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,
