by Jane Yolen
She heard a noise and turned to face it, thinking it some small night creature on the prowl. There was nothing larger than a stoat or fox on Ynis Evelonia. She feared neither. At home she had kept a reynard, raised up from a kit, and had hunted with two ferrets as companions in her pocket.
Home! What images suddenly rose up to plague her, the same that had caused her no end of sleepless nights when she had first arrived. For she had been homesick, whatever nonsense she had told little Pie for comfort’s sake. The great hearth at Carmelide, large enough to roast an oxen, where once she had lost the golden ring her mother had given her and her cousin Cadoc had grabbed up a bucket of water, dousing the fire and getting himself all black with coal and grease to recover it for her. And the great apple tree outside her bedroom window up which young Jemmy, the ostler’s son, had climbed to sing of his love for her even though he knew he would be soundly beaten for it. And the mews behind the main house where Master Thom had kept the hawks and let her sneak in to practice holding the little merlin that she had wanted for her own. But it had died tangled in its jesses the day before she’d been sent off to the isle, and one part of her had been glad that no one else would hunt the merlin now.
She heard the noise again, louder this time, too loud for a fox or a squirrel or a stoat. Loud enough for a human. She spoke out, “Who is it?” and held out the knife before her, trembling with the cold. Only the cold, she promised herself.
“It is I,” came a small voice.
“Pie!” Her own voice took back its authority. “You are not supposed to be here.”
“I saw it all, Veree. The dressing and undressing. The ropes and the knife. And I did promise to help.” The childish form slipped out from behind the tree, white linen shift reflecting the moon’s light.
“I told you all would be well, child. You did not need to come.”
“But I promised.” If that voice held pity, it was self-pity. The child was clearly a worshiper begging not to be dismissed.
Veree smiled and held out the hand with the cup. “Come, then. Thou shalt be my page.”
Elaine put her hand to Veree’s gown and held on as if she would never let go and, so bound, the two entered into the Goddess Glade.
The arch-mage came in the morning just as Morgan had foretold. He was not at all what Elaine had expected, being short and balding, with a beard as long and as thin as an exclamation mark. But that he was a man of power no one could doubt.
The little coracle, rowed by the same ferret-faced woman who had deposited Elaine on the isle, fair skimmed the surface of the waves and plowed onto the shore, leaving a furrow in which an oak could have been comfortably set.
The arch-mage stood up in the boat and greeted Mother Argente familiarly. “Salve, mater. Visne somnia vendere?”
She answered him back with great dignity. “Si volvo, Merline, caveat emptor.”
Then they both laughed, as if this exchange were a great and long-standing joke between them. If it was a joke, they were certainly the only ones to understand it.
“Come, Arch-Mage,” Mother Argente said, “and take wine with us in the guest house. We will talk of the purpose of your visit in comfort there.”
He nodded and, with a quick twist of his wrist, produced a coin from behind the boat woman’s right ear. With a flourish he presented it to her, then stepped from the coracle. The woman dropped the coin solemnly into the leather bag she wore at her waist.
Elaine gasped and three other girls giggled.
“The girls are, as always, amused by your tricks, Merlin,” said Mother Argente, her mouth pursed in a wry smile.
“I like to keep in practice,” he said. “And to amuse the young ones. Besides, as one gets older the joints stiffen.”
“That I know, that I know,” Argente agreed. They walked side by side like old friends, moving slowly up the little hill. The rest of the women and girls fell in behind them, and so it was, in a modest processional, that they came to the guest house.
At the door of the wattle pavilion which was shaded by a lean of willows, Mother Argente turned. “Sonda, Hesta, Morgan, Lisanor, enter and treat with our guest. Veree, ready yourself for noon. The rest of you, you know your duties.” Then she opened the door and let Merlin precede them into the house.
The long table was already set with platters of cheese and fruit. Delicate goblets of Roman glass marked off six places. As soon as they were all seated with Argente at the head and Merlin at the table’s foot, Mother A poured her own wine and passed the silver ewer. Morgan, seated at Argente’s right hand, was the last to fill her glass. When she set the ewer down, she raised her glass.
