Daughter of Albion

by Ilka Tampke

  She looked at me in surprise. ‘What do you know of the Kendra?’

  ‘Little. This is why I ask.’

  ‘Be still, you wretch!’ she cried as the ewe bucked its head. ‘She is gone. Dead for thrice seven summers, without a daughter to bear her cloak. Albion yields no other Kendra.’

  ‘But will she return? How is she found? How is she known?’

  ‘How will I endure your ceaseless prattle?’

  ‘Please,’ I urged. ‘You bid me always to be curious—who is she?’

  Cookmother sighed. ‘Her name means most knowing woman. Her wisdom descends by blood and rises by training. Keep milking, don’t slow!’

  I tugged on the fingers of skin that hung from the udder. ‘Why is she so little spoken of?’

  Cookmother leaned closer. ‘Fraid has bade that we do not speak of it. Because it is feared that in losing her, we are distanced from the Mothers.’

  My eyes widened. ‘Does she journey?’

  ‘Of course she journeys. All wisewomen journey,’ Cookmother snapped. ‘How else are they called journeywomen?’

  ‘But the Kendra?’ I pushed.

  ‘Her journeys with the Mothers endure. They are not fleeting.’ Cookmother pauses. ‘The Kendra learns with them. They are her teachers.’

  I took breath at the words.

  ‘Ay, it is an honoured path she walks.’ She lowered her voice, glancing sideways to ensure that we were unheard. ‘But dangerous also. The Mothers are strong. And they can be cruel. They will take of her what they want.’

  My fingers clenched the teat. ‘What, Cookmother? What do they take?’

  The ewe jerked, kicking the pail, and splashing milk over the ground.

  ‘By the Mothers!’ cried Cookmother, setting the pail upright with a thump. ‘Concentrate on the task, Ailia, you have no need to know of this.’

  ‘I want to know.’ I was surprised by the strength in my voice.

  ‘Then listen,’ she said, her eyes locked to mine. ‘There was a time the Mothers stood much closer. It was easy to see them. Now the new world bleeds into ours and the Mothers are fading. It is harder for the journeywomen to enter their realm. The learning we need is different. We still call upon our Mothers, but perhaps the time to walk with them has passed. Perhaps the need for the Kendra has passed.’

  Never before had I known her to question the old ways. ‘Journeyman Llwyd would not agree,’ I whispered.

  ‘Llwyd has not known what I have known.’

  I stared at her, startled. ‘What have you known?’

  She shook her head in agitation. ‘Enough!’ she said. ‘Ask me of plantcraft. You’re well gifted for it and that’s what you are born to. No more, no less.’

  A flame of protest flared in my chest but I said nothing more.

  ‘Cookmother?’ I ventured, when we had milked without words for some moments.

  ‘Ay?’ she grunted.

  ‘How did she die?’

  ‘Drowned, I recall. Drowned in a river.’

  The late morning brought an unseasonal heat, sedating the township with the scent of warm earth. Work slowed as townspeople paused to give thanks for the Mothers’ gift of an early summer.

  Bebin and I took hours to boil and strain the sheep’s milk, and I had almost given up on seeing Taliesin. But then Cookmother settled for a rest after highsun, and murmured her drowsy approval when I told her I was going harvesting for spring roseroot.

  ‘If you give me half an hour, I’ll come with you.’ Bebin looked up from the table where she was shaping the sheep’s cheese into soft boulders.

  ‘Oh no,’ I faltered, ‘I want to pick from the north side of the hill and if I wait any longer the buds will close.’

  Her smile could not mask her disappointment and I resolved to attend to her soon.

  This time it was he who was waiting, sitting on the bank, when I turned the last bend of the river path.

  I was damp with sweat as I dropped down beside him. ‘How do you fare in this fearsome heat?’

  He shrugged, making me feel foolish for my trifling question. ‘As I fare at all times.’

  Neha clambered joyfully over him.

  ‘And how is that?’ I retorted.

  He looked at me as if to answer, then shook his head. Something needled him today. ‘One such as you would not understand.’

  ‘What do you mean “one such as me”?’

  ‘One who lacks nothing.’

  ‘Lacks nothing?’ I laughed at the untruth. ‘How little you know.’

  He worried a small tear in the seam of his trousers. How had I displeased him?

