Lion of Ireland (10 page)

No lamp or candle defended the little dwelling against the forest darkness; only the fire served for illumination, painting their young faces with a golden glow against the thickening gloom. Brian was painfully aware that it would be the grossest form of indecency to take advantage of womenfolk in .a house where he was a guest, but the girl was so lovely, sitting there, smiling at him from beneath the tangled thicket of her dark lashes. His skin burned with awareness of her. The pores of his body opened, yearning toward her like hungry mouths. There seemed to be nothing in the world but the new wonder of her body, her glowing and fragrant flesh, the tingling shocks that ran through him every time she moved.

They talked, but neither listened. It was not their voices that were communicating. He moved closer to her, or she to ‘him. Then she reached past him to poke up the fire, and the warm swelling of her breast lay heavy on his arm.

Like an observer, Brian watched his own hand reach to cup the yielding roundness. Their eyes met and locked; in their breathlessly constricted world there was not even room for the sound of Gamin’s approaching footsteps.

The old man hesitated at the door, warned by a tension that radiated from the hut.’The summer night was vibrant with it. It was the aura of power that surrounded the young man, an aura he was unconscious of but which Camin recognized very well, and it had been magnified to a throbbing degree. Slowly, careful to make no sound, Camin eased himself there was no resistance to through the doorway and got a good look at the tableau by the hearth.

He was surprised to feel a momentary sense of loss, keen as the pain of mourning the dead. Her time had come, then; his Fiona. He had cast his net on her behalf, with the ancient words and symbols of power, and caught this bright youth destined by his stars for greatness. The glory of womanhood had come to her, even in this dark and hidden place, and from this moment forward her life was the tool of the gods.

She would be his little hearth-mouse no longer . . . He moved his body silently backward a few paces, and then forward again, with much shuffling of his feet and clearing of his throat.

When he re-entered the hut Brian and Fiona were on opposite sides of the hearth, each apparently busy with a final cup of mead. But the flames on their cheeks were not from the fire, and their eyes met in a darting series of little rendezvous they could not control.

“You will be leaving in the morning?” Camin asked, as casually as if the answer were of no consequence to any of

them.

“My brother expects me at Kilmallock,” Brian replied, the words drawn from him with reluctance.

Mahon seemed very far away from this time and place.

“You may sleep on a pallet by the fire, and we will feed you in the morning before your journey,” Camin told him cheerfully. Fiona sat with folded hands and said nothing.

It took Brian a long time to fall asleep. He lay with his head pillowed on his bent arm and listened to Gamin’s rattling exhalations, and the movements of Fiona beneath her blanket. Every time she stirred he felt heat ripple through him. How could the mere fact of her being influence his body so? Did she know what was happening to him on his pallet? He gritted his teeth and tried to remember the prayer for resisting temptation.

When all was quiet and the fire was only the memory of a glow upon the hearth, Fiona left her bed. Brian had fallen into an uneasy slumber, tossing restlessly on his blanket. She tiptoed past him and out of the hut, making her way to the brush pen where Brian’s horses were tethered.

In a low voice she called to the mare, then whistled through her teeth with the soft hissing sound that soothed the most nervous animal.

“Easy, Briar Rose, stand still. That’s a good girl. I’m not hurting you, I would not do that for any lad’s bright eyes. But he must not go away in the morning, don’t you see? Not so soon!” She knelt in the leaf mould and ran her hands down the slim foreleg of the mare, murmuring an incantation as she did so, willing the heat of her body to flow from her fingers and into the horse’s leg.

In the morning the mare was lame. They all three stood and looked at her, in the way people have of watching something that is not working properly. Camin stroked his beard and surveyed her through slitted eyes, Brian shook his head and stared helplessly, and Fiona just looked, her arms folded across her apron.

The leg was hot to the touch, a puffiness gathered about the thin ankle, and the black mare would not rest her weight on it.

