The White Mare: The Dalraida Trilogy, Book One (80 page)

‘My love …’ he murmured now, an edge of rawness in his voice. ‘I will never let you be alone in this again.’

She closed her eyes, suddenly troubled by his words. But with the release of the heavy secret, and its shame, a new knowledge was sweeping through her heart. Perhaps Nerida sent it, perhaps the Goddess-light still lingered, illuminating what she had been too blind to see.

Eremon had never been sent to save her.

He but offered me the gift. All along, I had only to reach out and take it
.

She took a deep, shuddering breath, and raised her face. ‘Eremon, I will need to be alone with this, at times, and that is as it should be. But with you by my side, it will be easier.’

He was quiet for a moment. ‘That is why you wielded the knife on our wedding night. And I forced myself upon you … gods!’

She wiped her cheeks. ‘You did not force yourself, Eremon. You treated me with honour.’

‘No … I pawed at you … and then later I tried to kiss you, when all along a man’s touch was hateful to you. Forgive me.’

‘Eremon.’

His eyes were wild with pain.

‘Eremon, you did not do this to me.
They
did. You cannot be responsible for the actions of all men, only your own actions. And you acted as any husband would, as any man should.’ She put her hands on his shoulders and gave him a gentle shake. ‘Your touch was … is … not hateful to me. Remember, after we rescued you, when you tried to kiss me?’

He nodded.

‘I wanted to, Eremon. It was because I wanted to that I pulled away, not because I did not love you. I was so scared that if I gave in and you touched me and I flinched … that you would reject me. I did not want to let you down … not you. Never you.’

At those words, the pain in his eyes flared brighter.

‘So you see,’ she added, smiling wistfully, ‘I am not the Goddess, either. Just a faulty vessel; a broken vessel.’

At that, he folded her in his arms again, gently this time. ‘Faulty, perhaps – as am I. But you are still my fierce, loving, maddening Rhiann. That is all I need.’

Rhiann closed her eyes and let the warmth of his body hold the pain at bay. For now, there was just this moment, and she would savour it: the scent of the hollow of his neck, the beat of his heart, and the softness of his breath in her ear. Beneath their tunics, pressed together, she sensed the lines of power on her belly and those on his drawing them ever closer.

At that moment, a carnyx trumpet rang out from the wall around the broch, cleaving the air with a strident summons.

‘Gods!’ Eremon released her. ‘Is there to be no rest for me? They call me back.’

Rhiann smiled. ‘Many kings are waiting for you. This is what you have worked so hard for. Come.’

As they walked back up the glen, hand in hand, and drew closer to the shadow of the broch, Eremon stopped again. ‘Will you stay close by my side this night? I need you there.’

She smiled, and leaned up on tiptoe to kiss him. ‘The dream is alive, Eremon. We both saw it, that night of the rite. You and I have come together to do this for our people; all of them. My place is by your side, for this night and all to come.’

The boar-head trumpet cried once more, and was joined by another, and then another, until the air all around rang with the clamour.

Together, they heeded the call.

Epilogue

Far in the east, in a city on seven hills, there was a room of gold.

The carved arms of the chair at its centre were gilded, the wall hangings were of cloth-of-gold, and there was a gold ewer of fine Gaulish wine on a small, ebony table.

From the marble terrace outside, sunlight poured into the room, and the blue sky beyond was pale with heat. The air was golden, too, heavy with myrrh and the scent of cedar, and dripping with the moistness of the River Tiber in late summer.

A stray reflection of sun caught the rings of the man in the chair, blazing on a ruby intaglio ring, carved with the head of the divine Jupiter. The man was young, with close-cropped dark hair and small, piercing eyes. He would address the Roman Senate shortly, and for this reason wore the purple on his toga.

A scribe crouched on a stool by a table, a sheet of vellum spread before him, dipping his stylus into a jewelled inkwell. The scratching of it was the only sound in the silent room, apart from the buzzing of a bee, which had ventured through the terrace doors from the gardens of the Palatine.

The scribe finished his opening paragraph, with its long formal address, and the man with the ruby ring continued his dictation. As he spoke, the stylus resumed its flight across the vellum, in perfect, cursive script:

… Gnaeus Julius Agricola, as well as greetings, I give you confirmation of my ascension on the early and unlooked for death of my dear brother Titus, former Emperor of Rome
.

Know then that on the fate of your forces in the northern realms of that province of Britannia, so rests the glory of the Empire
.

You are hereby ordered to advance from your present frontier position as dictated by my predecessor Titus, and take all the territories of that land known as Alba from southern to uttermost northern, from sea to sea
.

In accomplishing this, I confirm my faith in you as a staunch support of my father Vespasian, and our family for all these times past, and the military commander who has conquered so many new territories for the Empire
.

In return correspondence, indicate your dispositions and campaign plans for the coming season. In all, you have my support and faith in your abilities, as always
.

Farewell!

Domitian

Emperor of Rome

Historical Note

Any historical novel is a blend of fact and fiction. While I have stuck to the facts if they are known and widely accepted, luckily for me, as a fiction writer, there is so much we either don’t know for sure, or is the subject of great debate among scholars. In these cases, fiction takes precedence. I make no apologies for that, since I set out to tell a good story first and foremost, which just happens to be set against a historical background.

While I’ve been as careful in my research as I can be, errors and omissions will have occurred, and these are entirely my own fault.

