Druids (31 page)

I could not reply. I just stood and looked at her.

“He needs me,” she said. “You don’t understand him. He really does need me. If I left him he would be devastated— particularly if I left him for you. He’d never get over that.”

I said nothing.

“He’s been very good to me. After you just … went away … without even telling me you were going to be a druid … I felt betrayed. I was so angry with you. You left me after I’d let you see me cry.” She dropped her eyes then looked up quickly again, her gaze fierce. “I let no one see me cry. Not ever!”

In a softer voice, she went on. “But Crom Daral cries sometimes, you know. In his sleep. I hear him. His back is getting worse and he knows it. If he can’t be a warrior and claim his share of the spoils, his clan will have to support him. That means Og-mios, who has always had nothing but contempt for him. Don’t you see, Ainvar? Crom has to have something, I can’t leave him with nothing!”

She had taken a step closer to me in her anxiety to make me understand. I opened my arms.

Briga fitted into them like a missing part of myself.

When I began fumbling with her clothes, she mounted a token defense, but it was too late. I forced her down onto the sun-wanned sand.

“I’m Crom Daral’s woman,” she tried to protest, half-smothered beneath me. She twisted from side to side, trying to fend me off with knees and forearms, but every move she made only increased my desire. My flesh was frantic with need of her.

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She stopped fighting me with a startling suddenness. “Why did you wait so long to come for me?” she whispered.

When I entered Briga, she responded with a wild, free joy. I knew then what the Source of All Being must have experienced at the moment of creation: the bursting of a passion too great to be contained.

In that explosion the stars were born—and we are made of

stardust.

Later, much later, we began exploring one another, tentatively at first but with increasing confidence. Her soft, round little belly charmed me, and I pressed my lips against its warmth. She rose onto hands and knees to crawl the length of my body from head to foot, pausing along the way to touch, to caress, to look back mischievously over her shoulder and inquire, “Do you like this? And this?”

I grabbed her from behind and buried my face between her buttocks, savoring the jmciness of her. She laughed; I laughed. The two of us together were a festival.

The wildness returned, deeper and richer than before.

This time images formed behind my closed eyes. I saw the naked tree rising in the clearing. I saw sunlight gleaming on spears, and golden sparks flying upward . . - and, at the ultimate moment, I caught the briefest glimpse of one particular, dauntless

face.

“Vercingetorix,” I whispered into Briga’s hair as the cosmos crashed around us.

When we lay quiet once more with her head tucked into the hollow of my shoulder, I stared up at the sky and reflected on the nature of the special climax that can occur with a special woman. The climax that takes place not in the loins, but in the head and the spirit.

Magic was not too strong a term.

We slept and woke and slept. No one disturbed us-At last I thought I had nothing left to give; then Briga took me into her mouth and caressed my thighs and belly until they grew heavy with the need to give again. She swallowed my seed in lavish gulps. “Now your body will nourish mine and become part of me,” she whispered, pleased with herself.

I had a sudden vision of Menua becoming part of an oak tree.

A calling bird reminded me that the shadows were lengthening and I had responsibilities; we rose and began to dress. Briga turned her back to me. I would not have it. I caught her shoulder

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and made her face me. “Don’t go away from me, Briga. Not even a step.”

“I must, sometime.”

“No. I want you with me as long as we live. Promise me.” It was an extravagant demand. Even in the Beltaine marriage ritual promises were not made for a lifetime. Life is change, a fact that Celtic law takes into account. Free people pledge to remain partners only as long as both are willing. It would be neither natural nor wise to ask for more. Yet I asked it of Briga. “Promiseme!”

She looked at me… and into me, going all the way into those depths from which Nantorus had drawn back so long ago, I felt her in a part of myself no one had ever touched. “I shall be yours forever, Ainvar,” she said softly. “By sun and moon, by fire and water, by earth and air, I swear it.”

Embracing her with joy, I was shaken to discover in Briga a depth of intensity to match my own.

What do we do now? my head demanded to know.

