The Forest House (21 page)

Eilan nodded, her heart beginning to pound, whether with excitement or fear, she did not know.

"Well, I will teach you now. The important thing to remember is that the fire cannot harm you; you have seen me handle it, and so you know within yourself that it can be done." She picked up the girl's slender white fingers in her own cool ones and breathed on the palm of Eilan's hand.

"Now," she said, "The important thing is to trust yourself. Reach quickly into the fire, and pick up a handful of live coals; the fire can only harm you because you believe it is in the nature of fire to burn; once you know its true spiritual nature, you can handle it as you would a handful of dry leaves. Fire burns within you as it burns on the hearth. How can one flame harm another? Let the spark of life within you welcome fire!"

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Eilan quailed, but it was true that she had seen Caillean do this trick; and she trusted the older woman completely. She reached towards the brazier of live coals; heat touched her face, but Caillean said firmly,

"Do not hesitate — do it quickly!" And Eilan thrust her hand into the flames.

On her cheeks she could still feel heat, but to her astonishment, the coals felt like a handful of winter snow. Caillean, watching her wondering face, said, "Drop it; quickly now." Eilan opened her fingers against a sudden blast of heat and the coals rolled on to the hearthstone. She stared at her hands in wonder.

"Did I really do that?"

"You did," Caillean said. The coal had reached a cloth lying in the hearth, which began to smolder. A strong stink of burning cloth rose suddenly from the singed edges as Caillean picked it up and blew it out.

Eilan stared at her in astonishment. "How did you know that in another moment it was going to burn?"

Caillean said, "I could feel you beginning to think and wonder -and doubt. Doubt is the enemy of magic.

We are taught to do things like this to astonish the common people with wonders and marvels, or to guard ourselves in danger. But you must learn," she cautioned, "that it is not right to do miracles for the sake of merely astonishing the once-born. Even to preserve yourself against danger, you must be wary of doing what may seem miracles. It may not have been altogether wise to use it that night in Main's house; but done is done. Now that you know it is possible, you shall learn when it is right to use such things, and when it is not."

As the year's passage was marked by the festivals, the girls received not only the lore of the gods each festival honored but the meaning behind the tales, many of which, true in symbol, were not true in fact.

They argued about the virginity of the goddess Arianrhod, and the fate of the bright son she so unwillingly bore; they analyzed the transformations of Gwion who tasted the brew in the cauldron of wisdom. They learned the secret lore of the Sacred King and the Lady of Sovereignty. And in the darkest days of winter, they contemplated the mysteries of the shadowy goddesses whose bloody faces and withered flesh were the embodiment of men's fears.

"But why do men fear old women?" Eilidh asked. "They do not feel that way about old men!"

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"The old man becomes a sage, something for a man to aspire to," Caillean told them. "They fear the hag because she is beyond their power. With the coming of her moonblood a girl becomes a woman. She needs a man to become a mother, and a mother needs a man to protect her children. But the old woman knows all the secrets of birth and death; she has rebirthed herself and needs nothing. So of course the man, who knows only the first change that brings him to manhood, is afraid."

Lhiannon's name was sacred even when the younger girls giggled about their elders late at night in the Hall of Maidens, but Eilan could not help wondering if the High Priestess had gone through the rebirth Caillean had described. Old as she was, one could not imagine that any human grief or passion had ever touched her. She had lain with no man, borne no child; she drifted through the Forest House in a cloud of lavender scent and trailing draperies, her smile sweet and vague and distant as if she moved through her own private reality.

And yet Caillean loved her. Eilan could not allow herself to forget that the older priestess, with whom that night of Mairi's childbirth had given her so deep a bond, saw something in the High Priestess that she herself had not seen; but she would take it on faith that it was there.

When they began to teach the girls the disciplines that would give them access to the inner planes, Eilan applied herself with diligence. Such things — dreams and intuitions — had always come to her easily and without warning. Now she learned to bring the visions at will, and when it was necessary, to wall them away.

