B007IIXYQY EBOK

by Gillespie, Donna

  “I…I have no influence with Athelinda…. Yes, I will try.”

  “What preparations for war are being made?”

  “None. Except against Odberht. That wretched spawn of Wido has enlisted the good will of the Cheruscan king. His companions have swelled to a mighty army, and they’re nothing but cattle thieves and butchers. He plans to attack the north ranges in spring—he as much as said so. Everyone who is celebrated means to go north and fight him. He should be easy to put down.”

  “Madness. They must awaken. He is in league with them.”

  “I do not understand.”

  “Do you not see? Odberht means to divert our attention from the south. The Romans have given Odberht a rich bribe, I would wager all I own. When our warriors are drawn north to fight him, we will be vulnerable in the south. Then the Emperor will launch an attack. This is Odberht’s final vengeance upon us.”

  “But…he has a rogue’s nature for certain but that is madness—he was born one of us!”

  “You are wrong. My father always said Odberht would do what even Wido would not. Odberht lusts for renown, and the greater the crime he commits, the more tales the people will tell of him. He would not have the mettle to do such a thing without the assistance of the Cheruscan king. In the spring when we’re weary of war with Odberht and straggling home, the Romans will strike with greater force than ever in our lifetimes.”

  Fastila was quiet for a moment, fighting the idea. Then at last she gave up and said with gloomy finality, “You are right.”

  Another disturbing thought came to Auriane. Decius was a captive of the Cheruscan king. He might be forced to give tactical advice to the Cheruscans in this war with her own people. Would Decius be a traitor to her? He might, if the only alternative were to take his own life. He was already a traitor once—to his own people. Perhaps it would not be so difficult for him to act as traitor once again. The Fates seemed to delight in these cruel tricks.

  Surely he will not turn on us. I know him as honorable.

  But what is “honorable”? Its meaning must be confusing to a man who has lost his people twice.

  “Fastila,” she said softly, firmly, “you must say all these things at the next Assembly. Odberht’s challenge must be ignored.”

  A look of sharp discomfort came to Fastila’s face. “I wish to go on living, Auriane. Geisar wants this northern war. And he has the support of everyone who’s important. It’s easy vengeance and easy plunder. You cannot stop such a thing as this.”

  Baldemar would have stopped it, Auriane thought in a moment of frantic misery. Do you watch us now? How could you leave us to this?

  “Here is what you must try, then,” Auriane replied. “Explain what I have said to Thrusnelda, and make certain she knows it comes from me. Then have her deliver it up as an oracle.”

  “That is good! They dare not lay a hand on her, though they’ll want to.”

  “It probably will not stop them. But it might set their minds to thinking of the folly of going north…and hopefully, it will start disputes that might slow their haste.”

  At dawn the next day Auriane said a somber farewell to Fastila.

  At the waxing of the fourth moon, the time of the Festival of Loaves when the people baked barley-cakes for burial in the first furrow of the fields, Auriane was milking one of the goats that roamed the island while looking restlessly toward the two even hills between which far travelers came. Surely war had not begun, she thought; she would have seen streams of people driven from their homes with crying children in tow and household possessions tied onto their backs.

  Then came a low bolt of pain that flashed out through her whole body and brought her gasping to her knees. She cried out for Helgrune, who was using a flint axe to crack open the ice that had formed over the watering trough so the animals could drink.

  Helgrune helped Auriane stagger to her hut. Then the serving-woman sent a messenger off to Ramis, who had departed at noon for a midnight gathering of the Nine.

  “She will not come,” Auriane protested, feeling pitiful and small. Why would Ramis return for a mere birthing when she sets out to lead a ceremony that will bring mild weather for the coming year to all the tribes of the north?

  “She may not,” Helgrune agreed laconically as she steadied Auriane with hard hands, guiding her onto the bed of straw. “She either comes, or she doesn’t.”

  Auriane despised Helgrune then. The woman was comforting as a bed of brambles. The pain struck again—a clutch of excruciating torment, a nightmare in her body that held her hostage for a harrowing length of time before it let her go. A wild madness seized her. Surely this is Wodan’s punishment for lying with a foreigner.

