Chuck's grin was honestly admiring. "Lost none of your innkeeper's instincts, I see," he said, laughing and leaning on his spear. "The longer they keep it, at their expense, the better it gets."
"Since it's a red blend that's mostly pinot noir and less than a year in the wood, yeah, pretty much. And running the Hopping Toad was fun, sorta, but it was just my eating job. Wood and leather, that was where I got my kicks. Well, I like brewing, too. Anyway, it ain't strictly Celtic like the ones here; some of the knotwork, yeah, but the faces are classical as much as anything. Everything's an aspect of the God and Goddess, right?"
He looked down at the wood, smiling, and touched it lightly with his fingertips again. "It's all gonna look damn good, if I say so myself."
"Sutterdown ought to be concentrating on getting their damn town wall finished," Chuck grumbled.
He wore two hats in the clan: Lord of the Harvest, which translated as Minister of Agriculture, and Second Armsman, which in peacetime meant going around chivvying people to keep their training and defensive works up to scratch.
"No rest for the Wiccan," he went on with a sigh, settling his helmet and heading for the gates.
And he puns, too, Dennis thought with a wince, and set about closing up shop.
Dun Juniper was bustling with preparations for the Chiefs homecoming and the big pre-Ostara dance by the time he and Terry had swept up the chips for the kindling box and dragged a tarpaulin up to cover the workpiece. Terry's mother Sally was over in the Hall, helping with the decorations and cooking—her usual jobs were principal of the Dun Juniper high school and Lore-Mistress for the Clan as a whole, overseeing the schools and Moon Schools, but the kids were off for the day.
Dennis decided that the best contribution he could make was to go up and lean on the battlements and watch the sun set and Juniper and her party arrive; if he didn't someone would find him real work to do. There were ladders at intervals between the cabins built up against the wall. He went up one with the ease of long practice and emerged puffing on the fighting platform, surprised as always at how high things looked from there.
Higher outside than inside, of course; Juney's cabin—the core of the Hall—had stood on a little oblong plateau jutting southward into a larger hillside bench. The steep slope around its edge gave the walls fifteen feet more height on their outer surface.
In the summer of Change Year One the growing clan of the Mackenzies had put up a log palisade around Dun Juniper. Then they'd had a couple of practical examples of how well that style of fort could burn, and nobody had grudged the work of renovations next year—much. They'd used the Murus Gallicus as a model—the Gallic Wall of the old continental Celts. It was a crib-cage of horizontal squared logs, each layer at right-angles to the one below; the gaps between the logs were filled with fitted rock and rubble before the next layer of timbers was spiked down, until the wall was as high as you wanted—thirty feet, here—and an outer layer of mortared fieldstone concealed the ends of the horizontal logs. There were U-shaped towers half again as tall at the corners, plus a pair facing each way to bracket the gate, and they'd improved on the Celtic original by working cement and rebar into the rubble as the wall went up.
Add a solid coating of waterproof stucco from an abandoned building-supply warehouse over the outside, give the fighting platform a pavement of remelted road asphalt six inches thick and it was weathertight and low-maintenance, too.
Hell of a lot faster and easier than building a real stone wall, he thought, putting an elbow on one of the waist-high embrasures that alternated with the seven-foot merlons along the platform; the merlons each had an arrow slit in the middle. And remembering how much sweat it cost us, that's saying something. Stronger than stone alone if someone comes calling with a battering ram, too.
"Which the Lord and Lady forbid," he murmured, and made a gesture as Sally and Terry came up the ladder he'd climbed; she had infant Maeve on her back in a carrier, and eight-year-old Jill scampered up behind her, confident as a squirrel on ground she'd climbed over all her life.
The girl pointed upward with a cry of delight. A flight of swans went by overhead, their V headed westward towards the distant river.
* * *
Juniper Mackenzie looked up at the swans as they went overhead, flying down from the mountains to the river; here at the top of the road she was near level with them for an instant, close enough to see their snowy feathers turned ruddy by the light of sunset. Their voices floated down, majestic as the slow beating of their great white wings, sad as the sunset. Then they were past, shadows against the greater shadows in the west, where crimson and gold castles towered above the trees and slowly faded towards blue-black as the first stars shone.
