Daughters of Fire

Medb of the White Hands, the king’s youngest wife.

‘Oh God!’ Viv bit her lip, totally engrossed. ‘Does she know? Did I warn her?’

It didn’t matter of course. Nothing she did or said mattered. She couldn’t change the course of history.

Could she?

5

I

Pat turned over in bed with a groan and glanced at the small alarm clock near the lamp on the table beside her. It was ten past three and she was still reading. With a sigh she laid down the book and sat up. She couldn’t stop now. Padding down the stairs in her royal-blue pyjamas, she made her way through the silent flat to the kitchen. Turning on the light she reached for a glass and went across to the sink for some water.

She frowned. There was no mention of Medb in the book. None at all. She took a sip from her glass.

Medb.

Where had that name come from?

It had swum up from her subconscious while she was reading. Or had she dozed off without realising it and dreamed it?

‘Pat? Are you OK?’ Cathy appeared in the doorway behind her. She was wearing a dark red nightshirt.

‘Yes, sorry. Did I wake you?’ Pat leaned against the worktop, sipping from the glass. ‘I was reading Viv’s book. I didn’t realise it was so late.’

‘Is it any good?’ Cathy went over to the kettle. ‘I haven’t started it yet. No, I was awake anyway, worrying about Tasha.’

Pat glanced at Cathy across her glass. ‘Is she a problem? I thought you liked her.’

‘I do. It’s her mother I’m not so keen on. It’s such an issue each time she comes over. Pete’s got a meeting next time she brings Tasha so I’ve got to entertain the woman.’

‘Can’t you just grab the kid and shut the door in her face?’

Cathy gave a throaty laugh. ‘I wish! No, I’ll serve tea and cake and look all domesticated and try to outshine her at her own game as usual.’

‘That’s crazy. Pete lives with you. He didn’t like domesticated, remember?’

‘I know.’ Cathy sighed. ‘I may be a psychologist, Pat, but I’m still as insecure as the next woman.’ Cathy reached for a jar of teabags. ‘So, is Viv’s book any good? I must confess I haven’t read it yet.’

‘Yes, it is.’ Pat rubbed her eyes wearily. ‘But it’s really strange. She’s an academic, right? And she’s making a huge issue of the fact, but whatever she says it does read like fiction, she’s right. It’s almost lyrical. Even I can see it’s full of stuff she could not possibly know for a fact and her professor is probably justified in his remarks. It is not kosher research. It can’t be. I don’t pretend to know anything about the subject, but I would have expected lots of other detail, social history, Roman background to the period, that sort of thing. Stuff which would be hard to convey in a drama documentary with no visual cues and not much time to spare, but this …’ She paused, sipping from her glass. ‘It doesn’t matter. From my point of view it’s brilliant! We can do a lot with it!’

Cathy shrugged. ‘She’s been translating old Celtic manuscripts and things and reading oghams, which are some sort of ancient Celtic sign writing, and running her hands over stones and stuff. She let on that much. She was really embarrassed about it!’ She grinned. ‘So, do I gather it is readable? After all, that is the important thing, isn’t it?’

‘Indeed, yes. It is readable. Very. And great material for a play, so I think we’re in business, and,’ Pat headed for the door, ‘I’m going back to bed to finish it. As far as I remember from looking her up before I came, no one knows about Cartimandua’s later life. I shall be intrigued to see what Viv has to say on the subject.’

The answer was, she didn’t. She described the final confrontation between the Brigantian forces and Rome and the story stopped abruptly.

No more is heard of the Queen of the Brigantes.

She disappears from history every bit as enigmatically, if with less drama, than did her sister queen, Boudica. Did she live to grow old?

Did she leave heirs? Did she meet her husband again? We do not know.

Pat closed the book and let it fall on the sheet. She felt absurdly cheated. The story had been exciting. Engrossing. Brilliant. Surely there must be more to the ending than that?

