Druids (15 page)

“But—”

“Out of here, I said!” She opened her fists and made shooing motions at me with her hands, as if I were a flock of hens. “You don’t frighten me,” she told me. “You’re so lean a gust of wind would blow you away.” She took another step toward me, rose onto her tiptoes, tilted her head back, puffed out her cheeks, and blew in my face.

Her companions shrieked with laughter. Even the guard at the door guffawed.

Defeated, I fled.

Laughter followed me.

This, I thought daridy, is what comes of the king being incapacitated. No one respects us. May Sulis heal him soon!

What should I have done to demonstrate my authority over Briga—hit her?

My spirit was incapable of such a deed. I hunched my shoulders around me and trudged on, feeling sorry for myself.

When I saw Menua he was so busy, fortunately, that he forgot to ask me about examining the women, and I was careful not to remind him. If I was able to set out on my journey before he remembered, so much the better for me. Someone else could doit.

Yet the Sequani woman lingered in my head. I found myself imagining a score of different and more satisfying endings for my confrontation with her. Though she had publicly belittled me, I did not like the idea of someone else examining her; some other man’s hands on her body.

The end of the day found me retracing my steps to the assembly hall. Only a ribbon of rose light edged with gold lingered in the western sky, bringing that moment of reasonless melancholy that is like a toothache in the soul. As I went back toward the captive women, I told myself I must not let the day die without fulfilling my responsibility. This time I would not be deterred… .

I heard her before I saw her. A sound of sobbing came from the path that led to the trench where we relieved ourselves. Following the sound, I almost stumbled over a huddled shape in the twilight. The Sequani woman was sitting beside the path in a ball

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of misery, hugging her knees. She tried to muffle the sound of her crying, but I had a dmid’s ears,

She was alone, not surprisingly. The guard would have let her go relieve herself on her word of honor to return. She was a Celt.

I crouched beside her. “Are you hurt?” When she did not respond I touched her shoulder. “Are you hurt?” I repeated.

She shrank in on herself. “No.” Her voice was strangled by the effort to choke back tears.

“Are you ill, then? Do you need a healer?”

“No. Leave me alone.” She covered her face with her hands.

How could I walk away and leave her alone? I had planned to be very stem, remorseless even, when I saw her again, but that would have to wait. I could be remorseless some other time. “Let me help you,” I said as gently as I could.

Her small body convulsed with grief. Before I knew it I had gathered her into my arms. She did not resist; to my astonishment she pressed herself against me and buried her face in my chest. She was mumbling something I could not make out.

“What? What are you saying?”

“They burned Bran,” sobbed the hoarse voice somewhere be-low my chin, “but they wouldn’t take me.”

“What are you talking about?”

“They wouldn’t take me!” Briga’s voice rose to an ear-tearing wail of purest agony -

1 clamped my arms around her, afraid someone would hear and think I was torturing her, “There, there,” I murmured inanely. “It’s all right, ssshhh. It’s all right. Just tell me what you ‘re talking about. Who was Bran? And who burned him?”

“The druuis" The words exploded out of her, propelled by unmistakable hatred. “The druids bumed Bran because he was the best of us’” She spoke as if the druids were monsters who had acted out of deliberate cruelty, which was unthinkable.

“You must have misunderstood,” I tried to tell her.

“No, they said they had to have Bran, no one else would do.”

She was giving me bits and pieces that explained nothing. *’ Tell me all of it straight out, so I can help you,” I urged.

“You can’t help me. No one can.” The anger faded from her voice, leaving it disconsolate. “It began with Ariovistus,” she said at last. Then she hiccuped-

“Ariovistus? The king of the Suebi?”

“The same. They are a Germanic tribe, you know, and he kept leading them across the Rhine to attack the Sequani. My father was a prince of the Sequani but he had grown weary of war. He

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persuaded some of his followers to go in search of new lands. Let the Suebi have the old one, he said. We only want peace. So we set out, but an evil spirit overtook us and burned and blistered and killed many of our people. We tried prayer and we tried sacrifice but nothing prevailed against the spirit of the illness-The Otherworld was deaf to our pleas and would not recall the malign thing that was killing us. Eventually my own … my own beloved …” She could not speak.

