White Mare's Daughter (100 page)

He traced the line of her cheek with his finger. “Shall we
make a son this time?”

“If you want one.”

“I would like that,” he said gravely, but with a glint in
it.

“Then we should set about it,” she said.

“Now?”

“Will there ever be a better time?”

He lifted his head and peered into the birthing-room. Sarama
half-turned herself to see what he was seeing.

The babies’ cries had quieted. The Mother had them both at
the breast, and people all about, a great crowd of them as it seemed, and not
all people of the city, either. Patir was there, and Taditi, and others whom
she knew from the king’s camp.

In a little while, from the look on Agni’s face, they would
all be sent away so that Tilia and the children could rest. But for the moment
they were there, two worlds, two peoples, all together in this one blessed
place.

Sarama glanced at Danu.

His eye met hers. He nodded.

Laughter bubbled up in her. His own echoed it. He swept her
up and kissed her soundly. “Now,” he said.

“Now,” she agreed with great contentment.

Perhaps the most unexpected discovery for a novelist working
in prehistory these days, particularly if the novelist has had the sort of classical
education that regards the civilizations of Mesopotamia—Sumeria and Ur of the
Chaldees—as the very beginnings of civilized culture, is that Sumer and Ur are
in fact quite young as cities go. Long before either of them, a large area in
what is now eastern Europe and western Asia, and even as far west as the “heel”
of Italy, saw the rise of innumerable towns and cities. Archaeologists have
found settlements large enough to match a medieval city, in clusters as close
as within a kilometer apart, a population of quite remarkable density—and dating
from 7000 B.C. until about 3000 B.C. Even predynastic Egypt does not go back so
far.

Interpretation of these cultures is difficult and
controversial. One interpretation in particular has been both avidly embraced
and bitterly excoriated: that of Marija Gimbutas, who coined the term “Old
Europe,” and whose monumental body of archeological and scholarly work operates
on the assumption that these Neolithic city-states were centers of
peace-loving, Goddess-worshipping people ruled by women and innocent of war.
Particularly in her book
The
Civilizations of the Goddess: The World of Old Europe
(San Francisco,
1991), as well as in
The Goddesses and
Gods of Old Europe: Myths and Cult Images
(Berkeley, 1982) and
The Language of the Goddess
(San
Francisco, 1991), along with numerous articles, she assembles an impressive
collection of archaeological evidence to support her thesis.

However the scholar may feel about her interpretation, for a
novelist it is pure gold. Add to this the discovery of a second motherlode in
Riane Eisler’s
The Chalice and the Blade
(San Francisco, 1987), along with Margaret Ehrenberg’s
Women in Prehistory
(Norman, OK, 1989) and the wonderful
examination of the history of weaving in Elizabeth Wayland Barber,
Women’s Work: The First 20,000 Years
(New
York, 1994), and a picture emerges of a tremendously rich and sophisticated
people who were, perhaps, totally different in mind and emphasis than any later
Western culture.

This novel began as a prehistoric epic about women and
horses. Its original inspiration was an item that appeared in the newspapers,
on the discovery of bit wear on the jaw of a horse dating from about 4000 B.C.
This was based on an article by David W. Anthony and Dorcas Brown, “The Origin
of Horseback Riding,” in
Scientific American
256 (1991), along with subsequent articles including David W. Anthony’s “Horse,
Wagon, and Chariot: Indo-European Languages and Archaeology,” in
Antiquity
69 (1995). Professors Anthony
and Brown, with others, have concluded that there is clear evidence for the
riding of horses with bits of either leather or bone as early as 4000 B.C., and
possibly earlier—predating the first evidence of the chariot by some thousand
years.

It so happens that these dates are significant in the
history of Old Europe. These are the dates—between 4500 and about 3000
B.C.—when the civilization of Gimbutas’ “Old Europe” was invaded and eventually
either assimilated or destroyed by tribes of pastoral nomads.

