Hadrian's wall (24 page)

Samhain was the first night of winter, the end and the beginning of the Celtic year, and thus a night outside the normal cycle of time. The world stopped, the dead rose to dance in the glens, and reality became a dream.

Valeria never imagined she'd still be at Tiranen so late in the Roman year, and so enmeshed in a world not her own.

She existed that long northern summer without any news of rescue, enjoying days in which dusk would linger past bedtime and the east would blush before the wheel of stars had barely turned. It was as if night were near repeal. Cattle fattened, crops ripened, and the clan celebrated the festival of the god Lugh-the-Many-Talented near high summer. Valeria had never spent so much time outside, hardening to the weather and invigorated by the smell of sea and heather. She rode, she gathered, she walked, she weaved, she waited, and she learned skills a patrician would never learn in Rome. She was in a carefree limbo of captivity, past and future having disappeared. While her entire life was held captive, many of her ordinary worries had disappeared because of her own initial helplessness and, later, a reluctance to recognize and confront her own confused feelings.

It was easier to drift.

Then the sun began slipping south, the night began to lengthen, and eventually it was time for Harvest Home, the gathering of the autumn equinox. Every clan member from child to chief took part in the great harvest, and the captive Romans were no exception.

Valeria and Savia found themselves with the other women one dawn at the fringe of yellow wheat, a bag on one shoulder and a leather flask of spring water at their waist. A drum and flute began, a song arose, and the line of women began moving through the high grain with hands outstretched, nimble fingers breaking loose the fat and brittle heads. The kernels sifted past their bright metal rings like a tumble of coins, cascading into shoulder sacks with a whisper. The harvesters swayed as they worked, forming a slow dance of Celtic females in blue, yellow, and scarlet tunics who moved across the fields like feasting songbirds. Their men came in rhythmic line behind, stroking with their scythes to cut the stalks for winter straw and hay. Mice ran from the stubble and so hawks orbited overhead, picking them off.

It was the first time Valeria had harvested the bread she ate. At midday the women sat in the shade together, gossiping and eating a lunch brought from the huts by the youngest children. Her labor made her a part of them, and she enjoyed this strange new camaraderie of shared work. At day's end her hands were raw, her back stooped, her feet aching, and yet when her bag of grain cascaded into its storage hole, she felt it was filling her as well, even before she ate it. She tried to share her enthusiasm with Brisa.

"It's still a novelty to you," grumbled the archer, groaning as she massaged her feet. "I've been harvesting since I could walk. I'd rather practice archery."

"It's astonishing to work together. Rome is so crowded that you're never together with anyone."

"That makes no sense."

"Cities don't, sometimes."

"I've never been to one, and from your description, I don't care to."

Valeria found herself eating like a wolf and never gaining any girth. Her skin tanned a common, scandalous brown; her endurance increased. She noticed things she'd never really seen before: the curve of windswept grass that signaled a change to rain or sun, the progressive migration of birds, the heaviness of dew, the twin half-moons of a deer print in the mud, the hiss of rain on straw. After harvest, Arden took her riding up into highlands so windswept that they were stripped at their tops to raw rock, the lichen like spilled paint. The view seemed endless, and yet never a glimpse of the Wall! Then he took her down into narrow, shadowed valleys to fish. She caught some, their scales slick as oil and their muscles jumping.

He never touched her, yet never stopped looking at her.

She was haunted by him.

Brisa continued to teach her to shoot. Valeria's fingertips callused to pull the bowstring, and her aim became good enough to hit a target. Once, in a meadow, her rival Asa set a sewing basket on a rock, and Valeria impulsively put an arrow through it, pinioning the wicker against the ground and making her tormentor jump. The Roman didn't say a word, but her message was plain enough. She was becoming dangerous.

Asa's tricks stopped.

Inside the hill fort, Valeria weaved tartan on the clan looms and traded recipes with her captors. At night she listened to the stories of their gods and heroes, and told her own of Hercules and Ulysses and the court of Jupiter.

