Lady of Avalon (4 page)

Now even that blurred, obscuring the moon’s reflection in the water of the silver bowl. Or perhaps it was not the image but the radiance it reflected that was changing, brightening, until the moon and its image were linked by a shaft of light. Particles of brightness moved in the moonbeam, shaped a figure, softly luminous, that gazed back at her with shining eyes.

“Lady,”
her heart called,
“I have lost my beloved. How shall I survive alone?”

“Hardly alone-you have sisters and daughters,”
came the reply, tart and a little, perhaps, amused.
“You have as on…and you have Me…”

Caillean was dimly aware that her legs had given way and that now she was on her knees. It did not matter. Her soul went out to the Goddess who smiled down at her, and in the next moment the love she had offered flowed back in such measure that for a little while she knew nothing more.

The moon was past the midpoint of heaven by the time Caillean came to herself. The Presence that had blessed them was gone, and the air was cold. Around her, the other women were beginning to stir. She forced stiffened muscles to work and got to her feet, shivering. Fragments of vision still flickered in her memory. The Lady had spoken to her, had told her things she needed to know, but with each moment they were fading.

“Lady, as Thou hast blessed us we thank Thee…” she murmured. “Let us carry forth that blessing into the world.”

Together they murmured their thanks to the Guardians. Kea came forward to take up the silver bowl and poured its water in a bright stream over the stone. Then, going against the way of the sun, they circled the altar and moved toward the path. Only Caillean remained beside the altar stone.

“Caillean, are you coming? It has grown cold here!” Eiluned, at the end of the line, stood waiting.

“Not yet. There are things I must think on. I will stay here for a little while. Do not worry, my mantle will keep me warm,” she added, though in truth she was shivering. “You go on.”

“Very well.” The other woman sounded dubious, but there had been command in Caillean’s tone. After a moment she too turned and disappeared over the lip of the hill.

When they had gone, Caillean knelt beside the altar, embracing it as if she could thereby grasp the Goddess who had stood there.

“Lady, speak! Tell me clearly what you want me to do!”

But nothing answered her. There was power in the stone, a subtle tingle that she felt in her bones, but the Lady was gone, and the rock was cold. After a time she sat back with a sigh.

As the moon moved, the circle was barred by the shadows of the standing stones. Caillean, her attention still inward, noticed the stones without really seeing them. It was only when she stood up that she realized her gaze had fixed on one of the larger stones.

The ring atop the Tor was moderate in size, most of the rocks reaching somewhere between Caillean’s waist and shoulder. But this one had grown taller by a head. As she noticed that, it moved, and a dark figure seemed to emerge from the stone.

“Who-” the priestess began, but even as she spoke she knew with the same certainty that had come to her that afternoon who it must be. She heard a low ripple of laughter and the fairy woman came fully into the moonlight, dressed, as before, in her deerskin wrap and wreath of berries, seeming not to feel the cold.

“Lady of Faerie, I salute you-” Caillean said softly.

“Greetings, Blackbird,” said the fairy woman, laughing once more. “But no, it is a swan you have become, floating on the lake with your cygnets around you.”

“What are you doing here?”

“Where else should I be, child? The Otherworld touches yours at many places, though there are not so many now as formerly. The stone circles are gateways, at certain times, as are all earths edges-mountain tops, caverns, the shore where sea meets land… But there are some spots which exist always in both worlds, and of those, this Tor is one of the most powerful.”

“I have felt that,” Caillean said softly. “It was like that sometimes at the Hill of the Maidens, near the Forest House, as well.”

The fairy woman sighed. “That hill is a holy place, and now even more so, but the blood that was shed there has closed the gateway.”

Caillean bit her lip, seeing once more dead ashes beneath a weeping sky. Would her grief for Eilan never end?

“You did well to leave it,” the fairy woman went on. “And well to bring the boy.”

“What do you want with him?” Fear for Gawen sharpened her tone.

“To prepare him for his destiny…What do
you
want for him, priestess, can you say?”

Caillean blinked, trying to regain control of the conversation. “What is his destiny? Will he lead us against the Romans and bring back the old ways?”

“That is not the only kind of victory,” the Lady answered her. “Why do you think Eilan risked so much to bear the child and keep him in safety?”

“She was his mother-” Caillean began, but her words were lost in the fairy woman’s reply.

