by Mike Crowson
Chapter 7
I was about five summers old when they sent me to train as a priestess. Five or six, I don't recall now, but I do remember it was a long journey for a child. Well, it was a long journey for anyone. Three weeks or more it took us.
Before I undertook such a venture my mother and father went into the circle of stones and our priestess made an offering. Only when she was satisfied that all was well did she say that I could go and my parents solemnly kissed me goodbye. It's so long ago and so far away that I cannot remember what manner of folk they were. Good, ordinary folk, I suppose. I remember them only dimly as warm and kindly persons who provided my food, warmth and security. I recall them less clearly as individuals and not at all as regards their status in the village.
We set off early and at first we followed the river valley near home uphill, crossing the river when it was no more than a stream and went down the far side of the mountains. That part didn't take long and we were already going down when we camped for the first night.
There was a woman to look after me. She was a comparative stranger, since I hadn't seen her before she arrived at my village a week earlier, but she was a kindly person and treated me well. She was tall with an air of confidence that was not quite authority. I think she would be in her early twenties, but she might have been younger - after all this time I cannot be sure and, in any event, a child as young as I was then is a poor judge of age. Be that as it may, I became very attached to her and insisted on sleeping with her when we camped, not that she seemed to mind. I think she had an escort of only two or three and another four of our people went with us as well.
We crossed several more streams, going steadily down all the time. We rode for a time alongside a substantial river to our left and camped the second night on its bank. It was a grand camp as far as a small child was concerned. The ponies we were riding and the two pack animals were tied for the night, then three hide covered lean-to shelters were made from cut branches. When the shelters were built, a fire was lit and supper was cooked. I remember noticing that Nerfin, the woman taking care of me, didn't eat the meat, though there was plenty if she had wanted it. It's strange that I should remember a fact like that.
There were mostly paths, though not always. Sometimes there was a track leading to a bigger village and sometimes no path at all and we just seemed to follow a river. Usually we camped near villages and the people were friendly enough, even treating Nerfin and to a lesser extent me, with respect. Once we were invited into a village and Nerfin and I slept in a house, but mostly we camped and Nerfin traded with the villagers for food.
Then we followed another river, on the right hand this time. I had never seen one so big, but remember first that I was a child and second that I was untravelled. There were more villages now and more people. The land was hilly and grassy. There were tame cattle and sheep everywhere, with guarded pens for them at night. Though I hadn't seen any wolves on my journey, I was old enough to know them as a threat, but too young to realise that they weren't much of a threat in summer, provided they were left alone.
At last we came to a group of houses, wooden and above ground, surrounded by a circular ditch and bank, with entrances at either end. I remember I didn't think the ditch and the bank would do much to stop an intruder and guessed, more or less correctly, that the bank marked a boundary as much as anything. If I hadn't spent three weeks camping I would have been nervous of sleeping in a house built above ground but, as it was, I had no qualms.
There were several girls about my age, all training to be priestesses, as well as some older girls, further along the path of the goddess, and we all had our duties in the house. Of course we had to keep ourselves clean and groomed - we had to look our best for the Goddess - and we had to take turns at keeping the house tidy. Besides that we had weaving and spinning to do, as well as our studies of the stars and the herbs. I soon settled into a comfortable routine, for life was even and regular in the village. I quickly discovered that it was a temple. The actual temple building was the largest one of the group, and there were some twenty-five or so altogether with the various trainees and the active priestesses and the one or two old women. There were no men or boys living in the compound, but it was not forbidden to speak or mix with those outside if we had any spare time.
I think I was probably a good-looking child, small with long dark hair and an oval shaped face. It took me quite a time to braid my hair each morning, combing it out and then putting it in a single broad plait that hung down to my waist. I was certainly a bright child, learning to spin and weave with some dexterity, but also learning about life to an extent far beyond my years. I soon understood why the priestesses must keep their virginity for the fertility rites at Beltane each year. I don't know whether I fully appreciated the finer points which make it an enjoyable experience, but I certainly knew more about the basics than I should have done and, of course, accepted it.
