by Ilka Tampke
I committed these instructions to memory and called Neha to my heel.
‘Keep clear of the Oldforest,’ said Cookmother as I packed the bundle into a basket and checked for my knife.
‘Yes, Cookmother,’ I droned in response to the warning I had heard a thousand times.
To the east of Caer Cad lay a forest that was forbidden by lawsong to all but the journeypeople and their highest initiates to enter. To get to Dun’s farm I had to walk the river path until it met the Oldforest, then along the track that skirted its western edge.
Late sun warmed my shoulders as I walked upstream past the last of the farmhouses. Neha bounded beside me, barking at the insects that hummed near the water. The river spirits were restless and the very earth seemed to prickle with life.
The grazing pastures gave way to wild grasslands clumped with meadow flowers, and soon we drew close to the dark edge of the Oldforest. Before the pathway left the river, I crouched down to fill my waterskin.
The Cam flowed right through the heart of the Oldforest. It was said that the water journeyed to the Mothers and back again before it emerged, sweet and cold and full of secrets from its passage.
I looked out over the river as I drank. It was wide here and sharply banked. A thin mist trailed over its surface. Strange, when I left Cad the day had been clear, but now the water was dark under low cloud. I stood, knotting my waterskin back onto my belt, when I heard a long moan.
Neha growled and I heard it again. It came from upstream, near the forest’s mouth. Neha darted toward it. I followed her and peered over the bank where she had stopped.
There, crouched in the shallows, not five paces away, and hunched in pain, was a man. He was unclothed to the waist, his dark hair spilling over his bare shoulders, and he was rocking as he moaned.
‘Are you…in need?’ I called.
He looked up in surprise.
‘By the Mothers,’ I whispered when I saw his face.
A large iron fishhook was pierced through his lower lip. He stared at me from dark brown eyes, trembling.
‘What a wicked wound!’ I dropped my basket and splashed into the water. ‘Let me help you.’
But he startled, like an injured animal, jerking his face from my touch.
‘Hush,’ I said, crouching before him. ‘I cannot help you if you don’t let me look.’
Slowly he turned toward me. He was barely beyond learning age—perhaps three or four summers my elder—but his beard was thick and he was finer than a king, with searching eyes, hollow cheeks and the ripe, brooding lips of a displeased god.
Neha had followed me in. She whimpered, licking the brown skin of his shoulder. Only now did I notice that she had not barked.
My soaked skirts billowed around me. ‘Are you a fisherman?’ I asked, bewildered. ‘Where is your shirt?’
He went to speak but flinched with pain.
‘Let me try to free it,’ I coaxed. ‘I am trained in wound work.’
He paused then shifted toward me.
I eased open his lip and inspected the hook. ‘You’ll have to come back with me to the township,’ I told him. ‘It will take a smith’s tool to cut it cleanly.’
His eyes flared and he shook his head.
‘You will not come?’
He shook again.
I stared at him, wondering at his stubbornness. ‘This wound will catch heat if you do not clear the implement,’ I explained. ‘If you won’t come, then I shall have to cut it now.’
He searched my face, making some kind of reckoning of me, then nodded.
‘Be steady,’ I warned, loosing my knife from my belt. ‘There is a ring at one end of the hook and a barb at the other. I will enlarge the piercing and slide it out. Can you hold?’
His eyes widened but he nodded again.
‘I have some knowledge of surgery. It will be quick.’ I gripped the knife close to the blade. ‘Ready now,’ I said. ‘Hold here about my ankles and squeeze if the pain is too strong. I’ve helped a few women in birth, so I can take some squeezing.’
A trace of a smile flickered in his face as he braced himself against my legs.
I stretched his cheek flesh taut with one hand and positioned my knife with the other. ‘There!’
He gasped as I sliced deftly. Deeply. Through the crimson surge I opened the cut and tugged hard on the hook, taking care that it did not re-lodge in his flesh as it passed. Proudly, I held it up for him to see.
‘Mother of earth,’ he gasped, blood streaming down his chin, ‘you have the touch of a slaughterwoman!’
I stared at him, disbelieving. Where were his thanks? ‘Come out of the water,’ I called as I climbed onto the bank. ‘I need to treat the piercing.’
He did not move. I watched him from the shore. A trickle of blood ran down his chest and stomach. He was lean, but his muscles were long and well worked, the body of a messenger.
‘As you wish,’ I said.
He waited in silence as I plucked stalks of nettle from the river’s edge and squeezed their juice into my palm, mixing it with honey from Dun’s bundle. I stepped back into the shallows. ‘This will stem the blood,’ I said, dabbing it on his swelling lip.
There was vividness around his skin, like spray from a waterfall. Our faces were close. He lifted his eyes. His gaze was a blow to my belly.
