Warrior's Daughter

by Holly Bennett

  It was a test, then. She must be powerful, I thought, to call up a storm like this. Still, it seemed a silly effort. I tugged at Geanann’s cloak.

  “She could not suppose that weather would turn me back?”

  His hoot of laughter was snatched away by the wind. “It turns back the weak of will and the frivolous of mind. If she knew you as I do, no doubt she would not have bothered!”

  There is a self-confidence that comes with a high name. I had grown up in the reflected light of the respect given to my parents. Without even thinking of it, I had known that my place in the world was assured. Now I was to stand, homeless and in hiding, before a high druidess, with nothing but my own self to recommend my worth. It made me feel naked.

  She was waiting for us at the end of the causeway that joined the isle to the mainland. The storm had passed, and in the uncanny quiet that followed I could hear the steady dripping as branches and leaves shook off their burden of rainwater. The lake—only a small channel on this side—was a still gray mirror.

  Tlachta was, well, not what I expected. In those days, my imagination patterned all druids after Cathbad. For one thing, Tlachta was shorter than me by a head, and I am not much above average height for a woman. And though her hair was gray and her forehead disconcertingly high from the shaved tonsure that marked her as a Master, she was by no means ancient. She was vigorous and womanly still, lush in the hip and breast, and when she turned to lead us onto the isle she walked with a grace that I thought might still turn a man’s head.

  Geanann greeted her as “daughter of the Sun” and that sent a thrill of apprehension through me. People used to whisper that my father was the son of the god Lugh, and as a girl I loved imagining it was true without ever believing it or letting it worry me one whit. But this was different; Tlachta was a stranger to me and a woman of power, and Mug Ruith a southern god I had barely heard of. In my mind, the great unknown that was my life here became even more unpredictable.

  I could have spared myself that worry. It was not long before I learned that “daughter of the Sun” or “daughter of Mug Ruith” is a title of office, given to every mistress of Cluain-na-mBan. While Tlachta is a woman to inspire awe, she is not truly born of the sun god, but rather dedicated to his service.

  We walked into a dense wall of trees, an apparent forest which soon thinned out to reveal a sizeable community: lime-washed houses, both round and rectangular, a stable and beyond them, cultivated fields and pastures. It all looked so...normal.

  Tlachta was brisk and assured in her hospitality, and there was soon a bustle about us. To my surprise a man came to see to our horses and the calf, and then we were shown to our respective quarters: the apprentices’ house for me, the men’s guesthouse for Geanann and Berach and a women’s guesthouse for Roisin. I could see she was irked to be sent there, but whether she wished to sleep beside Berach or me, I could not tell. Berach, most likely.

  The apprentices’ house was a long low building, filled with two rows of simple wattle bed frames and little else.

  “This one is free and away from the door,” said the girl who led me there. “You’ll be out of the draft.”

  I would be sharing my sleeping space, by the looks of it, with nearly twenty other girls and women. Coming as I did from a small wealthy family, I found it unpleasantly crowded. But the straw was fresh, so I nodded my thanks to the fellow who carried in my trunk and set it at the foot of the bed. Another man! I had jumped to a foolish conclusion, I realized; it is the druids who are women here, not every soul who works for them.

  “If you have more things, there is a storage room attached to the back of the house,” the girl said. I thought of the portion of treasure I had brought, left for now in Tlachta’s care. A better place than that would have to be found for it. “Do you want to put on dry clothes, and I will take care of your wet things? There is food for you when you are ready.”

  I changed gratefully and did the best I could with my wet hair. Already I missed Roisin’s help. By the time I was done, the serving girl was back. But I asked her to wait a moment, while I freed Fintan from the wicker cage he had sheltered in through the storm, and watched while he hopped out to explore his new home.

  We ate soup and bread, and Roisin was full of chatter, wanting to know if my chamber was all right (I assured her it was) and was my bed made up (it wasn’t, but I lied and said yes, figuring I would have to start doing without her soon enough) and had I seen the marvelous device they had for drying clothes? I hadn’t, but I found it hard to concentrate on her description of the tiny stone building that was heated with a constant turf-fire and filled with drying racks. I was nervous, wondering what was to come. Surely there was more to starting an apprenticeship than claiming a bed? I looked to Geanann and found his eyes already resting upon me. With a smile, he nodded to the door.

  It was Tlachta, her timing (as always, I have learned) perfect.

  “You are dry and fed, now? Good. Well then, Luaine, we had best get started. Will you come with me?” And off she went, leaving me to trail after her like a child.

  Well, Cathbad had taught me to endure a druid’s stare, but with Tlachta it was a whole new experience. For once all self-consciousness about my scar dropped away, for in her eyes it was invisible. It was my heart she was seeking, and as I sat across from her and ordered myself to keep still under her gaze, I understood that she had as little interest in my name and my holdings as she did in my good looks. In this place, such things did not matter.

  After a long moment, with a tiny nod and an even tinier smile, she released me. Odd, that feeling. She looked at me still, but the sensation of being searched was gone.

  “I understand your life has not been an easy one of late.” This time the smile was warmer. “Know that you are welcome to stay with us on the island for as long as you have need.” Her hand rose, forestalling any reply.