“She was High Priestess, and a great one. And she was a daughter of that blood that brought the highest human wisdom to these shores. To human eyes, she failed, and her Roman lover died in shame. But you know differently.”

Caillean stared at her, scars from taunts she thought she had forgotten awakening to new pain in her memory. “I was not born in this land, nor do I come of noble kin,” she said tightly. “Are you telling me I have no right to stand here, or to raise the boy?”

“Blackbird”-the other woman shook her head-“listen to what I say. What was Eilan’s by inheritance is yours by training and labor and the gift of the Lady of Life. Eilan herself entrusted you with this task. But Gawen is the last heir to the line of the Wise, and his father was a son of the Dragon on his mother’s side, bound by his blood to the land.”

“That was what you meant, then, when you called him Son of a Hundred Kings…” breathed Caillean. “But what use is that to us now? The Romans rule.”

“I cannot say. It has been given me to know only that he must be prepared. You and the Druid priesthood will show him the highest wisdom of humankind. And I, if you will pay my price, will show him the mysteries of this land you call Britannia.”

“Your price,” Caillean repeated, swallowing.

“It is a time for building bridges,” said the Queen. “I have a daughter, Sianna, begotten by a man of your kind. She is the same age as the boy. I wish you to take her into your House of Maidens as a fosterling. Teach her your ways and your wisdom, Lady of Avalon, and I will teach Gawen mine…”

Gawen looked at him in surprise. When the priestess Kea had brought him to Brannos the night before, it had seemed to the boy that the ancient bard had outlived his wits as well as his music. His hair was white, his hands so palsied with age he could no longer pluck the harpstrings, and when Gawen was introduced, he had stirred from his own bed only long enough to point to a heap of sheepskins where the boy might lie and then gone back to sleep.

The bard had not seemed very promising as a mentor in this strange place, but the sheepskins were warm and without fleas, and the boy was very tired. Before he had half finished thinking through all the strange things that had happened to him in the past moon, sleep carried him away. But Brannos in the morning was a very different being from the mazed creature of the night before. The rheumy eyes were surprisingly keen, and Gawen felt himself flushing under that grey stare.

“I am not sure,” he answered cautiously. “My foster-mother has not told me what I am to do here. She asked if I would like to be a bard, but I have only learned the simplest songs that the children being fostered in the Forest House sang. I like to sing, but surely there is more to being a bard than that…”

That was not quite the truth. Gawen loved to sing, but the Arch-Druid Ardanos, who was the most notable bard among the Druids of his time, had hated the sight of him and never even let him try. Now that he knew Ardanos had been his own great-grandfather, the one who wanted to kill Eilan when he knew she was with child, he understood why, but he was still wary of letting his interest show.

“If I were called to that path,” he said carefully, “wouldn’t I know it by now?”

The old man spat into the fire. “What do you like to do?”

“At the Forest House I helped with the goats, and worked sometimes in the garden. When there was time the other children and I played ball.”

“You like to be out and about, then, instead of studying?” The keen eyes fixed him once more.

“I like doing things,” Gawen said slowly, “but I like learning things too, if they are interesting. I loved the hero-tales that the Druids used to tell.” He wondered what kind of stories the Roman children learned, but he knew better than to ask here.

“If you like stories, then we will get on,” said Brannos, smiling. “Do you wish to stay?”

Gawen looked away. “I think there were bards among my kin. Perhaps that is why Lady Caillean sent me to you. If I have no talent for music will you still want me?”

“It is your strong arms and legs I need, alas, not music.” The old man sighed; then his bushy brows drew down. “You ‘think’ there were bards in your family? You do not know? Who were your parents?”

The boy eyed him warily. Caillean had not
said
he was to keep his parentage a secret, but the knowledge was so new to him it did not seem real. But perhaps Brannos had lived so long that even this would not seem strange.

“Would you believe that until this moon I did not even know their names? They are dead now, and I suppose it cannot hurt them anymore if people know about me…” He heard with surprise the resentment in his own words. “They say my mother was the High Priestess of Vernemeton, the Lady Eilan.” He remembered her sweet voice and the fragrance that always clung to her veils, and blinked back tears. “But my father was a Roman, so you can see I should probably never have been born.”