Feeling helpless, I stroked her hair. “Go on.”

“My own dear parents died of the plague. Then some of the others began saying my father’s cowardice in abandoning our land to the Germans had caused the Source to send the evil spirit of the illness upon us. A bad thing calls a bad thing, they said, and cowardice and plague are both bad things.” She hiccuped again.

“But my father was no coward! He was wise and kind and only wanted a better life for us. They blackened his name with accusations only after he was dead and could not defend himself. It was so unfair!”

‘ ‘Was Bran one of those who blamed your father?”

“No. Bran was my brother.” She began to weep again, very softly and without hope. “They bumed him. But they wouldn’t take me.”

Then I understood; I saw the druidic symmetry. The Sequanian druids, those who had fled with Briga’s father and his followers, had sacrificed the prince’s son so he could plead for mercy from the Source. But they had also, shrewdly, done it to placate those who blamed the dead prince for their misfortune.

“They wouldn’t take me,” Briga was murmuring almost mindlessly, losing herself in the repetition.

“Why should they take you?”

‘ ‘I was his favorite sister. We were as close as two fingers on one hand. Wherever he went I always followed, and he wasn’t like other brothers, he wanted me along. But the druids wouldn’t let me go to the fire with him.”

“Did Bran want you to be sacrificed with him?”

She hesitated. “No. But he couldn’t have stopped me. The druids stopped me. Two of them held me, but I saw him go with them willingly, bravely, with his head up. He said he was honored to offer himself for the good of his people. Bran was so noble! But he went to the fire … he went to the fire.” Her voice was sinking into that rhythmic, mindless murmuring again.

“Then what?” I shook her gently, drawing her back.

“Ah? After?” She said it as if nothing that happened after

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could be of any consequence. “When the people woke up next morning, the boils had faded from their flesh. The fever had passed. While the smoke of Bran’s burning still hung in the trees.”

Yes, I thought. Yes.

Her voice was dead as she went on. “When we could, we gathered our things and continued looking for a place to settle. But then your warriors attacked us. And here I am. Without Bran. The druids took him from me. I shall hate them until I die.”

The vehemence in those flat, uninflected words was somehow more terrible than her spasm of hatred had been.

I ached for her.

Briga lay in my arms as if the life had been crushed out of her. I could not leave her there, so I lifted her and carried her to the assembly house. The guard at the door gaped at us when we emerged from the darkness.

She turned her face into my chest again, and I realized she did not want to have anyone else see that the prince’s daughter had been crying.

Her women crowded around us, staring at me accusingly. ‘ ‘I found her outside,” I said lamely. “She was … distressed.” I tried to lower her onto one of the couches, but she clung to my neck.

“You won’t leave me, too?” she whispered. Then she hiccuped again.

Ignoring the other women, I sal down on the couch and held her in my lap. “There, there,” I said. “There now.” And other meaningless things. But they seemed to comfort her. I rocked back and forth and murmured; she nestled against me and tucked her face into the curve of my neck like a weary child. A small sigh escaped her. Her grip on me eased, but did not let go.

I cannot say how long I sat there holding her. The women watched. No one tried to take her from me. Indeed, I would not have let them. Nothing had ever fitted me as perfectly, even my own skin, as Briga of the Sequani fitted against my body.

When her breathing deepened into sleep, I gently disengaged her grip and laid her down, motioning to one of the women to put a blanket over her. Briga stirred but did not waken.

For the second time I left the house of the captives without examining the women for blemishes.

That night I lay awake for a long time, not thinking about the journey to come, but wondering if anyone had mentioned to Briga at any time that I was a druid’s apprentice.

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With Menua’s permission, before dawn I made my way to the grove alone to sing the song for the sun.

As I climbed the ridge, the stars were fading from the coming of the light, yet still they kept their vigil, watching for their brother beyond the edge of the world. I saluted them, the skywatchers-Sparks from the Source, keeping me company in the great silent ringing of the dawn.

