As the memory of what she had seen began to settle more firmly into her mind, Avenahar found she wanted to push it away. She listened warily as Hildigun and Ivalde described their visions: a stag that spoke in human voice, a shining village in the sky. Avenahar was certain there was something peculiar about her own vision, an unacceptable strangeness that somehow spoke of a strangeness nestled at the core of herself.
She looked tensely from one face to another as the elderwomen waited for her to speak.
“Avenahar, whatever it was,” Auriane prompted her gently, “it’s not yours. It comes from gods.”
Avenahar’s tale came out all at once. She described her rapture, the shining sow’s mask, the golden life pouring out from the dance. She told of the tall, veiled presence behind them. She lingered long over attempts to describe those powerful rope skirts that clicked and swayed.
The women were deeply silent. Gunora seemed to have fallen in a trance of amazement, her downturned mouth half opened. Walberga’s eyes shone; a tear began to course down one age-mottled cheek.
Avenahar began to wonder if she had gravely displeased them in some way.
“You saw them,” Gunora said at last.
Avenahar did not understand. But she guessed from Auriane’s face that her mother was beginning to grasp it.
“The first nine sisters, from aeons ago,” Gunora said, “from the Time of Peace and Wandering.”
“You saw how very old we are,” Walberga added. “You saw that which we work to preserve and keep holy, that which is in danger of being lost.”
Gunora turned to Auriane. “I’ve never known a maid to see them.”
“I’ve scarce known one who is adept to see them,” added another of the elderwomen.
Avenahar looked on in mild amazement as the elderwomen gathered round her mother and conferred in low voices. The three maids grew restless sitting before the fire, while the elderwomen’s barely audible talk continued on. Once, Walberga’s voice rose above the others to say, “Ramis must be told. You cannot deny any longer, Auriane, what lives in your line.” When the conclave came to a close, the elderwomen ordered the maids to return to their shelters.
In spite of how unsettled her mother seemed, Avenahar felt she’d been given a crown. She wore it in light-headed ignorance, for she scarce knew what to deduce from all this. She cared only that she was a despised outsider no longer.
But as she made her way to her small brushwood hut, she passed Hildigun and Ivalde huddled in close talk that died off abruptly at her approach. Hildigun turned about and challengingly met Avenahar’s gaze, that handsome, stubborn face communicating some unfocused threat.
Avenahar sensed envy turned to poison, for the admiring attention her vision had brought her.
ASHORT TIME afterward, Auriane returned to the cave to examine in daylight the place where the intruder had approached her daughter.
She found crushed grasses, and a man’s sandal-print in the mud. Her daughter had spoken the truth.
And there, sun-bright on the ground, was a golden brooch so unweathered it seemed brought forth by magic; indeed, it was as polished as if just filched from a wealthy matron’s jewel casket. It was of ring-form design; a pair of serpents’ heads with sapphire eyes completed the circle. Where the pin was fastened it was inset with an extravagant pearl. Certainly, the intruder dropped it in his flight. The fibula had a fine, sharp point, but it hardly seemed a likely choice for a weapon. Auriane showed it to Gunora, who was equally baffled.
“I’ll set a watch there,” Gunora said. “That bauble’s worth a year’s harvest. Whoever lost that thing may return for it.”
AS AURIANE ROUSED herself from sleep on the rite’s ninth and final day, she felt bowed beneath a load of dread, before she remembered why.
The day of the naming of ancestors.
The day my newly proud daughter hears the name of the hated foreigner who fathered her.
Gunora had sent the three maids off to wash themselves in the pool. In preparation for the culmination of the ceremony, Auriane and the elderwomen began dragging more pine logs to the Middle Fire.
While the women were decking the low branches of the trees with flowering wreaths, very near in the forest, they heard men’s staccato laughter and animated jests.
Two young Chattian warriors burst through the underbrush, grinning triumphantly. Red-blond hair fell in tangled masses to shoulders draped in marten-skin cloaks; beaten silver rings glinted on scarred, muscle-roped arms. Their sentinels, Auriane realized. Between them, they dragged an unhappy-looking man with the chubby face of an infant and hair that sprouted from his head in oily serpent-coils.