She learned the work of seeing visions in a bowl of water and the use of spells for far-seeing. One of the first things she saw through her scrying was the battle with the raiders who had destroyed her home.

"A blessing on the Lady of Vernemeton, if it is she who has sent this wind!" said Cynric, sniffing the mist that was blowing past him, heavy with the scent of the sea.

"She was as good as her word," answered Bendeigid beside him. "Since the third day after they burned my hall this wind has blown. When the scattered bands came back to load their curraghs with their spoils they found the breeze dead against them." He grinned mirthlessly. "We shall pin them between the strand and the sea!"

From near by came a hard-edged order, and the rhythmic tramp of hobnailed sandals came to a halt.

Cynric grimaced, glad the wind had not carried the sound to the enemy. As well to go in with clarions shrilling than to let the raiders hear that ominous tread. The Britons were not nearly so orderly, but a great
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deal quieter.

He still found himself stiffening whenever the crest of
a
Roman helmet appeared through the mist. He had never expected to be fighting side by side with his enemy. But if, for the sake of a greater good, even Bendeigid could suspend his hatred, he supposed he could do the same.

Then Bendeigid laid a hand on his sleeve and Cynric halted, peering through the fringe of scrubby alders that stretched between them and the shore. He could smell woodsmoke and the rank odor of the privy trench - not very well tended. It was true, one could track vermin from the smell. He eased his shield down from his shoulder and got a better grip on his spear.

Cynric's heart was pounding oddly and his mouth was dry.
You longed for real battle, how can you be
afraid?
he asked himself.
Would you have hidden behind Rheis's skirts if you had been there when
they attacked the hall?
At the thought, his panic changed to fury.

Then the Roman trumpets blared. Bendeigid gave tongue with a guttural roar and Cynric found his own throat opening. Howling,

the Britons ran forward. Cynric pushed through the trees, spear ready, and heard the Roman charge beating out an accompaniment to the British cries.

As the Romans drove down upon the foe the Britons fell upon their rear. A warrior turned, his form distorted by the mist to that of a monster. He
was
a monster! Cynric's training took over and he jabbed upward; felt the shock and heard the cry as the blade went in. But he had no time to react, for another man was coming at him. A swordstroke clattered on his shield. Side-vision showed him the Roman troopers, cutting through the foe with mechanical efficiency. Cynric jerked the spear free and swung, seeing in each contorted face his enemy.

Cynric could not tell if half a day or half a lifetime had passed when he realized there was no one attacking him any more. All around him lay bodies, and Bendeigid was methodically giving the mercy stroke to any that still lived. He was covered with blood, but none of it seemed to be his own. Once he had fallen and thought himself done for, but a legionary had stood above him, covering him with that big oblong shield until he could rise.

He realized that you could hate someone and still admire .them. He would never love Romans, but he
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could see now there might be something to be learned from them. At this moment, even his own Roman blood did not seem so evil a thing. He heard a crackle of flame and saw that Ardanos was directing the burning of the enemy curraghs. The smoke stank of burnt meat, but the round, leather-covered boats burned merrily. Cynric turned away, wondering if he were going to be ill.

But one boat had been kept back, and one of the raiders had been saved alive, though blinded, to man it.

Ardanos lifted his hands to the skies, shouting something in the old speech that only the Druids used. For a moment the breeze died, then it backed and began to blow from landward. Ardanos set his hand upon the rim of the curragh, holding it.

"I have called the winds to speed you," he told the man inside. "If the gods love you, you will come to Eriu once more. Be you our messenger, and take them this word," Ardanos said fiercely, "that if you come again to these shores, the same will be done to every one of you."

The vision faded, and Eilan sank back, shuddering. She had never seen serious fighting, and it filled her with horror, yet she found herself rejoicing fiercely as the raiders died. One of these men had certainly killed her mother and probably her younger sister, and set aflame the house in which she had been born.

