Ravens of Avalon: Avalon

by Marion Zimmer Bradley

moment she could not remember their names. She felt as if an age had

  passed.

  “No. We must find a place to bury him,” she whispered, and Tilla

  began to cry. “Have the holes for the gateposts been dug?” When the men

  nodded, Boudica added, “We will lay him there, where he can continue

  to guard us, and carve his head upon the pole.”

  Drops of moisture sparkled on the dog’s white coat and she thought

  it had begun to rain, but it was only her tears.

  T W E N T Y

  At Samhain, the doors are open between the old year and the new,

  between the living and the dead, between the worlds. This year, the

  new gate of Teutodunon was open as well, with torches set into the ground

  before the posts where the heads of the cattle sacrificed for the feast had

  been hung. The inner bank and ditch had been completed, though the

  palisade was still going in. Now Prasutagos had gotten the idea of add-

  ing another outer wall, with a forest of posts between them. Only the

  Good God knew how long that would take to build.

  This was the season when the herds were brought in to the home

  pastures. Next week, when they began to cull those they could not keep

  through the winter, the scent of blood would hang heavy on the air. But

  now, as Boudica watched the sun fade into the west, the wind carried the

  smell of roasting meat and woodsmoke and the promise of more rain.

  “Mother, what are you doing? We are waiting for you! ” Rigana had

  just turned eleven and with every moon, it seemed, she grew taller.

  Along with the height came an apparent conviction that her parents

  were inferior beings who alternately annoyed and amused. Boudica

  told herself that the girl would grow out of it, but she recalled being

  much the same.

  Well, Mama, you have your revenge, she thought with an inner smile.

  And perhaps tonight her mother’s spirit would hear.

  “Yes, dear, I’ll come now,” she said peaceably, and followed her

  daughter into the two-tiered hall.

  Prasutagos was already seated in his carved chair on the other side of

  the fire. Her stool was next to his, but then came two seats that would

  be left empty for her mother and father. The king’s guard and the rest of

  the household were settling into their places. There would be empty

  seats there as well; one of the warriors had been killed when his horse

  fell, and the wife of another was dead bearing her child.

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  An ordinary year, she thought, not like the autumn after her mar-

  riage when half the feast had been set aside for Prasutagos’s brother and

  all the men killed at the battle of the Tamesa. If the gods were good, she

  would never see a Samhain feast like that again.

  Prasutagos looked at her with a worried frown and she managed a

  smile. The feast was sacred, but most years it was not a time of sorrow.

  The Druids taught that the Otherworld was only a breath away from

  this one. The dead were not gone, and at Samhain, the veil between the

  worlds grew thin.

  Now the food was coming in on wooden trenchers—bread and

  honey cakes and steaming barley, dried wild apples and ribs of beef

  and slices of roast boar. They had been brewing for weeks to get ready,

  and cups and horns were kept fi lled.

  “I salute my mother, Anaveistl,” said Boudica. “Teutodunon has

  changed a lot since you were lady here, but I hope you are not too disap-

  pointed with our housekeeping!” That got a laugh from those who re-

  membered her mother’s heroic bouts of spring cleaning. Boudica drained

  her cup, and the toasting went on.

  She bit off the last bit of meat that human teeth could remove from

  a beef rib, reached down to give it to Bogle, then stopped, tears pricking

  in her eyes as she remembered why he was not there. But surely the dog

  had been as valued a member of the household as many of the others

  they were hailing—with a silent prayer she set the bone on the earth

  where he had so often lain.

  The toasting continued, sometimes with a song or a story as the

  dead lived again in memory. But as the eve ning drew on, Boudica saw

  her daughters beginning to look more often at the open door.

  “I think that someone wants to keep watch outside,” she said smil-

  ing. “Eoc Mor, will you go with them to the gate?”

  And because she was listening, even before the girls came running

  back, Boudica caught the deep vibration of the distant drums.

  “The White Mare is coming! The White Mare!”

  The whole company poured out into the torchlit night. Overhead a

  few clouds were playing tag with the moon and a little fog was rising

  from the moist ground. Beyond the gateposts at the other end of the

  enclosure she saw a glimmer of light. It was not the great bonfi re that

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  burned beyond the gateway, for this light was moving. The misty air

  lent a quality to that brightness that made the hair prickle on her arms.

  It pulsed in time to the rattle of pebble- filled bladders and skirling of

  birch flutes and the throb of the drums. Boudica felt her heartbeat set-

  tling to that rhythm and laughed.

