Ravens of Avalon (31 page)

“The king has been seated,” answered Belina. “I think it is dark enough now to open the curtain a little. If you sit here, you can see—”

One of the Druids knelt to set the fire he had carried from the Earth-ring to the stacked wood in the center; a great shout went up as it burst into flame. The drummers let loose with a thunder of sound as a line of young men came dancing around it, armed with staves.

There should have been more of them, thought Boudica sadly. These were the younger brothers of men who had died at the battle in the fens. But they twirled and struck valiantly. Was Prasutagos thinking the same thing? He looked tired, but his features displayed his usual calm control. As they must, she realized, if he was to rule. Gold rings gleamed from his strong arms, a golden torque circled his neck. They had garbed him in a kilt and cloak in the ancient style. She had never noticed that his legs were as muscular and well shaped as his arms.

Well, when would I have had the chance?
she thought with a flush of shame, and something more. A flicker of excitement warmed her at the realization that she was free to look at him all she pleased, and he could not see.

Now some of the girls slipped out of the women’s enclosure to join the line of maidens who were tracing sinuous patterns around the fire. They were crowned with hawthorn, and as they grew heated by the dancing, first one and then another undid the pins that held her garment at the shoulders so that it was held up only by her woven belt, leaving white breasts bare.

Someone brought Boudica a cup of wine; she felt the warmth in her limbs, and in her head a regular pulsing that matched that of the drums.

The young men returned to circle around the maidens, dancing forward until they almost touched, then whirling away once more. Eyes grew bright and faces flushed with more than the heat of the fire.

Prasutagos was smiling. Did she imagine that the pulse at the base of his throat was beating more quickly, or was that only the throb she felt in her own?

This festival was not only to honor the new king but to welcome in the summer, and to do all that men might to encourage a bountiful year. Boudica cast a glance toward Lhiannon, remembering how the older woman had hoped to meet Ardanos at the Beltane fires. Child that she was, she had not understood the message of the drums. Her flesh comprehended it now.

They thundered in a final flourish; man and maid joined hands and ran laughing into the darkness. Suddenly the circle was still.

“It is time …” said Lhiannon very evenly, as if she, too, were fighting for control.

“It is time indeed—” Belina turned to Boudica. “Are you ready, my dear?”

Boudica could not have found words, but her body was responding for her. She got to her feet. She reached out to take the mask of the White Mare from the priestess’ hand. She settled the molded leather over her head, where her hair had been coiled to support it, and Lhian-non reached up to secure the ties. The neck of the mask extended down the back of her head to her shoulders, while the head hid her face, cheekpieces curving down to frame her own while the muzzle projected forward. Real horsehair had been added to form a mane.

“Now …” Lhiannon’s voice seemed to come from a very long ways away. “Now you are a queen …”

Boudica scarcely noticed the leather’s weight. As the mask enclosed her head, she felt a corresponding pressure within her skull that pushed the self she thought her own into some space from which she could only watch in terror and amazement as her body jerked like a young horse fighting the rein. How many queens had borne this crown? They were all here, whispering, their voices blending into a single Voice.

“Is it time to run?”
came the question.
“Is it time to dance?”

Tremors ran downward along her spine, out her flailing arms, down strong legs to feet that stamped and struck the earth. She reeled, and soft hands pushed her upright again. The mane tossed as she shook her head, breath exploded from her lungs with a sound that was halfway between a laugh and a neigh. She tried to fight, as she had tried to fight the Mor-rigan. This goddess was both wilder and more benign, but She was just as strong.

“You already know Me, my daughter, why are you afraid? Don’t you remember how you rode the red mare?”

And as Boudica recalled that wild ride through the moonlight, past and present, rider and ridden, became one. When she was a little girl she had begged her father for a pony, and ridden her own galloping legs around the dun until he complied. Her body already knew the motions. Letting the cloak fall from Her shoulders, She swept the curtain aside and paced toward the fire.

A whisper of awe swept around the circle, louder than the flutes and rattles that had finally remembered to play. “The goddess is with us … Epona has come to us … the goddess comes to the king …”

The totems of every clan rippled as muscles slid beneath white skin. She turned, arms extended, embracing them all. Women were weeping, men’s eyes shone with a hope that had not been there before. She took Her time, for these people had suffered and had need of Her love. Once, twice, thrice, She paced around the circle, blessing Her tribe, and then at last She came to a halt before the king.

Prasutagos’s calm had shattered. On his cheeks shone the silver track of tears, in his eyes an astonished joy. The molded mask bowed before him, lifted with a shake of the mane. A quiver ran through Her body; She twisted, presenting Herself like a mare. But She was also a woman. She turned back to him, offering the firm breasts that had suckled his child, ran Her hands across Boudica’s belly, outlining the womb that had received his seed.

“Come!” came the command in a voice that both was and was not Boudica’s own.

The king stood, fumbling with the golden clasp of his belt, and let the wrapped kilt fall away. Already his phallus was engorged and rising. Was it the ritual, or was he really more generously endowed than other men? The people shouted out their approval as he stepped toward her. As She was the goddess, he stood before them as the image of the god.

“Come and serve Me,” She whispered. Power jolted through them both as he took Her hand.

A path was opening through the crowd before them. Beyond, the plowed field waited to become their bed.

wish that you were not leaving us,” said Boudica, picking up the traveling cloak that Lhiannon had just shaken out and folding it up again. At Dun Garo the queen and her women had a sun-house for their own activities, built in a ring whose center was open to the sky. The light was welcome, but the company of so many chattering women grated on Lhiannon’s nerves. But there was room here to pack the many things that the queen had insisted she and Belina must take on their journey.

