Tales of Avalon Read online

  I’ll tell him I was lost in the marsh, she thought. He would not believe her, but would pretend to in order to save face in the camp. It was not a thing of honour for a chieftain’s young wife to go missing for the night. He would back her story publicly, but she shivered when she thought of how he would punish her inside his roundhouse. Perhaps I will not go back at all, she told herself.

  The boat scraped to a stop on solid ground. “Here is Ynysig,” said Crika, and he helped her step out onto the soft earth.

  Ynysig was a small island, a slight rise in the marsh bed, really. In summer it was merely the raised end of Ynys y Niwl’s long western arm where rose Bryn Fyrtwyddon, the hill of myrtles. But then, and through the winter, it was separated from the larger island by a marsh channel. Willows ringed the shore, between open stands of marsh sedge. On the western flank a small spring offered fresh water. The crown of the island rose as a small grassy hill, looking bare in the moonlight. Crika stopped at a weathered lean-to and found a fur to wrap around Morla’s shoulders against the night chill. Apparently he came here often enough to keep shelter and supplies, she thought.

  “Come,” he said, taking her hand, and together they climbed the small rise to the center of the islet. Though it rose only slightly higher than the surrounding marsh, it was enough to lift them above the evening’s ground mist. Spread out before them in all directions under the moon was a smooth white sea of cloud. The willow crowns formed a ring around them and Morla could see Ynysig was tiny indeed. Not more than two hundred of her paces across. Straight ahead, beyond the Bryw channel, rose the hills of Ynys y Niwl, including the high and mysterious tor. To her left, the tops of marsh isles grew here and there above the mist, finally reaching the tor of Bryn Llyffaint, which some said lay at the edge of a vast and deep sea. The whole was surrounded at a distance, as if by the rim of a bowl, by the hills of Mendydd, Pennard, and Pwlborfa. A light breeze came from the northwest, whispering through the dry quaking-grass at her feet.

  The crown of Ynysig seemed to shimmer in the moonlit breeze. Here and there among the tall grasses were the year end remnants of knapweed and trefoil, and the bare tangles of dog roses. Near the crest of the hill the naked branches of an ancient whitethorn raised to the sky. Morla followed their pointing fingers upward and gazed at the stars, finding the Hunter low in the sky, the Sisters a bit higher overhead, and, from horizon to horizon the long bright Cowpath. She felt Crika’s arm enfold her waist, the gentle warmth of his slight body. She turned to him, but his eyes were still on the heavens.

  “There is magic here,” she whispered.

  He bent and kissed her lightly on her forehead. She raised her head, seeing the moon over his shoulder, and his lips touched hers. Softly, then more intently, and then with the growing passion of need that came from years of loneliness. Morla knew of the relentless insistence of male passion from Crwban. Something to be endured but not shared. But this was something different. In this kiss, Crika gave as well as took, and a warmth Morla had never known spread through her body. She raised her arms to encircle his neck, drawing him more deeply into the kiss, closing her eyes to the turning stars overhead.

  And then she was lying with him on the moss and soft loam of the hilltop amid the high grass, drawing him to her, drawing him in. They spent the night in the intense sweetness of discovered love, until the sun rose over the ridge of Bryn Pennard in the morning. As she lay in Crika’s arms, their covering furs damp with dew, she knew they had done what she and Crwban had been unable to. With the certainty a woman understands and a man finds unfathomable, Morla knew she had conceived a child.

  ~

  “No!” she cried, great shuddering sobs shaking her body, her face wet with tears. “Crika, how can you say such a thing?” She turned from him, fell to her knees, and continued to cry.

  The days and nights since their first time on the top of Ynysig had been delightfully happy for Morla. She had helped him to repair and enlarge the old lean-to. During the day she went with him in the boat to gather marshweed and sometimes a fish for food. In the evenings they would sit atop Ynysig, telling each other imaginary tales of Ynys y Niwl across the marsh. At night she would lie with him under the furs, and they would make love, and she would fall asleep in his arms. All the while, within the warmth of her belly, a child began to grow.

