He noticed, of course. I thought I had hidden my discomfort, but as I tossed in my blanket Geanann arrived at my side with a mug of some vile-smelling brew.
“The weather is changing,” he said as he pressed the cup into my hand. “You may find your wound ever warns you of oncoming rain.”
“I would rather be surprised,” I muttered, but I took the draught, and I slept.
That was the last of the glorious weather we enjoyed that autumn. We woke to a gray drizzle that settled over the land like an unwelcome guest. In the days to come we had every kind of rain in existence, from a fine invisible mist that beaded on our hair and cloaks to lashing downpours that drenched us to the bone. One morning we picked our way through the forest in a silent silvery fog that billowed up from the wet ground like the very breath of the Otherworld, smelling of the secret rivers that run deep under the bones of the earth. A couple of times we were able to shelter for the night on a farmstead and dry out our things, but we skirted wide of any large duns. Berach was not the high king’s man yet, and for myself I wished to avoid awkward questions.
Strangely, the weather was not able to dampen my spirits. My eagerness grew with every mile we traveled. I could hardly sleep on the last night of our journey, though we were warm around a farmer’s hearth. It was a new life I would be greeting on the morrow, and my mind jumped like a flea between excitement and nerves.
The storm swept over us before we had traveled an hour. It upset me as the other weather had not; I wanted to arrive dry and composed, not bedraggled and dripping. We were at the southeast tip of Ireland now; the mountains had been left behind for a flat open land dotted with cleared fields and farmsteads, and while our road was now broad and easy, there was nothing to shelter us from the driving wind that ripped across the plain. The calf bawled with fear at every crack of lightning, and we had to clutch our cloaks tight, for the storm seemed bent on tearing the clothes from our skin. I kicked Orlagh up beside Geanann and yelled into his ear.
“Are the gods angry with me, Geanann? Do they set their will against me?”
He smiled. Rain was streaming down his face, despite the heavy wool hood. “More like it is your new mistress,” he shouted.
I stared at him in confusion. Was he saying she did not want me? How could he smile at such a thing?
“It takes determination to become a druid,” he explained. “The Isle of Women is not easily approached. Not by those seeking initiation.”
It was a test, then. She must be powerful, I thought, to call up a storm like this. Still, it seemed a silly effort. I tugged at Geanann’s cloak.
“She could not suppose that weather would turn me back?”
His hoot of laughter was snatched away by the wind. “It turns back the weak of will and the frivolous of mind. If she knew you as I do, no doubt she would not have bothered!”
There is a self-confidence that comes with a high name. I had grown up in the reflected light of the respect given to my parents. Without even thinking of it, I had known that my place in the world was assured. Now I was to stand, homeless and in hiding, before a high druidess, with nothing but my own self to recommend my worth. It made me feel naked.
She was waiting for us at the end of the causeway that joined the isle to the mainland. The storm had passed, and in the uncanny quiet that followed I could hear the steady dripping as branches and leaves shook off their burden of rainwater. The lake—only a small channel on this side—was a still gray mirror.
Tlachta was, well, not what I expected. In those days, my imagination patterned all druids after Cathbad. For one thing, Tlachta was shorter than me by a head, and I am not much above average height for a woman. And though her hair was gray and her forehead disconcertingly high from the shaved tonsure that marked her as a Master, she was by no means ancient. She was vigorous and womanly still, lush in the hip and breast, and when she turned to lead us onto the isle she walked with a grace that I thought might still turn a man’s head.
Geanann greeted her as “daughter of the Sun” and that sent a thrill of apprehension through me. People used to whisper that my father was the son of the god Lugh, and as a girl I loved imagining it was true without ever believing it or letting it worry me one whit. But this was different; Tlachta was a stranger to me and a woman of power, and Mug Ruith a southern god I had barely heard of. In my mind, the great unknown that was my life here became even more unpredictable.
I could have spared myself that worry. It was not long before I learned that “daughter of the Sun” or “daughter of Mug Ruith” is a title of office, given to every mistress of Cluain-na-mBan
.
