Druids (5 page)

Beltaine was, among other things, the season of generation, of marriages and of manmaking. At Samhain, which was the opposite festival on the wheel of seasons, druid judges settled dis—

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putes and punished crimes. Debts were paid if they must be, broken partnerships dissolved, broken pots returned to the earth from which they were formed. Samhain, season of endings.

Beltaine was the season of beginnings.

For the first time in bardic memory, spring came to the territory of the Camutes that year while other tribes, even the Arvemi in the south, were still being pelted with sleet. This did not go unremarked. Word traveled fast in Gaul, shouted from village to village in relays. Soon the achievement of our druids was common knowledge.

As a result, a prince of the Arverai, a man called Celtillus, sent his oldest son to us, requesting that the powerful druids of the Camutes conduct the youngster’s manmaking themselves. He would share in the ritual with the lads of our tribe.

Menua tried not to let me see how flattered he was.

In due course one of the boy’s uncles, a man called Gobannitio, brought his nephew to the Fort of the Grove in a four-wheeled, shield-hung wagon drawn by two wintershaggy horses. We had heard they were coming long before their arrival, and the fort was thrown into a frenzy of preparation. Even uninitiated boys, myself among them, were given weapons and sent to stand among the men at the gateway to impress the Arvemi with our numbers.

The wagon came rumbling up the rutted trackway from the south, accompanied by an escort of Arvemian warriors with weapons at the ready. In tribeland not their own, they shot suspicious glances at every rock and bush.

Gobannitio was easily recognized. He stood in the front of the cart, wearing a massive tore of twisted gold around his neck to protect his nape and announce his status. His arms and fingers gleamed with rings of gold and bronze. Earrings of imported enamelware dangled from his ears. Luxury goods from the Mid-Earth Sea were very popular among Gaulish princes.

In spite of his splendor, my eyes were drawn to the person who rode beside him, a youth of my own age and height. This must be the lad come for his manmaking.

I could not help staring.

From the first glimpse I sensed in the boy a surging urgency, as if he might explode at any moment. Though he was affecting a glaze of princely boredom for our benefit, he seemed more alive than anyone I had ever seen.

He felt my eyes on him and turned toward me. Our gazes met and locked. For one heartbeat his eyes were cold, measuring me.

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Then his aloof expression dissolved into a grin that went all the way to his ears.

“My nephew Vercingetorix,” Gobannitio was announcing to Menua and the waiting druids. “The name was given him at birth by our seer. It means “King of the World.’ ”

Vercingetorix. I knew from that first moment that we were as different as ice and fire. We were not going to like each other.

Instead of stepping from the wagon, he put one hand on the side panel and vaulted out. Gobannitio followed in the more customary way, and Menua. together with Dian Cet and Grannus, escorted the pair into the chief druid’s lodge.

I was left outside.

After a little stylized posturing, the Arvemian escort relaxed and mingled with our own warriors-Fighting men have a common language beyond tribal dialects. Soon they were sharing cups. I was left to slink around outside the lodge on my own, wondering if Vercingetorix was drinking wine with the adults.

The life of the fort went on around me. Metal clanged; the craftsmen, who were honored next to warriors, were getting the tools ready for planting season. Meanwhile, women swept and scrubbed and baked and sang the songs of work and weariness. Knee-children scrabbled in the dirt, whooping and shrieking.

Eventually Vercingetorix emerged from Menua’s lodge and glanced around. “Where is the lad with the bronze-colored hair? Ah, there you are. Help me with my things, I’m going to be

sleeping here.”

“/am the only other person allowed to sleep in the chief druid’s lodge,” I retorted, prickling with indignation.

He flashed me another of his engaging grins. His sandy-gold hair entitled him to a face full of freckles. He had a sharply chis-eled nose with little indentation below the brow, like a Hellene’s. His eyes sloped downward at the outer comers, giving him a deceptively lazy expression as he drawled, “But Menua just told me I am to share his lodge. So you are wrong. Wrong often, are you?” he added insultingly.

Menua might accuse me of being wrong, and often did, but no stranger from another tribe could saunter into my birthplace and insult me. I hit him, of course. I am a Celt.

