Heart of Ice (15 page)

     The leader of the invaders drew up his men on the far shore and commanded them over the water and on to the attack. The men were afraid, for rumour of the people and their strange powers had spread like sickness through the southerners’ ranks, but their commander was not a man to abandon a mission. He ordered the most vociferous of the reluctant ones to be brought forward and he ordered savage punishment. Having thus made an example of the cowards, once again he gave the order to proceed across the water. This time there was no hesitation.

     ‘They killed everyone that they found,’ sighed the old man who was Joanna’s teacher in this vital part of her instruction. ‘Men, women, children; mercy was shown to none. Then they cut down the trees, for Suetonius was a wily man and he knew that destroying our sacred groves would be a blow from which we would not recover.’

     There was an extended silence. Finally, when she could bear it no longer, Joanna said, ‘But you
did
recover!’

     The old man smiled. ‘Oh, yes.’ Then, after a pause, he went on, ‘Have you ever seen a tree in a dry summer? Hm?’

     ‘Er . . .’ She thought frantically what he meant. Then suddenly she knew, or believed she did. ‘We had a birch tree in the place where I grew up,’ she said softly. ‘One year there was a prolonged drought and the birch put out a myriad small seeds. They went everywhere and we were finding them in the house for months afterwards. Later we noticed that there were dozens of little birch saplings.’

     ‘Well done.’ The old man was nodding his approval. ‘Your Lady Birch perceived the threat and she put forth her strength and ensured her survival; even had she herself perished, she would live on through her daughters.’ Leaning forward, he said, ‘In this same way did the sacred oaks of Mona make sure that they would endure.’

     Joanna frowned, trying to absorb this. ‘But they – that is, the trees’ – she was finding it difficult to speak as naturally as her teacher did of trees as sentient beings – ‘they could not have known in advance that they would be destroyed, so how could they have had the time to produce a particularly generous crop of acorns?’

     The old man was watching her. ‘They knew,’ he said simply. ‘That is a fact for, even as the armies went marching away back to the conquered lands, already the acorns were putting down their tap roots. By the time Boudicca died those roots were strong and, the next spring, the first leaves appeared. Four hundred years later the invader went away, as do all invaders in the end, and here in the sacred grove, it was as if he had never been.’

     ‘And what of the people?’ Joanna whispered, although she felt she already knew what the old man would say.

     The old man smiled gently. ‘If a tree can survive, so can men and women,’ he said. ‘Child, from what you already know of us your people, can you believe that, unlike the oaks, we had no forewarning?’

     Something about what he said snagged in her mind but she was preoccupied with discovering how they knew and did not pause to look at what it might have been. ‘Do you mean that the people saw the enemy on the far shore?’ she asked. ‘Or that they had sent out spies to see what the soldiers were doing?’

     ‘Both of those things, naturally, for they are common-sense actions. But think beyond such things. Think how it is that you, even you, young and green as you are like a slim birch sapling,
know
when your child needs you, even when she is out of range of your eyes and your ears.’

     ‘Well, I suppose that’s a mother’s instinct,’ Joanna said without pausing to think.

     ‘Instinct,’ the old man repeated. ‘The use not of eyes, ears or touch, but of something far more fundamental and subtle. Ponder that, child, and come back to me when you have done so.’

It was the old man who bestowed her new name. He must have likened her to a birch sapling knowingly for he named her Beith. The birch, she learned, was the first tree to grow after the retreat of the ice and so was sacred to the Mother Goddess. Among her people Joanna was so called for ever more.

There was no warning of what came next. She was shaken awake very early one morning soon after the spring equinox – and when, indeed, she and the rest of the community were still catching up on their sleep following the extraordinary night of celebration – and told to pack up, feed Meggie and get herself ready. She had learned that it would do no good at all to say, ‘Ready for what?’ and she did not, instead meekly doing as she was ordered and then sitting down patiently to wait.

     It was the man with the gold earring who came for her and the fact of its being him straight away gave her a clue. Sure enough, and without allowing the time for goodbyes, he led the way out of the settlement by the grove and back across the grassy moor land to the shore, where once again he helped her into his little boat to ferry her across the narrow channel. On the mainland shore he gave her a nod, wished her good speed and the Great Mother’s protection, then nimbly turned his boat and paddled swiftly away.

     She had no idea where she was to go. Back home to the hut in the forest? Surely not, for there had been hints in plenty that something was being planned for her that had nothing to do with quietly returning to where she had come from.

     She waited for much of that day. At sunset, a small, neat ship entered the channel from the north-east and, its sails furled, slipped quietly along until, offshore from where she stood, it lowered an anchor. As she watched, a small boat was lowered and rowed across the water towards her. A man with weather-roughened skin called out to her and, picking up her pack, she ran down the beach and jumped into the boat, Meggie in her sling bouncing up and down with the violence of the action. The man gave a nod and in silence rowed her out to the ship, where he helped her climb up a rope ladder hanging down from the wooden deck. A group of sailors stood watching her; a couple of them gave her friendly smiles.

     Then a tall man in black stepped forward from the shelter of a companionway. ‘I am called Nuinn,’ he said in a rich, deep voice. ‘I am to take you south across the sea to Armorica, which is the Land Beside the Sea. It is a long way. Come with me’ – he stepped back inside the entrance – ‘and I will show you to your quarters.’

     The cabin was tiny but at least she and Meggie had it to themselves. There was room on the floor – which was spotlessly clean – for her pack but for little more, and the rest of the space was taken up by a narrow bed with several thick woollen blankets and a small pillow. Under the bed were a bucket and a jug, both at present empty.

