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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
High Fell, Ingleborough. The name resonated in her head. Suddenly she was shivering with excitement.
II
It was focussing so closely and so constantly on Cartimandua that had first brought the woman closer. It must have been. It was as though she was there at the end of a phone line and it had begun soon after Viv had actually started writing the book following two years of intense research, two years of studying Roman texts, of following up the latest archaeological, anthropological and social studies. She had interviewed archaeological conservators, forensic archaeologists, philologists. She had, she used to say to herself, learned to extract blood from stones.
Then one day, out of nowhere, as she sat staring at her computer screen she had heard the voice. Not clearly at first. No words. Just a strange resonance deep inside her brain. It had worried her. She wondered if she was going potty; she took a couple of days off. Then it happened again and this time she had heard the one word clearly.
Vivienne.
A strange, foreign-sounding version of her own name and one she never, ever, used herself.
She worked harder every time it happened, fighting it; ignoring it. So the voice used another approach. In her dreams. And in her dreams she could do nothing to stop it.
She grew confused. Cartimandua was emerging from the shadows of archaeology as a flesh and blood personality. She had grey-green eyes with dark flecks in them, red-blonde hair which was thick and long, she had strong broad cheek bones and a generous mouth. A forceful character. She was clever. Sometimes amusing. Often troubled. Sometimes hard to understand.
It had been so difficult to ignore her. To stick to the facts. The facts as far as they are known through a few Roman historians and Cartimandua’s place within the historical context of first-century Britain.
Each time it happened she had fought it tooth and nail. Thrown down her pen. Another whole passage of the book to be erased. Romantic, imaginative rubbish. Her book was to be factual.
She had spoken to a colleague in the modern history department, cautiously, casually, not giving too much away, about getting too close to the subject of one’s biography.
‘Oh God, yes!’ he had said, roaring with laughter. ‘It’s spooky. You become so intimate with someone you get right under their skin. You feel you know them better than they know themselves. Don’t worry, old thing. We read too many letters and diaries in our job, that’s the problem.’
Viv had nodded and grinned and walked away. Too many letters and diaries?
No. Not in the Iron Age.
If only.
If Cartimandua had written letters and diaries they had long ago dissolved into the sodden mires of northern England where she had lived and loved and died, and academics are not supposed to know how the subjects of their biographies feel and think without those indispensable written sources.
Hugh was right. She was probably a novelist at heart. Someone who could write good convincing historical fiction.
‘But I’m not!’ The words exploded out of her, heard only by the pot plants on her window sill. ‘I am an academic, damn it! I have studied Celtic history for fifteen years. That’s why this has all come so easily. It’s not because of –’ She paused. ‘It’s not because of her.’
Viv’s editor had loved it. So had the publishers’ readers; the publicity department; the sales team. Parts of it which she had cut, her editor insisted on reinstating – the best bits – the most ‘imaginative’! And the first person to look at it who knew what he was talking about, Professor Hugh Graham, had spotted it immediately. Cartimandua’s voice was there. It shouldn’t have been.
And now Viv was hearing it again, more insistently than ever. The book was finished. The voice should have gone away. Instead it was louder and now there was no reason – no academic reason – not to listen. After all, there were so many pieces of the jigsaw still missing. So much she still wanted to know.
Walking slowly back into her living room, so empty after Steve’s departure, Viv was lost in thought. Where was the voice coming from? Was it from her imagination? Was it a memory? An echo? A ghost? Why did she have this strange feeling suddenly that on top of all the other reasons not to listen to the voice that called itself Cartimandua, there might be one overriding factor. That it was dangerous?
She stood staring at the phone thoughtfully. Perhaps she should tell Cathy what was happening. Cathy would know what to do. She was after all the psychologist; the expert. But then, supposing Cathy said it was stupid and potentially harmful and that she should stop?
The words of the first scene of her play resonated in her mind again suddenly. Once written, she had not been able to erase them. Most of them hadn’t gone into the book, but they were still there. In her computer. In her notes. In her head. They were the bit of the play that Maddie Corston had praised. They were the words that had first brought Cartimandua alive.
III
For as long as she could remember she had known that she would be a queen some day. It wasn’t a dream, or a memory of past existences or a knowledge of a destiny which was the result of birth or fortune. It was a certainty. A knowing in her blood. Besides, the goddess had told her. The first time she had heard the voice clearly she had been standing quite alone amongst the trees near the river in the lush valley below her hilltop home. She had left her pony to graze and was staring down into the glittering churning sweep of the brown waters, her mind a blank, mesmerised by the movement of the ripples.
Cartimandua
The voice seemed to echo off the stones beneath her feet, resound from the boulders, rustle in the leaves above her head. Cartimandua, Queen of the North.