“I am Wind on Sea,” Morgan chanted.
“I am Wind on Sea,
I am Ocean-wave,
I am Roar of Sea,
I am Bull of Seven Fights,
I am Vulture on Cliff,
I am Dewdrop,
I am Fairest of Flowers,
I am Boar for Boldness,
I am Salmon in Pool,
I am Lake on Plain,
I am a Word of Skill
I am the Point of a Weapon—”
“Morgan,” warned Argente.
“Do not stop her,” commanded Merlin. “She is vates, afire with the word of the Gods. My god or your god, they are the same. They speak with tongues of fire and they sometimes pick a warped reed through which to blow a particular tune.”
Argente bowed her head once to him but Morgan was already finished. She looked across the table at Hesta, her eyes preternaturally bright. “I know things.” she said.
“It is clear that I have come at a moment of great power,” said Merlin. “‘I am the point of a Weapon’ say the gods to us. And my dreams these past months have been of sword point, but swords that are neither gladius nor spatha nor the far tribes’ ensis. A new creation. And where does one come for a sword of power, but here. Here to Ynis Evelonia.”
Mother Argente smiled. “We have many swords ready, arch-mage.”
“I need but one.” He did not return her smile, staring instead into his cup of wine.
“How will we know this sword of power?” Argente asked, leaning forward.
“I will know,” intoned Morgan.
Sonda, taking a sip of her wine, put her head to one side like a little bird considering a tasty worm. “And what payment, arch-mage?”
“Ah, Mother Sonda, that is always the question they leave to you. What payment indeed.” Merlin picked up his own glass and suddenly drained it. He set the glass down gently, contemplating the rim. Then he stroked his long beard. “If I dream true—and I have never been known to have false dreams—then you shall give me this particular sword and its maker.”
“Give you? What a notion, Merlin.” Mother Argente laughed, but there was little amusement in it. “The swords made of Evian Steel are never given away. We have too many buyers vying for them. If you will not pay for it, there will be others who will.”
There was a sudden, timid knock upon the door. Sonda rose quietly and went to it, spoke to the Mother who had interrupted them, then turned.
“It is nearing noon, Mother. The sun rides high. It is time.” Sonda’s voice was smooth, giving away no more than necessary.
Mother Argente rose and with her the others rose, too.
“Stay, Arch-Mage, there is food and wine enough. When we have done with our … obsequies … we shall return to finish our business with you.”
The five Mothers left and so did not hear the man murmur into his empty cup, “This business will be finished before-times.”
The entire company of women gathered at the river’s edge to watch. The silver vat, really an overlarge bowl, was held by Mother Morgan. The blood-tinted water reflected only sky.
Veree, in the white silken shift, stood with her toes curling under into the mud. Elaine could see the raised goose bumps along her arms, though it was really quite warm in the spring sun.
Mother Hesta held a sword on the palms of h
er upturned hands. It was a long-bladed double edge sword, the quillon cleverly worked. The sword seemed afire with the sun, the shallow hollow down its center aflame.
Veree took the sword from Hesta and held it flat against her breast while Mother Argente anointed her forehead with the basin’s water. With her finger she drew three circles and three crosses on Veree’s brow.
“Blood to blood, steel to steel, thee to me,” said Mother Argente.
Veree repeated the chant. “Blood to blood, steel to steel, I to thee.” Then she took the sword and set it into the basin.
As the sword point and then the blade touched the water, the basin erupted in steam. Great gouts of fire burst from the sword and Mother Argente screamed.
Veree grabbed the sword by the handle and ran down into the tidal pool. She plunged in with it and immediately the flames were quenched, but she stayed under the water and Elaine, fearful for her life, began to cry out, running down to the water’s edge.
She was pushed aside roughly by a strong hand and when she caught her breath, she saw it was the arch-mage himself, standing knee deep in water, his hands raised, palms down, speaking words she did not quite understand.
