Dreaming the Hound (7 page)

Airmid could run as fast as any of the warriors when she chose to. Careless of her tunic, she crossed the river’s wet stones and, coming to kneel by the child, took hold of the small, shaking shoulders. A tumble of uncombed hair fell about her fingers; that part of Graine that belonged only to the child and had no echo in her parents or grandparents on either side. It had been pale as winter thatch when the child was born and for a while it had seemed as if the dreams of a lifetime had gone awry, but the deep, oxblood red had grown through in the first year and had confirmed at least the first beginnings of hope.

Later, as the infant had become a child, the neat smallness of her had become apparent; the fine lines of her features mirrored no one so much as her mother’s brother, Ban, with whom Graine

shared only the barest splash of blood.

Graine’s eyes alone were recognizably her father’s: the changeable grey that moved with the weather of her soul from the density of storm clouds to the almost-blue of newly forged iron. Outwardly, the child carried nothing of her mother. One needed to understand, and profoundly to love, the souls of each to see the fire blazing in the core and how it was shaped differently in the dreamer and the warrior.

There was little fire to be seen in Graine now, only hurt and a fragile pride. The birch log lay along the bank, shedding feathery strands of white bark onto the loam. Sitting a little away, Airmid brought from her belt-pouch the handful of shelled hazelnuts and withered green crab apples that she had collected at dawn, thinking to share them with her not-daughter. Now, she offered one, staring into the water beyond the hare. ‘Can you tell me what the hare showed you?’ she asked.

In the woods behind, a west wind teased at autumn leaves, loosening them. Graine looked up. Her grey eyes were ageless. ‘When mother was fighting against the traitor Cartimandua, you prayed to Nemain for help,’ she said. ‘We still lost.’

It showed me what became of mother … Airmid breathed deep and slow and unclenched her hands. She had been with Graine when they had seen the vision of Breaca. It had come hazily through water but even at so far a remove, it had been clear the warrior was dying. Airmid had prayed and dreamed constantly in the three days since, but nothing further had been shown her. Graine, to whom the gods sent visions beyond the minds of any dreamer on Mona, chose not to share what she knew, but instead turned her mind to the lost battles of the summer.

There was nothing to be done to hurry her; a god-touched child is not to be pressed. Wiping a palm on her tunic, Airmid said evenly, ‘The gods know more than we do of how things must go. We can pray, and must do so. Not everything we ask for will be given.’

‘No, or the Romans would have taken ship and sailed away long since.’

‘Indeed. But it has always been this way and should remain so. If every prayer were granted, we would become arrogant, and ask for too much.’

Graine thought for a while, then, ‘Would that be bad?’

Airmid said, ‘It could be. I think in time we would stop honouring

the gods for what they gave us. Then we would truly be godless.’

‘Like the men of the legions?’

‘Some of them.’

‘That would be bad.’

They were quiet a while. It could have been a day like any other. They ate quietly until the nuts were gone. Airmid broke one wizened apple between her palms and offered half. The smell was sharp, like new grass with a sweet, nutty base. Graine took it, unseeing. Her gaze was fixed on the hare’s. Its eyes were open, opaque, like dusted water.

Graine said, ‘I think … maybe … it may be that Nemain cannot help us, however much we pray? As I could not help the hare, even though I wanted to.’

And so the pegged skin and the severed head became more clear. Stifling a bigger movement, Airmid reached forward and smoothed a lock of stray hair from Graine’s brow. The gods spoke in so many small, indefinable ways. The training of a dreamer was to know how to listen. Here, in the presence of a child who embodied her own dream, Airmid’s whole body vibrated with listening. A magpie flew over and called once, raucous in the morning hush. More quietly, a trout flipped in the stream and landed uncleanly, splashing more than it might have done. A frog croaked, at a time of year too late for frogs.

In these ways, the god warned Airmid to pick her words with care. Twenty years of Mona’s lessons and a handful of years before that in service to the elder grandmother helped her find what to say.

