Daughters of Fire

The sound of her doorbell distracted her from her thoughts. There was one good thing about living on the top floor of a six-storey tenement house. No one was going to arrive without a good reason for being there.

Opening the door she found herself face to face with Steve Steadman, one of her post-graduate students. Calm, reliable, and universally popular in the department he was, she had to admit, at the moment, also one of her favourite people. He was a good-looking man in his early thirties, tall and sturdy, with a thatch of fair hair and a weathered, ruddy skin liberally sprinkled with freckles. He was also one of the very few people of her acquaintance who wasn’t completely out of breath after climbing the stairs to her front door.

‘Hi, Viv.’ He was holding a copy of Cartimandua, Queen of the North. ‘I hope you don’t mind me dropping by, but I wondered if you’d sign it for me.’

She stared at it, frozen to the spot. ‘Where did you get that?’ Then she relented. ‘Sorry. Of course I’ll sign it. Come in. It’s just that it’s not in the shops yet.’ She grabbed his arm and drew him inside the room. ‘I’ve got a bone to pick with you, Steve.’

Before he had a chance to reply she had gestured him towards the rocking chair as she went to hunt for a pen on her desk. ‘Why didn’t you tell me that Hugh was writing about Venutios?’

Steve frowned. ‘I had no idea that he was.’

She turned to face him, pen in hand. ‘Are you sure?’

He nodded. ‘I’m surprised he hasn’t told me.’ His voice wavered slightly as he caught sight of her face. ‘You didn’t know either, I take it?’

She sighed. ‘No. So, where did you get the book?’

‘Hugh gave it to me.’ He sat down on the edge of the rocking chair, balancing easily as he stuck his long legs out in front of him.

‘So, it’s a review copy.’ She gave a wry smile.

It was rapidly dawning on Steve that he was tiptoeing around a minefield. ‘I suppose he is sent so many …’ The comment trailed away as he began to see only too clearly that he had fallen into the Professor’s trap. ‘Go and ask her to sign it for you,’ he had said, with a gleam in his eye which Steve now suspected had been purely malicious. ‘She’s probably going to resign some time during the summer so you won’t be seeing much more of her, and I’m sure she would like to think she has a fan.’

Viv was riffling through the book. Had it been read? She was almost afraid she would find red lines striking out paragraph after paragraph – a phenomenon his students grew used to as the terms progressed. There were no marks that she could see. She breathed a sigh of relief and turning back to the title page, signed it with a flourish.

Steve took the book as she handed it back and tucked it into the tatty canvas bag he had dropped beside his chair. ‘The Prof hinted that you were thinking of resigning. It’s not true, is it? We’d miss you tremendously if you did.’ The remark was warm; totally genuine.

‘No, I’m not leaving, Steve, however much the Professor might wish it,’ she said firmly. ‘That was his little joke.’

Steve shook his head. ‘I’m glad! I must have misunderstood him!’

‘No, you didn’t misunderstand, Steve. Don’t worry about it. I’ll still be here next year.’ She paused as a thought occurred to her. Hugh had passed the book on unread because he was not going to review it. He didn’t think it was worth the bother. He probably hadn’t even glanced at it. She stood for a moment chewing her lip. Was she angry or relieved? It was going to be an insult, either now or more publicly later. But then, what had she expected? Had she really thought she would get away with it? Had she expected him to act as anything other than a curmudgeonly, narrow-minded, devious chauvinist? She grinned broadly. Even silently thinking the invective made her feel better. ‘I hope you enjoy the book, Steve.’ Once he had read it he would know, of course, why Hugh didn’t rate it. But then everyone was going to know soon.

