by Jules Watson
‘She said the rite will have greater power if you approach it with an open mind. And she also said she knew you would argue, but that the villagers have stripped the thorns nearby already, and the girls must go far into the hills for more, and she thought you could tell the ones who will be Ban Crés about politics and such, and the others about herbs.’
Rhiann frowned in the half-dark, then said, ‘I must go to her.’ She drew on the nearest dress, then, pulling on her cloak, tiptoed over the other girls wrapped in their blankets, and stepped out into the chill, wet dawn, ducking the dew drips coming off the eaves.
The sun was still below the horizon, but she could clearly hear the rumble of men’s voices – the villagers from the broch were already hauling wood for the bonfires to be lit at dusk. They sang and called out to each other as they worked, trailing up and down between the horse-drawn sledges and the Stones.
As she hurried along, Rhiann sniffed the familiar salt and seaweed, turning her face to the lightening east, where the last stars speckled a sky as blue as a duck egg. Eremon was waking to the same sky, clear and unclouded. Perhaps he stared at it right now, thinking of her. A pang of longing almost burned her throat in its intensity, as did the fear he could have already been harmed. Rhiann had asked him to avoid battle until Beltaine, but she had no way of knowing if circumstances had allowed him to keep to his promise. Hopping over a puddle, she breathed through her nose, calming herself. Nothing would keep the knowledge of Eremon’s death from her – the land would sense it, and bring the change to her on the wind, or through the soil. It hadn’t come. The King Stag still lived.
And with the Mother’s blessing he will be even stronger after this night, Rhiann told herself, forcing confidence down into her cold chest. The stags had come before, when all the priestesses held their energy together. And the same would happen tonight. It would not all rest on her abilities alone.
As she hurried past the glow of the bakeovens, Rhiann nodded at the priestesses stoking the fires and preparing the sacred moon cakes, and reached Nerida’s door just as the sun broke over the hills. And there was Nerida herself watching it rise, wrapped in her cloak, her breath misting the air.
Swiftly, Rhiann gave her the priestess kiss. ‘Surely you cannot mean me to leave here this day!’ she burst out. ‘If you do not wish to meet with me, I must understand, but at the least I should stay inside and fast and meditate—’
Nerida’s tired smile stopped her, for in contrast to her own torrent of words, it spread over her face soft and slow. ‘Daughter, do not make me order you. You are young, and there is still a girl in you, though you try to believe otherwise. Just for today, be a child in your heart. That will do more to prepare you for the rite than any meditation. There is more than one way to honour the Goddess, after all.’
Rhiann tried to argue with her, yet though the soft smile never wavered, Nerida’s words were implacable. Rhiann must leave the other Ban Crés to decide on the rites, and take the girls to hunt for blossom.
‘As you wish, Sister,’ Rhiann said heavily at last, bowing her head. Unease burned in her chest, though she could not disobey the Eldest Sister. Yet as she turned to go, Nerida suddenly clasped her close in her fierce, bony arms.
‘Promise me,’ the old woman murmured, looking up into Rhiann’s eyes, ‘that one day you will judge yourself by what you do and say, and not by what you believe yourself to be.’
Rhiann gazed down at the old woman’s lined face, still spare and elegant beneath the softening flesh. Despite Nerida’s smile, something unsure had wavered there for a moment. ‘I will try,’ Rhiann answered, her hand clasping Nerida’s, though the meaning of the words were obscured by the unreasoning fear that clutched at her. ‘If soon you promise to take tea with me around your fire.’
Nerida’s eyes flickered, and the mysterious world held there was again veiled. ‘As we have done so many times, child, so will we do so again.’
Rhiann left the settlement behind a group of chattering young women and girls laden with empty willow baskets and food for the day. The initiates of Rhiann’s own age were doing their best to be severe, led by Fola, whose own face could barely summon such gravity even when she tried.
Besides Rhiann strode Didius, fully armed despite the heat promised by the strengthening sun. His fine sword and dagger and helmet seemed to make him feel more secure in his self-appointed role of guard, but had no effect on the younger girls, who were now over their fright of him and had decorated his neck and wrists with a chain of sea-pinks.
