The Oath

by A. M. Linden

  PART III

  The King’s Ghost

  The Abbey of Saint Edeth the Enduring was either four or five leagues north of Derthwald’s main town, depending on whether a traveler chose the shorter, more difficult route through forest or the longer, easier route along the river.

  Named for its location at the point where the main road crossed the river, Strothford was both the gateway into the kingdom and the center of its trade. Cottages and farmsteads, occasionally coalescing into villages, spread out from there along footpaths and cartways that ran across the broad river plain like the strands of a spider’s web and ended in the rugged ridges that marked the kingdom’s boundaries.

  Gothroc, the central fortress of Derthwald, loomed over Strothford from the top of a massive granite outcrop. Awesome by day and ominous by night, it was circled by stone walls and guarded by soldiers’ garrisons. Entry was by way of a steep, exposed roadway that passed through lower and upper gates under constant watch by archers who knew they could be executed for falling asleep on duty.

  The night that Aleswina so narrowly escaped being caught with Caelym in the convent garden—and at just about the same time that she was drifting off to sleep in her narrow little cot—her closest living relative, Gilberth, King of Derthwald, was awake in his royal chambers at the top of the citadel’s highest tower, sitting upright in a bed the size of Aleswina’s entire room.

  A stray breeze had made its way through a narrow crack in the otherwise tightly sealed and barred shutters of the chamber’s windows and ruffled the thick inner draperies. With only the flickering light of the hearth to see by, the motion was barely perceptible, but Gilberth stared at the swaying folds as though the spectral figure of the late King Theobold were still standing there.

  Gilberth made it a point to think as little as possible about his departed uncle, but a week earlier—by coincidence on the same night that Caelym arrived at the abbey searching for Annwr—Theobold’s ghost had come to him in a dream. Looking wan and frail, Theobold had walked in through the closed window wearing a monk’s robe and leading a small, fair-haired boy by the hand. He hadn’t said anything to Gilberth (when he was alive, he hadn’t said much either), but he’d looked intently at his nephew, as he had never done in life—as though he were expecting something. Still looking straight at Gilberth, he let go of the little boy’s hand to stroke the ghost-child’s shimmering silky hair. Then, taking the boy’s hand again, he’d turned away and walked back out through the swinging curtains.

  That first night, Gilberth had dismissed the dream as an aftereffect of eating over-spiced eel at supper and settled back down to sleep. But every night since then he’d dreamed the same dream, regardless of what he’d had to eat, and even after he had the shutters of his bed chambers reinforced with iron bars.

  The dream had not gotten worse and there was nothing so obviously disturbing about it—just a tall, thin, sad-faced old man holding an equally sad-looking little boy by the hand. Still, it bothered Gilberth, disturbing his sleep and leaving him jumpy and irritable during the day. And as the week passed it seemed that, even awake, Gilberth could not turn his head without catching a glimpse of the old man and the little boy, lurking in dark corners or hovering at the end of dimly lit hallways.

  Whatever the dream meant, the one thing that was absolutely certain was that the boy with Theobold was not Gilberth’s boyhood self. The ghost-boy was no more than four or five, and Gilberth had had been almost ten when he’d arrived at Gothroc and met his uncle for the first time—and Theobold had never once held Gilberth’s hand or stroked his hair or taken him anywhere.

  Gilberth’s father, Gilwulf, was the first of his mother’s four husbands. Like the next three, Gilwulf set out to win his fortune as a warrior and, like them, died a violent death without ever achieving more than antagonizing his neighbors. Gilberth’s mother, Theodosia, didn’t like Gilwulf any more than anyone else did, and after his death, she readily shifted her affections to an earl on the other side of Gilwulf’s last battle.

  That earl died in much the same way as Gilwulf, to be replaced in Theodosia’s bed successively by his younger brother and then by an unrelated thegn. Widowed for a fourth time and approaching thirty, with no assets or suitors to speak of, Theodosia pretended a deeper affection for her only living brother than she actually felt and announced that she would refuse all future offers of marriage to live with him and oversee his household. Taking Theobold’s silence for assent, she moved into Gothroc, remarking to anyone who would listen how much Gilberth resembled his childless uncle.

