AD 268-70
In the year that I turned eighteen I left the House of Maidens to dwell in a separate enclosure with Heron and Aelia and Roud, for the time of initiation was approaching, and the disciplines which prepared us to receive the Mysteries required solitude. But though we three novice priestesses were to be kept apart from the rest of the community, we could not be isolated completely from the rumours that swept the isle.
It was a time of death and omens, on Avalon as well as elsewhere. A network of connections kept the High Priestess informed of what was going on in the Empire, and from time to time one of the boatmen of the Lake village would bring a leather tube containing a message, or the messenger himself, who was led blindfolded to the house of the Lady to give his news. I always suspected that the High Priestess heard much that was never passed on to the rest of our community.
However, the news that the self-made emperor Postumus had been assassinated by his own troops when he refused to hand over the spoils of a captured town was deemed essential knowledge, for it was he who had divided the West, including Britannia, from the remainder of the Empire. A man called Victorinus had assumed his title, but rumour held that he was a warrior of the bed-chamber whose adulteries were already eroding his support. It was his mother Victorina, said the reports, who really ruled the Imperium Galliarum now.
But to those of us who dwelt on the holy isle these tales meant little, for at the end of the winter Sian, Ganeda's daughter and likely heir, lost her own battle with the illness that had come upon her after the birth of her second child, and the community of Avalon was plunged into mourning.
The year that followed seemed to promise little improvement. We heard that the people of the Mediterranean, swept by plague and famine, were blaming their troubles on the Emperor, and Gallienus, like his western rival, fell to an assassin's blade. Of his successor, Claudius, little was known save that he came from somewhere on the Danu, and was said to be a good general. We worried more about the Saxon sea-raiders who were attacking the southern coasts of Britannia in ever greater numbers.
Still, the Saxon shore was far away. As the year turned towards harvest, my own time of testing was approaching quickly, and that gave me a more immediate reason to fear. Our final lessons were the responsibility of the High Priestess, and now that Ganeda was once more forced to acknowledge my existence, it was clear that she had not learned to love me any better than before.
Sometimes it seemed to me that she blamed me for being alive and healthy when her own child lay cold in the ground. I knew that she hoped I would fail the tests that determined who was worthy to be called a priestess of Avalon. But would she so far betray her own vows as to use her powers to make sure?
I woke each morning with a knot in my belly, and approached the garden beside the house of the High Priestess where we had our lessons as if it were a battlefield.
"Soon you will be sent out beyond the mists to the outer world, to bend time and space, if you can, to return to Avalon."
It was a fair day just after midsummer, and through the leaves of the hawthorn hedge I could glimpse the blue glitter of the Lake. Today the mists were only a thin haze on the horizon. It was hard to believe that beyond them lay a different world.
It seemed to me that the gaze of the High Priestess rested on me a little longer than on the others. I glared back at her, but I retained a vivid memory of how it had felt to come through the mists the first time, when Suona opened the gateway between the isle of the priestesses and the world of men. At that moment, with no training whatsoever, it had seemed to me that I almost understood what was happening. If the test was a fair one, with all the training I had received I did not think that I would fail.
"But you must understand," Ganeda continued, "that you are not only being given a challenge, but a choice. You will go forth in the dress of a woman of that world, with gold enough to take you wherever you might wish to go, and provide you with a dowry when you have got there. No vows will bind you, save only a geas against revealing the secrets of Avalon. You are young yet, for all our learning, and have barely begun to taste life's joys. To discipline the mind and the body, to go without food or sleep, to lie with a man only for the Lady's purposes, never your own, is to give up what the Goddess offers every woman born. You must consider whether you truly wish to return."
There was a long silence. Then Aelia cleared her throat.
"This is my home, and I want no other, but why must it be so hard? If those folk out there know nothing of Avalon, what is it that we are doing for them, and why?"
"The princely families know," I ventured to reply. "When the crops in their lands are failing, they send for one of us to perform the Great Rite—that is how I came to be born. And they send their daughters to us for training in the old ways of our people."
"But the Romans have temples, and tax the people to support them. Let them win favour from the gods with their offerings. Why must we give up so much, when we receive so little in return?"
The High Priestess was watching with a sour smile, but she did not seem angry, so I dared to answer once more.
"Because the Romans have forgotten what the rituals mean, if indeed they ever knew! My father used to say that they think that if every word and action of a ceremony is performed correctly, the deity must do their bidding, and that no amount of sincere belief will matter if one syllable is wrong."
My tutor Corinthius, that kind and gentle man, had believed that rituals were only a means of holding society together, and the gods were some kind of philosophic ideal.
"The people of my village knew better than that!" exclaimed Heron. "Our festivals put us in harmony with the cycles and seasons of the world."
"And the rituals of Avalon can change them," Ganeda put in at last. "We are halfway to the Otherworld already, and what we do here resonates on all the planes of existence. There have been times when we worked more openly within the world, and times when we have stayed behind our mists, invisible, but we work with the energies of the cosmos, according to the teachings that have come down to us from the land of Atlantis that lies now beneath the waves. It is real power, that would destroy the mind and body of any who tried to channel it unprepared or untrained…"
Aelia's eyes dropped before the fervour in her gaze, and then Heron and Aelia looked away. Her gaze moved to me, and I realized I was looking not at my aunt, who hated me, but at the Lady of Avalon. I bowed my head in homage.
"And that is why we offer ourselves to the Goddess, to do Her work within the world, not in pride, but because She has called us in a voice that compels an answer," she said softly. "Our lives are the sacrifice."
After that day, the tension between Ganeda and myself seemed to ease a little, or perhaps it was only that I was beginning to understand her now. Indeed, each day seemed to bring new understanding, as we refined skills we thought we had mastered before.
The vision was fading. Reluctantly I released the image of the Tor, ablaze with light, and willed myself to retrace my steps around and around and back again to the garden. The Voice of my Guide continued in its steady direction, keeping me from straying until the brilliant memory of my inner journey became the familiar scene I saw every day.
I opened my eyes, blinking at the sunlight, and set my hands upon the earth to root myself once more in her power. The hawthorn hedge and the carefully-tended herbs were still beautiful, even though they had lost the glowing edges I saw in the Otherworld. Roud and Heron were beside me. I took a deep breath of the scented air and blessed the Goddess for bringing me safely back again.
"Does the Sight come only to those who have been trained in the old ways, as you are training us here?" asked Roud.
The High Priestess shook her head. Since the death of her daughter, age had come fully upon her, and the morning light that filtered between the leaves of the apple tree showed each line and furrow in her face with merciless clarity. If Ganeda had not made it so obvious that she was teaching me with the others only because it was her duty, I could almost have pitied her.
"There are many among our people in whom the Gift runs strongly," she answered, "but it does them little good, for it comes unbidden, without direction or control. Untrained, they know neither how to keep such vision from coming when they do not want it, nor how to focus and control its power when they do, and so for them the Sight is more a curse than a blessing."
Heron frowned thoughtfully. "And that is why you are so careful about when and where you allow it?"
Ganeda nodded. I wondered whether she feared for the safety of the visionary, or that the vision might be beyond her control? It seemed to me presumptuous to think that one could set such limits upon the speech of the gods.
For a week now she had been speaking of the many ways in which one might divine the future. The Druids knew the craft of reading omens, and the bard-trance, and the dream-vision that comes when the priest sleeps wrapped in the hide of the sacrificed bull. Such skills were also practised by the Druids of Hibernia. The folk of the Lake village used the little mushrooms that can bring visions even to the ungifted, and would trade them to us in exchange for our medicines.
But there were other means, practised only by the priestesses. One of them was the art of scrying in the sacred pool, and another the rite in which a priestess was set on high to seek visions at the time of the great festivals. I had heard talk of this last, but if the rite had been performed since I came to Avalon only the priestesses of the higher grades knew.
"Go now and rest," Ganeda said then. "You think you are seers already because you can journey in the spirit, but that is only the first step. Roud has her moonblood, and must wait for another opportunity, but tonight the other three will attempt to scry by fire and water. We shall see if any of you has the Gift to be an oracle."
Her voice had grown harsh, and none of us dared to meet her eyes. Her daughter Sian had been highly gifted in that way, and since her death Avalon had no seeress. It must hurt my aunt to be reminded of her loss, even as her duty pushed her to seek a replacement. The inner work had always come easily to me, and I wondered whether I would have an aptitude for scrying as well. Such gifts were said to run in families, so it was quite possible. But somehow I did not think Ganeda would be pleased to see me step into her daughter's shoes.
That afternoon was spent in scrubbing the stones of the Processional Way, for Ganeda was a great believer in physical labour as a way to tire the body and occupy the surface of the mind. Also, I suppose, the drudgery was intended to keep us from putting on airs, now that we were training to be seeresses.
But even with the distraction, I could feel tension knotting my belly as the shadows lengthened. When the bell summoned the rest of the community to dinner, we four went instead to the Lake to bathe, for this work was best done purified and fasting.
By the time we were brought to the sanctuary above the holy well darkness had fallen. We were dressed alike in plain white garments that hung uncinctured from an shoulders to our bare feet, and cloaks of undyed wool. Our hair lay loose upon our shoulders. Torches had been set along the path; their wavering light gleamed from Heron's dark locks, and touched Aelia's hair with fire. My own fine hair, undisciplined since its recent washing, blew across my face, edged with light.
Seen through that golden veiling the familiar way appeared mysterious and strange. Or perhaps it was only that the day's fast and the expectation of trance was beginning to affect me. It seemed to me that it would be very easy to let go of ordinary awareness, and travel between the worlds. I wondered whether the rule that one must seek visions while fasting was always wise. It was keeping control of the vision that was likely to be a problem now.
A stool had been set upon the stone terrace. Before it, coals glowed in a brazier. A small carven table stood nearby bearing a silver pitcher and a piece of folded cloth. Silently we took our seats on the bench beyond it and waited, hands resting on our knees, breathing deeply of the cool night air.
It was some sense other than hearing that made me turn. Two priestesses were approaching with the silent gliding step it had taken me so long to learn. I recognized the rigid set of Ganeda's shoulders even before she came into the light. Suona followed, bearing something wrapped in white linen in her hands.
"Is it the Grail?" Aelia whispered beside me.
"It cannot be—the only novice who is allowed to see it is the Maiden who is its guardian," I murmured in reply as Suona set her burden on the table. "This must be something else, but clearly it is very old." Old, and holy, I thought then, for it seemed to me that I could already feel its power.
Suona drew the linen cloth away from the thing she held and lifted it so that it caught the torchlight. It was a silver bowl, a little dented, but lovingly polished, chased around the rim with some design.
"It is said that this bowl was used for scrying at Vernemeton, the Forest House whence came the first priestesses to dwell on this holy isle. Perhaps the Lady Caillean herself once gazed into it. Pray to the Goddess that some of her spirit may touch you now…" She set the bowl beside the pitcher on the little table.
I blinked, my sight of the bowl overlaid for a moment with another image, of the same vessel, bright and new. Was this imagination, or recognition?
But I did not have much time to wonder, for the High Priestess stood before us, and between one moment and the next she drew the glamour of her calling around her, so that from a little bent woman, always frowning, she became tall and stately and beautiful. I had seen that transformation many times now, but it never ceased to amaze me, or to remind me that I must never discount this woman's powers, no matter how she treated me.
"Do not think," said the High Priestess, "that what you are about to do is any the less real because you are still being trained as priestesses. The face of Fate is always both wonderful and terrible—beware how you lift Her veil. Certain knowledge of what is to come is given to few. For most, even a holy seer, foreknowledge comes in glimpses only, distorted by the understanding of the one who sees and the ones who hear the prophecy." She paused, fixing each one of us in turn with a gaze that pierced to the soul.
When she spoke again her voice had the resonance of trance. "Be still, therefore, and make clean your hearts. Let go the busy mind. You must become an empty vessel waiting to be filled, an open passageway through which illumination can flow."
Smoke swirled up from the brazier as Suona sprinkled the holy herbs upon the coals. I closed my eyes, awareness of the outside world already beginning to slip away.
"Heron daughter of Ouzel," said the priestess, "will you look into the sacred waters and seek wisdom there?"
"I will," came the answer. I heard the rustle of clothing as she was assisted into the chair.
I did not need my eyes to know when she looked into the bowl, nor did I need to hear the murmur of instruction by which the Lady drew her deeper into trance. As Heron spoke, I also glimpsed the images, broken and chaotic—storms and armies, and dancers at the sacred stones.
Presently they ceased. I was vaguely aware that Heron had been brought back and it was now Aelia's turn to look into the bowl. Once more I shared the visions. The Lady's voice had sharpened, commanding her look for a time closer to the present, and events of import to Avalon. For a time there was only swirling shadow, and then, dimly, I saw the marshes that edged the Lake. Figures with torches moved along the shore, calling. Then the image disappeared. There was a splash as the bowl was emptied, and Aelia sat down beside me once more. I could feel her shaking, and wondered what it was that her mind had refused to see.
But now I could feel the High Priestess standing like a flame before me. "Eilan daughter of Rian, are you willing to seek visions?" the voice came out of the darkness.
I murmured agreement, and was assisted to the chair. Awareness shifted once more and I opened my eyes. Suona poured more water into the bowl and set it before me.
"Lean forwards and look within," said the quiet voice beside me. "Breathe in… and out… wait for the waters to still. Let your vision sink beneath the surface, and say what you see."
Suona had put more herbs on the coals. As I breathed in the heavy sweet smoke my head swam and I blinked, trying to focus on the bowl. Now I could see it—a silver rim surrounding a shifting darkness shot with gleaming flickers of torchlight.
"If you see nothing it is no matter," the priestess continued. "Be at ease—"
It does matter, I thought with a twitch of annoyance. Does she want me to fail?
