The Hallowed Isle Book One Page 3

  Peace there might be in field and forest, but it was otherwise in the world of men. Just before dawn, Maderun found herself sitting up in her blankets, wondering what had awakened her. She looked around for the warrior on watch and could not see him. Alarm burned the last of the sleep from her brain and she drew breath to call out a warning, and in that instant the darkness exploded.

  Sword blades flared red as someone kicked the coals and the banked fire burst into new flame. Maderun heard a grunt and one of the struggling bodies fell; warm blood splattered her hand. She gasped and struggled to her feet. Scottii raiders . . . the thought came through the gibbering in her brain. But the sea had been empty. Where had they come from?

  Clutching the blanket around her, she tried to distinguish friend from foe. In the growing light she saw that several of her escort were down. The others were too few to hold all of the raiders, some of whom were already beginning to paw through the piles of gear.

  One of them caught sight of her and grinned, and Maderun remembered with appalling clarity the burned villa and the body of the little girl. As the Scot started towards her the horror that had frozen her limbs became a hot tide of terror and she ran.

  She fled like a frightened doe, blundering into branches and stumbling over roots and stones. When she came to a halt at last, breathless and bleeding from a dozen scratches, she heard crashing in the undergrowth behind her, and compelled her trembling legs to carry her onward.

  When fear-begotten strength finally failed, Maderun forced her slim body through a hole some creature had made in the tangled lower branches of a hazel copse and lay still. Whether she fainted then or only slept she did not know. But when she became aware once more it was full daylight, and in the forest there were no sounds but the musical gurgle of a nearby stream and the cheerful morning song of the birds.

  She had lost the blanket, and the undergown in which she had slept was dirty and torn. But at least no one was pursuing her. Slowly, for overstressed muscles had stiffened and she ached in every limb, she crawled out of the hazels and down to the stream. The cool water eased her thirst, and bathed some of the hurt from her face and arms. She sat up then, looking around her, and realized that she had no idea where she might be.

  Argantel would know how to find her way out of the forest, she told herself, looking around her. What would she do now? Water ran toward the ocean, she thought, and the road ran beside it. She had only to follow the stream.

  But perhaps in her panic she had run south instead of east, or perhaps it was only that the forest brook meandered where it chose, in no hurry to reach the sea. Maderun was still lost when darkness fell on the forest—and hungry, for aside from a few greens whose leaves she recognized, she had found nothing to eat all day. Weeping a little from fatigue and hunger, she curled up between the gnarled roots of a great oak tree.

  Maderun woke once in the night, whimpering from a dream of terror; finding herself safe and warm, she dropped swiftly into sleep once more. When she woke again she sensed light through her closed eyelids. She started to move and winced. What had she been doing yesterday to get so sore? She remembered men fighting, and a terrified flight through the forest, but surely that had been in her nightmare, because now she lay in a warm bed. . . .

  Her eyes opened. Above her light filtered through green leaves. But the air was quite still. She listened, and realized that what she had taken for the wind was the sound of someone breathing. Her groping fingers closed on fur. She jerked upright, turning, and found herself staring down into a flat, wide-nostriled face. Brown hair thick as a bear’s pelt grew low above a pair of dark eyes.

  Maderun gasped and started to scramble away. A long-fingered hand, attached to a sinewy arm which was also covered with hair, reached out and grasped her ankle. The grip was not tight enough to hurt, but quite secure. She could not get away.

  Swallowing her fear, Maderun looked at her captor. If the beast had meant to eat her she would be dead already. She saw long legs, and feet very like those of a man, a thick barrel, and—she looked quickly away. He—not it—was unmistakably male, but not quite a beast. Seeing him whole, she recognized the original of the distorted masks and tunics of tufted wool in which men cavorted at festivals. It was a Wild Man.

  She had been told they were all dead, or at least withdrawn to the far northern lands. What was one doing here? Around his face white hairs sprinkled the dark fur. Was he the last in Britannia?