She felt a song moving, a stirring behind the breastbone, the music weaving with the words; not the fiddle or guitar for this, but the harp Dennie had made for her over the winter with its sounding board of seasoned, polished En-gelmann spruce; she could forgive a great deal of his foolishness for that. Her lips moved, singing in a half whisper, with a hum to carry the tune:
"Where does the wild swan wander? On lonely shores where salt foam tumbles No roof but leaves, above a bed of moss By silver streams that shun the homes of men. So flies my heart over mountain rock: My brother the deer, my sister the wolf; To run alone in the cold gray wet of autumn With the harsh tapping of twigs And the flutter of wind-stripped leaves…"
She stopped, confident that she had the beginning of it at least. To work the rest she needed solitude and quiet—which in her position were unfortunately hard to get.
Damn! I never wanted it! All I wanted was to help my loves survive. I could see what must be done, and one thing led to another…
"Sorry, friends," she said, noticing that the column had halted; and feeling once more the chill, chafing discomfort of soaked clothing. "Didn't mean to keep you here cold and wet!"
"Sorry?" a woman said, laughing, tossing back long yellow hair darkened with the rain despite her slicker—Cyn-thia Carson Mackenzie, commanding the escort now that Sam had dropped off at his home at Dun Fairfax down in the little valley below. "Sorry?"
"We're sorry we won't hear the rest of it, Lady Juniper!" Astrid said.
I like the words, Mom, Eilir signed; she read lips well. A lot.
"Then you'll all hear the rest, though not today. And now let's go see if there's a hot bath and a dry robe, and what's on the hob for dinner!"
Mom… it's Ostara eve. You can bet there's something special!
They pressed their tired horses up to a trot, out westward onto the broad bench in the side of the mountain that held Dun Juniper, away from the creekside path up from the head of the valley. The level land beyond ran east-west, an oval nearly a mile long and half a mile wide at its broadest point, making an interval of rolling meadow between steep tall forests upslope and down. The graveled road wound through the spring flush of green meadow dotted with huge Oregon oaks; some from the days when her father's line settled here fresh out from East Tennessee a century and a half ago; more planted since—along with maple and walnut—by her great-uncle Earl, who'd prospered in town and bought back the family homestead as a hunting lodge and played at forestry.
She thought of the strange, solitary, childless old man and smiled fondly; he'd loved her in his way—probably—although she'd seen little of him, even when the family visited in the summertime. Willing the property to a teenager with an illegitimate deaf daughter had astonished the family nearly as much as it surprised her, but by then a whole generation of potential heirs had predeceased old Earl. Maybe he'd laughed from the Summerlands as she buckled down to make a modest success of her music, as much to hold on to the land as to keep a roof over her and Eilir's heads. And she had—just, if you counted selling some of the timber occasionally to make up shortfalls. They'd been doing well enough right before the Change…
And if only he could see it now! she thought.
The first blue camas flowers starred the meadows; they'd turn t
o sheets of color by April or May, and twinberry glowed dull gold, henbit reddish-purple. Cattle black and red, horses squat and powerful or tall and long-limbed drowsed behind plank fences or young hedges of white-flowered hawthorn, some raising their heads to watch as the riders went by. The Mackenzies kept their best breeding stock here for safety, the precious Suffolk punch roans, Arab and quarter horse saddle-breeds, fleecy square-set Corriedale rams and Jersey and Angus bulls. There were fewer fields than in the first desperate years; most of the grain came in now from more fertile parts of the Clan's lands westward in the Valley proper. But some brown plowland showed the green shoots of potatoes or the blue-green of oats, and a stretch of old gnarled apple trees painstakingly brought back into bearing with more new-planted, all showing the first creamy froth of flowers.
