“Ah, boy,” Cregan said. “It’s friends we will be forever. You understand my thoughts so well.”
“What is it?” someone asked. “The thing is too big to be a hawk.”
“Fool! It’s a she-eagle, the very queen of birds,” Cregan said.
She ceased feeding and met Cregan’s eyes.
“Boy,” he said to Black Leg. “Get me my toughest glove.”
Black Leg nodded and hurried off. He returned with a bullock-hide falconer’s glove. Cregan pulled it on and waited politely until she finished her meal. Then he raised his hand and she flew to his glove.
Arthur studied the two men’s faces, Black Leg’s and Cregan’s. So did the eagle.
“One must live,” he told her. “It is not slavery but brotherhood.”
Her silence was assent.
“She can no longer live off the land,” Black Leg said to Cregan.
“Most can’t, boy. Most can’t. Not now.”
Then she flew, circling the hall just over the men’s heads. Then, abruptly, she rose higher and exited through the smoke hole in the roof.
“No!” Cregan cried out as if in mortal pain.
“She has something to do, that’s all,” Black Leg said.
“You know? You’re sure?” Cregan shouted.
“I know. And I am sure,” Black Leg said. “I tell you it will rain, it rains. I tell you it will snow, it snows. I tell you the Huns are coming, the next night you’re eating their horses. I know.”
She entered the smoke hole, dipped down, and circled Cregan. “She does him homage,” several of the men gasped.
Then she rose higher and exited through the smoke hole in the roof again, spiraling upward into the night sky. She turned toward the east. Arthur was bewildered for a moment, and then he understood.
“Is that all it is?” he asked.
Again, as before, the silence was assent.
It was a long climb. Higher and higher they flew, rising beyond the hills and above the mountains that looked strangely ethereal, their tops locked in perpetual winter. But she managed to climb higher yet, into realms where ice clouds spread their dust into veils riding the wind-driven currents of the upper air, circling the earth the way water currents swirl through the oceans. And then beyond, hovering at the edges of the profound silence that lies between the worlds.
The earth was spread out beneath them. Its visions—the ugliness and darkness of war, the unending, ever-varied beauty of creation—all swallowed up in the abyss of distance until at last she must perforce level out. There alone, with God and the eagle, Arthur saw the sunrise flare across the edge of the world as they flew on out of darkness and into the sun.
He woke in what he knew must have been her throne at the top of the tower. He closed his eyes briefly, so he would know, and saw the eagle enter through the smoke hole. The hall was filled with sodden, snoring men, but Cregan and Black Leg waited up for her. Cregan stretched out his arm; she landed, and he brought her to her new home in his mews.
Arthur opened his eyes again and looked out into the morning. He had won.
The throne was set between two parts of the waterfall that entered the tower. The bowl from which he had drunk was in the center of the room where the fire pit should be, and he sensed that all he needed or ever would need in the way of material possessions was contained therein. He was tired, weary to the point of death, but filled with absolute, complete, and unutterable peace.
He had won.
What that implied or how it would play out in the scheme of things, he had no idea. But none of this mattered now; he would deal with these things as they presented themselves. For now victory was all that mattered. He must sleep.
And he carried the knowledge of his triumph with him into the darkness.
TWENTY-EIGHT
HE STEPS OF THE DANCE ARE A SECRET. They are between the Painted People and the queens. They and the pattern the dance floor follows inform the watchers about the season of the dragon in the sky and what it means day by day, month by month. And one who sails beyond sight of land can navigate safely between landfalls even when there is only water and sky.
Those directions were worked out long ago by the wise, and incorporated in the dance long before any could put pen to paper. The directions for safe voyaging were handed down from generation to generation by ecstatic dance.
But that is not the only thing the dance means. As I said once, Dugald told me that I would not understand love fully until I loved, or war until I was in the midst of battle. The same is true of the dances taught by the Painted People. Each of the rulers in the houses of heaven has a different meaning. The salmon, as I have said, for both chastity and fertility. They do not love until the appointed time, but then have many children. The wolf is the symbol of duty and skill. Wolves seldom fail at either. The boar bespeaks headlong valor and unsullied courage. He is not, however, very smart, but one who values these qualities above all will embrace his dance.
We—each one of the Painted People—enter the dance that seems best to that particular person. Each adopts that particular path in life. I had chosen the dragon path, and I would embark on it tonight.
The dragon is wisdom and power. That is why it is so feared and yet courted. Nothing is more powerful than the dragon, just as nothing is more chaste than the salmon or braver than the boar. And as you put your feet on the path, you hope—you pray—that somehow the wisdom is granted to your heart that allows you to deal with that great power without vainglory or selfishness. That your spirit doesn’t die like a rotten tree eaten away from within by its own greatest gift turned into a fatal, tragic flaw.
This is as far as I can go in telling you what the dance means—beyond this point, you must look into your own heart and see Dugald was right. Some things can’t be taught. At least, not in any words possible.
