Skin (10 page)

I stared at him, disbelieving. Where were his thanks? ‘Come out of the water,' I
called as I climbed onto the bank. ‘I need to treat the piercing.'

He did not move. I watched him from the shore. A trickle of blood ran down his chest
and stomach. He was lean, but his muscles were long and well worked, the body of
a messenger.

‘As you wish,' I said.

He waited in silence as I plucked stalks of nettle from the river's edge and squeezed
their juice into my palm, mixing it with honey
from Dun's bundle. I stepped back
into the shallows. ‘This will stem the blood,' I said, dabbing it on his swelling
lip.

There was vividness around his skin, like spray from a waterfall. Our faces were
close. He lifted his eyes. His gaze was a blow to my belly.

‘What is your business here?' I whispered.

‘As yours. Taking drink.' He winced with the movement of his lip.

‘But the hook? The wound?'

‘Unfortunate,' he answered.

‘But where are you from?' I pressed. He was certainly a stranger to Cad.

‘Surely that is my question to ask, Journeywoman.'

‘Journeywoman?' I gasped, laughing at his error. ‘Not I! Much as I would wish it
were so.'

He frowned. ‘Then where…?' His question drifted into silence.

As he stood in the knee-deep water, I saw the full height of him. His trousers were
rough-made (he was no nobleman) and of a strangely patterned weave. A whistle, carved
of bone, was strung on a plait of leather and wound around his narrow hips.

‘Might I know your name at least?' I asked, standing beside him.

‘Taliesin.'

A bard's name. Or a magician's. But he was too young to be either. Why did he not
state his tribe or township?

‘Yours?' he asked.

‘Ailia of Cad.'

‘Ailia,' he repeated. ‘Light.'

‘Yes,' I said, surprised. Few knew the meaning of my name.

‘What is your skin?' he said.

Never had the question laid me so bare. ‘I...I am skin to the deer.' It was a lie
I had never told. Why could I not bear him to know me unskinned?

‘I am skin to the salmon,' he said.

Cookmother's skin. I looked away. Something in me had shifted with my lie. ‘If you
walk with me a short while back to town,' I said, distracting myself, ‘I can show
this wound to my Cookmother. She will know how further to treat it.'

‘I cannot come.'

His firmness stopped me asking his reason. ‘Then perhaps we should meet again a day
or so hence, that I might check it again,' I said, relieved, at least, that he would
not discover my untruth.

He nodded hesitantly. ‘Come here again tomorrow and I shall show you my wound.'

‘Here?' I said. ‘Surely your home—?'

‘Is too far,' he said.

I stared at him, then reached for his hand. ‘Let me help you out of the water.'

‘No!' he said, almost shouting.

Startled, I dropped his hand.

Neha barked. I was suddenly unsure of myself, uneasy with his strangeness. ‘Be very
careful with your eating and drinking,' I said as I wiped my knife on my skirt and
put it back in my belt. ‘So you do not tax the wound unduly.'

‘Good advice.' He found my eye. ‘I won't kiss you for thanks. It might tax the wound
unduly.'

My face burned as I stepped back onto the bank to repack my basket. I glanced about
for his tunic and sandals, but saw neither. ‘In which direction do you walk?' I asked
over my shoulder.

He did not answer.

When I turned around, there was only Neha, barking at the river. I looked to the
forest and called his name, but he was gone. Disappeared like the mist from the sunshine.

Around the pool of wisdom grew nine hazel trees. Each tree dropped a nut into the water, and they were eaten by a salmon.

By this act, the salmon gained all the world's knowledge.

Whoever first eats of the salmon's flesh will, in turn, gain all the world's knowledge.

I
HAD
SCARCELY
walked through the kitchen doorway, when Cookmother thrust two steaming
bowls of broth into my hands and bade me take them to the sleephouse.

‘Llwyd is with her,' she said. ‘And he was here earlier also, asking of you.'

‘Of me?'

‘Ay.' Cookmother was bent over the cookpot, and I could not see her expression.

‘For what purpose?'

‘None that he was confessing to me.'

Fraid's daughter was playing outside by the fire pit with a straggle of other children.
‘Tidings, Manacca,' I called as I hurried past. ‘Do you want some broth?'

‘I'm not allowed in,' she cried, turning back to her skittling stones.

There was a scent of disagreement in the room as I shouldered through the inner doorskins
of the sleephouse. Fibor and Etaina were not within. Again Fraid sat with Llwyd alone.

‘Does he forget the reputation of Britain's knowledge?' said Llwyd. ‘We are known
the world over for our teaching.'

I passed him a bowl and he took it gratefully.

‘Initiates travel from Germania to be taught here, from Gaul,' he continued. ‘Albion
is at the very centre of learning, Tribequeen.' He sipped his broth.

‘But he has seen the new world,' said Fraid. ‘He sees freedom in it.'

They were speaking of Ruther. I handed Fraid her soup and slipped to the edge of
the room.

‘He mistakes wealth for freedom,' said Llwyd, ‘and might for wisdom.'

