The Boar Stone: Book Three of the Dalriada Trilogy (15 page)

Minna walked fast, her eyes blurred, the net bag banging on her thigh. When she reached the bridge she stopped. ‘Orla.’ Her voice quavered. ‘Who is Rhiannon? Who are Hawen and Manannán?’

Orla smiled, relieved. ‘In Alba Rhiannon is the great goddess, the Mother Goddess,’ she explained.
Honour the Mother.
‘Manannán is the sea-god, her husband, and Hawen is the boar god of the warriors. They revere him and take his name as an oath.’

A loud shout from the gates interrupted Minna’s wonder. As Orla raced ahead, she drifted along behind. When they got to the gatetowers, people were talking excitedly.

‘Fa is coming home!’ Orla shrieked, and hurried inside to tell Finola.

The warriors that had accompanied Minna leaped up the stairs with no glance for her, their faces grim.

Minna’s feet, however, were rooted to the spot. For above the gates a banner hung, scarlet and red. She knew it must have been there before, but the only time she had entered these gates she was staring at her feet.

Now the wind was blowing straight from those fiery mountains, and the banner spread over her head against the sky, unfurled. A red boar was caught racing furiously across a white field, crest raised in attack. It drove every other thought from Minna’s head.

The Boar
!
The Boar
! The cry she had uttered by Mamo’s deathbed.

Chapter 14

I
t was a freezing dawn, the grasses white-tipped on the meadow.

Up in the gallery of his hall, Cahir, King of Dalriada, unbuckled his sword-belt and flung it wearily to the chair. This small space for two seats and a brazier was his only retreat from the sharp eyes that were always following him: servants, warriors, druids, nobles. Everyone watching him, all the time.

At least he didn’t have to face his wife yet, he thought with a grim smile, listening to Maeve’s faint snores further along the gallery. Judging by the volume, she had guzzled her usual bucket of Roman wine last night.

Cahir massaged the knee which played up when he rode, then caught himself doing it and frowned. When tired he often slipped into thinking himself old, even though he was barely past thirty. He briskly stirred up the coals instead and left the poker in to heat the mead. There. He sat back. One moment with no one staring at him. One moment with no one trying to look inside him while masking their own thoughts. He leaned his head back and closed his eyes. Five heartbeats. Nothing.

‘Fa!’ Orla squealed, dashing over in her night-shift and throwing herself across his lap. His little Finola followed, padding up on baby feet.

Cahir mustered a tired smile. ‘Hush, lass. You don’t want to wake your mother, do you?’

That always quieted them.

‘Did you just come back?’ Orla asked, in a loud whisper.

Tenderly, he nodded and smoothed her braids. She was the only child with hair like his, dark with an auburn tinge. Finola, clutching her doll, gazed up as if his size and sword and smell of horse scared her, but that wouldn’t last. Though she resembled Maeve, his younger daughter had a heart as courageous as the elder. If only it was his son who looked up so adoringly, desperate to wield a sword for him like these foolish, brave daughters of his.

Cahir drew Finola close with one arm, and, after a moment, she melted into his side. ‘Did you see the Wall?’ she whispered.

‘Not this time, but I’ve seen it many times before.’ Cahir tried to hide the roughening of his voice. ‘The Wall is tall and grey, I told you, and long like an eel.’

‘Taller than you, Fa?’

Cahir’s heart stopped. Those trusting eyes only made the rest of his life seem so barren, full of treachery, compromises and betrayals. ‘No, not taller than me,’ he said, as if a simple lie could make the Wall shrink, the Roman soldiers on it fade away. As if he could shield his children from the swords that one day must come for them, along with Roman ships massing in the bay and fires blooming like scarlet flowers on the thatch.

For Cahir had already seen with his own eyes Alban land laid waste by Rome, and Alban bodies hung from trees with Roman rope.

Minna heard the girls gasp, ‘Fa!’ and bound from bed.

She roused herself, pulling a wrap around her shoulders and going to follow them. Then a deep voice sounded like a bell, and she slowed her steps. The voice rumbled again, answered by the girls in tones of affection she had never heard them use, except when they spoke of … their father.

Holding her breath, she crept to the wicker screen that shielded the alcove and pressed her eye to a gap.

The brazier was small, the coals dim, so it was hard to see him. His face tilted as he spoke and dark hair fell over his shadowed cheeks. She could only make out a glimpse of clean-angled jaw and nose. Why, he wasn’t old at all. Then he moved back, the firelight gilding his outline, and Minna’s thoughts stopped altogether.

Everything she had ever heard of barbarians and Albans, even men, collided with each other in her mind.

She could see how powerfully built he was, clad in polished mail, with muddy boots laced up long, sprawling legs. Next to him leaned a daunting sword in a battered scabbard – blood-stained, she was sure. But in the midst of all that his hands moved gently, tenderly stroking through Finola’s hair, then cradling Orla’s chin. The clash was so unexpected that for a long moment Minna’s eyes simply followed those rhythmic fingers back and forth, mesmerized.