As the girls streamed up the path into the nearest hills, Rhiann paused to glance back across the broad vale towards the Stones.
Among the chanters who sat within the circle, drawing the Source with their songs, other figures were now outlined against the sky: the elder priestesses, walking alone and in groups. Now the sun glowed bright on the white robes of one who detached herself from the rest and came to the edge of the ridge, looking across the vale at Rhiann. And as Rhiann raised her hand, so Setana raised hers. It was like the glimmer of a gull’s wing against a storm cloud. But there were no clouds. The sky was clear, and that was why she was leaving them for the day.
‘Rhiann,’ Fola was at her elbow, ‘please tell us a story as we walk. These girls squawk incessantly, like ravenous chicks, and it will be a long day indeed if my headache begins before we even leave! Tell them about your adventures – they will love that.’
Rhiann turned her back on the Stones and raised her face to the sun, summoning a smile. Such stories may sound exciting, Sister, but I can assure you that in reality they are usually frightening, cold and uncomfortable.’
‘Well, don’t tell them that, or my head will never have peace!’
In the narrow glen along which they walked, all was in shadow, and a chill still rose from the boggy ground. But up ahead, the youngest girls had already clambered to the crest of the ridge, and the warm morning light spilled over their unbound hair and round, ruddy faces, fresh from scrubbing.
A day in the sun will cure me of my dark mood, Rhiann thought, quickening her step. But later I will ask Nerida what ails her, and this time I will get my answer.
CHAPTER 36
Though there was much to do after the sun salutations that day, Nerida indulged herself and remained with the elders in the circle, straightening her back against one of the outer Stones. She turned with closed eyes to face the north, and savoured the sensation of sun-warmth on her eyelids.
These Stones had witnessed many other mornings of her life: days of sun and wind and rain; visits by kings and princes asking for counsel; the rites of the Sisters. And it seemed to Nerida then that for one moment out of time she was given a glimpse of the spiral pattern of her life: coming from and returning to the Mother along the same path, a pattern too subtle and beautiful for a human body to fully grasp. Yet perhaps now, as her body grew ever more frail, the veil between Thisworld and the Otherworld was growing thinner to her spirit eyes.
The singing of the other women pulsed and surged through the air, and with her enhanced sight Nerida watched the rivers of the Source below ground grow brighter as they were called to the surface, welling up like many fountains of silver that flowed into one. And as the sun poured down, Nerida let those lights hold her – the gold from above; the silver from below – as the steady thud of her heart marked out the hours.
When at last they came, there were no sails, which surprised Nerida. For Setana had always dreamed of sails.
Instead, Nerida opened her eyes, dazzled by the glare, to see the blur of oars beating fast up the sea-loch, so fast that the twin Roman warships were like arrows loosed from a string, easily outdistancing the three smaller Alban ships that followed in their wake.
In the calm of the midday sun, Nerida watched them come in silence. All Sisters vow the sacrifice, for the greater good, she said to herself. The Mother is just calling me closer to Her, that is all. Yet her heart could not help but beat faster, for although the elders had sensed a
calling, they had not known what its instrument would be.
The songs of the chanters grew stronger, and the air shimmered with waves of sound that echoed from the Stones until it was as if the monoliths themselves were ringing with song. The men who had built the fire-mounds had returned to their village, taking all the boatmen to ready the male part of the rite.
The Stones had been left to the women.
Setana’s hand crept into Nerida’s, and on her other side Nerida sought for and found the wrinkled palm of another Ban Cré. She didn’t know which one, nor did it matter, for they were all daughters of the Goddess now.
‘They knew to come this day,’ she murmured to Setana, and could not help the echo of anger that stirred in her. Betrayal. Betrayal by one of their own. Then Nerida took a deep breath, and let it go. She would not spend herself in anger, not now.
