the prospects for a good harvest. There was a murmur of satisfaction as the
seeress spoke of sunny skies and fields golden with ripe grain. Now the air
around her was beginning to glow. Lhiannon smiled. Mona was one of
the breadbaskets of Britannia—it would take an evil fate indeed to threaten
that harvest. Coventa swayed beside her, humming softly, and Lhiannon
gave her hand a sharp squeeze.
“Fasten yourself to the earth, child,” she whispered sharply. “Only
the seeress is supposed to go through the gate of prophecy.” Coventa
hiccupped and then grew still, but she remained unsteady as Lugovalos
spoke once more.
26 D i ana L . Pax s on
“In Gallia, the Legions of Rome have placed an iron yoke upon
our people, and now their emperor has banished the Druid Order
from their lands. Say then, seeress, what the future holds for us here in
Britannia?”
There was a silence, as if not only the Arch-Druid but all Britannia
was waiting to hear.
The blossoms in Helve’s garland began to tremble, and Lhiannon
felt Coventa shake as if in sympathy. Once more she damned Helve’s
pride. The child was being caught up in the vision and had no defense
against it.
“I see oars that lift and dip like wings on the water . . .” muttered
Helve. “As the geese flock north in the spring they come—three great
flocks of winged vessels stroking across the sea . . .”
“When will they come, wise one?” Lugovalos asked urgently. “And
where?”
“Where the white cliffs rise and the white sands gleam,” came the
answer. “When the hawthorn is in white bloom.”
Time was notoriously diffi
cult to fix in prophecy, thought Lhian-
non as a murmur of unease swept through the crowd. But at the earliest,
it could not be until next year. To collect so great an army would take
time, and though the Druids might be banned from Gallia, the Order
had agents in plenty on the other side of the sea. Surely when an inva-
sion was planned they would know. She put her arm around Coventa,
holding her close and praying that Helve would finish soon. But the
Arch-Druid wanted more.
“And what then? Where are our armies?” he demanded.
“The Red Crests march westward and none oppose them. I see a
river . . .” Helve’s moan was echoed faintly by Coventa. The glow
around her deepened to a fiery hue. Lhiannon shook her head as vision
teased at her awareness, armies locked in combat and corpses fl oating
downstream.
“The river runs red . . . red . . . it becomes a river of blood that cov-
ers the land!” Coventa’s thin scream joined Helve’s shriek in eerie har-
mony. Focused on Helve, the priests did not appear to notice, but the
other priestesses turned in alarm.
“Get her out of here!” hissed Belina in Lhiannon’s ear.
M A RI O N Z I M M E R B RA D L E Y ’ S RAV E N S O F AVA L O N
27
Coventa’s limbs were twitching now. With the strength of despera-
tion Lhiannon lifted the girl and stumbled backward into the trees. Be-
hind her she could hear Helve’s wail and the murmur as Lugovalos
strove to stem the torrent of visions. The Druids would have more ques-
tions about the Romans, but Lhiannon did not need to be in trance to
predict they would not be asking them at a public festival.
Panting, she leaned against a tree. She tensed as a shadow appeared
beside her and then relaxed, recognizing Boudica. Coventa had gone
limp, still muttering. Together they carried her through the trees and
back to the House of the Healers.
W ill she be all right?” Boudica looked from her friend’s still face
to the strained features of the priestess, alternately lit and shadowed by
the flickering of the little fire. Coventa had quieted as soon as they got
her away from the grove, and now she lay as one in a deep sleep. She
leaned forward, wondering in what dream Coventa wandered now.
“Should we try to wake her up?”
“Best not,” answered Lhiannon. “People often fear being lost in
trance, but if one cannot return consciously, it is better to simply
pass into normal sleep. Coventa’s mind will reorder itself before waking
again. All we can do is to guard her. If she wakes too suddenly some
part of her spirit may be dream-lost, and it will be difficult to fetch it
back again.”
“But you would do it, wouldn’t you.” It was not quite a question.
“Would Helve?” The sound of the festival was like distant waves on the
shore—they might have been alone in the world.
Lhiannon looked at her in surprise, and Boudica held her gaze. Ex-
cept for Coventa, for a year she had refused all offers of friendship, espe-
cially Lhiannon’s, suspecting condescension, or worse still, pity. Lhiannon
was so beautiful, what use could she have for a gawky, head-blind girl?
But tonight they were united by a common need and a common fear.
Boudica was the one who had noticed that Coventa was in trouble. To-
night she could face her teacher as an equal and dare to wonder what lay
behind the serene face the priestess showed the world.
“Oh yes. You must not underestimate her skills. It is likely that she
28 D i ana L . Pax s on
will be High Priestess after Mearan.” From outside they heard the joyful
shout that hailed the lighting of the Beltane fi re.
