The Boar Stone: Book Three of the Dalriada Trilogy (16 page)

broke over the rocks of the land …

Afterwards, Eremon and Rhiann were forced to flee the battlefield and sailed to Erin for their own safety. They birthed a family there, a dun where many found protection and justice, and strengthened the kingdom of Dalriada.

‘Gabran became king here in Alba,’ Orla whispered, reciting faithfully, her eyes bright with the war-light though she was but a child. ‘And later the kin of Eremon and Conaire joined when Eremon’s granddaughter wed Gabran’s son, and their children founded Dalriada in Alba. So Fa is descended from Eremon
and
Conaire, the greatest warriors
ever
! Isn’t that wonderful? And we are, too!’

Minna’s breath whistled out, her eyes wide open as if she could see in the shadows the pictures Davin was painting.
A strong man on a horse beneath a banner, turning as the Romans poured down a slope.

She did not want to face it, admit it, even to acknowledge the inevitable shock as the song ended with the same war cry:
The Boar
!

The chant was taken up by the drunken warriors downstairs, overflowing into a great roar that shook the hall. ‘The Boar! The Boar!’

Gradually, the music slowed until Davin dropped his head for the last flourish of strings, a haunting refrain that spoke of a yearning farewell. As the final note faded, the smoke took the bard from view. Silence fell.

After a moment a great sigh was released, and rustlings broke out once more as people stirred. Murmurs began, growing louder, breaking into laughter. ‘Open the doors!’ someone cried drunkenly then. ‘The firewood must be wet – I can’t breathe in here.’

‘Too cold,’ someone answered.

‘Bah! Open them, I say.’

Servants dutifully scurried, the doors creaked open and the air finally cleared. ‘Look now, Minna!’ Orla cried. Her eyes stinging, Minna did.

She had grown used to a quiet hall with Queen Maeve on her couch, her advisers and dull lyre player. Now it was as if one room had been replaced with another. A tide of colour and movement eddied around the fire: the sheen of furs, the bright dyes of tunics and cloaks, the lustre of swords and jewellery. Ruddy warriors with wild hair gesticulated while servants ducked under their arms with ale jugs. The firelight glinted on their arm-rings, and the torcs at their necks. Tall women in colourful dresses laughed and caught the eyes of passing men, bracelets looped up their wrists, jewel-drops at their ears, gold threaded through their long braids. The scents of roast meat, ale and sweat floated upwards.

‘There’s Fa.’ Finola pointed.

Minna couldn’t see much more than the top of his head. His long, dark hair was braided back at the sides, and an immense, twisted gold ring sat about his neck: not a slave-ring, but a royal torc. He strode confidently among his people, pausing to speak to a warrior here, a merchant there, clapping shoulders. But there remained something tense about him, which Minna could feel even from her place in the gallery.

‘Ooh, and there’s Darach,’ Orla said. An old man in a pale robe sat on a stool, and the people had left a space around him. The forelock of his white hair was twisted into tiny plaits, each tipped with a gold bead.
The chief druid.
Darach was sitting where Oran usually positioned himself, beside Maeve’s couch. Next to Darach the queen was frowning with a disdain she did not trouble to hide. Behind, half in the shadows, was Brónach, her face impassive, showing nothing.

King Cahir was speaking to that warrior Ruarc now, their stances betraying unease, hackles raised despite their smiles. But just as Minna was about to draw back, as if he felt her eyes, the golden king glanced up and looked directly at her.

She couldn’t register any features beyond a glimpse of black brows, leanness and steady eyes, because a falling sensation nearly sucked her over the edge of the gallery. And all he would see, she thought, were the whites of her eyes and her knuckles in the firelight, like some crazed spirit gazing down from the rafters.

Minna rolled to her back, breathless, the words of the bard’s song still ringing in her heart.

Chapter 15

T
he wax tablet slipped through Minna’s fingers again and thudded on the earth floor. She cursed under her breath and squatted to retrieve it, praying it wasn’t broken. Lia yipped, bounding about as Minna impatiently pushed her snout away.

