The Oath

by A. M. Linden

  Squatting down, he gazed at the ripples running across the surface of the water, thinking that they must have thrown the chalice into the lake as an offering to the Goddess. Out of the blue, he recalled how the shrine’s cook, purposely confusing the spirit of the Goddess embodied in the shrine’s chief priestess with the cosmic entity who was the Earth Herself, had once joked, “Why do they make such a fuss when they could just hand it to her at the dinner table?”

  But the haughty priests of Llwddawanden wouldn’t “just hand it to her at the dinner table,” and they hadn’t just tossed it into the middle of the lake! They’d paddled their boat out beyond this rock, chanted their chants, and deposited it ceremoniously some-where—but where?

  That was a puzzle that teased Benyon as he looked around, seeing only the shimmering black surface of the water.

  Discouraged and on the verge of giving up, he sat back with his knees drawn up and his head resting on his arms and stared out at the lake as if it would show him its secrets if he just looked long enough and hard enough. There was nothing to see, however, except for a log that floated some ten boat-lengths down the lake—and had been floating there the entire time he had been on the island.

  With the prevailing wind through the valley pushing other floating debris to the east end of the lake, why did that log stay in one place?

  Benyon climbed back into his boat, paddled out to the log, and found the chain and sunken boom that kept it in place, as well as the cleat that the Druids used to tie their boat to it. Then the clouds covering the moon parted, a shaft of light shone down through the clear waters of the lake to its deepest depths, and he saw a shimmer of gold—the chalice they’d just dropped there, and other things even more wonderful.

  Dazzled by the sight, Benyon leaned over the side of his boat and reached down in an involuntary impulse to grab at the mountain of treasure glittering in the depths of the lake. The narrow boat reeled wildly, tipped over, and cast him into the frigid water. He came up splashing and coughing. Desperation overcame his panic and he managed to catch hold of the prow of the upside-down boat in one hand, grab the drifting paddle in the other, and kick his way back to the island where he forced his numb hands to turn the boat right-side up. Shaking from cold, he got into it and rowed back across the lake, vowing that if he made it to shore, he’d never pry into the Druids’ secrets again.

  Whether Benyon was swearing to himself or the Goddess, it was a promise he forgot the next morning and broke the next night when he again snuck out of the shrine, again took the small boat, and again paddled back out to the log. This time, he was careful not to lean out too far as he lowered an iron nail tied on a cord to see how deep the water was.

  It turned out to be very deep—much too deep for him hold his breath long enough to reach the bottom, even if he dared and if he could swim, which he did not and could not.

  To know where so much treasure lay unguarded would have tempted stronger men than Benyon. At first, though, he wasn’t really thinking about stealing it, he just wondered if you could.

  Benyon was an indoor servant. To an outdoor man, the answer would have been obvious, but Benyon did come to it before long.

  He was returning home from the market, not thinking about the treasure at all, just glad to be out of the cold, dark underground passage that echoed the sounds of dripping water and the occasional clatter of a falling rock.

  The trail from there ran alongside a stream, crossed over a low wooden bridge just above a deep pool, and climbed over a series of steep embankments to reach the lower gate of the shrine’s thick stone wall. As he came up onto the bridge, Benyon saw the village smith wading at the far end of the pool, holding the end of a thin cord and jigging it up and down.

  Benyon did not, as a rule, mingle with workers who lived outside the shrine, but he knew the young artisan who made most of the things that the Druids sent to the market so he stopped and called to him, meaning to tell him which of his wares sold best. The smith, however, was an avid fisherman, and he was concentrating on a particularly elusive trout.

  Ignoring Benyon, Darbin pulled his hook out of the water, stretched out his arm, and let it sink down again. His body, except for the tips of the fingers that were controlling the line, went absolutely still. Then there it was—the faint tug he was waiting for. His fingers tightened. There was another tug, but still just a curious nibble. He did a tiny jerk, just enough to make the worm on the end of the hook wiggle as if it were alive. For a moment there was nothing. And then the answering jerk as the fish snapped. Darbin grasped the line and yanked. The fish, flapping—its silver scales shimmering in the sun— was his.

