The Oath

by A. M. Linden

  It was a gallant response, well phrased and flawlessly delivered, but it earned him nothing more than a cranky grumble from Annwr: “I haven’t said I’m going anywhere with you.”

  Instead of arguing, Caelym put his head back down on his arms.

  He must have dozed off again, because suddenly Annwr was next to him and helping him over to the bed. She cut the stiff, blood-soaked cloth away from the base of the arrow and eased his cloak, tunic, and shirt off around it. Then she brought him another cup of wine and a leather strap to bite on. He braced himself, gripping the checkered blanket in his fists as she took hold of the arrow, biting the strap nearly in two when she wrenched it out.

  Holding a cloth to Caelym’s back to stop the fresh flow of blood, Annwr led him back over to the chair by the fire. She put a basin of hot water on the floor in front of him, helped him shed the rest of his clothes, and kept a hand on his shoulder to steady him as he leaned over to wash. When he had done what he could on his own, she poured soapy water through his hair and scrubbed his back, cleaning carefully around the still-oozing wound. She had been quiet before, but somehow seemed quieter now.

  Caelym guessed what she was thinking. “It would be likely to fester and bring fever, I suppose.”

  “And you would be some physician to be knowing about festering and fevers?”

  “That I am, for six years and more.”

  “You never are. There’d be nobody trusting you with any healing!”

  “My patients may not be trusting me with their healing, but I’m doing it whether they are trusting, or they are not.”

  “Well then, you are physician and I am a midwife, so I suppose we may both be thinking it could fester and bring fever, but you are young and strong and likely enough to live through it.”

  “Still, if it does fester, I won’t be moving so well for a while, so I will get my clothes and think of where I will go next while I can still be up and about.”

  “And how am I to know where to find you, if I should decide to go on this trip of yours?”

  “You are coming with me, then?”

  “I haven’t made up my mind, so you might as well be getting back into the bed, as it will be a week or more before you are going anywhere.”

  Caelym was not about to let the matter rest before he had an answer to his question. “A week is a long time to keep a man in your bed if you haven’t decided what you’re going to be doing with him.”

  Annwr was not about to be pushed into an answer before she was ready to give it. “I am an old woman,” she snapped, “and it’s been more than a week since anybody has worried about whether there was a man in my bed. Anyway, your clothes are soaking in the wash and my geese would laugh themselves egg-bound to see you walking out the door wearing nothing.”

  Too tired to think of a satisfactory retort, he allowed her to lead him back to the bed, but there he stood his ground, refusing to lie down, until he had repeated his pledge to save her from the Saxons. Even as the room spun around him, he spoke with a Druid’s persuasive powers, choosing his words skillfully to hide his disappointment that she was no longer beautiful.

  Chapter 3

  The Novice

  The Abbey of Saint Edeth the Enduring was a cloistered convent in the northeastern corner of the Kingdom of Derthwald. A dense forest surrounded the abbey and a narrow clearing around its outer wall was all that separated the nuns and novices inside from the wilderness, so there was a strict rule that all the doors and all the windows had to be kept closed and latched at night.

  Shy, high-strung, and fearful, Sister Aleswina was an unlikely delinquent, but she eased herself out from under her blankets, tiptoed over to the window, and opened the shutters. While Caelym was looking up at her window, Aleswina was looking at the horizon, as if by staring hard enough she could make the dawn come faster. A breeze wafted in, carrying the enticing scent of spring, and she gripped the window’s ledge, overcome with longing to have her trowel in her hand. If she had dared, she would have gone out in the dark to start digging her beds and planting her seeds.

  While there was not much in her dress or in her features to distinguish her from any of a dozen pale, blond Saxon nuns, Aleswina was different from the other women at the convent in three ways— her passion for growing plants, her deep love for the servant who had once been her nursemaid, and in her being the cousin to the king of Derthwald. An unspoken deference to her royal status did more than save her from open reproach over the length of time it was taking her commit to her final vows; it gave her two unusual privileges within the abbey. She was allowed to work by herself in the convent’s garden, and she was allowed to keep her servant, Anna, in a cottage on the edge of the convent’s grounds.

