A Circle of Celebrations: The Complete Edition (17 page)

“… And she is reunited with her precious doll just in time for her very special seventh birthday,” one of the on-air reporters told her camera sincerely. “Birthday wishes for this brave little girl can be sent to the Channel Four website. The address is on the bottom of the screen.”

“You’ll be all right now,” Chatty Cathy confided to Perinda. “Carjacking carries a mandatory sentence. Those two scary men are going to be locked up for years. Your mother will be here soon. Then we can go home. I can’t wait to see our home.”

“You came back for me,” Perinda whispered. “How come you did all that?”

Chatty Cathy fixed her big blue eyes contentedly on Perinda, and felt satisfied to the depths of her cotton stuffing. “Because you’re my best friend.”

Mistletoe

Rhodri could barely believe the good fortune that the gods had bestowed upon him, and through him, all the people of Llyn. The lean, dark-haired man kept the pure white cloth cradled against his chest under the shelter of his green woolen hood and cloak all the way from the edge of the forest to the center of town. The sharp, crisp, green leaves and white berries of mistletoe had glinted at him from the trunk of an oak along the black scar where lightning had struck it during the autumn rains. Born of fire and collected in just the right way, the leaves and berries would provide powerful protection to the townsfolk. Despite the fresh, ankle-deep snow that slickly coated the stone cobbles of the streets and chilled his feet through his wooden-soled leather boots and thick knitted socks, he had run all the way back to the chief druid’s cottage, to bring him out to see the miracle. Alas, Gryffydd was not at home. Instead of waiting, Rhodri decided to surprise him. He took a piece of clean linen from Gryffydd’s press and the golden sickle from the druid’s chest of books and mystical devices. Rhodri praised the gods that he knew the correct prayers to say while harvesting a few sprigs of the mistletoe, although he was almost certain to be chided by Gryffydd for doing the ritual himself at all. He was but a bard, not yet a full initiate, though he had recently been allowed to do some small charms and healings in the company of an experienced ovate, he sang the chants during their meetings, and he joined the three hundred druids at the Powys council when a grave decision was to be made.

The moon would be full at week’s end, when they marked the winter solstice, also known as the second Gathering Day. At that time, the druids would collect the parasitic plant from all parts of the forest and take it to the grove, where it would be blessed by the entire circle of druids and the pure silver light of the moon herself, then either put to use as protection, medicine or part of spells to benefit the people of Llyn. With sun’s light beginning again to wax from that day, the power of the rituals they performed would be all the greater.

The mistletoe had not lost its virtue through his inexpert handling, thank all gods. He could feel the incredible power of the vine right through the cloth. It was said that the mistletoe had magnetic properties as well as magic. Indeed, it felt as though it was pulling his heart almost out of his lean chest. Oh, Gryffydd must rejoice! Rhodri began to compose a poem in the honor of the sacred plant. He hummed measures, trying this phrase and that in his warm tenor voice.

“Shall I fetch your harp, master?” Llew panted. The servant, a leggy boy rising twelve, with a shock of crisp black hair and dark blue eyes like sunlight reflected in a peat-logged pool, ran to come up alongside him. Naturally, he had not been permitted to touch neither sickle nor plant, but had followed Rhodri into the woods, dagger drawn, to protect them both in case of attack from bandits or animals. Now that they were among houses and shops, he sheathed it again. The few passersby nodded their greetings to the two men. Rhodri could smell the mouth-watering aroma of fresh-baked bread steaming up from the bundle wrapped well against the cold of the day in the arms of Mistress Islwyn, wife of Huw the Dyer.

“Nay,” Rhodri said, grinning at the boy. “As soon as we’re home again, there’ll be time for music! After we take this to Gryffydd’s home, run along ahead of me and make sure the fire’s stirred up. You stay there.” He glanced at the lad’s red nose and the hint of water in his eyes. He wished he could take a pinch of the sacred vine to treat Llew’s oncoming ague, but until it was blessed he didn’t like to call upon its powers. “Crush some rosemary and onion together and take it in wine.”

