“How so?” said Brutus, forgetting Blangan.
“These circles of stones are called Stone Dances,” said Coel, but, before he could add any more, Cornelia spoke.
“They are places deeply sacred to women.”
Everyone twisted about on their horses to look at her, their expressions ranging from puzzled to stunned.
“How did you know that, Cornelia?” said Coel.
She had her hand resting lightly on her own belly, and she dropped it away under Coel’s intent gaze.
“It is obvious,” she said. “Look, that avenue of stones leading into the circle—it depicts a woman’s birth canal leading into her womb.”
Coel nodded, more intrigued with her than ever. He felt Brutus’ eyes on him, and let his own gaze drift away from Cornelia and back to her husband. “The Stone Dances have been used for hundreds of generations as potent places for fertility rites,” he said.
“It is where the stag comes to mate,” Blangan said, making everyone look at her as they had previously looked at Cornelia. This time the looks ranged from the interested to the coldly antagonistic.
She ignored most of them, and smiled at Cornelia. “It is a shame, perhaps, that you will not witness any of these rituals.”
“The Stone Dances are rarely used?” Brutus said, trying to deflect some of Coel’s and his two companions’ hostility away from Blangan. From what Brutus could see of the circle of stones, the Stone Dance, it was not only well built, but an imposing site that dominated the entire surrounding landscape. He could imagine people, many thousands of people, perhaps with torches in the deep mystery of the night, moving up the hill towards the Stone Dance, and a shiver ran up his spine at the image.
“There are certain ceremonies that are still held within the Stone Dances,” Coel said, “and people who live close by them continue to use them throughout the year. But the most sacred of our ceremonies, our most sincere rites to Og and Mag, are now conducted within the Veiled Hills.”
Then Cornelia spoke again, and what she said sent a jolt of fear deep into Brutus’ belly.
“Is that where the stone hall is?” she said to Coel.
He frowned. “The stone hall?”
“A hall built of stone, ten times the height of the stones in the Dance beyond, great arches for walls, and a domed golden roof. Is it in these Veiled Hills?”
Brutus’ mouth thinned at the eagerness in her voice.
“We have no such hall,” Coel said, his voice soft and puzzled. “There is an Assembly House made of stone, but it is not so large as you describe, and has no arches, nor a golden domed roof.”
Brutus let out a soft breath, allowing himself to relax. It was just a dream, nothing more, and perhaps merely something he’d caught from Cornelia because of their proximity in bed. It didn’t exist.
“Cornelia,” he said, “do not trouble Coel with your childish fancies. We have better things to do than listen to your dreams.”
“I never tire of listening to dreams,” Coel said softly, looking Brutus in the eye. “I find they add beauty to what is otherwise unbearable.”
It was Brutus who looked away first.
For two more days they travelled, passing several more Stone Dances on their way, and on the third day they came in the evening to a village that rested some five hundred paces away from the largest and most imposing of the Stone Dances they had yet encountered.
Looking at it, Blangan lost what little colour remained in her face.
She knew why they’d come here.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
This time the village headwoman—the Mother of this particular clan—agreed to Coel’s request that he and his companions might stay in her village for the night. The Mother’s name was Ecub, a woman in her late middle age, her face worn, her body slightly stooped with the hardness of her life, and with a flintiness in her sharp brown eyes that made it difficult to believe she could ever unbend enough to love.
She greeted the group politely, moving from one to the other, taking each person’s hands in hers and briefly laying her cheek to theirs. She had greeted Coel first, her hands squeezing his slightly harder than they squeezed anyone else’s, then moved to Brutus, whom she studied with marked speculation, then Cornelia, who caused her a puzzled frown.
As she drew back from laying her cheek to Cornelia’s, Ecub said, “You have given birth recently?”
“Yes,” Cornelia responded. “A few weeks ago. See, my son nestles at Aethylla’s back.”
Ecub completely ignored Aethylla and Achates. She had not yet let go Cornelia’s hands, and she tightened them momentarily. “Yes. You have just given birth. That must be it.”
Then she dropped Cornelia’s hands and moved on before either Cornelia or Brutus could say anything.
Ecub moved through the group, greeting each in turn, until she finally reached Blangan.
“You have caused us the world of trouble, girl,” Ecub said in a flat voice. “Have you not seen the blight on this land as you passed through it?”
“It was not I, Mother Ecub,” Blangan said.
Ecub’s mouth twisted disdainfully. “You are not your mother’s daughter.”
Surprisingly, Blangan managed a smile at that. “No,” she said, “I think that may be safely assumed.”
Various members of the group were bedded in several of the circular stone-walled houses in Ecub’s village—Coel, Brutus and Cornelia, and Corineus and Blangan, were to sleep in Ecub’s personal house—but everyone met in Ecub’s house for the evening meal.
This was the first time the Trojans had been inside a Llangarlian house, and they looked about them curiously.
The circular stone walls, only shoulder height from the outside, were sunk into the ground so that the internal floor of hard-packed earth and stone flagging was several steps lower than ground level. Combined with the high, conical thatched roof, that meant that the house felt roomier inside than external appearances indicated.