  While it was true that Gilberth looked enough like Theobold to be his son, the two actually had little in common beyond a shared bloodline. Preoccupied first with military conquest and later with absolution, Theobold cared nothing for the things Gilberth liked to do—going to dog fights, bear baitings, and public executions—and in the brief intervals when they spent time in the same room, he rarely even glanced in his nephew’s direction.

  So why now, after he’d been dead for fifteen years, was Theobold looking at Gilberth from every shadow and dark corner in Gothroc?

  That was one of two questions tormenting Gilberth as he sat staring at the moving curtains, his ermine robe pulled tight around him. The other was, Why haven’t any of my wives borne me a son?

  Seeing Theobold’s old and decrepit ghost was an unwelcome reminder for Gilberth that time was passing. He was thirty-five years old and, despite having married five times, had no male children. He had no female children either, but that was not the problem. The problem was, as Gilberth had good reason to know, that an aging king without a grown son to defend him was never safe.

  It was almost noon the next day when the answer suddenly came to him. He’d been pacing back and forth along the tower’s upper walkway, muttering the two questions—“What does he want?” and “Why can’t I have a son?”—over and over until they were jumbled together, sometimes coming out, “Why didn’t he have a son?”

  The answer to that question, at least, was obvious: Theobold’s wife had died before she could give birth to the baby Theobold had been so sure was going to be a boy!

  Gilberth stopped dead in his tracks and shouted, “It’s the boy!”— startling the two bodyguards who’d been watching him nervously from a distance.

  But, of course, that had to be it—the ghost-child was the spirit of Theobold’s unborn son.

  In a rare moment of looking at things from another person’s point of view, Gilberth saw that Theobold had wanted an heir and the little boy had wanted to be born. That was why all of Gilberth’s wives were barren! It was because Theobold, using the influence of his earthly contributions to the church coffers, stood in the way of Gilberth having an heir—just as he had once stood in the way of Gilberth being a king.

  No sooner did Gilberth understand this than he saw the answer and wondered why he hadn’t thought of it before. He would take Theobold’s daughter back from the convent and marry her; then the little boy would be born, and he would be both Gilberth’s son and Theobold’s grandson, and that should make the old man happy.

  Rushing back inside, practically skipping down the hallway to his throne room, Gilberth began giving orders, gleefully sending for his scribe to compose a petition to the bishop for dispensation to marry his cousin.

  Chapter 16

  Awakening

  His abscess drained and his fever broken, Caelym had fallen into a deep sleep that lasted into the morning, when the relentless tolling of the abbey bells finally penetrated down into the depths of his slumber. Even then he refused to listen, preferring to stay as he was, swathed in a blissful sense of wellness.

  It wasn’t the clanging of the bells but a nagging sense of urgency, of needing to get on with the rest of what he had to do, that pulled him back towards consciousness—bringing him up to a borderland in between sleep and waking where he saw himself climbing a steep trail up the side of an otherwise sheer cliff.

  In the absolute omniscience de
nied to a waking mind, he knew that he was dreaming and knew equally that if he got to the top and looked over the edge he would plunge headlong into an abyss of unbearable sorrow.

  Rocks crumbled and slid under his feet as he clambered desperately up the trail after his other self.

  Catching up just as he reached the pinnacle, he threw his arms around himself to pull himself back—only to merge together and look down.

  Lying out far beneath him was a beautiful green valley. Its upper slopes were covered with stands of oak and pine mixed with open meadows. Below the forests, there were pastures thick with waving grasses, and below the pastures, where land flattened out, there were the grain fields and a cluster of thatch-roofed huts.

  Sparkling brooks splashed and tumbled down the steeper slopes, turning into meandering streams that wandered across the fields before flowing into a long, sickle-shaped lake covering a third or more of the valley basin.

