The Greener Shore (4 page)

The children are the reason we have flung ourselves off the edge of the Earth. The children embody our tomorrows.

Briga has given me a wiry, clever son called Dara, who has survived nine winters by now. A year younger than he is a sturdy boy we named Eoin, who is followed by a cheerful, curious lad called Ongus, and last but by no means least a little girl we named Gobnat to please the Goban Saor. The great craftsman fashioned a dainty bracelet of gold set with carnelians for her birth gift. Briga had been willing to sacrifice her own treasures to pay the Armoricans, but she did not let them have Gobnat’s bracelet. Instead she hid it in the secret recesses of her own body.

All four of our children have their mother’s wide blue eyes and my jutting cheekbones and brown hair. Perhaps one of them has inherited a druid gift as well. That would be a great relief to me; to all of us.

Yet even then I shall never forget my firstborn daughter. My beautiful, stolen Maia, with her dark baby ringlets and her tiny crumpled ears.

Onuava has three sons. The oldest, whom she calls Labraid, meaning “the Speaker,” was sired by Vercingetorix. Labraid is an argumentative boy of ten winters who could be mistaken for much older. Indeed, thinks himself every bit as much a man as Cormiac Ru, who is almost twice his age. This is the source of growing friction between them.

Onuava’s other sons, Cairbre and Senta, are mine; quiet little lads who cause no trouble. Yet I am mindful they carry their mother’s blood, too. They will bear watching in future.

Lakutu has a son and daughter. Glas of the nimble fingers was sired by my friend Tarvos the Bull, who taught the Egyptian to speak our language. After Tarvos was killed I married Lakutu, who subsequently bore me a daughter she calls Niav. It is, I believe, an Egyptian name. With her huge dark eyes and pretty ways, Niav enchants every male who sees her. Including me.

Although Labraid is a king’s son, I predict it is Cormiac Ru who will one day take over leadership of our clan. The Red Wolf simply has a better head on him. Quiet, intense, and endlessly resourceful, he takes his name from his hair, which is the exact shade of burnished copper. His eyes are as colorless as clear water.

Water is sacred.

Cormiac was born to farmers who grew barley near the fort of the Carnutes. He was a fearless little boy who once told me that he wanted to be a champion when he grew up, and ride in a chariot. Unfortunately he was of common rank, not of the noble class. Worse still, the child had been born blind. No one expected him to survive to adulthood.

When Briga came to us from the Sequani tribe she had wept with pity over the little fellow. Some of her tears fell onto his eyes.

Within a few days he could see.

Since then Cormiac has been Briga’s shadow, closer to her than the children of her body. Long ago his voice changed from a childish treble to one so deep and resonant I would recognize it among thousands. The Red Wolf is now as tall as I am and has an exceptional gift for the sword. He need only touch a weapon to have it leap into his hand, ready to serve his bidding. I would not want him as an enemy.

Cormiac respects me because I am Briga’s husband. My membership in the Order of the Wise does not impress him. I am impressed by Cormiac, however; by the proud unyielding core of him. Vercingetorix had that, too. Nobility is not in the blood, but in the spirit.

The Greeks describe the Celts, or Keltoi, as they call us, as one of the four peripheral nations of the known world, the others being the Scythians, the Indians, and the Ethiopians. The Scythians, who were nomads from the steppes, penetrated the heavily forested territory of the Celts at some time in antiquity and introduced our ancestors to the ridden horse. This new mobility enabled the Celts to explode outward from their homeland. Travelers tell of having encountered Celts as far east as the plains of Anatolia and as far south as the mountains of Iberia.

Celtic tribes may appear to differ greatly from one another, yet they share a similar culture and possess common characteristics. Celts tend to be poetic and lyrical, volatile and reckless, boastful, generous, impulsive, high-spirited, bellicose, and courageous. All of those qualities were found in Vercingetorix. When I look at his son, Labraid, I wonder how much of the father is in the boy.

A child is both a riddle and an answer.

Late at night in the forests of Gaul, when the fires burned low and memory seized my throat with both hands and threatened to choke me, I needed to talk about Maia. My stolen child. She was Briga’s child too, but for me no pain was comparable to my own. So I could not reminisce about Maia with Briga.

I talked to Cormiac instead.

He listened in silence, the Red Wolf with his intense face.

Cormiac had not yet enjoyed a woman. Since he became a man we had lived a solitary existence. We even avoided the remnants of other tribes for fear of paid informers. The Romans had corrupted our people and taught them to betray one another.

If someone is willing to buy, someone else is always willing to sell.

I might have asked Sulis to initiate Cormiac in the mating mysteries as she once did me, but since she married Grannus she had accepted no other partners. Cormiac, although tall and muscular, a fully adult male in every sense of the word, was still waiting for that singular moment that teaches a man why there are two sexes.

Meanwhile, the waters ran deep behind his colorless eyes.

Cormiac remembered Maia as well as I did. Furthermore, he had conceived the notion that she was his destined wife, her spirit the sundered half of his own. He once confided to me that someday he would find her and bring her back. In spite of its impossibility, Cormiac’s dream gave me comfort.

How fragile is hope! Yet it can withstand the cruel cudgels of circumstance.

chapter
II

W
HILE THE CARNUTES WERE STILL AMONG THE FOREMOST TRIBES
of Gaul we often traded with the Armoricans. They roved far and had seen much. After a hard day’s bargaining they sat with us around the fire and related their adventures. Many of these were the sort of stories men tell when they have had too much to drink. I paid little attention to them; our own bards told better tales. Occasionally, however, the traders spoke of a nameless island somewhere to the west. They described it as being rich in everything a person could possibly want; a place of astounding beauty and mysterious happenstance.

