Magdalen Rising (12 page)

“And now,” said Bran, “unless you've sworn a vow of secrecy or must of necessity cloak your identity, may I know the names of the beauteous
women who walk beside me, whose loveliness calls to mind the first stars blooming in the twilit sky?”

He addressed this question to my mothers in deference to their age. I hoped they'd answer, because I was choking on what can only be called a fit of giggles. You must remember this was my first exposure to male charm and flattery. It acted on me like laughing gas.

“Our daughter will speak for us.” Fand said slowly in an approximation of P-Celtic.

“Ah,” said Bran. “Do I detect the accents of Hibernia?”

“The accents, perhaps.” I recovered myself. “But we do not come from that large island.” I paused, took a deep breath, and plunged in. “I am Maeve Rhuad, daughter of, er, Queens Fand and Boann.” I nodded toward each of them. They began to beam. I was doing it right. “Liban, Deirdru, Dahut, Emer, Etain, and Grainne of the golden hair....”

Now what, I wondered? Bran was looking politely confused by this time. That made two of us. Then inspiration struck.

“And by their...um...queenhood and sacred sisterhood my mothers are daughters of the Cailleach who is, let's see, the daughter of Bride.”

“Daughter of Dugall the Brown,” King Bran chimed in, “ab Aodh, ab Conn, ab Criara, ab Cairbre, ab Cas, ab Cormach, ab Cartach, ab Conn. Each day and each night that I say the descent of Bride, I shall not be slain, I shall not be sworded, I shall not be put in a cell, I shall not be hewn, I shall not be riven...”

I stared at Bran, not understanding, as doubtless you don't either, that I had prompted him to recite the genealogy of Bride, a charm known to every Celt from the time he could speak the way you know “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” or “Now I Lay me Down to Sleep.”

“...I shall not be anguished, I shall not be wounded, I shall not be ravaged, I shall not be blinded, I shall not be made naked, I shall not be left bare, nor fire shall burn me, nor sun shall burn me, nor moon shall blanch me—Oh, excuse me.” He suddenly remembered me. “You were saying?”

What had I been saying? Oh yes, I had just claimed descent from Bride. Need I say more?

“And your father?” he prompted.

“Oh. Him. My father is Manannan Mac Lir.” There. That ought to do it. If your father is Son of the Wave, you shouldn't have to trace his lineage any further. “That's Manawyddan ab Llyr to you,” I translated helpfully.

“Yes, well,” King Bran said in his turn.

You can hardly blame him for being somewhat at a loss, having just been introduced to someone whose descent was divine on both sides. Even my foster brother's chroniclers stopped short of that claim—if only just.

“You can call me Maeve. And the two queen mothers traveling with me are Fand and Boann,” I refreshed his memory.

“It is a privilege to walk with queens.”

He bowed his head in their direction. They nodded stiffly in return. But I could tell they were beginning to thaw. I could practically hear the drip, drip, drip of icy reserve melting.

“Where did you say you came from?” Bran asked.

“We didn't, but I can tell you. I think.”

I glanced at Fand and Boann to see if they had understood the question. They conferred together in low tones. Then nodded to me.

“We have sailed here from Tir na mBan.”

“The Land of Women,” he repeated in P-Celtic.

A dreamy look came over his face, a look I was to see time and again on men's faces when I spoke that name. The rapturous response was not the only one I was to encounter, however. I soon learned that if I wanted to know something about a man's nature, at least a Celtic man's, all I had to do was pronounce those syllables: Tir na mBan.

“I've heard about such islands.” His voice was full of longing. “It has never been my good fortune to find one.”

“Well, they're not always easy to find.” Fand had clearly followed the gist of the conversation. “But if you want directions....”

Boann started to giggle. There is no other word for it. I was shocked. What had gotten into my mothers? They were acting, well, not like
mothers.

“I've often wondered what it might be like...” Bran went on dreamily, focused not on Fand and Boann (at least not as I knew them) but on some rich fantasy unfolding before his inner eye. “...to slip out of time and into all those waiting arms and perfumed—”

Boann, I must report, gave a loud, ribald snort. And Bran came to.

