Votan and Other Novels (FANTASY MASTERWORKS) (57 page)

‘You have a ship. You have a ship for this trade, and for all trade you may wish to do across the Irish Sea.’

Far in the east, the dawn had begun, over the Lead Hills. In my impiety and joy and pride I forgot the Gods Below that all in Britain worship, and I forgot that Apollo had bade me worship him no more. I stood up on the bale of straw that had been my seat, and I lifted my hands to the advancing Chariot, and I called as I had done all my two-eyed life:

‘All Hail and Blessing to the Unconquered Sun!’

And fate came on me, and I slipped from the edge of the bale. The hilt of my sword tore at my side, and I knew that the old wound was opened. I felt the blood run down, and I screamed, and I fainted with the pain.

That day after Samain, they took me to Caw’s house, where he lived now alone, a widower. I lay on a bed, my shirt off, while everybody who had any pretensions to medical skill or knowledge – and the two do not always go together – fussed around me like so many broody hens.

Taliesin had the first try. He looked wisely at the nasty gash, oozing blood and yellow pus through the bandages.

‘The sword is no use. I suppose the weapon that did the original wound—’

‘Lost long ago, on the Amber Road,’ I groaned. It hurt me to breathe deeply.

‘Then I am sure you will not be having the gallstone of a male ass, which is a sure cure for such afflictions.’

‘In my wallet.’

Taliesin looked a little disappointed. However, he picked it out, and examined it for a while. I said:

‘Have you used it before?’

‘I know all about it.’

‘Perhaps you do, but have you used it?’

‘Well, no, not in the … well, it isn’t flesh, is it. Should we say in the lava? Rub with it, don’t I?’

‘And not too hard. It’s got a surface like pumice stone.
Aaaaah
!’ It hurt, too.

‘I’d better put something soothing on it. I don’t suppose you’ve got any lion fat …’

‘The yellow pot.’

‘Oh. Powdered ostrich egg-shell?’

‘In that twist of parchment – the one with the green lines on it.’

‘Ground mummies’ testicles?’

‘In the small phial. Be careful, it’s hard to come by.’

‘Do you think I don’t know that? And Phoenix ash?’

‘The vulture-skin bag.’

‘At least, I’ve got a pestle and mortar. I think I know the right proportions.’

He beat together the ointment in fury, using some very appropriate incantations. He laid across the wound two hairs from the head of a blonde virgin, and that is something very hard to find in the Summer Country, smeared on the ointment with nine strokes of a swan’s feather, being the proper instrument to my clan, and bound it up with a strip of the horseblanket last laid on the back of a white gelding. I must say that in their knowledge of medical science the Britons do not lag behind doctors in more civilised countries: they only suffer a great deal from shortage of quite elementary necessities, like bottled moondust and salamander skin. I made a mental note that the family might as well begin business in this field in the islands.

For about two days, the wound seemed to mend, and at last I was so bold as to get out of bed and walk about. Nothing went wrong for at least an hour, and then I coughed, and the whole scar opened again. It hurt dreadfully. Now Caw came to look at it, and he had a remedy which was beautiful in its simplicity. He merely clapped on to my side a hunk of whale’s fat, blubber they call it, and tied it there with a length of whale skin, reasoning that the strength of the whale would pass into me and give me energy to resist all strains. The blubber was strong enough, all right. The fish had been dead for three months, and when at last I got up and went out of doors, people could smell me coming half a mile away, and all the dogs of the Summer Country came to the point of interest, and some even from farther away. And I did well enough, since the smell meant that I could endure to breathe only in the most gentle fashion, but at last, through sheer boredom, I yawned, and it was all to do again.

Then Cicva decided she would take a hand. First she washed off the whale blubber, much to Caw’s annoyance, but she pooh-poohed him away.

‘Men!’ she said. ‘They think that they know everything.’

‘But instead,
you
know everything, my girl,’ I teased her, but of course she didn’t see it and answered:

‘The only things I didn’t know, you taught me.’

‘Thank you. Now what are you going to use?’

