Priestess of Avalon Read online

  She could always be depended on to state the obvious, and as the youngest of the girls being trained on Avalon, she came in for a good deal of teasing. I had seen how it was when a new member was introduced to a pack of hounds, and had expected that they would gang up on me.

  But even though Ganeda showed me no favour, I was a relation of the Lady of Avalon. Or perhaps it was my size, for at thirteen, Aelia and I were as tall as many of the grown priestesses, or because Wren was such an easy target, but it was the younger girl who got picked on and I who did my best to protect her.

  "The Christians have a tale of a prophet called Elijah who went up to heaven in a chariot of fire," I said brightly. As part of our education we had been taken to a service on the other isle. "Was he an adept as well?"

  Suona looked a little sour, and the other girls laughed. They had become accustomed to thinking of the Christians of Inis Witrin as foolish, if generally kindly, old men who mumbled prayers and had forgotten the ancient wisdom. And yet, if what I had heard of the holy Joseph who was their founder was true, they also had known something of the Mysteries at one time.

  "Perhaps—" Suona said unwillingly. "I suppose that the laws of the Spirit World are like the laws of the world of Nature, and do not operate much differently in other lands than they do here. But it is in Avalon that the old ways are practised and the truth remembered. To most men, this place is a dream and a rumour of magic. You are very fortunate to be dwelling here!"

  The giggles subsided and the girls, recognizing that their teacher's patience was thinning, arranged their skirts decorously around them and sat up straight once more.

  "I remember how it felt to go through the mists the first time," said I, "for I came here only three years ago. It was as if my mind was being turned inside out, and then the world changed."

  Only three years—and yet now it was the world outside that seemed a dream. Even my grief for my father, who had been slain fighting the Saxon raiders, had eased. My hostile great-aunt was now my closest relation, but the other priestesses were kind to me, and among the maidens, Aelia was my fast friend.

  Suona smiled a little. "I suppose that is as good a description as any. But that is not the only way to move from world to world. To travel from the life of the tribes to Londinium is to the spirit as great a journey, and some of those who make it fell ill and pine like trees transplanted to unfriendly soil because their minds cannot bear the change."

  I nodded. I had been to Londinium several times during my childhood, and though Prince Julius Coelius might have been Roman in name and taught his children to speak Latin as well as their mother tongue, I could still remember the shock as we passed through the gate of the city and the noise of the capital rose around us, like jumping into the sea.

  "But do our bodies go to Faerie?" said Wren, who could stick to a topic like a terrier when her interest was aroused.

  Seeing Suona's frown, I stepped in once more. "We know that our solid bodies are sitting here in the orchard below the Tor, but except that the weather is sometimes a little different, Avalon is not so unlike the outside world."

  "There are other differences," said the priestess, "which you will learn about when you are more advanced in your training. Certain kinds of magic work more easily here, because we are at a crossing of the lines of power, and because of the structure of the "For… But for the most part what you say is true."

  "But Faerie is not the same," put in Tuli. "Time there runs slower, and its folk are magic."

  "That is so, and yet even there, a mortal who is willing to pay the price may dwell."

  "What is the price?" asked I.

  "To lose the gradual sweet changes of the seasons, and all the gathered wisdom of mortality."

  "Is that so bad a thing?" asked Roud, her red hair glinting as her braid swung forwards. "If you go when you are young?"

  "Would you like to have stayed forever nine years old?" Suona asked.

  "When I was nine, I was a baby!" Roud said from the eminence of her fourteen years.

  "Each age has its own delights and contentments," the priestess went on, "that you will miss if you go where time has no meaning, beyond the circles of the world."

  "Of course I want to grow up," muttered Roud. "But who would want to be old?"

  Everyone, thought I, if Suona was to be believed. It was hard, though, to credit it, when young eyes could gaze through the trees to the dazzle of sun on water, and young ears listen to the song of the lark as she lifted skyward, and a young body twitched with impatience to run with Eldri through the long grass, to dance, to be free.

