Daughter of Albion

by Ilka Tampke

  I lifted him and saw the wound at his side. Too deep to treat, yet shallow enough that he may have lived another hour or two. I pulled Bebin’s knife from her hand, stilled him quickly and walked on.

  From the peak of Cad Hill, I saw the camp in the west, the soldiers gathering around fires next to the Nain. Their work was complete.

  At the door of the shrine was a pile of old man with pale robes and silver hair. The sight of him ignited me and I ran the last few steps to his side. He was sliced neatly beneath his left ribs, his face drained to the colour of chalk. He would not have fought. He would have stood before them with the names of his beloved Mothers on his lips. But what was this? Blood still seeped from the wound in a weak pulse. He lived.

  I dropped to my knees. ‘Journeyman?’

  At the sound of my voice his eyes drifted open. In them, I saw the courage and faith that had never wavered, and it broke me in half. ‘I was wrong, Llwyd.’ My voice was hollow. ‘I needed skin to protect you.’ I paused, scarcely able to breathe. ‘I did not transcend it…no one can—’

  He frowned, his lips parting as blood welled at the corners. ‘And now?’ he uttered, searching my eyes. ‘Do you have skin now?’

  ‘Yes,’ I whimpered, wincing at its uselessness. ‘But it came too late. I am sister to the dog, Journeyman! The Mothers did not need it, but I needed it. Forgive me, beloved Llwyd. I am no Kendra. I have betrayed you all.’

  ‘No,’ he rasped. His face was greying, yet his gaze sharpened. ‘The failure is ours. You have shown us the truth. Skin is the law of all life—’ he paused, his chest rattling as he laboured for breath, ‘—but it is something other than what we have known.’ His eyes closed. Then slowly he looked upon me once more. ‘You always had skin.’

  I stared into his eyes. Even moments from death, his strength held me.

  ‘You were always the Kendra,’ he whispered.

  Then I heard his final breath and watched his life end.

  I rose to my feet. With his death I was at last awakened to this slaughter. ‘Do you know this man you have killed?’ I screamed into the smoke-filled sky. ‘Do you know his greatness? Do you know what you have destroyed?’

  I ran to the outer wall of the township and looked down. Our most sacred part of the river Nain was where they washed their knives and rinsed their dirty bowls. They camped in the Mothers’ place, the northwestern place, where my womb sister had been slain. That death was a gift, offered with love and great reverence. That was how we killed. Not like this.

  Standing high above their smoking fires, I held my arms to the sky. With every part of my being I drew spirit to set a geas against them. A sudden cold wind curled up from the valley. The smoke clouds shifted and swirled. My Kendra’s power was summoning weather. I reached my fingers into the furious sky. ‘I curse you soldiers of Rome,’ I screamed down to them. ‘For this devastation that you have inflicted, may you be crippled by anguish and shame. May you be overcome with the weakness and suffering of a woman raped. May this remain on you for every night and day of your lives.’

  My curse echoed like thunder and the soldiers below looked up at its sound.

  If I were caught I would be killed. I strode back to Llwyd and quickly whispered the chants that would carry him to Caer Sidi, tucking his adder stone talisman into the front of his robe. I pulled the knife from his belt so the Romans could not take it, and ran back to the sleephouse, murmuring what blessings I could, as I passed, to honour the dead.

  Heka waited in the storepit just as I had left her.

  ‘Come,’ I urged, pulling her gently to her feet. ‘Do as I say and we may be safe.’

  She was weak and compliant as I fastened her robe.

  I led her from the chamber and through the township to the northern gateway, steadying her as she took in the sight of the slaughter.

  We kept ourselves hidden by the hedges that lined the field lanes, but there was a short distance where we would need to pass close to the legion’s camp, if we were to reach the river track.

  I stood at the end of the hedge, Heka behind me, and peered around at the camp. The men were so strange, so different from us, yet all dressed alike: one beast made of many, like a swarm of wasps. I picked up only fragments of their Latin tongue, but their laughter, the irreverence with which they sat on our sacred place, was unmistakable. They were the mighty and all others must fall.

  Some of the tribesmen of Cad sat at the camp’s periphery, unwounded, but bound by rings about their necks or ankles. One of them stood and, with what little movement the chain at his leg afforded, took a few steps to the edge of the camp. He stared southward toward the hill. It was Ruther. He had been spared.

