Chains of Gold

by Nancy Springer

  “White goddess of winter,” they chanted, and then their words followed the cycle of deathlife and the seasons.

  “White goddess of spring, the seed in thy bosom,

  White goddess of summer, thy sower the sacred king,

  Goddess of life, red reaper of death,

  Great goddess of winter, white goddess, dark winnower,

  Great goddess, hear us.”

  They went on in that way for a while as I stood amidst sheetings of milk. Then they progressed to petitions, begging the goddess for fertility of fields and heifers and women, for a mild winter without pestilence, for easy birthings among women of virtue, for a staying of the powers of death. Then they took me out of the milk bath and let me warm myself in the bed awhile and chanted over me there, surrounding me as if I were a corpse laid out before them. Meanwhile the milk bath was taken away and another brought; this time it was spiced river water, and I stood in it as before, and as before it was cold.

  “Great goddess of vengeance, whom blood of heroes pleases,

  Dark goddess of death, with serpents in thy bosom,

  See thou this naked one, nameless now before thee.…”

  Imprecations! A thousand evil fates were to befall me if I were not a virgin perfect in purity before goddess and winterking and the Gwyneda went on to detail most of them. Any punishments forthcoming from the anger of the goddess were to be visited on me and not on them, the Gwyneda. If my looks displeased the goddess, might my hair fall out, and if I had spoken ill of her, might my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth and my lips erupt in putrefying sores. If I were not the purest of virgins, might I lie for a year in childbed, might my sexual organs rot and cause me agony. There was more, which I mercifully cannot remember. I felt no qualms concerning the matter of my purity; no man had ever been allowed to court me. But there was a malice in the women’s voices that struck through my soothing thoughts and made me want to hide.

  Erta was not among them. She could not have said such things so willingly.

  Let them turn my whole body to ice, and a pox on them.… Finally they were finished, and escorted me into my bed again, and prepared the third and final bath.

  It was of water with scented oil, and it was warm! I saw the steam go up and could scarcely believe it, not even when I stepped into it. Moreover, I was made to sit down in it, and lean back, and my hair was washed with a delicate scented lotion, and the fragrance of the warm oil was heady and most pleasant. And except for a muttered “Mother, comfort now thy daughter,” all chanting had ceased.

  Then the hearth fire was fueled into a crackling blaze which heated the whole room, and I was stationed in front of it so my hair would dry. By then I had realized that there was to be nothing to eat. Fasting was commonplace for them, I surmised. On this morning it would have been necessary for me in any event, for purification. And in truth, I felt different, my whole body faintly tingling in the warmth and somehow insubstantial, as if it did not belong entirely to me. Nothing seemed very real, and even my starving stomach did not tell me when it was noon and time for the nuptial ceremony. I had begun to think the morning would go on forever, and I was hazily surprised when they began to dress me.

  Only a white robe—that was all they put on me. A white robe as simple as theirs, but of a finer stuff that floated like the river mist, and there was no hood, but a sort of trailing cape instead. They combed my hair carefully and fastened it up in loops and wound a garland of evergreen laurel around it like a crown. They tied a green silk sash around my waist, the ends of it fringed and embroidered with gold thread in the circle and spiral emblems of the goddess. Nothing for my feet. Barefoot as before, I walked out into the snow to wed with Arlen.

  Name of the Mother, but he was beautiful! I had seen pageants of royal splendor and I had seen real lords riding out in all their jeweled adornment, but his beauty outshone theirs as the sun outshines the stars, and it was all simplicity: a milk-white tunic and breeches of doeskin and a crown of laurel and himself, glorious. He wore a green sash, like mine, and his feet were bare, like mine. His green eyes shimmered as green as the sash. He waited for me in a crowd of other youths, and I do not remember what any of them looked like; I saw only him, and went to him and took his hand, and he led me to the tree.