Perhaps it would be easier without the distraction of external vision. I did not quite dare to close my eyes again, but I let them unfocus, so that I saw only a dim blur surrounded by a circle of light. Look for the marshes, I told myself; what had Aelia been trying to see?
And at the thought, the vision began to emerge before me, first in scattered flickers, and then complete and whole. Dusk was fading into evening. The Lake gleamed faintly in the last of the light. But the mixture of marsh and islet that stretched around to the south and east were all in shadow. Torches moved along the higher ground, but my vision was drawn to a dark pool in the shadow of a twisted willow tree.
Something moved there. With a gasp, I recognized Dierna's bright head. With one arm she clutched a fallen log. The other reached down as if she were holding onto something beneath the surface. I strove to see more clearly, and the scene shifted.
The searchers had found her. In the torchlight I could see Dierna sobbing, though I heard no sound. Two of the Druids were in the water beside her. One lifted her into Cigfolla's waiting arms. The other was fixing a rope around something beneath the water. The men pulled, a pale shape surged upwards—
"Becca! Drowned!" The words tore from my throat. "Please, don't let me see it—don't let it be true!" I convulsed away from the table, and bowl and pitcher went flying. I fell to the ground, curled in anguish, grinding my palms against my eyes as if to erase what I had seen.
In another moment Suona had my wrists and was holding me close, her voice a soothing murmur beneath my sobs.
"Of course she will be all right," Ganeda's voice came from behind me. "These hysterics are only to gain attention."
I jerked upright, though the movement made my head spin. "But I saw it! I saw it! You must guard Becca or she will drown!"
"You would like that, wouldn't you?" snarled Ganeda. "One less of my blood to compete with for my place when I am gone!"
The manifest unfairness of this deprived me of speech, but I could feel Suona stiffen with shock at her words.
To move into the trance state had been easy. Recovering, especially when I had been so suddenly recalled from it, was harder. For several weeks thereafter I was disoriented and subject to fits of weeping. In the days immediately after the scrying session even my sense of balance was upset so that I could hardly walk, and at every step a headache stabbed my skull. When it became clear that a single night's sleep would not restore me I was sent to the House of Healing. The reason given was that the other maidens would tire me, but I think now that it was really because Ganeda did not wish me to speak to the others, and especially to Dierna, about what I had seen.
And so it was that I was still there, being cosseted by Cigfolla whenever I emerged from my uneasy dreams, when I heard shouting from outside the house, and sitting up, saw the flicker of torches in the darkness through the open door.
"What is it?" I cried. "What is going on?" But a familiar fear had begun to uncoil in my belly. I tried to get out of bed, but the pain in my head struck me back down, moaning.
I was still sitting there, trying to control the agony by careful breathing, when the door flew open and Heron darted in.
"Eilan—we cannot find Dierna or Becca!" she whispered, looking over her shoulder to make sure she had not been seen, and from that I knew that no one had come to see me because Ganeda had forbidden them to come. "In your vision, where did you see her? Tell me quickly!"
I clutched at her arm, describing as well as I could where the willow pool that I had seen lay in relation to the path. Then she was gone and I lay back, tears leaking from my closed eyes.
An eternity of misery later I heard the searchers returning, voices deadened by sorrow or hoarse with weeping. I turned my face to the wall. It did not help that without my vision Dierna might have died with her sister. I had wanted so desperately to prove to Ganeda that my Seeing was true, but now I would have given anything to have her accusations proven right, and little Becca safely home again.
Gradually my own health improved and I was allowed to return to the House of Maidens. Heron told me that Dierna had gone hunting herbs in the marshes, leaving her sister behind. But Becca, who since their mother's death had been her sister's shadow, had followed, and fallen in, and by the time Dierna reached her, had already been sucked under by the bog. Even if no one else blamed her, Dierna must be tormenting herself with guilt by now.
I was not surprised to hear that the chill she had taken from the water had turned to lung fever. Now it was her turn to be nursed in the House of Healing. I asked to visit her, but Ganeda forbade it. I remembered a story that my tutor Corinthius had once told me about an oriental king who responded to bad news by executing the messenger. It made no sense for her to blame me for what had happened, particularly since she had not believed me, but I had learned long since that where I was concerned the actions of the High Priestess rarely made sense at all.
Our training went on, but we were given no more lessons in scrying, and I for one was content to have it so. I had learned the first paradox of prophecy, which is that glimpsing the future does not necessarily mean one can understand it, much less alter what one sees.
In time, Dierna also recovered, to creep about with eyes like holes in a blanket and a face pale as whey against the fire of her hair, as if she had died with Becca, and it was only her ghost who remained with us on Avalon.
And so that dreadful summer drew to a close at last. The cat-tails in the marshes grew full and brown, nodding in the wind that fluttered the turning willow leaves, and the mists that surrounded Avalon seemed suffused with gold. One evening as the new moon was rising I was returning from the privies when I glimpsed a pale shape moving down the path towards the Lake and recognized Dierna. My pulse leaped in instant alarm, but I stifled the cry that rose in my throat and whistled instead to Eldri to go after her.
When I caught up with them, Dierna was sitting beneath an elder bush with her arms around Eldri, weeping into the little dog's silky fur. At the sound of my footstep she looked up, frowning.
"I was all right. You didn't need to send Eldri after me!" she said sullenly, but I noticed that she did not let the dog go. "But maybe you think I ought to walk into the Lake and just keep going, in punishment for letting my sister drown!"
I swallowed. This was worse than I had thought. I sat down, knowing better than to try to touch the girl now.
"They all say it wasn't my fault, but I know what they're thinking…" she sniffed, and wiped her nose on her sleeve.
"I saw what happened, you know, in the scrying bowl," I said finally. "But nobody believed me. I keep thinking that if I had only tried harder to convince them…"
"That's stupid! You couldn't know when—" Dierna exclaimed, then paused, eyeing me suspiciously.
"We both feel guilty," I said then. "Perhaps we always will. But I will try to live with it if you will. Perhaps we can forgive each other, even if we cannot forgive ourselves…"
For a moment longer she stared at me, her blue eyes filling with tears. Then, with a sob, she threw herself into my arms.
We stayed that way, weeping, while the white sickle of the moon swung across the sky. It was only when Eldri growled and pushed her way out from between us that I realized how much time had passed, and that we were not alone. For a little while I had felt peace, holding the child, but now my belly tensed once more. The cloaked shape confronting us was that of the Lady of Avalon.
"Dierna—" I said softly. "It is late, and you should be in your bed." She stiffened as she saw her grandmother, but I was already pushing her to her feet. "Run along now, and may the Goddess bless your dreams."
For a moment I thought she would insist on staying to defend me. But perhaps Dierna realized that to do so would only increase Ganeda's wrath, for although she glanced backwards several times, she left us without arguing. I confess that as I sensed the menace in the Lady's silence I almost called her back again, but this confrontation had been a long time coming, and I knew I must face it alone.
I got to my feet. "If you have something to say to me, let us walk out along the shore, where our voices will disturb no one." I was surprised to hear my own voice sounding so steady, for beneath the shawl I was trembling. I led the way down to the path that edged the Lake, Eldri trotting at my heels.
"Why are you angry?" I asked when the silence had grown unbearable, like the stillness before a storm. "Do you begrudge your grand-daughter a little comfort just because it comes from me?"
"You killed my sister when you were born…" hissed Ganeda, "you ill-wished Becca, and now you are trying to steal the last child of my blood away."
I stared at her, anger replacing my fear. "Old woman, you are mad! I loved that little girl, and surely my mother's death was a greater loss to me than to you. But have our choices no part to play in all this, or has all the teaching of Avalon been a lie? My mother chose to act as priestess in the Great Rite, and when she knew she had conceived, to keep the child, understanding the risk she ran. And Becca had been told not to follow her sister and chose to do otherwise."
"She was too young to know—"
"And you chose to keep me away from both girls!" I raged on. "Don't you know I would have watched them like a mother bear with two cubs to stop what I had seen from coming to pass? From the moment I first set foot on Avalon you have hated me! What have I ever done to deserve that? Can you tell me why?"
Ganeda gripped my arm, and as she jerked me around to face her, I sensed her energy expanding, and before the wrath of the Lady of Avalon, my anger seemed suddenly the petulance of a child.
"You dare to speak so, to me? With a single Word, I could obliterate you where you stand!" Her arm swung up in a sweep of dark draperies like the wing of the Lady of Ravens, and I cowered. For a moment the lapping of wavelets against the shoreline was the only sound.
And then, from the rich scent of wet earth and the whisper of water another kind of power began to flow into me, a steady, enduring strength that could absorb whatever lightnings Ganeda's majestic fury might call down. For a moment then I touched something fundamental within, although whether it was the Goddess or my own eternal soul I could not tell. Slowly I straightened, and as she met my gaze, the power ebbed from Ganeda's body until she was no more than an old, bent woman, shorter than me.
"You are Lady of Avalon," I said with a sigh, "but we are both daughters of the Lady who rules over all. In everything that concerns the good of Avalon I will obey you, but it is because I choose to do so."
She looked up at me, her seamed features carved in lines of light and shadow by the moon.
"You are young," she said in a low voice, "young and proud. Refuse to fear me if you will—life itself will teach you to be afraid, aye, and the meaning of compromise!" She began to make her way back along the shore.
"Dierna is my kinswoman too," I called after her, "and I will not let you keep me from being with her!"
At that Ganeda turned once more. "Have it your own way," she said tiredly, "but when I was younger, I too had visions. I have looked into the Sacred Well, and seen that it is Dierna who will be my heir. You do well to make a friend of her, for I tell you now that it is she, not you, who will be the next Lady of Avalon!"
Slowly, the terrible summer of Becca's death faded into memory. I knew what that tragedy had done to her sister, but as time passed it became clear that Ganeda had also been affected, more deeply than we, or perhaps she herself, knew. In body she was still vigorous—indeed, I do not believe that anyone without superior stamina could do the work required of the Lady of Avalon. But the edge that could cut friend and foe alike, was gone.
I found it hard to be sorry, and being young, I did not understand how life's buffets can wear down the spirit. Nor did I care enough to try. Strong in body and delighting in my own rapidly maturing powers, I went eagerly to my testing, and, certain of my decision, bestowed the bag of gold aureii with which I had been provided upon the family of the boy who had given me Eldri ten years before.
And so I entered the mists, and drew up from the depths of my being the Word of Power that would open the way, laughing because in the end it was so easy, as if I were simply remembering something I had learned long before. Heron and Aelia did likewise when their turn came, and like me were received back with rejoicing. But Roud never returned to us.
In the year of silence that followed, I was forced to look inward in a way that the myriad demands of my training had never before allowed. It was this, I think now, that was the true initiation, for it is not the adversaries outside oneself, that can be confronted and defied, that are most dangerous, but the more subtle antagonists that dwell within.
Regarding the oath with which that year ended, I must also keep silence, save that it was, as Ganeda had promised, an act of making sacred, of sacrifice. But though I offered myself to the Lady to be used as She willed, I did not then understand the warning that we cannot predict or control what the Goddess will do with us once that commitment has been made. Nonetheless, when my oath had been given, I passed through the Mystery of the Cauldron, and the blue crescent of a priestess was placed upon my brow.
With my attention fixed upon my own struggles, I did not at first realize that things were not going so well in Avalon. During our year of silence, Aelia and I grew ever closer. I was surprised to find that wordless, I understood more of what was in her heart than ever I had when we concealed our thoughts in conversation, and knew she felt the same for me. Using our voices only to sing the offices of the Goddess, words themselves took on a new and sacred meaning.
Thus, the deliberations at the first full meeting of the consecrated priests and priestesses to which I was admitted after my year of silence seemed charged with unusual significance. In truth, matters were serious enough. It had been several years since any new youths or maidens had come to be trained at Avalon, and Roud was not the only one who had gone out for her testing and never returned. In addition, the princes whose contributions helped to maintain the community on the isle had become increasingly unwilling to pay what was due.
"It is not that we have no money," said Arganax, who had become chief among the Druids the previous year. "Britannia has never been more prosperous. But the Emperor Claudius in Rome seems to have forgotten us, and with the death of Victorinus, the Imperium Galliarum has concerns more pressing than collecting taxes here."
Cigfolla laughed. "It is his mother, Victorina, who rules there now, despite those young cousins she has set up to warm the throne, and she is twice the man he was, from all I hear. Perhaps she would welcome the assistance of Avalon!"
"The princes supported us gladly when the foot of Rome was on their necks," said Suona. "It is almost as if they feel they no longer need us—as if they can abandon the old ways of Britannia now that they are free of direct control by Rome."
For a moment we stared at her in bemused silence. Then Ganeda cleared her throat.
"Are you proposing that we work magic to bring the emperors back again?"
Suona flushed and fell silent, but the others were babbling with speculation.
"We can decide nothing without knowing what we face," Ganeda said finally, "and we have exausted the knowledge available by any ordinary means…"
"What are you proposing?" asked Arganax.
Ganeda looked around the circle with the exasperated frown I remembered so well from my days as her student.
"Are we Greeks, to waste our lives debating the limits of our philosophy? If our skills are worth preserving, let us use them! The Turning of Spring is almost upon us—let us make use of this balance point between the two halves of the year to invoke the Oracle!"
AD 270
"Seekers on the ancient ways,
Seekers on the Path of Light,
Now the Night gives way to Day,
Now the Day has equalled Night…"
Singing, the line of dark-robed priestesses moved with gliding steps around the circle, matched by the Druids in their white garments marching in the opposite direction. Dark and light in perfect balance completed the circle and came to rest. Arganax stepped forwards, lifting his hands in blessing. Behind him another priest stood waiting with the gong.
The Arch-Druid was a vigorous man in his middle years, but Ganeda, who had moved out to face him, seemed ageless, empowered by the ritual. Her robe, of so dark a blue it was almost black in the lamplight, fell in straight folds to the polished stone of the floor and the moonstones in the silver ornaments of the High Priestess glowed unwinking from her breast and brow.
