That night they stayed in the village, resting, eating, and nursing tired bodies. The chiefs of the village were used to battered, defenceless strangers. People straggled in at all times of the year seeking the sanctuary of the holy island, beaten and hopeless, bringing nothing with them but tales of Rome’s brutality and a need for peace. Caradoc was received kindly and he spoke to the Council, telling the people of his vision, and they understood. They, unlike their ricon far away, had a very good idea of what the domination of Rome would mean to the men of the west and they gave Caradoc the first open, unstinted support he had received since he left Madoc and the Silures. He relaxed. He slept well. But he and Eurgain remained strangers, looking at each other with eyes that prisoned the sweetness of the past and could not put the key of love to the lock of a lonely, painful present. She was too proud to face a rebuff, and he was too preoccupied to care.
In the morning they crossed to Mona. The wind was high and cold, fretting the narrows into boiling white spray, and the island itself alternately gleamed green under the sun and was plunged into a brooding gloom as the big gray clouds raced over it. The fishing boat yawed and bucketed and Caradoc and the others clung grimly to the sides, their faces and hands soon slick with salt water, but within a very few minutes the two taciturn Ordovician fishermen were stepping into the knee-high shallows and the boat was beached. Cinnamus knelt and kissed the sandy, sloping shore, Bran gave his hand to Eurgain as she struggled to keep her footing in the hissing undertow, but Caradoc and Caelte strode together to where sand became pebbles and then grass. Far to the right, beyond the oak groves that pressed close to the beach, the land rose, still thickly forested, but before them lay softly undulating fields glinting golden with uneven stubble between the tree trunks. Here and there smoke rose from the roofs of many huts and houses, then was whipped into nothingness by the steady gale. From where he stood Caradoc could sense movement in the woods. The voices of children came to him, twigs crackled underfoot, the laughter of women filtered from the verges of the little fields, and he turned to Caelte.
“There is peace here,” he said. “A spell of contentment that could persuade me to forget my duty and sink under it like a stone dropping through water.”
“I know, Lord,” Caelte replied. “I feel that I should sing, but I have no song. How far away is Madoc, and Emrys, and the dark stain of Rome!”
Not far enough, Caradoc thought, his eyes watering from the sting of the wind or a long-forgotten uprush of emotion, he could not tell which, and then Bran, Cinnamus, and his wife joined him and they all followed Bran along the path that ran narrow but sure through the oaks. They did not hurry. They walked steadily, their eyes never still, for many other paths branched from the one they were treading and each seemed to beckon in friendly understanding. One track, running straight to a treed hillock, gave Caradoc a glimpse of a stone altar, a ring of wooden stakes with carved boar and human heads upon them, and another ended at a palisade, with the roofless walls of a shrine visible and the quiet, folded form of a Druid sitting before the gate. After a mile the trees gave way to more fields, and the travelers could see how, though the forest curved and swept this way and that, the gently rolling land was heavily cultivated. The crops had been harvested, and now women and children gleaned, their backs bent and their cloaks spread high in the wind. They straightened and called greetings as the group passed, and many bowed to Bran, but only Caelte answered their gay words. Cinnamus was lost in wonder, setting his feet down carefully on the sacred soil, and Eurgain marched with her arms folded and her chin high, conscious of her husband’s dour, preoccupied glare. For two miles they trudged through stiff yellow stubble, under the branches of the leafless oaks, past huts full of the homely smells of cooking and the murmur of voices, then they came to a river. It flowed slowly, a wide, green expanse of marshy, bird-clouded water, and huts straggled along both its banks to form a town. Beyond it the land continued flat and golden, but far to the northeast Caradoc saw it begin to rise, to hump, then to be lost in a forested haze. Bran halted.
