The Boar Stone: Book Three of the Dalriada Trilogy (5 page)

Of course. Broc didn’t know about Mamo, and so she must tell him. Broc would change his mind when he heard, when he saw that Minna had the courage to travel all the way to him, to the Wall. She would go down on her knees and kiss the hem of his tunic, tell him she would be good from now on, quiet and compliant, if he would only let her stay near him and not make her marry Severus. ‘When do you leave?’

Cian’s brows went up. ‘Tomorrow. That’s why I was here trying to have a rest before … well, before you appeared.’

She leaned back to look up at him. Somewhere she knew she had to return from the shadowed realms in which she’d been wandering, pick up the broken pieces of her wits and use them. ‘Cian,’ she said slowly. ‘My name is Minna and I have business in the north, too.’

Amused, Cian folded his arms and stared down at this unexpected apparition.

She didn’t fit any of the slots in his mind labelled ‘women’: dried-up old hags like the troupe’s herb-woman; painted whores; or the young ladies who looked down their long, refined noses at him. That left a plucky girl fallen on hard times, who’d already learned to open her legs and grow a tough hide.
Perhaps, but … no.

Standing in her shapeless tunic, arms braced, head up, she was trying her best to look tough, but her features were almost elfin, and there was no slyness or guile in those extraordinary pale green eyes. ‘You can’t just attach yourself to us and expect us to feed you,’ he said. ‘It doesn’t work like that.’

Those eyes flashed. ‘How
does
it work?’

He grinned at the change in her, for the vulnerability she showed by the stream had suddenly been checked. This set mouth and firm chin were familiar to her, comfortable. Cian also knew how to don a mask, after all. He understood that.

‘You have to pay your way, earn us something.’ He raised his fingers, one by one. ‘We have actors, who put on plays. Acrobats like me, who juggle and tumble.’ He paused. ‘The girls who sell their bodies, of course, though that’s pretty easy.’ Her eyes flickered, pained. ‘Some people trade in ribbon and embroidery, leatherwork, belts, shoes. And there’s the herb-woman—’

Desperation leaped in the girl’s face, startling him. ‘I can do that!’ she cried. ‘I am well versed in herb-simples and remedies, bone-setting and wounds.’

By the gods, an innocent. Cian squashed an unnerving spike of pity. ‘Well, then. Sounds like you could at least give the old dear a hand. Her eyes aren’t so good any more.’

‘I could, I could!’ the strange creature agreed and, forgetting herself, she reached unconsciously towards him, to convince him. Instinct pushed him smoothly back a step, and her hands dropped to her sides.

She tucked her fists under her arms instead. ‘Do you really think the troupe will take me?’

Cian scratched his ear. ‘There won’t be any big council: just come with me and join in. If you pull your weight you won’t get thrown back out.’ Her eyes widened. ‘It’s not that bad,’ he added gruffly, turning away. ‘Come on, camp is quiet at the moment. It will be busier tonight.’

The girl called Minna walked along the riverbank behind him, and though her footsteps were light on the damp earth, her fear was a weight at his back.

Downstream, around a campfire sprawled an untidy scatter of wool and leather lean-tos, moth-eaten tents and painted carts. Colourful items of clothing, harness and costume hung from trees, ropes and poles. The tents were guarded by scrappy dogs that barked as they passed, and on the outskirts, mules were tethered in lines.

There was no leader of the troupe; everyone just mucked in together, Cian said. So it was all easily arranged. The old green-woman, Letitia, who sold the herb-simples, blinked blearily at Minna, her breath reeking of sour ale, and shrugged her acceptance.

As dusk deepened, the actors and jugglers came back from town, arms slung about women with painted faces. Cian had disappeared, so Minna huddled on a log at the edge of the firelight, overlooked in her boy’s clothes and scraped-back hair.

Barrels of ale were opened, and the atmosphere grew more raucous. Men attempted to swallow burning torches as women shrieked with laughter. A group of actors quarrelled, while some of the acrobats practised their tumbles on the damp grass.