“We need you here, Lhiannon. We need your healing and your wisdom,” Boudica continued.

If you had said “
I
need you here, Lhiannon,” I might stay …
she thought sadly.

“You are no longer alone on a farmstead,” she said aloud. “You have healers and wise men and warriors in plenty here in Dun Garo. It is time I became a priestess once more.” She rescued the cloak from the queen’s nervous fingers and draped it over one arm.

“Most Druids live at chieftains’ duns, not at the school,” Boudica replied. “If you want to cram wisdom into the heads of youngsters, stay here and smack some sense into Rigana!” That morning the little girl had managed to elude her keepers. Her short legs had carried her to the blacksmiths’ enclave before they heard Bogle barking and found her screaming because the dog would not let her reach the fire.

“For the kind of warding she needs right now Bogle is a better guardian than I could ever be,” answered Lhiannon. She bent to strap up her bag. “My dear, this is not forever. I will visit, and when she is older, you may send Rigana to be trained as you were trained …”
If there is still a school for her to go to,
came the thought. But wasn’t she leaving so that she might do what she could to preserve the life they had known?

“Yes, but …” Boudica’s words trailed off. Lhiannon looked up and saw that the king had entered. The queen turned toward him as a flower turns toward the sun. Ever since Beltane it had been so. The marriage had at long last been consummated not only in the the flesh but in the spirit. The girl was become a woman, priestess to her husband as well as queen.

No, I am leaving because she no longer needs me,
Lhiannon admitted to herself as Boudica moved into the circle of Prasutagos’s arm. What had she hoped—that having lost the man she loved, she might find a substitute in Boudica, and still retain her virginity? Lhiannon knew quite well that it was not the physical contact but the emotional bond it created that was the distraction for an oracle. By that alone she was disqualified.
I must recover my own sovereignty.

“Lhiannon, are you ready?” Belina called from the doorway.

She picked up her bag. Prasutagos and Boudica came to embrace her—together. They would always be together now.

“My lady, I thank you for all you have done …” murmured the king.

“Lhiannon—” Boudica’s voice broke. “Take care! Take care!”

She had no words. She kissed them both and walked out into the blinding light of the sun.

oudica leaned on the rail at the top of the fence around the home meadow of Dun Garo, watching Roud move gracefully across the grass, her chestnut coat shining in the sun. The mare would pause to snatch a mouthful, then flirtatiously switch her tail, looking back to see if the king’s gray stallion was following. Boudica had not realized that the red mare was coming into season. She wondered how long it would take the stallion to get her in foal.

And how long will it take Prasutagos to do the same to me?
At the thought, she could feel the heat flushing her skin. Her recollections of the Beltane rite were fragmentary, but to recall the authority with which her husband had taken her every night since then left her liquid with longing. And as if the thought had summoned him, senses she had never owned before told Boudica that the king was approaching now.

She turned her head and smiled a welcome, wondering that she could ever have watched that springy walk without wanting his strong body close to hers, or looked into those rugged features without wishing to make him smile.

“Well met, my lady.” His lips quirked as he realized what was going on. “The king and queen are expected to bring fertility to the kingdom, but I had not supposed the effect would be quite so immediate.”

Laughing, Boudica twitched her hips as the mare was doing now and took a step back so that her buttocks butted against his groin. She felt him hardening against her and moved quickly away again. She had danced naked before all the tribe at the Beltane rite, but she could not do so here.

“That was … wise,” he said a little breathlessly. “The king should demonstrate self-control as well as virility, and if I touch you, in another moment I’ll have you on your knees in the grass …”

“Yes …” she said in a shaken voice, agreeing to more than desire. He took a deep breath and met her gaze. They were no longer touching, but she felt him as powerfully as if he had been inside her. This was not lust, or not lust only. “What has happened to us?”

Prasutagos swallowed. Whatever it was, he, too, was its thrall. “Between a king and a queen there should be regard and respect,” he said, as if it were a teaching he had memorized. “I never dared to hope …”

“For love …” she breathed, allowing herself to recognize and accept it at last. She saw his face grow radiant as he realized that for both of them this was forgiveness for what had gone before and a promise for what was to come.

I owe an apology,
thought Boudica,
to the spirit of the sacred spring …

hiannon bent to fill her waterskin, suppressing an impulse to take off her shoes and soak her feet in the pool. Her horse had gone lame that morning and she had walked, leading it, for the rest of the day. A few rags of cloth fluttered from the birch trees that grew around the water. The local people who had given them milk and cheese called the place Vernemeton, the holy grove. It would not do to offend the spirit of the spring.

She sat back, breathing deeply of the cool, damp air. There was great peace here. She wished that she could stay for a while. She tried to tell herself that it was because she was wearied by travel, but the longer she journeyed in the company of Belina and the other Druids who had joined their party as they made their way across Britannia, the more she remembered why she and Ardanos had been glad to get away.

The moon that had been waning when the little party of Druids left Dun Garo had passed the full and was beginning to shrink once more. In the old days it would have been a somewhat shorter journey, but the Romans were patrolling the territory of their allies in the midlands more closely than expected, in case Caratac and the Ordovice warriors should attack again.

She sighed and got to her feet as Belina called her name. The others had a fire blazing already. Lhiannon poured her water into the cauldron and Belina dropped in the loosely woven bag of dried meat and meal. Two of the Druids were arguing about ways to calculate the dates of the festivals. They were both old men from newly conquered lands, leaving the clans they had served for fear of the Roman ban. What would the people do for spiritual leadership if all the Druids sought sanctuary on Mona? What would the Romans do, she wondered uneasily, when they realized that was where all the Druids had gone?