While Tlachta is a woman to inspire awe, she is not truly born of the sun god, but rather dedicated to his service.
We walked into a dense wall of trees, an apparent forest which soon thinned out to reveal a sizeable community: lime-washed houses, both round and rectangular, a stable and beyond them, cultivated fields and pastures. It all looked so...
normal
.
Tlachta was brisk and assured in her hospitality, and there was soon a bustle about us. To my surprise a man came to see to our horses and the calf, and then we were shown to our respective
quarters: the apprentices’ house for me, the men’s guesthouse for Geanann and Berach and a women’s guesthouse for Roisin. I could see she was irked to be sent there, but whether she wished to sleep beside Berach or me, I could not tell. Berach, most likely.
The apprentices’ house was a long low building, filled with two rows of simple wattle bed frames and little else.
“This one is free and away from the door,” said the girl who led me there. “You’ll be out of the draft.”
I would be sharing my sleeping space, by the looks of it, with nearly twenty other girls and women. Coming as I did from a small wealthy family, I found it unpleasantly crowded. But the straw was fresh, so I nodded my thanks to the fellow who carried in my trunk and set it at the foot of the bed. Another man! I had jumped to a foolish conclusion, I realized; it is the druids who are women here, not every soul who works for them.
“If you have more things, there is a storage room attached to the back of the house,” the girl said. I thought of the portion of treasure I had brought, left for now in Tlachta’s care. A better place than that would have to be found for it. “Do you want to put on dry clothes, and I will take care of your wet things? There is food for you when you are ready.”
I changed gratefully and did the best I could with my wet hair. Already I missed Roisin’s help. By the time I was done, the serving girl was back. But I asked her to wait a moment, while I freed Fintan from the wicker cage he had sheltered in through the storm, and watched while he hopped out to explore his new home.
We ate soup and bread, and Roisin was full of chatter, wanting to know if my chamber was all right (I assured her it was) and was my bed made up (it wasn’t, but I lied and said yes, figuring
I would have to start doing without her soon enough) and had I seen the marvelous device they had for drying clothes? I hadn’t, but I found it hard to concentrate on her description of the tiny stone building that was heated with a constant turf-fire and filled with drying racks. I was nervous, wondering what was to come. Surely there was more to starting an apprenticeship than claiming a bed? I looked to Geanann and found his eyes already resting upon me. With a smile, he nodded to the door.
It was Tlachta, her timing (as always, I have learned) perfect.
“You are dry and fed, now? Good. Well then, Luaine, we had best get started. Will you come with me?” And off she went, leaving me to trail after her like a child.
Well, Cathbad had taught me to endure a druid’s stare, but with Tlachta it was a whole new experience. For once all self-consciousness about my scar dropped away, for in her eyes it was invisible. It was my heart she was seeking, and as I sat across from her and ordered myself to keep still under her gaze, I understood that she had as little interest in my name and my holdings as she did in my good looks. In this place, such things did not matter.
After a long moment, with a tiny nod and an even tinier smile, she released me. Odd, that feeling. She looked at me still, but the sensation of being searched was gone.
“I understand your life has not been an easy one of late.” This time the smile was warmer. “Know that you are welcome to stay with us on the island for as long as you have need.” Her hand rose, forestalling any reply.
“However, I am told you wish to become an initiate. Is this correct?”
“Yes, mistress.”
Who told her, I wondered. Geanann? But she had been waiting for us. Unless he had sent a message that somehow arrived faster than we could travel. Or... I shivered at the thought. Had she known I was coming before I myself did?
“You come highly recommended,” Tlachta continued. “But, you understand, I must be satisfied myself that an initiate is suitable.”
“Of course, mistress.” There would be a test, then. I tried to remain calm, while my stomach began to jump around as it had when Eirnin used to grill me in my lessons. It was long since I had studied anything but my own survival. I was not sure what I remembered.
“Good. Then let’s see what you have learned so far.”
She began with the simple triads from my earliest lessons.