She peered into the water, seeking the face of Gaius, but caught no sight of him. Had he fallen in some earlier skirmish with the enemy, believing her dead in the ruins of her home? Well, better that he should think her dead than faithless, she told herself, but she was surprised at how much, even now, the thought that he was the one who might have died brought her grief. The night they sat beside the Beltane fires they had seemed one being. Surely if he were killed, she could not help but know.

But presently the steady flow of her life in the Forest House washed the pain even from the memory of Gaius and what might have been.

With the others, she took her turn at gathering the sacred plants and herbs, learning which of them should be gathered by a particular light of sun or moon.

"This lore is older than the Druids," Miellyn confided to her once when they were paired. Miellyn, although she had come to the Forest House long ago, was not many years older than Eilan and the two, as the two youngest in the house, were often paired off in their work. Miellyn had chosen to become a
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priestess of the healing arts, and had already had extensive training. "Some of it comes down from the old days, even before our people came into this land."

It had been a wet spring, and along the banks of the brook that wandered through the fields behind the Forest House, the mugwort plants were waist high. The sharp pungent scent of their leaves was almost dizzying as she stripped them from their stalks. The priestesses used them to induce visions, and in an infusion to ease sore muscles.

"Caillean told me something of this," Eilan answered. "There was a time, she says, when there were no Druid priests in Britannia. When our people came they killed the priests of the tribes they conquered, but they did not dare to kill the priestesses of the Great Mother. Our own sacred women learned from them, and added the ancient knowledge to their own."

"It is true," Miellyn said, moving along the riverbank. "Caillean has studied these things more than I, and she is a priestess of the Oracle. They, at least, go back to a time well before the Forest House was built and long before the Order of Druids came to this island of Britain. They say that their first priestesses came here from an island far out in the western ocean that now is sunk beneath the waves. With them came the priest men called the Merlin, who taught the lore of the stars and of the standing stones."

For a moment they contemplated an almost unimaginable antiquity. Then a little breeze fluttered their skirts, and brought them back to the beauty of the green world around them.

"Is that feverfew or chervil?" Eilan pointed at a mass of low-growing bright green foliage with small jagged leaves.

"Chervil. See how tender the stems are? It has just sprung up here. Feverfew lives through the winter, and its stem is woody. But it is true, the leaves look much the same."

"There is so much to remember!" Eilan exclaimed. "If our people did not always live here, how did we learn all this lore?"

"Men are by nature wanderers," said Miellyn, "though you may not think it, rooted among us here. Every people has moved from somewhere, and had to learn the ways of the land from the people who were there before. The last of our own tribes came to this island only about a hundred years before the Romans, and from much the same part of the world."

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"You would think the Romans would know more about us, then, if we were neighbors," said Eilan.

"They knew enough about our warriors to be afraid," Miellyn grinned fiercely. "Maybe that is why they spread such scandals about us. Tell me, Eilan, have you ever seen any man burnt on our altars? Or any woman either?"

"No; nor anyone put to death except for criminals," replied Eilan. "How can the Romans say such things about us?"

"Why should they not? They are ignorant men," said Miellyn scornfully. "They set down all their knowledge on bits of leather or waxed wood or tablets of stone and think that is wisdom. What good does it do a piece of stone to have knowledge? Even I, a young priestess, know it is the understanding graven in the heart that makes men wise. Can you learn the ways of the herbs from a book? It is not enough even to be told. You must seek out the plants yourself, handle them, love them, watch them grow. Then you can use them for healing, for their spirits will speak to you."

"Perhaps their women know more," said Eilan. "For I have heard the Romans do not teach the craft of letters to all their womenfolk. I wonder what wisdom the mothers pass on to their daughters that the men do not know?"

Miellyn made a face. "Perhaps they are afraid that if women learned bookcraft too there would not be enough work for scribes and the letter writers of the marketplace."