Hag of the Hills, page 2
Bodvoc held Fennigus’ sword now, his squinted eyes checking every detail. He stroked his greying moustache. Fennigus’ sword came from the sidhe, so to say. When a young man turns thirteen Samhains, he must go and find a sword. I don’t know where the swords come from, since it’s a secret kept by the sword-armed boys, but I’ve heard they come from bogs or lochs or old tombs, gifted by the sidhe of those places. Bodvoc and Auneé forbade us from partaking in this ritual, even though it is our birthright, but Fennigus snuck out one night and returned in the morning with an iron sword. Sometimes, the boys bring back bronze swords, though those are probably ill luck, cursed weapons from a bygone before men knew the magic of iron.
‘Not bad. I would take it into battle,’ said Bodvoc as he hefted the blade, ‘I always thought of myself with this in my hand. Another stuck in my chest. Used to think that was the death. Now I’ll be happy to die in my bed, when I am no longer useful for our world of Taman.’
For a moment, I imagined him wielding our clan’s war-kit: a bare chest covered in a green cloak, green-yellow check trousers, face painted blue in woad, and a reddened sword in hand.
I had many thoughts and questions, but I dared not ask.
‘Bodvoc, why’d you put down that sword and take up a sickle?’ Fennigus asked. ‘Our father was a warrior. His father was a warrior. We are descendants of Lugus of All Crafts. Why don’t we honour him with the greatest craft of man, the craft of war?’
Bodvoc sighed. ‘All young men crave a death in battle, especially when it’s in our blood, like us. Will you die in battle? Maybe a festering wound. Maybe starve to death. Maybe drown. Captured. Sold into slavery. It’s not all gold and glory.’
The hot blood in my veins turned cold. I ignored Bodvoc’s words. Something within me told me that I desired more than this life of cows, pigs, and the neighbour girl. Something told me that glory flowed through my veins, dormant, patient yet eager like a bear just waking from winter. I had to say something, perhaps, to stir Bodvoc’s spirit.
‘But father lived that life. He didn’t die at sea, he was never a slave, he didn’t starve, and he died in battle,’ I said.
‘That life is not yours. That Cloda girl isn’t so bad. She comes with as much land as the crow flies.’
He placed the sword down on a bench, walked over to the other side of the cave, picked up a whetstone, and picked up the sword again. He nodded to Fennigus as a command to watch him, and whetted the edges of the blade.
‘Nothing wrong with this life. I’ve given you food, and shelter, and work that is the salt of the good Danu. The land is yours after I’m dead. You are a free man, and answer just to the druids, and the gods. Most men do not have this choice.’
The whetting stopped, and Fennigus handed me both the whetstone and the sword. I attempted to sharpen the dull side of the blade.
‘Father travelled the world. He made a name for himself. He is known after death. I am sure his grave is glorious, like the mounds and cairns we see all over Bride’s islands,’ I said.
‘You didn’t pay attention, did you? Far too hard – look, like this.’ Bodvoc said, and pulled both objects out of my hands, and whetted the sword. ‘No idea how he died. We’ve heard second-hand accounts. He died in battle, so what? Would have been better if he were here now. Could teach you lads a thing or two about sharpening a blade.’
Bodvoc raised the sword and stooped over, then hacked at a log near his feet.
‘Decent blade, but the tang is rusty. A rusty tang means a broken sword,’ he said to Fennigus. ‘But a good sword. Probably will have to sell it to pay off your blood debt.’
Fennigus grunted as he shovelled some hay onto the pile of coal. Bodvoc handed him his sword the correct way that is pommel first, and left down the hillock. ‘Beware the hag of the hills,’ he said, an adage I had always thought scared children to come back home before dark and to stay away from the deep mountains.
When Bodvoc’s cart disappeared in the meld of the red moors, Fennigus spoke. ‘The spearhead is finished. I’ll attach it to an ash-pole and then it’s yours.’
‘For what?’ I asked.
‘The raid,’ Fennigus said.
‘Who are you raiding?’ I asked.
Fennigus grinned at that. His eyes perked like a wildcat’s ears when they hear their prey nearby.