They drank in silence for a few minutes. ‘You may leave,' said Fraid, turning to
me.

‘Shall I not wait for your bowls?' I uttered before I could stop.

‘No, Ailia.' She frowned in surprise. ‘I asked you to leave.'

I waited as the heavy skins of the inner doorway flapped closed behind me. Fibor
or Etaina could return at any moment, but I was hungry to know what was being said
inside. I leaned toward the doorskins and could just hear their muffled voices.

‘Why do you remove her?' Llwyd asked. ‘I thought she held your trust?'

‘She lay with him at the fires. I do not want our words recounted at his pillow.'

I heard Llwyd chuckle. ‘She certainly commands an allure beyond that of a kitchen
girl.'

They both laughed, then quieted.

‘Ruther's words have unsettled the journeypeople,' said Llwyd.
‘With Belinus's death,
we do not need one of our own warriors crying the greatness of Rome.'

‘I will summon the council tomorrow to discuss what we shall do.'

Footsteps approached the sleephouse. Manacca squealed outside.

My heart thudding, I continued to listen as the footsteps passed.

‘I have looked to the stars and to the birds,' said Llwyd. ‘We stand at the dawn
of a change. And Ruther's words at the feast have given it shape.'

‘Surely his knowledge of Rome can only strengthen us…?'

There was a pause before Llwyd answered. ‘What strengthens us is the Mothers. We
have to hold them close. We have to protect our bond to them.'

‘But is it not already strong? The journeymen are powerful, as you have said—'

‘There is one weakness,' said Llwyd.

Fraid sighed and I heard the exasperation in it. ‘We have agreed to raise this no
further, Journeyman. It is no riddle I can solve. Why speak of it now?'

‘Because the Great Bear is dead. And a vulture is circling his carcass. When it lands,
make no mistake, we will need the strength of the Kendra. We will need the presence
of one who has sung.'

‘The bloodline is fallen.' Fraid's voice had a strange edge. ‘We cannot conjure her
from chalk or iron. With or without a Kendra, we must plan our defence against Rome.'

I stood frozen in the dark corridor between doors, straining to make sense of their
words. Who was this woman? This Kendra? Why could she not be discussed?

‘No army of the tribes will triumph without her blessing,' said Llwyd. ‘She is the
voice of the Mothers.'

‘Then why has she not spoken?' said Fraid.

‘She will speak,' said Llwyd. ‘We must make sure we are listening.'

‘Ailia!' Llwyd's voice rang through the early dusk.

I had fled the sleephouse as I heard him prepare to leave, and now he sighted me
hurrying toward the kitchen. I stopped and waited while he caught up.

Despite the stoop of his back, he moved with a journeyman's grace. ‘May I walk with
you?' he said as he reached my side. If he was suspicious of me he did not show it.
His eyes caught the day's dying light. ‘I was impressed by your words at the feast
yesterday,' he said as we walked.

‘I suspect the knave Ruther was less so.'

Llwyd chuckled. ‘Though it appears it did not quell his interest.'

Now it was I who laughed. ‘No, it did not.'

‘Were you always of the kitchen? Raised by the Cookwoman there?'

‘Since near birth.'

‘And you have learned the plants by her?

I glanced at him, unsure what to confess. ‘I assist her when her bones stiffen, deliveries
and the like.'

‘Nothing more?'

I faltered. Llwyd was the keeper of all Caer Cad's learning. It was only by his sanction
that healers could practise their arts.

‘Tell me,' he continued, ignoring my silence, ‘has an animal appeared to you since
Beltane? An animal of unusual countenance or strangeness?'

We had reached the kitchen. The doorskins were pinned open. I saw the firelight glowing
through the doorway and caught a waft of Cookmother's sour milk dumplings on the
evening breeze. Suddenly I was very keen to be inside. I thought hard on his question.
‘None strange,' I said.

He kissed my cheeks. ‘Go well, maiden, enjoy your sweetmeats.'

It was only later, as I lay between Cookmother snoring at my back, the buck curled
in my arms, and Neha grunting at my feet, that I remembered the fish I had seen as
I bathed in the river.

I rushed through the next morning's tasks, then set about grinding a tincture, making
sure I was noticed by Cookmother as I pounded the white meadowsweet petals to a paste.

‘What do you make?' she duly asked.

I could not tell her that I was to meet Taliesin, a stranger of tribe unknown, who
waited within a breath of the forbidden forest. She would never have permitted it.
So I did, for the second time, what I had never done before: I played fool with the
truth. ‘Dun requested something further to dull the pain,' I announced. ‘I promised
I would bring it this afternoon.' I stared down at the quern, my cheeks burning with
the lies, and with the shame of not yet delivering even the first batch of herbs.

‘Good then.' She poked a wooden spoon into the mixture. ‘Throw in a little nightshade
if he's making such a fuss.'

With my face and neck splashed with rosewater, my braids tied, and Cookmother's fish
pin at my breast, I hurried out the south gate and down to the Cam. I soon reached
the Oldforest, where only Neha saw me again stop by the river, instead of turning
north toward Dun's farm.