Druids (3 page)

Something as insubstantial as a sigh sped past me into the

morning.

For a few heartbeats no one moved. Then Menua gently pulled me away. There was no resistance left in me. He bent over the old woman’s body. His examination of her was thorough. Later, when I had more wisdom, I would recall that, among other things, he had pressed his fingers very firmly against Rosmerta’s wind-pipe and held them there for a time.

He straightened up and looked around the glade, seeking the eyes of the other druids. “Winter is dead,” he announced. “Gone beyond recall.” He flicked a glance at me.

The ritual resumed, swirling around me like a mist. I paid no attention, I could not make sense of it. I was numbed by a sense of being alone which I had never imagined before. I would not starve, my blood kin occupied the Fort of the Grove and no clan allowed any of its members to be abandoned. But the warmth of affection Rosmerta had blanketed me with would not, could not, be replaced.

I felt cold and naked.

The druids chanted and circled. A hole was dug among the roots of the oaks. Rosmerta would sleep forever as I had slept the night before, embraced by the trees. Her shrouded body, wrapped

DRUIDS 15

in a cloth painted with eyes and spirals, was reverently returned to Earth’s womb together with a small selection of grave goods to show her status in life.

My eyes saw. My spirit was somewhere else.

When the ceremony was concluded we left Rosmerta in her very special grave. She was honored; usually only druids were given to the oaks. We started back toward the fort, a group of druids singing one of the songs of praise to the Source, and me among them, small. Alone. Cold.

Except I was not cold.

Gradually I realized I was growing warm.

Sunlight was pouring over me like melted butter.

Looking at the others, I saw golden light on their faces. The druids had thrown back their hoods and were walking bare-headed, and the sunlight struck sparks from hair of russet and gold. It cast a sheen on the graying locks of Grannus and haloed Menua with silver.

Sunlight.

We slowed, we stopped, we stared at each other.

The chief of the vates, Keryth the seer, broke into a grin. A generously proportioned woman with half-grown children of her own, she seized the usually diffident Grannus by the hands and swung him around in a wild dance. “Sunshine!” she exulted, laughing. Grannus laughed with her.

Giddiness overcame us all. I felt a cloud lift from me, leaving in its place the glow of life.

We walked on. The druids began singing a jubilant song of thanksgiving, and though I did not yet feel like joining in, something inside of me sang with them … until I saw the palisade of the fort ahead of us and realized I would be returning to an empty lodge. No Rosmerta to keep the fire going, to cook the food, to mend my clothes … to rumple my hair with a fond and loving hand. Most important of all, that.

My steps faltered.

As if he heard my thoughts, Menua put his hand on my arm. “You are coming home with me,” he said.

I almost wriggled with gratitude, like a puppy given a bone. But my relief was short-lived. When I smiled thankfully at Menua, he did not smile back. His face seemed carved of stone.

A horrid thought occurred to me. What if he was taking me to his lodge, not to save me from loneliness but to punish me for my behavior?

No matter how I screamed, no one would dare enter the chief

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druid’s lodge without permission to rescue me. My blood kin, my clan, would leave me to whatever fate he chose for me. Cousins and aunts and uncles would go about their affairs; Rosmerta was the only person who had been truly my own, who might have defended me.

The darkest whispers I had heard about the druids flooded into

my mind.

You have been a fool, my head informed me now that it was

too late.

There was nothing for it, I thought miserably, but to act like a man now at least, even if it was my last act. Particularly if it was my last act. We Camutes were Celts. I clenched my fists, took a deep if shaky breath, and followed Menua with my chin up.

The captain of the guard was standing sentry at the main gate, as he did once every moon. When he saw us he reversed his spear, turning it point downward. Then his eyes widened in surprise, recognizing me among the druids.

Ogmios, whose name meant “The Strong,” was a mighty-thewed man with a drooping moustache in the style favored by warriors. As guard captain he possessed a two-handed sword with coral set in its hilt, and his oval shield was elaborately ornamented in swiriing Celtic patterns. Wearing a plaid tunic of red and brown and crimson leggings that encased his muscular legs like sausage skins, he was an impressive figure.

