“We made the proper sacrifices,” Elfrida said, finally. “Didn’t we? What’ve we done or not done that the land turns against us?”
Mag didn’t answer, but there was a quality in her silence that made Elfrida think that the old woman knew something—something important. Something that she hadn’t yet told her pupil.
Finally, as darkness fell, and the fire burned down to coals, Mag spoke.
“We made the sacrifices,” she said. “But there was one—who didn’t.”
“Who?” Elfrida asked, surprised. The entire village followed the Old Way—never mind the High King and his religion of the White Christ. That was for knights and nobles and suchlike. Her people stuck by what they knew best, the turning of the seasons, the dance of the Maiden, Mother and Crone, the rule of the Horned Lord. And if anyone in the village had neglected their sacrifices, surely she or Mag would have known!
“It isn’t just our village that’s sickening,” Mag said, her voice a hoarse, harsh whisper out of the dark. “Nor the county alone. I’ve talked to the other Wise Ones, to the peddlers—I talked to the crows and the owls and ravens. It’s the whole land that’s sickening, failing—and there’s only one sacrifice can save the land.”
Elfrida felt her mouth go dry, and took a sip of her cold, bitter tea to wet it. “The blood of the High King,” she whispered.
“Which he will not shed, come as he is to the feet of the White Christ.” Mag shook her head. “My dear, my darling girl, I’d hoped the Lady wouldn’t lay this on us . . . I’d prayed she wouldn’t punish us for his neglect. But ’tisn’t punishment, not really, and I should’ve known better than to hope it wouldn’t come. Whether he believes it or not, the High King is tied to the land, and Arthur is old and failing. As he fails, the land fails—”
“But—surely there’s something we can do?” Elfrida said timidly into the darkness.
Mag stirred. “If there is, I haven’t been granted the answer,” she said, after another long pause. “But perhaps—you’ve had Lady-dreams before, ’twas what led you to me. . . .”
“You want me to try for a vision?” Elfrida’s mouth dried again, but this time no amount of tea would soothe it, for it was dry from fear. For all that she had true visions, when she sought them, the experience frightened her. And no amount of soothing on Mag’s part, or encouragement that the—things—she saw in the dark waiting for her soul’s protection to waver could not touch her, could ever ease that fear.
But weighed against her fear was the very real possibility that the village might not survive the next winter. If she was worthy to be Mag’s successor, she must dare her fear, and dare the dreams, and see if the Lady had an answer for them since High King Arthur did not. The land and the people needed her and she must answer that need.
“I’ll try,” she whispered, and Mag touched her lightly on the arm.
“That’s my good and brave girl,” she said. “I knew you wouldn’t fail us.” Something on Mag’s side of the fire rustled, and she handed Elfrida a folded leaf full of dried herbs.
They weren’t what the ignorant thought, herbs to bring visions. The visions came when Elfrida asked for them—these were to strengthen and guard her while her spirit rode the night winds, in search of answers. Foxglove to strengthen her heart, moly to shield her soul, a dozen others, a scant pinch of each. Obediently, she placed them under her tongue, and while Mag chanted the names of the Goddess, Elfrida closed her eyes, and released her all-too-fragile hold on her body.
The convent garden was sodden, the ground turning to mush, and unless someone did something about it, there would be nothing to eat this summer but what the tithes brought and the King’s Grace granted them. Outside the convent walls, the fields were just as sodden; so, as the Mother Superior said, “A tithe of nothing is still nothing, and we must prepare to feed ourselves.” Leonie sighed, and leaned a little harder on the spade, being careful where she put each spadeful of earth. Behind the spade, the drainage trench she was digging between each row of drooping pea-seedlings filled with water. Hopefully, this would be enough to keep them from rotting. Hopefully, there would be enough to share. Already the eyes of the children stared at her from faces pinched and hungry when they came to the convent for Mass, and she hid the bread that was half her meal to give to them.
Her gown was as sodden as the ground; cold and heavy with water, and only the fact that it was made of good wool kept it from chilling her. Her bare feet, ankle-deep in mud, felt like blocks of stone, they were so cold. She had kirtled her gown high to keep the hem from getting muddied, but that only let the wind get at her legs. Her hair was so soaked that she had not even bothered with the linen veil of a novice; it would only have flapped around without protecting her head and neck any. Her hands hurt; she wasn’t used to this.
The other novices, gently born and not, were desperately doing the same in other parts of the garden. Those that could, rather; some of the gently-born were too ill to come out into the soaking, cold rain. The sisters, as many as were able, were outside the walls, helping a few of the local peasants dig a larger ditch down to the swollen stream. The trenches in the convent garden would lead to it—and so would the trenches being dug in the peasants’ gardens, on the other side of the high stone wall.
“We must work together,” Mother Superior had said firmly, and so here they were, knight’s daughter and villien’s son, robes and tunics kirtled up above the knee, wielding shovels with a will. Leonie had never thought to see it.
But the threat of hunger made strange bedfellows. Already the convent had turned out to help the villagers trench their kitchen gardens. Leonie wondered what the village folk would do about the fields too large to trench, or fields of hay? It would be a cold summer, and a lean winter.
What had gone wrong with the land? It was said that the weather had been unseasonable—and miserable—all over the kingdom. Nor was the weather all that had gone wrong; it was said there was quarreling at High King Arthur’s court; that the knights were moved to fighting for its own sake, and had brought their leman openly to many court gatherings, to the shame of the ladies. It was said that the Queen herself—
But Leonie did not want to hear such things, or even think of them. It was all of a piece, anyway; knights fighting among themselves, killing frosts and rain that wouldn’t end, the threat of war at the borders, raiders and bandits within, and starvation and plague hovering over all.
Something was deeply, terribly wrong.
She considered that, as she dug her little trenches, as she returned to the convent to wash her dirty hands and feet and change into a drier gown, as she nibbled her meager supper, trying to make it last, and as she went in to Vespers with the rest.
Something was terribly, deeply wrong.
When Mother Superior approached her after Vespers, she somehow knew that her feeling of wrongness and what the head of the convent was about to ask were linked.
“Leonie,” Mother Superior said, once the other novices had filed away, back to their beds, “when your family sent you here, they told me it was because you had visions.”
Leonie ducked her head and stared at her sandals. “Yes, Mother Magdalene.”
“And I asked you not to talk about those visions in any way,” the nun persisted. “Not to any of the other novices, not to any of the sister, not to Father Peregrine.”
“Yes, Mother Magdalene—I mean, no Mother Magdalene—” Leonie looked up, flushing with anger. “I mean, I haven’t—”