  Then came the morning, when frost was on the grasses and the curve of her belly had begun to show, that Crika told her of his fears. They had not yet risen from their sleeping furs. She lay in the crook of his arm, and he was stroking her long hair.

  “Morla, I am afraid.”

  She shifted and looked at him, his usually spiked hair curling around his face in morning disarray. “Afraid?” she asked.

  “It is lonely and dangerous out here in the marsh,” he said. Our shelter is poor, the cold is coming. Already we eat only marshweed. Soon there will be little of that. It is not a good place for a pregnant woman. I fear for you, and for the child.”

  She shifted closer, pressing her breasts and growing belly against him, reaching out and drawing his face to hers for a kiss. “I am safe, here, with you,” she said.

  Crika sat up, raising his knees to his chest, folding his arms across them, drawing himself into a tight ball. He pretended to look at something out in the marsh, fighting to withhold what he knew must be said.

  “I think you should go back to Crwban.”

  “What!”

  “Just, just until the baby is born. You’ll be safer with your clan. Then I’ll come back for you, in the night. “No!” she cried as she turned from him. “Crika, how can you say such a thing?”

  ~

  But in the end, with the growing awareness of an expectant mother, Morla knew the wisdom in his words. She had been carrying the child for three cycles of the moon when he returned her to the mainland, poling his boat slowly back through the night marshes. Their hearts broke as one while they held one another in the dawn mist. Then she turned on the path to Crwban’s village. Crika pushed off the bank into the marsh, and headed he knew not where.

  ~

  Crwban had finished his morning meal and was already sitting with the old warriors around what they pretended was a council fire when the ghost of his young wife, disheveled and dirty, walked into camp. She walked right up to him where he sat, his mouth open, drinking gourd dropped at his side. She reached out her hands to him.

  “I am home, husband,” she said. “I have missed you so much.”

  Under the watching eyes of all the camp he stood silently. Without a word, his face a blank, he lifted her in his arms. With her arms about his neck and her head resting on his shoulder he turned from the fire, and slowly crossed the common area of the camp. They disappeared through the door of his roundhouse.

  He did not beat her, as she had feared he would. But he put her down in one corner and retreated to another, as far from her as he could get. He stared at her, his face filled with cold rage.

  Morla knew it would be best to begin her tale before the profanity of his questions could begin. She told him of setting out on one of her walks in the bogs the day he last saw her, taking great care to remind him of the joyful passion of their lovemaking the night before. It wasn’t true, of course, but his arrogance would supply the needed belief. She had lost her way and spent the night in the bogs, pulling reeds and grasses over her for warmth. The next day she tried to find her way back, but got turned around and headed farther north. Several days of this wandering had left her weak and hungry. She collapsed on a small rise of dry ground and lay unconscious while the sun traveled across the sky, then through the dark of another night. In the morning a hunting party found her. They took her to their village among the wells that border the north marshes, where she spent many days recovering her strength and health.

  “As I regained my strength I knew I was with child. I came home as soon as I could” She smiled at Crwban and moved toward him across the floor of the roundhouse. His face was still flushed with anger.
He retreated further into his corner as she approached. Morla came to him, sitting beside him. Putting a look of love into her eyes she said, “Dear husband, I remembered the passion of our last night together, and I knew at last I would bear you a son.” She took his hand and placed it on the curve of her belly. He began to soften then, and she kissed his face. “Crwban,” she said with tears in her eyes, “It is so good to be home, and to be carrying your child.” She drew his arms around her, sinking back against him. When she felt him tighten the embrace, and the touch of his face in her hair, she knew it had worked.

  ~

  Cycles of the moon passed in the camp. Morla’s belly grew, as the cold of winter came and went. Crwban often walked her around the encampment, arm proudly around her shoulders, showing her off to all.

  “Look at Morla,” he would crow. “She’s giving me a big, healthy heir – the new chief!”

