Skin (3 page)

I placed the loaves in my basket. Even within my short remembering, the tendrils
of Roman ways had touched Caer Cad. Aside from the pretty cups and the dark wines
that filled them, there were new arts like coloured glass, oils from fruit, and different
coins that served in trade. More and more barrow-loads of our lead and grain were
carted out and rolled onto ships bound for the Empire. But the tribes had always
been, and remained, the law-keepers of this land.

Rome's army had come one hundred summers before and the eastern kings had defended
their freedom with trade and terms. There was always talk that they would come again,
that they would not be so easily withheld, but I was not afraid. Cookmother had taught
me
that the roots of the tribes reached deep and it would take more than Roman swords
to dig them out.

I thanked Mael for the bread and he smiled at me through blackened teeth. ‘First
time through the fires tonight?' he asked.

I nodded.

‘Then Mothers bless you.' He chuckled and the knot tightened in my belly.

Outside, Neha sprang to her feet. Sun streamed over Sister Hill to the east. Already
there were women busied at its crest, softening the ground for the poles and laying
the offerings.

Of the year's four great festivals, Beltane was the most beloved by the tribes. A
night of fire, of joy, where the heat of man against woman broke open the winter,
called back the sun and readied the ground for a strong, sweet harvest. For girls
who had first bled since last Beltane, such as me, tonight would be their first union.
I was twice seven summers.

Barking filled the air. Neha had galloped ahead. I ran after her, hoping she hadn't
bitten the wheelwright again.

When I rounded the corner I found her snarling at a young tribesman marking his fightcraft
in the street. I pushed through the crowd around him and called Neha off. ‘I'm sorry,'
I panted, grabbing her scruff. ‘She's not fond of strangers.'

He laughed. ‘She mistakes me then. I am no stranger to Cad.'

I stared at him. He was well cast, of medium height but heavily muscled, his beard
lime-bleached in the style of the warrior. Despite the crisp morning, he practised
without a shirt, his silver torque glinting on his shaved chest. He was familiar
but I could not place him.

‘Are you returned from fosterage?' I asked, hooking my unbraided hair behind my shoulders.

‘Ay.' He sheathed his sword. ‘I am Ruther of Cad.'

Orgilos's son. Often spoken of. Fostered to the east for
fight-training, then to
Rome to learn their soldier's craft, he would have been almost twenty summers now.

I nodded. ‘Blessings upon your return.' Neha growled under my firm grip. ‘Hush!'
I hissed. ‘Forgive her. She's cursed with a wolf's temper.'

‘And her mistress?' He stared at me. ‘Is she so cursed?'

I answered with a brief smile, then pulled Neha and turned away.

‘Do you not offer your name?'

‘Ailia,' I called over my shoulder.

‘Skin to Caer Cad?'

I stopped, wordless. It had been many summers since I had met this question.

In the silence, a woman's voice called. ‘She's unskinned, daughter only to the doorstep!'

My face burned. There were those who were angered by my place in the Tribequeen's
kitchen. Years of taunts had taught me to walk away without looking back, lest their
spit wet my face.

‘Unskinned?' said Ruther. ‘Yet you hold your head like a queen.'

‘Because she attends the queen's kitchen,' called another. ‘And the Cookwoman pets
her like a house dog.'

I kept walking. Ruther was right to be surprised. Not often would one without skin
move through the town so freely. A pebble struck my shoulder, hard and sharp. I stopped
as the sting gave way to a warm ache and a trickle of blood down my back.

‘Cease!' shouted Ruther into the crowd. ‘Do you strike a maiden's back? And for nothing
but an accident of birth? Do you still live in this darkness since I have been gone?'
He turned to me. ‘Go home, daughter of the doorstep,' he said. ‘Be proud of your
boldness.'

Before I turned the corner, I glanced back. Ruther had unsheathed his sword and was
swiping and twisting it again to a tide of admiring murmurs. Who is he, I wondered,
who cares so little for the laws of skin?
‘Handsome, isn't he?' said a townswoman
as she passed.

‘If your tastes are such,' I answered.

‘He thought you sweet enough.'

As I hurried home, I saw the thick smoke of the fringe fires coiling above the town
walls.

Just beyond the southern gate, wedged along the lower banks of the ramparts, was
a tight-packed warren of stick huts and hide tents, foul with littered bone scraps
and poor drainage. These were the fringes. Home to the skinless. Shunned by the tribe.

Summer was strong in deer spirit. Except for those who had travelled or married
in—bringing with them skins of the owl, wolf or the river—most born here were skin
to the deer.

Born to the skinless, or lost to their families before naming, the unskinned were
not claimed by a totem. Their souls were fragmented, unbound to the Singing. If they
remained little seen, they were not despised, not usually harmed. The townspeople
gave them enough grain, cloaks and work, if they would do it. But they could not
live within the town walls because no one could be sure of who they were.

I quickened my pace and Neha trotted beside me.

Skin was gifted from mother to child by a song.

I had no mother. I had no skin.

But I had been spared. Just.

‘Who cast the stone?' spat Cookmother, dabbing an ointment of comfrey on my back.

In the quiet of the kitchen, I sat between my worksisters on a long log bench draped
with pelts. We held bowls of bread soaked in goat's
milk and huddled close to the
hearthstones as the morning sun had not yet warmed the thick walls of our roundhouse.

