Skin (5 page)

‘If the laws are not held,' I whispered, ‘then what protects us?'

His eyebrows shot skyward. ‘This is what I seek to learn.'

There was something that angered me in these words and in the smile that accompanied
them. ‘Is it not tribal law that has placed you as nobleman?'

His smile fell away. ‘Have you not seen me fight? I will earn my position by my sword
against any warrior of Albion.'

‘And a nobleman's schooling has bought you that skill.'

He stared at me and I looked straight back. His eyes were as blue as flame. ‘So are
you permitted, at least, to attend this night?' His voice was low. ‘After all, even
cows and pigs run the fires.'

I reddened. ‘Of course.'

‘And will you dance?'

‘Ay.' No one was denied the dance.

‘And take a fire lover at your will?'

The hairs on my arm rose to stand. ‘Yes.'

‘Good then,' he said, suddenly too jovial. ‘Perhaps I shall meet you there.' He stepped
forward, draping his arm around Uaine's shoulder. ‘Good brother!' he exclaimed. ‘I
did not see you there, and who is this delicious sweetmeat with you?'

I stared as he laughed with Uaine, gathering the ravel of my wits. It did not take
one any more learned than myself to see that he was not to be trusted.

The afternoon was busy with preparation for tomorrow's feast.

Ianna and Cah helped Cookmother to knead the barley cakes while Bebin and I decanted
the barrels of beer and lined the roasting pit with straw.

All had to be completed before our kitchen fire was doused at sunset. Our hearths
burned ceaselessly throughout the year, except at Beltane, when they were extinguished,
to be re-lit, reborn, by a flaming tallow stick carried back from the fires after
the dance.

We were deep in work when the horn call from the shrine announced the late-day hunt.

I ran back to the kitchen and gathered the pots and vials from the medicine table.
Cookmother packed her tools and we left for the shrine. She gripped my arm as we
wound through the back streets. The shrine lay at the midpoint of Cad's central roadway,
but we took a less visible path so that fewer would see it was I who accompanied
her. ‘My knees cannot bear the distance,' she panted. ‘Next time you will have to
go alone.'

Although I could not be taught, for years, at Cookmother's skirts I had watched and
gathered, unsanctioned, the arts of healing. Because
her hands had become gnarled
by labour and her back twisted with age, it was I who had ground the heavy medicine
stone, wrapped marsh reed tight around a cut, and pressed deep into a swollen belly
to discover the lay of a babe. By the time I was nine summers old I had dressed hunt
wounds open to the bone and sewn a man's flesh with an iron needle while five men
held him down.

There were physicians among the journeymen of Summer, but none as trusted as Cookmother.
And none she trusted more than me to assist her, as I had until late last night,
distilling the frog poisons and bud essences that would aid the hunt.

We passed the last of the roundhouses and emerged back onto the open street. Turned
earth surrounded the entrance to the shrine, where calves and foals, offerings for
Beltane, lay in shallow graves, their bones safeguarding the shrine.

A lone journeywoman, barely older than me, left the hall as we entered, the green
robe of the novice seer billowing behind her. Cookmother stopped, offering the greeting
of the salmon, and the journeywoman murmured the deer skin greeting in response.

I stood, head lowered, saying nothing, but I turned to watch as she walked away.
Hers was the path of hard learning: long days in the groves, listening and questioning,
twenty summers gleaning the sacred truths and rites of our country. Many sought this
path, but only those who showed great fire of mind could begin it. For women of knowledge
could travel far further than even their journeybrothers. The journeywomen were those
who could cross—mostly by spirit but sometimes by flesh—beyond the hardworld to the
spirit realm, the place of the Mothers.

‘Is she Isle-trained?' I whispered to Cookmother.

‘I have heard she will go this summer.'

I fought a wave of envy. While the men went to the Island of Mona, the most gifted
journeywomen from all of Albion trained
their craft at the Glass Isle. I knew little
else of it. Only that it was water-bound, protected by mists, and closer than anywhere
else to the Mothers' realm.

Within the cool darkness of the shrine, the men of the hunt were seated on rows of
benches, giving thanks before the altar. Ruther was not among them and I was relieved
not to be distracted as I worked the plants.

Fibor, Fraid's brother and first of her warriors, stood waiting to dedicate the hunt,
but first Cookmother had to ready their eyes and arrows with juices. She worked quickly,
brushing frog poison over their upheld spear tips.

The men began the low chant to ready themselves.

Strong like a bear

Strong like a bear

I followed behind Cookmother, holding the bottles as she tipped droplets of goldenseal
into their eyes to bring them clear vision.

See like a bird

See like a bird

She turned to me in annoyance. ‘Bah, Ailia, my own eyes are failing me. You finish
it,' she said, thrusting the bronze pipette into my hand.

‘Are you sure?' I whispered. Only ever within the walls of the kitchen did she charge
me with treatment.

‘Ay—begin, begin,' she urged. ‘The mixture will not hold for long.'

I finished walking the circle of upturned faces, dripping the poison into each pair
of eyes. ‘It will pass in a moment,' I whispered to one, who winced with the sting.

Eyes streaming, the men stood, making the cries of the animal they would hunt: the
short blasting snorts of the doe, the guttural grunts of the tending buck. They mimicked
not in disdain but in kinship. The eating of totem meat was forbidden, except at
Beltane
when it was hunted, just once, and eaten to remake the bonds.