The ancient Druid could no longer sing, but there was nothing wrong with his ears. He heard the sullen note in the boy’s voice and sighed.

“It does not matter in this house who your parents were. Cunomaglos himself, who rules the Druid priesthood here as the Lady Caillean rules the priestesses, came from a family of potters near Londinium. None of us on this earth knows, save by hearsay, who his mother may have been, or his father. Before the gods, nothing matters save what you may create for yourself.”

That is not completely true,
thought Gawen.
Caillean said she saw me born, so she knows who my mother was. But I suppose that
is
hearsay, for I have to trust her word that it is true. Can I trust her?
he wondered suddenly.
Or this old man, or anyone here?
Oddly enough, the face that came into his mind at that moment was that of the Queen of Faerie. He trusted her, he thought, and that was strange, for he was not even sure that she was real.

“Among the Druids of our order,” said the old man, “birth does not matter. All men come alike into this life with nothing, and whether you are a son of the Arch-Druid or of a homeless wanderer, every man begins as a squalling naked babe-I as much as you, the son of a beggar or a king or of a hundred kings-all men begin so, and all end the same, in a winding sheet.”

Gawen stared at him. The Lady of the Fairy Folk had used the same phrase-“Son of a Hundred Kings.” It made him feel hot and cold at the same time. She had promised to come for him. Perhaps then she would tell him what that title might mean. He felt his heart pound suddenly and did not know if it was with anticipation or fear.

As the moon which had welcomed her return to Avalon waned, Caillean found herself settling into its routine as if she had never been away. In the mornings, when the Druids climbed the Tor to salute the dawn, the priestesses made their own devotions at the hearthfire. In the evening, when the distant tides of the sea raised the level of the waters in the marshes, they faced west to honor the setting sun. At night, the Tor belonged to the priestesses; new moon and full moon and dark all had their own rituals.

It was amazing, she thought as she followed Eiluned toward the store shed, how quickly traditions could emerge. The community of priestesses on the holy isle had not yet celebrated its first full year, but already Eiluned was treating the ways of doing things that Caillean had suggested as if they had the force of law and a hundred years of tradition.

“You remember that, when Waterwalker came the first time, he brought us a sack of barley. But this time, when he came for his medicine, he brought nothing at all.” Eiluned led the way down the path to the storehouse, still talking. “You must see, Lady, that this will never do. We have few enough trained priestesses here to tend those who can give us something in return, and if you insist on taking in every orphan you find, how we will stretch our stores to feed them through the winter is more than I can tell!”

For a moment Caillean was struck speechless; then she hurried to catch up.

“He is not just any orphan-he is Eilan’s son!”

“Let Bendeigid take him, then! He is her father, after all.”

Caillean shook her head, remembering that last conversation. Bendeigid was mad. If she could help it, he would never learn that Gawen still lived.

Eiluned was pulling back the bar that held the door to the storage shed. As the door swung open, something small and grey scurried away into the bushes.

Eiluned gave a little shriek and lurched backward into Caillean’s arms. “A curse on the dirty beast! A curse-”

“Be silent!” Caillean snapped, shaking her. “You’ve no call to curse a creature that has as much right to seek its food as we do. Nor to deny our help to any who come to ask, especially Waterwalker, who ferries us back and forth across the water with no more than a blessing for his pay!”

Eiluned turned, her cheeks purpling ominously. “I am only doing the task you set me!” she exclaimed. “How can you speak to me so?”

Caillean let go of her and sighed. “I did not mean to hurt your feelings, or to imply you have not done well. We are still new here, still learning what we can do and what we need. But I do know that there is no point in our being here if we can only do so by becoming as hard and grasping as the Romans! We are here to serve the Lady. Cannot we trust that She will provide?”

Eiluned shook her head, but her face was returning to its normal hue. “Will it serve the Lady’s purposes for us to starve? See here”-she pulled the stone slab from the storage pit and pointed-“the pit is half empty and it will not be midwinter for another moon!”

The pit is half full,
Caillean wanted to reply, but it was for just this compulsion to worry about such things that she had appointed Eiluned keeper of the stores.

“There are two more pits, and they are still full,” she said calmly, “but you do well to point this out to me.”

“There was grain enough for several winters in the storehouses at Vernemeton, and now there are fewer mouths to consume it,” Eiluned said then. “Could we send to them for more supplies?”

