Just before midday, as the weak sun had finally managed to warm both riders and horses, they rode about the curve of a small hill. Before them the land flattened out a little, although it once again rose toward a mound some hundred paces distant.
A family group of aurochs—a bull, five or six cows and their young—grazed on the mound’s slopes, but even the sight of these huge black and tan horned creatures could not distract the groups’ eyes from what sat on the summit of the mound.
A circle of gray stones, twice the height of a man, and capped by lintel stones about the entire circle.
On the eastern side of the mound there was an avenue of small standing and lintel stones that led into the stone circle.
Behind him, Brutus thought he heard Blangan murmur something—a prayer, perhaps.
He was about to turn to her when Coel spoke. “Behold,” he said, indicating the mound. “That mound and its stones is a deeply sacred place.”
‘How so?” said Brutus, forgetting Blangan.
‘These circle of stones are called Stone Dances,” said Coel, but before he could add any more, Cornelia spoke.
‘They are places deeply sacred to women.”
Everyone twisted about on their horses to look at her, their expressions ranging from puzzled to stunned.
‘How did you know that, Cornelia?” said Coel.
She had her hand resting lightly on her own belly, and she dropped it away under Coel’s intent gaze.
‘It is obvious,” she said. “Look, that avenue of stones leading into the circle. It depicts a woman’s birth canal leading into her womb.”
Coel nodded, more intrigued with her than ever. He felt Brutus’ eyes on him, and he let his own gaze drift away from Cornelia and back to her husband. “The Stone Dances have been used for hundreds of generations as potent places for fertility rites,” he said.
‘It is where the stag comes to mate,” Blangan said, making everyone look at her as they had previously looked at Cornelia. This time the looks ranged from the interested to the coldly antagonistic.
She ignored most of them, and smiled at Cornelia. “It is shame, perhaps, that you will not witness any of these.”
‘The Stone Dances are rarely used?” Brutus said, trying to deflect some of Coel’s and his two companions’ hostility away from Blangan. From what Brutus could see of the circle of stones, the Stone Dance, it was not only well built, but an imposing site that dominated the entire surrounding landscape.
He could imagine people, many thousands of people, perhaps with torches in the deep mystery of the night, moving up the hill toward the Stone Dance, and a shiver ran up his spine at the image.
‘There are certain ceremonies that are still held within the Stone Dances,” Coel said, “and people who live close by them continue to use them throughout the year. But the most sacred of our ceremonies, our most sincere rites to Og and Mag, are now conducted within the Veiled Hills.”
Then Cornelia spoke again, and what she said sent a jolt of fear deep into Brutus’ belly.
‘Is that where the stone hall is?” she said to Coel.
He frowned. “The stone hall?”
‘A hall built of stone, ten times the height of the stones in the Dance beyond, great arches for walls, and a domed golden roof. Is it in these Veiled Hills?”
Brutus’ mouth thinned at the eagerness in her voice.
‘We have no such hall,” Coel said, his voice soft and puzzled. “There is an Assembly House made of stone, but is it not so large as you describe, and has no arches, nor a golden domed roof.”
Brutus let out a soft breath, allowing himself to relax. It was just a dream, nothing more, and perhaps merely something he’d caught from Cornelia because of their proximity in bed. It didn’t exist.
‘Cornelia,” he said. “Do not trouble Coel with your childish fancies. We have better things to do than listen to your dreams.”
‘I never tire of listening to dreams,” Coel said softly, looking Brutus in the eye. “I find they add beauty to what is otherwise unbearable.” It was Brutus who looked away first.
FOR TWO MORE DAYS THEY TRAVELED, PASSING SEV eral more Stone Dances on their way, and on the third day they came in the evening to a village that rested some five hundred paces away from the largest and most imposing of the Stone Dances they had yet encountered.
Looking at it, Blangan lost what little color remained in her face.
