Queen Hereafter, page 2
“I was praying to the new god, asking him to give me strength.”
Mother scoffed.
“A waste of time to pray for strength to a god so weak he wouldn’t defend himself from a handful of priests and soldiers.”
Grandmother laughed.
“At least there’s one thing we still agree on. Now,” she continued, taking my cold hands in her warm ones, “let us prepare for the Feast of Imbolg.”
Chapter 2
Where once entire settlements had assembled to celebrate Imbolg, now only a handful of families, brave enough to risk the penalty for being caught, gathered in isolated corners of the kingdom. My grandmother’s island was one of those corners.
First came the young women with their children whose job it was to clean Grandmother’s house, purifying it from the harsh winter and making space to welcome Brighde, goddess of prophecy, healing and new beginnings. Next the men, usually farmers, would arrive with stores for the feast. Finally, the old daughters of druids would be brought to the island and given a place of honor at the feasting tables where they would gossip as they watched the preparations.
This year, there was talk of how the new religion had stolen the Festival of Imbolg and changed it to suit its own purposes—women wore white in a ritual of purification, prayers were said to the new god and solemnity had settled over the whole affair. I didn’t understand why King Malcolm couldn’t invent his own rites, but instead had to shame us further by fouling ours. And though I should have been afraid to be involved in an illicit festival, I felt only pride in our stubborn defiance of the king’s wishes.
My task was to stand on the shore and welcome all who alighted. In the guests’ nervous smiles, I could feel the weight of their anticipation. Grandmother would send them all away with tinctures for protection and prosperity, and many would receive prophecies to carry them through the year ahead.
Even Mother’s icy demeanor warmed as the day went on, though she continued to maintain her distance from Grandmother, as if proximity would be too painful. I clung to Grandmother all the more, to assure her that my love had not cooled. If she noticed, she said nothing.
The sun dipped behind the hills and my grandmother and her servants built a large sacred fire near the water’s edge. Those who had come for the feasting and the charms but were too afraid to be caught taking part in this oldest tradition of divination, slipped back to the shore until only a few remained, mostly daughters of druids like Grandmother, and far fewer of them than the year before. I looked to see if she had noticed the dwindling numbers, but her attention seemed to be entirely on the task before her.
We gathered around the fire, and I was surprised to see Mother among those who would partake of the sacred mugwort. There was hunger in her eyes, and I knew then that she would use the ceremony to ask Brighde for a son.
I sat beside Grandmother as she crushed the brown and red plant against the side of the bowl, mixing it with water boiled on Brighde’s sacred fire until it turned the color of mud. As she stirred, she sang a bewitching melody—an ancient song of rebirth, new beginnings, and good fortune.
I could feel the song calling to my heart of hearts, pulling me towards it, though I could not articulate what it wanted. The ground murmured beneath me as if in answer to my grandmother’s song.
Her voice trailed off and she peered into the bowl. Satisfied with what she saw, she poured the contents into a cup, which was then passed around, every woman taking a sip. And so it continued—pouring, mixing, casting, sharing, singing.
After the mugwort had been passed twice round, some of the others began to sing their own song as Brighde visited them and filled their minds with her vision. Their voices were lifted on the wind as they moaned in the throes of prophecy, the sound echoing across the dark water. Hairs on my arms and neck tingled as the women grew wilder, dancing and bucking, casting strange shadows on the walls of my grandmother’s small home, sending shocks of light across the sandy shore.
It was beautiful and terrifying.
I was considered too young for the powerful plant, and though I protested vehemently, I was secretly relieved not to have to ingest the dark liquid and surrender my body to the control of the gods. But no matter how uneasy I felt, I dared not move, breathe even, lest I shatter the thin veil between this life and the next through which Brighde was communicating with her faithful followers. Grandmother sat quiet, her eyes vacant as she reached out into the darkness, searching for the goddess.
Though I didn’t drink the mugwort, I participated in my own way. I sank my hands into the grass, cold and crisp beneath my fingers, searching for the power that Grandmother had spoken of. But all I could hear was a humming in the air.
“What are you trying to say?” I asked, barely above a whisper.
I knew I would not receive a response, but at that moment a breeze whispered at my neck and I felt my grandmother’s gaze on me. I looked up. Her eyes had turned black and her fists were clenched, but she sat still—a point of strength in a sea of noise and shadows. I squirmed under the intensity of her stare.
“Don’t be afraid, Groa, daughter of Boedhe, son of Coinneach, the rightful King of Alba.” My grandmother’s voice was deep and rich, like the steady hum of a swarm of bees.
“You will be the greatest of us all. Your fame will spread through all of Alba and into England. All the land your feet can touch and your eyes can see is yours, and you belong to it.”
My heart stirred and a shiver coursed down my back as the murmur of the earth confirmed it.
This . . . This is what I am saying to you.
Grandmother had never prophesied over me before and I was not meant to speak to her during the ritual, but the call from the earth urged me to respond.
“Will I be a queen?” I ventured, hating the reediness of my own voice in comparison to the rich timbre of my grandmother’s.
“You will be so much more. You will be immortalized.”
