gloom. It was as if he saw through the wall, out to the sea whose noise forever enclosed him. Finally he said, “Ye’d have me fare to firiu—Hivernia—without telling anybody besides my crew. Ye’ll keep it secret also. In Ériu I’m to ask around about this Niall. Be that right, my lady?”
“It is,” Vindilis replied. “If you dare. For the sake of your family here, and Ys, and yea, Dahut whom we love.”
5
“In the name of Taranis, peace,” chanted Soren Cartagi. “May His protection be upon us.”
Lanarvilis, who this day led her colleagues, rose from among them. “In the name of Belisama, peace,” she said. “May Her blessing be upon us.”
She sat down again. Adruval Tyri, Sea Lord, helped Hannon Baltisi, Lir Captain, rise and stand. The aged man stared out of eyes going blind and quavered, “In the name of Lir, peace. May His wrath not be upon us,” before crumpling back onto his bench.
Soren passed the Hammer to the leader of the marines who formed his honor guard. For a silent minute, he looked from the dais across the chamber, the high priestesses in their blue and white, the thirty-two officials and heads of Suffete clans in their variously colored robes—not a toga in sight anymore, when Ys lay wary and resentful of Rome.
He cleared his throat. “In the absence of the King, I, as speaker for Taranis, hereby open this Council of the vernal equinox,” he began. “We have, as ever, numerous matters of public concern to deal with, some of long standing, some arisen during the past quarter year. However, I propose that we postpone consideration of them until tomorrow or the day after. None is vital, as are the questions I wish to raise first, questions of the terms on which Ys shall endure. Does this assembly concur?”
“The Gallicenae concur,” Lanarvilis responded. Their glances crossed and she threw him a tiny smile. They had threshed this out beforehand, he and she and a few reliable councillors.
A sound of assent went along the tiers. Cothortin Rosmertai, Lord of Works, had a word of his own: “I trust those questions can be formulated with sufficient exactitude that we will have a solid basis for discussion.” The plump little man was apt to pounce forth with shrewdness like that.
“I take it you mean we should eschew generalities,” Soren said.
“And platitudes, sir.”
Despite the weight on his spirit, Soren must chuckle. Then, grave again, he said slowly, “Were the issues clear-cut, we could indeed put them in plain language and examine the alternatives. However, as we are each aware, they are not. At best we can, and should, utter what has been skulking about in our minds; we should acknowledge the truth.”
Well-nigh physically, he projected his massiveness over them. “We have lived with our succession crisis so long that ’tis come to seem well-nigh natural. But it is not. If the Gods have been forbearing, how terrible will the wrath be when at last Their patience comes to an end?” (Sight flickered over the tall images behind the dais and the guards, Man, Woman, Kraken.) “And what of lawfulness among mortals, what of rights denied and grief inflicted?” (Dahut’s countenance flushed in twin flames across bloodlessness; the fists clenched in her lap; she sat spear-straight, head high.) “Yet the person of the King is inviolable to all save his challengers. And Grallon has prevailed against every one of those.” He paused. “Thus far.”
Tambilis broke procedure to cry, “Never did Ys have a better King! And now he’s off to keep for us our freedom!” Bodilis, at her side, took her by the hand.
Surprisingly, Maldunilis added, “His Mithras is surely a strong God, when Grallon always wins.” Guilvilis nodded with more vigor than might have been awaited from her wasted body.
Forsquilis stirred. “That may be,” she said, “though I think His twilight is upon Him. But He is not our God. Nor is Christ.” She returned to the withdrawal in which she had wrapped herself of late.
“Continue, Speaker,” said Lanarvilis sharply.
“King Grallon has in truth been a strong and able leader,” Soren said without warmth. “Whether he has always led us aright is—perchance not something for us to argue. Most Kings aforetime were content to leave the governance of Ys in hands that would abide after them.” He lifted a finger. “This is what we have shied from voicing, lest we seem to wish evil on him. He is mortal. Late or early, the time will come when we lose him.
“We may already have lost him. He should have been back erenow. Granted, he may simply be delayed, from what we hear of storms and floods. But no messenger has gone ahead of him. He may have died—let’s say in some meaningless misfortune. Or the Romans may have refused his petition, detained him, even struck off his head. At this hour, a legion may be hitherbound to impose a Roman governor on Ys.”
Unease and anger rustled along the benches. Innilis took an unexpected initiative: “Nay. He told me the day ere he left, whatever else they might do, they lack manpower for that, when the Goths are so troublous down south.” Vindilis cast her an inquiring glance. “’Twas at our Temple,” she said. “He came in to pay the Goddess his brief respects, as the King should prior to departure. I chanced to have presiding duty. We talked a little.”
“What I wish us to do is probe the contingencies,” Soren resumed. “What if Grallon does not return? Or if he does, which seems the likelier event, what then?” He avoided looking at Dahut. “Because of the succession crisis, situations have arisen which he cannot ignore, as he has ignored so much else. Let us be silent about them here. The truth will come forth in its own time. But we might well think upon certain matters that go far deeper… such as what share the Queens—and the Suffetes, the Lords, the Great Houses—what their claims are as against the King. Then mayhap he will at last acknowledge what he has
been doing unto Ys, and set it aright.”
Dahut sprang up, parted her lips, caught her breath, lowered herself in the same haste.
“Did… the Queen… wish to speak?” Soren inquired.
Beneath all their eyes, she shook her head. It was plain to see that she could barely keep still.
He sighed. “Very well, let us get on with our thinking,” he urged. “My lord Cothortin, behold how twisted and ambiguous are the questions before us. Yet confront them we must, somehow. Else it could be that this is the last Council of Suffetes ever to be held in Ys.”
6
The night when Gratillonius and his men camped at Maedraeacum was the first clear one of their homeward journey.
After the stoppage they had suffered, they were pushing their hardest. If a town or hostel chanced to be at the end of a day’s march, well and good; but if they could make a few more miles, they left it behind and pitched camp at sunset, tents only. When their fire had heated their rations, everybody but a pair of sentries went straight to sleep.
The road bringing them into the Armorican peninsula was unpaved but Roman made, well graded and drained. Gratillonius had chosen it in preference to a more direct route through Condate Redonum because he had heard of flood damage there. Here the gradual rise of land toward the central plateau made for less mud than the squadron had struggled through earlier. Springtime burst forth in wildflowers, primrose, daisy, hyacinth, speedwell, borage, and more. Willows had leafed, buds were unfolding on oak and chestnut, blossoms whitened orchards. He remembered his first faring toward Ys.
That had been a lovely season, though, while this was raw. When clouds parted and the sun shone through, his troop raised a cheer. “Bloody near forgotten wot that looked like,” Adminius muttered.
As it sank, they found themselves at a cluster of huts in the middle of plowland and pastures, with a shaw standing dark above tender green. Folk went coarsely clad, in and out of their thatch-roofed wattle-and-daub dwellings. Adults were deformed by toil. They watched the soldiers with dull wonder. Only their small children scampered up and shouted for joy at this break in dailiness. It was a village of serfs, such as could be found throughout the Empire.
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