Dreaming the Eagle (17 page)
The west, nearest her shelter, was the place of water and dreaming, Nemain’s place, sacred to women and the night; Airmid’s frog bone was there. In the north, home of earth and rock and mountains, she had placed the wren’s wing from Macha, who had been to Hibernia and Mona and knew the mountains well. South was the fire and the full sun of summer and it held the foot of the yellow-eyed owl that had been the dream of her mother. The east, place of air and wind, home of the eagle and the fleet-running hare, had been empty for most of the first day. In her imaginings through the summer, she had left it free for the symbol of her dreaming, so that she could return from the other world and draw the image first on the empty patch of sandy loam as she had once drawn a frog for Airmid. Now, in the real world, with the earth so sodden and covered in wet leaves that it had taken an age simply to clear a wide enough space to light a fire, drawing on the earth seemed a childish fancy. Some time in the dark of the first night, it had become clear that she needed to fill the gap and she had placed Ban’s stone spearhead there. It had glimmered, gathering firelight and folding it outwards, making the circle whole. Later, after the fire had gone out, the curves on its surface still glistened, catching what light there was and holding it for her. She had been grateful during the day and now, standing, she lifted the stone last and held it in her hand for a moment before slipping it in the pouch with the rest.
Beyond the grasp of the trees, the world was different. The river was running faster than she had imagined it and was less clouded with mud. The mist had thinned and the rain had stopped and the quality of the air was better. The river danced and sang and small fish flashed at the margins. Out on the eastern horizon, a gap appeared in the clouds showing a night sky. A haze of moonlight brightened the far bank and, in the stars, the shield arm of the Hunter pointed up towards the Hare.
Breaca slid down the bank to the place where she had lain with Airmid and walked forward until the pool lapped at the bare skin of her feet. It was cool but not cold and the feel of it was refreshing after the insidious damp of the rain. She walked slowly downstream feeling the grate of sand between her toes and the coil of the river around her ankles. At the place where the flow ran fastest she stepped sideways onto a stone, lifted her tunic clear of the surface and squatted to urinate. Small clots of blood slipped out with her water and flowed downstream. She felt better afterwards. The hollowness of hunger had become a part of her and the new emptiness matched it. Standing up on the stone, she turned east to study the stars. The rent in the clouds widened until she could see the spear held aloft by the Hunter. The tip of it pointed east to the far horizon with the crisp imperative of an order. She took a step further out across the river - and stopped.
In all the hours of instruction from the elder grandmother and Macha, in the long talks with Airmid, it had been impressed upon her that she must find a place to sit, to light her fire, to lay out her tokens. At no time that she could remember had she been forbidden to leave that spot; it had been her assumption that she should stay there, but it had not been said. She considered the matter intently. In this, it was as important to abide by the spirit of the law as by the letter. Presently, when she was sure that she was breaking no unspoken rules, she stepped out onto another stone and then another.
On the third, halfway across the river, she turned back to look at the wood. The beech that had held her was shrouded in mist, as forbidding as it had been since she first arrived. The far bank, by contrast, was clear and inviting, the ground was sandy and free of dead leaves, and winter grass rippled under a light breeze. As she watched, a water rat threaded through the reeds and paused to look at her, its eyes bright in the starlight. It was the first living thing she had seen since walking out of the gates, and for one appalling moment it seemed possible that this was it, that she was going to return not only smelling of rancid bear-fat but with the water rat as her dreaming. Her mind sang, cluttered suddenly with the grandmother’s tales of others whose arrogance had brought them dreams they did not want. Even the least of them had not dreamed a rat. She swayed on the stone, light-headed with fear, paralysed in ways she had not been by the Coritani spearman or Amminios and his sword.
Then a white owl screeched close by in the woods, a dog fox barked and a vixen answered, a stag grunted in the far distance and suddenly the night was alive with all the things that had been missing. The rat stayed a moment longer and vanished. It gave no message and was, therefore, neither her dream nor her dreaming. The shock of relief crushed the air from her chest, leaving her dizzy. In a burst of unstable energy, she ran the last half-dozen strides to the far side of the river, skidding on the crossing stones, throwing herself with outstretched arms onto the crumbling sand of the bank. She collapsed onto the turf, breathing in ragged bursts, laughing and crying together, weeping her thanks to the gods and the rat and the river. Only later, as she calmed, did she remember something Airmid had said, long ago, in the summer. Be careful of the river. It is not for nothing that men say it has the power to drive women mad. Don’t cross when the moon is on it if you don’t have to.
