Chapter 3
‘My daughter is our shaman.’ Her father’s voice was faint as he explained her fall to their guests, but there was a note of pride. ‘She has the clear sight – inherited, not learned.’
Becuma and Angarad helped lift her, but Cordelia gasped as though in pain.
‘What’s wrong with her?’ said Regan, her voice tense, worried. ‘Be careful, she might still be in the Everywhen.’
‘No,’ reassured Cordelia, her voice hoarse. ‘The rook returned me home, I am here.’
She felt Regan’s hand squeezing hers.
‘Take her to our roundhouse,’ ordered Goneril. ‘We’ll care for her.’
The four women guided Cordelia away from the gathering. As she passed her father, he smiled reassuringly, but she could not look at him, speak to him. The image of his other-worldly violence was scorched on her mind. His conversation with Aganippus floated to her through the night sky.
‘I had no idea she possessed the gift,’ said Aganippus, his voice full of concern. ‘Will she recover?’
‘Of course,’ Lear said. ‘This must have been a powerful message for it to have taken her by surprise.’
‘Please send her my regards,’ said Aganippus.
Cordelia felt a strange pang of loneliness as she heard his footsteps retreating.
‘Come,’ said Becuma, ‘you must rest, and tomorrow, we will decide what your journey shows us.’
‘Yes,’ whispered Cordelia.
She allowed herself to be led to her quarters, unable to believe what she had seen: the violence, the brutality.
The pale body on the ground. In her trance, she had seen her father raise his sword and bring it down with swift, brutal blows.
She had felt the icy slice of metal, the cold fingers of death, before she was flying, lifted by the rook, leaving behind the horror of her vision.
Goneril lit the oil lamp, guiding Cordelia to the bed, helping her to take off her shoes. Regan, Becuma and Angarad moved around the room on silent feet, sprinkling herbs and tinctures across the entrances and around the bed.
‘These will keep you safe,’ said Angarad.
She was the Mother of the Temple, the most senior woman of rank in the hill fort and revered for her wisdom.
‘Thank you,’ murmured Cordelia, her eyes heavy.
‘She must sleep,’ said Angarad to Goneril, Regan and Becuma. ‘I’ll stay with her.’
The tone of her voice was firm, the other women knew not to challenge her and, with whispered ‘goodnights’, they left.
‘What did you see?’ asked Angarad as soon as they were alone.
‘Fa,’ said Cordelia, her voice faint, dream-like, as though the trance lingered in her blood. ‘He was injured.’
‘Badly?’
‘No, he was angry, full of violence, there was a battle,’ she said.
Angarad closed her eyes.
‘I see nothing,’ she said. ‘Tomorrow, after the ceremony for Litha, the crowning of the god and goddess, you must travel back there—’
‘No,’ gasped Cordelia, ‘please, don’t make me.’
‘You must visit it again before it travels too far from you. If there is to be an attack, we must be forewarned. We might be able to heal whatever has caused this rift in the Everywhen and prevent the bloodshed from happening.’
‘It can’t be done.’
‘Yes, it can,’ replied Angarad. ‘Your mother achieved it on several occasions and you are more powerful than her.’
‘Mother averted wars?’
‘She went deep into the Everywhen and changed our destiny, it’s how we became so prosperous,’ said Angarad.
‘She guided your father and helped him to achieve his status of king. It’s why he’s so proud you inherited the gift, he feels he has another advisor, one who will steer him through troubled times. ’
The image of her father, his teeth bared in rage, made Cordelia shudder.
‘Sleep now,’ advised Angarad. ‘Tomorrow, we will know.’
Angarad turned away, busying herself with the guttering oil lamp, and as she did, Cordelia felt a streak of pain down her arm.
When she raised it in the dim light, she saw a silver line on her skin, like a thin scar that had healed, even though it had not been there before her vision.
She stared at it, wondering if the trance lingered and this was a dream, but when she touched it, she knew it was real.
* * *
The candlelight flickered, casting grotesque shadows on the walls as Cordelia adjusted her ceremonial headdress. The two antlers, taken from the body of a young deer who had succumbed to the bite of an adder, made her silhouette monstrous.
Becuma, wearing the flowing white robes of the priestesses, dipped a soft brush of rabbit fur into the blue woad and with a well-practised hand painted the swirls and patterns of the dreaming spells across Cordelia’s face, finishing with a triskele in the centre of her forehead, the position of the psychic third eye.
Behind her waited the three handmaidens of the temple, twin sisters Gloigin and Ignogin, and Oudar, the neophyte, the youngest member of the sisterhood. Gloigin stepped forward and took the bowl and brush from Becuma before retreating to the shadows.
‘The girdle,’ said Angarad.
She stood behind Cordelia wearing robes dyed brilliant blue and embroidered with leaves of green, red, orange, brown and white, falling in a graduation of colour from her shoulders to her feet, embodying the changing seasons and the turning of the year.
Ignogin presented a heavily embroidered fabric belt, which Angarad tied around Cordelia’s waist, fastening the silken cords with an intricate series of knots.
‘The jewel.’
Oudar stepped forward and held a cushion aloft.
On it nestled a pendant of deepest purple attached to a woven cord that matched the girdle.
Angarad reached around Cordelia’s neck and fastened the necklace with a small but perfect clasp of a gleaming copper hook and eye, then she and Becuma stepped away.
Behind her, the other women echoed their movements.
‘May the Goddess hear your words,’ Angarad said, bowing low.
‘Your wishes have been heard,’ replied Cordelia, inclining her head.
‘The wax tablets have been prepared as you requested,’ Becuma said. ‘We shall keep vigil until you return.’