  Then, just before midsummer, the marsh flush began to appear on her belly. It began on the underside as a small, dull patch of blue-green, just below her navel. At first she was able to cover it on her dark skin with an ointment of oak bark and walnut hulls ground in sheep’s fat. But the flush grew and spread until it completely covered her abdomen. By her final month it was too obvious to hide any longer. During a particularly callous and inept attempt at lovemaking, Crwban wiped away some of the ointment, and discovered the rash. With a scream he leaped up and backed away into the shadows. There was only one way for marsh flush to appear on the belly of a pregnant woman. The child was not his! Morla had lain with a spirit-possessed outcast of the marshes! The child in her belly was bendith y mamau, a “mother’s blessing” spawn of the fairies. In the dead of night Crwban dragged his young, pregnant wife into the reeds, dumped her in a flatboat, and cast her off into the marshes, there to die of exposure. He would find some excuse to tell the people in the camp. Bandits had come in the night, perhaps. Anything rather than admit the child was not his.

  ~

  But as usual Crwban was not thinking clearly. Even in the marshes it is hard to die of exposure in midsummer. Heavily pregnant in her final days, Morla pulled her boat through the reeds, cutting her hands on the sharp sedge. She headed for Ynysig, where she had been with Crika so many moon cycles ago. When she arrived, the island was empty and quiet, save for the calling and scuttling of marsh creatures. The lean-to had fallen into disrepair. There were no supplies. Crika had left, and there was no sign of where he had gone.

  Morla was utterly alone. She sank dully onto a willow root hanging out over the water, not knowing what to do or where to go.

  She sat for days, neither eating nor sleeping, staring into the marsh, becoming weaker and weaker. When her grief overwhelmed her, she cried to the sacred spirits of the marsh to take her soul, and that of her child, that she might die in peace. Finally she waded into the waters, calling her prayer, and the waters took her soul, allowing her the peace she needed to die. She slipped beneath the marsh waters. All was still.

  In that peace her body was washed up on Ynysig, beneath the willows. It was there that Crika found her. His heart breaking with love, he held Morla in his arms and cried out to the goddess of the water.

  The goddess, hearing his cries, sent spirits of the marshes to whisper Morla’s song in the trees, guiding her back.

  Come, child of the whispering reeds, marsh daughter, wand’ring alone. Back from the call of the ancient seas; from where the dead have gone.

  Daughter of chieftains, bride of the fens, lost on a distant shore,

  come to us through the watery glens, back to your home once more.

  As she awoke, her body began to pulse with the power of birth and, with the marsh spirits around her singing the songs of the goddess, her daughter was born.

  ~

  Now the marsh folk speak of the daughter as a wild dark child, half sprite and half human, with coppery hair. So do they bring all such children, born with too much marsh power, to Ynys y Niwl for the priestesses to raise. But among the priestesses Morla’s daughter is described in all her beauty, as a child crafted by love.

  The rest of Morla’s tale is lost to memory. She and Crika, and Anwyledd their daughter, faded into the marshes and were not seen again.

  Ynysig, the tiny islet in the marsh, became known as Bol Forla, Morla’s Belly. It has ever been a sacred place, wrapped about with this tale. Women go there for their unborn children to be blessed, for the goddess to ease the birthing, and to heal the damage wrought in the tide of giving birth. Some, who have courage, seek its shores when their hearts are broken for they have fallen in love with men they should not love. But always, it is said, through the willow branches and the quakegrass the song of Morla can be heard across the little isle in the whispering of the wind.

  Daughter of chieftains, bride of the fens, come back to your home once more.

  Chapter Five Boudicca’s Revolt

  The news reached Llan y gelli even before the arrival of its messengers, for men must stop along the way to rest, but news is under no such compulsion. By the time Rys and Cledwyn stood, filthy and exhausted, before Cadael in the chieftain’s hut, the latter had already heard reports from three traders and several Dubh-bunadh farmers from across the Hafren. Cadael was not happy with the delay, and had already summoned his council, which included the herbalist healer. Cethin sat in the shadows, having no desire to be a part of the unfolding drama.

  “Three days!” Cadael thundered. “Three days it has taken my own men to reach me with news of her defeat, while all the countryside has been buzzing with the tale for two sunrises!”

  The travel weary messengers stared intently at the rushes upon the floor. It did not do to answer Cadael yea or nay when he was in such a mood. Not unless he looked you in the eye and asked a specific question. Rys and Cledwyn were hoping to avoid such a misfortune, steadfastly keeping their own eyes downcast.

