The White Mare: The Dalraida Trilogy, Book One (16 page)

The scene shifts and blurs, in and out of focus, and yet little things leap out in minute detail. The gnarled boles of age-darkened wood on the druid shrine. Light glancing off the boar that crests the prince’s helmet. The damp wind lifting the braids at her neck. The rigid line of Linnet’s mouth.

Beyond the murmuring of the crowd, the birds on the marsh cry, faintly.
I could fly there right now. I could be with them
.

A spot of rain falls, glistening on Gelert’s balding scalp. He steps back, and the raindrop runs down into his beard. His eyes are slits; what lurks in them, she is beyond. Today he cannot touch her.

Linnet comes forward with the golden cup, and wraps Rhiann’s chilled hands around it. Linnet blesses the prince with water from the sacred spring, while Rhiann stares at the clouds. One has billowed into the shape of an eagle’s head. Or is it a goose?

How did I get here? This man … this man will take me … I am afraid
.

The stabbing fear breaks through the
saor
for a moment as the prince accepts the sacred bread from Linnet’s fingers. Then his sword is out, and he turns to her people, laying it across his hands. No! She pushes the pain away, not willing to come back into the shell of her body.

He is not marrying me. He is marrying the Goddess. The Goddess … I am the Goddess
.

Yes … the cloak of numbness falls back into place, and she draws it tight. The fear recedes. She looks down into the cup of sovereignty in her hands. In it, there lies a pool of amber mead, like her hair. She must raise it to his lips now, so that he can drink and be one with her land, her people.

Don’t look at him, though, as he sips, and fixes her with those green eyes. Don’t look.

The Goddess. You are the Goddess
.

Yes, he feels it too. He can look no longer: he knows that he does not join with Rhiann. And then it is over, and his eyes are hidden by his dark hair.

Linnet binds their hands together with a sash of deep red, a blood colour. His palms are damp. Linnet speaks of the Goddess and the consort, the defender of the land, ritually bound now with the bones of the land. And the people shower them with dried haws, for there are no flowers. No Beltaine flowers.

Goddess, he will take me. I am afraid
.

‘Please, my lord. Let me sing.’

Aedan’s words were muffled, as Eremon tugged his helmet and circlet off and handed it to Finan.

‘You’d better let him.’ The older man winked at Eremon. ‘He’s got to show those fine threads off to everyone, after all.’

Now Rori was helping Eremon off with his mailshirt. As befits the new defender of the tribe, Eremon went to the ceremony in full war regalia, but he couldn’t sit like that all night.

‘And why did Aedan get
that
, while I got
this
.’ Rori looked from Aedan’s riotously embroidered tunic down to his own plain red one, which clashed with his hair.

The Erin men explained away their lack of feasting clothes by saying
that their chests of personal belongings had been lost in the storm. The Epidii willingly furnished them with clothing for the wedding, although the quality had been a chance affair.

Aedan sniffed. ‘Well, perhaps these people understand the true status of a bard. Second only to his lord, is that not right, sir?’

‘In polite company, yes.’ Eremon was curiously tired. Standing up there in front of the shrine, before all the people, he had suddenly become aware of what he was swearing to. A defender of their land – he had agreed to that with Gelert. But a consort for their Goddess? Just where did that come from? He was taken unawares, asked to make a lasting vow when, come a year, he would be leaving. But how could he have backed out then and there? So he drunk from the cup, and swore the oath to that older priestess – his bride’s aunt – even though the girl herself would not even look at him.

Ah. He swore fealty to the Boar and to Manannán first, in Erin. He promised them he’d go back. This Goddess of the Epidii would just have to understand. He shrugged away an uneasy prickling that she might prove more demanding than he thought.

A bronze-rimmed cup of ale was thrust in his hand. ‘And here’s your first drink as a new husband.’ Conaire grinned at him, took a gulp of his own ale. ‘By the Boar, my leg was growling to stand so long! But this will take the pain away.’

The men were alone in the King’s Hall, except for the servants turning the spits of boar and deer over the fire-pit, and rolling barrels of ale and mead into place against the outer walls. The feast would begin soon, but they had a few moments to themselves. Cù was pacing around the hearth, watching the sizzling fat spit into the fire, and squabbling with the old king’s hounds.

