Part 14 (1/2)

Suddenly I remembered a fragment of teaching from Avalon, offered as a historical curiosity, since surely we would never have any use for it now. In the ancient days, the Druid priestesses had been taught battle-magic, spells to protect their warriors, and the shriek of the Raven-G.o.ddess that had the power to unman a foe.

It was that shriek that I felt building in my breast now, a cry of rage, of despair, of utter negation. I extended my arms and they became black wings, bearing me upward as that fury filled me, body and soul.

The Goths looked up, mouths opening, fingers flexing in the sign against evil as I swooped towards them.

They were no Romans, to make divinities of abstractions and abstract principles of their deities. They knew the spirit world was real...

”Waelcyrige! Haliruno!”they cried as I bore down upon them. And then I opened my throat, and the scream that left my lips separated them from their senses, and me from consciousness as well.

When I opened my eyes once more, Drusilla and Philip were bending over me, faces blanched with fear.

”My lady, my lady! What was it? We heard a cry-”

I looked at them, thinking that I did not want the love with which they served me to change to fear.

”A nightmare, I think,” I muttered. ”I must have fallen asleep before the fire.”

”Are you all right? Is the child-”

In sudden alarm I set my hand to my belly, but all was well. ”He is a soldier's son,” I managed to grin at them. ”It will take more than a little noise to frighten him.”

It was the Goths who had been frightened, I thought in satisfaction, if what I remembered had been true vision, and not a dream.

After that I sent Philip to the market-place each morning, seeking news, until a letter came from Constantius, telling me that he was well, and not to worry if I heard there had been a battle. He had not been hurt, and in the fighting the Gothic king Cannabaudes had been killed. And by the way, and here I could almost hear the uneasy laughter with which Romans responded when they thought the powers they wors.h.i.+pped might actually be real-Crocus said that the enemy had been routed by a G.o.ddess with my face...

When we had first come together in the Great Rite, Constantius had seen me as the G.o.ddess; and he had done so on the night I conceived my child. Why then, I wondered, should he be surprised?

The Romans, I reflected as I wrapped my shawl around me, were p.r.o.ne to fall into one error or its opposite-either to hold that the visible world was only an imperfect reflection of the Ideal, which the philosopher sought to transcend, or to live in a world of unpredictable forces which must be constantly propitiated. The one despised the world while the other feared it, and the Christians, I had heard, did both, calling on their G.o.d to save them from his own judgment.

But everyone believed in omens. If Constantius had not provided for me I could have made a good living as a seeress, using the skills I had learned on Avalon. And what omen, I wondered then, should I find in my vision of the battle? I set my hand on my belly, smiling as I felt the flutter of movement within.

Was it your valiant spirit that inspired me, my little one? Surely you will be a great general, if you are helping to win battles even before you are born!

And what, I asked myself then, did I believe? I did not fear the world, but neither did I reject it. We had learned a third way, on Avalon. My training there had taught me to sense the spirit in everything, and to recognize that for the most part the world went its way with little interest in humankind. The raven that croaked from the rooftop did not know that the man who listened would hear a message-it was the man whose mind must be altered in order to find meaning in it, not the bird. Spirit moved through all things; to learn to live in harmony with that movement was the Way of the Wise.

The babe stirred once more in my belly, and I laughed, understanding anew why we saw a G.o.ddess when we sought to give a face to the Highest Power. Now that the first months of adjustment to pregnancy were over, I had never felt so well. Filled and fulfilled, I was simultaneously acutely aware of my body and one with the life force that flowed through everything.

As the winter progressed and my belly grew ever larger, my euphoria was tempered with an understanding of why the G.o.ddess might sometimes want to let her creation fend for itself. I gloried in my role as human cornucopia, but it would have been a relief at times if I could have set my fertile belly down. By the time Constantius and the Dardanians returned from their campaign, early in the second month of the year, it seemed to me that I could have posed for a statue of Taueret, the Egyptian hippopotamus G.o.ddess who presided over pregnancy.

Upon learning of my condition, the wives of Constantius's fellow-officers had been quick to share every story of childbed trauma to be found in what was obviously a rich folklore, while cheerfully offering me the services of Egyptian physicians and Greek mid-wives. When I was still at Avalon birthing had never been one of my specialties, but fortunately it was covered as part of our training in healing. When I woke in the still hours, still trembling from some nightmare of a botched delivery, I knew enough to quiet my worst fears.

But the midwife I chose was a woman Brasilia had found for me called Marcia, who had a good reputation among the wives of the town. A st.u.r.dy, matter-of-fact soul with a frizz of auburn hair and an ample bosom, she insisted on consultations with the mother-to-be well before the delivery, and consented to work only for those who would follow her directions regarding diet, exercise and rest.

When she had measured my girth and calculated my due date Marcia recommended activity. The child was large already, she told me, and the birth would go easier if I could deliver him early. I understood what she did not say. When an infant was too big, it came down to a choice between cutting into the mother, as they said the great Caesar had been born, or dismembering the child to extract it from the womb. It was then that I began to make offerings to Eilythia for a safe delivery. I was willing to die for the sake of the Child of Prophecy, but if it came to a choice between us, I knew that Constantius would wish to save me.