Orange slivers tore open a bank of lowlying cloud to the east. I had almost reached the grove when the sky burst into flame and the sun slid upward like a burning coin. I fell to my knees and extended my arms in welcome as the song for the sun poured from my throat.

We were a people who sang.

When the song was complete I went on to the grove.

Later I would discover that the Romans claimed we worshiped trees, but Romans only see surfaces. Druids do not worship trees. We worship among trees, and with trees. All of us together worshiping the Source.

From the radiance of sunrise I stepped into a darkling woodland of eerie vistas and glimmering greenness. Perception altered with every step. Each breath of wind formed new patterns of leaf and twig. Sound was curiously muted by the living columns of the great temple of the Camutes.

I had come alone but I was not alone; one is never alone among trees. From the corner of my eye I glimpsed the swaying shapes of the gods of the forest pacing in antlered splendor along the borders of reality. I saw goddesses formed of moss and greenery moving out of, melting into, the trees. As long as I did not try to turn my head and look directly at them, they did not hide themselves but kept amicable pace with me, their Otherworld overlapping mine.

Soon, in the Roman province, I would meet creatures more alien to me than the spirits of stag and sycamore.

Beside the stone of sacrifice I made the summoning sign, splay-ing my fingers and then drawing them together one at a time:

pointing finger, pressing finger, tooth-search finger, heartbeat fin-ger. Then the thumbs linked as I silently implored That Which Watched, Help me. Give me an agile mind and a guarded tongue. I must see everything and reveal nothing, for I will be among strangers. Help me.

Then I returned to the fort to collect Tarvos and our porter, and begin my adventure.

MENUA CAME AS far as the gate with me, and many of my clan followed along to see us off, but I did not see Bri-ga’s face anywhere. I had not expected to; I had only hoped.

She probably does not even know who I am, I reminded my-self- She may not even care.

Still…

“Who are you looking for?” Menua asked.

My head warned me not to remind him of the Sequani women, who were still unexamined. “Crom Daral,” I replied quickly. It was not a lie. I should have liked to see him—though not as much as I should have liked to see Briga. Neither appeared.

“Come back to us a free person, Ainvar,” Menua saluted me. Something suspiciously like moisture sparkled in his eyes. My own were stinging. I hate farewells.

Nature offers a better model. Animals greet one another with \ the rituals appropriate to their species, but they part without ceremony. No painful moments. They just go. That is what I wanted to do then: just go.

I was young, that long-ago day on the plain of the Camutes. I did not know how to cherish the moment. I did not realize how irrevocably the gales were closing behind me. I thought everything would be waiting for me when I returned, just as I remembered it.

The sun flashed on Tarvos’s spear and we were on our way.

For a time the journeying was easy. I was accustomed to walking long distances with Menua. However, I made the mistake of letting Tarvos set our pace, and Tarvos was not a strolling, contemplative druid but a trained warrior. At first I could keep up ^ with him, but when the long muscles in my legs began to ache, I -^

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started gritting my teeth and pushing myself to avoid falling be-hind.

We would not delay our journey with a visit to Cenabum, but hurried on toward the land of the Bituriges. From sunrise to sunset Tarvos swung his legs from the hip in an earth-skimming, ground-eating stride that forced me to new respect for him. My own legs became columns of pain. My back ached, my buttocks ached, my heels were bruised, and it felt as if the tendons were tearing loose in the arches of my feet.

How could the simple act of walking become such agony?

It was painful to walk and painful to stop walking. Most excru-ciating of all was attempting to move again after a night’s rest. Then my joints were locked and my muscles like rigid timber. My richly furnished head was merely a weight to carry, conversation was beyond me. All the concentration I could muster was needed to lift one toot after the other.

I could have mounted me mule and ridden, perched ludicrously atop the baggage, but I would rather have died in the ruts of the trackway. So I stumbled on grimly, my mind a blank of all but pain.

From time to time “farvos cast an amused glance in my direction but said nothing. Even Baroc the porter and the mule he led knew I was hurting. No one offered to help.