The Dawn Stag: Book Two of the Dalriada Trilogy (65 page)

‘The air
was
stifling, was it not?’ Linnet’s hands were folded into her blue cloak, her deep-set eyes floating around the yard with apparent interest, despite the fact it held only a scattering of rusting, half-finished cart wheels and ploughs, all protruding from the snow.

Rhiann blew out her breath. ‘Yes, I find I am not as recovered as I’d like to think.’ She squinted down at her boots, the soles wet with melting frost.

‘Well.’ Gently, Linnet took her arm. ‘These things take time, as we both know.’ With a soft pressure, she urged Rhiann up the main path through the village, as Rhiann tried to think of some better excuse for her abrupt departure. And another part of her was wondering, as she did, why she shied away from telling Linnet her suspicions then and there.

Yet at the door of Rhiann’s house, Linnet took her by both arms and looked deep into her eyes. ‘In fact, child, take all the time you need. There is no rush, after all.’

Rhiann watched Linnet glide away, realizing that her aunt was giving her the time to come to some understanding of her own feelings. And so inside her house, Rhiann stood unmoving before her fire, her gaze lost in its flickering glow, wondering just when these feelings would become clear to her.

Traders were not expected so early in the year, but just before the moon turned again, two visitors did find their way to Dunadd out of the frosted reaches of the northern mountains.

Rhiann was standing beneath the gatehouse, peering dolefully out at sheets of rain which were marching grimly down from the valley of the ancestors. She stared at the two warriors as they dismounted in the shelter of the gatetower, struggling out from under long skin riding capes that covered them from head to toe, and realized with a shock that she knew them. One was the Creones messenger she had greeted the preceding leaf-fall on her return to Dunadd, when Eremon was in the east. He had proven to be a more amiable warrior than his king, and now he nodded respectfully as he recognized Rhiann.

‘Lady,’ he said by way of greeting, brushing drips from his moustache and shaking his hair so the rain ran from the ends of his braids.

It was common courtesy to warm and feed such arrivals before seeking their news, but Rhiann could not stay silent, not when she had watched Eremon being eaten away by frustration these past moons. She cleared her throat. ‘It takes courage to come so far in such a season.’

The other man, the Boresti, paid Rhiann little attention, his dark eyes darting to the Epidii warriors who warmed their hands before a fire under the eaves of a nearby storehouse. But the Creones warrior turned to Rhiann with a grin, and she saw then he was much younger than she’d first thought. He leaned close to her, with a swift glance over his shoulder. ‘My lord king has enjoyed no peace this long dark, for the fire that you lit, lady, shows no signs of dying. When I returned with news of your war leader’s victory, defying the Romans before your very gates, the frenzy of our swords and shields was deafening – like a storm breaking over the mountains!’

Another frustrated bard
, Rhiann noted. ‘Yet when you left, my lord was gravely ill,’ she replied. The words brought an echo of panic, even now, and a sudden suspicion: that the Creones king might be seeking to confirm a weakness among the Epidii. ‘So I am gratified to see such support still burning among the Creones,’ she added carefully.

‘I understand.’ The messenger spoke just as carefully. ‘Yet that is why we have come. If he is still your war leader, then we still wish to give him our allegiance.’

Rhiann blinked, her mittened hands over her mouth. She waited for the rush of joy …
this was what she had worked for … travelled all that way for
… but it was not forthcoming. All she felt was a recurring lurch of sickness. Abruptly she clasped her belly as if she could keep the contents of her stomach down there by will alone.

‘Lady?’ The warrior ducked his head, peering at her in the dim shadows of the gatetower, and Rhiann forced a shaky smile, raising her face.

‘Then your journey was not wasted,’ she informed him clearly, ‘for if you come with me, my lord will greet you himself in the King’s Hall.’

At these words, the sleek, wet head of the Boresti messenger also swung around, and Rhiann led the way up the path through the rain, the two men behind her. Yet she found her steps were heavy in the mud, a weight echoed strangely in her heart.

That night, Eremon gave an intimate feast to seal the new bond between the tribes. Determined to be the gracious hostess, Rhiann nevertheless found her stomach turned yet again, this time by the copious stench of male sweat and ale fumes. Poor Aedan only got halfway through a new lay he had composed, when his song was swept aside by a shout from an increasingly drunk crowd around a
fidchell
game, and he put away his harp and went off to sulk somewhere else. Taking her cue from him, Rhiann caught Caitlin’s eye, and they took Gabran to join Fola and Eithne at Rhiann’s house.

