Hag of the Hills, page 13
‘Then let me ask you,’ I asked him. ‘Do you have a tub of water so I can clean this blood from me before I meet this former druid?’
‘What blood?’ he asked.
I looked down at my tunic and trousers and found them clean. I unsheathed my sword, Antedios jumped backward, and the sword shimmered unstained in the sun. I sheathed it.
He looked at me curiously, and then left, and the mercenaries disappeared into the green meld of pine forest. I hurried to catch up. I followed them out of the forest, questions and worries harrying my mind.
Antedios chatted to me about Verc and gave me some advice regarding him as we headed toward the mercenary camp. We had gone through the frown of pine forest and emerged on the coast. The smell of brine and the baying of seagulls signified a normal balmy early autumn day. Behind us, lay a span of moorland that was an excellent hunting ground but haunted by sidhe, and home to a clan that is probably dead and nameless by now. In front of us, a black rim of shingles where sea-eagles dump their shells to crack them open, and then the grey ocean. The mercenaries camped on the slither of grassland before the shingles, a series of white tents contrasted against the black shale rocks, like mould on rotten food. There were men strewn about, and even some women, a campfire in the centre, two pack mules grazing on the grasslands, some barrels, a wooden frame with hanging clothes, and the smell of cooking meat as we came down toward them. I noticed little else, for I was terrified of the prospect of the Hillmen finding us, but no one seemed concerned.
‘There are Hillmen!’ I blurted out, hopping across a stream. ‘Don’t you know what happened to my clan last night?’
Aldryd, who strode across the treacherous shingle spread as sure footed as a goat, turned to me and shrugged. ‘We have a deal with them.’
A deal with them Hillmen? Just as I were about to ask him more, Tratonius began speaking to a tall man in a green tunic, and Tratonius pointed back at me. That must be Verc.
At the camp, Verc looked down his meaty nose at me. He had a hard face, a high hairline of grey-blond hair, and a thick, long moustache. He stood a head taller me. He was an old Gaul, a druid-turned-warrior, and Antedios told me that he hated the Romans and if I wanted to get on his good side, I would tell him I hated the Romans. I told him I hated the bastards, and he asked if I knew who the bastards were, and I didn’t. That did not seem to matter, since it was as if he were a dog and sniffed me and smelled something he disliked.
‘You’re not the relative of the girl, so it means nothing.’
I stared up at him. He looked back down at me. Badb pounded in my chest, reminding me of my failure with each beat.
‘You can do one thing for me, though,’ he said, and squinted his eyes.
‘What is it?’ I asked.
Verc walked toward a tent and beckoned for me to come. I followed, looking around, getting strange looks from the other men, and glanced around for Myrnna. He opened the flap of the tent, stuck it into a wooden peg in the ground, and entered. I followed.
The interior of the tent was an orderly bed of skins and woollen blankets along with rugs and sacks stacked on one side. He picked up a wooden box and shoved it at me. I opened it and was met with a putrid stench.
‘My shoes smell. They’re also leaking. Fix that,’ he said, and left the tent.
I looked down at the brown leather, pointed, stinky shoes in the box. I dropped the box and the shoes spilled out on the grass. I left the tent and looked for Myrnna.
Outside among the tents, one man around the campfire caught my attention. He was large, so tall and so fat, whale-like, with thin black hair in a tiny ponytail at the nape of his neck, big beefy hands whittling a chunk of wood with a long, broad dagger, and someone had just told a joke so he let out a great bellow and shivers ran down my spine. Though most of the men there intimidated me, this massive man intimidated me the most. It was as though he could gut a man with that knife as simply as he whittled with it.
I put him out of my mind and called out ‘Myrnna!’
Some commotion came from one of the tents, and I looked around and the mercenaries now had noticed me. Tratonius walked toward me from the shingles, he had been speaking to a blond man with a fishing pole reeling in a fish. He unhooked the fish from his line and plopped it in a bucket and started toward me.