At Beltane, in two or three villages chosen for that year, one of the priestesses and one of the men of that village, chosen by ballot, mated. The prayers to the Goddess were said over the fields and the animals. Afterwards the Beltane fires were lit and the whole village took part in the fertility rites. At the high temple, which was the holiest of places, one of the younger priestesses, a virgin vowed to the Goddess, led the mating and the fertility rites each year.
I saw little of Nerfin after the journey and the first few weeks. The house was ruled over by an older woman and my own particular friend, a dark-looking girl about a year older than me, was called Eyebright after the herb because, as the name suggests, she was a bright-eyed little thing. I don't remember her true name after all these years: perhaps I never knew it.
I grew up in the house from a little girl to a young woman. I would have been about twelve when the decision was made to build a new temple. A spot was chosen in the middle of a grassy plain about a day's ride away from the place we had used from time out of mind. The area was farmed, I think, but there was to be a circular ditch with the earth piled up inside, much as the present site but bigger. There would be two entrances and a circular temple, with a circular veranda with a circle of stones marking the position of the sun's and moon's risings and settings at different times of year, so that we would know exactly when midsummer and midwinter were.
One day, just before the work started, the old woman in charge of the house came up to me and said that the High Priestess required my presence in the temple. When I walked into the temple she was talking to Nerfin so I stood in silence until she had done. She turned her attention to me, studying me carefully. She told me at length, "You have been chosen for the blessing at the start of work on the new temple."
I knew, of course, what this meant and was filled with several conflicting emotions. I realised it was a great honour that the Goddess required me for something so important but I was also more than a little afraid. I said nothing.
"You will be prepared by Nerfin for a ceremony next new moon." Her tone did not allow for dissent, though I would not have argued anyway. I had only eight days to prepare myself. Of course, looked at another way, I had only eight days to worry about the event and my part in it.
We rode to the site just two days before the ceremony. In the middle of the plain, in the hollow of a low hill, was a solitary rock: flattish, about four feet wide by six feet long by three feet high. This was to be the altar for the ceremony: I think it was always intended that it remain in place and become the altar of the temple itself. Certainly that's what happened anyway.
I had a tent nearby and on the eve of the ceremony Nerfin first made me bathe in a stream and then rubbed my skin with herb oils to make it smell pleasing, then I combed my long hair but let it hang loose. Nerfin painted me with the symbols of the Goddess and led me naked and shivering with fright to the rock. The only concession made to my comfort was a sheepskin covering it and I had to lie on this. The rock was circled by priestesses and other officials, to see that the offering was mad
e as custom demanded. I lay there and waited.
I gave myself to the Goddess and my virgin-blood was the offering. Work could begin on the temple. I do not know to this day who he was, but he was gentle in his taking of me.
After the blessing ritual, work began on the ditch and the bank and I returned to the temple with Nerfin to find myself a fully established priestess. Of course I was still learning - predicting eclipses and so on, the medical effects of herbs and how to find them - but I took up regular duties in the temple.
About six weeks after the ceremony I began being ill: foods which I liked before now made me sick. Looking back I cannot see how any woman could be so naive as not to see the connection, but I was very young then and my monthly cycles had hardly begun. So it was that I failed to recognise the life within me and it was Nerfin that recognised my pregnancy before I did. I think all those at the temple rejoiced with me when I did know, but I was more glad than they when I stopped being ill!
The temple grew and so did I. The soil from the deeper of two circular ditches was thrown up into two banks: the higher inside the ditch, the lower outside. A second ditch was dug inside the bank and the soil used to raise the bank itself even further. In a single summer most of the preliminary work was done. If I have spoken much of the temple, which I visited only once before my confinement, and little of my pregnancy, it's because everyone has seen plenty of pregnant women! My only claim to fame was that I was unusually young. Once I got over my morning sickness I was very fit and was slowed down only by my own awkward shape in later months.