  Despite my stillness, his eyes fell upon me.

  With Heka’s hand gripped in mine, I took a step forward.

  His lips parted. Would he call my name? He glanced around at the camp, the soldiers lulled and drowsy with their morning’s kill, then looked back, nodding me on.

  We moved lightly, with the rhythm of the wind.

  The Mothers protected us. Ruther alone saw us pass.

  The farmhouse was empty, but two grey horses still grazed the house paddock. We ate bread and milk that we found inside, then I roped the stronger of the two horses and helped Heka mount.

  ‘Ride to the north,’ I told her, pushing the last of the bread into her belt pouch. ‘Head for Siluria, where Caradog hides. It may take some days, but his people will give you refuge. Tell what has happened. Tell to all the nature of this enemy.’

  ‘And what of you?’ she said. ‘There is another horse. Will you not come?’

  ‘No.’ I handed her the head rope. ‘I am still needed here.’ I untied Llwyd’s knife from my belt and gave it to her. ‘This will gain you much coin.’

  She hooked her tangled hair behind her shoulders and gathered the reins. ‘Thank you,’ she said.

  I looked up, my hand resting on the mare’s smooth flank. ‘Thank you also,’ I said. ‘Thank you for giving me my skin.’

  ‘It came too late,’ she stated.

  ‘It came by its own course.’

  ‘Farewell, Ailia.’ She stooped down to kiss my mouth. The first and only kiss I had been given from kin.

  ‘Farewell, sister,’ I whispered as she rode away.

  Only when Heka was disappeared from view did I allow my legs to weaken, my breath to shudder in grief. I sank to the ground and lay on the grass. As much as I tried to still it, the shaking would not cease. Too many had died. How did I deserve to survive? Llwyd was wrong. I was no Kendra. There was nothing I could bring to my people now.

  As I curled in a ball, something rustled behind me. The soldiers had found me. I buried my face in my arms. Let them come. Something nudged the back of my neck. But it was not a sword or a soldier’s foot. It was a whiskery snout and a cold, wet nose. I lifted my face, disbelieving, then reached out and pulled her to my chest. Her rough tongue scraped my cheeks.

  ‘Neha.’ I breathed her warm fur. My sister dog.

  We lay unmoving together, her heart whirring under my grasp, until I had the strength to rise again. ‘Come.’ I brushed the grass off my skirts. ‘It is time for us to get Taliesin.’

  She trotted beside me as I walked to the Oldforest. At least I would be safe there from the soldiers. With every step I forced myself to silence the warning of the Fire Mothers. I forced myself to hope that my sword would still cut.

  At the mouth of the Oldforest, Neha stopped.

  I turned back to face her. ‘Do not abandon me,’ I whispered.

  For the first time, she came.

  Already the forest was lively with the dead, howling and unsettled, as they moved among the trees. I sensed their panic in the shadows and in the bleats of the owls. They were calling on me to give them their rites so they could passage in peace to Caer Sidi.

  I staggered among them, cycling the chants and poems that would free their souls. There were so many. The light deepened. At last my voice was hoarse and my legs w
ere buckling, but the forest was quiet.

  I returned to the path. There was one left still to save. My sword had killed. It would need every shred of my strength, my knowledge, to bring Taliesin through.

  As I walked onward, I thought on what we would do once he had been freed. We could not return to Cad. We would have to stay forest-hidden for some time. Taliesin was skilled in hunting arts and I could help us find our way northward until we reached safer tribelands. There would be no hardship with him at my side.

  We came to the pool. A fine mist rose off the water, coiling around the hazel branches, staking, with its watery tendrils, the boundary between our place and the realm of the Mothers.

  Neha stood beside me at the water’s edge.

  Through the thickening veil, I sensed the presence of Tara, Steise, and all the women who kept the knowledge in their magical otherworld. Their voices echoed over the distance, mingling with calls and rustles of the forest.

  The mist started to close in, heavy and wet.

  ‘Taliesin!’ I cried. Let him come. Let him come. ‘Taliesin!’ My voice was ugly with fear. I stared hard into the whiteness, unsure if he would appear.

