Dreaming the Eagle (13 page)

He was a warrior. He could do anything. He squared his shoulders. ‘I will go if that is what you want of me.’

‘No. No, it is not. Most assuredly it is not. You may owe this man a debt of honour, but he…’ She was struggling, seeking the words to name a horror, and not finding them. Drawing a breath, she said, ‘The honour is ours. Amminios does not share it. The elders would not allow you to go to him.’ He saw the fear in her eyes, more clearly than before, and the effort it took her to face him. She spoke fast, to get it over. ‘There is another way. You must give him a gift, something that matters to you deeply. A gift from the heart that would be worth as much as a year of your life.’

She could not look at him then. Her eyes slid away to the fireside, where Hail chewed on the bare end of a torch. He saw the trail of wet on her cheek again and understanding fell on him, crushing him, choking him, grinding his life to dust.

‘Not Hail!’ He clutched at her, frantic with terror, grasping the startled whelp with his other hand. ‘Please, please not Hail. I would rather serve for the rest of my life.’

She caught his wrist. ‘Don’t say that, Ban. Not on a day such as this.’

‘But—’

‘Just don’t. And no, it is not Hail.’ He saw the ghost of a smile. ‘I do not think he would accept Hail. Your battle hound tried to unman him. If Efnis had not caught him, I think he would have succeeded.’

At another time, he would have been pleased with that. Now, even as the relief swamped him, he cast around for the real answer. ‘The new bitch? She is good. A man such as that would not know what to do with her, but I will give her if I must.’ ‘No. Not the bitch. She is a thing you have traded. She is not something you value. There is one other’ And so he saw it, like a knife blade too close to be ducked, aiming straight for the heart. ‘The foal? My dun filly?’

‘Yes. I’m sorry, Ban, but it’s the only thing that will serve.’

‘But she can’t leave her dam. She’s too young. She isn’t weaned yet.’

‘I know. So the mare will have to be given with her. They must go together. Tomorrow morning, after the ceremony of the sunrise, you must give them both to Amminios as your debt-gift, with your apologies.’

His day passed in desolation. He sat in the field with the filly, giving her salt and honeyed bran cakes and the other gifts that were brought him. Word travelled fast and people he barely knew - the ones who had come to look at her and admire during the fair and others he had never seen before - passed by the field and left small gifts: a twist of salt for the filly, a jar of oil to paint her hooves, a sword belt for him to wear in the morning. A day earlier, he would have burst with pride simply knowing that they cared. Now, nothing touched him. His father came to be with him for a while. Together, they brushed the mane and tail of dam and foal and polished their hides until they shone. They said nothing. There was no need for discussion. Both knew that she was the best foal Eburovic had ever bred and the dam was his best brood mare. Both knew the years that had gone into making her and that the chances of ever breeding another like her were too small to measure.

In time, his father left and the filly nuzzled Ban’s neck and lipped at his hair and did not understand why he did not play as he used to. He twisted her forelock, as he had on the morning she was born, lifting the silk-sand hair away from her face so that the new-moon star showed to the sky. He spoke to her, promising her great things: that she would be honoured above all the other horses in her new owner’s herd, that she would be gently ridden and well trained and would see great battles; that when her time came she would be put to the bravest and best of the sires and would breed only the best of foals. He lied and he knew it and the words dried in his throat. She blew in his face and butted his shoulder to cheer him, and he smelled the special young-foal smell of her and knew that he wanted to die.

Breaca came later, nearer to evening. Thunder clouds gathered in the west, blotting out the skyline. The red of the sunset leaked from the edges like blood from a fatal wound. He watched it and tried to remember why he had believed himself to have the courage of a warrior. He did nothing to acknowledge his sister. Of all the people close to him, she was the one he least wanted to see. She stood on the edge of his vision, waiting. Presently, when he did not turn to her, she stooped and laid an armload of twigs and logs at the side of the wall. ‘I brought wood for your fire,’ she said. ‘You should build a fire if you are going to stay out all night.’

That was sensible. He had not considered a fire but it was a good idea, for Hail, if not for him. He nodded to show he had heard and waited for her to go away.

