The Hallowed Isle Book Two Page 6

  “Why?”

  “To learn about the spirits of this land so that we can honor them and gain their blessing. I left an offering at the barrow before I came away. You must leave a portion, also, when you go hunting in the Weald.”

  Oesc took one of the lamps from its niche and squatted, holding the flame so he could see.

  “Do you think the Lady could be Frige, and the hooded gods Woden and Willa and Weoh?”

  “Little by little our tongue is replacing that of the Romans on the land. I do not think its gods will mind if we call them by our names,” Hæthwæge answered, and heard in her head a whisper of approving laughter.

  Old Man, be still, she told the god within. It seems to me you have too many names already! Are you greedy for more?

  “But is that who they really are?”

  Hæthwæge shook her head. “Child, there is no name a human tongue could master that would tell you that. In many places, the Britons called their Lady Brigantia. But perhaps these are the names they will bear for us here.”

  “That is why I have brought the boy,” Hengest said then. “So that we may make our offerings.”

  The wicce nodded and got to her feet. Taking up the second lamp, she moved around the altar and held it high. Light glimmered warm on the worn grey stones of the well coping, and glittered on the dark water within. Enclosed within stone walls, this place was very different from the pool in the marshes of the Myrging lands, and yet the power of its waters was much the same.

  “The shrine was built around this spring. It rises from the same waters that feed the river, coming down from the Weald and the Downs. They carry the lifeblood of the Lady of this land.”

  Hengest had risen as well. Now he took from his belt purse three golden coins that bore the blurred image of some long-dead emperor. Carefully he bent over the well.

  “Gyden . . . Frige . . .” he said in a low voice, “I took this land by the sword. But the folk I have brought to live here will tend and till it in love and law. All my days I have been a man of blood, but I have no strength now to force men to my will. Let this land feed my people. . . .” His voice trembled. “And let me leave it in frith to the son of my son.”

  As he spoke the air inside the temple grew heavy, as if something very ancient and powerful had directed its attention that way. Then the coins splashed into the pool and the tension broke.

  It took a few moments for the king to straighten. Then he sat down again, his old eyes moving from Hæthwæge to the boy.

  The wicce felt a pang of pity for this ancient warrior who had outlived his own strength and all his companions and now, at his life’s ending, sought in a new land the justification for his deeds. For a moment her memory went back to Oesc’s other grandfather, Eadguth the Myrging-king, who had been so bound to his land that like an ancient oak, he could not be transplanted from his native soil.

  “Now it is for the heir to make his oath and his offering,” she said aloud.

  Oesc set the lamp he had been holding on the rim of the well and knelt beside it, staring down into the pool. The current, welling slowly from the depths, broke the reflection into a scattering of gold, as if more wealth were breeding already from Hengest’s coins.

  Rather reluctantly, he unpinned the silver brooch that held his cloak, the only thing of value that he had on. Once more the atmosphere changed, this time to a kind of singing tension that lifted the hair on Hæthwæge’s arms and neck. Oesc felt it too. He cast an uneasy look in her direction before turning once more to the well.

  “Lady of the spring, this is for you.” His voice cracked on the last word and he flushed, swallowing, and swiftly tossed the brooch in. “Let me be worthy of my grandfather’s trust. Body and spirit I offer, if you will give me this land as a home for my children and my people. And please, Lady, let me one day know your true name!”

  The tension built to an audible hum, like crickets on a day of summer, though the leaves were turning and the air outside had the crisp clarity of fall. It intensified to the edge of pain, then, very slowly, ebbed away, leaving behind it a great peace and the conviction that all would be well.

  From Ægele’s ford the road cut southward through the Weald, dwindling to a rough track by the time it reached the southern coast. There, the Jute, Hæsta, had settled his clan near the old Roman iron workings where a low ridge ran down to the sea. Just down the coast, the sea-fort of Anderida provided safe harbor, and with a good wind and a pilot who knew the shoals of the coastline, they could return to Lemanis by boat in no more than a long day’s sail. Hæsta’s other guests had ridden eastward from the South Downs, where Aelle had been lord of his Saxons for almost as long as Hengest had held Cantuware, though he was thirty years younger. The farmstead, where the rich fields sloped down toward the sea, lay on the border between the lands the two leaders ruled.