Privately, I thought he was as stupid as a barrel of hair. Perhaps I was prejudiced because of his treatment of Crom Daral, his son and my cousin.

Crom was small and dark-visaged, born of a woman with crooked shoulders who had been stolen from the Remi tribe. Og-mios made it plain he was disappointed in the boy, who was a replica of his mother. Though boys were not allowed to speak to their warrior sires in public, Ogmios also avoided the lad in private, showing such distaste for him that Crom became a morose and bitter child.

When I felt sorry for him and offered him my friendship, Crom attached himself to me like moss to a stone. We got into all sorts of mischief together—usually at my instigation.

Then my fascination with the druids had begun to take over my life to such an extent that I began neglecting Crom. When I sought his company out of guilt, he was sarcastic. “I’m surprised you bothered to look for me,” he said. “Is there no druid in me fort for you to tag behind?”

Our relationship grew strained. Yet I continued to think of him

DRUIDS 17

as my friend, someone I would get back to, someone who would always be there. When I had time.

I was very young.

As I entered the fort with the druids, I looked around for Crom, but I could not find his somber little face among those of people hurrying to greet us, praising the druids for their success.

Menua accepted their thanks impassively, with a grave and dignified nod. Later I too would leam the value of an opaque expression for guarding one’s thoughts.

People were emerging from every lodge, throwing off their cloaks to bathe in the sun. The men wore tunics and leggings, the women were dressed in heavy woolen skirts and round-necked bodices dyed red and yellow and blue. They resembled flowers as they turned their faces eagerly to the light.

Several of the druids were married. Their partners hurried to congratulate them, but the chief druid, who had no wife, stalked on alone. I trotted miserably after him like a bullock to the sacrifice.

He did not bother to look back. He knew I must follow.

The lodge reserved for the Keeper of the Grove was the largest in the fort, as fine as the home of a tribal chieftain, a king. It stood at a slight remove from the other buildings, an island in a sea of footbeaten brown mud. A sturdy oval building of well-chinked logs, Menua’s home was thickly thatched—grass-headed, as we used to say. An oak door hung’on iron hinges that had been rubbed with fat until they gleamed. Above the doorway was a perch for a tame raven such as many druids kept.

The raven watched as Menua swung open his door and beckoned to me.

The lintel was low enough to make me bow my head, but the single room inside was high and spacious … and nothing like I had imagined.

No matter what the tribe, houses in Celtic Gaul followed one general pattern. They were constructed of logs or watUe-and-daub, and every one was crammed with the paraphernalia of living. A lodge invariably had shields hanging on the walls and spears stacked by the single doorway, a loom monopolizing floor space, carved wooden chests for personal property, clothing drying on ropes strung from the rafters, pallets of wool stuffed with straw lying on the floor or in wooden bedboxes set against the walls, cages of woven willow fastened high on the walls so hens would not lose their eggs to small children and roving hounds, a clutter of tools and benches and baskets and pots and Greek amphorae

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and Roman pitchers and, perhaps, an imported bronze brazier, a luxury much prized this past winter.

By contrast the lodge of the chief druid of the Camutes was starkly bare.

In the center was his stone hearth, graced by a splendid set of iron firedogs in the Celtic style of swinging, swelling curves. An age-blackened bedbox held his bedding. There was one carved bench, one carved chest, a net of borage suspended from the rafters, and a single shelf holding bottles and jars and some red-glazed pots. His wardrobe hung from three pegs. All else within the walls was space and air. Even the flagstones of the floor were swept clean.

“You live here?” I asked incredulously.

“I live here,” Menua corrected me, tapping his forehead.

My eyes swung round the lodge again, looking for the instrument of torture with which he would punish me. Something terrible. There was nothing. Then I realized he needed nothing tangible; with one magical gesture the chief druid could probably turn me into a toad.

Yet he did nothing more threatening than to stretch, yawn, and hoist his woolen robe to his belly so he could scratch the skin beneath.

Then he turned to me. I had backed up against a wall. In a voice every bit as stem as I had been expecting, Menua said, “You and I must talk. A very serious talk indeed.”