  It was a pollarded oak, lopped into a stumpy shape, the very oak that within the day was to be splattered with his blood. We stood at its roots, and around us and the tree a circle formed, all around us the ranks of the Gwyneda and beyond them the youths and boy children who would go to the oak in their turn some day, some season. Lonn came and stood near Arlen’s right hand. And beyond the dwellers of the Sacred Isle stood ranks and ranks of the secular kings and lords and noble ladies who had come that morning across the water to look on us. They would go the next day back to their servants and serfs and tenants, their garrisons and games of war, their vassals and their many strongholdings scattered between the eskers of the Secular Lands. My father stood there somewhere, and my relations, and acquaintances. I did not look at them; I scorned them all for what had been done to me.

  “White goddess of winter, behold now the winterking.

  Goddess of spring, behold now the bride.”

  More invocations. I did not listen, only stole glances at Arlen as the chanting went on. He held my hand softly and stood still.

  “Bind them!” A voice said more loudly, and I stiffened. It was one of the Gwyneda, and the others answered.

  “Power of the goddess, serpent power, bind them!

  Power of the goddess, glycon power, bind them!”

  The white circle of Gwyneda moved, became a chain spiraling in and in on us, ever nearer. Hands to the waist of the one in front of them, the white-robes shuffled closer and closer to us, serpentined around us. I saw Erta and smiled at her, but she did not look at me. She glided along with the others. Tighter and tighter became their knot, coils looping around us, until I began to breathe quickly in unreasoning fear, and Arlen took me into his arms; there was no longer space for us to stand side by side. The youths and young boys had joined in, forming a darker tail to the great white serpent that surrounded us. The lords and ladies in their large ring merely looked on—the chain was great enough without them, and I in the midst of it seemed to feel the hot breath of an enormous power, and the force of the great body or press of bodies that threatened to crush us appalled me. I closed my eyes. Hot breath all around me—

  A warm touch on my cheek—Arlen’s hand. He tilted my head up and very softly kissed me on the lips. It was the first such kiss I had ever known, and instantly everything else dwindled to meager importance. I opened my eyes to look at him, and as I blinked the serpent of Gwyneda uncoiled from around us, spiraled away, and formed a circle again.

  “Power of the goddess, serpent power, go with them,” the Gwyneda chanted. “Power of the goddess, serpent power, be in them. Bind them as with chains.”

  “Come,” Arlen murmured to me, “this way,” and he took my hand again. We walked forward. The circles parted before us like so many ring brooches, ring of white-robes and ring of youths and ring of noble onlookers. We walked through them and into the hold, and no one followed us. We found the chamber, my chamber with the bed—the only proper bed in the place, Arlen told me later. On the hearth cold meats awaited us, cold water and dry bread, the sparest of food.

  “The feast will be after the butchering,” said Arlen wryly.

  “The feast is now,” I said, and I reached up to put my arms around him. His breath seemed taken away. But then he loosened the robe from my shoulders and let it slip to the floor.

  We lay on the bed together.

  Ours was a blissful lovemaking, during that one short hour, ardent and effortless, like a dance or a dream. We were both virgins—to satisfy the ritual we had to be—but Arlen was much man, and magic was in him. As for me, I think the goddess possessed me as we embraced, made me bold and passionate.

  “Rae,” Arlen whispered against my cheek, “oh, Rae
.” That is an endearment, the name of the tawny doe that leaps on the mountains, and also name of the goddess, she who takes many forms, and she came to me; I flowered under his touch. There was no such thing as pain; all was sensation, ecstasy. Arlen kissed my eyes, surging over me, within.… “Rae,” he whispered again. Afterward he held me, drew the blanket warm over both of us. I felt him quivering, and I knew that silently he wept.

  “What is it?” I murmured, stroking his bare broad shoulders, his marvelous hair. A foolish question, since he was fated to die most unpleasantly within the day—but there are many aspects of death, and I ached to comfort him more fully. He sat up and faced me, tear tracks running back across his temples.

  “I—Rae.…” He could scarcely speak. “I love you.” His shoulders shook, as if earth had quaked within him; the words had undone his world. “I love you,” he said more intensely, as if I could not possibly have understood. “I scarcely know you, but I have never loved anything as I love you now, this minute, anything, ever, and I want only to be with you, I want to—love you—and I have to—go off and—die on a filthy tree!…”

  He sobbed, hiding his face with his hands, and I reached out to him and gathered him in, pillowed his head on my breasts. His sobs quieted quickly, I could feel how he hardened himself against them, but he lay motionless with his face pressed against me, and after a while he groaned.