‘Ban?’ She crouched at his side. Shyly, almost tentatively, she laid a hand on his arm. Her voice had a catch, as if she had been weeping, or was going to do so, soon. ‘Ban, I’m so sorry. I didn’t know …They didn’t tell me until now. I have tried to make them take other gifts but they say it is in the hands of the gods and they cannot act differently.’

He said nothing, not out of rudeness, but because there was nothing to say. Anyone else would have left him to his misery. Breaca was his sister. She sat down on the ground beside him, moving the quiet, disconsolate Hail out of the way. ‘Ban? Little brother?’ She reached for him, wrapping her arms around him. Her fingers linked through his. Without his conscious thought, his thumb sought out the scar on her palm, running down the ridge of it. She laid her cheek on his head as she had always done and pulled him close to her chest. He could hear the beat of her heart through her tunic. In the old days, when he was a child and she had held him thus, he had counted her heartbeats out loud, to show he knew the numbers and could measure the rhythm. Now, they rocked through him, echoing in the emptiness.

Her voice moved down through his head. She was speaking, telling him that she had tried to reason with the elders and had failed and that she had come to offer the only recompense she could think of. ‘I know the grey filly is not as good, but if you want her she is yours. Would you take her as my gift to you? Please?’

He shook his head. He did not want another horse, ever. He had already decided that. He tried to pull free and she held him tighter.

‘No.’ Her arms bound him close. ‘Leave it then. Stay with me. Just stay and be still. We don’t have to talk.’

He gave up the struggle. She held him tightly, as he had held Hail, pressing her lips to his hair and then everywhere, kissing his forehead, his face, his neck. This, too, was something that would have brightened any other day. Since her mother died, they had not been this close. He was her brother; he had always known that he would have to share her. Then, through the spring, seeing the change in her, he had thought her lost to him and had turned to Hail and the filly in her place. Now he found he had never lost his sister but instead was losing half his heart. He began to sob then, feeling himself a child again in her arms, forgetting that he was a warrior and had vowed not to weep.

She held him for a long time until the crying had stopped. His head hurt again and she brought him clean water and a hank of wool to clean his face. She held him on her knee and ran her fingers across his scalp, untangling his hair. When she found the sheared ends of the newly cut lock and ran over it without comment, he knew that Efnis had told of all that had happened in the greathouse. He looked up at her for the first time. She had taken off the torc and the blue cloak, and the warrior’s braids had been combed from her hair so that it hung loose in a fine sheen to her shoulders like the vixen’s pelt of his horsedreams. She looked entirely unlike the warrior he had seen wield the red-marked shield and the broken spear in the forest. ‘I saw you,’ he whispered. ‘You were leading the spears. You had a sword-cut on your arm and there was blood on the back of your tunic, all the way down.’

‘I know. Macha told me.’ She stood, staring out at the sunset. In the odd, lurid light, her face and her hair were the same shade of red gold. She looked strained, as she had in the winter, and he looked quickly at her hand, to make sure that the wound on the palm had not opened. It did not seem that it had. He looked up again. With her eyes still on the sunset, she said, ‘I don’t want to be a warrior, Ban. That’s for you.’

She wanted so badly to be a dreamer and go to Mona with Airmid. He knew that. He had always known. He did not think it would happen but today was not the time to say it. ‘I didn’t make up the vision,’ he said. ‘It was so.’

‘I believe you. So does the elder grandmother.’ She squatted down beside him again, out of the light, wrapping her hands in his.

‘She told it to the other dreamers so they would know ahead of the gathering. This one will be a bigger council than the one in the winter; the dreamers and singers and war leaders of the entire Eceni nation will all come together with our elders and the grandmothers. Togodubnos has asked leave to put a question; a “representation” from his father.’

‘Have they allowed it?’

‘Yes. They have to. It is the gods’ day and anyone who comes can put a question.’

Over by the greathouse, a horn brayed, mournfully. Breaca untangled her fingers from his. ‘I have to go. The council will meet when the horn sounds a second time and I must dress properly.’

She kissed him again, on his eyelids, making him squint. He giggled and, just for a moment, forgot the filly. When he looked again, his sister was standing straight and sober. She said, ‘It is not why I came, but I have a message from the grandmothers.’

