Magdalen Rising (43 page)

I nodded. Esus had suspected as much. “What did he say about me?”

“Of you he will not speak.”

“It doesn't make sense,” I said. “I'm the one he should want sacrificed. I'm the one who knows. Knows what happened to Lovernios. Knows what he did.”

“Child, child!” Nissyen put his hand out in front of me as if to stop me from hurtling over some cliff.

“What if I told!” I plunged on. “I tried to at
Imbolc
but no one would listen. No, I blame myself. I didn't try hard enough. I didn't speak loud enough. But it's not too late. I could tell the archdruid. I could tell everyone.”

Nissyen put his hands over his ears.

“Listen!” I shouted at him. “You said you were sorry you didn't listen before. Well, listen now!”

He took his hands from his ears and covered his eyes. “Go on,” he said.

“Lovernios. Lovernios is my father. Lovernios is the father of both misbegotten children. There is only one misbegetter.”

Then I told him the story from the beginning. When I had finished, Nissyen let out a long, long sigh. It was hard to believe he had that much breath in his slight body. Despite the hot green of the new grass and leaves, despite the cloudless blue of the sky and the warmth of the sun, it suddenly felt like summer's end, not its beginning. Everything seemed old and dry and wind-tossed. Lost. Gone out with a tide of grief.

“I suppose I've always known,” he said at last. “I suppose we all have.”

“Then why—”

“Because we cannot know,” he answered before I could finish asking. “It is not the story we want to hear. It is not the one we are telling.”

“You said Esus had the power to change the ending of the story. Why not me? This is my story, too. Why can't I tell it? Why can't I change the ending? What if Lovernios were to say: Yes, I am the misbegetter, take me. Let me be the sacrifice?”

“Think about it, Maeve. Lovernios has offended against the Otherworld, despising its gifts to him. How could he be acceptable as a sacrifice?”

“Well, what better way to apologize? Besides, criminals are often sacrificed.”

“Not that way. Not the god-making way. For the fate-changing sacrifice, the gods must have the finest we can offer.”

“And I'm not good enough! Esus is, and I'm not?” I huffed. Call it cosmic sibling rivalry. “As far as I'm concerned, it's double or nothing. If they won't have me, they can't have him.”

“Maeve, listen to me. If you're concocting some rabbit-brained scheme for saving the Stranger—and I have no doubt you are, and personally,
I don't like the idea at all—let me tell you one thing right away. Forget about going to the archdruid.”

“Why?”

“Think, girl, think. With your head for once. The archdruid could have forced Lovernios's story from him, if he chose to. He didn't because it suited him not to. And there's an end of it.”

“What about the Crows? Would they believe me?”

“The Crow ladies have your best interests at heart, Maeve. Who do you suppose pleaded your case, besides my poor self? I don't have much clout.”

“Couldn't they help me save Esus?”

“I don't think anyone would help you do that, Maeve.” He sighed again. “Not even me, dear heart. Not even me. I love you too much to encourage such a rash course. And, Maeve, it may pain you to hear this, but has it ever occurred to you that the Stranger might not
want
to be saved?”

In fact, it had. But if Esus thought it was his destiny to be sacrificed without me, well then, he was going to have to think again. And, one way or another, I was going to make sure he did.

“Nissyen, you've got to tell me. Where is he? I saw them all surrounding him, talking to him, taking him off somewhere. Is he a prisoner?”

“Imprisonment would be unnecessarily crude. Where, after all, would he go? A stranger in a strange land. But you, Maeve Rhuad, if you were to draw attention to yourself in any way, they would not hesitate to put you on an even shorter tether. Your best chance of seeing him at Llyn Cerrig Bach is to say nothing to anyone. Don't run about making rash accusations about senior members of the college. It will do no one any good.”

We sat in silence for a time. I looked at the mountains, deep blue today against the bright sky, a huge, unbreaking wave of earth. I called up the maps the Cailleach had made me memorize and imagined the land beyond the mountains, the channel that divided the Holy Isles from Gaul, all the mountains, valleys, and rivers between here and Rome. King Bran was being forced across them. How could Esus's death reverse his steps?

And hadn't Anna the prophetess said he would return to his own people? She had also told him: Don't despise this shitty little dove. Someday you may need her again. No matter what happened, he needed
me now, whether he admitted it or not. There must be a way I could get to him.

Then all at once I knew who could help me. The only one who would.

“Nissyen, would you do something for me?”

“Oh, Maeve, how can you ask?”

There was a double meaning in his answer. Well, I'd go easy on him.

“It's almost my time. I want Dwynwyn to be there when my baby is born. Will you send word to her? She could meet us at the camp.”

“I don't know what the Crow ladies will say.”

I placed his hand on my belly to let him feel the baby stir. My hazel eyes with the salmon sparks did the rest of the persuading.