Maeniel felt this was why all the great sages never wrote anything down. And why the druids committed their wisdom to memory only. In the final analysis, scriptures are futile things, dependent as they are on the intentions of the interpreter. All too often too literal a mind can lead human students into strange follies. Sometimes it is better to allow the searchers to try to plumb the depths of the great mystery on their own and accept that not every one of those taking the road will see the same end.
There are ways to hold back, not fully commit to the journey. But I scorned those and even now, after a lifetime of sorrow and struggle, I believe I made the right choice. I never asked her to teach them to me, but yielded fully to my destiny.
When we reached the edge of the dance floor, I cast off the mantle and let the crowd look their fill at me. The dress of fine chain was not intended to conceal. The ring of chain at my shoulders fell back, baring my breasts. The one that circled my hips left me bare at the sides, and when I began to dance, I knew the moving skirt would hide nothing.
Sometimes, what we are is more important than who we are, and what we represent more important than what we are trying to accomplish. I surrendered to this truth, also.
I was the ripe apple on the highest bough, the wheat field turning from green to gold in the autumn sun. The mountain and river teeming with fish, dressed in scarlet robes of desire. The crowd was silent, and even the wind seemed to die down as I crossed the broken dance floor toward the center.
Then I heard a murmur of approval from the people gathered on the hillside. The women would want to be me, the men would want me … that was the point.
Then silence fell. I had passed the first test.
It was cold. I remember that. But I was young and my blood heated and brought a flush to my skin. And the armor rose, a green tracery over my breasts and hips, the most exposed parts of me, rendering me less naked.
We had the dance mapped out, Kyra and I. We practiced a method of compensating for the broken dance floor. You see, in any given dance not all of the paths in the maze are used. Each dancer finds her—or his for that matter—road along them. So I knew what I was to
do. I knew each step. Each twist and turn of the pattern had been laid out for me beforehand. I could follow it in my sleep.
When I reached the center, I stood silent, facing the vast crowd standing on the hillside above the dance floor. I raised my arms and the music began. So practiced was I that my feet seemed to sweep into the repetitious first movement of the dance without my will.
It begins with the sun. They all do, the increasing and decreasing sun of summer and winter. That way the watchers know, by how many turns in the sun spiral and their direction, what design in the stars is indicated, what constellation the dance is about. Then, this and other information once given, the dancer is free to lay her interpretation of the dragon journey to the people. They could read it in the intricate in-and-out steps of the labyrinth. It was theirs to accept or reject.
I’m not sure how I can tell what happens next. I’m not sure I know how. I’m not sure if anyone would know how. But I did not dance the steps I and Kyra worked out so laboriously.
Instead, I found myself alone with the night wind, the silence, and the sea, the torchlight and the cold stone under my feet the only reality. We ask and ask the question of the abyss. We beat our fists against the wall of ignorance standing between ourselves and the ultimate meaning of the universe. The ultimate truth that lies at the heart of creation itself.
We search, call out into the darkness, and hope for an answer. Hope that somehow the ruling principle of all things, the eternal lover, will formulate an answer that would not destroy us.
I struggled. I sought. I asked. And I was answered.
Words fail here. They not only cannot come to the end of this ultimate experience, they cannot even reach the beginning of it. It is as if you lived in a world where the clouds never parted and your eyes and mind never experienced the sun. Then one day the overcast thinned for a little time and the light broke through, transforming all creation. Even if it lasted only an instant, from that instant might be drawn a lifetime of transcendent illumination and love.
For that is what God is: light. Thought that is the light of the mind and love that is the light of the heart. And they are one and there is no place in or outside creation where that light does not shine.
And for a precious few seconds, moments, it was one with me, and I it. And nothing else mattered. Nothing.
And I danced the hunger of the human spirit for the fulfillment of everlasting love. I danced the rapture which is the contemplation of the transcendent love, meaning, beauty—where the seeker, the questioner, the lover, the dreamer, for an instant knows what a purely human mind can never know. And the shape and meaning of everything in life itself changes, is changed, and we cannot look at so small a thing as a blade of grass and not experience it as part of the only mystery, the great unknown, the root and logic of creation itself.
No, words cannot describe it, cannot come to the end of it. They cannot reach even the beginning.
My friends stood and watched me, a figure glowing in gold and green, moving through the maze of rock, my body a living column of sparkling light against the gray stone.
“She is not dancing the figures we agreed upon,” Kyra whispered to Maeniel and Dugald.
“I know,” Dugald said. “But it is not the dance that troubles me but where it is leading.”
Because I was drawing near the edge of the cliff.
“She will double back,” said Kyra.
But I didn’t. I danced out over the empty air.
A scream boiled up in Kyra’s throat, but Dugald ended it by slapping his hand over Kyra’s mouth.
“Be silent, both of you,” he whispered to Maeniel and Kyra as I danced on and on in an arc where the dance floor had been, out into the wind, above the pounding surf, below the stars. And Dugald told me I carried the watching crowd with me, not into the miracle of one who dances on nothingness but into the search of mankind for the absolute and the transcendent. A search begun when the minds of human beings named the divine after the day itself, the light. A search that is not ended yet and perhaps never will be. A thirst never quenched, a hunger that may never be assuaged.