  Hæsta himself had come down to escort his guests from the landing. As they approached his hall, more men came out of it—a thickset, muscular man with grizzled hair and a king’s torque who they said was Aelle, and behind him a tall young man with red hair. The child he carried on his shoulder stared at the newcomers with bright, considering eyes.

  “He has brought Ceretic, I see,” said Byrhtwold, “and that must be Ceretic’s young son. That’s a man to watch, lad. If he fights half as well as he talks, he’ll be calling himself a king too one of these days.”

  Oesc nodded, understanding that this was one of the men with whom he would have to deal, in friendship or without it, when his own turn came to rule. Hengest’s bid to claim lordship over all the men who had come over from Germania had failed, and Aelle seemed content with his coastal hills. Despite their numbers, the Saxon settlements were scattered, each under its own chieftain—men who had never gone under the yoke of Rome and saw no reason to bow down before one of their own.

  Octha might have united them, Oesc thought grimly, until his battle-luck failed. But no—it had not been bad luck that felled him, but the sorcery in Uthir’s sword. I might do it . . . he thought grimly, and Artor will be my opponent if I do. Then they were dismounting, and Hæsta led them into the friendly shelter, its air blue with woodsmoke and the welcome scents of cooking food, of his hall.

  That night, new clouds rolled in from the sea. For three days, rain and sleet kept the Saxons inside the hall. They scarcely noticed. Hæsta had been brewing for weeks in preparation for the feasting, and so long as the ale-vats did not run dry, no one would complain.

  In a break between the discussions, Oesc sat by the long hearth, carving scraps of wood into crude figures of horses and split twig-men to ride them. As each one was finished, he gave it to the child beside him. Cynric, he was called, with hair as red as his father’s, the legacy of the British grandfather who had given Ceretic his name.

  “That is a mighty army—” said Ceretic, looking down at his son. Cynric nodded, took the rider that Oesc had just finished and set it in order with the others.

  “These with the bark on are Romans, because of their armor, and the peeled ones are Saxons,” the child explained. Several of the figures fell over and he set them up again.

  “I see you are placing your unmounted warriors in a wedge formation—” commented Ceretic.

  “He told me—” said Cynric, pointing at Oesc.

  “It was what my father used at Verulamium.” Oesc swallowed, his stomach knotting as he remembered that day.

  “Ah, yes.” Ceretic transferred his attention from the child. “You were in that battle, I have heard.”

  Oesc flushed. “Against my father’s orders,” he said with a quelling look at Cynric. “But I brought away his head so that the British should not dishonor it. I have sworn that I will avenge him one day.”

  “Perhaps we will march to battle together. For now, I am in Aelle’s following, but my father rules in Venta, and he refused to acknowledge Ambrosius as his master. It is certain he will not bow before this child the British are calling high king!”

  “You ar
e British?” Oesc stared at him. But of course, he thought as he looked at the milky Celtic skin and bright hair, it must be true.

  “My father is—” Ceretic’s lips twisted wryly. “Maglos took my mother as a second wife when he made alliance with Aelle. I grew up speaking both tongues equally. My father likes Saxons because they are good fighters, and if this new high king tries to recover the lands around Venta, Maglos will need more men to defend them. So he has sent me to Aelle.”

  “Does Aelle have them?”

  “Not enough—hence, this meeting. Your grandfather’s people have held Cantuware long enough for there to be a few younger sons who need new holdings. If they come to the Isle of Vecta, my father will make no objections. But I will need to bring more men from Germania to settle the land around Clausentum, along the estuary of the Icene. From there I can drive northward into the heart of Britannia. Maglos thinks he can defend the land with Saxon settlers and still call it British. But when I rule in Venta, I can strike northward to the British heartland!”