‘What is your business here?’ I whispered.
‘As yours. Taking drink.’ He winced with the movement of his lip.
‘But the hook? The wound?’
‘Unfortunate,’ he answered.
‘But where are you from?’ I pressed. He was certainly a stranger to Cad.
‘Surely that is my question to ask, Journeywoman.’
‘Journeywoman?’ I gasped, laughing at his error. ‘Not I! Much as I would wish it were so.’
He frowned. ‘Then where…?’ His question drifted into silence.
As he stood in the knee-deep water, I saw the full height of him. His trousers were rough-made (he was no nobleman) and of a strangely patterned weave. A whistle, carved of bone, was strung on a plait of leather and wound around his narrow hips.
‘Might I know your name at least?’ I asked, standing beside him.
‘Taliesin.’
A bard’s name. Or a magician’s. But he was too young to be either. Why did he not state his tribe or township?
‘Yours?’ he asked.
‘Ailia of Cad.’
‘Ailia,’ he repeated. ‘Light.’
‘Yes,’ I said, surprised. Few knew the meaning of my name.
‘What is your skin?’ he said.
Never had the question laid me so bare. ‘I...I am skin to the deer.’ It was a lie I had never told. Why could I not bear him to know me unskinned?
‘I am skin to the salmon,’ he said.
Cookmother’s skin. I looked away. Something in me had shifted with my lie. ‘If you walk with me a short while back to town,’ I said, distracting myself, ‘I can show this wo
und to my Cookmother. She will know how further to treat it.’
‘I cannot come.’
His firmness stopped me asking his reason. ‘Then perhaps we should meet again a day or so hence, that I might check it again,’ I said, relieved, at least, that he would not discover my untruth.
He nodded hesitantly. ‘Come here again tomorrow and I shall show you my wound.’
‘Here?’ I said. ‘Surely your home—?’
‘Is too far,’ he said.
I stared at him, then reached for his hand. ‘Let me help you out of the water.’
‘No!’ he said, almost shouting.
Startled, I dropped his hand.
Neha barked. I was suddenly unsure of myself, uneasy with his strangeness. ‘Be very careful with your eating and drinking,’ I said as I wiped my knife on my skirt and put it back in my belt. ‘So you do not tax the wound unduly.’
‘Good advice.’ He found my eye. ‘I won’t kiss you for thanks. It might tax the wound unduly.’
My face burned as I stepped back onto the bank to repack my basket. I glanced about for his tunic and sandals, but saw neither. ‘In which direction do you walk?’ I asked over my shoulder.
He did not answer.
When I turned around, there was only Neha, barking at the river. I looked to the forest and called his name, but he was gone. Disappeared like the mist from the sunshine.
Around the pool of wisdom grew nine hazel trees. Each tree dropped a nut into the water, and they were eaten by a salmon.
By this act, the salmon gained all the world’s knowledge.
Whoever first eats of the salmon’s flesh will, in turn, gain all the world’s knowledge.
I HAD SCARCELY walked through the kitchen doorway, when Cookmother thrust two steaming bowls of broth into my hands and bade me take them to the sleephouse.
‘Llwyd is with her,’ she said. ‘And he was here earlier also, asking of you.’
‘Of me?’
‘Ay.’ Cookmother was bent over the cookpot, and I could not see her expression.
‘For what purpose?’
‘None that he was confessing to me.’
Fraid’s daughter was playing outside by the fire pit with a straggle of other children. ‘Tidings, Manacca,’ I called as I hurried past. ‘Do you want some broth?’
‘I’m not allowed in,’ she cried, turning back to her skittling stones.
There was a scent of disagreement in the room as I shouldered through the inner doorskins of the sleephouse. Fibor and Etaina were not within. Again Fraid sat with Llwyd alone.
‘Does he forget the reputation of Britain’s knowledge?’ said Llwyd. ‘We are known the world over for our teaching.’
I passed him a bowl and he took it gratefully.
‘Initiates travel from Germania to be taught here, from Gaul,’ he continued. ‘Albion is at the very centre of learning, Tribequeen.’ He sipped his broth.
‘But he has seen the new world,’ said Fraid. ‘He sees freedom in it.’
They were speaking of Ruther. I handed Fraid her soup and slipped to the edge of the room.
‘He mistakes wealth for freedom,’ said Llwyd, ‘and might for wisdom.’
They drank in silence for a few minutes. ‘You may leave,’ said Fraid, turning to me.
‘Shall I not wait for your bowls?’ I uttered before I could stop.
‘No, Ailia.’ She frowned in surprise. ‘I asked you to leave.’
I waited as the heavy skins of the inner doorway flapped closed behind me. Fibor or Etaina could return at any moment, but I was hungry to know what was being said inside. I leaned toward the doorskins and could just hear their muffled voices.
