Dahut Read online

  Eochaid’s mount lurched ahead. “You must stop!” shouted the man. “For my honor’s sake! I want to give you hospitality!”

  There was something in the call that Eochaid had heard before. He could not remember what. He thought foggily that anyone trotting, not running, just trotting, could overhaul this wreck that he rode. Maybe he should heed. He drew rein. The horse whickered and stood with head and tail adroop.

  The man laughed. “That’s better,” he said as he came nigh. “I was walking about, making a poem, and saw you. It would be a shame if a wayfarer in need got by the house of Laidchenn—”

  He jarred to a halt and gaped. “But you are Eochaid!” he exclaimed. “Eochaid the Fer Lagin.”

  Below him Eochaid saw the face of Tigernach, the satirist who had ruined his face. Those men who were bound toward him would take him prisoner and return him to the kennel.

  He slid down off the horse. In his left hand was the sword. He shook the wrappings off as he took it in his right. Did he or the Power strike? The blow was light, as wasted as his body was, but the iron sharp. Tigernach fell, blood spouting from his neck.

  Horror yammered among the approaching men. Eochaid dropped the sword and ran. The Power had him. Husk though he was, he sped weasel-swift. Unable to grasp at once what had happened, and then frantic to care for the son of their master, the men were too slow in giving chase. Eochaid vanished into the reeds along the river. While every male in the household beat them as hounds bayed about, until nightfall, they did not find him.

  5

  Tigernach lived long enough to cough out the name of his killer.

  Eochaid crossed the Ruirthech in the dark after all. Having skulked evasive or lain moveless under water with little but his nose above, he found a log that had drifted against the bank. With its help he swam the river. On the far side, he somehow walked until he came on a shieling. The family there was impoverished, but they took him in and shared with him what milk and gruel they had: for the Gods love this. He caught a fever and lay drowsy for days.

  That may have been as well for him. A war band from the north side came over and ranged in search. They did not happen on the hovel, and must withdraw when the neighborhood mustered force against them. Belike he had drowned, they supposed, the which was too good for him.

  In time, Eochaid became able to make his painful way to Dun Alinni. The news had gone faster. “You cannot stay here, you who have violated the home of a poet,” his father King Éndae said. “All Mide and Condacht would come after you once they heard, and this Fifth would itself deliver you up to them.” The breath sobbed into him. “Yet you are my son. If I must disown you, I will not forsake you.”

  And he gave Eochaid a galley of the Saxon kind, and let it be known that men were wanted to go adventuring abroad. There were not a few ruined by the war or despairing of the morrow at home or simply restless and aspiring, who overlooked Eochaid’s deed and risked any bad luck that might flow from it because they remembered what a peerless leader he had been. The upshot was that he departed with a full crew and several large currachs besides.

  They fared south along Britannia, raiding where they could. That was not often, and pickings were lean. Stilicho’s expeditionary force had lately withdrawn, but after expelling the Scoti who had settled there. Though it was against Roman law, the Ordovices and Demetae were now well armed to protect themselves, while the Silures and Dumnonii had a legion not so far away to call upon. Eventually Eochaid and his men settled down for the winter on an island off Gallia, as various other sea rovers were wont to do.

  During a spell of fairly good weather he sent a currach back to learn what had happened meanwhile. It returned with ill tidings.

  Laidchenn had arrived home shortly before the killing. He was indoors when his folk brought him the news and the body of his son. Loud was the keening; but the poet remained silent until he had a lament ready to give at the funeral feast. The next day he went forth by himself. He climbed the raw earth of the barrow, faced south, and drew his harp out of its case. Sharp with early autumn, the wind at his back blew his words toward the river. Certain black birds circled overhead. When he was done, they also flew that way. Some workmen could not help hearing him. They shuddered.

  “Lagini, I sing now.

  Wing now to cravens,

  Ravens; bespeak them!

  Seek them will bold men.

  Old men can only,

  Lonely, send greeting,

  Meeting them never:

  ‘Ever to sorrow

  Morrow shall wake you,

  Take you like cattle—

  Battle-won plunder—

  Under its keeping.