The temple was started just after the Spring equinox, so my time came in mid-winter, just when the weather was at its coldest. Even with fires burning in our houses, ice sometimes formed on the washing and drinking water. We piled on extra covers and snuggled down within the beds. I was not very big but, fortunately, my daughter took after me and was small too. I was young and fit, a little scared and very unknowing - I was more scared when I knew what to expect. I spent a miserable night with backache and stomach ache, but I did not realise that it was part of labour. The bearing of my child was like ... well, what was it like? Like shitting a lump of rock I suppose. I was wondering how much longer I could put up with cold feet and legs rather than pain and discomfort before it was done.
When Beltane came around I was still nursing, but that did not prevent me from taking part in the fertility rites. Mind, I took part as much from curiosity as from a wish to serve the Goddess again. I wanted my share of what some reckoned to be a pleasure, seeing that my one exploit had been uncomfortable, public and had ended with pregnancy. The chief of the priestesses wondered at my sense of duty, but I rather think Nerfin was wiser. She, however, said nothing.
Later that year I went again to the temple. The ditches and banks were all dug and already some of the posts were in place. I learned that there would be a circular building providing living accommodation for those who tended the temple itself, which would be an open circular centre to the residential area. There would be just one entrance to the temple. In the building were to be the rooms for living, working and learning, for we already supplied priestesses to most of the bigger villages and even more were to be trained in the future. I took my daughter Gaïn with me for the weather was warm and the distance not great, but I did not stay long.
The second summer after Gaïn was born, when she was about eighteen months old, I went again to the new temple and watched as the work progressed. The old high priestess died about this time and her body was laid out. Before we had decided what to do with her a local chief died too, and it was decided that a new tomb should be built for the two of them, marking the mid-summer sunrise line at the same time. Work on the temple stopped while a mound of suitable size was raised over the graves. I was impressed with arrangements when I went there for the funeral rites. The chief was buried with a cup of mead for his journey and his two favourite hunting axes. The body of the high priestess was burned before the remains were interred.
There were not the workers to spare for two projects in a single summer, so we went back to spend another winter in the old temple at Durring and to elect a successor to the high priestess.
The old high priestess had been more than forty two when she died, and that itself caused us some problems. She had been in charge so long that many of us had known no other: many of her potential successors were themselves too old. In the end the choice fell on Nerfin, though there were several her senior.
During the spring Nerfin was much occupied with the question of sacrifice. We no longer sacrificed people as a matter of routine, but the building of a temple was not routine and every temple demands its sacrifice. Generally it was said that a death among those building was a sacrifice and that sufficed. Here we had a big, new temple and no deaths. Nerfin was faced with the decision.
We all travelled to the new temple as it neared completion and I took Gaïn with me. She was walking and getting into everything now, at about two and a half. I had to watch the dark haired, rather silent child the whole time . We camped outside but nearby and waited for mid-summer day. Grass had grown on the hillock which marked the burial place of the old high priestess, and a small pile of stones on its top marked the mid-summer sunrise line. I wondered who had done that. Grass had also grown on the bank round the temple site.
Nerfin had called a final gathering at noon two days before mid-summer and I had no doubt she would tell us the arrangements for a sacrifice at the dedication of the temple. I wanted to settle Gaïn in our tent before we met but she was not around. I looked for her in the camp which was not only soon done but drew a blank. I was only mildly worried, because she was always into something and this was not the first time she had been lost. I wandered into the temple complex and saw her across the other side watching some workmen taking out wooden poles that had been used in the building without being incorporated into the structure. While I watched, one of two men handling a long pole let slip his end. The wood caught Gaïn a glancing blow on the head and she was knocked over.
I rushed over to where she lay but she was dead. I couldn't see any damage to her beyond a bruise on the side of her head. Not even a cut. When I looked up I saw that Nerfin was amongst those standing round.
"There is a strange but consistent logic in what the Goddess has seen fit to do." she said. "Gaïn was conceived at the start of the temple and died at its completion."
Nobody could argue with that. She gave instruction that Gaïn was to be buried within the boundaries of the temple itself and there was no further talk of a sacrifice.
As the Goddess willed, so it might have been, but that did not prevent the tears when I was eventually alone. Gaïn's death had been so quick and sudden that she could have known nothing about it. I grieved for her as her mother, will of the Goddess or not.
