She stirs a little and nestles closer, her mouth warm against my throat. The morning breeze ripples the hillside. Bru’s nose twitches. He wakes, sniffs. I catch the scent myself, breathing deep to know it better. Now Bru’s up, circling nervously, trotting back to growl at me. He doesn’t know what it is, but his nose says wrong.
Morgana wakes and sits up, lashing the hair back from her narrow face. Without a word to me, her nose lifts into the air, separating the right traces from the wrong. We both know the smell of dead cattle. The morning wind blows from the east over the Votadini pastures where one and perhaps more of their animals is bloating untouched by any scavengers but flies. It is sickness, blight.
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We must move our herds quickly before they’re tainted with it, before the Votadini accuse us of witching their stock. Blight in Prydn cattle is our misfortune; in theirs, our malicious fault. Right or wrong, before the sun climbs high the rath skins are folded, ponies loaded and even little Drost helps with the hasty milking. Morgana and I see to the readying of Cradda and Uredd. Bredei helps Dorelei to horse. Nectan, Cunedag and I move ahead with arrows hemlocked and ready. With a line of hills between ourselves and the Votadini, we move on eastward toward new pasture.
With a month between ourselves and the blight, we reach the sea and turn north along the cliffs and lowland downs. Now Dorelei is too heavy with child to ride a Prydn pony, and it’s in Nectan’s head to trade for a bigger breed. Moving ahead of the fhain, we raise a lone farmstead with a large herd of horses. Nectan judges the mares in the stock enclosure, and one young gray catches his fancy.
“That one there,” he points. “Two good milk cows for her.”
The trader is a thick-bodied man with light coloring and possibly more Saxon blood than would be considered respectable among Votadini. Eyes the color of winter sea, a shrewd, measuring man. He sees how Nectan wants this horse.
“Three cows,” he says. “Two to calve.”
Nectan laughs in his friendly fashion, as if the man were having him on. “Now, now, sir. Do bargain for thy horse, not thy house.”
“Three.”
“Two. One to calve next Bel-tein.”
“Faerie lad, you want this horse or you don’t. Which is it?”
Well, it is, then it isn’t. They haggle on while I look over the man’s stock. He must want the trade as much as Nectan, since he has horses a-pienty but only a few cows and those not the most thriving. And such horses for a simple farmer, long-legged, high-shouldered beasts, all with saddle marks. Not foaled among the Pktish tribes, not these. More likely night-borrowed from south of the Wall. But I study Nectan’s choice and some knowledge from who knows where tells me this mare has more trouble in her than Morgana, that she’s fast but not quite broken to steadiness.
“Choose another, Nectan. Can do better than this.”
The owner turns on me as if to say, “Who in hell are you?” But he doesn’t, because I’m big as he is and that puzzles him. He looks me up and down.
•’“‘You must have been cradle-took. The likes of you wasn’t Faerie-born.”
Very humble, I know my place: “Don’t know, sir, and have never asked.” I run my hand slowly over the saddle marks on the mare’s back. “And who could tell where this mare was foaled?”
We understand each other, but Nectan wants the mare. “Will run like the wind, Belrix.”
“Na, brother, but thy wife be in no race.” Ah, it does no ,, good to argue, nothing will say him nay. I wander away from mem to stand by the storage croft. There are two near-full sacks on the ground near the door, and there’s been a thought growing in my head through the summer. When the trader’s not looking, I take a pinch from each.
The bargain is sealed at three cows, two to calve next Bel-tein, Nectan to have the use of a bull to stud. So we go home with his prize. Dorelei is so big now only I can lift her to the mare’s back. Thrilled with her gift, she perches there happy and proud of Nectan, shrewd bargainer and the handsomest of men, while I hold the nervous mare’s bridle and whisper black threats in her twitching ear.
“Woman, did know from far off thy name’s Trouble. But mark me. One bit of temper, it will be Regret.”
And yet my hands stroke with an odd familiarity along the fine head and neck, and for a moment I seem to remember … no. Nothing.
But there’s discontent around the rath fire, and not ill-founded. Dorelei might be first daughter and bearer of child-wealth, but three cows?
“Will have the bull to stud,” Nectan defends his choice.
“And what till then?” Cradda challenges. “Can not milk a mare. Can not stay here long and the grass this poor.”
Old Uredd broods over his pease porridge. “The seasons be not as good as a were. Must go back to better grass. The People must go back.” And he does, into his memories.