  "And that is why, for the most part, we make our journeys in the spirit only," Suona added. "And at the moment, yours are bouncing about like lambs in a meadow. If you will be so kind as to focus your minds for a few moments, we have work to do."

  Alas, thought I, it was nothing so exciting as a journey to Faerie. The folk of Avalon, both priestesses and priests, did not spend all their time in ritual. Wool and flax must be spun, the gardens tended, buildings repaired. But at least some of the work involved the heart as well as the hands. Now, when the fruit was setting, was the time for working with the spirits of the trees.

  "Sit still, then, and rest upon the earth—" As the priestess spoke, the girls settled obediently into the position for meditation, legs crossed like the Horned One when he blesses the animals.

  I closed my eyes, my breathing slipping automatically into the slow, regular, rhythm of trance.

  "See with your mind this orchard—the rough and smooth of the bark on the apple trees, the glitter of leaves as the wind moves them. And now, begin to see with other senses. Reach out and touch the spirit of the tree before you. Sense power radiating around it in a golden glow."

  As the gentle voice continued, I found myself shifting into that passive state in which images formed almost as soon as I heard the words. Whether I was feeling or imagining I could not tell, but I knew I was touching the spirit of the tree.

  "Let your own power flow outwards—thank the tree for the fruit it has given, and offer some of your energy to help it make more…'

  I let out my breath with a sigh, feeling myself sinking deeper and deeper, even as the tree became a brighter glow. And soon I realized that what I was seeing was not a bright tree-shape, but the shining form of a woman, who held out her arms and smiled. For a moment I seemed to see another country beyond me, shimmering with a beauty beyond even that of Avalon. A responding joy pulsed through me in a wave that carried all awareness away.

  When I came to myself, I was lying on my back in the grass. Suona was bending over me. Beyond the priestess I could see Aelia, watching with a pale face and worried eyes.

  "You were to use some of your energy—" said Suona tartly, straightening. Beads of perspiration glistened on her brow, and I wondered just how hard it had been to bring my spirit back again. "A priestess must learn not only to give, but to control, her power!"

  "I am sorry," I whispered. I felt not so much weak as transparent, or perhaps it was the substance of the world that had grown thinner, for I could still see a glow through the trunk of the apple tree.

  Spring turned to summer, but Sian, the Lady's daughter, continued to ail. Often, during those long days, the care of her two daughters fell to me. I had become quite a story-teller in my quest to amuse them. Sometimes, one of the boys the Druids were training, like little Haggaia, would join us.

  "In the old and olden days, before the Romans came, there was a king in the westlands whose people complained because his queen had given him no son," said I.

  "Did she have a daughter?" asked Dierna, her bright head flaming in the afternoon light that slanted through the trees around the holy well. It was cool here at the end of summer, listening to the endless sweet song of the cold waters that welled from the sacred spring.

  Her little sister Becca was asleep on a pile of blankets nearby with Eldri curled up beside her. The little dog had grown too big for me to carry in the front
of my gown, but she was still no larger than a cat. Except for her black nose, she looked like a bundle of white fleece, sleeping there. Haggaia lay on his belly, half-supported on his elbows, his brown hair glinting in the sun.

  "Not that I ever heard," I replied.

  "That is why they complained, then," said Dierna decidedly. "It would have been all right if she had had a girl."

  This afternoon, Sian was resting. She had never really recovered her strength after Becca's birth last winter, and none of Cigfolla's herbal remedies seemed to help her. I knew that the elder priestesses were worried, though they did not speak of it, from the gratitude with which they accepted my offers to take care of the two girls. But in truth I did not mind, for Becca was as bright and bouncy as a puppy, and Dierna like the little sister that I had always longed for.

  "Do you want to hear what happened or not?" I asked her, amused in spite of myself.

  Haggaia pulled a face, but it was no wonder that Dierna thought a daughter more important, living on the holy isle where the Druids were subject to the will of the Lady of Avalon. If there had been a Merlin, the authority might have divided more evenly, but the last had died shortly after I was born, and no one had inherited his powers.

