Daughter of Albion

by Ilka Tampke

  She held one hand out to Tara’s circle, the Mothers of fire, summoning their song. When the sound was strong, she used her other hand to call for another group and then a third. The exquisite blend of the three tones coiled through the air, soothing my fears and winding around my spirit.

  With this, the old woman began an intricate dance of gestures, silencing one circle, summoning another, calling five, six, even ten at once. I listened spellbound as, with threads of song, she wove the fabric of the world around me.

  I looked up at the great Tor and the trees covering it. They were made of song as much as of wood and earth and I could not tell if I was hearing or seeing them. The ground hummed beneath my feet and I looked up to a sky full of sound.

  This was the Singing, the birthing of our country.

  Slowly, I understood why skin was not part of the Mothers’ world. They were before skin, beyond it. Skin was what held the hardworld in place. Skin was our name for what they created.

  Slowly, I understood that our world could not exist unless the song was heard that made it so. And I was the woman who heard it for my people.

  There was an abrupt silence as the old woman quieted the Mothers and raised her left hand high above her head. I watched her, without breathing, as she lowered her arm toward the place where I stood, until finally it came to stillness pointing directly at me.

  I froze.

  She wanted me to sing. She wanted me to answer. But what would I sing? I had no skin. I had no song. I looked at the old woman and then around at the Mothers, all silent, all staring. I met Tara’s eye, then Steise’s.

  I opened my mouth and drew a lungful of air. My breath reached where it had never been, into the deepest core of my being, where I sensed something dislodge and take form. It rose from my core, then broke from my throat on trembling air. A note, as sweet and thin as a shoot of grass. And as it was uttered, it took root, strengthening, until it was as dense and textured as the ground beneath me.

  I knew it. It was my song. My part of all creation.

  I did not have skin, but I was the Kendra.

  28

  Bridging the Worlds

  The hardworld and the Mothers’ world

  are bridged by our Kendra.

  Only she can witness the making of time.

  THE SUN ROSE and set three times as we sang. Sometimes the women lay down to sleep. They left to drink water, to piss, or fuel the fire, but the song remained unbroken.

  During these days I learned the songs that made the mountain, the wind, the trees and the seasons. I heard the words that made the human and animal shapes, and I echoed them until I knew I would never forget them. Each circle of Mothers had a song for their part of the country. I remembered them all.

  By the Singing, I knew that I would never see the hardworld in the same way now. I would always hear the songs that gave it form. By the Singing, I knew the counsel that I would offer Llwyd and Fraid when I returned: we would fight the Roman forces. We would defend the songs with our lives. For without it, there would be no life.

  It was the dawn of the fourth day. My legs ached from standing, my vision was blurred from tiredness but still I sang.

  The old woman summoned Tara and two others of the Fire Mothers to my side.

  Tara drew her knife.

  I knew what they were about to do. I trembled as the two Mothers braced my arms and Tara released the fastening of my robe. She placed a wad of tightly rolled linen into my mouth and raised her blade. The old woman summoned volume in the song. Every Mother was singing me into being. The sound was deafening.

  I buckled, biting hard on the linen as Tara cut a spiralling shape into my chest with her knife. The hot pain brought a deep release as blood dripped in the dirt at my feet. This was the wound that would hold the song. The scar that would mark me in the hardworld.

  Tara left my cut untended and returned with her women to their circle.

  I tried to resume my song but, in my exhaustion, my voice began to fail, and with it, my vision. The temple house emerged before me, its stones not solid but sheer as a veil, the circles of Mothers still visible behind it.

  I squeezed my eyes closed, but when they opened, the temple was yet clearer and I saw Sulis push through the door and walk toward me, a jug in her hand. ‘Sulis!’ I cried. I stood directly before her but she neither saw nor heard me. She did not witness that I stood with the Mothers as they sang.

  The Mothers’ song shifted, strengthened, and Sulis faded from sight.

  I stared hard at the circles of Mothers, watching and listening, before once again the temple huts and gardens took shape before me. My sister initiates were tending the temple grounds, chattering as they filled buckets from the pools. They were not firm-fleshed, but wrought of some mist that thickened then waned with the rise and fall of the song.

