The Greener Shore (29 page)

With a cry of horror, Bal Derg broke and ran.

Bushy-beard winked at the others and sauntered after him.

I had to stand in line to congratulate Dian Cet. He had not attracted much attention before, but now everyone wanted to talk to him. “No chieftain ever made so wise a judgment,” one of his new admirers claimed.

After I returned to my lodge, I repeated the remark to Briga.

Her eyebrows stitched a frown. “Fíachu will be angry if people think Dian Cet is a better judge than he is.”

“They were just praising the old man. Fíachu didn’t hear them.”

“Did he not? A word spoken is like a bird released into the air, Ainvar. Sooner or later it may fly his way.”

“We acted in good faith. Fíachu was glad to accept our help at the time.”

“I’m sure he was. But if it costs him a loss in stature he may change his mind.”

“Fíachu’s a Gael and the Gaels prize honor.”

Briga pursed her lips. “He’s a
man,
Ainvar. You must avoid doing anything that would diminish him in his own eyes.”

“Why didn’t you say this to me before?”

“You didn’t ask me before.”

My senior wife is most exasperating when she is right. Yet without her I would be diminished. Male and female are equal, two halves of the whole. Without that balance humankind staggers.

In warrior societies men are dominant and women are relegated to hearth and home, their other talents ignored. This, I believe, is why such societies are doomed to disaster. I saw it demonstrated with the Gauls. I hope it proves equally true for the Romans—may their urine run red.

In the Order of the Wise, male and female are equal.

I began to plan an appropriate funeral for Onuava. Although she would be buried among the Gael, the accompanying ritual must also reflect the traditions of the Arverni and the Carnutes.

Since first we learned to ride horses, we of the Celtic race had been great travelers. My third wife had made one of the greatest leaps of all, from the kingdom of the Arverni to Eriu’s land.

Eriu.

The name reverberated through me. As clearly as if she had called to me aloud, I heard her.

Eriu.

Whom I could touch through her trees, her grass, her sweet soft earth. Eriu, who was a huge part of my Pattern. Perhaps the center that held it all together.

My surviving wives insisted upon being left alone while they washed and prepared Onuava’s body for burial. I suspect that Lakutu performed certain services for the dead that were unique to her people, but neither woman confirmed this. Briga did tell me that they had applied ocher to the bloodless cheeks and lips, and carefully arranged the abundant hair to hide the damaged face. They wrapped the body in a winding sheet of undyed cloth for its return to the earth.

Eriu’s earth.

On the third day after Onuava’s murder a solemn convening was held at the fort, involving every member of Fíachu’s clan and my own. Only Bal Derg was absent. He was never seen again, but Bushy-beard was wearing his gold arm rings.

We greeted the dawn by joining hands in a huge circle to mimic the flaming orb rising above the horizon. With one voice we repeatedly chanted the names of Onuava and her son. Sparks of the Great Fire.

Afterward we made our way to a level field where the Slea Leathan often raced horses. At either end of the racecourse stood a pair of pillar stones, delineating the arc of the turns. Under my direction the Goban Saor had carved the name of Onuava on one of each pair, in ogham.

Borrowing from the traditions of Gaul, I had organized funeral games. We had taken the concept from the Greeks and found it very sensible. Engaging in strenuous physical activity beforehand helped men remain calm for the more sober aspects of the ritual.

The games began with foot races. Fíachu and I stood together, watching. “My son would have been a fine runner when he grew up,” he remarked.

I nodded.

“My son would have been a great warrior, too.”

I nodded again.

“But I’ll have other sons.”

I said nothing.

Fíachu fixed his piercing gaze on me. “Your senior wife told me I could have sons.”

“To be precise, Fíachu, she said the potion she gave you to drink would enable a woman to conceive a male child. Which Onuava did.”

“Then have Briga make up another potion for me. I’ll take more women, as many as needs be.” He must have seen the truth in my face. Anxiously, he asked, “I will have more sons, won’t I?”

I had to be honest with him. “Keryth says not.”

“Keryth says? Ah.” He could have chosen to disbelieve, but Fíachu did not become chief of his tribe by refusing to accept the Pattern. I watched him absorb this new information as stoically as he had absorbed the circumstances of Onuava’s death.

His eyes swung back to the foot racers skimming over the grass. “When I had no sons, at least I had my sister’s son. Bal Derg was fleet of foot and mighty of arm. He would have made a worthy chieftain.”

“There was a flaw in him,” I pointed out.

“There is a flaw in everyone, Ainvar.” Fíachu turned his back on me and walked away.

Wrapped in an outer covering of green, bushy branches, the bodies of mother and child were laid in the grave together. Atop the leaves I placed Onuava’s ivory hairpin, an Arvernian trinket she had worn for as long as I knew her. The honor of presenting the second grave-gift should have gone to her eldest son. Instead it was Cairbre who proffered a girdle woven in the Carnutian style. Senta’s gift was a bowl made of Hibernian clay. Thus the three phases of the dead woman’s life were represented.

Fíachu gave his only son a massive gold ring as big as the baby’s fist.

A great mound of soft soil had been piled nearby. Following my lead, all of those present, down to the smallest knee-child, took a double handful to drop into the grave. This continued until the yawning mouth in the earth was filled.

As the last clods fell, the women of the Gael unexpectedly uttered the most hair-raising cry I had ever heard in my life. Somewhere between a shriek and a wail, it was filled with despair. The nearest thing to it was the sound of a man being disemboweled on the battlefield.

