Gwenhwyfar Read online

  Provided that person would listen to her.

  After the meal was over, and the women had gathered at the hearth as the men gathered at the mead benches, instead of sitting at her mother’s feet as she usually did, Gwen allowed Little Gwen to usurp her place without a murmur. Instead, she settled away from the warmth of the fire, just in the shadows, and fixed her gaze on the priestess, silently willing the woman to look at her. If it worked to will people not to look at her, the opposite should be true too, shouldn’t it?

  For the longest time, the priestess seemed oblivious to Gwen’s gaze. The usual talk went on, of the luck of the hunt that day, of the feast to come on Samhain, of those who were expected to pledge to each other by leaping the fire that night. Of the thickness of the wool, the taste of the wind, speculation on how hard the winter to come might be.

  But finally, slowly, the priestess turned her head and looked into Gwen’s eyes. Her solemn gaze met Gwen’s anxious one, and, finally, she nodded once, then indicated the door with a little inclination of her head.

  Gwen got up and headed for the door, as if she were going to relieve herself at the privy. But she lingered beside the door, shivering in the cold with her cloak around her, waiting for the priestess.

  She did not have long to wait. The priestess slipped through the door and shut it against the wind, then reached down and gripped Gwen’s shoulder.

  “Your eyes were burning holes in my back, child,” she said, calmly. “What is your trouble? For surely you have one, if you gave up your place at the hearth and hardly smiled at your father’s thanks.”

  “I—I saw something!” Gwen blurted. Then the words came tumbling out of her, like an avalanche of pebbles, as she described the battle of serpent and bear. When she was finished, she waited in silence.

  “I do not know what this means,” the priestess said, after a long silence, in which the cold wind whipped their cloaks about them. “That it is a vision, and one portentous for you, I have no doubt. But I cannot tell what it means.”

  “Oh,” Gwen said, in a small, and disappointed, voice.

  “But I will meditate on this,” the priestess continued. “And if the Goddess sends me enlightenment, I will tell you.” The hand on Gwen’s shoulder relaxed, and the priestess gave her a little pat. “You did well to tell me, Gwenhwyfar. Such visions are rare; your mother has never had one. Should you have another such, do not fear to confide it to a priestess.”

  “I won’t,” said Gwen, and that seemed all there was to say. Feeling vaguely cheated, she went back inside and spent the rest of the evening on the edge of the cluster of her sisters, shivering, until the queen sent them all to bed.

  Chapter Three

  The morning of Samhain dawned as perfect as anyone could have asked for. The sun was warm enough for pleasure but not so warm as to make the old people grumble about summer-out of-season and bad omens. A cloudless sky and not even a hint of wind meant that the fires would send their smoke straight up, not into anyone’s face. A hard frost three days ago had killed the flies, and the hunts had been outstanding; in short, everything was as perfect as one could want to celebrate the High King’s wedding, the harvest, and the rites of the Lady of the Fields and the Lord of the Wood.

  Gwen and her sisters were rewarded for much hard work in the days before by being given a holiday today. They couldn’t stay abed though; the moment the sun was up, so were they, getting their hair braided, putting on their best gowns and shifts. The castle hall was full of people already; folk had been coming for days, and every little space where someone could lay his head had been taken up by someone. There were even tents pitched all about the castle and people sleeping in them.

  When the girls left their room, the sleepers had already been cleared from the Great Hall, and trestle tables were set up along the wall, laden with bread and autumn fruit and honey for folk to break their fast on, and ale for drinking. For the girls, however, there was a tastier treat of sops-in-wine and watered wine with honey to sweeten it. All of them helped themselves to apples once they had cleaned their bowls, both figuratively and literally. It was only dawn and a long time to dinner.

