The Oath

by A. M. Linden

  “That is the fate she would choose for herself if you deigned to ask her!”

  “She has not the”—and here Caelym had come to insert “age or experience” in place of “wit or understanding”—“to make that choice!”

  “Neither do Arddwn and Lliem, and yet you make that choice for them! Why not find them a Christian monastery and leave them behind, ‘safe and secure’?”

  “Because they are not Christian, and she is!”

  From there the dispute would run its course, with Caelym insisting that he was only thinking of Aleswina’s safety, and Annwr contending that it wasn’t safe to leave her alone and defenseless when his own experience proved that Gilberth’s guards had no compunctions about raiding convents in their search for her.

  “Then she must learn to defend herself!”

  “And I suppose you will teach her that!”

  “I will, for you have not!”

  “Like you have shown you can defend yourself!”

  It was at this point that both would realize they’d gone too far, and retreat to the place they’d started from—that, for the time being, they would go on as they were. And that was what they did, and so, in spite of their unresolved argument, the small group’s passage through the woods was for the most part as peaceful and harmonious as Lliem would later remember it being.

  Late in the afternoon of their sixth day in the forest, the trees ahead of them began to thin so that there were gaps where blue sky peeped through.

  There’d been no boat traffic in all the time they’d been traveling along the river bank, so, in what was to be the last uncomplicated decision Caelym and Annwr would make together for the next several weeks, they agreed it was safe to set up camp at the river’s edge. By then Arddwn could build a fish trap by himself, Lliem knew how to gather sticks for the campfire, and Aleswina was as adept as Annwr at scouring the undergrowth for mushrooms and new fern fronds. With all three solemnly promising to do their chores and to stay close together, Caelym and Annwr went to see what lay ahead and decide what to do next.

  As they were about to leave, Annwr looked straight at Arddwn and said for a third time, “You are to stay within sight of the camp, and you are not to go wading any deeper than your knees, and you are not to even think about going swimming until your father is back to go into the river with you!”

  “I wasn’t . . .”

  The lie that Arddwn was about to tell crumbled under Annwr’s stern gaze. Looking down at his feet and scuffing his toes, he mumbled, “I won’t, Aunt Annwr.”

  Annwr saw no need to repeat her admonitions to Aleswina and Lliem, since the two of them were never out of sight of each other or ever went willingly into water above their ankles. Still, neither Caelym nor Annwr wanted to leave Aleswina and the boys alone any longer than absolutely necessary. They hurried on their way to look at the lay of the land ahead and returned before Arddwn had time to think of some way to accidently slip into the invitingly deep pool just upstream from his fish trap.

  Although the supper they’d foraged that night was better than any Arddwn and Lliem had eaten at Barnard’s manor, it hardly deserved the lavish praise Caelym heaped on it. It was clear to Annwr what was behind his exuberance. She, however, had no intention of taking Aleswina and the boys up through the rugged terrain that lay ahead without civilized food and a pot to cook it in. Her arms crossed, she let him make his case for continuing to live on “what the forest provides” and avoiding any contact with their enemies’ strongholds before she pointed out that it took them half their day to gather enough to eat—and then added some uncomplimentary remarks about men who promised to fight bears and ogres but were afraid to set foot in a tiny little village.

  “And what do you propose, then?” Caelym parried. “That we knock on some Saxon’s cottage door and ask if they’ve food and clothes for five, saying we’d be glad to pay with gold and jewels and, by the way, kindly don’t mention this to your friends or neighbors, as we’d prefer the king’s guards don’t find out that we have passed this way?”

  “What I suggest is that you remember that you are going in disguise as a monk who has taken a vow of silence and leave the rest to me!”

  With that, Annwr smiled at Aleswina and the boys and went on, “We will make our camp here for the night. In the morning, we will need to clean ourselves up as much as we can, and then we will play a new game, and the rule of this game will be that we all do exactly what I say.”