These nomads, it must be noted, were horsemen. First as
riders and later as warriors in chariots, they overwhelmed the cities and swept
westward until, after several millennia, they came to a halt in the isles of
Britain and Ireland. Professor Anthony suggested that a novelist well might
consider the first contact of these two cultures, Old Europe and the steppe
nomads called the Kurgans, either around 4500 or around 3500 B.C. I chose the
earlier date, the invasion of riders on horses rather than in chariots.

I have taken great and perhaps unconscionable liberties with
the archaeological and geographical evidence, but considerably fewer with the
technology and daily details, as far as they are known. Readers in search of
the “true” story would do well to go to Gimbutas, Anthony, and other scholars
of Neolithic Europe and Asia. The basis however is the Kurgan invasion of the
Cucuteni peoples of the area south of what is now Kiev, beginning around the
Volga and the Don and sweeping south and west toward the Dnieper and the
Dniester rivers.

In the way of all epics, I have simplified the long and
complex story, and focused it on one small area and one rather symbolic
geography. The wood between the steppe and the Lady’s country could as well
have been a river or a mountain range. That there was some barrier which had to
be crossed before the warriors from the steppe could overwhelm the Goddess’
country, seems likely.

I should note here that the people of the wood have a basis
in archeological evidence; there is some indication of Cro-Magnon survivals in
this region, and further indication that these early humans interbred with the
peoples of the steppe. Tillu and his kin, or people very like them, well may
have existed.

The geography I invented or heavily adapted, but the
cultures are based on Gimbutas and on the Rig Veda. The latter, the great
Indian sacred cycle, is one of the sources and inspirations of Anthony and
Brown’s work on early equestrian societies. If one treats it as legend rather
than myth, it becomes a fascinating historical source, a depiction of a culture
that must have been based originally on the Kurgans. In the meeting of so
strongly male-dominated and warlike a society with a society that worshipped a
Mother Goddess and that did not until quite late—after the invasions had begun—appear
to make or use weapons of war, I found my story and my characters.

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White Mare’s Daughter

The Epona Sequence, Book 1

Judith Tarr

Book View Café Publishing Cooperative Edition January 28, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-61138-356-0
Copyright © 1998 Judith Tarr

First published: Forge

Cover illustration by Theodor Kittelsen

Cover design by Pati Nagle

Production team:
Proofreader: Julianne Lee;
Ebook Formatter: Vonda N. McIntyre

This book is a work of fiction. All characters, locations, and events portrayed in this book are fictional or used in an imaginary manner to entertain, and any resemblance to any real people, situations, or incidents is purely coincidental.

Book View Café Publishing Cooperative
PO Box 1624
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v20140118vnm

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Judith Tarr
holds a PhD in Medieval Studies from Yale. She is the author of over three dozen novels and many works of short fiction. She has been nominated for the World Fantasy Award, and has won the Crawford Award for
The Isle of Glass
and its sequels. She lives near Tucson, Arizona, where she raises and trains Lipizzan horses.

Novels

Ars Magica

Alamut

The Dagger and the Cross

Living in Threes

Lord of the Two Lands

A Wind in Cairo

His Majesty’s Elephant

Series

The Epona Sequence

White Mare’s Daughter

Avaryan Rising

The Hall of the Mountain King

The Lady of Han-Gilen

A Fall of Princes

Avaryan Resplendent

Arrows of the Sun

Spear of Heaven

Tides of Darkness

The Hound and the Falcon

The Isle of Glass

The Golden Horn

The Hounds of God

Nonfiction

Writing Horses: The Fine Art of Getting it Right

BVC Anthologies

Beyond Grimm

Breaking Waves

Brewing Fine Fiction

Ways to Trash Your
Writing Career

Dragon Lords and Warrior
Women

Rocket Boy and the Geek Girls

The Shadow Conspiracy

The Shadow Conspiracy

The Shadow Conspiracy II

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