The low door opened on to several steps which led down to the floor which was dominated by a large central hearth. Here a huge pile of coals glowed, serving both as a cooking fire and a means to heat the house. Several earthenware cooking pots sat in the coals, the steam rising from their lids making everyone’s mouth water.
Bedding niches had been built into the walls, each niche piled high with animal skins, furs and woven woollen blankets and covers over the straw and woollen bedding, while tools and other farming implements hung from the walls and rafters, along with dried vegetables and smoked meats and baskets of preserved eggs and fish. In one part of the floor were tightly woven wicker lids that hid deep food and grain storage pits sunk into the earth.
The house smelled of smoke, of the spice of the dried foods and of those cooking in the coals, and of the stale musk of human bodies packed into a relatively small space.
Ecub, her brothers and sons, as well as her daughters and their children, lived in this house; twenty or more people were crowded into a circular space some twenty-five feet across.
Benches and stools had been set about the hearth, and to these Ecub’s daughters—two women of mature child-bearing years—directed their guests.
With Ecub’s immediate family, and the eleven members of the travelling band, it would be a tight fit indeed.
But fit they did, and once everyone was seated Ecub’s daughters and granddaughters handed about a rich stew that they ladled into semi-hollowed-out portions of heavy grained bread. Salad herbs and cooked vegetables lay on plates about the hearth, and after Ecub had said a blessing to Og and Mag for the bounty of the food, everyone fell to.
Ecub also handed out flasks of wine, and this was wine such as the Trojans had not yet tasted. It was honey wine, but without much of the cloying sweetness, and with an undertaste of herbs and flowers that lent it a complexity that made many among the Trojans reach again and again for the flask.
Ecub caught Coel’s eyes, and smiled secretly.
Once the food had gone�
�but with the flasks of wine still being passed about—Ecub said a word to one of her sons, and he picked up a small drum and began to play upon it a complex, throbbing beat.
Shoulders dipped and swayed, and eyes half closed as people gave themselves to the power of the music.
Again Ecub said a word, and her two daughters rose, loosened their hair and the belts that held their robes close to their bodies, and began to dance.
Like the throb of the drum, it was a slow, sensual dance. They moved separately about the outer circle of benches and stools, but nevertheless danced to each other as if there was no one else present. It was a dance of lovers, and even though both the daughters were mothers themselves, and one was some five or six months gone with her next child, it was as though they were virgins, moving ever closer to that moment of their first bedding.
They twined about behind the people seated on the benches, their hips or hands or bellies occasionally brushing someone’s shoulder or back, but always Ecub’s daughters kept their eyes firmly fixed between themselves, acknowledging no one but the other, demonstrating desire for no one but the other.
Whenever they passed in their intricate orbits about the benches, their hands and lips would graze that of the other woman in abandoned promise.
Brutus was stirred by the women’s dance as he had never before been moved. Part of it was physical desire—the way these woman moved their bodies and the patent sexual intent of their rhythmic motion, combined with the throb of the drum, meant that no one in the house could fail to be aroused—but another part was a sense that the dancers led him on to a deeper plane, an ancient mystical realm where strode gods and powers he could never hope to understand.
He drank heavily of the wine every time the flask came by him, and soon the wine throbbed inside his veins with the same beat of the drum, and every time one of the dancers passed behind him and brushed him with hip or belly, he moaned, his hands clenching into fists where they lay on his thighs.
The Llangarlians, women and men, had closed their eyes to sight, and let themselves drown in the sound of the drum and the touch of the dancers. They seemed to know whenever the flask was being passed their way, for they put out their hands at precisely the right moment, grasped the flask, drank of it and passed it on without ever opening their eyes or interrupting the swaying movements of their bodies.
The Trojans, too, although more inhibited, gave themselves to wine and music and dance, and soon everyone was half mad with drink and sensuality, and the dancers’ rhythm increased until they were twirling about the circular rim of benches, their colourful robes a blur of brilliance, their hair and hands flying, and soon there was nothing but madness and pleasure, and people took partners as they pleased.
Later, much later, when the night was still and cold, Ecub rose from her sleeping niche, leaving Coel fast in sleep behind her, and walked naked to where Blangan lay with Corineus.
She reached out a hand, but Blangan’s eyes flew open before Ecub touched her.
“Is it time?” Blangan whispered.
Ecub nodded, and stepped back.
Blangan slowly rose, careful not to wake Corineus, then stood next to the bed, gazing down at her husband.
“How I have loved him,” she said, then, her face composed but her eyes desperate, she followed Ecub out the door.
CHAPTER TWELVE
CORNELIA SPEAKS
I rolled over, away from Brutus’ warmth, and peered from under the thick wrapping that lay heavy and comforting over me.
I was rigid with foreboding, yet I could remember no dream, nor think of any reason why this feeling should grip me.
Then I saw two naked female figures briefly highlighted in the open door.
It closed, but I’d only needed that brief glimpse to know who they had been: Ecub and Blangan.
Hera! What was going on? What were they doing to set out unclothed into the frigid night?
