“I’ll be well within sight and sound of both you and the camp,” I added, mindful of Griflet’s responsibility. So the two of them went down to the willows by the stream while the pup snuggled up next to me and went to sleep.
It was a sweet, peaceful evening and before long the fullthroated song of a thrush filled the gloaming. Other songs may be more delicate, or more finely made, but I know of none that is richer or more joyous. It swelled and glided in the soft dusk, lilting and happy and triumphant in its free beauty. It was as close as I needed to come to the Goddess, and I smiled and stretched contentedly, thinking it a kind of prayer in itself.
Later, as I lay waiting for sleep in the darkness of the tent, it was the cuckoo’s call that kept me company. I wondered suddenly where Kevin was, and if somewhere he too was listening to the first sounds of spring. Even now I would not admit he had been sung into Eternal Sleep by the Birds of Rhiannon, and if memory could keep him tethered to this earth, then I would not let him go unremembered.
Chapter XXII
The Black Lake
On the day after we learned of the King Making, Kevin and I went riding over the dunes at Ravenglass, racing along the shore and laughing as the flocks of black-headed gulls surrounded us with screeching disapproval when we thundered past their nesting sites. Afterward we headed for the trail along the far edge of the estuary and fell to arguing over whether it was fair that I couldn’t take part in the important things, such as riding to the outlying areas with my father, or attending the King Making at the Sanctuary.
“It’s just common sense, Gwen. You haven’t been trained in swordplay; you can’t defend yourself in case of attack, and there’s too much danger involved in those situations to ask our warriors to look out for you as well as themselves.”
“Well, then, I should have been taught! Look at Boudicca. She defended her territory with the sword, and all but drove the Romans out when she led her armies against them. Or Vennolandua, the Warrior Queen of Cornwall who donned her armor and went against her husband in single combat rather than have their two armies slaughter each other. She won; in a fair battle, she won!”
“And killed the High King,” Kevin said with a grin. “Maybe that’s when they decided to quit teaching women to be warriors.”
“Nonsense! No Celt would argue that. After all, he had it coming to him; he had betrayed her publicly, and she had the right to call him down on it. No, I’ll bet it was the Romans who turned the women into tabbies-by-the-fire. For all their superior attitudes, I’ll bet they were afraid to face an armed woman.”
“I don’t blame them,” Kevin answered good-naturedly, and I wondered if the Irish women still fought beside their men. Before I could ask, Featherfoot shied to one side, startled by an adder that slithered away from the path. Kevin had his dagger to hand immediately, but the snake disappeared, and since it didn’t coil for an attack, we let it be.
“It’s still not fair,” I continued with righteous indignation. “When I’m queen, I’ll come and go with the warriors as I please.”
“Unless your husband forbids it,” Kevin teased.
“No husband’s going to forbid me to do anything,” I flared. “Maybe I won’t bother to get married…Why should I, anyway, except for children? But if I did decide to marry, I’d choose someone here in Rheged, who would travel at my side and not expect me to stay behind while he goes off and does the interesting things. If Gawain was there, I should have been there,” I persisted, refusing to be sidetracked.
“Gawain, my dear, is the eldest male of his house’s line,” my companion said reasonably. “And even though his mother is the reigning monarch of the Orkneys, she wasn’t present at the King Making.”
“Well, she should have been,” I fumed, pausing to watch a heron try to swallow a frog. It was no easy matter, for the frog struggled against the grip of the bird’s bill, its legs jerking wildly. It had no intention of becoming a nice tidy meal without a struggle.
By the same token, the women’s exclusion from the King Making refused to slide comfortably into my craw. I found it puzzling that Morgause had not attended the ceremony. Not only was she a leading monarch, she was half-sister to the new King and full sister to the Lady of the Lake. Had I had her rank, nothing short of childbed would have kept me away. I doubted Morgause was pregnant at the time of her husband’s death or she would have declared it, for it was now up to Arthur to look after all of Lot’s children. Whatever the reason for her absence, I was sure it was based on her own decision rather than the fact she was a woman.