  “It is cruel!” The words burst out in a sort of desperate protest. “So cruel.…”

  There were things that could have been said to him: how the red blood of the sacred king fertilized the earth of all the many kingdoms, causing the green crops to grow; how the goddess who gives us life demands payment in death—Meripen, she is called, death-in-life, and Mestipen, fortune-fate or destiny-doom, for all things are in her. Or how the seasons come full cycle and the great glycon bites its tail. In some sense he would live again, if only as grass. I said none of these things, but only lay still and held him and stroked his temples, feeling my own pain burn as deep as his, knowing the words would not have touched even the tithe of it.

  “It is odd.” Anger had left him, and he spoke only with a wry weariness, still nestled against my breasts. “Very odd. I had thought a coward was one who fears pain, as I do not; the blows and the blinding and all the rest of it—that is nothing. I would serve the goddess willingly in that way. But this love of you that calls me to live—pain of leaving you may yet undo me, Rae. Cerilla.”

  “I will love you as long as the goddess gives me breath,” I told him. It was all I could do for him, and I could scarcely speak for sorrow. He lifted his head and drew mine down to his, to kiss me. Then we lay side by side, drawn close into each other’s arms, until our hour was at an end.

  At the appointed time the chamber door opened and Lonn came in, carrying a tall spear and a great frothing stoup of mead. He set the spear against the wall and came over to us, went to one knee to present the mead. He held the stoup in both hands. I could see that the draught swam thick with herbs.

  “A potion,” Lonn explained gruffly, “to take the edge from the pain.” But as Arlen reached for it, Lonn hesitated and drew it back, a light coming into his face and eyes. “There is a change in you,” he murmured. “You wish to live now.”

  “Yes, may the goddess forgive me.” Arlen spoke tightly, holding back his grief. “For my lady’s sake, honor or no honor. But it is too late for such thoughts.”

  “Think you so?” Lonn stood up, staring down at us. Then he laughed, a wild, enchanted laugh that flew like a trapped bird between the stone walls. “This cup is for me!” he cried, almost gaily. “And to think I never knew it!”

  His voice had changed. The warmth was still in it, but so now was the echo of a song. I glanced at him, then stared, openmouthed. He seemed taller, stronger, greater in every way; his hair shimmered with golden light, a sheen as of sunlight lay on his face, and his every movement spoke of glory. There he stood, the hero, shining godlike. And his eyes, a glowing dark amethyst hue, the deepest hue of wood violets—how was it that I had not noticed them before?

  “Lonn,” Arlen breathed.

  I turned to look on him and found him nearly a stranger. A youth like other youths, like a hundred youths I had seen beyond my father’s castle walls, youths I had wished to speak to. A comely young man, fair but ordinary. Russet hair above a somewhat freckled face, anguish in his greenish hazel eyes. Still, with mingled consternation and relief, I found that I loved him ardently. The bond held strong.

  Lonn raised the stoup to his own lips and quaffed the mead.

  “You have done this,” Arlen said to him, but Lonn seemed not to hear him.

  “Where is that white shirt of yours?” he muttered. He was stripping off his own of wine red, and he tossed it at Arlen, his movements spellbinding, full of serpent power, his skin aglow with a golden brilliance. He found the white tunic and slipped it on, knotted the green sash. “Get up, Arlen, put some clothes on,” he ordered. “You must lead the twelve, for a while. Dress yourself, take the spear. Already the white-robes are addled with mead, and as evening comes on they will be the more so. Let Lady Cerilla keep to her place and watch, and you lead the dance. When the frenzy peaks, go to your lady and take her and leave. No one will notice or know the difference until tomorrow, I feel sure of it.”

  “You have done this,” said Arlen again, not moving, and Lonn shook his marvelous head, smiling.

