Ravens of Avalon (14 page)

Boudica laughed. “I don’t mind,” she said. “I come from the Iceni country. It reminds me of the fens near my home.”

“That’s as well, as you must journey that way to reach the holy isle.” He pointed vaguely eastward. Between the marshland and the sea she saw a cluster of huts on poles. Mist hazed whatever lay beyond the tangled trees. “We’ll find you a boatman in yon village. They’re an odd folk hereabouts, little dark people who have been here since this land was made, but they know their way through the marshes, and they’re loyal to the holy ones of Avalon.”

Boudica continued to watch as they eased slowly shoreward, trying to decide whether the pointed shape she thought she saw was really the Tor about which she had heard so much, and wondering what she would find there.

SEVEN

he child has grown!
thought Lhiannon, watching Boudica make her way up the path, pausing to stare at the pointed cone of the Tor. At her back, reed and thicket laced the shining expanses of the fen, islanded with green hills and fading away to the silver shimmer of the sea.

Or perhaps she had simply forgotten just how impressive Boudica’s long-limbed stride and flaming hair could be. She moved like a young goddess as she climbed the hill. The girl was a welcome sight after all the horrors Lhiannon had seen. She had hoped that the two weeks she had spent on the Tor would bring healing, but her nerves still twitched at any sudden sound. Maybe Boudica’s robust cheerfulness would be a medicine.

Lhiannon stepped from the shade of the wild apple trees that made a natural orchard on the hillside. A wide smile brightened Boudica’s face, newly freckled from the sea voyage, as she saw the priestess waiting there.

Lhiannon gave her a swift hug. “Come, after two days in the marshes you must be hungry—I hope the boatman fed you something better than pond-lily bulbs and smoked eel.”

“We ate smoked
something,”
answered Boudica. “Just what, I didn’t really care to ask …”

The priestess laughed. “Has the boatman taken your father’s man to the Lake Village? He will be their guest until we are finished, although I can’t answer for what they will feed him. We have greens and barley cakes and some roasted duck for
your
dinner. The huts where we sleep are simple, but in this weather we need little more.”

“Lhiannon, you are babbling,” said Boudica, peering down at her. “And you don’t look well … I know you were at the battles. Did you take some wound?”

“Only to my spirit …” Lhiannon felt her mouth twist with grief, started to turn away, then looked back again. How could she teach Boudica self-knowledge if she hid her own pain?

But it was not until after they had eaten that the time seemed right for talking. Lhiannon cooked their simple meal over a fire outside the cluster of houses near the sacred spring where the priestesses stayed when they visited Avalon. A gentle hill partially hid the Tor beyond, but one was always aware of its presence. The only permanent residents were a few old Druid priests who spent their time in contemplation in scattered huts on the northern side of the isle.

Lulled by the chuckle of the water that welled continually from the Blood Spring, they sat and watched the evening deepen around them. Mist was rising on the marshlands, lapping the lower vale in mystery, but the sky above the Tor blazed with stars. As the fire dimmed, Lhian-non began to speak, and in reliving the blood and anguish, she found that she could release it at last.

“So King Togodumnos is dead?” said Boudica when she had done.

Lhiannon nodded. “It was a hero’s death. Now he feasts in the Blessed Isles. The flower of the Trinovantes dwell there with him, and far too many of the Catuvellauni and Cantiaci as well. Caratac means to seek out King Tancoric in the west country and try to build an alliance there.”

“Did you and Ardanos bury the king at Camulodunon?” Boudica asked softly after a while.

Lhiannon nodded. “Eventually. That first night was a terror, running and hiding and running again, wondering when the Roman scouts would find us. It was not until the third day that we dared halt long enough to burn the body. We carried the ashes to the gravefields just outside the dikes of Camulodunon and buried them near those of his father. It was a poor funeral, with no grave goods, but we left him his spear and his shield.” She looked up with a sigh. “How did you know?”

“Coventa saw you—” Boudica stopped short, as if there were more that she would not say. Somewhere an owl gave three hoots and then was still.

“That poor child … Helve will use her without mercy, as I suppose I should myself, if the choice had fallen on me.” She leaned forward to stir the fire. “In the days to come we will need every advantage.”

“And what are the Romans doing now?”

“Waiting.” Lhiannon gave a mirthless laugh. “The Roman general has built a bridge across the Tamesa, and they say he is waiting for his emperor to cross it and complete our conquest.”

“Can he do so?” A stray gleam of firelight blazed in Boudica’s hair.

“My dear, in the southeast there is no one left to oppose him. Whether we will
stay
conquered is the question.”

Julius Caesar, after all, had come, proclaimed himself a conqueror, and gone away, and Britannia had been left alone for a century thereafter. Wind whispered through the treetops, but if it was trying to answer her, she could not understand the words.

“It’s getting late.” Lhiannon stood up suddenly and started toward the roundhouse. “We should get some sleep. Tomorrow I will show you the isle, and when the moon is new on the day after, we will do your initiation at the Blood Spring.”

n the gray hour before dawn the air held a chill that reached the bone. Boudica supposed she ought to have expected that, having become accustomed to sunrise ceremonies on the Druids’ Isle, but somehow she had assumed that being farther south, Avalon would not be so cold. In the afternoon sunlight the holy isle had seemed a place of beauty and power. But as she followed Lhiannon’s cloaked shape toward the fold between the orchard hill and the Tor where the Blood Spring emerged, the dim shapes of tree and rock shifted around her with a protean ambiguity, and she could not tell whether their new forms would be wondrous or terrible.

I suppose that is the first lesson …
she thought as she picked her way along the path.
We all have the potential for both good and evil, and knowing that, we must choose …

They came to a halt before a yew hedge. In the dim light she could make out a gap at its base. She turned to ask if this was the entrance, but the other woman had disappeared.