He hit me back, of course. He was a Celt.

At once we were rolling in the dirt, grunting and swearing and pummeling each other. He sank a fist under my ribs that knocked the breath out of me, but not before I managed to strike him

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squarely in one of those sleepy, hooded eyes. It would be rainbowed before the sun set.

Rough hands pulled us apart. I looked up to see Menua glaring at me, and beyond him an amused circle of onlookers. “You disgrace me, Ainvar,” said the chief druid.

Vercingetorix and I scrambled to our feet. He had the nerve to try to help me brush myself off, but I shoved him away.

Menua regarded me sourly. “Having an Arvemian prince entrusted to us for manmaking is a singular honor, Ainvar, yet you have welcomed the boy with your fists. This is a very bad beginning, and the first step shapes the journey. No sooner do the Arvernians acknowledge us as the preeminent druids in Gaul than you embarrass our entire tribe with your behavior.”

“All the blame isn’t his,” Vercingetorix spoke up. “Nor all the credit yours. I was sent to you because our chief druid is very old and the long winter has enfeebled him. In my opinion, you were simply the next best thing. And this fellow and I fought because I baited him deliberately. I wanted to know what sort of man he is.”

I wanted to throttle Vercingetorix. How dare he defend me— and insult Menua! I waited for the chief druid to wither him where he stood.

But Menua never batted an eyelash. In a tone that implied he gave no weight to the opinions of .children, he said, “Like you, young Vercingetorix, until Ainvar undergoes his manmaking he is no sort of man at all.”

The Arvemian turned his hooded gaze toward me. “Oh, I think he is,” he said softly. ‘ ‘I think this Ainvar is a man.” Then

he simply walked away.

I looked at Menua in bafflement to find him laughing with the others. “Two wolf cubs in one sack,” said Grannus. Gobannitio added, “In a moon’s time I’ll collect whichever one of them survives.”

Everyone seemed to think this was very funny. I was not laughing, however. I was watching the tall lad with the golden hair who was wandering around the walls of our fort as if assessing the strength of the palisade.

So it was that I met the audacious warrior, irresistible and relentless, whose star we would one day follow where none of us ever thought to go. Vercingetorix.

Just then Menua’s raven cried from the roof, an omen I had already learned to interpret. The raven’s voice above the bed meant a guest was welcome; I could not aigue.

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“If the raven calls ‘Bach, Bach!’ a visitor is a druid from another tribe,” Menua had taught me. “If the cry is ‘Gradh!’ it is one of our own druids. To warn of warriors approaching, the raven says ‘Grog! * If it calls from the northeast, robbers are near;

if from the door, we can expect strangers. If it chirps with a small voice, saying, ‘Err, err,’ we can expect sickness in the lodge.”

For Vercingetorix the raven called from just above the smoke-hole, and that same night the Arvemian lad spread his bedding so close to the fire that he blocked all the heat from me.

VERCINGETORIX AND I were able to take instruction for our manmaking together. The eligible youths were divided into groups of three, a powerful number. Each group would be tested as a unit to strengthen the sense of tribal broth-erhood. The Arvemian was not of our tribe but was arbitrarily linked with me by Menua—as was Crom Daral, who would be our third.

The choice of Crom surprised me. Memories of our friendship came welling back, and I was glad when Menua said I could tell him about the arrangement. I found him throwing spears at a straw target by himself. But in spite of what I thought of as good news, he was cool to me, even though I gave him a fond blow on the shoulder. His face remained closed and sullen. “Did you ask that I be your third?” he wanted to know.

Before my head recognized the hope hidden in his voice, my mouth blurted out the truth. “No, it was Menua’s decision. He wants us with the Arvemian,”

“Ah.” Crom half-turned away from me. I observed that his mother’s legacy of uneven shoulders had grown more pronounced, now amounting almost to a deformity, one was so much higher than the other. Poor Crom. If Vercingetorix was gold and

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I was bronze, between us Crom Daral would be like some dark and baser metal, introduced for what purpose?

Only the druids knew.

“Do you like the Arvemian?” he asked abruptly.

“I don’t know yet. 1 don’t think so.”

“Do you like him better than you used to like me?”