Cian came back, shoved a cup of ale in Minna’s hand and carelessly introduced her to a dozen people, none of whose names she afterwards remembered. She was rolling the musty ale on her tongue when a drunken man with his arm about a whore lunged into the opening of the woman’s dress. The gaudy cloth gave with a loud rip, and Minna was confronted by the sight of painted nipples being jiggled boldly in the firelight.

The whore screamed, while Minna tried desperately to gulp her ale rather than gag on it. But when the man flung himself to his knees and buried his face between those ample breasts, she ducked her burning face away.

Her eye fell on Cian. He wasn’t drinking anything, and his watchful gaze shifted from the antics of the half-naked whore to Minna with a sardonic smile.

‘Welcome to the real world, Tiger.’

Minna had no trouble falling asleep in Letitia’s stuffy tent that night, as the men continued to shout and laugh outside. She had barely slept for days, had walked far in the sun, and was wrung out by the effort of holding her feelings at bay.

But when she woke suddenly before dawn it was to find herself lying rigid among the damp hides, her nails clenched into her palms.

Even in sleep she had guarded herself against the keening grief, which had, after all, flown with her all the way to Eboracum.

Chapter 5

T
hey rode away from the city two days later, and Cian left Minna to make her own way among the wolves.

Wising up fast, she grimly threw herself into work, picking herbs and bottling remedies, standing for hours in rain and shine to urge the people in each steading and village to exchange cures for coin. When the old woman Letitia saw her persistence she left her to it, happily losing herself in drink. Minna didn’t mind. The exotic smells and sounds, the chaos of the camp, and its frightening and amusing people, became a blessed blur through which she walked, untouched by feeling.

After a week, she learned to parry rude quips from the men and hostile glares from the women. But, one night, as she was wending her way to the fire from her tent, a young actor grabbed her in the dark, pushing her up against the stinking leather and thrusting his tongue in her mouth as a hand groped for her breast. Her cry was muffled by his lips, until something that Broc taught her kicked in and she brought her knee up sharply between the boy’s legs.

‘Ow!’ he howled, releasing her and grabbing for his groin.

Minna shrank back against the tent, panting.

A cool voice sliced through the night air. ‘The little tiger has a bite; you should have known that, Bren.’

Minna’s assailant squinted at the tall figure standing in the open, shoulders outlined by moonlight. ‘Off with you, Cian,’ he growled. ‘She’s fair game.’

Cian took a step forward, stretching his frame by leaning one arm on the tent-pole. ‘There are plenty of slack-eyed whores around for you to take your pick,’ he said evenly. ‘Leave her alone.’

Bren was still panting, cradling his crotch. ‘And what’s it to you?’ he slurred. But he was already backing away, for though Cian was slim, he was by far the tallest of the men, and Minna had already seen him easily win at least three fist-fights.

Cian shrugged, but his eyes did not waver. ‘You don’t need to know my mind now, do you, Bren?’

The young actor glanced belligerently between them, but he was swaying with drunkenness and contented himself with spitting on the ground and staggering away.

Minna’s tension rushed out of her. ‘I … thank you.’

Cian shrugged again, then tilted his head, the moonlight catching his one-sided smile. ‘Not a bad little move you have there, Tiger.’

‘My brother showed me,’ she said faintly. She should be relieved, but it was hard to feel so before those glittering eyes, shifting with indecipherable thoughts.

‘Then you’d better keep in practice, just in case,’ he said, and was gone.

That night, she appeared to pass some unspoken test. For the very next day Cian began riding the acrobats’ pony up behind Letitia’s cart, regaling Minna with tales of his travels, most of which she only half-believed.

‘Wherever did you become so good with horses?’ she ventured once, seeing how carefully he brushed his pony at the end of each day.

He paused imperceptibly, his fingers easing knots from the horse’s black tail. ‘Where we all did, Tiger: on the road.’ He cast a mocking glance at her. ‘Don’t you know you aren’t supposed to ask travelling people about their past?’

