Songwoman Read online

  I hung her dress on the firedog and sat beside her.

  We did not speak as I watched her eat. Her gaze darted around the room. Damp, black hair stuck to her neck. Unskinned, she could hope for neither marriage nor admittance to learning. It took little skill in prophecy to see that her future was ended before it had begun. It angered me that she should be so condemned for the ill-fortune of her birth. But these were the laws of skin. And I, as Kendra, was their highest custodian.

  She nodded frantically when I offered another ladleful of broth.

  ‘Shall I sing you a song?’ I asked, unsure of how to settle her.

  Her dark eyes widened. ‘Ay.’

  Watching the flames, I sang her a lullaby that my suck mother had sung to me.

  She listened, barely moving, and when it was finished, she looked at me so hopefully for another, that I began to sing her one of the songs I had learnt in my training. It was a forming song about the creation of a mountain not far from my home, and the trees and birds found on its slopes. Such songs were for the journeypeople, not intended for the ears of a half-born child. She would never be taught them. What harm could it do for her to know a taste of their magic and beauty?

  Partway through the song I heard a movement at my door screen. I paused, but hearing nothing further, I lifted my voice again.

  With sudden force, the screen was shunted aside and Prydd stepped inside. His expression was controlled, but I felt his fury. ‘Kendra—’ he bowed hastily, scarcely honouring rank. ‘Perhaps you have not yet learnt of this, but you cannot sing the journeysongs to a skinless child. She should not be within the township, least of all in your hut. She is impure.’ He took the girl’s hand and pulled her firmly to standing. The blanket fell from her shoulders, exposing her twig limbs and her sheer, veined skin: the very image of purity.

  Prydd stepped back, as if fearful of her nakedness.

  ‘I was merely feeding her,’ I said, tugging her still-damp dress back over her head. ‘The song was only a comfort.’

  ‘Journey-songs are not intended as a comfort.’

  I looked up at him. ‘Forgive me, journeyman, I thought that was exactly what they were.’

  I stood to face him.

  His voice strained to contain his displeasure. ‘Please return her to the fringe huts,’ he said, ‘and do not bring her past the town’s threshold again.’

  Without speaking, the little girl reached for my hand.

  ‘When you return, come directly to the temple,’ he continued. ‘I will begin your instruction this day.’

  There was no purpose now in asking if I may learn instead with the Songman. Especially as song was the very craft I had now transgressed. ‘Yes, journeyman.’

  He turned and left.

  I finished dressing the child, combed her damp hair, then took her hand and walked out the door.

  ‘What is your name?’ I asked, as we passed the smith huts. The rain had subsided and we could walk at her pace.

  ‘Manacca.’

  I smiled. ‘In my old township, I cared for a child called Manacca.’

  ‘Is she still there?’ she asked.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Where is she now?’

  ‘Annwyn,’ I answered.

  ‘What is Annwyn?’

  I stopped and stared at her. Could she know so little? I looked around, then stooped and said softly, ‘Annwyn is the hidden world, the place of the Mothers, where souls live after their body has died.’

  ‘Is it far?’ she asked in wonder.

  ‘It is all around us, but we cannot see it.’

  Manacca looked up and down the street, eyes wide in alarm.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ I smiled, taking hold of her shoulders. ‘It is a beautiful place—the trees are always heavy with apples…’ I leaned forward and whispered in her grubby ear, ‘I have been there.’

  ‘How?’

  I was deep in journey-law now. What should I say? By ritual? By rapture? Both were true. But she would never know either. ‘By looking beyond,’ I answered. ‘Watch carefully, and you may glimpse it.’

  ‘Will I go there?’

  ‘Not soon, if Caradog can help it.’

  We walked through the northern gate and I asked Manacca to show me where she lived. She led me past the lowest rampart and looped west to the lowlands beside the hillfort. There were fewer fringe huts here than there had been in Caer Cad. But as I watched her run into the jumbled nest of stick huts and tents, and smelt the fetid streamlet that trickled from its midst, I wondered why there should be any at all.

