Daughters of Fire

by Barbara Erskine

  Steve was silent; after glancing anxiously at her he turned back to the screen and was at once engrossed in the text unrolling before his eyes. ‘You were certainly writing this very fast,’ he commented cautiously. He glanced across at her again, puzzled. ‘It’s breathless.’ The text was littered with little red squiggly lines denoting spelling errors.

  He lapsed into silence again, reading intently while Viv, too restless to sit still, got to her feet and paced up and down the floor behind him. When he finished at last he turned away from the computer.

  ‘That’s incredible prose. So vivid.’ He hesitated. ‘You’re writing a novel, yes?’ He studied her face.

  ‘No!’ She came to a standstill behind him. ‘It’s not a novel, Steve. It’s real!’

  ‘What do you mean, real?’

  ‘It’s true!’ Suddenly she was sobbing.

  He frowned. ‘It’s weird and frightening.’

  ‘And convincing.’

  ‘It certainly reads convincingly.’ He sounded dubious. ‘But it is a novel you’re writing. It must be.’

  ‘No! No! I told you, it’s true! You’ve got to believe it. I didn’t make it up.’

  He said nothing for a moment. ‘I don’t understand. I don’t know what to think. How can it be real?’ He scanned her face. ‘Look, Viv. You must calm down. Tell me exactly what happened.’ He was anxious.

  ‘She is there. In my head. I can’t stop her! I don’t want to stop her!’

  ‘You can’t stop who?’ Steve stood up and put his arms around her. She seemed so vulnerable. So unlike herself.

  ‘Cartimandua. I told you.’

  For a moment he was speechless. ‘You don’t mean you think she is dictating all this?’

  ‘I just said so, didn’t I!’ She was trying to control her trembling. ‘It’s overwhelming. I can’t fight it. She’s there. All the time. Just out of sight. Not out of sight. Tasha saw her. And Pete.’ She choked back a sob.

  ‘Who are Tasha and Pete?’ Steve was incredulous.

  ‘Friends. They saw her. Oh God, what am I going to do?’

  ‘You must calm down.’

  ‘You mustn’t tell anyone about this, Steve. Promise. I shouldn’t have told you. Nobody must know. Especially not Hugh -’

  ‘I won’t tell a soul.’ He stared at the screen again. ‘It can’t be real, Viv.’

  ‘It is.’ Her mouth was dry, her lips sore where she had chewed them. She moved away from him and sat down on the sofa. ‘She’s haunting me, Steve.’

  He went and sat down beside her on the sofa. Taking the tissue out of her hand, he leaned forward and dabbed at her cheeks then hesitantly he put an arm around her shoulder again. They sat for a while, unmoving.

  ‘Why don’t I go and make some coffee,’ he said at last. ‘I know where everything is.’

  When he came back she was still sitting where he had left her but she seemed calmer. ‘Steve, I’m sorry.’ She looked up at him wanly. ‘I shouldn’t have got you involved in all this. You rang at just the wrong moment.’

  ‘I’m glad I did.’ He put a mug into her hands. ‘Look, you know this is not real, Viv. I don’t have to tell you that. It can’t be. You’re not being haunted. It must be some kind of stream of consciousness creative thing, coming from deep inside you.’

  She shook her head. God, he sounded just like Cathy. Rationalising. Always rationalising. Making it sound normal.

  ‘Viv, it’s -’ He started, then stopped, unable to find the words. ‘It’s amazing, but it’s not true.’

  ‘It is!’ She was anguished.

  He sighed. ‘Whatever it is, you have to stop.’

  ‘I can’t stop!’ It was a whisper.

  There was a long silence as they both contemplated the screen in the corner of the room. With a sigh, Viv climbed to her feet and went over to turn it off, then she threw herself back down on the sofa. ‘I’m going mad.’

  ‘No.’ He turned to face her. ‘Gifted. Honoured. Blessed. Maybe obsessive, and highly creative and fighting the tight restrictions of the rules of your - our - chosen profession. Mad, no.’

  ‘Not yet, anyway.’ She gave a wry smile.

  ‘You are exhausted, Viv.’ He reached for his own coffee thoughtfully. ‘Before anything else, I think you should get some rest.’ He paused. ‘Unless - do you dream about her too?’