  Already there was activity everywhere, in the Hall and especially out on the green and about the village. Great cauldrons of soup were cooking, and ovens were fired up with the first baking of the day; the boar’s head, the baked meats, fish and fowl, the fruit pies, the cakes and baked vegetables that would be served at dinner. The second baking would be for meat pies for supper and more fish and fowl. There was a whole ox roasting at one fire and a whole wild boar at another. Samhain was not a religious festival, although tonight there would be the Great Working for the High King—it was the Equinox that was the significant date, when the Winter King slew his rival, the Summer King, as the Spring Equinox was when the Young Stag slew the Old. Samhain was the celebration of the end of harvest and the time when those animals who were to be killed for winter meat were culled out. Anything that could not be preserved must be eaten, so why not make a festival out of it? The butchered beasts were already rendered into quarters and in the pickling vats, the smokehouse, or the salt packs. Sausages were already made up and curing. The brewing was done, the ale and mead in their casks.

  Still the women were hard at work, tending to the cooking. Innards and bones, hooves and vegetable scraps had gone into pies and soup, for nothing was wasted. The common folk would get their portion of the ox and the boar—everyone got at least a small share of meat—but mostly they would be eating their fill of the soup. It was the guests of the king who would feast on the choicer stuffs.

  So this was mostly celebration for the menfolk. The hard work of farming was over, and the year was about to descend into the dark. Not a bad time of year to handfast, for the sharing of a bed now could mean a fine babe in the summer, and a bed was warmer with two in it. This would be the last time of abundance before the hoarding of winter.

  Gwen’s father made a point to bring in all his warriors for the days of feasting, organizing contests and games. There were even musicians, and not just the ones from the village.

  He was a surprisingly tenderhearted man as well where children were concerned; as this was the time of year when many a lamb grown into a sheep, gosling now big and gray and honking, or pink piglet grown fat went under the knife, he saw to it that there were plenty of things to occupy the children who had made these creatures into pets. So when the former pet became quarters, ham, and sausages hanging in the smokehouse, it was all done when the child was occupied with dancing or gaming or stuffing himself with unaccustomed treats.

  As Gwen headed purposefully out with her pockets bulging with apples, she did not follow after her older sisters, who were making straight toward the field where some of the older boys were engaged in wrestling, archery and sling contests, and the hurling of woolsacks.

  She also made sure to lose Little Gwen at the moment when her younger sister was distracted by a game of tag. Little Gwen could not bear to be left out of anything that promised attention, and once the child’s attention was fully occupied, Gwen took advantage of a couple of geese being chased to get away.

  Gwen didn’t want to play tag or hoops, to run races for prizes or watch the older boys and men compete at feats of strength. She wasn’t interested in the quieter pursuits of playing with poppets or merrils, and she certainly wasn’t interested in the mock handfasting that was going on, nor the flirtations of her oldest sister.

  She made her way with quiet determination to where the horses had been tethered.

  She knew better than to approach them; handling the warhorses was strictly the work of those who were given that privilege—sometimes boys and rarely girls, but mostly fully grown men and the occasional woman. But feast days like these were the only time she ever got to see them do the sorts of things they had been trained to do.

  At the moment, they were being readied for the chariot races. The Romans had introduced the chariot to the tribes, and once they had seen cha
riots in action, there was no stopping the tribes from adopting the vehicle. But unlike the Roman races, which were held in the coliseums on round or oval tracks, and were consequently hideously dangerous for driver and horses alike, these races, like the ridden ones that would come later, were held on the straight. From the line out to some distant spot, then a turn, and back to the start. Horses were too valuable to lose to accidents that could easily be prevented.

  The chariots were light wicker affairs, never pulled by more than two horses. The wheels had iron rims and iron fittings, and the wicker cars themselves were open in front, with a curved wall behind. The chariot that their father used for important occasions had seats; these racing chariots did not. Nor did they have the scythes on the wheels that the war chariots had.

  The war chariots were fearsome things, and Gwen had never (of course) seen them in use in battle. But these races would demonstrate some of the skill of the charioteers and the warriors who fought with them.