  This was no trick of the eye. This was my return to the hardworld.

  For most of the day I was cast backward and forward between these two visions. The Mothers’ song poured forth unbroken while the temple initiates carried out their tasks in the same place, the same moment. I saw both truths at once. One a little clearer, then the other.

  As the sky deepened, the temple at last grew solid and the circles of women ebbed away. As I watched them fade I felt a wash of grief, then I recalled Tara’s words and they hit me like a slingshot: I would not be called to the Mothers again.

  ‘Taliesin! Tara!’ I shouted, calling them back, swaying with the effort and the pain of my wound.

  The shape of the Mothers strengthened once more. I ran among them, searching and calling.

  Shrouded by trees, beyond the edge of the circle, he stood alone. At the sound of my voice he turned. I had never seen him look so fragile or so beautiful. He wore a summer tunic, dyed with bark, as dark as the shadows that ringed his eyes. The bones of his shoulders hunched forward as though caging his heart.

  ‘My light,’ he whispered into my hair when I reached him. ‘Can you free me? Have you learned of your skin?’

  I shook my head against his chest. ‘The woman who knows it will not yield.’ His heart quickened beneath my cheek and I tightened my hold. ‘There will be a way.’

  He pulled back to stare at me. ‘There is no other way.’

  Through the translucence of his throat and arms, I saw the faint forms of the temple huts. ‘No,’ I cried. I could not let him fade from me. By the force of my intent I hardened the realm and he was once again solid. But there was little strength in me to hold him much longer.

  Think, I commanded myself, over the crash of my heartpound. I searched my memory for the ways I had journeyed forth and back from the Mothers: by the drop in the pool, by the Mothers’ song, by cutting the mist in the gully. The mist! I gripped Taliesin’s forearms. Why had I not seen it before? ‘My love,’ I gasped, ‘when you come to the hardworld, is it always through water?’

  ‘Yes. As fish. I have told you—’

  ‘There has been no threshold, other than this?’

  The bones of his wrist started to soften as I grasped them. He was slipping. ‘There is another threshold.’ He frowned. ‘But one I cannot breach.’

  ‘Describe it,’ I urged.

  ‘It is a thickness, a barrier that rises near the river when you call to me. I have tried to push through it as man. Sometimes I see you beyond it. Once you even heard me call through it. But only as fish, beneath the water, can I pass.’

  I was shaking in my excitement. ‘Is it a mist? A watery barrier?’

  He nodded. ‘It is that.’

  Then I was laughing and sobbing. ‘Mothers be praised, Taliesin. If you can stand at that veil, then I have means to cut it. I can bring you through as man.’

  ‘How?’ he asked, unbelieving.

  ‘This!’ I cry, lifting the weapon still bound to my waist. ‘My sword has cut such a mist before. My sword will cut your passage.’

  ‘No.’ His face knotted with doubt. ‘No sword can cut the realms.’

  ‘Bu
t it has! It has cut through when skin could not.’

  His smile was unsure.

  My hold of him was weakening. In moments he would be gone. ‘You must go to that place,’ I told him. ‘You must stand at that mist.’

  ‘When?’ he breathed. ‘Now?’ His flesh grew yet sheerer.

  ‘Not now,’ I cried, desperate. ‘If I cut from here, I do not know where we will emerge. I must cut from Summer and bring you there.’ I looked to his face. ‘Beloved Taliesin, can you wait a little longer to come home?’

  He answered me with a kiss that turned my flesh to water.

  ‘Wait for my call,’ I instructed when he pulled away. ‘I will go to the forest and call for you. I beg that you hear it. But do not sink beneath the water. Do not come as fish. Find the mist and stand before it as man. That is my only chance to make you free.’

  He stared at me, his dark eyes ebbing. ‘Are you true?’

  I staggered. His wounds were deep to question a heart as sure as mine. He was dissolving quickly now.

  ‘Listen for my call!’ I commanded as he faded.

  He nodded, and met my gaze for one last moment. For the first time, I saw an echo of Cookmother’s eyes in his. It was too late to tell him now. I would tell him when he was free.

  He turned as he disappeared.