  And now she could see the beings that bore those torches tumbling

  into the enclosure, masked and caped to mimic the animals that were

  the families’ totems, or fantastic creatures from the Otherworld. Capes

  and sleeves fluttered with streamers of colored wool and metal bits and

  clattering bones. Some had the shape of men, but had painted them-

  selves like the warriors of the old race whose blood they bore. Some had

  no disguise but chalk paste that turned their faces to skulls from which

  eyes glittered with unnerving intensity.

  And rising from the midst of that screeching, chattering mob was

  the White Mare Herself, the bleached skull poised with clacking jaw

  above the drape of the supple white hide. Copper discs had been set into

  the eyeholes, polished to catch the torchlight with a baleful gleam. This

  was not the lively, loving horse goddess whose mask Boudica had borne

  at the kingmaking. At Samhain Epona showed the face of Life beyond

  life, to which Death was the door.

  At Samhain she walks with the Lady of Ravens, thought Boudica, and

  that is an aspect no one in her senses would ask to bear . . .

  The invaders formed into a rough semicircle with the White Mare

  in its center and began to sing—

  “Behold, here we are,

  Come from afar,

  Your gates, friends, unbar,

  And hear us sing!”

  Each district had its own variation on the festival. Teutodunon had

  been Boudica’s childhood home, so it was for her to step forward with

  the reply—

  “Wise ones, tell me true,

  How many are you,

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  And give your names, too

  That we may know.”

  She probably knew the men who were responding, but through the

  masks their voices sounded blurred and strange.

 
; “You must give us to eat

  Both barley and wheat,

  As the spirits you treat

  So shall you prosper!”

  As the girls ran back to the house for the bannocks and ale, Boudica

  kept the interchange going. In a few minutes the food and drink were

  being distributed to the masquers.

  “The White Mare will sing,

  The spirits will bring

  New life and blessing

  To everyone . . .”

  The massive head dipped. Boudica stepped back, dizzied as if it were

  she who had drunk the ale, seeing not a horse skull and hide but the

  entire animal, limned in glimmering skin and bone.

  “A gift from you gains a gift from me . . . What would you ask, Iceni Queen?”

  Was she hearing that with her ears or with her heart?

  “Give me back my little son . . .” she whispered in reply.

  “He will return, but not to you. It is not through your children that you will

  gain immortality. But I will give you back your guardian.”

  Then the crowd surged between them and the connection was bro-

  ken. Blinking, Boudica found herself at the edge of the throng.

  “My Lady—”

  She turned and recognized Brocagnos, a boar-mask dangling from

  his hand. On his other side something white was moving.

  “When you visited my dun last fall my white bitch was in season,

  and that dog of yours—well you can see the pup is the spit of him. I

  thought to keep him, Lady, but I think he belongs here . . .”

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  Boudica scarcely heard. “Bogle . . .” she whispered as a massive

  white head with a russet nose and one red ear appeared at roughly the

  level of Brocagnos’s hip. “Bogle,” she said again, “is it you?”

  The silky ears lifted. Then, with a joyful bark, the dog launched

  himself into her arms.

  The ripening grain in the fields around Danatobrigos rippled like an

  animal’s pelt in the cold wind that blew in each day at sunset from the

  sea. Prasutagos had gone down to Colonia for the annual meeting of the

  chieftains, but it was five years now since Boudica had accompanied

  him. She preferred to spend the summer here, on the land she had learned

  to love, where the girls, now ten and almost thirteen, could run as wild

  as the ponies they rode.

  During the day she was too busy to miss Prasutagos, but when the

  shadows lengthened and eve ning began to steal across the world it had

  become her custom to whistle up the dogs and walk out to the track

  across the downs. There were a good half dozen of them now, old Bogle’s

  offspring by bitches all over the Iceni lands. After Brocagnos brought the

  young dog, others had gifted her with puppies in which his blood ran

  strong, and now her walks were attended by a frothing of white, red-

  spotted hounds.

  They coursed back and forth, giving chase to a hare that had been

  hiding in the hedge, barking at the crows that rose in yammering fl ocks

  and winged across the fields to their roosting tree. And yet beneath all

  the surface noise there was a deep quiet in the land that soothed Boudi-

  ca’s soul. Presently she came to the road and gazed southward, hoping

  to sight the party of men and horses that would herald her husband’s

  return.

  Boudica could see nothing on the road, but the dogs had come to a

  halt, heads lifted, scenting the breeze. She stood waiting, fondling fi rst

  one and then another furry head as it pushed against her palm, and pres-

  ently a single figure came into view. It was a man, young by the vigor of

  his walk, in a worn tunic of undyed wool with a pack on his back and a

  hat of woven wheatstraw pulled down over his brow.

  “Well met, wanderer,” she said as he came to a halt before her.

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  “Why it is Rianor!” she exclaimed as he swept off the hat. He was a full

  priest now, she saw by his beard and shaven brow. “I hope you were

  coming to see us at Danatobrigos. If not, my hounds and I will carry

  you off anyhow.”