But a search without which we would be less than the dumb stones tumbled by the endless swirling of the surf until they are at last worn away.
“She might die!” Kyra whispered.
“And I tell you, fool woman, break her concentration and she surely will.”
So they watched while I completed my arc out over the pounding sea, then back to the cliff and then, in a few moments, back out again, my face void of all awareness. Not only of danger, but even of where I was as I closed the final sun spiral to mark the place where the dance must end, reached the center of the dance floor again, and was still.
I didn’t know what I had done. I remember only a vast silence until I heard the first shout, then the second, and at last a third. Then unbelievably, a fourth. One honored me, my effort. Two confirmed my candidacy. Three crowned me; the Dragon Throne was now my right. The fourth—I heard only a few times a fourth—commanded me to go forward.
I threw up my arms and gave my promise in return. “It is the duty and pleasure of the queens to bring kings to the people. With all my heart, I embrace my duty. I will bring to you the greatest king of all.”
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s I suspected, stealing from professional thieves takes some skill and a lot of hard work. We took shifts at the oars once we were out of the territory of the Painted People and didn’t, as was more usual among peaceful mariners, go ashore to sleep.
She—the ship—was decked only lightly, boards nailed over her ribs and hide bottom. We were drenched by squalls and frozen by the icy spring seas breaking over our bows. But Lord she was fast! Small and light, propelled by ten at the oars by day and six by night. We all took rowing duty, as I said, the ones not pulling at the sweeps eating, then sleeping on the narrow deck between the rowing benches. Or we slept when we could.
At times we would row into an icy rain squall. Then the sleepers must rouse themselves and bail like mad, not to keep her from sinking but so as not to slow those of us plying the oars. She wouldn’t sink, but if her forward progress were slowed, heavy seas might break her up. Whereas, more or less empty of water, she was able to ride the combers like a floating cork, and in calmer waters, skim along as might a bird.
We had no sail, since we wished to announce neither our passage nor arrival to any watching coastal people. And watch they do, being as they are used to trouble coming by sea.
I don’t like to remember the start of our voyage or our first few days aboard. We were all seasick and none too sure of ourselves at the oars. But Dugald, who is my Druid, gave me medicine for seasickness. True, it tasted like the floor of a town midden pit and stank worse than a herd of goats, but withal—it worked. And most of us recovered well enough to devote ourselves to the oars within a day or two.
I’m not sure Dugald considers himself my Druid. Once he was my guardian, then my teacher. But when I became a woman and a queen, I felt he should be my Druid. He couldn’t agree less. He says I’m a child and only an honorary ruler, and not to be so presumptuous as to drape a mantle of authority over my shoulders.
I wished I had something to drape over my shoulders. Gods above and below, it was cold in that boat. But I knew if I could pull this off, I would be rich and a real queen. So I must make the attempt, no matter how great the hardships involved.
Four days out of port, I understood I had good companions. Our flotilla—there were three small ships—held seventeen men each. “Men” not always men; some of us were women. But there was a man at the tiller of each boat; Maeniel, my foster father, on one; Gray, an oath man of mine on another; and aboard this one, Ure, a relative of
Gray’s, an experienced man of the sea.
Ours was the lead ship; the rest followed us. Ure knew the coast and its hazards: rocks, reefs, sand spits, though with our shallow-draft, those weren’t a problem. Currents and last but not least pirate nests. He told us he would undertake to keep us clear of them all.
In return, we didn’t ask him how he knew so much and promised to devote ourselves to the work of the oars. When I asked him if we shouldn’t have some dry land practice first, he fixed me with an eye cold and green as a breaking winter sea and said, “One learns best by doing. And when you do a thing day to day on a regular basis, you will eventually learn all there is to know about it. Sometimes more than you want to know.”
He was right; by now, eight days into our voyage, I knew a lot more about rowing than I ever wanted to. About blisters that broke and bled, scabbed over, then broke open again the next day and bled. About excruciating pain in the arms, back and neck. About the discomfort of perpetually wet clothing that chafed and itched, or sleeping on a hard, wet, stinking plank among the wet, stinking bodies of fellow crew members. Of huddling together with them to try to coax a little warmth from one another. Not to mention the joys of hanging off the stern up to your waist in the icy sea as the small craft you are clinging to battles fifteen-foot waves while you try to take care of necessities, since there is no room aboard for such nonsense as chamber pots.
See, the water ran to the back of the craft because she was lighter at the bows, so the steersman bailed with one hand while he clung to the tiller with the other. Guess what he used to do the bailing?
When I was much younger, I used to think the sea was romantic.
Despite our many struggles, we moved with almost unbelievable swiftness toward the south and the forts of the Saxon shore. On the tenth day, we arrived at the mouth of the river that flowed through the Fenlands. Ten days of rowing in the heaving, pitching sea. We were all glad to pull the narrow craft into the tall reeds and sedges, rest and wait for dawn.
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