Benyon’s plan was to settle into his new life, see the shrine brats learned their English, then bring them back with some excuse why he couldn’t stay (and the claim to have been persuaded by Christians to convert was one guaranteed way to be expelled with no further questions asked). For the next two weeks, he spent his days rushing to do everything the priests and priestesses thought necessary to get the boys packed and ready, and his nights crafting a false bottom for the cart and packing armloads of treasure.
The day that he left Llwddawanden dawned bright and clear, a perfect spring day that seemed to promise a whole new life in a world where wishes came true and ventures couldn’t go wrong.
Awake long before there was enough light to see by, Benyon lay in bed with his hands behind his head. He’d packed the wagon, making sure each urn and goblet, torc and armband was wrapped in linen and padded with wool, and all snugly tucked in with the bags of jewelry and Saxon coins. He’d fitted the false bottom over his trophies and covered it with the crates of clothes, sacks of toys, and wicker baskets of food the boys’ nurse had insisted on sending with them—and covered that with an oiled wool blanket, which he’d tied down with loops of rope “to keep the rain off” (and keep any snoopers from looking under it). He’d given misleading directions to the shrine’s chief priest so the map the old man was drawing would lead the wrong way if someone was sent to find him. He’d turned his duties over to his nephew, Nimrrwn, and told the simpering boy every last little detail about picking up after the priests and carrying out their chamber pots.
Benyon could hear Nimrrwn stirring in the next bed, no doubt anxious to assume his new position—and he was welcome to it!
Now he just had to collect the two boys, take his treasure, and be off.
Of course, he should have known Druids couldn’t go to the latrine without making a ceremony out of it!
All Benyon wanted to do was to get the horse harnessed and leave. Instead he had to endure a long, drawn-out farewell breakfast, sitting at the high table with the boys on either side of him, listening to Herrwn strumming his harp and telling stories about the mortal children of gods and goddesses being raised by loyal servants until they were ready to go out and perform heroic deeds.
Then there was the grand procession through the shrine, led by no less than the high priestess herself, her puffed-up consort at her side.
Instead of sneaking behind and out of sight, Benyon found himself walking in the middle of the procession, holding the boys’ hands—the older one tugging and pulling ahead, the younger one prancing along and waving at the servants who were watching them go past.
The horse and wagon were waiting at the shrine’s back gate. Benyon took the reins and clambered up to the wagon’s seat. All that remained was for Caelym to finish hugging and kissing the two boys and lift them up.
Benyon leaned forward, reaching out his arms for whichever one of the boys Caelym relinquished first. He managed, somehow, to keep his smile fixed in place, even as he realized what his soon-to-be-former master was in the midst of saying “. . . so if you will promise me that you will both do as our good Benyon tells you, and learn your lessons quickly, I will promise you that I will come to get you and bring you home as soon as ever I can . . .”
The older of the two boys, who was the exact image of Caelym at the same age—and every bit as uppity—demanded that his father promise not just to come and get them but also to do heroic deeds on their way home.
Speaking as if he were swearing to the Goddess at the high altar stone in the center of the shrine’s sacred grove, Caelym declared, “I make my vow to you, my sons, that when you have learned your lessons, I will come for you, and we will travel together on great adventures and return to your mother with gifts from all the wondrous places we have seen.”
With that, he threw his arms around the boys in one last, interminable hug, before turning to Benyon to remind him which toys the boys took to bed with them at night and what stories they most liked to hear. Keeping his expression humble and his voice sincere, Benyon swore he’d care for the boys like his own flesh and blood.
With years of practice in pretending loyal devotion, Benyon made a show of comforting the younger of the two boys, who’d suddenly realized that his father truly wasn’t coming along and begun to cry. The older one, who still thought this was a game, was persuaded to hold his sniveling brother on his lap while Benyon bid his last groveling farewell, made his last promise to guard the boys with his life. Even then he had to endure the shrine’s chief priest making one last speech, admonishing the boys to study with diligence and to honor their hosts before he could finally snap the whip to get the horse moving.
As they rattled down the road, leaving the shrine behind, Caelym’s vow to come to get his sons rang in Benyon’s ears, followed by a flood of worries—What if giving the priests false directions about where he was going wasn’t enough? What if they really did have the power of second sight? What if Caelym came for the boys and found out the truth?
Caelym’s pledge to come for his sons combined with Benyon’s lingering belief in Druids’ supernatural abilities, merging into the conviction that he would never be safe as long as Caelym lived.
While the boys peppered him with “When are we going to get there?” “Can we go faster?” “Why are you hitting the horsie?” the only question that mattered to Benyon was, What am I going to do?
The answer came to him late that afternoon, when they arrived at a town with an open tavern and a lighted church.
Planning for his new life had included learning about being a Christian, and Benyon had found out what he could about that during his sojourns to village market—getting both eager proselytizing from converted Britons and sarcastic counter-arguments from skeptics. In one particularly heated exchange, an earnest villager started explaining the benefits of cleansing your sin through confession only to have his unconverted cousin interrupt, “Aye, you can tell their priest anything—anything you don’t mind your worst enemy hearing before the day is out.” From there, the two had settled into what was clearly a well-worn dispute, and Benyon had backed off while the Christian was warning his kinsman that his soul was in peril for questioning the sanctity of holy confession, and the pagan was scoffing, “Two can keep a secret if one of them is dead!”
That cynical remark came back to Benyon just as he was pulling up the sweating, stumbling horse in front of the tavern where he bought the boys the last good meal they would have for two years before bedding them down in the back of the wagon and going back inside the inn. Although overcome by greed, he was not so devoid of conscience that he could betray the people he had spent his life with to torture and death without any qualms at all. It took four full mugs of ale for him to build the courage to leave for the church.
He got there just as the priest was coming out. Recalling what he’d been told over and over by enthusiastic converts—that Christian priests were always happy to hear about sins—he clasped his hands and, in a louder voice than he intended, announced that he needed confessing. For a nerve-wracking moment, the black-robed man just looked at him. Benyon held his breath, letting it out again when the priest nodded and led the way into the church. It didn’t take long and, when he came out, he felt light and free, confident that he was saved, and Caelym was doomed.
Father Wulfric had had a long day. He was tired and hungry, and he wanted to eat supper and go to bed. Faced with a supplicant asking to confess, however, he had no choice but to agree.
Benyon was not the first penitent to come to the confessional by way of the tavern, and Wulfric had no trouble recognizing the almost overpowering odor of alcohol that wafted through the wooden grate between them. Although a generally forbearing man, he wasn’t feeling much charity for a drunken Briton who thought it was funny to send a Saxon priest on a wild goose chase looking for secret Druid caves. Too tired to challenge the man’s rambling story, he absolved him in the name of Christ (who was, in Wulfric’s view, capable of infinite forgiveness), dispensed a routine penance and send him on his way.
Both because Wulfric did adhere absolutely to the sanctity of confession and because he was not about to be laughed at, the secret of Llwddawanden’s hidden entrance would remain safe for another two years. Benyon did not know that, however, and so it was because he wanted to make a complete break from his heathen past—not because he was afraid of Caelym finding him— that Benyon changed his name to Barnard.
Lulled into a false sense of security, he also changed his mind about drowning the two boys in the first lake he came to, deciding instead that he’d keep them to be his servants as he had been a servant to their parents—the closest thing to a genuine joke he’d made since he had embarked on his plan for personal advancement all those years earlier.