  She shrugged. Those flashes of firelight. The thunder of hooves. The shouts and clashes of sword-blades. Were those part of her waking dream or part of a nightmare?

  ‘Would you like me to stay?’ He was watching her anxiously. ‘I can sleep on the sofa. I don’t think you should be alone.’

  ‘No, Steve.’ She shook her head. ‘That’s sweet of you, but I’ll be fine.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ He was uncertain. ‘I don’t think you should do this any more. Not if it upsets you so much.’

  ‘I don’t have a choice. She forces herself into my consciousness. I’m not imagining this.’ She was pleading with him. ‘Besides,’ she hesitated,‘I want to go on.’

  He leaned over and took her hand. ‘I think it could be dangerous.’ He was looking very serious. ‘Honestly. Whether it is coming from inside you, or from some sort of ghostly spirit it’s not good if it’s taken control of you like this. I wish my mother was here. She knows more about this sort of thing than I do. She would believe you.’

  Viv gave a wan smile. ‘Then I shall look forward to meeting your mother one day.’

  ‘You must.’ He paused. ‘Are you sure I can’t stay?’

  ‘No. I’ll be all right. Don’t worry about me. It was really nice of you to come, Steve.’ She hesitated. ‘This is all secret. You realise that, don’t you? I don’t want anyone to know about it.’

  ‘They won’t. Not from me.’ A thought struck him. ‘Is this where those extra facts came from in the book?’

  ‘I didn’t mean to use them. I tried not to listen. I pushed her away. I never wrote it down before!’ She swallowed, looking down at her hands. ‘I think I want you to go now, Steve.’

  He stood up unhappily. ‘You’re sure you’ll be all right?’

  She nodded. ‘Promise you won’t say anything?’

  ‘I promise.’ He headed for the door. ‘Call me if you need me.

  Any time.’ He turned anxiously. ‘I don’t like to leave you alone -’ ‘I’m fine. Thanks for coming, Steve.’ Closing the door behind him, she shut her eyes with a sigh. Shit!

  She wouldn’t blame him if he went straight to Hugh.

  9

  I

  Steve rang at 8.30 the next morning. Standing beside the phone, Viv listened to his voice, her fists clenched, her forehead twisted into an agonised frown. She didn’t pick it up.

  She had to get out of the flat. She had to distract herself from the cacophony of voices whirling around her. She hadn’t slept. She hadn’t moved from the computer all night. She was exhausted.

  Traprain. Carta wanted her to go to there.

  By nine she was in her car, heading south on the A1, heading for the car park at the foot of Traprain Law. It was here that Carta had come to live with the Votadini. Here she had met and married her first love. Here she had fallen ill during her pregnancy. Sitting in the car, Viv stared up at the steep grass-sided hill climbing sheer out of the flat countryside around it. Then slowly she opened the car door.

  Climbing over the stile from the car park she started to walk up the steep track, up the huge shoulder of the hill. In this life the place was deserted, but the view was still amazing. She could see for miles. To the east the sea was a brilliant, almost violet blue, with the viridian-topped Bass Rock rising vertically out of it in the distance. She shivered. Warm though it was, the wind was cold, whistling though the grass, drumming in her ears as she walked slowly across the empty terraces where once a thriving Iron Age community had lived.

  Small yellow flowers of tormentil danced at her feet, and lush dandelions on the banks. Nearby she could hear a skylark as it soared overhead. She stopped
, listening intently. The atmosphere had become jagged. She shivered again, plunging her hands into the pockets of her jacket as the wind whipped briskly across the grass, trying to marshal facts in her head. This place, desecrated now at one end by a quarry, had once been a busy township. Dozens, perhaps hundreds of houses had clustered on the flat top of this high, almost surreal volcanic mound. It had been called Dun Pelder then. Its present name, Traprain, also came, it was thought, from the Celtic or Welsh Tra Pren, which would mean something like the ‘wooden town’, from the palisades which had topped some of the great ramparts defending it and which would have been visible for miles. Over the span of the centuries, thousands of people had lived and loved and died here and in the township which had sprung up around the hill; kings and queens, the ancient Druids, the bards, the seers, the educated, aristocratic layer of people who with the warriors, the farmers and the servants and slaves made up the society of Britain two thousand years ago. The contemporaries of Boudica. The contemporaries of the Romans, who she had fought. The contemporaries of Cartimandua, Queen of the North.