  As I strode back to meet Prydd my anger grew. Why was I forced to withhold truth from an innocent child? The Mothers had not withheld it from me. What was Prydd’s purpose in wishing to distribute my Kendra’s knowledge artfully? Would it not strengthen us? Especially now, when we were under such threat from our enemy, and so many tribes had already relinquished their rituals. Was now not the very time to allow the few tribes who still remained free to drink as freely as possible from learning’s deep cauldron?

  My questions fell away when I entered the temple. Prydd was seated on the first bench before the altar. Beside him sat Caradog. The silence rang with the echoes of their discussion.

  ‘The journeyman tells me that you are stirring trouble,’ said Caradog, as I walked forward. His tone was sharp, but his eyes hid a trace of a smile.

  ‘Hardly that.’ I looked at Prydd. ‘The girl is returned to her swine yard as instructed. Her hunger and ignorance are ensured.’ I sat on a stool to face them both.

  Caradog said, ‘You do not desire to go to Môn—’

  ‘I am no use in Môn.’

  Caradog nodded. ‘If you wish to remain here, then you must play a role.’

  I frowned. ‘We have already discussed that I will sit on your council.’

  ‘I think we can make further use of your Kendra’s grace.’

  ‘How?’ I asked with suspicion.

  ‘The attack we will make this winter is outside the time that is sanctioned for war.’ Caradog paused. ‘To ensure its success, we must make an offering to the Mothers of great value.’

  I knew from his voice that he did not mean a calf or a lamb or even a dog. Offerings of human kin had been outlawed in the Roman-ruled townships, and were rarely made in the free tribes. I had not seen such a rite since I was a child. They were terrifying and dangerous if wrongly done, yet they bound the tribes to the Mothers more powerfully than any other ritual.

  ‘Do you wish me to augur for the best day for an offering?’ I asked.

  ‘No.’ Caradog paused. ‘I want you to make it.’

  My eyes closed. ‘Not I…’

  ‘Who better to perform this most sacred rite than the Kendra?’ said Prydd.

  I stared at him. This was not Caradog’s idea, it was his.

  ‘I cannot,’ I said. ‘I have never performed it, nor learned its arts.’

  ‘I will teach you,’ said Prydd.

  He does not think I will do it, I thought. He thinks I will ask, instead, to be taken to Môn. I looked to Caradog. Did he not see the hidden motive?

  ‘I understand your aversion,’ said Caradog. ‘It takes stomach to put iron into flesh.’

  ‘I have the stomach.’

  ‘Then you accept?’

  ‘Are you certain it is needed?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Caradog. ‘My men are already beginning to turn on each other. This morning a parry went far beyond practice and one of my best fighters was cut.’

  ‘I will attend him—’

  ‘—he is well. But the offering is needed to settle them.’

  I knew he was right. With one ritual act of killing, the offering would appease the hunger for violence that might otherwise erupt between tribesmen in the days before war. The blood of a calf did it well. The blood of a tribesman would do it better. But I had never slayed a tribesman. I had only killed once, and my victim had been a Roman. In truth, I knew not whether I had the stomach.

  ‘If i
t is done by the Kendra’s hand,’ urged Prydd, ‘our fighters will be all the more blessed.’

  ‘Kendra?’ Caradog beat his fingers rapidly on his long thigh. He was tiring of this discussion. ‘Will you do it?’

  I took a deep breath. Had I not come to lend my Kendra’s glimmer to this war chief? I met his eye. ‘Who will I give?’

  Caradog looked to Prydd.

  ‘One who is…marked by the Mothers,’ said Prydd, trying to cloak his surprise at my acceptance.

  I nodded. Offerings were selected from among those at the thresholds: criminals, the misshapen, those at the cusp between childhood and adulthood.

  ‘Your Songman is an obvious choice,’ said Prydd to Caradog. ‘And his voice would honour the Mothers.’

  ‘No!’ I gasped. ‘He…he is needed in other ways…’ Heart pounding, I looked to Caradog.

  ‘Not Rhain,’ he murmured.

  Prydd frowned. ‘Then I will search for one equally distinctive,’ he said.

  I exhaled in relief. Prydd influenced Caradog, but did not control him.

  ‘Good,’ said Caradog. ‘Then we are finished here.’

  They both stood.

  ‘Were we not beginning instruction this night?’ I asked Prydd.