  She searched her memory for the old tales. The Wildfolk were shy creatures, but could fight fiercely if captured. At times they had rescued lost children and cared for them until they were found. That gave her hope. She licked dry lips and pointed to the stream.

  The Wild Man chuffed deep in his throat and released her ankle. Carefully she made her way to the brookside and cupped water in her hands to drink. Then she made her way behind a clump of sallow to relieve herself, still uncomfortably aware of his watchful gaze. But when she tried to go further he half rose, growling deep in his throat until she turned back.

  Later that morning the Wild Man left her and she tried to escape once more, but he found her when she was scarcely out of sight of the oak tree and carried her back under his arm. Some tender roots and new greens lay on the ground beside the tree root, and a piece of honeycomb. Still weeping, Maderun ate greedily.

  The infant moon began to wax with little change in Maderun’s captivity. By day she followed the Wild Man, learning which plants could be eaten. By night she slept warm in his arms. She grew thin on a diet of tubers and raw greens, and wept again when the grubs and raw birds’ eggs the Wild Man brought began to look good to her. She tried to pray for deliverance, but prayers to the Christian god seemed irrelevant here in the wildwood, and she had never learned how to address the old gods of her tribe. Argantel would have known. “Cousin, help me!” she cried, but her only answer was the wind in the trees.

  To think about her situation brought pain, and so as the days passed she avoided thought and banished memory, taking refuge in the forest’s eternal now. To live was to feel the warmth of the sun or the cool wind, the satisfaction of food in the belly and the sweetness of water on the tongue. Wordless, she seemed to sense the life that flowed through all the green world around her in a way she had only glimpsed when she was part of the world of men.

  Bright eyes gleamed through the sparkle of a waterfall; willowy maidens emerged from the trunks of their trees to dance in the moonlight, and once, just at sunset, she glimpsed the turf of a forgotten mound opening like a door, and saw a radiant figure that beckoned to her to come in. She might have gone, but her captor, growling deep in his throat, had grasped her arm and dragged her away.

  The Wild Man had a territory through which he ranged, gathering the sweet onion in one place, mustard in another, fish from a forest pool, grubs from beneath a fallen log. It took most of his time and energy just to find enough food to support his giant frame. Maderun tore off the ragged hem of her skirt, and clad now in what was no more than a short tunic, followed him. They slept sometimes in a hollow tree and at others in a kind of nest lined with soft grasses, but always they returned to the oak tree by the stream.

  The moon grew full and round, blessing the woodlands with her silver light. In the world of men, if Maderun had had any way to calculate the calendar, it was the moon when men and women danced together around the Beltain fires. In the forest, Maderun lay curled beneath her captor’s hand as once she had curled around her pet kitten. The Wild Man stroked her as she had touched her cat, drawing his long, lightly furred fingers through her hair and humming tunelessly as he often did at such times. She held still when he sniffed along her body, nostrils flaring. Sometimes he licked her skin and she shivered, simultaneously repulsed and pleasured. In this state of mindless endurance, it seemed inevitable that one day his touch should grow more intimate, and when he thrust her down and dog-fashion, entered her, she did not try to pull away.

  While the moon remained full this usage continued. In
that corner of her mind that still could think Maderun knew that reason was her enemy. If she allowed herself to understand what was happening, she would be reduced to gibbering hysteria. And if she recognized that she had come to welcome it her mind would snap entirely.

  When the silver round began to thin, the Wild Man seemed to lose interest, though he fed and protected her as before. One night, when the moon was only a thin sickle in the sky, Maderun dreamed. She was looking in a mirror, and then she realized it was not a mirror but Argantel who was facing her, calling her name. And when she replied, the other woman cried, “Remember the hope of Britannia! Remember the Sword!”

  When she woke, Maderun knew herself as human for the first time in many days. But she scarcely recognized the gaunt features that stared back at her from the forest pool. If I stay here, I will die, she thought, and then, Better to die than to live as an animal. . . .