The elderwomen gaped.
One man called out gaily, “This is what returned for your golden bauble! He looks harmless enough. Unless he’s got a lady’s hairpin stashed on him somewhere.”
“What shall we do with him, Gunora?” the bristle-bearded one cried out. “Nail him to a tree with golden nails, since he likes gold so much?” They pushed the quivering man to the ground at Gunora’s feet.
Auriane and Gunora helped him to stand, brushed him off, then sat him before the fire and began to put questions to him.
“An assassin?” the befuddled-looking fellow said, shaking his head so emphatically the serpent-coils swung about. “I don’t even own a dagger. I’m a Ubian junk dealer. My name’s Iarbas; ask any dozen traders who travel the West Forest road, they all know me. I only wanted to—”
“I should curse you with death for intruding on a maid in her silence,” Gunora said. “You polluted the rites.”
Auriane saw the man had tied dried mugwort round his ankles, a remedy for tired feet commonly used by far-travellers, and she gave a faint nod to Gunora, signing that she thought the man was telling the truth.
“I meant no harm! I only wanted words with Avenahar—I’ve a dire message for her, to give her mother, and I’ve got a—”
“This is Auriane,” Gunora broke in. “Have your words with her.”
The man’s brooding, red-rimmed eyes widened considerably. “You are—” Iarbas began, became flustered, and stopped. Auriane grew uncomfortable as the odd fellow studied her face with great care, as if trying to fit her into stories he’d heard. With a jolt he remembered himself, and inclined his head. “I am most honored to meet a woman I’ve heard spoken of as a queen, throughout these lands. I was sent by another, the man who is Avenahar’s father—”
“Oh, curses on all the gods,” Auriane said.
“—who just wants to set eyes on his only child before—”
“I regret, but you must leave,” Auriane said. “You do more harm than you know. We’ll give you meat and drink and see you safely on your way.”
“I beg you, hear me out. Decius meant to come himself, but couldn’t—he’d hatched a clever escape plan, but that lord who holds him found out and—”
“Chariomer, you mean, who all say Decius helps?”
“The very one, but you shouldn’t lay his crimes at poor Decius’s door. Decius is his prisoner, Lady, and he suffers from Chariomer’s displeasure as we speak. He sent me to warn you, Chariomer’s oathed all his men to slay you. And he sends Avenahar a rich gift, as a token of his goodwill, but”—he looked pitiably bewildered as his gaze moved from Gunora to Auriane—“this isn’t coming out well: I seem to have lost it.”
“Is this what you lost?” Auriane rose, and returned with the fibula.
“Praises to Rosmerta, you have it!”
“Take it, Iarbas—” Auriane said.
“You are nobly kind.”
“—and give it back to him.”
Iarbas’s face deflated like a punctured wineskin. “I can’t do that. He depends on me as a friend, to do this thing for him.” He looked so helplessly distressed, Auriane felt a welling of pity.
“Iarbas, I must attend to my child,” she said more gently. “Avenahar is proud. Decius must understand that. I hope he’s well. But tell him, if he has any true tenderness fo
r her, he’ll stay far away from her. He’ll let her have a chance to be known as an honorable woman.”
“He wants only to look on the beauty of his daughter. At least give her the gift, and tell her it’s from her father.”
The brooch glinted in the morning sun, as if innocently begging her acceptance, as though it were Decius’s fading voice, trying to reach her through the years. Decius, who’d troubled himself to dispatch this man to warn her. It seemed small and mean to refuse. Slowly she nodded in agreement.
When they’d sent Iarbas off with dried venison, a bread loaf, and a skin of mead, Auriane went to Avenahar’s hut and put Decius’s golden fibula into her daughter’s goatskin sack. Later, she would devise some way to tell Avenahar whose gift it was.
I’VE DONE WELL!—the words surged joyously in Avenahar’s blood as she caught a root and pulled herself, naked, from the pool, dried her fall of thick, crow-black hair with a woolen cloth, then put on a tunic of clean white linen.
I belong here, I do indeed belong. . . .