  His trophy in hand, Darbin turned to find out what Benyon wanted only to see him walking away.

  Realizing that jigging for treasure would take something bigger than a fishing hook, Benyon started searching the shrine as soon as he got there. Once he began looking, he started seeing hooks everywhere—in the kitchen holding pots, in the storerooms holding sacks of grain, and in the closets holding the priests’ robes. The day he lost his left eye, he was peering over the cook’s shoulder, wondering if there was some way he could take one of the heavy iron hooks that held the roasting spit.

  A few days later, after the pain in his eye socket subsided, he snuck into the kitchen in the middle of the night and found a spare hook like the one he’d been looking at. The first time he used it, he brought up the golden chalice, and from then on, he thought of it as his lucky hook.

  Over time, what had begun as a mental game to relieve the monotony of Benyon’s daily chores grew into an obsession. At first, the thrill lay as much in the challenge as in the pieces of treasure he managed to retrieve. Hours of patient concentration might bring up a jeweled necklace or a decaying branch. Sometimes something glittering under the surface of the water would slide off the hook just before he could reach it. He might go out for weeks at a time with nothing to show for it, but then for the next two or three nights in a row bring up a goblet or torc or crown.

  As his trove grew, he couldn’t fit it all in the space he’d hollowed out in his mattress, so he pried up the floorboards in the closet where he kept his broom, mop, and buckets, and dug a pit to make a hidden chamber where it would be safe and he could look at it every day. Once or twice he took a bit of his treasure with him to the market and exchanged it for Saxon coins. Each time, the merchant looked sharply from the jewelry to Benyon and asked where he got it, and Benyon sensed that everyone around was staring at him and wondering the same thing. But there was nothing he could safely spend his money on anyway, since any new possessions would raise the suspicions of his fellow servants, and maybe the Druids as well.

  Chapter 39

  A Step Beyond Sport

  For the next five years, Benyon was very much like a passionate fisherman who fished for the love of the sport but did not eat what he caught. That changed one market day when he was waiting his turn to do his trade with the salt seller near where a pair of traveling vendors were talking about the other towns on their circuit.

  “Now Welsferth,” one of them said, “there’s the one place I know where Britons and Saxons get along without always being at each other’s throats.”

  “And it’s in Atheldom,” the other replied, “where you’re halfway safe as long you say you’re a Christian and don’t give their priests any reason to suspect otherwise”—at which both men made the sign of the cross and laughed.

  Benyon left the line, sidled over to them and joined their conversation, and by the time he went back to buy the salt, he knew the road to take to reach the place they’d talked about and had begun to dream of living like a priest—or a king—with servants to wait on him.

  As long as the illicit hoard he’d fished out of the lake stayed hidden under the closet floor, Benyon had not seen his activity as stealing, exactly, or seen himself as a thief. Even trading the occasional piece for Saxon coins at the market hadn’t seemed so bad, as long as he didn’t spend any of it. To ta
ke the treasure and leave, not intending to return, was a step beyond sport—and Benyon decided to take it.

  It was a surprisingly easy decision. The hard part was thinking of some way to sneak what he had come to think of as “his” treasure out of the shrine without getting caught.

  Again, the answer came by accident.

  He was carrying an armload of the priests’ robes back from the shrine’s laundry and took a shortcut through one of the side courtyards. Strictly speaking, he shouldn’t have entered there without permission, but it was usually empty in the early afternoon and crossing that way saved time.

  Hearing voices, a man’s and a woman’s, he stopped and backed off, meaning to turn around and go the long way around, but then he realized the voices belonged to the chief priestess and her consort—and they were arguing.

  The union between the beautiful but aging chief priestess and the boy-priest, who was young enough to be her son, was a source of intense gossip among the shrine servants so Benyon listened in, hoping to learn some interesting tidbit to pass on.

