The Children of the Company (7 page)
Read The Children of the Company Online
Authors: Kage Baker
Tags: #General, #Fiction, #Science Fiction, #C429, #Extratorrents, #Kat
“But you’re a young man,” I said doubtfully. “I thought most of the
vates
had died off years ago.”
vates
had died off years ago.”
“I’m older than I look.” Was he evading my gaze, there, for just a second? “In any case: I’m quite resigned to the druids being dead as last year’s mutton, but it kills the heart in me to know their more, ah, arcane knowledge will be lost. The sciences. The sacred rites, the ceremonies and all that. Now, I couldn’t ever tell you Christians certain things, being sworn to secrecy, but if you happened to overhear me talking to myself—say if we happened to be sitting in the same room at the time—and you happened to write down what you heard, well, it wouldn’t be a sin for you, would it?”
“I’m not so sure about that.” I sat to consider it. “Preserving heathen history and legends is one thing. Preserving a false faith … I seem to remember the Blessed Patrick stating quite clearly that druid books ought to be burned, not preserved.”
He sighed and had another sip of mead. “I know what you’re thinking: what if this is some pagan plot to keep the Old Religion going? I’ll tell you what you can do: once you’ve made my
Codex Druidae
, you can bury it in a lead casket ten feet below the floor of this room. I’ll swear any oath you like that it’ll remain there, undisturbed, unseen for a thousand years and more.”
Codex Druidae
, you can bury it in a lead casket ten feet below the floor of this room. I’ll swear any oath you like that it’ll remain there, undisturbed, unseen for a thousand years and more.”
“It’s a strange request …” I tugged at my beard. “Still, I know how I’d feel in your position. Couldn’t we finish this cycle of stories about Finn MacCool first?”
“Naturally.” He brightened up, setting down his mead and reaching for the harp. “How’s your cramp? Feel up to some white-knuckle iambic pentameter? I was just about to come to the part where Finn’s woman is stolen by demons of darkness …”
“Finn married?” I grabbed up my pen.
“Not exactly. It was like this …”
So we went on like that, he and I, and the hours lengthened into days. From sunrise until midday we’d work on the stories of Finn, or the tale of Conchobar’s
quest for the Four Blind Boys, or other fascinating material, with me copying fast in simple brown ink, leaving margins and capitals to be elaborated on and illuminated later. If the weather was fair we’d move outdoors, where the light was better and Lewis wouldn’t have to keep retuning his strings. Sometimes the Abbess would come to us, unable to restrain her desire, and read over my shoulder or listen with her eyes closed, to hear about Fergus and the Seal-Woman. But in the afternoons, when she had gone, we’d go inside and work on the
Codex Druidae
, the forbidden book. The actual text took no more than a week or so to rough in. I planned to spend more time on the illumination.
quest for the Four Blind Boys, or other fascinating material, with me copying fast in simple brown ink, leaving margins and capitals to be elaborated on and illuminated later. If the weather was fair we’d move outdoors, where the light was better and Lewis wouldn’t have to keep retuning his strings. Sometimes the Abbess would come to us, unable to restrain her desire, and read over my shoulder or listen with her eyes closed, to hear about Fergus and the Seal-Woman. But in the afternoons, when she had gone, we’d go inside and work on the
Codex Druidae
, the forbidden book. The actual text took no more than a week or so to rough in. I planned to spend more time on the illumination.
I must say, any reservations I had melted away once I actually heard the so-called sacred knowledge of my ancestors. No wonder they’d kept it secret! Most of it was utter nonsense. I remember one absurd formula for producing children out of nature, by combining tiny bits of the parents’ flesh in a glass dish. Some of their astronomy was fairly good, at least. They knew, like Pythagoras, that the Earth was a sphere, but they had this notion that the Earth revolves around the Sun! In fact, they thought—but it’s just too stupid to waste the ink in telling over again. I confess I was laughing as I took most of it down. No wonder Lewis had abandoned the priestly caste to be a bard.
And in any case, he was a kindly young man, and I couldn’t imagine him shutting unfortunate criminals into wicker cages and burning them alive. Not that he wouldn’t have been strong enough; one time he took his turn at serving the evening meal, though as a guest he needn’t have, and I saw him hoist the great fish-cauldron on his shoulder and bear it from the kitchen as though it weighed nothing. I watched him mend a set of beads for one of the sisters one evening at table, prizing and closing the bronze links with powerful clever fingers. And his speech was graceful and witty, making us laugh so, it was as if Christ Himself were there telling jokes.