“Name the three divisions of the world.”
“Earth, sea and air.”
“The three divisions of nature.”
“Animal, vegetable and mineral.”
“The three divisions of man.”
“Body, soul and spirit.”
By the time we moved on to more complex questions—the eight winds, the seven divisions of the firmament, the truths of the poet, the duties of the king—I was more confident, and I could feel my studies coming back to me. The knowledge was all there, after all, locked away and waiting to be called back to my head.
She took her time, leading me through the landscape of all I had learned. From the names of the constellations to the names of Ulster’s kings, from the mysterious triple face of the Morrigu to the
familiar geography of Muirthemne, Tlachta took the sounding of my mind. By the time I finished reciting one of Lasair’s battle sagas, she knew as much about my education as my own teachers.
Tlachta turned to a great chest that lay against the wall and brought out an armful of yew wands. I could see the white notches cut against the rich red of the polished wood. She laid the bundle before me and fanned it open, for the sticks were drilled with holes and attached together at the bottom.
“Do you know what these are?”
“Yes, mistress. It is Ogham writing.”
“Can you read it?”
“Yes...but I have never seen the wands bound together so.”
“Ah. Tell me then: Why do you think they are bound?”
I was too curious to be nervous and this freed me to think. “It must be to keep the wands in order,” I offered. “The messages on the wands must be sequential.”
“Good. Will you read some for me?”
It was a simple memorial—the name of a king and his death date and the name of his father. The next wand held the name of another king, the son of the first man, with again his death date and ancestry. And so it continued.
“It is the genealogy of the kings of Leinster,” she explained, “kept in the order of their reigns. There are six bundles, recording the lives of some thirty kings. We have other bundles that document contracts undertaken at the Samhain judgments. We set them down in case of future disputes.”
I was a little puzzled by that. I had studied some law, but only as it applied to everyday householding: the exchange price of livestock, recompense for property damage, the obligations of
fostering and so on. Nobody would bother recording such agreements; in a dispute, the judgment and witness of a druid, or even the local chieftain or king, would be more than enough.
Tlachta was speaking of another level of judgment altogether. I realized suddenly that my conception of law had been too narrow—that judgments and contracts might draw borders and define kingdoms, save lives or lose them, bind or be broken by generations to come.
She must have sensed my interest, for she interrupted my testing to say something that has echoed in my mind ever since.
“Luaine, what does the law say if a free man is killed by another, say in a drunken brawl?”
A simple question. “His family must pay the dead man’s family his honor price.”
“Correct. And when your father was killed in battle, it is a rather different recompense was taken, was it not?”
Conall Cearnach, laying out his row of bloody heads for my mother. They had filled me with weary sorrow, but my mother had been glad to see my father properly avenged.
“The rule of war is different,” I protested.
“The rule of war is different,” she agreed. “Should, then, kings and chieftains be free to set the men of Ireland against each other for squabbles over cattle or women, and will our warriors forever spill each other’s blood for the sake of insults and rivalries? Do they live free from any law but their own code?”
I had no reply to her words. They disturbed and excited me both, for I saw the truth in what she said and yet...a saying flashed into my mind: A tame wolf is merely a dog. Was not the same true of a warrior?
Tlachta’s gaze was on the peat fire now, her voice soft and private. “If Ireland’s rivers run red with the blood of her own warriors, who will be left to defend us when invaders land on our shores? There are men across the sea hungry for conquest: yellow-haired warriors in long ships, and an army from the hot lands so vast that it consumes its neighbors as a fire consumes thatch.”
Then her eyes were on me, so intense they seemed to glow yellow in the dim light. “The druids have foreseen this,” she said, and the hair stood up on my arms for I hadn’t the least doubt that what she said was true. “It is time for the tribes of Ireland to unite under their high king and to be bound to a common law.”
There are many branches of study to explore in the druid’s long training. But I believe I was called to the Law on my very first day, when Tlachta gave me a vision of a world in which sworn brothers need not fight each other on the whim of a queen, nor a man slay his own son over a withheld name.