"Behold, the Sun rules in the House of the Ram, and the Moon rests in the arms of the Twins," the Druid proclaimed. "The winter is past, and herbs are pushing their way towards the sunlight, birds return, proclaiming their readiness to mate, beasts emerge from their long sleep. Everywhere life arises, and ourselves with it, moved by the same tides, kindled to action by the same great energies… Keep silence, and behold the rebirth of the world, and as we are all One, behold the same great transformation within…"
I closed my eyes with the others, trembling to the vibrations of the gong that echoed from the pillars of the Great Hall of the Druids. It seemed to resonate in every atom of my being. Lost in the beauty of the moment, I forgot to feel envy that it would be Heron and not I who would be sitting on the three-legged stool and descending to the Well of Prophecy.
"Awake! Awake! Awake!" came another voice, high and clear.
"Companions of the Cosmic Light,
The hidden splendour will appear!
Greet it on high and in your hearts,
Return to life, cast off your fear!"
I opened my eyes. Four youths stood now in the corners of the hall, bearing torches. Someone had cast the first handful of herbs onto the brazier, and in their light the sweet smoke glowed as if it had ignited the air. Now I could see the images painted on the plaster of the walls—an island surrounding a harbour, great temples, a pyramidal mountain spouting flame, and other scenes from the fabled land that in one day of doom had sunk beneath the wave. Like this ritual, those tales belonged to a wisdom of which the Druids were only the inheritors.
With question and response, the ritual rolled onwards, defining the sacred moment when, Night and Day being equal, a doorway opened between Past and Future and one who was properly prepared and guided might see between the worlds.
The circle opened to reveal a veiled figure, half-supported by Wren and Aelia. Carefully they guided her to the three-legged stool, steadying her until she found her balance there. The sacred drink has taken her swiftly, I thought, watching. Goddess grant it does not take her too far…
In the old days, I knew, they had called on the Goddess Herself to speak through the lips of Her priestess. Now, though the gods might come down sometimes to dance with us at their festivals, it was considered more useful for the Seeress to become open and empty of any personality, even her own, with no will save to describe the images she saw.
The High Priestess moved forwards to stand at her side. The little table with the silver bowl had already been set before her. Berries of mistletoe floated on the water along with other herbs. From where I stood I could see the glitter of torchlight on the dark water. I felt myself sway and blinked quickly to break the spell, then turned my gaze away, hoping no one had noticed my momentary disorientation. I was a trained priestess now, and should have had better control.
"Sink down, sink down… sink deeper and sink deep…'
Ganeda's voice was a murmur, leading the Seeress on her journey inwards, downwards, until the bowl of gleaming water became one with the sacred well beside the white cypress tree. Then she straightened and stepped away.
"What passes now among the Romans? What is the Emperor Claudius doing now?" Arganax asked.
For a long moment there was silence.
"Tell us, Seeress, what you see?" Ganeda prompted her.
A shudder vibrated through the sheer folds of the veil. "I see… cypresses against a sunset sky… no, it is firelight. They are burning bodies… one of the watchers staggers and falls…" Heron spoke softly, her voice calm as if she watched from some vantage point outside of the world. "The scene changes… an old man lies in a rich room. His bed is hung with purple, but he is alone… he is dead… Would you know more?"
"Plague—" whispered someone. "May the gods grant it does not come here…'
"Is the Roman power ended, then? Will they return to Britannia?" the Druid asked, and this time Heron's answer came without prompting.
"I see armies and ships—Briton fighting Briton… blood, blood and fire—" she shook her head in confusion, as if the images were overwhelming her.
"Sink back down to that place where there is only the shining water," said Ganeda in a low voice. "Tell me, who will come to our aid?"
Heron stiffened. "The Sun! The sun blazes in splendour! It blinds my eyes!" For a moment she remained transfixed, then let out her breath in a long sigh. "Ah—He comes… his armour is Roman, but his eyes are those of one who knows the Mysteries. There is a city… I think it is Londinium. In the streets people are cheering—"Redditor lucis… redditor!"
She stumbled on the unfamiliar Latin, but I could translate it: Restorer of the Light!
So could Arganax. He traded glances with Ganeda. "If this man is an initiate, he could help us greatly," he said in a low voice. Then he bent forwards again.
"Who is he—no, where is he now?"
Once more Heron swayed above the scrying bowl. "I see him… but he is younger. Hair like dandelion—" she added in response to further questions. "He is riding a chestnut mule along a Roman road… but it is in Britannia… the road to the lead mines in the hills…"
"Here!" exclaimed Arganax. "Surely the gods have destined that he shall come to us!"
The seeress was still mumbling to herself, but at the Druid's words she straightened, quivering like a drawn bow. "Destiny!" she echoed, and then cried out suddenly in a great voice quite unlike her own. "The son of the sun, greater than his father! A cross of light burns in the sky! All things changing! Fate hangs in the balance, the son will blaze across the world!" With a last ringing cry the Seeress threw out her arms, sending the scrying bowl spinning across the floor. I saw her begin to crumple, and Aelia and I were just in time to catch her as she fell.
After the noble stonework of Avalon, the round daub-and-wattle huts of the monks on Inis Witrin seemed clumsy and mean. I drew down my veil to hide the crescent on my brow as we climbed the slope, and Con, the young Druid who had been assigned to escort me, moved forwards to take my arm. Nearly six weeks had passed since the Oracle rite, and Beltane was hard upon us. After the usual debate regarding the meaning of the oracle's pronouncements, Arganax had sent out some of his young men to the Mendip Hills to see if any Roman fitting Heron's description could be found, and we had had to wait for their reply.
"You will have to let me talk to them. These holy men are forbidden to speak with a female," he said softly. The monks allowed us to keep the few horses belonging to Avalon in their pasture, in exchange for herbs and medicines. I wondered where they thought we came from.
"What, do they think I will tempt them to impurity?" I snorted derisively. "I will need to put on the guise of an ugly old woman when we meet the Roman. I might as well begin practising now." My father had made sure his children learned good Latin—it was one of the reasons I had been chosen for the task of bringing the Roman to Avalon.
As the path curved around, I could see the round church, the lower ambulatory supporting a central tower, whose thatch shone golden in the sun. Con showed me a bench near the sanctuary where I could wait while he went off to see about the horses. It was a surprisingly peaceful place in which to sit, listening to the soft drone of chanting that came from within as I watched the meandering progress of a butterfly above the grass.
The singing in the church soared suddenly and I turned to listen. When I looked back, the butterfly had alighted on the outstretched hand of an old man. I blinked, wondering how he had come there without my seeing him, for the area all around the church was clear. The other brothers I had seen wore rough tunics woven from the undyed fleece, but the old man's garment shone snowy white and the beard that covered his chest was as white as the wool.
"The blessing of the Most High be upon you, my sister," he said softly. "And my thanks to Him for allowing me to speak with you once more."
"What do you mean?" I stammered. "I have never seen you before!"
"Ah—" he sighed. "You do not remember…"
"Remember what?" Defiantly, I pushed back my veil. "You are a follower of the Christos, and I am a priestess of Avalon!"
He nodded. That is true—today. But in ages past we were both of the same order, in the land that now is sunk beneath the waves. Lives and lands pass away, but the Light of the Spirit shines still."
My lips parted in shock. How could this monk know about the Mysteries? "What—" I stammered, struggling for focus. "Who are you?"
"My name in this place is Joseph. But it is not my name you should be asking, but your own."
"I am called Eilan," I answered swiftly, "and Helena…'
"Or Tiriki…" he answered, and I blinked, finding a strange familiarity in that name. "If you do not know who you are, how can you find your way?"
"I know where I am going—" With an effort I stopped myself from blurting out my mission, but it struck me that the old man already knew.
He shook his head and sighed. "Your spirit knows, but I fear that the flesh you wear now must walk a weary way before you understand. Remember: the symbol is nothing. It is the reality behind all symbols that is all."
I was still no closer to comprehending who or what this old man might be, but I had training enough to know that what he said was true.
"Good father, what must I do?"
"Seek ever for the Light…" he answered, and with his words, the sunlight on his white robe grew blinding.
I blinked, and when I looked up, Con was standing before me, saying something about the horses, and the old man was gone.
"The horses are waiting down by the gate," the young Druid repeated, "and the day is wearing on."
Still wondering, I allowed him to help me to my feet. I knew better than to speak of what I had seen, but I knew that I would be thinking about it for a long time to come.
Dusk was drawing its cloak across the Vale of Avalon, covering marsh and meadow alike with the same dim purple-grey. From my post by the Mendip road I could see from the higher ground in the east almost all the way to the Sabrina estuary, where the sun was setting into the sea. Now all but the Tor lay in shadow, with a gleam of water below. For ten years I had said farewell to the sun from within that scene; it was fascinating to observe it from outside. Indeed, it was in all ways strange and fearful and oddly exciting to be back in the world of humankind, even if only for a little while.
Con touched my elbow. "It is almost dark. The Roman should be coming soon."
"Thank you," I nodded, glancing up at the clouds that loomed to the north. Even the folk of Avalon could not call rain from an empty sky, and we had had to wait for a weather pattern that would serve my purpose. I had held the clouds at bay throughout the afternoon. Now I released some of the energies that bound them, and felt on my cheek the chill damp breath of the storm.
To learn that Heron's vision of the death of the Emperor had been a true Seeing was encouraging. The men who drank at the taverna near the lead mines were full of gossip. It was said that Claudius had willed the Empire to another general called Aurelian, by-passing his own brother, Quintillus, who, after an abortive attempt at a coup, had died by his own hand.
"He will come, never fear," said the Druid who had been waiting for us. "These Romans are creatures of habit, and every evening for the past week he has come this way."
"He is fair-haired?" I asked once again.
"As fair as bleached flax, with the mark of Mithras between his brows."
I reached up beneath my veil to touch the blue crescent tattoed on my own forehead. He is an initiate, I reminded myself, and may see more than an ordinary man. I will have to be careful.
From beyond the curve of the road came a curlew's piping call, an unlikely sound for the high moors, but the Roman whose coming it signalled would not know that. I took a deep breath, lifted my arms to the heavens, and released the clouds.
In moments I felt the first spatterings. By the time the figure on the red mule came into view the rain was driving down in sheets, as several storm fronts that would have passed over one at a time simultaneously released all their stored rain.
Our quarry had pulled up in the tenuous shelter of an elder bush, holding his sagum cloak half over his head in a vain attempt to protect it. For a little longer I watched him.
"Stay out of sight," I told the two Druids, wrapping my mantle more securely, "but when I move, follow me." I gave my mount a kick and reined it across the slope below the road.
"Help—oh, please, help me!" I called in the Roman tongue, pitching my voice to carry above the storm and hauling on the reins of the pony, who had started to plunge as if to make my plight a reality. For a moment nothing happened, and I let the pony move forwards, clutching its mane. "Can anyone hear me?" I cried again, and saw the red mule at the rim of the hill.
I was wearing a white mantle so that the Roman should be able to see it even through the storm. I screamed and gave the pony a good kick, hanging on desperately as it galloped down the hill. I heard a Roman oath and the crashing of brush as the mule scrambled after me, but we were all the way down the hill and well into the tangle of oak and alder beyond before the Roman caught up with me.
"Lady, are you hurt?" His voice was deep, and so far as I could see beneath his sagum, his body seemed sturdy, though he was tall. He grabbed for the reins that I had artistically allowed to fall as he arrived.
My pony ceased to struggle, recognizing a master's hand, and freed of the need to divide my strength between my mount and the storm, I drew the next squall shrieking down upon us.
"Thank you! Thank you! The pony ran and I feared I would fall!"
He edged the mule closer and put his arm around my shoulders. I leaned against him gratefully, aware now just how long it had been since I had done much riding. His warmth spread through me faster than I would have expected. Perhaps Heron was right, I thought dimly, and he really was the sun.
"I must get you to shelter," he muttered against my hair, and a shiver ran through me at the touch of his warm breath. The storm had expended its first fury, but the rain was still driving down.
"That way—" I said, pointing south. "There is an old tile shed." The tile-makers had not yet started work for the summer: we had slept there on our journey here.
By the time we reached the shed, I did not have to feign exhaustion. My knees gave way as I slid down from the pony, and only the Roman's quick reactions saved me from falling. For a moment he held me, and I realized that we were matched in height. In what else would we be a match? I wondered then, feeling the strength in his arms.
Not that I was likely to find out. The Council, in its wisdom, had decided to bind the Roman to our cause by giving him one of our number in the Great Rite at the Beltane fires; but the priestess whom the lots had selected to be his consort was not me, but Aelia.
I watched, shivering, as the Roman proceeded with swift efficiency to build a fire. At least the tile-makers had left plenty of fuel for it. The little flame leapt and kindled, revealing a sinewy arm, strong cheekbones, short hair plastered close to his head and darkened to old gold by the rain. As the fire began to catch in the larger branches, he stood to unfasten his sagum and drape it, dripping, over one of the low beams. He wore a tunic of good, grey wool edged with red. A short sword in a well-worn leather sheath hung at his side.
"Let me take your mantle, Lady," he said, turning. "The fire will warm the air in here soon, and perhaps it will dry—"
The fire flared suddenly, for the first time revealing him fully, and my world stood still. I saw intelligent grey eyes that enlivened a rather ordinary face, permanently reddened by exposure to sun and wind and pinker than ever from the cold. Tired and wet, he was hardly at his best, but he would never be famous for beauty. His colouring proclaimed him Roman by culture rather than ancestry; he hardly seemed the stuff of prophecy.
Yet I knew him.
In the ceremony that made me a woman, the Goddess had shown him to me. He was the lover who would claim me at the Beltane fires, and I was the woman who would bear his child…
The Druids found the wrong man, I thought desperately. This is not the hero of Heron's vision, but of my own…
And if they were the same?