  There were four in the first race, which was a very special challenge match; two of them were her father’s horses and were driven by his men. The other two belonged to two of his war chiefs. The king was well known to be a generous winner and a gracious loser; no one would hold back for fear of displeasing him. These would be excellent races.

  Much as Gwen yearned after the horses like one gone lovesick, there was one pair and their driver that Gwen particularly wanted to watch, and they were not her father’s horses. They belonged to Hydd ap Kei, one of the king’s oldest friends, and the chariot driver was a woman.

  Her name was Braith, and Gwen had watched her race a score of times. She was amazing in the races, and Gwen wondered what she would be like in battle. She seemed to be absolutely fearless, she was known for running out onto the pole, standing on the yoke to help balance for a fast turn, running back to the chariot again. Precious time could be lost in the turns, precious in a race, and, Gwen supposed, precious in a fight, too. Running the pole like that helped in a turn. Gwen had even, once, when the chariot had hit an unseen rock and shattered, seen Braith leap onto the horses’ backs and drive them with one foot on each horse, her hair coming loose from its braids and streaming behind her like the horses’ tails.

  She’d been disqualified, for after all, in a chariot race it is expected that there be a chariot behind the horses, but people were still talking about the feat.

  Braith was indeed in the first race, and Gwen edged as near as she dared, watching her idol crooning to and soothing her team. They weren’t a matched team, like the king’s two; the left-hand one was a dark chestnut, the right-hand a dun. Braith combed her fingers through their coarse manes, ran her hands along their stocky necks, and whispered into their short, broad ears, standing between them as if she were a third horse in the traces. Gwen watched her with raw envy, her fingers itching and twitching with longing to touch those soft noses, scratch those warm necks. She wasn’t allowed near the warhorses, ever. “Too dangerous,” her father said. He didn’t mean dangerous for her, he meant dangerous for the horses. She might move suddenly, the wrong way, or do something else that would startle them, he said. They could sprain a muscle or make a misstep and hurt themselves some other way.

  So Gwen could only watch from afar as the bettors circled the chariots, eyed the great beasts knowingly, and conversed in mutters.

  Gwen thought that Braith looked exactly like her team; she was stocky, weather-beaten, rough. Her bright brown eyes peered out from under a kind of forelock of coarse, dark hair that looked as if she had hacked it off with her own knife in a fit of impatience. Her voice had the same intonation as a horse’s whinny, and when she laughed, it was loud and sudden and exactly like a neigh. Gwen adored her.

  If there was anyone in the world she would have liked to grow up to be, it was Braith. Power? Braith had Power! If anyone doubted, all they had to do was see her with her horses! That was Epona’s Power, and if Epona was a lesser goddess, well, perhaps she was closer to those who served her.

  The race was to begin at the sacred oak grove, and Gwen pressed herself against the bark of one of the great trees, hoping her brown gown would blend in with the bark, and yearned after Braith and her team with a passion she never felt for the gods.

  Suddenly those bright brown eyes caught sight of Gwen and locked on her. As if pulled by their reins, her horses turned to look at what Braith was looking at, so now there were three pairs of eyes gazing thoughtfully at her. Slowly, Braith smiled. And Gwen felt a jolt of something that took her breath away.

  Then she went back to whispering to her team. But now and again, she looked over at Gwen and smiled.

  No one else seemed to notice—or if they noticed, care that Gwen was there. Her ability to be quiet and unobtrusive was working even in this crowd. So she was allowed to watch with the rest as the drivers got into their chariots, as the chariots maneuvered into a roughly straight line, and then, at the shout from the king, reins slapped on backs, whips snapped, and the teams plunged out onto the rough sward for the outward leg of the race.

  Gwen would have swarmed up the tree, but she was wearing her one good gown, and she knew what her nurse and the queen would have to say about it if the garment was ruined before it was even dinner.

  So she just ran to stand in front of the shouting, cheering men, who were now so focused on the race that they didn’t even notice her.

