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said.
    I could not read her face as I walked toward her. Her high brow was smoother, more
innocent, than one would expect of a woman who had borne the weight of a tribe for
twenty summers. Yet usually I could detect the twitch of the lip, the lift of the
jaw, which told me if matters in the tribe were not well. Today I could not.
    I glanced at her bed. No warrior lay within, though she had taken many since her
husband had fallen to fever last midwinter. The bed of her brother, Fibor, was also
empty and her youngest daughter, Manacca—seven summers old and the only one yet to
be fostered away—had torn past as I returned from the well. Fraid was alone.
    Yet when I drew closer, I was startled to see Llwyd the Journeyman, sitting motionless
on the carved bench to Fraid’s right. Her concern must have been great to call her
highest advisor before she was properly cloaked.
    Clutching the bucket, I bowed deeply.
    ‘Quickly, Ailia,’ said Fraid. ‘I’m poorly slept and hungry.’
    I pulled a bowl from the shelf and ladled it full of the barley porridge bubbling
on the hearth. Etaina, Fibor’s wife, must have prepared it before she left. ‘Might
I serve you food also, Journeyman?’
    ‘Nay, I fast for the rites.’ Llwyd smiled at me. Rarely did I see him outside of
Ceremony or council. He wore the bone-coloured cloth of all journeymen Elders and,
where it parted at his shoulder, I saw the mark of the deer scarred and dyed into
his upper arm. His beard was the colour of pewter and his brown irises were misty
with age, but the creases in his face showed there had been laughter in him. There
was laughter still.
    The journeypeople were those who had travelled many years in their learning. They
were our teachers, our law-keepers, our ears to the Mothers. They knew how to travel
the dream states, the trances, from which they saw what was true.
    I unhooked the cookpot and placed it on the hearthstones. Then I hung an empty cauldron,
filled it with wash-water, and sat down at Fraid’s feet.
    ‘This death will hasten an attack, I am sure of it,’ Fraid said to Llwyd between
mouthfuls. ‘Not only because it makes cracks in our leadership, but because Caradog
speaks so provocatively against Rome.’ She sighed.
    ‘He has always spoken so,’ answered Llwyd.
    ‘Yes, but he had his father to blunt his words.’
    ‘True,’ Llwyd nodded. ‘Belinus was an artful leader, equally skilled with word and
sword. But Caradog has his own strengths. He is a tribesman, a lover of our Albion.’
His voice had the warmth of a long-burned fire.
    Fraid placed her bowl on the bench beside her. ‘Do you suggest that we offer an alliance
with Caradog? Should I send an envoy to pledge our fighting men and our coinage?’
    Llwyd glanced at me and I turned back to the fire, embarrassed that he had caught
me listening. ‘No,’ he said. ‘You have worked hard to protect the independence of
this tribe.’
    ‘Caradog may seek to bring us into an alliance by force,’ said Fraid. ‘After all,
he already controls the tribes on three sides of Durotriga.’
    ‘Caradog will seek to subdue the tribes whose leaders hold Roman sympathies,’ said
Llwyd, ‘and that, good Tribequeen, is not us.’
    I unhooked the simmering pot and poured the steaming water into a clay bowl, sweetening
it with a pinch of dog-rose from a pot on Fraid’s shelf.
    She winced at the heat as her feet slid in. ‘Nevertheless it will not hurt to keep
the tradelines strong. After Beltane, I will send an envoy with new samples. I will
send the knave Ruther.’
    I glanced up as I rubbed her feet with a slippery slab of tallow.
    ‘Why him?’ asked Llwyd. I could not read the tone that had darkened his voice.
    ‘He’s been Roman-taught. He knows their ways. Perhaps he can help smooth what Caradog
upsets.’
    ‘Be at peace, Fraid,’ said Llwyd, lightening again. ‘Caradog is a man of fire, but
he is fuelled by love of the Mothers. If he leads us to war with Rome it will be
an