“Little was required of those who stayed behind: mending roofs, keeping the wells clean, that sort of thing. Conflict with the natives was avoided because our numbers were so small. Boredom became a major problem. We were all veterans of hard campaigns and accustomed to activity. Anicius in particular was going very sour.
“Deputations from the tribes of Albion visited Mona to seek the aid of the druids, whose ‘holy island’ it was, so I organized a fact-finding expedition to the place. The expedition was not just to relieve the tedium; I hoped it would provide information that might be useful when Rome resumed the conquest of Albion.”
Labraid had begun fidgeting. Kicking pebbles. Whistling through his teeth. The Speaker was interested only in conversations that revolved around himself.
Aware of his impatience, Probus said, “I apologize for taking so long to explain, Ainvar, but I wanted you to understand my background.”
“I believe I do.”
“What I tell you next may be more difficult to understand. I am not a fanciful man, and you may laugh at me if you like; but the moment I set foot on the druids’ island something strange occurred.”
Intuition prompted my response. “You felt as if you had come home.”
The Roman’s jaw dropped. “How could you know?”
“What nonsense,” Labraid said peevishly. “I never felt anything like that on Mona.”
Probus gave him the glance an older brother might give an impudent sibling, understanding him but loving him anyway. “Different people react in different ways, Labraid. That was mine.
“We carried weapons concealed beneath our garments, but I had given orders not to use them unless absolutely necessary. Without any knowledge of the number of inhabitants on the island I did not want trouble. The first person we came upon was a man gathering nuts. Speaking to him in his own language, I said, ‘We mean you no harm. We are only in search of knowledge. Mysterious tales are told of this island and we would like to know the truth.’
“‘Truth is everything,’ the man told me. ‘If you seek it you have come to the right place.’ He led us into the darkest woodland imaginable, following trails so convoluted I doubted if we could make our way back to our landing site unaided. Anicius, who was walking behind me, said we were making a mistake. But I pressed on. This was my first occasion of real leadership and I could not let the men see me back down.
“At last we came out of the trees. In the center of a huge clearing we found a structure somewhat resembling a temple. As we drew closer I could see that it had been shaped by human hands, though it appeared to grow out of the underlying rock. The design was oval in shape and had no roof. Our guide explained that it was open to the sky so the movements of certain stars could be observed and their paths calculated.
“This was the heart, he said, of a druid ‘college’ called Tan Ben y Cefn. The place defied classification, being neither city, town, nor fortress. In fact, the man-made aspect was kept to a minimum. Spread around the temple were various small houses that might almost have been random piles of stone, and domestic offices built of timber so they looked like clumps of trees. The buildings were enclosed within roughly rectangular earthworks, whose dimensions had been determined by the druids according to a formula of their own. There was no palisade, no gates. No armed guards.
“At first I thought the place deserted, but as we walked forward people appeared. Men and women but no children. It was as if they materialized out of the stones. At the time I thought that impossible.
“We were greeted by a man whose graying beard reached to his knees, while the forepart of his head was shaved clean from ear to ear. In one hand he carried a long staff carved from the wood of the ash. He said his name was Mac Coille, meaning ‘the Son of the Wood,’ and further identified himself as the chief druid. Before I could offer an innocent explanation for our visit he told me its true purpose. Yet he showed no anger. He accepted our arrival as inevitable and seemed untroubled by it. Quite the contrary, he offered us the hospitality of a guesthouse and promised to show us almost anything we wished to see. A few of the most sacred rituals might be denied us, but everything else was wide open.”
“Only someone supremely confident of his power,” I commented, “would grant you such access.”
“That was my conclusion too, Ainvar. I privately told my men to cause no trouble, but to be wary. For several days we wandered at will around Tan Ben y Cefn. At first I was merely curious; before long I was baffled. Although every member of the community obviously had a specific function to fulfill, I could not determine what those functions were.
“In front of the temple, different druids spoke daily on a variety of both esoteric and practical subjects. Their audiences were encouraged to ask questions, but even the simplest query might elicit a complex response that took up half a morning.
“In addition to the lectures we also witnessed incomprehensible rituals. Some had results so astounding we doubted the evidence of our senses.”
“Such as?”
“I saw a druid stand atop a rock and hold up his arms. He gave a peculiar cry and the birds of the air swooped down to him in their hundreds, covering his head and shoulders, fighting for perches on his arms, blanketing the earth at his feet until he stood amid a feathered flood. He did not feed them, he did not even speak to them.”
“He was being with them, Probus,” I explained. Knowing that would mean nothing to the Roman mind. “Give me another example.”
“An elderly female druid carrying a parcel wrapped in deerskin hobbled to the edge of a bog. While my men and I watched, she crouched down and chanted under her breath for a long time. Then she stood up again, with considerable effort and creaking of joints, and unfolded the deerskin. A tumble of bones fell out, at least a dozen of them. Yet she caught each one separately, in midair, and flung it out onto the bog. That crippled old woman!
“Wherever a bone fell,” Probus added in a voice still tinged with amazement, “on the following day a flower bloomed.”