“But when you're a king,” he sighed, “not to mention the head of a large
tuath,
it's all work and no play. Still, I've a good mind to turn it all over to Caradoc—he's my eldest—while I'm still hale enough to have a mythic adventure or two before I go West permanently.”

A euphemism for dying that may have originated with the Celts.

“But what brings you happy queens and your lovely daughter from one of the Shining Isles to a place like Mona?”

What did he mean by that, a place like Mona? I was about to ask when he went on, answering his own question.

“Looking for a match for the maiden? Not much traffic on Tir na mBan these days, I should imagine,” he went on. “Young men are not what they used to be. I put it down to the Roman influence.”

“Heroes have been scarce on Tir na mBan.” Boann bellowed in Q-Celtic, as if volume would translate for her.

As it turned out, Bran readily comprehended Q-Celtic. In the days to come, I was to hear many conversations like this one, each person speaking in his own dialect.

“But we are not here to look for men.” Fand felt obliged to remind us all. “We are presenting Maeve Rhuad as a candidate to the college. She is to become a poet.”

“To be sure!” Bran answered heartily. “That should have been plain to me at once. After all, that's one of the chief reasons I'm here myself with my own daughter Branwen. I lay odds the two of you are the same age. Fourteen, am I right? She's here somewhere. Branwen!” he bellowed. “Probably gone ahead with the women to set up camp. She'll be glad to meet a classmate. She's a bit shy, what with losing her mother a few years back.”

Losing her mother! The concept of motherlessness was almost beyond my grasp.

“Branwen's got her mother's talent and memory,” he continued. “She was an educated woman, my Gwynefere. Could have been one of the
Aos Dana.
Me now, I'm no great intellect. Same with my sons. I could never get them interested in anything but fighting. But I promised Branwen's mother before she died that if ever they opened the college to women I'd give Branwen a crack at getting a Silver Branch at least. But a twelve year course of study!” He shook his head. “It's not easy for a young girl to last that long, if you get my drift.”

Personally, I didn't see how anyone could.

“Well, then, here's our camp now.” Bran gestured to the left. “Would I be too bold and presuming, O queens from the Shining Isles of the Blest, if I invited you to join our company?”

Too bold! Here we were with our plaids and our sodden oatcakes. Down a small slope, in a grove of large, sheltering beeches not far from a small river gleaming silver with the last light, I could see cook fires
with meat already roasting on the spit. Someone was playing a harp. Other people were setting up shelters and making beds with evergreen boughs.

“That would be most acceptable,” said Fand.

“She means we accept,” Boann hastened to add.

Bran got the gist. “I'm honored,” he said, offering a massive, muscled arm to each of my mothers. To my amazement, Fand and Boann looped their arms through his without a murmur. “And there's Branwen,” he said, leading us down the slope. “That little shadow there in the gloaming. She's been to the
Beltaine
festival many a time. She'll show you around, Maeve Rhuad. Branwen. Ho! Branwen! Come meet your new classmate!”

Through the green-smelling dusk, I saw a slight young girl running towards us, her bare feet gleaming. She fit her father's description of her as a shadow. Her dark braids seemed thicker than her narrow face. The largest thing about her were her eyes. They were enormous, and with the pupils dilated they looked bottomless, mysterious like a scrying pool. I was relieved that she wasn't one of those strapping redheads.

In fact, Branwen and I could not have looked more different from one another in face or figure. Our breasts could have been used to illustrate the extremes of size and shape in human females. Mine threatened to split the seams of my tunic; hers were barely visible. Thrust at each other by her father, we stared for a few moments as if we were both much younger children. I don't know who smiled first. I suspect it was simultaneous. Branwen's smile was as sudden and bright as a shooting star. It made me think of Grainne's.

That one smile was all it took. We were friends.

T
HEY ARE WAITING FOR us on the shore of Llyn Cerrig Bach, the druids of Mona. They are standing, white robed, row on row, in a semi-circle. If you were a night-hunting bird looking down from above, their ranks might have resembled a crescent moon. And don't forget the moon's shadowed side. Though tonight they are not present, remember the black-robed priestesses of Holy Island.