  ‘Tomorrow,’ he said, walking to the door. ‘Await me at the eastern gate, at Lleu’s last hour.’ He was gone before I could query it.

  Caradog hesitated. ‘I am expected by my wife for bread…’

  ‘Of course.’ Did he think I would detain him?

  ‘Ailia—’ It was the first time he had called me by name.

  I met his gaze. Now it held no humour. ‘I cannot afford any disturbance in the township as I ready for the attack. You must comply with my head journeyman. You cannot defy him or cause him further annoyance. Only then may you remain and assist me.’

  I was speechless. Was I a child to be so chastised?

  He bowed swiftly, then strode past me to exit the temple.

  I turned back to the altar. Things were askew. I commanded a knowledge above all others in Albion, yet I did not command the respect of this war chief.

  Evening drew near but I could not yet bear to go back to my hut. Once more, I headed for the northern gate, seeking a quiet place by the river Castroggi where I might sit with the Mothers.

  As I passed Hefin’s guest houses, I saw Euvrain standing outside the largest of them, calling to two fair-haired children fighting with wooden swords in the courtyard. She held the doorskins open as the girl and boy tore inside. The room within looked bright and welcoming. I hastened my pace so that she would not see me.

  The northern path was deserted. I passed the fringes and headed to the wetlands, where the earth became soft under my step. A timber causeway had been built over ground too porous to walk upon. This was a boundary place, neither land nor water, but a merging of both. Annwyn felt close. On the horizon, mountains rose into cloud.

  I had only been two days returned to the world of the tribes. Already the clarity I had gained in the forest was fading. I was determined to retain it. I would not repeat the mistakes I had made. I would perform the offering. I would meet whatever was asked of me.

  Neha bounded ahead as we stepped down from the causeway, wending between pools and tussocks of nettle to reach the river. Here, the Castroggi was barely more than a stream. I sat at its babbling edge. The low sun cast a gauze light across the marshlands, and the small pools glowed like liquid metal. I pulled the knotted cord from my pouch and let it rest in my lap. Each nodule recalled a poem of praise to the Mothers.

  As always, the chanting of their names brought them close and I welcomed their breath in the wind on my skin. But it was not just the Mothers whose nearness I sought. My heart called out to another being. One who had always found me by water. One that I had loved not only as spirit but as flesh.

  ‘Taliesin?’ I murmured the name into the river haze. The missing of him was a stone in my chest. I had not known his presence since I had failed him.

  Neha barked and I looked for what had roused her. But it was only a heron, stalking at the water’s edge.

  I turned to observe the rising moon. The time of Winter’s Eve drew near, the festival to mark the transition from one year to the next. This was a night of change, of disorder, where the spirits of Annwyn could roam, once more, among the living.

  On this night, I prayed, I would see Taliesin.

  ‘Stop here,’ said Prydd.

  We had reached the boundary of forest.

  I had met him at the gate at sunfall, as he had commanded, and he had bidden me follow him, by torchlight, to Llanmelin’s north, where fields gave way to the untamed places.

  ‘Are you frightened?’ he asked, nodding to the darkness before us.

  ‘No.’ I had lived alone in the forest. I knew its laws.

  He slipped into the trees, leaving me to follow.

  No daylight remained. Our torches made shifting figures of the silver birch trunks. The path was narrow and soft underfoot, the air teeming with the scent of rotting leaves.

  We were making an ascent. Prydd moved quickly for a man of his summers and several times I lost sight of his pale cloak. Finally we reached a clearing, circled by a ring of oaks. Prydd stopped at its threshold and took hold of my wrist.

  This was a nemeton, a grove for worship and teaching, wherein only the initiated were permitted to stand. A boulder formed an altar within the clearing, and the torchlight revealed its thick mantle of blood.

  ‘Are you frightened?’ Prydd asked again.

  I told him I was not. But this time it was a lie. Faces loomed in the knots of the trunks. He had not permitted Neha to accompany us from Llanmelin and I felt unguarded without her.

  With a grip that belied his age, he held me at the boundary, murmuring skin chants to protect me from the spirits that swirled within. Had he forgotten Kendra law? Did he not know I had drawn closer to these spirits than any other?