Leaning forward, the dreamer took the child’s two hands between her own. ‘You may be right. It may be the gods can do nothing, but the hare is Nemain’s beast and if it died, it did so to return to her. Death isn’t a bad thing when it comes at the right time, you must remember that. And you’re not a god, but another of Nemain’s creatures. You could no more have stopped the hare’s death than one of the skylarks could stop you from eating the apple. It’s not in your power.’

‘You mean the hare died because it wanted to? I don’t think it did.’

‘I don’t think so either. I didn’t say that. I said it may be that it died because its time was right. We can’t know why, but perhaps if Stone, who is the best of hunters, had not caught and killed it

cleanly, something worse might have happened later; an eagle might have caught it and torn it apart to feed her young, or a fox cub that had not learned to kill properly might have left it crippled to die of starvation in the winter. Or perhaps simply it was its time to return to Nemain, who cares for it. We, who are not gods, cannot know these things.’

‘But Nemain can?’

Airmid took time to think. The hands she clasped had grown cold and then too hot. She turned them over, studying the bitten nails with their constant half-moon of grime. The grey eyes drew her back.

‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Truly, I don’t. But I think we have to believe so, or there is nothing left to believe. It may not be true. It may be that the hare died because you chose to set the hound on it and there is nothing more. Would you rather believe that?’

In the long silence, the birds sat still on the branches and the frog crooned alone.

‘If I believe it, will it make it so?’

‘I don’t think what we believe changes anything except ourselves.’

‘No … in that case, I would rather believe that it died because it was time for it to return to Nemain. But that means …’ Graine faltered. She was a child of six, grappling with questions that had vexed the elders since the time of the most ancient ancestors. Her frown became so complete that her brow flattened tight against the bone.

Airmid said gently, ‘It means that Nemain sees a greater part of the picture and we see only that which is before our eyes. It means that if your father Caradoc is in Gaul, he is there for a reason that we do not know.’

‘And the traitor brother? Why is he in Hibernia?’

‘Valerius. He was Ban but he calls himself Valerius now.’ Airmid stroked a small cheek that could as easily have been his. ‘It doesn’t help to think of him badly. I don’t know why he’s there. I can’t reach him or see him. He has closed himself off from the gods’ touch.’

Airmid had not said as much to anyone else, certainly not to Breaca. Graine shivered in the morning chill and it was not simply her skin thrumming to the sound of the god’s voice. Seeing it

possible to show the depth of her care without doing harm, Airmid reached forward and drew the young body in to her chest, warming her and holding her close.

The shuddering stilled in a while. Kissing the rich, unruly hair, Airmid said, ‘We must learn patience, both of us. The answer will be clear in time, if we have to wait for death to see it.’

‘Does death make some things more clear?’

‘Death makes all things clear.’

‘Then the man Sorcha brings on the ferry will know all things by noon.’

The child was exceptional, but some things are beyond even the gods. Sharply, Airmid said, ‘How do you know that?’

The small face turned up. For a moment Graine looked serious, keeping the faraway gaze that she had learned from the dreamers. Then she grinned and was a child again, bright with triumph at the success of a ruse.

‘He was there when I left Sorcha’s cabin with Stone. I saw him ride to the water’s edge and raise the signal. He rode lopsided, holding his belly, and when he tried to dismount he fell and his horse walked away from him. They only do that when a man is dying, Gwyddhien said so.’

The hairs rose on Airmid’s forearms and her throat ran dry. Certain dreams of the past nights became more clear than she might have liked. Distractedly, she said, ‘If Gwyddhien said so, then it must be right. Did Sorcha go to him?’

‘Not yet. She was rising to feed the babe when I left. She’ll be ready by now. You should go. He brings news from the east. The hare told me that.’

‘And did the hare tell you what news he bore?’

The grey eyes grew wide. ‘No. It showed me his brother, who is dead. Mother met him and has his message. She was sick with the wound we saw but the serpent-dreamer healed her. She is going away now and will never come back. The ancestors are with her. They cannot hold her safe any more than can the gods. But they will keep watch so that we’ll know if she falls.’

‘Thank you.’ So much from the lips of a child. So much held alone for the length of a morning. So much to mourn and to fear and perhaps to plan.