  “I? No. Power is in me, but difficult, unschooled; I could never by myself have managed this thing. This is the will of the goddess, serpent power working through me.… Get up, Arl. I will have need of you. If you but smite me a shrewd blow, I will go quickly.”

  He drained the flagon to the bottom, and wordlessly Arlen rose and dressed himself, put on Lonn’s boots, and took up the spear with its head of wicked willow-leaf shape. From somewhere he had drawn courage; he stood in front of Lonn with the spear in hand, straight and stalwart, like a warrior, and they regarded each other. Their hands moved slowly to meet each other, touched. Fiercely they embraced, a warriors’ embrace with no weeping in it. Then they went out together, comrades.

  In a moment the Gwyneda came in to get me. Their faces were whitened with chalk, expressionless and as white as their robes. The sight of them disgusted me.

  “Go away,” I told them sharply. “I can dress myself.”

  They glanced at each other and said nothing, only came over to me and pulled the covers out of my clutching hands, turned them back, and examined the bedsheets. Whatever they found there must have satisfied them, for they nodded and took hold of me. I made myself very heavy in their hands.

  “Go away!” I shouted at them. “I am not a child; I am capable of getting into a robe by myself.” I twisted away from them and kicked, and they were startled enough that they let me go. “Wait outside,” I commanded imperiously, one fist in the air, and they looked at each other, shrugged, and withdrew.

  I listened at the door, then dressed quickly, secreting all the bread and meat that stood on the hearth in the fold of my robe above the sash. I knew I would not remain indifferent to food forever; nor, I hoped, would Arlen. I tightened the sash to my utmost. That done, I took my time combing and arranging my hair, so that they would think I was a vain young fool, and then I appeared at my door, yawning. They greeted me with frowns and hurried me off to the oak.

  Lonn hung there already, stripped and tied with willow thongs, his wrists bound to the lopped boughs on either side, his ankles to the trunk, and a bond around his waist as well. Before him stood twelve youths and striplings, eleven armed with darts or arrows and Arlen armed with the spear. All of the Gwyneda had chalked their faces, and they bore the scourges, the snakelike whips, their handles carved in the shape of serpents’ heads. The nobles and ladies kept to their great circle, as before. It was as Lonn had said; no one had noticed any difference in the winterking—he was the one who wore the sheen, and that was all that mattered. I was hurried to my place at the fore, and someone shouted
and swung a scourge, and it began.

  I closed my eyes to most of what went on, and Lonn was good to me; he did not cry out. Still, there was the lashing of the whips to be listened to, and the brutal shouts, and every so often someone jostled me; they even tried to force a scourge into my hand. I stood stiff and still, letting the rites swirl around me like an incomprehensible storm. Great fires were being kindled to either side of me, fragrant fires of alder and cornel and applewood, for immortality. I could smell the spicy smoke, and when a serpentine dance began, in two loops coiling around the fires, I could feel it sweeping by me.

  “Rae,” said a soft, taut voice at my ear, “be ready.”

  It was Arlen. I mustered myself and slowly opened my eyes. Lonn hung before me, limp and bloody but still breathing—I did not look at him but a little to one side of him, seeing him as a red man, no more. The smoke stung my eyes, bringing tears, and I watched the dance, a blur. Faster and faster Arlen led it in the heady smoke, the youths spinning and leaping behind him, the Gwyneda circling and shuffling—tears had made tracks in the chalk on their faces, and smoke had begrimed it, and their white robes were disheveled, but they did not care; I could hear them panting. The look on their faces was not cruel, as I had expected, but merely entranced. Frenzy was building. Faster, faster, the dance, as the king hung on the tree.…

  With a great shout Arlen leaped and turned and sent his spear flying. Swift and true it flew, transfixing Lonn to the oak, cutting off his life in one moment. The shrewd blow had been struck, and the youths loosed their arrows and darts, and the white-robes closed in on Lonn like so many hounds, wild for the taste of his young limbs. But Arlen ran around the fire and came to me, and we walked swiftly away. Straight through the ring of lords and ladies we walked, and none of them tried to stop us or so much as looked at us, so spellbound were they with what was happening at the oak.