  Listening to him talk, Oesc understood how it must have been for Hengest and Horsa when they were young. But in Durovernum the scars of warfare had been repaired, the burnt houses scavenged for building material or allowed to go back to the soil. The British who remained there were grateful for the protection of their new masters, and the Saxons were rooting themselves ever more deeply into the soil.

  “And what about you?” asked Ceretic, as if Oesc had been thinking aloud. “Will you push westward as well? You are young, with your name yet to win. Have you no ambitions to take Londinium?”

  “Londinium and the British lands around it divide us from the Anglians in the fen country, as Lindum divides them from the north. We would be stronger if we could take it,” Oesc added thoughtfully, “but the city was more important when there was trade with the Empire. In itself, it is not so useful now.”

  “Go around it, then. If I push northward and you move west, our armies can join forces, and who will stop us then?” He threw his head back, laughing. In the flickering light his hair was as red as the fire.

  “What armies? Are you Woden, to breathe life into these sticks your son is playing with, and make them men? Let us wait at least until the seed is planted before we sell the tree!” exclaimed Oesc. “When you have brought your warriors from Saxony and I command the men of Cantuware, we may talk of this again.”

  “It is so! It is so!” shaking his head, Ceretic hunkered down and began to help his son pick up his scattered men. “Always, my dreams have outstripped reality. But it will happen. Among the Saxons a second wife has equal standing, and my mother went willingly to Maglos’s bed. But the Christian priests called her a Saxon whore and me a bastard. I had to fight for every scrap of food and nod of approval, but the sons of my father’s Christian wife were killed in battle, while I survived and took a wife from my mother’s people. Maglos has no choice now but to trust to me and my Saxon kin to defend him. I have come too far already not to believe it is my Wyrd to be a conqueror.”

  Oesc believed him. Ambition pulsed around Ceretic like heat from the flame. And what is my Wyrd? he wondered then. But even as he questioned, a memory came to him of lamplight on dark water, and a breath of wind.

  My Wyrd is to be a king. . . .

  Hæthwæge dipped up a spoonful of broth, tasted it, and decided that she could add a bit more of the infusion of galluc root and mallow without rendering it so bitter the king would refuse to drink it down. As she poured, she bent over the pot, whispering—

  “Galluc, Galluc, great among herbs,

  You have power against three and against thirty,

  Against poison and all infection,

  Against the loathsome foe that fares through the land. . . .”

  In her mind’s eye she saw the plant from which that root had come, its broad leaves frosted with prickles, the pale pink-purple flowers trembling like bells in the breeze. Boneset, they called it sometimes, but it had great power also to heal internally. The mallow would soothe and smooth it on its way.

  Hengest would not admit that he was ill, though the cough he brought home from his visit to Hæsta’s hall had hung on throughout the winter, and his frame grew as gaunt as the horsehide hung over the poles at the offering pool. Her more elaborate curing methods were useless if the patient would not admit he needed them. All she could do was to doctor his food and drink as unobtrusively as possible, and sing her charms over her pots as she prepared them.

  Eadguth had been much the same in his old age. Why, she wondered, have I spent so much of my life nursing old men? But the god she served appeared most often in an old man’s guise, so perhaps it was not so surprising.

  And to balance the old man she had the young one, although these days Oesc spent most of his time outdoors, hunting, exploring the countryside, even helping the farmers with the work of each season as it came. She supposed it was inevitable, after his dedication at the sacred spring. The goddess of the land was speaking to him in each tree and hill, and as time passed, he would learn to understand her.

  Oesc came to the wisewoman for liniment for sore muscles, and sometimes to dress a wound, but on the whole he was a healthy young animal, for which she thanked the gods.

  She stirred the broth once more, then dipped it carefully into a carved hornbeam bowl, its wooden surface smoothed to a rich patina by the years, and carried it from the cookshed across the yard to the hall. In the years since Hengest had built it in the space adjoining two of the better preserved Roman dwellings, trees had grown up on the western side, screening the weed-covered waste where half-burned houses had been pulled down to serve as building material. Afternoon sunlight slanted through the branches, glowing in the new leaves. A pattern of shadow netted the path.