From beyond the trees she heard the dark, doomful pounding of a drum, a big, brazen, stomping sound like the footfalls of giantesses. It was a rhythm of many parts, the sound of all nature on the move. She felt caught up in something fated and large, forced forward by a powerful expulsive thrust, like the final convulsions of a birth, propelled into a drama that could not be halted until nature had had her way.
Her sister-maidens were already ascending the path from the pool. They spoke to each other in low voices, paying her no mind, but the rapture brought by the elderwomen’s praise of her vision blunted the misery Avenahar might have felt at being excluded from this fond fellowship. Happily, she climbed after them, lengthening her strides to catch up.
As she crowned the rise, she saw that Ivalde and Hildigun had halted to wait for her. Avenahar would, long after, remember the matching looks of bright menace in their eyes. Hildigun looked down from her sturdy height, her square chin lifted. Pale, uncertain Ivalde was glaring at her with a belligerence that, to Avenahar, felt borrowed; for reasons Avenahar did not know, Ivalde had chosen to make Hildigun’s enemies her own.
“You’re preening about this place like some fine cock, Avenahar,” Hildigun said, her voice rich and low, “as if no one around here knows you were fathered by a Roman dog.”
Avenahar felt the blood drain from her like wine from a tipped chalice.
“What filth spews from your mouth?” she whispered. Through some deep knowing, Avenahar sensed something dangerous in Hildigun’s words. A numbness formed around her heart that spread slowly to her throat, her limbs.
“Why, how could anyone not know,” Ivalde joined in, “with her ugly black hair telling it all! Go back and wash your hair, Avenahar.”
Avenahar’s warrior nature reared up then, and a strengthening madness began to steal over her.
“By the gods, you two are fools,” Avenahar said, taking a smooth, strong step toward them. “By those words you insult my mother.”
“It’s true, Avenahar,” Hildigun said. “If you hadn’t fled off to a foreign land, you’d have heard it yourself, many times, by now. Your mother lay with a murdering Roman swine called Decius and the result was you. So you can stop strutting about as if you’re nobler than us!”
Something burst in Avenahar’s heart. She left the ground like a lynx, striking Hildigun somewhere about her midsection. Hildigun was pitched backward, and they fell together into grass and mud. Avenahar clawed at that proud, pleased mouth, while Hildigun fought to shield her face. Through a fog of fury, Avenahar was only gradually aware that Gunora was standing above them—a storming giantess ringed with thunderclouds, ready to hurl down a bolt.
“Get up! You dishonor the rites. You are not women, you are addlepated children. I should send all three of you home in disgrace!”
Gunora looked longest and most penetratingly at Avenahar, seeming to assume she was the perpetrator. Then the three maids followed meekly in single file behind her. Avenahar was left struggling to contain all the storm and thunder in her breast, feeling imprisoned within the ceremony now. Until it was complete, she could ask no questions of her mother, would have no outlet for the molten mix of rage, confusion, and grief roiling in her.
As the maids were brought before the Middle Fire, Avenahar scarce saw how the waiting grove had been transformed for them. A hanging forest of garlands woven from flowers of bloodroot and moonwort drooped from the low limbs of trees; the small blooms were scattered stars of golden yellow and rose. The air was heavy-laden with the scents of honey and fresh hay, from the smoke-herbs Gunora had cast into the bonfire—dried sweet clover to gladden minds, benevolent mullein to push back evil in the unseen world. The elderwomen, including her mother, were dove-white in their rope-belted linen shifts; their heads were adorned with wreaths of flowering goatweed, the glory of midsummer. One of the elderwomen played a bone flute; the warm, trembling tones gushed out strongly, drawing guardian ghosts from moist green shadows. Walberga continued to beat the drum, a sound abstracted, yet alert. The glade was, at once, solemn and gay. A shyly emerging sun shone through wet leaves and they sparkled like gemstones, flashing yellow-green against the watery translucence of a slate-and-blue sky.
Avenahar scarce was aware, too, that onlookers had come: As this was the ninth and final day, a collection of village women had travelled over the hill to watch from a respectful distance. Afterward, there would be feasting, storymaking, and dancing.