Airmid did not force herself to smile; with Graine, such a thing would be an insult. She rose, holding the child’s hand, and said, ‘In that case, there is nothing to be done but to greet the messenger. Do you think he will live long enough to deliver his message?’

‘He will if we are quick.’

‘Can you run?’

‘Of course.’

‘Let’s go then.’

They ran together along the stony path towards Sorcha’s cabin. A single frog at the river’s edge croaked an autumn song of mourning.

V.

ENCASED IN A PIT, THE FIRE GAVE OFF NO SMOKE, ONLY A HAZE OF burnt air that smeared the straight lines of the surrounding beech trees so that they wavered as if reflected in water. The clouded evening sky behind took on the ripples of the ocean so that Breaca could have been in the cave again, locked in the fever dreams of the ancestor, but was not.

Dreams might have been pleasanter than reality. She sat wrapped in her cloak with her back to a rock and wished, without hope of fulfilment, for the warmth and companionship of a hound. In the days before Rome’s invasion, no hunter, warrior, trader or travelling smith would have slept under the open sky without a hound to keep the night’s cold at bay.

It was a small change amidst the greater cataclysm of occupation, but it served as a marker for the life that had been lost and was yet one more feather to weight the balance of her decision, should she ever regret it: for the promised warmth of a hound on an autumn evening, Breaca of Mona, once of the Eceni, had abandoned her warriors and the island of Mona that had been her home and her safety for nearly twenty years. She had abandoned the children for whom she had never fully been a mother and the warriors for whom she had been the Boudica, bringer of victory, and, emerging from the cave of the ancestor-dreamer with the wound in her arm half healed, she had set her mare’s head to the east towards the lands of the Eceni and had not once turned back.

The gods show the many possible futures … it is up to the living to manifest what is offered.

The ancestor-dreamer had said so on parting, speaking from the hound stone as Breaca scoured clean the last of the grasses in fulfilment of her promise, then stood on it to mount her horse.

She thought of that later, riding east on poorly trodden pathways, focusing on the smaller sacrifices that the larger ones might not overwhelm her. It was not hard to find things to mourn: the loss of Stone, who was her best war hound and the last remaining son of Hail; the loss of the dun stallion who should have covered the blue mare in the spring and the yearling filly who was their daughter and would outclass both of her parents; the loss of the many hunting knives that lay on the shelf beside her sleeping place in the great-house; the loss of the ancient blade with the feeding she-bear on its hilt that had been her father Eburovic’s and his father’s before him and his mother’s before that, back through the years to the distant history of the Eceni.

That blade should have gone to Cunomar on his long-nights, and might do still; Ardacos knew where it was kept and would do what was right, speaking the words of the giving as if he were father to the child-made-man, not simply his mentor. Cygfa could not be present at the ceremony - only men could take part in a boy’s long-nights as only the women stood vigil for the girls - but she could braid his hair for him afterwards with Airmid and Graine when he came out to join—

Breaca stopped, cursing her undisciplined mind. She had never thought herself weak. She did not wish to do so now.

Breathing tightly, she raised her head and looked beyond the fire to the place above the treetops where the half-circle of Nemain’s light made silhouettes of leafless branches. When she had lain above the Roman camp, the moon had been in the last day of waning, too old to show at night. Now, it was halfway to full, and casting shadows on the landscape. Five days had been lost as she healed in the cave, each one a lifetime.

The night was less still than it had been. A damp wind billowed from the south, spreading the haze above the fire low and flat. The darkening trees bent their heads to the north and the sky beyond sparked with early stars. The roan mare shifted, snuffing the breeze, then shifted again and blew out gently through her nose.

Move!

It was not the ancestor who spoke, but the oldest part of Breaca’s mind, which was wedded to the serpent-spear and to life. She rolled to her feet, shedding her cloak and sweeping it over the fire pit to hide the glow. Her slingstones were in one hand and her sling

in the other and she was already within the shelter of the trees, moving silently over rain-damp leaves and pressing through undergrowth that eased forward to let her through and closed behind her afterwards, denying that she had ever been.