The White Mare: The Dalraida Trilogy, Book One (74 page)

Yet of course, he was interested in this broch for more reasons than how it was built. He pulled up his borrowed horse as they reached the
gate to the broch wall, and gazed down a narrow glen to the sea, where a glimpse of shingle shone through the encroaching tide.

This was where Rhiann’s nightmare began. This was where she saw her family slaughtered.

This day, the sun sparkled on the water, bathing the hill that rose above the broch, patterned in heather and moss, and catching the thatched roofs of the village that spilled down the slope below it. But despite the fairness of the day, he was swept by a feeling of utter desolation. For in truth, it was here that he had lost Rhiann. If she had not been so torn by what happened, perhaps her hatred of warriors would not have stood between them at the beginning, and soured what could have turned into something else.

When he ducked in under the massive lintel, and climbed the stairs to the first floor hall, he was still blinded by the afterglow of the sun. But when his eyes cleared, he was faced with perhaps a score of men seated on hearth benches, already deep in their ale. They wore checked cloaks, and the pelts of different beasts, and their ornaments were shell and shale and copper.

As one they stopped speaking among themselves. Eremon watched the black eyes fall on his shining sword and the gold torcs that his men still wore, for they clasped the neck tightly, and no sea could wrench them free. Yes … despite their faded, salt-stained clothes, they still had enough presence to make a man think. And Nectan’s message would have presented them well. So he hoped.

Nectan stepped to his side. ‘Lords,’ he said, ‘this is Eremon mac Ferdiad of Erin.’

Eremon bowed his head, and the kings of the western tribes nodded.

‘You are welcome,’ one of the men said, rising. He was only a few years older than Eremon, but stocky, with wind-blown cheeks and a drooping black moustache. A cape of seal-skin covered his shoulders. ‘I am Brethan, the chief here, now that Kell and his kin are gone. Nectan says that you are the bonded man of Rhiann, foster-daughter of Kell and Elavra.’

Eremon nodded.

‘You come from Calgacus the Sword,’ another man remarked.

‘Yes. I am war leader of the Epidii now. The Epidii and the Caledonii have become allies against the invaders – the Romans.’ As he spoke, Eremon pulled the boar stone from his neck and held it up to the light. ‘Here is the token of Calgacus himself.’

Brethan beckoned, and a young druid, hovering in the shadows, came forward, scrutinizing the symbols before nodding his assent. ‘It is as he says.’

There was a general murmuring, but already Eremon could sense,
from the slowness of their voices, that it would take a lot for these men to be galvanized into hot words and deeds.

‘I think you have much to tell us,’ Brethan said now. ‘But the kings arrived only this morn, and we must deal with our own business first. Later, we will hear your plea.’

Setana rapped her staff on Nerida’s doorpost and entered without waiting for an answer. Nerida sat at her fireside, as she liked to do alone after the sun greeting, drinking her morning brew of honeysuckle for the aching bones and chills of age. In the fire, she saw many things.

‘I must speak to our girl Rhiann,’ Setana declared.

Nerida looked up, blinking. ‘Why?’

Setana smiled and clapped her hands. ‘Because
She
wants her, Sister.’

Nerida shook her head, and rested the ash cup on the hearth-stone. ‘She asks much of us, Sister, and much of Rhiann. She is fragile still.’

‘Yes!’ Setana whispered. ‘Oh, yes! But a man has softened her heart.’

Nerida let out a breath she did not know she held. ‘And yet the pain stands in her way; I can sense it.’

Setana smiled, as if they did not speak of such weighty matters. ‘Foolish woman! Do you not trust the Mother yourself? The pain is the strength, if she surrenders.’

Nerida sighed, and glanced down at her age-gnarled hands, remembering the bitterness in Rhiann’s eyes after the raid. ‘Her will is strong, Sister. Once before I asked her to understand, and I all but lost her.’

