Lady of Avalon (10 page)

Then he sighed and his eyes focused on Caillean. “But I shall miss our conversations. Unless an old man on his deathbed can convince you to accept the Christos, only at the end of all things will we meet again.”

“I will miss talking with you as well,” said Caillean, blinking back tears. “And perhaps in another lifetime I may follow your path. But for this one, my oaths are given elsewhere.”

“It is true that no man knows his road until he reaches its ending…” Father Joseph whispered. “When my life changed I was not much younger than you… It would give me comfort to tell you the tale, if you are willing to hear.”

Caillean smiled and took his outstretched hand in her own. It was so frail, the light seemed to shine through it. Eiluned and Riannon would be expecting her back to discuss the girls who were applying to join their community, but they could wait. There was always something to be learned when men spoke of how they came to the Light, and Father Joseph had very little time.

“I was a merchant of Judea, from a town called Arimathea, in the eastern part of the Empire. My ships went everywhere, even to Dumnonia to trade for tin, and great wealth came to me.” His voice gathered strength as he went on. “In those days I never thought beyond the next day’s accounting, and if in my dreams I sometimes remembered the land that is now sunk beneath the waves and yearned for its wisdom, I forgot it with the dawn. I brought those who were notable in every craft to my table, and when the new teacher from Galilee whom men called Yeshua began to be widely talked of, I invited him as well.”

“Did you know then that he was one of the Sons of Light?” asked Caillean. The gods were always speaking, in tree and hill and the silence of men’s hearts, but in each age, it was said, they sent an Enlightened One to speak in human words to the world. But in any age, as she had also heard, never more than a few could hear.

Father Joseph shook his head. “I listened to the Master’s words, and found Him pleasant, but I did not know Him well. The old teachings were still hidden from me. But I saw that He brought hope to the people, and I gave money when His followers needed it, and allowed them to celebrate the Paschal feast in a house that I owned. I was away from Jerusalem when He was arrested. By the time I returned, He was already on the cross. I went out to the hill of execution, for I had heard that His mother was there and I wished to offer my assistance.”

He stopped, remembering, and she saw his eyes grow luminous with tears. It was Gawen, sensing the weight of emotion without understanding it, who broke the silence.

“What was she like-His mother?”

Joseph focused on the boy. “She was like your goddess, when she weeps at harvest for the death of the god. She was young and old, fragile and enduring as stone. I saw her tears and I began to remember my dreams. And then I stood at the foot of the cross and looked up at her Son.

“By then, His agony had burned most of the human guise away. The knowledge of His true nature came and went-at times He cried out in despair, and at others He would speak words of comfort to those who waited below. But when He looked at me, I was dazzled by His Light, and in that moment I remembered who I myself had been, in times past, and the oaths that I had sworn.” The old man took a deep breath. It was clear that he was tiring, but no one would have tried to stop him now.

“They say the earth shook when He died. I do not know, for I had been shaken to my core. Afterward, when they speared Him to make sure He was dead, I caught some of His blood in a flask I had by me. And I used my influence with the Romans to get His body, and laid it in my own family tomb.”

“But he didn’t stay there…” said Gawen. Caillean looked at him and remembered how long he had studied music with the Nazarenes. He must know their legends well.

“
He
was never there,” Father Joseph said with a little smile. “Only the flesh He had worn…The Master took it back again to show the power of the spirit to those who think that the life of the body is all there is, but I did not need to see Him. I
knew
.”

“But why did you come here, to Britannia?” Gawen asked then.

Joseph’s gaze grew sorrowful; he spoke more slowly now. “The followers the Master had left began to fight over who should lead, and who should interpret the meaning of His words. They would not listen to me, and I refused to be drawn into their quarrels… I remembered then this green land beyond the waves where there were those who still, in a fashion, followed the ancient wisdom… And so I sought refuge here, and your Druids welcomed me as a fellow seeker of the Truth behind all mysteries.”

He coughed, and his eyes closed as he fought for breath. Caillean murmured soothingly, willing her own energy through their linked hands.

“Don’t try to talk,” she said as he opened his lips and coughed once more.

“I…must…tell you.” He forced himself to take a deeper breath, and gradually grew calm, though he was perceptibly weaker now. “The flask with the holy blood-”

“Do not your brothers here have charge of it?” Caillean asked.

He shook his head. “His mother told me…a woman must guard it. I bound it to the old ring, in the niche…in the holy well.”

Caillean’s eyes widened. The iron-rich water of the well left a stain like blood, though it was icy cold and pure. The wise ones of ancient times had by their arts built a well house around it, cut from a single massive stone. That much, anyone could see. But the existence of the niche in the well shaft, just tall enough to hold a man, was a secret known only to the initiates. A fitting place to shelter the blood of sacrifice, she thought then, for it had undoubtedly been used for that purpose in ancient days.

“I understand…,” she said slowly, “and I will guard it well…”

“Ah…” Father Joseph settled back. Her promise seemed to ease him. “And you-” His gaze turned to Gawen. “Will you join my brethren, and link the old wisdom with the new?”

The boy sat back, his eyes widening like those of a startled deer. For a moment he looked at Caillean-not in appeal, as she had expected, but in apprehension. The priestess blinked. Did the boy
want
to join the Nazarenes?

“Child, child,” said Joseph, understanding, “I did not mean to press you. When the time is right, you will choose…”

A hundred replies surged in Caillean’s mind, but she said nothing. She would not debate religion with a man so near to death, but she could not believe that the arid existence of a monk was what the gods wanted for this child, whom the Lady of Faerie herself had called “Son of a Hundred Kings”!

Father Joseph’s eyes had closed. Caillean felt him drifting into sleep, and let go of his hand.

