Lady of Avalon Read online

  The old man spat into the fire. “What do you like to do?”

  “At the Forest House I helped with the goats, and worked sometimes in the garden. When there was time the other children and I played ball.”

  “You like to be out and about, then, instead of studying?” The keen eyes fixed him once more.

  “I like doing things,” Gawen said slowly, “but I like learning things too, if they are interesting. I loved the hero-tales that the Druids used to tell.” He wondered what kind of stories the Roman children learned, but he knew better than to ask here.

  “If you like stories, then we will get on,” said Brannos, smiling. “Do you wish to stay?”

  Gawen looked away. “I think there were bards among my kin. Perhaps that is why Lady Caillean sent me to you. If I have no talent for music will you still want me?”

  “It is your strong arms and legs I need, alas, not music.” The old man sighed; then his bushy brows drew down. “You ‘think’ there were bards in your family? You do not know? Who were your parents?”

  The boy eyed him warily. Caillean had not said he was to keep his parentage a secret, but the knowledge was so new to him it did not seem real. But perhaps Brannos had lived so long that even this would not seem strange.

  “Would you believe that until this moon I did not even know their names? They are dead now, and I suppose it cannot hurt them anymore if people know about me….” He heard with surprise the resentment in his own words. “They say my mother was the High Priestess of Vernemeton, the Lady Eilan.” He remembered her sweet voice and the fragrance that always clung to her veils, and blinked back tears. “But my father was a Roman, so you can see I should probably never have been born.”

  The ancient Druid could no longer sing, but there was nothing wrong with his ears. He heard the sullen note in the boy’s voice and sighed.

  “It does not matter in this house who your parents were. Cunomaglos himself, who rules the Druid priesthood here as the Lady Caillean rules the priestesses, came from a family of potters near Londinium. None of us on this earth knows, save by hearsay, who his mother may have been, or his father. Before the gods, nothing matters save what you may create for yourself.”

  That is not completely true, thought Gawen. Caillean said she saw me born, so she knows who my mother was. But I suppose that is hearsay, for I have to trust her word that it is true. Can I trust her? he wondered suddenly. Or this old man, or anyone here? Oddly enough, the face that came into his mind at that moment was that of the Queen of Faerie. He trusted her, he thought, and that was strange, for he was not even sure that she was real.

  “Among the Druids of our order,” said the old man, “birth does not matter. All men come alike into this life with nothing, and whether you are a son of the Arch-Druid or of a homeless wanderer, every man begins as a squalling naked babe—I as much as you, the son of a beggar or a king or of a hundred kings—all men begin so, and all end the same, in a winding sheet.”

  Gawen stared at him. The Lady of the Fairy Folk had used the same phrase—“Son of a Hundred Kings.” It made him feel hot and cold at the same time. She had promised to come for him. Perhaps then she would tell him what that title might mean. He felt his heart pound suddenly and did not know if it was with anticipation or fear.

  As the moon which had welcomed her return to Avalon waned, Caillean found herself settling into its routine as if she had never been away. In the mornings, when the Druids climbed the Tor to salute the dawn, the priestesses made their own devotions at the hearthfire. In the evening, when the distant tides of the sea raised the level of the waters in the marshes, they faced west to honor the setting sun. At night, the Tor belonged to the priestesses; new moon and full moon and dark all had their own rituals.

  It was amazing, she thought as she followed Eiluned toward the store shed, how quickly traditions could emerge. The community of priestesses on the holy isle had not yet celebrated its first full year, but already Eiluned was treating the ways of doing things that Caillean had suggested as if they had the force of law and a hundred years of tradition.

  “You remember that, when Waterwalker came the first time, he brought us a sack of barley. But this time, when he came for his medicine, he brought nothing at all.” Eiluned led the way down the path to the storehouse, still talking. “You must see, Lady, that this will never do. We have few enough trained priestesses here to tend those who can give us something in return, and if you insist on taking in every orphan you find, how we will stretch our stores to feed them through the winter is more than I can tell!”