On their benches, Orla and Finola were apprehensive as they watched her. She had been nervy and irritable all morning, Davin’s song going around her head, the echo of the war cry ringing in her ears. She couldn’t steady her hands.

The doorway darkened and Minna glanced up, then blushed and leaped to her feet, brushing herself down. ‘
Domina
.’

Queen Maeve’s hand rested on the shoulder of a sturdy, blond boy. ‘This is the Prince Garvan,’ she announced, her face still puffy from the wine the night before.

Minna hailed the child, but the scowl given in answer made her heart sink. Garvan was in body like his mother, round-faced and freckled, though with green eyes instead of blue.

‘He is very intelligent,’ Maeve continued, with a fond glance at her offspring. ‘You will find his mind to be exceptional.’

‘Mother—’ the boy began.

‘There, now.’ Maeve, who never touched her daughters, pressed her lips to his brow, and he flinched, screwing up his nose at her stifling cloud of perfume. ‘You will be good and learn all you can, as I asked you to do.’

At the door the queen glanced at the girls. ‘Do not hold him back for the younger ones,’ she instructed, blue eyes resting on Minna. ‘He will be king; they will be married. Have I made myself clear?’

Minna felt the girls’ eyes on her. ‘Yes,
domina.
Perfectly.’

Garvan threw himself to an empty bench, barely glancing at his sisters, and folded his arms. There followed a most difficult hour. The prince spoke Latin well and wrote a small amount, taught by his mother, but sneered when Minna asked him to copy out the one line of Virgil she remembered, which she wrote on his wax tablet. ‘Poetry is for girls,’ he taunted. ‘Not warriors.’

She breathed through her nose. ‘And yet this is what your mother has ordered.’

‘I don’t care,’ Garvan snapped, and dashed the tablet to the ground. Again.

With gritted teeth, Minna bent down for it. ‘Then I suppose you know history better,’ she said with narrowed eyes. A headache had started banging on her temples. ‘Livy, pray tell? Tacitus? Plutarch? Polybius?’

Garvan merely scowled again, and Minna regretted her flash of temper. This sulky boy was to be king some day, though she couldn’t reconcile that with her glimpses of his father. She decided to continue with the girls, hoping he might join in out of boredom, or even to boast. But Garvan turned his attentions to the puppy’s tail instead, and when Minna admonished him mildly, he gave a sly smile and yanked Lia into the air by her back legs. Orla screamed and tried to reach her dog, while the puppy yelped and Finola burst into tears.

At thirteen Garvan was just shorter than Minna, and at last she managed to furiously wrestle the whimpering pup off him and hand her to Orla. ‘That is not becoming behaviour for a prince!’

Garvan’s plump cheeks mottled. ‘You’re a slave: I’ll have you whipped for that.’

‘I think your mother would be more concerned about your disobedience of her.’

‘Oh, really?’ he cried. Without further ado, he stalked out of the door.

Minna stared after him, winded. Then she slowly placed the stylus back on the table, struggling to keep her voice calm, as Finola sniffled and Orla, who looked stricken, stroked Lia. ‘Stay here, and don’t move.’ Then she hurried to find Maeve.

The queen’s women told Minna she was having her hair dressed at her bed-place in the king’s hall. Minna took the ladder to the gallery, sick with dread, but when she approached the lamplight at Maeve’s dressing-table, far from the stairs, she found herself ducking into her own bed-place first to summon courage.

Through the gaps in the bedscreens, Minna saw the queen wince as one of her maids caught an earring in her hair. She batted the girl’s fingers away with her hand-mirror. ‘That’s enough of your clumsiness,’ she growled. ‘Go.’ Gathering the pins, the maid bowed and fled.

This was the time. But just as Minna drew another breath, bracing herself, feet came pounding up the stairs. She shrank into the shadows behind Orla’s clothes chest as the king strode past with Garvan at his heels. Neither saw her.

‘Husband,’ the queen said coldly.

‘What is this foolery of my children learning the Roman tongue?’ the king snapped. Minna stared at the back of his head as he ran a hand through his loose, rumpled hair.

