“‘Young stranger,’ Madrone spoke at last, ‘Esus, as you say the druids call you after a sacrificial god. It is our ancient right to offer asylum to fugitives. To interfere with the rites or sacrifices of the druids of Mona or any justice they might see fit to administer, that is another matter.’
“Weak as he was from his fever, the boy stood up again. There was a calm about him that made him seem older than he was, as if he would have us all know the strength of his will, the certainty of his intent.
“‘Thank you, all of you, for your kindness to a stranger. I will go alone.’
“All of us were touched by his determination. No one wanted to say the stark truth: you could not find your way out of this marsh alone, let alone across the wild mountains. We all watched, speechless, as he walked towards the door.
“‘Don’t go, my son, don’t go,’ the merchant cried out in such anguish that the boy turned around. ‘There must be another way.’
“The boy’s weakness began to overtake him against his will. He hadn’t eaten anything but a bit of broth. His legs began to shake. I didn’t wait for instruction from the priestesses, I went to him and slipped my arm around him.
“‘Eat something. At least eat something before you go.’
“I saw the priestesses exchange glances. I learned later that it was then they decided to train me, instead of just keeping me as a servant. I only tell you, because it was a gift that came to me from his presence among us.”
“Don’t be so humble, Aoife,” I interrupted for the first time. “We all love you for loving him.”
She nodded and bent her head, while I translated again, and then she went on.
“He sat down and accepted food, and while he ate, Madrone spoke to him again.
“‘Think, Esus, think carefully. You have been gone some days. You don’t know what has happened since then. It may be there is no danger to your Maeve, no danger unless you return. You were the one they wanted for sacrifice, not her. She is also carrying a child who was foretold. By now she may have given birth.’
“‘The misbegotten child of a misbegotten child,’ Esus quoted the druid prophecy.
“‘From whose line will spring the last one of us to stand against the Romans,’ Madrone completed the druid prophecy; she had paid close attention to his story. ‘The druids of Mona will not allow harm to come to this child, however it was begotten.’
“‘But Maeve.’ The boy’s voice broke. ‘Once the child is born….Maeve. What will happen to her then? She was afraid of what the druids might do. She asked me to run away with her before, to take her home with me, and I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t.’
“He broke down then and wept silently, and such was the force of his grief that everyone else wept, too.
“‘It may be that you can take her to safety yet,’ said the merchant, coming and putting his arm around the boy. ‘I have a ship at Nidum, loaded and ready to sail.’
I smiled to hear these words, Joseph ready to rescue me, sight unseen, not knowing how many chances he would have in the future.
“‘But we must find out first what has happened and where she is,’ Madrone insisted, ‘not have you rushing off into danger and endangering her.’
“I understood better than the older people how hard it was for him to wait, to be patient, how desperately he wanted to be like a hero in tales told by the bards.
“‘How?’ he asked at last. ‘Is there someone trustworthy you can send to Mona to look for her, someone the druids will answer to?’
“No one spoke right away. He had raised a sticky point. The priestesses of Avalon were the poor relations, the ones who did not live on the gold route, hold arbitrations among the tribes, maneuver and manipulate kings.
“‘There may be a better way,’ said Madrone, ‘a quicker way. It’s worth a try.’
“‘What way?’ asked Esus, suddenly uneasy.
“‘We have seers here as well as healers. Surely as a student at the college, you studied the arts of divination.’
“‘I have studied them,’ he said after a moment, ‘but I have never practiced them. It is forbidden.’
“The priestesses were taken aback.
“‘Forbidden for students, you mean?’ Madrone asked. ‘I don’t see how else you can learn except by practice, but that’s druids for you. Anyway, you wouldn’t be doing it, we would.’
“‘Not forbidden by the druids, forbidden by Yahweh, my God.’”
Aoife did not add this detail, but I could imagine the looks passing among the priestesses. He was a stranger, so it figured that he had a strange god. And he was called by the name of one of the more peculiar Celtic gods. Too many gods in the mix.
“‘Your god forbids the consulting of oracles?’ Madrone asked, with a touch of exasperation. ‘How does your god make himself understood?’
“‘He doesn’t,’ said Esus, ‘He doesn’t expect to be understood; he is beyond our understanding. But he has given us many commandments to keep, so that we remember him always.’”
I could picture my beloved knitting his brow and chewing his cheek, becoming lost in thought, almost forgetting his heartbreak in pondering this quandary. It made me homesick for him, for all our debates under the yew trees on Mona.
“‘How tedious of your god,’ said Madrone.
“‘Long ago his people, our people, had a king named Saul,’ the merchant spoke up to ease the tension. ‘He went to a sorceress to find out how he would fare in an important battle. After that Yahweh withdrew his favor from the king, and his reign and his life ended tragically. I expect the boy is thinking of that.’
“The priestesses were more mystified than ever. What king wouldn’t consult an oracle before battle?
“‘I am thinking of that,’ the boy said after a silence. ‘And I am thinking that Saul only cared about his own power. I care…I care about Maeve. I love Maeve and so,’ he paused again. ‘and so I will break the law. And I pray to my God, God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, if I offend you, let the punishment for this offense fall on me alone.’”