  The valley, like the lake, was long and sickle-shaped, broader at the end that lay below him and tapering as it curved around to become a narrow gorge.

  The section of the cliff where he was standing dropped straight down into the treetops, but off to his right it descended like steps in a giant’s staircase and ended in a final plateau that jutted out into the bend of the lake. Dense, white mist rose up from the water’s surface and swirled around the base of that lowest bluff, making it look as if the circle of white stone towers built on top of it—the shrine of Great Mother Goddess—were floating on a cloud.

  Caelym’s sense of dread was swept away by the surge of his longing to be home. Not stopping to think, not caring if he was dreaming or not, he jumped over the edge of the cliff, bounded downwards from one craggy foothold to the next—leaping, flying— landed lightly on his toes in a soft bed of pine needles, and then ran, sure-footed, through the forest until he came out into a meadow. It was only when he stopped to savor the sensation of Llwddawanden’s earth beneath his feet and to gaze in rapture at its beloved landscape that he realized that the slopes were empty. There was not a single sheep or goat to be seen anywhere.

  His sense of dread returned as he crossed pastures without flocks and fields lying fallow and grew stronger as he reached the cottages of the valley’s farmers and herders. The hamlet should have been bustling with men doing their chores, women chatting and children playing games, but the cottages stood dark and silent. Afraid of what he might see if he looked inside, he didn’t stop. The winding pathway that led from the village to the shrine was longer and steeper and far more overgrown than he remembered. Each step of the way seemed to take forever—then, without warning, the entrance was in front of him. Its gates gaped open, half torn from their hinges.

  There was no glad outcry to welcome him—no sound at all, not even the tread of his own footsteps—as he walked through weed-infested herb gardens, past silent council chambers, and along unlit hallways to reach the arched entrance to the shrine’s innermost sanctum. His knees trembled as he stepped across the threshold and into the place where even priests as high ranking as he was were forbidden to go without the permission of the priestesses who lived there. Seeing that the stool where the guardian of the women’s chamber usually sat was turned over and lying on its side, he silently invoked the will of the Goddess and made his way to Feywn’s chamber.

  Before he could knock or try the handle, the door swung open and he walked in—expecting to find it as forlorn and desolate as everything else in his dream had been.

  Instead, the room was bright and warm, glowing with the light that poured in through the open window and fragrant with the scent of sacred herbs and oils burning in pots sitting in their usual niches.

  Nothing was changed or missing. The bed, with its plump, down-filled pillows and its rich silken covers, was where it belonged; the table next to it was set with golden plates and goblets, the plates piled high with the food he loved best, the goblets filled with cherry-red wine. And there by the window, bathed in sunlight, stood Feywn, dressed in a sheer, silvery gown, jewels sparkling in her hair, her eyes as blue as the sky behind her.

  He must have walked over to her but had no sense that he did; he knew only that he was suddenly falling down at her feet, sobbing and consumed with grief and guilt—just as he’d done on the night of the last winter solstice. And just as she had done that night, she leaned over and touched his face, her fingers firm and cool against his burning cheek, wiped his tears, and then drew back, straightened up, and shook away the drops in a gesture that began as a flick of her fingers and ended up as a dismissive wave of her hand—as if the catastrophic betrayal of their shrine and his failure to prevent it were no more than a trifle, not important enough to merit acknowledgment.

  As her lips parted and she drew in the softest of breaths, he expected her to say what she had said then—that the enemies sharpening their swords to slaughter them on their own altars would swarm through their once-secret passageway to find nothing but the empty shell of what had been their shrine, now no more than the shed skin of a sacred serpent, while they and all of those who remained faithful to the Goddess would be gone to a new and safer haven.

  But this time her words came out shrill and biting: “Where are they? Where is my sister? Where are my children? Why have you not brought them back to me as you swore you would?”

  Before he could explain that this was a dream and he had just forgotten to include them in it, the abbey bells sounded again, jarring him awake.

