‘I have cast your web of destiny, Lassair,’ she said to me one bright morning. ‘We shall use the knowledge that it provides as a basis for our discussion on how the planets guard us, guide us and, indeed, make us what we are.’ I like that about Edild; even when the lesson consisted of her talking and me silently listening, she still calls it a discussion. ‘You are air and fire,’ she went on, ‘and you live in your mind and not your body. You are restless, drawing on a great well of energy, and in time you will perceive and penetrate the web that connects all of life. You will brim over with creativity and new ideas and you will be brave, uncompromising and direct, yet possess the ability to conceal your true self with a plausible false skin.’ Yes, that bit sounded like me; I had always been a good liar. ‘You are essentially a private person, and your friends and your lovers’ — I blushed violently — ‘will sense that they are never truly close to you. You must learn to distinguish between independence, which is admirable, especially in a woman, and its darker face, isolation.’
‘But I’m not isolated!’ I protested. I felt the urgent need to lighten the mood. ‘I live in a tiny cottage with seven other people!’
Edild regarded me, her green eyes solemn. Then, ignoring my foolish comment and my nervous little laugh, she went on, ‘At the time of your birth, the Sun, the Moon and the planets were all in signs of air and fire. You are water-lacking, so that the turmoil of emotions experienced by others will be incomprehensible to you, and you are also earth-lacking, and will thus have little sense of being grounded firmly in the good Earth.’
I was never going to achieve closeness with people, even my lovers. I would never understand emotion, presumably not even my own. Oh, it sounded bitter. My dismay must have shown in my face for Edild reached out and took my hand, squeezing it in her own.
‘Look,’ she said brightly after a moment. ‘Look at your chart, Lassair.’ She spread out a large square of vellum, beautifully marked with a big circle divided into segments and dotted with intriguing little signs and symbols. ‘This is the moment of your birth, in the early pre-dawn light of the twentieth of June, in the year 1074, and this is where the planets were positioned.’ I followed the long finger with its short, clean nail as she pointed. There were the Sun, the Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn, marked on my web of destiny as if for that instant of my birth, their sole purpose had been to make me what I was. It was an awesome thought.
Something struck me; I heard Granny’s voice, speaking of another Lassair. ‘My namesake was a child of the fire and the air,’ I said cautiously. ‘It’s in Granny’s story.’
Edild smiled. ‘I thought you would remember. Yes, Lassair’s web was very similar to yours — she too had Mercury placed in his own house of Gemini, the planet of love in the same air sign and the warrior god in Aries, most warlike sign of all.’
She fell silent, frowning as if in thought. Perhaps she was thinking, as I was, of the mysterious ancestress who had borne my name before me and I knew enough about her to understand that she cannot have had an easy life, to say the least. I hesitated, and then said in a small voice, ‘Will I be a mystery too? Will I disappear into the mist one day and nobody will know what’s happened to me?’
Edild have me a hug. ‘I doubt it,’ she said robustly. ‘You usually chatter so much that we’re left in no doubt whatsoever where you are and what you’re up to. Now, come and look at my model of the planets and I’ll tell you which of them influence which healing herbs and show you how to work out the best time for planting and harvesting.’
Later that day, while Edild was closeted with a young woman suffering from something that necessitated privacy while she removed her undergarments, I crept back to have another look at my fascinating but alarming web of destiny. My head was full of the morning’s lesson and I now knew what some of the symbols meant. There was the Sun, as Edild had said, in the sign of Gemini at the moment of my birth; there was the Moon, in distant, mysterious Aquarius; I had believed Aquarius the Water-Carrier to be a water sign (it seemed logical) until Edild put me right and said he was an air sign. There were Mercury and Venus, both also in Gemini; there were Mars, Jupiter and Saturn, in the fire signs of Aries and Sagittarius. All placed just as Edild had said.
And, apparently, very similar to their positions in the chart of Lassair the Sorceress, whose fate we do not know but who was strongly believed to be half elfish. .
Oh!
I rolled up the chart and retied its ribbon. I did not want to know any more.
The Winter Solstice was upon us and, as my family has always done, we celebrated with a meal eaten as the light faded. As well as my immediate family, my uncle Alwyn, my aunts Edild and Alvela and my cousin Morcar were also there, which meant it was a crush but nobody minded. When we were all seated, my father blew out the lamp and we all sat in the darkness. Out of the silence came Granny’s voice, intoning that tonight was the longest night of the year and that tomorrow the dark began to give way to the light. This was the signal; my father struck a spark with his flint and lit a precious stump of candle, saved for this purpose, and from that one light we each lit little tallow lamps of our own until the flames shone out in a circle that illuminated our faces and showed that all of us were smiling.
It might be midwinter still, with many cold, hard days of frozen ground and driving rain ahead, but now that the Solstice was here, we knew that the year had turned and the Sun was coming back. On that frosty night, with the stars shining brilliantly in the sky, that was something to smile about.
A couple of months after Christmas, Goda sent word. She was pregnant, she was perpetually sick, her entire body had swollen up so that she could barely move and she needed me to go and look after her.
I protested as violently as I could, bringing to bear every argument from the necessity to continue my instruction with Edild to the well-known fact that Goda didn’t like me and it couldn’t possibly be good for a pregnant woman to be in the perpetual company of someone who was so far from being a kindred spirit. Nothing made a jot of difference. Goda had sent for me and I must do as my parents commanded and go to her.
In desperation I turned to Granny. Whatever anyone else said, if Granny decreed I did not have to go — if, for instance, she insisted that it was far more important for me to get on with my studies than to tend my ingrate of a sister — then I would be saved.
But Granny took me aside, put her thin arms round me in a sudden intense hug and said quietly, ‘It’ll be a sore trial and you’ll hate it. But you must go, child.’
I had tears in my eyes and angrily I brushed them away. I made it a rule never to let anything Goda did make me cry, or at least not when anyone was watching. ‘Why?’ I wailed. To my shame I sounded like a three-year-old whining against sense and reason for its own way.
Granny had broken away and now she gave me a little shake. She muttered something — it sounded like wait and see, but that did not seem to make any sense — and then she said brusquely, ‘We all have to do things we don’t like and it won’t be for ever.’
Then she turned aside and hurried away.
Even in the extremity of my despair, I did not suggest that Elfritha go in my place. Elfritha is a year and four months older than I am, as I have already said, and she wants to be a nun. She is also gentle, impractical — when she’s in the convent they’ll have to watch her to make sure she doesn’t spill swill buckets and absent-mindedly tear her clothing on brambles like she’s always doing with us because I’m sure people vowed to poverty aren’t allowed to be wasteful — and inclined to daydream. All of which qualities drive Goda to distraction so that she has always been even rougher with poor Elfritha than with me. Besides the fact that nobody in their right mind would ask Elfritha to look after a tetchy and uncomfortable pregnant woman, I love my second-eldest sister far too much to make her suffer as she undoubtedly would in Goda’s household.