“I take ye here
Till Bedevere
Cast ye back.”
Bedevere? Did he mean Veree? Elaine wondered, and then had time to wonder no further for the waters parted before the arch-mage and the sword pierced up into the air before him.
He grasped the pommel in his left hand and with a mighty heave pulled the sword from the pool. Veree’s hand, like some dumb, blind thing, felt around in the air, searching.
Elaine waded in, dived under, and wrapping her arms around Veree’s waist, pushed her out of the pool. They stood there, trembling, looking like two drowned ferrets, unable to speak or weep or wonder.
“This is the sword I shall have,” Merlin said to Mother Argente, his back to the two half-drowned girls.
“I do not understand …” began Mother Argente. “But I will know.”
“I know things,” said Morgan triumphantly.
Mother Argente turned and spoke through clenched teeth, “Will someone shut her up?”
Hesta smiled broadly. “Yes, Mother. Your will is my deed.” Her large right hand clamped down on Morgan’s neck and she picked her up and shook her like a terrier with a rat, then set her down. Morgan did not speak again but her eyes grew slotted and cold.
Marta began to sob quietly until nudged by Gale, but the other girls were stunned into silence.
“Now, now,” murmured Sonda to no one in particular. “Now, now.”
Mother Argente walked over to Veree who straightened up and held her chin high. “Explain this, child.”
Veree said nothing.
“What blood was used to quench the sword?”
“Mother, it was my own.”
Elaine interrupted. “It was. I saw it.”
Mother Argente turned on her. “You saw it? Then it was your watching that corrupted the steel.”
Merlin moved between them. “Mater. Think. Such power does not emanate from this child.” He swung his head so that he was staring at Veree. “And where did the blood come from?”
Under his stare Veree lowered her eyes. She spoke to the ground. “It is a woman’s secret. I cannot talk of it.”
The arch-mage smiled. “I am man and woman, neither and both. The secrets of the body are known to me. Nothing is hidden from me.”
“I have nothing to tell you if you know it already.”
“Then I will tell it to thee,” said Merlin. He shifted the sword to his left hand, turned to her, and put his right hand under her chin. “Look at me, Gwyneth, called here Vireo, and deny this if you can. Last night for the first time you became a woman. The moon called out your blood. And it was this flux that you used, the blood that flows from the untested womb, not the body’s blood flowing to the heart. Is it so?”
She whispered, “It is so.”
Argente put a hand to her breast. “That is foul. Unclean.”
“It is the more powerful thereby,” Merlin answered.
“Take the sword, arch-mage. And the girl. And go.”
“No!” Elaine dropped to her knees by Veree’s side and clasped her legs. “Do not go. Or take me with you. I could not bear to be here without you. I would die for you.”
Merlin looked down at the little girl and shook his head. “You shall not die yet, little Elaine. Not so soon. But you shall give your life for her—that I promise you.” He tucked the sword in a scabbard he suddenly produced from inside his cloak. “Come, Gwyneth.” He held out his hand.
She took his hand and smiled at him. “There is nothing here to pity,” she said.
“I shall never give you pity,” he said. “Not now or ever. You choose and you are chosen. I see that you know what it is you do.”
Mother Argente smoothed her skirts down, a gesture which seemed to return them all to some semblance of normality. “I myself will row you across. The sooner she is gone from here, the better.”
“But my clothes, mother.”
“They shall be sent to you.”
The arch-mage swung the cape off his shoulders and enfolded the girl in it. The cape touched the ground, sending up little puffs of dirt.
“You shall never be allowed on this isle again,” said Mother Argente. “You shall be denied the company of women. Your name shall be crossed off the book of the Goddess.”
Veree still smiled.
“You shall be barren,” came a voice from behind them. “Your womb’s blood was given to cradle a sword. It shall not cradle a child. I know things.”
“Get into the boat,” instructed Merlin. “Do not look back, it only encourages her.” He spoke softly to Mother Argente, “I am glad, Mater that that one is your burden.”
