Against a Darkening Sky

by Lauren B. Davis

  Wilona takes note of the translator standing near Paulinus. He is thin as a willow switch, but his hands look strong, and there are muscles around the curve of his shoulders and in his neck. No feeble court-rat, this one. His mouth is wide and he smiles often, a little too often, perhaps. But his eyes intrigue her. They are a remarkable shade of green, even from this distance, bright as a spring leaf. It’s hard to turn away from them, but this could be trickery. The Folk, after all, are known to have such eyes. Regardless, in his simple robe of undyed wool and his wooden cross, he makes a poor figure next to Paulinus. As the canopy moves in the breeze, sun glints off Paulinus’s gold cross.

  Although she doesn’t wish to admit it, the elf-eyed one is a good speaker and understands his audience. She’s sure Paulinus doesn’t have the gift of storytelling, but the plain-robed monk does. She sees it in Paulinus’s face: the ideas may be his, but he has no sense of poetry.

  “Beloved people, we come to reveal secrets of great worth, full of life-giving wonders, and to invite you to enter under the protection of the Almighty and Merciful God, who never scorns or rejects those who approach with humble hearts. How beloved you are, that the highest chieftain in Rome, Pope Gregory the Great, sent his companions and me”—here he gestures to Paulinus to make the reference clear—”across the land and sea and land again, a great journey, so you might receive the good news.

  “This is how it came to pass: one day some merchants, recently arrived in Rome, displayed their wares in the marketplace. In the crowd the high chieftain himself, Gregory the Great, saw some boys for sale. They had fair complexions, fine-cut features, and beautiful hair.” A murmur goes through the audience. They don’t like to think of themselves for sale in a market. Paulinus bows his head, and the elfish one holds up his hand and continues.

  “Much taken by their beauty, he inquired what part of the world they came from. He was told they came from the island of Britain, where all have this appearance.” The people are quiet, pleased to be called beautiful.

  Wilona fingers the warm and comforting rune stone she has placed in her pocket.

  “The chieftain asked if they were Christians and, learning they were ignorant of Christ’s message, said, ‘Alas! How sad such graceful features conceal minds void of God’s grace! What is the name of this race?’ ‘They are called Angles,’ he was told. ‘That is appropriate,’ he said, ‘for they have angelic faces, and it is right that they should become joint-heirs with the angels in heaven.’” The crowd chuckles at the pun, and then sounds of approval fill the air, for as pleasant as it is to be told one is beautiful, it is more pleasing still to be told it’s one’s right to inherit great treasure.

  Wilona sees what’s happening. A clever mix of flattery and glittering promises. The people, fickle as bees, will be seduced. She tsks and, as she does, realizes people have begun to take notice of her. Touilt was right to stay away.

  As she rounds the edge of the amphitheatre, she nearly runs into Margawn and his hound. Margawn’s size is always somewhat overwhelming. He looks down at her, frowning. His eyebrows are the colour of otter pelts, darker than the golden blond hair curling unbraided about his face.

  “I hadn’t thought to see you here today, Wilona.”

  “Shouldn’t I be here?” She scratches Bana behind the ears, and he leans against her leg, heavy as a pony.

  “That dog takes to you. He doesn’t take to many.” Margawn smiles, his teeth surprisingly white behind the trimmed beard. “I didn’t think there’d be anything of interest to you.”

  “I have a curious nature.”

  “But you’re not staying?”

  “I’m not staying.” The dog is sitting on her foot now, wanting her to keep scratching. She pulls her foot free. “If your dog will let me leave.”

  Margawn chuckles. “Get off, Bana. Get off. I think I’ve heard enough as well. Will you permit me to escort you?”

  Wilona blinks. Margawn has escorted her and Touilt home from the hall occasionally but has never suggested such a thing in daylight. She looks at him, opening herself to an inquiry that cannot be spoken. A certain tension flickers round him. “If you’ve no other pressing duties, my lord.”

  As they pass among the wattle and daub buildings of the village proper, people waiting their turn for a seat in the amphitheatre pop their heads out of windows and doorways. Wilona wonders what the village gossip is, what people think of this new god, but it wouldn’t be fitting for a seithkona to ask when she claims to receive messages from the spirits. She lets her mind open to the energies around her. There is no open hostility, but she senses the distance Touilt has warned her about time and again. Our place is near the holy spaces, guarding and watching the borders, the doorways between worlds. The people are not entirely comfortable with us.