Setana laughed, the sound echoing on the bare walls, and she brushed Nerida’s face with her hand. ‘You worry too much, old woman.’

‘Old! We are nearly of an age, you and I!’

Setana threw her wrap around her shoulders, as she strode from the room. ‘You still worry too much. Trust!’

In the hall, Eremon charted another course through the blindness of men.

‘Why should we care for the Roman invaders?’ a chieftain rumbled, eyeing a basket of new-baked bread being carried in. ‘We are safe, on our islands.’

‘No one in the islands will be safe if Agricola takes Alba and Erin. He has a fleet; he can be on your doorstep within days.’

‘Then we will draw into the mountains,’ another king said.

Eremon leaned back on his bench, holding their dark eyes. ‘In western Britannia, Agricola went up into the mountains, which are nearly as harsh as yours. And he hunted down every last man, woman and child of the Ordovices. In the
long dark
. Your mountains will not keep you safe. Nor will your seas. Do you wish to know why?’

‘Why?’ Brethan asked, frowning, his hands clenched on his knees.

‘Because at the council, one man spoke out against myself and Calgacus at every opportunity. Is he sympathetic to Roman rule? Does he want to rule over you himself? For he then tried to kill me and the Ban Cré by sinking our boat. This man is known to you all; he has power in the northern seas.’

‘What man?’

‘Maelchon of the Orcades.’

‘We wish to speak with you, child.’

Rhiann was startled, so absorbed had she been in the play of an otter against the bronze dusk on the loch, its tracks a ripple across the tide-race.

Nerida was leaning on an ash staff, Setana grasping her arm; they had climbed the headland to the north of the Stones just to find her. The reflections from the loch caught at the many wrinkles seaming their cheeks.

‘You are well, our daughter?’ It was Nerida who spoke.

Rhiann hesitated, and bowed her head. ‘I thought I would never come back, that I never could, because you would not have me. Now I feel like … a child again.’

‘But you are not a child any more.’

Rhiann’s head jerked up.

‘Daughter, daughter, do not look like that!’ Nerida smiled, yet sadness crept at the edge of her mouth. ‘You were not cast out, nor could you ever be. But you have responsibilities now, as a child does not. Though I would give you more time for these feelings of … childishness … the Goddess cannot give us this time. I vowed to follow the Mother, and that is what I must do. As must you.’

Why can I not sink into the joy, after so much pain
? Rhiann thought, with a stab of anger.

As if she heard her, Nerida looked deeply into Rhiann’s eyes. ‘Listen to me, and trust me, even if you never trust me again. We’ve come to ask you to take up your duty. A child cannot be a vessel for the Goddess. Only a woman can do that.’

Rhiann’s shock chilled into dread.
A vessel for the Goddess
.

‘We understand your pain, as we understand the joy you felt last night. But life is neither all pain nor all joy, Rhiann. It is both.’

Rhiann thrust out her chin. ‘You wish me to go back to the pain, then, after all I have been through?’

‘Some of this pain you chose yourself,’ Setana broke in, her eyes seeking to be gentle. ‘Do not forget that, child. You chose to leave, and you chose to stay away.’

‘But I have chosen differently now!’ Rhiann cried, her fear rising. ‘I want to stay here with you! Let me do that, please!’

Setana closed a hand over Rhiann’s own. The grip was strong, yet not to hurt. ‘No,’ she said quietly. ‘The world has need of you. I have felt it. We all serve the Mother in different ways. Your home is not on these shores.’

The women glanced at each other then, and Rhiann knew that worse was to come.

Setana released her hand, and Nerida straightened her shoulders. ‘The Goddess has chosen you to perform the Beltaine rite.’

‘
What
?’

‘The Mother has chosen you to do this for the people.’

Rhiann glanced back and forth between them wildly. ‘No!’

‘I promise you – I
promise
you – Rhiann, that in the joining with the land, with the God and Goddess in the rite, there will be joy again.’ Nerida smiled reassurance, yet the sadness had now reached her eyes.