There is not enough space here to include all the detailed facts, but I wanted to explain here the major issues, and why I decided to use certain facts as I have. Also, Kilmartin in Argyll is well worth a visit, and there you can go to the actual sites of Dunadd and Crìanan (often spelt Crinan), the Dun of the Cliffs (Castle Dounie) and the line of ‘ancestor mounds’ and stones in Kilmartin valley. Kilmartin also has the best little museum I’ve ever visited in the UK, the Kilmartin House Museum, which houses some great interpretive displays – and does a mean coffee!

The Roman Campaigns

All of the basic information about the Roman army’s movements, its fort building and frontiers, are taken from the biography Tacitus later wrote about his father-in-law, Agricola. Some scholars think it likely that Tacitus did in fact spend a short time in northern Britain as a young man. Interestingly, although I had written my plot before I knew this, Tacitus does mention that Agricola entertained an exiled Irish prince and was considering the invasion of Ireland with this prince at the helm.

Dalriada

Also known as Dál Riata. Later Irish and Scottish annals speak of a people who came from Ulster in northern Ireland to colonize Argyll in western Scotland sometime in the sixth century ad. This colony of Gaels, as they were known, established their king’s seat at the fort of Dunadd near Crìanan in Argyll, bringing the Gaelic language to Scotland. However, most scholars agree that, because of the close proximity of their coastlines, the northern Irish were probably in close contact with western Scotland centuries before the accepted colonization. So the first real contact between Argyll and Dalriada could easily have been made as far back as the first century, since I am not proposing a wholesale movement of people at this time.

Dunadd

Dunadd is now accepted as the royal seat of the kings of Scottish Dál Riata from approximately the fifth to tenth centuries ad, and became a centre of trade and fine craftsmanship. However, excavations have proven that people were living, or at least visiting the site for thousands of years before that, including the time around the Roman invasions of Scotland. It is unlikely that a prominent volcanic crag close to the sea would not have been used by the earlier Celtic peoples of the area. Excavations have focused on the stone walls built in the middle of the first millennium, and it is entirely possible that traces of timber buildings have either been missed, or were destroyed during later building on the site. To my knowledge, the plain around the crag’s feet has not been excavated.

Tribes

The Greek geographer Ptolemy, writing in the second century ad, has left us a map of Scotland showing the names and placements of major tribes. It is possible that some of this information was gathered during Agricola’s campaigns. I have included the tribal names and positions as shown on this map, although we don’t know how accurate it is.

Some people also think that the tribal names relate to animals, and could indicate totemic affinities. Thus the Epidii might be related to horses, the Caereni to sheep and the Lugi to ravens.

A note on the Caledonii: On Ptolemy’s map, this tribe is shown as the Caledones. However, by the fourth century, when the last book in this trilogy is set, the name seems to have become ‘Caledonii’ to Roman writers, so for simplicity’s sake I’ve used that.

Picts and Gaels

The name ‘Pict’ is not used by Roman writers for the peoples of Scotland until the fourth century, and may come from a Roman term meaning ‘painted people’. However, although my characters obviously ‘became’ the Picts, we don’t know what they called themselves. So I’ve stuck to the old name for Scotland, Alba, and called them Albans. With regard to the ‘Gaels’, there is strong evidence that this is what the early peoples of Scotland called those from Ireland. Argyll, where the Dalriadans later had their centre of power, means ‘coast of the Gael’.

Language

By the sixth century there is some evidence that the Picts (descendants of Scottish people) and Argyll Scots (descendants of the Dalriadan Irish) spoke a mutually unintelligible form of the Celtic language. However, languages can change rapidly, and we don’t know how close the two were in the first century, although many people think it is likely to have been much closer. I’ve left them speaking essentially the same language, for simplicity’s sake.

Personal Names

I don’t follow one naming scheme, since we don’t know what language the Picts/Albans spoke: was it closer to Welsh or Irish at this time? So some of my names are Irish, some Pictish, and some I have invented. The only records we have of Pictish names are lists of kings. As far as possible, I’ve used names from this list for major male characters, including Brude, Maelchon, Gelert, Drust, and Nectan. The one exception is Calgacus, which is Celtic and means something like ‘great swordsman’. He is noted by Tacitus as leading the resistance of the tribes against Agricola.

We don’t have records of female Pictish names, so in the book these are mostly Irish, such as Caitlin, Eithne, Mairenn, Dercca, and Fainne. Rhiann, though based on Welsh, is not a traditional name. All of Eremon’s men have Irish names, although as Aedan sang at the wedding feast, Eremon is not a traditional name and in fact is the name of a mythological hero, the first Gaelic king of Ireland.

Gods

In a similar vein, since we don’t know what the Albans called their gods, I’ve used a mixture of Welsh gods (Arawn) and goddesses (Rhiannon, Ceridwen), British goddesses (Andraste and Sulis), and Irish gods (the Dagda, Lugh, Manannán). These last two appear all over the Celtic
world, from Ireland to Gaul. Manannán appears in Welsh mythology, often as the husband of Rhiannon, and gave his name to the Isle of Man as well as being one of the most important Irish gods. Taranis is known from Gaulish inscriptions and seems to be a god of thunder. Cernunnos, the stag god, also seems to have been widely worshipped on the Continent as well as in the British Isles.