Awed, she stared round. This valley was full of gods; it was a sacred place and this was a sacred river and a goddess had spoken her name. A goddess called Vivienne. She knew what she looked like, her goddess. She had glimpsed her green eyes in the reflections of the water, seen her hair, the russet of oak leaves in autumn, in weed streaming amongst the rocks. And it was there that, cautiously, shyly, for the first time, she answered the call of the goddess who called her queen.
Her brothers had laughed. Good-natured, tolerant, fond of their small sister, they encouraged her fantasy. They taught her all day, every day, to run, to throw a spear, to wield her small razor-sharp sword and to ride. To ride as though she were part of the horse itself. It was they who had given her her special name – Cartimandua, which meant Sleek Pony – teasing her as, soaked to the skin in the rain and the mist of her native Pennine Hills she leaned forward against the neck of her pale cream garron, her own long fair hair hanging in ropes about its neck, blending with its mane as they tore across the heather-clad fells and the dales and into the forest. It was her brothers and their friends who set her up to stand on an upturned box to address her troops, the children and young men and women of the hilltop fort on the high northern moors where they had been born, and who led the cheering as she rallied her followers to their next adventure.
She did not enjoy weaving.
Or sewing.
Or playing with other girls save those who, tomboys like herself, dreamed of being warriors alongside their menfolk.
It didn’t matter what she did. She was the apple of her father, the tribal chieftain’s eye, her uncle’s darling, and if she was the despair of her ambitious mother she didn’t care. She romped unchecked through the small township, her clothes peat-stained, her fingernails split and dirty, her straw-coloured hair unkempt. Until the autumn of her twelfth year. The year her world was to change forever.
Her own special hound, Catia, had whelped in the night. She was a small bitch and the sire had been huge. The birth had torn the dog badly. Gentle and strong as she always was with her animals Carta had done her best to help, her small fingers easing out the last of the pups, tearing apart the membranes the bitch was too weak to break with her teeth, plugging the baby to the teat even as she knew the mother was dying. Three of the pups were already dead. Her eyes full of tears, she was sitting in the watery dawn sunlight, her hand on the bitch’s head as it lay in the shelter of the log-shed outside the great round house, when a shadow fell across her and she looked up blindly. ‘She won’t live,’ she wailed. She did not ask for help. It never occurred to her to ask help from an adult. Already she was self-sufficient.
It was a stranger who stood over her. A tall lean man of some forty summers wrapped in a mantle of green and blue dyed wool. She had heard with some part of her the watchman’s horn and knew someone must be approaching the gates of the township, but had taken no notice, too preoccupied to care. He bent towards the dog, laying down his staff and the leather bag he carried and, going down on one knee he put a gentle hand on the dog’s flank.
‘She can still be saved.’ His voice was deep. ‘Take the surviving pups from her. She has no strength to feed them. Is there another bitch here to adopt them? If not I’ll twist their necks.’
‘No!’ Her eyes flashing fury Carta pushed at him, trying to place herself between him and the dog. ‘I will not have the pups killed. She has plenty of milk. They can feed till she dies. Then I will feed them myself with goat’s milk. And maybe she’ll be all right.’ Her certainty faded. ‘I will ask the goddess to bless her.’ She looked doubtfully down at the dog who lay, eyes closed, without moving.
The man studied Carta’s face briefly, then he reached forward and taking her hand examined her blunt, dirty little fingers covered in dried blood. ‘Is she your bitch?’
Carta nodded.
‘And you are willing to nurse her? And the pups if necessary?’
The girl nodded. She wiped her eyes defiantly with the back of her hand and set her jaw in determination.
‘Then we will try to heal her. The goddess needs our help in this, child. Or she will take the dog to herself where it will play forever in the summer lands. Do you want to help her?’ He glanced up and saw the eager nod, the sudden frown, the inclination of the head as though she was trying to recall some forgotten memory. He studied her face. ‘What is it, child?’
She shook her head as if irritated at some unknown failure. ‘The goddess does not want Catia. Not yet.’ The goddess whose voice she heard in the wind on the fells. The goddess who had spoken to her from the river. Vivienne.
He held her gaze for a moment, then he nodded as though satisfied at some conclusion he had arrived at in his own mind. ‘Go and fetch a pot of boiling water, and – wait!’ He had hardly raised his voice as she jumped to her feet but the authority in it turned her to stone. ‘Wash your hands before you come back.’
When she returned it was to find he had opened his bag and extracted packages of dried herbs and mosses, small glass phials, and a set of sharp bladed knives and scalpels. ‘You are a healer?’ Her eyes were round with relief. ‘Why didn’t you say?’ She was carefully carrying a pitcher of hot water drawn from a cauldron hanging over one of the cooking fires.
