Guinevere's Gift

by Nancy McKenzie

  Llyr seemed to sway in the rising breeze. Guinevere ran to him and took his hands as he sank to the forest floor. They were cold.

  “Llyr!” She reached inside the heavy cloak, drew out her waterskin, and pressed it to his lips. As he drank, she pulled the cloak off and wrapped it around him. Gradually, his color improved.

  “Pellinore's men—come to kill us?”

  “Of course not. King Pellinore's men are patrolling the hills as they did before. These new troops belong to the lord of the Longmeadow Marshes. But the lord himself is away with King Pellinore, fighting Saxons. His son leads them now.”

  “We do not steal.”

  “I know. I know that. But he has convinced Queen Alyse that you do. He does not care whether or not it is true. He likes to kill, and there is no one to stop him.”

  Llyr rose. His lips twisted with some strong emotion. “Earth's Beloved will not listen to any warning I bring.”

  “Why not?”

  “They have cast me out until the next new moon.”

  Now it was Guinevere's turn to stare. “You? But why? You are a prince among them! Your father is leader of the White Foot.”

  He turned away from her, and in the slump of his shoulders she read his shame. She took him by the arm and turned him back until she could see his face.

  “Llyr,” she whispered, “how long have you been . . . outcast? How many days?”

  He shrugged and avoided her eyes.

  “Tell me,” she pressed. “Two days? Three? Four? Five?”

  His eyes met hers briefly and dropped again. “Five.”

  “Five days ago, I met you here. Is that the reason?” Her voice began to shake. “Llyr, tell me the truth. Did they cast you out because of me?”

  He shook his head. “I broke an oath.”

  “How?”

  His hands lifted and cupped her shoulders. They were warm hands now, and welcome. Her body had grown cold without the cloak.

  “Good guards stay hidden.”

  She stifled a gasp. “Because you showed yourself to me? Is that why? . . . Oh, that is unfair! It is not the secrecy of the guard that matters, but his presence, his loyalty, his courage.” She smiled at him. “I know you are loyal, and you must be courageous, or you would not have come back here.”

  At last, the glazed look left his eyes, and he attempted a smile. “Thank you, Gwenhwyfar.” He did not tell her that his own need, not her call, had driven him to the clearing. He lifted the cloak from his shoulders and replaced it gently on hers.

  “You must take my warning to your leader,” she insisted, teeth chattering. “Only you can save the Long Eyes from annihilation.”

  Llyr's smile faded. “They cannot hear me or see me. That is what it means to be outcast. To them, I do not exist.”

  Guinevere stared at him, and pity nearly overwhelmed her. But knowing Llyr did not want pity, she said firmly, “Then we will go together. They will have to believe me. If they are my guards, they cannot harm me. And they cannot prevent you from coming if I am the one who brings you.”

  Llyr hesitated. “It is forbidden.”

  “There is no time to worry about that. We have to hurry. Peleth can take us both if you will show me the way. All right?”

  Llyr did not move. “There is only one way I can return to the Long Eyes,” he said, searching for the words that would explain it. “I must go as supplicant. I must ask for a meeting with the One Who Hears.”

  “Who is that?”

  He shied from the question. “An old woman. Once I do that, my life is hers.”

  Guinevere frowned. “What does that mean?”

  Llyr's hands twisted together, and he looked away. “For an outcast to approach her—a terrible act, almost a heresy—means I put my life in her power. Forever. To disobey the One Who Hears is death.”

  Guinevere paled. “I would not have you risk your life, Llyr. Is the One Who Hears such a harsh judge?”

  “She speaks with the voice of the god,” he whispered. “Her judgments are absolute.”

  “I cannot let you risk it. Never mind. I will take the warning to the Long Eyes myself. Tell me how to find them.”

  Llyr gripped her arm. “No. Do not go alone. It will make great trouble. As long as you live in Gwynedd, you bring them honor and status, but no one is allowed to approach you. They will not know what to do.”

  “But, Llyr,” Guinevere pleaded, “I cannot leave them to be killed and persecuted by the Marsh Lord's son. I must warn them.”

  “We will warn them together,” Llyr said at last, after a long study of the forest floor. He did not look happy about it.