Soon, Rhiann found herself aching for bed, so tired, in fact, that she was almost glad that she had it to herself, for she was sure Eremon would stay with his men in the Hall.

Yet deep in the night he crept in beside her, his nose chilled from the night air, his hands warm as they roused her from sleep into desire. Without pausing to undress, he slid on top of her, the legs of his trousers rough against her thighs, his ale-soaked murmurs drawing forth not tenderness, but an urgency that was just as sweet. Blinking sleep away, Rhiann clung to him as he entered her, her nose buried in his smoky tunic.

Later, as Eremon fell down into a solid sleep, Rhiann lay under his weight, stroking his thick hair back from his temples in the dark. She knew what these messengers meant to him, and yet her own feelings were mixed. If the other tribes joined Eremon, war was a surety. And if they did not, the Romans would roll over them like a stormcloud. Was there another way? An alliance was what Eremon wanted, but perhaps the whisper of the child had lent Rhiann a new acuteness of sense, for the sickness in her belly, the dread, told her that an alliance would also take them to a place from which there would be no return.

A place where this man of hers, whose heart now beat in her own breast, would face the greatest danger of his life.

It was a terrible time to be breeding, as she had always known it would be.

CHAPTER 59

G
oddess Mother of All!’ Caitlin’s frustration released itself in a barrage of white-fletched arrows that sang through empty air, spurning the dead oak tree for which she was aiming.

‘Look!’ she squeaked, brandishing her bow angrily at Rhiann and Linnet, who were seated on hides on the slopes of the ancestor valley, where the low morning sun warmed the turf to a brilliant green. ‘I am useless now,’ Caitlin grumbled. ‘Worse than useless, in fact! Like a child with its first bow.’ She disappeared behind the tree and began plucking wayward arrows from the undergrowth, muttering to herself.

‘Such impatience,’ Linnet murmured, cutting another slice of cheese with her herb-knife. ‘I think she shares that with you.’

‘I can hardly defend myself on that point,’ Rhiann agreed.

By careful study of stars and sun, the druids marked the leaf-bud solstice – when day and night were of equal length – by burning offerings in the stone circle at the end of the ancestor valley. Declan and his brothers had concluded their rites to the sky gods at dawn, and now Linnet and Rhiann would shortly make another offering to the ancestor priestesses at the base of the stones. Since Gelert’s departure, the dealings between druid and priestess were proceeding with a lot more ease and respect, at least.

Linnet had also asked Caitlin to come this day without Gabran, and now she seemed in no hurry to begin the rite, taking a leisurely meal on the flat ground outside the lichen-stained stones. At the top of the slope the hazels and oaks reared wet and nearly bare, though the hazel catkins misted the copse with a veil of green.

Another curse floated from behind the stump, and an arrow sailed across the clearing into the shadows of a hawthorn thicket beyond, its branches clouded with the first blossom.

Momentarily distracted, Rhiann took the cheese and bannock from Linnet and bit into it, watching her aunt out of the corner of her eye. Ever since arriving at the circle, Linnet had been speaking in a most uncharacteristic way, a brittle chatter that set Rhiann’s teeth on edge. Now Linnet was staring down at the deer-hide, one fingernail tapping the hardened leather of a small mead flask.

Rhiann swallowed, the cheese and bread a hard lump in her throat. She only had one thing to say, yet the words kept sticking there, for somehow speaking them aloud made them real. A part of her still felt that the babe was a dream, she supposed. Voicing her news meant that a door would close behind her: a time when it was her secret alone. Hers and the child’s.

Furtively, Rhiann leaned back on one hand and peered down at her flat belly. The babe itself was still a vague concept to her. She stared harder, half expecting the child to sit up and make itself known. Something was in there, she told herself again. No,
someone
. At that thought, a thrill of mingled terror and wonder shot up Rhiann’s spine. A person was in there, not an idea, a person closer to Rhiann than anyone had ever been. And she was giving that person life.

The oak tree let out a satisfied clunk. A sigh of pleasure followed.

Raising her gaze, Rhiann saw that Linnet’s eyes were now fixed on her, expectant. ‘Never have a priestess for an aunt.’ Rhiann forced a smile, but Linnet’s mouth was pained, uncertain, and Rhiann’s attempt at flippancy trailed away.