This happy time lasted until Beltane Eve. On that afternoon, Lewis and I were sitting out of doors, and white thorn blossoms were dropping on the calfskin from the bush above me, so I kept having to brush them away as I took down Lewis’s account of the Daughter of the King Under the Waves. Suddenly he stopped. A second later the birds, who had been singing delightfully, stopped, too. “Liath is coming,” Lewis announced, raising one eyebrow, “and something’s wrong—”
When she came into view I saw he was right, for her face was dark with unhappiness. She wasted no time, but came straight to Lewis, and in blunt
Gaelic addressed him: “Pagan man, have you any knowledge of the ways of the
sidhe?”
Gaelic addressed him: “Pagan man, have you any knowledge of the ways of the
sidhe?”
His mouth hung open a second in surprise. “I have,” he said.
“Good, for we have need of it. Brother Crimthann has been stolen away from us by the
sidhe
of Dun Govaun, and must be rescued.”
sidhe
of Dun Govaun, and must be rescued.”
If Finn and all his host had suddenly leaped alive from my page, I could not have been more bewildered. Fairy folk? Fairy folk kidnapping one of us? But the
sidhe
were mere heathen fables, they didn’t exist! And I saw that Lewis was no less amazed, though courteously he asked her to explain.
sidhe
were mere heathen fables, they didn’t exist! And I saw that Lewis was no less amazed, though courteously he asked her to explain.
It seemed that Brother Crimthann, who was one of the younger members of our community, had been troubled lately with bad dreams. In his dreams, the
sidhe
came into the cell where he slept, as easily as if they walked through smoke, and bore him away with them to their palace under Dun Govaun. There he suffered torments of fleshly temptation, but by morning woke in his cell again with no sign of the ordeal of his dreams: not even the guilty emission of a young man so tempted. He had sworn that the
sidhe
were not beautiful, either, but pale and small and silent.
sidhe
came into the cell where he slept, as easily as if they walked through smoke, and bore him away with them to their palace under Dun Govaun. There he suffered torments of fleshly temptation, but by morning woke in his cell again with no sign of the ordeal of his dreams: not even the guilty emission of a young man so tempted. He had sworn that the
sidhe
were not beautiful, either, but pale and small and silent.
At this I saw Lewis start forward, like a hound catching a scent. “Now that is a strange thing, truly,” he told the Abbess.
“Strange, but not so strange as this: Brother Crimthann did not come to prayers this morning, nor later, nor was he to be found in his cell. But Brother Aidan’s hut adjoins his, and Brother Aidan swears that in the third hour of the night the moon shone into his cell, bright enough to flood between the stone chinks; and as you are a pagan and learned in these things I need not tell you that there was no moon last night.” The Abbess looked at him grimly. “Now, this is a pagan matter. The Blessed Patrick gave us prayers against the
sidhe
, but I never read anywhere that fairy women carried him away from his holy bed. Can you go to them, then, and win our brother back with that fine pagan talk of yours? Bring him alive out of Dun Govaun, and Christ will bless you for it, druid though you are.”
sidhe
, but I never read anywhere that fairy women carried him away from his holy bed. Can you go to them, then, and win our brother back with that fine pagan talk of yours? Bring him alive out of Dun Govaun, and Christ will bless you for it, druid though you are.”
“I will,” said Lewis, “and gladly, good Mother. Only tell me where to find Dun Govaun, and I’ll go there straight.”
“Brother Eogan knows,” she told him, and gave me a Look of Order. “Eogan, show him the way.”
“This is really marvelous,” Lewis said as we pushed our way through the heather. “Tell me, Eogan, have you ever noticed this sort of thing going on before? Strange lights in the sky, unusual marking in the fields, cattle inexplicably slaughtered in grotesque ways? Any nocturnal goings-on in your cell?”
“This is really marvelous,” Lewis said as we pushed our way through the heather. “Tell me, Eogan, have you ever noticed this sort of thing going on before? Strange lights in the sky, unusual marking in the fields, cattle inexplicably slaughtered in grotesque ways? Any nocturnal goings-on in your cell?”
“Certainly not,” I replied stiffly. “I sleep soundly at night, at least since I stopped having to shave my tonsure. I daresay Brother Crimthann will, too, when he’s past thirty and not quite so easily tempted by the flesh.”
“Cheer up! Baldness looks good on some men. You think that’s all it is, then, with Brother Crimthann? He’s been sneaking out at night to visit a girl?” Lewis leapt nimbly up on a rock and peered ahead, shading his eyes with his hand. “Ah. That must be the famous Dun Govaun.”
“That’s it.” I regarded it sourly. “The supposed hall of the fairies. Absolutely ridiculous! It’s a completely smooth and solid hill. Not even a rabbit hole on it anywhere. As for Brother Crimthann, he’s simply run away, if you ask me. That’s the trouble with these boys who get all inflamed by the idea of monastic life before they’ve had a chance to see what sleeping with a woman’s like.” I bent to untangle a branch of gorse from the leg of my trews. “Chastity seems like such a wonderful idea until the first time someone actually tempts them, and then they go all to pieces. Hysteria, night sweats, and Satan everywhere they look.”