“I give you no thanks for her,” said Mother Argente as she pushed the boat off into the tide. She settled onto the seat, took up the oars, feathered them once, and began to pull.
The coracle slipped quickly across the river.
Veree stared out across the gray waters that gave scarcely any reflection. Through the mist she could just begin to see the far shore where the tops of thatched cottages and the smoky tracings of cook fires were taking shape.
“Shapwick-across-the-flood,” mused Merlin. “And from there we shall ride by horse to Camlann. It will be a long and arduous journey, child. Your bones will ache.”
“Pitying me already?”
“Pitying you? My bones are the older and will ache the more. No, I will not pity you. But we will all be pitied when this story is told years hence, for it will be a tale cunningly wrought of earth, air, fire—and blood.”
The boat lodged itself clumsily against the Shapwick shore. The magician stood and climbed over the side. He gathered the girl up and carried her to the sand, huffing mightily. Then he turned and waved to the old woman who huddled in the coracle.
“Ave, mater.”
“Ave, magister,” she called back, “Until we must meet again.”
Ynis Evelonia, the Isle of Women, lies within the marshy tidal river Tamor that is itself but a ribbon stretched between the Mendip and the Quantock hills. The isle is scarcely remarked from the shore. It is as if Manannan MacLir himself had shaken his cloak between.
On most days there is an unsettling mist obscuring the irregular coast of the isle; and only in the full sun, when the light just rising illuminates a channel, can any passage across the glass-colored waters be seen. And so it is that women alone, who have been schooled in the hidden causeways across the fen, mother to daughter down through the years, can traverse the river in coracles that slip easily through the brackish flood.
By ones and twos they come and go in their light skin boats to commerce with the Daughters of Eve who stay in holy sistership on the isle, living out their chaste lives and making with their magics the finest blades mankind has ever known.
The isle is dotted with trees, not the great Druidic oak
s that line the roadways into Godney and Meare and tower over the mazed pathways up to the high tor, but small womanish trees: alder and apple, willow and ash, leafy havens for the migratory birds. And the little isle fair rings with bird song and the clanging of hammer on anvil and steel.
But men who come to buy swords at Ynis Evelonia are never allowed further inland than the wattle guest house with its oratory of wicker wands winded and twisted together under a rush roof. Only one man has ever slept there and is—in fact—sleeping there still. But that is the end of this story—which shall not be told—and the beginning of yet another.
… it fell so that Merlin fell in a dotage on the damosel that King Pellinore brought to court, and she was one of the damosels of the lake, that hight Nimue. But Merlin would let her have no rest, but always he would be with her. And ever she made Merlin good cheer till she learned of him all manner thing that she desired; and he was assotted upon her, that he might not be from her.
—Le Morte D’Arthur
by Sir Thomas Malory
In the Whitethorn Wood
HE WOKE TO WOOD and the underside of bark. There had been no death, at least none that he remembered. Just a long, final breath, part kiss and part spell. A name formed on his mouth, a name he could not quite shape, though he was sure it began with an n.
“Nnnnn,” he murmured tentatively.
Reaching upward, his hands touched wood. He felt wood on all sides, a coffin of it, rounded without the square, hammered pegs. Pushing desperately against it, he was surprised that it had a give to it, as of a living thing. He scratched it with his fingernails and a soft, meaty substance peeled downward.
“Where am I?” he cried out, his words strangely muffled.
In the dark. It was a woman’s voice that answered him, but not aloud. In the dark.
Where is this dark? he thought to himself, hesitating to frame the question with his mouth.
It did not matter. The woman’s voice, low and throaty, still answered him. In the wood.
In the dark. In the wood. Bottled up like a cask of wine. They were answers that meant nothing to him. But remembering little else, he knew he was a man used to riddles. They had been—of this one thing he was sure—his lifework. He had moved from riddle to answer, from answer to riddle down through his days. In this dark and in this wood he would unravel this final riddle. And then, like a weaver woman with a fleece, skirting the bad parts and spinning out the thread, he would wind it up again.