  For a moment Caillean was struck speechless; then she hurried to catch up.

  “He is not just any orphan—he is Eilan’s son!”

  “Let Bendeigid take him, then! He is her father, after all.”

  Caillean shook her head, remembering that last conversation. Bendeigid was mad. If she could help it, he would never learn that Gawen still lived.

  Eiluned was pulling back the bar that held the door to the storage shed. As the door swung open, something small and grey scurried away into the bushes.

  Eiluned gave a little shriek and lurched backward into Caillean’s arms. “A curse on the dirty beast! A curse—”

  “Be silent!” Caillean snapped, shaking her. “You’ve no call to curse a creature that has as much right to seek its food as we do. Nor to deny our help to any who come to ask, especially Waterwalker, who ferries us back and forth across the water with no more than a blessing for his pay!”

  Eiluned turned, her cheeks purpling ominously. “I am only doing the task you set me!” she exclaimed. “How can you speak to me so?”

  Caillean let go of her and sighed. “I did not mean to hurt your feelings, or to imply you have not done well. We are still new here, still learning what we can do and what we need. But I do know that there is no point in our being here if we can only do so by becoming as hard and grasping as the Romans! We are here to serve the Lady. Cannot we trust that She will provide?”

  Eiluned shook her head, but her face was returning to its normal hue. “Will it serve the Lady’s purposes for us to starve? See here”—she pulled the stone slab from the storage pit and pointed—“the pit is half empty and it will not be midwinter for another moon!”

  The pit is half full, Caillean wanted to reply, but it was for just this compulsion to worry about such things that she had appointed Eiluned keeper of the stores.

  “There are two more pits, and they are still full,” she said calmly, “but you do well to point this out to me.”

  “There was grain enough for several winters in the storehouses at Vernemeton, and now there are fewer mouths to consume it,” Eiluned said then. “Could we send to them for more supplies?”

  Caillean closed her eyes, seeing once more the heap of ashes on the Hill of the Maidens. Indeed, Eilan and many of the others would not need to be fed this winter, or ever again. She told herself that it was a practical suggestion, that Eiluned had not meant to cause her pain.

  “I will ask.” She forced her voice to calm. “But if, as they were saying, the community of women at the Forest House is to be disbanded, we cannot depend on them to support us another year. And it may be best in any case if the folk in Deva forget us. Ardanos mixed in the affairs of the Romans and nearly brought us to disaster. I think we should be less visible, and if so, we will have to find a way to feed ourselves here.”

  “That is your business, Lady. Dealing out the stores we already have is mine,” said Eiluned. She shoved the stone slab back into place again. No, it is the Lady’s business, thought Caillean as they continued with their count of bags and barrels. It is because of Her that we are here, and we must not forget it.

  It was true that she and many of the older women had never known any home but that of the priestesses. But they had skills that would win them a welcome in any British chieftain’s hall. It would be hard to leave, but none of them would starve. They had come to serve the Goddess because She called them, and if
the Goddess wanted priestesses, Caillean thought with the beginnings of a smile, it was up to Her to find the means to feed them.

  “—and I cannot do it all alone,” said Eiluned. With a start, Caillean realized that the other woman’s comments had become a buzz of background noise. She raised her brows inquiringly.

  “You cannot expect me to keep track of every gram of barley and turnip. Make some of those girls earn their keep by helping me!”

  Caillean frowned, an idea blossoming suddenly. A gift from the Lady, she thought, my answer. The girls that studied with them were trained well, and could find a place in any household in the land. Why not take the daughters of ambitious men and teach them for a time before they went out to marry? The Romans did not care what women did—they did not even need to know.

  “You shall have your helpers,” she told Eiluned. “You shall teach them how to supply a household, and Kea shall teach them music, and I shall teach them the old tales of our people and the Druids’ lore. What stories will they tell their children, do you think? And what songs will they sing to the babes they bear?”

  “Ours, I suppose, but—”

  “Ours,” Caillean agreed, “and the Roman fathers who see their children only once a day at dinner will not think to question it. The Romans believe that what a woman says does not matter. But this whole isle can be won away from them by the children of women trained in Avalon!”