He took two ominous steps toward me. My shoulder blades pressed against the rough logs behind me, feeling a thread of cold air blowing through where some of the chinking had dried and shrunk. I willed myself to melt into the timbers, but instead my belly growled ferociously.

Menua’s eyes began to twinkle. “I suppose you would like to eat something first, eh? I had forgotten that boys are always hun-gry-”

I was as astonished at his suddenly solicitous voice as by the

smile that accompanied it.

I would soon leam that a disconcerting change of mood was one of Menua’s tools. It threw people off guard.

“I only had gruel to eat last night, and nothing since,” I blurted out as my stomach knotted and gurgled. “I’m awfully hungry.”

He nodded. “Seeing death makes the living want to eat and to mate. So life asserts itself, Ainvar,” he added in a new tone of voice, stressing each word carefully as if he were instructing me.

Which he was, of course. That was the beginning.

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My second lesson came hard on its heels. “Go to Teymon’s

lodge; it is his turn to provide for the needs of the chief druid. Tell his wife that you require a meal. Explain you are with me now.” When I hesitated, he added, “Didn’t you know that every family provides for the druids in turn? Our gifts belong to all. Run along now.” He aimed a slap at my buttocks.

I ran.

Teymon the smith and his wife, Damona, were sitting on a bench beside the door of their lodge, watching their children play and soaking up sunshine like sponges from the Mid-Earth Sea. They were sturdy people who looked as if they missed few meals, even when times were lean. The armorer of warriors was not allowed to grow weak with hunger; his clients saw to that.

I repeated Menua’s words to Damona, a sallow woman with an ugly, good-humored face. She exchanged a long look with her husband, then disappeared into the lodge. Teymon leaned back against the wall of his house and eyed me speculatively, picking his teeth with a goose quill. I offered no conversation. I did not know what to say.

Damona returned with a wheel of coarse dark bread with a hole in the center, and a copper bowl of boiled roots drenched in melted fat. I mumbled my thanks and started back to Menua. Behind me I heard Teymon saying, “You might as well begin making a new tunic for the lad, too. He needs it. His legs are long and growing longer.”

By the time I entered Menua’s lodge I was embarrassed to find that the smell of the food was making my mouth water. In spite of the chief druid’s words, it seemed disrespectful to gobble food on the day my grandmother died. But the fragrance of the melted fat was irresistible. Fat had become a rare delicacy during the endless winter.

Fat, my head surprisingly observed, had also recently greased the chief druid’s door hinges.

When I offered the food to Menua first, he waved it aside. “Not for me but for you,” he insisted. He sat on his bench and watched me without expression as I ate right-and left-handed, swallowing as fast as I could. For all I knew, at me end of the meal I might be slain, and if so I wanted to die with a full belly.

The endless winter had done that to many of us.

When I picked the last crumb off my tunic and wiped my mouth on my forearm, Menua’s smile returned like me sun. “Was it good?”

“The best food I ever ate!”

20 Morgan LIywelyn

“I doubt that. But your gift for appreciation does you credit. You have a lot to leam, however.” The smile vanished, his voice darkened. A fire leaped into his eyes. In spite of myself I flinched before the power of the druid’s gaze.

“First,” he said, in a voice so cold I thought I must have imagined the earlier smile, “you will tell me how you recalled the dead to life.”

He sprang forward in one motion. I would not have thought a square-built man could move so fast. His fingers clamped on my wrist and he shook me as a hound shakes a hare.

The attack was so unexpected I nearly vomited my meal into his face. “I didn’t … I don’t know … I don’t know what happened, what I did! Was she dead? I can’t bring the dead back to life!”

The chief druid shook me back and forth, his compelling eyes fixed on mine. “Of course she was dead, Ainvar!” he roared at me. “Are you implying that a druid death potion might have failed? Never!” His face was no longer impassive. The skin was mottled with red and his eyes bulged from their sockets.

Any fear I had felt before was nothing compared to this.

He shook me and shook me and I babbled and babbled. I was incapable of measuring my words, I could only blurt out what I knew. And I knew I could not possibly have restored Rosmerta’s life if the druids had killed her. I was young, I was ignorant, I was …