Chapter 6: Lillywen

Perched precariously on the edge of a cliff, overlooking an alien landscape and thinking back forty years, Herrwn regretted not trying harder to make peace between his cousins. But at the time when he might have done something to intervene, he had been preoccupied with his own affairs and had not noticed how wide the rift between Ossiam and Olyrrwd was growing.

Being literal minded, Olyrrwd would no doubt have pointed out that the actual parting of their ways had begun when Ossiam left their shared bedchamber to spend his nights as well as his days in the Oracle’s tower, descending only for the midday and evening meals and then saying nothing of what he was learning except that it was secret knowledge and that “his master” had forbidden speaking of it to the uninitiated—following the prescribed practice of using honorific titles rather than any designations as informal as “my father.”

Meanwhile, Herrwn and Olyrrwd were each kept busy with their own advanced studies, and while they still shared their sleeping chamber and continued to spend time together when their work allowed, they, like Ossiam, had time-consuming studies—and stern taskmasters.

Of their three teachers, Herrwn’s father was, in Herrwn’s mind, the most—he was about to use the word “lenient” but instead chose “wise.” The elder Herrwn had not just allowed him to take a break between his afternoon practice and his evening recitations but had actually insisted he do so, saying, “Go and experience your own life so that you may more convincingly give voice to the lives of others!”

At first, this had felt more daunting than even reciting the most complex of poems, but his father had remained adamant (in later years, Herrwn had come to wonder whether this was at his mother’s insistence). In any case, he soon came to look forward to those free hours. At first, he went with Olyrrwd on his rounds to tend ill and injured villagers—an experience that gave depth to his understanding of the minor characters in his sagas. Then he sought out his younger brother’s company, developing a deeper friendship with him than they’d had when all of his time was spent with Ossiam and Olyrrwd. But gradually and increasingly, he was drawn to the shrine’s central courtyard and herb gardens, the one location where priests and priestesses who weren’t consorts or immediate family might mingle on an informal basis.

His excuse at the time was that this was an ideal location to practice his recitations, but the truth was that he liked being in the garden with priestesses-in-training who were his own age, especially Lothwen, who was his second cousin on his father’s side.

As the understudy to the shrine’s chief midwife, Lothwen was not free to choose a consort until she completed her apprenticeship any more than Herrwn was free to accept such an offer before completing his, but as they spent those months talking together, she became more and more open about who she would like to name and he became more and more open about his readiness to say yes. An array of their kin—parents, aunts, uncles, and older cousins—looked on from the sidelines with understanding smiles, and as the time approached when they would be free to make this choice, they were given tacit approval to start moving their things into a room of their own in the hall of the shrine reserved for priestesses with consorts and children.

It was considered a mark of a mature Druid to be able to maintain a calm demeanor in the face of the best as well as the worst of events—and Herrwn had managed, barely, to contain the pride and joy he felt the day he was named both a full-fledged bard and Lothwen’s consort. The all-consuming bliss of the first months he and Lothwen shared was cut short by the plague but was subsequently replaced by something deeper and stronger as they held each other up and gave each other the strength to accept the loss of their parents and so many others.

Herrwn had slipped out of the lean-to shelter where he and his companions had taken refuge for the night intending to make use of the time that Gwenydd and Darbin were arguing to catch up on a much-needed rehearsal of the fifth and final saga of the epic struggle between the Goddess and the giants of the northern mountains.

When the insistent hooting of an owl in a nearby tree brought him back to task, he was startled to realize that the moon was halfway up its eastern arc and he’d not yet completed so much as the hero’s opening ode. Such lack of discipline was not acceptable for a bard of his rank. Straightening his posture, he started over, beginning with the names, lineage, and chief attributes of divine and semi-divine figures with major parts to be declaimed. Instead of focusing his mind, however, the familiar litany ran on of its own accord while his thoughts returned first to his beloved Lothwen, who had died giving birth to their only child, and then to his daughter, Lillywen—taken from him six years later by a childhood fever.

The midwives who fought the long, losing battle for Lothwen’s life had been too busy to notice that Herrwn had slipped into the birthing chamber. He’d stood in the shadows, drawing shallow, irregular gasps along with Lothwen until her breathing stopped and his kept going.

Rhonnon, the shrine’s chief midwife, looked perplexed for a moment. When she turned around and saw him, her expression changed to vexation—leaving no doubt that she felt he’d done enough damage already. He flinched, expecting her to curse him as he was cursing himself, but instead she sighed and handed him his infant daughter, swaddled in woolen wraps that were damp with birth waters and Lothwen’s blood.

It was well-known that Rhonnon did not hold men in much regard, so Herrwn was not surprised that she stayed close by, her hands stretched out to catch the baby in case he let her slip, but despite her misgivings, Herrwn did not drop his newborn daughter—he held her pressed against his heart until he was forced to surrender her to her nurse.