  Helgrune moved fretfully about the hut, first planting a torch in the earthen floor, then marching off to the drying-shed, to return with a cat’s skull, which she placed in the doorway to protect the child’s spirit from restless ghosts, and a snakeskin girdle. Snakeskin was believed to ease birth pangs and speed delivery. Hastily Helgrune fastened it round Auriane’s stomach, not meeting Auriane’s eyes, seeming loath to touch her. More good fortune! Auriane thought miserably. Helgrune despises this task. I am trapped here with a woman who would rather bed down on a glowing hearth than assist at a birthing.

  Auriane recalled vividly tales of lying-ins that stretched on for half a cycle of the moon, or ended wretchedly, the babe dead, the mother drained of all her lifeblood. She struggled to do the fire ritual, but it was too new to her; each time her body was gripped with fresh agony she clawed at the straw, a tormented animal that did not know fire from air or water. When the tide of pain subsided she doggedly fixed her gaze on the flame of the torch, imagining it struggled to give birth to itself.

  Evening came; shadows lengthened and gradually overtook the island. Helgrune announced irritably that Ramis was not coming, and she sent out to the nearest village for a midwife. Then Auriane lay alone; Helgrune busied herself somewhere out of sight. Through the door of her hut Auriane watched the sun die and leave a bloody wake; the sky was pearly nacre streaked with blood, lurid and full of evil omen. Desolation gripped her. She realized she had allowed herself to believe that Ramis would come.

  Wolves began to howl. She tried to read meaning in their rising and falling cries. Were they greeting the child’s descending spirit or heralding her death?

  She tasted her own salt sweat. The hut seemed stiflingly hot. Her fear was thick in the air; she could scarcely breathe. From time to time she tentatively put her hands on her swollen belly, probing gingerly, striving instinctively to push out the child and rid herself of this grievous burden. Gradually she suspected that something was wrong. The babe’s head was too high. Yes, she thought as she probed again, that was the child’s head, near her navel. From the birth-talk she had heard all her life she knew that the child should have turned round. By now, the babe’s head should have dropped and be pressing hard for release.

  Mother of the gods, preserve me! It is a breech. I will suffer long and die, and the child will be strangled by the birth-string.

  Each pang brought increasing terror, until she was in the throes of a fright greater than any she ever experienced in battle. I thought I had more courage than this! she thought despairingly. It is because I can do nothing…but endure. Agony owns me. My own body is my foe. As long as it pleases, it can put me to the torture.

  Her whole spirit shrieked for the steadying arms of her mother.

  Why am I alone? All your kin should gather round at the birth of a child.

  The wolves’ cries were closer, hungrier.

  She heard fast-approaching steps.

  “Helgrune,” Auriane called out, not really wanting Helgrune, thinking there was something decidedly reptilian about the woman, but desperately wanting a human presence. She struggled up and turned to the doorway. Helgrune was nowhere about.

  “Helgrune?” she said again, increasingly uneasy. There was no answer but the wolves, and those swift, sure steps, rapidly coming closer.<
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  What stalking creature of the night might this be?

  A tall, hooded figure filled the doorway. It is some minion of Geisar’s, come to drag me to death. It is blue-faced Hel herself, come to strangle the child and drain my blood. Weakly Auriane struggled in the direction of the water jug, with some dim plan of using it as a weapon.

  An instant later she recognized Ramis.

  She has come! Auriane collapsed back onto the straw and wept openly with relief.

  Ramis strode in and dropped down beside Auriane. The old woman cradled her head in her arms as if Auriane were her own child. “Cry out all you wish,” she said soothingly. “It does not shame you. It is far better, and it relieves the pain.” Ramis held her tightly through the next grip of agony.

  As Auriane clung to her, she could not remember why she ever thought Ramis august and forbidding; the old priestess was gentle and human as her own mother. Auriane understood then Ramis loved her greatly and without reserve, and had always.

  “The babe,” Auriane whispered feebly. “It is turned round.”

