We sat silently, alternately glaring at each other, then looking away, like cats trying to decide whether to have a full out fight.
“And you came here,” he said, “to ask me to do something about it, to influence the procurator.”
“Why do you call him that?” I shot back. “As if you had no other relation to him.”
“Because I don’t,” said the general shortly. “No matter what I told you in a moment’s madness in the moonlight, no matter what I believe to be true, another man lifted him to the knee, accepted him as his son and raised him. According to Roman law that man is his father.”
I knew that law well. To raise a child to the knee was to acknowledge paternity. If a man refused to do it, a child could be exposed and abandoned. Once it was done, it was binding, no matter what a man subsequently believed. That was how my erstwhile nemesis Paulina became the daughter of a horrible Roman senator who discovered too late his wife’s liaison with a slave.
“I understand,” I spoke more gently. “So you have not told him.”
“Have not and will not.”
I felt at an impasse. There was too much emotion roiling around to continue a policy debate. It occurred to me that the general might be ashamed of this man who was son in blood if not in name. Yet this unacknowledged bond might also make him hesitate to challenge or even advise the procurator as he might if he were merely a fellow official.
“And what about you?” he asked. “Did you tell your daughter who you are?”
I hesitated, aware that we were now entering treacherous water, cold with strong currents and slippery rocks.
“I did,” I said. “Perhaps not wisely or well, but I did.”
“She was not pleased with the news?”
“It was bittersweet,” I answered cautiously. “It did not match the story she had always been told.”
“But she believed you?”
“Yes, she believed me.”
There was another silence, and I sighed with what turned out to be premature relief.
“And is your daughter’s tribe one of those oppressed, as you so dramatically put it, by the procurator’s policy?”
I raised my eyes to his. He looked back, his expression carefully noncommittal. Did he think I would open my mouth as easily as I opened my legs? He could think again.
“There are few tribes that are not. Travel to the east and see for yourself. Leave someone in charge here. Go see the procurator. Speak to him, sway him before it’s too late,” I sounded my theme again. “You are older, more experienced. Surely he must defer to you.”
He gave a harsh laugh that got caught somewhere in his throat.
“I thought with your experience you would know men better than that,” he said. “I am the old dog. He is the new dog. Best we keep to our own turf, unless one of us is willing to roll over, expose his neck.”
And I understood. He would not do that to his son, even if he didn’t call him son, and even if he could. And so he was off, as I could guess only too well, to subdue the west instead.
“What will you tell your daughter when you return to her?” he asked, assuming more than I had told him, an old trick for getting information. He wanted to know if I had been sent here; he wanted to know who my daughter was.
“Nothing,” I said.
“Nothing?” He gave me a skeptical look.
“Nothing,” I repeated, and then decided to toss him a tidbit. “She does not know I am here. No one knows I am here.”
“How will you explain your absence?”
I could not help it, I smiled. He thought I was going back; he thought I was going east, and I would—until I lost any tail he put on me and doubled back.
“I will think of something,” I assured him.
“Let me give you safe escort,” he urged. “You should not travel alone.”
I gave him the look he deserved for such an obvious ploy.
“The Grey Hag’s only companion is the wind,” I tried it on for size.
“What is that supposed to mean?” He seemed singularly unimpressed. That was a Roman for you. Where was his Etruscan spirit?
“It means I can take care of myself.”
“On the contrary, it seems to me that whenever you venture out on your own you get into trouble.”
He gave me another of those almost smiles.
“Is that how you describe yourself?” I shot back.
We were playing, and I couldn’t resist, even though or maybe because the world around us, our clashing worlds, were in such dire condition.
“Upon consideration,” he said, “I’d say that’s how I would describe you.”
“I see.” I smiled and stretched out on the couch, letting the shawl fall away and expose breasts that could never, no matter what age or shape I took, be described as anything but ripe, round, glorious. “And would you like to get into trouble again?”
“I would,” he said, and he reached for me, but his playfulness was gone, and there was such sadness in his face, I caught my breath and touched his cheek.
“What is it?” I asked him. “Tell me.”
“You know,” he said. “You know.”
I closed my eyes and saw that valley again; it was dark, and we were alone there. All the din and death as yet unborn.
“It doesn’t have to be that way,” I told him. “It doesn’t.”
“You have your fate,” he said. “I have mine.”
“Fate doesn’t have to be fatal,” I insisted.
He shook his head, “Of course it does, in the end. Didn’t your husband teach you that?”
“No,” I told him. “No, he taught me that love is as strong as death.”
“But not stronger,” the general said. “Not stronger.”
We looked at each other, suspended, at a draw. Two wrestlers evenly matched. Yes, wrestlers, locked in that close fighting form that could turn at any moment into an embrace.
“He also said to his followers, Love your enemy.”
And I drew my enemy into my arms. Tonight, at least, I would win.
I left the next day not long after dawn. The general had had Macha fed and curried, and her saddle bags were filled with fresh provisions. He himself walked me to the gate. As we crossed the near deserted courtyard, I looked at the construction-in-progress, idle now at this early hour. It was at too unformed a stage to be sure what was being built, but I noted lots of oak boards, and some wood being soaked so that it could be shaped into what looked like the prow of a…boat.