I thought of Grandmother’s druidic power, passed down from our ancestors. I thought of how Mother now held Father in her grip with the promise of a son. I thought of how Father bent beneath King Malcolm’s rule without the king ever having set foot in Fife. And I would be greater than all of them?
“Will I marry a king?” I asked.
My grandmother laughed.
“You speak of marriage when I am offering you glory and a legacy that will never die.”
“But how will I become queen if—” I began. Grandmother cut me off.
“Enough questioning, my child, there is still much more to be revealed.”
I shrank back, but Grandmother, sensing this, reached out and took my hand in hers.
“You must survive, little Groa. Of all of us, you must survive,” she said, her rich prophetic voice replaced by a tone of deep longing, her eyes intent on me.
With a gentle squeeze of my fingers she turned back to the fire, the flames throwing dancing shadows on her face. I looked around to see who else had heard this incredible prophecy but no one else seemed aware of what had taken place. They were still caught up in their own visions. Mother danced, and while I wanted with all my heart to believe she was free and happy, the movements seemed forced, as if she was trying to summon Brighde by sheer will rather than allowing the great goddess’s presence to land on her.
Grandmother’s words spun in my head.
Immortalized.
Queen.
Survive.
* * *
Pink had already given way to the blue of morning by the time I opened my eyes. The old daughters of druids were saying their goodbyes and sharing their visions excitedly with each other. One would be a grandmother again by harvest; another would be reunited with her son.
Someone had placed a sheepskin over my shoulders and I buried myself deeper inside its warmth. From where I lay, curled up beside the embers of the night’s fire, I could see my grandmother and mother bidding the others farewell. The small boats were pulling away from the shore until only one remained. One of our guards sat at the prow, and I didn’t understand why the few things we had brought with us were already loaded into it.
I sat up and the chill of the spring morning hit me full in the face. As the fog of sleep cleared, I remembered my grandmother’s prophecy and my spine tingled.
So caught up was I in my thoughts, I didn’t realize she had approached me. She looked older than I had ever seen her. Pulling me to my feet, she wrapped the sheepskin tighter around me.
“It is time to say goodbye, Groa,” she said as she bent down to kiss my cheek.
“Goodbye?” Sleep must have blocked my ears as well as my mind. “We have only just arrived.”
“Your mother has what she came for,” she replied quietly, taking my hand to lead me to the boat.
“No,” I cried, pulling away from her. “What about your tapestry?”
“I did not make one this year.” But I saw the twitch in her lower lip and the clench in her jaw and knew this was a lie. She was trying to hide her emotions. I did not have her strength. Tired and cold and upset to be deprived of precious days with my grandmother, I burst into tears.
“Gruoch,” my mother shouted in reproof from the boat, but Grandmother turned on her a gaze so cold and terrifying that she shrank back despite the distance between them. Grandmother had never looked at her that way before, and I sensed that things had shifted between them, perhaps forever.
Grandmother then stooped down so that her eyes were level with mine.
“Do you remember what I told you last night?” she whispered.
I nodded, wiping my nose on the sheepskin.
“You must survive,” she said. “You must be strong.”
“I miss you,” I could only reply desolately, and the admission brought with it a new flood of tears.
Grandmother stood and lifted me up, holding me close. She walked me towards the boats, but when my mother reached out her arms to take me, Grandmother hung back a moment more. She stroked my hair and my sobs lessened. She smelled thickly of mugwort and I tried to breathe in deeply, nearly choking on snot. This made Grandmother chuckle, which in turn brought a glimmer of lightness to my heart.
“Don’t forget my words, little one,” Grandmother said, and I nodded.
She leaned down to kiss my cheek once more.
“Look like the innocent flower, but be the serpent beneath it,” she whispered in my ear.
It was an old Picti saying, and though she had used it often before, in this moment it felt like a divine command, as if it were the reason I had been born—to be such a serpent beneath such a flower.
With that, I was bundled into the boat, and we pulled away from the island. The morning mist hung thick, but still I kept my eyes fixed on my grandmother. She stood alone on the shore, her cloak pulled around her, the wind lifting the tips of her long silver hair as she sang the song of parting. I stared at her, trying to burn her image into my mind, my ears straining to catch every word. Her voice carried on the wind and the last line seemed to float along the water behind us.
Nuair bhuannaichear ’s a chaillear blàr.
Even when the mist swallowed her up and we reached the opposite shore, still I kept her image in my mind.
Riding home with my mother, I welcomed the warmth of her body. She kissed my head and stroked my hair just as she once had. Brighde must have given her a wonderful promise to elicit such renewed affection. Despite her warmth towards me, I resolved not to tell her about the prophecy. She wouldn’t understand, not while her head was full of visions of sons and heirs.
That summer, I swam in the sea by myself while a guard stood watch. I traipsed through the hills with Mother’s maid and took boat rides on the Firth of Eden. Day by day, I grew into my divine purpose, watching the land as Grandmother would have wanted, observing how it changed and warmed under the summer sun, and how the hills became soaked with the purple of heather and then darkened as the harvest drew closer. The divinity of the land soaked into my skin as my bare feet trod upon its grass. I was heady with the knowledge that Alba herself had decreed me her rightful ruler—for this reason had I been born.