  Feywn, her voice less song-like than usual, was saying, “Ossiam has seen it in the entrails of three separate goats! We must send them now!”

  There was a standing quip among the shrine’s inner circle of servants that when Feywn said, “Bow!” Caelym only asked, “How low?”—so it surprised Benyon to hear Caelym protest, “We cannot send them out of the valley! They are too young! And there is no longer anyone we can trust to keep them safe who speaks English and lives in the outside world!”

  Benyon dodged back inside and took the servants’ hallway to the priests’ quarters, hugging the fresh-smelling robes to his chest. Here was the plan for how he could leave the shrine and take his treasure with him.

  The next morning, he was ready to set it in motion.

  One of Benyon’s daily duties was to carry a tray up to the shrine’s oracle, who insisted on having breakfast in his private chamber at the top of the shrine’s northern tower. As he was setting out the plates and platters in the exact order that Ossiam demanded, Benyon spoke in his most ingratiating voice, begging a thousand pardons for intruding in matters above his station . . .

  “But while I was at the market, I met a cousin of a cousin on my mother’s side who practices our ways and lives in the not-so-far off kingdom of Atheldom, in a village where Saxons and Britons live at peace with each other.”

  Ossiam, who’d been standing at the window with his back to Benyon, turned to look at him.

  Struggling to keep his voice steady, Benyon went on, “He . . . my cousin’s cousin . . . needs help with his flocks . . . and asks . . . that I come to stay with him for a time . . . and thinking that this might be a way for some of the young Druids to learn English, I said I would, so long as I might bring my foster sons with me.”

  As he was saying it out loud, Benyon saw the gaping holes in his story—How did it just happen that he met this previously unknown cousin’s cousin? Why would he, who’d never herded a sheep in his life, suddenly be the one this cousin’s cousin needed? And why would he want to risk leaving the safety of the shrine for the dangers of the outside world?

  Ossiam, a tall, angular man with a jutting nose and wild, tangled gray hair, towered over Benyon, his oracle’s cloak billowing in the wind that swirled through the window so that the ravens embroidered on it seemed to be flying around his shoulders.

  “So, you just happened to meet your cousin’s cousin, who lives in this happy village where Saxons and Britons live at peace with each other.”

  As he spoke, Ossiam ever so slightly nodded his head and Benyon found himself nodding along as he squeaked, “Y-yes, I just—just—”

  “And this cousin’s cousin said he needs your help herding his sheep.”

  The oracle spoke in a cold, dry voice that might almost have been a serpent’s hiss.

  “He—he—said he needs m-my help—”

  “And at just the time we need to send the sons of our chief priestess outside of the valley to learn to speak English well enough to pass among our enemies undetected, you, out of selfless devotion, are offering to go to this not-so-distant kingdom disguised as a sheepherder fostering them there, caring for them as if they were your own flesh and blood.”

  Suddenly certain that the oracle could read his innermost thoughts, Benyon froze, as paralyzed as a rodent caught in the stare of a snake coiled and ready to strike. Convinced that Ossiam was about to lash out and curse him for his deceit and thievery, Benyon would have pled for a quick and not too painful death if he could have made his tongue work. Instead he dropped to his knees, still nodding, as the oracle lifted his staff and said, “I will tell the council. You will leave as soon as it can be arranged. You will need a horse and a cart big enough for the boys and all their things. Tell the stablemen I have commanded it.”

  With that, the oracle waved his free hand in dismissal.

  Amazed, first that he was still alive and human—not transformed into some scurrying vermin and set upon by the shrine’s cats—and then that he had gotten exactly what he had hoped for, a wagon big enough to carry all his treasure, Benyon backed out of the room on his hands and knees. Once he was out of the door, he must have pulled himself to his feet and climbed down the stairs, because the next thing he remembered was leaping in elation as he bounded toward the stable.

