The White Mare: The Dalraida Trilogy, Book One (44 page)

‘But you could have rid yourself of the baby, if you wished. You had the knowledge.’

‘Yes. But I did not know if I would ever have a baby to anyone else and I … When she was inside me, I heard her, Rhiann. I heard her soul, the music of her soul. And I could not do it.’ She rushed on. ‘I secreted myself away. As a priestess, it was easy to find excuses, even for your mother. I bore the babe, and by that time your mother was pregnant with you. I could not shame her, Rhiann. She would have known whose child it was. I thought that if I sent Caitlin away for a few years, just a few years, then your mother would have a gaggle of children. And it would matter less; so I could bring Caitlin back.’ Her throat moved as she swallowed. ‘But she disappeared, and I could get no news of her. A few moons later I lost your mother.’ She bowed her head. ‘You were all that kept me going.’

Rhiann put her hand on Linnet’s back, palm over where her heart was, and just held it there. Purged of her own grief, she could at last feel Linnet’s anguish. And she knew that it had been great, burning with bitterness and guilt. ‘I understand, aunt. I am sorry for the words I said.’

‘You said nothing that I have not said to myself a thousand times and more. Yet I buried the memories in another life … another time. That is why I kept my silence.’

‘I know.’ Rhiann smiled wearily. ‘But the gap between us just kept getting deeper. When you told me of Caitlin I felt it all slip away … I was so scared.’

‘You feared she would take your place in my heart.’

Rhiann caught her breath. ‘Yes.’ It was so simple after all, but this
truth had escaped her. That is why the betrayal cut so deep, and would not heal. That is why the anger burned and would not cool. Eremon was right. It was fear all along; and she had been blind to it.

Linnet grabbed her hand and kissed it. ‘No one could take your place. You will never know the love that I bear for you, just as I will never know how much your mother loved me. Perhaps if I had trusted it, trusted her enough to tell her, she would have accepted the babe.’

‘As I should have trusted my secret with you,’ Rhiann said softly.

‘Yes. I wonder sometimes if we bring any knowledge with us from our other lives. We seem to make the same mistakes over and over.’ Linnet let her breath out. ‘But at least we can change some of them. Now that I know all, you must be released from this marriage. I thought you were just shy about the bedding … I cannot leave you with the prince now.’

Rhiann flinched. ‘Aunt, I must tell you something. He has never bedded me. I … asked him to leave me alone. He has done so.’

Linnet gasped. ‘Can it be true?’

‘It is strange, but true. And – I hardly thought I would ever say this – I want to stay. If he is to help our people, then I must be involved in his campaigns against the Romans.’ At Linnet’s frown, Rhiann rushed on. ‘It is a marriage in name only; I could not hope for more! And I am not the only female of the blood now. Caitlin is more amenable to mating than I. She will bear our heir.’

The concern in Linnet’s eyes lingered, though she said only, ‘That is good for the tribe.’

‘Yes.’ Rhiann got to her feet, and held out her hand to help Linnet up. ‘And aunt, despite my fears, know that I grow to love Caitlin. She is unlike anyone else I have ever met.’

Caitlin’s grin suddenly flashed into Rhiann’s mind, and alongside the bone-deep exhaustion, she sensed the lift of hope, a light that for so long had been shrouded by her darkness.

‘Yes,’ she said again. ‘For all that we have lost, we have gained her.’

Beltaine: the festival of fire and renewal. Even the air smelled of fertility, heavy with the scents of damp earth, woodsmoke, and flowers. Rhiann drew in a deep lungful, loving the way that as dusk fell, the dampness released the captured warmth of the day’s sun.

Only six moons had passed since Samhain, when she stood on this same mound in the valley of the ancestors, the cairn stones sparkling with ice under the silver moon. Then, she had been so cold and frightened. And alone.

Now, there was laughter and music, and the Beltaine fire’s warmth caressed her bare arms. There was rosy light in the sky; the promise of the fair nights to come on the way to the longest day. Her head was no
longer crowned with rowan-berries, but with thorn blossom, which hung in the valley thickets in garlands of cream.