He was sliding moss between the bitch’s back legs.
‘I am here to settle matters of dispute, child. But I retain an interest in healing, certainly. Here, put these to steep in the water till it cools.’ He handed her a small wooden pot of herbs and dried berries. ‘Now, whatever you say, we must remove these puppies. They will drain her life force. They can come back to her later when she is stronger.’
Her eyes had widened. He was a Druid, then. She had not noticed his robes under the warm mantle. A wise man come to settle the legal disputes within the huge hill fort compound formed by the hilltop ramparts. Her father, king of the Setantii, had his own Druids, of course. They ran a school and a college in the forest near the river in the valley below the fort and two of their most senior members were his advisers at the tribal councils. This man must be very special and very senior to have been summoned specially. She was dimly aware of there having been quarrels amongst her father’s followers; the reason for them did not interest her. She reached out for the puppies, detaching them with much whimpering and squealing from their mother’s teats and snuggled them into her arms. ‘I can put them with my brother’s hound. She is so stupid she won’t notice the extra.’
‘Take them.’ He smiled at her, reading perhaps more into her comment than she had intended. This bright, wilful girl obviously had little respect for the sibling whose dog she described so dismissively. ‘Then come and watch what I do. Your hands are strong and gentle. You have the makings of a healer.’
As she had suspected, the pups settled to their foster mother at once with no sign of surprise or hesitation on either side as she lay in the shade of the wool store with her own litter. Carta watched for a moment, making sure the week-old pups did not push the newcomers aside, but there seemed space for all and with one or two indignant squeaks and a gentle inspection and lick from the new mother all was peaceful. Threading her way through the dozen or so houses with their attendant granaries, barns, stores, work-shops and stables which comprised the settlement where she had grown up, she found a small respectful circle of spectators had formed around the visitor and the sick dog in the beaten-earth courtyard in front of her father’s house.
She pushed between them impatiently only to find her father standing in the way as he addressed their visitor. ‘Welcome, friend. I am sorry this child has waylaid you. She had no business bothering you with such trifles.’ Her father was a tall well-built man, handsome and much respected within the tribe. He was, she noticed, wearing his best mantle with the silver circlet denoting his kingship around his shaggy mane of reddish hair.
Their visitor looked up. ‘The life of a dog is not a trifle, Bellacos. On the contrary,’ he smiled gravely. ‘Matters of law can wait. Let us see what we can do for this creature, then I shall come to your fireside later.’
That evening, certain that Catia was sleeping soundly on the rug on her own heather bed and that the puppies were content and replete with their new mother, Carta crept back at last into the great feasting hall of the Setantii. Built several years ago beside her father’s house, this hall, slightly larger than her family home and without smaller rooms around the circular walls, formed a great ceremonial space, kept for tribal gatherings and entertainments and for communal meals. Richly decorated with colourful woven wall hangings, elaborately carved support pillars, and everywhere riots of colour and design, it was lit by dozens of lamps. As the population of the settlements crowded in, the great hall was smoky from the central fire and the lamps and smelling strongly of the food which was even now being carried in on great heavy trays. Carta arrived in time to see her father passing their guest a horn of the best mead. She wriggled onto the bench between the two men, almost deafened by the noise of shouting and laughter as the whole community crowded in to see their visitor and to share the evening meal. By the flickering light of the flaring lamps, meat from the firepits and ovens in the kitchens was being passed round on platters swimming in rich blood gravy together with bowls of stew and baskets of bread and hunks of fine rich cheese. By the wall Enocios, the harper, was strumming a gentle background music all but inaudible in the hubbub around him.
Bellacos and his visitor, engaged in serious talk, had not seemed to notice the small girl who had forced her way onto the cushioned bench between them, but now the newcomer glanced down. He laid his knife beside his platter and wiped his fingers on the napkin before patting her unruly head. ‘So, is the bitch comfortable?’
Carta nodded. ‘She’s asleep on my bed.’
He smiled gravely. ‘And where will you sleep, little one?’
‘Anywhere. I don’t care.’ She was immediately on the defensive. She was aware that her father’s attention had already wandered. He was scanning the company for someone. Her uncle was there, on the other side of their visitor, so it must be her eldest brother, Triganos, he sought. She scowled, hoping fervently that Triganos would as always be somewhere else, lurking in the stables or the arms hall with his friend and foster brother, Venutios. If they came over she would be chased away to sit with the other children or sent to sit at her mother’s side at the far side of the fire and forgotten. She hadn’t stirred beneath the stranger’s hand. It was light. Gentle. Warm. Normally she would have wriggled away, ducked aside and fled but he fascinated her and he had won her trust as easily as he had won that of her dog.
