Seduction

Twenty-six

56 BCE

ISLE OF JERSEY

When Owain walked into the hut, Gwenore was standing by the hearth. She looked up, a welcoming smile on her lips. But beneath it he could see worry in her eyes. He’d been gone for four days. The longest he’d ever spent, and the retreat had been exhausting. He could see in his wife’s reaction that his ordeal must be showing on his face.

“You look like you need to eat and to sleep,” she said. “Which first?”

“I’m starving.” He sat at the table, hoping she’d busy herself with making him food and not ask too many questions. Not yet. Not until he could talk to the elders. Perhaps the worst part of the retreat was the walk home, knowing she was going to want to know what path the gods had told him to take. What preparations the tribe needed to make.

Owain almost sobbed again as he thought of the revelation. Even though he’d already cried and beaten his fists on the ground for hours, his agony was still fresh and new. His anxiety as sharp as any knife’s edge.

Gwenore poured her husband a mug of ale. While he drank a long draft and then another, she brought over a plate of wheat cakes, set it down and sat next to him. He took a cake and bit into it. She was a good cook, but it tasted like straw. Why had he thought he could eat? He felt as if he could barely breathe. She put her hand on his thigh as if she was making sure he was real and not an apparition. It was a quiet gesture, and he remembered that when they were first together and she was still shy with him, she had touched him this way too, often.

“So tell me about the mission. Was it very difficult? Why were you gone so long?”

How could he ever explain? What could he say? His fear made his voice gruff, his tone angry. “I’m hungry, woman. Can’t your questions wait?”

She rose, went to the hearth. From the pot hanging over the fire, she spooned stew into a wooden bowl. Once she placed it in front of him, he fell to eating it, forcing the food down. Anything to prevent the inquisition.

Gwenore poured him more ale. He stopped eating to take a draft, then went back to the stew. It was well cooked and spiced correctly, but like the cake, he wanted nothing to do with it. He filled his stomach only because it ached from being starved for so long, and eating gave him an excuse for not speaking.

“Did the visions come?” Gwenore asked.

“They did.” He had spent his days in the cave, fasting, dreaming and then meditating on his dreams.

“Were you able to interpret them?”

“I believe so,” he said, and then spooned more food into his mouth. Feeling as if he was going to choke on it.

“You stayed longer than I expected.”

He nodded.

“Why?”

“The messages were complicated.”

She frowned.

“What is it?” he asked her.

“You tell me.”

“What do you mean, woman? Don’t speak in witches’ riddles.”

“You’re not reporting on what you learned. You always do. Right away. Usually you can’t wait.”

“Is that true?” He really wasn’t aware that he was so quick to confide in her when he returned from a retreat.

“Yes, Owain. You do. As soon as you come home, you tell me what you learned. I’ve been with you for fourteen years. I’ve watched you go forth on quests four times during each of those years. Over fifty retreats. You always return after two nights, spent but refreshed. Now you stay away twice that amount of time and you come home exhausted and sickly. Worry lines are around your lips, on your brow. Trouble in your eyes.”

“The visions were complicated, Gwenore. I’m not sure I understand what I saw, or what it means. I need to consult with the other priests tonight.”

“Can’t that wait till tomorrow?”

“Not really. No.”

“It must. You can barely keep your eyes open.”

He knew how tired he was. From the moment he had gleaned an interpretation from the vision, he had been unable to sleep. To rest. To do anything but worry. Was it possible that he’d misread the dreams? Might one of the other priests find a different interpretation? Oh, how he prayed they would. He was not a man who was often wrong, and he prided himself on that. But now? To be wrong would be a blessing.

“Come,” she said, holding out her hand. “At least try to sleep. If you can’t, you can go to see the others.”

Usually he washed before going to sleep, but he’d washed just hours ago in the cave, using the spirit water that spilled down the rock. That icy cold water he always used to come awake from the visions.

Gwenore stayed with him as he stripped off his tunic. He wondered what else the witch sensed, but he didn’t want to ask lest he invite more questions. Owain was afraid of what she could intuit. And he didn’t want to have to explain. Could not bear it. Not yet. Not while there was still a small chance that he was wrong about what he’d seen in the cave. Not until he’d consulted with the elders and made certain his interpretation was the correct one.

He lay down on the mat. Yawned. He really was tired. The visions always wore him out. But this exhaustion went deeper. It struck his heart. It tore at his guts.

Gwenore lay next to him.

He shut his eyes and then asked the one question he did need the answer to. The one he’d been afraid to ask for fear of how his voice would sound saying his son’s name out loud. “Where is Brice?”

“Wth a group of boys on a fishing excursion. I expect we won’t see him until tomorrow or the day after. They planned on staying on the other side of the island at least for tonight.”

A burst of relief was followed by one of panic. He wanted his son home. Wanted to see him. To look into his eyes. To discover that Brice wasn’t the same boy he’d seen in his visions. That his son didn’t look as Owain saw him in the trance. That the boy in the dreams was someone else’s son.

Even as he wished it, Owain knew it had been Brice. Owain knew his own son. How could he not? How could he mistake him for anyone else? Unless the herb combination had been too strong. That was possible, wasn’t it? Maybe the smoke from the sacred fire had too much magic in it. That was possible, wasn’t it? Maybe the gods were playing tricks. Maybe…

“What is it?” Gwenore asked. “You are so restless.”

He shook his head. “I don’t know.”

“Do you need a potion?”

“No, I’ll be fine.” He didn’t want her ministering to him. Didn’t want her kindness now. It would only make her fury that much worse when she found out the awful secret that had been revealed to him in the cave of the visions.