  "So what happened?" demanded the boy.

  "The king loved his lady, and he told his counsellors to give them another year to have a child. And sure enough, before the year was over they had a little daughter—"

  This was not the way the singer in my father's hall had told the story, but he was no Druid to memorize the old lore exactly, and had often said that a bard must adapt his material to the taste of his audience. Encouraged by Dierna's grin, I forged ahead.

  "The queen had women to watch by her, but they fell asleep, and while they were all sleeping, the little princess disappeared! When the women woke up, they were terrified that the king would be angry. Now that same night the queen's hound-bitch had given birth to puppies, so the women took two of the puppies and killed them and smeared blood on the queen's mouth and set the bones beside her, and when the king came, they swore that the lady had eaten her own child!"

  Now, not only were the children frowning, but Eldri had roused from her sleep and was staring at me with reproachful brown eyes, as if she understood every word.

  "Do I have to please you, too?" I muttered, trying to think how I could save the story. "Don't cry, Dierna—it will come out all right, I promise you!"

  "Did the queen die?" whispered Haggaia.

  "Indeed she did not, for the king loved her and did not believe the accusations, though he could not prove them wrong. But they did punish her."

  "They would have known the bones belonged to puppies, if she had been on Avalon," Dierna declared. "But I am sorry for the mother dog who lost her children," she added in apology to Eldri.

  "She was not the only one!" said I, forging ahead quickly without worrying about the traditional form of the tale. "In the same country there was a farmer whose hound-bitch gave birth to one puppy every year that disappeared, just like the queen's child. So the farmer stayed up one night to see what was happening—" I paused dramatically.

  "Was there a monster?" asked Dierna, her eyes round.

  "There was indeed, and the farmer swung his axe and cut off the claw with which it had the puppy clutched tight, and then he started to chase the beast he could hear rushing away. He could not catch it, but when he came back to the barn what do you suppose he found?"

  "The rest of the puppies?" Haggaia exclaimed.

  Eldri yipped approval, and I made yet another change to the story. "Not only were the puppies there, but beside them was a lovely little girl wrapped in an embroidered cloth, and she looked just like the queen!"

  "And they took her back to her mother then, didn't they, and they were all happy—" Dierna was bouncing with pleasure as she provided her own ending to the tale. "And the puppies too, and they all grew up together, just like you and Eldri!"

  I nodded, laughing, as the little dog bounded to Dierna and leapt up against her, licking her face enthusiastically. The little girl fell backwards and child and dog rolled over and over across the grass. At the noise, Becca began to stir, and I went to pick her up.

  "Is this how you fulfil your trust?"

  I looked up in alarm, blinking at the dark shape that stood between me and the sun. I scrambled to my feet, holding the baby tightly, and realized it was Ganeda, her worn features set in a frown. But that was nothing new. The High Priestess usually frowned when she looked at her sister's child.

  "Look at them—it is disgraceful! Dierna! Let go of that dirty beast now!"

  I blinked at that, for Blossom's curly coat shone like washed fleece in the sun. The dog stopped first, and then the little girl, the laughter fading from her face as she looked up at her grandmother.

  "Get up! You are the heir of Avalon! And you, boy—go back to the Men's Side. You have no business here!"

  I lifted one eyebrow. Dierna came of the priestly line, to be sure, but so did I. And high priestesses, like Roman emperors, were chosen by their followers on the basis of merit, not bloodlines. She wants to rule Avalon even after she herself passes on, I thought then, and if her daughter dies she will lay the burden on this child…

  "Yes, grandmama," said Dierna, getting to her feet and brushing the leaves from her gown. Haggaia was already edging away, hoping to make his escape before worse befell.

  For a moment Eldri glared at the High Priestess, then she trotted across the grass and very deliberately urinated below a tree. I bit my lip to keep from laughing as Ganeda turned back to her.

  "It is time for Sian to nurse the baby. I will take the children now."