  The hoofbeats didn’t sound anything like thunder—more like rocks tumbling down a cliff. Thunder wouldn’t make the ground shake; thunder didn’t make her heart pound or her throat dry with excitement. Four lines of rising dust followed the teams, but the colors painted on the chariots made it easy to tell which was which. What you could not tell, until they turned at the opposite end, was who was in the lead.

  That was signaled by the servants at the end, who raised a pole with the owner’s pennant on it as soon as the chariot made the turn.

  And the first pennant up was for Braith’s team. Gwen gave a squeal of glee, and jumped up and down, her hands clasped under her chin. She knew better than to pray to Epona, the goddess of horses, for Braith to win—that was frivolous use of prayer, which was important; the queen had made that very clear to all her daughters. If you pestered the gods with petitions all the time, they’d grow tired of hearing from you, and when you needed them to answer, the prayers would be ignored. But she could hope, and she could wish, and she wished with all her might.

  But right behind Braith’s team was her father’s, a pair of handsome grays out of his warhorse herd. If the Romans had still been here, he’d have lost them for certain. The Romans would have whisked them away for tribute before you could say “knife.”

  The other two teams were lost in the dust, but the king’s, and Braith’s, were so close that Gwen held her breath; it looked from here as if they were literally one team of four horses. The tension was incredible; she clasped her hands so tightly together that the knuckles hurt.

  And then Braith did the unthinkable. She leaped out onto the pole and ran up between her pair, reins wrapped loosely around her wrist, to stand between them, an arm over each neck, shouting encouragement in their ears. Behind her, the empty chariot bounced and bucked; other horses might have shied, but her team paid it no heed. From some depth within them, they found new strength and surged ahead, crossing the finish line a full chariot-and-team length ahead of the King’s. The men roared approval at this daring move, even the king whooping and clapping. Gwen’s heart was beating so fast she felt faint.

  They shot past as Braith ran back to the chariot and began, slowly, to rein her team in and turn them about.

  When they pulled up again before the crowd, Gwen hung back to keep from being noticed, but Braith was having none of that. “Young Gwenhwyfar!” she called, beckoning to her. “Come ye here.”

  Gwen started at the sound of her name, but at her age, she was supposed to obey any adult, and although her father looked surprised to see her there, he didn’t forbid it. She eased through
the forest of towering men and came to the side of Braith’s chariot. The horses steamed, their sides moving strongly, although they were not heaving for breath. “Nah, my beauties have just run themselves to sweat, so what is it we do with them?” Braith asked, looking straight down at her.

  “Walk them so they do not founder nor stiffen,” Gwen said promptly.

  “And water?” Braith prompted.

  “Only a mouthful at a time.” Gwen knew all this very well; on the rare occasions that the sisters could get their fat pony to work up a sweat, she was the one left to walk him cool. Not that she minded. She just wished he was a horse, but she was fond of him, and a pony, even a shared pony, was better than no horse at all.

  “Here ye be then.” And to Gwen’s astonishment, as well as that of the rest of the crowd (including several adolescent boys who gaped at her with raw envy) Braith put the looped-up reins in her hands. “Be walking them cool, please ye.”

  Gwen didn’t hesitate. She took the reins as the two horses bent to sniff the top of her head. Then, with her heart feeling so full of happiness she thought she would burst, she began walking toward the stream, the team ambling obediently behind her, with the chariot wheels rumbling and swishing through the grass. She let them have the allotted mouthful of water when they reached the stream, then turned and began walking them back. In the distance she could see Braith talking with the king and the rest of the men. The prize was already in her hands, a pair of beautiful bridles with bronze ornaments for the team, a silver torque for her. The team’s owner got a drinking horn bound in silver, with silver feet; he seemed well pleased.

  Without being prompted, Gwen stopped short of the crowd, reached up under the nearest horse’s mane as high as she could, and felt the shoulder. He was still sweaty, so she turned back around and made another trip to the stream. Again, she let the horses have a mouthful of water, and she tried not to feel self-conscious as everyone but Braith seemed to be casting glances at her.