Aoife fell silent, waiting for me to translate. I opened my mouth but found I couldn’t speak. Long ago Joseph had told me something of what had happened at Avalon, but not like this, not so that I felt I was there in the room with my beloved when he defied his god. For me. The compression of time was dizzying, how strange to grieve for him after all that had happened, after I had lived the rest of this story and knew how it ended.
The sound of Sarah’s voice brought me back to the present in this wood, where the rain had now stopped and the stars shone through wisps of mist. She had taken over the translation. She did not need to understand all Aoife’s words to tell the story. She knew it in her bones.
“Do you want me to go on?” Aoife asked when Sarah had finished.
“I think I know the rest,” I said. “You saw that I had been exiled, sent beyond the ninth wave. Joseph told me that he and Esus were going to try to find me at sea. And then the storm came.”
Aoife nodded, almost bowed her head, and I could feel her relief at being released from the effort of words, as if she were a creature, like a silkie, forced to live out of her element and at last allowed to return to the sea.
“Thank you, Aoife.” I wanted to acknowledge her gift. “No one could have answered me better.”
But Sarah was not satisfied.
“There is more I want to know.” Sarah spoke in Aoife’s dialect now, which she must have picked up just from hearing the story. She was quick with languages. “If you are willing.” She remembered her manners.
“Ask, daughter of Esus.”
It occurred to me that I had not told Aoife who Sarah was. I suppose no second sight was needed to figure it out.
“What form of divination did you use? How did you see? How did you know?”
It startled me to realize that I did not know the answer to that question. Neither Joseph nor Jesus had ever told me.
“Madrone and a few other priestesses
gifted in the sight walked the spiral path to the Otherworld where all things are revealed.”
I noticed she spoke that phrase as if she had repeated it many times, as if the words could never be separated from each other.
“All?” said Sarah. Her voice was soft, but it had an edge. “All?”
“Say what you would say, daughter of Maeve.”
She was my daughter now, I noticed, now that she was about to be difficult. No matter. Maybe I could retire and have my daughter be the one to upset everyone.
“If all is revealed, then why did you, or anyway the priestesses, let my father think my mother had died? Why did they let him suffer all those years, bearing the guilt of abandoning her, feeling as though he had as good as killed her? Why didn’t they tell him she was alive? Why didn’t they tell him where to find her? Do you know what it cost him to ask, to risk being forsaken by his god? What good is the sight if it can’t spare people from suffering?”
I hadn’t seen Sarah so angry since her rage at me had driven her to run away, away from my stories, to seek the truth for herself. I had been afraid of her anger then. It made me giddy to realize that I wasn’t any more. Her anger was hers, fine, furious, a shining storm. I thought of the huge storm that had blown my boat hundreds of miles over mountainous billows. And I thought of her father, ranting against hypocrites, inciting riots in the Temple. It was a good thing there were no tables nearby to overturn.
There was only Aoife, sitting there, her silence deep as any votive well, ready to receive Sarah’s rage as an offering.
“I don’t know,” Aoife said at length.
“Don’t know what?” Sarah pressed.
“I don’t know what good the sight is. I don’t know why the priestesses didn’t know your mother would survive or, if they did, why they did not tell your father.”
I waited. We all waited to see if she would say something more, something like: they had to lose each other to find each other again. Or he had to know this guilt and grief to become who he was meant to be, and so did your mother.
But she said nothing.
I wondered if I would ever be that wise.
“It was more than ten years before they found each other again,” Sarah added. “Then they had only a few years together. Do you know how he died?”
What was Sarah up to, I wondered. Alyssa and Bele shifted uneasily, and Alyssa mouthed something to me I couldn’t catch. I shook my head as imperceptibly as I could, meaning, I don’t know either.
“You mean the god-making death?” Aoife said matter-of-factly. “We know. We never lost sight of him. And Joseph always returned to us when he was in Pretannia. Long ago we hoped that Joseph would bring you and your mother back to Avalon with him. He wanted to protect you; we would have given you sanctuary. Now it is too late.”
“Too late for what?” I blurted out, suddenly afraid that we would not get to Avalon in time to see Joseph.
“Too late,” Aoife repeated. “Too late to be safe.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
JOSEPH
AVALON, YNYS AFALON, the Isle of Apples, was and is a between-the-worlds place, between earth and water, between water and sky, between light and mist, between the human world and the other.
Not far from the marshy sanctuary, ports along the Sabrinae Aestuary received goods from all over the world and shipped out tin and lead from the Mendip Hills, as well as meat from abundant herds, and captives taken in raids to be sold as slaves. My foster-father’s tribe, the Silures, lived to the north of the estuary and still fought other tribes who were more welcoming of the Roman merchants who wanted to settle there. So far there were no official Roman settlements, but there was scant doubt that the Romans wanted to gain control of the shipping routes. So the southwest of Pretannia was also between the worlds of skirmishing tribes, each with their own king and territory, however disputed, and the Roman occupation now firmly established in the east.