“What in the name of all the stars is that?” I gasped.

“Keening,” said a man standing near me. “Our women always keen the dead; it’s a sign of respect.”

I doubt if Onuava had ever been so respected in life.

The keening was horrific, yet there was a curious rightness about it. The men had spent their burden of emotion in games; this lamentation belonged to the women. It was purely Gaelic.

The keening continued while we raised a cairn of stones over the grave. Somewhere beyond our vision Onuava and her child were moving farther and farther away from us. In the privacy of my head, I bade them farewell.

The day was to conclude with a funeral feast. Before we ate, and at Fíachu’s request, Dara repeated his lament for Onuava. Everyone applauded except for Seanchán, who kept his arms folded.

During the feast Fíachu’s senior wife proclaimed in a loud voice, “When I die I want the sort of funeral Onuava had.”

Bit by bit, our influence was seeping into the Gael. Shapechanging them as they were shapechanging us.

The following evening, my clan gathered to remember Onuava among ourselves. “For her sake I hope she did not see her baby die,” Sulis remarked.

Keep quiet,
I warned Keryth with my eyes.
Don’t tell us all you know.

Ignorance can be kinder than knowledge.

Briga gave a sad smile. “Those who die as small children never grow up. I still dream of little Maia as I saw her last. I actually feel her in my arms; her warmth, her weight. She comes to comfort me.”

“When I was a boy,” said Dian Cet, “the chief druid of the Carnutes was my father’s mother. She too was called Maia.”

I straightened in surprise. “What? I never heard that before.”

The old brehon turned toward me. “Do you not recall my suggesting her name for your daughter?”

“I don’t remember,” I said honestly. Yet within me was a vibration like the plucking of a single harp string; the recognition of another element of the Pattern.

As soon as possible, I must tell my students about the Pattern.

In the following days I noticed a disturbing change in Fíachu’s attitude toward me. At first there was half a heartbeat before the smile on his lips reached his eyes. Then there was not even a smile on the lips. I had never deluded myself that we were friends, but if he had turned against me my clan could suffer.

The more I thought about the matter, the more certain I became. Druid intuition.

During our last years in Gaul all I had to worry about was survival. How clear and simple that seemed to me now, when I went from one worry to the next without respite.

At night when I longed for rest my head trudged on relentlessly, asking questions, formulating possibilities, turning over rocks to see what lay beneath. Beside me Briga slept untroubled. I wondered where she went in her dreams.

As if the change in Fíachu was not problem enough, Cormiac and Labraid were much on my mind. I had not the slightest hope that they could find Maia, but if they searched for her long enough they were bound to encounter the Romans. Under torture—and Caesar’s agents were skilled at torture—I was confident that Cormiac would never reveal anything about us. Labraid might.

It was the policy of Gaius Julius Caesar to pursue his enemies and eliminate them to the last man. Even after all this time, Caesar would consider the chief advisor of Vercingetorix a trophy worth hunting down, no matter how far he had to go.

Once again I was confronted with the Two-Faced One. One face expressed joy because I was convinced that Cormiac Ru survived. The other face was horrified because if he was alive, the mission he had undertaken could lead the Romans to us after all.

AFTER NINE DAYS’ MOURNING FOR ONUAVA, I RESUMED TEACHING IN
the forest glade. Aislinn, Fíachu’s daughter, attended with the others. Apparently her father’s feelings had not turned her against me.

I wondered how often she thought of Labraid.

I began the new lessons by explaining what lay at the heart of druidry. “The Source of All Being does not work at random, though to our eyes it may appear so. Always remember: There are no coincidences, just unexpected glimpses of a hidden Pattern.

“To begin to understand about the Pattern, you must learn to see with more than your eyes.” Stooping, I scraped up a little soil and let it trickle through my fingers. “Observe,” I said.

I stretched up to pluck a leaf from a tree and displayed it to them. “Observe,” I repeated. “The Earth is the leaf is you is me. What do I mean? It is my way of telling you that an unvarying building block forms the mote of dust and the tallest mountain. Both conform to the same Pattern. The Source resonates equally through all creation.

“The Pattern affects us, too. Our mortal bodies conform because they have no choice, but our spirits, as sparks of the Great Fire of Life, have more freedom. A spirit that ignores the Pattern can suffer dire consequences. The study of druidry will help you recognize the Pattern. Only by following it as it applies to each separate one of you can you live in harmony with Thisworld.”

Senta asked, “How can the Pattern be the same for everybody?”

“As it applies to each separate one of you,”
I reiterated sternly. “Senta, you were daydreaming again. Pay attention. As I was about to say, all elements of the Pattern are linked. Stars and stones, humans and animals—”

“I can see where they meet!” Aislinn cried. Everyone turned to look at her.

“What do you mean?” I asked the girl, trying to ignore my excitement at her words.

“My father’s favorite mare likes to rub her head against me. When you mentioned animals I thought about her and then…she was touching me again, Ainvar. I can’t describe it, but the horse and I melted into each other. As if she was a line drawn on the ground and I was another line on the ground and the two lines came together. I could see them as plainly as I see you.”

Her eyes pleaded with me to understand.

I did. “Aislinn, you have just seen one of the invisible threads that connect all creation.”

And as simply as that, we had found our next druid.

chapter
XIX