Daughter of Albion (6 page)

‘By the will of the Mothers, I am blessed with a name. Will you use it?'

He laughed and rolled back, pulling me onto his chest.

What he described did interest me. How could it not? But it frightened me also. The laws of skin had denied me much but I knew in the heart of my bones that they were true. It unsettled me that Ruther did not see it so.

He yawned. ‘You should come with me to the Empire lands, Ailia. Journey with me and see for yourself what I have spoken of.'

I chuckled. ‘How could I come?'

He wriggled up to sitting, roused by the idea. ‘You will come as my servant.'

I sat up, our spell broken, and began to dress. ‘It is too soon for me to leave Cookmother. She needs me for her work.'

‘The herbs? Any girl can help her with that—you are meant for something greater.'

I flinched. ‘You'll not say that when my poultice saves your limb should you come to me with battle wounds.' I strapped my sandals.

‘Where are you going?'

‘To my bed.'

‘Will you not return with me to my house?'

‘As your servant?'

He frowned. ‘Forgive me, is that not what you are? Have I done wrong to call you so?'

I sighed and softened. ‘No, you haven't. But I would rest in my own bed this night.'

He drew a deep breath of my scent. ‘You've pierced me, Doorstep. When I was not battle-ready.'

I kissed his mouth then slipped out onto the moonlit courtyard. As I walked to the kitchen, my eyes stung from sleeplessness and my body hummed with a sweet, dull ache. But I was glad to have run the threshold of Beltane, glad to discover what lay beyond.

All wisdom lives in our rivers.
The brink of water is where knowledge is revealed.

T
HE MORNING'S FIRST
light showed Bebin's bed was empty.

As I wandered out to collect fresh water, I met her stealing through the Tribequeen's gate, still in her feasting dress. I led her to the back of the kitchen, where we could stand in the warmth of the rising sun and talk without being heard.

‘Where have you been?' I whispered.

‘With Uaine,' she murmured, heavy-lidded.

‘He is pleased to return then?' I smiled.

‘Ay.' She turned to me, her brown eyes brightening. ‘I think he will sing me his song.'

I nodded. Wordless. I was not prepared for how deep it cut.

The skinsong. The betrothal. An invitation to join with another as kin. It was how we knew if the Mothers blessed the union. When the skinsong was sung, the one who listened could remain silent, declining the bond. Or they could sing their skinsong in return. It was in the blending of songs that the singers knew if they were favoured to marry. If the harmonies shifted the soul, the bond was true.

Bebin had sung me hers, once, in friendship and, of course, I had heard Cookmother's many times. But I would never hear one from a tribesman in betrothal. Because they would know that I could not return it.

I kissed Bebin's cheek and wished her happiness.

Ruther and Uaine returned mid-morning to prepare for their departure. They would take some of Fraid's best horses and many of her dogs and hides.

I found cause to pass Ruther many times in the stables and storehouses until eventually he pulled me into one of the grain huts, pulling the door closed behind us. ‘How can a man prepare for travel,' he said, kissing my throat, ‘with such a bird flying past?' He loosened his belt. ‘Must I show you once more, my feeling for you?'

I took a strange pleasure in luring him from his task, testing this new power I held. My back was pressed hard against the storehouse wall when the door swung open and Bebin stepped in. She stopped when she saw us, then turned and left.

I found her in the Great House, straightening the skins that covered the benches.

‘May I speak, Ailia?' she said, as I joined her.

‘Of course.'

‘Think on your intention with Ruther. The union of man and woman is a life-giving act. It summons magic in one way or another—use it cleverly.'

I fondled the tattered edge of a boar skin, shamed by her wisdom.

‘But Ailia—'

I looked up.

‘Do not think I am displeased that you are favoured so.' She smiled her quiet smile.

I glanced at her sideways. ‘You are still not impressed by him?'

‘No, no, he is a fine man indeed,' she protested. ‘I hear he even employs a history-keeper to travel with him and sing praise-songs as he walks into new townships, like a king into battle.'

We both spluttered with laughter at the arrogance of it.

Smoothing my fingers over the animal skins, I marvelled, as always, at the variation between them: the soft, patchy pelts of the cattle, the spiked shiny bristles of the boar, and the deep lustrous fur of the reindeer, in which I buried my whole hand. Each held its own beauty and worth.

The sun had just begun its descent when a small group gathered at the southern gateway to farewell Ruther and Uaine.

Ruther's last kiss was sweet but I was relieved as I watched him ride away. I could return to the kitchen's steady rhythm and settle my thoughts.

Cookmother busied all of us with harvesting early berries from the Tribequeen's gardens, but when I could not even sort the green from the rosy without error, she took pity on me and went to fetch a delivery of medicine. ‘You are useless to me here, sex-drunk and giddy,' she said, handing me a muslin-wrapped bundle and a small bottle of honey. ‘Take these to Dun's farm. Tell the woman there to heat the powders and honey with sheep's milk, drink it, and rub a little on the chest. Throw what remains on the ground to the south of the house. Tell her there's enough within for four days.'

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 wound 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.