Wiping her face, she made herself sit upright and look at the water. White foam curled innocently around the margins of the stones. The truncated circle of the moon lipped at the one on which she had been standing. She could return. If pressed, she would do so, but it would be better to do it in daylight, or later at night when the moon had passed on. In the meantime, she was free to follow the call of the Hunter. Standing, she put her back to the river and set off east, towards the dawn.
Without the rain, the night was surprisingly warm. She crossed scrubland too poor for horses but with signs that deer had grazed on it recently. Stunted hawthorn and rowan, growing singly or in small stands, dropped leaves in the breeze as she passed. Islands of gorse and broom grew more strongly; the late flowers of the gorse glowed faintly yellow in the starlight. Everywhere, the land was completely flat, without even the gentle undulations of the paddocks beyond the roundhouse. The mound was the only feature: a dark, brooding bulk that became darker and more brooding as she approached. She did not make for it directly, but it was in her path and she made no effort to avoid it. Even so, she might have passed it by without a second glance had not the clouds split apart as she came near and the full moon burst through, flooding the mound and the land around it with light.
It was not a beautiful sight, but it was arresting. She stopped and drew breath once at the spectacle of it and then again, more sharply, at the sight of the great stone that stood at the mound’s end. It was granite, which was not common: a single slab of it taller than she was by a spear’s length and half a spear wide, tapering to a rounded point. From a distance, it had the same proportions as the spearhead in her pouch, but it was not the size that caught her eye, that brought her up close to run exploring fingers across the surface, but the markings on it. There, at a height level with her eyes, was boldly carved the sign of the serpent-spear, the one the grandmother had painted on Breaca’s shield and the shoulder of her horse as she rode out to greet the Trinovantes on the gods’ day in the summer. She ran a finger along the lines, cleaning the edges. It was not newly cut, nor was it, on close inspection, as deep as it had first looked. The whole thing, from the end of the serpent’s head to its tail, was the length of her hand, and the lines had been softened by generations of sun and wind and rain and the furred coverings of lichen. Had it not been for the high angle of the moon, she would have missed it altogether.
‘Is it a good likeness?’
Breaca spun round, her knife coming clean of the sheath even as her ears made sense of the words. The elder grandmother stood behind her, grinning as she did whenever she had caused the greatest discomfort in those around her. She was not dressed as she had been in the women’s place. She was, in fact, not dressed at all but for an elaborate necklace of eagle skulls and fox teeth that clattered on her breastbone. Her thighs were slickly wet almost to the hip, as if she had crossed the river elsewhere than the stepping stones and had misjudged the depth of it. Her eyes, caught in shadow, were black.
‘It has taken you long enough to find the place. I was beginning to think I would have to seek you out.’ The grandmother cocked her head. ‘Did you bring my spearhead with you?’
‘Is it yours? I thought … yes, I have it here.’
She was too shocked to answer more fully. Nothing, none of the lessons, none of the elliptic conversations with Airmid, had prepared her for this. She reached in her pouch and brought out the gift Ban had given her. She had taken it lightly but now did not want to part with it. The grandmother took it and turned it over in her hand.
‘Good.’ She handed it back. Breaca received it with relief. The grandmother smiled again, brightly. Her step was light, as if, by shedding her clothes, she had shed many of her years. ‘Come. You are late and there is a great deal to see.’
Reality moved back another pace. The old woman stepped round behind the standing stone and vanished, much as the water rat had done. When Breaca did not follow she called, sharply, in a voice of fast-waning patience. ‘Come. Quickly. You’re wasting time.’
It was not good to try the grandmother’s temper. Breaca stepped round the standing stone, sucking in a breath to squeeze into the narrow space between the rock and the grass of the mound. On the far side, she let the breath out again, sharply, and grabbed for the support of the standing stone. Her stomach lurched as she stared down at where the ground should be and saw only space. Here, hidden from prying eyes, was the entrance to the mound: a shelving pit that slanted down and into the earth, its walls bounded by more slabs of granite. The grandmother waited inside it, glaring.