  And then, just as it had rolled in, the mist began to thin before me, and he was standing on the other side of the river. Thinner, weaker, beneath his rough shirt and trousers, he seemed altered. But still it was his form that waited, hopeful, before me. His beautiful spirit. ‘Ailia?’ he called, his expression uncertain.

  ‘I am here!’ I cried, laughing with relief. I could scarcely hold the sight of him as the mist ebbed and surged with its own living force.

  A smile broke over his face. ‘I can hear you!’ he called. ‘But I cannot see you. Can you cut the mist?’

  Frantically, I tugged free my sword and plunged it into the space between us. The air shuddered and rippled from where my strike had disturbed it, but no hole was cut.

  ‘Ailia?’

  ‘Yes! I am here.’ I slashed into the vapour, ‘Stay near!’

  Neha stood beside me, her head thrust forward, hackles raised. She growled warily at the eddying vision.

  I stumbled into the shallows, stabbing at the veil. But the membrane did not yield. Again and again I struck it, willing the skin to tear with all my being. It bent and moved, yet held intact.

  Although he stood only paces away, Taliesin was frowning into the distance, unable to see me. ‘I can hear you, my love. Why do you not cut?’

  ‘I cannot,’ I said, beginning to weep. ‘The sword will not cut.’

  ‘Try again!’ His voice rose in panic. ‘Ailia, do not fail me. You are my only chance.’

  Over and over, I drove my weapon into the mist. Surely the force of my love would pierce it? Each time it merely quivered and settled back to quietness. ‘No…’ I gasped. It could not be so. I threw the sword behind me onto the bank and pushed forward with my bare hands, waist deep in the water. Perhaps, if I could touch him, I could pull him through. ‘Taliesin,’ I wept, clawing blindly into the vapour, ‘can you still hear me?’ But I knew, even as I pushed against it with all my strength, that the skin between us would not be breached. The Mothers would not permit it.

  Finally, my arms fell to my sides. I crawled from the water, where Neha waited for me, and collapsed on the bank.

  ‘Ailia?’ Taliesin called, fainter now. ‘Are you still there?’

  I turned to face him. ‘I cannot cut you free.’

  We both stared across the chasm, him unseeing, and me watching his face turn to stone. The air clouded and he was gone.

  My scream cleaved the sky. I grabbed my sword, hacking wildly at trunks, hewing leaves from branches, stabbing the blade into the earth itself. ‘Damn you, Tara!’ I screamed at the forest, ‘Damn you, Steise! Damn you, Mothers! You have stolen my love.’

  With Neha close at my heel, I walked back to the place where the river emerged from the forest. The place where I first met him. Perhaps he would be able to walk one last time as man. Before I had the Mothers’ knowledge, he had come to me several times in this way. Could it not happen again?

  But even as I hoped for it, I knew in my Kendra’s wisdom that he would not find form here again as a man. The Mothers would not allow it. He had been the lure, the seed that conceived me as Kendra. Now I was born, they had no need to release him, even for an hour. The Mothers cared for my learning. They did not care for the longing of my heart.

  As we approached the place in the river where I first found him, I saw something twitching in the grass on the bank. The moon was not long risen and I could not make it out. But when I reached it, its form was clear. It was Taliesin caught in the fish’s shape. His scaled flank shimmered as he whipped back and forth in the hard air. He had journeyed as fish and had leaped to the bank in search of me.

  I dropped to my knees, touching his side, slick with its jelly coating that yearned for the river. The vents in his flesh were fluttering as he struggled to draw air. He needed the water.

  ‘Taliesin,’ I murmured, ‘I am here.’

  I slid my palms under him and lifted him up. For a moment, he lay still in my hands and I felt his heart humming beneath his fragile skin.

  I brought him to the water’s edge, then lowered my face, pressing my lips to his skin. ‘I am sorry,’ I whispered. Then I crouched down and let him slide from my hands back into the water.

  I watched long after he had swum away.

  Neha had been keeping her distance, sitting a few paces away, wary of the strange smells of the water animal.

  I called her to my side, took off my sandals, and sat down on the riverbank, letting my feet trail in the flow.

  Nearby a wolf howled. Ready to hunt.

  By my command, hundreds had died.