The little waterfall off to her right leapt down the steep mountainside into a pond fringed with reed and willows, larger now that they'd put up a turf-covered check dam. The waterwheel below it was still just now, without the querning sound of grain being ground or the ruhhh… ruhhh of the saw; the wood of the millhouse walls silvery with age—they'd rescued it from a tourist trap. A furrow from the pond watered acres of truck garden and berry bushes.
And westward Dun Juniper itself, still like a dream that might vanish and leave only Uncle Earl's lodge. The white walls grew solid enough as they neared, silver and then stained reddish with the dying sunlight behind it; spearheads glinted on the battlements, and the banners flew, and a few first gleams of lamplight showed through arrow slits in the towers. The heavy boom… boom … of Lambeg drums came from above the gates, and the squeal of bagpipes, and the little figures of people growing until she could identify one or another—probably the whole four hundred or so who dwelt within.
"Is e do bhaile do chaisledn," Juniper murmured.
"What's that, Lady Juniper?" Astrid asked.
"Very freely translated: A woman's home is her castleT
Everyone in hearing chuckled. "And never were words more true!"
The road kept going westerly, through the flower beds just outside the Dun—her secret guilty indulgence in the fruits of power, although they were useful for ceremonies, too—and then one branch climbed along the side of the rise to the gates, exposing any attackers' defenseless spear-arm side to missiles from above. The people there were throwing things: flowers, in fact, or little braided grass figures of the Green Man, for luck. She waved and grinned; being Chief might be a pain in the fundament some of the time—much of the time—but Juniper Mackenzie knew how to work a crowd, by Ogma the Honey-Tongued!
She halted at the top of the laneway, amid an iron clatter of horseshoes on the small flat area paved in flagstone that spread before the entry. The gate was closed—had been closed so it could be symbolically opened again. Its frame was heavy timbers close-fitted into a solid baulk a yard thick, but the surface on both sides was quarter-inch sheet steel, painted bark brown. This last winter they'd had the leisure to get a little playful with it, and Dennis had directed a project that laid on designs in copper; Astrid and Eilir had done the drawings. At first glance it was just more of the swirling abstract knotwork, the bronze bolts which held the facing on part of it, but when you looked closer the patterns running down the middle sprang out at you.
The Triple Moon above, waxing and full and waning, like a circle flanked by crescents; below that a man's face, wildly bearded and surrounded by a halo of curls, with horns springing from his forehead.
Juniper halted her horse and swung down from the saddle, not without a groan—riding for hours in cold rain did middle-aged joints no good—and thumped the side of her fist against the gate. It felt like striking a cliff of living rock, and she called up: "It's Juniper Mackenzie, Chief of the Clan Mackenzie by the Clan's own choice, asking for the gate to open!"
Dennie and a few others had tried to get her to refer to herself as the Mackenzie, the way a lot of other people did. She'd drawn the line there, successfully for once.
Inside someone shouted, and there was a long rumbling quiver as the great horizontal beams were drawn back into slots in the tower walls on either side; there were vertical ones as well, but they weren't used except in emergencies. Then came a rhythmic shouting, as teams pulled back on the gates. Each had heavy truck wheels built into its middle and the end where the leaves joined, and they rolled back easily enough.
Chuck and Judy Barstow walked out through the gateway, between the shaped and painted pillars—the God as Lugh of the Sun on the left, with his spear and solar disk and head wreathed in carved holly; the Goddess as Brigid on the right, with the flames of wisdom and the sheaf of abundance, crowned with rowan. Judy—once Maiden of Juniper's Singing Moon Coven and now High Priestess of her own Wolf-Star—poured wine from the pitcher into the long silver-mouthed horn Chuck held; that had started out as one of a pair over the bar of a Western-themed place in Sisters. Then he handed it to her.
"Welcome home, Lady Juniper," he said, smiling warmly. "A hundred thousand welcomes to the Mackenzie!"
Juniper nodded to him, and took the horn; she'd rather have had hot chocolate with a marshmallow—lost paradise!—or mulled mead, but wine would do well enough. She raised it overhead in her right hand, then poured a few drops before the image of Lugh, holding it expertly with the curling tip over her forearm:
"Shining Sun, God of the skillful hand and piercing mind, strong Defender, Wise in Council, gentle Father, we thank You for guidance on this journey in the works of hand and word and heart. May this place be rich with Your gifts of knowledge and of craft."