‘First of all, spider’s web, because although it is so thin it holds the weight of the spider, which is a great beast in comparison.’ So a whole web, taken with the dew on it, and lifted from the bush and brought in whole and unbroken – and how many webs the children of the place spoiled entirely I have no knowing, but there must have been mourning throughout the halls of Ariadne – she laid across the wound.

‘And now some soothing ointment we use a great deal where I come from, up in the Silures. Most of it is goose grease, and that provides the softening. But there are other things my grandmother taught me to use, such as meadow saffron and foxglove, and they will stop the pain and the itching. Now, we have that on thick, and then I will tie it up in a strip of linen – here, one of Caw’s napkins will do, if I tear it up like this …’

I said that there was no evidence of poverty in the houses in the Mere, and no expense would have been spared if there had been anything to spend on. However, it was plain that the Britons here were doing as well as any civilised doctor.

‘Now, what I really would like to do, and what would do you good,’ said Cicva, ‘would be to tie up both your arms so that you can’t scratch. It’s scratching that opens it every time, whatever we do.’

‘I don’t scratch.’

‘Indeed you do, you scratch like half a dog with two dog’s fleas.’

‘Well, and how do you expect me to behave with this itching like it does as long as I lie still? And as soon as

I move it tears, and then I can’t feel it itching for pain and bleeding.’

‘Then shall I tie your hands? There’s not much you can do with them, lying here.’

‘No, you may not tie my hands. I refuse to have anyone tie my hands.’

‘All right,’ she said crossly. ‘There’s no need to make such a fuss about it. It’s not good for you – or for me, either.’

Well, I know that it is quite common for a doctor to prescribe restraint for a patient, but I wasn’t an ordinary patient, I knew
too much for that. Besides, I knew very well that no human means could heal the wound. I had offended the Sun Above and the Gods Below. Only those Gods together could heal me.

All the human attempts followed the same pattern. First the side felt better, the pain subsided, and then the itch. Next, there would be a firm clean scab over the wound. All would be going well. Then I would get up to walk. And in a moment, all would be undone, the wound would be open, and the blood run down.

‘Nothing there is for it now,’ said Pryderi, after two weeks of this, ‘but seeing Rhiannon.’

‘If it comes to that?’ I asked angrily, ‘why isn’t she here? Either she belongs to me, or I belong to her, as Taliesin said, and in either case she ought to show a little interest.’

‘And is it not for you to be showing a little interest in her!’ countered Taliesin. ‘It’s carrying you we’ll be doing.’

Hueil and his brother Coth the Cook took the ends of the bed on which I lay, and moved out of the house into the rain. Cicva threw my sealskin cloak over me. I could not remember now how long it had been raining; I could not remember when it had not been raining. The edge of the Mere was now nearer to the houses. My bearers’ feet splashed through what had been firm meadows. We took a narrow path between the flooded fields, between clusters of willows that stood leafless out of the water. We came to the Deep Pool of the Mere.

Many are the gates to the World Below. Out on the green sea there are whirlpools, that engulf ships and men, and spin them down into the green dark, and these are the least known, and the greatest and the most powerful, because there is no return. But on land, there are the mouths of volcanoes, spouting fire and lava, and into these men had leapt to seek those who have gone before. There are caves both in the mountains and on the seashore, and it is in these that men have buried their dead, and it is into these that wise women have gone to speak with those who have left us and who now speak with the wise of all the ages. Out on the level plains there are marshes and bogs and places of Green Moss, and on the level shore there are sinking sands and into all these men have thrown their sacrifices to those who rule our deaths, believing, as some do, that no ordeal is as grim as
death, and that those who rule our lives may hurt us as they wish, if so be they do not kill us. Life, say some, is worth the clinging to in spite of all indignities. I do not agree. I have lived long and I have travelled far, and I have seen men suffer things to which death is a feast. But whatever one’s opinions on this, who can doubt the wisdom of making offerings by casting booty into a bog?

Of all the gates into the World Below, the surest and the deepest and the swiftest are the Black Pools in rivers and lakes and marshes. Bottomless beyond reach of plumb-line, their surface smooth and unruffled by storm or rain, they lie beneath steep cliffs or smooth banks, and there for many generations wise men have come to make their offerings.