‘The Ashmore clan. You know, we slaughtered the bull last night that I had captured last season. That bastard son of the clan, Skeane, grabbed for the thigh when it was rightfully mine. You know what that means – it’s a fight, a fight to the death. I drew my sword but the druids came and stopped it, and called for peace.’
‘The Ashmore lad? But they’re our neighbours, and we’re in debt to them. How can you?’
‘To the crows with the Ashmore,’ he said, and spat, then poured the vat of clay on the forge’s fire. It hissed and I turned from the smoke. ‘I’ll pay off our clan’s debt when I shove my sword up Skeane’s arse.’
‘I can’t do it, Fennigus,’ I said. ‘The druids will hang us if Bodvoc doesn’t first.’
‘Fennigus?’ a voice chirped from below. A girl’s voice, a sweet voice that sounded as endearing to me as the chime of birds in the morning. It was Cloda, the neighbour girl. I thought it strange to see her now, since the women go up to the hills with the animals to milk them at this time of day. When I heard her voice, it soothed me. She had a fringed, fluttering brown cloak over her white wool dress. She was walking up the hillock barefoot. She possessed wide, shapely hips that swayed, as curved as corbels.
Her father and Bodvoc had already worked out the deal for me to wed her. Next Beltane, after the whelping of the last foal, I will present Cloda with a horsehair rope I had made myself, and then I will tie it into a lariat, catch her and drag her back to my house. Then the men in her family shall contend this, through chasing, wrestling, and some light fisticuffs with the men in my family. Her attendants will dress her in yellow and green to symbolize fertility and maidenhood. After we win the skirmish, I will put her on my horse and ride her to Dun Ashaig. There the druid will wed us in the name of Bride, our goddess of our marriage and the hearth, and our two lands will be joined as one.
It was Bodvoc’s dream, and the only reason I had never snuck out at night and snatched a sword from a tomb was that I had Cloda promised to me.
‘Cloda, hello – what are you doing down from the commons so early?’
‘Brennus – I’ve come to tell you – oh, Fennigus is here. Hello, Fennigus!’
Fennigus took a whetstone to the spearhead. Scrapes filled Lugus’ cave, sandstone on iron. Sweat dripped stripes down his soot-covered half-naked body.
‘This whetstone has been in my family since Cúchulainn walked Skye to find Sgàthach,’ he said, as Cloda edged closer.
‘Really?’ She edged closer to him, ankle-deep in the soot.
‘Cloda, what did you have to tell me?’ I asked.
‘Yeah,’ Fennigus said. ‘On his way to the mountains to train with the amazon queen, and goddess of Skye, Sgàthach, Cúchulainn was challenged by a young Ashaiger man, eager to prove his worth to the Hibernian. He struck high, Cúchulainn struck low, and Cúchulainn’s sword chopped his cock clean off! When Cúchulainn returned from the mountains, he met the Ashaiger mourning on the road that his wife will never love him again. Cúchulainn gave the whetstone to the Ashaiger, to use instead of a cock.’
Fennigus set the spearhead down, picked up the whetstone and put it between his legs and wagged it at Cloda. She laughed, red in the face.
‘Why are you back so early from the pasture?’ I asked again.
‘Oh, no, how could I forget! Auneé sent me – both of you need to go down the trackway! And bring some charcoal!’
I grabbed a clump of charcoal from the ground, turned heel and started down the hill. ‘Come on Fennigus,’ I said.
‘I’m not going anywhere – I’m busy,’ he said. ‘But you go and then tell me what she wants. Beware the hag of the hills,’ Fennigus said, and then said to Cloda, ‘you’re not allowed to have a dress on in here.’
I stopped.
‘That’s not true,’ Cloda laughed.
‘Yeah, it’s true. Look, both Brenn and I have no shirts on. You have to take yours off.’
‘My dad would kill me!’ she said.
‘He’s not going to find out, right, Brenn?’
I looked on, aghast.
‘You can’t do that,’ I said to her.
‘I can’t?’ she asked, and her voice perked.
‘No,’ I said, somehow finding my balls as Fennigus suggested before. ‘I’m your future husband, and I say you can’t.’