The druids are waiting to meet us, the
Beltaine
crowds: the traders, the warriors, the wandering poets, the members of respectable
tuaths
who will present sons and daughters as candidates to the College. Tonight, on the shore of the Lake of Little Stones, the druids preside over the opening rite of the five day festival. They will mediate for us with the Otherworld; they will receive, appraise, and offer to the lake our jewels, our weapons, our prized possessions.

Think of layers and layers of gold, iron, and bone sinking, settling, shifting through water, mud, earth, and deeper. And the little stones—the tips, perhaps, of huge megaliths—rise and stand, ambassadors from the world under the water. Minnow stars swim around their stillness, distracting from the secrets beneath the surface.

You can see more than I could then. I only glimpsed the druids from a distance as we climbed over the dunes to the meadows by a lake, which could more properly be called a marsh. On the northern shore there was enough dry, level ground for a gathering. When we halted, I found myself in the middle of the crowd, and I could not see well enough to suit me. Though I was taller than Fand and Boann, there were plenty of taller people surrounding me, especially men. Fascinated as I was by the appended ones in general, I didn't find staring between their shoulder blades all that interesting. Soon people began spreading plaids and sitting down. (Branwen had warned us this rite went on forever.) But still I fretted at being so far from the main stage.

“I want to go closer to the front,” I whispered to my new friend.

We had walked with Branwen from the camp grounds. It was she who explained to us about the votive offerings. Fand and Boann had dropped behind us to confer anxiously. Later I understood that they
were worried, like many parents, about the cost of my education. They hadn't reckoned on having to make a non-returnable deposit, so to speak, before I was even admitted. As for me, I was blissful in my ignorance. I did not know the value of gold or the meaning of sacrifice. I only hoped I'd be allowed to toss my onerous torque into the bog.

“We have to stay with our
tuaths,”
Branwen explained. “That's how we're called when we go to make our offerings.”

“I don't have a
tuath,”
I pointed out.

“You and your mothers are our guests.” Branwen laid a gentle hand on my arm. “You could come with us.”

“You're kind,” I had the grace to say. “But let's just go to the front for a little while. I can't see anything from here.”

“There are things I'd rather not see.”

Branwen was close enough so that I could feel her shudder. Of course, that hint made me all the more determined to get a front row seat.

“I might not want to see them either,” I tried to be agreeable, “once I'd seen them already, that is. But you see, Branwen, I've never seen anything. I've lived my whole life 'til now on an island so small you could eat it for breakfast and be hungry again by noon. I never saw anyone, and nothing ever happened,” I said with the callow exaggeration and sublime ingratitude of youth. “I'll only be a minute. Don't tell my mothers!”

For the first but not the last time, I left Branwen holding the bag. Before she could say a word, I ducked under an arm, darted around a massive warrior, and began worming my way to the front.

I secured a seat some fifty feet away from the phalanx of druids just as a rather unimpressive looking specimen came forward to address the crowd. He had a moth-eaten beard of indeterminate color and a concave chest. His gold torque looked too heavy for his neck. I couldn't imagine that the far reaches of the gathering could hear his high-pitched voice, but no one was paying much attention anyway.

And what was he saying? What were the first words of esoteric wisdom to fall from druid lips into my tender, untutored ear?

“And we remind you that bathing in the Menai Straits is inadvisable when the tides are turning. Drink from non-votive wells only, and you should not drink from Afon Crignu drink until you are several miles inland, because of the high saline content....”

Some things haven't changed as much as you might think. Wherever two or three are gathered together, there will be announcements. The
druid continued with a run-through of the festival schedule, the time and location of various rites and events. I tuned out. It was my mothers' job to remember such details. Instead I turned my attention to the druids standing behind the speaker. I'd never seen so many beards gathered in one place since the dream I'd had of my Appended One. They came in all shapes and sizes and assorted colors—

All at once my heart stopped. I know that's a hackneyed phrase, but no other will do. That's what it feels like. You're the mouse hidden in the grass when suddenly you see the glow of the cat's eyes. It hasn't seen you yet, but any moment it might. Your heart stops, as if you could will yourself into the safety of non-existence.