She knew why they’d come here.
ecevejsi HIS TIMETHE VILLAGE HEADWOMAN—THE mother of this particular clan—agreed to Coel’s request that he and his companions might stay in her village for the night. The Mother’s name was Ecub, a woman in her late middle age, her face worn, her body slightly stooped with the hardness of her life, and with a flint-iness in her sharp brown eyes that made it difficult to believe she could ever unbend enough to love.
She greeted the group politely, moving from one to the other, taking the person’s hands in hers and briefly laying her cheek to theirs. She had greeted Coel first, her hands squeezing his slightly harder than they squeezed anyone else’s, then moved to Brutus, who she studied with marked speculation, then Cornelia, who caused her a puzzled frown.
As she drew back from laying her cheek to Cornelia’s, Ecub said, “You have given birth recently?”
‘Yes,” Cornelia responded. “A few weeks ago. See, my son nestles at Ae-thylla’s back.”
Ecub completely ignored Aethylla and Achates. She had not yet let go of Cornelia’s hands, and she tightened them momentarily. “Yes. You have just given birth. That must be it.”
Then she dropped Cornelia’s hands and moved on before either Cornelia or Brutus could say anything.
Ecub moved through the group, greeting each in turn, until she finally reached Blangan.
‘You have caused us the world of trouble, girl,” Ecub said in a flat voice. “Have you not seen the blight on this land as you passed through it?”
‘It was not I, Mother Ecub,” Blangan said.
Ecub’s mouth twisted disdainfully. “You are not your mother’s daughter.”
G Surprisingly, Blangan managed a smile at that. “No,” she said, “I think that may be safely assumed.”
VARIOUS MEMBERS OF THE GROUP WERE BEDDED IN several of the circular stone-walled houses in Ecub’s village—Coel, Brutus and Cornelia, and Corineus and Blangan were to sleep in Ecub’s personal house—but everyone met in Ecub’s house for the evening meal.
This was the first time the Trojans had been inside an Llangarlian house, and they looked about them curiously.
The circular stone walls, only shoulder height from the outside, were sunk into the ground so that the internal floor of hard-packed earth and stone flagging was several steps lower than ground level.
Combined with the high, conical thatched roof, that meant that the house was much roomier inside than external appearances indicated.
The low door opened onto several steps that led down to the floor that was dominated by a large central hearth. Here a huge pile of coals glowed, serving both as a cooking fire and a means to heat the house. Several earthenware cooking pots sat in the coals, the steam rising from their lids making everyone’s mouth water.
Bedding niches had been built into the walls, all piled high with animal skins, furs, and woven woolen blankets and covers over the straw and woolen bedding, while tools and other farming implements hung from the walls and roofing rafters, along with dried vegetables and smoked meats and baskets of preserved eggs and fish. In one part of the floor were tightly woven wicker lids that hid deep food and grain storage pits sunk into the earth.
The house smelled of smoke, of the spice of the dried foods and of those cooking in the coals, and of the stale musk of human bodies packed into a relatively small space.
Ecub, her brothers and sons, as well as her daughters and their children, lived in this house; some twenty people all crowded into a circular space some twenty-five feet across.
Benches and stools had been set about the hearth, and to these Ecub’s daughters—two women of mature childbearing years—directed their guests.
With Ecub’s immediate family, and the eleven members of the traveling band, it would be a tight fit indeed.
But fit they did, and once everyone was seated Ecub’s daughters and granddaughters handed about a rich stew that they ladled into semi-hollowed out portions of heavy grained bread. Salad herbs and cooked vegetables lay on plates about the hearth, and after Ecub had said a blessing to Og and Mag for the bounty of the food, everyone fell to.
Ecub also handed about flasks of wine, and this was wine such as the Trojans had not yet tasted. It was honey wine, but without much of the cloying sweetness, and with an undertaste of herbs and flowers that lent it a complexity that made many among the Trojans reach again and again for the flask.