The heron finally got his catch in a more favorable position and swallowed it, then haughtily stalked away.
“What do you suppose the Sanctuary is like?” I asked as the bird disappeared in the rushes beyond a rotting log. “Have you ever been there?”
“How should I have gotten there without your knowing?” Kevin shrugged. “I did hear King Ban speak of it, when he and Arthur were at Carlisle. It seems his son Lancelot is being educated by the Lady, in the ways of both the scholar and the warrior.”
“I think Ban’s son was one of the princes Cathbad mentioned when he first told us about the school,” I mused. I watched a dragonfly hovering over the water and wondered how the druids’ wisdom and a warrior’s heart would blend in one person. It seemed an odd combination, as chancy and unpredictable as the blue-green-purple coloring of the insect in front of us.
There was a sudden flash of iridescence, and Gulldancer tossed his head in wide-eyed surprise as the dragonfly flitted past his ear. Laughing, we resumed our leisurely pace down the path.
“Are you sorry you didn’t go study with the Lady?” Kevin inquired.
“A little. I’ve always been curious about it. Don’t you sometimes wonder about her? What she knows? What she can do?”
I glanced over at my companion, but he was squinting at something moving through the water. I followed his gaze and caught a glimpse of the sleek dark head and supple spine of an otter. It slipped into and out of sight, holding its tail upright instead of floating out behind, so that it looked like a miniature dragon coursing through the ripples. The creature played about in the water for the sheer joy of it, and I watched it roll and circle, dive and surface, for all the world like a rook tumbling about in the currents of the sky. Oh, I thought, to have such freedom!
When we came to the crossing of the track and path, I turned Featherfoot to the east and stared at the long valley which led into the mountains. Somewhere beyond that shield of rocky fells lay the Black Lake and the school I could have been part of.
“Let’s go see for ourselves what it’s like.” The suggestion leapt out before I thought, and from Kevin’s expression I knew it didn’t surprise him. But he frowned and shook his head.
“I don’t think it’s a good idea,” he said uneasily.
“Oh, come on,” I urged, alight with the desire of adventure. “What harm could it do, just to go and see the Lake? We don’t have to enter the Sanctuary, you know—just see where it is. And it’s not even midday,” I went on, taking a quick reading of the sun. “We’ll be back in time for dinner, and no one will even know we’ve been gone.”
“But we don’t have Ailbe with us,” Kevin pointed out. “We’ll have to ride home and get him, and tell Brigit where we’re going.”
“Oh, bother telling people where we are all the time! I’m tired of never doing anything without getting someone else’s permission,” I flared.
He was silent for a minute, duty and curiosity each struggling for the upper hand. I knew which one would win if I left him to work it out, so I turned Featherfoot onto the track. “Well, I guess I’ll just have to go by myself,” I announced.
“You can’t do that!” he exploded, catching up with me.
“It’s better than having to order you to come with me,” I retorted, knowing I was straining the delicate balance of our relationship but too irritable to care. “You can do whatever you want, but I’m going to the Lake.”
I set a smart pace along the river way, keeping enough in the lead so he couldn’t try to talk me out of it. Ahead, the rolling landscape funneled toward the feet of the crags, and the track turned to a narrow pathway alongside the riverbank.
Before long the trail roughened and we moved into a rockstrewn, hummocky land of open woods. The river meandered in endless curves and double-backs, and gradually the gaunt gray peaks ahead of us loomed closer.
At one point we passed a fox’s earth, its pungent odor hanging heavy on the balmy air. A few minutes later Featherfoot pricked her ears and I heard the sharp yip of a fox kit.
We were riding below an embankment, and when I looked over its crest I could just make out a pair of kits rolling about in mock battle. The vixen was busy burying the remains of a bird, while another of her offspring stalked a stray feather. We paused for a moment to watch the pouncing, growling youngsters go charging after shadows, their mother’s tail, or each other.
