Read The Horse Goddess (Celtic World of Morgan Llywelyn) for Free Online Page B

“I leave its life in your hands. I am going out.” She slung a cloak of blue wool and fox fur across her shoulders and left the lodge.
    The clear light dazzled her and she squinted a little. Even after all these seasons, the lambent quality of mountain light surprised her almost as much as it had when she first came to this place from the northern riverlands, to be wife to the chief of the Salt Mountain. Then she had thought she would have everything; a home amid soaring, easily defended peaks
in a village famed for its wealth, and a husband described as the Invincible Boar.
    She had not realized then that Toutorix, already a grizzled warrior, had far too many responsibilities as lord of the tribe to pay much attention to a woman, aside from lifemaking, and that every aspect of his person must be shared with the rest of the tribe.
    That was the sort of thing a woman discovered too late.
    Rigantona noticed her oldest daughter headed for the bakehouse and set off in that direction herself, sniffing the air. At least the pleasures of food never failed one, and it had been a long time since her breakfast of cheese and salted venison with goats’ milk pudding.
    She intercepted Epona at the doorway of the earthwalled bakehouse. “Get us a loaf of hot bread to share right now,” she ordered the girl, “and walk with me. My back aches and my eyes are burning.”
    “I was just coming to begin our baking …” Epona started to explain, but Rigantona waved her hand. “Later. Yestersun was the last of your childhood, and now I suppose I must talk to you as my mother talked to me. After my own woman-making.” She did not sound enthusiastic about the prospect.
    Epona entered the bakehouse and asked Sirona for one of her loaves of bread, fresh from the oven. “My mother requests it,” she explained when Sirona raised her eyebrows. No one refused a direct request from the chief’s wife, even Sirona, whose feud with Rigantona entertained the entire tribe.
    When Epona brought the loaf she and her mother strolled through the village, dividing the bread between them, their teeth crunching the grains embedded in the chewy dough. At last they sat together on a boulder near the log palisade. Rigantona stared into space, licking her fingers, trying to recall the words her mother had used on a similar occasion. But that was many summers ago and the memory had turned to smoke and fog.
    “About men,” she began, and stopped. Epona waited, digging with one forefinger at bits of grain caught in her teeth.
    Rigantona tried again. “Do you know what men expect of women?”
    “Certainly. To protect the lodgefire so it only needs to be rekindled at the start of each new year, to fight as warriors if needed, to cook and weave and sew and salt meat and dry herbs and …”
    Rigantona cut off the flow of words. “What about bedsports? What do you know about that?”
    The girl’s cheeks were bright pink. Like all the people, she caught fire easily. “I know everything about bedsports. Our family shares one lodge; I’ve seen men and women together all my life.”
    “Seeing something done and experiencing it yourself are not the same thing, Epona. You can watch me eat the thigh of a pig and if you had never eaten meat you would not know what I was tasting. Until a man enters you the first time you know nothing about bedsports—or men, either.”
    Epona resented her mother’s patronizing tone, but the topic was causing an inexplicable wave of shyness to wash over her, turning her skin hot from the inside. She asked in a voice barely above a whisper, “Then what is it like? Tell me.”
    “That depends on the man. Some are like pigs, rutting; others have all the artistry of a bard playing the lyre. If you learn bedsports with a skillful husband you will come to enjoy his body and your own; if not, it is your right according to our custom to find someone who pleases you better, just as soon as you have given your husband one living