‘So can I sing, my lord?’ Aedan was pleading now.

‘Yes, yes. But choose your tales with care. That goes for all of you – hold your drink well, and keep your counsel.’

‘Hold your own drink well, my brother!’ Conaire nudged him. ‘No going soft tonight, of all nights!’

‘And fill up on boar,’ Colum chuckled. ‘You’ll need your strength!’

Eremon forced a laugh, as the others let loose with a stream of sexual jests, while a servant refilled their cups. Tonight. He’d not forgotten that part.

A strange mixture of desire and apprehension stirred in him. Hawen, it had been a while without a woman. Unlike Conaire, he’d had more to think about since their arrival. And his new wife was comely, if thin for his taste. There was little enticing roundness about her hips or breasts, as far as he could see, but she certainly had a striking face, with its high cheekbones and generous mouth. And unusual hair.

As Finan launched into a ribald story about a wedding night in his
youth, and Eremon’s ale slid down his parched throat, he thought about that hair. An image flashed into his mind of pulling it down around his face, running his fingers through it. Hmm … now that thought was more interesting. His memory continued roving over her face, coming to rest at last on her eyes, and there the hot flush of desire abruptly faded.

Her eyes were striking, too, wide-set, tilted up at the edges. But they unnerved him. On the beach they held repulsion, in the King’s Hall that morning, hostility. And during the ceremony – well, that was the most unsettling part of all. She stood there, but she wasn’t
there
. Her eyes were not even cold; coldness requiring some emotion and presence. They were just blank.

He had seen plenty of druid rites in his time, and as the king’s son, was often close to the brethren when they were communing with the gods. But he never expected that one day he would see that same unearthly light in the eyes of his bride. The touch of the Otherworld.

Still, she was a priestess, which must be something like a druid. And after going through all that joining-to-the-land thing, he had realized that this must be business to her as well as to him. He sighed. Politics were all very well, but in the meantime, this betrothal could have been a pleasant interlude.

He had spent years trying to stop girls falling in love with him, because he did not want a wife. He was too busy roving Erin with Conaire, honing his military skills. With his looks and position, there had been no shortage of noblewomen making eyes at him, but he’d stuck to the safer options: regular tumbles with the dairymaids, the smith’s daughter, and his mother’s fine-fingered needlewoman. But this was altogether a different proposition. He must be careful with her. Especially tonight.

‘So, to the health and fortune of our prince, a married man at last,’ Conaire was saying, his cup lifted.

Eremon glanced around at the bright circle of faces, cups in the air, humming with the promise of the evening’s delights – food, drink, and women. At least they were getting a feast out of it.

‘To the prince!’

‘The prince!
Slàinte mhór!’

Rhiann knew it would be one of the longest nights of her life.

The
saor
had worn off now, and in its wake came a hollow sickness, and chills that brought a shiver to her skin. She desperately wished that she could take more, that she could return to the floating haze, and stave off the time when she would have to regard this hall and the people in it in the cold light of reality.

She glanced around the huge ring of benches, circling the hearth.
Servants dashed back and forth, holding on high woven willow platters of boar-flesh, salmon with juniper, roast goose with blackberries, and baskets heaving with soft cheeses and honey-baked bread. Others mingled among the nobles with jugs of heather ale and pale mead. The calls for more ale! more mead! resounded from the roof-beams. The crowd was becoming louder, the jokes quickly bawdier. Normally she would be long gone to her bed … but tonight, tonight she would rather endure this than …
that
.

The bridal hut was waiting. With the houses always so full of guests, newly-weds were given their one night of total privacy. And she must go there, with
him
. The rite she had gone through today, to safeguard her people, it would have no meaning to them unless she disappeared into that hut with that man, and did not emerge until morning.

Her hand crept to her waist. The jewelled girdle was still there, but underneath her linen shift she had tied on her priestess pouch. She cupped it now through the soft wool of her dress, her fingers seeking security. For the people, she must go to that hut. But, just as no one knew what went on inside her head, no one would know what went on inside the hut.