  How I longed to slip into the water, like Taliesin, and let it close slowly over me.

  I could not return to Caer Cad. Even if they allowed me to live I would not survive among men who did not love the Mothers.

  My sister was gone. She would endure. Her alone, I had protected.

  Taliesin was held. I could not free him. But he lived.

  There were no others living who were kin to me by blood, nor by love.

  I was kin only to knowledge. That was all I possessed. All that I was.

  Everything changes. Yet nothing is lost.

  How I longed to return to the water.

  There was a whimper beside me. Neha was guarding the gateway of the realms. Her ears were petal-soft as I caressed them.

  ‘Do not worry,’ I murmured. ‘I am not yet leaving.’

  I chose to seek Taliesin where the forest forbade.

  I chose to learn, though I had no skin.

  I chose to slay he who violated my sister.

  I was born by these acts.

  And through them all I now understood, with deep-water clarity, the meaning of skin.

  That skin was an act of love. Love of the earth. Love of kin. And love of the truth.

  No one would hold us to this love but ourselves. Not the Romans. Nor the Mothers. For truth answered only to itself. And bestowed its light and protection on those who chose to seek it.

  What Heka had given me was only part of the truth. My soul had been shaped long before by what I had loved: Cookmother, Neha, my tribelands. And Taliesin.

  All these were my skin.

  This was why the Mothers had chosen me. This was the new truth I revealed: that skin was far greater than something simply given. It was something that must be grown, understood, chosen and loved. Something that must be taught.

  I did not know what shape this new truth would take in Albion’s future. I knew skin was needed for the hardworld to endure. And I knew that if I, as Kendra, was to teach anything, it would be that no one could be denied learning.

  No one could be denied skin.

  It was Taliesin who had led me to knowledge. This was his gift to Albion. And he was still imprisoned in the giving of it. I would live my life in honour of that gift.

  I was Ailia of
Durotriga. Skin to the dog. Seventeen summers. Tall for my tribe and strong. I had been a kitchen girl. A privileged servant. Now I was something other.

  I pulled my feet from the water and strapped my sandals.

  I would go to Caradog. I would offer him my knowledge. I would find a way to fight for skin.

  For Albion had needed a Kendra. It needed her yet.

  I called Neha to my side and began to walk.

  Author’s Note

  AILIA’S STORY IS fictional, but her world is not. Caer Cad is Cadbury Castle, an ancient hillfort in South Cadbury, Somerset, the site of which remains today. One can still see the remnants of undulating banks and ditches, now covered in grass, which would once have protected this mighty tribal centre.

  The characters and events relating to the Roman invasion are drawn from history; the events preceding it, however, have been compressed to serve the purposes of fiction. There were in fact two or three years between the death of tribal chieftain, Cunobelinus and the Romans’ landing in AD 43, although this is a period of only a few months in Daughter of Albion.

  My ‘journeypeople’ are, of course, the druids. Archaeology reveals almost nothing of these mysterious philosophical and religious leaders, but many Roman historians bear testament to Britain’s deep reverence for their people of knowledge.

  Acknowledgments

  MY DEEPEST THANKS and appreciation must go to Penny Hueston at Text Publishing who has guided me through this endeavour with extraordinary grace and skill. Thank you also to Michael Heyward, Alice Cottrell, Kirsty Wilson and Léa Antigny for their work in promoting the book, and to Imogen Stubbs for her beautiful design.

  The manuscript has benefited greatly from the expertise of archaeologist and author, Francis Pryor, who generously read the whole thing and spent a very pleasant morning with me touring Flag Fen in Peterborough, UK. His books, Britain BC, Britain AD and Seahenge were key sources of historical detail. All errors of fact are mine.

  In understanding the elusive teacher/priests of ancient Britain I have drawn heavily on the work of Peter Beresford Ellis, particularly The Druids, which led me to several ancient texts. The riddles that Taliesin asks Ailia are taken from the ‘Wooing of Ailbe’, a medieval Irish manuscript. Instructions of Morann Mac Cairbre, recorded in the Book of Leinster, inspired the speech Ailia uses to the rally the warriors. Ailia’s curse on the Romans at the end of the book is a reworking of Macha’s curse in the Irish saga ‘The Debility of the Ulstermen’.