As if to crown all our endeavors, Majanah sent word from Aojun that Donah and her party had arrived safe and sain. Arthur sulked around the palace for a time—a talpa could see that he yearned to be there himself—and even Gwennach could not forbear a sigh or two; despite black expectations (or secret hopes?), she and Arthur’s outfrenne ban-charach had grown to be dear friends, and she would have greatly liked to visit Aojun herself, to see Majanah in her own realm and sphere of rule. But it was not to be.
Things slowly settled back to normal, or what passed for normal: Peace was upon us all now, the Cup’s return had seen to that. Healing had been restored to the land, and if Marguessan still nursed her dark hopes of queenship and a black Graal to empower her, she nursed them in secret and alone. Or as near as makes no matter: Mordryth she doubtless held still to her side, but Galeron her daughter was slain; and Gwain her youngest had publicly repudiated her, declaring himself quit of her in formal ceremony, like to a divorce but between child and parent. Arthur had received his kin-fealty, and had taken him as a sort of foster-son, so that Gwain’s royal blood remained so and his kinship was not lost to us.
As for me, I returned to my ‘customed duties and tasks: serving Artos and Gwen as they had need of me; performing my bardic chores at the grand new star-shaped hall Arthur was building for my order across the Great Square from Turusachan. Seren Beirdd it was to be called, ‘Star of the Bards,’ a fine graceful edifice of cream-colored stone to replace the somewhat shabby hall that had stood there.
And I travelled on errands of state, and otherwise simply spent time with my wife and my son, as so seldom before I had had the chance. It was as well I took the time when I did; for like all very good things it did not last as long as any of us might have liked.
* * *
Chapter Sixteen
It was on a cold quiet sunny winter afternoon at Turusachan that I opened a chest in my bedchamber, and quite without warning came across something I had, utterly, unaccountably, forgotten. Though just how I could have done so… well, you shall hear.
Rummaging through assorted presses and cupboards and coffers, looking for something I cannot now for all the life of me recall what, I touched what seemed an ungainly bundle of oddments wrapped in a velvet cloth. As I had thought I knew, more or less, what possessions of mine were here present, and could not place this parcel among them, I found my attention instantly diverted.
What I drew out from under the untidy welter of harp-music and spare strings and other bardic rubble was a small package, quite heavy for its size, around which was neatly folded a swath of somewhat threadbare brown velvet cloth. Within the velvet folds was a small chest of figured metal, and within that was a pouch of dark green leather, its corded strings doubly knotted closed upon its contents and fastened with a crested lead seal. No more; but at sight of this my heart began a slow pounding—for this I most assuredly did recall. Indeed, how not, for I myself had snatched it up from the floor of my cell in Oeth-Anoeth, just before Arthur had magicked us away to freedom and safety out of Marguessan’s hands.
And, incredibly—though truly the time ‘twixt then and now had been not only short but crammed with far more pressing matters—in all the months since, I had not been moved to determine what the pouch did hold. Perhaps I was simply afraid, perhaps—Well, any road, aside from the bronze dagger I had extracted (not even breaking the seal) that night Artos and Gerrans and I lay by the fireside in rough camp on Gwynedd, I had neither removed aught nor looked within. Nor even, consciously at least, remembered it at all.
Well, better now than never… Slowly I untied the drawstrings, and, all in one quick motion, before I could change my mind again, spilled the contents out onto the fox-fur coverlet of the great fourposted bed I shared with Morgan. The things glittered in the low afternoon sunlight that flooded the room through uncurtained windows: mostly jewels, as I had surmised that night in camp, judging from the weight and the sharp irregular outlines; but other things too.
And I stared at the little heap through stinging hot tears, for these assorted tokens were treasures of my mother’s; some of them plainly Keltic in origin, others of them so foreign in look and technique of working that surely they had come from Earth, cherished heirlooms she had brought away with her—but all of them the dower property of the Lady Cathelin of Gwaelod, and hence, now, mine.