  Eiluned shrugged and smiled, half understanding. But as Caillean followed her through the rest of the inspection, her own mind was working swiftly. One girl among them already, little Alia, was not meant for the life of a priestess. When she returned to her home she could spread the word among the women, and the Druids could let it be known among the men of the princely houses who still cared about the old ways.

  Neither the Romans with their armies nor the Christians with their talk of damnation could prevail against the first words a babe heard in his mother’s arms. Rome might rule men’s bodies, but it was Avalon, she thought with rising excitement, the holy isle, safe in its marshes, that would shape their souls.

  Gawen woke very early and lay awake, his mind too active for sleep again, though the bit of sky he could see through the crack in the daub and wattle of the hut was just beginning to lighten with the onset of day. Brannos was still snoring softly on the other bed, but outside his window, he heard someone cough and the rustle of robes. He peered out. Overhead the sky was still dark, but to the east a paler flush of pink showed where the dawn would break.

  In the week since he had come to Avalon he had begun to learn its ways. The men were assembling in front of the Druids’ hall, the novices robed in grey and the senior priests in white, preparing for the sunrise services. The procession was wholly silent; Gawen knew they would not speak till the sun’s disk showed clear and bright above the hills. It would be a fine day; he had not lived all his life in a Druid temple without knowing that much about the weather.

  After sliding out of bed, he got into his clothes without disturbing the elderly priest—at least they had not consigned him to the House of Maidens, where he would be guarded like a young girl—and slipped out of the hut. The predawn light was dim, but the fresh smell of early morning scented the damp air, and he took a deep breath.

  As if at some wordless signal, the sunrise procession began to move toward the path. Gawen waited in the deeper gloom beneath the thatched overhang to the hut until the Druids had gone by, then on silent feet went down to the shores of the lake. The fairy woman had told him to wait there. Every day since he had arrived, he had come down to the water’s edge. He wondered now if she would ever come for him, but he had begun to love the slow dawning of the day above the marshes for its own sake.

  The sky was just beginning to flush over with the first rosy light of dawn. Behind him, the growing light showed him the buildings clustered below the slope of the Tor. There was the long peak of the meeting hall, built in a rectangle in the Roman way. The thatched roofs of the roundhouses behind it glistened faintly, the larger for the priestesses, the smaller for the maidens, and another small building a little apart for the High Priestess. Cooksheds and weaving sheds and a barn for the goats lay beyond them. He could just glimpse the more weathered rooftops of the Druids’ halls on the other side of the hill. Farther down the slope, he knew, was the sacred spring, and across the pastures were the beehive huts of the Christians, clustered around the thorn tree that had grown from Father Joseph’s staff.

  But he had not yet been there. The priestesses, after some debate about what tasks were suitable for a boy-child, had assigned him to help herd the goats that gave them milk. If he had gone to his Roman grandfather, he thought, he would not have had to herd goats. But the goats were not bad company. Eyeing the brightening sky, he realized the priestesses would be stirring soon and expecting him to come to the hall for his morning bread and ale. And then the goats would begin to bleat, anxious to be out on the hillside pastures. The only time he had to himself was now.

  Again he could hear in his mind the Lady’s words: “Son of a Hundred Kings.” What had she meant? Why him? His mind would not let these thoughts alone. Many days had passed since that strange greeting. When would she come for him?

  He sat for a long time on the shore, looking out over the grey expanse of the water as it changed to a sheet of silver reflecting the pale autumn sky. The air was crisp, but he was accustomed to cold, and the sheepskin Brannos had given him for a cape kept off the chill. It was quiet, but not quite silent; as he himself grew more still, he found himself listening to the whisper of wind in the trees, the sigh of the wavelets as they kissed the shore.

  He closed his eyes, and his breath caught as for a moment all those small sounds that came from the world around him became music. He became aware of a song—he could not tell if it came from outside or if something in his spirit was singing, but ever more sweetly he could hear the melody. Without opening his eyes, he pulled from his pocket the flute of willow that Brannos had given him, and began to play.