Such a pool there was in the Mere, where the river flowed against a bluff. In a backwater, the water gleamed no more than lead, the surface stirred no more than does a mirror. Only sometimes the great pike moved, hunting for what he could catch, and there was enough, for it was to the hungry Gods Below that the Britons of the Mere gave the scraps of food that even the dogs left. And here, on the bluff above the Deep Pool, Rhiannon sat.

She sat on a tripod, looking to the east, over the dark water. Above her head they had built a booth of alder boughs, thatched with the rushes of the Mere. Her food was the broth of nettles, and a fungus that grows on the trunks of trees, thrusting out in a fleshy shelf. I knew it as a boy: we called it Dead Men’s Ears.

Rhiannon looked out across the flooded, sodden Mere. Little pools were become great lakes. Lagoons where in summer a man might wade a mile and never wet his knees would now float a trireme. The river, in the dry of the year a faint drift of leaves and twigs across the marsh, was now a strong current, sweeping whole trees to the sea, faster than a man might run. As a galley of pleasure is beached for the winter, her mast unstepped, her oars unshipped and stacked against the eaves of the boathouse, her sail of scarlet linen furled and carried under shelter, her cushions of velvet and of cloth of gold taken to grace my lady’s boudoir, gilt flaking and paint peeling from her sides – so sat Rhiannon above the Mere. She was dressed in rough sacking,
black, all black. She wore no jewels. Her hair had ceased to shine. Her hands, through hunger, were transparent, only the blue veins opaque. Above the waste, hardly sheltered from the rain, unwashed, uncombed, her nails uncut, she fasted for …? She waited for …?

Only the birds did not forsake her. The rooks cawed in the trees across the pool, the heron stood and watched. The kingfisher dived as if to seek out the sleeping swallows. Starlings hungrily combed the grass.

The sons of Caw put down the bed. They went away. I spoke:

‘Help me, my Mother.’

Rhiannon did not answer. She sat and looked across the marshes. I asked her again:

‘Help me, my Mother, for your birds’ sake.’

Still, she did not reply. I waited a very long time, an hour or more. Then, I took courage.

‘Rhiannon, my Rhiannon. By him that gave you to me, I challenge you. Speak to me. Who are your birds?’

Still, for a moment she said nothing. Then we heard the sound of wings in the east, and we both watched as the great birds went over us as an arrow. And after that, she sang: at last I heard that splendid voice again.

That was all she sang, and she sang it only once. Yet it was not an hour after dawn when we heard the wings, and when she
finished singing it was the grey twilight of a December afternoon under the clouds of Britain. Then she spoke, not sang:

‘Tell Pryderi: the goose has flown.’

‘Have you no word for me? Can I not be healed?’

‘Oh, Mannanan, my son, my father, my brother, my husband! Come to me at midwinter. Come when the Thorn flowers.’

Uncalled, Hueil the son of Caw and Coth the son of Caw came forward. They picked up my bed, and they carried me back to the house.

I spoke first to Pryderi.

‘The goose has flown, Pryderi. Rhiannon said, the goose has flown.’

He bent down, and he took ashes from the fire and threw them on his head. He smashed a pot that stood by, and with the sharp edge of a broken fragment he slit open the front of his shirt. He said:

‘I am going to the Demetae.’

Madoc, who stood by, spoke:

‘You cannot face the winter seas alone.’

They went out. Cicva, silent, threw the end of her shawl over her face, and followed. Caw watched them go, then:

‘It is no kin of mine. They will lay him in his house, new built, on his bed new made. Every man who comes will bring a stone, and they will fill the house about him with stones and earth, and they will build the house about outside with walls of cut stone and they will whiten it. And that is an end of him. And an end of much more, too.’

‘An end of whom?’ I asked. Caw did not answer. Suddenly, with the air of a man throwing off unpleasant thoughts, he asked:

‘And Rhiannon – did she say nothing to you?’

‘She sang one short song, that lasted a day. And she showed me the birds, and what they are.’