It was then that Rhiann understood that this babe was not just hers after all. This child was for her kin, as much as for Eremon, and would be loved by them all. It was all the more precious because of those they had lost – Rhiann’s mother and father, her foster-family, the Sisters.

Linnet, who had lived with so much loss, was waiting for the gift Rhiann could give her.

‘Aunt,’ she said, the words unfurling naturally after all, drawn by Linnet’s shadowed eyes, ‘I think I am with child.’

For a long moment, Linnet did not move nor speak, then she, always the most elegant and constrained of women, buried her face in her hands. ‘Oh!’ Her voice was muffled, queerly breathless. ‘I knew, but I couldn’t be sure.’ She dropped her hands, her face now a hot rose from cheek to cheek. ‘It is three moons now, child, is it not?’

Rhiann smiled shakily. ‘Nearly. I should have known I could not keep it from you.’

‘I thought perhaps it was the illness but …’ Linnet shook her head, as a smile of relief broke through. ‘But I have had dreams of a child, a coming child.’

‘I have had no dreams,’ Rhiann replied, suddenly realizing that it was true. No dreams at all.

Linnet’s delighted smile faded. ‘Are you not pleased, daughter? I understand the difficulties you had before, and I never judged you for them, you must know that.’

Rhiann’s eye fell on Caitlin, who was bent over once more scrabbling for arrows, the weak sun bright on her fair hair. ‘When Caitlin first had Gabran, she chafed at being left behind, at not being able to ride by Conaire’s side. She could not travel, or even practise, as you see. She could only be a mother.’ Rhiann stared down at her spread hands. ‘I was terrified of the same thing, and that’s why I took the brew. My dream has carried Eremon and I across Alba – what if I could not be Ban Cré and mother both?’

Linnet’s reply was low. ‘A Ban Cré is often a mother, my love. It is fitting.’

‘I know!’ Rhiann replied with some desperation. ‘But no Ban Cré has ever faced what we face now, aunt. I feared becoming useless to Eremon, to my people. You must think what I did terrible, but I …’ She broke off, for the taste of the glory and the power of the dream was sharp on her tongue, and she knew, suddenly, that wanting it was an indelible part of her. She needed it to be complete.

Linnet took Rhiann’s hand and turned it upwards, tracing the lines on her palm. ‘You walk a path like no other. It is not for me to say what you should do, only love you for all you do.’

Rhiann bit her lip, her eyes stinging. ‘I never told you this, but two years ago, on the Sacred Isle, Nerida and Setana told me to root myself in this world, by being wife and mother as well as priestess. They asked me again, just before they died. And aunt, as skilled and clever as you may think me, it has taken me these years to find that, with Eremon.’ Rhiann looked up into Linnet’s calm eyes. ‘In that Otherworld place, I pledged myself to him by surrendering all, and after that could no more stop our child growing in me as leave him altogether.’

Rhiann’s pulse was beating erratically now, fluttering within her as if it did not know which way to fly, and Linnet folded her fingers around her hand. ‘Then let me ask you this, daughter.
Now
it is done, how do you really feel?’

Rhiann stared at her aunt, as tears welled up with every thump of her breast, laying bare all that confused her. ‘That’s just it,’ she whispered. ‘I feel so happy and I don’t know why!’

Linnet smiled her broadest, and pulled an unresisting Rhiann into her arms.

‘What’s wrong?’ Caitlin was standing there now, nervously twisting the stone guard on her bow wrist.

As Rhiann struggled to speak, Linnet answered for her. ‘Rhiann is to have a baby.’

And following those simple words, a cry of joy rang out over the green, sunlit slopes, echoing off the ancient, grey stones and up into the sky.

If Rhiann had felt coddled when she was ill, it was nothing to what was lavished upon her by Caitlin, Fola and Eithne on their return from the valley. Against all protests, Rhiann was tucked up in her chair by the fire, a blanket wrapped around her despite the fairness of the day. Eithne disappeared to appropriate eggs and milk for a pudding, while Fola repaired to Rhiann’s workbench and began opening and sniffing every jar she could reach on the shelves. As if to affirm the whole business, Caitlin plucked a sleepy Gabran from the bed and swung him into Rhiann’s lap. Gazing down at his slow-blinking eyes, Rhiann allowed herself to imagine, for the first time, what the weight of her own child would feel like in her arms. The sharp tug under her ribs caught her by surprise.