  The first notes seemed such a squawk that he almost flung the flute into the water; then for a moment the note clarified. Gawen took a deep breath, centered himself, and tried again. Once more he heard that pure thread of sound. Carefully, he changed his fingering and slowly began to coax forth a melody. As he relaxed, his breathing became deep, controlled, and he sank into the emerging song.

  Lost in the music, he did not at first realize when the Lady appeared. It was only gradually that the shimmer of light above the lake became edged in shadow, and the shadow became a form, moving as if by magic across the surface until at last it grew close enough for him to see the low prow of the boat on which she stood and the slender shaft of the pole.

  The boat was something like the barge in which Waterwalker had brought them to the isle but narrower, and the Lady was poling it with long, efficient strokes. Gawen watched her carefully. He had been too confused to really look at her when they met before. Her slender muscular arms were bare to the shoulder despite the cold; her dark hair was knotted up off her forehead, which was high and unlined, crossed with dark, level brows. Her eyes were dark too, and brilliant. She was accompanied by a young girl, sturdily built, with deep dimples embedded in pink-and-white cheeks as smooth as thick cream and fine hair, burnished copper-gold, the same color as the Lady Eilan’s—his mother’s—had been. She wore her hair, like the priestesses, in a single long braid. The young girl grinned quickly at him, her pink cheeks crinkling.

  “This is my daughter Sianna,” the Lady said, fixing him with eyes as bright and sharp as a bird’s. “What name did they give you then, my Lord?”

  “My mother called me Gawen,” he said. “Why did you—”

  The Lady’s words cut across his question. “Do you know how to pole a punt, Gawen?”

  “I do not, Lady. I have never been taught anything about the water. But before we go—”

  “Good. You have nothing to unlearn, and this at least I can teach you.” O
nce more her words overrode his. “But for now it will be enough to get into the boat without upsetting it. Step carefully. At this time of year the water is too cold for a bath.” She held out her small hand, rock-hard, and steadied him as he stepped into the boat. He sat down, gripping the sides as the punt lurched, but in truth it was his own response to her command rather than the motion that had unsettled him.

  Sianna giggled and the Lady fixed her with her dark eyes. “If you had never been taught, you would not know anything either. Is it well done to mock at ignorance?”

  What about my ignorance? he wondered. But he did not try to repeat his question. Maybe she would listen later, when they had gotten wherever she was taking him.

  Sianna murmured, “It was only the picture of an unexpected bath on such a day…” She was trying to look sober, but she giggled again and the Lady smiled indulgently, digging in with the pole and sending the punt gliding across the surface of the lake.

  Gawen looked back at the girl. He did not know if Sianna had been making fun of him, but he liked the way her eyes slanted when she smiled and decided that he did not mind her teasing him. She was the brightest thing in all that expanse of silver water and pale sky; he could have warmed his hands at her red hair. Tentatively, he smiled. The radiance of the grin that answered him struck through the shell with which he had tried to armor his feelings. Only much later did he realize that in this moment his heart was opened to her forever.

  But now he knew only that he felt warmer, and loosened the thong that held his sheepskin closed. The punt moved smoothly over the water as the sun climbed higher. Gawen sat quietly in the boat, watching Sianna from beneath his lashes. The Lady seemed to have no need for speech and the girl followed her example. Gawen dared not break the silence, and presently he found himself listening for the occasional call of a bird and the faint lapping of water.

  The water was calm, ruffled only by small ripples as the breeze touched it or the sliding wrinkles that the Lady told him signaled hidden snags or bars. The autumn had been rainy and the water was high; Gawen looked at the waving water grass and imagined sunken meadows. Hills and hummocks poked through the surface, linked in some places by thick reeds. It was past noon when at last the Lady sent the boat sliding up the pebbled shore of one island which—at least to Gawen—seemed no different from any other. Then she stepped out on the dry ground and motioned to the two children to follow her onto the land.