The Council hut was large, wooden, and protected by a high palisade that was in turn ringed by more of the wooden stakes carved at their summits into solemn, self-contained faces which gazed out over the heads of the passers-by with stolid indifference. At the low wooden gate of the palisade two chiefs stood guard, spears upright in one hand and swords drawn in the other, and before them a group of Druids was gathered, five or six of them, hands tucked into white sleeves, listening intently and smilingly to one of their kind. He was tall and brawny. The sleeves of his tunic were folded back, revealing brown, hard-muscled arms crossed on his broad chest. His beard was a vibrant, luxurious brown, and the spasmodic sunlight flickered on a dozen bronze rings tied into brown hair that fell tousled and healthy to the middle of his white-clad straight back. As they watched him, he unfolded his arms, pointed to his head, and laughed, and his companions laughed with him. Then he saw the silent band and swung toward them, arm outstretched, teeth bared in a wide, warm smile, and Caradoc stiffened in surprise while Caelte breathed a sigh of shock and behind them both, Eurgain started. The man’s eyes were blue. Not the deep, rich flower blue of Eurgain’s own, or the green blue of the ocean, but the palest, most delicate shade, almost no shade at all, almost milky in their opalescence. They did not glitter, nor did they reflect the plays of light and shade around them, and the pupils were pale also, the gray of an overcast dawn. If Caradoc had not seen them pass quickly over the group he would have believed that this Druid was blind. Bran took three steps and bowed.
“Master,” he said, “I bring you Caradoc, his wife, and his train.”
“Yes, yes, I know,” the rich voice answered. “I dreamed of you last night, Caradoc, and the night before. I saw you sitting with your back to a rock, and it was night. I have been expecting you.” The arm tinkling with silver clasped Caradoc’s own, warm and strong, and seeing Caradoc’s shock, the full mouth parted again in mirth. “You did not expect me, though, did you, my friend? You imagined the master of Druithin to be an old graybeard like Bran, bowed with the weight of wisdom? Well, I am sorry to disappoint you!”
Caradoc looked into the young face with its old eyes, and suddenly Bran did indeed seem to him to be a wizened, palsied dotard. He wanted to bow but could not, and then the master was beckoning behind him.
“Eurgain, come here.” She walked forward, and he took her hand, stroking her cheek, her hair, then he kissed her softly. “I saw you also,” he said, “with your feet sunk in the earth and your fingers straining for the stars. I saw you at your window, suffering for the mysteries of both. You should have been a Druid, Eurgain, for then your feet would never have touched the earth and you would not be torn. Ah well.” He smiled. “Fingers are all very well, but they cannot carry the heart where it wants to go. And you.” He turned to Cinnamus and a moment of pain clouded his features, but his eyes did not change expression. They seemed to be a mirror looking only upon his inner world and reflecting back to him his visions. “The precious seed is strewn upon the ground,” he murmured, “and trodden underfoot. Yet how else shall the new crop spring up? I salute you, Ironhand. An arrow is not good enough for you.” And to everyone’s amazement he knelt before a bewildered Cinnamus and kissed his sword, but before the moment could become an embarrassment he sprang up and enfolded Caelte, laughing as he did so. “Caelte, Caelte!” he exclaimed, “Your soul is like the crystal flow of the purest forest spring! A gift to you would be like a stone flung at a mountain, for you have the greatest gift of all, and do not think that I speak of your beautiful voice!” He let Caelte go, tightened his girdle with one swift tug, then turned away. “Come into the Council hut,” he ordered. “We will eat, and laugh and talk of nothing at all, for this is holy Mona, and here you may rest.”
The hut was spacious, clean, and warm after the chillness of the wind. Even at that hour of the morning it was full. Men stood around the fire over which a cauldron sent gusts of fragrant steam to the cei
ling. Women squatted or sat cross-legged on the skins that were scattered everywhere, clutching children or bundles of possessions and looking anxiously to the Druids who moved among them. No one even glanced at Caradoc and his train as they shed their cloaks and took the bowls handed to them by Bran.
“We must serve ourselves here,” Bran said. “Every servant who could be spared is threshing the grain, and as you can see, there are new refugees from Gaul. My brethren are busy.” They drew bowlfuls of hot soup and found space by the door in which to sit, and they sipped it slowly, savoring it, while one by one the newly arrived families went out with a Druid, the men swinging their children onto their shoulders, the women gathering up their few treasures and hooding themselves against the cold. Soon the crowd thinned to a few chiefs who had just returned from hunting and small groups of Druids who sat or stood and ate silently, their eyes on the master who at last came to sit with the Catuvellauni.