But of course even she, who was no historian, knew there wasn’t. History is not interested in happy endings. It is not indeed interested in endings at all. It moves on with the current of events, ever following the path to the future. And Cartimandua was not even a part of history as such. She belonged to pre-history, her name only known because of her interest to Roman historians who recorded what they knew of her, or guessed, or invented, and then moved on to talk of different things.

Putting the book on the table with a sigh she reached over to turn out the light. It would make a brilliant play.

II

Sixteen miles away and some two hours later, in Aberlady, Hugh woke up and lay staring up at the ceiling. Outside the dawn chorus was in full swing, the birds so loud the glory of their song was an almost discordant force, pouring through the open window into his bedroom, drowning the silence.

He closed his eyes with a groan. It had been a long time since Alison had come to him in a dream. ‘Hugh!’ Her voice had been so clear. ‘Hugh! Be careful.’ Dropping his hand, she had moved away, turning towards the skyline. He remembered what would happen next and he reached out towards her desperately. ‘Don’t go. Please, don’t go.’

She had paused and turned back. ‘Speak to Meryn, Hugh,’ she said softly. ‘Speak to Meryn.’ And then she had gone.

He frowned as the words came back to him.

As his car bumped over the mountain track towards the white painted stone cottage, Hugh gave a wry grin. Where else would his old friend, Meryn Jones, have come to rest in his peripatetic life when he needed to be near the National Library of Scotland for his research, than this remote glen in the Pentland hills? Any nearer the city would have been an anathema.

The two men had first met at Jesus College, Oxford over thirty years before, their point of contact their intense interest in the Celtic world in which both were working on post-graduate research, prior to setting off in very different directions, Hugh to Trinity College, Dublin, Meryn to his native Wales where he was to centre his life around his study of Druidism.

Parking near the door Hugh climbed out and looked round appreciatively. The cottage, nestling beneath a glorious great mountain, and within earshot of a swiftly running rocky burn was surrounded by a small garden where vegetables and herbs – always herbs, wherever Meryn lived, herbs for healing, and for magic and for divination – vied with flowers for the space within the tumbled grey stone garden walls.

As the two men shook hands and then turned to walk inside, Hugh grinned. He could smell coffee. Most of his friend’s eccentricities he could tolerate, but herb tea morning noon and night was not one of them.

Tall, with dark hair greying at the temples, Meryn was in his mid-fifties, though his confident stride and upright posture had not changed at all from that of the young man who had gone from Oxford to live and work and study in the mountains of mid-Wales.

He led Hugh into the cottage where a large work table stood in the centre of the book-lined living room; its stone walls were nearly completely hidden by the shelves, the deep window recesses bright with scarlet geraniums, the fire in the hearth lit even though it was June.

He gestured Hugh towards one of the two deep armchairs and fetched their drinks.

‘You look troubled, my friend,’ Meryn said as he set down a cup beside Hugh.

Hugh sighed. There were never any preambles with Meryn. Straight to the point.

‘I’m tired. Getting old and grouchy.’

Meryn smiled. ‘You’ve always been grouchy, Hugh. As for old, you’re younger than me. Prime of life! The target of many a beautiful undergraduate’s lustful fantasies if rumours are true.’ He smiled as he glanced across at the other man, as always acute in his summing up of the situation. ‘Time for a sabbatical, perhaps?’

‘In two years’ time.’ Hugh reached for his coffee and sniffed it appreciatively before taking a gulp. His host had a cup of something green steaming away beside him. He had not touched it, Hugh noticed. ‘I dreamed about Alison,’ he went on abruptly. ‘I thought I was moving on, like we’re told to, you know, getting on with my life,’ he shrugged, ‘and it’s getting easier. Then suddenly, this.’

Meryn was studying his face. His silence led Hugh to continue.

‘She told me to come and see you.’ He gave an embarrassed laugh.

‘She is a wise lady.’