  Reaping is mirthless,

  Worthless is sowing;

  Growing dry thistles,

  Bristles the plowland.

  Cowland lies calfless.

  Laughless the hall is.

  All is turned sickly,

  Quickly, O Lagini.”

  And every day thereafter, for a full year, did the ollam poet mount the grave of his son to satirize yonder country, its King ana its people. And during that year, neither grain nor grass nor any green thing grew there. Herds starved in barren fields, flocks in sere forests, folk in foodless dwellings. When finally Laidchenn maqq Barchedo reckoned his vengeance complete, and the blight and the famine had lifted, that Fifth of Ériu took long to recover its health. Meanwhile pirates made free of the coasts, raiders and rebels of the interior.

  Such was the tale that, above the fire of past wrongs, hammered the soul of Eochaid into a knife meant for Niall.

  IV

  1

  In the dead of winter, people must rise hours before the sun if they were to carry out their duties. It was earlier than for most when Malthi, a maidservant to Queen Fennalis, entered the room where Dahut slept and gently shook her. “Princess. The time is come, as well as I can judge. Waken.”

  The girl sat up. Light from the lamp in the woman’s hand glowed across tumbled hair, white silken shift, the cloven swelling of bosom. She scowled. Her tone came near to a snarl. “You dare! You called me from a dream, a holy dream.”

  “I am sorry, my lady, but you did order me yesterday evening—You must be in attendance at the Temple today—”

  Dahut drew a measure of calm across herself. “Woeful it is, though, being wrenched away just when—Well, have you my bath ready?”

  “Of course, Princess, and I’ll be laying out your vestments. May I wish you a good morning?”

  Rueful humor flitted across the clear brow, the soft lips. “Better ’twould be did I not have to arrive fasting!” Solemnity replaced it. Dahut flowed out of bed. “Honor to the Gods.” Before an image of Belisama as Maiden, she offered her orison. At the end she whispered, “You will come again to me, will You not?”

  Malthi had lighted a candle for her. She took it out into the hallway. That was less black than expected. The adjoining door stood open, and yellow radiance spilled forth.

  Dahut looked in. Fennalis was abed but awake, propped up in a nest of pillows, a sewn stack of papyrus sheets open on the blankets. “Why, greeting, Mama,” Dahut said with a smile. The old Queen liked to hear that name from the vestal’s childhood. “How naughty. You should be asleep for hours yet, regaining your strength.”

  Fennalis sighed. “I couldn’t. At last I called poor Malthi to arrange things.” Her white head nodded at the cushions, the nine-branched bronze candelabrum on a table beside her, the booklet under her fingers. “I may as well use the time. Also, it takes my mind off—No matter.”

  Dahut entered. “Pain?” she asked, concern in her voice.

  Fennalis shrugged. “Let’s not speak of regaining my strength. It no longer exists.”

  Dahut set her candle down and regarded the high priestess closely. That stumpy body had been losing its stoutness fast of late. Skin draped emptily past the pug nose and over the withered arms. It was taking on a fallow hue. Nonetheless, her belly made a bulge in the covers. “Oh,
dear Mama—”

  “Nay, no sniveling. ’Tis high time I got out of the way, and ready I am to go. A kind of adventure, drawing close to the Otherworld. I begin to make out its shores.”

  Dahut’s eyes widened. “In dreams?” she breathed.

  “Often I cannot be sure if the glimpses come while I sleep or I wake.” Fennalis gave her visitor a sharp glance. “Have you been dreaming?”

  Dahut swallowed, hesitated, nodded.

  “Sit down, if you’d fain tell me,” Fennalis invited.

  Dahut lowered herself to the edge of the bed. Fennalis reached unsteadily up to stroke her cheek. “How lovely you are,” the Queen murmured. “And how strange. What was your dream?”

  Dahut stared into the darkness that pressed against the window. “’Twas more than one,” she said low. “They began… two years ago, I think, after… my seal left me. I can’t be certain, for at first they seemed little different from others, save that I always remembered them. I stood on a seashore. The waters were dark and unrestful beneath a gray sky. The air was windless. No birds flew. I was alone, altogether alone. Yet I was not afraid. I knew this strand and sea were mine.