“I find it hard to like her,” said Boudica. Lhiannon said nothing, but
her lips tightened, and Boudica understood what the priestess was too
loyal to say. “She flirts with every male she sees, but she gives her love
to none.”
“She must keep pure to serve as Oracle,” Lhiannon said evenly.
“When Mearan fell ill it was a good thing we had another priestess who
was qualifi ed.”
“You could do it,” Boudica said warmly, and noted the betraying
color that reddened Lhiannon’s cheekbones. “Is that why you are here
instead of dancing around the fire?” She had seen how Lhiannon and
Ardanos looked at each other when they thought no one could see.
“I am here because Coventa needs me!” snapped the priestess, and
this time, her response was sharp enough to warn Boudica off .
“I do not understand all this emphasis on virginity,” the girl said
at last.
“To tell you the truth,” Lhiannon said wryly, “at this moment, nei-
ther do I!”
Boudica smiled, finding it surprisingly sweet to know herself for-
given. “I do not like the idea of being at the beck and call of a husband,
but I would like children. Mearan has always seemed like a mother to
this community. I am surprised that she has none.”
“In the past the High Priestess often bore children, and another
woman served as Oracle,” Lhiannon replied.
“But is it so important?” asked Boudica. “How do they manage in
Rome?”
“The Romans have no seers of their own,” Lhiannon answered,
obviously relieved to move the conversation to more neutral ground.
“They visit the oracles of Hellas, but when t
he Sibyl of Cumae off ered
the books of prophecy to their last king, he refused twice, and she
burned six of them before the tribal elders insisted he buy the last
three—for the same price she had originally asked for all nine!” Both
women laughed. “Now they consult omens or pore over the verses that
remain, or make pilgrimage to oracles in other lands.”
“I have heard there is an oracle in Delphi. Is she a virgin?”
M A RI O N Z I M M E R B RA D L E Y ’ S RAV E N S O F AVA L O N
29
“That is what they say. The pythia is an untried maiden, though
in other times they chose older women who had already raised their
families.”
“But no one who has a husband or a lover . . .” observed Boudica.
Lhiannon sighed. “There are other kinds of divination a married
woman can do. To read omens does not require the same level of trance.
Or even to prophesy on the fingers’ ends or in answer to a sudden ques-
tion, as they do in Eriu. But the rite of the bull-sleep in which the Druid
divines the name of the rightful king requires the priest to prepare with
prayer and fasting, and to sit on the tripod involves an even deeper sur-
render, for which all the channels must be clear.” She sighed.
“And you want to do that,” Boudica said.
“Yes. The visions call me as they called Coventa, but I know I must
resist them.”
Above the crackling of the fire they could hear the skirling of pipes
and a sudden shout as some lucky pair leaped over the fl ames. Lhiannon
turned, her eyes shimmering with unshed tears.
“I must resist them,” she said. “Helve is the priests’ darling, and I
will never sit in the high seat while she is here.”
“Then go after what you can have,” Boudica told her. “Coventa
needs only a guardian. If someone is waiting for you,” she said tactfully,
“go to the fires—I can keep watch here.”
“There was someone, but I don’t suppose he is still waiting now,”
the priestess said softly, head bowed so that her face was hidden by the
shining fall of pale hair. “Once I thought that the Goddess had called
me to serve as an oracle, but now the way seems blocked. I am halted,
whichever way I turn!”
Boudica stared, shaken to find that even a sworn priestess could be
as tormented by doubt as she herself had been.
“How do you know the Lady’s will?” she exclaimed. “Does She
speak to you?”
Lhiannon looked up at her with a shuddering sigh. “Sometimes . . .
though I am usually too fixed on my own pain to listen at those times
when I most want to hear.”
Such as now . . . thought Boudica.
“Sometimes She speaks to me through the lips of others,” Lhiannon
30 D i ana L . Pax s on
managed a wry smile, “as I think She is speaking through you now.
Once or twice She has spoken to me aloud, when she occupied Lady
Mearan’s body during a ritual, and sometimes I have heard Her speaking
in the stillness of my soul. But sometimes we know what our choices
were only after we have made them. I thought that to gain love I would
have to relinquish power, but instead I appear to have traded love for
duty.”
“Or perhaps for friendship?” asked Boudica, only now, when she
found herself letting down the barriers that had kept her solitary here,
realizing how lonely she had been.
“Yes, little
sister—perhaps that is what I have done.” Lhiannon
managed a smile.