  “However, I am told you wish to become an initiate. Is this correct?”

  “Yes, mistress.”

  Who told her, I wondered. Geanann? But she had been waiting for us. Unless he had sent a message that somehow arrived faster than we could travel. Or... I shivered at the thought. Had she known I was coming before I myself did?

  “You come highly recommended,” Tlachta continued. “But, you understand, I must be satisfied myself that an initiate is suitable.”

  “Of course, mistress.” There would be a test, then. I tried to remain calm, while my stomach began to jump around as it had when Eirnin used to grill me in my lessons. It was long since I had studied anything but my own survival. I was not sure what I remembered.

  “Good. Then let’s see what you have learned so far.”

  She began with the simple triads from my earliest lessons.

  “Name the three divisions of the world.”

  “Earth, sea and air.”

  “The three divisions of nature.”

  “Animal, vegetable and mineral.”

  “The three divisions of man.”

  “Body, soul and spirit.”

  By the time we moved on to more complex questions—the eight winds, the seven divisions of the firmament, the truths of the poet, the duties of the king—I was more confident, and I could feel my studies coming back to me. The knowledge was all there, after all, locked away and waiting to be called back to my head.

  She took her time, leading me through the landscape of all I had learned. From the names of the constellations to the names of Ulster’s kings, from the mysterious triple face of the Morrigu to the familiar geography of Muirthemne, Tlachta took the sounding of my mind. By the time I finished reciting one of Lasair’s battle sagas, she knew as much about my education as my own teachers.

  Tlachta turned to a great chest that lay against the wall and brought out an armful of yew wands. I could see the white notches cut against the rich red of the polished wood. She laid the bundle before me and fanned it open, for the sticks were drilled with holes and attached together at the bottom.
/>   “Do you know what these are?”

  “Yes, mistress. It is Ogham writing.”

  “Can you read it?”

  “Yes...but I have never seen the wands bound together so.”

  “Ah. Tell me then: Why do you think they are bound?”

  I was too curious to be nervous and this freed me to think. “It must be to keep the wands in order,” I offered. “The messages on the wands must be sequential.”

  “Good. Will you read some for me?”

  It was a simple memorial—the name of a king and his death date and the name of his father. The next wand held the name of another king, the son of the first man, with again his death date and ancestry. And so it continued.

  “It is the genealogy of the kings of Leinster,” she explained, “kept in the order of their reigns. There are six bundles, recording the lives of some thirty kings. We have other bundles that document contracts undertaken at the Samhain judgments. We set them down in case of future disputes.”

  I was a little puzzled by that. I had studied some law, but only as it applied to everyday householding: the exchange price of livestock, recompense for property damage, the obligations of fostering and so on. Nobody would bother recording such agreements; in a dispute, the judgment and witness of a druid, or even the local chieftain or king, would be more than enough.

  Tlachta was speaking of another level of judgment altogether. I realized suddenly that my conception of law had been too narrow—that judgments and contracts might draw borders and define kingdoms, save lives or lose them, bind or be broken by generations to come.

  She must have sensed my interest, for she interrupted my testing to say something that has echoed in my mind ever since.

  “Luaine, what does the law say if a free man is killed by another, say in a drunken brawl?”

  A simple question. “His family must pay the dead man’s family his honor price.”

  “Correct. And when your father was killed in battle, it is a rather different recompense was taken, was it not?”

  Conall Cearnach, laying out his row of bloody heads for my mother. They had filled me with weary sorrow, but my mother had been glad to see my father properly avenged.

  “The rule of war is different,” I protested.

  “The rule of war is different,” she agreed. “Should, then, kings and chieftains be free to set the men of Ireland against each other for squabbles over cattle or women, and will our warriors forever spill each other’s blood for the sake of insults and rivalries? Do they live free from any law but their own code?”

  I had no reply to her words. They disturbed and excited me both, for I saw the truth in what she said and yet...a saying flashed into my mind: A tame wolf is merely a dog. Was not the same true of a warrior?

  Tlachta’s gaze was on the peat fire now, her voice soft and private. “If Ireland’s rivers run red with the blood of her own warriors, who will be left to defend us when invaders land on our shores? There are men across the sea hungry for conquest: yellow-haired warriors in long ships, and an army from the hot lands so vast that it consumes its neighbors as a fire consumes thatch.”

  Then her eyes were on me, so intense they seemed to glow yellow in the dim light. “The druids have foreseen this,” she said, and the hair stood up on my arms for I hadn’t the least doubt that what she said was true. “It is time for the tribes of Ireland to unite under their high king and to be bound to a common law.”

  There are many branches of study to explore in the druid’s long training. But I believe I was called to the Law on my very first day, when Tlachta gave me a vision of a world in which sworn brothers need not fight each other on the whim of a queen, nor a man slay his own son over a withheld name.

  The day was wearing to a close, but Tlachta had not finished with me. For, as she explained, “You have excellent recall and an inquiring mind, and these are both important. But an initiate must also have the potential to learn in another way. It is the druid’s task to see what is hidden, to hear what is unsaid. It is the truth that lies beneath the surface of the world that we seek.”