“You had some difficulty with Emrys, Caradoc,” he remarked, stirring his porridge with a polished stick which he then licked clean and stowed away in the folds of his tunic. “I am not surprised. He and his kin have been tucked away in the mountains for many ages and the events of the outside world have not touched them at all. They never come to the Samain court, for they never have cases to settle with other tribes, and it is a pity. They have become too proud, too sure of their own invincibility, which causes them to be vulnerable to the glib tricks of a clever speaker.”
Caradoc stopped eating and glanced at him sharply, and he smiled. “Your words to them were true, of course, but I do not think that you yourself believed them, did you?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, it does not matter. You have stirred them up, and I think that I must go and stir them still further. I would like to see my cousin again.”
“Your cousin, Master?” Eurgain queried, and he nodded, his mouth full.
“Emrys is my cousin. I came to Mona when I was seven to have my dreams read, and I am still here, as you can see!” He laughed and Caradoc turned his face down to his own bowl, suddenly disappointed in this virile, muscle-bound man who laughed too much and seemed bereft of the dignity that surely ought to belong to the master of the Druithin. His feeling of depression and isolation increased and he wished that he had never crossed to Mona. He preferred his daydreams at his back, the thoughts of a powerful and mysterious figure of magic and secrecy who could weave spells against Rome while he himself wove military strategy. Now here was the master, grinning at Eurgain and scouring his porridge bowl with a piece of bread in his nimble fingers, while his bronze-ringed hair fell about his arms. Caradoc felt cheated, used somehow, and the old niggling seed of regret and longing for the past began to grow in him once more. Camulodunon, he thought sadly. My home. Why did I not surrender to Claudius and live there in peace and contentment? The master handed his bowl to a young attendant and rose. “I would like to show you the island,” he said to them. “Are you warm now? Is your hunger appeased? Good! Then let us go. Bran, you need not tire your limbs with us. Stay here.”
They walked many miles that day, through country that was more populous than any they had yet seen, more so even than the thick-scattered people of their own tribe. Everywhere huts were going up, round the edges of the fields and in under the oak groves’ rims. The landless fugitives from Rome’s peace had brought their dishonored gods with them so that each clearing guarded an altar or a stone deity, and many held the pits or pools into which the offerings were thrown. Apart from the armed chiefs who had guarded the Council hut they had seen no weapons, and Cinnamus asked why.
“The people come from every tribe,” the master told him, “and here on Mona we wish only peace. Their weapons are given to their gods as a thanksgiving for this refuge, and I put them to work instead of to fighting. We have been able to clear many new fields since our population has grown, and grain is produced most plentifully. The gods are pleased with their new home, and bless the soil, and the Ordovices grow fat!” He chuckled, then turned in under the shelter of a wind break woven from young oak saplings and squatted, and the company went down with him. The whistle of the steady wind dropped to a low humming, and they loosened their cloaks and dropped their hoods with relief, looking with surprise at the distance they had come. Behind them the land had been steadily rising, and before them the ocean sparkled blue and lacy-white where a wide, calm bay had been carved. Fishing boats lay on their sides in the sand and their owners sat and gossiped around the fire they had kindled, but the company was so high that neither the crackling of the burning wood nor the voices of the men could be heard.
“Master, where are the halls of learning?” Eurgain asked him tentatively. “I had thought…I had hoped…Where are the secret places?”
He sat back on his heels, his hands clasped loosely on the ground. “The halls of learning are all around you, Eurgain,” he replied. “Did you not notice the groups of young men and Druids, pacing here and there? The long, slow absorption of knowledge takes place wherever the teacher wants to teach, be it sitting in a field, walking by the river, or standing in the shrines, and his pupils move with him. The whole island is alive with the flow of thought, and after twenty years of study there is no tiny rock, no wrinkle in the rivers, no sacred tree that remains undiscovered and that does not have the power to recall some lesson to the mind of its observer. This is one reason why Mona itself is called holy. The very mud cries out to the initiate of all that he has learned. And those children who come for five years, or ten, take back to their tribes a fierce love of this, their true cradle.”
“But what of the places of divination? The places where the stars are read? Where do the soothsayers practice their art?”