T H R E E
On a hot afternoon just before the feast of Lugos, the blare of the
bronze carynx horn echoed across the fields. After the Beltane Oracle
the Arch-Druid had summoned the kings to take counsel for the fate of
Britannia, and they were coming at last. Boudica ran for the House
of Maidens to change her clothing. For more than a year her world
had been limited to the community here on the isle. What could she
say to them? Would any of those she had met at Camulodunon re-
member her?
Her second summer at the Druids’ Isle had been as bountiful as
Helve had promised. By midsummer the barley hung heavy on the stalk
and the lambs grew fat on the rich grass. But for those who had heard
the Oracle’s predictions, the blessings of the season were an evil omen,
for if Helve was right about the harvest, she might be right about the
Roman invasion as well.
Swiftly Boudica pulled the white gown over her head and jerked the
comb through her thick hair. Brenna and Morfad were already settling
wreaths of summer asters on their heads. She snatched up her own
wreath and hurried after the others down the road that led from Lys
Deru to the shore.
The chorus of youths and maidens formed behind the senior Druids
and priestesses. At the narrowest part of the strait the cliff s were steep on
both sides of the water. Boats made their landing farther down, where
between the cliffs and the sandbanks there was a narrow beach. A barge
was angling toward them across the blue waves. There was a haze upon
the water, and all Boudica could make out within were the bright blurs
of clothing and a glitter of gold. Another craft followed; she glimpsed
the shapes of horses. No doubt the rest of their retinue had been left to
camp upon the far shore.
The
Arch-Druid had sent out his summons to all the southern
32 D i ana L . Pax s on
Cunobelin, with all his devious skill, had only been able to bring the
Trinovantes and the Catuvellauni under his yoke, would even Lugov-
alos be able to impose unity on tribes that had been enemies since their
fathers came into this land?
As the barge reached the midpoint of the strait it seemed to lose way.
Boudica remembered that moment from her own arrival, when even
untrained and exhausted as she was then, she had felt the pressure of the
invisible wall that protected Mona.
“Who approaches the holy isle?” Lugovalos’s voice rang out across
the water.
“Kings of Britannia, come to take counsel with the Wise,” came the
answer, blurred by something more than distance.
“Pass, then, by the will of the mighty gods,” cried the Arch-Druid,
and the priests and priestesses behind him began to sing. There had been
no chorus of Druids to welcome the pack-train that brought Boudica,
only two priests and a priestess. But she had felt an odd tingle when
their voices joined in the spell. There were twelve here now, and the
thirteenth was the Arch-Druid standing before them. Their chanting
vibrated through her bones.
The Druids were reshaping the relationship between sky and sea.
For a moment that vibration matched her own; Boudica saw each par-
ticle shimmering and understood what her teachers meant by the har-
mony of all things. When she could focus again, she saw the two barges
and their passengers clearly. But the far shore behind them was still
veiled by a golden haze. Their guests had passed the barrier.
Boudica recognized Cunobelin’s two sons immediately; wiry, red-
haired Caratac, who had taken over the Cantiaci kingdom, and Togo-
dumnos, grown more portly already as he settled into his father’s
dignities. With them were two more whom she did not know. Behind
Togodumnos she glimpsed another man, tall with fair hair and mus-
tache. She raised one eyebrow as she realized it was Prasutagos, brother
of the Northern Iceni king.
As the barge approached the shore, the youths and maidens began to
sing:
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33
“It is to the land of gifted men that you have come,
It is to the land of wise women that you have come,
It is to the land of fair harvests that you have come,
And to the land of song.
You who sit in the seat of the hero,
You who sit in the seat of the king,
You who give ear to good counsel,
Be you welcome here . . .”
If both Helve and Lady Mearan have foreseen a Roman victory,
why have you called us here?” said King Togodumnos. Unusual among
the younger men, he wore a short beard. “Are you counseling us to bare
our throats to the Roman wolf without a fi ght?”
There was a growl from the other leaders, and Boudica, who was
refilling the golden drinking bowl, stopped with it in her hand. The
kings had spent half a day already debating whether the visions should
be believed. At this rate, deciding what to do about them might take till
the next full moon.
“I am willing to go down fighting,” added Caratac, “but I would
rather not know that I am doomed before I begin!” As he leaned for-
ward the fi relight kindled a new flame in his russet hair. He was not so
kingly a figure as his older brother, but though he always spoke to and
of Togodumnos with respect, Boudica judged that of the two he had, if
not the greater intelligence, certainly more energy.
To house their guests the Druids had repaired the huts in the meadow
where they held the festivals and removed the wicker sides from the long
feasting hall to admit air and light for their deliberations. In the central
trench a fire was kept burning, providing light and warmth and a witness
to oaths as well. Several stave buckets bound in bronze and fi lled with
ale served to lubricate the deliberations. Boudica, who had lived in a