Daughters of Fire. Barbara Erskine

and she learned to play the harp. She would never play well, she was too impatient, but she had a good singing voice and would sing to her companions as the women sat sewing in their gallery or out in the sun sheltered from the wind by the great stone walls. She still did not sew. She preferred to work with the horses.

      Her intelligent questions and gentle hands were welcomed in the stables. She was quick to learn which herbs to add to a horse’s feed to calm it down or increase its strength. She could soothe the most fretful stallion with her small hands and pull sharp stones from a huge and shaggy hoof without need for twitch or whip.

      Viv stirred. Unconsciously she stretched her cramped fingers, but the story was racing on. Picking up her pen again she wrote on, the pages filling quickly under her uneven, untidy scribbled notes. When her doorbell rang once, echoing through her silent flat, she did not hear it.

      Cartimandua was universally liked. One pair of eyes alone watched her balefully from the shadows and as she grew, so the resentment behind those eyes deepened. Their owner was careful, hiding her dislike and jealousy, but as the Brigantian girl blossomed into a beautiful young woman so dislike deepened into hatred.

      It started with small things. Carta’s favourite pottery bowl was found broken. Then a string of freshwater pearls disappeared. Her best shoes were found thrown into a latrine pit behind the house and the smooth surface of her precious mirror was viciously scratched. Sadly she surveyed the faces of the women around her, wondering, but as yet not angry enough to go to the king.

      ‘Take care, Carta.’ Mellia had brought her own small mirror as a replacement. ‘Someone is jealous of you.’

      ‘Who?’ Carta sat down on the stool near her lamp stand. The fluttering wick needed tending and automatically Mellia moved across to see to it, the light reflecting on the girl’s pale hair.

      Mellia shrugged. ‘None of the women in this house. They all love you.’ She was speaking softly, while glancing quickly over her shoulder towards the screened doorway into the central chamber where Pacata was singing to the others. The slave girl had a pure gentle voice and was often excused her other duties so she could sing them the sad beautiful songs of her native Erin.

      ‘I haven’t done anything to make people jealous of me.’ Carta was genuinely bewildered.

      Mellia sat down beside her and fondled Catia’s head as the dog lay next to her young mistress. The two pups had gone. One, Carta had shyly presented to Riach, the other had returned to Dun Righ with her brother, Bran, a link between them as they made their tearful farewells.

      In her loneliness after his departure she had turned more and more to Mellia as a friend and confidante and the two girls had grown close in their time at Dun Pelder, often whispering their hopes and dreams to one another. ‘You’re too pretty!’ Mellia smiled. ‘And you’re going to marry Prince Riach, everyone knows that. That would make most women jealous.’

      ‘I don’t know I’m going to marry him!’ Carta protested, colouring slightly. ‘No one has ever said anything. Not officially.’ The thought made her feel tingly and embarrassed, scared and excited, all at the same time. ‘If I did, you wouldn’t be jealous?’

      ‘No. I’d be happy for you. If it was what you wanted.’

      ‘Because you’re in love with someone else!’ Carta raised an eyebrow. ‘Don’t tell me you haven’t been flirting with Conaire.’

      Conaire had accompanied them from her father’s hall as a young and inexperienced musician and had been studying hard at the bardic school which nestled on the northern flank of Dun Pelder, between the stonemasons and the goldsmith’s workshop, and he had done well. He was nearly halfway through his seven years’ course and had already learned a vast stock of songs and poems as well as being an acknowledged master in composing his own.

      Mellia blushed scarlet. ‘That’s not true!’

      ‘It is!’ Carta teased. ‘And why not. He’s going to be a great bard one day. He will need a very special wife.’

      Mellia looked down at her feet. ‘He wouldn’t look at me.’

      Carta stared at her. ‘Why not?’

      ‘I’m not good enough.’

      For once Carta was speechless. She stared for several moments at Mellia then she shook her head. ‘How can you be so silly! You are beautiful. Far more beautiful than me.’ She was surveying the other girl critically. ‘Your hair is gorgeous. Much nicer than mine. Your eyes are prettier. You can sew and stuff like that.’ Carta was being scrupulously honest. As Catia sat up and rested her head trustingly on Carta’s knee, she leaned forward and hugged the dog and kissed her forehead. ‘Next to Catia you’re my best friend, Mellia. I couldn’t have lived here without you. And I want you to marry someone really special. If Conaire becomes my head bard he will travel everywhere with me, and that means you can too. We’ll be together forever. I’d like that.’

      Behind them a shadow crossed the doorway and vanished. As Pacata’s pure voice soared to the roof, whoever had been standing there tiptoed across the central chamber behind the silent women spinning and sewing beside the fire and disappeared out into the night.

      Two days later Carta found her beloved dog, Catia, lying dead in the passage between the feasting hall and the kitchens, a dirty froth of vomit around her mouth, the remains of a meat sauce in a bowl nearby.

      She knelt there on the cold stones beside the dog, her hand on the cold matted fur, tears pouring down her face. For a long time she would not let anyone touch Catia. Her despair and her misery were too raw. Even Mellia could not come near her. When at last she stood up, it was to go straight to Lugaid, interrupting his consultation with his Druid advisers.

      ‘You have to do something!’ Her eyes were bright with tears still but somehow she held her anguish back, concentrating only on her anger. ‘Someone is trying to chase me away. A woman. It is a woman’s trick to resort to poison.’ She looked from one solemn face to another. Did these men understand? Did they even care?

      Truthac, one of the oldest and most senior Druids in the community held up his hand to forestall her passionate accusations. ‘I don’t think we would disagree with you, Cartimandua. However, what is needed is subtlety and study to find out who is doing this to you.’

      ‘And why,’ his colleague Vivios put in. ‘Have you angered someone, child?’

      They were taking her seriously. She was not going to have to convince them of her accusations.

      ‘I am not aware of angering anyone. The people here are my friends.’ She was speaking to the king, her eyes clear of tears now and focussed on his.

      She had her suspicions. She had had them for a while now, but without proof, as the Druid said, there was little she could do.

      Truthac was watching her shrewdly and she found herself looking away quickly. He can read my thoughts, she realised. He knows I suspect someone.

      As if answering her unspoken statement, he gave her a grave smile. ‘Suspicions are not enough, child. There must be proof. Have you consulted the gods?’

      She bit her lip. The gods were a part of her life, of course they were, as they were a part of everybody’s, but in this matter she preferred to rely on her native wit.

      He was watching her again. As was the king, who leaned back on his bench with his arms folded. ‘Go and make offerings, child, and search for omens to see what they say to you,’ the king put in. ‘And ask someone to help you to the temple with the dog’s body. She was your friend and companion. It is right to offer her to the gods so she may live again, is that not true, Truthac?’

      The Druid nodded. ‘Go, child. Be steadfast in your prayers and your actions and remember,’ he held up his hand as she turned away. ‘Tears are the offerings we give to our departed friends and loved ones, and rightly so. Never be ashamed to cry. But tears dry and disappear. Justice is what will serve best here. Be canny.’ He tapped his nose with a gnarled finger.

      Dun Pelder was a sacred hill. Upon it there were temples and offering