When they emerged from the hut, she looked around for the brother who had shown them in. But it was Brother Paulus who was waiting, and from the outrage in his eyes she knew that only respect for the dying man prevented him from railing at her.

His gaze softened a little as Gawen approached behind her. “Brother Alanus has written a new hymn. Will you come tomorrow, when we are to learn it?”

Gawen nodded, and Paulus stalked away, the ragged hem of his grey robe hissing across the stones.

In the days following their visit to Father Joseph, Gawen waited fearfully to hear that the old man had died. But, astonishingly, the word did not come. Father Joseph struggled on, and as the festival of Beltane approached, other matters distracted Gawen from his concern. He and two of the other boys were being prepared for initiation on the eve of the festival, and he was afraid.

But he did not know how to voice his feelings. No one had ever really asked him if he wanted to become a Druid; they simply assumed that, because he had completed the first stage of training, he would continue. Only Father Joseph had even suggested there might be another choice, and although Gawen admired the purity of the Nazarenes’ devotion and found much good in their teachings, their lives seemed even narrower than those of the Druids on the Tor. The Druids, at least, were not completely cut off from womankind.

The community of Avalon had inherited the traditions of the Forest House, but Caillean did not make them keep those rules which had been imposed in deference to Roman prejudices. For the most part, the priests and priestesses of the Tor lived chastely, but the rule was relaxed at Beltane and Midsummer, when the power raised by the joining of man and woman gave life to the land. But only those who had made their vows could participate in these rites.

Sianna had been made a priestess the preceding autumn. This would be her first Beltane ritual. In his dreams Gawen saw her body glowing in the light of the holy fires and would wake, groaning with frustration at the unmistakable response of his own.

There had been a time, before the demands of his flesh had become so distracting, when he had wanted the wisdom at the end of the Druids’ road. He could hardly remember that pure longing now. The Nazarenes said that to lie with a woman was the blackest sin. Would the gods strike him down for impiety if it was desire for Sianna that motivated him to take the Druidic vows? It was not only lust that drove him, he told himself. Surely what he felt for her was love. But since her initiation he had not been alone with her. Was the friendship she had always shown him only a sisterly affection, or did she feel the same as he?

His feelings in turmoil, he gazed across the marshes to the distant line of the hills as a captive bird looks out through the meshes of its cage. Surely, he thought, becoming a man must be simpler in the Roman lands. What would his life have been like if he had been fostered by his grandfather Macellius instead of by Caillean? At times the peace of Avalon was a prison, and he grew so tired of seeing the same faces every day he could have screamed. But a Roman was a citizen of the whole world.

Gawen thought that if he had gone to Macellius he might have become a soldier like his father. Soldiers only had to take orders, not make decisions like these. Sometimes that seemed very attractive. But at other times it seemed as if everyone he knew was trying to give him commands, and all of them different, and all he wanted was to be free.

Then, one morning, he went out to join the sunrise procession and heard from below the sound of lamentation. He started down the hill, but he knew, even before he saw the monks standing about like lost children, what was wrong.

“Alas,” said Brother Alanus, his pale cheeks tear-streaked, “our Father Joseph is gone from us. When Brother Paulus went to his quarters this morning he found him already stiff and cold. I should not weep,” he went on, “for I know he is with our Master in heaven. But it is hard that he should have gone alone, in the dark, without the comfort of his sons around him, and harder still that we did not have his last farewell. Even when he was sick, it was a comfort to know he was there. He was our father. I do not know what we shall do now!”

Gawen nodded, his throat aching as he remembered that strange afternoon when the old man had told them how he came to Avalon. He had not seen the Light Father Joseph spoke of, but he had seen its reflection in the old man’s eyes, and he did not think the old man had died alone.

“He was a father to me as well. I must go back up the hill and tell them.” But it was Caillean he was thinking of as he hurried back up the path.

That afternoon, the Lady of Avalon came down from the Tor to express her condolences, drafting Gawen to join her escort as she had before. The confusion of the morning had ended. From inside the round church came the sound of chanting. The Druidic procession came to a ragged halt outside, and Gawen went to the door.

The old man’s body lay on a bier before the altar with lamps burning around it. Incense swirled in thick clouds, obscuring the shadowy forms of the monks, but for a moment Gawen seemed to glimpse shining forms hovering above them, as if the angels of which Father Joseph had often spoken were watching over him. Then, as if aware of the touch of pagan eyes, one of the shadows rose and Father Paulus came toward him.

Gawen backed away as the Nazarene came through the door. Paulus’ eyes were rimmed red with weeping, but his expression had grown no gentler with sorrow. His gaze fixed with disfavor on Caillean.

“What are you doing here?”

“We have come to share your sorrow,” said the High Priestess gently, “and to honor a good man’s passing, for, truly, Joseph was like a father to us all.”

“Then he was not so good a man as he seemed, or not so good a Christian, or you heathen would be rejoicing,” Paulus said stiffly. “But I am the leader here now, and I will enforce a purer faith upon my brethren. And my first act will be to put an end to the coming and going between our brotherhood and your accursed priesthood. Woman, begone. Neither your sympathy nor your presence is welcome here.”

Gawen took an instinctive step forward as if to place himself between them. Some of the Druids were muttering angrily, but Caillean looked simultaneously astonished and amused.

“Not welcome? But was it not we who gave your people permission to build your church here?”

“It is so,” Father Paulus answered sourly, “but the land was God’s, not yours, to give. We recognize no debt to worshippers of demons and false gods.”

Caillean shook her head in sorrow. “Do you betray Father Joseph before he is even buried? He said that true religion would forbid blaspheming the name by which any man called his god, for they are all names for the One.”

Father Paulus crossed himself. “Abomination! I never heard him speak such heresy! Get you gone or I will summon my brothers to drive you away!” His face had gone alarmingly red, and flakes of foam caught in his beard.