The White Mare: The Dalraida Trilogy, Book One (71 page)

‘That you were my bonded man, here to help me—’

‘Bonded man?’

‘Their meaning for “husband” is slightly different.’ She put her hand on his arm. ‘Eremon, this is all old lore. All that matters is this is the help we needed. They will take us to their village, and then I will ask them for help to get us home. They respect me, but are wary of you, so you are in my hands in this. There is nothing more to be done.’

He saw the truth of it, and nodded. ‘I will be on my best behaviour. Especially if they give us food; my belly growls like a bear.’

Chapter 70

N
ectan came back to Rhiann and instructed that they follow, so long as the ‘man with the sword’ stayed by his side. The rest of his men fanned out to surround the little group, and in this way they were led back into the dunes until they came out on to a narrow trackway that ran south.

The clouds had been blown away by the last of the high winds, and the moon now sailed in the dark sky, sheening the surface of a shallow loch by their path. They splashed through a stream trickling over the sands, before climbing higher ground once more, reaching Nectan’s settlement before the moon had sunk halfway to the horizon.

There a strange sight awaited them. Among the dunes, a scattering of small, pointed roofs rose above the sand, like the helmets of a buried army. Nectan stopped outside a passageway that led into the dune towards one of the roofs. ‘Come, we will eat,’ he said. ‘Then, we will talk.’

Eremon looked up at the tiny cone of thatch poking out of the sand, and down to the narrow doorway. ‘All of us? Surely there are too many to fit in this house?’

‘No.’ Rhiann’s voice smiled in the darkness. ‘Among these people, not all is as it seems.’

They walked down a passage roofed with massive lintel-stones, and then Eremon discovered what Rhiann meant, as they emerged into an enormous house that had been built snugly into a great pit in the dune.

Firelight from the central hearth warmed the outer stone walls, but there was also an inner ring of pillars that held up a flat, corbelled roof. In the centre, where the stone ceiling ended, an opening was capped by the thatched roof they had seen from outside. It was hard to believe such a house could not be seen from above, and yet was safe from the wild winds and rain of the Western Sea.

Eremon turned eyes full of new respect on Nectan, who was
watching him, a glint of amusement in his own. ‘Son of Gede, this is an extremely fine house. I have seen none so cunning, even in my own lands.’

Nectan beamed and clapped Eremon on the back, gesturing for him and his men to sit around the hearth. Rhiann he led to his wife, who bowed and kissed her hand fervently, seating her and Caitlin on embroidered cushions nearest to the fire.

Rich smells of leftover mutton and carrageen stew were still curling from the iron cauldron, but as the family had already eaten there was not enough to feed unexpected guests. But Nectan’s wife sent her numerous children scurrying to the other houses, and soon they returned bearing gifts of porridge and bread and new cheese; enough to bring strength back to their limbs.

They fell to eating, ravenous. Nectan went to a barrel in a storage alcove and returned with a wooden jug of ale, which was just as quickly consumed.

As he ate and drank, Eremon saw the little man gazing at his golden torc; those alert, dark eyes made him uneasy. Rhiann ate more slowly, murmuring all the while to Nectan’s wife, and then to Nectan, who came and sat near her. Soon Rhiann shook her head, her voice raised as if she were striving to explain something. Then Nectan frowned, his mouth stubborn. Caitlin was worried, looking from one to the other.

Rhiann glanced over at Eremon. ‘I told him why we have come – that war with the Romans is near.’

‘What does he say?’

‘That the Goddess smiles on us. All the Caereni and Carnonacae leaders are travelling to the Sacred Isle, over the sea.’ A shadow of pain crossed her face. ‘In less than a week it is Beltaine – a most sacred Beltaine to the island people, for in the moon cycle it only comes around once every eighteen years.’

‘Then it
is
a god-given opportunity!’

‘Yes.’ She stared at him, unseeing.

‘Cousin.’ Caitlin put a tiny hand on Rhiann’s arm. ‘What is wrong?’

But Rhiann did not answer, and Eremon could see her struggling with some strong emotion.

‘I wish to speak with the Ban Cré alone,’ he said. Nectan bowed his head, signalling to his wife to get sheepskin cloaks for them both.

Outside, they walked in silence on top of the dunes, where the sinking moon turned the sand to bronze.

‘Landing there before these kings with only the cloak on my back is not the most auspicious of entrances.’ Eremon ran his fingers through his salt-tangled hair. ‘Yet, by the Boar, it is too good an opportunity to miss!’

Rhiann said nothing, watching the gleam of light on the sea. Then Eremon took her elbow, and felt the shiver that went through her.

‘You are distressed,’ he said. ‘It is because we must return to the island that was your home, isn’t it? Where the raiders came.’

‘I cannot go back. I cannot!’

‘Rhiann, I know the memories run deep, but it seems we must go.’ He drew her closer. ‘I will keep you safe there, when the dreams come.’

Though the wind was not bitter, another shudder wracked her. ‘You don’t understand! I said to Eldest Sister, Nerida, that I would never go back, that I could never look on those faces again! And if I go, I cannot hide … from
them
.’ She bowed her head. ‘You do not understand.’

One knotted braid fell across her face, and he tucked it behind her ear. ‘What do you want to do then? We can walk south, though it will be hard. But I will do this – my men will do this – if you wish it.’

She sighed and raised her face. ‘No, you cannot do that, Eremon. Calgacus has charged us with his trust, and in one visit you may be able to win thousands of men to your side. It would be great folly not to go … yet I will stay with the boats, and hide my face away.’