  Chapter 17

  Ask And It Shall Be Given

  Caelym was lying on his back on a dirt floor, his knees drawn up and his head resting on his leather satchel. Staring up into the darkness, he began to sort through his muddled memories and gather his scattered thoughts.

  He was on a quest. He knew that even without the still-vivid vision of Feywn to remind him.

  First, he had to find Annwr—and he’d done that.

  Then he had to find Arddwn and Lliem. For a moment, their sweet faces floated in the darkness above him—Arddwn’s a smaller version of his own, only with Feywn’s blue eyes, and Lliem’s more like his mother’s but with eyes that, like his, were so dark a brown they seemed almost black.

  The longing to hold his sons in his arms again came over him, flowing out of his heart and filling his chest so that for a moment he couldn’t draw a breath. When he did, the sharp pain below his right shoulder blade reminded him of where he was and why.

  Confined in this dank, dark chamber, with only the miserable clanging of those wretched bells to mark the time, there was no way to know how long he’d been there, but hopefully (and Caelym was by nature inclined to be hopeful) it had been long enough for his pursuers to give up and for Annwr to decide to let him rescue her.

  Whether to return to take her rightful place as an elite priestess in the highest ranks of their sacred order or remain a Saxon’s slave did not seem like a difficult decision to Caelym. The only reason he could imagine for her foot-dragging was that she had been forced to swear an oath to serve the child of her Saxon captor—an oath that, even sworn under duress to their worst enemy, was still binding, unless she was released from it by death or dispensation.

  Equally binding was the absolute prohibition against a guest killing a host, so if he was to fulfill his promise to Feywn, he would have to persuade Aleswina to release Annwr from her service.

  This, fortunately, was a task totally within his powers. A master bard trained by Herrwn, the greatest of all their orators, Caelym was confident that he could convince a snake, at least for a short time, that it had legs.

  Slowly, cautiously, he rolled onto his side, rose up on his elbows, and then shifted into sitting as upright as the low ceiling allowed.

  So far, so good. Certainly he was weak and understandably stiff, but he was no longer fevered or ailing—except for a gnawing ache in his stomach that, after a few moments’ consideration, he identified as hunger.

  If he was hungry, then Aleswina had not come to feed him yet and would
be there soon.

  And he would be ready to greet her, not as a sickly vassal here in this cramped, foul-smelling pit but out in the open air, able to sit—or even stand—upright.

  He felt under his bag for his knife. Keeping a grip on it with his right hand, he crept towards where he thought the door must be. Feeling blindly along the planks and crossbars, he found it, pushed the panel upwards, and thrust it aside.

  The light of day dazzled his eyes. He drew in a careful breath, savoring the fresh, clean air, as welcome as wine after the suffocating stench of the underground cell. Moving stealthily, he climbed out and peered around the corner of the shrine, then darted into a thick hedge of laurel bushes growing against the garden wall, where he could see around him without being seen. At last able to stretch his legs, he leaned back against the wall to wait for Aleswina.

  The midmorning prayer service had run longer than usual but, now that Aleswina was actually paying attention, the reading out of The Book of Matthew had seemed to speak directly to her, giving her a message of hope and inspiration.

  “Ask and it shall be given.”

  Taking the Bible’s words literally, she was overjoyed that it could be so easy. She just had to ask Caelym to go away and leave Anna with her—and Jesus would make him do it! Filled with hope, she hurried through the garden and around the corner of Saint Wilfhilda’s shrine but came to a lurching stop at the sight of the open doorway and empty chamber.

  “Over here!”

  Even spoken softy, Caelym’s voice coming out of the hedge startled her into dropping the handful of bread and cheese she’d brought for his breakfast. Kneeling down, she scooped what she could back into her sleeve and peered into the bushes. She first saw his feet and from there was able to make out the rest of him, sitting up and looking sternly at her—an entirely different person from the desperately ill man she’d been tending for the past week.