  But already Ramis had her hands on Auriane’s stomach and was lightly, vigorously kneading; gradually, surely, those strong hands shifted the child into the position of readiness. “It is no matter,” she said gently as she worked. “Close your eyes, breathe evenly, and think on the flame.”

  When after long moments this was done, Ramis rose and moved swiftly about, putting things the way she wanted them, bringing an extra torch for more light, laying white linen on the straw. She gave fast, precise orders to Helgrune, directing her to set a cauldron on the fire before the hut, then rapidly naming off the herbs she wanted brought from the drying-shed. As the water began to boil, Ramis added the herbs, each at its proper time. Then she brought Auriane a clay cup brimming with a mysterious, pungent drink. Ramis’ birthing herbs were among her close-kept secrets. Auriane guessed there was ergot from rye to stimulate the contractions, as well as motherwort, shepherd’s purse, parsley, and rue. To ease the torment, she supposed there were henbane and hops and a measure of balm and celandine. Whatever it was, it was strong and gentle. Within moments the dark drink took merciful hold of her, and a soothing mist blotted out fear, muted the pain, even softened the howling of the wolves. Ramis directed Helgrune to sponge Auriane’s stomach and thighs with the same steaming mixture; the bouquet of medicinal vapors brought a hazy tranquillity to them all. Auriane’s deep, troubled breathing filled the small room.

  Dimly Auriane was aware that as night progressed and the stars made their passage across the black sky, Ramis never let her go; the old priestess spoke to her ceaselessly, and Auriane was strengthened and steadied by that voice that sometimes chanted, sometimes spoke poetry, sometimes gave homely advice or told old tales; it gave her something to cling to outside the pain. She later remembered little of this constant talk, except for a few words Ramis spoke near dawn:

  “…and this, too, is an initiation, you see, as much as first blood or first battle…for a birth tests the soul in every way, calling for love to the limit, courage beyond day-to-day imagining, and the strength of an aurochs…. At the same time it washes you clean and makes your spirit anew…for you are reborn with the babe…. Know that you cannot come into your full human power until you know this divine power of giving life to a child.”

  Auriane realized then she had always thought of birth as a woman’s sacrifice for her child; she had never thought it might also be a part of a mother’s own path to gathering knowledge of life and death.

  As the first ghost-pale light formed a halo over the eastward hills, Ramis turned her attention from Auriane to the child.

  “The difficulty now is with the babe,” Auriane heard Ramis whisper to Helgrune. “The child fears to emerge…for the little one senses, through her mother, that the world is all terror and tragedy.”

  With her hands on Auriane’s stomach, Ramis began speaking fervent encouragement to the child to allay her fears of coming into the world. Then Ramis directed Helgrune, who was unusually strong, to pull Auriane up into a squatting position.

  The pain that struck Auriane then obliterated thought. She forgot even her humanity—she was some hapless beast, being slowly, relentlessly, rent in two. She cried out to Ramis to take her back to Chattian lands so she could be laid in her own earth at death.

  I cannot die this way! all her mind screamed. The birth seemed some impossible hurdle raised up higher than nature permits a creature to leap. Yet leap it must, if it is to live. To nature there is no appeal.

  Outside a dawn wind sprang up; it lashed the branches of the alder tree against the roof. Auriane felt all her viscera were being drawn out through her womb. Then suddenly the mountain of agony was released. A great ocean-tide rushed out of her.

  She felt vastly empty. All was small, quiet and still.

  Gently they laid her back on the straw. She felt light as a ghost, fearful she might float off like a cinder and be lost. She lay there trembling between heaven and earth, reduced to pure spirit, hovering peacefully above the beaten body she left behind.

  Then she heard the rapid, spilling notes of a pipe, a sound glittering with life-love and light. She struggled up far enough to see Helgrune playing an alder-pipe and Ramis cradling an impossibly small, red creature that steamed in the frigid air. Distantly Auriane heard the child’s fragile, gasping cries—the plaint of a gentle seagoing creature rudely thrust into the harsh world, forced to take in chill air, to battle hunger and lifelong uncertainty.

