Gallicenae (35 page)

In a house near Menhir Place there was no mirth. It was a small but decent house, such as a married soldier could afford to rent. The matron was having her own first childbirth. Her labor started about when the Queen’s did. Still it went on. She was Keban, wedded to Budic.

Adminius had excused him from duty, never expecting he would be gone this long. He sat on a bench in the main room, elbows on knees, head bowed between shoulders. A lamp picked furnishings out of the shadows that filled every corner. His breath smoked in the chill. Outside, the night wind hooted, shook the door, flung handfuls of hail against shutters.

The midwife came in from the bedroom holding a candle. She shambled in her exhaustion. Budic raised his face. The youthfulness
it had kept through the years was hollowed out. He had not shaved all this while; the whiskers made a thin fuzz over jaws and cheeks. “How goes it?” he croaked.

“Best you look in,” the woman said, flat-voiced. “You might not see her alive again. I’ll keep doing what I can, sir, but my arts are spent.”

Budic rose and stumbled into the other chamber. A brazier gave warmth that sharpened the reek of sweat, urine, vomit, burnt tallow. Enough light seeped through the doorway to show him the swollen form and sunken wet countenance. Her eyes were shut, except for a glimmer of white. Her mouth was half open, her breath shallow. Now and then a feeble convulsion shook her. Helplessly, he laid his palm on her forehead. “Can you hear me, beloved?” he asked. He got no answer.

A sound drew his attention—crash of wood against wall, suddenly loudened storm noises, the midwife’s cry of amazement. He went back into the main room. A tall, grizzle-bearded man in a coarse robe and paenula had entered. One knotty hand gripped a staff Beneath a half-shaven scalp his features jutted like the headlands.

“Corentinus!” Budic exclaimed in Latin. “What brings you, Father?”

“A sense within me that you have need, my son,” replied the chorepiscopus.

The midwife traced a warding crescent. Tales had long gone about that this man of Christ sometimes had foreknowledge.

“Need of your prayers,” Budic said. “Oh, Father, she’s dying.”

“I feared that. Let me see.” Corentinus brushed past him. Budic sank down on the bench and wept.

Corentinus returned. “She is far gone, poor soul,” he said. “This was just a little late in life, maybe, for her to start bearing. I thought she was barren, and beseeched God to gladden the two of you with a child, but—”

Budic lifted his gaze. “Can you pray her back to me?”

“I can only ask God’s mercy. His will be done.” Corentinus pondered. “Although—” Decision: “He helps us mortals, even unto an angelic summons, but we must do our share. My rough medical skills are of no use here. The Gallicenae command healing powers beyond any I’ve ever heard of elsewhere. I’ll go fetch one.”

Budic gasped. “What? But they’re feasting at the palace. I know because Cynan looked in on us on his way to parade.”

Corentinus rapped out a laugh. “The more merit in the charity, then. Who can tell but what this may start the pagan on a path to salvation? Hold fast, son. I’ll be back as soon as may be.” He went out into the night.

The midwife shuddered. “What did he want, sir?” she asked. Her Latin was rudimentary.

Budic shook his head, numbed beyond his numbness at the thought of such a raven breaking into the King’s banquet and demanding the aid of the Nine.

Whoo-oo
called the wind, and more hail rattled over the cobbles.

Budic returned to the bedside. Time crept.

The door thumped open. Corentinus loomed above a slight form in a cowled cloak hastily thrown over splendor. Emerging, Budic recognized Innilis. He pulled himself erect and saluted. Behind the two came a servant woman with a box in her arms, and then Adminius in armor that sheened wet.

“Stand aside,” ordered the Queen. Budic had never before heard her anything but soft-spoken. She stepped into the bedroom. “Light.” The midwife got the candle. “Well want more than this. I’ve brought tapers.” The servant, who had followed, began unpacking the physician’s things from the box. Innilis closed the door.

Adminius looked around. “Filthy weather,” he said. “You got something ter warm a fellow’s belly? The centurion ’ad us inside, of course. We’d get our share when the fancy part of the evening was done and ’e relieved us guards.”

Mechanically, Budic set out wine and water jugs, cups, a loaf of bread and sections of sausage. “He let you go just like that?” he asked.

“’E’s our centurion, ain’t ’e? Told me ter convey ’is sympathy and best wishes. ’E can’t leave the feast, that’d insult some of their ’igh and mightinesses there, but ’e’ll stop by in the morning. I came along on be’alf of the boys.”