  It must be true, I assured myself. My sword would cut what lay between us. The Mothers had promised me this: if it took no life, it would do my will. And this, above all else, was my will. At last my legs, which had stood for four days, could carry me no longer and I sank to the ground.

  ‘Ailia?’ The sharp voice was familiar.

  I opened my eyes to see darkness had fallen.

  ‘Rise, girl.’ Sulis crouched beside me and aided me to sit.

  The temple garden was quiet now. The Mothers were gone.

  ‘Am I returned?’ I murmured, dizzy from change.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, scowling, ‘and I do not need to ask whether you have been with the Mothers. I see how you are drunk with journey.’ She offered me her water pouch and I drank thirstily. ‘How did you reach them?’ she asked. ‘By medicine? By chant?’

  By my love of Taliesin, I wanted to answer, recalling the pool, the swim. ‘By their ways,’ I said.

  ‘By skin?’ she persisted.

  My face fell. ‘No.’

  Her eyes closed then opened, her brow furrowed. ‘You will not disturb the initiates with any account of this. You will sleep this night in my hut and resume training at sunrise.’

  I stared at her, terrified that she would not release me. ‘But—I cannot go back to my training,’ I stammered. ‘I must return to Cad—’

  ‘You have been almost three summers gone from temple. There is much you have missed.’

  Breath caught in my throat. Yet another year passed in a matter of days. I wanted, with all my being, to free Taliesin, but even more than this, I wanted to give my people their Kendra. Was it too late? ‘There is counsel I must give Fraid and Llwyd—’

  Sulis shook her head. Her voice could not contain her displeasure. ‘You have journeyed again to the Mothers without skin, without sanction. You are in breach of our most sacred laws.’ Her hands trembled as she interlocked them. ‘You will stay and resume your learning. And try to make right what you have wronged by these journeys.’

  ‘I have been given knowledge, Journeywoman! I must bring it to Cad—’

  She crouched unmoving. ‘What knowledge have you received?’

  I paused, suddenly frightened to utter it. But there could be only truth now. ‘The song,’ I answered. ‘I have heard the song.’

  Her eyes widened. ‘Whose song?’

  ‘The Mothers’ song. The creation song.’

  ‘And you, girl…did you sing?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, my heart soaring at the memory. ‘I sang.’

  ‘You lie,’ she hissed.

  We both looked up as an initiate passed, holding a blazing torch. Suddenly there was light enough for Sulis to see the dark stains that soaked my tunic. ‘Mothers of earth, what is this wound?’ she cried.

  Before I could tell her she tore open my robe and bade the light be held nearer to my bleeding cuts.

  The initiate gasped.

  ‘As the moon is my witness.’ Sulis was trembling. ‘It is the cut of the Kendra.’

  ‘Yes,’ I murmured.

  Sulis stiffened. ‘Was it you?’ she whispered. ‘Have you wrought these cuts to claim the Kendra’s title?’

  ‘No. They are true.’ My voice was a whimper.

  Slowly Sulis placed her fingers to the edge of my wound and her eyes closed.

  I watched her. These cuts were my only evidence. Why did she touch them?

  A frown twitched across her brow as if she battled another expression. Her eyes sprang open. ‘I hear it.’ Her voice was unsteady. ‘I hear the song.’

  I slumped, weakened, as though her touch had drained me of blood. But even in my frailty, my whole being was lit by the revelation: this was how the Mothers claimed me as their own. Their song was in my wound. This was what I would carry back. And no one could deny me.

  29

  Initiation

  Knowledge is shared only between the initiated.

  Only the initiated have the power to prevent death, recapture

  souls, and understand the depth of the human mind.

  AD 46

  WE REACHED CAER CAD in the bright light of the next afternoon. Sulis had brought me by boat across the lake and we had walked the day’s journey back to my hillfort home at a tireless pace. Save for the brief words of wayfinding and the sharing of dried fish, our travel had passed wordlessly. I was unsure of how I stood in her eyes. She had recognised my mark, she had heard its song, but she had not yet called me Kendra.

  Spring blossoms dotted the hedges along the laneways. Three seasons. By hard time, I was seventeen summers. How close would Rome be now?