At Harvest Home, the animals came down from high pastures to winter barns. Vegetables were pickled and meat salted. Fruit was stacked in fat casks. New beer was fermented in vats smelling of malt and barley. Night overtook the day, the first frosts and bitter winds came, and leaves came showering down from the trees. Here was a breath of winter far deeper and more enduring than Italy's, and, despairing of rescue, she braced herself for a harsh season. Now, at Samhain-the end of autumn and beginning of winter, that time when the dead can walk and the faery kings emerge from their barrows-the clan would celebrate the New Year.

She'd been chosen by lot to play the central role.

At Kalin's command, each young woman had woven a tassel of individual pattern. Brisa taught Valeria a swirling Celtic design of saffron and cobalt. As they wove, the Roman admitted to herself that by now she was captive in name only; she could ride away at any time with a rough understanding of which direction the Wall must be. Yet the failure of Marcus to rescue her, the seasonal cycle, and her interest in Arden had all conspired to still impatience.

She was still gathering intelligence on these Celts!

She was still disturbed by her abductor.

Her tassel went with the others in a covered wicker basket.

Three nights before Samhain, Kalin stood before the clan to choose the woman who would play the role of the good and terrible Morrigan, and drew Valeria.

There was a confused and knowing murmur.

"She doesn't even believe in the goddess she's to represent!" Asa protested.

"How can a Roman play a Celt?" added Luca.

Kalin listened judiciously to their complaints. Valeria was horrified at her selection; she'd planned to watch the ceremony from the shadows! Why had fortune selected her for a central role? She glanced at her maidservant. Savia's eye avoided hers.

"The goddess herself guides my hand," Kalin said. "This year, for whatever reason, Morrigan has decided to be danced by the Roman."

Valeria felt trapped. This new honor picked her out again just as she was fitting in. She feared she'd embarrass herself at the pagan festival, or make new jealousies.

Brisa tried to reassure her. "Morrigan will inhabit and guide you. She's honoring you because of the boar."

"You must tell me what to do!"

"Ask the goddess."

"I'm asking you!"

"Calm yourself. I'll come the evening before Samhain and make things plain."

Brisa came as promised and found Valeria worriedly combing her long dark hair before a mirror of polished bronze.

"I don't want to dance the part, Brisa."

"Kalin believes you touched with magic. As Asa said, it's peculiar the goddess would pick you. Maybe she wants you to understand the ways of the Caledonii, should you ever go back to your wall."

"Of course I'll go back! Soon! I must!"

"Yet will you?"

Valeria wasn't sure of the answer anymore. Tiranen was a cruder place: its rooms colder, its courtyard mud, its latrines mere pits in the ground, its food plainer, its conversations less witty and knowledgeable. She missed many things. And yet all the restrictions that had bound her old life had fallen away. Instead of feeling captive she felt strangely liberated. A woman was more equal with these people. Her life could be less calculated. Friendship simpler. Pleasure quicker. Worries less complicated. And yet this wasn't her. Was it?

"Look." Brisa held up a carefully selected and polished apple. "To tap Morrigan's magic, you need the fruit of the gods. Slice this with your dagger to reveal your future."

"My future? I paid for that in Londinium, and little of it has come true."

"Sometimes the future takes time. Slice it."

Valeria reluctantly started to.

"Not that way! Crossways, the blade level."

She cut horizontally as directed, and Brisa gestured at the five-pointed star that the core made in the severed halves. "Here is a fruit of the earth that reflects the stars. It's one more sign that all is one. Can you see it?"

"Yes."

"Now take a bite as you look in the mirror. Legend has it that over your shoulder you'll see the image of your future husband."

"Future husband?"

"It's Celtic custom."

"Brisa, I have a husband."

"Then what are you hesitating for? Take a bite."

Valeria lifted the apple to her lips. There was no one in the mirror but herself and the warrior woman, of course. No Marcus, just as he'd been absent all summer. No husband at all. Was that what the goddess meant? She bit. "I see nothing."

"Swallow."

She did so. The fruit was crisp and sweet. Her eyes closed to remember her soldier husband, and she was surprised that her picture of Marcus had become cloudy. She remembered the stolid sense of him more than his appearance. So odd…

"Valeria?" It was a male voice.

Her eyelids fluttered open in alarm.