  “The dreams came far apart in the beginning, and I gave them little thought, when so much was happening in my life. Somebody slowly appeared, away off on the horizon. They came toward me, over the waves. Each time they got nearer. At last I could see they were three, a man, a woman, ana… something else, a presence, a shadow, but I could feel the might within….

  “The dreams seek me more and more often. Now I can see that the man bears a hammer and wears the red robe and Wheel emblem of a King. The woman is dressed in blue and white like one of you Gallicenae. The third—I think has three legs and a single huge eye.”

  Dahut drew breath before she finished: “This morning just ere the servant roused me, they were so close that I thought I could see what faces were theirs. It seemed to me that the man could be my father and the woman my mother—from what I’ve heard tell of my mother—”

  Her words trailed off. She sat looking at the night.

  “The woman may be yourself,” Fennalis said.

  Dahut twisted about to stare at her. “What? You can, can read it for me? I never thought you—”

  “Divination, magic, the Touch, all such wonders, aye, they’ve passed plain little Fennalis by. Nor was I ill content with that. They are not human sorts of things. I felt no envy of Forsquilis, say. And as for you, my darling, I only wish—” The woman sighed once more. “Nay, I’m still too far from the Otherworld to understand this. I do beg you to be very, very careful.”

  Dahut straightened. “Thank you, but why should I dread my destiny?”

  “You know what it is.”

  “I know it is mine.” Dahut rose. Her gaze fell on the booklet. “What is that about? ’Tis new to me.” Bending over, tracing with a fingertip, she read aloud: “—Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of Heaven—”

  She sprang back as if the papyrus had burned her. “Fennalis!” she cried. “That’s Christian! I saw the name of Jesus!”

  Calm descended on the woman. “It is. Corentinus has rendered some of his Scriptures into Ysan. He lent me this.”

  Dahut made a fending sign. “You’ve been with him?”

  “Of late.” Fennalis smiled. “At ease, child. We’ve merely talked a few times, at my request. He knows he’ll never convert me. I’m too old and set in my ways.”

  “By why, then, why?”

  “To learn a minim about what he believes, what so many people believe. Surely they have some truth, some insight, and I’d be glad to know what ere I depart.”

  “They deny the Gods!”

  “Well, our Gods deny, or at least defy theirs. Who is the more righteous? Even when young, I—Dahut, my first King was Wulfgar, a rough man but well intentioned, able, and—ah, a stallion of a man; and I was young. Stark Gaetulius slew him and possessed me. Moody Lugaid slew Gaetulius. I could not hate either; both gave me more children to love, and besides, this was the will of the Gods. Still, Hoel came like a big golden sun that drives out winter; and I was not yet too old to have a daughter by him. But horrible Colconor finally cut Hoel down. After five years, Gratillonius delivered us.”

  Exhausted, Fennalis sank back on the pillows. Her eyes closed. The girl could barely hear: “Someday those Gods you adore will send a man who kills your father. You may become his bride.”

  “I must go!” Dahut nearly screamed. With anger-stiff strides, she left the room. The candle shook and wavered in her grasp. Her free hand clenched and unclenched.

  In a chamber of marble and fish mosaics, lights burned manifold and a sunken bath steamed fragrant. Dahut pulled off her nightgown, flung it on the floor, and descended.

  Lying there, she slowly loosened. First her glance, then her hands glided over her body. Just past her fifteenth year, she was nonetheless entirely woman. She caressed the roundednesses, arched her back, mewed, with eyes half shut.

  Malthi came in, recalling Dahut to the world. “Princess, ’tis getting late. Better we hurry.” As the maiden stepped forth: “How beautiful you are. A pity I must towel you. Many a young man would trample dragons on his way to this task.”

  Dahut accepted the praise as she did all such words, something pleasant but unsurprising. Back in the bedroom—she had not paused to look in on Fennalis—the servant helped her into the vestal’s gown: at this season, white with solar symbols embroidered in gold. Having combed out her hair, Malthi crowned it with a wreath of evergreen laurel, whereinto were woven red berries of holly. Red also were her shoes; but the girdle about her slenderness was Belisama’s blue, with a silver clasp conjoining Hammer and Trident.

