She joggled Crulegh to make him laugh, proud that he took to the pony with no fear, as he should. The beach grew rocky here, hard even on a Prydn pony. Dorelei slid down with Cru, leading the animal.
Some distance beyond them, small and slender on a shelf of rock thrust out into the surf, an Atecotti woman in a sealskin cloak spread a net wide and tossed it into the white foam with a graceful motion, waiting, then hauling it in slowly. She was small and dark as Dorelei; one couldn't tell the two peoples apart but for fhain marks, which Atecotti never wore. Good folk; one could be neighbors with them without fear of betrayal.
"See, Cru. Rainbow."
The Atecotti woman looked up as she did, enjoying the wash of color across the sky and bending to the sea.
4 Thee's heard Rainbow song enough, Crulegh. Come, sing with thy mother/'
As she sang the last notes, the other woman straightened up and called to Dorelei in the soft, liquid speech of her people. "Rainbow song?"
"Aye, friend. Thee knows't?"
The woman, a little older than Dorelei, busied herself snatching fish from the net and flopping them into a large wicker basket. "Did hear it now and again. And of Dorelei Mabh of the iron magic."
"Truly. And this my first bairn, Crulegh."
"Did hear Dorelei Mabh was cast out by Prydn."
Dorelei's smile faded. She did not want to talk about that. "And thee?"
The fisherwoman shook her head. ' 'Life be too short for that. Be too much to learn. Like Rainbow. Does Dorelei Mabh truly know the rainbow and where it goes?"
Queer question. Dorelei swept her arm up to the bright daub across the blue. "Down to sea."
"Or from sea down to us." The woman plunged both hands into her catch and held up two large wriggling plaice by their tails. "Help me cast, and thee can share."
A generous thing to do, but a strange thing to say, that Rainbow led depending where one viewed it from. True enough, but Dorelei never thought much on it.
She wrapped Crulegh in her cloak and helped the Ate-cotti woman with the net. The sunlight, rare for this time of year, turned their brown skin to gold as they worked. It was good to have the woman's company.
That evening's meal was ample but chaotic. Dorelei stowed her share of the catch in Crulegh's blanket, so that her son rode home sheathed in fish. As always, the children roamed free during the meal, eating from dishes here and there, Prydn-fashion as they pleased. The custom reinforced a child's feeling of security within fhain but didn't do much for serenity.
The fish were wrapped in seaweed to cook and sprinkled with Neniane's hoarded sweet basil and rosemary:
delicious and plenty of it. The children could disrupt supper for a time, but when Dorelei nodded to their mothers, they were whisked away to bed—another tedious process. Growing faster than tallfolk children, they were already learning, and reveled in, the beautiful concept of no. No, they weren't finished, no, they weren't tired, and no! they didn't want to go to bed.
4 Think again," Padrec advised Crulegh. "Bed."
"Bed," Malgon ordered his daughter and turned back to his meal.
"Just like men," Neniane muttered to Guenloie as they dragged the children off. "One grand judgment and leave the work to us."
But the supper fire was warm, and when the children were finally subdued, the three women came back to sit with the taciturn men, stir their tea, and meditate over the fire. Dorelei was more thoughtful than usual, but not depressed for once. With the men home, there was that at least to help them feel human, not alone, and she was careful to include Neniane in any cheer they found. The thick stone walls had become a world for them— gloomy, but at least they would not be reminded of their shame by vindictive Prydn.
"Padrec," she asked, "sing Rainbow-song."
"Again?"
"Would think on words."
Padrec sang the verse to her, Malgon joining in toward the end.
Beneath the greening, hollow sods, The Prydn hoard be seen again. The hoard be pointed by the gods t So be not where, but only when.
Neniane spooned the last of the basil and rosemary from her wooden platter and licked the spoon. "Most queer. Not green, but green-ing."
"So did think, sister. Green be green all summer. Green-ing be only in spring."
They considered that. Padrec admitted he'd never thought on it much before. None of them had, but it made excellent sense.
"And hollow?" Dorelei's narrow brow furrowed with the puzzle. "Why hollow?"
"Ai, did think Gern-y-fhain would know that," Guen-loie offered.
"As all have seen, cousin, be many things thy gern does nae know," Dorelei replied with gentle irony. "Tell."
"Rath or crannog." Guenloie stroked her husband's bare thigh. "Malgon be the silent thinker nowanights. Be nae so, husband?"
His round head moved up and down in slow affirmation: a sodded-over rath or crannog would be the only hollow sods he could name.
"And the treasure," Padrec finished the thought, "be that hoard every gern keeps."