After sex, my thoughts always came clearest, and suddenly I found myself—somewhat after the fact—examining our situation with rueful clarity. If I took Briga into my lodge today as my woman, under the law Crom Daral would have every right to come after me and split my skull. By stealing the woman of a fellow clansman 1 would have dishonored my office.

I must not dishonor the title of Keeper of me Grove!

So I could not take her for myself. No. Not yet-1 could claim her for the Order, however. Yes! Then at some future time, when Crom had accepted it and found himself a new woman, I could dance with Briga around the Beltaine tree.

The plan seemed perfectly reasonable to me.

I need only explain it to her.

We began our reluctant return to the fort. As we walked, I put my arm around her shoulders- “I’m going to take you to Sulis’s lodge,so that…”

She dug her heels into the earth and stopped. “I thought you were taking me to your lodge. I can’t go back to Crom Daral if I’m yours. You said you wanted me with you.”

“I do, I do! But there are many factors to consider, Briga, and I think I have found the best way for us. At least for now. Listen to me.” Keeping my arm around her shoulders, I resumed walking, drawing her along with me. She paced with her head down in what I assumed to be a listening attitude.

Until we were almost at the gates of the fort. Then she threw

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off my aim and whirled on me, eyes blazing. “So this was all a trick to force me into the Order!”

I was dismayed. “Of course not! It’s simply the best way for us, don’t you see? I meant it when I made you mine.”

“Being yours doesn’t mean I have to be a druid.” She lifted her chin and threw her shoulders back, letting her posture remind me that she was a prince’s daughter and could not be forced to do anything.

“Briga, you took part of me to become part of yourself, remember? That means that whatever I am, you are also. And I am a druid.”

“Druid logic,” she said coldly. “I knew this was a trick. You planned it from the beginning, you trapped me.” She look a step backward, away from me, then turned and began running through the twilight toward the fort.

I sped after her, but anger gave her legs strength. She hurtled through the open gates with the chief druid in undignified pursuit. The sentry yelled something at us, but I did not understand what he said.

Nor, for that matter, did I understand Briga. She raced through the fort, dodging people and hounds and hens, leaping over baskets, swerving to avoid midden heaps. I was within a stride of catching her when a nearby lodge door opened and Sulis emerged.

With one swift glance the healertook in the scene: Briga flushed and furious, me exasperated and desperate.

Sulis stepped deftly between us, shook her head wamingly at me, and put her arms around Briga. ‘ ‘You poor thing, is the chief druid upsetting you? We won’t have it. Come with me now, we can sort this out in the morning-Your clothes are all sandy and you look tired, would bathing in heated water refresh you? And a good meal? There now, just come with me …”

Sulis led Briga into her lodge and shut the door in my face. I had neglected to raise my hood; now my people crowded around me, eager to talk of tomorrow’s Beltaine celebration. I had to answer their questions, I belonged to the tribe. They caught me up and carried me away on the tide of their demands, to supervise me purifications, to consult with Dian Cet about the law, to examine me property being exchanged, to share my wisdom and learning and energy when all I wanted to do was be with Briga. And explain. And make it all right somehow.

Late in the night, I scratched on Sulis’s door. The Goban Saor answered. “I’ll get her for you,” he said, not offering to admit

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me. In a few moments the door opened wider and Sulis slipped outside to join me.

“Briga is sleeping, Ainvar. What did you do to her?”

“What did she tell you?” I countered.

“Not much, only that you had tricked her.”

“She misunderstood.”

“That’s what I suspected. It didn’t sound like you. But she’s very angry, Ainvar. She accused you of trying to force her to join the Order before she’s ready.”

Before she’s ready—those few words gave me hope. “Is she

willing to stay with you now, Sulis?”

“She is; she says she’s left Crom Daral for some reason and has nowhere else to go. It’s the opportunity we’ve been seeking, of course. With the two of us under one roof I know I can win her over. But I should like to know how this came about.”

“The pattern,” I said succinctly.

Sulis gave me a skeptical look.

After a sleepless night, at the next dawn I sang the song for the Beltaine sun.

Neither Briga nor Crom Daral appeared to take part in the ceremonies that followed, though I watched for them when I could. Mostly I was too busy to think of either of them. Ainvar the man was submerged in the Keeper of the Grove.