“The priestess Innilis—”

“She honors her calling,” said Corentinus.

Toward dawn she trod forth. Her face was pallid, eyes dark-rimmed, hands atremble. “Keban should live,” she told the men. “The child—it was a boy—I had to sacrifice the child for the mother, but I think he was doomed in any case. Nay, do not go in yet, not ere Mella has… wrapped him. Besides, Keban has swooned. But I think, by Belisama’s grace, she will live. She may be in frail health hereafter, and I doubt she will conceive again. But your wife should live, Budic.”

He went to his knees. “Christ b-b-be thanked,” he stammered in Latin. And in Ysan, lifting eyes burnt-out but adoring: “How can I thank
you,
my lady? How can I repay you?”

Innilis smiled the least bit, laid a hand on his blond head, and murmured, “The Nine take no pay, unless it be in the coin of love.”

“Ever shall I love the Gallicenae and, and stand ready to serve them, whatever their wish may be. By the body of Christ I swear it.”

She declined his offer of refreshment and departed with her attendant, promising to visit later in the day. Adminius escorted them. Corentinus stayed behind. “Let us thank the Lord, my son,” he said. His tone was harsh.

3

At Imbolc Niall Náegéslach gave out that after Beltene he would fare overseas. Unspoken was: “Let Conual Corcc down in Mumu have his fortress. The Romans threw him out of Britannia. I will carry my sword there.”

Remembering what had happened under the wall of Ys, some men were daunted. Most, though, felt no forebodings. In the ten years since, the King at Temir had won back everything he lost, and far more. This foray could well begin laying the groundwork of his vengeance on the city of the hundred towers. Well-informed chieftains knew that the terrible Stilicho had not only himself quitted Britannia, he had taken with him many troops to use against the Germani who threatened Gallia. Complacent and thinly defended, the island east of Ériu offered wealth for the taking.

So it proved. Those who met with the King and followed him in galleys and currachs found easy pickings. From Alba to Dummonia they ravaged. Men they killed, women they raped, slaves and booty they took. What legionaries there remained never got to a place the raiders struck before they were gone, leaving smoldering ruins, beheaded corpses, weeping survivors who had fled and then crept back home. The Britons themselves were ill prepared and fought poorly—save for Cunedag’s tough hillmen, whose territories Niall steered clear of. Elsewhere he opened a way for Scoti to return, resettling along the western shores.

In blood he washed away his bitterness. As hay harvest and Lúgnassat neared he went home full of hope, he went home in glory.

He came back to wrath. In his absence, the Lagini had entered Mide and made havoc.

Eochaid, son of King Éndae Qennsalach, led that great inroad: Eochaid, whose first taste of battle seven years ago had become rank with defeat at the hands of Niall; Eochaid, whose handsomeness was forever marred by the scars of the blistering satire which Tigernach, son of Laidchenn, laid on him that same day. Since then he had known victory. He joined the Loígis clans when trouble broke loose with men of Condacht or Mumu, to repel the invaders and harry them past their own borders. He helped bring the allied kingdom of Ossraige to obedience, and collected tribute that subordinate tuaths in the mountains would have denied. Yet always the memory of the humbling festered.

They were, after all, as honor-proud in Qóiqet Lagini as men were anywhere. In Gallia their distant ancestors had been the Gáileóin, the Men of the Spears, which the Lagini claimed was also the meaning of their present name. Having entered Ériu, they formed their own confederation at the same time as the Goddess Macha of the Red Locks built Emain Macha to the north. Their seat of high Kings, Dun Alinni, was the work of Mess Delmon, who cast out the dark Fomóri, and pursued them into the very realms of the dead. The Lagini held
Temir itself until the Condachtae who founded Mide drove them from it.

Long had Eochaid brooded upon this. When the news came that Niall was bound abroad with as large a following as could put to sea, he shouted that this was a chance given by the Gods Themselves. Éndae, his father, urged caution; but Éndae was weakened by age, while the country throbbed with fierce young men eager to hear the son.

Thus Eochaid gathered a host on the west bank of the Ruirthech, which near Dun Alinni flowed north before bending eastward to the sea. His charioteers led the warriors on into Mide, straight toward Temir.