The next day, he used his authority as the shrine’s chief priest to get past the guardian of the entrance to the inner sanctum of the women’s quarters and found his way to the nursery. Brushing aside the nurse’s objections, he sat on the only adult-size chair, placed Lillywen on his lap, and recited the silly rhymes he remembered from his own days in the nursery as she gazed up at him with her mother’s eyes.

After that, he went to see Lillywen every day, getting up before dawn to cradle her in his arms before reluctantly relinquishing her to her nurse and leaving to attend to his own work, then returning as soon as possible—anxious to hold her again.

When she was weaned, he flouted tradition—and further displeased her nurse—by having his breakfast in the nursery sitting on a little chair at Lillywen’s little table, his long legs drawn up so he looked like an oversized grasshopper perched on too small a leaf. His answer to Ossiam’s querulous objections that he was spending more time in the nursery than in the priests’ quarters was, “If you need me, you know where to find me.” That was true—any time he wasn’t presiding in the council chambers, reciting epics in the shrine’s main hall, teaching in the classroom, or conducting sacred rites, he could be found playing dolls with Lillywen on the nursery floor.

As Lillywen grew older, Herrwn began to make up stories about a little girl and her foolish, stubborn father having humorous misadventures together and somehow coming through them without any harm to anything except that father’s dignity. The stories became a saga about the fictional father and daughter’s travels on a long journey to a distant and only vaguely explained destination. At the beginning of each story, the father would take the wrong path and get lost, and the daughter, who was brave and resourceful as well as beautiful, had to rescue him from one predicament after another with the help of the forest animals who, in spite of their fur or feathers, spoke fluent Celt and had complicated family relationships that crossed the boundaries between species with bunny children running to their uncle badger for advice or quarreling fearlessly, if illogically, with their cousin fox cubs.

Now, sitting at the edge of the cliff and gazing up across the valley as the moon moved through a swath of clouds, Herrwn could almost feel his small daughter’s warm, sweet-smelling body snuggled against his chest and could almost hear her sleepy voice insisting that she was not tired and asking for just one more story.

After Lillywen died, Herrwn retreated back to his studies and to teaching other men’s children. He took refuge in his work and was not willing to leave it even when his brother—his eyes once again bright with enthusiasm after seven years of pining—urged Herrwn to join him on a quest into the outside world to seek out those who still worshipped the Goddess and give them the comfort and strength of knowing that they were not alone. At the time, Herrwn did not think that he could offer anything to help the loneliness of others, and so his brother set off without him.

Of all the choices that he had made in his life, that was the one Herrwn regretted the most. He had, of course, no thought that his going along would have saved his brother from being captured by their Christian enemies—only that they would have been together and his brother would not have suffered and died alone. In the years that had passed since then, he had not ever forgiven either himself or the supposedly faithful servants who had promised to guide and protect his brother and had instead betrayed him to be tortured and burned at the stake.

Herrwn’s daughter and brother died within a month of each other, giving rise to a communal sense of foreboding that settled over the shrine like a fog.

No one said what they were thinking out loud, but—

Ossiam stopped telling anyone what he saw when he looked into the entrails of sacrificial goats or watched the dark swarms of crows that flew over the shrine’s highest tower.

Olyrrwd found reasons to remark, at least three times each day, that belief that bad things come in threes was a foolish superstition.

And as Herrwn passed people in the hallways, they would abruptly break off their conversations to smile unnaturally bright smiles at him.

While his friends and relations were treating him with the cloying kindness reserved for those who are fatally ill, Herrwn moved through his days with a feeling of profound clarity, relishing each act and each sensation, conscious that this might be the last time he laced his sandals, or bit into warm bread, or felt the sun on his face. His craving to savor each moment was mixed with his impatience to be reunited with those he loved the most, and he lived the next three months with an intensity of awareness that he’d never felt before or since.

As days and then weeks passed, however, Herrwn remained in glowing health—and one morning, he put on his sandals without paying attention to what he was doing. That same day, at breakfast, he had to ask twice for the salt, only to have a nearby servant fetch it for him instead of all his table companions reaching for it at once. As he left the table and went back to his classroom, Herrwn realized that all he felt was sad, and he resigned himself to remaining in the mortal world for the time being.

While Herrwn was disappointed, the rest of the shrine was relieved. Except for Lillywen, they’d all survived the illnesses of winter, and the pessimism and doubts that took hold in the dark of the year released their grip, giving way to the burgeoning hopes of spring—a spring in which Caelendra, their chief priestess, was going to give birth to the child everyone expected would be a girl and their next Goddess incarnate.