  While they were packing to leave the palace for the convent, Aleswina had entrusted Anna with a substantial cache of coins and jewels, and as soon as it was safe, Anna had bribed a traveling tinker to cut a secret door into the back wall of the convent garden so that Aleswina did not really work in the garden by herself. It was against the rules and, cousin to the king or not, Aleswina would have faced untold days of penance if the abbess ever found out, but every day weather allowed, Anna slipped in through their secret entrance to work along with her.

  The morning promised to be exceptionally warm and balmy for so early in the year, and Aleswina was anxious to begin.

  “Not our wishes but the Lord’s!” was what the abbess would say if Aleswina told her how much she wanted to tend her plants instead of singing or praying. She’d tried that once and been confined in her room to pray and reflect for the rest of the day.

  It was a lesson she’d taken to heart. She’d spent those long, lonely hours terrified that the abbess would send someone to the garden in her place, that Anna would be caught, and that their secret door would be discovered. Whether it was the Virgin Mary or the Mother Goddess who heard her frantic prayers, someone did; and Aleswina never said another word to the abbess about anything that really mattered to her ever again.

  Now, she leaned as far out of the window as she dared, savoring the smell of fresh night air, until the bells rang for the sunrise service. As she closed the shutters—careful not to let them clatter—she realized she’d waited too long to change into her daytime habit. She snatched her wimple off its hook, pulled it on as she felt under her bed for her sandals, and was just in time to open her door and take her place in between Sister Erdorfa and Sister Idwolda as they filed past her door.

  While the poorly lit passageway between the dormitory and the chapel was among the spaces exempted from convent’s rule that secular exchanges were to be conducted using officially sanctioned hand signals, the nuns and novices of Saint Edeth usually went to the first office of the day in sleepy silence. That morning, however, they were wide awake, whispering,

  “Did you hear?”

  “Killing babies and drinking their blood!”

  “Raping virgins!”

  “Coming for us!”

  Before Aleswina could ask who was killing babies and raping virgins, they reached the chapel. The whispering changed to shushes as they filed into their places.

  After they sang the opening hymn and recited the designated psalms, the abbess stepped up to the altar, but instead of reading from the gospels, she announced that the rumors were true.

  “A Druid sorcerer has been sighted near Strothford, just across the River Bense.”

  The nuns on either side of Aleswina gasped.

  The abbess put up her hand for silence. “The king’s soldiers are searching every cottage and shed. They will find the sorcerer and the rest of the devil’s minions—the witches that brew his deadly potions, the demons that cavort at his feet, and the incubi that lure hapless girls into his grasping claws—and burn them at the stake.”

  The abbess lifted her voice in a fervent prayer for the Lord’s protection before dismissing them with a final warning: “No one is to go outside of the abbey, and if you see anything suspicious—the slightest change in
the behavior of any of the servants or even one of our own—you must come and tell me at once!”

  The nervous chatter started up again on the way from chapel to the dining room and did not stop until the abbess took her place at the head of the table. After she said the blessing, they murmured “amen” in unison and began to eat. As Sister Aleswina moved her spoon from her plate to her mouth and back to her plate, the abbess’s warning echoed in her ears.

  Although she was afraid of many things, Aleswina was not frightened of Druids or witches, because Anna was both. It was no use trying to explain it to the abbess, but not all witches brewed poisons, and not all Druids were in league with the devil. There were good ones like Anna, who made healing potions to ease the pain of childbirth and who kept evil spirits away with magic sachets filled with sweet-smelling herbs and who rocked you to sleep at night with lullabies that banished nightmares and brought happy dreams of sunlit meadows blooming with beautiful flowers.