“What are you building here?” I asked, trying to sound merely curious.
“Boats.” He didn’t bother lying.
“Boats for what?” I pressed.
He shrugged.
“Pretannia is an island. Everyone who lives here needs boats.”
“I suppose they do,” I said lightly.
But not everyone built them at a fort on the western front, and not all boats were constructed with flat bottoms, as these appeared to be, to make it easy to maneuver them in very shallow waters.
We did not speak again until we reached the gate. He helped me mount Macha, and then we looked at each other, each silently making our case one more time.
“The gods protect you and yours,” he said.
I don’t know why, but I found I could not repeat his words back to him.
“Peace,” I heard myself saying. “Peace be with you.”
And then I headed east on the Wyddelian road.
It wasn’t long before I sensed I was being followed. Whenever I stopped to listen, I could hear the footfall of another horse behind me stopping a moment or two after I did. It might not have been a pursuer, but I decided to take no chances. For an experienced weather witch, the solution was simple. I gathered the mists still hovering over the river and the streams, the boggy places, and put quite a thick fog between me and whoever rode behind me. Then I rode on swiftly till I came to a stream running down from the ridge, shallow and rocky enough for me to follow it up int
o the cover of the wood without leaving any hoof prints. The great thing about a hard paved Roman road is that no one would be able to see where I departed from it. From my hidden post on the ridge, I thinned the fog so that I could glimpse the other rider; he was dressed in a plain tunic as if he were a farmer, but his horse was no plough horse, so I felt confirmed in my suspicions. I watched to make sure he kept riding east, then I sent the fog after him, and I followed the ridge west, going out of my way to avoid the wedge-shaped valley where I had foreseen the horror that I still hoped against hope to prevent.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
INHERITANCE
THE ROAD BECAME wilder and less Roman the farther west I went. Even after the paving stopped, I managed to follow it through the steep mountains that made the west so difficult for the Romans to control. A great country for ambushes. Now and then, I caught glimpses of roaming warrior bands, but they were all heading for their winter places now. In the mountains the snows had begun, and more than once Macha and I had to wait out a blizzard in a cave. These were the mountains I had gazed at when I was a student on Mona, the mountains my beloved had disappeared into when he escaped with the Hibernian outlaw women, an escape too swift and mountains too rugged for a young girl about to give birth. They were a bit rugged for an old woman and an old mare, slowly picking their way across narrow valleys and narrower passes with no companions most of the time but each other—and the rocks that at dawn and dusk looked like giant creatures, watching, waiting, deciding whether to open the way or obstruct it.
Then one morning early, with the sun rising behind us, we crossed the last pass and Mona lay below us, still lush and green and ripe, floating in a sea of dawn light.
“Oh, Macha!” I said aloud, “Just look at all that rich grazing! Just think of all the oats and barley mash you will have.”
Of course Mona fed not only horses but armies, I realized. No wonder the druids had made it their stronghold and the base of resistance to Rome. I thought uneasily of the boats under construction at the fort. It would be no mean feat to cart them over these mountains or to maneuver them around the long intricate coast, but the general had the winter to prepare equipment and troops. For what it was worth, he did not know that I would warn the druids.
Macha whinnied, impatient of my interest in the view, and we started our last descent.
By the time we got to the shore, it was midday and the tide was high. We stopped and rested for awhile and then, as the tide ebbed and the sun went west to the Hibernian Sea, I searched for the best place to ford the straits. Even at the lowest tide in the shallowest waters, the currents were tricky and quicksand was a danger. At last I fixed on a course and prayed to Bride and Isis to guide us safely across. But I believe it was my beloved who led me. In the late afternoon light, I could see that we were splashing ashore at just the spit of sand where I had let him go, no, commanded him to go in the name of his god. I slipped off Macha and just stood there with my eyes closed, listening to the same wind blowing over and over the island, the same tide going out like a last breath. My beloved was long gone; he was just here.
I didn’t really have to think what to do next. I mounted Macha again and turned her west towards Dwynwyn’s Isle. As if sensing she was almost home, Macha galloped down the sands like a horse half her age. At dusk, we crossed the tidal spit of land where we were greeted by a small flock of sheep, with complicated horns. Dwynwyn’s own breed. They regarded Macha with equanimity and silently invited her to feed, which she did with a big horsey sigh, while I unloaded her saddle bags and went in search of the cave. I wanted to settle in before full night was upon us.
I picked my way in the gloaming, stopping at the well where Dwynwyn’s famous eels swished, a flash of darkness in the silvery pool. The cave, if I remembered right, was on the other side of the highest hillock on the little island. When I walked around it, I got a shock. There was Dwynwyn’s cauldron where it had always been, just outside the mouth of the cave—and someone had just lit a fire, for I had not seen or smelled smoke when I set foot on the island.
“Dwynwyn?” I cried out. “Dwynwyn, are you here?”