I do not know what my face showed at that moment, but the Roman took a step backwards, lifting his hands in self-deprecation.
"Please, domina, do not be afraid. I am Flavius Constantius Chlorus, at your service."
I felt myself flushing as I realized that I hardly looked my best either. But that was as it should be. He must see me as ugly, old even, until I knew… until I knew whether he was my destiny…
"Julia Helena thanks you," I murmured, giving my own Roman name. It felt as strange on my tongue as the Latin. The girl who bore that name had lived another lifetime, ten years ago. But suddenly I wondered if she was destined to live again.
A leather flask hung at his side. He pulled the strap over his head and held it out to me. "It is only wine, but it may warm you—"
I managed a smile, and turned to rummage in my saddlebags. "And I have here a little bread and cheese and dried fruit that my sisters packed for me."
"Then we will feast." Constantius seated himself on the other side of the fire and smiled.
It transformed his face, and I felt a rush of heat that seared my flesh like fire. Wordless, I held out the loaf of bread, and he took it from my hand. I had heard once that in the hill country, to share a meal, a fire and a bed made a marriage. We had the first two already, and for the first time in my life I felt the temptation to deny my vows.
When my fingers brushed his, he had trembled. My extended senses knew that at a level below thought, he was responding to my nearness. My Druid escorts were outside somewhere. They would not disturb us unless I screamed. It would take very little, a step in the Roman's direction, a shiver as if I was cold and needed his arms to warm me. A man and a woman, alone together—our bodies would do the rest without direction.
But what of our souls?
To come to him without honour would destroy that other thing, sweeter even than the desire that heated my body: the potential that I sensed between us. And so, although I felt like a starving woman pushing food away, I edged back, drawing ugliness around me like a tattered cloak, the reverse of the glamour a priestess knows how to wear.
Constantius shook his head a little, cast a frowning glance at me and looked away. "Do you live nearby?" he asked politely.
"I dwell with my sisters on the edge of the marshes," I answered truthfully, "near the isle where the Christian monks have their sanctuary."
"The isle of Inis Witrin? I have heard of it—"
"We can come to my home tomorrow before the sun is high," I said. "I would be grateful for your escort—"
"Of course. The men who oversee my family's holdings would rather I had never come here—they will not care if I miss a day or more," he added bitterly.
"How did you come to riding the back roads of Britannia? You seem a man of authority," I asked with real curiosity.
"Not to mention family connections." There was an edge to the bitterness now. "My grandmother was sister to the Emperor Claudius. I wanted to make my own way by ability, not patronage. But since my great-uncle tried to seize the Imperium, and failed, I will settle for simply staying alive. The new Emperor has good reason to distrust men of my family."
He shrugged and took a pull from the wineskin. "My mother's family has investments here in Britannia—an import company in Eburacum, and an interest in the lead mines, and it seemed a good time to send an agent to check on them. At the moment, the Gallic Empire is safer for me than Rome."
"But will not Tetricus and… what is his name, Marius, consider you a danger?"
Constantius shook his head and laughed. "It is Victorina Augusta who really rules. They call her the Mother of the Camps, you know, but she has little attention to spare for Britannia. So long as she gets a share of the profits, they will leave me alone. Emperors may come and go, but business makes the world go round!"
"You do not sound very happy about it," I observed. "I would not have guessed you for a merchant."
For a moment that grey gaze held my own. "And what did you think I was?"
"An army man," I answered, for thus, in vision I had seen him.
"Until a few months ago that was so." His face darkened. "I was born at an army post in Dacia. It is all I know, all I ever wanted to be."
"Are you so eager for battle?" I asked curiously. He did not seem bloodthirsty, but how could I know?
"Say rather, that I want what battle can win," he corrected. "Justice. Order. Safety for the folk beyond the frontier so that peace can grow…" He fell silent, his ruddy skin reddening further, and I judged he was not a man who often let his feelings show.
"Your fortunes will turn," I assured him. For a moment he eyed me uncertainly, and I reinforced the illusion that disguised me. "But now we should sleep," I went on. "Tomorrow's journey will be difficult after such a storm." But in truth, it was not the riding that had exhausted me, but the effort to conceal my essence when what I really wanted was to offer him my body and my soul.
The rain had stopped by morning, but as I had anticipated, as the day grew warmer, the saturated ground gave up its excess moisture in wisps of fog. As we rode it grew thicker, until tree and meadow disappeared and the only thing visible was the path.
"Domina," said Constantius, "we must halt, before we wander from the road and end up sinking in some bog."
"Do not be afraid. I know the way," I answered him, and indeed, I could feel the power of Avalon drawing me forwards. We had come around by the higher ground to the north and east, where a narrow neck of land ran out to the isle.
"I am not afraid, but I am not a fool, either!" he snapped back at me. "We will go back to the shelter and wait for the weather to clear." He reached out to take my bridle rein.
I kicked the pony forwards and reined it sharply around. "Flavius Constantius Chlorus, look at me!" I let the illusion of ugliness fade and called up the power of the priestess to take its place. I could tell I was succeeding when his face changed.
"Lady—" he breathed, "now I see you as I did before…"
I wondered what he meant, as this was the first time I had used the glamour, but the power was continuing to build around me.
"I have been sent to bring you to the holy isle of Avalon. Will you come with me freely and of your own will?"
"What will I find there?" He was still staring at me.
"Your destiny…" And Aelia, I thought then. For a moment I wanted to cry out to him to turn, to flee.
"And will I return to the human world?"
"It is there that your fate will be fulfiled." Ten years of discipline spoke through me now.
"And will you go with me? Swear!"
"I will. I swear it by my eternal soul." Later, I told myself that I had believed he was asking if I would go with him to Avalon, but I think now that a deeper wisdom made that vow.
"Then I will come with you now."
I turned, lifting my arms to draw down the power, and as I spoke the spell, the world changed around us, and with the next step the mist was rolling away to either side and we entered Avalon.
Since dawn the drums had throbbed through the earth of the holy isle, the heartbeat of Avalon, filled with the excitement of the festival. White hawthorn weighted the hedges, and creamy primroses and bluebells flourished beneath the trees. It was Beltane eve, and all the world trembled with expectation. All but Aelia, who was trembling with fear.
"Why has the Goddess laid this upon me?" she whispered, curled upon the bed that had been hers while we awaited initiation. There were currently no priestesses in training, and they had given the house to us to prepare the Beltane Bride for the festival.
"I do not know," I answered her. "But we have been taught that often Her reasons for setting our feet upon a path are not apparent until we reach its ending…" I spoke for my own sake as much as for hers. In the three days since I had brought Constantius to the isle I had not seen him, but he haunted my dreams.
Aelia shook her head. "I never intended to go to the Beltane fires. I would happily have lived a virgin until my life's end!"
I put my arms around her and rocked her gently. Our unbound hair mingled on the pillow, dark gold and light. "Constantius will not hurt you, darling. I rode with him for two days—he is a gentleman…"
"He is a man!"
"Why did you not tell them of your fear when they chose you?" I stroked her hair. And why, I asked myself, had the lot not fallen on me?
"We swore obedience to the Council at our initiation. I thought they must know best…"
I sighed, understanding how it must have been. Of us all, Aelia had always been the most biddable. For the first time I wondered it the lot had fallen upon her entirely by chance.
"They said the Goddess would give me the strength to do it, but I am afraid… Help me, Eilan! Help me to escape this, or I will drown myself in the sacred pool!"
I stilled, understanding in a single instant how I might fulfil both her desire and my own. Or perhaps I had already planned it in some secret part of my soul, and only now, like some moulting insect hidden in the soil, had the idea emerged into the light of day. Justifications came easily—Aelia was the choice not of the Goddess, but of Ganeda. All that was required was a virgin priestess.
It did not matter who she was, so long as she came willingly to the fire. And the substitution would be so easy. Though she was paler in colouring than I, and thinner as well, Aelia and I were enough alike for newcomers to mistake us. The younger girls nicknamed us the sun and the moon.
The one reason I did not give myself was the true one—that Constantius Chlorus was mine, and it would be like death to see him lead another woman to the bridal bower.
"Ssh… be easy…" I kissed Aelia's soft hair. "Both the Bride and her attendants go veiled to the ceremony. We will exchange clothing and I will take your place in the ritual."
Aelia sat up, gazing at me wide-eyed. "But if you disobey, Ganeda will punish you!"
"It doesn't matter…" I answered. Not once I have spent the night in Constantius' arms!
The firelight, seen through the sheer linen of my veil and the screen of branches, filled the circle with a golden haze. Or perhaps it was the aura of power that the dancers were raising, for with each circuit around the bonfire it grew stronger. All the folk of Avalon were here in the meadow at the foot of the Tor, and most of the people from the Lake village as well. My whole body vibrated as the earth shook to their footfalls, or perhaps it was the beating of my heart. I could feel the dancing building to its crescendo. Soon… I thought, licking dry lips. It would be soon…
The other maidens shifted restlessly on the bench beside me, Heron and Aelia and Wren, all of us clad alike in green gowns and veils and garlands of spring flowers. But only I bore the hawthorn crown. My skin still tingled from the water of the sacred pool, for we had all helped to bathe Aelia, and in the process been cleansed ourselves. I had shared her fast and her vigil; all the ritual requirements had been completed. This substitution might be disobedience, but at least it would not be sacrilege.
"The Roman has been bathed and prepared as well," said Ganeda, who waited with us. "When he arrives, you will be brought out to him. Together, you will partake of the sacred food, and together you will enter the bower on the far side of the dancing floor. You are a virgin field, in which he will sow the seed that will engender the Child of the Prophecy."
"And what will I give to him?" I whispered.
"In the outer world, the female is passive while the male initiates action. But on the inner planes, it is otherwise. I have spoken with this young man, and at present fortune does not smile upon him. It is for you to awaken his spirit, to arouse and activate the higher soul within him, that he may fulfil his own destiny and become the Restorer of the Light for Britannia."
I dared not ask more, lest my voice be recognized, and then I heard a change in the drumming and my throat began to ache so with tension that I could not have spoken if I had tried.
The Druids were coming in, their white robes washed with gold by the firelight, wreaths of oak leaves upon their hair. But as I watched I caught a glimpse of brighter gold among them. The people were cheering; the air throbbed with wave upon wave of sound. Dizzied, I shut my eyes, and when I opened them again I blinked, dazzled by the golden figure who stood before the fire.
As my sight adjusted I saw that it was only a saffron tunic to which the light had added a deeper gold, but the wreath that crowned Constantius was fashioned of the true metal, like that of an emperor. I realized that when I had last seen him, splashed with mud and worn out by our battle with the storm, Constantius had not been at his best either. Now, his skin glowed against the tunic, and his fair hair was as bright as the wreath of gold.
"He is Lugos come among us," breathed Heron.
"And Apollo," whispered Aelia.
"And Mithras of the Soldiers," added Wren.
He stood like the sun god in the midst of the Druid oaks. If I had not loved him already, in that moment I would have adored him, for the body of the man had become a clear vessel through which shone the light of the god within.
If I had watched for much longer, I think I might have passed into an ecstasy that precluded movement, but now the drumming was giving way to the music of bells and harpstrings. The maidens beside me assisted me to my feet as the screen of branches was lifted away. The noise of the crowd became a hush of awe, and there was only the music.
Constantius turned as we came forward, and his exalted expression focused suddenly, as if he could see past the veil to the woman, or the goddess within. Wren scattered flowers before me, Aelia and Heron walked to either side, and then they too fell back and I went on alone. Constantius and I faced one another, priest to priestess, across a little table that bore a loaf of bread, a dish of salt, and a cup and flagon filled with water from the sacred spring.
"My lord, the gifts of the earth I offer you. Eat, and be strengthened." I broke off a piece of bread, dipped it in the salt and offered it to him.
"You are the fertile earth. I accept your bounty," Constantius replied. He ate the piece of bread, tore off another and held it out to me. "And I shall spend my strength to care for the sacred soil."
When I had eaten, he picked up the flagon, poured some of the water into the cup and held it out to me. "I am poured out for you like water. Drink, and be renewed."
"You are the rain that falls from heaven. I receive your blessing." I sipped from the cup, then offered it back to him. "But all waters are at last reborn from the sea."
He took the cup from my hand and drank.
The drum began to beat once more. I took a step backwards, beckoning, and he followed me. The music moved faster, and I began to dance.
My feet no longer seemed to belong to me; my body had become an instrument to express the music as I bent and swayed in the sinuous spirals of the sacred dance. My garment, of a linen almost as fine as the veils that hid my face, clung and flared as I whirled. But always as I circled, Constantius was my centre, to whom I turned as a flower to the sun.
First he swayed, and then, as the music broke through the last of his Roman conditioning, he began to move, a stamping, vigorous kind of dance, as if he marched to music. Closer and closer we came, mirroring each other's movements, until he caught me in his arms. For a moment we stood breast to breast. I could feel his heart beating as if it were my own.
Then he lifted me, as easily as if I had weighed no more than Heron, and bore me away to the bower.
It was a round hut in the ancient fashion, made from branches loosely woven together. Flowers had been twined among them, and firelight gleamed through the gaps, dappling the rich cloth that covered the bed, and the walls, and our bodies, with golden light. Constantius set me on my feet again and we faced each other, silent, until the golden leaves of his wreath no longer quivered with the swiftness of his breathing.
"I am all that is, has been, and will be," I said softly, "and no man has ever lifted my veil. Make pure your heart, oh you who would look upon the Mystery."
"I have been purified according to the Law," he answered me. Then he added, "I have eaten from the drum; I have drunk from the cymbal. I have seen the light that shines in the darkness. I will lift your veil."
