Chapter 82: Swatting Flies

“They’re Caelym’s children, so they can’t take them away from him, can they?” Cyri was having trouble concentrating on her day’s recitation, and Herrwn, after correcting her a third time for the same mistake, had asked her what the matter was.

Wishing he could simply say, “No, they can’t,” Herrwn still spoke reassuringly. “I cannot say what our chief priestess will decide, but I believe the case for keeping the boys here is a strong one, and there is every reason to hope it will prevail.”

“But what if Ossiam …” It was a mark of just how upset Cyri was that she’d left off the oracle’s honorific title. At the sight of Herrwn’s raised eyebrow, she corrected herself, “If Master Ossiam still—”

Benyon’s sudden arrival, banging the door open and gasping that Cyri was needed in the healing chamber, saved Herrwn from hearing the end of the question, for which he had no answer.

While clearly dedicated—and hardworking—in all of her studies, there was an eagerness in the way Cyri rushed off that made Herrwn wonder whether, at the susceptible age of sixteen, she might be as enamored with the teacher instructing her in healing as she was with learning how to heal. Only half aware of Benyon’s profuse apologies for interrupting their lesson, along with his repeated avowals that he would not have done so if Master Caelym hadn’t said that he must, Herrwn found himself musing about how well Cyri’s solemn, steady personality balanced Caelym’s impulsive exuberance and that, had things been different, this would have been a very good match for them both.

Realizing that Benyon was still standing in the doorway waiting to be dismissed, Herrwn sighed, thanked him, and sent him on his way. Then, with the thought of the next day’s High Council meeting weighing heavily on his mind, he went over to the classroom window.

The cliffs that circled the western side of the valley poked up through a misty bank of clouds. Those cliffs, his father had once told him, were the shield that protected them from the dangers of the outside world. Picturing two tiny birds flapping their little wings and fluttering out of sight over those dark, jagged ridges, Herrwn repeated, “The case for keeping the boys here is a strong one, and there is every reason to hope it will prevail.”

Ossiam’s opening invocation the next day was a repetition of his previous vision, except for adding that he had conducted three separate auguries and each time the answer had been the same—that, in order to prepare for the day when the Goddess would again assume her full powers, Arddwn and Lliem must be fostered among English-speaking Celts.

Ossiam held the chalice out to Herrwn, who accepted it with both hands and gave his own carefully prepared speech acknowledging the compelling power of their oracle’s vision of the Goddess lifting up Her hands and releasing two small birds to go soaring over the cliffs, agreeing that the one having black feathers and the other red made it almost certain that they symbolized Arddwn and Lliem but going on to point out that “while this could be taken in the literal sense of the boys being sent outside of the valley’s walls, it could equally well be understood in the figurative sense that She is setting their minds free to learn all the wisdom in all the world, including, as our oracle suggests, the language spoken by Saxons.”

“And so”—he paused to take a sip of the sacred wine and to let his point receive the consideration it was due—“the next and paramount question is how to heed this portent while fulfilling our duty as the guardians in whom She has placed Her trust to keep Her children safe. Who here can speak to that question?”

“I can!” Rhonnon rose from her place and took the chalice. “I have spoken to each of the women servants and found five who have ties with kin in villages outside our valley. Of those, two say that neither they nor their kin nor any others in those villages speak English. The others say that their kin and all who live around them have converted, and that they wouldn’t dare take the boys there for fear of them being captured and made into Christians.”

Succinct as she always was, Rhonnon handed the chalice back to Herrwn and sat down.

Although he knew that Caelym was chafing to deliver his own speech, Herrwn held on to the chalice long enough to ensure that the significance of Rhonnon’s words was clear.

“So to your absolute knowledge, there is no longer anyone among your trusted servants who has kin ties in a place where English is spoken and where it would be safe for her to take these boys, disguised as her own, and keep them in safety while they learn to speak this new language?”

“Yes! That is what I have just said!”

Handing the chalice to Caelym, Herrwn sat down, nodding his own approval as his disciple rose and gave a smooth rendition of the lines he’d learned from Gofannon, a survivor of Rhedwyn’s War who’d lived outside the valley before joining them and who had learned to speak the Saxons’ language from a boyhood friend. While a recitation of an exchange between two boys agreeing to go fishing was not in complete accordance with what the vision suggested Arddwn and Lliem would need in order to be prepared for the day when the Goddess again assumed Her full powers, Caelym delivered it with a flare suggesting more than the words actually conveyed, and the response of everyone—except Ossiam—was warm, even effusive.

As Caelym bowed and took his seat, Ossiam stood up.

There was a moment when it seemed Caelym might refuse to relinquish the chalice, but he was obliged to do so and, reluctantly, he did.

Speaking in a solemn voice that was quite different from his usual shrill oratory and, like Rhonnon, looking directly at Feywn, Ossiam began, “Our ever-esteemed chief midwife has, I am certain, done as she said and searched among the women servants for any with kin in an outside village where English is spoken and where Arddwn and Lliem may safely be fostered, but her failure to find one does not mean no such servant and nor any such village exists.”

There was a faint snort from the priestesses’ end of the table that Ossiam ignored as he continued, “I, too, have made a search, and I have found a servant—an honest, dependable servant in whom we can trust absolutely and who, by good fortune, has kin in just such a village.”

Rhonnon took advantage of Ossiam’s pause, which he no doubt meant for emphasis, to demand, “And who is she?”

“He”—Ossiam turned his gaze to meet hers—“is Benyon, chief of the men’s servants, who as part of his many duties is entrusted with taking our artisan’s goods to trade for salt and spices.” Turning back to Feywn, he dropped his voice again, speaking as if she were the only one in the room. “It was on his recent trip to the market that he met one of his kinsmen and learned that he, a cousin of a cousin on his mother’s side, practices Druid ways and not only lives in a village where English is spoken but one in which Saxons and Britons live at peace with each other and where those who worship the Goddess do so openly and without fear. Then—by a coincidence which, I am certain, must have been ordained by powers beyond my understanding—this cousin revealed that he is in need of help with his flocks. Thinking quickly, and acting out of selfless devotion, Benyon told his kinsman that he was widowed with two young sons and that, so long as there was no risk of either himself or his sons being forced to convert, he would return to his home, pack his wagon, and come to join him. Returning from this trip to the market, Benyon came to tell me what I have just told you and gave me his oath that he will take the boys there, care for them and protect them as he would his own children, and bring them back to you when they have learned to speak English as fluently as they do Celt.”

When Ossiam raised his voice to address the rest of them, demanding, “Is there anyone here who does not wish the vision I have seen and the prophesy of the Goddess again reigning supreme to be true?” only Caelym spoke up, and his protests—that the boys were too young, that he could already speak enough English to teach them himself, and, the last desperate objection, that they needed Benyon to clean the priests’ quarters—were dismissed by the oracle as easily as he might swat flies on a table.