Omega (49 page)

The farm had been growing fast but still not as fast as the population. The six-hectare meadow had been fully ploughed before the winter and in much of it new sowings had replaced the winter vegetables. Every seed was precious, though fortunately several of the newcomers who had had both the time to prepare their flight and the foresight to think of it had brought more; but even those who were experienced gardeners were having to learn the unfamiliar skill of growing for seed as well as for consumption, with the next crop to think of and nowhere to buy new seed.

But the six-hectare field no longer sufficed, with the absolute necessity of keeping as much livestock as could be acquired and managed. So every patch of river meadow between camp and village had been pressed into service and the camp farm had become a necklace of meadows stretching the whole four kilometres to New Dyfnant.

With the onset of winter, the area around the Vyrnwy valley below New Dyfnant had become relatively peaceful. The scattered survivors had almost all drawn together into little communities, clearing and patching up villages, and there were large stretches of country without a soul in sight. Many cattle, sheep, and pigs and a few horses and goats, roamed wild; there had been much hunting and slaughtering of them for food and the wiser communities had been rounding them up for stock as well but with population less than a hundredth of its former size there were still many wandering free. On two or three occasions, New Dyfnant and Camp Cerridwen had organized joint round-up expeditions, with every rideable horse for which there was a rider, and had brought in a gratifying number which were shared out between village and camp in proportion to their populations. These expeditions had been careful to avoid clashes with other communities, conceding any disputed territory without argument, for there were still unclaimed animals to be found and the last thing most people wanted was any local feud springing up.

Also still to be found, fortunately, were a few hayricks and hay-filled barns far enough from communities to be unclaimed and winter feed was badly needed, so slower cart-expeditions were sent out for these. The cart-expeditions took with them one of the bee-keepers (of which there were six in New Dyfnant and two in the camp) on the look-out for hives, which in their winter somnolence could be sealed for the journey and brought home.

As a result, by the spring Camp Cerridwen possessed one bull and eight cows, a boar and two sows, six ewes (but as yet no ram, though they could borrow one from the village) two billy-goats and seven nannies, four geldings and three mares (again, no stallion but the village had several). Two of the mares were in foal, both sows were in farrow, only one cow as yet in calf and two of the nannies had been February twins of one of the adult nannies, while another was in kid. The ewes had not been found till April, so no increase was expected there for a while. They also had eighteen hives, sixteen of them flourishing, the other two colonies having failed to survive the winter, but their beekeeper was confident he could re-stock the two empty ones during the summer.

Four cockerels and sixty-thre
e hens in the hen-runs were mostl
y of their own rearing from the original handful, for wandering poultry, being easily caught and cooked, had quickly become very scarce. No geese as yet but a drake and two ducks had been recently acquired and were being carefully guarded (especially from the camp's twelve dogs and five cats) for breeding. (Of the cats, incidentally, Ginger Lad was the undisputed king and two were heavily pregnant by him.)

One other thing had come from growing contact with the local small communities; the beginnings of barter and of the planning of output with barter in mind. One village, for instance, had once had a reputation for hand-weaving and two of the surviving older villagers remembered their skill; three looms and five spinning-wheels had been salvageable and the experts had set to at once training other spinners and weavers. In New Dyfnant, Jack Llewellyn had restored his grandfather's forge and remembering what he could (he knew metal in any case, being a proficient welder) was also training two youngsters; and already woven cloth was coming into New Dyfnant in exchange for ironwork and repair jobs. Two tiny villages down the valley, a couple of kilometres apart and manned by no more than half a dozen adults in each, had agreed to specialize, the one on livestock and the other on crops, to keep each other supplied. Other communities were beginning to wonder how they, too, could improve their position in the makeshift economy that was developing.

Inevitably, the internal economy of each 'tribe' became more or less communal, because at such a level of day-today survival nothing else would work. Camp Cerridwen, having started from scratch in survival conditions, was completely communal, both in the organization of work and in the use of products; the facts of life, not political or economic theory, dictated this. New Dyfnant stood at the other extreme, for thanks to Eileen's vinegar-mask warning, its population had survived almost completely, though the quake had done a good deal of physical damage; so the social and economic structure remained with all the impetus of habit, family pride, mutual knowledge and Welsh independence. But even that could not survive entirely; damage was uneven, community effort was needed for rebuilding and the closing of road-fissures and outside services and supplies had vanished. No stocks came into Bronwen's shop, no petrol to Jack's garage, and no liquor to Dai Forest Inn's cellars. No county salary to Dai Police, no church stipend to the Rev. Phillips and no National Health pay to Dr Owen or Ministry of Education pay to Geraint Lloyd. No money existed anyway. Yet all these people's services were still needed (even Bronwen's as barter organizer, Dai Forest Inn's as by now full-time Council chairman and Dai Police's as arbitrator of disputes and occasional enforcer of community decisions) and the village did not resent having to feed them. So gradually an
ad hoc
mixed economy had evolved wit
h the boundaries between its pub
lic and private sectors constantly being adjusted by trial and error.

At the camp, Dan's chairmanship had become as full-time as Dai Forest Inn's in the village. He was still the undisputed leader, though by now he had an active camp committee to help him and was able to delegate a lot of the organizing work. The committee's most important function was the deciding of priorities and the division of labour, for between building and farming there was more than enough to be done. There was always, too, a balance to be drawn between the effective use of available experts and the need to give individuals a variety of work - for their own encouragement and morale, for the development as far as possible of a community of all-rounders and for the fair sharing of popular and unpopular tasks.