The deep, horrible sense of foreboding increased, and I felt as if my stomach was turning over and over in its panic. I’d begun to sweat, consumed with fear, and I felt my heart racing.
And yet there was nothing to fear…was there?
Unable to lie still, I slipped quietly from the bed, slid my feet into my leather shoes lying close by, and grabbed a cloak.
Pausing to make sure that everyone else slept on, I opened the door and followed Blangan and Ecub into the night.
I could not see them, but that did not disturb me. I was certain I knew where they were going.
The night air chilled me, and I shivered, and pulled the cloak tight about me as I hurried through the few circular houses of the village, past the pens where the village goats and sheep slumbered the night away, and on to the path that led through the harvested fields towards the plain in the distance.
Once I was on the track I saw Blangan and Ecub walking side by side, now well ahead. How could they walk so calmly? They must be frozen.
They were almost to the embankment that encircled the Stone Dance, and they had shifted from the path I was on to a broad raised pathway clearly defined by ditches on either side.
Something made them stop, and turn to look back.
They saw me instantly: in this treeless landscape they could hardly have missed me.
Blangan became excited, turning to Ecub and grabbing at her arm with one hand, pointing to me with the other.
Ecub shook her off, and said a few words.
Blangan subsided, but her entire body language projected misery.
I wondered why she didn’t want me to come to the Dance. I suppose I should have taken note of Blangan’s fear, her wish that I not follow, but my foreboding had grown stronger with every step towards the Dance that I took, and there was nothing that would stop me now.
What was wrong?
All I knew was that my sense of fear somehow involved Blangan, and for love of her I kept on going.
As I continued to walk forward, my breath frosting about me, Ecub lifted a hand, pointed it at me, then slowly moved it about until it pointed at the raised path on which they stood.
The message was clear: You may join us, but to do so you must walk this path.
I nodded, and cut across the turf between their path and mine. The going was difficult, and I stumbled several times, once almost falling.
I was wondering why on earth I was out here in the freezing night, and had started to think that the wise and sensible thing would be to return to my warm bed and husband, when the raised pathway suddenly loomed before me. I climbed down into the ditch, then scrambled up to the path’s surface using my hands for purchase.
Blangan and Ecub had gone, presumably inside the Stone Dance where the great dark monoliths, topped with their oppressive lintel stones, were now wreathed in thick garlands of a faintly yellowed fog.
When I had left the smaller pathway to cross to this raised one, the night had been frosty and clear.
It still was, where I stood, but not where the Stone Dance rose.
There, mystery gathered.
Suddenly, Ecub appeared, standing alone, dwarfed by the stones towering over her. She saw me, and beckoned again.
I took a step towards her, hesitated, then took another, then another, and before I knew why, I was walking swiftly towards the Stone Dance.
Ecub held up a hand just before I reached the circle of stone—twin circles, I could see now, as there was an inner ring of smaller stones.
“Stop,” Ecub said. “Why have you come?”
I licked my lips, then spoke the truth. “Because I fear for Blangan.”
“How did you wake?” Ecub said, ignoring my remark about Blangan. “The wine was drugged so most would sleep insensible.”
Most? Hera, who else was going to join us?
“Fear woke me,” I said, my eye sliding past her beyond the stones, “fear for Blangan.”
“Blangan is not deserving of such care,” Ecub said, her voice hard.
“To me she is,” I said quietly. “I love
her dearly.”
Ecub was unmoved by my words. “Only Mag herself knows why you are here,” she said. “Only she could have woken you.”
“Then Mag must care for Blangan, too.”
Ecub’s face flushed—with anger, I think. “Mag has no care for Blangan at all,” she said. “Now, as you are here, and I must assume there is a reason for it, then you may enter. But stay with me, and do only as I tell you.
“And divest yourself of your clothes. Mag’s Dance will only accept you naked.”
I hesitated, unnerved not so much by any thought of modesty, but because of the frigid air.
How could Ecub stand so calmly, so still, when her flesh must be screaming for warmth?
“You will be warm enough,” Ecub said, and so I shrugged off my cloak, and kicked my shoes to one side.
Ecub looked at the faint lines of pregnancy still visible on my belly, and nodded. “Your fertility blesses you,” she said. “Enter.”
And with that she turned, and walked into the stone circle.
With no more hesitation, but with my sense of fear growing every moment, I, too, stepped into Mag’s Dance.
We stood within the outer circle of monoliths, halfway between it and the inner, smaller circle.
“This is the greatest Stone Dance of them all,” Ecub’s soft voice said. “This is Mag’s Dance; her Dance, her womb.”
She led me to the very centre of the Dance through the inner circle of smaller and uncapped stones to where five stone arches stood in a “U” shape.
“The cup of the womb,” said Ecub, and reached down to the foot of one of the arches. She lifted up a flask. “Drink,” she said, and handed it to me.
I hesitated, and looked at Ecub.
The woman’s eyes glinted at me, daring me. “Are you afraid?” she said.
Yes, I wanted to answer. “No,” I said, and raising the flask to my lips, drank deeply of the warm, pungent liquid within.
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