And so as February drew on I walked to the market with Brasilia in the mornings, and down to the river and back up the hill every afternoon, ignoring Constantius's worried frown. I walked on the occasional day of watery suns.h.i.+ne, ignoring the twinges as my womb prepared for its task, and through the rain, even when it turned to sleet and snow.

”You do not train your soldiers for battle by keeping them idle in camp,” I told Constantius. ”This is my battle, and I intend to go into it as fit as I can.”

And on the twenty-seventh day of that month, coming back up the hill to our house I slipped on a wet cobblestone and sat down hard. As Brusilla helped me back to my feet I felt the gush of warm water from my womb mingling with the cold water that soaked my gown, and the first hard pang as labour began.

The household clucked and bustled in panic around me, but I had hoped for just such an accident. As one of the maids rushed off to find Marcia and Philip took horse to go out to the fortress for Constantius, I lay back upon the bed with a grin of triumph, until the next contraction came.

My time had come upon me early, but my womb, once started in its labour, seemed in no hurry to expel its contents. Through the rest of that day and the night that followed the contractions continued. The merciful amnesia that allows a woman who has given birth to face the prospect again has dimmed my memories of most of that time. Indeed, sometimes it is the fathers who remember so vividly that they fear to let their wives suffer so again.

If I had not been in such good condition I doubt I would have survived, and even so, as the second day drew on and my pangs, instead of becoming closer together, began to slow, the women who attended me looked grave, and I remember telling Marcia that if it came to a choice, she must cut me and save the child. The rain had stopped and the light of the westering sun, coming through the window, flamed in her hair.

”Nay,” she said then. ”It is true that once the waters have broken the birth must not be too long delayed, but fear not to let your body rest for a little while. I have a trick or two left in my bag that can get things going once more.”

In my exhaustion I found it hard to believe her. I closed my eyes, wincing as the child within me kicked.

This must be hard for him as well, trapped in a constricting bag that was squeezing him into a pa.s.sageway too narrow for his frame. But he had no choice about it now, and neither did I.

”G.o.ddess, was it so terrible for You, when You gave birth to the world!” came my silent cry. ”I have seen the pa.s.sion that drives Your creatures to reproduce their kind. Help me to deliver this child! I will give you whatever you ask”

And it seemed to me then that from the depths of my pain there came an answer.

”Whatever I ask? Even if it means that you must lose him?”

”So long as he stays alive!” I replied.

”You will keep him, and you will lose him. He will trample your heart as he pursues his destiny.

The changes that he brings you can neither predict nor control. But you must not despair. Even when they bring pain, growth and change and alteration are all part of My plan, and all that is lost will one day return once more...”

I was in pain already, and could not understand. I knew only the need to bring forth my child. I made some motion of a.s.sent, and abruptly I was back in my body once more. Marcia set a cup of tea to my lips whose bitterness was perceptible even through the honey they had mixed in. I tried to identify the herbs, but caught only the astringent taste of yarrow and red cedar.

Whatever it was, when it hit my empty stomach it began to work immediately. The contractions returned with a wrenching agony that overwhelmed my intention not to scream. Again and again I was wracked by the pain, but presently I was able to discern a kind of rhythm in it. Marcia got me up onto the birthing stool and gave me a wad of cloth to bite down on. Brasilia braced herself behind me and one of the maids took either arm. I learned later that I had gripped their wrists so tightly I left bruises, but I was not aware of doing so at the time.

I felt the warm seep of blood and the hot oil with which Marcia was ma.s.saging me. ”You're doing well,”

she told me. ”When the urge comes, bear down with all your might!”

Then the giant hand squeezed once more, and I pushed, past caring whether anyone heard my cry.

Again and again it came, until I thought I must split in two.

”I have the head,” said Marcia, and then a last convulsion seized me and the rest of the child slid free. A purplish, struggling form swung across my vision as she lifted it, ummistakably male, and then the room resounded to a roar of protest that must surely have been as loud as any of my own.

Dimly I was aware of being lifted to the bed once more. Women bustled around me, packing me with cloths to stop the bleeding, was.h.i.+ng me, changing the bedding. I paid no attention to their chatter. What matter if I was too badly torn to bear another-this child lived! I could hear his l.u.s.ty cries even from the next room.

A face appeared above me. It was Sopater, with a man in the robes of a Chaldean priest whom I remembered being told was an astrologer.

”Your son was born at the fifth hour past noon,” said Sopater. ”We have a preliminary horoscope already. Mars is in Taurus and Saturn lies in Leo. This child will be a warrior, stubborn in defeat and unyielding in victory. But Jupiter reigns in the sign of Cancer and there also sits his moon-your son will care strongly for his family. But above all, Aquarius will rule, rising with his Venus and his sun.”

I nodded and he turned away, still excited. I heard the clink of gla.s.sware and realized that they were drinking to the baby's health in the next room. How unfair, I thought then. All the work was done by me!