  A small girl, holding a wooden doll, runs through the snicket, her mother chasing after her, laughing. Maccus, the bone-worker, sits on a bench talking to his daughter, Aylild, who holds her own child in her arms. Again, Wilona wonders what it would be like to share her bed with a man every night, to wake up to the laughter of children, to sit by the fire in the evening, watching the light play across the faces of her loved ones. What would it be like to spend her days in the laughter and gossip of the weaving house with the other women, known and knowing, claimed not by the gods but by her friends and neighbours? Tonight she and Touilt will sit again by a lonely fire, sleep at the edge of the village, now without even the comfort of knowing their purpose is valued. She will drink from a solitary cup, eat from a solitary bowl.

  Margawn clears his throat, and Wilona shakes off the sticky tendrils of self-doubt. Borders, doorways between worlds. Perhaps it is impossible to ever really be alone anyway, not if one lives in the company of the spirits and the dead.

  When they arrive at Wilona and Touilt’s hut, Elba is lying in front of the door, her tiny eyes closed, her mouth open, showing her short tusks in a sort of smile. Bana’s hackles rise and Margawn makes a low noise in his throat to calm him.

  “I see you have a guard pig,” says Margawn. “Some people use geese.”

  “I expect she serves as well. Thank you for your escort. I’m in your debt.”

  “You and Touilt should have been included in the hall last night.”

  Wilona’s eyebrows fly up. She has never heard Margawn criticize any of Caelin’s decisions. “I agree. It was a great insult to Touilt, and she won’t forget it.”

  “There was a lot of talk. Most of it none of my business.”

  “Can it be we agree on this issue of gods?”

  He drops his head, purses his lips, and then looks up at her from beneath a furrowed brow. “I’m Lord Caelin’s man. I have my oath to honour.”

  “So do I.”

  “And is your first oath also to Lord Caelin?”

  She searches his face. It could be he was sent to test her and Touilt’s loyalty. “I’ve never forsaken an oath.”

  He looks at the ground, shifts his balance from one tree-trunk leg to the other. She finds herself hoping Touilt will not come through the door.

  At last he looks up again. “You need a friend, Wilona.”

  Sensing he has more to say, she waits. He tucks his thumbs in his belt and looks down for a moment before meeting her eyes again. Blood tints his cheeks.

  “I would be honoured to be that friend.”

  Wilona’s heart pulses in her throat and, at the same time, she is in danger of giggling. How soft his lips look, under that sweep of moustache. It would be fatal to laugh at such a proud and powerful man and it would carry a meaning she does not intend. Besides, an entirely different feeling, all warmth and longing, blossoms in her belly. And yet there they are, giggles, bubbling like an overheated soup in her chest. She bites the inside of her mouth, hard, and continues to do so until the urge disappears. It’s impossible to know what to say. An hour with Godfred during the spring rain festival is the sum of her sexual experience. As seithkona, she’s not forbidden sexual contact, but the
gods’ claims take precedence, and she may never marry. But here, now, this man stands before her, looking more uncomfortable by the second. Oh, how theoretical her mind gets, when the practical is right in front of her! Then, too, there is Lord Caelin’s wrath to consider. Margawn is taking a great risk.

  “Lord Caelin—” She falters.

  “My lord is a man of strong … appetites … but an honourable man, faultless in this way.” Margawn squints, and pauses before continuing. “During the battle against Cwichelm of Wessex I had the opportunity to do Lord Caelin a service, one which left a debt of honour.”

  Several things occur to her simultaneously: it’s known Caelin has his eye on her; Margawn saved Caelin’s life; and how serious this is, if Margawn would choose to ask for the right to approach her as the settling of an honour-debt. “You’ve spoken with Lord Caelin?”

  “Yes.”

  “And?”

  “As I said, he’s a man of honour.”

  “You’re presumptuous, aren’t you?”

  “If my friendship is unwelcome, you’ve only to say so.”

  She sees she’s offended him but can’t seem to stop. “So why not ask for a parcel of land? Or a fine horse?”

  “The debt’s worth more than land or livestock.”

