The Greener Shore (40 page)

Probus cleared his throat. “I was never a general, Ainvar.” He sounded slightly embarrassed. “And I was only in command of the garrison at the very end.

“For a long time before that, our commanding officer kept assuring us we soon would receive reinforcements and the assault on Albion would begin in earnest. But it never happened. Then we learned of Caesar’s death and—”

“What?!”

Turned upside down, the world spun around me.

“Caesar was assassinated on the Ides of March,” Probus said as if clarifying something I should already know.

My tongue had cleaved to the roof of my mouth, but finally I managed to mumble, “When?”

“Eight years ago.”

Eight years!

I think I staggered. I know I gazed wildly around and passed my hand across my forehead as if brushing away cobwebs. Had time contracted for us while expanding elsewhere? Or was it the other way around? Druid questions.

Probus was looking at me curiously. “Can it be that you were unaware of Caesar’s death?”

Think, head!

In the forests of Gaul we had avoided all contact with the Romans—or with anyone who might be in contact with them. Soon we would welcome our seventh spring in Hibernia, where the fate of a far-distant tyrant called Caesar was of no consequence. As far as the Gael were concerned the machinations of Rome might as well have taken place on the moon.

“We’re…a bit out of the way here,” I replied.

“Well, I know all about it,” Labraid babbled. “Caesar’s enemies cornered him in the Senate and hundreds of them pounced on him all at once and cut him into little pieces and—”

“It was not quite that dramatic, Labraid,” the Roman corrected. “However, several members of the Senate did conspire to kill him; they stabbed him to death in front of Pompey’s statue. On an earlier occasion Caesar had refused the crown of king but the conspirators were convinced he now meant to accept it. Rome is a republic; the concept of monarchy is anathema. Great Caesar had overreached himself at last and his ambition brought him down.”

Caesar. Gone. How was that possible? Did the sun rise in the west now? Had the stars changed their patterns? The object of the hatred that had fueled most of my adult life was dead. Not just dead, but dead for almost a decade.

“My garrison did not learn of Caesar’s death for several months,” Probus told me, “and then only by rumor. Officially we were still under the command of Julius Caesar; realistically our little corner of Albion was forgotten in the turmoil. Other garrisons were recalled but no summons came for us, and without written orders our commanding officer was reluctant to return to Rome.

“After Caesar’s death, Rome was ruled for a while by a triumvirate composed of Caesar’s nephew Octavian, Marc Antony, and Marcus Lepidus, but then there was a power struggle and civil war broke out. Legionaries who had followed one standard all their lives felt the earth shift beneath their feet. Some changed sides, while others deserted altogether. It was a very confusing time. Our aging commandant, who had been anticipating a pleasant retirement in a villa in Tuscany, felt the wisest course was to stay where he was and keep his head down.

“Time passed; far too much time. Can you imagine what it was like to occupy a forgotten outpost in hostile territory? Occasionally we snarled at one of the tribes in our vicinity and they snarled back at us, but few battles took place. We did a little trading and a lot of foraging. We drilled on the parade ground until we were heartily sick of drilling. Our head carpenter amused himself by building miniature models of Roman forts. The rest of us mostly sat around and drank bad wine and talked about bad women. Our famous discipline grew very lax, Ainvar.”

“I can well imagine. A warrior without a war to fight needs cattle to tend or fields to plow.”

“I cannot tend cattle or plow a field, though I do think I would make a good trader,” said Probus. “Eventually some bureaucrat buried in the bowels of Rome discovered us in the military records, and we were recalled. A skeleton force was picked to stay behind for maintenance of the garrison. Both of my parents were dead by then and I had no one waiting for me, so I volunteered to remain. The commandant put me in charge of a handful of other volunteers—including Anicius, whom I mentioned before—and went home to enjoy a well-earned retirement.

“Little was required of those who stayed behind: mending roofs, keeping the wells clean, that sort of thing. Conflict with the natives was avoided because our numbers were so small. Boredom became a major problem. We were all veterans of hard campaigns and accustomed to activity. Anicius in particular was going very sour.

“Deputations from the tribes of Albion visited Mona to seek the aid of the druids, whose ‘holy island’ it was, so I organized a fact-finding expedition to the place. The expedition was not just to relieve the tedium; I hoped it would provide information that might be useful when Rome resumed the conquest of Albion.”

Labraid had begun fidgeting. Kicking pebbles. Whistling through his teeth. The Speaker was interested only in conversations that revolved around himself.

Aware of his impatience, Probus said, “I apologize for taking so long to explain, Ainvar, but I wanted you to understand my background.”

“I believe I do.”

“What I tell you next may be more difficult to understand. I am not a fanciful man, and you may laugh at me if you like; but the moment I set foot on the druids’ island something strange occurred.”

Intuition prompted my response. “You felt as if you had come home.”

The Roman’s jaw dropped. “How could you know?”

“What nonsense,” Labraid said peevishly. “I never felt anything like that on Mona.”

Probus gave him the glance an older brother might give an impudent sibling, understanding him but loving him anyway. “Different people react in different ways, Labraid. That was mine.

“We carried weapons concealed beneath our garments, but I had given orders not to use them unless absolutely necessary. Without any knowledge of the number of inhabitants on the island I did not want trouble. The first person we came upon was a man gathering nuts. Speaking to him in his own language, I said, ‘We mean you no harm. We are only in search of knowledge. Mysterious tales are told of this island and we would like to know the truth.’