  “But I don't want you to submit yourself to the One Who Hears if it could mean death for you.”

  “It is the only way.”

  He spoke with finality, and Guinevere saw that Llyr had made up his mind. She made him a reverence to honor his courage and reached for Peleth's reins. “Then let's go.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  The Old Ones

  It was one thing to set off on a mission that honor demanded and quite another to enter a world one knew nothing about, meet strangers whose customs one did not understand and whose language one could not speak. Anything might happen. Guinevere steeled herself against second thoughts as they trotted into a clearing high in the hills where a spring and a small stream flanked a low-mouthed cave.

  Rising wind whipped the trees and bushes around them. The gray sky had a greenish hue. Any moment Guinevere expected the lowering clouds to release their burden of rain and drench them both. Already thunder rumbled in the distance.

  They slid off the horse together. Guinevere tied Peleth under a tree and took Llyr's hand. It was trembling.

  “How do we announce ourselves?” she asked. “Or do we want to take them by surprise?”

  Llyr almost smiled. “It is difficult to take Earth's Beloved by surprise. There are lookouts everywhere. They know we are here.”

  Inside the cave, the floor tilted down at a gentle angle. As they descended into the heart of the hill, the air grew warm and thick with the scents of burning peat and human habitation. Squat oil lamps every thirty paces gave them just enough light to see.

  Llyr stopped at the threshold of a wide, torchlit cavern and released Guinevere's hand. She blinked at the scene before her. The cavern was full of people. Every man, woman, and child in the entire Long Eyes clan must have come to meet them. They stood clustered around a central fire, staring at her openmouthed and making the ancient sign against enchantment.

  Guinevere scanned them with frank curiosity. They were a small people, most of them shorter and stockier than Llyr, with weathered faces and thick, dark hair. It was easy to tell which of the men was the leader. He was the only one who did not have black tufts of hair sprouting from his chest, arms, and chin. His hair, as bountiful and unkempt as his fellows', was uniformly gray. He wore a copper armband around the hard swell of muscle on his upper arm. It was his only ornament. A thick bearskin cloak, hanging from shoulder to heel, lent him an air of primitive majesty. In his right hand, he held a staff made of ash wood, one end curled like a shepherd's crook and carved with runes.

  Llyr slid to his knees and spoke quickly in the guttural tongue of the Old Ones. When he had finished, he translated quietly for Guinevere. “I have told them who you are and why we have come. The leader's name is Mapon. He speaks your language.”

  Guinevere waited for him to rise. But Llyr remained kneeling, forehead to the floor, in an attitude of abject submission. A low mutter of voices ran like wildfire around the walls of the cave. The leader, Mapon, glared at Llyr and struck his staff against the floor. The voices died away to utter silence.

  Guinevere took a deep breath and made the leader a graceful reverence. “Mapon, leader of the Long Eyes, greetings. I beg your pardon for coming uninvited into your—your abode, but I bring a warning of dire importance to your people.”

  At the sound of her voice, another murmur swept through the crowd. Map
on raised his staff in the air for silence and took one step forward from the men gathered behind him. All of them, Guinevere noticed, had daggers stuck in their belts.

  “We are honored by your presence, princess,” Mapon said gravely in excellent Welsh. “But it is forbidden.”

  Guinevere flushed. “I will leave at once if you'll allow Llyr to speak for me,” she said quickly. “Otherwise, I must stay.”

  Mapon's face darkened. “The one you refer to is outcast. He may not speak.”

  “Then I must stay. I am very sorry if it is forbidden.”

  After a short, stiff silence, Mapon nodded in Llyr's direction. “The outcast asks for a hearing with our wise woman. It is his right, but as an outcast, the cost will be high. Does She With Hair of Light wish this cost to be paid?”

  Guinevere shivered. “It is not my wish,” she said evenly. “But it is Llyr's wish.” She spoke his name deliberately, even though it shocked them. But she refused to call him “outcast.” He was not outcast to her. “He would not let me come here alone. He said it would make trouble. But the warning must be delivered. He came the only way he could. As a supplicant.”

  The stiff lines in Mapon's face relaxed. “Very well.”