  Annwr paused, looked Caelym in the eye, and waited until he glumly nodded his acquiescence before she turned back to Arddwn and Lliem and went on, “And what I say is that your father will pretend to be a monk who does not speak, and we must all help him remember that, so that if he does begin to speak we must all say, ‘Shhhhhhh!’” She demonstrated by putting her fingers to her lips. “And Ethelwen will pretend to be Codric again, and I will pretend to be your grandmother, and you will pretend to be my two good, obedient grandsons, and so now you may pick your own pretend names.”

  After some back and forth, Arddwn decided on “Elderond,” which was both the name of a very exciting and adventuresome hero and also of Arddwn’s favorite of the shrine’s goats, while Lliem, with some help from Caelym, picked “Penddrwn,” which was the name of the hero who the Goddess Ethelwen had rescued.

  That settled, Annwr explained that in the morning they were going to go to market in the village, and they would use their ordinary money (of which they now had plenty, she added for Caelym’s benefit) to buy supplies, as well as new packs to carry their new things in.

  “For us too?” Arddwn and Lliem asked in a single voice.

  “Yes, you will each have your own pack and your own cup and spoon and bowl and nice new clothes and maybe, if you remember all the rules and do exactly as I say, a toy as well.”

  Caelym scowled. “My sons don’t need Saxon toys, they—”

  But before he could get any further, Arddwn and Lliem put their fingers to their lips and said, “Shhhhhhh!”

  Chapter 55

  The Trees Speak

  Arddwn and Lliem lay awake late into the night, whispering about what toys to get. Their murmuring debate over balls and tops and toy boats had barely tapered off before it started up again at the first hint of dawn—or so it seemed to the exhausted grown-ups trying to sleep in the same small shelter.

  “It was you that put these ideas in their heads,” was Caelym’s grumbling retort to Annwr’s muttering about Arddwn and Lliem being his sons.

  In the morning, yawning and stretching, he got up and took the boys with him to visit the bushes and get their breakfast fish out of the weir. By the time the first sun beams broke through the branches overhead, Aleswina was covering the last smoldering ashes of the campfire with an extra layer of dirt, and Annwr was shaking the pine needles off her apron.

  Unable to contain himself any longer, Arddwn bolted down the path, calling, “Come on!” over his shoulder.

  Lliem dashed after him, crying, “Wait for me!”

  “Stop them!”

  Before Annwr’s command was out of her mouth, Caelym was racing to head the boys off. He caught up where the path crossed a small clearing, circled in front of them, and blocked their way.

  “What is your hurry, and where are your manners?”

  Thrusting out his lower lip, crossing his arms, and assuming a stance that mirrored his father’s, Arddwn declared, “We thanked the forest creatures!”

  Lliem had come to a stop right behind Arddwn. Peeking out around his brother’s shoulder, he chimed in, “And the sprites and the spirits of the fish!”

  “And so now you rush forth, leaving the shield of their good will behind you, with no thought of the dangers ahead? Do you recall nothing of what you’ve learned in our time together?”

  “Do what you and Aunt Annwr tell us.”

  Confident he’d picked the right answer, Arddwn was ready to start on. When Caelym didn’t budge, he elbowed Lliem for help.

  “And what Eth
elwen tells us, and don’t eat any mushrooms that might be poisoned, and don’t go swimming without you there so we don’t drown ourselves, and . . .” Lliem listed off as many of the admonitions and prohibitions as he could remember, finishing with, “and cover our poo over with dirt after we do it.”

  “And?”

  Lliem dropped his eyes as he whispered, “And don’t run off into the woods by ourselves.”

  “But”—Arddwn picked up their defense as Lliem faltered—“we weren’t running off into the woods! We were on the path! And you were right behind us!”

  That was at least as close to the truth as any of the excuses Caelym had made to his teachers when they’d caught him sneaking away from his lessons to explore the forest on the upper slopes of Llwddawanden. For a moment, warm memories of roaming through the woods with no real idea of where he was going or how far he’d gone welled up in Caelym’s mind. But that had been within the secure confines of Llwddawanden, where, when he was tired and hungry, all he had to do was head downhill until he reached the lake and follow the path along its shore back to the shrine.