‘We knew it would be soon, however it came,’ Setana replied, her voice as calm and steady as the sunshine. ‘The dark wave has been rising for moons, and now it will break. It is a fitting day.’ She turned sad, luminous eyes on Nerida, and all the lines seemed to smooth from her skin. ‘Remember to surrender, my Sister, for that is what She told me above all other things. Find how not to be afraid, for all that She has taught us will come down to that one thing. Trust. Love.’
Nerida nodded, and as she did felt the heavy dizziness of the saor descend, the brew they had all shared that morning. It would help them to let go of their human attachments – fear, survival, anger, grief – and enable them to find something else, perhaps, something of the spirit.
‘So they come,’ Setana said, her arms out, the white robe falling back from her thin, pale wrists.
From the shore below, harsh shouts in a foreign tongue floated up on the warm air, along with the hollow thud of feet on timber, the grating of ropes. And despite all her years of training, despite the saor, despite her great belief and trust, one last flare of grief bloomed in Nerida’s heart.
Grief for the light of dusk on the loch, for she had always loved that sight above all others.
CHAPTER 37
The sun was high now, and to escape its heat Fola and Rhiann had herded their charges into the shade of a birch grove by a shallow mire. The silver leaves had unfurled just enough to throw some faint shade over the Sisters’ flushed faces, as Rhiann sat on a log before them, racking her mind for more tales. Didius, meanwhile, leaned against a pale tree-trunk, and began whittling a piece of hawthorn with his meat-dagger, sprigs of white flowers now tucked into his dark hair.
Rhiann smiled around at all the expectant faces, somewhat at a loss. Then, mindful that she was also supposed to be teaching the novices something, she fell back on herb-lore. The most basic of lessons suddenly came to her, but perhaps a good reminder on this Beltaine day. She took a bunch of creamy blossoms from the basket at her feet and held it up. ‘We decorate at Beltaine with hawthorn because it is pretty and smells nice, and because it is one of the first flowers to bloom. Yet hawthorn is much more than that: the fruit and leaves make powerful medicines. Who can tell me what we use it for?’
A young hand raised in answer, but it wavered before Rhiann’s eyes as a burning pain suddenly lanced her breast. She gasped, her hand falling to her lap, the edges of her sight closing in and growing dark.
‘Sister?’ a high voice piped. ‘Are you well?’
‘I …’ Rhiann tried to speak, but only a croak came out. Then, as all those concerned faces turned up to her, her vaguely remembered dream suddenly came alive in her mind: these faces – so young, so trusting – and what she had seen rearing up behind them. It was unclear in the dream, but the vision that descended on her now was stark and brutal in its clarity.
No! Rhiann lurched to her feet, struggling to breathe.
‘Rhiann!’ That was Fola, rising from a crouch, white blossoms falling from her lap. They were the same blossoms that were crushed in Rhiann’s hand, the same as in her dream.
Rhiann blinked to focus on her friend’s worried face. ‘I must go back.’
Fola pushed her way through the murmuring girls, taking Rhiann’s arm. ‘Why? What is wrong?’
‘It is the elders!’ Rhiann pulled her arms free and grasped Fola’s shoulders. ‘We have not come as far as they wished,’ she whispered in anguish. ‘Keep the girls here, Fola. Hide them, please!’ Then she took off at a run, pelting back along the path that skirted the mire.
Fola’s commands came faintly from behind, her voice sharpened with fear. ‘Dera, take these girls higher into the hills. Didius, let us away after her, man! Hurry!’
Yet Rhiann soon lost their voices, focused solely as she was on the path that led back to the Stones. Over the hill pass she thudded, and then down a broad, shallow glen, leaping around scattered boulders and outcrops that thrust their way up to block her, and splashing through brown puddles. In the low places she ploughed through bogs, falling over in the cold mud, sobbing as she pulled herself up and stumbled on.
Faster! she screamed to herself, ignoring the burning in her lungs, the stabbing pains in her legs.
If she could have grown wings and flown she would, but there was only the maddening slowness of her heavy, earth-bound body, holding her back.