  ‘You should ask your hutmother to repair that,’ I ventured.

  ‘I would if I had a mother to ask. But I do not. Hut or otherwise.’ He glanced at me. ‘Nor father.’

  I stared at his profile, stunned. By the Mothers, he was as I was. Yet he must have known his mother once, for he was skinned. ‘I am sorry for it.’

  ‘Why?’ He straightened. ‘It was not your doing.’

  I sighed. His spirit was covered in bruises. A wrong word and he would snarl like an injured dog. Yet when I coaxed him to come closer, it was as though I had captured a piece of the sun in my hand.

  I stretched out my legs, sticky with sweat. Heat rose off the earth as if the Mothers themselves were feverish. ‘Pity we cannot eat those berries,’ I said, looking at a bush laden with black fruit on the far side of the river.

  ‘We can,’ he said.

  ‘Oh no—’

  ‘Come,’ he insisted, rising. ‘Swim with me.’

  ‘I can’t,’ I confessed. ‘I cannot swim.’

  ‘But you are of the river tribes,’ he questioned, ‘how can you not swim?’

  ‘Why should I?’ I snapped. ‘Our bodies are not meant for water.’

  ‘Yes, they are,’ he said, sitting back down. ‘We all began life in water. Was it not where we were safest?’

  He picked up my hand, stretching my fingers, and let it fall in my lap. Then he squeezed my thigh through my skirt. ‘Large hands. Strong limbs,’ he pronounced. ‘This body was meant to swim. I will teach you.’

  ‘No!’ I laughed. It was forbidden for me to be taught. Besides, I would be so graceless.

  ‘As you wish.’ He walked to the bank and launched himself into the rolling water.

  I trailed my feet among the reeds in the shallows. The river was wide here, perhaps twenty paces across, swollen with spring melt. Taliesin stood chest-deep in the current, his shoulders gleaming like polished wood. ‘It’s colder than a widow’s bed!’ he called.

  ‘What did you expect?’ I laughed. ‘It’s full of mountain snow!’

  He swam to the other side of the river and climbed onto the bank.

  I watched him as he plucked and savoured the fruit, mocking me with his unhidden pleasure. ‘All right,’ I shouted. ‘Teach me to swim!’

  He stuffed his mouth with more berries before crossing back. Standing before me, water running off his skin, he took a berry, warm from his mouth, and slipped it gently into mine. ‘Get in,’ he said, as the acid sweetness broke on my tongue.

  The water swirled cold around my thighs.

  ‘You’ll need to take off this.’ He gathered my billowing leine and tugged it over my arms.

  Facing him in my thin linen under-robe, my resolve started to slip away. ‘Taliesin,’ I said. ‘I spoke in truth—I have never swum.’

  ‘I will not let you drown.’ He took my hands. ‘Let the water lift you. And kick your legs.’ He walked slowly backward, pulling me into the belly of the river, as I gripped his wrists. ‘Good,’ he nodded, his dark eyes blazing.

  Never had my body been so immersed. Never had it felt the icy eddies and nagging currents of deep water. Breathlessly, I let go one hand as he pulled me further. Now the river was too deep even for him to stand and we were both water-bound and jubilant, joined only by our fingers.

  The current surged, testing our hold. ‘Taliesin!’ I gasped.

 
But instead of tightening his grip, he cast me free.

  Water drowned my protests as I slipped under, flailing in panic. The current had dragged me downstream several paces before I felt his hands around my ribs. ‘Why did you let me go?’ My heart hammered under his palms.

  His expression was bemused, unrepentant. ‘To see what you could do.’

  ‘I can do nothing!’ I clung to him like a frightened child. ‘You need not test it a second time.’

  ‘No.’ He cradled me.

  Our faces were close. I was suddenly conscious of how tightly I pressed against him, but was too nervous to loosen my grip.

  He carried me to the shallows of the far bank, but no sooner had I relaxed my hold, than he ducked out of my reach.

  Incredulous, I watched him glide back to the other side, where Neha paced the bank. ‘Swim back, Ailia!’ he called.

  Furious, I ignored my fear and plunged forward in a frenzy of kicking to berate him. But when I could find neither the surface above me nor the riverbed below, I panicked again, swallowing water and clawing at the current. I heard Neha barking. My chest burned. Would he not come?