Then I fell silent abruptly, feeling cold despite the heat from the fire. What if someone else was here, what if someone had taken her place? Whoever they were—or weren’t—they couldn’t be far away. Most likely they were inside the cave.
“Is anyone there?” I crouched by the entrance and peered inside.
By the firelight I saw the red tunic, laid out on a pallet on the floor. The necklace of white skulls gleamed against the blood red of the robe.
“Dwynwyn?” I whispered. “Is that you?”
But I already knew it wasn’t. I crept into the cave and touched the fabric, a strange fabric, heavy and light, smooth and coarse at once. I brushed my fingers over the skulls; they made a sound between a rattle and a bell.
“Is this for me?” I asked, not knowing if I spoke aloud or silently.
“Of course,” the answer came from somewhere, from the tide creeping back, the wind in the wild grass, the crackling of the fire. “I told you I would leave my red tunic for you. But before you put it on, you’d better stir the pot. The rutabagas are sticking to the bottom.”
I laughed out loud, and then got up and did as I was told.
The red tunic was as wonderful on my body as it had felt to my touch; in the days to come, it adjusted itself to the temperature, cool when the weather was warm, which it seldom was as autumn advanced, and warm when it was cold, and wonderfully dry in the inevitable damp. It felt then as though I had picked it up from a sun-warmed rock and put it on. Weather magic woven into fabric. When I was a girl I’d had no idea that Dwynwyn enjoyed such luxury. The time I had changed shapes with her, she had made sure I felt all her aches and pains but none of this ease. Or perhaps it was only that I had worn a grey robe then, the better to appear as the Grey Hag and not Dwynwyn in particular, who had a habit of annoying the druids with her scorn for their authority. They had no jurisdiction over her and could not prevent people, including students, from coming to consult her eels about their love luck, something the druids considered frivolous, but we girl students had taken very seriously.
When I woke that first morning after a long, comfortable sleep, I stoked the fire under the cauldron, and went outside to relieve myself. The day was bright and clear; though it looked as if clouds might be moving in from the east. I whistled for Macha, whom I hadn’t tethered, and she ambled around one of the hillocks, looking as well-rested and better fed than me. Her mouth full of grass, she had clearly been breakfasting for awhile.
I went to the cauldron, hoping I’d find stew left over from last night’s supper, and to my surprise (well, not as much surprise as you might think) I found the cauldron full of stirabout flavored with fresh apples. I heaped some in a bowl, and then sat down cross-legged, looking out at the straits where the tide was ebbing again.
“If you had a magic cauldron,” I said to Dwynwyn, “why were you always pestering us about bringing something for your pot and scolding us if our offerings weren’t up to snuff?”
“You can’t give divination away for free,” she said. “No one believes in it if you do. Haven’t you learned that, sweet pea, in all your worldly travels?”
Had I? I was suddenly finding it hard to remember the details of my life, where I had been, what I had done. I had been a whore and a slave for awhile, I thought, and then later I had embraced men of my own free will and healed people for the asking. But there had always been food, I seemed to remember, or coins to buy food. They fed me on the ships when I whistled up the wind for them. Why did it all seem like a dream?
“Besides, I am spoiling you now. Soon you’ll have to fill the pot for yourself. Don’t worry. You’ll have plenty of business. Some things never change.”
All at once, I felt dizzy and confused, as if I had fallen into some vortex and landed here on this timeless tidal isle without knowing how.
“Dwynwyn,” I cried out.
“Why I am here? Why must I take your place?”
“If I knew the answer to that, mutton chop, you wouldn’t be here at all. You’re here, that’s all I know. We’ll just have to find out.”
Then I realized with a jolt that Dwynwyn’s words were coming out of my mouth.
Was I Dwynwyn or was I myself?
I stood up suddenly, upsetting my bowl of stirabout, pulled back my hood and loosed my hair on the wind. It was still grey as clouds, not that gorgeous mist-by-moonlight white Dwynwyn’s had been.
“Damn,” I said, relieved and annoyed at once.
“You can’t have everything,” Dwynwyn retorted, in whose voice no longer mattered.
Over the next few days I got used to this strange relationship within or around whatever I called myself. I tended Macha and the sheep, whose needs were few beyond a trip to the mainland for fresh water (the eel well was brackish). The pot continued to have something in it, but I also added fresh fish I caught with a net I found in Dwynwyn’s cave. I found a smaller pot and made tea from wild rose hips. A couple of times I rode with Macha to an orchard a mile or so away and gathered apples.
Periods of what might almost be described as amnesia (or perhaps the beginning of senile dementia?) were punctuated by memories so vivid it almost seemed as though they were not memories at all. The future, too, troubled me, what with Dwynwyn’s maddeningly vague prophecies of the terrible things to come and visions that hovered at the periphery of my second sight. Nor did I forget that I had come to Mona with a mission to fulfill, though I sometimes could not remember what it was. And whenever I thought of leaving the tidal isle to seek out the druids of Mona, I felt a stop in my mind.
“It is timing,” said the Dwynwyn part of me, “it is all a matter of timing. You will know when to go to them. Otherwise they will not hear you.”
Red-Robed Priestess Page 21