  Chapter: 40

  Benyon’s Plan

  Benyon’s plan was to settle into his new life, see the shrine brats learned their English, then bring them back with some excuse why he couldn’t stay (and the claim to have been persuaded by Christians to convert was one guaranteed way to be expelled with no further questions asked). For the next two weeks, he spent his days rushing to do everything the priests and priestesses thought necessary to get the boys packed and ready, and his nights crafting a false bottom for the cart and packing armloads of treasure.

  The day that he left Llwddawanden dawned bright and clear, a perfect spring day that seemed to promise a whole new life in a world where wishes came true and ventures couldn’t go wrong.

  Awake long before there was enough light to see by, Benyon lay in bed with his hands behind his head. He’d packed the wagon, making sure each urn and goblet, torc and armband was wrapped in linen and padded with wool, and all snugly tucked in with the bags of jewelry and Saxon coins. He’d fitted the false bottom over his trophies and covered it with the crates of clothes, sacks of toys, and wicker baskets of food the boys’ nurse had insisted on sending with them—and covered that with an oiled wool blanket, which he’d tied down with loops of rope “to keep the rain off” (and keep any snoopers from looking under it). He’d given misleading directions to the shrine’s chief priest so the map the old man was drawing would lead the wrong way if someone was sent to find him. He’d turned his duties over to his nephew, Nimrrwn, and told the simpering boy every last little detail about picking up after the priests and carrying out their chamber pots.

  Benyon could hear Nimrrwn stirring in the next bed, no doubt anxious to assume his new position—and he was welcome to it!

  Now he just had to collect the two boys, take his treasure, and be off.

  Of course, he should have known Druids couldn’t go to the latrine without making a ceremony out of it!

  All Benyon wanted to do was to get the horse harnessed and leave. Instead he had to endure a long, drawn-out farewell breakfast, sitting at the high table with the boys on either side of him, listening to Herrwn strumming his harp and telling stories about the mortal children of gods and goddesses being raised by loyal servants until they were ready to go out and perform heroic deeds.

  Then there was the grand procession through the shrine, led by no less than the high priestess herself, her puffed-up consort at her side.

  Instead of sneaking behind and out of sight, Benyon found himself walking in the middle of the procession, holding the boys’ hands—the older one tugging and pulling ahead, the younger one prancing along and waving at the servants who
were watching them go past.

  The horse and wagon were waiting at the shrine’s back gate. Benyon took the reins and clambered up to the wagon’s seat. All that remained was for Caelym to finish hugging and kissing the two boys and lift them up.

  Benyon leaned forward, reaching out his arms for whichever one of the boys Caelym relinquished first. He managed, somehow, to keep his smile fixed in place, even as he realized what his soon-to-be-former master was in the midst of saying “. . . so if you will promise me that you will both do as our good Benyon tells you, and learn your lessons quickly, I will promise you that I will come to get you and bring you home as soon as ever I can . . .”

  The older of the two boys, who was the exact image of Caelym at the same age—and every bit as uppity—demanded that his father promise not just to come and get them but also to do heroic deeds on their way home.

  Speaking as if he were swearing to the Goddess at the high altar stone in the center of the shrine’s sacred grove, Caelym declared, “I make my vow to you, my sons, that when you have learned your lessons, I will come for you, and we will travel together on great adventures and return to your mother with gifts from all the wondrous places we have seen.”

  With that, he threw his arms around the boys in one last, interminable hug, before turning to Benyon to remind him which toys the boys took to bed with them at night and what stories they most liked to hear. Keeping his expression humble and his voice sincere, Benyon swore he’d care for the boys like his own flesh and blood.

  With years of practice in pretending loyal devotion, Benyon made a show of comforting the younger of the two boys, who’d suddenly realized that his father truly wasn’t coming along and begun to cry. The older one, who still thought this was a game, was persuaded to hold his sniveling brother on his lap while Benyon bid his last groveling farewell, made his last promise to guard the boys with his life. Even then he had to endure the shrine’s chief priest making one last speech, admonishing the boys to study with diligence and to honor their hosts before he could finally snap the whip to get the horse moving.