He was there at the far edge of the front row of druids: the man from my vision, the man who stole my face.

I had an overwhelming urge to run in two directions at once: back to a mother's arms, back to Tir na mBan, back to before. The other impulse was worse: to dart into the open, to draw danger to me. The two instincts cancelled each other out and kept me still. My heart went back to its job, and as it calmed, I reasoned with myself. With such a large crowd, and red hair everywhere, there was no reason he or anyone should notice me. For the moment, I was willing to relinquish all claims to uniqueness.

I took advantage of my anonymity to study the man of my nightmare. The more I looked, the more his face seemed only his own, whoever he was, and not a distortion of mine. In fact, I could hardly see any resemblance between us beyond the red hair. His eyes were smaller than mine and his nose larger and more defined. From what I could see of it under the hood, his hair was straight. Mine was springy and wild as heather. Silver glinted in a beard that was neatly trimmed and glossy as a fox's coat. He was broad-shouldered and had a fine, straight bearing. From this safe distance, I could see that his looks were pleasing.

I barely noticed when the lightweight druid's droning ceased, and he melted back into his place. Then the drums began, and the whole mood changed. Even the wandering breeze shifted and came to attention. Another druid emerged from the crescent formation, positioning himself just beyond its curve as if he were the evening star in relation to the new moon. With the light playing on his impossibly long, white beard, he had the commanding brilliance of the brightest star. To say that he was a very old man would give the wrong impression. There was nothing frail or diminished about his presence. He was ancient, rather, as a tree
is ancient: massive, thick, complex with gnarls and knots of root and branch, the lines in his face like the cryptic inscriptions insects make under the bark. An old tree is host to a plethora of life: nesting birds and squirrels, burrowing creatures among the roots. This man was a human center; a whole people grew or withered in his shade.

He stood before us, his gaze steady. Have you ever noticed how the eyes of a statue or painting seem to follow you, even though you know they are motionless? His eyes were like that. No one escaped. He looked for a long time, until you felt he had not only seen you but seen through you to a place beyond, visible to him alone. Then he raised a wooden staff with carvings as intricate as the lines of his face. The drums ceased, and he began to chant and pace a circle. At first the sound was barely human, more like wind in branches or waves rolling over stones. Then, from this elemental song, words rose.

On and on he chanted, pausing in his steps to mark the four quarters. Soon voices all around me answered his. Words sang themselves through me. Not just words but images. The air teemed with the forms he invoked. I could see the flash of the salmon's scales and the gleam of the stag's tines.

Silence fell again. The old druid made his way to the center. There he raised his staff over his head, and then he plunged it into the earth that opened magically to receive it.

“Here now is the center of the world.”

For an instant I glimpsed the Tree.

It was so tall, I couldn't see its highest branches. Its roots reached as deep. I could feel the pull of them. The leaves were gold. I don't mean yellow or even the rich-yellow brown you see in autumn. I mean hot,
fresh gold drawn up from the molten places in the earth, exploding into leaves.

Then the vision passed. I saw only the staff, but now I knew what it was.

The center of the world established, the druid turned and walked towards the lake. At that moment it would not have surprised me to see him walk on the water's surface or disappear beneath it into the Otherworld, but he stopped at the edge. As the druid stood by the lake muttering and motioning with his arms, my willing suspension of disbelief suddenly snapped. I shifted into technical appraisal.

He was doing weather magic. I was sure of it. Subtly, he was changing the temperature of the air and water. Soon the surface of the lake came alive with eddying mist. He called forth marsh lights, turning the mist a rather lurid green. (Believe me, special effects are nothing new.) The ancient druid was a master. I hoped Fand had a good view, though she was probably green as the marsh gas with envy and itching to get her hand in. Now the druid gathered all the little mists and shaped them into one huge form, both gorgeous and terrifying.

The Lady of the Lake reached out with long phosphorescent fingers. You'd have to be braver than most to hold out on this dame.