There was a figure in her mirror, she realized, dimly reflected from the doorway, but it wasn't her Roman. She whirled around in her seat.

Arden.

His mouth was open to speak, but he'd stopped in surprise at her shocked expression. He noticed she was holding something shiny in her hand.

"I didn't mean to surprise you," he said, looking confused. "I came to speak about Samhain. It's important for the clan that it goes well. Are you all right?"

Valeria turned away in alarm.

Brisa spoke softly. "It's all right, Arden Caratacus. Valeria will play her part well. Leave now, for you've done what you must. We'll see you at the fire."

Valeria wouldn't look back at him. She dropped what she was holding, and he saw it was half an apple, a bite taken. It rolled under her stool.

He swiftly disappeared.

"I saw him," Valeria whispered.

"You saw what Morrigan wanted you to see."

The celebration would take place at midnight on the horse meadows below the hill fort. It would give time for a banquet in the Great House by the legions of the dead, who could return this one night from the realm of Tirnan Og and feast as if still living. Oakwood platters, eating knives, and pewter cups were set in neat ranks for the restless ghosts, the cups filled with milk and the platters graced with an apple and a sheaf of barley. The benches were empty, the shadows deep. If the dead truly came-on this one night between past and future when time became meaningless and distant events could be foretold-then they'd celebrate in Tiranen and leave the living, who would be dancing in the meadow, alone.

The clan left the hill fort in procession, descending to the waiting bonfire that would keep them safe. Every third member held a torch, the march of light reminding Valeria of her impossibly distant wedding. How different and yet alike the two worlds were! Instead of stern cavalrymen lining their way, there were horn lanterns stuck on upright poles, each frame carved into a grotesque face, grinning or hideous. Candles lit them with an eerie glow, making the succession of lanterns like an arc of orange fireflies, or a tendril of glowing salmon eggs.

"What do all these images mean?" Valeria asked Brisa as they walked together. Savia, just ahead, was crossing herself.

"These lanterns become our guardians this night, lighting our way to Samhain and frightening away roaming spirits. They're the luck to see us through to the next year that comes at dawn, when the old crone Cailleach strikes the ground with her hammer and makes it hard with frost."

"We Romans believe the year begins with the spring."

"And we Celts believe the spring begins with the triumph of winter. Death is a necessary prelude to birth, and darkness the herald of the coming sun."

It was frosty this night. A full moon was up, making plain the shapes of the hills that surrounded them. Great trees lifted bare beseeching branches to heaven, and all color was leached from the world. Valeria had come to like the forest, but on this night she could once more imagine ghosts marching through it, the stone dolmens of the dead yawning open and slain warriors issuing forth. Old women would be reborn as young maidens. Drowned children would be given the adult bodies they'd never enjoyed. All would glide across the ground and up the mist to the hill fort, there to sit in the banquet hall and feast for one night in the world of the living.

She shivered, wrapping her cloak more tightly against the cold.

The Celts sang a song as they marched, a saga of a legendary chieftain who sought the gold of the dragon Brengatha, and the warrior queen he freed from the dragon's lair. Then a song of thanks to the gods for giving the clan another year, another harvest, another cycle of life. And then a ribald song about the maiden Rowena, so beautiful and tempting that she'd made fools of three men, and lover of a fourth.

In the clearing was stacked an immense cone of wood, ready for firing. The procession circled, stopped, and looked back up the hill at Tiranen. Gurn, who at the ceremony of Lugh had passed from boy to man and was thus, at fourteen, their youngest warrior, was still up there watching them-a test of his young courage against the imminent approach of ghosts. At their halt he disappeared from the gate and hurriedly went into the emptied Great House, the hair on his neck rising at its strange chill. A burning fire seemed to give little heat, casting a dance of shadow on the peaked ceiling. He lit the final torch from its flame and then sprinted in relief from the deserted hill fort, running to the others below. They watched his descending flame draw gold filigree against the night, its arc like the vine and rainbow of Celtic artisans. Finally the youth came dashing into their circle, breathless and triumphant, a young maiden named Alita already watching him with covetous eyes. He thrust the torch into the base of the pyramid of wood, its tinder caught, and fire began reaching up the cone.