They failed to take it. The sons of Niall who had stayed behind held it too strongly. Yet bloody was the fighting ere the Lagini recoiled. Thereupon they went widely about, killing, plundering, burning. Countless were the treasures, cattle, slaves, and heads they took home.

Niall came back. When he saw the ruin that had been wrought, he did not rage aloud as once he would have done. Men shivered to behold an anger as bleak as the winter during which he made his preparations.

It may be that at first King Fergus of the Ulati breathed easier, knowing that for another year he need not await attack out of Mide. If so, his happiness soon blew away, on the wind that bore the smoke out of Qóiqet Lagini. From end to end of that Fifth Niall and his sons went. They pierced and scattered the levies that sought to stay them, as a prow cleaves waves, flinging foam to starboard and larboard. His ship, though, plowed red waters, and the spray was flames and the whine in the rigging was from women who keened over their dead.

Éndae yielded before his land should be utterly waste. Now Niall exacted the Bóruma; and when he brought it back, chief among the hostages who stumbled bound at his chariot wheels was Eochaid.

Never did Niall show honor to this prince, as he did to those he had from the Aregésla and elsewhere. The Laginach hostages lived crowded into a wretched hut, miserably fed and clad. They were only allowed out once a day to exercise, and that only because otherwise they would have taken sick and died—which some did anyhow. When Niall fared in procession, most of the hostages in his train wore golden chains, the merest token of a captivity which was actually a life full and free in the royal household. The Lagini went in shackles of iron.

On his deathbed a few months later, the druid Nemain reproached the King for this. “You are ungenerous, darling, the which is not like you. Was it not enough to reclaim, in the Bóruma, threefold what that young man reaved us of?”

“I have my revenge to finish,” Niall answered. “Let Eochaid meanwhile be my sign to the Gods that I do not forget wrongs done my kindred.”

The old man struggled for breath. “What… do you mean… by that—you whom I love?”

“Eochaid shall go free,” Niall promised, “when the head of Fland Dub is in my hand, and Emain Macha mine, and Ys under the sea.”

1

It had become clear to the Nine and many others that Dahut would embark upon womanhood in her twelfth year. Suddenly she was gaining height and shapeliness. There was never any misproportion, outbreak in the clear skin, or loss of self-possession. While always slender, she would be more tall and robust than her mother, though equally graceful and lightfooted. The buds of her breasts were swelling toward ripeness, the curves beneath becoming rich. Golden down appeared below her arms, and under her belly formed a triangle, the figure sacred to the Goddess as the wheel was to Taranis and the spiral to Lir. She strode more than she skipped. Her voice took on a huskiness.

Above, she eerily resembled Dahilis. Great lapis lazuli eyes looked from tawny arches of brow, out of a face where the high Suffete cheekbones joined a chin small but firm. Her nose was short, a little flared at the nostrils, her mouth full and a little wide. Her hair billowed halfway down her back when she loosened it, thick, amber-hued with a tinge of copper therein.

What she lacked was the sunny temper that had been Dahilis’s. Despite her beauty and quick-wittedness, Dahut was a solitary child. The Gallicenae and their maidservants had tried to find her companions of her own age, but those grew inclined to avoid her. At home the boys complained that she was too imperious, the girls shivered and called her “odd.” Dahut did not seem to care. She preferred adult company when she was not off by herself, which came to be more and more in her free time.

She learned fast, read widely, was earnest in her devotions. Athletic, she walked or ran across long stretches, ranged the woods when at the Nymphaeum, rode the horses her father gave her or drove a chariot he had lately added, was a crack target splitter with bow or light javelin, spent as many hours as she could arrange on the sea, sometimes even demanded privacy to strip and swim in its chill turbulence. Female skills she acquired, but without much interest. Occasionally she made use of Gratillonius’s workshop behind the palace, and he laughed that an excellent artisan was lost in her as well as in him. She appreciated good food, drink, garb, together with art, music, theater; but it was as
if she found her real pleasure in board games and other mental contests, or simply in listening to the King’s conversations with visitors from afar.

His Roman soldiers doted on her. They called her their Luck, and practiced special drills when she was there to see. Likewise, the fisher captain Maeloch was her slave.

The Queens held her precious too, though in various ways and for various reasons. They agreed she must not be spoiled—if anything, more was required of her than of the rest of the princesses—nor should weight be laid on the fact that they perceived a destiny in her, without being able to see what it was. Nevertheless, inevitably, Dahut got intimations of this.