After a while I reached out a tentative hand to touch the jewels, marvelling at their beauty and strangeness. There was an elaborate heavy necklace worked in silver and beautiful blue matrixy turquoise, skystone, and a ring to match it of one huge turquoise slice the size of a child’s palm; a pendant of watery gray rose-cut diamonds in shape of a heart, a silky blue sapphire at its center; a big square emerald set as a ring in some glowing hard white unknown metal; a heart-shaped ruby as big as my eye, framed in tiny diamonds; a fabulous necklace of seastones and those same rose diamonds, fashioned as a collar delicate as lace; oh, and much more besides, it was a hoard that would have disgraced neither a queen nor a dragon—and I knew, plain as if I had been told, that most of these fair things had been my father’s gifts of love to the woman he had reived away from Earth.
And that she had received them, and had worn them, as lovingly as they had been given, could not be doubted… I ran my fingers again through the gleaming tangle, thinking that I must show Arthur the Terran pieces particularly. We had nothing in Keltia to rival some of this work—the turquoise necklace in especial, which had a ritual feel to it—and Artos with his own great gift for goldcrafting would appreciate the artistry. Morgan too; she should wear all these, I had a sure and certain feeling that Cathelin who was her matemother would wish it so…
At the very bottom of the tumbled glorious heap something gleamed and vanished again amid the glitter of the more lavish pieces. I sifted the tangle of gems and pearls and chains, searching for what I thought I had glimpsed; and caught my breath, stared at it unseeing, when I found it.
Stared not so much for its value or uniqueness as for its utter startling familiarity: I had seen tiny silver pendants such as this one a thousand times, at the throats of Ban-draoi throughout Keltia—a crescent and V-rod, adorned with the spirals sacred to the Mother. And upon the same fine gold chain, a suncross in the same rose gold: the suncross, bossed and equal-armed within a circle, that is the universal symbol in Keltia of our ancient faith.
I turned the two small pieces over, to make certain of what I already somehow knew, and saw without surprise the alien hallmarks of the Terran goldsmith who had fabricated these tokens long years since—perhaps even in a corner of Earth that had once been Keltic, had seen the great immrama, even, centuries ago. That my late mother should have worn such tokens came as no surprise—half Keltia did so—but that they had come with her from Earth, as part of her personal dower, was more than surprise: It was shock.
And it raised more questions than I could just now compass: Had my mother, a Terran, yet been of the faith—a Terran Ban-draoi, if such could be? Was that how Gwyddno had met her, and why he had loved her, and fetched her away with him? I would give much to know, I suddenly realized; and then all but stag-leaped off the bed in surprise, as I glanced up to see someone standing quietly in the doorway.
"I knocked," said Gweniver apologetically, "but you were a million star-miles away."
"Nay, further still, I think," I said, recovering myself though my heart still raced. "But see, Gwen! See what my mother has left me."
The Queen came and sat beside me cross-legged on the coverlet, and we yearned over the jewels like eager children dazzled by a faerie hoard, touching them with reverent hands, exclaiming at the strangeness of the Terran pieces, admiring the skill of the metalworkers.
"After all this time—" she breathed. "Oh Tal-bach, I am glad…" She reached behind her for the thing she had been carrying when she entered, which I had noticed but not noticed, if you take my leaning. It was an ancient leather satchel, unmistakably Keltic in design, its worn brown leather studded with
rock crystals and garnets and chunky amethysts in hammered silver bezels. We use such things—tiachan in the Gaeloch—to house even more elaborate book-shrines, in which are protected rare or valuable volumes, kept as they deserve.
"Gwyn ap Nudd gave this me," Gweniver was saying, "what time he came to Caerdroia when you were in Oeth-Anoeth. He bade me hold it safe for you against your return; but, tell you the truth, I did not think of it when first you came home, and after that there was too much else to think on. My sorrow for the delay."
Aye so; and how uncannily Gwen had just echoed my own thoughts of scarce a half-hour since… This seeming coincidence was no chance hap at all. I reached out and took the thing from her, sliding it over the coverlet. It was quite astoundingly heavy—she had held it in both arms when first she came in—and I stroked the smooth brown leather, shiny with age and long careful polishing.