I longed to ask if the bones were human, but kept silent.
“Then there was the matter of food. We were very well fed during our stay, though the druids did not hunt game or cook meat. They subsisted, as far as I could tell, on fish from the streams, and fruit and nuts and root vegetables, and cheese they made from a herd of goats. And the most delicious bread I ever tasted.”
“They grew wheat on Mona?”
“As far as I could tell, the answer is no, Ainvar. We never saw a wheat field or any other cultivated crop. What we did see were round ovens made of clay, presided over by druids who brought stones of a specific size from a nearby stream and put them into the ovens first thing every morning. When the sun stood overhead they opened the ovens and took out loaves of bread. Golden, crusty loaves of moist bread. A man could live on that bread alone.
“I looked into the ovens after they took out the bread. There were no stones inside.
“None of the magic I saw is explicable, Ainvar. Yet I was aware that every action resulted from another as naturally as a flower bud unfolds from the heat of the sun.”
“Naturally,” I echoed.
“You sound as if that is important.”
“It is. The ‘magic’ you witnessed was accomplished through an understanding of the natural world that doesn’t conform to your limited perceptions.”
Probus started to say something; stopped; gave me a long, thoughtful look. “I hope you will explain that statement to me sometime. Meanwhile we must take pity on our young friend here.” With his eyes he indicated Labraid. “He can hardly stay in his skin for eagerness to hear the part about himself.”
chapter XXVIII
“MY MEN AND I SPENT SEVEN DAYS AT TAN BEN Y CEFN,” PROBUS continued, “observing everything and understanding practically nothing. For all we learned we might as well have stayed on Albion. We could not even determine the exact population of Mona. ‘They come and they go,’ Mac Coille said.
“Then one mor
ning he announced, ‘Two who have visited here before will be returning soon; we must make ready to welcome them.’ Although I did not know it at the time, he was talking about Labraid and Cormiac Ru.”
I turned to scowl at Labraid. “You should have mentioned meeting the druids before.”
“We didn’t meet them, Ainvar; not the first time anyway. From the sea the island had looked uninhabited. I ordered one of the boatmen to stay with the boat while the rest of us went ashore with the leather waterbags. We explored only long enough to find a stream, but we didn’t see anybody. We filled the bags and hurried back to the boat because I wanted to sail on before the wind turned and—”
I held up one hand. “Be quiet for a moment. Let me think.”
Our two young men had landed on Mona and departed again without ever encountering the druids. Some time later, the chief druid had referred to them as “two who have visited here before”—according to Probus, who was precise in his language. This meant Mona’s druids had been aware of the pair when they first visited the island. Yet they had not revealed themselves.
The reason, my head commented, was rooted in the philosophy of druidry. Cormiac and Labraid had been seeking only water. They required nothing from the Order of the Wise on that occasion, so the druids had not interfered.
To interfere without being asked can distort the Pattern.
Labraid looked as if he were about to explode with the effort of keeping quiet.
“Perhaps we should let him tell his own story now,” Probus suggested.
With a grateful grin, the young man prepared to launch himself into a highly colored and probably rambling discourse. I forestalled him. “Let’s keep the string straight, shall we? Where did you go when you left Mona?”
“We went to sea, of course, where I was an excellent—”
“But where did you go, Labraid? It’s been two years since you left Hibernia. Where were you all that time?”
“At sea, mostly.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Keep it simple,” Probus advised in a kindly tone, demonstrating insight. Friendship might work with Labraid but exasperation never would.
“We set sail for the east, skirting the southern coast of Albion thanks to my understanding of the stars. But when we entered the waters that separate Albion from Armorica things started to go wrong.” Labraid’s tone changed abruptly. It was the first time I had ever heard him sound subdued. “We ran into a fleet of Roman warships. They didn’t have much trouble overpowering us, and by sundown we were galley slaves.”
“You were actually on a Roman ship? Where did you go, what did you see?”
“I have no idea where we went, Ainvar, and I never saw much of anything. On the rowing deck your only view is the sweaty back of the man in front of you. You smell nothing but the stink of the men around you. You hear nothing but the thudding of the oars and the pounding of the drum that beats out their rhythm over and over and over again until your head feels like it’s going to burst. On the rowing deck you can’t tell if it’s night or day. It’s always hot, though; you can’t imagine how hot. How stifling. A lot of men simply die where they sit, so there’s always a need for replacements. As soon as we were brought on board Cormiac and I were clapped in leg irons and then chained to a rowing bench.”
Labraid Who Sails the Seas. One should be careful when choosing a name for oneself. That Which Watches has a sense of irony.
“I thought we were on one of Caesar’s warships until the other rowers told me Caesar was dead and we were under someone else’s command. They said, ‘It doesn’t matter who’s in control, it will make no difference to us.’ They were right. There’s only one kind of life for a galley slave. You row until your muscles are on fire, then they take you down into the very bottom of the boat and you’re given some food—never enough—and a chance to sleep—not long enough—and then they take you back to the rowing deck and it starts all over again.