Now, when she looked down to the faces ranged below her, upturned and shining in the firelight, she saw friends. Caitlin, laughing, as Conaire pulled the flower chains in her hair. Eithne, her black eyes huge and round, her hands clasped before her in delight, as Rori tried but failed to catch her eye. Aedan, dreamy, his face full of the stories he was weaving. And Eremon, breaking into his slow, crooked smile when she caught his eye.

She felt a touch on her arm; it was Linnet. Rhiann was pleased to see how much of the strain of the last year had smoothed from Linnet’s brow. She supposed that the same must apply to her.

Under cover of a burst of Meron’s singing, leading the bards, Linnet squeezed her hand. ‘How beautiful you look tonight, daughter,’ she murmured. ‘The bloom has come back to your cheeks, as it comes to the land.’

‘I was with the maidens at dawn, and washed in the dew of may,’ Rhiann answered, smiling. Yet she knew it was more than that, for after Eithne braided her hair with gold thread and touched her lips with
ruam
dye, she took the bronze mirror from its place at the bottom of her carved chest, and looked at herself for the first time in one full wheel of the sun.

The face that looked back was sad, but no longer haunted. It was the Rhiann she remembered, with fuller cheeks and rounded lips, a nose that, while still long, fitted her face and gave it refinement. The shadows were gone from under her eyes. Their depths still held grief, but there was also a light, which had been missing before.

On the valley floor, scores of cattle were being driven between the purifying bonfires, as Gelert sacrificed a new lamb and offered its blood to the four corners of the earth, to ensure a good harvest. One of the druids then recited the marriage laws, as the betrothed couples leaped over the low flames on the bonfire’s edge, their hands clasped, before stepping up to Rhiann for the Mother’s blessing. She touched their foreheads with a paste made of water and earth and ash, and called on Rhiannon to give them many children.

By the time she finished this task, the
saor
had taken full effect, and unlike at Samhain, this time she felt its freedom sound a clear note, vibrating deep in her flesh. She was wrapped in its warmth, and her spirit floated dreamily, wafting with the scents of roast deer and the sacred Beltaine moon cakes, baked over the need-fire.

This was no festival for the dead, as Samhain had been. The host of silvery ghosts were gone – this was a night for the living, for fecundity, and richness, for fire and laughter, for the warm glow of gold and bronze jewellery, the bright cascade of cloaks and wraps and flowers.
And the light of hope that Rhiann had felt on the beach with Linnet still clung to her, its roots tiny, but clasping the earth. It would grow.

Now Meron was singing a song of the goddess, the Mother, and as his voice soared to the stars Rhiann looked out over the heads of the throng, and beheld a shimmering thread of light reaching up from each person.

The threads met and mingled in the air, and the whole web rippled, just like the strange coloured lights in the far northern sky. Then Rhiann knew what it was – love, made visible to her bodily eyes by the
saor
.

Meron sang:

She gives us our breath

Her tears the streams

In Her womb we grow strong

Love is Her song
.

With these words, the golden web swelled into a wave, and it rushed towards the mound and broke over Rhiann. She felt the lifting in her heart, and the sensation of her whole body swelling, growing. The crowd burst into song with Meron, all the myriad voices yearning for the Mother.

And Rhiann felt just the merest touch in her soul, the presence of the Greater One, the rich, heavy, rounded feeling in her limbs, which made her skin glow with light. For that moment, a joy sprang up in her heart, the joy of the stag running through the forest, the salmon leaping the falls, the eagle crying in the high air. For that time out of time, she held the energy for her people.

She caught her breath, desperate not to fail.

But she held on long enough for the wave to wash outwards again, enveloping the people in gold. The Goddess may not speak to Rhiann any more, but the people would know She was with them that night.

How long Rhiann channelled wave after golden wave, she never knew. The singing went on, full-throated, until people had no more to give. And yet they were still held in it, cradled for that moment as one. At last Meron’s voice fell away, and pipes started up again, wild and free, and people broke from their reverie to dance their joy.

As the energy left her, Rhiann slumped, but Linnet was there, holding her. ‘Well done, child!’

Through the dizziness Rhiann saw Eithne holding out a cup of mead, and she sank down on the carved chair behind her, sipping it until the daze passed.

Linnet leaned over her with a smile in her eyes. ‘Go now,’ she urged, pointing to where Caitlin, Conaire and Eremon stood at the bottom of
the mound, among the swirling dancers. ‘They are waiting for you, child. Tonight is for friendship, for fun.’