Nissyen sighed. “Maeve, my heart, will you promise to be good?”

“I am,” I said.

An ambiguous statement, subject to broad interpretation.

A
T FIRST IT SEEMED my plan had backfired. My request for Dwynwyn's presence, which Nissyen had worried might offend the Crows, delighted them instead—or anyway lightened them. I had become, in every sense, a heavy charge. Dwynwyn, on her remote, tidal island, struck the Crows as the perfect baby-sitter for an unpredictable mother-to-be. They'd had enough difficulty keeping track of me at Caer Leb. No one wanted the responsibility of minding me while on the move to a tribal gathering where the closest thing the
Combrogos
knew to a city would spring into being. The Crows unanimously ignored my pleas that Dwynwyn be asked to accompany me to the festival, and promptly set off with me to her island. Their only worry was that Dwynwyn might have been angered by the college's previous refusal of her services and would turn me away. But when we reached the narrow spit of sand and pebbles that led to her island, we saw Dwynwyn was waiting for us on the other side.

“Took you long enough,” she called out. (She did say it rather snottily.)

“All right, all right. So you told us so,” a Crow crabbed back.

This rancorous exchange between elder females was at once immensely comforting and maddening to me. In short, I felt right at home.

“Almost missed the tide,” Dwynwyn added unnecessarily. “Hurry up.”

I had started to cross to the island when Moira surprised me, almost knocking me off balance on the slippery stones, by grabbing me and whirling me into a black-winged embrace.

“Courage, Maeve Rhuad. You are in skilled hands. We'll be back for you in three days.”

Then Moira and the other Crows were gone rather suddenly. There was nothing for me to do but walk between the waves to Dwynwyn who stood with her arms outstretched in her blood-red tunic, her wild hair whitening the wind.

It was late afternoon when I woke from the nap Dwynwyn insisted I take after she fed me something unidentifiable (and awfully slippery) from her pot. Only now did she permit me to speak. So I told her everything that had happened since
Imbolc,
including King Bran's capture, Viviane's warning, the rejection of me as a candidate for sacrifice, the likelihood of the lot falling to Esus. Then I poured out my doubts and confusion.

“I don't understand. How could it be—
could
it be?—that Esus's dying could save King Bran and even stop the Romans from coming to Mona?”

Dwynwyn did not answer for a time, just gazed across the straits. At last she turned her eyes on me, the clear one and the cloudy one.

“Without blood there is no birth,” she said in a singsong voice. “Without death there is no life. Without the salt of bitter tears the sweetest cake will lose its savor. But,” she cautioned, “between this world and the Other, it is never simply tit for tat. Give me this, I'll give you that. It's give all you've got or nothing at all. Give what you want for yourself, not what you want gone. That's where the druid boys might have made a teensy little mistake.”

“You mean because it doesn't matter to them whether Esus lives or dies? But it matters to me. And it also matters to me whether King Bran lives or dies. If they wanted both of us, or just me, it would be so much simpler.”

“Oh? Did I miss something? Did someone put you in charge of life and death when I wasn't looking?”

“But if I could find a way to save Esus, does that mean Bran will be lost to Rome and that the straits will run with blood and the groves burn to the ground?”

“My, my,” Dwynwyn clucked. “Such responsibility.”

She was laughing at me.

“But I need to know!” I raged at her.

“You can't know, my sweet honey cake, my hot eel pie.” Her terms of endearment were somewhat alarming. “That would be cheating, now wouldn't it, my plump, spitted piglet.” She got up to stir the pot. Good grief, we'd only eaten a little while ago. “One eye sees what the other doesn't. Choose blindly with your eyes open. Walk and whistle in the dark. You're not the whole story, only a part. Even the teller is changed in the telling.”

“What's the use of your being old and wise if you can't tell me what to do!” I cried out in frustration.

“I am old and wise enough to know that when people say ‘Tell me what to do,' they mean ‘Tell me to do what I want to do.' Of course they don't always know what that is, and they want you to do the work of figuring that out for them, too. But I'm too hungry and cranky. You'll have to figure that out for yourself, my overgrown cabbage. Now concentrate. Close at least one eye while you think.”

It didn't take me long. Behind my lids, in my blood, in my bones, in my flesh, he was there.

“I want to see Esus,” I said, and thick, messy tears began to fall. “I want to see him in this world, in the flesh. I don't know what he thinks or what he wants. I don't know if he is a god or could be one or not. I only know I love him. Nissyen says he might not want to be saved. I don't know what is right or wrong. I don't know what to do. But I need to see him. I must see him.”

“Well answered, Maeve Rhuad, well answered.” I could just hear her over my sobs. “And a wiser answer than I looked for. If you had been certain what to do, I couldn't have helped you. Or I wouldn't have. But now....”

