‘I would so love to ride a sea-serpent one day,’ she said. ‘Perhaps I will come and visit ye in the Fathomless Caves, so ye could take me out on one.’
She said this in a voice of gentle raillery, and was obviously taken aback when the ambassador straightened his back and said abruptly, ‘I’m afraid that would be impossible. No woman is permitted to ride a sea-serpent. They are only for warriors.’
‘Oh, but I’m sure ye could make an exception for me,’ she said.
Alta bowed curtly. ‘I am sorry, Your Highness. Sea-serpents are dangerous creatures. It would no’ be suitable.’
She sighed. ‘Ye ken, sir, ye do no’ encourage me to want to visit ye, as ye are always urging I do.’
He bent his head over hers. ‘Indeed I do urge it, Your Highness. The blood o’ the people o’ Jor runs in your veins; it is there in the sheen o’ your skin, and the frill o’ your fins. Ye should no’ have grown to womanhood knowing naught o’ your people. There are many things I wish to show ye. Though ye may no’ ride upon the back o’ a sea-serpent yourself, ye can watch the warriors in their races and jousts, and it is permitted for women to ride on porpoise-back, which they seem to enjoy. Then ye could play with the sea-otters, as they slide down the icebergs into the ocean, or ye could bathe in the hot pools o’ the Fathomless Caves. The water there is rich and strong, Your Highness, and fills ye with such strength and vitality. Then, at night, the sky is filled with a thousand stars and with curtains o’ coloured light we call Ryza’s Veils, after the god o’ dreams and visions. It is very beautiful.’
Bronwen looked up at him, fascinated. ‘I would like to see it,’ she sighed.
‘Then why do ye no’ come to the Isle o’ the Gods to see for yourself? I believe those o’ humankind often go on a tour after they are married. Why do ye and your husband no’ come to see the Fathomless Caves? Your husband should know about your ancestry as much as ye should.’
‘It is so far,’ she stammered, looking down again, discomposed to find him so close. ‘I dinna think Donncan –’
‘But are ye no’ to be his wife and his Banrìgh? Use those feminine wiles on him, as I have seen ye use them on every other man whose path ye cross.’
She drew away from him. ‘I beg your pardon?’
He smiled down at her, taking her hand. ‘Do no’ think I do no’ understand ye, Your Highness. O’ course ye are bored, incarcerated here so far from the sea. That tiny little pool is no’ enough for a princess o’ the royal Fairgean family. Ye need to swim in the fathomless sea, ye need to feel the drag o’ the tides in your blood, ye need to fight the waves and the icebergs, and dive so deep your blood drums in your ears.’
‘Och, aye,’ she whispered. ‘I do. Ye’re right.’
His voice dropped so low Mathias could hardly hear it. ‘Ye need to stand at the lip o’ the Fiery Womb and know the names o’ your own gods, the true gods. Ye are one o’ those anointed by Jor, and ye do no’ even ken his name, or the name o’ his brothers.’
She stared at him, shaken and confused. For a moment he loomed over her, his ice-pale eyes glittering, then he let go of her hand, moving away to pour her a tiny glass of the pungent seasquill wine. ‘So ye see, ye really must come to visit your family home,’ he said lightly. ‘I know King Nila is eager indeed to see ye again.’
‘I will try,’ she said, her voice for once unsure.
‘I do hope ye will no’ take this amiss, Your Highness, when I express my fervent hope that your very understandable restlessness and boredom does no’ tempt ye to behave unwisely. Your uncle, my king, is very eager to see relations between the Fairgean and the humans continue in their current pleasing route. Any imprudence that may cause a coolness to grow between ye and your betrothed would be seen with great sadness by both your uncles, I fear.’
She stared at him, flags of colour flying in her cheeks.
‘When is your betrothed due back from his travels?’ Alta asked. ‘Soon, I hope.’
‘Very soon, I am sure,’ she answered coolly.
‘Excellent,’ he answered. ‘I am looking forward to your wedding very much, and so, I may assure ye, are King Nila and Queen Fand, who are already making preparations for the journey.’
‘I look forward to seeing them here,’ she said, looking down into her glass.