  The Wild Man was watching her, his dark eyes sorrowful as if he sensed her unhappiness, but Maderun refused to pity him. She no longer feared him, nor did their strange life together disgust her, but from that time she began to actively try to recover her humanity.

  It was three days later that she heard in the distance the melancholy belling of a hunter’s horn. The Wild Man was off somewhere, seeking food. Heart pounding, Maderun set off toward the sound of the horn. For a time she waded in the stream, hoping to throw him off the scent if he should follow her. Then she took to the bank once more, moving as swiftly as she dared.

  The horns grew louder, and she heard the yapping of hounds. But closer still she heard a familiar deep chuffing and knew that the Wild Man was coming after her. Her first cry was a squawk, and for one panicked moment she wondered if she had forgotten how to form human words. Then she filled her lungs and tried again.

  “Help—help me!”

  For a moment there was silence, then she heard a change in the calling of the hounds. Rapidly they drew closer, but the Wild Man was gaining too. Panting, Maderun leaped for the lower branches of a gnarled apple tree, survivor of some forgotten orchard, and began to climb, seeking the topmost branches that would bear her slender weight but not that of her pursuer. Clinging to the bough she cried out again and again.

  The Wild Man splashed through the stream and paused at the foot of Maderun’s tree. For a long, wordless moment she stared into his eyes. Then the yammering of the dogs grew deafening and he crouched to meet them, the rough hair over neck and shoulders rising to a crest as he bared his teeth.

  “Run!” cried Maderun, gesturing towards the undergrowth. “Run, or they will kill you!”

  Once more the Wild Man looked up, jaws opening in a very human moan. Then, as the first of the dogs leaped through the undergrowth, he whirled away into the forest and was gone.

  Let the hunters think that the dogs had treed her, thought Maderun as they milled around the base of the beech, whining. Let them think that her tears were from fear of them, and not because now, when she was sure of rescue, she could at last afford to pity the creature that was more than a beast, if less than a man, and who in his way had loved her.

  To her rescuers, Maderun would say only that she had wandered in the wildwood, living on roots and greens, meeting no man. Her father received her with astonished joy, for her marriage had figured in his plans. But she continued to weep, and so he sent her for healing to the quiet confines of the convent next to the church of Saint Peter in the town.

  The nuns were kind to her, and if their garden was not quite so peaceful as the forest, it was far better than the smoky clamor of her father’s hall. Maderun sank gratefully into the routine of song and prayer, and her memories of the wildwood became as faint and disjointed as images in a dream.

  When her bleeding did not come at the change of the moon, the Infirmary sister patted her hand kindly and assured her that when a woman had suffered a shock or was as thin as Maderun had become, it was often so. With good food and rest, surely she would grow healthy once more. And indeed, as the summer passed, she began to fill out a little, though her face was still gaunt and pale. But her moon blood did not return.

  She dreamed, sometimes, that she was back in the forest. Sometimes she relived the terror of that first flight from the raiders, and would wake in a cold sweat, babbling of blood and monsters among the trees. But sometimes her dreams returned her to the oak tree, and she smiled, thinking she still slept cradled in the Wild Man’s arms. Those were the times when she reached out to him, and writhing on her narrow bed, touched herself as he had touched her, until she passed into peaceful sleep once more. The other girls in the novices’ dormitory would ask her what she had been dreaming, but Maderun could not answer them.

  On a warm autumn day just after the Feast of St. Michael, Maderun went out with a few of the older nuns and the three novices to gather apples.

  “Have you heard?” said little Felicia as they searched for windfalls among the tall grass, “Ambrosius the Emperor is dead and Vitalinus of Glevum has proclaimed himself Vor-Tigernus—High King!”

  “And how would you know that?” asked Thea, the brownskinned daughter of a legionary from Numidia who had married a British woman and settled in Demetia when his term of service was done. “Did an angel announce it to you in a dream?” The folklore of the convent was rich in tales of supernatural visitors.

  “I heard it in Maridunum, of course,” retorted Felicia, “when I accompanied Sister Ildeg to market last Saturday.”