  ‘Speak nothing of your marks until I meet with Fraid and Llwyd,’ said Sulis, as we reached Cad Hill. ‘We must determine what shall be done.’

  ‘But they must learn that I have been made Kendra straightaway,’ I said. ‘There may be little time to wait.’

  ‘Hush,’ she spat, panting with the ascent. ‘I know not what skewed spell-craft you have used to purchase the marks at your chest, but you will stay silent now.’

  I pushed down my protest. Sulis did not recognise me. Would anyone? The Mothers had made me Kendra, because they were not beholden to skin. If the tribes were to accept me as Kendra, I would have to convince them of this new truth. But would they hear it?

  The gates were unattended as we entered Cad. My heart swelled at the sight of the familiar houses and roadways, yet something was altered here. The township was too quiet. I glanced to the daylight moon. It was no wane day. Where were the craftsmen and the sellers? ‘Perhaps there has been a death?’ I wondered aloud. ‘Are they all at burial?’

  There were no deer antlers adorning the doorways of the central street and many houses were emptied of their shrines. ‘The totems are abandoned,’ said Sulis. ‘This is not well.’

  Both wary of what we might find, our pace slowed as we approached the Tribequeen’s compound. We passed through the gateway, and what we saw brought us to stillness.

  Clustered around the entrance to the Great House was a large gathering of my townspeople, some sitting, others sprawled on the ground. At the sound of our footsteps, they turned to us with an inhuman slowness. Their eyes were dark and staring, their faces gaunt.

  ‘What is this, Journeywoman?’ I whispered, filling with dread.

  ‘This is Troscad,’ said Sulis with shock in her voice. ‘The ritual fast. They are hungering against the Tribequeen’s injustice.’

  ‘But why? How does Fraid betray them?’

  ‘We cannot ask them. Troscad prohibits both word and food. Go to your kitchen house,’ she commanded under her breath. ‘Wait there for me. Speak to no one. Not a word. I will go to Fraid and learn wh
at has happened.’

  Cah was alone in the kitchen, at the quern stone, grinding wheat. ‘You are back,’ she said, standing.

  ‘What has happened?’ I asked. ‘Why do the townspeople make Troscad?’

  She knelt back down at the quern. ‘Your bedfellow has taken Caer Cad.’

  It took me a moment to realise she spoke of Ruther.

  ‘Ay,’ she said, working the stone. ‘He appealed for clientage with Rome but Fraid would not agree. Then he worked secretly last winter to gather support from the warriors. He challenged for the kingship and won it by one vote in the council.’

  I gasped in astonishment. ‘Where is Fraid?’

  ‘One of the farmhouses gives her refuge. I know not which.’

  ‘And Llwyd? Surely he has not sanctioned Ruther as Tribeking?’

  ‘Of course not. But Ruther does not care for the ways of the journeymen now. Amusing,’ she snorted, ‘that his great love is a journeywoman in training.’

  ‘I am no love of his.’

  She poured a fresh cupful of grain into the quern hole. ‘Do not say so too loudly. It is rumoured that he is still angered by your marriage refusal, despite that it is three seasons past. If you were clever, you would keep far from his sight.’ She chuckled and looked up at me. ‘Not the welcome home you were expecting, eh?’

  ‘I must find Llwyd,’ I murmured, too distracted to respond.

  ‘Be careful,’ she warned. ‘Ruther has cast Llwyd from the walls of Cad. He forbids the townspeople to see him and he is not a forgiving Tribeking. Many townspeople are fasting against his kingship and he’ll see them die for their effort, I’m sure of it.’

  ‘And you? Do you not fast against this wrongdoing?’

  ‘I’m busy enough cooking here with only Ianna to help me. Whether I make bread for Fraid or Ruther, it is all the same to me.’

  I flinched at her heartlessness, then realised that she had mentioned only Ianna. ‘Where is Heka? Does she not help you?’

  Cah raised her eyebrows. ‘She serves in Ruther’s house. He looked favourably, as I did, upon her spine and grit and likes her to attend his person.’ She looked at me. ‘I miss her being here,’ she said. ‘She was good company.’