She stopped speaking and regarded me thoughtfully. My tears ebbed as I began, willy-nilly, to hope again.

“There may be a way, but it won't be easy. It won't be what you or anyone expects. But yes, I believe it can be done, and will do nicely.” She cackled to herself. Not a very reassuring sound. “Entertaining for me. Instructive for her. Yes, I like it. I like it a lot.”

An old woman walks along the shore in the last light. She is cloaked in grey. You can't see her face and eyes. She blends with the rock or with the light reflecting from the swells when a cloud passes over the sun. She is a flapping, grey rag, wiping away the colors of the day as she passes, leaving shadows in her wake.

An old woman walks along the shore. Her back is bent, her ear cocked to the murmur of water meeting earth. Her breasts brush her belly, and her dry thighs whisper. Her breath whistles in and out, blown away behind her with the west wind. She walks on into night. Her flesh is thin over bones sharp as the sudden stars.

Meanwhile, to the East on a tidal island, a young girl takes her ease. Lying back on a heather bed at the mouth of a dry cave, she looks out
at a round of starry sky. She drums with her fingertips on the round of her great belly and sings snatches of old songs between bites of honey cake. Now and then she gets up to heap her bowl with another helping of whatever bubbles in the pot. At last she curls on her side and falls into a cat-like sleep.

At least this was what I imagined Dwynwyn was doing with my shape.

“Don't worry,” Dwynwyn had said when I fretted that I might miss the birth of my child while I was off being a hag. “I won't have your baby for you. Not on your life. I'm just going to eat and sleep, maybe comb these gorgeous, flaming curls. Not that my own hair isn't a wonder and a glory.”

It was. I wished I could wear it loose and windswept as Dwynwyn usually did. But not only was I disguised in her flesh, I also wore her cloak of invisibility. That did not mean I could not be seen, only that I would appear to others, not as Dwynwyn, who would be recognized by Cranes and Crows, but as generic old woman—or, when need be, as the Hag herself. In other words, no one would mess with me.

The disguise, from my point of view, left a lot to be desired. I had wanted to be turned into some animal, preferably swift of foot or wing, and be restored to my own shape when I reached Esus. But Dwynwyn said she could not be troubled with zapping me from one form into another long distance, and that I was not experienced enough to do it myself and would only end up getting caught. Take it or leave it, she finally said. When I agreed, she laid a
geis
on me for good measure.

“As long as you are in the shape of the hag, you will not reveal that you are Maeve Rhuad. If you do, I call upon the power of the three worlds to keep you in the shape of a hag forever.”

Then faster than you can say holy shit, we changed shapes.

Now here I was an old lady on a twelve mile hike to Rhosneigr. Despite my suddenly advanced years, I moved more quickly than I might have in my own shape, being much lightened. In fact, I felt lighter altogether, as if I had hollow bones. My blood felt thin, like the last trickle of an autumn stream before the rains. But I also had new aches. The call of the earth to sit, lie down, stop, let go, was like the constant drone of the pipes.

Gradually my new, old shape began to shape my thoughts, too. They slowed and became essential. No more tugging and bounding ahead and running circles around the rest of me. As I left the shore for the
wood, my thoughts amounted to
one foot forward, then the other. There's a root rearing up. Listen, an owl calling. No, I won't rest now. Keep going. One foot, and then the other.
When the prevailing wind shifted and blew at my back, I spread my arms and the cloak of invisibility became a sail. I scudded the remaining miles, blowing into the festival camp just before dawn.

At first glance, camp was much as it had been the year before, with its colorful, make-shift shelters, strolling musicians, and raucous reunions. But the absence of King Bran as a jolly, unifying force was palpable. His son Caradoc's leadership of the Silures was only tentative. Some felt Caradoc should be made king; others felt that he could not be while his father's fate was unknown. Still others thought there should be a king-making rite with a druid wrapped in a bloody bull hide till the identity of the next sovereign was revealed to him. This matter was the subject of much debate and not a few brawls.

The other hot topic was, of course, the quinquennial sacrifice. There were rumors that a candidate would be chosen that night in a secret rite. I began to appreciate my disguise as I drifted from campfire to campfire, always greeted with respect and given something to eat, then forgotten as people went back to their gossip or debate. By mid-afternoon, after sorting through some contradictory information, I had determined the likeliest spot for the ceremony of the lots: Bryn Du, a thickly wooded hill a mile or so inland from Rhosneigr where the druids traditionally made camp before the opening ceremonies beside Llyn Cerrig Bach. As the afternoon shadows began to lengthen, I left camp unnoticed and made my way through field and marsh towards the black hill.

For most of the way, I heard nothing but bird song and marsh water percolating and the occasional burble of a tidal stream pushing through the grasses towards the sea. Then, just as the marshes ended, voices drifted towards me, female voices, engaged in what sounded like competitive cursing. I stopped to listen.