"Blessed be," came a hundred other voices, murmuring on the heels of her own.
She drank. The wine was strong and mellow; when you gave to the Gods, you gave your best. Then the libation to the Mother-of-All—and here Dennie had been guided, for while the God's image was beautiful, the carven eyes of the Goddess rendered here always seemed to lift her beyond herself:
"Goddess of the ripened corn, Lady whose flames are the warmth of wisdom, You who inspire the poet's tongue, Mother gentle and strong, whose womb is source of all things, we thank You for the protection of Your arms while far from hearth and loves. May this place be a sanctuary of Your compassion, to nourish all who enter in perfect love and perfect trust."
"Blessed be."
Another long sip, like the spirit of berries and fruit and the autumn earth, and she passed the horn on to the others, for each of them to make the thanks-offering and take a swig. A four-footed figure burst through the legs of the crowd inside the gate—her old mutt Cuchulain, limping and dim-eyed, but still determined to claim his mother/pack-leader/comrade. She bent to thump his ribs and push aside his usual attempt to sniff under the kilt, and then straightened.
"And the Lord and Lady witness, if we're going to have that dance tonight I need a bath. We old ladies get cranky and creaky without a good hot soak."
"What of the bow? The bow was made in England: Of the true wood, of yew-wood The wood of English bows So men who are free Love the old yew-tree And the land where the yew-tree grows!"
Sam Aylward sang the old ditty softly; his bass voice was still rough as a rasp, and he warbled out of tune now and then—music had never been his strong point. The sheep never seemed to mind, though, here or back on his father's farm, and it did seem to make them a little less flighty. It was hard to tell for sure with woolies; they were near as brainless as a new-minted lieutenant fresh from the drill fields of Sandhurst.
"Come on, Dolly, let's get the little bugger born and you comfortable," he said, interrupting himself, then went back to the work and the song. "You should have done this a month ago like the rest of your woolly mates. Breeding out of season, shame on you."
His broad hands moved with surprising gentleness, as the ewe bleated and struggled in the straw of the sheep shed he'd built at the highest point in the big plank-fenced field. Fingers traced the leg; the joint went the right way this time, which meant it was the front legs, the ones which shoul
d be facing this way, at last. He reached in to make sure that it wasn't twins, and the ewe gave an indignant wiggle.
Most of the breeders could drop theirs out in the pasture, in this gentle climate, but he preferred to have them dry and out of the wind on a raw afternoon like this. The rain had barely stopped when he arrived, beneath a sky colored like old iron and darkening towards the early spring nightfall. He'd come home soaked, and then it was out to check on the last of the flock to deliver with no more than a quick word to the wife. The weather had turned nasty the last half of their trip back from Larsdalen, though now the clouds were breaking open to show belated blue sky in the west.
As well I did check.
No single family here at Dun Fairfax had very many woolies, so they managed them as one flock to save time and work—and Larry Smith, the shepherd, had been off after a couple of strays. Dolly and the lamb both would have died if Aylward hadn't been there and pitched in.
It was turning dark; the cries of a flight of swans went by overhead, and outside his eldest son Edain was romping with the dogs. His stepdaughter Tamar was waiting not far away, crouching in the straw with her arms around her knees and singing along with him as he worked, and doing a much better job of carrying the tune:
"… so we'll all drink together Drink to the gray goose feather And the land where the gray goose flew!"
"All right, girl, keep her steady," he said. "Firm but gentle, now."
Tamar knelt and held the ewe's head and forelegs while he grasped the lamb's feet and began a steady pull; his grating bass and the girl's clear contralto sounded together over the frantic bleats as the nose came free.
"What of the-men? The men were bred in England: The bowmen—the yeomen—The lads of dale and fell. Here's to you—and to you—To the hearts that are true And the land where the true hearts dwell!"
The Protector's War Page 19