  He led me into the grove, my arms pimpling in the sudden cold. ‘Sit,’ he said. Several fallen logs were arranged as benches. Prydd knelt to kindle a flame in the stone-rimmed fireplace in front of the altar. He pulled out a small jar of mead from his leather sack and poured a libation. Then he sat before me, silhouetted by the fire behind him. After some time he said, ‘Tell me the spine of our law.’

  ‘Flesh dies, but the soul endures,’ I said, unsure of why he asked for this most basic truth. Any farmhand could repeat it.

  ‘And?’ he said, prompting the second utterance of the couplet.

  ‘Most things remain hidden,’ I said slowly. ‘What is unseen is always greater.’ Why did he test me on the simplest of our laws?

  ‘Correct.’ He paused. ‘This is why our knowledge must be hidden.’

  I rubbed my fingertips on the course wool of my skirt. Was this another chastisement for singing to Manacca?

  ‘And the deeper purpose of the journeypeople?’ he went on.

  ‘To honour the Mothers…to seek the wisdom of Annwyn.’

  ‘Not this.’ He paused. ‘We command the unseen.’

  I frowned. ‘We seek it. We cannot command that which is greater.’

  ‘Yet it is our art to show that we do. The tribespeople look to us to control the forces that terrify them. Time. Death. War. Our tool is the sacrifice.’ His face was concealed by darkness, his voice emerging from a pool of shadow. ‘You, Kendra, possess an unseen force,’ he continued. ‘You are a cauldron that holds the pure will of the Mothers.’

  I dipped my head briefly at his acknowledgement.

  ‘How wasteful is the cauldron that boils over untended, spilling its contents over the ground for only the dogs to drink.’

  The fire crackled in the silence, as if sounding its agreement.

  ‘Let us begin.’ Prydd began to sing in tuneless drone, summoning the teaching he was about to give.

  At first I almost giggled; his high, scraping voice held so little resonance.

  But then I saw, as he prayed, someth
ing of the grace that long-learning bestowed. Prydd’s goal was as mine: to preserve our sovereignty, to preserve our law, and he had done much to achieve it. For the first time, I saw that I could learn from this man. My hands softened in my lap as I listened. He did not despise me. He wanted to ensure I tore no holes in the fabric of his power.

  He had ceased his chant. ‘How great is your knowledge of death-craft?’

  ‘Poor,’ I answered, ‘I am better practised at healing than killing.’

  ‘The first lesson is that death must not come too quickly,’ he said. ‘The moments between the infliction of the wound, and the death that arises from it, are the most potent. He who is offered must be held at that brink for as long as possible.’

  ‘But…’ I stared in horror, ‘it will cause immense suffering.’

  ‘This brink is the gate into Annwyn, Kendra. It honours him. And you.’

  I half laughed in shock. ‘How does such cruelty honour me?’

  ‘You cut the passage to the hidden world,’ he said. ‘You determine how long it is held open.’ There was a tremble of excitement in his voice. ‘For that moment, you command the unseen.’

  I wanted to heed his greater training, but I could not endure it. ‘Journeyman,’ I said. ‘Only the Mothers command the unseen.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ he answered, ‘but the people must see that you command it. This is how you are powerful.’

  I flushed hot with confusion. Was this the journeyperson’s art? To conjure an appearance of power? A faint itching in my scar protested the idea. I would not be made powerful by artifice. My knowledge of the Mothers was true. It needed no design or embellishment. My brief moment of faith in him dissolved into the grove air. This was not knowledge. This was wile. I would not lead in this way.

  ‘Do you understand, Kendra?’ said Prydd.

  I went to argue, but as I opened my mouth, I remembered Caradog’s warning. This man held Caradog’s trust. I had to gain his. ‘I understand.’

  ‘Good,’ he said. ‘Then let us begin learning the chants that will precede the offering.’ He pulled out a linen bundle from his sack, unwrapped it, and placed on the ground a set of twelve metal rods of different lengths and thicknesses, each incised with intricate patterns. Even in the firelight, I recognised the varying lustres of bronze, iron and silver. Learning rods, one the most gruelling methods of teaching I had ever endured.