The Making of the Lamb (33 page)

“Much as I have come to love these people, their religion is pagan and barbaric.”

“There is more to it than you see, my Son. Keep to your own faith, but do not be afraid to learn from the druids and attend their festivals—as the Spirit leads you. They are an unfinished work.”

“You gave Moses the law after he went up Mount Sinai through a cloud. You now lead me down through this cloud of fog and tell me not to fear that same law.”

“You are the fulfillment of that law, but that’s enough for now. Your uncle and cousin have need of you back in Lake Village. Follow the path to the water and follow the shoreline to the boat. Take the boat and do not wait for Brian; I will look after the child.”

There was much unloading and planning to engage Jesus once he returned to the village. He was not surprised when Brian could not be found that night in the dining hall, as it was the custom of the Celts to keep their boys separate until they were old enough to fight. But many knew Eogen, Brian’s father, and they directed Jesus to the house.

Jesus met the man at his threshold. “I come to ask after Brian. He took me to the Tor this morning, and we got lost. I want to make sure he returned safely to his mother.”

The man looked at Jesus with sadness. “You are cruel to mock me so,” he said.

“I assure you that I did not come to mock you, sir.”

“You were not with my son this morning. My wife died in childbirth twelve years ago, and Brian died of fever last year. I buried him with my own hands.”

L
ater that night Jesus stayed up to write another letter to Mary and Papa. Uncle Joseph would take it with him when he sailed with Kendrick the next day on the tide. Jesus did not want to say anything about fighting alongside the Celts, but he knew that Joseph would tell them. So he explained as best he could the justness of the cause and his sense of loss over the death of his companions, particularly Fedwig. He sent his love and told them how he prayed for Papa’s health every day.

As the day wore on, Jesus and Daniel walked through Lake Village, catching glimpses of the vessel sailing away. “You know today is Beltane,” Daniel remarked. “The pagans will be at the festival.”

“I know. I was planning to see it,” Jesus answered.

“You cannot be serious. They will be worshipping idols. It is against the law.”

“I did not say I would join in their worship. I will only watch.”

“Why do such a thing? We should use this time to devote ourselves to our own prayers.”

“It is written in Scripture that we must be a light to all the nations. It will not offend my Father for me to study these people and learn.”

“Have you spoken to him again?”

“I did. Early yesterday morning.”

“And he approves of this?”

“It was his idea.”

“You are a strange Messiah, Jesus. First you fight for pagans, and now you will join their festival. I’m just glad no rabbi will see this. I guess you waited for Papa to leave before you told me.”

“It was one less thing to explain in my letter home. It will hard enough for Mother and Papa to hear about the fighting.”

“You’re right about that. Look. The curraghs are leaving. We had better get back to the dock.”

Jesus smiled. “Are you coming with me, then?”

“Don’t I always, Cousin?”

Jesus and Daniel alighted at the foot of Wearyall and walked with the people, weaving their way among the meadows of the island, then following pathways through a wooded area.

In a field, the native men and boys started their games and contests while the women and girls filled pots and lit cooking fires. It would be a feast of great proportion.

On the side of one field toward the Tor, sheep, goats, and cattle grazed in an enclosed pasture. On either side of the gateway were two large unlit pyres.

King Grengan of the Lake Village spotted them and approached with open arms. “Welcome, my friends. We did not expect you. We were told that Jesus bar Joseph of Israel never comes to any of the great festivals.”

“This is our first time,” Jesus answered. “From what I have heard, this must be Beltane, where you celebrate the arrival of spring.”

“It is much more than that,” said a woman’s voice. Jesus and Daniel turned and saw a woman in the long flowing linen robes and the golden headdress of the druid priests. Her eyes seemed to pierce right through them as she gazed through locks of flowing blond curls that enveloped her head and cascaded below her shoulders. Her face had an ageless quality, neither youthful nor old. “We will reawaken the fertility of the earth from the dark months of winter. We will purify and protect the herds so they may graze the fields without coming to harm.”

“This is Esmeralda, the druidess and keeper of the Tor. The Lake Village is under her jurisdiction,” said Grengan. “And may I present Jesus bar Joseph of the nation of Israel and his cousin Daniel.”

“We have heard of your many deeds among the Dumnonii, Jesus bar Joseph, and that you bring the ways of a strange and powerful god to these shores. We must take care that he does not upset the cosmic balance among the gods already here.”

“The people of Israel believe there is only one true God, and he has given me many spiritual gifts,” Jesus answered her. “He cannot be confined by anything you or I may do, but I promise you he guides me here to learn and grow in wisdom, not to overthrow your ways.”

“True seekers of wisdom are always welcome among us,” the priestess replied. She turned to Daniel, who appeared distracted. “Is there something wrong?”

Daniel came out of his reverie. “I’m sorry. We did not meet any female druids among the Dumnonii.”

“Because they do not have any,” she explained. “But any person who devotes themselves to the required course of study may become a druid.”

“I would like to join some of the games. You don’t think that would be idolatry, do you, Jesus?”

“Not at all. I will be along shortly.” Jesus turned his attention back to the priestess. “Will you perform the ceremony by yourself?” he asked her.

“I am the only druid here, but the lighting of the great pyres of Beltane is always the province of the local king after druids make the appropriate incantations.”

“I thought that there were always half a dozen druids at the great festivals, each with a special function.”

“Yes, we usually work in councils except for times of imminent danger, but this is a small mission, and if it were not for the Tor, there would be no druid here at all. If you join us at Samhain, you will see dozens of druids from all over Britain. The Tor is a special place. It is the entrance to the Otherworld, and Samhain is the festival where the spirits of the departed join with the living.”