These words were not the ones the priests had taught him. Clearly, he was not only an initiate of the Soldiers' God, but of the Mother and the Daughter as they are known in the southern lands. He reached out, and with steady hands lifted the hawthron wreath from my brow, and then drew off my veil. For a moment he simply stared at my face. Then he knelt before me.
"It is you! Even in the storm I knew you. You are the Goddess indeed! Did you show yourself to me first in the guise of a hag to test me, and is this my reward?"
I swallowed, gazing down at his bent head, and then, bending, took off his golden crown and laid it beside my wreath of flowers.
"With this crown or without it, you are the God to me…" I managed to say. "It was I indeed, and even then, I loved you."
He looked up at me, his eyes still wide and unfocused, set his hands upon my hips and drew me forwards until his bent head rested at the joining of my thighs. I felt a sweet fire began to build between them, and suddenly, my knees would no longer bear me, and I slid down, down, between his hands until we knelt together, breast to breast and brow to brow.
Constantius gave a little sigh then, and his lips found mine. And as if that had completed a circuit of power, suddenly the fire was everywhere. I clutched at his shoulders, and his arms came tight around me, and together we fell to the bed that had been prepared for us.
Our clothing had been made so that at the removal of a few pins it would fall away, and soon there was no impediment between us. His body was hard with muscle, but his skin was smooth, sliding across mine, and his strong hands tender as he taught me ecstasies that had never been mentioned in my training. And then we came together. I set my arms about him as the power of the God came down, shaking him until he cried out in his extremity. And as he gave his soul into my keeping, the power of the Goddess bore my own away to meet him and there was only light.
When time had come back from eternity once more and we lay quiet, clasped in each other's arms, I realized that outside the hut, people were cheering. Constantius stilled, listening.
"Are they cheering for us?"
"They have lit the bonfire atop the Tor," I said softly. "On this night, there is no separation between your world and Avalon. The priests will huddle in their cells for fear of the powers of darkness, but the fire that is lit here will be visible all over the Vale. On other hills, folk are waiting to see it. They will kindle their own fires then, and so, from hill to hill, the light will spread across Britannia."
"And what about this fire?" he touched me once more and I gasped as flame rippled upwards.
"Ah, my beloved, I think the fire we have kindled between us will light the whole world!"
AD 270
When I woke, the pale light of early morning was filtering through the leaves of the bower. The air was moist and cool on my bare skin. I burrowed back under the covers, and the man beside me grunted, turned, and flung out a possessive arm to draw me close against his side. For a moment I stiffened in confusion, then my awakening senses flooded me with memory. I turned, fitting myself more closely against him, astonished, despite the unaccustomed soreness in my body, by how right it felt to lie this way.
I could hear no human sounds, but the birds were singing a triumphant welcome to the new day. I raised myself on one elbow, gazing down at the sleeping face of my—lover? That seemed too light a word for our union, and yet what had passed between us had surely been more personal than the transcendent joining of priest and priestess as they manifest the power of the Divine into the world.
Though that, certainly, had been part of it. A reminiscent tremor of energy quivered in the area of my solar plexus as I remembered. When we came together, the awakening earth had been filled by the radiant power of the sun. If I extended my senses groundward I could feel the aftermath of that conjunction, like ripples spreading through the stillness of a pool.
And what else had the ritual accomplished? I focused on my own body, lips swollen with kissing, breasts awakened to an exquisite sensitivity, the muscles of my inner thighs sore with unaccustomed stretching, and the secret place between them beginning to throb once more as memory stimulated new desire. I forced awareness deeper, into the womb that had received Constantius's seed. Was I pregnant? Even my priestess-trained senses could not tell. I realized that I was smiling. If last night's love-making had not planted a child in my belly, we would have to try again…
Relaxed in sleep, Constantius had a serenity I would not have suspected. His body, where the sun did not touch it, was like ivory. I gazed upon his face with growing delight, memorizing the strong lines of cheek and jaw, the high-bridged nose, the noble sweep of his brow. In the pale light the brand of Mithras was barely visible to the eye, but to my inner senses it glowed, focusing the radiance of the soul within.
As if that awareness had been a physical touch, he began to waken, first with a sigh, and then with a flutter of the eyelids, and then the muscles of the face tightening into their accustomed lines as he opened his eyes. He was, it would seem, one of those fortunate people who pass in one instant from unconsciousness to full awareness. The grey eyes that gazed up at me were wide, not with sleep, but wonder.
"Sanctissima Dea …" he whispered.
I smiled and shook my head, unsure whether that had been a title or an exclamation. "Not now," I answered. "Morning has come, and I am only Helena."
"Yes—now," he corrected. "And when you came to me last night, and when you sat as a hag beside my fire, and when you summoned me to Avalon. The Greeks say that Anchises trembled in fear because he lay with a goddess all unknowing. But I knew—" He reached up, and very gently brushed the hanging lock of hair back from my brow. "And if the gods had blasted me for my presumption, I would have counted the price well paid."
The gods had not blasted us, though there had been moments when we might well have been overcome by ecstasy. It was Ganeda, I thought suddenly, who was going to blast me when she realized I had taken Aelia's place in the ritual.
"What is it?" he asked. "What is the matter?"
"Nothing—nothing you have done," I said quickly, and bent to kiss him. Clearly reverence did not unman him, for his response was instant. He pulled me down beside him, and in the flood of sensation as he made love to me all thought was for a time submerged.
When I became capable of coherent thought once more, the light that was filtering through the leaves of the bower was bright and golden, and I could hear the murmur of voices from outside.
"We should dress," I murmured against his cheek. "The priestesses will be coming soon."
His grip tightened suddenly. "Will I see you again?"
"I… do not know…" Yesterday, I had not really thought beyond the ritual. I had known I wanted Constantius, but I had not considered how difficult it would be, once I had lain with him, to let him go.
"Come with me—"
I shook my head, not in denial, but confusion. I believed that I had been justified in taking the place of the Beltane Bride because Constantius was the lover promised to me by my vision. But if that was so, then what of the images of foreign lands that I had seen? Much as I loved him, I did not want to leave Avalon.
"What does this mean to you?" Gently I brushed the sign of Mithras on his brow.
For a moment he looked taken aback. I waited as he struggled to frame an answer, understanding how deep was the inhibition against speaking of the Mysteries.
"It is a sign… of my devotion to the God of Light…" he said finally.
"As this sign signifies my own dedication to the Goddess—" I indicated the blue crescent between my own brows. "I am a priestess of Avalon, and bound by my vows."
"Was it only obedience to your vows that brought you to me last night?" he asked, frowning.
"Can you truly think that, after this morning?" I tried to smile.
"Helena—I beg of you, let there always be truth between us!" His face had gone grim.
For a long moment I met his gaze, wondering how much I dared say. But surely he was going to hear about it as soon as I emerged from the bower and they saw it was not Aelia.
"I took the place of the priestess they meant for your bride. I have the Sight, and it showed me your face long ago. And then I was sent to bring you here, and… I began to love you…"
"You disobeyed?" In his face anxiety warred with satisfaction. "Will they punish you?"
"Even the Lady of Avalon cannot change what has happened between us," I managed a smile. But we both knew that I had not really answered him.
There was a sound outside and I stiffened. Someone was knocking softly against the upright of the door.
"Eilan, can you hear me? Is the Roman asleep?"
It was Aelia's voice, and I remembered suddenly that she had been told that after she lay with him she must make sure Constantius drank the contents of the silver flask in the corner so that he would sleep while she slipped away.
"Eilan, come quickly, and no one will—" She broke off with a gasp. I heard the sound of several people approaching, and the pit of my stomach went suddenly cold. With a leaden certainty I knew it would be Ganeda even before I heard the next words.
"Is she still sleeping? It would seem she did not fear a man's touch so greatly after all. You will have to go in and wake her…" The laughter stilled. "Aelia!"
There was a short, charged, silence. As I started to drape the coverlet around me Constantius gripped my arm.
"You shall not face them alone—"
After a moment I nodded, and waited while he twisted my veil about his loins, reminding me of the statues I had seen in Londinium. One arm went protectively around me. With the other, he pushed aside the woven curtain that covered the doorway, and together we emerged into the uncompromising illumination of the new day.
It was worse than I had expected. Not only Ganeda and the priestesses, but Arganax and his Druids, were standing there. Aelia still crouched by the doorway, weeping silently. I reached down to touch her shoulder and she clung to me.
"I… see…" said the High Priestess in a voice like grating stones. She looked around her at the dancing floor, and I saw that the people who had dropped down to sleep there, in couples or alone, were beginning to awaken and cast curious glances at the scene by the bower. With an obvious effort she controlled the words that trembled on her lips.
"Aelia… and Eilan—" she ground out the names, "—will come with me." Her gaze turned to Constantius. "My lord, the Druids wait to attend you."
His grip on me tightened. "You will not harm her!"
Ganeda's face darkened further as she realized just how much I must have told him.
"Do you think we are barbarians?" she snapped, and he responded to the note of command and let me go, though in truth that was no answer at all.
"It will be all right," I said in a low voice, though my gut was still knotting in apprehension.
"I will not lose you!" Constantius replied, and it occurred to me that not only had I not anticipated how this night would bind me to him, I had not even imagined how it might affect his feelings for me.
I helped Aelia to rise, and putting my arm around her, started towards my reckoning.
"Why does it matter?" I exclaimed. "Both of your purposes have been accomplished. You wanted a man of destiny for the Great Rite, and you wanted to win his friendship for Avalon."
The sun was nearing noon, and we were still arguing. By now, my belly was cramping not from fear but from hunger.
"You forget the third reason, and that was the most important of all," Ganeda said grimly. "Constantius was to engender the Child of Prophecy!"
"And so he shall, with me! In my womanhood vision I saw myself with his child!"
"But not the child of the Great Rite—" the High Priestess said grimly. "Why do you think Aelia was intended as his consort in the ritual?"
"Because you could bend her to your will!"
"You little fool—she was chosen, indeed, but not for that reason. In your arrogance you thought you knew better than the Council of Avalon, but you were an untried maiden, ignorant of the Mother's Mysteries. Last night Aelia was at the height of her fertile time. If the Roman had lain with her she would have come away pregnant, and the child would have been born here in Avalon."
"How do you know I am not?"
"Your moontime is barely three days past," she answered me, "and I have examined you. There is no spark of new life in your womb."
"There will be. Destiny cannot be denied—" I answered, but the first breath of doubt stole the force from my words. "Constantius has pledged his faith to me—a priestess will bear his son!"
"But when? Even now do you not understand? A child begotten last night would have preserved the Mysteries for a thousand years. Even if your fantasies were true, what stars will rule the fate of the babe you finally bear?"
"He will be my son," I muttered. "I will raise him to serve the gods."
Ganeda shook her head in disgust. "I should have sent you back to your father long since. You have been a trouble-maker since the first day you arrived!"
"You missed your chance!" I hissed, touching the crescent on my brow. "He is dead, and I am a priestess now."
"And, I am the Lady of Avalon!" she snapped in return, "and your life is in my hand!"
"All your anger, Ganeda, cannot change what has been done," I said wearily. "At least I have won Constantius's friendship for Avalon."
"And what about that which was undone? Do you think the man will come back every Beltane like a stallion to stud until he gets you with child?"
Some tension eased within me. I had feared she would forbid me ever to see him again. Surely he would come back, I told myself, and somehow I would endure until that day.
"So, what is my punishment?"
"Punishment?" There was venom in her smile. "Did I not promise the Roman I would do you no harm? You have chosen your own condemnation, Helena. When Constantius leaves, you shall go with him…'
"Leave… Avalon?" I whispered.
"That is what he is demanding—be grateful you are not being turned out like a beggar to wander the world!"
"But what about my vows?"
"You should have thought about your vows last night, before they were broken! In the old days you would have burned for that crime." In her lined face, a sour satisfaction was replacing the fury.
I stared at her. I had disobeyed her order, certainly, but surely I had given myself to Constantius as the Goddess willed.
"You have until the sun goes down to make ready," Ganeda said then. "When the sun goes down and the festival is over, you will be banished from Avalon."
The Christians, I had heard, had a legend that told how the first parents of humankind were exiled from Paradise. When the mists of Avalon closed behind me I understood how they must have felt. Had it comforted Eve to know that Adam was still beside her? Knowing that my own choices had forced this destiny upon me was little comfort.
I told myself that if Constantius had gone alone, leaving me behind, I would have been weeping bitterly, but the grief that kept me numb and silent as the barge bore us through the mists was of a deeper order entirely.
As we slid up onto the shore below the Lake people's village I felt a sudden disorientation, as if one of my senses had disappeared. I staggered, and Constantius lifted me in his arms and bore me up the bank. When he set me on my feet again I clung to him, trying to understand what had happened to me.
"It is all right," he whispered, holding me against him. "It is all behind us now."
I looked back across the Lake, and realized that the psychic sense that had always told me where to find Avalon was no longer there. Physical sight showed me marshland and blue water, and the beehive huts on the Christian isle. But when I had left before, I had only to close my eyes in order to sense, at an odd angle to the mortal world, the way to Avalon. I had taken the link for granted. Through it, the High Priestess could check on the well-being of her absent daughters, for even when priestesses were sent on errands away from the holy isle a thread of connection remained.
But now, Ganeda had severed it, and I was like a sapling that the flood uproots and whirls away. By the time I ceased my weeping, a cold grey dawn was breaking once more.
I do not know whether the fact that Constantius tolerated me for the next few weeks was a measure of his honour or his love. He told the keeper of the posting-inn where we spent the next night that I was ill, and it was true, though my sickness was not of the body, but of the soul. By day, my only comfort was Eldri's devotion, and by night, the strength of Constantius's arms. And when it became clear to him that it was a constant torture for me to live where every clear day showed me the Vale of Avalon, he concluded his business at the mines and we set out for Eburacum, where the workshops his family owned turned some of the lead into pewterware.
