Lady of Avalon (8 page)

Father Joseph nodded. “That was why I marveled to see her mother here. She is one of the people who were here before the Britons-some say before humankind. Certainly they were here when the People of Wisdom first came from the Drowned Lands to these shores.”

“I do not know for certain who or what the Lady of the Forest Folk may be,” Caillean said. “But she helped me once when I was in great need. There is a wisdom in her kind, I think, that ours have lost. I would like to bring the Elder Folk, and their knowledge, among us. And she has promised to teach my adopted son, Gawen.”

“It is of Gawen that I wished to speak,” Father Joseph said. “He is an orphan, is he not?”

“He is,” said Caillean.

“Then, in the name of the Teacher who said, ‘Let the little children come unto me,’ let your fosterling Gawen be my son as well. He has asked to study our music. If the girl also wishes to learn, she shall be my daughter and Gawen’s sister in Christ.”

“It does not trouble you that they are sworn to the old gods?” asked Caillean. One of the Druids had brought out his harp and was beginning to play. Gawen stood beside him, watching the flicker of light on the strings.

“I have no objection to the fact that she has taken vows among you,” Father Joseph sighed, “though Brother Paulus may not like that. He is newly come among us and feels that even here at the end of the world we should convert everyone we meet.”

“I have heard him,” said Caillean a little grimly. “Doesn’t he believe that if you allow any person in the whole world to remain a pagan, you will fail in your duty? Must I, then, forbid Gawen to have anything to do with any of you? I do not want him to be a Nazarene.”

“That is Paulus’ belief,” said Father Joseph. “I did not say it was mine. A man who forswears his first faith is likely to be apostate also to his second, and I think this is true of women too.” He smiled with singular sweetness. “I have great respect for those who profess your faith.”

Caillean sighed and relaxed; she knew she could entrust any of her young people to Father Joseph.

“But did I not only now hear you require the maiden to make her own choice? In the end, what faith he follows will be a matter for the boy to decide.”

For a moment she stared at him, then shook her head and smiled. “You are right, of course. It is a hard thing to remember that the choosing must go both ways, and that it is not my will only that matters, or even his, but that of the gods…”

She gave the old man her hand. “I must go now and see if Sianna is settling in. Thank you so much for your kindness to Gawen; he is very important to us.”

“It is a privilege to be kind to him,” Father Joseph assured her. “I must go now as well, for we will rise at dawn to worship our Lord, and then I will have to justify my decision to Brother Paulus, who thinks that I am too tolerant of pagans already. But my Master taught that the Truth of God is more important than the words of men, and in their foundations, all faith are one.”

Caillean looked at Joseph, and her vision wavered as if she looked through fire. Then, for a moment, she saw him taller, a man in his prime with a flowing dark beard. He wore a white robe, but the symbol around his neck was not a cross. And she herself was younger, swathed in dark veils.

“‘And this is the first of the great truths.’” The words came from the depths of memory. “‘That all the gods are One, and there is no religion higher than the Truth…”’

Father Joseph replied simply, “Let the Truth prevail.” And the two Initiates of the Mysteries smiled.

From there it spread downhill to the huts of the Druids. Gawen was awakened by the sound of old Brannos coughing. At first he thought that the old man was having a worse night than usual, but as he woke, he caught the reek of smoke and began to cough himself. He jumped from his bed and went to the door.

Dark figures scurried frantically against a blaze of light, shouting. A breath of hot air lifted the hair from his brow as the wind shifted. Sparks fell sizzling onto the frosted grass.

“Brannos!” he shouted, turning. “Get up! Fire!”

Gawen owned nothing he would miss but the sheepskin cloak. He pulled it over his head with one hand and hauled the old man upright with the other.

“Come now-get your boots on-” He shoved them onto Brannos’ feet and grabbed the sleeping robe to wrap around the thin shoulders. The old bard stood up, swaying, but he resisted Gawen’s efforts to pull him toward the door.

“My harp…” At last the boy made sense of his muttering.

“You never play it-” Gawen began, then coughed. The fire must have reached their roof, for smoke was beginning to fill the room. “Go,” he gasped, pushing the old man toward the doorway. “I’ll save it for you!”

A face appeared in the doorway; someone grabbed Brannos and pulled him out, shouting. But Gawen was already turning. A rill of flame appeared suddenly above him, fed by the draft from the door. He started toward the corner where the instrument stood beneath a swathing of hides, recoiled as an explosion of sparks scattered across the floor, then dove forward, swatting the bits of burning thatch away like flies.

The harp was almost as big as he was, and heavy, but in that moment strength came to him and he hauled it back through the blast of heat as flame pulsed downward, and he hurled himself through the door.

“Stupid boy!” cried Eiluned, her face smudged and her hair wild. “Had you no thought for Caillean’s feelings if you had been burned?”