  ‘Kick and lift!’ I heard the muffled command through the prism of water.

  Desperate, I thrust forward again and kicked with all my strength, gasping for air whenever I broke the surface. I struggled forward until my legs sank in exhaustion, finally finding foothold on the riverbed.

  ‘Do your promises mean nothing?’ I panted. ‘What teaching is this?’

  ‘That which has seen you cross the river alone,’ he said without apology.

  I glared at him, then burst into laughter.

  Then he showed me, more carefully, the art of travelling through water until finally, with him coaxing beside me, I swam smoothly from one bank to the other and back again.

  I had almost forgiven him as we climbed out to dry.

  ‘What is your greatest fear?’ he asked.

  We lay back on our elbows in the sun. His questions were like cast stones, falling straight to the depths.

  ‘To be alone.’ It burst out before I could catch it and I prayed he did not think me too brittle. ‘And yours?’

  ‘A witless conversation.’

  I stared down at his long fingers splayed in the grass.

  ‘And your greatest pleasure?’ he continued.

  In an instant of truth, I realised it was him, but I could not confess it. ‘Knowledge,’ I answered, thinking of when I was happiest.

  ‘Mine also.’

  ‘Hah! What do you love in it?’ I had never spoken in such a way with another.

  He thought a while. The sun had dried his hair to crisp coils on his shoulders. ‘That it saves us.’ He glanced at me and saw the question in my face. ‘What else is evil but ignorance?’ he said.

  ‘A brutal assessment.’

  ‘But true.’

  ‘And for those who are untaught through no choice of their own, what is their salvation?’

  He stared at me. ‘It is a great waste that you have not been made journeywoman.’

  ‘Why do you say so?’

  ‘Because you would look so fetching in the robes.’

  I shoved his arm and he collapsed onto the grass.

  ‘Because you have a mind that asks,’ he said, sitting up. ‘Like a river that finds new paths. Such minds are rare as jewels. I am surprised it has not been recognised.’

  I reddened under his praise. ‘My tribespeople need me for other purposes.’

  ‘It is not for the tribespeople to determine. If the Mothers want you, they will call you to journey.’

  ‘But skin is needed to journey—’ I flinched, almost confessing myself.

  ‘Of course,’ he said, frowning.

  I took a deep breath, wondering how long it would be until he discovered how far from a journeywoman I was. Until that moment, I would drink of the cup he offered. ‘Taliesin, can you tell me of the Kendra?’

  His eyebrows lifted. ‘You ask me of your own Kendra?’

  ‘But Albion is without a Kendra.’

  He looked at me with an expression I could not read.

  ‘Is it so illicit a truth?’ I ventured. ‘Might no one speak of it?’

  ‘How is there no Kendra?’ he interrupted, his voice sharp. ‘What has happened?’

  ‘I don’t know—’ I faltered. ‘The township is forbidden to speak of her. I am told she is lost…drowned. There is no other.’ I had gone too far with this question. He would learn too much of my ignorance.

  ‘Drowned,’ he repeated to the river. ‘Then what holds your people to the Mothers?’

  ‘Why…the same that holds yours…’ I floundered. ‘The journeypeople?’ I thought of Llwyd’s distress, of Cookmother’s words. ‘Perhaps…not enough.’

  Taliesin shook his head, his mood suddenly as dark as when I arrived. ‘You know that the Kendra is the bridge! If she is lost, there is no hope.’

  With every question I risked exposure but I had to know. ‘No hope for what?’

  He would not meet my eye. Agitation rose off him like heat. ‘No hope for me.’

  His words made no sense. ‘Why?’ I urged. ‘What does she bridge?’

  His expression was incredulous. ‘Surely you know? She opens the gates between the hardworld and the realm of the Mothers. She stands with the Mothers as they are singing.’

  ‘And…’ I breathed, ‘what does she do?’

  He stared. ‘She sings.’

  ‘How do you know this?’ I asked.

  ‘How do you not?’

  I hurried home through the warm evening, my head spinning with him. I could not fathom how he did not know of our Kendra’s loss or why his own hopes hung upon it.