  As she passed, a portion of that shadow solidified into a human shape: a tall man, wrapped in a cloak and leaning on a staff. Hæthwæge stopped, eyes narrowing. High One, she queried silently, is it you?

  As if he had felt the touch of her mind, the stranger straightened, turning toward the light. The wisewoman noted the dark eyes beneath their heavy brows, the brown beard where only a few strands of silver yet showed, and let her breath out in a long sigh. It was not the god. But neither, she thought as other senses picked up the aura that surrounded him, was this entirely a man. And knowing that, she thought she could put a name to him.

  “Merlin Witega, wæs hal! Be you welcome to this hall!”

  His eyes widened at the greeting, and some indefinable tension in his posture ebbed away.

  “A blessing on you also, woman of wisdom. I had heard there was a bean-drui in the house of the king, and I think you must be she.”

  Hæthwæge bowed her head, accepting the compliment. She should have expected that he would be able to see beyond the old shawl and apron to her own aura of power.

  “Come with me, then. The king has been ill, but he is well enough to speak with you. Perhaps he will be ashamed to fuss about drinking this down if you are by.”

  His broad nostrils flared, though it seemed unlikely he could pick up the scent from there. Then he began to ask if the king’s cough had lasted for long, and she realized that he had indeed recognized the herbs.

  “We were not certain whether Hengest was still living.” His deep voice rumbled up from somewhere near his belly. “I knew him when I was a boy in the Vor-Tigernus’s hall.”

  “He is old, but he still has his wits.” Hæthwæge answered the unspoken question.

  A swift grin of understanding split the flowing beard. “Then he will remember me. But it might be better if to the rest I were known only as a messenger.” He said, and Hæthwæge, remembering how Oesc still blamed Merlin for the magic that had caused his father’s death, had to agree. Then he pushed open the door and together they entered the hall.

  He is an old man, Merlin told himself as they made their way past the empty feasting benches toward the high seat. He cannot hurt you now. Somewhere inside him there still lived a child wh
o remembered Hengest as a towering force that could break him without even breathing hard. But in the man before him there was nothing of the Vor-Tigernus’s war leader but the eagle gaze. Who would have thought that the terrible Hengest would live to be so old?

  “Am I well?” Hengest echoed his question. “At my age it is enough to be alive. No doubt you seem ancient to Artor.” He chuckled grimly. “I have outlived all my enemies, and most of my friends. But I will last until my grandson is old enough to rule. Uthir’s son has the name of king already, but is it he or his council who have sent you here?”

  “His council—” admitted Merlin. “But the boy is no weakling. In time he will be a powerful leader in peace or in war.”

  “I don’t suppose you have come to say that Artor wants me to give back Cantium. Even the hotheads on his council must recognize that we have sunk our roots too deeply into this soil.”

  “Nor have I come to ask whether you will try to take advantage of Artor’s youth to attack Londinium,” Merlin answered pleasantly. “What my king and his council offer is a treaty to confirm your possession of these lands, in return for your support against any of the Saxon kings who would try to expand their territories.”

  Hengest gave a bark of laughter, took a sip of broth, and grimacing, set it down again. “Why come to me? I am not high king of the Saxon kind. Do you think they will listen to me?”

  They may not obey you, old wolf, but they listen, thought Merlin as the old man went on. What is it that you are not telling me?

  “While I live, the warriors of Cantuware will not march against you. I can give no surety for the others, nor even for what my grandson will do when he has drunk my funeral ale.”

  He looked up, a warmer light coming into his old eyes, but Merlin had already felt the stir in the air as a youth who stood, like Artor, on the threshold between boy and man, came in. He was taller than Artor, and fair where the other boy was brown, and in his gaze Merlin perceived something watchful, as if he had already learned not to trust the world, where Artor’s gaze was still open and unafraid.