  Mapon turned to his people and spoke quickly in his own tongue. Quietly, they dispersed into branching passageways and interior caves, leaving Mapon, twelve men, and twelve women behind in the cavern. The women began to distribute mats in a circle around the hearth, while the men fetched wineskins, horn cups, and an offering of mealcakes on a bone platter. These were arranged near Mapon's place toward the back of the cave.

  At Mapon's signal, everyone took a seat around the low peat fire. The women sat cross-legged on the mats, knee to knee with the men. Guinevere was given the place of honor at Mapon's right hand. Llyr was not offered a seat around the fire but remained kneeling, forehead to the floor, a little outside the circle.

  Mapon began the meeting by introducing each of the Old Ones in the circle. This took a long time, for each name contained an ancestry. He ended by introducing himself as Mapon the Long-Sighted, son of Lugh Strongheart, son of Bran the Wise, son of Mapon the Mighty. He was the fourth generation of his family to be chosen leader of the Long Eyes.

  Guinevere inclined her head politely. “I am honored to make your acquaintance.”

  Each of them gave her a shy nod in return. Their faces were uniformly grave and disapproving but at the same time alight with curiosity. Mapon began speaking to his people in their own tongue, and Guinevere took time to look around.

  The Old Ones were not the primitive people she had imagined. Their clothes of animal hides stitched with sinew were not as fine as her own, but their weapons, from what she could see of them, were beautifully crafted and honed to a bright edge. They looked to be a strong people, strong of build and strong of feature, but they were not the savages some folk thought them. They lived by rules and customs, paid obedience to their leader and their gods. The women wore amulets around their necks, and most of the men had drawings of animal heads etched into the flesh of their upper arms. Their society was different from her own, but it was not uncivilized.

  She knew from Llyr that they raised sheep, yet none of them wore anything made of wool. The mats they sat on were made of thick, coiled ropes of braided and twisted wool stitched together in tight, concentric circles. The wool was unwashed, unbleached, and undyed. Smelly and oily as it was, it made a mat that would stay dry on any ground.

  Perhaps the Old Ones did not know how to weave. Perhaps they had no spindles to spin fine thread, no looms to weave the threads into a fabric. They were, after all, a seasonally nomadic people who followed the game over the hills and through the forests, and sometimes even down into the settled valleys of their ancestral territories. They had no use for looms or anything too heavy to carry on their backs.

  The Old Ones spent their days close to the land, in tune with its rhythms and under the protection of its gods. They put up no fences and owned no property but lived on the earth's gifts, unfettered as the birds of the air, as free and as wild as Father Martin's lilies of the field. Clothes of skins and oily wool mats seemed a small price to pay for such a privilege.

  She wondered what it would be like to be on the move so often, to own not a single clothes chest, to sleep in a cave instead of a castle, or better, out under the stars, free of the constant encasing of cold stone walls. A yearning for it gripped her forcibly. No more worries about combs or gowns or the latest fashion in dress, no more feeling pampered and useless until a forced marriage to some stranger tore her away from home. No more wrenching away from the old gods and trying to form allegiance to a deity who had never lived in Wales.

  On the other hand, the Old Ones were not sleeping out under the stars; they were living deep within the cave. To the Welshmen she knew, this was sacred terrain. Caves and tunnels dug into the mountains, the “hollow hills,” were considered to be gates to the Otherworld, and to pass into them meant passing into an unknown territory from which travelers did not always return. Great warriors were sometimes buried in the hollow hills. It was considered a high honor to lie at the threshold of gods. Did Welshmen fear the Old Ones because they dared to live at the gates of the Otherworld? Because they claimed to be the mortal descendants of the gods themselves? Or was it just the distrust that always arose between cultures with different practices and beliefs?

  Guinevere gazed up at the vaulting roof of stone above her head and shivered. She recognized the feeling that had gripped her on the threshold of the cavern, the feeling that had forced Llyr to his knees. It was awe. Here, in this hallowed hall, she sensed an unseen presence. Someone else was with them, watching, listening. The hair rose on the back of her neck, and in response, she pulled the borrowed cloak tighter around her.

