The Circle of Ceridwen: Book One of The Circle of Ceridwen Saga

by Octavia Randolph

  Gyric was already turning and pulling on the girth straps to check them. “And to think you just dried all of our clothes, too,” he said lightly.

  Together we retied our packs so everything was as high as we could make it. Then he felt for the reins of his gelding, and untied them from my mare’s saddle. I did not want to be separated from him, or for him to become separated from me, but I bit my tongue and spoke not.

  “Our horses will swim better apart,” he said, and I nodded my head mutely.

  He mounted, and asked, “Are you ready?”

  “I am ready,” I managed, and pulled myself up.

  “Just urge her into the water, and let the reins go slack. If she tries to turn back, kick her forward. Once she starts swimming, let her alone, and just hold on. When she starts to climb out, it might be slippery, so hold tight.”

  I was already holding so tight that my hands were trembling. But I moved her to the water’s edge, and the black gelding came up beside us. Gyric held the reins in his hands for the first time, and used his heels to urge his horse forward. He had no look of concern upon his brow. If he felt any, he hid it well.

  My mare paused, and lowered her head and tried to drink, but I gave her a little kick instead. She stepped into the water, and I kicked again, and she took a bound and suddenly I was splashed as she plunged chest-deep into the green waters. Almost at once she was swimming; the river bottom must drop off quickly. She held her head high and her ears pointed straight back at me. I think she enjoyed it as little as me. The cold water swirled around my legs, soaking my gown, but everything, including me, seemed secure. Gyric was just next to me; his gelding was pulling away and even passing my mare.

  The river bank looked far off, but my mare kept her head pointed straight at it. Now the black gelding was in front of us, and I beat back the fear that he might pull away from my mare. She kept swimming steadily. It was an odd feeling, for at times I felt myself almost lifted from her saddle.

  Gyric reached the bank first, and I had a moment to watch his gelding gain its footing and struggle out of the water before my mare touched bottom. Then we were out, with the same little bound with which we had entered. She was tossing her head, and her nostrils were flaring, and I only wanted to get down off her.

  Gyric was already standing on the ground by his horse’s head, and he gave the shiny wet neck a pat. I came up to him, catching up my gown and wringing its hem of water.

  “It was a long swim, and they were heavy loaded,” he said.

  “It was very long,” I agreed, and tried to laugh.

  “Did everything make it across?” he asked, as his hands swept over the pack on his saddle.

  “Yes, and not everything is soaked,” I answered. “The tip of my nose is dry.”

  He gave a smile, and it was wonderful to see, and wonderful to think I made it happen.

  “We are in Mercia,” he said, and got ready to mount again. “Let us hope it is still ruled by Burgred.”

  He handed me his reins, and I again looped them through my saddle rings. Our first goal was the trees before us, for we needed to unload our horses and dry out and re-pack our gear. I looked at everything on this side of the great river with real interest. It looked just the same as the other side, yet we were now in my home country, and not a land ruled by the Danes. Or at least, these were the things we hoped.

  “I do not want to stop, but we will regret it if we do not,” he said to me, as we approached the woods. “It cannot be long before we find a bailiff, or some shire man of rank.”

  I wanted to ask what we would do then, but the question stuck in my throat, for I dreaded the answer. I feared that Gyric would arrange for some man to escort me back to my village, and he himself find some thegn or ceorl to ride back to Kilton with. He was rich and from a famed family; any man of Mercia would readily go with him if he could. Now that he was well enough, why should Gyric wish to have me continue on with him? I would likely be a burden, and slow him down, compared to the speed with which he and another young man could ride. Then too, what would he do with me once we reached Kilton? Where would I go? I would be truly far from my Western village then, and his family would have the trouble of sending me back with an escort. Such were my thoughts upon setting foot in Mercia again.

  I found an open place, not too far within the line of trees, and we freed our horses and spread out our things to dry in the noon Sun. I had not said anything for a long time, and Gyric too was quiet next to me.