‘Slàinte mhath,’ he said, raising his glass.
She inclined her head and sipped at her glass.
Mathias could hardly hear for the roaring in his ears. He could not have explained why he was so angry, though he knew the ambassador’s comment about Bronwen’s feminine wiles had cut him on the raw. He stepped onto the terrace, determined to demand a dance from the Banprionnsa. She raised her head at the sight of him and smiled mechanically. He bowed at the ambassador, then bent his head to press a passionate kiss into her hand. ‘Your Highness,’ he said urgently.
She pulled her hand away.
Mathias was mortified. He glared at the Fairgean ambassador, who looked aside, smiling, he thought, mockingly. Mathias grabbed for a glass of seasquill wine, and knocked it over, spilling the potent liquor onto the tray. He crossly seized another one and drained it dry, rocking back on his heels.
‘I thought ye wanted to dance,’ he said to Bronwen sulkily.
‘I think I may withdraw now,’ the ambassador said. ‘Thank ye for a most amusing evening, Your Highness.’
She bent her head, murmuring a polite response.
‘Your devoted servant,’ the Fairgean said mockingly to Mathias, with a slight inclination of his head. He then bowed low over Bronwen’s hand. ‘And yours, as always, Your Highness.’
‘Good night, Alta,’ Bronwen said, looking troubled. He bowed again, and then left with a dramatic swirl of his seal-skin furs.
Mathias scowled. Bronwen did not notice. She seemed preoccupied.
‘I had best go back in,’ she said, looking back through the doors at the party within.
‘Nay, do no’ go in, please stay out here. Ye look so lovely in the moonlight, Your Highness,’ Mathias said.
‘No, I am growing rather cool,’ she replied, putting her glass down on the tray and gathering up her skirt in her hand.
He sprang towards her. ‘Let me keep ye warm, Your Highness!’
As soon as the words were out of his mouth, he wished he could bite them back, but it was too late. She turned an affronted face towards him. ‘I beg your pardon?’
His head swimming, his whole body aching with longing, he seized her hand. ‘Ye must ken, I live for your smile … my days are filled with thoughts o’ ye … Ye canna be so cruel as to deny me …’
‘Ye’re drunk,’ she said incredulously. ‘How dare ye? Let me go!’
He had seized her waist, the feel of her skin beneath the sinuous satin inflaming him beyond all reason. ‘Please … Bronwen …’ He dragged her against him, bending his head to kiss her lips.
She fought free. ‘Are ye mad? Let me go!’
‘Ye canna pretend the way I feel is a surprise to ye,’ he managed to say, though his tongue felt thick and his brain foggy.
‘Just because I like dancing with ye does no’ mean I want ye to manhandle me,’ she retorted, trying to smooth her crushed dress. ‘I like dancing with many people!’
‘Aye, so I’ve seen,’ Mathias said angrily. ‘The Banrìgh was right about ye, ye are naught but a whore!’
‘What did ye say?’
Mathias was conscious of having spoken unwisely, but the fumes from the seasquill wine were clouding all thought. He swayed on his feet. ‘That’s what she said. This morning. I heard her.’
‘The Banrìgh said I was a whore!’
‘That’s why Prionnsa Donncan willna come home,’ he said spitefully.
Bronwen’s cheeks were scarlet, her breast heaving with angry breaths. ‘How dare she!’
Mathias took an unsteady step towards her, reaching out one hand. ‘Bronwen …’
‘Do no’ dare call me by my name,’ she hissed. ‘Get out o’ here,
now! I never want to see ye again.’
‘But my lady … Your Highness …’
‘Go now, else I’ll call my men to throw ye out.’
He tried to marshal his thoughts, but she had spun on one foot and gone back into the ballroom. He saw her seek refuge by Thunderlily’s side, the Celestine turning at once to embrace her, bright eyes flying up to stare through the door and straight into Mathias’s heart. The wrinkled eyelid of her third eye rolled back and he saw the dark liquid well of her secret orb, stripping him of all pretences. He shrank back, trembling, aghast.
After a few moments, he hurried back through the ballroom and out into the corridor, knocking over a table with his hip. All the way he was conscious of the Celestine’s terrifying three-eyed gaze.