I ran over to the tent with the women’s voices and ripped open the flap. I was met by a woman with striking long dark hair. She had a small, rounded forehead, a thin but long nose, full ruby lips, and a glowing smile. She had a beautiful face, though aged, with a dark mole on her delicate chin that gave her a lasting impression. Due to her beauty and posture, I had first thought she was some queen held captive by the mercenaries, until I saw her garments. She wore a simple wool dress that clung close to her lithe body, the trace of her nipples visible, and a leather collar around her lithe neck. She was a slave, and I thought it was a crime to see such a pretty and dignified woman in such an ugly and undignified way.
‘Puer! Oh, puer!’ She said to me, then she looked over my shoulder. ‘Tell me, Tratonius, oh domine! Tell your most beloved slave Sabella what this handsome puer is doing here! Have you a guest that needs loving arms?’
‘We have a guest here that needs to fix my shoes,’ said Verc, whom I had not noticed behind me.
Behind the slave woman, Myrnna rested on a sheepskin bed, and she looked up at me with shining eyes.
I wanted to shove this slave out of the way, grab Myrnna and run away. Run away from these horrible mercenaries and their twisted laws and slavery.
‘Come here, boy,’ Tratonius said, and he grabbed me by the shoulder and beckoned me away from the tent. I moved and Sabella closed the flap.
We all sat down at the fire: Tratonius, Verc, myself, and the fisherman they called Marthelm. Marthelm must have been in his forties, and he had a knot of blond hair tied above his ear. He had a trimmed dark blond beard and fierce blue eyes that burned so hot in his head that they resembled the blue of flame. He dumped the fish, a ling, out of the bucket. It flopped about until he stunned it with a rock, then he chopped its head off, cut it from gill to tail and its guts spilled out, and began fileting it on a cutting board across his lap.
‘I swore an oath,’ I said, fingering the brooch that clenched my cloak together.
‘Her father is dead, I told you,’ Verc said. ‘But if you insist, there may be a way we can sell her to you.’
‘How?’ I asked, fingering my sword in its sheath, catching a glimpse of its leathered handle. It hurt to think about departing from that sword, but if it meant purchasing Myrnna, then my oath must take precedent over my sword, though I had started to believe Bodvoc travelled with me as I wore his sword, and guided my sword-arm when I struck with it.
‘You don’t want to do it,’ said the man filleting the fish. He looked up at me, and nodded. ‘You should find another way,’ he said in a thick accent that I could not pin down, but it sounded similar to Auneé’s when she got upset.
‘Let him make his own decision, Marthelmaz,’ Verc said. ‘He’s a freeman, and a warrior, aren’t you?’ he turned to me. ‘They painted you with woad and your hair is spiked, and you own a sword. You’re a warrior.’
‘I’m Biturix’s son,’ I said. ‘We are descended from Lugus, and I demand that you take my oath seriously!’
‘Biturix – I know the name. But you aren’t your father and as far as I know, you have no clan any longer. You’re a lonesome warrior and we aren’t giving your girl back, unless you work for us.’
‘You talk too much, Vercerterx,’ Marthelm said.
‘Then you tell him, if you are more efficient, Marthelmaz,’ Verc said with a wave of the hand. A girl in a tattered, undyed dress passed him by, her dirty bare feet unsure on the ground. She had short-cropped blond hair and a leather collar, and she was clearly another slave girl. Verc caught eye of her rear, and he grabbed her by her little wrist and pulled her toward him. She sat in his lap, expressionless. We made eye contact, and she just stared through me. I shuddered at her dead-gaze.
‘They want you to sell yourself into slavery,’ Marthelm said.
Badb pounded in my chest. I’m a warrior, how could I even be a slave?
‘Look, son,’ Tratonius said, ‘our hoisting slaves drowned on the way over here. Your islands are terribly stormbound, lucky to get here alive. We’re real short on hands and we need people to sharpen our weapons, help stitch our clothes, carry our shit – tell you what, you work for, let’s say, five years, and if we still have Myrnna then you can have her back.’
My woad ran down my forearms and calves in streamlets of blue sweat, and the beeswax melted down my forehead.
‘Five years?’ I asked, bewildered.
‘Yes,’ Verc said.
‘Maybe we can do four years,’ Tratonius said.
‘No, five. The girl is a maiden,’ Verc said.
‘Come on, he’s Biturix’s boy. Four and a half.’