It was as if my grandmother’s words had tethered me to Alba, not through fantastical stories, but through my own claim to it. This land was mine, and I would care for it and love it as no one had cared for or loved it before. That summer, I thought I would never love anything so much as I loved Alba.
Then Adair was born.
Chapter 3
A sliver of moon against the dark sky heralded a new season. Harvest was drawing to an end and the time for feasting was upon us, but I cared for none of this.
My mother was wailing in her chamber.
I had woken in the night to her screams and ran to her rooms only to find them filled with women from nearby settlements, one of whom gently led me back into the hall, reassuring me with vague words of comfort that did little to assuage my fears.
“I demand to know what is happening!” I said, afraid of the way I had been greeted with sympathetic looks.
“Her child has come early, that is all,” the woman said softly.
“Early?” I asked.
“Pray it is a boy. He will need strength. They both will.”
The woman closed the door and, though I should have crawled into bed, I remained rooted to the ground.
How had I not known my mother was with child? It was true that her slender figure had rounded in recent weeks, but I had seen countless women grow fat at harvesttime and thought nothing of it. And though she had prayed fervently to Brighde that night at my grandmother’s, I had not expected the goddess to fulfil her request, especially when she had granted me such a destiny. What need would my mother have for sons when her daughter became Queen of Alba?
It was only now that I made sense of Father’s increased shows of affection of late. He had stroked my mother’s hair lovingly in the presence of his thanes and brought her back dried fruit from tours around his land. He had waited on her as a druid waits on a deity. She had accepted both affection and fruit with pleasure.
“See, little one,” she had said, “this is how you win a man and all the land he walks on.”
She had smiled coyly to herself as she ate fruit and adorned her hair with trinkets my father had bought her. I had assumed this was a result of her womanly wiles, but it was the spell of a full belly.
Now, as I lay anxiously in bed, I wondered if Father was still in the fortress. I had not seen him in Mother’s room, but I had not seen much aside from the blood that soaked her bedsheets. I wept and whispered pleas for her protection to any deity who would listen. I dipped in and out of restless sleep until, in the early hours of the morning, I woke to silence.
The door hinges were well oiled so no sound betrayed me as I slipped out into the long corridor. I peered into the darkness but the hall was empty.
Creeping on tiptoe, heartsick with the silence, I made my way towards my mother’s room. When I peered around the doorway, I was relieved to find no trace of the earlier bloodshed. Torchlight softly lit my mother, breathing deeply, wrapped in clean clothes and buried under warm furs. Beside her slept Father in his linen tunic. Between them lay the smallest child I had ever seen. Its skin was purple like the dawn, but it too was breathing peacefully.
The boards beneath my feet creaked as I stepped forward. My mother’s eyelids fluttered open.
“Come, Gruoch.”
I obeyed and climbed beneath the sheepskins, nestling against the warmth of her back.
“Is it a boy?” I whispered.
My mother laughed quietly.
“Aye, your brother.”
“Why is he so little?”
“Because he could not wait to join you.”
This answer pleased me and I curled up closer to her, sinking back into sleep.
They named him Adair—fortune. But, as is the case in my language, names often have many meanings. Adair also meant spear, and into my new brother’s naming, my father poured his every ambition to raise a great warrior and win back Alba. Perhaps I should have been angrier that he and Mother only cared for Adair’s future now, but my brother was so small and so beautiful, I could not bring myself to resent him.
He was the mirror image of Father, which of course pleased him all the more. Adair’s curly blond hair hung over his blue eyes, and he smiled with his whole face. Even in infancy his arms were thickset like Father’s, and his chest barrelled out when he learned to walk. But Adair was nothing like Father in demeanor. My brother was quiet, thoughtful, taking in everything with eyes that were as large as mine.
When he began to walk, he did not try and join in swordplay, for all that Father tried to force him towards it. Instead, Adair preferred to follow me around, hurtling forward on legs like thick saplings, and I was pleased to have found a loyal subject upon whom I could enact my grandmother’s prophecy. In our games, I veered between benevolent ruler and vengeful deity, both of whom he venerated with all the love of a younger brother.
Father worried that our close companionship would make my brother womanly, and so did his best to push Adair towards the company of the young men of our fortress.
“His first word was horse,” my father insisted on telling everyone when Adair began to speak. “He will grow up to be a warrior.”
“His first word was hair,” my mother quietly boasted to her ladies as they plaited her auburn mane, still lustrous despite the birth of two children.
I could have sworn Adair’s first word was hais, which was not a word at all but incoherent baby babble. But I dared not cross my father or my mother, each of whom seemed to have determined Adair’s destiny without consulting the other: to one, he was to be a powerful ruler who would bring glory, and to the other, he was to be an obedient son who would sail across the world, proclaiming his mother’s beauty and grandeur.
We didn’t visit my grandmother the following spring, nor the spring after that. Adair was too small to risk the journey, and though Mother assured me we would go as soon as he was strong enough, I suspected that Father would do everything he could to keep his son from Grandmother’s influence.