Gawen, his legs chilling from the cold ground even as he perspired from the heat of the fire, gaped up at her, struck dumb by sheer astonishment at her angry words. Then he saw the terror in her eyes and understood that accusing him had been a cover for her own fear. How many of the things people did that annoyed him so, he wondered, were only defenses, as a hedgehog bristles when it is afraid?

I will think of her as a hedgehog,
he told himself,
and when she annoys me remember what a timid little beast she really is.

A few of the Druids were trying to douse the thatching of the buildings that were yet unburned with water from the holy well, but buckets were scarce, and by this time most of the community was standing, watching the fire burn. The long hall stood outlined in fire, and flames shot from the roof of the House of Maidens to lick the sky. The Druids’ hall had caught fire as well, as had some of the smaller buildings. The animals had been released from their barns, bleating anxiously, but perhaps those buildings were far enough away to escape the flames.

Women sobbed or sat in stunned silence, watching the flames. “How will we live?” they whispered. “Where will we go?”

Brannos sat weeping, cradling the harp in his gaunt arms.

Why had he risked his life to save it, Gawen wondered, and then, as he considered the size of the instrument,
how
had he done it?

And like an answer, words came to him:
“You will always find the strength for what you have to do…”

Brannos looked up, his eyes luminous in the flickering light. “Come,” he croaked. Ignoring Eiluned, the boy got to his feet and joined him. The old bard reached out and grasped his hand, then set it on the pillar of the harp. “Yours…You saved her. She is yours…”

Gawen swallowed. Firelight sparked gold on the wire inlaid into the polished wood and the bronze strings. The voices around him blurred into a soft roaring, like the sound of the fire. Carefully, he reached out and plucked a single sweet note from the glistening strings.

He had not meant to pluck the string loudly, but the note seemed to hang in the air. Those nearest turned, and others, seeing their movement, looked as well. Gawen stared back at them, his gaze going from one to another, seeing them for a little while distracted from their panic or despair by the sweet sound. Among the dark figures he found Caillean, swathed in a shawl. Her face, in the firelight, was furrowed and cragged with anguish. She looked old. She had once told him about the pyre on which his parents had burned. Was she thinking of it now? His eyes prickled with pity for himself, because he had not known what he had lost, and for her, because she had known his mother so well.

And now they were both losing everything a second time.

The harpnote faded. Caillean meet Gawen’s stricken gaze. For a moment she frowned, as if wondering how he had gotten there. Then her look changed. Later, in his memory, the only word he could think of to describe what he saw in her eyes was “wonder.” As he watched, she straightened, visibly resuming the majesty of the Lady of Avalon once more.

“Lady”-Eiluned spoke for them all-“what will become of us? Will we go back to the Forest House now?”

Caillean stared around her. The Druids were looking to her as well, even Cunomaglos, their leader, who had come to the Tor for a life of peaceful contemplation and had been increasingly unhappy as the community grew.

“You are, as always, free. What do you wish to do?” The voice of the High Priestess was cold.

Eiluned’s face crumpled, and for the first time, Gawen found it in his heart to pity her as well. “Tell us!” she sobbed.

“I can only tell you what
I
will do,” Caillean said more gently. She looked once again at the flames. “I gave my oath to make a center of the ancient wisdom on this holy hill. Fire can only burn what is visible to the human eye, what is made by human hands. Avalon of the heart remains…” She looked at Gawen once more. “Just as the spirit rises triumphant from the body that burns on the pyre, the true Avalon cannot be contained by the human world.” She paused, as if her words had been as much a surprise to herself as to those who listened. “Decide as your hearts counsel. I will stay and serve the Goddess on this holy hill.”

Gawen looked from her to the others and saw spines straightening, a new light in people’s eyes. Caillean’s gaze came back to him and he got to his feet as if she had challenged him.

“I will stay,” he said.

“And so will I,” came a voice beside him.

Gawen jumped and saw it was Sianna, who had her mother’s gift for moving silently. Others were speaking now, promising to rebuild. He reached out and squeezed Sianna’s hand.

Winter was not the easiest season for building. Gawen blew on his stiff fingers to warm them, reached down from the roof of the new House of Maidens for the length of straw rope Sianna was holding out to him, and began to bind the next bunch of straw to the frame. She was shivering, her cheeks, normally so rosy, purpled with cold. In Faerie, she had told him, the weather ranged between the brisk chill of autumn and the sweet warmth of spring. She must be wondering why she had ever agreed to dwell in mortal lands.