‘Thank you, my friend,’ murmured Cordelia to Becuma.
The women straightened, their eyes averted from Cordelia as though she were too bright to allow them to look directly at her, the embodiment of the sun. They filed out in silence.
Upon the altar, a fire burned in a shallow metal cauldron.
Beside it, in a basket of white willow, were five small, round wax tablets, nestled among bunches of herbs.
Next to this stood a golden flask engraved with images of bees and a matching goblet.
They glinted in the firelight, giving the impression the bees were moving.
‘Matronae, mother goddess, I invoke thee for protection,’ Cordelia said as she poured wine from the flask into her goblet, before adding a libation to the flames.
‘Hecate, sister moon, I invoke thee for my safe return. Aine, sister of the sun, I invoke thee to shine a light on my path as I heal our past and future.’
The fire spluttered as the tiny drops evaporated. She dropped two of the small round wax tablets into the flames. As they melted, the sweet scent of the honey from the beeswax floated on the air, before, with a hiss, the flames flared purple.
‘Corycia, Kleodora, Melaina, the Bee Maidens Three, show me the path to the truth,’ she continued crumbling herbs into her drink. ‘Help me to repair our wounds and return our strength and compassion. Show me the path as I follow your wisdom.’
Cordelia swallowed the wine in one gulp and winced as the bitterness of the herbs hit the back of her throat.
Breathing deeply, she waited until a woozy feeling began to creep over her, the hallucinogenic properties of the henbane were steeling through her blood; as it took her hold, she groaned, the world around her blurred, her eyes widening and rolling uncontrollably.
She sank to her knees, her arms outstretched as she flew into the Everywhen, where a wolf howled and on her shoulder she felt the claws of her spirit guide, her rook.
Her connection to the mortal plane was kept safe by the rhythmic drumming and the low chanting of invocations to the goddesses by her sister priestesses.
In the distance, another rook cawed and she flew into the blinding white of the Everywhen until the image formed around her and she was standing in the centre of the hill fort.
‘No,’ she said as she gazed at the horrifying vision. ‘This cannot be…’
The once prosperous and welcoming community was in tatters.
The straw roofs of the roundhouses sagged with neglect, one had been half burned and the entire structure abandoned.
People she did not recognise scurried about their business, their heads bowed, faces white and pinched with hunger and cold, skinny dogs worried mangy chickens and the central meeting space, which was usually filled with energy and laughter, even on the coldest of winter days, was desolate and bare.
In the distance, the temple was in ruins and a goat wandered through the entrance to what had once been the inner sanctum.
A woman stumbled past her. Tripping on one of the ruts, she fell to her knees and the covering on her head slipped into the mud.
Cordelia gasped, it was her sister Regan, but her hair had been shorn almost to her scalp and her skin was blotchy and scarred.
From the nearest roundhouse, another woman hurried to her aid and Cordelia felt her stomach clench.
Goneril was gaunt, her face angular from lack of food, one eye was swollen shut and there were bruises around her neck.
Cordelia could see the finger marks on her sister’s skin from where an assailant must have throttled her but had released her before she choked to death.
‘Where are my useless daughters?’
The voice was low, angry, full of menace, and the two women clung to each other in fear.
A man, his left eye covered in a leather patch, emerged from the roundhouse. He was stooped and skinny, leaning on a heavy walking stick, his lips bared in fury.
‘How many more beatings must I give you before you two useless wretches prove yourself worthy of calling yourselves my daughters?’ he shouted.
‘Sorry, Fa,’ whispered Goneril, helping Regan to her feet.
‘You dare to answer me back,’ he said and Cordelia ran forward to try to halt the violence, but her father brought his stick down on Goneril’s arm. She screamed in pain and the two women crumpled once more into the cold, icy slush of mud and dung on the ground.
The rook cawed and the scene changed. Cordelia stared around in alarm, this place was like nowhere she had ever seen before in her dream-walking.
She was standing in a long narrow room, it glowed with an unearthly, harsh white light and there were doors at points along the walls.
There was no trace of the roundhouses or the settlement, but as she looked around, a path of golden light opened before her and Cordelia knew she was safe.
The glowing footprints on the floor buzzed like the sacred bees from the temple’s hive and, even in her trance state, she understood this sound indicated she was being shown a message of life-changing importance.
One of the doors shone silver before swinging open.
She stepped forward, following the lights, but the room she entered confused her.
The space was the size of a small roundhouse, but the walls were straight, it was square with no softening curves.
A bed dominated the centre of the room, where an old man lay asleep.
She did not understand the vision, this man was attached by what she could only think of as cords, clear and flexible, to strange black boxes which flashed and beeped.
A woman sat beside the bed, holding the man’s hand, and she was crying.
Cordelia watched as the woman wiped away her tears and reached forward to stroke the man’s face.
When she spoke, her accent was strange, her words both familiar and unusual, a language similar to her own tongue but with different inflections and intonations.
‘Dad,’ the woman said in a quiet voice, ‘I love you, please don’t leave me. You’re strong; Uncle George says you can make a full recovery. Please, Dad, fight to stay with me.’
Cordelia moved forward, drawn to the sorrow of the woman’s heart.
She wanted to offer comfort by standing nearby.
During these visions, she knew she could move through any obstacle – doors, walls, none held any substance for her and she could pass freely through them like a spirit – but when she moved towards the bed, expecting to skim through its solidity, she felt the coldness of metal and the smoothness of the sheets as she bumped into the bed, making it tremble.
The woman looked up.
‘Who are you?’ she said in horror.
For a fleeting second, their eyes met and Cordelia gasped, then the rook cawed and all went black.