Skin (17 page)

He began the last verse. The music of the skinsong was always gifted by the mother,
but this—the summation—was where Taliesin must shape his own words:

I was born in the waters of wisdom,

Spawned of knowledge more ancient than creation

But I was wrong-born: half here, half there

Swimming forward and yet backward tears the soul,

Lets memories out and chaos in,

But the smell of my birthplace is in my flesh.

My love, I call to you

I've swum oceans searching,

Now I catch your scent

I am destined to find you, but it will be a fight,

My flesh will ebb, my bones will crumble,

but I will not sleep until I have reached the pool where you swim.

Your scent is in my flesh

and I will search the world to find it.

When we had finished, we both stared into the water, the silence bleeding between
us.

He loved me utterly and I could not return it.

‘Why do you not sing?' he whispered.

In his eyes I saw his slow understanding that I would not join with him. And I was
horrified that he should think this, because I had never yearned for kinship with
anyone so deeply in my life.

For this reason, I could not tell him why I did not sing. I loved him too much to
speak the truth: that I was unmarriageable, unloved by the Mothers. That I had no
song. It was better he thought I withheld it than know I did not possess it. While
he believed I had a song, at least, he might continue to hope for me, continue to
love me.

I could not bear the disbelief in his face. I had never felt so treacherous, so
ignorant. For the first time it was I who stood and left without farewell.

The rising sun was clearing the mists as I pounded over the forest path. But though
I ran swiftly, the edge did not come. I stopped to check I had not led myself awry,
but no—the river was still close. As I entered by her, I would exit by her, so I
held tight to her banks. Taliesin's song pushed into my thoughts, but I drove it
out, running yet faster to be free of this forest and into the open where I could
think in the light.

I stopped, motionless, at the smell of woodsmoke. There was a fire
nearby, downstream.
I crept forward. If there was a camp or worse—a journeymen's grove—I had to pass
unseen.

The smoke thickened and I wondered, with a gust of hope, if somehow Taliesin had
lit this fire—if I had discovered his home. Then I froze again. Through the dense
trunks I glimpsed a hutgroup on the other side of the river.

I stole through the trees until I reached an old willow at the water's edge. Hidden
behind its trunk, I peered over at the settlement, amazed that I had run this very
path yesterday and seen nothing.

It was a small hut group, the huts built in a circle amid pens of dark sheep. But
at the centre of the hutgroup burned the largest fire I had ever seen. It was tended
by tribespeople I thought at first to be men. But they worked half-clad in the fireheat,
and soon I saw they were women's shoulders that carried fuel to the firepit and women's
arms that cast it in.

Propped against the huts were many swords and knives. This was forge fire. But who
were these women who worked fire without men? They were young, barely past maidenhood,
but steady and formed as grown oak. Even at a distance, their dark eyes burned.

I stood transfixed by their stature, their purpose. I squinted to see the talismans
and cloth patterns that would mark their tribe, but the smoke was settling over the
river, veiling my sight.

A wren whistled behind me. The forest grew ever lighter. If I did not return home
in time with bread, then I would be forced to confess my disgrace to Cookmother and
my broken promise to Bebin.

I took a last look at the women, then turned back to my path. When I emerged from
the forest, Neha was still standing guard at the entrance. She whimpered as I greeted
her, more anxious than usual to rekindle our bond. Something was not right as I cast
my eye around the fields. The sky was too bright. With a horrified glance at the
sun, I realised that the day had almost reached highsun. It had been dawn
only moments
hence! Had I watched the women of the fire for so long? I began to run. There would
be no explaining this lateness now.

An icy silence greeted me as I entered the kitchen.

Bebin's eyes flickered a warning as she hurried out at Cookmother's command. Ianna
and Cah were at lessons.

Cookmother sat at the hearth, facing the door. ‘Sit,' she said.

I walked to her and sat on the floor at her feet.

‘Bebin went to the bakehouse,' she began, ‘as you were not here to make the errand.'

‘I am sorry—'

‘Silence,' she spat. ‘While she was at the bakehouse, Bebin saw Dun's wife, wasted
with worry. Dun has worsened, is near gone.'

My stomach curdled as I realised what I had done.

Cookmother sat unmoving. ‘She asked Bebin why the herbs never came.' Her mouth was
rigid. ‘Why did the herbs never come?'

‘Is it too late?' I whispered. ‘Let me take them to her this moment.'

‘Bebin brought her here and I gave her the herbs. Tomorrow will tell us whether they
came too late. Now I ask you a second time: why were the herbs not taken?'

In all my days with Cookmother, I had never once failed to do her bidding. Not one
life had been lost at my hand. I had served her craft tirelessly and the thought
that I had breached it now was too much to bear. The wrongness of this neglect, Taliesin's
unanswered song, and all that had befallen me since Beltane surged within me and
I could carry it no longer. ‘I have been swept up in a tide of change since the fires,'
I wept. ‘I have been wronged, and oddly powered, and then seduced into the Oldforest—'

She inhaled sharply. ‘What is this? You have walked the forest?'

In truth, it was a relief to be caught. ‘Yes.'

‘That which I have entirely forbidden?'

There was to be no more hiding. ‘Ay. It was a fish, a crimson-skinned fish that magicked
me in. Then this morning, there were women with a great fire—'

Cookmother flinched as if physically struck. Her voice, when it came, was trembling.
‘Tell me what you have seen.'

‘Only a hutgroup,' I said. ‘And women of such grace working the fire…'

Cookmother's hands flew to her mouth. When she lowered them they were shaking. ‘Did
you walk among them? Touch them or speak with them?'