Morgana has something on her dark mind. Her eyes gleam coldly. “Better grass, I’ll tell thee where it is. In the glens of the tallfolk. In the valleys where a keep us out. Go back, father? Go back where? To what-was, to old times? Will be no better grass beause we own nothing. Because be no hill, not one foot where we can say ‘Stay out, this be Prydn land.’ “
“What’s this own?” says Gern-y-fhain, curious. “As if thee was no more than greedy Venicone.”
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Morgana lashes back: “Our herds be not smaller than at Bel-tein last year?”
“Aye, but—”
“And that year smaller than the one before? And before and before—”
“Peace, wife.” Cunedag tries to stroke her cheek, but she shakes him off.
“Peace, hell!”
Urgus sputters through a mouthful. “List to Lady Tallfolk, doth curse like Christen now.”
The wrangling annoys me. I hardly listen with the other thoughts in me that will have to be shared soon, perhaps this night. Already my wife has spoken the first of it. “Morgana, can it not wait?”
A she-wolf turning on me. “And thee! Off all day with sister’s man, trading good cattle-wealth for that useless naig, and fondling and talking to it while thy wife goes without greeting.”
“Is that what angers thee?”
“Oh, do not ask the whole of what angers me.”
“Ah, God, thee’s got a mouth like forever. What’s the silly horse to do with owning of the land?”
“There’s child in me, Belrix.”
Sudden silence in the rath, an oh of breath. It is a great moment when & fhain daughter tells of coming child, but Morgana wants no honor now, her mind is set on one thing and we must listen.
“That’s why would own grass, mother. Would own a place. Melga said it before me. Did scorn like thee once, but that was before my child was barrowed on a hill where we may be welcome next year or not if the signs be bad, if a’s mood be bad, if do but frown at one of them. And Prydn will move on. And on.”
Cradda is patient with her daughter. “Be no owning of earth, no more than child owns pieces of a’s mother. Does the wind live in a house?”
Morgana gets up and comes round the fire to stand by me. I press my hands to her stomach in respect.
“The wealth is from me, Morgana?”
“From thee. From Belrix comes another lord of fire who will not live without home to call a’s own or shrivel in one more hungry winter, or be buried in borrowed ground-What says my husband?”
Well, husband says nothing right away, tfs much to swallow
in one gulp while I’m still trying my first taste of fatherhood. And there are the other thoughts that have been with me since Midsummer morning when we woke to smell the dead cattle. I think of all these things and take Morgana’s hand. We face the fhain together.
“Gern-y-fhain, Uredd, Morgana is right. Would never go against the People’s ways. Have never spoken foolishly nor much at all in the rath, only listened and learned. But must speak now for the sake of the child, for all of us. Prydn wealth grows smaller and cannot last forever. Must trade wisely to build our herds again. Build them to what they were, must think of nothing else.”
Uninterested, Cradda licks the porridge off her fingers. “This is new wisdom? Have not tried?”
“And when the herds are strong, must trade for land.”
Urgus almost drops his bowl. “Wha-at?”
I kneel before Cradda, bringing out what I stole from the horse trader. “Here, see. The best wealth of all, seed. Why do tallfolk prosper? Be this. Why do Saxon-men whose fathers were sea pirates now call half Britain their own? Be this. Wherever a stays long enough to plant, crops are sown. And the women and the houses come after, so their roots go deep in the ground. So a has something worth staying for.”
“Yah!” says Morgana, proud of me. “Thee remembers so?”
The question should not sadden me, though it does. “Sometimes at night … I dream.”
Cunedag tries to speak. All this is beyond him. “But Earth . and Lugh—”
“Will not help us!” Morgana hisses. “Land. Must trade for it or take it.”
“Take it?” they wonder.
“Others take, so can we.”
But Cradda’s heard enough. “Daughter, sit. And thee, Belrix.” • But Morgana’s defiant: “Remember what Melga said, day on day, Belrix says no more than that.”
“Belrix! First name was fool, and Melga no wiser.” Cradda puts an end to it. “Be still now.”
It is out, said. The fhain is silent. They look at the seeds on the earthen floor and no one speaks for a long time. Then old Uredd nods slowly.
“Must range farther next year.” , “Perhaps north,” says Bredei. ‘“Hie Attecotti pastures. Have
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not tried there for three Samhains. And have heard the northern grass is coming back.”
Cunedag agrees quickly. “Be Prydn there already and many good crannogs.”
Cradda muses over her porridge. “A good thought. Perhaps will try north next year.”
My wife looks at me. We are alone in our plain truth. It’s as if we had said nothing at all and the seeds on the earth were dead pebbles, and we must listen respectfully as the/tarn plans not a future but an end.