“‘Truth is everything,’ the man told me. ‘If you seek it you have come to the right place.’ He led us into the darkest woodland imaginable, following trails so convoluted I doubted if we could make our way back to our landing site unaided. Anicius, who was walking behind me, said we were making a mistake. But I pressed on. This was my first occasion of real leadership and I could not let the men see me back down.

“At last we came out of the trees. In the center of a huge clearing we found a structure somewhat resembling a temple. As we drew closer I could see that it had been shaped by human hands, though it appeared to grow out of the underlying rock. The design was oval in shape and had no roof. Our guide explained that it was open to the sky so the movements of certain stars could be observed and their paths calculated.

“This was the heart, he said, of a druid ‘college’ called Tan Ben y Cefn. The place defied classification, being neither city, town, nor fortress. In fact, the man-made aspect was kept to a minimum. Spread around the temple were various small houses that might almost have been random piles of stone, and domestic offices built of timber so they looked like clumps of trees. The buildings were enclosed within roughly rectangular earthworks, whose dimensions had been determined by the druids according to a formula of their own. There was no palisade, no gates. No armed guards.

“At first I thought the place deserted, but as we walked forward people appeared. Men and women but no children. It was as if they materialized out of the stones. At the time I thought that impossible.

“We were greeted by a man whose graying beard reached to his knees, while the forepart of his head was shaved clean from ear to ear. In one hand he carried a long staff carved from the wood of the ash. He said his name was Mac Coille, meaning ‘the Son of the Wood,’ and further identified himself as the chief druid. Before I could offer an innocent explanation for our visit he told me its true purpose. Yet he showed no anger. He accepted our arrival as inevitable and seemed untroubled by it. Quite the contrary, he offered us the hospitality of a guesthouse and promised to show us almost anything we wished to see. A few of the most sacred rituals might be denied us, but everything else was wide open.”

“Only someone supremely confident of his power,” I commented, “would grant you such access.”

“That was my conclusion too, Ainvar. I privately told my men to cause no trouble, but to be wary. For several days we wandered at will around Tan Ben y Cefn. At first I was merely curious; before long I was baffled. Although every member of the community obviously had a specific function to fulfill, I could not determine what those functions were.

“In front of the temple, different druids spoke daily on a variety of both esoteric and practical subjects. Their audiences were encouraged to ask questions, but even the simplest query might elicit a complex response that took up half a morning.

“In addition to the lectures we also witnessed incomprehensible rituals. Some had results so astounding we doubted the evidence of our senses.”

“Such as?”

“I saw a druid stand atop a rock and hold up his arms. He gave a peculiar cry and the birds of the air swooped down to him in their hundreds, covering his head and shoulders, fighting for perches on his arms, blanketing the earth at his feet until he stood amid a feathered flood. He did not feed them, he did not even speak to them.”

“He was being
with
them, Probus,” I explained. Knowing that would mean nothing to the Roman mind. “Give me another example.”

“An elderly female druid carrying a parcel wrapped in deerskin hobbled to the edge of a bog. While my men and I watched, she crouched down and chanted under her breath for a long time. Then she stood up again, with considerable effort and creaking of joints, and unfolded the deerskin. A tumble of bones fell out, at least a dozen of them. Yet she caught each one
separately,
in midair, and flung it out onto the bog. That crippled old woman!

“Wherever a bone fell,” Probus added in a voice still tinged with amazement, “on the following day a flower bloomed.”

I longed to ask if the bones were human, but kept silent.

“Then there was the matter of food. We were very well fed during our stay, though the druids did not hunt game or cook meat. They subsisted, as far as I could tell, on fish from the streams, and fruit and nuts and root vegetables, and cheese they made from a herd of goats. And the most delicious bread I ever tasted.”

“They grew wheat on Mona?”

“As far as I could tell, the answer is no, Ainvar. We never saw a wheat field or any other cultivated crop. What we did see were round ovens made of clay, presided over by druids who brought stones of a specific size from a nearby stream and put them into the ovens first thing every morning. When the sun stood overhead they opened the ovens and took out loaves of bread. Golden, crusty loaves of moist bread. A man could live on that bread alone.

“I looked into the ovens after they took out the bread. There were no stones inside.

“None of the magic I saw is explicable, Ainvar. Yet I was aware that every action resulted from another as naturally as a flower bud unfolds from the heat of the sun.”

“Naturally,” I echoed.

“You sound as if that is important.”

“It is. The ‘magic’ you witnessed was accomplished through an understanding of the natural world that doesn’t conform to your limited perceptions.”

Probus started to say something; stopped; gave me a long, thoughtful look. “I hope you will explain that statement to me sometime. Meanwhile we must take pity on our young friend here.” With his eyes he indicated Labraid. “He can hardly stay in his skin for eagerness to hear the part about himself.”

chapter
XXVIII

“M
Y MEN AND I SPENT SEVEN DAYS AT TAN BEN Y CEFN,” PROBUS
continued, “observing everything and understanding practically nothing. For all we learned we might as well have stayed on Albion. We could not even determine the exact population of Mona. ‘They come and they go,’ Mac Coille said.

“Then one morning he announced, ‘Two who have visited here before will be returning soon; we must make ready to welcome them.’ Although I did not know it at the time, he was talking about Labraid and Cormiac Ru.”

I turned to scowl at Labraid. “You should have mentioned meeting the druids before.”

“We didn’t meet them, Ainvar; not the first time anyway. From the sea the island had looked uninhabited. I ordered one of the boatmen to stay with the boat while the rest of us went ashore with the leather waterbags. We explored only long enough to find a stream, but we didn’t see anybody. We filled the bags and hurried back to the boat because I wanted to sail on before the wind turned and—”