Oh, I remembered everything now, right enough: how when I had stood before the crystal tomb of Merlynn beneath the hollow hill, Birogue herself had given the leather pouch of jewels into my hands. I could see her in memory’s eye, taking it from the niche in the stone in which it had been carefully kept until what time I had arrived to receive it. And my surprise had flared and faded, for I had by then seen my mother’s grave in the halls of the Sidhe, had heard Seli the queen of the Shining Folk and Birogue my Morgan’s tutor in magic tell me how my mother, their friend, had died among them and they could not save her. They had passed on to me, as legacy from her, her jewels and her truth; and Marguessan’s final, greatest cruelty in my two years’ captivity was that she had taken the memory of all this from me, while yet leaving me the mere possession of the jewels themselves to torment me.
But now the whole of my heritance had come to me at last… Gweniver was watching me with close concern, her gaze shifting from the satchel to me and back again.
"Well, Talynno, there it is. I did not know about those"—she gestured to the gems sparkling on the coverlet—"and had I done so perhaps I might have delayed bringing you what Gwyn had consigned to me. Perhaps too much is too much, and now is not the time to open the tiachan. But I will tell you what Gwyn told me: It holds your mother’s writings, her journals and chapbooks and such, both here in Keltia and in her home on Earth. I do not know, I have not looked within—no one has, the seal is intact—but it seems to me that there is some great reason for the timing here. You remembering the jewels, I remembering the satchel—something more than memory seems to be moving here. Surely it cannot be chance." The ghost of a smile as she nodded at the gems again. "Neither of us believes in that."
When I did not answer, she smiled a real smile, dropped a quick kiss on my cheek and was gone. I looked sidewise at the tiachan as it sat there, glared evilly upon it as if it had been some coiled nathair; then took grip of myself. How could aught be here to hurt or harm me? This was of my mother; and perhaps here in that satchel were answers to those questions I had been asking myself ever since the jewels spilled out onto the bed… With a gesture half resolve, half resignation, I pulled the tiachan over to me and broke the seal—the seal that matched the one upon the pouch-strings, the seal of Merlynn Llwyd himself, who had been mover and guardian of so much.
Within the four leather flaps that formed the satchel was a thing of piercing beauty. I had in the course of my bardic studies seen a goodly number of these book-shrines, but never had I beheld one so fair as this…
It was like a little house of silver, an oak box shaped like a high-roofed cottage completely covered with shining silver plates. Rope-edged with twisted gold and copper wire, it was studded with all manner of gemstones and enamelled in bright clear colors with armorial devices. Among those I marked my own House’s wave-embattled tower (how ghastly prophetic that had proved!), and side by side with Gwyddno my father’s particular arms, there was a lovely rendering in opalescent greens and blues of a sea-gryphon, surely my mother’s own device…
But all this splendor was mere shrouding to what was within: Neatly packed within the silver shrine were perhaps ten or twelve leather-bound volumes, in two tiers, all with bone-stiffened covers and interleaved with butter-soft suede squares to cushion each against the next. The books themselves were small, thick, filled with tough tissue-thin paper of the sort our bookbinders call crystalskin; most perdurable. Whoever had made these had made them to last.
Also there were four books the like of which had never been bound or made or even seen in Keltia… I touched one of them, gently, breathlessly. So foreign—Like those certain jewels, this book and its three fellows had been fashioned on Earth, had been written in by my mother upon her native world, long before ever she was my mother, before she had met Gwyddno, before Earth itself, even, had made the least tentative sortie out of itself and into space.
All at once I was shamed thoroughly of my fear and hesitance. My mother had died leaving these to me; it had been all she could do for me, all she could give me save life itself. Surely it was little enough to give back, that I should read her words; did I not owe it to her, and to my father, to do so? I settled down against the pillows; and with a feeling of a vast journey about to be embarked upon, in a kind of peace and a sort of triumph I opened the most ancient of the journals from Earth—dated on the flyleaf, in a delicate hand using blue ink, ‘1935’—and began to read.