Still unable to accept what he’d seen, now he set to wondering if there was something wrong with his abilities. Maybe he was no longer capable of seeing the messages from the spirit world. Or maybe someone had invaded the sacred place where only priests were allowed, and altered it somehow. Corrupted the magic.

Was that possible?

The entrance to the cave was hard to find. In fact it had been chosen by the ancients because of how the grouping of rocks curved and obscured the access even when the tide was low. At high tide the entrance was hidden from sight and water flooded the front chambers. You could be trapped during storms. Just a dozen years ago, a priest who had been trying to escape had drowned.

No one but the elders knew the location of the cave. Each generation passed it down to the next. Only holy men could go there. And only holy men could be entombed there. Deep in the inner reaches, far back, Owain had buried five elders there, two of whom were his mentors. Those had been difficult days. Even though Owain believed that the men’s souls would return, he’d been close to the men and their passing had been hard for him to accept. He’d missed both of them more these last few days than he had in years. In the cave, after the visions, he’d visited their tombs and tried to conjure and communicate with them. He’d prayed to them to help him understand the vision another way. To have it mean something else.

Why not me? Why don’t the gods want me?

“What?” Gwenore asked, her green eyes staring into his. “You were crying out in your sleep.”

He was amazed he’d actually fallen asleep. With all he had on his mind, he hadn’t thought he’d be able to.

“You were arguing with someone, Owain.”

“What did I say?” Perhaps his dream conversation would be important and reveal some flaw in his interpretation of the message he’d received in the cave.

“ ‘Why not me?’ That’s what you said. Over and over again.”

Owain nodded. Closed his eyes. No, it wasn’t a new divination. It was the same thought he’d been having continuously since his terrible revelation.

Gwenore stroked his hair. Combed out his tangled curls with her fingertips. She smelled of the food she’d cooked, of earth and herbs, of the sweet flowers she brewed and the oils she used to concoct her remedies. His wife came from a long line of witches, herbalists and healers who passed down their elixir recipes. Their potions soothed the skin, relaxed the soul. Some, even, could draw out and expel evil powers.

The first time he’d lain with her he’d been so intoxicated by her aroma that he’d accused her of drugging him. She’d said no, there was nothing in the oils she wore except nature’s perfumes. But he wasn’t certain. Just as he wasn’t positive that the beverage she made for him and Brice every morning wasn’t a magical brew.

He’d watch her crush grasses, herbs and minerals, mix them with spring water and pray over them. He’d never seen her add anything suspicious. But still, how was it that he and Brice were the healthiest men on the island? That neither of them, or she for that matter, was ever sickly?

Gwenore’s fingers massaged the base of his skull, moved down the back of his neck and to his shoulders. Kneaded out the terrible knots in his muscles. She was using one of the minted oils, and the menthol was seeping into his skin and relaxing him despite his resistance. Under her skilled fingertips he was letting go. Giving up his fear. Not trying to work out his problems anymore. With each downward and upward stroke he became less in his mind and more in his body. He was not on a sacred retreat now. Not on a quest. This was his home. This was his wife.

The smoke he’d burned in the cave put him in one kind of trance. All mind, no body. His wits danced with ideas, with images. He witnessed a play of scenes acted out on a stage in the air. A theater of the gods. He lay on his back on the raised stone slab where he was protected from the waters that rushed in when the moon rose too high, and he disappeared into the visions.

But this, what Gwenore did to him, was a different kind of trance. All body and no mind. He became the sensation of his skin beneath her fingers. He was his own rising and falling and quickening breath. He was the hardening of his cock and the pulsing in his veins.

Owain was amazed he could react at all. Amazed his body was able to dismiss what his thoughts had been fixated on. Could he give in? Did the gods need him to be aware of his physical self now?

Or was he was convincing himself of that? Maybe he just desperately wanted Gwenore to take him to the forgetful place between her legs.

She disrobed. The star-shaped mark on her breast looked redder to him tonight. He reached out and touched it and his fingertip burned.

Pushing him back, Gwenore mounted him. Kissed him. Kept massaging him. Her hair was spread out on his belly. Every strand like a lick of fire, teasing him. His blood was finally warming after four full days and nights of cold. He felt it quickening as the pressure inside him built. His head fell back. He closed his eyes. Concentrated only on the touch of her lips. The hot inside of her mouth. The motion of the tides, the ebb and flow of the waves on the sand were in her movements. He thought only about the naturalness of their being together. Of the wonder that one body could effect this in another. Gwenore had told him once this was the real magic they were all searching for. That they were wrong to search for it in caves. That this coaxing of a man’s blood to the surface, this building up of pressure, this sweetness that came from a man and woman lying together was the secret.

He reached down and his fingers found the other cave, the one between his wife’s legs. Where she was slick. Where she was ready. He traveled into her and she took him in, deeply, with a soft moan of pleasure. Owain wanted her to absorb him. Wanted the oblivion her lips and her legs were promising, but at the same time he was frightened of going to that sweet place. It would be a relief, yes, but what if it was such a relief, he didn’t come back? What if the job ahead of him was so horrible to contemplate that he let himself disappear? He knew of others who had left their minds, never to return. As much as he didn’t want to do what had to be done, he must. No one but him could make the sacrifice the gods were demanding in exchange for keeping the tribe safe from the Romans.

His movements became the rhythm of her breath. His breaths became the rhythm of her movements. There was nothing to tether him to reality anymore. Nothing to keep him from losing his mind.

Owain let go.