‘You’re my future husband, not my husband now, Brennus, son of Biturix!’ she said, and stuck her tongue out at me. She pulled the cloak from herself and revealed her long, elegant neck, her slim and narrow shoulders that just accented her wide hips. I knew I had been summoned by Auneé and it sounded urgent, especially since the women shouldn’t be down in the lowlands this early in the year, but I failed to budge.
Now, dearest Luceo, when you relay this to the men of the south, who take godly pride in their naked bodies, and who know that we up in the north do, too, and when we bathe there is little division between men and women, and that I have seen Cloda naked before, though only a glimpse for it is wrong to stare at women during our baths. Now Fennigus simply wanted to see her tits.
Her dress had two straps over the shoulder pinned by bone pins, and she unpinned the straps loose and the dress flapped over her belt. She stood in the darkened rock shelter now and she looked shadow-like, yet the flow of her body and her bare hills mystified me. I nearly snatched my tunic off the ground and draped her in it, and then a great warmth fell over my face. What I would have done to both her and Fennigus, if I had found my balls, I will not relay now, but there I walked off, marched down the hillock and to the dung of the trackway.
I headed down the trackway toward where Cloda said Auneé would be. The trackway was two carts wide and nothing but mud and puddles. It stank of shit and piss and soon my feet became encrusted in it. The animals must have returned early this year. A much-needed numbness overcame me, until a dog yapping and loping over the hill and down the trackway came toward me.
It was Lappie, our black and white sheep dog. She sprang into my arms and her coarse fur ruffled against my arms, and her dry tongue licked me across the lips. I had not seen her either since Beltane. She darted off and I followed up over the hill, and there at the base of the hill down in the valley, a company of men all stood around, dressed in white robes and I knew it was the druids of Dun Ashaig. In the centre of them, a girl lay prone on her back. An oxcart stood idled near a stream.
Auneé stooped over the prone girl, her white-streaked blond hair danced over her brown shawl. She said something in her foreign tongue, repeated the phrase nine times, and rubbed red powder over the girl’s bare white leg.
Auneé looked up at me. ‘Where’s the charcoal?’
I handed it to her. She rubbed a chunk of it across a red wound on the girl’s leg.
Nine druids encircled us. They all were older men, over fifty Samhains, greying or grey, bearded, dressed in pure white robes and they walked on raised wooden shoes so the trackway would not blemish the purity of their vestments. They all carried shepherd’s crooks, and the highest druids carry gilded crooks like curved sunbeams.
The men of the south know our druids well, and they despise them because our druids are smarter than their druids. All men are dumb animals compared to the intellect of our druids. They study for twenty years on the isle of Mann in the arcane arts. They master healing, poetry, warfare, theology, astronomy, philosophy, math, law. They divined the will of the gods and all they said must be followed.
Auneé looked up at me again with her big green eyes. They looked desperate. ‘I need your spit,’ she said, her accent bleeding through, palm bared.
I spat in her hand.
The wounded girl’s teeth clattered and Auneé held her hand as she applied the salve of charcoal and my spit to her wound. Auneé, armed with a bronze needle, sewed the wound shut.
The girl was Myrnna, the brunette daughter of the chief druid. Her big brown eyes welled with tears. She wore a green dress and a brown shawl, and her gold armrings and earrings glittered. I had known Myrnna by her long, wavy, brown hair. Our clan had been blessed chiefly with blond and red hair, and nearly all of Skye displayed this trait, except for a few clans down in the southeast who were said to have been the descendants of the island’s original inhabitants. Myrnna had both dark hair and eyes and many speculated that the druid’s wife had cuckolded him with a foreign merchant.
‘I wasn’t chasing butterflies,’ Myrnna said. Our eyes met and she looked away.
‘Myrnna was chasing butterflies, and she was bitten by a snake,’ said one of the druids. ‘May Cernunnos crush all snakes in his mighty fist.’
I thought that explanation odd. Chasing butterflies? That was child’s play, and Myrnna was a woman, and she studied for a few years at the druid’s academy far south on Mona. The druids rarely permit women to join their ranks, but the daughters of the druids are sometimes allowed to become druidesses, but Myrnna left the academy and returned to Skye around Lughnasa.
