Chapter 65: The Girls’ Game

“Caelym is back?” Herrwn reached for his staff. “That is won—”

“No, no, Master, not he, Master Caelym—he, the sprite! The wicked, wicked sprite! He’s taken it!”

Dropping to his knees, the distraught servant grabbed hold of the hem of Herrwn’s robe and twisted it between his fingers. “It was there! I know it was! And now it’s gone!”

Startled by this alarming display of emotion, Herrwn could think of nothing to say but, “What is gone?”

“The goat!”

“Which goat?” Herrwn asked, although he’d already guessed the answer.

“The goat that is to be the sacrificial offering for Master Ossiam’s augury! The wicked sprite has stolen it from its pen in the shed!”

Herrwn caught his breath. Until now, the sprite’s misdeeds had done no real harm, but to steal an offering intended for the spirit guide who was Ossiam’s link to the next world was an act that could have grave consequences—not just disrupting the day’s difficult and delicate augury but making their chief oracle appear foolish in the eyes of the denizen on whom he relied for his prognostications. Hoping that there might be a natural rather than a supernatural explanation for the goat’s disappearance, he asked the sort of questions he imagined Olyrrwd would ask, starting with, “Are you sure? Could it have found some way out of its pen?”

“I am sure, Master! I am absolutely sure!” Benyon continued wringing the hem of Herrwn’s robe but spoke in a steadier voice. “Iddwran told me that Master Ossiam wanted the firstborn of this year’s goats for the sacrifice, and I told Aonghus, the chief herder, and he went and got it and gave it to me, and I put it in the pen in the shed—but now it’s gone!”

“When did you last see it was in its pen?”

“Last night. I gave it its last meal exactly at sunset.”

“And could you possibly have left the—”

“No! No! I swear on my mother’s grave I tied the gate to the pen closed, and I closed and barred the door to the shed! And the door was still closed and the gate was still tied shut when I went there this morning! But the goat was gone!” Letting go of Herrwn’s robe, Benyon buried his face in his hands and rocked back and forth. “What am I to tell Master Ossiam?”

Herrwn pursed his lips and thought before he answered, “Nothing yet, as he is no doubt absorbed in his preparations for this ritual and must not be disturbed! For now, you must go quickly and find the goatherd. Tell him to get another young goat—one that is as much like the missing one as possible, so the spirits will have no cause to be disappointed—and see that it is prepared and ready when it is called for.”

As Benyon dashed off, Herrwn turned back to his five young charges. They were sitting quietly in a circle, playing with a loop of string—making complex designs that changed as they passed it between them. It was a girl’s game that Lothwen had once tried to teach him, laughing at the tangles he made in his clumsy attempts to take hold of the right thread at the right spot and lift or twist with just the right pressure. “You are too tense,” she’d told him. “You have to relax and not worry so much!”

Watching the girls, all five of whom had been so distraught over the fate of their pet goat the day before, easily and deftly picking up the loops of string and turning one pattern into another as they passed it around their ring, his teacher’s instinct tingled.

From Benyon’s account, it was clear that the goat could not have escaped on its own, but the shed was not guarded and anyone—even a child—could have gone in, let the goat out, and closed the gate and the door behind them.

Herrwn cleared his throat and said sternly, “Now, girls, I know how fond you all were of the little goat, but this is an extremely serious matter, and if any of you have any idea of where it might be, you must tell me now!”

Five pairs of eyes met his without blinking or shifting away.

“We were all in bed!” said Arianna, her tone equally hurt and offended. “Ask Nonna!”

The nurse, who had already come over to listen to Benyon’s account, reached out her arms, gathered the five girls close to her breast, and bristled like a mother bear. “They were—all of them—fast asleep in their beds all night long. I was there watching over them myself!”

“I am relieved to hear it, for I would have been very disappointed to think otherwise.” Herrwn did not take his eyes off the innocent (“too innocent,” a little voice in the back of his mind whispered) faces looking up at him.

Oddly, of the five girls, the only one to shift her gaze was Gwenydd. If it had been any of the others, Herrwn would have pressed further, but he could not imagine the best behaved of all the priestesses-in-training sneaking past her drowsy nurse, down the torchlit halls and stairways of the women’s quarters, past the guardian at the entryway, and out through the shrine’s back passages to take the goat out and hide it, all without being noticed.

Still, he hesitated, wondering what Rhonnon would say if he approached her privately and asked that she have the women’s quarters searched for the missing animal. As he was picturing the affronted look on her face, Benyon came rushing back in, panting. “They’re gone!” he cried. “They’re all gone. The herder went to get another baby goat, but the whole herd is gone!”

“The whole herd has disappeared? How could—”

“He thinks they have run away to meadows on the upper slopes and has taken his dog and gone to get them back but … but …”

Here Benyon stuttered to a halt—but Herrwn knew what he was trying to say. It was almost noon! At any moment, Ossiam would be descending the stairs of the oracle’s tower, starting the incantations that would draw an invisible audience from the spirit world.

They needed a goat, and they needed it now!

“I heard you might need a goat.” Olyrrwd appeared at the garden’s open gate, looking quite good-humored. Both his walking poles were in his right hand, and in his left he held a thick rope that was tied to the collar of a decrepit-looking ram.

“Where did you—” Herrwn wasn’t sure whether to ask “hear that?” or “get that?”

Answering both questions at once, Olyrrwd explained that he’d just been to the shrine’s kitchen to tend to the cook’s toe, and he learned the strange story of the missing goat from her. “As we wouldn’t want our chief oracle to get all dressed up for his augury and not have anything to gut,” he went on quite cheerfully, “I asked whether there might be a goat in the kitchen’s pen where they keep the animals to be stewed. Mind you, to get this fellow I had to promise Iddwrna on my word of honor that we’d have him back to her, cleaned and flayed, as soon as Ossie is done.”

With that lighthearted admonition, Olyrrwd handed the lead rope to Benyon. He gave the animal a departing pat on its flank as it hobbled off.

“Are you going to the augury, the name of which is not to be spoken to the uninitiated? It’s close to time.” Olyrrwd’s tone remained droll and it was clear to Herrwn, seeing his cousin’s ordinary (not to mention stained) robes, that Olyrrwd had no intention of being there himself.

“I am,” Herrwn said, picking up his staff, “but first I must go to the oracle’s tower to advise Ossiam what has come to pass, assuring him that a substitute offering has been found.”

Still chipper, Olyrrwd responded, “It will be my honor to take over their lesson. I have some quite useful things to teach them about the healing properties of willowwort and barthberry.”

Intending to remind Olyrrwd that it behooved them to maintain an elevated and serious demeanor in the presence of the young priestesses-in-training, Herrwn gave a formal bow and, assuming the tone he used when addressing the High Council, said, “The girls will, I know, be honored as well.”

As he was taking his leave, Herrwn looked over his shoulder and paused long enough to watch Olyrrwd lay his walking sticks aside and reach down to the string lattice Cyri was holding out toward Gwenydd. Picking up its outer threads deftly with his thumbs and forefingers, he hooked the innermost lines with his little fingers, turned it with a flip into a spectacular design, and with another flip changed it back into a plain but untangled loop of twine.