His short-sword sheathed at his waist, the young Roman soldier stood rigidly in the line his century had formed after disembarking. Yet inside, where no one could see, he was trembling with fear and excitement. He tipped back his head, looking from under his helmet guard to the crest of the ridge, where those barbaric stones reared from the headland he had seen from the ship’s deck. Witches, his fears whispered to him. Black witches waited up there; sorceresses who would unman him with their spells and dark incantations; evil, savage women who sought to take the emperor and all his men down into their vile underworld, never to return; sacrificers of babies. Children’s blood had run down these very stones in their black rites! For the Empire and all the gods, he had to rid the world of such savagery. So his commander had said; so the barbarian king had said.
What made it worse was that women were conducting these savage rites, and women were writhing in sexual union on this tainted earth, coupling with goats and stags and who knew what else, laying their thighs open to the men who came here in orgies of lust and depravation. The soldier’s breath was coming faster now, and he gripped the butt of his javelin with a slick hand. The skin under his plate armour was prickling with heat, and his scalp itched with sweat that ran down into his eyes.
Suddenly he was startled by a strange noise behind – the bellow of a horn, blasted out by a blue savage in the ship coming behind. He risked a glance over his shoulder. The three barbarian vessels were close to shore now, the men within screaming curses and battering their spear-butts on the mast, the hull and their shields. Their faces seemed transfigured with fury and lust. Yet although they would land, they wouldn’t come to interrupt the Roman work on the ridge-top. For some reason they still held these women in fear and awe, though it was hard to believe such warriors could look so terrifying and still be cowards.
It would be left to the Romans to be the cleansing fire in this place of darkness. He himself would bear a sword of truth and light!
A curt, clean command rang out from his centurion, and eagerly the soldier pressed forward, his heart hammering against the tight lacings of his armour. In perfect time, all the Romans began marching, and his own feet fell into line, digging into the soft sand as they scrambled up the hill slope in a tide of red shields and flashing metal.
For Jupiter and Mars I do this, he prayed fervently. Praise be to the gods of light.
Croaking for breath, Rhiann stumbled to a painful halt where the pass from the hills spilled out into the vale before the Stones. Spent and sick, she leaned over on her knees, her sight blurred and dizzy as she nearly fainted with pain and lack of air. Yet she forced her head up to see what was before her – a sight she had prayed never to see again.
The thatched roofs of all the huts were alight, and smoke billowed
up and out, obscuring the buildings and the loch. But when the sea breeze gusted and parted the thick, choking cloud, Rhiann glimpsed two ships hard against the pier, barbed ships that were not of Alban make.
‘No!’ she screamed, the wind ripping the sound from her throat, the smoke slapping it back, choking her. ‘No!’
Just as Fola appeared at her side, Rhiann was taken by a burst of retching and coughing, and she vaguely heard Fola’s breath become lost in an unearthly moan. And then Didius was there, supporting Rhiann by her heaving shoulders, silent with disbelief.
Above the pall of smoke the Stones reared free, glittering in the sun that had bathed them for years uncounted. Between them, the Sisters stood in a ring that echoed the rock circle, yet on the slopes below the peak the sun also glinted on armour and helmets and crimson shields. Romans. Here, in this most sacred of places.
‘M-my lady,’ Didius now urged her, out of breath from running, ‘I must get you away from here, to somewhere safe.’
Fola gulped, tears marring her cheeks. ‘Rhiann, that is why they sent us away. They knew.’ A sob twisted her swollen, blotched face. ‘They knew.’
Rhiann’s awareness was fast receding now, to a place of numb shock that was cold and muffled, where sounds barely penetrated. She was hardly conscious of Didius and Fola drawing her away from the burning and ruination, back up the path to the ridge-top, unprotesting and limp. At every step, though, something deeper in her began to stir, fighting to break free of the tempting numbness, the dark veil that was descending over her soul.
Then Didius was turning her, so that all she could see was sky, a blue sky unmarred by smoke, almost as if it were not happening …
The thing inside Rhiann struggled harder against the shock, biting and writhing, until at last, as the vale was disappearing from view, it clawed its way to the surface. And as it shattered the ice forming around Rhiann, sounds returned to her with a jolt.
