CHAPTER 5
Angharad
Caer Gwenddolau
Kingdom of the Pendragons
Late Summer, AD 572
Angharad’s uncles rode off at dawn. She watched from the small timber tower perched above the gate a long while after, until the birdsong became a cacophony and the summer heat made her linen dress cling to her back. The warrior called Rhiwallon kept watch beside her, eyes fixed patiently on the lush green pastures below. Angharad adjusted the belt at her waist; the gold-handled knife sheathed there had once belonged to her mother, and its presence made her feel less lonesome. For although Eira had followed her dutifully up the ladder, Angharad could feel Eira’s thoughts traveling leagues away.
Men were forever riding off. To dangerous things, mostly, like the time her elder brother, Rhys, reached his fifteenth winter, disappearing with her father and her uncle Morcant. Days later he returned driving a stream of stolen cattle. Thereafter, Rhys had been full of shadows.
“A dull occupation, keeping watch, until it is not,” Rhiwallon said, startling Angharad from her thoughts.
“My uncle hoped it would divert me,” she answered. “Yesterday I told him I would quite like to mind the gate.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” he replied. “Perhaps he wished you to learn our ways so you might carry your weight in earnest, as all of us do.”
A voice came from down below. “Or perhaps he wished to demonstrate that diversions are impossible without training the mind.” Angharad leaned over the opening to see Diarmid the Diviner squinting up into the sun.
“You must have terribly good hearing,” Angharad said.
“Children’s voices carry,” the Wisdom Keeper replied. “You would do well to remember that.”
Next to her, Eira smiled, amused.
“Come down, then,” Diarmid said. “Keeping to towers is a waste of your time.”
Angharad turned to Eira. “May I?”
“I don’t see why not.”
Angharad climbed down carefully and looked at the diviner. His expression was frank, but his brown eyes were kind and full of stories.
“Would you like to see Pendragon’s birds?” he asked.
“The eagles? Oh, yes. Very much,” she replied.
“Excellent.” He looked to Eira. “I will return her to you.”
“Of course,” she said.
Sun through summer leaves dappled the grass as Angharad followed the Wisdom Keeper into the courtyard. “Is it true you can divine the future?” she asked.
“Aye. What the Gods allow.”
“Have you done the Bull’s Sleep, then?”
“Aye. I’ve done many a Bull’s Sleep.”
“Is it true you must chew the bull’s flesh without even roasting?”
“Aye.”
“And does it taste very awful?”
“I find it quite mild. ’Tis better, though, if you take no issue with gristle and fat.”
The thought made Angharad want to retch, but there was so much more she wanted to know. “Is it true you can cloak yourself from sight?”
At this, Diarmid turned to her. “In a way,” he said. “Would you like to know how?”
“Oh, very much,” she answered.
“Then look.” Diarmid pointed. Angharad followed his finger in confusion before spotting a little streak of brown disappearing behind the kitchen house.
She screwed up her face. “A mouse?”
“Precisely.”
“I don’t understand.”
Diarmid looked at her. “Imagine you are brown as dirt. Imagine you are little more than a mouse. Think on it. Who knows? Perhaps then you shall see.”
They stepped through the door of the temple, and Angharad bent quickly to remove her leather shoes. A tingle rose as the cold flagstone met her bare feet. Before her a wooden statue stood, the figure of a man with a great pair of antlers branching from his head. Herne, she knew. Beyond the effigy, Angharad heard the rustle of two powerful golden eagles. They sat perched in a tall wicker enclosure, eyes blinking as they regarded her.
“Magnificent creatures, aren’t they?” Diarmid said. And at the sound of his voice, one of the eagles tilted its head. “Go on, go and greet them. But don’t get too near. They do not much care for strangers.”
Angharad moved nearer. The birds seemed nearly as large as she. The ends of their beaks were curved and looked sharp as needles.
She could feel the Wisdom Keeper watching her. “Lailoken told me of your encounter in the stones,” he said.
“Had he not told me, I would not have remembered what took place at all.”
“Yes, that is the way at first.” Diarmid nodded. “But in time you will gain mastery over it. Seers live in two worlds, Angharad. The outer and the deep. I admit I sometimes forget which is where. It is only natural that, in the beginning, memories are lost between the two. Better that the memory is lost rather than you.
“From the tower where you sat, one can scarcely see beyond the farthest pasture,” he continued. “There are much more efficient ways to see. Your uncle may instruct you on augury and the study of omens in nature. But, child, I can teach you how to become an instrument of the Gods, if you will it. Are you ready, then, to learn?”
“Yes,” Angharad answered eagerly.
“Good. First we shall quiet your mind. Then we shall see.”
Angharad went to the temple each morning as soon as she’d swallowed down her breakfast. There she and Diarmid sat on reed mats in the cool quiet, and he taught her the way of slowing her breath. Of waiting without waiting.
It was not seeing. Not truly. It was more akin to listening. Sensing. Angharad began to understand it in the way one catches a scent on the breeze for a moment, before it is gone. But now, on the eighth day since her uncles’ absence, she sat trying to listen, to no avail. Everything had become so loud. The feathery rustles from the eagles’ enclosure. The thudding of her own heart. As she sat in Diarmid’s stillness, the tiny red lumps on her arms from the midges at sunset itched with renewed vigor until Angharad felt she’d go mad. She squeezed her eyes shut, screaming inside her own head.
“Enough for today,” Diarmid announced, as if she had spoken aloud.
“A few moments more,” Angharad begged.
“Nay, we must cease, Angharad. We shall try again tomorrow. Besides, your uncles will soon return.”
“How do you know?” Angharad asked in wonderment. “Did you divine it?”
Diarmid gave a small smile. “Your frustration, child, is a mirror of their own.”
“Whatever do you mean? Please, Diarmid. Tell me plain.”
“The warriors have failed in their raid. They could not catch Gwrgi out. You felt their rage as I did. Only I intended to, whereas you did not.”
Angharad frowned. Diarmid could not be right. Her inability to sit still had always enraged her. Or had it indeed? For she’d sat quite happily the day before, and the day before that.
“Come now, no frowns,” Diarmid said. “Your uncles will be in need of a welcoming face.”
Relieved as she was at the thought of their safe return, Angharad found it difficult to believe the Dragon Warriors could set out with such fervor and fail at their task. She knew Gwrgi of Ebrauc was a horrible man. She had seen him in Strathclyde, for he never missed their summer games. She had seen the way her mother stiffened at the sight of him. Heard the way her mother spoke his name, as if it were a curse.