For a heartbeat, he dared to hope. But if it was a reprieve, she would not have waited so long to tell him. Reading him, she shook her head. ‘No. Not that. But I am to tell you that, if you want it, they would allow you to sit with the council. You could hear the Trinovantian put his question and there would be time for you to speak afterwards.’ She smiled, wryly. ‘It is the greatest honour they can give. You would be the youngest person ever to sit as a member of the elder council. The singers would tell it in your hero-tales after you died.’ She spread her hands. ‘They cannot go against the laws, but they are doing what they can to make it better.’

It was a great honour but it did not make it better. She knew that as well as he did. He said nothing. After a moment, Breaca nodded. ‘I told them you would prefer to stay here but I had to offer. Will you light the fire? Please? Tonight is not a night to spend in darkness.’

His throat was becoming tight again. He said, ‘I will light a fire. For you.’

‘Thank you.’ She hugged him a final time, as she might were he going to war. Releasing him, she said, ‘Stay warm, little brother. I will be back before morning.’ She left before he could weep again.

The night was warm and not dark. The sun sank below the horizon but the light remained, muting the stars. Bats and evening insects flittered in perpetual dusk. Horses grazed as they would of an evening, cropping the grass in circles around where he sat. The greater mass of the people, those not engaged in council in the greathouse, cleared away the trade stands and the benches, the ropes and the marker stones, returning the fair ground to the flat, open fenland it had been before they came. In due course, they lit fires and sat round them, talking. Only the youngest and oldest slept.

In the field, Ban laid and lit his fire and was surrounded by moths. Hail lay curled tight, dreaming of hares. The dun foal grazed and sucked from her dam and in between came to lie on the other side of him, sharing her warmth with his. He talked to her of the constellations as they passed overhead: the Hunter and the Serpent, the Bear, the Otter and the Spear. She dozed with her muzzle resting on his thigh. A horn sounded faintly in the greathouse and raised voices answered in chorus, falling away to a distant murmur, like the sea.

The footsteps came shortly after that; a quiet scuffing on the grass that could have been a horse grazing but was not.

‘May I join you?’ The accent was rounded, from the far south. A man squatted down at his fire and, without asking further leave, laid a piece of wood on the flames. That was unfortunate; it was not permitted to turn away someone who shares a fire. Ban looked down at the filly’s head, resting on his knee, and said nothing. Hail, perversely, raised his head to look but made no attempt to drive the incomer away.

‘It is a beautiful night.’ It was an inconsequential statement, but the tone of it made him look up. The man was young, not much older than ‘Tagos, but taller and more loose-limbed, like a colt that will be big but has not yet grown into its body. His hair was black and curled like lamb’s wool and his nose, which was too big to go with the rest of him, had been recently broken and reset on the angle. The effect was comical. One could imagine, were he younger and not so big, that he would be taunted for that. Dubornos, for instance, would not let him forget it. As an adult, it marked him out so that his face was one that others would remember. He had discarded his sun-cloak. In its place, he wore a dark, sober tunic and a cloak of undyed sheep’s wool, marking him as neutral, of no tribe. Perhaps, on this night, it was a necessary deceit. Or perhaps the elders had required it.

The man held his palms to the fire, savouring the heat. His presence was an insult and clearly deliberate. If he stayed, it would be necessary to move. Ban looked out across the field, seeking out other places where he could build another fire.

‘Who is Mandubracios?’

The words were slipped in between one crackle of the fire and the next so that Ban was not sure he had heard them at all. He looked up. The man’s eyes were on his face. They were brown and wide and free of guile. ‘The traitor Mandubracios,’ he said again. ‘I have not heard of him. Can you tell me?’

‘I am not a singer.’

‘I know, but I did not ask for a song, just the bare bones of a story. Was he Eceni?’

‘No!’ That one could think so was appalling and added to the insult. ‘He was Trinovantian. He betrayed Cassivellaunos to Caesar’s legions. It was because of him they crucified the hound Belin, who was named for the sun.’

‘Ah.’ The man reached over and held his hand for Hail to smell. The whelp raised his head, gave the proffered knuckle a perfunctory lick and fell asleep again. The man stroked him as one who cares for his hounds. He said, ‘I can see that would be a bad thing.’