‘So when you or I are made
A fable, a song, or fleeting shade;
All love, all liking, all delight
Lies drowned with us in endless night.
Then while time serves, and we are but decaying;
Come, my Corinna, come, let’s go a-Maying.’
ROBERT HERRICK,
‘Corinna’s Going a-Maying’ (1648)
Olwynne drifted up from the dark dreamless void of her slumber, slowly becoming aware of herself again. Outside her window some bird was going crazy with joy at the prospect of another day. Olwynne wished it would shut up.
Another bird joined in, and then another. With her eyes still closed, Olwynne wondered idly if the birds’ dawn chorus was some kind of rite demanded by their religion. Was the sun a god to them, a deity to be worshipped and placated? Did its sinking every night herald a time of terror and despair, a period of darkness and silence stalked by owl and cat and rat? Did they fear, huddling in their flimsy nests, that the sun would never rise again? This hosanna of rejoicing could be, then, a desperate plea for the sun not to abandon them as much as a shout of relief at the first paling of the night. Perhaps the birds believed that if they failed in their duty to sing the sun to life, it would be dreadful night forever.
Today was the first of May. Today the Coven would ring bells and blow whistles to welcome the dawn, and light a chain of bonfires across the land. All the people would dance and sing and feast, welcoming the coming of summer and the passing of winter, celebrating Eà of the green mantle, Eà the mother. There was as much fear as joy in these celebrations, Olwynne realised for the first time. Did they all not dread the cold and the darkness, the barren and the bleak? Did not every living creature – man or woman, beast or bird – did they not all long for love and happiness and warmth and health?
Olwynne’s eyes filled with tears. She flung her arm over her eyes and turned her face into the pillow, castigating herself once again for this dreary misery which dogged her every waking moment. More than a week had passed since she had walked the dream-road, yet Olwynne had not been able to throw off the effects of the sorcery sickness. A blackness lay over her spirits, a blight which drained her of all will and energy. She could find no desire to get up out of her bed, to rejoin her classes, to see her friends. What’s the point, she thought to herself. So she stayed in bed for most of the day, picking listlessly at her food, waking in the darkest hour of the night in sudden bouts of inexplicable terror, to pace her floor or stand staring out at the moonlit garden, twisting her hair in her fingers.
It was not nightmares that disturbed her repose. Olwynne’s sleep was devoid of any dreams at all. Isabeau had placed a ward on her third eye. Every time Olwynne fell asleep, it was into a sensory void, a long period of blankness from which she woke feeling strangely dislocated. At first it had been a blessed relief, for Olwynne’s fever had brought all sorts of terrible hallucinations and fancies to haunt her. But now, after so many days, the emptiness of her sleep was as ghastly as any of her dreams had ever been. Olwynne felt as if her waking life had been leached of all colour and purpose and marvel. She did not wish to sleep, she did not wish to be awake. She seemed to hang in a no-man’s-land between worlds, lacking the desire or the ability to cross back into her own world, or to move forward into the land of dreams.
Isabeau was worried about her, and kept the healers busy making bitter-tasting potions for her, and nettle tea, and soup rich with herbs and mushrooms. Iseult stroked her hair back from her brow, and told her not to fear for her father’s life, that she was watching over him as she had always done. Her father suggested a good meal of roast lamb and mulled ale, a solution Olwynne regarded with horror, while Owein tried to coax her out to visit the city inns, or to attend a ball at the court. Nothing helped. The rest of Olwynne’s life stretched out before her, grey and flat and featureless.
Not even to herself would Olwynne admit that Lewen was the primary cause of her depression. I’m just tired, she told herself. I’m worried about Dai-dein. I’m having trouble recovering from the sorcery sickness. The fever has taken it out o’ me. I’ll feel better soon.