  There’s no clever answer for this, and the flattery sends blood to her face. “The honour would be mine,” she says, surprising herself, and then, recovering, “and I do hope our friendship will … deepen. However I have my duties, to Lady Touilt, to the goddess, as you have yours to Lord Caelin.” She drops her eyes before raising them again. “We must trust to the gods for the proper time, I think, and the proper place.”

  The bold words scald her mouth and throat, making them as dry as heated wool. Margawn holds her eyes and there’s no fear of any laughter now; it’s far more likely she’ll either vomit or faint. His eyes, she thinks, are the colour of the tawny river. She never noticed that before.

  He smiles, a little, at last, and the lines in his brow soften. “It is well, then.” He taps Bana on the head, turns on his heel, and, the hound at his side, strides up the path, the muscles of his long legs showing through the lacings on his trousers. She watches him, baffled, fearing she said the wrong thing. Is this the way lovers behave? He disappears over the hill. She sits on the step next to Elba and, feeling decidedly woozy, lays her head on the pig’s belly. They stay like that for some time, Wilona listening to the heartbeat of a pig, wondering what it would be like to lay her head on Margawn’s chest.

  When she opens the door and steps over Elba, she finds Touilt wrapped in her blue cloak, gazing into a bowl of dark water. Whatever spell she has woven is broken by Wilona’s entrance, and she agitates the water’s surface with her finger before looking up. When she does, her eyes hold anger, sorrow, and fear.

  Wilona’s thoughts of Margawn scatter. “What do you see?”

  “Very little, which is the worst of it,” says Touilt.

  The next day, Touilt is up early, and she is firm. Wilona is to go to the river and check the eel-bucks. Wilona protests, but Touilt will not have it; they must be seen going about their business as usual. To huddle in the doorway, waiting, gives away their power. Trust the gods, she says, over and over, trust the gods. And so, with the warmth of the morning sun on her face, Wilona sets off down the pebble-strewn path to the water’s edge, turns right, and follows the river until she comes to the place where she set the traps. She’s taken Elba with her, and the pig roots happily in the undergrowth, grunting when she finds something she likes. Wilona hauls up the willow eel-buck and can tell by the flapping and struggle inside she has a catch. She unlatches the lid and looks. Sure enough, a lovely eel, not too big, writhing furiously.

  She says a prayer of thanks to the nixie who lives by the willow, who Touilt saw once, a beautiful, water-pale woman wearing a green cape, with sharp green teeth. Nixies were often treacherous, and some credited this one with the drowning of two little boys three springs ago, but Wilona never feels the presence of evil here. Still, the nixie might merely be satisfied by the annual gift of a young lamb or piglet, and if more than one of Elba’s offspring have been offered to her, it’s a worthwhile sacrifice.

  Knowing how long an eel can live out of water, and not relishing having it flop about in the creel all the way home, she quickly kills it and cleans it, tossing the skin and entrails to Elba, who slurps and gobbles with gusto. Wilona rinses the eel thoroughly in river water, making sure every bit of slime and grit is gone, and all that remains is the firm flesh. She thinks how good it will be, stewed with garlic, onion, and parsley. Wilona cuts it into several pieces and wraps them in large green leaves before settling them in the creel. She spies some crowfoot and picks a bunch; she will make a salve for blisters. She wonders: Will these new Christians have the same respect for the old charms? She chuffs. Of course they will. The ways of a lifetime can’t be overturned in an instant like some wobbly stool.

  Away from the burbling waters, she spots wood avens in the shelter of an ash tree. Such a useful plant, good for diseases of the chest, for pains and stitches in the side, it dissolves bruises and, if the roots are boiled in wine and drunk, stops the spitting of blood. She heads toward it. It’s pleasant in the wood, with the gentle river beside her as a laughing companion. She thinks all will be well. The people of Ad Gefrin know the gods of this place too intimately to abandon them. Elba has stretched out in a soft hollow beneath an oak. Wilona looks up and realizes how high the sun is in the sky.

  “Come on, lazy one, we’ve left Touilt alone too long.” Wilona finally picks up a stick to prod the pig, and Elba, grunting protest, gets to her feet.