  Vivienne!

  The ringing in her ears grew louder and she found herself turning round and round, unexpectedly finding herself at last looking down the sheer cliff face where Mellia had fallen to her death. Her eyes filled with tears. The memories here were too confused, too violent, too intense and she was quite alone. Why in God’s name had she come? Turning quickly, she began to retrace her steps across the plateau towards the track, and once there she began to scramble down from the summit. Pausing to catch her breath, she smelled the wild thyme and sweet grasses and the subtle undertone of sheep dung. Once out of the wind the silence was an enormous relief. She could hear again the lark and in the distance the mewing of a buzzard as it circled over the wide farmland below her. Here the air was full of the scent of woodsmoke from a farmhouse down in the lea of the hill and the rich coconut scent of the gorse from the flanks of the terraces.

  She sat down on a sheltered ridge of the ancient terracing, just visible still beneath the grass, and closed her eyes to the view.

  They had carried Carta to her bed and sent for Gruoch, the Druid priestess who specialised at the college as a healer in women’s problems. She arrived carrying her emergency bag of herb bundles and went straight to the bedside, dismissing the women who flocked anxiously around the room.

  Her hands on Carta’s belly were gentle and experienced, her voice soothing. She frowned as she felt the muscles under her fingers contract. ‘Your babe is not happy, my dear.’ She pulled aside the bloody skirts and frowned again. ‘And you are still bleeding. We must pray to the blessed goddess to bring you succour. Lie still. I will give you something to help.’ She pulled the blankets back and reached for her bag. Calling for warm wine in which to steep the herbs, she smiled across at the frightened young woman. ‘Have no fear. If this child is destined to be born he will be. If there is no soul ready to come to rebirth then so be it. There will be others.’ She opened a pouch of dried mosses and reached for some linen to make a pad to ease beneath the girl’s hips as Mairghread brought in a goblet of wine and set it down carefully near the lamp beside the bed.

  ‘But it’s Riach’s child.’ Tears slid down Carta’s cheeks.

  ‘And Riach may require him in Tir n’an Og,’ Gruoch said reassuringly. ‘If that is so, then you must allow him to claim his son.’ She sighed. She saw no future for this baby. Even if the birth pains stopped she doubted if it would go to term. She knew, as well as everyone else within the Druids’ college, that Cartimandua’s womb was blighted by a curse. Truthac had called a meeting of his senior colleagues after Riach’s funeral, a ceremony Carta had been too sick to attend, and warned them. And he had told them then the future he saw for this young woman. He had foreseen her widowhood and he had foreseen what would happen next.

  ‘No!’ Viv was unaware that she had spoken out loud. Startled, two ramblers climbing the track nearby stopped and glanced at her. She appeared to be staring into the distance, lost in thought. With a quick look at each other they hurried on.

  The pains and the bleeding stopped. Carta climbed wearily from her bed at last to make offerings to the goddess. From the wood-carver’s stock of amulets and charms she bought a tiny carving of a baby and, with her favourite gold clip knelt before the sacred lochan and dropped them in, allowing them to carry her prayers and pleas deep into the fern-draped depths of clear brown water.

  ‘I am praying for you. I am,’ Viv murmured. She, like Gruoch, knew it was to no avail. If Cartimandua had borne a child to the son of the king of the Votadini, surely history would know about it. On the hillside, only a hundred yards, did she but know it, from the spot where Carta’s marriage bed had stood in the round house near the middle of the settlement, and within sight of the location of Riach’s funeral pyre far below in what were now fields, Viv drew up her knees and hugged them thoughtfully, her eyes fixed unseeing on the North Sea.

  The pains returned at midnight two days later as the moon moved from Samionos, the time of seedfall, to Dumannios, the darkest depth of winter and as the cold winter sun slid above the horizon Riach’s tiny son was born. He never drew breath. His body, wrapped in soft fur, comforted with precious beads, a small carved toy bear and his mother’s jewelled pony pendant, was consigned to the pit of offerings which would take him into the next world where his father’s arms would gather him up and carry him towards the western shore.

