Daughters of Fire. Barbara Erskine

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СКАЧАТЬ was impressed and for once struck dumb. Meekly she allowed Pacata and Éabha to strip off her mud-caked clothes and wash her body with the sweet-scented soapwort solution they found waiting in a jug beside the basin. Then they dressed her in a clean linen gown and a plaid woollen mantle quickly dug from one of the packs and threaded pretty glass beads through her hair. They slipped on her best soft leather shoes and stood back to admire their handiwork. She looked almost respectable.

      Lugaid, King of the Votadini, was a short, thick-set man of nearly forty summers, his long dark hair, bleached and stiffened with lye, caught back behind his head and tied with a leather thong. His face was scarred from a long-ago battle encounter which had made his eyebrow twist into a permanent quizzical loop and it said much for his strength and regal manner that this had not disqualified him from sacred kingship. He was terrifying. From his four wives he had fifteen children. Riach was the youngest of four sons by his senior and favourite wife, Brigit.

      Brigit greeted Carta with a hug. ‘So, my new foster daughter, you are welcome here.’ Her arms clanked with silver bangles that caught the firelight in the great feasting hall.

      Glancing up shyly, Carta noticed that the hall boasted a huge gallery, screened with wattle and hung with woven curtains. Brigit followed the girl’s glance.

      ‘That is the women’s chamber. We will withdraw there after the feast, but meanwhile you will sit with me and Riach.’ Taking her hand, Brigit drew Carta close beside her and led her to a bench, where she sat down amongst the warriors and the nobles and their wives and the dozens of strangers who all seemed to be casting covert glances in their direction.

      From the shadows a harper began to play as the doors were flung wide and a succession of huge trays of food were carried in.

      

      She had not expected she would have lessons. King Lugaid insisted that his children, foster children and those of his warriors who wished it, learn to speak and write the language of Rome.

      ‘Why?’ Her hands on her hips, her eyes flashing, her small feet planted firmly apart, Cartimandua of the Brigantes faced the king of the Votadini in fury. She was no longer afraid of him.

      He hid a smile. He had a soft spot for the little wild cat he had imported for his favourite son.

      ‘Because it is sensible.’ He folded his arms, settling back onto his cushioned bench. She was the only one of all of them to question his decision. ‘Our trading links with the Empire are good. It is a language which is beginning to be spoken all over the trading world. Your great-grandfather visited Rome, did he not? Did he not leave stories of its marvels to his bards so that all might hear about them?’

      Besides, his Druids had advised him that it was expedient. Rome was restless. Its conquests and trade routes spread ever towards the setting sun. One day the eagle of Rome would fly once more across the seas, plump with greed and aggression, and then those that understood the invader and spoke their language would be at an advantage.

      She was bright. She learned to read and to carve her letters on the wax tablets, smooth them over and write again. She learned to write with liquid soot on fine leaves of wood, drawing and forming her letters and exchanging notes with the other students with ease both in her native Celtic language and in the lingua Latina. And she learned to count and calculate. The Druid teachers at the college on the eastern side of the great hill were pleased with her. From the bards she learned ever more stories and songs – she already had a fund of these from her father’s fireside, and she learned to play the harp. She would never play well, she was too impatient, but she had a good singing voice and would sing to her companions as the women sat sewing in their gallery or out in the sun sheltered from the wind by the great stone walls. She still did not sew. She preferred to work with the horses.

      Her intelligent questions and gentle hands were welcomed in the stables. She was quick to learn which herbs to add to a horse’s feed to calm it down or increase its strength. She could soothe the most fretful stallion with her small hands and pull sharp stones from a huge and shaggy hoof without need for twitch or whip.

      

      Viv stirred. Unconsciously she stretched her cramped fingers, but the story was racing on. Picking up her pen again she wrote on, the pages filling quickly under her uneven, untidy scribbled notes. When her doorbell rang once, echoing through her silent flat, she did not hear it.

      

      Cartimandua was universally liked. One pair of eyes alone watched her balefully from the shadows and as she grew, so the resentment behind those eyes deepened. Their owner was careful, hiding her dislike and jealousy, but as the Brigantian girl blossomed into a beautiful young woman so dislike deepened into hatred.

      It started with small things. Carta’s favourite pottery bowl was found broken. Then a string of freshwater pearls disappeared. Her best shoes were found thrown into a latrine pit behind the house and the smooth surface of her precious mirror was viciously scratched. Sadly she surveyed the faces of the women around her, wondering, but as yet not angry enough to go to the king.

      ‘Take care, Carta.’ Mellia had brought her own small mirror as a replacement. ‘Someone is jealous of you.’

      ‘Who?’ Carta sat down on the stool near her lamp stand. The fluttering wick needed tending and automatically Mellia moved across to see to it, the light reflecting on the girl’s pale hair.

      Mellia shrugged. ‘None of the women in this house. They all love you.’ She was speaking softly, while glancing quickly over her shoulder towards the screened doorway into the central chamber where Pacata was singing to the others. The slave girl had a pure gentle voice and was often excused her other duties so she could sing them the sad beautiful songs of her native Erin.

      ‘I haven’t done anything to make people jealous of me.’ Carta was genuinely bewildered.

      Mellia sat down beside her and fondled Catia’s head as the dog lay next to her young mistress. The two pups had gone. One, Carta had shyly presented to Riach, the other had returned to Dun Righ with her brother, Bran, a link between them as they made their tearful farewells.

      In her loneliness after his departure she had turned more and more to Mellia as a friend and confidante and the two girls had grown close in their time at Dun Pelder, often whispering their hopes and dreams to one another. ‘You’re too pretty!’ Mellia smiled. ‘And you’re going to marry Prince Riach, everyone knows that. That would make most women jealous.’

      ‘I don’t know I’m going to marry him!’ Carta protested, colouring slightly. ‘No one has ever said anything. Not officially.’ The thought made her feel tingly and embarrassed, scared and excited, all at the same time. ‘If I did, you wouldn’t be jealous?’

      ‘No. I’d be happy for you. If it was what you wanted.’

      ‘Because you’re in love with someone else!’ Carta raised an eyebrow. ‘Don’t tell me you haven’t been flirting with Conaire.’

      Conaire had accompanied them from her father’s hall as a young and inexperienced musician and had been studying hard at the bardic school which nestled on the northern flank of Dun Pelder, between the stonemasons and the goldsmith’s workshop, and he had done well. He was nearly halfway through his seven years’ course and had already learned a vast stock of songs and poems as well as being an acknowledged master in composing his own.

      Mellia blushed scarlet. ‘That’s not true!’

      ‘It СКАЧАТЬ