  I knew what she spoke of, knew too, that I had that ability. Whether I would ever be at ease with it was another question.

  She must have seen my discomfort. “Will you walk with me?” she asked. “We will go to the tip of the island. These things are easier to speak of there.”

  The farther we walked along the shoreline, the more the magic of the island took hold. My slightly disappointing first impression that this long finger of land was an “ordinary” settlement faded as we left first the buildings and then the fields behind. As we walked along the strip of sand that edged the island, the sounds of human life were replaced with birdcalls. The reedy shoreline bustled with waterbirds: plovers, yellowlegs, gray herons and jet-black coots. And with every step, the wild calling in the air grew louder.

  When we reached the tip of the island, I caught my breath. Now, I realized, I saw the place of deep mystery that was the Isle of Women. It was not back at the settlement. It was not even on this lonely tip of land, silent and still but for the raucous cries overhead.

  Past the reeds, across a narrow channel of still gray water, lay a second island. It spread before us, flat and green, the air above it snowy with untold numbers of wheeling, shrieking terns. They sliced the air above our heads, white and black spears of flight, but always they returned to the far shore.

  From the dead center of the island loomed an ancient evergreen tree, massive and black. The trunk of it thrust from the earth like a mountain—it would take three or four people, I guessed, to span its girth—and its bottom branches brushed the ground, nearly as long as the tree was tall.

  Tlachta let me gaze at the sight in silence for some time. Then she motioned me to a bench that faced out across the water.

  “Do you know what kind of tree that is?”

  I knew. The shape suggested it, but I did not guess. I knew.

  “It is a yew.”

  “The terns nest on that island. They will leave sometime after Samhain, but always they return in the spring. They are beloved of Mug Ruith, for they are masters of the air and they greet his rising with loud cries and exuberant feats.”

  I smiled at the thought, but it was the yew that filled my vision.

  “The yew tree has been there for as long as human memory stretches back,” Tlachta said. “It is a tree of sanctuary and renewal, for the living and for the dead. Its roots sink deep, even to the Otherworld, while its branches stretch up to the sun god’s light.”

  I had seen others, of course, at sacred places; yews marked springs and groves and graves all over the country. Now I understood why.

  “You feel the power of the place, do you not?” she asked.

  I nodded without breaking my gaze. The dark tree called to me. It was both frightening and comforting. Don’t ask me how that can be. It is a thing not to be understood until it is experienced.”Yes, I feel it.” My voice was soft as a sigh.

  “Tell me, then. Has it ever happened that you felt such a thing before? Known or seen something that others don’t?”

  Oh, yes. Only I did not like to speak of most of them. I began with the easiest to tell: the way I had recognized Liban, the woman of the Sidhe, when she came to my father’s side at Samhain, and the time when Fintan’s feather showed me the ships sailing into our bay.

  “Cathbad taught you to use a Messenger?”

  Her interruption was sharp—sharp enough that I tore my eyes from the island to search her face. Was she angry? There was consternation there, certainly.

  “No, Mistress. He only gave Fintan to me for a companion, and bade me care for him. I...” I stopped myself. I had been about to say “I taught myself,” but that did not feel right.

  “It was Fintan taught me.” It was as close to the truth as I could get.

  “I see.” Tlachta smiled at me. “And I see also why Cathbad thinks you a promising candidate.” Hazel eyes held mine, considering.

&
nbsp; “There is more, isn’t there?”

  I sighed. In truth, this conversation, though it had sealed my acceptance to the isle, had made me question my fitness for it. I was not sure I wanted to open the door to more visions. I saw no reasonable response but honesty.

  “I have seen things, Mistress, that I would rather not see.”

  Haltingly, I told her what had happened to me at my coming of age, when I watched my father’s Gae Bolga kill a young man I knew to be my brother. Tlachta’s grave face was still through the telling, and she did not move even when my eyes spilled over with tears at the memory. Only when I fell silent and my breath calmed, did she speak.

  “It is difficult when such strong visions come upon a child with no training,” she said. “There is little wonder you found them overwhelming and frightening. Will you trust me when I tell you that with time and study, you will learn to be at ease with this gift? I will not say there will be no horror or pain in it—not so long as pain is a part of life. Did your father not suffer on that day, also, though his vision failed him?”

  I let my eyes travel the smooth green body of the island and then up to the wheeling white flecks that danced about it, and I thought about her words. I did not completely understand them, but I nearly did, and I found it was enough.

  “I do trust you,” I said at last. “And I am ready to learn what you have to teach me.”

  Besides, I had discovered something about myself, a secret nestled perhaps in the stiff black arms of the yew or chiming softly amidst the bird cries. I had lied to Tlachta—or rather to myself—when I said that I would rather not have my visions. When I looked deep inside and asked would I truly give up the Sight that I shared with Fintan, would I rather see only what everyone saw—the honest answer was no.

  I had a hunger for the truth, you see. And the truth does not come without cost.

  CHAPTER 22

  SAMHAIN ON THE ISLAND

  By midday my friends were gone, and I was alone among strangers.