  This forest was no familiar playground with safe sides around it—it was a vast wilderness teeming with danger from savage men and hungry wolves and lurking spirits.

  “And what if I was not behind you and you had left the path and were lost in a forest with wild beasts all around you? What would you do then?”

  Assuming this was an actual question, Arddwn answered, “Lliem would cry and wet himself—”

  “I would not!”

  “Would too!”

  Before his father could tell them both to hush, Arddwn rushed on, “But I would get a stick with a sharp end, and I would stab them and kill them dead!”

  Not to be outdone, Lliem declared, “I’d get a stick and stab them too!” He looked at his brother. “Please, Arddwn?” he asked in a wheedling tone of voice.

  But Arddwn stood firm. “No! I’m going to stab them! You can get wood and make a fire so we can cook them!”

  While Arddwn and Lliem were arguing over who would do the stabbing and who would do the cooking, Caelym was thinking how like him they both were. Of course, they would venture out on their own sooner or later, in spite—or because—of adults telling them not to. In his mind’s eye, he could see two frightened little figures lost in a vast, wild forest, blind with panic and running themselves into exhaustion. He ached to call out to them in that future moment—telling them to stop, stay where they were, and wait for him to find them.

  For most, the notion of sending a message forward in time would seem impossible, and for most it would be. It was, he knew, a feat that could only be accomplished by a Druid master. Now, after long years in training for just such a task, it was time to prove himself.

  Arddwn and Lliem were still arguing when Annwr and Aleswina caught up with them.

  Aleswina would have swept Lliem into her arms and Annwr would have scolded both boys up one side and down the other, only Caelym put up his hand for silence and stepped into a spot where a sunbeam pierced the branches overhead. As its shimmering light formed a halo around him, he seemed to change before their eyes into a Druid elder—assuming an aura of infinite age and wisdom that seemed to whiten his black hair and wrinkle his smooth skin.

  “The woods,” he proclaimed in a voice that might have come from some distant time and place, “are filled with trees.”

  As Caelym spoke, he gravely nodded his head. Arddwn, Lliem, and Aleswina unconsciously nodded along with him. Annwr, standing off to the side, shook her head in exasperation as she recalled how even the best of Druid priests (and by this she meant Herrwn) always had to make saying hello in the hallway into an occasion for oratory.

  Paying no attention to her and looking gravely down at his sons, Caelym intoned, “The trees of this ancient forest were living long before you were ever born!”

  Since Arddwn was eight and Lliem was five, this would have been true of trees in even a relatively young forest. Arddwn and Lliem were entranced, however, and Caelym swept from the mundane to the mystical.

  “The roots of these trees reach down into the earth, drawing up her sacred wisdom and carrying it up through their outstretched branches and into their whispering leaves, offering that wisdom to those who enter the forest with reverence and who listen with their minds as well as with their ears.”

  At this, Caelym stopped speaking. His eyes bored into the boys.

  Arddwn and Lliem held their breath and strove to look as though they understood—although neither of them did. Still, Arddwn stood as tall as he could, and Lliem stopped sucking his thumb. Apparently satisfied with what he saw, Caelym got to the point—that the forest itself was alive, that it harbored wonder and danger in equal measure, and that before they ventured into it on their own, they must prove to him that they understood the language it spoke as clearly as if it were their native tongue—or, he added for Lliem’s benefit, English.

  “Now, then, you, Arddwn, and you, Lliem, will each choose a tree from those around you, and you will listen to it and tell me what it says to you.”

  Arddwn quickly spotted a tall cedar with enticingly climbable branches just off the path and claimed it. Lliem drew in his lower lip and looked around and, after serious deliberation, picked a towering oak growing close by his brother’s tree.