Caillean closed her eyes, seeing once more the heap of ashes on the Hill of the Maidens. Indeed, Eilan and many of the others would not need to be fed this winter, or ever again. She told herself that it was a practical suggestion, that Eiluned had not meant to cause her pain.

“I will ask.” She forced her voice to calm. “But if, as they were saying, the community of women at the Forest House is to be disbanded, we cannot depend on them to support us another year. And it may be best in any case if the folk in Deva forget us. Ardanos mixed in the affairs of the Romans and nearly brought us to disaster. I think we should be less visible, and if so, we will have to find a way to feed ourselves here.”

“That is your business, Lady. Dealing out the stores we already have is mine,” said Eiluned. She shoved the stone slab back into place again.
No, it is the Lady’s business,
thought Caillean as they continued with their count of bags and barrels.
It is because of Her that we are here, and we must not forget it.

It was true that she and many of the older women had never known any home but that of the priestesses. But they had skills that would win them a welcome in any British chieftain’s hall. It would be hard to leave, but none of them would starve. They had come to serve the Goddess because She called them, and if the Goddess wanted priestesses, Caillean thought with the beginnings of a smile, it was up to Her to find the means to feed them.

“-and I cannot do it all alone,” said Eiluned. With a start, Caillean realized that the other woman’s comments had become a buzz of background noise. She raised her brows inquiringly.

“You cannot expect me to keep track of every gram of barley and turnip. Make some of those girls earn their keep by helping me!”

Caillean frowned, an idea blossoming suddenly.
A gift from the Lady,
she thought,
my answer.
The girls that studied with them were trained well, and could find a place in any household in the land. Why not take the daughters of ambitious men and teach them for a time before they went out to marry? The Romans did not care what women did-they did not even need to know.

“You shall have your helpers,” she told Eiluned. “You shall teach them how to supply a household, and Kea shall teach them music, and I shall teach them the old tales of our people and the Druids’ lore. What stories will they tell their children, do you think? And what songs will they sing to the babes they bear?”

“Ours, I suppose, but-”

“Ours,” Caillean agreed, “and the Roman fathers who see their children only once a day at dinner will not think to question it. The Romans believe that what a woman says does not matter. But this whole isle can be won away from them by the children of women trained in Avalon!”

Eiluned shrugged and smiled, half understanding. But as Caillean followed her through the rest of the inspection, her own mind was working swiftly. One girl among them already, little Alia, was not meant for the life of a priestess. When she returned to her home she could spread the word among the women, and the Druids could let it be known among the men of the princely houses who still cared about the old ways.

Neither the Romans with their armies nor the Christians with their talk of damnation could prevail against the first words a babe heard in his mother’s arms. Rome might rule men’s bodies, but it was Avalon, she thought with rising excitement, the holy isle, safe in its marshes, that would shape their souls.

Gawen woke very early and lay awake, his mind too active for sleep again, though the bit of sky he could see through the crack in the daub and wattle of the hut was just beginning to lighten with the onset of day. Brannos was still snoring softly on the other bed, but outside his window, he heard someone cough and the rustle of robes. He peered out. Overhead the sky was still dark, but to the east a paler flush of pink showed where the dawn would break.

In the week since he had come to Avalon he had begun to learn its ways. The men were assembling in front of the Druids’ hall, the novices robed in grey and the senior priests in white, preparing for the sunrise services. The procession was wholly silent; Gawen knew they would not speak till the sun’s disk showed clear and bright above the hills. It would be a fine day; he had not lived all his life in a Druid temple without knowing that much about the weather.

After sliding out of bed, he got into his clothes without disturbing the elderly priest-at least they had not consigned him to the House of Maidens, where he would be guarded like a young girl-and slipped out of the hut. The predawn light was dim, but the fresh smell of early morning scented the damp air, and he took a deep breath.

As if at some wordless signal, the sunrise procession began to move toward the path. Gawen waited in the deeper gloom beneath the thatched overhang to the hut until the Druids had gone by, then on silent feet went down to the shores of the lake. The fairy woman had told him to wait there. Every day since he had arrived, he had come down to the water’s edge. He wondered now if she would ever come for him, but he had begun to love the slow dawning of the day above the marshes for its own sake.