‘You don’t have to decide today,’ Marthelm said, ‘sleep on it. None of the men here can afford the girl. She is safe for now.’
‘Don’t be so sure. The Hibernian wants her, and he claims to have land over back home he’s willing to trade,’ Verc said.
Four and a half years of my life, working for them, as a slave. I could think of little worse. Yet my oath drove me to this path, the Morrigan, goddess of fate, cackled behind me. I was sure of it. When Cúchulainn stood dead on his legs against his enemies, she shapeshifted into a raven and perched on his shoulder, and mocked him, and now she mocks me here, seated humbly on a log at this campfire.
‘And how do I know in four and a half years you shall both set me free and Myrnna will be mine?’
‘My word,’ Tratonius said. ‘All a man has in this life is his word. Break the word, and you break yourself as a man. Come on, boy, I would never break my word, especially to the son of Biturix.’
‘Four and a half years of labour for a maiden?’ Verc said. ‘What sort of crime have you bestowed upon us, Tratonius? What sort of deal have you made?’
‘That’s a long time,’ Marthelm said. ‘He may not survive.’
‘I will live. I will live long enough to take Myrnna. You just wait.’
Verc scoffed and ruffled his moustache looking down at me. Tratonius put two fingers in his mouth and whistled. Sabella came out, crying domine. She probably had been eavesdropping since she carried with her a razor and a leather collar.
‘Strip it all off,’ Verc said.
‘I’m keeping my belongings,’ I said, fingering my baldric and running a finger over the leather grip of my sword. ‘And my land.’
‘Your land is owned by the Hillmen now, so that’s a different dispute,’ Tratonius said. ‘And you can keep your things, but you can’t have them
on you.’
‘Foolish,’ Verc said, ‘you’re letting him keep his sword? A slave with a sword – what do you bring upon us, Tratonius?’
‘I’m Biturix’s son. I am a warrior, a descendant of Lugus.’
‘It will be in your back first,’ Verc said to Tratonius.
‘He won’t dare, because then we will just sell the girl and his oath will be forfeit. Now come on, son, you agreed to your slavery. Go along with it.’
They kept speaking but I lost their voices. My head spun. They spoke but I spoke over them, and there I recited my lineage from Lugus to Biturix and to myself. All proud warriors, god-blooded, men who braved the ocean and settled on Skye a long time ago, who drove the giants into the sea, just as I drove my sword into the giant’s eye last night. I was a warrior, I carried a sword, I carried the blood of the gods, I carried my name. And now I was enslaved, through my own will. I reached the last name and that was my own, and Bodvoc’s sword bade me unsheathe it and impale myself upon it to end such a dishonour. A dishonour I had brought upon my forefathers.
For a moment, I hated the chief druid. I hated him for ripping me from my destiny of dying at the side of my brother and our clan on the rolling moors of Dun Ashaig. To join my brothers and father and all my forefathers in Tír na nÓg, where only the bravest warriors sit among the olden heroes. Now I stand among those rotten mercenaries, for that’s what they were, rotten, I could see it on their gaunt faces hidden behind deep scars, and now my thoughts subsided when one whistled and out came Sabella, and I caught Myrnna’s big brown eyes behind her. Her eyes shined in the dim light of the tent, and we locked our gazes and then she shouted at me.
‘You idiot!’
Sabella approached me as the three aged mercenaries surrounded me. The slave mistress motioned for me to raise my arms, and I did, and then she unhooked my baldric and removed my sheathed sword. The other two slave girls, blonds, pudgy-faced and snub-nosed Germans, lugged out an open wicker chest. Sabella placed my sword and belts in the chest, and off came my hat. I looked up at the overcast sky and watched the seagulls swirling above as she unhooked my brooch, and I pleaded for it, but she assured me it would be safe in the chest, and then she removed my cloak. Next came my tunic, my shoes, and then my trousers, my socks, and finally my undertunic. I was naked on the brine-breezed beach.
The German girls came. They had sponges and a bucket, and they scrubbed the woad off my body, Sabella instructing them to get every bit off it, and Sabella herself rinsed the beeswax out of my hair. I began to recite my lineage again throughout. Sabella motioned me to kneel and I refused.
‘I will not kneel.’