Constantius hired a trader to guide us cross-country through lanes and by-ways to the great Roman road that runs northeast from Lindinis to Lindum. For the first few days I rode in dismal silence, too wrapped up in my own grief to notice my surroundings. Still, if any time of the year could reconcile one to the loss of Avalon, I suppose it must be the smiling season that follows Beltane.
Cold though the wind might sometimes blow, the bone-deep chill of winter was gone. The triumphant sun laid a golden blessing across the land, and the land with joyous abandon made it welcome. The brilliant green of new leaves resounded with the songs of returning birds, and every hedgerow and woodland ride was adorned with flowers. As day followed glorious day, my body, like the earth, responded to that radiant light.
For so long—too long—I had searched out herbs only for their utility. Now I picked the creamy primroses and the nodding bluebells, bright celandine and hidden violets and forget-me-nots like pieces of fallen sky, for no other reason than that they were beautiful. The training of Avalon was intended to develop the spirit, and all the resources of mind and body were put at its service, under the direction of a disciplined will. The needs of the flesh were given grudging recognition only at the festivals, and those of the heart, no honour at all. But Constantius had conquered my awakening senses, and my heart was carried along in their triumph, a willing prisoner. I made no attempt at resistance: banished from the realm of the spirit, the world and its pleasures were all that remained to me.
We travelled slowly, staying sometimes at villas and farmsteads, and sometimes sleeping under the stars in some woodland thicket or in a field by the side of the road. The first significant town along our route was Aquae Sulis, tucked into the hills where the Abona curved round on its way to the Sabrina estuary. I know now that it was a small place, but at the time I was impressed by its elegance. Since ancient times the healing springs had been considered holy, but the Romans, for whom bathing was a social necessity, had made of the place a spa that could compete with any in the Empire.
As we rode in I marvelled at the buildings, constructed from warm golden stone. The people who thronged the streets were well-dressed, and I became abruptly conscious of what a week of journeying had done to my only gown. And my hair—I drew my veil up hastily, and nudged my pony closer to Constantius's mule.
"My lord—"
He turned with a smile, and I was surprised by how naturally he fitted into this civilized scene.
"Constantius, we cannot stay here. I have nothing to wear."
"That is precisely why I wanted to stop here, my love," he grinned back at me. "It's little enough I have to offer in return for all you have given up for me, but Aquae Sulis contains, in miniature, the best of the Empire. I have enough funds for us to stay for a few days in a decent inn, and enjoy the baths, and buy clothing that will do justice to your beauty."
I began to protest, but he shook his head. "When we arrive at Eburacum, I will be introducing you to my associates in business, and you must do me credit. Think of the shopping as something you can do for me."
I sat back in the saddle, my face flaming. It was still a wonder to be reminded that he thought me beautiful. I did not know if it was true—there were no mirrors on Avalon—but it mattered little so long as I found favour in his eyes.
Shopping in Aquae Sulis was rather overwhelming to one who had grown up with one gown for everyday and one for ritual, though even Constantius widened his eyes at the prices. I came away with a tunica the colour of terra cotta, banded at the hem with green and gold, and a palla of green wool to wear with it, and another ensemble in the rosy shades of dawn. I acceded willingly to whatever Constantius wanted me to wear, so long as it was not priestess-blue.
Leaving Eldri to guard our gear in the inn, we dined in the garden of a taverna on the main street, and then proceeded to the temple complex that included the baths. It was becoming clear that Aquae Sulis was not an ordinary Roman town. Dominated by the religious buildings that had grown up around the sacred spring, it was as dedicated, in its own way, as Avalon. I was accustomed to fine stonework, though the carvings that adorned the buildings seemed ornate after the stark simplicity of the isle. And though it was true that my people had carved images of their deities, the Druids of Avalon taught that the gods were most truly worshipped beneath the open sky.
Thus, I could tell myself that the image of Sulis Minerva that stood in the round tholos in the square before the bath precincts was only a statue, though I avoided meeting the calm gaze of the bronze head beneath the gilded helmet as I hurried by. I hung back as Constantius purchased a bag of incense to cast on the fire that burned on the altar in the courtyard, resenting his unselfconscious piety even as I admired it. But what had such observances to do with me, who had known the Mysteries of Avalon? Known, and lost them … a deeper self reminded me. Very well, I told myself, I would learn to survive with no gods at all.
A Gorgon-face glared fiercely from the portico of the temple, its hair and beard writhing in contorted rays. Another solar deity reigned from the arch that led into the baths. For Constantius's sake, I thought then, I might make an exception of that one.
He paid our fees and we passed beneath the arch, and I coughed at the sudden gust of moist, heated air. It had a faint odour of old eggs, not strong enough to be unpleasant, but distinctly medicinal. Before us, glimmering faintly in the light that came through the high arched window, lay the sacred pool.
"The water rises here and is piped to the other pools," said Constantius. "This place has been sacred since long before the Divine Julius brought his legions to this isle. It is customary to make an offering…"
He opened his pouch and took out two silver denarii. Other coins gleamed from the bottom of the pool along with lead votive tablets and other offerings. He drew the hood of his cloak up over his head, his lips moving silently, and tossed his denarius in. I followed his example, though I had no prayer to offer, only a voiceless need.
"You are in luck: the attendant told me that the hot pools are reserved for women at this hour. I will go to the steam room at the other end of the baths and meet you at sunset by the altar outside." Coristantius squeezed my hand and turned away.
For a moment I wanted to call him back again. But after a week on the road all other considerations were overwhelmed by the desire to get truly clean. I turned in the other direction and passed from the first chamber into the colonnade adjoining the large pool. Talk in the taverna had suggested that it was early in the season for the numbers of visitors the baths were built to receive. The warm pool was almost empty, its water green where sunlight slanted in from above, its sides mysteriously shadowed by the colonnade. I continued around it, looking for the smaller pools I had been told lay beyond it.
The pool I chose was heated by water that rushed from beneath a stone slab, its stones blurred by an accretion of minerals from the spring. It reminded me of the Holy Well at Avalon, but this water was as warm as blood. Sinking into its embrace was like a return to the womb.
I lay back with my head on the smooth curve of the coping, letting the water support my body, and muscles I had not known were tense began to unkink at last. The two women who had been soaking when I arrived climbed out of the pool and went off, chattering about a new cook. A slave girl came in with an armload of towels, saw I needed no assistance, and departed. The water grew still. I was alone.
For a timeless interval I floated, without need or desire. In that moment, undisturbed by demands from either mind or body, I did not realize that the defences I had thrown up around my spirit were dissolving away. The gentle lapping of wavelets against stone faded, until the murmur of the water flowing into the pool was the only sound.
And after a while that subtle murmur became a song—
"Ever flowing, ever growing,
from the earth to the sea,
ever falling,ever calling
ever coming to be…"
I relaxed into the music, and without intention, my soul stirred and reached out to the spirit of the waters. The singing continued. I found myself smiling, uncertain whether my own imagination was supplying words to the music or I was indeed hearing the voice of the spring. Now new words were whispering through the hushed trickle—
"Ever living, ever giving,
all my children are free;
ever turning, ever yearning,
they return unto me …"
But I was cut off from that eternal source, and forbidden to return. At that, a great grief rose up in me, and the tears rolled down my cheeks and mingled with the waters of the Goddess in the pool.
It seemed an eternity before the slave girl came back into the chamber, but I suppose that in truth not so much time had passed. I felt empty, and when I left the water and saw the blood running down my inner thighs, I realized that I was empty in truth. Ganeda had been right in her calculations, and despite the ecstasy of our loving, Constantius had not got me with child.
When the girl had provided me with clouts and padding, I sat for a long time in the moist shadow, gazing at the swirling waters and waiting for more tears to come. But for the moment I had no more emotion. My life stretched before me, devoid of magic. But not, I reminded myself, of love. By now, Constantius would be waiting. It was not he who had broken my heart—I had done that all by myself.
Deceived, lured from his ordinary world into Avalon and then burdened with a disgraced and weeping priestess when he left it, Constantius had not complained. He at least deserved a cheerful companion. By this time my hair was drying, the shorter strands curling in moist tendrils around my brow. I called to the slave girl once more to dress it high with pins and help me to disguise my puffy eyes with kohl and my pale cheeks with rouge. When I looked into the bronze mirror I saw a fashionable stranger.
When I came out of the baths the sun was about to sink behind the hills that sheltered the town. I turned from the dazzle of light and stopped short, facing a pediment that was the twin to the one that led to the sacred spring. But here, the dominant figure was a goddess, her hair twisted up on each side and caught in the middle by a ring. She was haloed by a crescent moon.
For a moment I simply stood, staring, as a traveller will stop who suddenly glimpses someone from home. Then I remembered how I had come here.
"It will do you little good, Lady, to lie in wait for me," I said softly. "It is you who cast me out—I owe you no loyalty!"
From Aquae Sulis, the military road angled northeast across Britannia. After we left Corinium it rose gradually, passing through wild hill country as it approached Ratae. Nonetheless, we continued to find mansios and posting inns spaced a day's travel apart along the road, and from time to time I would glimpse through the trees the red-tiled roof of a villa. This, Constantius assured me, was a gentle land compared to the mountains near Eburacum, but I, accustomed to the marshlands of the Summer Country, gazed at the blue distances and wondered.
As we neared Lindum, we came to flat green countryside like the Trinovante lands where I had lived as a child. I took refuge in those memories, and began to talk to Constantius about my father and my brothers, fitting together my memories like some Roman mosaic of the life of a British prince who had adopted, for the most part, the ways of Rome.
"My own family is not so different," said Constantius. "My people come from Dacia, the land away to the north of Greece, where the Carpatus mountains curve around the great plain. I was born in a villa on the Danuvius, where the river cuts through the grasslands. Dacia is still a frontier province—we became Roman even later than you Britons—and the Goths keep trying to make us barbarian once again…"
"We heard that the Emperor Claudius had beaten them at Nissa," I said when the silence had continued for too long. It had been some time since we had passed a villa, and though the road was elevated, a tangle of trees pressed close on either side. The clip-clop of our mounts' hooves seemed loud in that empty land.
"Yes… I was there…" answered Constantius, rubbing at the spot on his thigh where I remembered seeing a scar. "But it was a near thing. They came from the east, across the Euxine Sea. Our garrison at Marcianopolis fought them off, but they sailed south and managed to break through into the Aegeum, where they split into three armies. Gallienus wiped out the Herulians in Thracia, but the Goths were still rampaging around Macedonia.
"We finally caught up with them at Nissa. It's hard to defend against wandering bands that hit a village and run, but barbarian troops can't stand against our heavy cavalry…" His eyes were bleak with memory. "It was a slaughter. After that, it was mostly a matter of mopping up. Hunger and bad weather killed as many of the stragglers as we did. That, and the plague." He fell silent, and I remembered that the plague had killed Romans as well, including his great-uncle the Emperor.
"Was your home safe?" I asked in an attempt to turn his mind from thoughts of battle.
He blinked, and managed a smile. "Yes, it was—the Goths were after older and richer towns. It was one time when living on the frontier worked to our advantage. My people have been there since Trajan conquered the land."
"My father's family ruled the country north of the Tamesis even before the Romans came," I observed a trifle smugly. The sun was breaking through the clouds, and I unhooked my broad hat from the saddle and put it on. "But my ancestor made alliance with the Divine Julius, and took his family name."
"Ah—" answered Constantius, "my own ancestry is less illustrious. One of my ancestors was a client to Flavius Vespasianus, the great Emperor, hence the family name. But the first of my line to settle in Dacia was a centurion who married a local girl. But that's nothing to be ashamed of. Some say that Vespasianus himself was descended from one of the founders of Rome, but I am told that the Emperor laughed at that idea, and admitted that his grandfather had been a ranker in the legions. It does not matter. We are all Romans now…'
"I suppose so," I replied. "I know Coelius kept the Roman festivals. I remember going with him to the great temple of Claudius in Camulodunum to burn incense to the Emperor. In matters pertaining to government he was a Roman, but he kept to the old ways when it was a question of the health of the land. That is how I came to be conceived," I added unwillingly. "In the year of the great floods he appealed to Avalon, and my mother, who was the High Priestess then, travelled to Camulodunum to perform the Great Rite with him."
"So you are royal on both sides." Constantius smiled at me, then grew thoughtful. "Did your father ever formally adopt you?"
I shook my head. "What need?" I said bitterly. "I was always intended for Avalon… Does it matter to you?" I added, seeing his frown.
"Not to me—" he said quickly. "It may have some legal implications… for our marriage."
"You want to marry me?" In truth, I had not thought much about it, having grown to womanhood in Avalon, where the priestesses did not bind themselves to any man.
"Of course! Or at least," he added, "make some legal arrangement that will protect you—was not that ceremony we performed at your festival a wedding?"
I stared at him. "It was the union of the earth and the sun, meant to bring life to the land—the god and the goddess were wedded, as was the case with my parents, not the priest and priestess who performed the rite."
He reined in abruptly, blocking my pony, and faced me. A pair of warblers lifted from the hawthorn hedge, calling. "If you do not consider yourself my wife, why did you come with me?"
My eyes filled with tears. "Because I love you…"
"I am an initiate, but not an adept of the Mysteries," Constantius said after a long moment had passed. "The only way I knew how to make those vows was as a man. And you were my lady—the first time I saw you I knew you were the woman whose soul was bound to my own."
It occurred to me suddenly that Ganeda's plan could never have worked even if I had not interfered. If Aelia had been the priestess, Constantius would have refused to go through with the ritual. He reached out and seized my hand.
"You are mine, Helena, and I will never abandon you. This I swear to you by Juno and all the gods. You will be my wife in fact, whether or not you bear the name. Do you understand?"
"Volo—" I am willing," I whispered past the lump in my throat. At least I had had a vision. Only honour, and his noble heart, kept this man at my side.