“Boudica, daughter of Anaveistl, why have you come here?” came a voice from the other side of the hedge. Boudica blinked. Always before, she had been known as the child of her father, but they were concerned with women’s business here. For the first time, she wondered how her mother had felt about becoming a woman. She would not have had
this
ceremony, but the passage into womanhood was always honored in the tribes.

“I have been a child—I would be a woman. I have been ignorant— I would seek wisdom.”

“Remove your garments. Naked you came into the world. Naked you must make the passage to be reborn …”

Boudica knew the speaker must be Lhiannon, but she sounded … strange.

“Come!”

Shivering, Boudica let her cloak fall. Stones cut her knees and the pointed needles of the yew scored her back as she crawled through the gap. She crouched lower to avoid being flayed.

The sun was still hidden behind the hill, but as she emerged, she found that she could see. The hedge extended on either side to join the orchard hill. The sacred spring flowed from somewhere above them, trickling down to fill a wide pool, edged and lined with stone dyed rusty red by the iron in the water.

On the other side stood the cloaked figure that she knew—she hoped—must be Lhiannon. She wondered what this rite was like when it was done by a full complement of priestesses, and could not decide whether to feel disappointed or glad that she would receive this initiation only from Lhiannon, who was the one she most trusted of them all.

“You have come into the temple of the Great Goddess, who though she wears many shapes is formless and nameless though she is called by many names. She is Maiden, forever untouched and pure. She is Mother, the Source of All. She is the Lady of Wisdom that endures beyond the grave. And She answers to all the names She is given in all the tribes of humankind. The Goddess is in all women and all women are faces of the Goddess. All that She is, you shall be. Creating and destroying, She births all transformations. Are you willing to accept Her in every guise?”

Boudica cleared her throat. “I am …”

“Behold the Cauldron of the Mighty Ones.” The priestess gestured toward the pool. “Whosoever enters it unworthy shall die; the dead that are put into it shall live. Will you dare the Mystery?”

The sky was brighter now. Boudica wondered if the faintly gleaming water it showed her was as cold as it looked, but her voice was steady as she answered. “I will …”

“Then descend into the pool.”

At the first step, the water’s icy touch shocked through her. She shook with the effort it took not to leap out screaming. But though Helve might scorn her abilities, Boudica had mastered some of the Druid disciplines. She took a deep breath, seeking the fire within. She could feel it beneath her breastbone, pulsing like a tiny sun. With another breath she willed it outward into each limb.

She stepped downward without hesitation, skin tingling as the ice without met the fire within, and looking up saw another figure descending the steps on the other side, its movements mirroring her own. It was Lhiannon, she told herself, but against the glowing sky she saw only a silhouette. In the posture she recognized something of Mearan, in the grace, her own mother, and the turn of the head was one she had seen in herself when she bent over a reflecting pool.

Ripples broke their images into myriad reflections as they sank breast-high into the water. Red and fair, leanly muscled and slender, they moved toward one another through the pool.

“By water that is the Lady’s blood may you be cleansed,” whispered that Other who both was and was not Lhiannon. “From this womb may you be reborn …” Their breasts brushed as Lhiannon moved closer, then she set her hands on Boudica’s shoulders and pressed her down.

As the water closed over her, the wounds where the hedge had scratched Boudica’s back stung fiercely, then began to tingle with a sensation that spread across her entire body, as if she were indeed being created anew. She could feel the hands of all those who had been initated in this pool blessing her. The pulse of blood in her ears was like the beating of mighty wings; she bathed in light and did not know whether it came from without or within.

“Beloved daughter…”
from the depths of her awareness came a voice. At first she thought it was the Morrigan’s, but this was far greater—it resonated in her bones.
“In blood and in spirit you are My own true child. I give you to the world, and the world to you. Whatever may befall I shall never be far from you, if only you will look within. Go forth and live!”

Then strong hands drew her upward. Skin slid smoothly across skin as she emerged into the circle of Lhiannon’s arms. From the water light flared and glanced around them, a multitude of bright spirits rejoicing. During those moments when she lay in the water the sun had risen, and they stood in a lake of fire.

as the womanhood rite like this for you?”

At Boudica’s diffident question Lhiannon finished tying the strings of her shoe and looked up. Two days had passed since the initiation. Last night had been cloudy, but the mists were clearing from the marshes, and beyond the apple trees the Tor rose smooth and green against a smiling sky.

“It is always the same, and always different,” she said smiling. “The structure of the ritual has not altered much, I suppose, since the People of Wisdom first initiated their daughters in this pool. But the power it invokes, the internal transformation, must be different for each maiden it blesses.”

She remembered her own initiation as a slow unfolding of awareness, level upon level, like the opening of a flower, until at the end she had glimpsed the core of light. An entire lifetime, she thought, might be too short to comprehend what she had touched as she stood in the pool.

She did not think that what Boudica had experienced was the same, but clearly something had happened to the girl. And as always in ritual, the giver was as blessed as the one who received. Lhiannon still bore grief for Britannia’s slaughtered warriors, but she had been reminded that the Great Mother who weeps for her children also gives birth to them anew.

“I am still trying to digest all the wise words you gave me afterward, when we broke our fast beside the pool,” Boudica said.

Lhiannon frowned. In the euphoria that followed the blessing, their bare bodies still warmed by the sacred fire, she had found herself telling Boudica things she had scarcely admitted to herself. Not even when she walked with Ardanos could she share so deeply. Their souls had been as naked as their bodies, no longer teacher and student, but two women together in an intimacy of the spirit that would have been impossible if they had not been alone. Now she was beginning to suspect that a bond had been forged between them that she had not anticipated.