  “You are less than a week from your home,” he said at last.

  I did not answer, tho’ I always tried to speak soon after he spoke to me. “Yes,” I finally said.

  “You should take as much as the silver as you want, and all the jewellery,” he went on. “I will not need much to get back to Kilton.”

  Tears were flooding into my eyes, but I made steady my voice. “All of that is for you,” I said through clenched teeth.

  “I do not need it now,” he answered. He turned his face away from me, and lowered his head. “Soon we will find a man to ride with me; he will do it on the promise of gold at Kilton. You need it far more than me.”

  My heart was swelling in my breast as if an unseen hand had gripped it. “I do not want to go back to my village. I left it just a few months ago. I do not want to go back. It was my choice to leave.”

  He moved his face so I could see it, but I could not read his expression. It took a while before he asked, “What will you do? You cannot wander around; there is war.”

  The tears were flowing fast down my face, but still I kept my voice from breaking. He could not know or understand why I wanted to stay with him. I did not know myself. All I could think of was the night I had found him in his cell, and that, kneeling beside him, I had looked at his face and vowed I would come back for him. Everything grew from that moment.

  “I do not want to wander around. I want to ride to Kilton with you. We are not very far, now, are we?”

  He inclined his head towards me, but did not raise it. “You will come all that way with me?”

  “Yes,” I answered, and my words tumbled out. “It is my wish to do that. I want to see the hall on the cliff - and meet your mother who reads and writes - and see the books you told me of -” I stopped to wipe the tears from my eyes. “And see the hunting hawks - and the waters of the sea crashing on the rocks...”

  “You want to see all that?” he asked.

  “Yes,” I stammered out, “and meet your people, especially your mother.”

  As I said this last a terrible thought struck me: that perhaps he thought that I sought a reward for bringing him home. “I do not want anything, or any of the silver; I only want to ride to Kilton with you.” I said this so firmly that it stopped my own tears from flowing.

  He dropped his hands and said, “My father will give you much gold. Even crippled as I am, he will pay for me.”

  “You are not crippled, and I will not take a grain of gold. I only want to - see Kilton.” I wept again, and I stood up to hide it from him.

  When he spoke again his voice was calm and steady. “There is still danger, even tho’ we are in Mercia. We may find more trouble here than in Lindisse.”

  “We have always been in danger, from the first,” I answered back. I looked around the clearing to where our horses nosed together in the grass. “We are a good team,” I reminded him.

  Now it was his turn to echo me. “Yes,” he granted. “We are a very good team.” He nodded his head and ended, “Since you really want to, you will ride to Kilton with me.”

  Chapter the Fifty-eighth: Blood

  WE went on our way, and I at least had a light heart within my breast. Now I knew I should continue on with Gyric to Kilton. It was true that he had not said that he wished me to go there; rather, that I could since I wished it, but this troubled me not. What mattered was that I should see him to his home, where he would be safe and cared for. I did not and could not think abou
t what came next.

  “If we find a road, shall we take it?” I asked, when we had started out. The riding was easy, for the rolling grassland gave way to a light woods, and we could make good time through it.

  “I would rather find a track, and take it to a trev or hamlet, so we could question the folk,” he answered. “If troops are moving, they will be on the roads.”

  “Then we could buy more food, too,” I agreed.

  “Pay attention to the sky. Look for fires that might signal a settlement,” he went on. “Sometimes you can see or smell village cook-fires before you find their ploughed fields.”

  But look as I might, we found no trace of fields or folk all afternoon. We made camp that night in the same open woodlands we had travelled in day. It was a beautiful night, warm and clear, the darkening sky already twinkling with the first stars. I sat close to the fire, gazing into the glowing heart of it, and then lifting my eyes to the brightening stars.

  “It is Walpurga’s night,” I remembered of a sudden. Walpurga was the Goddess of Fertility to our people of old, and this her night. “Tomorrow is May Day.”