“I can poultice it for you,” Camin offered, “but it will be at least two nights before she’s fit to travel.” He looked closely at his granddaughter, and she returned his gaze fully, with clear eyes and a lift to her pointed little chin. In the silence, worlds of communication passed between them. Camin gave a brief nod and the ghost of a smile touched Fiona’s lips.

The old man prepared a smelly brown past which he applied to the horse’s leg while Brian watched; if he knew quicker ways to heal the mare, he refrained from mentioning them. Then at last Camin stood up and caught the girl’s eye once more, saying in surprisingly vibrant tones, “The day is so fine, Fiona; why not take our guest with you and see if you can get us a nice trout for our dinner?”

Fiona collected her fishing equipment with indecent speed, and the two young people had gone trotting off before Gamin’s words were stale on the air.

They walked for a while , . . Brian did not know how long, nor in what direction. They came at some length to a stream

... it might have been a pond or lake, it did not matter. All that mattered was the way Fiona’s hips swayed as she walked in front of him, and the scent of her hair as it drifted on the warm wind.

All his being seemed to be concentrated in his groin, in the delicious fullness that tantalized and maddened him.

Fiona chose her spot and prepared her net for casting, but the fish she caught was Brian. Even as she reached to make her throw he gave up the unequal fight against himself and grabbed her. The net slapped onto the surface of the water and drifted away unnoticed as she stood trembling in his arms, their unpracticed mouths groping together.

Brian tried to be gentle, but in his ignorance he hurt her and she cried out once, the little squeak of a hare taken in a trap. He felt awkward and foolish, not knowing what to do about clothing, about the arrangements of arms and legs, unable to think clearly enough to behave with the grace he would have wished. His body was beyond his control now, moving with a will and an appetite divorced from his rational mind.

He entered her clumsily, feeling her body shrink from his even as her arms tightened to draw him closer.

He opened his eyes, wanting to see her face in that incredible moment, but the intensity of his own sensations blinded him. He forgot her, forgot even himself as the convulsion tore through him, curving his spine, wringing from him a cry that might have been ecstasy or mortal pain.

It was over almost before it began. The sweetness ebbed away, leaving him shaken and drained. Before he had had a chance to savor it the moment was past, never to return. Never again the first time. He lay still, feeling bereft. Such a splendid thing, how could it flare and fade like that?

At last he became aware of her body beneath his, a separate person, pressed by his weight into the damp, cold ground. He had not even thought to spread his cloak beneath her ...

He tried to say something, find some phrase of tenderness

and gratitude. But his mouth was dry and his throat as dusty as a summer road. “Fiona .. .”

“Hush, it’s all right. I wanted you to do it.” She opened her eyes inches from his face, and he saw the glitter of tears. But her lips were smiling.

Alone in his sacred grove, Gamin prayed. On the soot-blackened surface of a holy stone he built a fire, using twigs from three different species of tree. Carefully he fed the flame, diminishing the three piles of kindling in scrupulously even amounts, chanting into the smoke as he measured the twigs and broke them into their proper lengths.

The last rising of the sap of spring moved in his old body, even as the first flowering had come to his granddaughter. The magic circles closed again, life speaking to life; his sacrifice was made. Death and birth in their endless cycle moved before his eyes.

“As the bee to the flower,” he intoned solemnly, feeling the ancient forces move tidally within him, “as the sun to the grain. Bring life to this, your consecrated daughter; welcome her as part of the chain. Give her her place in the circle, that she may add life to life and move through all her deaths unafraid.”

He prostrated himself before the stone. In his mind he saw again Brian’s strong young face. He envisioned himself touching hands with the boy through Fiona’s body, their linked lives going forward into the future together, passing through death, stronger with each rebirth. The sacrificial defloration was accomplished. The first connection had been made, the line of Camin would take part in the special immortality he foresaw for Brian of Boruma. In time they would merge and become one with all living things, and it would be good.

Above him, a slender coil of blue smoke spiraled upward until it was lost from sight in the branches of an oak tree that had stood in that place since before the before.

They sat shoulder to -shoulder, hands interlocked, talking about themselves. Brian told her of the rocky, windswept land of Thomond, and compared it to the lushness of woods and watercourses that surrounded them. “This is such a fertile land,” he said. “It must be easy for people to make their living here.”