  Now and again the pig stops to root in the earth, and Wilona sings a song about a prince lured into the woods by a beautiful elf, never to be seen again. Then she stops. Elba has halted, nosing the air. What is that sound? At first she thinks it’s a trick of the river babble, and then wonders if hunters are in the wood; but no skilled hunter would make such noise. She adjusts the creel’s leather strap across her chest and tucks her dagger into the herb basket. She removes her belt and fashions a leash for Elba, fearing the pig will run off into the forest in fright. Wilona moves off the trail, picking her way through the underbrush, following the swelling voices. Her heart begins to beat erratically, and she tenses as any wild thing in the wood will when confronted with an unusual phenomenon. The noise is coming from the direction of Touilt’s dwelling.

  Wilona has a sudden image of a mob, festooned in crosses, crying out oaths to the White Christ, searching for her and Touilt. Her stomach clenches. She’s heard tales of Christians killing the priests of Woden and Thunor. Is it possible the people, realizing she and Touilt will not become priestesses to the new god, now seek to kill them? She shouldn’t have left Touilt alone.

  She follows the noise. Some laughter, yes, and many voices, but it doesn’t have the raucous excitement, the ferocity, of a hunt. She creeps closer, able now to see flashes of brightly coloured cloth. She slinks through the trees, ties Elba to a river birch, and puts the baskets in the branches where the pig cannot get at them.

  Wilona goes from boulder to tree trunk to boulder, craning, stretching. Whoever they are, they’re not moving nearer, yet neither are they moving away. She spots a good-sized ash with low branches and dashes to it, her sides heaving. She waits to catch her breath, her back against the tree. When she’s calmed, she grabs a branch, hikes up her tunic, and climbs hand over hand, her feet straining for purchase, grateful for the deep fissures in the tree’s aged bark. At last she’s high enough to view the happenings below.

  A line of people snakes from the river’s shallow bank to the water’s edge. Men and women, children and the aged. She sees faces she knows—Farman the tanner and his wife, Sunild; Osgar the blacksmith and his family; women who have sought out Touilt, looking for tinctures and teas—Begila, Wynflaed, and Saewara. Those closest to the water are quieter, even the children, who shuffle nervously, without their usual b
oisterous ways. Her eyes follow the line. A young Christian monk stands at the riverbank, and in the water a little way from shore are Coifi, Paulinus, and Paulinus’s elfish interpreter. Ricbert, too, stands on the bank, his hands at his chest with palms together. A woman Wilona doesn’t know stands before Paulinus and, with a quick movement, Coifi takes hold of her and throws her backwards into the water.

  Wilona only just stops herself from crying out. Mass drowning? What madness is this? Her mind explodes, searching for some charm or song to break the spell, but then Coifi hauls the woman up. She is wide-eyed, braids dripping, her wet tunic clinging to her body, showing every curve and fold, her hands covering her nose and mouth. The priest makes the sign of the cross over her, says something, smiles, and turns her over to the interpreter, who helps her to the bank where other women wait with dry blankets.

  So, this must be the Christian rite of baptism. Symbol, no doubt, of dying and being reborn, as was their Jesus. Good thing they’ve chosen water and not fire, Wilona thinks, and that they don’t demand followers be hung on the criminal tree like their god. Why have they come this way, though? Why not on any of the shorter paths leading from the village to the river? Of course, it’s deliberate. They’re flaunting the new god in front of Touilt to show her powerlessness, parading past the sacred well, the great yew. Wilona’s heart sinks. She should never have left Touilt alone, left the well and the tree untended. Her vision flashes before her—the felling of the sacred trees! But the great yew tree is waving gently in the breeze, still standing. She wants to yell and hoot. Kings come and kings go. Woden has protected the tree.

  She smiles, careless now of who might see her. Let them think she’s a daughter of the horned one. She studies the faces of the people coming to the water and those leaving, dripping and exhausted. How many of them truly believe in this new god and his promises? How many just want to please the king and curry favour? How many are merely caught up in the drama of the moment? Those swept along by fine speeches and dreams of new glory, not to mention promises of peace and comfort, doubtless will slip back to the old ways at their first disappointment. Without a strong hand to hold them to the new faith, it will amount to little. Here and there, the set of someone’s lips or a frown reveals there’s no belief at all, not even a temporary one, only a fear of going against the wishes of the king.