The weather that first winter in the new temple was not cold but I have never seen it wetter, before or since. Every day from autumn solstice to spring solstice it rained some part of the day, usually all of it. It rained at Midwinter, so we burned the log in the hearth and celebrated inside. The ground in the centre of the temple drained reasonably well but it was still sodden most of the time and we didn't even dare step on it for fear of making it uneven when the ground eventually dried.
In March there were high winds and storms, with rain clouds driving before the wind like sheep before wolves. We were not unduly disturbed by the storms but some of the low lying and coastal areas were badly hit. Some places fared so badly that they sent to us for help, thinking that perhaps the Goddess herself was angry with them for some reason. Nerfin decided that she would undertake the journey in person, taking me with her.
We wore hide cloaks that had been smeared with beeswax and animal fat to make them as weatherproof as possible but we were still soon cold and wet. Low lying land was either covered completely in water with trees and bushes poking up from the stricken areas or wet and marshy with pools of water lying everywhere. By keeping to higher grou
nd we made reasonable progress, but crossing rivers was sometimes an almost impossible problem, and we had to make frequent detours as we made our way south-west.
We arrived at a cluster of tents and lean-to shelters with one or two boats pulled up. Below and beyond an expanse of water marked a river estuary where a fishing village had flourished. It transpired that the tents indicated the survivors, but the weather prevented fishing, water prevented planting crops and most of the animals had drowned. Unless there was a change quickly life could be very desperate for the remainder.
Nerfin felt that drastic steps were called for, and ruled that three sacrifices should be made to the Goddess on the next three mornings. Lots were drawn from among the young men who went out fishing and three more-or-less willing victims were chosen. On the day before the sacrifice the victim was given his choice of whatever the community could offer, then, at supper, he was given a potion of herbs to make him sleep - a sleep from which he did not waken!
The first chose a meal and the people went to great trouble to provide his pleasure. The second chose music when it was his turn and singers were found among the people. The third young man shocked and surprised everyone by choosing me. Or rather he chose to spend his last hours making love to me. I knew well enough that I had grown very beautiful but I was still flattered, though I did not admit that.
Nerfin was angry with him. She said that was hardly what was meant by his choice in the spending of his last hours. Still, a promise was a promise so she kept her word and as custom demanded I went to him.
The shelter was well placed and heated by a fire in the entrance. I went in and looked at him carefully. He was tall, perhaps as much as five feet, and his hard, outdoor life had made him hard and sinewy. I had already made up my mind to give him a night to remember - though, it must be said, his memory of it would be short indeed. Perhaps better say that I meant him to go to his sacrifice knowing the best a woman had to offer. It seems he had similarly made up his mind that I should enjoy my time with him. I undressed and stood before him. He parted my legs and worshipped at the shrine of the Goddess. When he took me it was such sweet pleasure that I almost forgot his enjoyment and delight, but I put that right times over before he drank the sleeping draught that night. I was sorry to see him sacrificed, a willing victim for the people.
Nerfin ruled that we would wait a week before we undertook any further actions of any sort. In the event we did not have to wait as long as that before the moon changed, the weather broke and the wind dropped. Naturally she received (and took) the credit and we set off back amidst rejoicing.
I was older and wiser this time, and was the first to realise that I was with child again. I had mixed feelings. I had grown used to having lost Gaïn and living alone in the temple. I rather regarded the new life within me as a distraction I could do without. On the other hand I quite enjoyed being the centre of attention again. Of course I would do as the Goddess willed.
I found that Gaïn's conception, birth, life and death were regarded in some awe, consequently so was the new life, especially as it too had been conceived in the direct service of the Goddess. I too was looked on with some respect. Nerfin had caught some kind of a fever as a result of her journey in adverse weather and in spite of the better summer conditions, was still unwell.
Again my confinement was in the depths of winter. As I knew what to expect I was more afraid of feeling pain this time but again I had an easy time of bearing a small but sturdy daughter. These rooms in the new temple were much less draughty than the old ones and, with the fire banked up and plenty of rushes to lie on, I made myself comfortable with my daughter. At the same time Nerfin, who had not really recovered her old self, was very ill.