  Caelym nodded his approval of each boy’s choice and waited.

  The boys hovered by their trees, listening with all their might, hearing the rustle of leaves or needles but nothing close to words in either Celt or English.

  “So then,” Caelym said. “Do you hear either of these trees shouting?”

  Relieved to have a question they could answer, Arddwn and Lliem spoke as one “No, Ta.”

  “Do you hear them arguing?”

  Arddwn could see where this was going and muttered, “No, Ta.”

  “Do you hear them grumbling in impatience with what their father is asking them?”

  Giggling, Lliem piped up, “No, Ta!”

  “What do you hear?”

  “Nothing!” said Arddwn.

  “Quiet,” said Lliem.

  “That is right! Quiet!” Caelym nodded at his younger son. “Now look at your tree and tell me what it is doing.”

  “Nothing!” Arddwn said again.

  “It’s standing still.”

  Lliem got a second nod but before Arddwn could object that that was what he meant, Caelym said, “So neither of your trees is running wildly about or stabbing at anything with sticks?”

  “No, Ta.” The disappointment in both boys’ voices was palpable.

  “And yet these trees and others like them have lived through fierce storms and freezing winds and now stand tall and unafraid— welcoming you to climb up into their branches or hide safely in their shadows should you ever be lost and need shelter while you wait for me to come and find you.”

  “But, Ta . . .” It was on the tip of Arddwn’s lips to say it had taken his father two years to find him the last time, and that was too long to sit waiting under some stupid tree, but he closed his mouth to keep the hurt-filled words from tumbling out.

  “I know how long it was that I kept you waiting when I should have come quickly at your first need,” Caelym hung his head and was, for a moment, the picture of a man burdened with remorse. Drawing a breath, he looked up again and spoke with renewed strength, “But that was before I knew I would need magic whistles to find you.”

  It was Arddwn who saw the opening this offered, “Maybe we can get them at the market!”

  “We can get many things at the market, as I’ve no doubt your Aunt Annwr intends to do, but I will make our magic whistles from the flute that I have played for you.”

  And with surprisingly little fanfare, he did. Cutting the reed flute into three, he trimmed it and taught the boys to blow notes that might not be musical but were piercing and were certain to carry farther than a child’s cry for help. When he was satisfied with each boy’s efforts, he tied each of
the whistles to a loop of cord and hung one around each of the boys’ necks and his own. Staying crouching down, eye level with them, he asked, “So now tell me what you would do if you were lost in the forest and needed me to find you?”

  “Listen to our trees,” Lliem guessed.

  “Blow our whistles,” Arddwn added.

  “Wait for you,” they said in unison.

  Sending up a silent invocation to the Goddess by all of Her names and in all of Her forms to protect these boys who were her own precious children, Caelym nodded. With a glance at Annwr to confirm that she was willing to let him stay in the lead for now, he started up the side of the ridge that lay between them the village that—he hoped—harbored no dangers worse than what they’d encountered in Welsferth.

  Chapter 56

  A Village Fair

  Caelym was first to reach the top of the ridge. Finding it open and exposed, he turned back and said sternly, “Wait where you are!”

  Aleswina and the boys obeyed his command, crouching down out of sight below the crest of the rise. Annwr dogged his heels as he crept across the ledge and looked over his shoulder as he surveyed what lay ahead.

  The path they’d been following dropped abruptly downwards into a swath of pine and oak that covered the hillside below them and came out again at the bottom of the slope, where it crossed a footbridge over the broad stream and joined a wagon road on the other side. The road traveled up a rise on the far side of the valley, then disappeared into a cluster of buildings surrounded on three sides by an expanse of tents with pennants flying from their center poles.

  Even from a distance and with trees blocking part of the view, Caelym could see a line of heavily loaded wagons with mounted riders alongside rolling up the road into what was not some ordinary village on market day.

  “An enemy encampment!” Aware of how sound could travel in the still morning air, he barely breathed the words as he drew back from the edge.