  “Look at me, you fools!” he bellowed. His head, as well as his beard and belly, was filled with barley beer. But if he was not sober enough yet to fully grasp the catastrophe, he could certainly deal with the two idiots he had once called messengers.

  For fifteen years Cadael had led the Silure resistance to Rome. For fifteen years he had been surrounded first by the II Augusta Legion under Vespasian, and then the XIV Gemina under Seutonius Paulinus to the east and north. The hills and heavy forests of the Silures favored their tactics of small raids with quick, highly mobile bands of warriors. In all this time Cadael had managed to avoid head-on conflict with full sized Roman units. As a result, the Silures were still nominally free, while most of the other tribes had long since capitulated through treaty, or been defeated in battle. Now the II Augusta seemed content to consolidate it gains in the south, while Seutonius, having gotten word of a growing druid presence on Ynys Mona, cut off his forays into the Silure forests and headed north where he could use his legion in direct conflict. It was Seutonius and the XIV Gemina who was responsible for the slaughter from which Fianna had escaped. He would have scoured Mona and destroyed the druids entirely to the last woman and child, had not the Iceni and Trinovantes chosen that moment to begin their revolt in the east of the Brythonic island under Queen Boudicca. Seutonius and the XIVth were summoned to the new Roman settlement at Londinium to stop Boudicca’s forces, which had reached perhaps 250,000 warriors. He saw at once that Londinium, like Camulodunum, was lost. The IX Hispana Legion had been routed at Camulodunum, and the rebel army had so far slain nearly 80,000 Roman sympathizers. So Seutonius turned back west into the midlands. He took a stand near the Roman fort of Manduessedum, near the capital of the Catuvellauni tribe to await Boudicca’s advance. It was there that warriors from several other tribes, including a handful of Silures sent by Cadael, joined the rebel ranks.

  Cethin’s mind had been wandering, in the shadows of the chief’s roundhouse. Most in Llan y gelli knew these broader details of the revolt. After the horror on Ynys Mon, it was exhilarating to learn of one Roman defeat after another. True, Boudicca’s mar
ch had been taking a ghastly toll on Celts as well as Romans, for collaborators were given no mercy. Tales had reached Llan y gelli of burnings and crucifixions. Noblewomen who had become too Romanized, it was said, were impaled upon spikes, and had their breasts cut off and sewn to their mouths. That was the way with the Romans, Cethin reflected. When they did not have the numbers to defeat a tribe outright, they turned the tribes upon one another with a savagery even the Romans loathed and feared.

  “The XIV Gemina took up a position in a narrow defile on the side of a hill,” Rys was saying. His voice brought Cethin’s thoughts back from the shadows. “There was a dense forest to their rear and, in front of them, a broad stream we would have to cross before attacking uphill.”

  “Fool!” Cadael said. “They think to win battles by standing in line.” There was a sneer of derision on his lips, even if the shadow in his eyes betrayed his respect for the disciplined troops.

  “They formed their ranks there,” Cledwyn added, waiting for reinforcements from the II Augusta, which never came. Our scouts told us to expect no more than 10,000 to stand against us. We outnumbered them twenty-five to one.”

  Cethin listened as Cledwyn and Rys went on with the report. It was early morning when Boudicca’s forces drew up across the stream from the Roman lines. Mist swirled in ragged wanderings along the line of the stream. Here and there, where the rising sun was able to break through, it glinted off polished Roman armor. Boudicca, standing at the stream with her chieftains, immediately saw the problem. Her numbers were overwhelming, but she would not be able to use them. The Romans might not be able to escape from the defile, but its steep sides, and the woods to the rear, prevented any flanking movements she might try. All she could do would be to meet them head-on, with a front rank no broader than theirs. Boudicca had the numbers, but the Romans had training and discipline, and she knew that counted for more. She stared up the hill to the Roman line. A swift breeze had begun to scatter the mists, and both sides could see one another clearly. Roman shields and gladii. Inceni and Trinovante pikes and spears.