“Do you believe that these spirits come out just at Samhain?” asked Jesus.

“No, they are around us all the time, but Samhain is the special time for us to commune with them,” the druid priestess answered. “The days leading up to Beltane also remind us of those spirits. Both festivals mark transitions. Just as today’s Beltane festival marks the awakening of the earth, so Samhain marks the preeminence of the spirit world as we put the earth to sleep for the winter. The two festivals mirror each other.”

“It is interesting that you commune with the spirits of the departed. My people from Israel would fear them.”

“We must be very careful when we deal with the spirits of the Otherworld,” the priestess remarked gravely. “You can climb the Tor before dawn and watch the sunrise above the mists. Feel the energy and freedom that surrounds you at the top, but never walk down before the sun burns the mist away. If you walk down through the mists, the spirits will ensnare you to enter the Otherworld, and you will never be heard from again. That is for certain.” The priestess paused and looked askance as Jesus suppressed an urge to laugh.

“I am sorry. I mean no disrespect. It’s just that I have climbed the Tor and been down through the mist. It seems that I have avoided your Otherworld.”

After an awkward silence, the priestess left him at the edge of the crowd and moved on.

Too preoccupied to look for Daniel, Jesus sat cross-legged on the grass.
Could there be any truth in her words? Did God appear in order to rescue me from Brian leading me into danger? Brian was so childlike and innocent, I cannot believe he intended to do me harm.

Daniel came back an hour later and shook Jesus out of his reverie, trying to read his expression. “Still missing Fedwig?”

Jesus nodded. It was true, though it was not the primary reason for his distraction. They shared memories of Fedwig for a few minutes, but Daniel must have sensed that this only deepened Jesus’s sadness.

“Let’s join the log toss competition,” said Daniel. “And later, the bow and arrow range.”

Although they both acquitted themselves well, they failed to emerge as the prizewinners.

They walked around, partaking of the abundant feast laid out for all. There were songs and stories and blithe young girls who enjoyed flirting with Daniel. When dusk began to fall, everyone stood silently as Esmeralda began her incantations, invoking the spirits to rise up and grace the earth with fertility for the coming season. She invoked the spirit of fire to keep all the livestock safe and healthy as they grazed the fields. Upon her signal, Grengan lit first one pyre and then another. A tall pillar of flame roared high into the darkening sky on either side of the gateway to the stockade. To the cheers of the crowd, the animals, their eyes covered with blinders, were led forth between the purifying flames.

Esmeralda finished the last of her incantations. It was done. The earth was reborn and all the livestock purified. There only remained the free-flowing mead, dancing, and song that continued well into the night.

The next day Jesus and Daniel set out for the Mendip Hills. The journey was less than five miles as the crow flies, they were told, but a direct route would take them over impassable marshland.

“You could paddle a curragh or coracle across the River Brue, and then double back up the River Axe,” Grengan said, “or walk on drier land around the Tor across the Pomparles Bridge and then detour a few miles to the east near Pilton, but make sure you stay away from there.”

“What’s wrong with Pilton?” Daniel asked.

“We don’t like to talk about it. Just take my word and stay away.”

On Grengan’s advice, they elected to walk.

As soon as they rounded the Tor, the rolling hills appeared in the distance. They skirted the headwaters of the Brue to avoid the wet bogs and then made their way northwest to the Cheddar Gorge.

The gorge cut through the landscape as if God had taken a mighty hammer and chisel to split the gently rolling hills. Jesus and Daniel walked along the bottom of the gorge beside a small river, but soon the river took a turn to the right where it emerged from the entrance to a cave, leaving the upper reaches of the gorge dry. Sheer cliffs exposed layers of rock that formed the side of the cavern. Rocky pinnacles loomed dramatically above the upper rim as the undulations in the cliff reached the hilly surface five hundred feet overhead. The other side of the gorge was not so vertical, but the slopes that broke through the cliffs were nonetheless quite steep.

At the entrance of the cave, a man was loading something into a small donkey cart. As Daniel approached, he could see a few wheels of cheese. They found miners working on scaffolds suspended on the sheer cliff to their right. Spotting the cheese maker’s wagon, the miners began to clamber down for lunch.

Jesus fished in his pocket and brought out a few of the Roman denarii Joseph had left with them, as they were now in an area where the natives understood money. He gave the coins to the cheese maker, thinking he was buying just enough for himself and Daniel. Instead, he was offered most of the contents of the cart, which included a dozen loaves of bread, several flagons of mead and two wheels of cheese.

“What are we going to do with all this?” Daniel asked. “We cannot possibly eat this much.”

“We can share it with the miners. There’s hardly any left for them,” Jesus answered.

“Feeding a multitude with a few denarii is a neat trick. You might find it handy one day,” Daniel remarked.

Jesus scraped away the mold from one of the cheese wheels. “It’s nothing. I just didn’t know how valuable our Roman money was.”

Finding their lunch laid out and paid for, the miners quickly took a liking to the young strangers. After the meal, the men let them climb around the scaffolding and gave them samples of the ore, pointing out the subtle difference between those that contained only lead and those that contained silver as well.

Daniel could see that Jesus was puzzled, weighing the two different ores in his hands. “Is there a problem?” Daniel asked.

“This is going to be harder to find than the tin. I cannot tell the difference between the ore with just the lead and the ore with the silver mixed in.”

“But even I can see the streaks of gray once it’s split.”

“So can I, but I have to look at it. They have been digging in this gorge for centuries. All the silver at the surface has been found. We will need to crack through many feet of rock before we see the ore. It will take weeks for us to do that, and we could easily come up with nothing but lead.”