And he was entirely still apart from his hands, though she could sense the force that would be unleashed by those arms and shoulders, built up far beyond those of the men she knew who worked the villa fields. She must be scared, for her stomach lurched in a sickening way. This man was the leader of the tribe which had enslaved her. He was a bloodthirsty savage. She had anticipated being repulsed. Minna turned her cheek to the darkness, unable to keep her eyes on that gentle stroking.

After a moment, the king said he was filthy and the water downstairs would be boiling so he must wash. He wanted his daughters back in bed until it was light.

Minna crept away before he saw her. When the girls crawled into bed, even though they were whispering with excitement they soon dutifully returned to slumber.
So he can even order sleep
, Minna thought to herself, and tensed with a shameful excitement. Here was a king straight from Mamo’s tales.

The next night a welcome feast was to be held for the returning warriors.

In the afternoon, Minna worked by Keeva’s side, rubbing butter and salt into a skinned pig and setting a pit with wood to bake it. Later, unable to stand without having her toes crushed by harried servants, Minna slipped upstairs and readied the girls for bed.

She had been afraid she would get into trouble for injuring the warrior, though no one had said anything, and in fact the young men downstairs were avoiding looking at her, which suited well. As for the boar banner, the boar god … her thoughts could not venture there.

‘Ow!’ Finola cried, when Minna caught her tangled hair in the comb.

‘I’m sorry, little one,’ she whispered, but her mind was far away.

Soon the hall was resounding with talk and laughter, and the chiming of bronze cups. The din grew, edged with harsh male voices, jests and shouts. In their bed-shifts, Orla and Finola wriggled to the edge of the gallery to look down, and Minna joined them.

The entire fire-pit was filled with burning wood, and thick smoke clouded the air and stung Minna’s eyes so she couldn’t see. But just when she thought she might give up, the twang of an instrument pierced the chatter. Notes wandered up and down as strings were tuned, there was a pause – and then a rich chord chimed throughout the hall, filling it to the roof. Instantly, the room grew hushed.

And so the music began, a pure, voiceless song that swelled into powerful life. Minna had never heard anything like it, and after a moment she sank onto her back, listening. The music wove a shimmering web, one moment suggesting laughter, the next a lament. It was wind lifting her hair, then the cool of the hills, then the scent of salt spray. When a voice at last joined the music, wound about the notes like woodbine, she turned over and peered down.

‘It is Davin the bard,’ Orla whispered, her eyes shining. ‘He sings like the birds.’

Mamo had told her about the tribal bards. Minna cradled a pained smile in her fingers, swallowing her fierce grief.
Look, Mamo
!

Someone opened the doors for a moment and a gust of air blew in. As the smoke lifted, she glimpsed the bard himself in the centre of the hall. Davin was ageing, thin and fair-haired, stooped from crouching over his harp. But his dignified bearing and the gold rings on his arms said this man was greatly honoured. With closed eyes, he lifted a transcendent face and opened his throat.

The longing in his voice gripped Minna, an ache for something almost outside the bounds of this world. Her hand crept to her throat. She knew this music in her soul, like a voice long missed. For a moment guilt fought in her, for she must be a traitor to feel these things. But the rapture was stronger.

Then, one by one, the words Davin sang began to gain sense in her mind, pictures forming then fading. It was a song of the ancestors of King Cahir, and a famous battle hundreds of years ago. The people below became hushed, the air expectant.

Rhiann, princess of Dunadd
, Davin sang,
she of the russet hair and heart of courage, drawn by love to Eremon, valiant prince from over sea, the green jewel of Erin on his brow.

Minna sat up and stared into the shadows. The names reverberated through her body.
Rhiann. Eremon.
She could not move.

Orla and Finola, their faces rapt, did not notice her discomfort.

The song told of the warrior Eremon, a prince of the province of Dalriada in Erin, who was exiled to Alba. There he wed Rhiann, a princess and priestess of the Epidii people at Dunadd, and hundreds of years ago they resisted the Romans when no one else would. Again and again the grim General Agricola tried to invade Alba with an army, and each time he was outwitted by Eremon and Conaire, his foster-brother, as they ambushed Roman patrols and burned down forts. Conaire was wed to Rhiann’s sister Caitlin, and they had a royal son, Gabran.

Eremon. Rhiann. Conaire. Caitlin.
The four of them loved each other, they were family. Faces swam before Minna’s eyes, pale, unformed shapes in the darkness. Wisps of memory darted around her rigid body.

At last, Davin recited, Eremon and the warriors of Dunadd faced the Romans in a great battle at a place called the Hill of a Thousand Spears. No one knew where it was. There the steadfast Conaire died, and the Albans suffered a terrible defeat at the hands of the Romans.

Surprisingly, Davin sang of the defeat with immense pride. The bravery shown by Eremon and his warriors was all-encompassing, as if that was all that truly mattered to these people. The music rose, rousing and proud even as death claimed them, afire with a sense of courage, honour and glorious deeds done, outshining all thoughts of defeat.

Lightning in his arm

a storm in his eyes

Eremon looked to the hills,

defeat a cloud gathering.

But against the red-crest sea

Undaunted he stood

Bright in truth’s light

Even as his enemy