Moira, also, retained her unchallenged spiritual and Craft leadership - though the situation had changed somewhat. There were over a hundred adult witches at Camp Cerridwen now, so the time had passed, early in the winter, when they could still be a single coven. In fact, there were now fourteen of them, none of which exceeded the traditional maximum of thirteen members. Three of the fourteen had hived off from Moira and Dan's original one, so she now wore four proud buckles on the Witch Queen garter Dan had made for her as soon as three covens had entitled her to that status. Five of the other covens had arrived independently, four had hived off from them and the remaining one had been built around a High Priestess and High Priest who had turned up covenless. It had been a wrench when Rosemary and Greg had hived off from Moira and Dan but they all knew it had to be done. Eileen and Peter, initiated at Samhain and intensively trained, had set up their own coven in March and another first-degree couple, arriving in November, had been similarly accelerated and were doing well, though Moira still nursed their young group from the sidelines. The coven maintained the Wiccan tradition of independence and autonomy, but the leaders met regularly as a Council of Elders to discuss progress and any differences that arose or to agree on transfers in the few cases of personal friction.

'I still can't get used to it,' Dan told Moira. 'Remember the old law that covensteads must be at least a league apart? And the years people used to wait sometimes for second and third degree?'

'The league law belonged to the Burning Time,' Moira said. 'It couldn't work once the Craft went public. And as for waiting years - well, it's like an army - in peacetime it takes years to train an officer but in wartime you do it in months. You've got to or no army . . . And this is war, darling. We've felt the Angels of Lucifer probing often enough this winter, haven't we? Half our work's been psychic defence, just blank-walling them. But there
will
be a showdown, so our army's got to be ready.'

'I know
...
Anyway, with a hundred and twelve witches in one camp, and two or three dozen more asking to be initiated - what else can we do?'

'One thing about having fourteen covens,' Moira smiled, 'it fits very neatly into the calendar. Though the way things are growing,
that
won't last long.'

The calendar-fitting concerned the Temple which had been completed in time for the Spring Equinox and stood at one end of the
are
of buildings. It had not had to be large, as it was never used by more than one coven at a time, on a fortnightly rota of formal Circles. Larger-scale rituals, such as Festival get-togethers, were held in the Mess Hall. Covens also met informally in between as they felt the need or for training purposes mostly in family cabins.

The promise to Father Byrne had been kept, though it had surprised some of the newcomers and even provoked some grumbling; his little Catholic chapel was built at the same time as the Temple, facing it from the other tip of the
arc
. His congregation was now four adults and one baby, for two other newcomers - unknown to each other before they arrived - were Catholics, a forty-year-old carpenter and a nineteen-year-old girl art student. Shy but not hostile with the witches (both of them had arrived with witch neighbours who had picked them up as lone survivors of their families), these two had gravitated together and two months later had taken
everyone by surprise by asking
Father Byrne to marry them. The wedding had been an extraordinary affair; Greg and Geraint between them had rigged a public address system for the Chapel, and the Catholics and half a dozen Protestant non-witches had gone inside, while the rest of the camp had listened to the service from outside. A nearly completed cabin had been rushed ahead in time for the bride and groom to move in and they had been escorted to it in procession after a memorable wedding-breakfast - to which Dai Forest Inn, one of the village guests, had contributed one of his three remaining bottles of champagne for the 'top table' and a cask of home-brewed cider for everyone else. The newly-weds had remained shy but were clearly happy.

Spiritual leader Moira might be, but she - and in due course even those who had grumbled at the priority given to the Chapel - had come to appreciate the elderly Father's contribution deeply. From his doctrinal stance he never wavered; his own faith was total and he would always say, if asked, that the witches' religion was mistaken. But his humanity was total, also, as was his respect - practical as well as theoretical - for other people's sincerity. More than once he helped Moira to counsel people in distress, on a basis of simple human wisdom and innate spiritual strength without trespassing in Moira's beliefs or betraying his own.

'How do you manage it, father?' Moira asked
wonder
ingly after they had, quite fortuitously, dealt together with a woman who did not know whether her son in Bradford was-alive or dead and had been suffering bouts of acute depression as a result. Moira and the old priest, strolling together and discussing the cultivation of lettuces, had come across her moping on the river's edge. Twenty minutes later, after a kind of spiritual pincer-movement of consolation, she had gone away almost smiling.

'Manage what, my dear?'

'To work so well with us when you don't agree with us.' 'But
you
manage it with
me.
I cou
ld ask you the same question.' Y
es,but...'

'Moira, we have many differences but we have certain things in common. A concern for human beings and a belief in the reality of psychic power. And neither of us believes that the duty of converting the other is more important than the harmony of this camp. So we work together on the things we believe in and keep our own counsel on the things we disagree about.'

'Is it really as simple as that?'

'Did that poor woman go away a little happier - after you and I had talked to her together?' 'Yes, she did. I'm sure of it.' 'Then it
is
as simple as that.'

They walked along the river-bank for a while in silence and then he said: 'You and Dan and many of the others -you are good people.'

Moira flung an arm impetuously
round his shoulders and gave hi
m a quick squeeze. 'And you, my friend, are the nearest thing I've met to a saint.
...
I suppose it's disrespectful to hug saints, though.'

'An interesting point of protocol,' he said with mock gravity, 'but since I am most certainly nothing of the kind, God help me, the point is academic. . . . Let me see, what were we talking about? Lettuces, wasn't it?'