Two or three others had joined them and began asking their own questions. It was the same after every Circle now, for the coven had become something very different from the tight little group in half-forgotten Staines. Tonight, for instance, there were eighteen adults and four children crowding the Central Cabin for the regular Friday Circle: Moira's group of five plus Diana, eight witches who had joined Camp Cerridwen over the past two or three weeks with three of their children, and five interested non-initiates including Eileen and Peter. What with getting the incoming witches attuned to Moira and Dan's particular methods and customs and explaining things to the non-initiates, 'I feel more like a schoolteacher than a High Priestess, sometimes,' Moira had said to old Sally.
'Since when were the two different?' Sally wanted to know. 'Maybe we'd got too cosy, love.'
Even the attunement process required care, for although all the witches realized the importance of harmony in their embattled situation, it was of the nature of Wicca that every coven had its own character and was a law to itself; so unless differences were examined and adjusted, misunderstandings could arise. Most bewildered, sometimes, were
Sam and Elizabeth Warner, who were Traditionals trained in a very different set of rituals from Moira and Dan's Gardnerian/Alexandrian ones, but their determination to work with the majority was fortunately aided by a healthy sense of humour.
'Cheer up,' Dan told them. 'We'll put out an astral call for more Traditionals, then you'll be able to do your own thing in parallel with us.'
'What?' Sam exclaimed in mock horror. 'All this re-education for nothing? Besides, I rather like holding two passports.'
Altogether, Camp Cerridwen now numbered twenty-four adults and six children. Father Byrne even had a congregation, for one couple with a year-old baby were Catholics; they had come in with the husband's brother and sister-in-law, who were witches. 'I'm past being astonished,' Father Byrne had said, smiling, when Dan informed him that a little chapel now had high priority on the building programme, immediately after the minimum sleeping accommodation.
Building was, in fact, going ahead well, for more hands meant more efficient working, and Bruce Peters, the quiet young builder who had arrived with Fred and Jean Thomas, had proved to be knowledgeable and ingenious. The Central Cabin, kitchen and three family cabins were all finished and three more were at framework stage.
Camp Cerridwen was becoming a village.
Liz Warner had proved an asset in another way: she was a schoolteacher and as soon as she arrived she started daily classes for the children – who, leaving out the Catholic couple's baby, ranged from five to thirteen years old. But within a week, she and Geraint Lloyd, the New Dyfnant schoolmaster, had arrived at a better arrangement. A pony-cart was found for Liz and her five pupils and every morning she drove them down to Geraint's little school. Geraint, who had been coping single-handed with seventeen children of various ages, was delighted. He took charge of the older ones and Liz of the younger. 'Now we might actually get some teaching done instead of just keeping the little devils quiet,' he told her happily. The New Dyfnant parents obviously appreciated Liz too, for she rarely returned to camp without gifts of vegetables, eggs or cow's milk, sometimes put anonymously in the pony-cart while she was busy teaching.
Camp Cerridwen's own little farm was making fair progress, all things considered. Much winter sowing had been done, goats and poultry were thriving, some soft fruits had been planted and the bees in their six hives seemed to be hibernating healthily (since they were newly installed, some of the camp's precious and dwindling sugar had been allocated to their autumn settling-in feed). But with winter closing in, first priority had to go to seeing that everyone was housed and warm, so there was a limit to the amount of time that could be devoted to farming. And it would be many months before the planting produced food or the hives honey. The half-hectare of vegetable garden in New Dyfnant which had been earmarked for their use was a considerable help and the cave in the woods still held useful stocks of food; but with the camp's population growing and perhaps more recruits to come, old Sally as ration-organizer kept an anxiously watchful eye on the reserves.
An extra hazard had arisen once the Madness was over. With movement much safer, occasional nomad pilferers appeared. Organized bands, strangely enough, were not the danger. A couple of raids had been tried on New Dyfnant but the villagers, themselves well organized and favourably, sited, had dealt with them firmly and word must have got around for no more attempts were made, although more exposed communities in the neighbourhood (and according to Geraint's ham-radio contacts, in other parts of the country) suffered sporadically. But lone infiltrators were another matter. One had been shot while trying to steal a goose on the outskirts of New Dyfnant, and two hens had disappeared during the night from Camp Cerridwen itself. Peter O'Malley, who still ranged as much of his beloved forest as his share of the camp work allowed, occasionally came across signs of what he called 'fly-by-night bivouacs', never of more than one to three people, and always abandoned by the time he got there. Though once he had shouted after a man running away through the trees a couple of hundred metres from him. The man had gone on running and vanished.
'If the bloody fools are hungry, why don't they come and ask if they can join us?' he grumbled to Dan.
'Natural cowards or natural thieves. Or both. Or maybe they've heard we're witches and they're scared we'll turn 'em into frogs.'
'Only thing that really worries me is the cave,' Peter said. 'If one of them finds that, we could be in trouble.'
Dan agreed and the evening meeting discussed the matter. Reluctantly, they earmarked a newly finished cabin as a store, and next day transferred the contents of the cave to it; even more reluctantly, with so much work to be done, they kept one man at a time, night and day, patrolling the camp as an armed sentry.
One of Peter's dudes fitted in well with his forest-ranging. They were almost out of tinned meat and there was no fresh to be had from livestock, for both camp and village had banned all slaughtering – even of poultry -till the spring brought renewed breeding. So Sally had asked Peter to supplement the rations by regular hunting, helped when possible by such good shots as Angie; only good shots could be allowed to hunt, for their stocks of ammunition, though not yet dangerously low, were still not limitless. Peter had agreed and had supplemented his gun by snares (which he hated). The result had been a fairly steady flow of rabbit, wood-pigeon and the occasional pheasant; and also a renewed withdrawal from Peter by Eileen, who had been beginning to relax in his company.
Angie, exasperatedly observing her young cousin's behaviour had for once thoroughly lost her temper. 'My God, Eileen, I wish we had a damn shrink in the camp – because that's what you need, my girl. You've got the nicest man in the place following you around like a puppy-dog and you bite his head off because he's keeping us fed. What the hell do you think you're up to? A bloody psychiatrist's couch is the place for you – if the word "bloody" doesn't trigger off this stupid obsession of yours.' She could see the tears in Eileen's eyes but she couldn't stop. 'For Christ's sake, none of us enjoy killing. I don't. Peter doesn't. And that's another damn stupid thing. When I kill a rabbit, you just look the other way. When he kills anything, you crucify the poor bugger.'
'I don't' Eileen burst out. ‘I only…'
'You only kick him where it hurts, that's all. Because, God help him, he's as much in love with you as you are with him. Which you are.'
Eileen, white-faced and miserable, looked at her in silence for a moment and then walked away, leaving Angie – once she had cooled down – thoroughly ashamed of herself.
Moira and Dan watched the approaching convoy with some surprise. It was usual for one or two of the New Dyfnant villagers to escort newcomers to Camp Cerridwen, to satisfy themselves that they were both harmless and acceptable.