Chapter 13: In the Garden

“It was odd, very odd,” Herrwn murmured, looking up at the cloud-veiled moon as if it might explain the mystery to him, “that I of all people should have so completely forgotten that the purpose of the Sacred Summer Solstice Ceremony was not love but birth.”

He actually had not hesitated very long, but as he wavered—seeing Lillywen’s sunken eyes in the last hours of her life, hearing her pleading with him to make her feel better, and wondering if he could bear to love and risk losing another child—the glow faded from Annwr’s face. She spoke before he did, saying in a small, brittle voice that she was sorry to have taken so much of his time and that she had to go back to work in the garden.

Days passed. As each afternoon approached, Herrwn felt his hopes rise, only to have them fall when Annwr did not appear at the classroom’s doorway. At last, he could no longer avoid the truth—that he loved Annwr, loved her so much that he had to overcome his fears and to go to her to plead that she choose him now for the night of the summer solstice, and later, when she was finished her training, to be her consort forever after.

The next morning, with the summer solstice only a fortnight off, Herrwn made a vague excuse to end Labhruinn’s lessons early and stepped back as the boy (and Herrwn still thought of Labhruinn as a boy, despite his having reached his adult height some years earlier) dashed for the door.

With Labhruinn out of the way, Olyrrwd in the healing chambers, and Ossiam in the upper tower, mulling over the meaning of the drifting clouds, there were no witnesses to see Herrwn retreat into the dressing chamber, where he tried on robe after robe, discarding one as too ornate and the next as too plain, before finally picking the one he’d worn on the day that Lothwen had named him to be her consort and had placed a bracelet made of twisted strands of gold in the shape of a miniature torc on his wrist as a token of their commitment.

He’d worn that bracelet ever since—his only adornment besides the necklace denoting his rank as the shrine’s chief bard. Looking at it for a long moment (and mentally pleading with Lothwen for understanding), he took it off and put it on a shelf beside the cloth doll that had been Lillywen’s favorite toy.

Then he put on his best sandals and looked in the polished brass mirror on the wall. He was not, he told himself, too old—he was a Druid master at the height of his powers. Drawing a breath, he said aloud, “Worthy to join my fate with yours, if that is your desire, as it is mine.” With that, he straightened his shoulders and set out to say just those words to Annwr.

He stopped along the way at the storage room where the musical instruments were kept, meaning to take his best gold harp. Finding it missing from its place on the shelf (all these years later, he remembered thinking that Rhedwyn must have taken it, and that he’d meant to complain about it to Ossiam since this was not the first time and he’d already chastised Rhedwyn, to no avail), he took up the next best harp, checked its tuning, and went on his way.

It was a perfect morning. The sun shone overhead. Wisps of white clouds danced with each other across the sparkling blue sky. Blossoms of columbine beckoned and waved along the edge of the laurel hedge that lay between the shrine’s main courtyard and the garden of medicinal herbs.

Walking with measured steps, as if he were already wearing the golden robes of the Sun-God, Herrwn rehearsed his plan. He would open the gate and enter the garden quietly, see her working among her plants with her back to him. He would speak her name. She would turn to him and he would kneel down, pluck gently on the harp strings, and recite his declaration of love, promising to do his part in giving her the child she craved.

A flood of sensations he hadn’t felt since his days of courting Lothwen came back, magnifying every sound, even the slightest fluttering of a leaf, and that was why he heard the voice on the other side of the hedge and stopped in his tracks. It was a man’s voice—not Ossiam’s or anyone that he immediately recognized, although there was something familiar about it. Puzzled, he quietly, stealthily, spread apart the branches of the hedge and peeked through.

Olyrrwd had warned him that he wouldn’t be the only man courting Annwr, but, even so, never, not in Herrwn’s strangest dreams, would he ever have imagined that his rival would be Labhruinn.

Almost as incomprehensible was seeing the tense, tongue-tied boy reciting in a confident voice as he strummed on Herrwn’s harp—without so much as a misplaced pause or a false chord—while Annwr looked up at him, holding a single summer lily in her hand.

Drawing back, Herrwn let the peephole he’d made in the hedge close and walked away, back to his classroom, where he put down the harp and changed into his ordinary robes. Taking the harp up again, he tried to concentrate on that night’s oration—only the echoes of his best harp, played by Labhruinn, continued to ring in his ears, and the sight of Annwr looking up at Labhruinn swam before him whenever he closed his eyes.