I had forgotten how exasperating Crom could be. “I still like you!” I snapped.

“No you don’t.” He thrust out his underlip sulkily.

‘ ‘Have it your own way, then. But you don’t know everything.”

“Neither do you. Nor your precious druids!” he retorted.

In a bad humor I returned to the lodge in time to meet Vercingetorix coming out of it. As wary as two hounds meeting in a narrow doorway, bristling and sniffing the air, we circled each other. Then he went his way and I went mine.

That night in my bed I thought about Crom Daral. With the self-centered callousness of children, I had been unaware of the depth of his hurt at my perceived defection. But he obviously was hurt, and I knew him well enough to know he would nurse his grievance interminably.

I had lost a friend.

Too late, I realized I had lost more than I could spare. Rosmerta’s death had already robbed me of the cushion of love that had supported me through my childhood. I had not appreciated it until it was gone. Menua saw that’I had what I needed, but he was no substitute for a grandmother.

Or a friend.

I lay curled into a tight knot in the darkness and fought the fangs of self-pity.

For three days, Crom, Vercingetorix, and I met daily with various members of the Order of the Wise, as did the other candidates for manmaking. The omens were read, our teeth and bodies examined for weakness, our minds tested with riddles.

On the evening of the third day, Grannus told us to prepare ourselves for purification.

The candidates for this particular manmaking came from the fort and the region surrounding it for one day’s walk. More distant youths would attend rituals held by their local druids. We comprised a large crowd, and members of the Order took turns supervising as we were bathed, purged, bathed again, given spring

water to drink, made to sweat in the sweat lodge, then rubbed with oil of anise and crushed bay leaves and switched with willow twigs.

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Throughout the day Vercingetorix was in a high good humor. Us ignored Crom Daral’s dour silence and treated my cousin as if the two were good friends. He was equally amiable toward me, and I discovered that when he chose, the Arvemian could exert an overwhelming charm. But when I burst into laughter at one of his jokes, I saw a look of hurt and anger on Crom Daral’s face. I clapped my hand over my mouth, then thought better of it and went on laughing.

I was beginning to resent Crom Daral.

When we were clean inside and out, we were ordered to stand a night’s vigil, naked, under the stars.

We took up positions around the wall. Each of us was determined to stand heroically, wide awake and impervious to the lingering chill in the night air. I was stationed between Crom and Vercingetorix. The latter endured, with little footshifting from sunset to sunrise. Whenever I looked in his direction, he flashed a grin at me, his teeth gleaming white in the gloom.

Crom, however, had difficulties. He shivered uncontrollably. He sneezed, he yawned. Once or twice he swayed and I feared he would fall, but he managed to jerk himself awake at the last moment. The rising sun found him red-eyed and miserable.

Vercingetorix, however, contrived to look as fresh as if he had spent the night in a bed, though I noticed that even he had goose-flesh. * ‘Today is our day,” he said cheerfully.’ ‘We become men.” He narrowed his eyes. ‘ ‘Amvar, did you ever wonder what wom-anmaking is like?”

I shrugged, pretending I was not interested in such things. “Different, that’s all I know. Each girl’s ritua! happens individually, when she has her first bleeding.”

Someday I will know all about it, I promised myself silendy. Druids know.

The druids circled the fort to collect us. We were still naked;

chilled, yawning youths trying to look manly. In the cold, Vercingetorix’s shriveled genitals were no larger than mine. In spite of, or perhaps to compensate for, his crooked shoulder, Crom Daral was more impressively equipped than either of us. As we accompanied the druids to the forest, however, I could smell fear on him.

Fear smells like the green rot that eats away bronze.

We climbed the ridge toward the grove as the sun climbed into the sky. We were not taken to the grove itself; mamnaking took place in a glade on the other side of the ridge. The trees watched

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us approach. Their arboreal darkness reached out for us; the wet weight of their shade lay heavily upon us.

Hooded druids and shivering boys came to a halt. Grannus called us each by name, then introduced us each, formally, to Menua, who would conduct the ceremony.

He called us forward m groups of three. When our turn came, Vercingetorix and I stepped toward him without hesitation, our strides matching perfectly. Crom Daral was half a step behind us.