Still, Avalon itself, especially in Springtime a maze of waterways and islands with the mysterious Tor looming over the inland sea, remained set apart from commerce and conflict—a place you could vanish into if you were a fugitive, a place that could vanish, if threatened.
“What is that?” asked Bele, pointing to the singular uprising in the land, visible from miles away.
“We call it the Tor,” Aoife answered; no one needed to translate Bele’s question.
“Tor?” Bele repeated.
“It’s a word that means high hill,” I explained.
“I’ve never seen a hill like that,” objected Alyssa. “It looks more like a finger, or, well, another kind of protuberance.”
“I agree,” said Bele. “It’s too narrow and pointy to look like breasts the way hills should.”
I had never pondered the metaphorical etiquette of landscape; I was amused, but also vaguely uneasy and not sure why. I decided not to translate for Aoife, but she must have gotten the gist. She smiled a small, private smile. She knew, as we could not, that the view from a distance was deceptive.
“Was it built?” Sarah spoke over her shoulder to Aoife, who rode pinion behind her.
A good question, I thought. There was something deliberate about the Tor, eloquent, as if this earth had risen up to speak, but to what? To the gods? To the people? To the stars? I did not know then that the whole landscape for miles around was encoded, alive with huge earthen figures. Only those who could shapeshift into flight could appreciate this eloquence.
“Some say yes, some say no,” Aoife answered. “No one knows. No one remembers a time when the Tor was not.”
We rode on, our silence matched by the silence of cloud shadow moving over the plains and the shadow of the Tor lengthening towards us. By sunset we were in a watery land, loud with bird song, and so full of reflection that it felt at times as though we were riding through the sky. At a signal from Aoife, Sarah halted her horse, and Aoife dismounted.
“From here we go by boat,” Aoife said.
Alyssa and Bele got the gist and exchanged looks of alarm.
“What about our horses?” Alyssa wanted to know.
“We have no boats big enough, but we have a place nearby where they can be stabled and fed, as we do the horses of all our guests.”
Sarah translated but Alyssa remained wary.
“Sarah and Mother of Sarah,” she said, “you have a mission here to see your old friend, but I’d just as soon stay with the horses, if it’s all the same to you.”
“I’ll keep you company,” offered Bele.
I knew the two sometime pirates had transferred their passion for their lost ship to their horses, but I also sensed they were reluctant to go further into the water-land surrounding the protuberance. We were at some boundary here. The air felt charged with invisible currents that I suspected were intended to excite fear or even repulsion in anyone who approached.
“As you wish,” said Aoife. “I will call someone to tend to you as well as the horses.”
She turned her attention from us and made a series of calls, each distinct but all more bird-like than human. And through the now-dusky marsh came answering calls and women poling small boats, while other women appeared as if out of nowhere to welcome Alyssa, Bele and the horses.
After embracing our companions, human and equine, and assuring them we’d send word to them about Joseph’s condition, Sarah and I got into a coracle with Aoife and another woman who maneuvered the boat with a pole. So deft were her movements that we glided through the water almost soundlessly. The wind had fallen with the dusk and the mists had risen, swirling over the waters, so thick sometimes that I could not see the other end of the boat, the torch set there a blurry and distant star. I understood better the intensity of Aoife’s silence. There were other uses for hearing and for breath. Speech here would be a distraction, a disturbance to the air whose minute shifts of temperature and direction served in place of landmarks.
As the gloaming gave way to full night, I lost track of time as well as space. We m
ight have been on the water only a few minutes or for years. There might never have been any other world than this one, and all that other life with its bright color and clamorous events just a series of strange dreams. At last, and with some effort, I recognized the rasp of reeds on the bottom of the boat and then felt it come to shore.
“Healers’ island,” said Aoife softly somewhere close to my ear. “I will take you straight to Joseph.”
We followed Aoife’s torch up and over a small hill. Sheltered and out of sight of the landing was a large wattle and daub round house.
“Is this where they brought my father?” Sarah wanted to know.
“Yes,” answered Aoife, and she held aside the heavy plaid that covered the door and gestured for us to go inside.
I wondered if Sarah, too, half expected and longed to see a boy lying there with a young girl watching over him, and if she, too, found it strange to see instead an old man, much older than when we had last seen Joseph three years ago. He was lying on a raised pallet on his back, with his eyes closed, lids too dry and thin to keep out any light. His chest barely moved when he breathed.
The woman watching him was old, too, older than Aoife and me, ancient. The lines in her face did not seem the ordinary kind made by falling or shrinking flesh or exposure to time and elements. They swirled and intersected, like knot work, like currents in a river.
“Maeve Rhuad,” she said. “We’ve been waiting for you.”
Her voice was stronger and younger than I would have expected, and held a note of reproach that implied I’d kept them waiting, that I was late.
“Colomen Du.” She addressed Sarah as Black Dove, her Celtic name that no one but me had ever used. “You are welcome here.”
She gestured for us to approach. Sarah held back, letting me go first, and I knelt down next to Joseph and took his hand.
“Speak to him, Maeve Rhuad,” said the old woman, “in whatever way you will. He’s not gone yet. Come, Aoife. Help me up. We will leave him alone with his kinswomen.”
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