They slept that night in an alcove of Nectan’s house, on a bed of moss and dried bracken covered by seal-skins.

Deep in dreams of a lonely coastline, Eremon heard a plaintive cry, a gull wheeling in the air above him. But the cry tailed off to a whimper, and the dream-Eremon realized that something was wrong; a gull did not cry like that.

Suddenly he was awake, and when he heard the whimper again he realized it was Rhiann, curled up with her face turned to the wall. He laid a gentle hand on her shoulder. ‘Rhiann?’ She gave a great, shuddering sigh, and then he felt her body tense as she woke fully. ‘Hush,’ he said in her ear, ‘Hush, it is me. Is it the dream?’

She nodded, struggling for breath, and he drew her rigid body into the curve of his own. ‘That was long ago, Rhiann. You are safe now.’

As if the soft words released something in her, her body was rocked by spasms, and she burrowed her face into her arms. And all the while Eremon held her, murmuring nonsense words, words to calm and gentle her.

Yet beneath his pain at her distress, he could not repress a guilty stab of elation.
She has never let me hold her like this
!

Rhiann was too exhausted to hold the tears back. The shipwreck … being so close to the Sacred Isle … suddenly finding she would stand on that familiar soil again … all had torn a breach in her heart, through which pain could pour.

And with the clarity of utter despair, she knew now that the sundering from the Sisters was the most acute of all those griefs in her
life. She had hidden it well, but now they called her. They called her home.

The anguish rose, twisting her mouth as she tried to swallow it, wracking her body from feet to head. Dimly, she was aware of Eremon’s soft voice, and though she did not know what he said, somehow the meaning of safety, and loving, and belonging came to her. And the pain was realizing that this was what she had missed these last years.

At last, when the tears were no more than salt tracks on her cheeks, Eremon spoke. ‘How long were you on the Sacred Isle, Rhiann?’

‘Thirteen years,’ she whispered.

‘Tell me about those years, then. Surely there were happy times, too?’

She sighed.
Mother, I made my peace with You
.
Why have You brought me back? Have I not suffered enough
?

‘The pain of my mother’s death was strong,’ Eremon murmured now, his breath on her ear. ‘But I remember her eyes … and her smell … like honey and milk. The way her hand felt when she stroked my head. I think boys are meant to forget these things. But she was the only softness in my life. I have never forgotten.’

Surprised, Rhiann thought of Drust, and how she had loved his tales, his refinement. How she had always hated the warriors, the rough men with swords.

‘You are safe,’ Eremon whispered again. ‘Tell me what you remember.’

And with those words she was winging over the choppy seas under moonlight, to a low island of rock and turf, once so dear to her heart. The wind-lashed coast, the scattered lochs, the rocks, wet with rain, all passed through her mind.

It was she who needed to remember, not Eremon who needed to hear. It was like the sea rushing up the sands, sweeping her relentlessly to a place that held precious things: a memory of belonging, a memory of the Goddess-light, the Sisters.

She longed to surrender to this, just for one night. It would be like returning to a time before pain.

‘I will tell you something, then,’ she said at last, her eyes open in the darkness. ‘I will tell you of the day I became a woman.’

Chapter 71

E
remon was to remember that telling his whole life, for he entered into it with her, saw and felt everything as she laid it out before him. Another Rhiann walked through that tale, a Rhiann he once thought he would never reach; a soft Rhiann that laughed and cried and loved.

It was a gift he never forgot, a memory that ever after took him back to that night, when he did not know if they would be alive in a year.

Alive, or free.

He closed his eyes, breathed the sea scent of her hair, and listened, as he had listened to the tale-tellers during long nights on Erin …

‘A girl’s first moon bleeding is a powerful time,’ Rhiann said, ‘for she can now give life, the most sacred gift. She becomes ruled by the Mother’s tides: it is her deep connection to the Goddess in Her earthly form.

‘I was twelve when my time came. In the maidens’ hut, the Sisters doused coals with water and wild thyme, and as the sweat dripped from my skin, so my child-life washed away with it. Then in a rowan cup they gave me the dreaming herbs, the
saor
, that would let me feel one with the Mother, that would awaken the deep memories of my birth in Her womb.

‘At full dark, two of my Sisters came to lead me into the woods, but I could not see their faces. In a daze I walked, and they led me to a glade that I did not know, and turned to me. Then I saw them.

‘Inside their hoods were two wooden masks, painted white. One had the full moon on the brow, wound about the edges with barley-heads. She was the Mother. The other had a waning moon, and on her mask were bare winter twigs, with scarlet hawthorn berries. The Crone. So I was the Maiden, and my other two aspects, that I would wear one day in turn, had led me forward.

‘“Daughter,” the Crone said. “You must stay here until dawn. Let the Mother bathe you in Her light, and hold you to Her breast. Let your blood run freely into the earth.”

‘They bade me remove my shift, and laid me down in the middle of the glade, on a patch of soft leaves. Then they left me, the scent of wood-flowers all around. I stared up at the sky, and the stars began to spin as the herbs took hold, until at last I heard a heartbeat.

‘The heartbeat swelled until I was somehow inside it, and it thrummed on my skin in waves and hollows. I lay like this for a long time, for hours, as my blood drained from between my legs into the soil, binding us, marking Her with my journey.

‘After an age, it seemed, I opened my eyes again. It was then that I saw the Stag.

‘His crown of antlers brushed against the branches above him, as he came, picking his way among last-year’s leaves. The velvet was hanging in strips from the antler tines, and they brushed my face as he leaned down and breathed on me, a sweet smell of berries.