Fibor called the dedication and strode to the doorway. The men gathered their weapons
and followed him out to the roadway, headed for the forest's edge where the dimming
light would embolden the deer and draw them out from the shelter of trees.

‘Return with deer or shame!' Cookmother cried after them. She took my arm. ‘Well
worked, Ailia,' she said.

‘The knave Ruther proclaims himself loudly.' Bebin passed a branch of fresh hawthorn
to me as I stood atop an upturned woodbox. We were decorating the Great House and
it was tiring work; five men on end would not reach its roof peak and five farm huts
would not cover its floor.

‘Too loudly,' I agreed, tucking the sprig of white blossoms behind a beam. Delicate
petals showered on her head as I wedged it in.

‘Still,' she said, ‘you seem to have caught his eye at market this morning.'

‘As many others catch his eye.' I jumped off the box and dragged it under the next
beam.

‘Choose carefully if he comes seeking you tonight,' Bebin paused as she followed
me, finding her words. ‘He is changed from what I remember of him.'

I straightened to face her. ‘How so?'

‘I'm not sure. There's a newness in him. Something not of the tribes.'

‘And Uaine? Is he so changed?'

‘Perhaps,' she answered. ‘But Ruther is somehow at its source.'

I laughed off her warning. ‘He is the son of a high warrior to the deer. He won't
come looking for a skinless girl.' I paused. ‘No one will.'

‘Oh, Ailia.' She took my hand. ‘It will be you who'll do the choosing. There are
knaves who'd have had you long since.'

‘None of honour.' I picked a bud from the branches cradled in her arm. ‘And even
if there were, I have no clan ties to offer in marriage.'

Bebin threw back her head and laughed in the way that saw her first coupled at every
festival. ‘Beltane is no time for making marriages. It's the night to throw rings
off!' She set down the branches on the box and turned to me. ‘This is the marriage
of earth and sun! Clan ties mean little tonight.'

I nodded. ‘There's a petal on your cheek.'

‘Sweet friend,' Bebin said, looping her arm around my waist. ‘Do not be nervous.
All will be well.'

Not until the sun nudged the western horizon did we hear the shouts and barks of
the returning hunt. Bebin and I were in the courtyard, stoking the roasting pit outside
the Great House. We rushed to the queen's gate, where a crowd was gathering to meet
the hunters.

Fibor came first, then the others strode through the gate, a strung milking doe swinging
between them, its pelt matted with blood. The last of the hunters carried its young—a
single buck, unharmed, no more than one moon old.

We followed them to the Great House, where the doe was laid on the ground at the
door and received by Fraid, before the hunters swiftly gutted and lowered it, without
beheading, into the pit. There were cheers and laughter from the crowd and Neha surged
forward with the rest of the dogs, snarling and snapping for her share of the innards.

I stood back while the doe was covered with straw, stones and finally earth. As I
turned to go back to the kitchen, I noticed the baby buck standing wide-eyed and
alone beside me, paralysed by the noise and the dogs. I scooped it up, its spindly
mass no heavier than a basket of bread. It struggled feebly then collapsed, trembling,
into my arms.

Fraid called to the crowd. ‘Look how the sun is nearly set. Go to
your homes, put
out your hearths and ready yourselves for the fires!'

With shouts of excitement, the crowd dispersed and Bebin came to my side, cooing
and fussing over the baby deer.

‘Ailia!' Fraid called. ‘Go and lay out my metals. I will follow soon to dress.'

‘Can you take him back to the kitchen?' I asked, pushing the buck into Bebin's arms.

As I walked to the sleephouse, I saw townspeople tying rowan branches to their doorways.
The boughs would protect against the dark spirits who could steal forth when the
Beltane fires burned a hole to the Otherworld. The rowan was a reminder to us that
when we sought light, there was an equal risk of finding darkness.

From the baskets and boxes that rimmed her walls, I pulled out all of Fraid's metals
onto a table draped with cloth, wondering what she would choose tonight. Next to
the coloured armbands, anklets, neckrings and her silver festival torque was my favourite
of her ornaments: a bronze hand mirror with the swirling face of a Mother engraved
on its back. I picked up the mirror, savouring the weight and lustre of the metal
and the texture of its scored pattern under my fingertips. I loved the spinning patterns
that flowed from the hands of our makers. None of the Roman crafts were ever as beautiful.

On a wooden stand beside the table was the Tribequeen's diadem, the tribe's most
sacred piece. With its hammered gold and flame-coloured stones, it seemed as if lit
from within.

Glancing at the doorway, I set the mirror down. Then with both hands, I lifted the
crown—heavier than I expected—and placed it on my head. When I held the mirror to
my face, I gasped. Before me was a queen. A Mother.

‘Ailia?' Fraid was at the doorway. ‘What are you doing?'

I wrenched the crown from my head and pushed it back onto its stand.

‘This headpiece marks the first consort to the deer,' she said, striding toward me.
‘Do you seek to defile it?'

‘No!' I assured her, furious with my stupidity. ‘I am sorry, Tribequeen. I…I was
beguiled by the metal—'

She stood before me, surprise knotting her brow. ‘You might have my favour,' she
said, ‘but do not forget that I am at the very limits of my grace in keeping you
here. Do not give me cause to release you. You are here by a spider's thread.'