Stop thinking
.

She had exchanged barely any words with her new husband. He tried that boyish grin on her a few times, but it slid off her skin like a straw arrow glancing off mail. It may well work with the insipid, moon-eyed girls that seemed to find him attractive, but it wouldn’t work with her.

Her other hand was gripping her mead cup so hard that the enamelled mounts were digging into her palm. She had no intention of being polite to him. She’d made the sacrifice, and that was enough. He married her for her position, and that was all that he would get. The council may be able to barter her away, but no one could control her mouth, her mind, her heart. They were hers alone.

One of the servant girls passed by again with the platter of boar-meat, and that great blond hulk from Erin paused to spear even more on to his knife. The prince was eating more sparingly, but she noticed his quick, nervous gulping of the mead.

Good. Get so drunk that you pass out
. As her mind slid dangerously close again to what would happen after the feast, she resolutely brought it to bay.
Stay here, in the present. What comes after cannot be faced. It cannot be faced
.

At least she did not have to worry about Gelert. The druids had blessed the feast and partaken of a sparse meal, and then left the hall to the warriors and their women.

On one side of her, she heard the prince and his brother talking about the Romans, speculating on what they might do. War talk, that was all they knew. Still, at least he had given up trying to speak with her.

‘Take some more food, daughter.’ Linnet, on her other side, squeezed her hand. ‘You must eat after the
saor
.’

‘I’m not hungry.’

A pause. ‘You did well today. I was proud of you.’

‘I did not have much choice.’

Linnet sighed, but she put a light hand on Rhiann’s back, at the level of her heart. After a moment, a warmth began to tingle on Rhiann’s skin, through the layer of the robe and the shift, growing into a pulsing glow of comforting heat that spread throughout her chest. And Rhiann remembered with a pang how Linnet had always been there, stroking her face, putting her healing hands on a scratched knee, a feverish cheek. It wasn’t much. Right now, it brought tears dangerously close to the surface. But it was hers. It was all she had. She reached out and put her hand in Linnet’s lap, and took another sip of mead.

The bards were tuning their harps near the door. One of the lesser bards had already been playing a series of wordless tunes throughout the feast, until it was time for the family lays to be recited and sung, to confirm the lineages and the new kin bonds. In effect, it was part of the marriage contract: telling the prince of Erin what he had got for his money.

Meron, the Epidii chief bard, told the story of Rhiann’s own ancestor, Beli the Bold, who led his people out of the east, and crossed the great sea, fighting all manner of strange beasts to make landfall on Alba’s fair shores. It was, of course, a favourite for the royal clan, many of whom knew it off by heart. Rhiann saw more than one old warrior’s lips move in a silent echo of Meron’s deep, melodious chant.

In the silent pause after Meron left the floor, when men were waking as if from a trance, blinking their drink-sodden eyes, a slight figure stepped out of the shadows into the cleared space beside the hearth.

It was the bard from Erin. He was so young, he must still be undergoing his training. And pretty, too, as she’d noted before, with his ripples of dark hair framing a heart-shaped face. He could almost be a woman, especially clean-shaven as he was today. She heard a muttered joke to this effect from somewhere to her left, smothered by a loud guffaw, and saw Conaire, the blond giant, pin the unfortunate joker to his seat with a glare.

The bard had borrowed a fine blue cloak to cover his tunic, and now he swept this back, somewhat theatrically, and paused, until a burst of talking and cries for more mead respectfully died down.

Bards – no matter their looks – were sacred. They were untouchable even on the battlefield. After all, they held a people’s whole history in their heads – all the kinship lines, the battles, the marriages, the acts of kindness and outrage, the births and the feats of honour and glory. They could kill with words, by bringing stinging satire and shame down on a
man’s head, hounding him to his death. And they brought beauty, on the long nights when the cold winds prowled around, and all within were aching to see the sun again.

Someone hastily brought the young bard a stool, and he settled himself on it, tuning his harp, his fingers tracing over the strings lovingly. Rhiann’s heart thawed just a little at this total absorption. This one did not wield a sword, at least. He was a maker of things, of beautiful songs, not a destroyer.