Steve was smiling. ‘I’ve read it already. I thought it was excellent.’ He showed no sign of moving from the rocking chair. ‘I read it last night after he gave it to me. It’s brilliant. Really brilliant. It would complement the Professor’s book perfectly if he’s writing about Venutios. You make him out to be quite a bastard.’ He chuckled. ‘You mention Ingleborough a lot in the book, Viv. You did know I’m from there, didn’t you? My parents’ farm is just below the hill fort. Actually on the slopes, more or less. You say that was where Cartimandua was born and brought up.’ He didn’t notice the way Viv clenched her fists, the stress in her face. ‘I didn’t know that was a fact. It’s local legend, of course, but I’ve never seen it acknowledged in a history book before. Tacitus and the other historians wouldn’t have known or cared where she came from of course, and they never referred to the smaller sub-sects of the Brigantian tribes, did they? It’s strange, because of living there I feel I have always known Cartimandua really well. I was brought up with her ghost.’

Looking up at last, he noted Viv’s white face, her raised eyebrows, and he shook his head hastily. ‘Not literally, of course. At least, I don’t think so. Though my mother could tell you a thing or two about ghostly noises in the night. The clash of swords. Horses galloping by. That sort of stuff.’ He grinned. ‘Not the kind of thing I would tell the Prof!’

‘Indeed, not.’ Viv grimaced. ‘I went there, of course, but only for a couple of hours. I didn’t hear any ghosts.’

Liar! Of course she had. She had heard more than ghostly hooves. She had heard a voice.

Steve was shaking his head. ‘I wish I’d known. You could have stayed with us while you were visiting the area. My mother’s been doing B&B since the foot and mouth epidemic.’ He sighed. ‘You can’t leave the department, Viv. You mustn’t.’

‘I don’t intend to if I can help it.’ Viv met his gaze. He would know all about the row soon enough. The grapevine was pretty good and it was a small department and she doubted if Hugh was going to be even slightly discreet about his dislike of her book. She sighed, and realised suddenly that it was partly with relief. The moment had passed. Steve wasn’t going to ask her where all her information had come from. He was content that it was legend. For him at least that was good enough. He was picking up his bag and standing up.

‘Stay and have a coffee,’ she found herself saying. She didn’t want to be alone. Not at the moment, not with the voice still clamouring in her ear. ‘I want to hear about your mother’s ghosts. I’m intrigued. I can’t think why we’ve never talked about this before.’

He slid his bag off his shoulder and, clearly pleased with the invitation, dropped it on the floor before following her into her small kitchen. The sky outside the mansard window was a bright duck-egg blue now as the sunlight poured in, spotlighting the cupboards, the shelves, the jars and bottles, as she reached for the kettle. ‘I had some strange experiences myself while I was visiting the sites I’ve written about.’ Keep the tone casual. Humorous. Don’t let him see how much it all worried her. ‘The trouble is I was always on my own so I had no one to compare notes with.’ She gave a self-deprecating laugh. She mustn’t let him think she took this seriously.

Steve was leaning against a cupboard, arms folded, watching as she scooped coffee into the pot. He seemed to be considering what she had said. ‘My dad has lived there all his life.’ He had a soft Yorkshire accent which she had always found rather attractive. ‘The farm has been in the family for hundreds of years. I know there are all sorts of stories – there always are, aren’t there, in the country?’ He paused. ‘But you know farmers,’ he added, shrugging. ‘They see things, all sorts of things, but they won’t admit it.’ He glanced at her from under his eyelashes and she saw a strange mixture of emotions flash across his face. Caution. Suspicion. Maybe he was testing her reaction? But the moment had passed and he was his usual relaxed self again at once. ‘My mother is a local girl. From the dale. She loved the farm from the first day Dad took her up there to visit,’ he went on. ‘It’s so beautiful and remote and wild. She was all romantic then. And young.’ He paused. ‘It’s a hard life being a farmer’s wife.’

She looked up again, hearing the change in his tone. ‘It must have been awful when you got foot and mouth.’

He nodded. ‘The worst. My dad nearly gave up. Then she came up with this idea of doing B&B – advertising on the Internet and all that. At first we hated the thought of having strangers in the house – she more than anyone – but it’s not so bad.’ He shrugged.

‘I don’t suppose she has time to hear ghosts now.’ Viv plunged the coffee and poured it into two scarlet mugs.