I think it was at that moment, standing in the road somewhere in the middle of Britannia, that my marriage to Constantius truly began.
AD 271
The wicker back of my round chair creaked as I leaned into it. The pose was deceptively casual: from here I could see past the frescoing of fruits and flowers around the doorway to the kitchen, where Brasilia should be readying the next course of the meal. Our guests, two of the more successful merchants based at Eburacum, had just about finished the pickled eggs and the oysters served raw in the shell with a sharp sauce. This was one of several little dinners Constantius had held in the year we had been here, building a network of goodwill among the merchants in the town.
It seemed to be working. The pewter business was prospering. I knew that Constantius would rather have been with the men of the Sixth Victrix in the great fortress across the river, though in truth, since the wild tribes beyond the Wall had for some time been peaceful the legion was rather under-strength, and there was not much activity there. The busy town, which since the time of Severus had been the capital of Britannia Inferior, was where the real power lay now, and Constantius seemed to be one of those men who could do well at anything to which he put his mind.
I glimpsed Philip, a Greek boy whom we had recently added to the household, hovering in the passage, and beckoned to him to clear away the platters. Constantius, who was still listening attentively to the older of the merchants, one of the large Sylvanus clan who traded in linen from Eburacum and pottery from Treveri, gave me an encouraging smile.
I smiled back, though acting the part of a Roman lady still felt a bit unreal. Avalon had trained me for many things, but they did not include planning a formal banquet and making small talk over the wine. For this, I would have been better prepared if I had grown up with the other simpering girl-children in my father's hall. Still, Constantius needed a hostess, and I did my best to pretend I was at ease.
I had learned to paint my face, and dress my hair in a complex knot with a Greek bandeau to hide the crescent moon upon my brow. Constantius's business was prospering, and he delighted to give me things. I now had a chest full of linen shifts and tunicas in finely-woven coloured wool, and earrings and a pendant of the locally worked jet, the roundel carved with Constantius's face and my own.
Spinning was a traditional woman's occupation among the Romans, and that was a craft that I knew well. But when we arrived in Eburacum I had no more known how to manage a house than fight a battle. I had no time to pine for Avalon—there was too much to learn. Fortunately, we had an excellent cook in Brasilia. Constantius had grown visibly more solid this past year. She would have resented any attempt on my part to direct her, even if I had had any notion of cookery. She did, however, require me to memorize the ingredients, so that if any of the guests inquired, I could do justice to her artistry.
Philip brought in the next course, a dish of tiny cabbages called coliculis cooked with sweet green peppers, and mustard greens. It was seasoned with thyme and served over a puree of jellied hare. With the gravity of one engaged in some holy rite he served out portions onto the plates, good red Samian ware, probably purchased from Lucius Viducius, whose couch was next to my chair. His family had been leaders in the pottery trade between Eburacum and Rothomagus in Gallia for as long as Constantius's relations had been manufacturing pewter,
I took a bite, then set the spoon down again. It tasted well enough, but my stomach was rebelling. I had not even attempted the oysters.
"You do not eat, domina—are you unwell?" asked Viducius. He was a big man with blond hair going now to grey who looked more like a German than a Gaul.
"A momentary upset," I answered. "No need for concern… Please eat, or my cook will never forgive me. Constantius tells me that you travel to Gallia twice a year. Will you be going oversea again soon?"
"Very soon," he nodded. "Your man is hoping to persuade us to carry his wares to Germania on the ship that will bring back our own. May Nehalennia keep us safe from storms!"
"Nehalennia?" I echoed politely. This was a goddess of whom I had not heard.
"She is a goddess much favoured by traders. They have made a shrine for her on an island where the Rhenus flows into the ocean. My father Placidus set up an altar for her there when I was a child."
"Is she then a German goddess?"
I cast a swift glance around. Constantius had drawn the second man, a ship-owner, into his conversation. There were more dishes on the table now: broiled mullets braised in olive oil with pepper and wine, and lentils with parsnips cooked with herb sauce. I took a little of each, though I did not try to eat them, and turned back to Viducius with a smile.
"Perhaps," he was answering, "my father came originally from Treveri. But I think she likes best the lowlands that face the north sea. It is there that the sea lanes and the land roads meet; from there, she can guard all the ways…"
My face must have shown something then, for he stopped, asking what was wrong.
"Not wrong: I was only reminded of a British goddess, whom we call Elen of the Ways. I wonder if they could be the same?"
"Our Nehalennia is shown sitting, with a dog at her feet and a basket of apples in the crook of her arm," the trader replied.
I smiled and leaned down to pat Eldri, who lay, as usual, at my feet hoping that some morsel would fall. She sat up, nostrils quivering, and I realized that Philip was bringing in the roasted boar. I saw it come with mixed feelings—the rich scent further upset my stomach, but its appearance meant that the meal was almost over. I took a careful sip of watered wine.
"Elen is said to love dogs as well, for they show the way," I said politely. "Did your father make a dedication to the goddess here in Eburacum as well?"
Viducius shook his head, "Only to Jupiter Dolichenus, sovereign of the sun, and to the genius of this place—wherever one may go, it is always wise to propitiate the spirits of the land."
I nodded, aware by now of the Romans' compulsion to honour, not only the genius loci, but any concept or philosophical abstraction that brought itself to their attention. Every crossroads and public well had its little shrine, with the name of the donor prominently displayed, as if without such a label the gods would not know his identity. Even Constantius, who had studied the philosophies of the Greeks that were so close to the theology of Avalon, insisted that his ancestral lares and the penates that guarded the storeroom of this house must receive their offerings.
"Your man has a good head for business, but he was never meant to spend his life as a trader," Viducius went on. "One day the Emperor will call him back to his service. Perhaps then you will cross the sea yourself, and pay your respects to Nehalennia."
I tried to say something polite, but the odour of the roasted meat was too much for my rebellious stomach. Excusing myself, I made a dash for the atrium and vomited into the terra cotta pot that held the rose tree.
By the time I had finished, I could hear the louder murmur of conversation that meant our dinner guests were leaving. I sat down on one of the stone benches, taking deep breaths of the cool, herb-scented air. It was close to the ending of the month of Maia, and the evening was still pleasant. There was yet enough light for me to appreciate the graceful lines of the two-storeyed wings that formed the long atrium, bordered, on the inside, by a colonnade. The house had been built by the same architect who had designed the nearby palace of the Emperor Severas, and though, like most homes in this part of town, it stretched back from a narrow frontage, it had a classic elegance.
I felt much better, now that my stomach was empty. I hoped, for our guests' sake, it was not anything I had eaten. I washed out my mouth with water from the fountain and leaned back against a column, gazing up at the open sky above the atrium where the young moon was already high.
And as I contemplated the moon, I realized that by now I should have had my courses. My breasts, too, had been unusually tender. I touched them, acutely aware of their new weight and sensitivity, and began to smile, understanding at last what was wrong with me.
A shadow moved among the potted shrubs. I recognized Constantius and stood up to meet him.
"Helena—are you all right?"
"Oh yes…" My smile grew broader. "Were your negotiations successful, my love?" I put my arms about his neck, and he murmured something into my hair as his own tightened around me. For a moment we stood locked together. He smelled of good food and wine and the spicy oil his slave rubbed into his skin at the baths.
"You may congratulate me as well…" I whispered into his ear. "I am about to bring you a greater profit than any trader. Oh, Constantius, I am going to bear your child!"
As spring ripened into summer, and my own body began to ripen with pregnancy, for the first time in my life I tasted true happiness. I even knew it, a gift not always allotted mortal men. I had defied, if not the gods, at least the priestesses of Avalon, and now I carried the child the oracle had foretold! It was not until many years later that I questioned that prophecy, or reflected that in order to obtain the right answer it is necessary first to have asked the correct question.
It was a smiling season, and Eburacum was the queen of the north, where traders from all over the Empire brought their wares.
Merchants prospered here, and shared their good fortune with their gods, from Hercules to Serapis. The square before the basilica was studded with dedicatory altars, set up in payment of vows. I paused sometimes to pay my respects to the matronae, the triple mothers who guarded fertility, but otherwise I had little to say to the gods.
With Eldri trotting at my heels, every day I would go out of the gate by the bridge and walk down the path by the Abus River to its confluence with the Fossa, where the boats that came up from the coast to the wharves disputed the right of way with the swans. In the evening, the white walls of the fortress were reflected in the water, and the setting sun overlaid the shining surface with opal and pearl. In the past year the little dog had slowed down, as if age had suddenly come upon her, but these expeditions, when she had a chance to nose through all the fascinating detritus left at the water's edge, were the high point of her day. I hoped that it consoled her a little for losing the freedom of Avalon.
But more than trade goods came in with those ships, and though the western and eastern parts of the Empire might be politically divided, news travelled freely between them. Just after midsummer there came two arrivals which were to alter our lives: a messenger with a letter from the Emperor, and the first case of plague.
We were sitting in the atrium, where I had asked Drusilla to serve the evening meal. I was just beginning to enjoy food again, and our cook delighted in finding ways to tempt my appetite. I was not certain whether it had been diffidence on my part or the lofty scorn of an old family retainer for a native-born concubine on hers that had initially created the distance between us. But my incipient motherhood had clearly elevated my status in her eyes.
I had made my way through several of the appetizers when I noticed that Constantius was not eating. After a year in his company, I could see the man in him as well as the hero. I now knew, for instance, that he was at his best in the mornings and increasingly irritable after sundown; could be honest to the point of tactlessness; and except when he was in bed with me, lived more in his head than his body. What some people perceived as coldness I would have called focus. He could not abide shellfish, and when his interest was engaged in some project, he had to be reminded to eat at all.
"You haven't touched the food," I said. "It is very good, and Drusilla will be upset if you do not appreciate her effort."
He smiled and speared a piece of leek and sausage, but sat with it uneaten in his hand. "This morning I received a letter."
Suddenly I felt chilled. "From Rome?" With an effort I kept my voice calm.
"Not exactly. When he wrote it he was in Nicomedia, though he has undoubtedly moved elsewhere by now."
I looked at him, thinking. No need to ask who he might be. But if the Emperor wanted Constantius's head, surely he would have sent an officer along with his message to take him into custody.
"It was not, I take it, a warrant for your arrest?"
He shook his head. "Helena, he has offered me a place on his staff! Now I can make a real life for you and our child!"
I stared at him, suppressing my first panicked assumption that he meant to leave me. Constantius had done his best to seem happy, but I knew how much he had missed his military career.
"Can you trust him?"
"I think so," he said seriously. "Aurelian has always had the reputation of being honest—a little too forthright, in fact. It was because he did not hide his anger that it seemed best for me to go into exile. He is already rid of me—to lure me back just so that he could have me murdered would require uneccessary subtlety."
Too forthright? I suppressed a smile, understanding why Constantius had been exiled, and why the Emperor might want him back again.
His gaze went inward, calculating, planning, and I realized with a pang that if he was to fulfil the destiny I had foreseen for him, his attention would be inevitably drawn away from me. In that moment I wished passionately that he and I could have been ordinary people, and lived out an ordinary contented life together, here at the edge of the Empire. But even in the fading light there was something luminous about him that drew the eye. If Constantius had been an ordinary man, he would never have come to Avalon.
"With Tetricus still in power in the West, I wouldn't be able to use the posting relays anyway," he said at last. "It is just as well, with an entire household to transport. We can do part of the journey by water—make the crossing over the British Sea, and then take a barge up the Rhenus. That will be easier on you…" He looked up at me suddenly. "You will come with me, won't you?"
One advantage to not being properly married, I reflected wryly, was that Constantius had no legal right to compel me. But the child in my belly bound me to him—the child, and the memory of a prophecy.
Constantius might have been able to leave at a moment's notice when he was a bachelor, but now there was an entire household to shift, and control of a business to transfer into competent hands. The pewterworks had grown in the year he had been in charge of it. The slaves who did the actual labour were all very skilled, but the volume of production was beyond the capacity of the agent who had handled things before, and it took time to find a suitable manager and break him in.
And in that time, the first case of plague became many. It occurred to me that if the disease had decimated the Emperor's staff the way it was going through Eburacum, Aurelian's invitation might be less a mark of magnanimity than of desperation.
The slave boy Philip fell ill, and despite Drusilla's protests, I nursed him. This disease was characterized by a racking cough and a prolonged high fever. But by wrapping him in cool wet cloths and giving him the infusions of white willow and birch that I had learned to use in Avalon I managed to keep Philip alive until the fever broke at last.
No one else in our household took the illlness, but the long hours of strain had drained my strength. I began to bleed, and after a few hours of wrenching cramps, I miscarried my child.
The summer, and our preparations to leave Britannia, were drawing to an end when Philip came into my chamber to announce a visitor. I was lying wrapped in a shawl on one of the couches with Eldri at my feet. It was summer, but clouds had moved in from the sea the night before and a damp chill weighted the air. Constantius had gone off to a meeting at the Mithraeum—not a ritual, as those were always conducted by night, but some business connected with the temple. I did not know what rank he had attained in the Mysteries, but his administrative responsibilities suggested it was a high one.
I had been pretending to look at the romance by Longus that Constantius had brought home so that I could brush up on my Greek. It was called Daphnis and Chloe and its exotic adventures should have been a potent distraction. But in truth I had been asleep. I slept a great deal—it made it easier to forget that the bright spirit that for a little while had made its home in my womb was gone. As Philip spoke I let the parchment roll up again.
"I will tell her to go away—" said Philip protectively. Since his recovery and my own illness, he had been my shadow, as if we were bound together by our pain.
"No—who is it?" I asked, with a quick glance around the room to make sure it was fit to be seen.
The walls had been painted in tones of warm gold, with festoons of acanthus leaves, and some of the striped rugs the local people wove took the chill off the tiled floor. A basket with wool and a spindle had been left on one of the tables, and several book rolls lay on another, but the room was clean. If the wife of one of Constantius's associates had come to see me, I should make the effort to be polite to her.