  Taking a lantern, she left the house where she had spent the night and hastened along the street. In its district few had occasion to be up so early. She noticed two or three lights bobbing in the echoful lane. From these heights, she spied more of them down in the working parts of the city and along its avenues, glow-worm small. The air was cold and quiet; breath smoked. A half moon rode among uncountable stars. Towers raised black lances against them. At the top of one a window glimmered lonely. That was where Rufinus lived.

  The Temple of the Goddess stood wan, its portico like a cave. Dahut gave her lantern into the care of the minor priestess who was keeping the door, and passed on into the sanctum. It was empty except for her. Lamps along the aisles made a twilight. She advanced to the altar at the far end.

  There she lifted her arms. Her duties today would not be sacral, she would take her turn at maintenance and scribe work, but a vestal must always begin with prayer. Its form was not fixed; this hour was called the Opening of the Heart. Dahut looked up to the images of the Triune, Mother, Maiden, and Hag. In the dim and uneasy glow, they seemed to stir. “Goddess, All-Holy,” she said under her breath, “come to me. Make known Your will. Embody Your power. Belisama, be Dahut.”

  2

  The men whom Niall had sent south found him at the hostel of Bran maqq Anmerech, on his way to Temir for the festival of Imbolc. A brief and murky day was drawing to its close. Firelight barely kept shadows at bay in the long room where the King sat among his chief warriors. Bran would not offend that nose with the stench of grease lamps, and instead heaped the trench full of sweet fir wood. Gold gleamed, eyeballs glared. Having eaten, the company were at drink while a bard gave them a ballad about an adventure of Niall’s great ancestor Corbmaqq.

  One did not interrupt an ollam poet, but this was a much lesser sort of fellow. Wet and muddy, the travelers tramped in and greeted their lord. “It’s welcome you are,” he said. His tone lacked heartiness. He had more and more been brooding these past months. “Bran, fetch what they need and prepare them quarters.” That could be done somehow, for the party numbered only ten.

  “We have brought such a man as you sent us to find,” declared the leader. “Come forward, Cernach maqq Durthacht.”

  A short but square-shouldered, slightly gri
zzled person responded. He had a cocky manner and a mariner’s gait. Niall’s gaze probed him. “You are indeed he who can teach me the tongue they speak in Ys?” asked the King.

  “I am that, lord,” Cernach answered. His dialect of Mumu was heavy but understandable. “And this is my wife Sadb. I will not be leaving her by herself a year or worse.” He beckoned her to join him at his side. She was younger than he, full-breasted, broad-hipped, her hair red and her face comely though freckled. When she smiled, Niall thawed a bit.

  “Well,” he said, “sit down, the pair of you.” A girl brought stools for them, placed at his knees where he sat benched. After mead cups were in their hands, Niall commanded, “Tell me about yourself, Cernach.”

  “I am a trader captain with my own small ship, harbored in the mouth of the River Siuir. For years I have taken cargoes to and from Ys. I have abided in it, and in my house at home I have received merchant seamen from it, on their way to our fairs or to Cassel. I know it as well as any outsider can know a place so full of magic and poetry; I speak the language with an accent, but readily.”

  “And you are willing, for rich reward, to share your knowledge with me?”

  “I am, also for the glory of having served Niall of the Nine Hostages.”

  The King peered. “Think well,” he warned. “I am the bitter foe of Ys. What harm I can wreak there, I will, and reckon it far too little revenge for the wrongs done me. They begin with the shattering of my fleet and the slaying of my son, when he meant Ys no trouble at all. They have gone on through the unloosing of my foremost hostage, which led to the murder of a son of my head poet and his own withdrawal from my household. That made ashen in my mouth the taste of my victory over the Ulati.”

  “I have heard this.”

  “Then you must know that I will learn of Ys as a means toward my vengeance. How that is to happen I know not, but happen it shall, unless I die first or the sea overwhelm the world. Now you have friends yonder, as well as business and, surely, good memories. Would you help sharpen my sword against these? Answer honestly, and you shall go home with gifts for your trouble. A man ought to stand by his friends.”