At one point near midday, when Sulis and I happened to be standing next to each other, the healer said to me in a private voice, “Briga wouldn’t come, even to celebrate Beltaine. She expected to be dancing around the tree today, you know. She’s staying in my lodge and wants to see no one.”

“Mnun,” I replied.

For the nine days and nights of Beltaine, my people celebrated the generation of new life. Even the harvest festival of Lughnasa could not compare with the joy of Beltaine. First Dian Cet recited the laws applying to marriage, gifts symbolic of the property of the partners were exchanged, then the man and woman danced the marriage pattern together around the base of the Beltaine tree. Drums beat, pipes played, dmids chanted; the warm air of spring lay like a beneficent weight on dreaming eyes and sweating limbs. The pattern grew more fevered, more and more couples joined the dance. Then they fell away like petals from a flower, to seek beds on the fecund earth. We were a people of passion and passion was a gift from the Source.

For nine nights and days, my people showed their gratitude.

As chief druid, I presided.

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The Head was alone.

When the last exhausted couples made their way homeward, I returned to my own lodge to find Tarvos there, looking after Lak-utu. Hiding my surprise, I said, “When did you leave the danc—

mg?” . o “Early. The dance is for marrying, and I wasn t marrying. So

I thought I ‘d look in on Lakutu, give Damona a chance to be with her own husband.”

“That was kind of you.”

The Bull shrugged. ‘*! had nothing else to do. But since you’re here now, I’ll go. Unless you need something … ?”

“No, that’s all right.” I motioned him away. “Ah, Tarvos!” I called when he was almost through the doorway. “Has any message come from the land of the Arvemi?”

He grinned. “They’re shouting on the wind. Vercingetorix is the new king. Named on the morning ofBeltaine.”

Yes, I thought, closing my eyes. The election must have taken place the day before, as I lay with Briga beside the river and whispered his name into her hair.

OGMIOS CAME TO me, somewhat disgruntled. “Crom Dar-al’s left the Fort of the Grove.” “What do you mean?”

“He was embarrassed at being rejected by the Sequanian woman. He’s run away, to Cenabum, I think. I always knew he was a coward. But his defection has left us a warrior short, though he wasn’t much of a warrior.”

“Don’t be so quick to condemn him, Ogmios. He’s your son.” “By a captured woman. And refused by a captured woman. Not worth much.”

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“You always underestimated him,” I said coldly. “You helped shape him, we all did.”

*’ You ‘re standing up for him after he’s run off like a thief in the dark?”

“Crom Daral was my friend. And I am not a judge.”

Summoning Tarvos, I asked him to send word to Cenabum that the chief druid of the Camutes wanted every courtesy extended to Crom Daral. ” Let it be known that I would be gratified if some prince took Crom into his retinue. But Crom himself is not to be told of my support,” I added firmly.

“You wouldn’t want the king to take him on, would you?”

“No, Tarvos. Definitely not the king. But there are others … suggest him to Cotuatus, he’s a good man.”

Events were moving swiftly in the land of the Arvemi. In spite of his uncle’s opposition, Vercingetorix was consolidating his power. The deposed Potomarus, together with Gobannitio and his other remaining followers, had left Gergovia and gone to the fort of Alesia, in the land of the Mandubii tribe. The wife of Potomarus was a Mandubii.

Perhaps he hoped to build a base of support there to attempt

another challenge for the kingship, but I doubted it. From what I knew of Potomarus, there was a limited amount of fight in him.

The Arvemi had done wisely in replacing him with Vercingetorix.

During that summer I received frequent news of the quiet but constant influx of foreigners into various parts of free Gaul. Some reports were shouted on the wind; others were brought to me by less ostentatious means, through the druid network. Members of the Order from the farthest comers of the land visited the great grove whenever they could, to renew themselves through communion with the heart of Gaul. Each brought me some snippet of news; each was sent away with my strong injunction to speak to his tribe of the need for unity, and the shining promise exempli-fied by the new king of the Arvemi, the one man I believed capable of facing Caesar when the time came.