  Gyric touched his spear shaft as it lay beside him, running his fingers slowly over the ash wood by the iron tip. We had not wished to lose track of the time, and so he had been careful to number the days as they passed.

  “Yes,” he answered, as he counted the notches he had cut, one for each evening. He released his hold on the spear. “At Kilton there will be big fires tonight,” he recalled.

  “And there will be much feasting and drinking,” I added, remembering the way my kinsman kept this night, and the way it was kept also in my village, tho’ the Prior tried to shame the folk for their behaviour. At dark men and women would go into the fields and give themselves to each other on the freshly ploughed Earth; it made fertile the fields and ensured a rich harvest. And too, any woman who wished would conceive a child on this night as she lay on the Earth with the man of her choice.

  I did not speak of this, but I guessed he was thinking of it too. “The folk will crowd the fields tonight, and tomorrow crowd the village church, asking forgiveness,” he said, and I wondered if he scoffed.

  It was the same way at my village, and probably too, at the village at Four Stones while the priest still lived.

  “It is an important night,” I ventured.

  He did not answer me, and I wondered if by saying this I had lowered myself to the level of a cottar. Then I recalled my father’s brother, ealdorman of my shire, the richest man there, who also honoured Walpurga and all things of the old Gods.

  “Yes, as even our chantry-priest says, it serves the need of the folk. It is important to them.”

  He said this so lightly that I felt ashamed. I thought of the grove at my kinsman’s timber hall, and thought, too of the place of Offering at Four Stones. I wondered what the men there would do to honour this night, and if Yrling would bring Ælfwyn out, and embrace her upon the warming brown Earth, joining those of the village in this sacred rite.

  “Of what do you think?” asked Gyric, rousing me from my distant thoughts.

  “Nothing much,” I answered, not wanting to bring up Ælfwyn.

  “Perhaps you were still thinking of the fires of Walpurga, and the cottars in the fields,” he said in a light voice.

  “No,” I replied, and chose to be honest with him. “I was thinking of Ælfwyn, and hoping that all goes well for her and her new people.”

  He turned his head away, and I regretted having mentioned her name. “Her new people are my enemies, and I cannot wish any of them anything but damnation.”

  “I was not thinking of the Danes,” I answered quickly. “I thought of the folk of Lindisse who she is trying to feed and clothe.”

  He nodded his head, but muttered, “If they prosper, the Danes prosper.”

  There was no answer for this, for he was right. At first Ælfwyn thought that the better she managed the affairs of Four Stones, the more content Yrling would be, but it soon became clear that growing fields of wheat and grazing cattle would not content him. If these things could be had as well as gold and silver plunder, so much the better; that was the way Yrling thought.

  “How much food do we have?” he asked next. I was becoming used to him changing the topic of a sudden.

  I pulled our food pack over and drew everything out, and examined it with care in the fire light. “There is a good deal of the haunch; two day’s worth. A few handfuls of barley. A handful or two of wheat.”

  He listened to all this, and said, “We need to go on half-rations until we come to a settlement. It is better to be slightly hungered for a few days than to exhaust all our provisions and starve.”

  “Yes,” I agreed, not looking forward to this at all. I put everything away and consoled myself by saying, “At least I am finding things to gather.” In the last week, the Earth had been generous in sending forth dock and succory and starwort and lamb’s quarters. Boiled down, they were tender and delicious, and relieved many of our cravings for fresh green things.

  “Yes, but they alone cannot keep us travelling; not for long.”

  “You are right,” I conceded, thinking of how hungry I was every night when we made our camp. “How welcome bread will be,” I thought aloud.

  “Yes; bread - and ale,” he agreed. “Will you give me your needle case?” he asked now, jumping, I thought, from one thing to the next.

  “Here it is,” I answered, pulling it from my satchel. “Do you have a splinter?”