  As soon as the after-breakfast benedictions and announcements were finished, Aleswina got up from the table, genuflected to the abbess, and left the room—not hurrying, hardly breathing, for fear of looking suspicious. Once she was in the hallway, she walked quicker, almost running, to the convent garden. She expected to find Anna waiting for her, but the garden was empty.

  There was no time to waste. She had to tell Anna to hide her powders and potions so no one would know she was a witch and burn her at the stake. Aleswina ducked out the back way, then rushed across the clearing and into the forest, running as fast as she could along the path to Anna’s cottage.

  Chapter 4

  The Warning

  The effects of Annwr’s wine had worn off, but instead of offering Caelym another cup, she fed him thin porridge, spooning it into his mouth and wiping his chin as if he were a drooling infant.

  What he needed was more wine and to be left in peace to sleep and recover his strength. Instead, she made him roll over so she could spread a foul-smelling unguent on his wound, lecturing him while she worked as though she were the shrine’s chief physician and he merely some ordinary patient come to injury through his own recklessness.

  He was still lying face down on the bed, gritting his teeth and reminding himself that Annwr was their long-lost priestess and Feywn’s beloved sister, when he heard running footsteps outside.

  “The Saxons are coming!” He kept his voice low as he groped on the bedside table for his knife, only to realize that Annwr had moved it across the room to the counter where it lay polished and gleaming and out of reach.

  “I told you that my geese will give warning if anyone comes—”

  Annwr’s hand was on his back, holding him down, helpless, as the door flew open and a Saxon—albeit a short, thin, female one—rushed into the room, gasping in English, “Anna, there are soldiers coming! They are chasing some poor Druid and searching everywhere. They are heading this way and will be—”

  She came to a halt in the middle of the room and stood there, staring at Caelym.

  Instead of letting him up to get his knife, Annwr kept her hand on his back and greeted the intruder like they were old friends.

  “Oh, Dear Heart, I’m sorry. I was coming to see you, only this boy, who is kin to kin of mine, arrived and I had to take care of him.”

  “Anna, no! He cannot stay here! He must go away! The soldiers will be here any moment!”

  “I’ll hide him somewhere—in the loft, or maybe in the goose shed.”

  The two women were speaking rapidly in English, while Caelym, feeling sluggish and stupid with his rising fever, looked from one to the other trying to follow what they were saying.

  “They will find him, Anna! They will search the loft and the goose shed! He must run away into the woods!”

  “He is too weak to run far. They will find him in the woods and follow his tracks back here—so when they find him, they will find me too. But, Dear Heart, you have given us enough warning that we have time to take a way out of this. I’ll have it mixed, and he and I will drink it, and neither of us will care what they do after that. Now, you must go straight back to the convent and be ready to say how you never suspected me of being a witch, and how glad you are that the Christian world is rid of him and me both.”

  “No, Anna, you must not even think of it! It is a sin!”

  “Maybe so, Dear Heart, yet I will choose this sin over the virtue of being put alive into a Christian bonfire.”

  These last words, at least, were clear. Wrestling himself out from under Annwr’s restraining hand, Caelym swung his feet over the edge of the bed and stood up. Weaving only slightly, he declared, “I will go, leading the soldiers away, leaving no tracks . . .”

  He would have gone on pledging his oath to Annwr to gladly give his life for hers, but the Saxon girl let out a strangled gasp, turned away, and covered her face with her hands. Her next words almost too muffled to hear. “I will take him back with me and hide him. Only, please, Anna, tell him to put his clothes on!”

  “Sit down, Caelym, and cover yourself!” Annwr said this in Celt, so sharply that Caelym hastily sat back down and pulled the blanket over his lap—offended at the girl’s reaction and resentful that Annwr didn’t appreciate his courageous sacrifice.

  Adding further insult, the girl turned her back on him while she spoke to Annwr. “Does he know any English? Will he understand what I say to him?”