Spring came, the weather warmed, Beltane was celebrated with enthusiasm, my daughter flourished and Nerfin died.
The priestesses assembled to elect a new high priestess. There were just four older women left in the temple and they counselled against choosing one of them on account of their age, which made much sense. There was then something of a gap. Too many had gone to villages and settled there while the remaining women in the temple were about my age or a little older. I was only in my seventeenth summer, though my word carried more weight than most and I seemed older. At my suggestion the priestesses were summoned from the villages and word was duly sent. We waited a full month to give them time enough to come before we met to decide.
Those who were trained in the way of the Goddess gathered and we waited the promised month for the further ones. When we finally met in council there were more than sixty of us. I explained the dilemma that beset us. I'm not sure why I spoke instead of one of the others. I was less awed than the others by the size of the gathering, of course, but I don't see why that should have been so. There were others my senior who did not wish to speak to such a crowd. There was some talk but no decision. Many of those from the villages had settled down and did not wish to move now: some even had relationships they did not desire to break up.
Gradually it became clear that the gathering as a whole looked to me for leadership. I was too young to be the high priestess. That office demanded wisdom and intelligence, which I was not sure I possessed in sufficient degree, a certain eloquence which I had to admit I did possess and experience, which I was certain I did not. It would seem the gathering thought otherwise. The other women were impressed by the life and death of my daughter Gaïn, the events at the coast, my second daughter, Faya and my persuasive tongue.
So it was that I came to be elected high priestess and wear the sacred ring at no more than eighteen summers. Why I sent the ring elsewhere ten summers ago is another story and I have not told it before. The ring. What is a ring? A thin hollow circle you slide onto your finger. Precious. I have seen no other one. One of the oldest women took it from Nerfin's body and gave it to me, saying that Nerfin had received it from the last high priestess. Many summers passed and I often wondered about the thinness and lightness of it. How had the craftsman worked the stone so thin? What stone was it, hard and light like that? As the years went by those who had known Nerfin and the old high priestess died and I did not speak of the ring. Young women came to the service and this ornament was forgotten.
Then one winter day a traveller came by. It was snowing hard and blowing half a gale and he was both cold and lost. It was only human charity to let him rest his horse and offer him food and shelter. I entertained him at the temple as was proper. As we sat and ate and drank he watched the ring closely and asked endless questions about it - how I had come by it, whence it had come and so on. It was clear that he did not believe that I knew nothing of its history and cared less.
It was full dark and I was sleeping when I heard the slightest noise of footsteps and woke to see a shadowy figure take something from my table. "Who's there?" I called, and the figure ran. I heard a door slam. I hurried to the door myself. It was very cold but it had stopped snowing and by the light of the rising moon I saw a trail of footprints leading to the stable. As I stood there I saw the traveller leading out his pony. I don't know why, but as he mounted I bent down and gathered up some snow into a ball and threw it. As he swung up onto the pony, the snow caught him full in the face and he slipped backwards. The pony bolted and he bounced along behind it on the ground.
In the morning, when we found him, I looked through his leather bag and found the ring. I do not know what attraction it had for him, but I resolved to have no more to do with it. I had not meant to kill the traveller. The ring seemed evil somehow.
When Spring softened the weather again I had a copy of the amulet's design carved on a holy stone from the seashore and then put both the ring and the amulet in a leather bag. A woman was going as priestess to a village in the far north. I gave the bag to her and she left with her escort. I gave the ring no further thought, 'till now.
Now I have seen at least forty-five summers. It may be forty-eight or even fifty, I'm not sure. But I have worn the ring and sent it north. This safe amul
et on a holy stone I will pass to a successor soon. I have ruled this temple for at least twenty-five summers, and held the office of high priestess longer than anyone else that can be remembered. All of my contemporaries have died and I shall not be sorry now when my time is up. Faya is priestess to a thriving village a week's ride from here, so I see her but little now. She lives with a good man and I have two grandchildren. Probably she will ride over to see me in the Spring if I live 'till then. Still, the will of the Goddess be done, as ever.