It had taken more courage than Breaca knew she possessed to face the water rat. Entering the mound was easy by comparison. It was not, as she might have expected, a cave of earth, but rather a wide, open-ended tunnel lined with cut and dressed stone. Standing at the entrance, she could see through the length of it to the shadowed scrub at the far side. Moonlight leaked in from both sides so that the interior was no darker than the roundhouse in an evening. She stepped slowly in. Three steps led down the entrance slope, all of stone and all worn by many generations of passing feet. It felt good to be walking in the tracks of the ancestors. She caught up with the grandmother, who turned and led the way inside.
The interior of the mound was surprisingly dry. Outside, the world was saturated after two nights of steady rain. Here, on the inside, the great slabs of the walls and ceiling fitted so closely together that neither earth nor water could seep between them and the packed earth beneath her feet was parched as in the height of summer, crumbling to dust between her toes. Here, too, were worn the grooves of many generations’ passing, although in the tunnel they ran parallel, as if those walking here had done so in pairs, shoulder to shoulder, or else had kept to one side going in and the other coming out. Breaca kept to the left, the shield side, out of instinct, her hand on the hilt of her knife. The grandmother walked ahead of her in the centre, ignoring the long-trodden paths.
The exit came soon and without any sign of the honoured dead of which Airmid had spoken. Breaca followed the grandmother up three steps into full moonlight. The land beyond was unremarkable. Scrub stretched away to the horizon. The river foamed and sang to their left. To the right grew a thick hedge of gorse. Breaca was looking for a way to get past it when the grandmother tapped her on the arm and, crouching, motioned her forward to a fox run that was wide enough to crawl through. The grandmother was small and naked and came through unscathed. Breaca had her tunic for protection but still emerged with long scores on either arm and a triangular tear on her shin.
She drew breath to speak, to advise that they walk round the hedge when they left, or at the very least to ask that she be allowed to go first with a knife on the return journey. The words were not formed when the grandmother clamped the claw of her hand across her mouth and forced her to silence. She pressed her lips to Breaca’s ear. Her voice was a breath of wind. ‘Say nothing. There are men in the hollow. If they know you are here, they will kill you.’ She unclamped her hand. In the moonlight, her eyes shone yellow, like a hawk’s.
Breaca had not noticed a hollow. She looked for it now, lying flat on her stomach in the shadow of the gorse. Creeping forward, she saw a wide, round-ended valley sunk into the earth like a bowl to feed the gods, the slopes of it lush with grass and berried rowan. A small stream threaded down one side and spilled into a pool on the valley’s floor. Near the centre, a fire burned with high, leaping flames. Two men stood on either side of it, each with a stock of dried boughs.
More men walked in from the east down a path that coursed alongside the stream. They were small men, the tallest no bigger than the elder grandmother and some not even that. Had they been clothed Breaca might have believed them children but, like the grandmother, they were naked, brown-skinned and dark-haired, and all were assuredly adult. She saw no women. From a place behind the rowans, a dozen of them dragged a vast cooking bowl, of a size to feed an entire roundhouse, and set it to heat on the fire. Presently, rising smoke carried to Breaca the mellow, meaty smell of bear fat, boiling.
The taller of the two fire-keepers gave his place to another and went to draw water from the pool, carrying it up in an oversized ale jug. When added to the larger bowl, the water hissed and made steam. On the ninth such journey, the taller man stood over the bowl and began to speak. Breaca could hear the tone of his voice, faintly mournful, like birdsong at dusk, but not the words. As he stopped speaking, the water hissed violently and fell silent.
A third man, one with a sun symbol drawn in yellow on his chest, was called forward to tip the contents of a belt pouch into the mix. He stirred it using the butt end of a spear and the smell ripened, gathering the tannin of hawthorn berries and the sweet-sour of spoiled hay until it settled to something Breaca recognized; they were mixing woad, the most sacred of plants, guardian of warriors and women in childbirth. Her mind was drifting, bringing images of the serpent-spear on her shield and the preparations for her mother’s childbirth, when it came to her, suddenly, that she was watching one of the men’s rites and that it was forbidden, absolutely, by all the laws of gods and dreamers, for any woman even to think of it, still less to lie on the damp turf and watch while it happened. In panic, she thrust an arm across her eyes and began to squirm backwards. The grandmother’s claw clamped her wrist, holding her still. The whispered voice was acidly painful, for all that she could barely hear it. ‘Would I bring you here did the gods not permit it? You will stay. There are things you must see.’