  He was as dazzling and unfathomable as the night sky: in equal measure splendid and despondent, vital and injured, tender and cruel. He had an Elder’s wisdom, yet the wariness of a child, and in the force of these splits, the whole earth turned within his sprawling frame.

  It was almost dark when I stole though the south gates of Caer Cad, my pockets stuffed with herbs, hastily picked.

  Bebin stood as I slipped into the kitchen.

  ‘Tidings, sister,’ I greeted her. ‘Where is Cookmother?’

  ‘With the queen, thanks be.’ She pulled me outside so that Cah and Ianna would not hear us. ‘I do not know what you have been doing these past turns of the sun, but I cannot explain your absences to Cookmother much longer,’ she whispered.

  ‘Is she angry, Bebin?’

  ‘I will not lie—today she smelled smoke, but if you settle quickly we can assure her that you have been returned an hour or so hence.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I breathed in relief.

  She paused, glancing around the queen’s compound, then lowered her voice. ‘Where have you been, Ailia?’

  ‘Only harvesting,’ I said. ‘The heat—it brings such lushness of growth.’ I had to look away from her doubtful eyes. I had never lied to her before. I had never lied before meeting Taliesin. And yet the lies were in service of something pure: my knowledge of a man who was awakening me. Surely no harm could come of it?

  It was nearly the hour for sleep. We were seated around the kitchen hearth, nibbling on fresh cherries of sheep’s cheese. I fed a morsel to the fawn, lying in my lap, and he nudged my hand for another. He was growing strong and lively on his food. It would be hard to let this one go.

  The striking of our doorbell startled us all.

  ‘Who comes now?’ grumbled Cookmother. ‘I tell you, I am not going to a birthing tonight. You go, Ailia—feign that I am not here.’

  Smiling, I set down the fawn and went to the door. Outside stood a strangemaid, who had turned away and was staring out to the night sky. She had some height but carried it weakly and her skirts were torn and filthy. ‘Tidings,’ I said to her bent back.

  When she turned I almost gasped at the sight of her. She was perhaps only five or six summers my elder, but looked much older, as if life-robbed by some means. Her face was
little more than skin draped thinly over the skull beneath it: a wide forehead and a wasted chin. But behind the defeated flesh were the bones of a face that might once have been beautiful. Her hair was unbraided and stiff with dirt, her mouth fixed in a grimace. Festival time brought many wanderers from the outlying settlements, searching for food or work. But seldom had I seen such a wretch as this even at the furthermost fringes.

  She looked at me from eyes sunk deep in her skull. ‘I am looking for the maiden Ailia.’

  It was a shock to hear her speak my name. ‘I am she. What business do you have with me?’

  She took a step toward me, staring. Her stance was unsteady and she seemed to struggle to make clear sight of me. But despite all this, there was a force in her that set my heart pounding. ‘You are she,’ she muttered. Her gaze steadied on my face. We both stood trapped in this reckoning of one another.

  I reached down to restrain Neha, but her ears were folded back and she nosed at the woman’s hand. ‘What do you seek?’ I asked again.

  ‘The townspeople tell me you’re a favourite of the Tribequeen.’ Her voice was rasping, too loud in the quiet night. ‘I need work and a bed to sleep. Will you ask the queen for a place in your kitchen?’

  I laughed. ‘I’m sorry, strangemaid, but I have no power to refer you. My own place is held by threads!’ My words were true, yet even if they weren’t, I would never commend this maiden. ‘Besides—there is no room.’ I lied to soften the refusal.

  ‘There must be room.’ Her voice sharpened. ‘I can do whatever needs to be done.’

  The weave of her tattered shawl was unfamiliar; she had travelled far and I knew, as she would also have known, that there was always need for tenacious workers in the Tribequeen’s hutgroup. Perhaps Cookmother would hear my petition if I made it. The scent of stale beer and piss rose from her skirts. ‘No,’ I said. ‘There is no room.’ I fought a stab of shame at another lie.

  She shrank back. ‘Where else might I ask then?’

  ‘Perhaps the warriors,’ I stammered. ‘Orgilos has not long since lost a daughter to fosterage.’ I clucked repeatedly at Neha, who, unfathomably, had settled at the woman’s feet and would not come.

  ‘The hound, at least, accepts me.’ She stooped to rub Neha’s head. ‘You know your own skin,’ she cooed.