But she had not complained, and he would not complain either, even to regret that his lighter weight made him the obvious choice to go up on the roof, exposed to every icy gust of wind. He grinned at her as one of the Druids lifted up another hank of straw. Then he eased sideways, fixed the straw firmly into place, and took another piece of rope from Sianna to tie it down. At least the new building did not have to be as large as the old one. Some of the priestesses were sheltering with Waterwalker and his kin, but others had gone back to their families. The older Druids and the boys were living in Father Joseph’s little beehive church. Some of the men had left too. Even Cunomaglos, leader of the Druids, had gone away, seeking a solitary hermitage in the hills. One house for the women and one for the men would shelter them until summer. At least the storage pits and the animals had not been harmed.

He supposed that meant Caillean was in charge. At least nobody had come from Vernemeton to say otherwise. If the High Priestess was disappointed in those who fled, she did not say so. It seemed to Gawen that she looked upon the losses as a necessary winnowing, which would leave them all the stronger. It was the same in the world beyond the Vale of Avalon, he had heard, where Trajan had proved victor in the civil wars and was setting his Empire in order.

The wind was picking up. He shivered violently and crossed his arms, hiding his cold hands between his arms and sides.

“Come down,” said Sianna, “and let me do that for a while. I am even lighter than you.”

Gawen shook his head. “I’m stronger-” he began. She glared up at him, her color changing as the heat of anger fought the cold.

“Let her do it,” said a new voice. Gawen blinked as he realized that Caillean was standing there.

“She can’t!” he exclaimed. “It is too cold up here!”

“She has chosen to live among us, and I would fail in my duty if I spared her,” said the priestess grimly.

Sianna looked from one to the other, her gaze kindling as if she could not decide whether to resent Caillean’s harsh words or Gawen’s protectiveness more. Then she reached up to grip his ankle and pulled. Gawen yelped as he began to slide, but in another moment he was halfway down the part of the roof that was thatched already and there was nothing he could grab. He landed in a heap at Caillean’s feet.

Sianna leaped back and scrambled, quick as a squirrel, up the roof. He looked up angrily, but he could not resist her laughter. Shaking his head, Gawen rose and began to gather the lengths of rope, and Caillean moved away, still frowning.

That night, as he listened to Brannos and Father Joseph argue theories of music, it came to him that he had never been so happy. Warm at last, his belly full of gruel, he huddled into his blankets. He did not understand all of their discussion, but the alternation of sonorously chanted phrases and rippling harpsong fed his soul.

The winter passed, and the summer after. The burned buildings were replaced by others even finer, and the priestesses were beginning to talk of building in stone. Gawen’s first uncertain fumblings on the harpstrings changed to the beginnings of real skill. He continued, as well, to sing with Father Joseph and the Christians, his boyish soprano soaring above their deeper drone.

As the seasons passed, he realized that the uncertainty he had always felt around Caillean had disappeared. He had stopped expecting her to be a mother to him, and in truth, as he grew taller, he no longer desired it. He was not certain what she thought of him, but as the community of Avalon became more secure, many sought to join it, and she was far too busy teaching the newcomers to pay him much attention.

As they grew older, the youths and maidens entrusted to the Druids of the Tor for training spent their days separately. But for some things they came together, when there was teaching that both needed alike, and for the festivals. And so, six years went by.

“I am certain that all of you can name the seven islands of Avalon, but can you say why each is holy ground?”

Alerted by the question in Caillean’s voice, Gawen blinked and jerked upright. It was high summer, and the land lay wrapped in a drowsy peace. At this season the folk of Avalon lived mostly outdoors, and the Lady had gathered her students beneath an oak tree near the water’s edge. He wondered why. This was lore they had all learned when they were children. Why was the High Priestess returning to it now?

After a moment’s surprised silence, Dica raised her hand. From a wiry, sharp-tongued child she had grown into a slender young woman, her foxy face crowned by a cloud of ginger hair. Her tongue could still sting, but she was clearly on her best behavior now.

“The first is Inis Witrin, the Isle of Glass on which is the Holy Tor,” she answered demurely.

“And why is it called so?” Caillean responded.

“Because…they say that when you see it in the Otherworld it shines like light through Roman glass.”

Was that true? Gawen’s own studies had progressed to include some inner journeying, like a waking dream, but he had not yet been allowed to travel out of his body and look upon the real world with spirit-sight.

“Very good,” said Caillean. “And the next?” Her gaze fixed on one of the newer girls, a dark-haired child from Dumnonia called Breaca.

“The second is the Isle of Briga, which is great in the spirit though its height is low. Here it is where the Goddess comes to us as Mother, carrying the newborn sun.” The girl was blushing, but her answer came clearly.

Gawen cleared his throat. “The third is the isle of the winged god, near the great village of the fen folk. To him the water birds are sacred, and no man may kill them near his shrine. In gratitude, no bird will foul its roof.”

He had been there several times with the Lady of the Fairy Folk and seen that it was so. At the thought, he looked back at Sianna, sitting behind the others, as she usually did when the High Priestess taught them. Caillean’s gaze had softened as he answered, but when she saw where he was looking, she frowned.