Maeve placed the mirror down. ‘A Roman slave fell into my hands by chance. She is the girl’s nurse, that’s all.’

The two of them had squared off as if taking up a long-running argument, ignoring their son. ‘Don’t play with me, Maeve.’ The king’s voice was ice. ‘You know I do not want Garvan to have any more Latin. He speaks enough as it is.’

‘I know what you want, and it is foolish.’ Minna had a full view of the queen’s face, her blue eyes hard, her thin mouth contemptuous. ‘You know as I do who holds the power in this land, Cahir. Your son must take his place among those favoured by the Romans.’

Garvan was darting eager glances between his parents.

‘I will
not
breed a Latin prince of Dalriada,’ the king growled. ‘There is precious little left of our blood, and I won’t have you leaching the rest away.’

‘Your
blood?’
Maeve snorted. ‘Other tribes have been Roman friends for generations, and
their
wealth and power is unparalleled—’

‘Wealth? Power? Is that all you think about? Roman wine and jewels and silk and … and
figs
, by all the gods!’

Maeve’s head snapped back, cheeks mottled beneath the powder. ‘No,
I
think for
you
! I think about a proper Roman garrison that will keep us safe from those bloodthirsty Picts, about equipping your
son
,’ she jabbed a finger at Garvan, ‘with everything that will help him survive in this world!’ Maeve leaned forward, eyes glittering. ‘You owe it to him to give him
all
the weapons he needs – not just that sword and a spear. The world is shifting: he needs knowledge, he needs teaching. Would you deny him the right to lead his people under his own terms?’

Cahir’s breath grated on the low roof. ‘We all have to carry our fathers’ yokes. I have had to.’

‘It is not a yoke, it is wisdom,’ she retorted. ‘And you’re a fool to think otherwise.’

Cahir took a step towards her. ‘I would think twice about bandying that word fool around any more, my lady,’ he said very quietly, and at his tone Maeve at last showed fear, swiftly veiled. ‘Now, let me make myself clear.
My heir is
not to be schooled as a Latin prince. I absolutely forbid it. Do not gainsay me on this. Ever.’

Maeve’s defiance quailed, before her face set into a mask. ‘Of course.’ She shrugged. ‘I think you are wrong, but of course. They are your people, it is your dun. If it is burned to the ground around you, I can always go home to my father.’

‘You can do that at any time,’ Cahir murmured. ‘But seeing as you were the gift that sealed our treaty, you might find him displeased to see you break it out of petulance.’

The queen’s lips pursed sourly. Satisfied with her silence, the king turned to pound back down the stairs. Minna shrank into the shadows, her head down, and did not see his face. For a moment nothing happened, as Maeve stared into the mirror in her lap.

‘Mother,’ Garvan whined then. ‘The sword and spear are what I should be learning. Not silly words!’

‘Hush!’ Maeve said sharply. She glanced around. ‘You will learn the Latin because I command it. I do not care what your father says. I had underestimated how pig-headed he gets after visiting the uncivilized north, that is all.’

‘But Mother,
not from a girl
.’

Maeve grabbed his wrist. ‘I can make you a greater king than any other, but for this you need the word. You need learning, wisdom and cunning to see into the hearts of men, in Rome and beyond.’

‘But Father took me south with him, Father—’

‘Your
father
is not the king you will be!’

‘He is … he looks …’ Garvan faltered. ‘I’ve seen him fight, Mother, and there is no one like him. Do not …’ His voice trailed away, a boy unable to speak with the conviction of a man.

Maeve glared him into silence. ‘Since my brothers died you are the obvious heir to my father’s hall as well as this. You could be king of both tribes.’ She pulled him closer, shaking him. ‘So tell me you do not want to be the greatest king in Alba; that you do not want gold to fill your coffers and men to bear a forest of spears for you. That you do not want to make Dunadd the flame of the west, the greatest trading port on the seas. That you do not want a fine hall of stone, and heated floors and proper baths –
tell me you do not
!’