  Carta remained dry-eyed throughout the ceremony, then as her breasts began to leak precious unneeded milk beneath her linen tunic, she walked alone to the shrine.

  ‘Why? I gave you offerings. I gave you my prayers. I gave you my husband! Why did you take my son as well?’ Her anguished cry echoed round the settlement and men and women crept away, respecting her need to be alone. ‘I see you watching me. Listening to me. Why? Why, if you do nothing to help me?’

  And gradually Viv became aware of the pale tear-stained face, framed by wild uncombed hair, staring straight into her own with wide furious eyes.

  She woke with a violent start and scrambled to her knees.

  She was alone. The hillside was bare now, where in her trance it had been terraced, crowded with houses, busy with people. Only one part in her vision was empty. Sacred. Where the pit of sacrifice had been and the holy lochan and the temple that guarded it. She stared round, still trembling with the shock of seeing those grey-green eyes fixed so firmly on her own.

  Slowly she stood up and at once she felt the wind catching her hair. All around her the Law was silent save for the distant song of the skylark and from somewhere in the fields far below the warning cry of a curlew. Retracing her steps, she found the lochan, on the very top. Small, insignificant. Its importance long forgotten. Overwhelmed by the need to make an offering of her own in memory of that little boy, she hunted through her pockets and brought out a coin. She looked at the water and back at the pound in her hand and shook her head. Carta had always left gold. This coin seemed tawdry, to say nothing of a gross intrusion on the memories and ecology of the place. Instead she stooped and picked a small perfect head of white saxifrage and dropped it into the water. It floated out into the centre of the pool and lay there in the sunshine.

  ‘I’m sorry.’ The words were ringing in her head. ‘I’m so sorry. I couldn’t save him for you.’

  Gruoch would have done so if she could. She had been so calm. So confident. A Druidess, trained in the healing arts.

  Viv stood there for a long time, her head bowed, then at last she turned and made her way back to the track. She was shivering. She had to pull herself together. Remember the detail, not the emotions. She was a historian. She had watched a healer at work. She must try and remember the details of what Gruoch had done. Perhaps this was something that could be checked and verified. What had the woman used? Red wine. Imported from Gaul presumably at this date, although the Romans cultivated vines when they came to southern Britain. A nice Burgundy or a Bordeaux, perhaps. She smiled sa
dly. It was used to steep the herbs which Gruoch had pulled from what appeared to be, in Native American terms, a medicine bundle and used to make a soothing mulled wine. What herbs were they? She repeated the names to herself like a mantra, trying to remember the unfamiliar terms which the woman had murmured as she added them to her concoction. At the end, as the baby was about to be born, Gruoch had given her rasps, presumably wild raspberries, and willow. And other things. Haws. Rosehips. She groped in her pocket for a notebook. Had those herbs been of any use? Did Gruoch, stately, reassuring Gruoch, know what she was doing? Did Carta survive?

  But of course she survived. History was clear on that score.

  Out to sea it was growing hazy. Once more a breeze stroked her skin, this time cold, smelling of salt.

  She stood staring round. The other climbers and walkers if there had been any while she was in her trance had disappeared. There was no one in sight. Nothing on the top of the great hill of Traprain but fleeting memories, lost as soon as they surfaced, swept away by new gods and time.

  II

  ‘I told you so!’ Pat looked across the desk at Maddie Corston with a grimace ‘Still no answer. Just the machine.’

  Maddie leaned back in her chair with a sigh. A slim, natural blonde with startlingly blue eyes she was dressed in voluminous trousers and a bright blue T-shirt which moulded tightly over the large, presumably fairly imminent bump of her belly.

  ‘You say you got on well?’ Maddie picked up the folder on her desk and stared at it.

  ‘I thought so.’ Pat shrugged. ‘I still think so.’

  ‘This is certainly good. A huge improvement.’ Maddie tapped the folder with a bright red fingernail.

  ‘It’s a good book. I’m enjoying working on it.’ Pat was watching Maddie’s face closely. ‘I could do it on my own, if necessary, you know,’ she said cautiously. The idea had been growing slowly at the back of her mind, egged on by the subliminal presence of Medb, the stranger in her dreams who could prove the stronger, more dramatic character the play needed.