“You have a greed, Eurgain,” he rebuked her quietly. “Beware. Yet for the love of your soul I will cause you to be shown a place where the evening star gives up her secrets. Caelte, there is a young man here who is engaged in making harps. Would you like to talk with him?” He chatted comfortably to Caelte, to Eurgain, to Cinnamus. Caradoc was silent, gazing out over the peaceful scene below him, aware that though the master had not addressed him once since the moment of greeting his whole inner attention was fixed on Caradoc alone.
Caradoc felt the probing concentration of him as a disquiet, a disturbance of his thoughts that had been growing ever since their boat touched the sandy shore. Memories long dead, long stripped of their power, misted through his mind, trailing anger or remorse. Aricia was there, sitting on the floor of his hut at Camulodunon and giggling, and though he believed that he had conquered the pain of her, yet now he felt nothing but a full-blown desire and he knew that he had not healed himself. Togodumnus passed by, his eager, adoring chiefs trotting in his wake, and the wave of jealousy that shook him was so violent that his hand stiffened on the hilt of his sword. Jealous? Was I jealous of Tog? Ah no! he shouted in his mind. That was not true! He was my brother. I loved him! But after Tog came Eurgain, long, fringed blue tunic sweeping the ground, gold on the gold on her hair and silver on the whiteness of her arms, and the twinge of jealousy widened to a throbbing. Another lie! he called to the memory. I love her, love her, I have no reason to wish her harm, I do not keep her from her rightful place, it is not true, I do not care how much of herself she hides from me!
He grunted aloud, and there was a sudden lull in the conversation. They all looked at him, and he met the nightmare eyes of the master with a new emotion. This man was a force more potent than the graybeards of his imagination, more dangerous than the strongest spell his shadowy, cloistered vision of a master had ever conjured in the cause of victory. Caradoc was afraid.
“I think we should return to the town and feed our bodies once more,” the master said lightly, and they rose. As they did so a new and final memory blossomed in Caradoc’s mind, as clear and sweet and fresh as the moment itself had been. Gladys came to him, walking along the clifftop to where the combined host had gathered in their fruitless wait for Plautius. Her face was
tanned, solemn. Her eyes held sanity and steady warmth. The sea breeze floated out her long, dark hair behind her and wrapped the tunic tight about her legs, and as she approached he smelled the salt on her, and the seaweed, and the rock herbs of the cliff. His heart opened like the petals of a bruised flower under her cleanliness, her honesty. “Have you considered telling the omens?” she asked him. “I can do it, Caradoc.” The master was watching him with a tiny grin. Caradoc turned and followed the others down the scrub-choked slope.
They returned to the town and ate a late afternoon meal, and by the time they had finished it the swift autumn dusk was beginning. The wind abated with its coming, and the scraped sky stayed clear. The master beckoned them all outside where a Druid waited for them, and Eurgain was introduced to him.
“He will show you the evening star,” the master said, “but you must hurry. The sun is already setting.” Without a word Eurgain turned away, following the glimmer of gray cloak, and the master pointed. “Caelte, follow the path that veers to the left. At the end of it is the hut of the bard-craftsman. Make merry music!”
“Cin, will you come?” Caelte asked, but Cinnamus yawned and shook his head.
“No. I will go back into the Council hut and talk some more with the warriors of Gaul. We have many stories to share. Then I will sleep. Caradoc, do you need me?”
Caradoc looked at the master. “No, Cin, I do not think I shall need you tonight. Sleep well.”
“You also, Lord. A good night.” He plunged back toward the doorskins, and Caradoc and the master were alone under the pink, paling sky.
The man gestured and moved away and Caradoc went after him, his body weary from the walking he had done that day but his mind wide awake. They glided swiftly along the track by the river, now placid with the last shreds of the sunset, then the master abruptly plunged in under the oaks to their right and was lost in shadows. Caradoc trudged after him, feeling the ground rising sluggishly beneath his feet. For half an hour they paced the silent forest, then all at once Caradoc found himself out on the crown of a hill. It was bare, and he could tell that at one time the trees had gathered right to the summit, for tiny saplings brushed his legs where the forest struggled vainly to regain lost ground. Now, three huge rings of stones marched peremptorily around the naked space, one inside the other, and in the center stood a low stone altar. There were no stakes, no heads, no god. Only the clean severity of weathered stone and long, frost-gripped grasses.
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