     ‘The bucket is for your personal use,’ the captain said tactfully; ‘come up on deck and empty it to leeward before it’s full, else you’ll spill what’s in it and have to mop it up.’ He gave her a swift grin. ‘Jug’s for washing water; you’ll be told when it’s available.’

     ‘Thank you,’ Joanna managed.

     He grinned again. ‘It’ll be rough once we’re out of the shelter of the island,’ he said. ‘You may be sick or you may not; people are different. If you’re sick, remember to eat whenever you can; better by far to be sick when you have something to be sick with.’

     As he spoke those disconcerting words, there came the sound of voices from above and she felt the ship give a sort of bounce. Then there was a definite sensation of movement, quickly accelerating. She sat down heavily on the bed and Meggie gave a small cry.

     The captain was already half out of the cabin. ‘Come up on deck if you wish,’ he said, ‘but do not get in anybody’s way.’

     Over the next three days Joanna experienced so may new sensations – some of them wonderful, some unspeakably awful – that, by the end of the crossing, she felt as if it had lasted half a lifetime. She was very seasick at first, heaving up her stomach’s contents into the bucket, then, when she felt the instant relief that comes just after being sick, hurrying up aloft to empty the vomit over the side and to eat some dry bread and drink a mug of watery beer before the nausea began again.

     But the sickness subsided and soon Joanna began to congratulate herself on being as good a sailor as Meggie, who had watched her mother’s convulsions and listened to her moans with a polite look of puzzlement on her little face, as if asking what all the fuss was about; Meggie had suffered no ill at all. Then it was heavenly to stand up on deck, warmly wrapped and with Meggie held against her body inside her cloak, feeling the bite of the wind and the sea spray in her face and watching the endlessly changing waters race by.

     In time she thought she saw land; there was a line of reddish-brown on the horizon which gradually resolved itself into low cliffs. As the ship neared shore, the water seemed to change from grey-blue to a sparkling, vivid green that looked like emeralds.

     And, not long after that, the ship furled her sails and slid into a narrow, secretive bay. As before, a boat was lowered; Joanna and Meggie were helped down into it and rowed the short distance to the shore. The fearsome red rocks at the mouth of the bay surprisingly hid a small area of sandy beach, where two men appeared to help Joanna on to dry land. She was so busy trying to keep her footing in the deep, soft sand that she forgot to turn round until it was too late and the ship that had carried her south was already moving off towards the mouth of the bay.

     The men took her to a small cottage deep in woodland and left her in the care of a woman and a younger girl, who looked after her for a couple of days. She was offered a bath and the women took every single garment she and Meggie possessed, washing them and hanging them out to dry on the holly and hazel bushes that grew in abundance around the cottage. While her clothes dried, Joanna moved about wrapped in a soft length of woollen cloth; such was her instant familiarity with the two women that, had the late March weather been a little warmer, she might have even done away with the wrap.

     The women spoke a version of the language that Joanna had been speaking on Mona’s Isle; which, indeed, she had always used with her own people and which she dimly recalled having spoken with Mag Hobson. The ordering of the women’s days was familiar too; the pattern of life was very well known to her  . . .

     When Joanna, her child and her limited wardrobe had been fully restored, the women took her off on yet another journey. This time they travelled south into the heart of Brittany, and were soon deep in a vast forest that seemed to go on for ever. They made two, perhaps three, overnight camps – again, Joanna was experiencing a disorienting sense of timelessness – and then one morning they entered an area where the rocky granite outcrops rising up among the trees and the grassland were as red as the cliffs that had called out a welcome up on the coast.

     They followed a narrow track that wound under trees, the beaten earth beneath their feet as red as garnets. Then they came to a small settlement: some of the typical temporary dwellings but, this time, also some low and sturdy little cottages made of the local pink granite. From one side of the settlement a path marked with stones along either side wound away up into a particularly dense area of forest, where pine, birch and holly gradually supplanted the broom and the gorse; both women gave a bow of reverence in that direction, as if something precious lay hidden there.

     Then they approached the largest of the stone dwellings and the elder woman tapped softly on the door. It was opened by a man of perhaps sixty, vigorous even in age, with a tanned and weather-beaten face and long white hair and beard. He wore a deep blue robe which, as it caught the light, sometimes looked silver. He nodded to the two women and said something to the elder one, waving a hand back inside the house to where a jug of ale and a loaf of bread had been set out, together with a pat of butter and a round cheese with a particularly piquant smell; Joanna thought it might be goat. Her stomach gave a growl of hunger.

     The white-haired man turned, gave her a wide smile and then, opening his arms, said, ‘You are Beith. I am Huathe. You and your girl child are expected and all is ready for you.’

     Joanna moved into the circle of his arms and was given a powerful hug which, because Meggie was still in here sling, included her too; Joanna heard the infant give a soft gurgle of happiness and she was just thinking that it was odd for Meggie to respond so positively to such a robust greeting from a complete stranger when the man spoke again, inviting her inside to eat and drink her fill.

     Loosening the hug but keeping hold of Joanna’s hand, he led her into the house. ‘This place,’ he said, ‘is called Folle-Pensée. Here we heal those who are sick in body and in mind, and here too we teach those healing skills.’ There was a pause and then he added, ‘Welcome to your new home.’

Chapter 8

Quite soon after her arrival in the secret place at the heart of the forest of Broceliande, Joanna discovered why the location was so precious to her people.