‘There was a raid reported on the cattle up over at Cuidrach,’ a druid with a long white beard said. ‘And another raid over at the glen in Ashmore. We’re taking everyone down from the pastures immediately. There are some rumours of boats of strangers being sighted around the coasts. All men are to arm themselves and watch their beasts. Be on guard. And you lads best not raid other clans.’
Boats of strangers? Foreign raiders? On our island?
Auneé beckoned Lappie. The dog cantered over, delved down in front of Myrnna’s leg and started to lick it.
‘Nodens, Nodens, Nodens…’ the nine druids chanted all around me. Nodens is the god of healing, hunting, dogs, and the sea.
Lappie stopped licking, the druids stopped chanting, and Auneé helped Myrnna to her feet. She stumbled and brushed her wavy hair off her wet face.
Auneé helped her into the oxcart, the druids piled in, and they disappeared down the glen toward Dun Ashaig.
‘They will claim my work as theirs as they always do, but I couldn’t leave the lass like that,’ she said.
‘Are they hiding something?’ I asked.
Auneé paused for a moment. ‘I don’t know, but that was no snakebite. The druids hide things from us for our own safety, I think.’
‘Wouldn’t they tell you since you were a druidess?’ I asked her.
She laughed. ‘Oh no, no! I did visit the druid’s isle, but I did not like it there. It is too formal, and Druidry is too strict. I may be a healer, but I am not a druidess. But remember my dear, I am not of your kind, the kind others call Celts, I am from a different land, so I cannot practice Druidry.’
I noticed her wide face, snubbed nose and her greenish eyes, flecked in brown. She could almost pass for a local, but the trace of her accent branded her as foreign.
She looked into my eyes, puffed her cheeks and bit her lip. ‘Bodvoc told me that you want to raid like Fennigus. Why?’ She put a hand on my shoulder. Lappie, ever jealous, nudged my hand. I petted her while Auneé spoke. ‘Why do you hate the life we’ve given you? Why do you want to go and get yourself killed in a raid?’
‘I want to travel the world like my father, and fight, and have a band of brothers to call my own that fight at my side.’
‘To travel around like your father, and you know, my husband, too,’ she said, placing a hand on my shoulder. ‘Do you know how I met Bodvoc?
‘I had not seen fifteen summers when they came to my village. They killed everyone – all the men and boys. They burned down our home. They took our cattle and anything of gold and silver. They took the women and children. Your brother – my husband…,’ she said, taking a sob, and tears forming in her eyes.
‘And he took me as his wife, and every day I hated him. I was taken all the way to Skye, so far from home. I had never even seen the ocean before, and now I was living on an island, surrounded by it. But as the months went by,’ she said, sucking in a sob, and stiffening her body. Lappie dove at her feet and whimpered.
‘That day when the donkey kicked him, he was in such terrible pain and I thought he would die. I wept and realized that if he died, I would miss him, and I knew I felt love for him. He became gentle after I healed him. I realized I had no home but Skye, to suckle from the breasts of Sgàthach, and no family but yours, and no clan but Ashaig.’
I could hear the accent in her voice strengthen. I stared at my sister-in-law, my foster mother, the one who cooked my porridge every morning and my stew every night, who weaved my wool, who brought me milk, who tended Bride’s fire, and who had been so mistreated by my own brother. Now we embraced and she wet my shoulder with her tears. Lappie cuddled against us.
Auneé pulled away from me and stroked Lappie’s head. ‘I just wanted you to know that because that is what warriors do. They travel to other lands, and they hurt people. Not just in battle, but they make widows, they make orphans, and they take widows and orphans as theirs,’ she said, and grabbed my hand. ‘And I don’t want that to happen to you. You’re a good lad. You want excitement and adventure, but you don’t understand that you could be killed!’ Her eyes teared up again. ‘You could be killed, and Fennigus could be killed, and when Bodvoc drinks himself to death, who will take care of lonely old me?’
My eyes drifted away and down the rolling red moors. There the cairn stood, between the trackway and black mountains, and its stony crown aimed at the stony crown of the Slighan Hill.
‘But Skye is covered in cairns of great men,’ I said. ‘I want to be one of those great men. I’m a descendant of Lugus, and it is my right to be so.’