Eithne’s bright face and shining eyes swam in Rhiann’s vision. The
saor
vibrated through her. ‘But what about you?’ She turned her face up to Linnet.

‘I will enjoy watching you young people from here. Now, go!’

The impulse to surrender rose strong in Rhiann, merging joyously with the
saor
. The relief of her confession to Linnet still sang through every cell in her body, loosening it from the frigidity of grief. And after the work this night she was both spent and elated.

‘Rhiann!’ Caitlin was calling.

Eremon was remembering back six moons, to quite a different festival. Then, he had lain on the frozen ground with Aiveen. Now, there was Conaire and Caitlin, laughing, silly with mead, pushing each other off balance until Conaire gave in and tumbled down the hill.

Eithne was perched demurely on the grass eating her Beltaine cake, but she had one hand to her mouth, stifling giggles. Rori was close by her side. Further off, Eremon glimpsed Aedan dancing in a circle, the firelight warming his dark hair to copper; and there lounged crusty old Finan and Colum by the mead barrels, and Angus and Fergus jostling each other to take deermeat from the spits. And Rhiann.

The place next to him, this time, was warmed by Rhiann.

He looked at her sidewise, hardly believing that this was the same woman who stood so cold here last Samhain, a pillar of moonlit ice in undyed robe, pale and remote. Now, she was crowned with blossom, and her dress was the colour of new leaves, her cloak scarlet, embroidered with gold.

‘Rhiann, you must dance!’ Conaire was pulling at her hand, and Caitlin grasped her other hand, and together they hauled Rhiann to her feet, ignoring her protests. The next instant the three of them were whirling in a dance of their own invention at the base of the slope.

Through the haze of his own mead-soaked mind, Eremon’s senses jolted. He had never seen her dance. Conaire held her hands now, and spun her around while Caitlin clapped with glee and shrieked, the horns and pipes between the fires leaping faster and higher. And for one moment, framed in the firelight, Rhiann threw her head back and looked up at Conaire, and she laughed. The mead and the fire had brought a rosy flush to her face, her amber hair blazed, and her eyes shone, their light clear at last.

As her dress clung to her skin, Eremon suddenly noticed, with a kind of shock, how much fuller and rounder she had grown. He had not looked at her properly for so many moons. But there it was. The strained, starved look of her had softened.

Into beauty.

She whirled free of the dance then, and came up to collapse breathless on the ground by his side, while Conaire and Caitlin danced on, using ever more ridiculous gestures until they were both helpless with laughter.

‘Lady.’ Rori leaned over to refill Rhiann’s mead-cup, and she thanked him and downed it.

‘You drink like a man,’ Eremon teased her.

She cocked her head at him. ‘And that’s the only thing I’ll ever do like a
man
.’

Now that Eremon could see her close up, there was a glazed look in her eyes. She had been drinking a lot, and did she not take some herb mixture before these rites? He smiled to himself. Surely Rhiann was not drunk!

He threw his own mead back and swallowed, raising one eyebrow. She struggled to sit up, boldly grabbed the jug and poured another cup for them both. ‘You think you can better me in anything, prince of Erin, but you’re wrong!’

He stifled a smile. ‘Fighting words! I must take you along on my next raid.’

Conaire and Caitlin raced up the slope, and Conaire threw himself down on the earth with a great sigh, both of them breathless. ‘Oh, Rhiann!’ Caitlin’s cheeks were glowing as she sat down. ‘Beltaine was never this much fun in the mountains!’

‘And the best is yet to come,’ Conaire offered, his eyes half-lidded, staring at Caitlin’s mouth.

She returned his look haughtily. ‘If you’re talking about honouring the Goddess on the ground with
you
, Conaire mac Lugaid, then think again.’ She put her nose in the air. ‘I outrank you now.’

There was a startled silence, and then Eremon snorted with laughter, and Caitlin’s mouth twitched at the bewilderment on Conaire’s face.

‘That’s a first, brother – a girl turned
you
down,’ Eremon said.

‘And not before time,’ Rhiann put in. They all turned to her in surprise.

‘Well said, cousin!’ Caitlin rejoined. ‘I think you men of Erin make far too much of yourselves. Don’t they, Rhiann?’