Morgan found me there, hours later, curled up in the semidarkness, a book still open and unregarded beside me. I had skimmed through all the volumes, right straight through to the last, written beneath the faerie hill when the author knew her end was upon her; then I had gone back to the first and begun to read slowly, savoringly, with care and attention and the bard’s sense for language alive and alight.
For all my familiarity with Englic—the tongue my mother had spoken on Earth, and one with which the bardic colleges were well conversant—still I found parts very tiring going, the idiom hard to interpret and shade. But throughout the journals I could sense the flair my mother had had for words, the flair she had gifted over to me—this for her, like music for me, was how the Awen had worked in her—and she had even filled the margins and blank leaves with vivid, humorous, enchanting sketches. She had been an artist, and I was glad to learn it; had learned, too, why she had worn the medallions…
Morgan said no word, but slipped in behind me and put her arms around me, letting her cheek rest against my shoulder; and after a moment I reached a hand up to touch her face.
Her lips brushed my fingers. "Gwennach told me," she said quietly. "I did not know if you wanted anyone, but—Do you care to speak of it now?"
I opened my mouth to say Aye of course, but instead to my great surprise heard myself saying something quite other.
"Nay, I think not. Not yet. Not now." I gestured helplessly to the scattered books and jewels. "She was—I do not—I need to be with her a while, I think, cariad, before I can speak of her, even to you. Do you mind? I do not mean to put you off—look, she has even given me her jewels, for my wife to wear after her. She would like you."
Though I could not see her face, I knew that Morgan smiled. "Nay, love!" she said, tightening her arms around me. "This is the first time you and your mother have spoken, heart to heart; small wonder you need time to take it to you. Besides," she added, and I heard the smile now in her voice, "no woman who calls herself wise ever intrudes between her mate and his mother! But you have had enough for one day; let it be a while. Speak to my mother, if you like; hear her wisdom on this. As for these, we shall read them together, one day, if it is your will; aye, and Gerrans too, to learn of his Terran grandmother. But now"—all at once her voice was of an everyday note—"it is time for supper, and Artos and Gwennach are waiting on us to go down with them."
I felt a short sharp flare of utterly unreasonable annoyance. Supper! Please! I wished only to go on reading all night, all next day, that was the only hunger I needed to feed just now. I longed to revel in my mother’s wit and words and insights, to learn what she knew and how she felt, to hear of he
r thoughts and hopes and fears, her life on Earth so strange to me, the grim account she had given (which I had only skimmed) of the great war that had come upon all Terra’s civilized nations, out of which dark days Gwyddno had borne her away…
But I also knew my wife was right, as usual. It was too much, all at once; I would do better to ration this out to myself. Anything more was a kind of soul gluttony that served no one and that would only make me sick, and do no respect to reader and writer alike.
So we went down to Mi-cuarta for the nightmeal, which Artos and Gweniver had made their pleasant custom that they and all others who dwelt or worked in Turusachan should share. It made for an easy and calming end to the day, and ofttimes was the only hour or two when friends and kin could be together. As now, for instance…
As Morgan and I took our usual seats at the high board, I saw Gerrans come in, and as usual these days he was not alone. Cristant Kendalc’hen was with him, the young Ban-draoi priestess who had ridden back with us from Caervanogue, as one who had achieved the Graal. She was a tall silent pantherine creature with the red hair of the Aoibhells of Thomond, to whom she was closely connected. Morgan and I had given her hospitality many times before, at Tair Rhandir, as the guest of our son; but we were as yet clueless whether or not a romance was toward—they seemed to prefer the dueling-hall to the trysting-bower—and since they seemed perfectly content we offered no prying parental word. Though we thought much…
It would displease no one if they did choose to make a match of it, I thought privately, watching them together. Indeed, Cristant seemed with Gerrans different than her usual grave capable self, and was by no means as silent as most folk thought her, and as I myself could attest. I had heard her speak her mind to Gerrans when she thought no one was about—and nay, I was not eavesdropping, merely too close not to hear—and she was not slow to do so, her words neither scant nor off the mark. Gerrans called her Crissa, though none else was permitted to tamper so with her name, or, knowing her, would even dare…
The Hedge of Mist Page 23