“Not one of the better innovations of Christianity, if you’ll pardon my saying so,” Lewis remarked as we hurried on. “But let’s climb Dun Govaun. I’m eager to see if anything’s up there. There are, er … certain stories amongst my people, of creatures like the ones Brother Crimthann described. We’ve never been able to verify anything, of course. So what do you think the place is? Not a natural hill, at any rate.”
“Nothing more than the burial mound of some heathen king,” I said dismissively; but I glanced upward, for by then we had come to the base of the great hill, and I felt my opinion curdle in my heart. Perhaps a giant heathen king.
“There’s a place in Britain—” began Lewis, and then he stopped still in his tracks. He seemed to be listening intently to something. His face lit up. He began to laugh.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” he said, in rather poor taste under the circumstances, I thought. “They’re here, Eogan! There are actually living things inside this hill.”
“How do you know?” I was unable to see what should amuse him so.
“Let’s say it’s druidical wisdom,” he replied, chuckling, and began to pace rapidly along the side of the hill. “Yes—there should be a concealed opening, and I’ll bet it’s just about here—”
“What in Christ’s name are you babbling about?” I demanded, running after him until he suddenly vanished before my astounded eyes. I froze, staring at empty grass and windy sky. To my horror his bright voice went right on.
“Here it is, no doubt about it. Eogan? What’s the matter? Oh.” His head appeared in midair, a vision no less terrifying. He must have seen how frightened I was, for in a soothing voice he said: “This is only a conjurer’s trick, man. There’s magic in your Bible, isn’t there? Moses and Aaron working spells against the Pharaoh’s magicians? And this is less than that, believe me.”
“But—” I said, and that was when I felt my faith first shifting under me. All this while, I had believed that Christ’s coming had scoured sorcery out of the world, as the sunrise dispels darkness. Though the old stories might be good to tell and listen to, and the days of the heroes sentimentally longed after, no such wonders existed any more, if indeed they ever had.
Yet my logic had been flawed, hadn’t it? For the old prophets did work magic, Christ Himself had done so, and where in Scripture did it say that we lived in an orderly and rational world?
Lewis extended a disembodied hand, in a gesture meant to calm me. “Come around here, and I’ll show you.”
Christ forgive me, I went to see. As I approached, the rest of him appeared whole and sound, and I saw the wavering stripes of shadow he was pointing out so proudly. They were like the blurs that used to dance before my eyes when I’d worked too late by one candle. “Now, watch this,” he told me, and closed his eyes. I heard a humming sound and a snap. The mouth of a cave yawned before us, black dark and deep. I made the Sign of the Cross against all evil.
“What did you do?”
“I just—broke the spell. In a manner of speaking. I’ll bet Brother Crimthann’s in there.” Lewis’s smile faded as he considered the thing he’d revealed to me. “Good Lord, a real abduction. What should we do now, do you suppose?”
“You—you said you’d rescue him!” I sputtered.
“I did, didn’t I?” He looked unhappy. “You wait here, then. I’ll be back as soon as I can.” To my astonishment, he turned without the least hesitation and proceeded down into the darkness, and I realized he had no weapon with
him larger than a penknife. I watched his back dwindling into the shadows a moment before I ran after him, calling on the power of Christ to shield me.
him larger than a penknife. I watched his back dwindling into the shadows a moment before I ran after him, calling on the power of Christ to shield me.
“Oh—” He half turned as I caught hold of his cloak. “That’s all right, you don’t have to come. Really, you’ll be safer out there. I can see in the dark, had I mentioned that?”
“No,” I replied, groping after him. There were strange smells in that darkness, but I didn’t want to be thought a coward; and wasn’t the power of Christ greater than anything that might be down there? It must be, mustn’t it? “I’ll bear you company.”
“Well, that’s thoughtful of you. Be careful, Eogan; the passageway’s getting narrower, and there’s some kind of threshold we’re about to cross. Here. Step up with me now—”
Then it was as though lightning had come down from Heaven into that black place, and I was struck and thrown like a spark from a smith’s anvil.
Hours and hours later I heard Lewis saying, “Well, that was certainly stupid.”
I sat up painfully, feeling as though I’d been beaten. We lay in halfdarkness, in an angle of corridor lined by panes of milk-white glass that glowed softly. Behind us, set into the floor, was a simple metal grating.
“Eogan,” said Lewis, and he sounded almost embarrassed. “Eogan, there are people coming for us, and I’m afraid I have a problem.”
“What is that?” How groggy I sounded.
“I seem to be paralyzed.”
I grimaced. “Your neck’s broken, then. I’m sorry, man.”
“No, it can’t break, but—” He paused a moment and then spoke rapidly. “Eogan, I’d like to make a confession. Will you hear it? Will you be my
anmchara?”
anmchara?”
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