  “I want to see if we can form a fish hook,” he answered, and promptly pricked himself as he tried to pull a long needle from the leathern quill.

  I began to reach to him, but then stayed my hand. I sat back on my heels as he bit his bleeding finger tip.

  “Do you want help?” I offered.

  He shook his head, and returned to touching the needles. “Is this the longest?” he asked, pulling it out for me to see.

  “It is,” I assured him.

  He held it carefully out towards me. “Put it in the fire where you can pull it out again when it begins to glow,” he instructed. “Use whatever way you can to pull it out, and I will bend it in a piece of leather to make the hook.”

  That is just what we did, for when the needle grew red I plucked it from the fire using tweezers, and dropped it into a scrap of thick leather. Gyric folded the hot needle around it, and it did not snap, so for the cost of a precious needle we had an even more precious fish hook.

  “When we are next by water we will fish over-night,” he said, fingering the cooled hook. “The streams are full of fish this time of year.”

  “I will never be so glad to dig for worms,” I returned. And so in this way we tried to make light of our fear of coming hunger.

  In the morning we ate the last bit of barley, and so the fear of lack was not far from my thoughts. The day echoed my mood, for the Sun was veiled with overcast, and a mist like the finest fog rose up from the Earth.

  At times the Sun burned through the mist, and at others the mist grew thick about us, but it was not cold, only damp. We stopped at midday, and I gave Gyric a slice of the smoked haunch, and I took a nibble of it myself, but kept from eating more. As it began to grow dim we crossed what looked like an animal path in the low growth.

  “Gyric, here is a trackway, perhaps made by deer or wild pig. We will follow it and see if it leads to water.”

  Within a few horse length’s the track opened, and became wider, and I saw what looked like wheel ruts in the soft reddish soil. At one place the track narrowed, and then turned and opened up, leading along the edge of a large ploughed field. There, across the straight furrows, rose a cluster of huts.

  “Gyric, here it is, a little trev. There are six or seven huts, centred in a big field.”

  “Who is about?” he wanted to know. “We must still be wary.”

  I looked at each hut carefully. “There is no one I can see.” The Sun’s setti
ng rays cast sharp shadows across the furrowed field. “Strange, since it is far from dark.” I eyed the scene again. “There is not even one fire burning.”

  Gyric shook his head, and a little motion of his body made his gelding try to back up. “This is not good. Go around it; do not move close. We will get at a distance, and you can watch from there.”

  I turned our horses, and then stopped, for I had heard a strange sound. Gyric’s face showed he had heard it too.

  “Was that a child?” I asked him.

  He held up his hand, and we were both quiet, waiting for the sound again. It did not come, and I began to move our horses. Then we heard it, louder than the first time.

  “It is a child, crying,” I said, and turned to look over the fields to the huts. “Someone is there, that we know.”

  “Get at a distance, where we cannot be seen,” said Gyric again.

  I turned back up the track we had taken, and we rode a little way through the elders. We sat on our horses, and I watched the huts as the creeping shadows slanted across them. We sat for many minutes, and then heard the child wail again.

  “Perhaps there is some trouble there; sickness, perhaps,” I said.

  “It could be fever,” warned Gyric.

  “Yes, or just a child left alone for some reason, while the others are out gathering, or at some other task.”

  I looked across at the surrounding fields. There were peas, and beans, and rows of young turnips, and carrots, and parsnips, I thought; all bordered by long straight rows of wheat.

  “The crops do well; there is plenty here,” I said, and recited all that I saw. The mist in the air made the light look soft, more like dawn than dusk.

  “We will ride down,” Gyric decided. He began unlashing his spear from his saddle. He gripped it upright in his right hand, and we rode down through the scrub.

  Ahead was a low wattle fence, and as we walked by it I started and gasped. My mare shied and took a little half-step to the side, and Gyric’s gelding bumped into us and whinnied, and Gyric reached out and caught my arm with his left hand and hissed, “What?”