"I think she is a seller of herbs. She has a covered basket… She said she had a medicine for what ailed you," he added unhappily. "I didn't tell her, mistress, I promise you—"
"It is all right, Philip. These people all talk to each other—no doubt she has learned of my trouble from someone in the town.
Perhaps she will have something useful." I sighed. "You may as well bring her in."
In truth, I had little hope of it, but it was bad enough that Constantius must drag a wife halfway across the Empire; he should not have to deal with an invalid. But deep down I understood that for any of the nostrums with which well-meaning people were plying me to work, I had to truly want to get well.
In a few moments Philip was back, standing aside as an old woman came into the room. Even before I saw her face, senses long unused were sending a prickle of shock across my skin. As the woman began to unwrap her basket, I realized it had been recognition.
One moment she was an old, bent woman in a tattered shawl, like a hundred others who came to sell their wares in the town. In the next, she had gathered the glamour around her, and stood in all her majesty before me, seeming almost too tall for the room. Philip's eyes widened.
"Lady—" Without thinking, I had risen to my feet, head bowed in salutation. Then anger flared through me and I straightened. " What are you doing here!"
Philip, bless him, took a protective step forwards. I bit back my next words.
"I could ask the same question of you," said Ganeda, "shut away within these walls! We must talk. Come out into the light and the air."
"I have been ill—" I began, automatically on the defensive.
"Nonsense—you will never be better if you curl up like a lapdog! Come!" Assuming obedience, she started through the door.
Eldri jumped down from the couch, growling faintly, and my lips twitched in the beginnings of a smile. At least in the atrium we would be less likely to be overheard. Motioning to Philip to stay inside, I picked up my shawl and followed her.
"So, what have I done to deserve this honour?" I asked dryly, seating myself on a stone bench and indicating that Ganeda should do the same.
"Stayed alive…" the High Priestess answered starkly. "The plague has come to Avalon."
I stared at her in horror. How could that be possible? The holy isle was separated from the world.
"A girl from Londinium was sent to us for training. She was ill by the time she arrived. We did not recognize the sickness, and by the time word of the plague had reached us it was too late to stop the contagion. Four of the maidens and six of the senior priestesses have died."
I licked dry lips. "Not Dierna?"
Fractionally, Ganeda's grim expression lightened. "No. My granddaughter is well." I listened as she gave the names of those who had succumbed, women with whom I had shared the unique intimacy of ritual, some who had cared for and taught me, and others whom I had taught in turn… and Aelia.
I shut my eyes against the tears I could feel leaking out beneath my eyelids, drawing hot tracks across my cheeks. If I had not left Avalon I could have nursed her, I thought numbly. I had saved Philip, for whom I felt no more than kindness, surely my love would have kept Aelia in the world. Or perhaps the plague would have taken me too. In that moment both fates seemed equally desirable.
"I thank you for coming to tell me…" I said at last.
"Yes, I know you loved her," the priestess answered tersely, "but that is not why I have come. You are needed by Avalon."
At that, my eyes flew open. "How… generous…" Through stiff lips I got out the words. "You are desperate, so now you will welcome me back again!" I rose to my feet, the shawl slipping from my shoulders, and began to pace back and forth along the path. "No." I turned to face her. "You severed my link to Avalon. During that first moon, when the wound was yet bleeding, you might have called me back again. Now there is only a scar."
Ganeda shrugged impatiently. "The link can be restored. It is your duty to return."
"Duty!" I exclaimed. "What about my duty to Constantius?"
"He has no legal authority over you, nor are you linked in the flesh since you have lost the child—"
"Is that all you can understand?" I cried, hands crossed protectively before my empty womb. "What of the bonds that link the heart and the soul? What of the prophecy?"
"Do you think that justifies your rebellion?" Ganeda sniffed scornfully. "A simple attack of lust would have been more forgivable, my dear—"
"I don't need your forgiveness! I don't want it!" I could hear my voice rising, and fought for control. "You had the right to banish me, but not to jerk me back and forth like a child's pull-toy on a string. It was you, not I, who cancelled my oaths to Avalon. Nor shall I break the vows I have sworn to Constantius. I lost this child, yes, but there will be another. I have seen the babe in my arms!"
Ganeda contemplated me sourly. "When we planned that ritual, Arganax calculated the movements of the stars. We know what they would have destined for a child conceived in that Beltane ritual. Who knows what the child you bear to Constantius will do? I tell you now that there may come a day when you wish he had never been born!"
I lifted one eyebrow and looked down at her. "Oh—I see. It is wrong for me to set my will above yours, but you are perfectly justified in setting yours above that of the gods! Did you not teach us yourself that the Fates weave our lives as they will, not as you or I would have it? My son will not be the tool of Avalon!"
"Then you had better pray that he will at least know how to serve the gods!"
"Can you doubt it?" I exclaimed in my pride. "He will be the son of the Restorer of the Light and a Priestess of Avalon!"
"I do not doubt the gods," Ganeda answered very quietly, "but a long life has taught me not to put my trust in men. I wish you well, daughter of my sister." Leaning heavily on her staff she got to her feet, and now she looked truly old.
"Wait," I said despite myself. "You have had a long journey and I have offered you no refreshment—"
But Ganeda only shook her head. "You shall be troubled no longer, either by me or by Avalon…"
I understood her words, but as I watched her go it seemed to me that the memory of this conversation would haunt me for a long time to come.
Whether it was because my healing was complete or Ganeda's challenge had stimulated me, I do not know, but from that time onward my energy began to return. I took a more active part in preparing to move the household, and when, a few days before we were scheduled to take ship for the continent, Conscantius mentioned that he had to ride out into the countryside to bid farewell to one of his father's cousins, I asked if I could come along.
As our sailing date approached, I found myself viewing Eburacum with new eyes. I had not been there long enough to think of it as home, but it was nonetheless part of Britannia, which I was so soon to lose. Still, the town itself was Roman, not British, and only along the river could I feel the spirits of the land. In the countryside, I would surely sense them more easily, and be able to make my farewells.
Constantius had rented a two-wheeled cart for the journey, drawn by the faithful red mule. The land here was low and rolling, rising gradually to the west, where mountains lay on the horizon, more sensed through the misty air than seen. On the second day we came to Isurium, the old tribal capital of the Brigantes, which was now a thriving market town. Isurium lay in the bend of the Abus, just before the road crossed the river once more.
Flavius Pollio had retired here after a successful career in Eburacum and was now a magistrate. He was clearly delighted to show off his newly-built townhouse, particularly the mosaic of Romulus and Remus with the wolf which adorned his dining room floor.
"I see that your little dog appreciates fine artwork," said Pollio, flipping a bit of roast mutton to Eldri, who had flopped down next to the mosaic of the bitch-wolf as if to join the twins in nursing from her dugs. I blushed.
"I am sorry—she always sits at my feet when we dine at home. She must have got out of our bedchamber—"
"No, no—let her stay. We are not formal here." Pollio smiled at me. "This is a country of goddesses and queens, and ladies have their privileges… Cartimandua, you know—" he added when I looked inquiring. "She held the Brigante lands for Rome, even when her husband rebelled." He shook an admonishing finger at Constantius. "Let that be a warning to you, my boy. A man is only strong when his wife is behind him!"
Now it was Constantius's turn to colour, always a notable sight with his fair skin. "Then I must be Hercules," he answered, but I shook my head.
"No, my dear, you are Apollo."
He blushed even more brightly then, and I laughed.
When the meal was over, the two men retired to Pollio's study to go over the papers Constantius had come to see, and I took Eldri out for a walk through the town. After a day and a half of jolting in the cart and a heavy meal, I needed exercise, and soon found myself striding through the gate towards the open country beyond the town.
Here in the north country the day lingered longer than I was used to. A ground fog was rising from the fields, catching the sunset light so that it looked as if skeins of golden flax had been laid across the land. Soon after I crossed the bridge I saw a cowpath leading away to the west and turned off the road. With Eldri to guide me I had no real fear of being lost, even if the mist should thicken as darkness fell.
My steps slowed as I went on, for at last I had found the solitude I was seeking. The air had the peculiar hush one finds at dawn and at sunset, broken only by the cawing of three crows flying towards their roost, and the distant lowing of a line of cattle moving towards the milking shed and home.
I came to a halt, hands lifting in instinctive adoration. "Brigantia, Exalted One, holiness upwelling! Lady of this land, I am soon to fare across the sea. Grant me your blessing, goddess, wherever my wanderings may lead…"
The stillness deepened, as if the land itself were listening. Although the air was cooling rapidly, I felt on my cheek a breath of warmth, as if the earth were giving back the last heat of the day. Eldri scampered up the road, more energetic than I had seen her for some time. The white tuft of her tail wagged as it did when she was on an interesting scent, and I hurried to follow her.
I reached the top of the rise just in time to see her white form disappearing into the alder thicket that edged the right side of the road.
"Eldri! Come back here!"
The dog did not turn, and I began to run, calling again. I could see now that a path led through the thicket, barely wide enough for me to force my way through.
The meadow beyond it was hazed with gold. Through the glimmer of ground mist I glimpsed Eldri, trotting towards a pillar of dark stone. I stopped short, staring. There were three of them, spaced across the meadow in an uneven row, about the width of a forum apart. I had seen megaliths before, but never any as tall as these, nearly the height of the columns in the Temple of Serapis's portico.
"Eldri, be careful," I whispered, but I should have remembered that she was a faerie dog, accustomed to marvels, for she sat down before the nearest, panting, and waited for me to catch up with her.
"Well, my dear one, what have you found?"
The dog cocked her head and then turned back to the pillar, watching it expectantly. Slowly I circled it, out of habit moving sunwise. The stone was very dark, more smoothly finished than was usual for one of the works of the ancients, narrowing slightly towards the top, which was marked by several grooves. Orange and white lichens spread lacy swathes across the dark surface. I understood the purpose of circles like the one upon the Tor, but I could not imagine why these three pillars had been erected here.
Very softly I approached and set my two palms against the stone. The surface was cold, but I let my awareness move out through my hands and into the rock, seeking the flow of energy that rooted it to the earth below.
It was not there. Instead, I felt as if I were holding onto some firm object while floating, except that the thing I held was floating too, as if I had taken a boat to the centre of the Lake to go swimming there. The sensation was rather pleasant, like the dislocation of trance, and for me, starved for over a year of such sensations, far too seductive. I let out my breath in a long sigh, allowing my awareness to sink ever more deeply into the stone.
For a timeless moment I knew nothing but sensation. Then I realized that the sense of vertigo was passing. The pillar was once more solid beneath my hands, but as I straightened and looked around me, I realized that the world had changed.
The pillars stood now on an open plain. The golden light of sunset had transmuted to a silvery radiance that had neither source nor direction, but was quite sufficient to illuminate the radiant figures that danced in a double helix around the stones. Eldri was running with them, darting in and out among the dancers like a puppy, barking with joy.
I stepped away from the pillar to go after her, and found myself being swept into the dance. Strong hands swung me around, fair faces invited me to join in their laughter. Suddenly my feet were light, the last, dragging exhaustion from my miscarriage vanishing. I felt joyous and free as I had not been since… I had wandered into Faerie.
In that moment I understood how, coming to the stones at sunset, I had opened a doorway between the worlds. Or perhaps it was Eldri who had led me here. Certainly she was gambolling about as if she had shed the years, ecstatic as one who, having been long exiled, returns at last to her home.
I saw her coming to rest at last at the feet of one of the fair folk who stood before the central pillar, and at last the dance cast me up in the same place. With the blood still racing in my veins from the swift motion, I halted, realizing that the person who waited there was the Faerie Queen.
This time she wore the colours of summer's harvest, a crown of woven wheat and a gown of pale gold. Eldri was nestled in her arms.
"Lady, how come you here?" I stammered, straightening from my bow.
"Where else should I be?" Her low voice was honeyed with amusement.
"But we are far from Avalon—"
"And when you dreamed of it the other night, how far away were you then?" she asked.
"I was there… but it was only a dream."
"Some dreams are more real than what men call reality," the Lady said tartly. "The gateways to Faerie are fewer than the Doors of Dream, and yet there are more than most men believe. One has only to know the times and seasons to find the way."
"Will I be able to find the way from the lands across the sea?" I asked then.
"Even from there, if you have need, though you may see us in another guise in those lands where men know us by other names. Indeed, unless you learn to honour the spirits that dwell in the other lands, you will not prosper there."
And she began to tell me of the beings I should encounter, names and descriptions that dissolved into my awareness, not to be recalled until many months, or even years, had passed. In the timeless present of Faerie I had no sense of hunger or fatigue, but at last the Lady ceased her instructions, and it occurred to me that I ought to be returning to the human world.
"My thanks to you, Lady. I will endeavour to do as you say. Now let me take the dog, that she may show me the way home."
The queen shook her head. "Eldri must stay. She is old, and her spirit is bound to this land. She would not survive your journey. Let her remain—she will be happy with me here."
In that land where there is no weeping, nonetheless tears came to my eyes. But the gaze of the Faerie Queen was implacable, and it was true that Eldri looked very happy, nestled in her arms. For the last time, I scratched behind those silky ears. Then I let my hand fall.
"How shall I go back, then?" I asked.
"You have only to walk widdershins around the stone."
I began to move, and with each step the light faded until I found myself standing in the meadow in the gathering darkness, alone.
When I reached the bridge I saw torches bobbing along the main road and found that Constantius had come out to look for me. I told him only that Eldri had run away, and I had been searching for her. He knew how I had loved the dog, and so my sorrow needed no explanation. And that night I found comfort in the shelter of his arms.
A week later, we were on one of Viducius's ships, bound for the mouth of the Rhenus and Germania.