‘She doesn’t go up on the hill much.’ He shrugged a second time, his face wistful. ‘She’s changed a lot. But she does still hear things. Sometimes I think she’s always been too sensitive. Dad’s far more down to earth. The visitors love it up there, of course.’ Again the quiet chuckle. ‘They come back some evenings with some cracking stories.’

Viv handed him a mug, then faced him, leaning against the cooker, her hands cupped around her own. ‘What sort of stories?’

He raised an eyebrow. ‘Are you really interested? Well, there’s the boggart holes, of course.’ He smiled. ‘And sometimes they think they’ve heard the barguest, shrieking in the night! They talk about horses, too. Galloping hooves. Sometimes they get quite spooked. There was one woman, she said she had ‘‘feelings’’.’ He rolled his eyes. ‘She was a bit freaky, but I saw Mum’s face and I reckoned she knew what the woman was talking about.’ Again the quick glance at Viv. ‘That woman wanted to hold a séance, but Mum wasn’t having that. Not in our house. Dad wouldn’t stand for it and she thought it was wrong. Disrespectful.’

‘I’d like to meet your mum.’ Viv sipped her coffee thoughtfully. ‘Maybe I will book myself in some time. I need to do some more research –’ She stopped herself abruptly but Steve picked up on the word at once.

‘Are you going to write more about Cartimandua? You’ve found some new sources, haven’t you?’

Oh God, so he had spotted all the extra stuff. Well, so he should have done. He was after all one of their best students and if he hadn’t noticed she would have been very surprised. She had let so many details slip in. Cartimandua’s tribe, her birthplace, were obvious traps; facts no one knew. Facts, if they were indeed facts, which she had no business to know.

Steve was nodding. ‘It’s frustrating, isn’t it, working just over the pre-history border; only having the Roman texts to go on. If only the Celts had written down stuff themselves.’

‘But they did.’

Viv was becoming more and more uncomfortable at the turn the conversation was taking. She wagged her finger at him in mock reproof. ‘Remember that where necessary they wrote in Greek and Latin as well as Celtic using Latin script. We know the Celts had an oral culture but remember their phenomenal feats of memory did not mean they were illiterate. We can’t be certain they didn’t write history too.’ She paused. ‘Maybe they even wrote down the sacred stuff and it was destroyed. We just don’t know.’

Steve shook his head. ‘We’d have found something by now if they had. I’ve been doing exhaustive research on this, you know I have, for my thesis. Their traditions were broken. The memories lost. The Romans and the Christians utterly determined to root out their culture. So it is only the Roman and Christian sources left.’ He paused. ‘Unless …?’ He was looking at her hard. ‘Is that what’s happened? Viv? They wrote something down after all and you’ve found it?’

There was a moment of silence. Oh yes, she had found something. But it was not a scrap of old parchment. It was in her head. An echo out of time.

He was still gazing at her, taking her silence for acquiescence. ‘My God, how exciting! And Hugh is jealous because you found something he doesn’t know about? Wow!’

‘No, Steve –’

But he was already convinced. ‘No, don’t worry. I shan’t say a word to anyone. I promise. Where did you find it? You’re sure it’s not been faked like Iolo?’

Viv shook her head, taking a deep swig of coffee. Iolo Morganwg, the eighteenth/early-nineteenth century Welsh Celticist had faked and/or created, depending on which way you looked at it, numerous so-called Druidic and Celtic manuscripts which had convinced the academic world for a long time. This was getting far too close for comfort to something she did not want to face at the moment. She glanced at her watch. ‘Sorry, Steve, but I’m going to have to go. I have to be somewhere.’ She smiled ruefully. ‘We’ll talk some more about this, I promise. But please, please, don’t say anything to Hugh. It is nothing that would interest him or be remotely important for his area of research, honestly.’ She hesitated. ‘And maybe I will go and stay with your parents. I would like to go back to Ingleborough. It was enormously atmospheric.’

Closing the door behind him she paused, looking down at the card he had pressed into her hands:

Peggy and Gordon Steadman

Winter Gill Farm

High Fell

Ingleborough

N. Yorks