From a bluff screened by trees they looked down over the river. It flowed broad between deeply green banks; reeds rustled, frogs croaked, fish splashed silvery, waterfowl flew in their tumultuous thousands; occasionally men paddled a boat along the opposite, Suarinian shore. “We will be a little in the life of the country,” Floris had said, “not quite like disembodied spirits flitting through.”
They sprang to their feet when Ulstrup appeared. He was a slender, sandy-haired man, as barbaric-looking as them. That did not mean bearskin kilts. His shirt, coat, and pants were of cloth well woven, tastefully patterned, and skillfully tailored. The goldsmith who made the brooch at his throat did not go by Hellenic canons, but was nonetheless an artist. His hair was combed and tied in a knot on the right side. His mustache was trimmed, and if his chin was stubbly, it was because razors were not of Gillette sharpness.
“What have you found?” Floris exclaimed.
Ulstrup’s smile showed how tired he was. “That will take a stretch to tell,” he answered.
“Give the guy a break,” Everard said. “Here, sit down.” He gestured at a mossy log. “Want some coffee? You can smell it’s fresh.”
“Coffee,” Ulstrup crooned. “I often drink it in my dreams.”
Odd, Everard thought momentarily, that we should be using twentieth-century English, we three in this scene. But no. He happens to be from then too, doesn’t he? For a while, English will sort of play the role that Latin does today. Not for as long a while.
They made very little small talk before Ulstrup turned earnest. His stare fixed upon the others as an animal might stare from a trap. He spoke with care. “Yes, I do believe you are right. This is something unique. I confess the potentials frighten me; and I have no experience with variable reality or expertise in it.
“As I told you before, I had heard tales of an itinerant sibyl or witch or whatever she was, but paid no special attention. That kind is . . . oh, not common in this culture, but not extraordinary either. I was concerned about the ongoing civil strife among the Cherusci and, frankly, resented your demand that I investigate her, an outsider. My apologies, Agent Floris, Unattached Agent Everard. Now I have encountered her. I have listened to her. I have spoken at length with a number of men about her. My Langobardian wife has told me what women are saying to each other.
“You related what a tremendous impact Edh will have on the western tribes. I suspect you did not anticipate how strong it is here, already, or how swiftly it increases. She arrived in a primitive wagon. I heard the Lemovii gave it to her, after she had come to them afoot. She will leave in a magnificent van the king is having made, drawn by his finest oxen. She arrived with four men in her train. She will leave with a dozen. She could have had far more than that—and women, too—but chose them and set the limit with intelligent practicality. I think that was on the advice of the Heidhin you described. . . . No matter. I have seen proud young warriors begging to abandon everything and follow her as servants. I have seen their lips tremble and their eyes blink hard when she refused them.”
“How does she do it?” Everard whispered.
“She bears a myth,” Floris said. “Isn’t that correct?”
Surprised, Ulstrup nodded. “How did you guess?”
“I heard her uptime, and I know well what could influence the Frisii. They cannot be greatly unlike these easterners.”
“No. Perhaps a difference comparable to that between Dutch and Germans in our period. Of course, Edh is not proclaiming the gospel of a whole new religion. That is outside the pagan mentality. In fact, I rather imagine her ideas are evolving as she goes along. She is not even adding a new deity. Her goddess is known through most of the Germanic range. The local name is Naerdha. She must be more or less identical with the Nerthus whose cult Tacitus describes. Do you remember?”
Everard nodded. The Germania told of a covered oxcart that each year drew an image in procession around the land. That was a time when war was set aside, a time of rejoicing and fertility rites. After the goddess returned to her grove, the idol was taken to a secluded lake and washed by slaves, who immediately afterward were drowned. Nobody asked “what that sight is that may only be seen by the eyes of the dying.”
“A pretty grim sort,” Everard said. The neopagans of his home milieu did not include her in their fairy tales of a prehistoric matriarchy when everybody was nice.
“It is a pretty grim life they lead,” Floris observed.
The scholar in Ulstrup took over. “This is clearly a figure in an aboriginal chthonic pantheon, the Wanes or Vanir,” he said. “It originated before the Indo-Europeans reached these parts. They brought their characteristic warlike, masculine sky-gods, the Anses or Aesir. Dim memories of the conflict between cultures survived in myths of a war between the two divine races, which was finally settled by negotiations and intermarriage. Nerthus—Naerdha—is still female. In centuries ahead she will become male, the Eddic god Njordh, father of Freyja and Frey—who today is still her husband. Njordh will be a sea god, as Nerthus is associated with the sea, though she is also an agricultural deity.”
Floris touched Everard’s arm. “Suddenly you look bleak,” she murmured.
He shook himself. “Sorry. My mind strayed. I was remembering an episode that hasn’t happened yet, among the Goths. It involved their gods. But that was quite a minor eddy in the time stream, easily damped except for what it cost the persons involved. This is different. I don’t know how it is, but I feel it in my marrow.”
Floris turned to Ulstrup. “What is Edh preaching, then?” she asked him.
He shivered. “ ‘Preaching.’ What a spooky word. Pagans don’t preach—at least, heathen Germans don’t—and at this moment Christianity is hardly more than a persecuted Jewish heresy. No, Edh does not deny Wotan and the rest. She simply tells new stories about Naerdha and Naerdha’s powers. But there is nothing simple about what they imply. And . . . by sheer intensity and eloquence, yes, it is fair to say that she delivers sermons. These tribes have never known anything of the kind before. They are . . . not immunized. It is why so many will so readily turn Christian, once those missionaries get here.” As if defensively, his tone dried. “To be sure, there will also be political and economic reasons to convert, which no doubt decide the issue in most cases. Edh offers nothing like that, unless you count her hatred of Rome and her prophecies of its downfall.”
Everard rubbed his chin. “Then she’s invented preaching, religious fervor, independently,” he said. “How? Why?”
“We must find out,” Floris responded.
“What are these new myths?” Everard inquired.
Ulstrup frowned into the distance. “It will take me long to tell you everything I have learned. And it is inchoate, not a neat theological system, you realize. And I doubt I have heard all of it, listening to her or at second hand. Certainly I have not heard what will develop as time goes on.
“But—well, she does not say it outright, perhaps she herself is not conscious of it, but she is making her goddess into a being at least as powerful, as . . . cosmic . . . as any. Naerdha is not exactly usurping Wotan’s authority over the dead, but she too receives them in her hall, she too leads them in a hunt through heaven. She is becoming as much a deity of war as Tiwaz, and the destined destroyer of Rome. Like Thonar, she commands elemental forces, weather, storm, together with the sea, rivers, lakes, all water. Hers is the moon—”
“Hecate,” Everard muttered.
“But she keeps her ancient precedence over begetting and birth,” Ulstrup finished. “Women who die in childbed go directly to her, like fallen warriors to the Eddic Odin.”
“That must appeal to women,” Floris said.