We listened with fascination, we who never left dry land.

Greek travelers passing through Gaul also had mentioned the existence of some island far out in the Great Cold Sea. This gave a certain credibility to the tales of the Armoricans.

Then came Caesar—may he die roaring and his progeny wither on the stem like fruit that will not ripen.

During the years when we were hiding in the forest the mothers had made up simple little stories to entertain their children. One of their favorites involved a fabled island in the far west. The women embroidered the tale to suit themselves, endowing it with their most wistful dreams. “The trees are weighed down with sweet apples,” they told their little ones. “Gold glitters in the streams and no one ever grows old.”

My ears had heard this story a number of times before my head finally paid sufficient attention.

One morning, in a sunny clearing where wild berries grew, I took off my hooded cloak to use to carry the soft fruits back to my clan. I lingered longer than necessary, enjoying the heat of the Great Fire on the dome of my forehead.

And an idea came to me.

If the far-traveled Greeks said the wondrous islands existed, they must. The Hellenes had described them as lying at the very rim of the world, where the sun sets. Surely even the Romans had not journeyed to the ends of the Earth.

We
could escape to the sunset islands!

From the perspective of a tranquil clearing sheltered by a palisade of pines, it seemed like a wonderful idea. By the time I explained the plan to the others, however, my enthusiasm had begun to wane. My confidence was not what it used to be.

But Briga had strengthened my spine. Clapping her hands together like a child, she cried, “Oh yes, Ainvar! Let’s go!”

My Briga is an irresistible force.

Keryth had studied the auguries, consulted the wind and the stars, read the entrails of birds and the spatter of sacrificial blood. All of these agreed with my senior wife. We should undertake a journey to the edge of the Great Cold Sea—and beyond.

So began our journey of exile. We, the dispossessed.

Making our way to Armorica had been difficult; we traveled on foot and mostly by night, hugging the shadows, avoiding any area where we might encounter Romans—or Roman sympathizers. Like ants, they were everywhere. It took a brave man to stand up to the conquerors, and the brave men were dead.

When we reached Armorica our first task had been to obtain boats. There were several Armorican tribes, including the Osismi and two or three branches of the far-flung Belgae, but we sought the Veneti. They, I recalled, had a reputation for building and sailing everything from multi-oared traders to inshore fishing boats.

In their territory we had found an assortment of seagoing vessels drawn up on the beaches. Trying to look as if I were knowledgeable about such things, I concluded that two of the smaller trading boats would serve our purpose. Two would be better than one. If half of us were lost at sea at least the other half might survive.

The Veneti were understandably reluctant to rent their boats to strangers. After being repeatedly rebuffed, I finally came upon a trader called Goulvan who owned two vessels in rather poor repair. He was an unprepossessing fellow; his eyes were too close together and his teeth too far apart. His pores exuded the smell of fish. I was careful to stand upwind while talking with him.

When I asked if we might hire his boats, Goulvan’s eyes lit with avarice. “Can you pay? In advance?”

“We can pay,” I assured him. “If you can supply us with a crew, that is. We have no knowledge of boats ourselves, we are inlanders.”

I explained our predicament by telling Goulvan, “Since the conquest of Gaul my clan has been hiding in the forests, but now settlers from Latium have cut down so much timber our sanctuary is disappearing. We have no choice but to migrate.”

“Don’t look to me for sympathy, we’ve had our own troubles,” Goulvan retorted. “At about the same time as they invaded Gaul, the Romans attacked Armorica. At first we submitted, but when we realized they wanted control of the tin route, we rebelled. The tin trade was our most valuable asset and we were not willing to give it up. We applied to Albion, the source of the tin, for aid, and received help from a branch of the Belgae. They sent several boatloads of warriors to us but in the end we were defeated anyway. Many of my tribe fled. Those of us who remain eke out a precarious living, as you see.” Goulvan extended his empty hands palm upward and arranged his features in the woeful expression of a destitute man.

I thought it best not to tell Goulvan that I had been chief druid of the Carnutes and advisor to Vercingetorix. A crafty spirit peered through the trader’s eyes. If he believed I was a person of importance Goulvan might turn me over to the Romans in hopes of a reward. He was already suspicious because we were prepared to pay for boats and crew, but I explained this by intimating we had robbed the dead on the field of battle.

The trader believed me. One tribe is always willing to believe the worst of another.

“I can provide six crewmen for each boat, including myself,” Goulvan finally announced.

“Twelve men to transport twenty passengers? Do we really need that many? How much is it going to cost us?”

Goulvan was not stupid; he realized that our funds were limited. Given the condition of his boats he was in the same position. He needed us; we needed him. It is the best situation for conducting negotiations.

“If some of your party can handle the oars you can cut your costs a little,” Goulvan told me. “Not much, mind you. But a little.”

So it was agreed. And our women gave up their jewelry.

When I questioned Goulvan about the sunset island he claimed to be well familiar with the place, and further informed me it was inhabited by Celtic tribes similar to those of Gaul.

“Are there no Romans, then?”

“Not a one,” Goulvan asserted.

“Will the natives resent us?”

“They’re quite prosperous, they have more than they need. A score of new people will make no difference to them. Aside from the welcome sight of some new women,” Goulvan added with a leer in the direction of my wives.

Briga rewarded him with a look that would have frozen fire. “If the men are like you, I would rather eat dung with both hands than have anything to do with them.”

“My senior wife is only making a joke,” I said placatingly. “Or perhaps you don’t understand our sense of humor?”

His eyebrows drew together like two bulls rushing to butt heads. “That didn’t sound like a joke to me.”