"Kept," Malgon commented dryly. "Did give't away as Jesu bade, remember?"
That wasn't the best subject for peaceful supper talk, and Dorelei deflected it. "But why green-ing then? Why only in spring? And pointed by the gods. Do think ..." She broke off, small fists rapping excitedly on her knees with the insight, frustrated for lack of words. "Be a road somewhere, a ... a picture of roads. Tallfolk word for picture of land and roads, as Ambrose had. Padrec, help me.
"Picture of roads. You mean a map?"
"Map!" She clapped her hands in triumph. "Could be so, a map. A picture of land."
"Land where, wife?"
"Do nae know" And she didn't, but all the same ...
"Nae where, but only when?" Guenloie wondered. "Can be picture of when?"
Padrec warmed his tea with more from the pot, intrigued with the odd logic of the doggerel that fell into
place more neatly than one would expect, once scrutinized. He tried to order the thoughts; after all, Prydn riches were no mere song. They might—must have— come from a larger hoard. And suppose—
Everyone knows . . .
Lifting to his mouth, the cup paused. Everyone knows. Marchudd made a cruel joke of it, referring to the nursery tale so old Padrec wouldn't have thought twice about it. The pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Every Parisi or Brigante child knew the tale from the cradle, and that it was impossible to find, truly in Faerie-land, because the rainbow began and ended nowhere. Was that what the song described? The road of the gods pointing to a fabulous hoard somewhere in place and/or time? The more he considered, the more it made a tantalizing kind of sense. An interesting puzzle, and fhain had so little to keep their spirits up now.
4 'Among my father's people, there is a story," he began. "A great hoard of treasure at Rainbow's end. Now, just suppose ..."
It began as an intriguing riddle to divert them from matters too hopeless or painful to dwell on. Padrec dreamed too often of Chumet Head and a place like Golgotha but with more familiar faces. He turned to the riddle as an escape, paraphrasing its lines into plain statements for consideration.
In rath or crannog, in spring/the Prydn hoard may be found again/this rath or crannog is pointed by the rainbow/at a certain time in the spring.
He liked the neatness of his thinking, but even deciphered, the results were meager. Obviously after a spring rain, which often occurred several times a day at that season. Still no clue to where. Quite possibly there was a line lost in the telling through the years. Rath and crannog were suspect because all of them were known and used.
Brigid-feast came with early February. They slaugh-
tered an old ewe who would not live to rade again in any case. Dorelei told the traditional stories of their ancient covenant with Mother and Lugh, and the coming of Mabh to Britain. She spoke slowly with care to the words, addressing much of it to the children. They wouldn't understand yet, but in another year or two, the ritual tales would be part of their memory by pure sound and rhythm alone.
The Rainbow riddle took Dorelei's mind off her failures and the hard tiuth that many of them were her own fault, but not all. She would rade north in triumph through the lowlands. She traveled in a haze of vanity, a folly of confidence that infected her younger women but alienated the other gerns. She showed herself in daylight in Taixali land and gave gifts in Jesu's name to those she met.
When Naiton attacked, Dorelei found how much of a Christian she really was. As she wanted vengeance for Gawse, she ordered it on the Taixali, demanded it, with no prudent Padrec now to temper her rage with sense, only the aged, the very young, and women—many of them wounded, some of them dead. They'd simply lost too many, and all the young men gone. The other gerns moved against her then, led by Bruidda. They laughed at her openly, called her no gern but a stupid, willful child. They said things that were not true, and it was clear much of their betrayal was envy. She'd taken presence over them on a tide of enthusiasm and new magic that seemed strong but failed in the testing. They left her with the warning that Salmon could henceforth expect no rights or place in any rath or crannog. Bruidda, descended of Mabh, branded her false. She was not the promised Bright One, nor was any child of Salmon. They threw away their iron and left her outcast, goaded by the jealous gerns whose power and presence she'd blithely put below her own. So be it: she was young and arrogant in her power, but they, with all their talk of wisdom and prophecy and endings, were only too quick to avoid the new. Did she not have to plead with Bruidda
to challenge the iron, and then save the woman's dignity by sheer quick wit?
Neniane and Guenloie were blessings. They might have gone with other fhains but remained loyal, thanks for that. But there was the hard reality of three women traveling alone with infants, pack ponies, and sheep. Word of their disgrace preceded them. Every rath warned them off or avoided them. They slept in the open, huddled against their ponies, curled around the children to keep them warm. The wolves took Rof one night while he circled the remnant of their flock. More than one, for sure: Rof was a match for any one wolf.