  “He spoke in English when we met. Nobody would take him for a bishop, but I expect he’ll understand you well enough.”

  Caelym started to say that he could speak English as well as any bishop could, but Annwr just told him to be quiet and get dressed, and handed him his wet clothes. With no more than a curt “and be quick about it!” she took hold of the girl’s hand and led her into the back room, closing the door behind them with a resounding thud.

  Curious, Caelym slipped silently across the room and put his ear to the door. He heard Annwr tell the girl what herbs and potions to mix to treat his fever and help him sleep, and—in a voice that was lower, but still audible—how much more of the poppy juice he would need to drink if the soldiers did find him after all. Then the girl, who had said almost nothing except “Yes, Anna” and “I will, Anna” until then, told Annwr to hide her potions and wear her crucifix.

  Annwr (who had never once spoken to him in such an agreeable, obliging voice) answered, “I will, Dear Heart.”

  He’d been pulling on his pants while he was listening. When the talking stopped, he backed away and was standing by the hearth, innocently tucking in his shirt, when Annwr, with the girl following behind her, came back into the room.

  Annwr looked from Caelym to the wet spot on the floor where he’d been eavesdropping, and then back at him. To his relief, the girl diverted Annwr’s attention by whispering in her ear.

  “His name is Caelym,” Annwr said. “He is a priest among my people—a physician, too, if you can believe him.”

  “Then I must call him ‘Father Caelym’?”

  Caelym’s face flushed red at the idea that he might ever be taken for the father of any Saxon, let alone one as puny and whining as this one. As usual, Annwr ignored his attempts to protest and went on talking as if he wasn’t there.

  “Just ‘Caelym’! He is a Druid priest, and you have to watch out or he will talk you into the ground. You tell him what he is to do, and you don’t let him argue back.”

  Annwr drew herself up to her full height and turned to Caelym. Looking him straight in the eye and switching into Celt, she declared, “Caelym, this is Sister Aleswina. She is the daughter of a king, and she is in training to be a Christian priestess. You will be going with her, and she will be hiding you at great risk. You will be grateful for it, and you will swear an oath now to give her the obedience and the service that you give to the Goddess Herself!”

  “I will not!” is what Caelym would have said if Annwr hadn’t been their long-lost priestess and Feywn’s sister. As it was, he cast himself down flat on the floor in f
ront of Aleswina to declare in clear and precise English: “I will sacrifice nine bulls in your honor, laying their livers and testicles at your feet, and I will obey your every wish as though you were the Goddess Herself!”

  Instead of being flattered and making the proper response— giving him a bracelet from her wrist or a lock of her hair as she promised to treasure his words forever—the girl backed away, looking at Annwr and sniveling, “Please tell him that it is a sin to say such things.”

  “Never mind him, he’s just showing off!” Annwr snapped. Fixing Caelym with her beady-eyed glare, she hissed, “Now you pick yourself up and go before you’ve got soldiers to be bowing to! You do what Aleswina tells you, and you keep quiet, and you stay out of trouble!”

  Caelym scrambled to his feet and was searching for a fitting retort when he heard the sound of baying hounds in the distance.

  “Go!” Annwr ordered.

  Caelym grabbed his bag from the side of the bed and his knife from the counter and dashed after Aleswina as she ran through the back room and out the door.

  Chapter 5

  Abduction

  The sounds of the baying hounds grew louder as Annwr sealed the gate and began to sweep away the telltale tracks. A single shrill bark rang out above the rest—then there was silence.

  The broom handle grew moist in her hands as she waited, straining her ears. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Betrys, heavy with her unborn piglets, heave herself up to look out from the door of her shed as the geese drew together into a defensive circle.

  When the yowling started up again, it was jumbled and discordant, as if the dogs were arguing amongst themselves.

  A loud yelp seemed to settle the pack’s dispute. It was joined almost at once by a chorus of blood-curdling howls that rose up, swerved away and faded into the distance.