AURIANE WAS ALARMED by the stricken look in Avenahar’s face, the slash of a mud stain on her white linen tunic. She looked questioningly at her daughter.
But Avenahar would not meet her eyes.
The three maids stood before the fire, their hair tumbling free—one head of sun-gilt russet, one of red honey, one of shining black. Gunora, near as thick in girth as she was tall, faced them with her back to the fire, her bellicose features grim and closed, her cloak whipping in gusts of heat. Auriane and the elderwomen sat on flayed hides, behind the maids. One elderwoman rose and placed chaplets woven of wolfsbane and ground ivy on each girl’s head, plants that helped a woman see the invisible world. Another hummed an incantation while circling the maids three times, sprinkling their heads with boar’s ashes. The ropes of flute tones wheeled out, looping loosely, lazily, about the patient drum beats. Gradually the far-ranging flute song began to tighten, moving in more urgent circles, causing all in the grove to feel roped in, bound ever more closely together.
Then flute and drum were silent, leaving them awash in the soughing of leaves, a clear quiet so steeped in peace that Auriane thought this was how the forest must have felt before Rome came. When no one told us where we could settle, when the movement of peoples was like a sea, flowing everywhere. Soon, we’ll be feasting and laughing over it all. Why am I braced in every muscle? Why do I feel a long night pressing close?
Gunora approached Hildigun and began speaking into the silence, a slight warble in her voice.
“Hildigun, daughter of Udo, you stand before the Ancestresses on this day . . .” The invocation stretched on for long moments, halting only when Gunora offered Hildigun a loaf of bread kneaded with water from a holy spring, baked with nine grains. Hildigun took a careful bite from the oval loaf; the bread united her with Fria as giver of all sustenance. Gunora then drew out her seeress’s dagger with its broken point, which stood for the Fates’s power to start life with the cutting of the birth string and to end it with the severing of the final thread. With the dagger, she traced runic signs above Hildigun’s head, writing growth, strength, and protection in the air. Next, she commanded Hildigun to take her child’s clothing and place them in the fire, along with a bit of cloth darkened with her first blood. Gunora then sang Hildigun’s lineage; the line of mothers wended backward for twenty generations. The line of fathers broke off after only five; as always, fewer were known. Finally, Gunora placed a blue mantle around Hildigun’s shoulders, and the maid owned the right to sit among elderwomen.
Ivalde took her place among the elderwomen.
“Avenahar, come before the gods,” Gunora intoned.
Avenahar was blessed, and offered the bread, and bid to throw her child’s things into the fire.
“Avenahar, noble and bright, is brought before the guardians of forest and grove. She comes from all and she comes from one . . .”
As Gunora spoke the lineage, her voice seemed to follow a soundless drum. “Auriane is her mother, and she is called Daughter of the Ash. Athelinda is Auriane’s mother, and she is called the Wise in Council. Gandrida was Athelinda’s mother, and she is called Gandrida the Sorceress. Avenahar, first of that name, was Gandrida’s mother, and she is called . . .”
AS THE MARCH of mothers continued, Avenahar could feel Hildigun and Ivalde watching her, their fierce interest like a blast of heat on the back of her neck. Avenahar clung to a hope her tormenters were simply wrong—or perhaps, playing some vicious game wrought of envy. Gunora would embarrass them when she named Avenahar’s father, who might be some poor Chattian landsman, perhaps, but a good and proud man nevertheless.
Gunora intoned, “Of fathers, she has but one who is known, for he was birthed in a far, foreign land . . .”
Avenahar drew in a tight breath. This was akin to being lashed to a hilltop tree, awaiting the strike of lightning.
Unseen in the sun-bright sky, the moon came to fullness.
“Her father is Decius of the Roman tribe, suckled by a she-wolf in lands far south. . . .”
Auriane never heard Gunora’s next words—she saw only her daughter. Avenahar’s body convulsed as if someone tugged sharply on a rope about her neck. An animal whimper came from her. Avenahar looked like a thing broken in two, suspended there, head bent forward, dark hair tumbled in her face.
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