  “God prosper him,” put in the third girl. “For well He knows how much we need a strong lord. But I do not think that the chieftains of the West Country will accept Vitalinus’s rule.”

  The others nodded. They were all, if not the daughters of princes, girls of good family. And in the West, even the poorest hill farmer felt free to criticize the doings of those who claimed authority over him.

  Thea laughed. “Of course not—it is Ambrosius Aurelianus who has the right to claim his father’s honors.”

  “But he is still in Armorica with his brother. My father says we need a king who will care for Britannia first and foremost,” Felicia replied. “Vitalinus doesn’t want to be emperor. He titles himself in our own language, ‘over king.’”

  Maderun nodded. “I met him at the wedding of my cousin in Luguvalium. He seemed a very determined man.”

  The others looked at her in surprise, unaccustomed to hearing her speak and remembering now that she outranked them all.

  “He will need to be,” Felicia said finally. “He is trying to raise an army, and our men will not want to fight for people at the other end of the country when the Dalriadan warriors are at our door.”

  Maderun shuddered, remembering the raiders, and the others fell abruptly silent.

  “They say that is why Vitalinus claimed the power—” Felicia added softly. “Because of what happened to you. He has said it is a disgrace that a princess of a royal house cannot travel safely through the land, and Britannia needs a defender.”

  “A Defender . . .” Maderun spoke softly in the cadence of prophecy, recalling fragments of the knowledge that had passed through her awareness, it seemed a lifetime ago, “but it will not be the Vor-Tigernus, but another, who shall come after him.”

  “What?” asked Thea, but Maderun shook her head, losing the memory. This had happened to her often since her ordeal. She lived in the present; all her memories were like fragments of dream, and as easily whirled away.

  “We have gathered all the windfalls,” Felicia said brightly into the silence. “And for all our shaking, no more apples will fall out of this tree. But there are still some clinging to the upper branches. They are almost ripe, and it seems a shame to leave them there.”

  Maderun looked up, dimly remembering that trees meant safety. “I will go after them. I am the lightest of you all.” Kirtling up her skirts, she began to clamber upward.

  From the top of the tree she could see over the convent walls. She could see the roofs of Maridunum, and beyond them a patchwork of field and fo
rest. But inevitably her gaze turned northward, where the land disappeared into a blue haze, and the wind dried the tears that sprang beneath her eyelids before she could wipe them away.

  “Can you reach the apples?” the call came from below.

  Recalled to the present, Maderun stretched to grasp the fruit, and the wind flattened her gown against her body and blew back her hair.

  There was a stifled exclamation from below. Maderun plucked an apple and settled back, turning to look down. Felicia was staring up at her wide-eyed.

  “What is wrong?”

  “Daughter of Carmelidus, I think you go with child!”

  The apple slipped from Maderun’s grasp, missed the basket, and rolled across the grass. Only a convulsive tightening of her arms saved her from falling as well. She shook her head and reached for another apple, then picked a third and two more.

  By the time she climbed back down the tree, Maderun could almost believe she had not heard it. But the flushed faces and avid eyes of the other girls forced her to remember Felicia’s words.

  “It is not so—” she said quietly. “I have never lain with a man.”

  “But your breasts are so round, and your belly—”

  “Hush!” said Thea, taking pity on her. “If she is a maiden, then time will proclaim her innocence, and time will accuse her more harshly than any man if it is not so. It is not for us to judge.”

  It is not true. . . . Maderun repeated to herself as they carried their baskets back to the convent. I have never loved a man.

  But as Thea had said, time did indeed accuse her—time, and the wagging tongues of two dozen cloistered women, who began to watch Maderun’s belly as a farmer scans his newly sown field. And by Samhain it was apparent to everyone that the princess was expecting a child.

  Then the questioning began.

  “It is a great sorrow, but no shame to you, child, if one of the Scottii raiders who attacked your camp caught and raped you before you fled,” said Mother Paterna.