“I am all right, master,” Llew said, sheepishly. Rhodri smiled. At least the boy was well wrapped up in good woolen clothes; being the apprentice to a tailor had some perquisites. Those studying to join the grove were supposed to be immune from unhealthy humors, but Rhodri knew it was an ideal that poor mankind could never reach. He was glad that the boy and others like him were so willing to risk themselves to gain wisdom. With the advent of the Saxons on the very shores of sacred Mona and the great outspreading of the church of the Christ, the druids and others who worshiped the gods of nature were becoming more threatened every day. Instead of living in isolated cottages to study magic and contemplate the gods, all of the druids but the Archdruids in Mona and Pontypridd had taken jobs and professions that suited their skills. Llew had come to Rhodri as both a postulant to the grove and an apprentice tailor.

As they came into Llyn’s market square, Llew glanced up, and his face cracked into a broad smile, showing the gap on the side where the boy had lost a tooth. “There’s Mistress Bronwen coming this way.”

Rhodri spotted the plump woman heading toward them. Back when he’d been drifting and foolish, he had joined with her more than once in the May Day dancing and private celebration on beds of dried leaves in the forests. Now they were both rising thirty. As a devotee to the grove, he had never married. Bronwen had been widowed five years before, leaving her with four children that she supported with her skills as a brewster. She was still beautiful, and would be until the day the gods folded her into their bosom. Rhodri regretted that their separate paths could no longer converge. He had set his feet upon the path of scholarship and purity, and she had risen to the high priestesshood of the witches’ coven. Both their groves were steeped in their own mysteries, though it was a fairly open secret among the people of Llyn that they existed. The overlord of Wales, King Hywel Dda, was nominally a Christian, but he treated the wise ones who practiced the old ways with respect. He believed in magic, as it had kept him safe against the interlopers from overseas. He used power from wherever it arose, unlike the Archbishop of Canterbury and his priests and monks, who disbelieved in anything that did not come from their Christ.

“Rhodri,” she called to him, waving a small, plump hand. Even in a modest, dark blue bliaut with a white head rail that covered her thick, dark soft hair, the undulations of her soft, curving body invited his own. He felt the old urges arising in him. The quickening of breath, the pounding of his heart in his own ears, the swelling of his nether member were all welcome to him, proving he was alive. He knew, as she did, that he had sacrificed his bodily comfort for the sake of magic and scholarship. He just couldn’t help but stare at her. The marvel of her, being able to glide over the snow as though she sailed on a pond! “And you’re looking well! Where have you been? And what’s there, now? Another measure of cloth for the cutting?” She nodded toward the bundle in his arms.

As she was a fellow celebrant, there was no harm in letting her see. He lowered his hands and spread the linen out over them. The gold glint of the plant with its gleaming white berries took what sad, thin sunshine peeked out between the heavy clouds and turned it into a warm glow. Bronwen’s eyebrows rose to the edge of her veil.

“That is a powerful herb you have there, my brother,” she said. “I can feel the lightning in it. Did it grow on that great oak thirty paces beyond the fork in the Aberystwyth crossroads?”

“It did,” he said. “I did not see this mistletoe before, but the wind we had two nights ago seems to have cracked away the twigs hiding it from view. It wasn’t there on Gathering Day at the summer solstice, so I believe the gods placed it there during the rains in August.”

“That would be enough to draw the crab from the chest of old Gareth,” Bronwen said, holding her hands above the cluster and rubbing them together as if warmed by its fire. “It’s worth a try.”

“I shall ask Master Gryffydd,” Rhodri said, with respect. She had always been more skilled an herbalist than he. He tilted his head back in the direction of his servant. “And a little for my
bach
, Llew. The cold has gotten into him. The power in this will drive it out.”

“Master!” Llew’s cry of warning came a moment too late.

“Pagan nonsense! God’s will heals the sick, not your pretense of magic!”

A blow struck Rhodri’s hands from below. The cloth and its precious contents went flying. He scrambled to retrieve them, as more strokes rained down on his back. His upper arm caught hot fire where the stick struck it. Instead of picking up the mistletoe, his hands grasped sodden snow.

He twisted to avoid his assailant, and threw the clumps of wet slush in the direction from which the blows had come. Another hard whack took him in the wrist. The agony rendered his fingers numb. He gawked in horror. The attacker was Father Nudd. The gaunt Christian priest, dressed in heavy black wool gown and hood, kept striking at him with his black staff. The silver cross at its top radiated cold disapproval.