  “So long as it’s not Arimanes’s pack you have there,” he said, still

  smiling. “They look like Faerie hounds, but they seem friendly. But that

  cannot be your old dog Bogle, unless he’s gone to the Land of Youth

  and returned—”

  “Very nearly. This one was born after the first one died, and as you

  can see, his markings are almost the same.” The dog had settled into her

  life so smoothly that even without the White Mare’s prophecy she would

  have believed him to be the same.

  “Somehow Lugovalos’s lectures never mentioned the reincarnation

  of dogs, but I suppose it could be so.” Rianor grinned.

  “Tell me what you are doing here?” Boudica asked as they started

  up the path to the farmstead.

  “Being among those still young and strong enough to do so, I

  mostly carry news and messages. And when the soil seems favorable,

  plant a few seeds that may sprout into rebellion when the stars are right.

  All that practice in memorizing, you know.” He smiled. “Anyhow, that

  is why I am here.”

  “Not to persuade me to rebel, I hope—” she began, but he shook

  his head.

  “No. I’ve a message for you, from Lady Lhiannon.”

  “Have you seen her? Where is she? Is she well?”

  Rianor held up a restraining hand. “I traveled to Eriu, and I hope

  never to do so again. The ocean and I do not agree. But indeed I did see

  the lady, and she is well. She is living with a community of Druids in

  the kingdom of Laigin, and truly they are a wonder, so numerous and

  powerful they can afford to fight among themselves when they are not

  using their magic to aid their kings. They are still as we were, I think,

  before the Romans came.”

  “And she sent word to me? You had best give it now. The girls are

  just the age to think you a figure of great romance. Once they catch

  wind of you the rest of us won’t get in a word until you have told them

  the full tale of your wanderings.”

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  “Very well.” They had come to the wood below the farmstead, and

  Rianor seated himself on a fallen log and closed his eyes. “These are the

  words of the priestess Lhiannon to Queen Boudica . . .” His voice ac-

  quired a lighter timbre, as if Lhiannon had imbued him with her spirit

  as well as her words.

  “My dear, I take this opportunity to send word by one you know

  well. He will tell you that I am well and happy. It was very hard to leave

  Britannia, but I am glad to have come. I have learned a great deal that I

  hope to share with you one day. But the chief news is that I have a

  daughter—no, not of my body, but a little girl that I found weeping in

  the marketplace one day, with hair as glossy as a blackbird’s wing and

  eyes the blue of the sea. Her parents had a house full of little ones they

  could not feed, and were happy enough to sell her to me.

  “My little Caillean, which means ‘girl’ in the tongue of Eriu, does

  not know when she was born, but I t
hink she must be nearly the age of

  your younger girl. It is hard to tell, for she was undernourished when I

  found her, though she is shooting up fast with good food and care. She

  is a bright little thing, and eager to learn. I understand something of

  your delight in your daughters as I watch her change from day to day.

  “I think of you often, and hope to see you again, though I cannot

  say when that will be. You may send a message through Rianor, who

  says you were well and happy—and beautiful—when he saw you seven

  years ago. If the gods are good, he will be able to bring it to me.

  “You have my love always, dear. I remain your Lhiannon.”

  For a few moments the Druid was silent, then he shook himself and

  opened his eyes.

  “Thank you,” said Boudica. “How much of that do you recall?”

  “You don’t understand—when a message is set in me in trance I

  don’t remember, and it’s frustrating when people want more informa-

  tion, and I have no idea what it is that I’ve said.”

  “That must be difficult, but I am sure you delivered the message

  faithfully. It sounded as if she were speaking to me.”

  “I’m glad.” He smiled warmly.

  “Come now, our dinner will be ready and I am sure you must be

  hungry. Did you come from the south? As we walk you can tell me the

  latest news from Colonia.”

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  Rianor was a good observer, with a gift for describing the things

  he had seen. They had all wondered what would happen when the em-

  peror Claudius was succeeded by his stepson Nero, but as far as the

  Druid could see, the major local result seemed to be the temple being

  built in the dead emperor’s name. It was strange that a man who in life

  had been despised by many should in death be honored as a god, espe-

  cially since it was widely rumored that his wife had poisoned him. But

  only the good qualities of the dead were remembered, as if the divine

  spirit to which they had off ered incense was all that remained. The an-

  cient kings whose barrows were all over Britannia were still honored,

  so perhaps the beliefs of the Celts and the Romans were not so diff erent

  in that regard. But however benign the emperor’s spirit might be, it

  seemed hard that the Trinovantes, whom Claudius had deprived of

  king and kingdom, should have to pay for the deification of their con-