‘No.' I was becoming frightened. ‘They were across the river, hidden by smoke. I
just saw the shape of them. I did not call.'

Her shoulders dropped with relief. ‘Thanks be,' she breathed.

‘Cookmother?' I said, unnerved. ‘Who were the women?'

She would not meet my eye. ‘They were outcasts, dirt-dwellers not permitted even
to fringe the towns,' she said. ‘They'll slit your throat for your sandals.' She
fingered the carved bone talisman at her belt as she spoke.

I frowned. ‘I would swear they were no outcasts.'

‘Be assured, that's what they are. And hear this, Ailia—' Now she held my gaze. ‘If
the threat of the forest alone is not enough to repel you, then let me promise you
this: if you go to the forest again, I will cast you from this kitchen.'

My mouth dropped open in shock.

‘Unlawful contact with the forest invites darkness and I will not permit it near
my kitchen.'

Never had she threatened such a thing and the fear of it conjured a fresh batch of
silent tears.

‘Ach, come,' she grumbled, pulling my head to her lap. ‘This is your path, by me,'
she murmured as she stroked my hair. ‘You are meant for my learning. Hear me please,
Lamb. Never go to the forest again.'

‘But what of the fish?' I hiccupped into her skirts.

‘Stay clear of the place where you saw it.'

And what of Taliesin?
cried my heart, but as when I spoke with Bebin, I could not
find the voice to name him to Cookmother. Her comfort was all I had. I could not
risk it.

There were footsteps outside, the girls returning.

‘Speak not of the forest to anyone,' Cookmother hissed. ‘Anyone!' Then she pushed
me off her lap and rose to her feet.

Cah burst in, flushed with excitement. Ianna trailed behind.

‘There is news in the township,' said Cah, her eyes alight. ‘Verica, the Tribeking
of the Artrebates has fled to Rome. He protests Caradog's theft of his kingdom and
asks for Rome's help to retrieve it. The Emperor Claudius has agreed. War is coming.'

Truth is life-giving, the sustaining power of creation.

The realm of the Mothers is a place of truth.

By truth the hardworld endures.

F
ROM
THIS
MOMENT
, there was little else but Rome on the lips of the town.

Messengers arrived every few days telling of Roman forces amassing on the shores
of Boulogne. Some said they were ready to sail, hungry to reinstate Verica and the
other exiled British kings who would rule by Roman law. Others reported that these
soldiers were scared, that the General Plautius could not rally them, that they feared
the thick mists of this island and called it a place of dark magic, of hurricanes
and creatures half-human, half-beast.

We heard that the brothers Caradog and Togodumnus held an army poised at Cantia to
fight back the legions. Then we heard that they had gone home to their wives and
children, assured that the Romans were still months from sailing.

The moon fattened and thinned twice. Cookmother permitted me to take no medicine
outside the township walls. I could not even fetch the bread alone. Only to serve
Fraid did she release me from her sight.

Nightly Fraid argued with Llwyd as to the best way to proceed. Send forces straightaway?
Wait to see whether Rome would move into the west after they landed? And always the
Kendra. The Kendra who bore the power of the Mothers. Who would weave the spells
that would confound and frighten the invaders. Who would guard the precious heart
of Britain—its knowledge, its skin.

I knew that Llwyd sat in silence for hours of each day calling for the Kendra to
come. Over and over, he opened the bellies of wild hares and studied the entrails
that fell steaming onto the crisp dawn ground. He watched the sky: by day reading
birdflight, and by night, the stars, looking for omens that would lead him to her.
He grew thin and wasted, fasting as offering for her revelation, drinking only the
bark teas that I brought him for his vision as he sat in the temple.

The arguments between Fraid and Llwyd were echoed among the townspeople. Some spat
on Verica's name, calling him a Roman-loving dog. Others claimed Caradog was too
hostile, too greedy in broadening his rule, and needed Rome's firm rebuke. It was
the division in the town that most disturbed Fraid as I brushed and shined her hair
each night with oil. How could we fight them when we were fighting ourselves?

She ordered the works on the hill's defences to be hastened. The ramparts were fortified
and lined with a dazzling new layer of chalk. All was built in precise alignment
with the sun's path, ensuring a strength far beyond what a craftsman's hand alone
could bestow. When our structures echoed the order of the skies, they harnessed the
power of the Mothers themselves.

All this pleased Llwyd but it was not enough. Only the Kendra,
he said—often with
tears in his eyes as days without food made him weak—would bring us to unity and
truth.

And I lived with my own war between the ache to see Taliesin and the forces that
held me from him. I was bound every waking hour to Cookmother's tasks, shackled by
a gaze that gripped me tighter than a prisoner's neckring. Only by night was I free
to be with him in my thoughts, where I relived every memory of his touch, and imagined
those that might come. Like Llwyd, I did not eat; my belly battled food and I grew
thinner. Like Llwyd, I was yearning for the one who would deliver me from this hunger.

‘Get up, Ailia.' Manacca shook me awake.

It was midsummer eve, the night of the southern solstice. I had drifted to sleep
on the floor of the Great House, though we were all supposed to keep vigil through
this, the shortest night. Now dawn approached and we had to walk to Sister Hill to
watch the break of the year's longest day. Despite Rome's encroachment, or perhaps
because of it, we clung even more tightly to our rituals.

Bebin and Cah tugged on their cloaks as I helped Manacca tie hers, blinking tiredness
from my eyes. ‘Do you come, Cookmother?' I asked, prodding the mound snoring beside
me.

‘Soon, soon,' she murmured, breaking wind as she rolled over.