Minna bit her lip, watching him. ‘Sorry.’

‘Anyway,’ he went on, tossing his head, ‘I have better taste than to get stuck with a grouchy old mule.’ His eyes glinted at her, and she smiled.

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ she returned, encouraged. ‘You and mules seem a good match to me.’ That was another thing he’d taught her: banter provided a refuge. Never stop to think or be quiet and still; talk fast, jest about everything.

He snorted, rubbing vigorously at the pony’s flank. ‘You’re right about that.’

He was certainly unlike anyone else in the troupe. While juggling he was fluid and graceful, but outside the ring his movements were contained, his habits rigid. The other men had wild hair they never combed, dirty skin and stained clothes. But Cian carefully washed his worn tunics, and though threadbare they were of good wool, the hems stitched. Each morning he sat down with a blade and scraped his jaw and cheeks clear of stubble, and every week took shears and cropped his hair into short, Roman lines.

And he kept himself aloof. The other men brought whores back to camp, when he did not. The girls in the troupe tried hard to get his attention, scowling when he spoke to Minna, but he never indulged them, merely overwhelming them with merciless teasing until they gave up and backed away.

But his eyes missed nothing, Minna saw. They were always darting about the camp, never at rest.

They travelled further north, into the realm of the Brigantes, the last people conquered by Rome below the Wall. They still wore skins and checked cloaks, and sported long, braided hair. Cian scoffed at their gaudy brooches and neck-rings, their raucous speech and songs.

Roman soldiers also became more numerous in every town, and at last Minna remarked nervously on it.

‘The Dux Britanniarum has his frontier army, the
limitanei
, spread all over these lands,’ Cian informed her. ‘He has to guard the Wall against the barbarians on the other side.’ He glanced north as he said this, to where the hills rose higher along the knobbed spine of the land, dark and clouded.

Minna followed his gaze. Those gloomy hills led to the Wall, and the Wall meant safety – and so many other things.
Memories starting up again.

She picked bark off an alder tree as Cian filled a leather bucket with water from a stream. ‘Listen to you,’ she said, falling back into the comforting speech that had grown between them. ‘You’re just like a tutor I knew once: facts, facts and more facts.’

His eyes narrowed and he flicked water at her. It just missed as she ducked aside, and when he went to do it again she dashed away, sliding on the muddy bank. By the time he caught up she was ready, scooping a handful from the icy stream and tossing it over him.

As he stood there with his hair plastered to his face and water dripping down his cheeks, she pressed her knuckles to her mouth to stop a laugh.

His eyes sparked, his mouth twitched. ‘That was not very polite.’

The laugh burbled out of her, for it was the first time she’d seen him anything but immaculate. He looked like a little boy, like Lucius. Like Broc a long time ago. Without thinking, she reached out as if to flick the dripping hair from his brow.

With an imperceptible movement he was out of range and she touched nothing but cold air. She froze as the shutters came down over his eyes, then, embarrassed, she spun on her heel. ‘Come on, the cooks are waiting for the water.’

He was silent as they walked up the bank, toting a bucket each, but then took her by surprise, elbowing her in the side. She stumbled and spilled water over her feet, and he grinned, tossing his wet hair. ‘
That’s
for soaking me when night is coming on.’

She stamped her boots, relieved by his smile. ‘I’ll dry your tunic at the fire.’

‘And give me your share of meat.’

She elbowed him back, and he shoved her again, and there was less water in the buckets when they got back to camp.

Cian was grooming the pony one chill dusk, scrubbing its flank with buckhide, while Minna sat in a patch of withered blackberries, tossing them at him every now and then.

‘Letitia said we’re going to cross the mountains now,’ she said.

Around them spread a rough plateau of heath and wind-blown birches, some still dressed with their last tatters of gold.

‘Mountains!’ Cian scoffed. He flung a berry up and caught it in his mouth, as Minna looked deliberately away. She hated him showing off. He stifled a smile, chewing. ‘They aren’t mountains, they’re hills. If you want mountains, go to Gaul.’