‘Why do you remove her?’ Llwyd asked. ‘I thought she held your trust?’
‘She lay with him at the fires. I do not want our words recounted at his pillow.’
I heard Llwyd chuckle. ‘She certainly commands an allure beyond that of a kitchen girl.’
They both laughed, then quieted.
‘Ruther’s words have unsettled the journeypeople,’ said Llwyd. ‘With Belinus’s death, we do not need one of our own warriors crying the greatness of Rome.’
‘I will summon the council tomorrow to discuss what we shall do.’
Footsteps approached the sleephouse. Manacca squealed outside.
My heart thudding, I continued to listen as the footsteps passed.
‘I have looked to the stars and to the birds,’ said Llwyd. ‘We stand at the dawn of a change. And Ruther’s words at the feast have given it shape.’
‘Surely his knowledge of Rome can only strengthen us…?’
There was a pause before Llwyd answered. ‘What strengthens us is the Mothers. We have to hold them close. We have to protect our bond to them.’
‘But is it not already strong? The journeymen are powerful, as you have said—’
‘There is one weakness,’ said Llwyd.
Fraid sighed and I heard the exasperation in it. ‘We have agreed to raise this no further, Journeyman. It is no riddle I can solve. Why speak of it now?’
‘Because the Great Bear is dead. And a vulture is circling his carcass. When it lands, make no mistake, we will need the strength of the Kendra. We will need the presence of one who has sung.’
‘The bloodline is fallen.’ Fraid’s voice had a strange edge. ‘We cannot conjure her from chalk or iron. With or without a Kendra, we must plan our defence against Rome.’
I stood frozen in the dark corridor between doors, straining to make sense of their words. Who was this woman? This Kendra? Why could she not be discussed?
‘No army of the tribes will triumph without her blessing,’ said Llwyd. ‘She is the voice of the Mothers.’
‘Then why has she not spoken?’ said Fraid.
‘She will speak,’ said Llwyd. ‘We must make sure we are listening.’
‘Ailia!’ Llwyd’s voice rang through the early dusk.
I had fled the sleephouse as I heard him prepare to leave, and now he sighted me hurrying toward the kitchen. I stopped and waited while he caught up.
Despite the stoop of his back, he moved with a journeyman’s grace. ‘May I walk with you?’ he said as he reached my side. If he was suspicious of me he did not show it. His eyes caught the day’s dying light. ‘I was impressed by your words at the feast yesterday,’ he said as we walked.
‘I suspect the knave Ruther was less so.’
Llwyd chuckled. ‘Though it appears it did not quell his interest.’
Now it was I who laughed. ‘No, it did not.’
‘Were you always of the kitchen? Raised by the Cookwoman there?’
‘Since near birth.’
‘And you have learned the plants by her?
I glanced at him, unsure what to confess. ‘I assist her when her bones stiffen, deliveries and the like.’
‘Nothing more?’
I faltered. Llwyd was the keeper of all Caer Cad’s learning. It was only by his sanction that
healers could practise their arts.
‘Tell me,’ he continued, ignoring my silence, ‘has an animal appeared to you since Beltane? An animal of unusual countenance or strangeness?’
We had reached the kitchen. The doorskins were pinned open. I saw the firelight glowing through the doorway and caught a waft of Cookmother’s sour milk dumplings on the evening breeze. Suddenly I was very keen to be inside. I thought hard on his question. ‘None strange,’ I said.
He kissed my cheeks. ‘Go well, maiden, enjoy your sweetmeats.’
It was only later, as I lay between Cookmother snoring at my back, the buck curled in my arms, and Neha grunting at my feet, that I remembered the fish I had seen as I bathed in the river.
I rushed through the next morning’s tasks, then set about grinding a tincture, making sure I was noticed by Cookmother as I pounded the white meadowsweet petals to a paste.
‘What do you make?’ she duly asked.
I could not tell her that I was to meet Taliesin, a stranger of tribe unknown, who waited within a breath of the forbidden forest. She would never have permitted it. So I did, for the second time, what I had never done before: I played fool with the truth. ‘Dun requested something further to dull the pain,’ I announced. ‘I promised I would bring it this afternoon.’ I stared down at the quern, my cheeks burning with the lies, and with the shame of not yet delivering even the first batch of herbs.
‘Good then.’ She poked a wooden spoon into the mixture. ‘Throw in a little nightshade if he’s making such a fuss.’
With my face and neck splashed with rosewater, my braids tied, and Cookmother’s fish pin at my breast, I hurried out the south gate and down to the Cam. I soon reached the Oldforest, where only Neha saw me again stop by the river, instead of turning north toward Dun’s farm.