‘O Servi!’ Sabella said, smiling at me and jiggling my dangling balls. My fist curled. She placed two hands on my shoulder, and her hazel eyes gleamed. ‘Servi! Kneel or we will have to make you,’ she said with a big toothy smile, and I wondered how such an old slave could have such a full set of white teeth.
I again refused, and she said something to the German girls in their language. Sabella walked behind me, and then a snap. I winced, and there stood Sabella behind me with a bullwhip. Blood rushed to my rear where the slave mistress had smarted me. I knelt, grumbling, and began reciting my lineage again.
I heard a snipping sound above me, and my hair trickled down my face and neck. Sabella had a pair of shears that snipped about my head, and by the time the Germans had finished washing my body, I had short-cropped hair, and then with a razor she shaved my head and face until both were as smooth as my knuckles. Then they led me toward the ocean, my bare feet rasped by the hard shingles and empty broken shells, and dipped me into the cold water. I came out and then Sabella wrapped a leather collar around my neck and handed me a loincloth and a pair of flimsy sandals. I was a slave, and I accepted my fate, holding in my heart that it was temporary, and that I’d be free in four and a half years with the Myrnna’s maidenhood and my oath intact. They led me back to the three elders of the mercenary tribe. I trembled, I seethed, I bowed my head and said nothing.
‘Your first order is to finish fixing my shoes,’ said Verc, ‘they are from Etruria, and I am fond of them.’ He stroked his long grey moustache and pointed toward his tent. ‘Go on, slave. Now.’
I followed his order, reciting my lineage under my breath, my oath in my mind, and hatred in my heart for the Hillmen.
For nine miserable days, I toiled on the beach tasked with tedious work. In the mornings, I fished and then prepared breakfast, and often had to go into the hinterlands with the German girls to fetch mushrooms, herbs, fruit, and berries for Verc, Cattos and Antedios, who refused to eat fish, but I did not mind for the air was fresh and the Slighan Hill hidden from my vision in the pine forest. After breakfast, a multitude of tasks affronted me. I had to clean, cook, wash clothes in the stream, sew patches on tents, sew patches on clothes, feed the mules, brush the mules, organize, repair, labour, all day and into the night. Then cook dinner and afterward Verc would order me to hold his wooden ale cup, and he would drink it and then sit it in my hand and all I had to drink was water.
All the while I worked closely with the slave girls. Sabella grew cross with me often, if I did not respond to orders quickly enough, she would yell ‘age, servi!’ and if I still did not comply, she would lash me with her bullwhip. One morning, I grew tired of her cruelty and raised a fist to strike her. She dropped to her knees and began to cry hot tears down her cheeks and she begged me, called me domine and handsome and sweet and offered me the wondrous pleasures of her flesh if I spared her my fist. When I spared her and turned around she snatched the whip from the ground and smarted me across the back so hard that I bled.
The German girls, Frowon and Mawaz, on the other hand, hardly responded to me at all. I knew the whip across their rears had broken them long ago. I still remember the look in Mawaz’s eyes when Aldryd had pulled her on his lap, the look of a dumb, dead beast, and I had taken up this life of slavery to ensure my Myrnna never would bear those dead eyes.
At twilight and in the evenings, we trained to fight. We had wooden swords, and Verc mostly led the trainings, though Marthelm and the Greek, who called himself Aster, also instructed us.
‘Teaching a slave to fight is stupid, perhaps,’ Verc said to us one night. ‘But he is still a man. If we ever need a spare arm, he will fight for us, and the better he is at fighting, the better off we are. Besides, he is a warrior, and warriors ought to fight.’
I enjoyed the time I spent training. It was mostly with Antedios and Cattos, who came from the Dobunni people of southern Britain, but occasionally, Cicarus, the Hibernian warrior came to fight with us. I disliked him, and he thought little of me, seeing me as nothing more than a servant and hardly worthy of his time. He bragged to me that he owned land and cattle. It was an irony, my dear Luceo, for my father’s mother’s side came from Hibernia, and my brothers carry Hibernian names and call some of our gods by Hibernian names, while the rest of our gods we call by Britannic names. Cicarus did not seem to recognize that at all, and I resented his disrespect.