Fiona shrugged; a small gesture that emphasized the thinness of her shoulders. “We see so few other people, I scarcely know how they fare. My grandsire is a Druid, and he has been forced to live as a hermit because the bishop accused him of sins and blasphemy. Hardly anyone seeks him out anymore; he spends most of his wisdom on me.” Her large brown eyes were wistful, saddened by the ignorance of the people who refused to accept Gamin’s priceless knowledge. “What of your parents, where are they?”

“Oh, my mother died when I was born. I think my father was disappointed in me, because he just left me with Camin and never came back.” She said it simply, a fact of her life that she did not mind revealing, but it shocked Brian.

How could she admit such a thing so casually? To be considered unsatisfactory by one’s own sire . ..

how could the girl accept that rejection, and how could she bear to speak of it to him?

A picture formed in his mind. A sunlit road; Cennedi and Mahon marching away from him. Mahon the valuable one, the star in his father’s sky. Cennedi had taken him and left his youngest son forever, without a backward glance.

He shook himself as one does when rousing from a bad dream. “You say old Camin is a Druid?” he asked quickly. It was surprising to hear of such a thing; a practitioner of the ancient religion was an exotic being to a boy raised within the monastic confines of Clonmacnoise. It was as if a giant elk had appeared, walking in stately grandeur among the trees, when no man alive remembered seeing the last of that vanished species. “I wasn’t aware that there were actually any Druids left in Ireland.”

“Oh, yes.” Fiona laughed. “There are a few of us, here and there. Not many. Camin ranks very high among us, for he can summon up the wind. He has all the old gifts; he can call down a rain of blood or of fire, he can put his spirit into an animal—a cat or fox, suchlike—and he can even put himself into the trees and see through their vision.”

Brian stared at her. “That’s impossible!” But there was such absolute conviction in the level gaze that met his that he felt his own assurance falter slightly. He continued, uncertain now, “Nobody can really turn himself into a cat or a tree. I mean, I don’t think anyone can. Anyway, if Camin did do those things, he’d be committing terrible sins, because they’re evil. Blasphemous!”

Fiona raised her brows. “You just say that because you don’t know anything about it.”

“I certainly do! We studied the pagan religions, I even know the mythology of the Romans and Greeks.

But the way of Christ is the only true way to salvation, and all others are traps and snares of the devil.”

Even to his own ears that sounded a bit pompous, a singsong echo from the monastery classrooms he had so recently escaped.

Fiona gave him an amused look. “Is that what you really believe?”

“Of course it is.”

“Don’t you know that your Christians fear the Old Religion because it has more power than theirs?

Camin says they stole our holy days and even our sacred symbols, and put their names to them because their god wasn’t strong enough to have any of his own.”

Brian was shocked at her interpretation of theological history. “That’s not the way it was at all! The wise men of the Church just saw that it would be easier to introduce the people to Christianity through concepts they already knew and accepted ...”

“That’s the way they justified it, I suppose,” Fiona drawled. “But they can paint their Christianity over the old ways all they like; it will never change the truth of what’s underneath. We were here first. We know how to deal directly with the forces of the earth, if need be—at least wise ones like Camin do—rather than wait with folded hands for whatever the gods see fit to give us. If we need sun, or rain, or an early spring, we know how to ask for it, what sacrifices are required and what powers to invoke. We can speak directly to the plants and influence them, or to the fish in the streams and summon ( them to our nets. We believe that every living thing has an awareness of its own and is bounded by certain laws, and if I we work within those laws all creatures live in the harmony the gods intended.”

“You think you still live in the Garden of Eden!”

“I don’t know that place; is it in Munster?”

Brian decided to try a different approach. The things she was telling him were strangely intriguing, but at the back of his mind he could picture his teachers at Clonmacnoise, standing with arms folded in rigid disapproval. “What about your sacrifices? I’ve been told that the Druids sacrificed humans, even burned some of them alive.”