‘I did not see.' I winced as Cookmother covered my wound.

‘I'll strangle them with their own innards if I learn of it.' She lifted my dress
back onto my shoulders, and I leaned against her warm bulk. It was by Cookmother's
insistence alone that I remained in the Tribequeen's kitchen.

As we ate, I told the girls of the Great Bear's death, and of my meeting with Ruther.

‘It is said he can match twenty Romans with his sword,' said Ianna, her wide eyes
blinking.

‘More likely to share their wine and whores, I've heard,' said Cah.

‘Speak not against Orgilos's son in my kitchen, thanks be,' said Cookmother, stirring
the fire pot.

Bebin rose and took up a flame to light the torches. ‘Was there another returned
with him?' she asked.

‘Who could you mean?' jibed Cah.

We all knew she spoke of Uaine, also fostered to the east. She had awaited his return
for three summers.

‘He was alone,' I murmured.

Bebin turned away and my heart fell.

‘Uaine will be schooled to a high warrior now,' said Cah. ‘He will set his sights
beyond a kitchen girl when he returns.'

I could have struck her with a fire iron, but I knew Bebin had more sense than to
listen to Cah.

Bebin walked the curved room, igniting the torches, each one revealing more of the
swirling red circles that marked our walls. She lit only the kitchen's eastern half—the
realm of the living—where the floor and shelves were crammed with baskets, grindstones,
grainpots and buckets. The western half, where our beds were laid, was the place
of the dead and must remain always in darkness.

‘Empty your bowls, Cah, Ianna,' snapped Cookmother. ‘It is time for your lessons.'

Cah groaned.

‘What was that?' said Cookmother. ‘Rather wash out the shit trough, would you?' She
reached over and snatched Cah's bowl.

‘I had not finished,' said Cah.

‘You have now. Get your cloak.'

Bebin smiled as she caught my eye. Four years my elder, she had finished her schooling,
but every morning except wane days and feast days, Cah and Ianna, both my age, were
still expected to go to the shrine, where learners gathered before dispersing to
the rivers or to the craft huts for schooling.

I followed them to the door and watched them walk off, laughing. Learning was wasted
on both of them. Ianna had no brains for it and Cah had no gratitude. They had no
idea of their privilege. I would have cut off my first finger to be in their place
for just one summer. But I was not permitted to go with them or hear any talk of
what they learned. It was forbidden for the unskinned to be taught.

Neha nosed my hand. I squatted beside her and buried my fingers in the swathe of
white fur around her neck. She was not a large dog—her shoulder only at my knee when
I stood—but her carriage was proud. She turned her snout to meet my caress. Her face
was unusually marked—half-grey, half-white in perfect division—but it was her eyes
that drew the most curiosity: the one belonging to the white side was ice-blue, the
other brown. It gave her an eerie, lopsided stare that, combined with her wary temper,
many felt marked her as a friend to the dark spirits. But I knew her soul was true
and I had taken many years of comfort from her odd-eyed gaze.

‘Come, Ailia,' called Cookmother from the hearth. ‘Fraid will be ready for her bath
and you know she does not like to wait.'

The moon has a name—a Mother's name—but it is too powerful to say.

We say only
brightness
or
light of the night.

We are too small to say its true name.

A name. A soul. They are the same.

I
PUT
DOWN
the brimming water bucket and struck the bell at the Tribequeen's outer
door. Although I had passed this threshold daily since I had turned twelve, it still
made my belly flutter. I paused at the inner door and she called me through.

Inside, the air was heavy with birch smoke and the scent of the walnut oil she rubbed
in her hair. She sat, straight-backed, on a stool by the fire. Dressed only in her
linen night-tunic, without the layers of bracelets and neckrings that marked her
as our leader, she looked pale and thin.

I was one of the few permitted to see her un-metalled, but I never forgot that she
was Fraid, unchallenged Tribequeen of Northern Durotriga, skin to the deer. She carried
the nimble wit of her totem and enough of its caution as well. Few tribeswomen rose
to rule but
Fraid had a stomach for it that her brothers did not, and the shelves
lining the walls were laden with gifts—carvings and jewels—that bore testament to
the bonds she had wrought with our neighbouring tribes.

‘Come,' she said.

I could not read her face as I walked toward her. Her high brow was smoother, more
innocent, than one would expect of a woman who had borne the weight of a tribe for
twenty summers. Yet usually I could detect the twitch of the lip, the lift of the
jaw, which told me if matters in the tribe were not well. Today I could not.

I glanced at her bed. No warrior lay within, though she had taken many since her
husband had fallen to fever last midwinter. The bed of her brother, Fibor, was also
empty and her youngest daughter, Manacca—seven summers old and the only one yet to
be fostered away—had torn past as I returned from the well. Fraid was alone.

Yet when I drew closer, I was startled to see Llwyd the Journeyman, sitting motionless
on the carved bench to Fraid's right. Her concern must have been great to call her
highest advisor before she was properly cloaked.

Clutching the bucket, I bowed deeply.

‘Quickly, Ailia,' said Fraid. ‘I'm poorly slept and hungry.'

I pulled a bowl from the shelf and ladled it full of the barley porridge bubbling
on the hearth. Etaina, Fibor's wife, must have prepared it before she left. ‘Might
I serve you food also, Journeyman?'