Suddenly one of them tumbled away from the rest and half-ran, half-rolled across the open space. It came to its feet at the edge of the drop-off, exactly on eye level with me. Featherfoot snorted and tossed her head, the kit froze in amazement, and the vixen let out a sharp bark of warning at which the baby fox turned and streaked for cover. It all happened in the space of a breath, but not before I had seen the quick, sharp look of surprise followed by immediate assessment in the eyes of the small, wild animal. There was a cunning behind its momentary stare that was well worthy of respect, and I grinned at Kevin.
“Pity one can’t make pets of them,” he said. “They seem to have the best qualities of both dogs and cats.”
I nodded, trying to remember if I had ever heard of anyone’s taming a fox. “Perhaps they need to stay free in order to go on being themselves,” I suggested.
“More likely they have no desire to change. You can’t tame something that doesn’t want to be tamed.”
The dale was narrowing abruptly where the mountains form a curtain that shields the secrets of the Sanctuary from the bright openness of the coastal plain. Night-shrouded yews, their rough-barked trunks hidden in dense shadow, intermingled with the lighter, happier trees. The light was growing dimmer and I wondered if the afternoon had passed already, but decided it was only the shade of the heavier woods that caused the twilight gloom.
Whereas the rising slopes of Eden’s vale lap upward to the Pennine crest, here there seemed to be no foothills, no gradual lifting of the land, no casual approach to the mountains themselves. They rise with sheer power directly from the dale floor, dwarfing all the creatures below. If Hardknott is perched on the shoulder of the world, the Black Lake is hidden in its navel.
We came to a wide, beaten path that had been much traveled of late.
“It’s probably the route most of the nobles left by, after the Ceremony was over,” Kevin suggested, so we followed it away from the river and headed over a small rise.
The track brought us round the base of the mountains, and the woods thinned out to an open meadow lying along the Lake. We paused at the crest of the curve to look out over the scene, too awestruck to say anything.
The place was aptly named, for the water before us was black and silent, a wedge of mystery under the high, steep wall of the opposite shore. The cliff face across from us glowed rust and gray in the late afternoon light, its long screes fanning down from the knife-edge ridge high above. It is a solid wall, stretching the length of the Lake, without peak or canyon, fold or spur, and no tree or bush softens its outline. The towering barrier of rock and loose stone was reflected in the water below, adding a bronze cast to its already metallic look.
I stared about, unnerved by the austere majesty of the place. Off to the right was an outcropping of rock, high and prominent by the shore of the Lake, and at its base lay a scatter of ashes. Kevin pointed wordlessly to the remains of the bonfire. The echo of affirmation still whispered from rock and forest: “Arthur! Arthur! King of the Celts!”
I nodded silently, unable to break the spell that hung over us. Farther to the right, beyond the rock, a dark forest hugged the shore, while far to the left, where the Lake’s head nestles under a cluster of triangular mountains, the smoke of evening fires rose above a steading. Probably that was where the students lived.
Suddenly I was very glad I hadn’t spent my childhood in this place, with its eerie silence and frightening Lake. I turned and grinned at Kevin, fully satisfied that we had come.
“Thirsty?” my companion asked, eyeing the water along the pebbly shore.
“Not for this,” I managed to say, grimacing at the dark liquid.
“Let’s see if there’s a spring in the woods,” he suggested, turning Gulldancer toward the shadowy trees beyond the King Making Rock.
Featherfoot followed, ears twitching and the whites of her eyes showing. Somewhere ahead a crow let out a rasping cry, and a cold chill ran over me. I didn’t need the bird to remind me we were in the Morrigan’s territory, and I would have turned back to leave by the way we’d come, but Kevin was already disappearing into the gloom of the forest and I didn’t want to be left alone.
Inside the woods we found a spring, complete with a traveler’s cup set in a rock niche above the trickling water. We dismounted and were careful to pour out a libation for the Goddess before drinking, then let the horses have their fill from the pool.