  Some are strong enough, some are not. Ramis, give this child more strength than I had.

  Ramis swiftly ascertained what she already knew—the babe was a girl. She cut the birth-string with a bronze knife, then laid the little creature on her mother’s belly. The child had fleecy black hair, a color Auriane had never seen on a newborn—the banner of her foreignness. Auriane met the babe’s glassy orbs steadily, while tears of amazement blurred her eyes. She was fascinated by what she saw there. Those squirrel-bright eyes seemed full of tales of another world.

  “Who are you?” Auriane whispered to the girl while Ramis looked on, smiling. “Someone from remote times, I think. You seem surprised to find the world this way.” Someone from the time of peace and wandering, she thought, from before the coming of iron. But Auriane saw a glint of Baldemar there, and a flash of Gandrida; poor Arnwulf, too, peered out of those eyes.

  You are a living record of great spirits…that somehow married themselves to Decius and his black-headed kin, dedicated to our destruction. A strange mismatch of souls…yet all exist so harmoniously in those eyes. Ramis once said, “To me, none are foreign,” and only now do I know fully the wisdom of this. The two rivers flow together in you, mingling without a thought.

  Helgrune gave Ramis a slender phial filled with waters from the sacred lake. Auriane looked questioningly at Ramis. Before the water-blessing could be performed, the child must have a name.

  Ramis knelt down and looked closely into the child’s eyes, struggling to read the shadowy soul-shape within. Meditatively she nodded. “There is a strong and definite presence here, dominating the others….” Ramis considered a moment longer, then declared with finality: “She is Avenahar.”

  Avenahar was the mother of Gandrida, known to Auriane from Athelinda’s tales. Like Gandrida, she too was called the Wise in Council; Athelinda said she could stun a deer with her eyes.

  “Avenahar,” Auriane said, testing the sound of it. She reached out with a fragile hand and grasped Ramis’, a mute gesture of overwhelming gratitude for all she had done.

  Ramis then began the ritual. First she took a fir bough and set it aflame, then passed it quickly three times around the child’s head to clear the air of polluting influences. The ghost of the fir tree was said to love all newborn children. Next she took a drop of water from the phial and daubed it on the child’s forehead.

  “Let the water cleanse!” Ramis’ voice rang out with a slight tremble. She smeared a second droplet on the child’
s chest. “Sorrows of past ages, begone! Let all wickedness that afflicted you in lifetimes past be banished by water. Evil beings, hurtful things, leave this child forever, in the name of all-seeing Fria.” She sprinkled droplets of the remaining water over the babe’s head. “You are Avenahar, come again. You are Avenahar, shining and new.”

  Then she helped the girl find Auriane’s breast. The moment was unending, all-sustaining. Draw in the soul-milk that makes you our own, Auriane thought. Drink in my love.

  “I bless you with milk,” Auriane said weakly, finishing the ritual naming-words. She put a droplet of her milk on the girl’s forehead. “My blood is your blood. My kin are your kin. None can deny you fire and water. I name you Avenahar.”

  And I will be with you forever, she added in her mind. Let none say otherwise. If you are severed from me, Avenahar, I will bleed all my life’s blood and die.

  Before exhaustion overcame Auriane and she fell into sleep, she made a last entreaty to Ramis. “When you read her future, my lady, I beg you, whatever it is, keep it from me.”

  Then came the days of flowers and milk overflowing; Auriane often went ashore with Avenahar on her back, walking the grassy meadows. The glades and valleys were intoxicated with color; everywhere were the nodding, checkered flowers of snakeshead, the pink flush of woodland anemones. On these days Auriane would hurl a spear at a tree until exhaustion came, with Avenahar nearby in her wicker cradle, watching with huge, uncritical eyes. Or she would restlessly walk the island, nursing the child; it relieved her grieving to feel the tiny mouth drawing her milk.

  Once again the garments of Eastre brushed past, her sunny hair streaming down as she moved through the season, unmindful of how her coming resurrected the pain of Baldemar’s death.