Yet often, as she lay in her bed, drifting in and out of sleep, her thoughts turned back to the previous summer, when she and Owein and Lewen had been the best of friends, and the days had been bright and golden and filled with laughter. They had ridden out and picnicked in the green woods together, Lewen whittling a lump of wood into something magical and beautiful while Olwynne made clover chains and Owein floated on his back, his freckled face turned up to the sun. They had read books together and argued over the laws of nature and the universe, they had danced together at balls, attended concerts and plays, and drunk ale together. If only she had known it was their last summer together. If only she had realised Lewen would be so stupid as to fall in love with a half-breed satyricorn girl whose hands reeked of murder. If only, if only, if only …
It seemed a lifetime ago. Now Olwynne hardly saw Lewen. If he was not at school, or squiring at the royal court, he was at the prison, visiting his paramour. When he did come to see her, he was preoccupied, or wanting to ask her advice on lawyers and court procedure, as if Olwynne knew anything about a murder case. Rhiannon, Rhiannon, Rhiannon, it was the only word she ever heard him say anymore. She was heartily sick of hearing it.
Olwynne threw back her bedclothes and got up, pacing the floor in her bare feet, heedless of the chill striking up from the stone floor. It was dark still. The birds singing their desperate chorale had not yet dragged the sun out of its night-shell. She went and looked at her face in the mirror. All she could see was a pale blob, surrounded by a wild riot of hair. Using flint and tinder, as magic had been forbidden to her since the sorcery sickness, Olwynne lit her candles and placed them on either side of her mirror. They illuminated her long face, her skin marred with reddish freckles, her eyes very dark between their red lashes, and hollowed underneath with violet shadows that began in the corner of her eye like the bruise of a thumb-print. Her nose was long and thin and had an arch in the centre like a crag of stone. Her mouth was nicely shaped, she had to admit that, but it was pale and bloodless. And her hair! Orange as carrots, frizzy and wild, dry to the touch. Black, straight hair was all the rage now. If the satyricorn girl had been at court, she would have been feted for her beauty, her dreamy blue eyes, her milk-white skin, her night-black hair. No-one would ever call Olwynne the Bonny, or the Fair. She was called clever, quick, bright, and sometimes, the Red, like her aunt had been.
Olwynne sighed. On an impulse she caught up her plaid and wrapped it about her shoulders and went out barefoot into the dim morning. All was quiet, though soon the witches would be rousing, ready to begin the Beltane rites. As soon as the sun rose over the horizon, the bonfire would be lit, and the chosen Green Man would carry his blazing torch out into the city, to light the hearth fires of the townsfolk. But for now, the only sound was the ridiculous clamour of the birds. No-one would see Olwynne NicCuinn, daughter of the Rìgh, gathering the May-dew like a common goose-girl.
Of course, Olwynne did not truly believe that washing one’s face in the May-dew caused freckles and other blemishes to fade, or gave one that baffling glow of beauty that some girls had so e
ffortlessly. Olwynne would have been mortified if anyone had seen her. Such country superstitions were not the lot of banprionnsachan. If anyone had suggested she was capable of doing such a thing, she would have poured scorn on their head. Yet here she was, out dabbling in the May-dew, and all for the love of a man who was in love with another. Olwynne felt angry, resentful tears in her eyes, but she did not turn back, slipping under the cover of the trees before bending her hand to sweep it through the icy, dew-silvered grass.
She rubbed the dew into her face, half-laughing at herself, half-angry. Her skin tingled. She stood then, lifting her face to the silver sky, watching the stars fade away.
From deeper in the woods, a woman’s voice rose in song.
‘By a bank as I lay
Myself alone did muse, Hey ho!
Methinks I ken that lovely voice,
She sang before the day.
She sang, the winter’s past, Hey ho!
Down, derry down,
Down derry, down derry,
Down, derry down, derry down,
Derry down, down!’
Olwynne turned, utterly smitten. She had never heard such a gorgeous golden voice, filled with such joyous abandon. The sound of it raised all the hairs on her arms, and sent chills down her spine.
‘The laird o’ spring’s sweet music,
The timid nightingale, Hey ho!
Full merrily and secretly
She sings in the thicket
Within her breast a thorn doth prick
To keep her off from sleep, Hey ho!
Down, derry down,
Down derry, down derry,
Down, derry down, derry down,
Derry down, down!
Waken therefore, young men,
All ye that lovers be, Hey ho!
This month of May, so fresh, so gay,
So fair by field and fen,