I stared about curiously while the horses drank, noting the votive offerings that hung near the water source. They were few and simple, probably set out by the pupils, for it seemed unlikely that many travelers came to such a secluded spot.
It felt good to stretch my legs, so I handed the reins to Kevin and looked around. Beyond the immediate trees a path appeared to lead through the shadows to a clearing of some sort. Perhaps it was one of the Sacred Groves from the old days such as Kaethi had described. Curious, I started off to explore it.
I must have misjudged the distance, for it seemed to take a long time to reach the trail itself. When I finally came near the clearing a sound of chanting drifted toward me, so I moved carefully to a spot behind a large yew, and peeped through its branches.
The trees formed a wall around that open space and the clearing itself was filled with grim darkness. Ancient shadows flickered across it, while in the center a giant wooden pillar stood, thick as two men’s bodies and bleached a sickly white, like bones left unburied. Odd niches had been cut into it here and there, perhaps to hold some form of sacrifice, and a ghastly face was hewn high up toward the top of it. It made my blood run cold just to look at it, as though the memory of unspeakable rites had soaked into it over centuries of secret use.
A dark-haired woman bent over something on a stone altar at the totem’s base. Absorbed in what she was doing, she had no idea I was near, and as I watched she began to weave from side to side, crooning as though to a child. She stretched upright, eyes closed, and slowly raised her arms in supplication. The sleeves of her robe fell back, and a pair of golden armbands glimmered in the gloom. In her hands she held a chalice rimmed with silver as in the olden tales. With a shiver I saw the cup had been fashioned from a skull.
She stood motionless, burning like a pale ghost in the dark shadows, and I realized with terrifying certainty that this was Morgan le Fey. Shaking, I drew back from the sight lest my presence profane her ritual.
The singing continued, sweet and melodious at first, then rising to a harsher note, and ending finally with a high-pitched shriek, after which there was total silence. I wished fervently I had not come this far, but were riding back along the river with Kevin.
There was nothing to tell me what the Priestess was doing, and after a bit I decided I had best try to get back to the spring without her knowing. I moved cautiously out from behind the tree, hoping to regain the path unobserved.
We almost collided as she glided silently down the trail, and she froze as quickly as I did. For a moment we confronted each other eye to eye, and I saw the same quick, wild look on her face I had s
een on the kit’s: surprise, assessment, and indignation. The green eyes narrowed to slits and probed my very soul.
“You!” she exclaimed in a whisper. “What are you doing here?”
I gulped, unable to speak, as she scanned the woods behind me. I was too scared even to glance toward Kevin. There was such a primeval intensity in her face I dared not look away.
“You have no right to be here, girl,” she said scathingly, satisfied that I had not come with a large party. “The Goddess’ secrets are not to be spied upon by those who have not taken part in Her training.”
Now fully in control of the situation, the Priestess looked me up and down, then dismissed me with an abrupt, scornful motion of her hand.
“The time is not yet,” she hissed. “Go now, if you can find your way.” And suddenly a dense mist swirled around us, hiding her completely from sight. I turned and stumbled toward Kevin, my ears ringing with peals of eerie laughter.
The horses were nervous and prancing, and Kevin boosted me up to Featherfoot’s back in one fluid motion. I held her on a tight rein while he mounted Gulldancer, though I wanted nothing so much as to bolt from the darkness that filled the forest.
“Did you see those eyes?” I asked shakily as he came alongside and we turned toward the sound of the river.
“What eyes?” he asked.
“The Lady’s. You did see the Lady, didn’t you?” I half-whispered, my throat dry as sand.
“Nay, girl, I saw nothing but you, hiding behind that tree.”
“But she was standing there in the path, before she called the Druid’s Mist upon us,” I said, starting to tremble now that the confrontation was past.
Kevin shook his head, looking back cautiously.
“Didn’t you hear her singing? Or her words to me?”
Again he shook his head. “Only the laugh of a woodpecker skimming through the trees,” he answered, watching me closely. “What did she say to you?”
Child of the Northern Spring (Guinevere Trilogy) Page 23