  Mapon's voice, speaking in Welsh, jerked her from her thoughts. “I have explained why you are here, princess. The Great Council has agreed to hear your warning. Please, tell us what danger threatens.”

  Guinevere quickly explained how Queen Alyse had been made to think the Old Ones were stealing her livestock and that she had permitted a young nobleman to organize a force of men to chase them from the hills. Guinevere did not name Sir Darric. It was important that Mapon's people know what the soldiers intended, but she did not want to begin a war between the Old Ones and Sir Darric. This was just the sort of trouble King Pellinore had worked so hard to avoid.

  The Old Ones listened carefully as Mapon translated her report into their language. Muttering broke out around the circle, and sharp glances were exchanged. Guinevere did not blame them for their anger. Would they view Queen Alyse's actions as betrayal of the promises King Pellinore had made? If they did, she could not blame them for that, either. The queen's actions were inexplicable to her. Mapon did not translate the discussion that now ensued, even as it boiled into argument. Guinevere hoped the dissension was about strategies for escape or about fighting tactics, but she had no way of knowing. More than once she glanced at Llyr, but he remained in the posture of abasement, kneeling with his fore-head to the floor.

  Guinevere waited impatiently for some resolution, for a decision to be made or action taken. Time oppressed her. It must be growing dangerously late. If she did not leave soon, she would never get home before dark. She would certainly be missed if she did not appear at dinner, and she did not have much faith in Elaine's ability—or Stannic's—to weave a tale Queen Alyse would long believe.

  The forgotten pain began to throb again between her temples. Smoke from the peat fire stung her eyes. She reached into her pouch and clutched the little carving of Rhiannon, uttering a silent prayer for strength and help. Just when she thought she could stand no more—when another moment of it would drive her outside into the clean, smokeless air and blessed silence—the voices stopped.

  All eyes turned to the back of the cave. There, half a dozen paces behind her, a light appeared. The wall at her back had been all the time in deep shadow, and she had assumed it to
be made of solid rock. It was not. Light seeped around the edges of a curtain of stitched skins covering the entrance to another cave. No one spoke. She glanced hastily around the circle and saw every face alert, intent, waiting with bated breath for whatever was behind the curtain to come forth.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  The One Who Hears

  The curtain parted and a girl appeared, little more than a child, with a stone oil lamp between her hands. An older girl followed, carrying a pallet stuffed with straw. They placed the pallet and the light before the only empty space in the circle, on Mapon's left hand, and retreated into the background. Two young women came forward, supporting between them a bent figure wrapped in a black cloak. The women deposited their burden carefully on the pallet, then withdrew into the shadows.

  Guinevere stared at the cloaked figure, her heart hammering in her ears. Her head felt as if it were about to split apart. Like the others in the circle, she bent forward until her fore-head touched the floor, and because the cool stone felt so wonderful against her throbbing head, she lingered in this posture a moment longer than everyone else. When she straightened, the hood of the cloak had turned her way. Guinevere looked up into a pair of black eyes set deep in a tiny, hideously wrinkled yellow face.

  “Mother,” she whispered in Mountain Welsh, “a thousand pardons. I came to warn you, not to disturb your peace.”

  The people in the circle inhaled sharply. Llyr raised his face from the floor, his eyes stretched in horror. Guinevere saw she had made a terrible mistake. Perhaps it was forbidden to address the old woman, but she hadn't intended to speak. The words had just spilled out, propelled by a power she could not resist. She pulled the folds of her cloak tighter around her and resolved not to say anything more. She had delivered her warning. The rest was in Mapon's hands.

  Mapon spoke softly and quickly, addressing himself to the Crone. For that's who this must be, Guinevere realized, once her mind had begun to work again. This was their wise woman, their sage, their seer, a woman who had grown up in the Mother's service from a child and who represented to the Long Eyes the divine Three-in-One: Maiden, Mother, and Crone. Some part of herself—the unthinking part—had known this instinctively the moment the bent figure had come through the curtain. She knew she ought to be afraid of this old woman, so frail and bent and surrounded by an aura of power, but she was not. The black eyes that regarded her so directly held no malice. Exactly what they did hold, however, she could not say.