“Back to your cloth, tailor!” he shouted. “Leave the weeds for the cattle! These unholy plants have no more power than a stone.”

Rhodri held his arms up, but only to defend himself. It was ill in the eyes of the gods to strike a fellow celebrant; more to the point, it was against the king’s law to hit a priest of the Christ. Worse yet, Nudd was not alone. More sons of Eire, dressed in brown wool, their heads shaved to show bare crowns to the sky, hulked at Nudd’s back, ready to strike with their own staves if Rhodri retaliated. All he could do was dodge out of reach until the priest stopped striking at him. His feet slipped on the wet cobbles, just as the staff descended again with a
whack!
To his shame, a few of the women selling winter apples and pots of beer came over to see what was going on.

“Leave me be, Nudd!” he said, doing his best to keep his own temper. “The gods have plans for us all.”

“Only one God rules all,” Nudd boomed. By then, even he realized he had drawn a crowd from the nearby market stalls. The townsfolk’s breath rose up in white clouds as they whispered among themselves. Too late, Nudd pulled himself together and straightened his narrow back.

“God will punish you for your savage ways!” he snarled. His ascetic countenance, with its thin, pinched nose and flared nostrils, resembled the pale illuminations painted on the inside of the wooden church at the top of the road. He looked as though he still wanted to strike out. Instead of attacking Rhodri again, he spotted a saucer beside the doorpost of the baker. It was filled with milk for the elves, a custom that went back farther than doorposts and saucers, to bring luck to the owner of the house. Nudd raised his staff high with both hands and brought the end crashing down in the center of the dish. It shattered into five pieces, sending milk splattering in every direction.

“Anathema!” he declared, aiming a bony finger at each of the folk who had gathered to watch. “These pagan ways are evil! Turn away from them or God will turn his countenance from you!”

He stormed away, his monks in his wake. The others went back to their interrupted bargains, murmuring low among themselves. A couple of stray cats crept over to lap up the milk before it seeped away in between the icy cobblestones.

“That’s a frustrated man,” Bronwen said, watching the Christians retreat.

“That’s an angry man,” Rhodri said, pulling up his sleeves to examine his bruises. He felt like the dish, split into pieces. Though his slender fingers ached, none of them was broken. The marks on his forearms were red, but the place where Nudd had struck his wrist was already rising purple. His ribs ached as though he had fallen off a cliff and tumbled over rocks. Luckily, nothing was really badly injured. “His soul can’t be pleasing to his god.” It was difficult to regain his composure, but he forced himself to remember that Druid lore warned that heat melted away intelligence. A clear head meant a softly-beating heart, the seat of wisdom. In spite of his efforts, the pain made his temper flare again.

Bronwen set a gentle hand on his arm and murmured soft words. A warm red glow that only he or another initiate would be able to see rose from her fingers. He felt a slight shock as it sank into his flesh. Wiccan healing was different than druidic spells but, if Rhodri was honest, just as effective. He let out a breath as the pain dissolved away. Rhodri met her eyes and smiled for thanks.

“He needs a woman so badly that it hurts,” Bronwen said, shrugging in the direction of the departed priest. “He’s always wanted me, but I’d never take a man so angry. It would be bad for the magic, to be sure, but it would also injure both of us.”

Rhodri shook his head. For all they proclaimed celibacy, humility, and poverty, the Christian religious were seldom any of the three. Some of them had women who lived with them, others visited women, and even men. Poverty, when they had clothes finer than the townsfolk who ran businesses? Not a chance. And humility, none at all.

“Is there any who would touch him? He wields power, whether or not he will acknowledge it. It could burn a decent person to death.”

Bronwen smiled, a wicked twinkle in her eyes. “Mistress Wynedd would risk it, in a heartbeat.” She named the headman’s daughter, a pretty girl with long tresses of yellow hair, who was as yet unmarried though her younger sister was handfast to their father’s kinsman. “Master Huw wouldn’t mind, to be sure. He’d give her the sun and moon if it would make her happy.”

“If only we could put them together,” Rhodri said, mischief matching her own in his heart. “But that would mean the breaking of his vows. And yours as well as mine, to do no harm. I can’t let you participate in such a prank.”