The Last Enchantment - Mary Stewart [96]
I thought nothing of the incident, and in a short while had forgotten it. We rode on, through villages and farms rich in grazing cattle. The willows were golden, and the hazel groves a-scamper with squirrels. Late swallows gathered along the rooftops, and as we approached that nest of mountains and lakes that marks the southern limits of the great forest, the lower hills flamed in the sun with ripe bracken, rusty-gold between the rocks. Elsewhere the forest, scattered oaks and pines, was gold and dark. Soon we came to the edge of the Wild Forest itself, where the trees crowd so thickly in the valleys that they shut out the sun. Before long we crossed the track that led up to the Green Chapel. I would have liked to revisit the place, but this would have added hours to the journey, and besides, the visit could be made more easily from Galava. So we held on our way, staying with the road as far as Petrianae.
Today this hardly deserves the name of town, though in Roman times it was a prosperous market center. There is still a market, where a few cattle and sheep and goods exchange hands, but Petrianae itself is a poor cluster of daub-and-wattle huts, its only shrine a mere shell of stonework holding a ruinous altar to Mars, in his person of the local god Cocidius. I saw no offering there, except, on the mossed step, a leathern sling, such as shepherds use, and a pile of sling-stones. I wondered what escape, from wolf or wild man, the shepherd was giving thanks for.
Beyond Petrianae, we left the road and took to the hill tracks, which my escort knew well. We travelled at ease, enjoying the warmth of the late autumn sun. As we climbed higher the warmth still lingered, and the air was soft, but with a tingle to it that meant the first frosts were not far away.
We stopped to rest our horses in one high, lonely corrie where a small tarn lay cupped in stony turf, and here we came across a shepherd, one of those hardy hillmen who lodge all summer out on the fell tops with the little blue-fleeced sheep of Rheged. Wars and battles may move and clash below them, but they look up, rather than down, for danger, and at the first onslaught of winter take to the caves, faring thinly on black bread and raisins, and meal cakes made on a turf fire. They drive their flocks for safety into pens built between the rocky outcrops on the hillsides. Sometimes they do not hear another man's voice from lamb-time to clipping, and then on to autumn's end.
This lad was so little used to talking that he found speech hard, and what he did say came in an accent so thick that even the troopers, who were local men, could make nothing of it, and I, who have the gift of tongues, was hard put to it to understand him. He had, it seemed, had speech with the Old Ones, and was ready enough to pass on his news. It was negative, and none the worse for that. Arthur had stayed in Caerleon for almost a month after his wedding, then had ridden with his knights up through the Pennine Gap, heading apparently for Olicana and the Plain of York, where he would meet with the King of Elmet. This was hardly news to me, but at least it was confirmation that there had been no new war-move during the late autumn's peace. The shepherd had saved his best titbit till last. The High King (he called him young Emrys, with such a mixture of pride and familiarity that I guessed that Arthur's path must have crossed his in times past) had left his queen with child. At this the troopers were openly skeptical; maybe he had, was their verdict, but how, in a scant month, could anyone know for sure? I, when appealed to, was more credulous. As I have said, the Old Ones have ways of knowing that cannot be understood, but deserve to be respected. If the lad had heard this through them...?
He had. That was all he knew. Young Emrys had gone into Elmet, and the lass he'd wedded was with child. The word he used was "yeaning," at which the troopers were disposed to be merry, but I thanked him and gave him a coin, and he turned back to his sheep well satisfied,