“Most of our urine came out in sweat. What didn’t ran into the bilge at the bottom of the boat and we had to put our feet in it. If we broke the rhythm of rowing they beat us. Briga saw my scars, she’ll tell you how bad they are.”
I took a good long look at Labraid. He had grown as big as his father, and even gaunt and battered, he was a physically impressive man. Whatever hardships he had endured had only made him stronger.
He interpreted my appraising gaze correctly. “I fought back, Ainvar.”
“I’m sure you did. What happened to the boatmen who’d accompanied you?”
“I never knew. It was only by chance that Cormiac and I were left together. We were chained together at the ankles, so we rowed the same oar,” Labraid added through gritted teeth.
That explained a lot.
“When I realized I was so strong that being a galley slave wasn’t going to kill me, I almost wished it would. The monotony was terrible. And it was no good trying to talk to Cormiac, you know how he is.”
I did know. Cormiac spoke only if he had something worth saying.
“Eventually we were transferred to another warship. Different slave-masters but the same life. The ship took part in several battles but we didn’t know much about them; we worked like oxen in the steamy half dark while above us warriors sounded trumpets and tried to kill one another. That was a frustrating experience, I can tell you. Once or twice we came near to sinking. I thought we might have a chance to escape then, but they never unfastened our chains. Galley slaves go down with the ship,” he added bitterly.
“At last we put into a port where the galley slaves were taken off and thrown into holding pens. There was a lot of yelling and cursing but it didn’t bother me; it was bliss not to hear that drumbeat night and day. The food was bad but there was plenty of it. Cormiac thought we were being rested and fattened up for a reason. He said we must be on the losing side and whoever was in command was trying to hoard his resources.”
A shrewd guess, my head observed. If Cormiac Ru survived his injuries he would make a fine leader for our clan.
For Labraid I had other plans. “Where were you at this time?”
“In a pen, Ainvar! Timber and iron bars. Weren’t you listening to me?”
“But where was the pen? What harbor, what town?”
“Somewhere in Iberia,” he said impatiently. “I don’t know where, it didn’t matter. All that mattered was escaping. Which we did, thanks to my cleverness. I told the others that I had a plan and they should follow my lead, then late one night I threw myself on the ground and shouted that something was wrong with my belly. I kept howling until the guards came running; I sounded very convincing. When they opened the gate of our pen—there were twenty of us in each pen—we rushed them. About half of us got past and scattered like rats. Cormiac and I hid under a wharf until the morning, then I scouted around and found a merchant ship being loaded with cargo. The two of us sneaked aboard and concealed ourselves until we were out of sight of land. Then I made a deal with the captain. I know how to strike a bargain and the captain knew a good man when he saw one.”
“I’m sure he did,” I said dryly. “What about your chains? I assume you were still wearing them. How did you explain those?”
“Oh, Cormiac broke them off long before then,” Labraid said dismissively. “With a rock or something.
“I arranged for us to work for our passage as independent seamen. Crewing a cargo vessel is hard work and willing men aren’t that easy to find. It was an ideal situation for us. The merchantman was going to sail north as far as Armorica, then turn around and head south again, passing through the Pillars of Herakles to the Mid-Earth Sea. Once we got that far I was certain I’d be able to find your daughter. But Cormiac changed his mind and began insisting we return to Hibernia. He’d lost his nerve.”
I doubted that. Never in his entire life had the Red Wolf lost his nerve.
“I’m beginning to tire,” the Roman interjected. “Shall we go back to the lodge for a while?”
In t
ruth, Labraid was the one who was tired; he had become very unsteady on his feet. If I had made the suggestion he would have refused, but since it was his friend he complied. He kept on talking, though. “I could have gone to the Mid-Earth Sea without Cormiac, Ainvar; I didn’t need him. But I’m not one to abandon a member of my own tribe. I planned for the two of us to steal a rowboat when we reached the point nearest Albion and slip away in the night.”
“How would you know when you were nearest Albion? And how, for that matter, did you intend to find your way back to Hibernia?”
“I have an excellent sense of direction,” Labraid said loftily.
Probus caught my eye. As surely as if I heard him speak aloud, I knew we were thinking the same thing. The only way to obtain an accurate account of this episode would be from Cormiac Ru.
Which must wait until he was stronger.
After we returned to the lodge Labraid continued his narrative, relating more than I wanted to know about his exploits. Not only relating but reiterating, elaborating, and exaggerating, in exhaustive detail. According to him he had single-handedly engineered their escape from the merchant ship with no assistance at all from Cormiac Ru.
“Did you not feel it was dishonorable to desert,” I inquired, “after the captain had treated you so fairly?”
He scoffed at the suggestion. “Men jump ship all the time, Ainvar. It’s expected.”
“Was that when you were injured? Was there a scuffle before you got away?”
“We weren’t caught in the act, I’m far too clever for that. We were over the side and gone before anyone knew.”
“Then how did you acquire your wounds?”
“Fighting the Romans, of course. I was brilliant in battle, you should have seen me. I had no sword, not even a meat knife, only fists and feet, but I was as quick as a—”
The Greener Shore Page 29