  With difficulty, I detached Becca's tiny fingers from the neck of my gown and handed her to the old woman. Ganeda strode up the hill, and Dierna, after casting one regretful look over her shoulder, followed her. As I watched them go, a cold nose poked my leg. I picked up the little dog and cuddled her.

  "I am sorry you lost your playmate," I said softly, but in truth, it was Dierna that I pitied most, and for the child there was nothing that I could do.

  From time to time some pilgrim to Avalon would bring news of the world beyond the mists. The imperium Galliarum established by Postumus in the year I had come to Avalon now included Hispania as well as Gallia and Britannia, and there did not seem to be much that the Emperor Gallienus, plagued by a series of pretenders in the other sectors of his empire, could do to reassert his authority. It was Postumus, not Rome, who had appointed Octavius Sabinus to govern Lower Britannia. Rumour had it that he was rebuilding some of the fortresses that had fallen into disarray when the troops that manned them had been sent to bolster waning Roman strength on the continent, but there was not much urgency in the matter, for the North had been quiet for some while.

  Indeed, though each year it seemed that Gallia suffered the incursion of some new breed of barbarian, Britannia lay lapped in a charmed peace, as if the mists had rolled outwards to separate it from the world. The harvests were good, and the northern tribes remained peacefully on their own side of the Wall. If the western regions of the Roman Empire were to be forever sundered from the remainder, in Britannia, at least, no one seemed disposed to mourn.

  Of these events, only rumours came to Avalon. Here, the passing of time was marked by the great festivals that honoured the turning of the seasons, celebrated year after year in an eternal and unvarying symmetry. But each winter Ganeda seemed to grow more grey and bent, and the girls who slept in the House of Maidens blossomed more brightly with the approach of womanhood every spring.

  One morning just after the equinox, I was awakened by a dull ache in my belly. When I got up and pulled off my sleeping robe, I discovered the bright stain of my first moonblood on the skirt of the nightgown.

  My first response was a great relief and satisfaction, for Heron and Roud had already made their passage, though they were even younger than I. But they were small and sleek and rounded, while my growth had a
ll gone into my long limbs. Cigfolla had told me not to fret, that the plump girls always matured first, and put on even more flesh in their middle years.

  "When you pass thirty and still have a waistline you will be grateful for your lean build," the older woman had told me. "You will see."

  But I was now the tallest girl in the House of Maidens, and if my breasts had not begun to grow, I would have wondered if I ought to have been living with the boys the Druids were training on the other side of the hill instead of with the priestesses. Even Aelia, who was very like me in build, had begun her courses a year ago.

  I understood what must be done—Heron and the others had been only too eager to explain. I knew that I was blushing, but I managed to keep my voice matter-of-fact when I went to ask old Ciela for the absorbent moss and the lengths of linen that had been washed to downy softness that I would need to wrap it in.

  I bore the congratulations of the other women as well as I could, wondering all the while how long Ganeda would make me wait for my ritual. The body's maturing was only an outwards marker. The inner transformation from child to maiden would be confirmed by my rite of passage.

  They came for me at the still hour just past midnight, when only those who kept vigil for the Goddess should have been waking. I had been dreaming of running water. As the hood came down over my head it became a nightmare of drowning. For a few panicked moments I struggled against the hand that had clamped over my mouth, then returning awareness identified the scent of the lavender that the priestesses stored with their robes, and I understood what was happening.

  Last year, it had been Aelia who had been missing from her bed when the horn call awakened us to salute the rising sun, and then, Heron. They had been returned, pale with fatigue and smug with secrets, for the celebration that evening, and neither by threats nor by urging could they be compelled to tell the uninitiated girls what had occurred.

  But beyond reinforcing a sense of superiority that had seemed to me to be excessive already, whatever had happened to them seemed to have done them no harm. I forced my limbs to relax. I sensed the beginning of a growl from Eldri, who always slept in the curve of my arm, and pressed the little dog back into the bedclothes, stroking the silky fur until the tension left her small frame.