Rhiann shielded her heart with her arms, as if warding away the sharp grief. Just as she found some peace, so it was taken away. Even here, she could not find refuge; even here among those who were supposed to love her. Despair rose cold in her throat.

And that was when she felt the touch of Setana in her mind.
No, daughter, it is not like that
! She stepped forward and took hold of Rhiann’s elbows, raising her bowed face with one finger. Her grey eyes no longer shone with feyness, but glittered with tears.

Nerida moved up to stand next to her. ‘The world is changing, child, and the sisterhood must change with it. In the times to come people will need a different kind of priestess; a priestess that does not live in seclusion, as Linnet does, as we do. For the message we heard is this: show women that the Mother lives in them by working side by side, sharing their joys, their pains, their birth pangs. Teach them that they
are
the Goddess, by living that ourselves.’

Setana nodded. ‘To do this you need to live, Rhiann. Hurt, fear, love fully. Show the people that the Goddess is not something apart, but the warp to their weft threads, so closely bound up with their souls they cannot be separated.’

Setana stopped, breathing heavily, and Nerida put a gentle hand on Rhiann’s shoulder. ‘You must start this now by trusting us, and surrendering to love, for this will root you in the land. The Beltaine rite will be a doorway for you. You must leap, with only faith as your wings, but we are here to tell you that you will land in safety.’

Rhiann trembled, gripped by their words, for they fell into her heart as truth, as rain on to parched soil.

But still she fought, for she had steeled herself well against these very things for so many years now. She didn’t want to become part of the
weave of men and women and children; she didn’t want to risk loss. She could not be a true priestess, and she certainly was not a true wife. How could she be a mother, an aunt, a grandmother?

She stood now at the lip of a chasm, and knew that Nerida and Setana asked her not to step into life, but into a void. Step, she might then, out of duty – for she knew duty well. But trust again? That she could never do.

Later, when Nerida and Setana left her, when darkness had devoured the loch and the hills and night crept into her bones, she remained on the headland, unable to return to the fires. The warmth of companionship below beckoned, but there would be no true belonging now, for no one knew what Nerida’s order meant to her.

A man, a vessel for the God, would join with her, as a vessel for the Goddess. He would come in his guise of Stag, the Great Consort, and in the merging of the two halves of self, male and female, the perfect balance would be struck, and the Source would flower. The energy would bloom, expanding outwards to the people, the creatures, and the earth, charging all with life.

It was the most wonderful act that she could perform; the greatest of honours. Yet despite her training, a deep part of her cried,
Eremon
!

She had hardly thought of him, so taken was she with the sights and sounds of her return. But she thought of him now, watching her join with another man in the circle, his hair falling about his face like dark fire, his green eyes blazing with hurt. He would not understand, she was sure.

And how could she herself bear it?

No one bar Linnet knew what truly happened to her in the raid. No one knew how her powers had failed her so many times since. What if the Goddess did not come to her in the rite? Then she would be conscious … she would feel every thrust, every touch of the man’s fingers.

And the Sisters would know … they would all know at last that she was a priestess no longer.

Chapter 75

‘U
rgh!’ Conaire dunked his head into a barrel of cold water behind their lodge. ‘My skull has broken in two!’

Eremon wiped down his own face with his hands, squinting into the morning sun that sliced between the village houses.

The feasting had gone on well into the night. By the time it ended, more than one chieftain had draped his arm drunkenly around Eremon, regaling him with tales of a sword he once owned just like Eremon’s, or recounting long-ago trips to Erin in his youth. The Alban and Erin men boasted at the top of their voices about which peoples made the better ale, who had the strongest fighters, and later – after Caitlin had gone to bed – who possessed the most beautiful women.

Eremon thought he could recognize quite a few of the Caereni women on first sight, just from the lewd descriptions that had been shouted in his ear. ‘The pain may well be worth it, brother. I think I managed to turn their hearts at last.’