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Authors: Kage Baker
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you.”
I stopped pacing. “It’s nothing sinful, I trust.”
“Not at all, at least not by your standards. Look, it’s simply this: I’m a bit more than a simple bard. I have some religious credentials as well, in my religion I mean. I was trained for certain rituals I’ll never be able to perform nowadays, with so few of us left.”
“But you’re a young man,” I said doubtfully. “I thought most of the vates had died off years ago.”
“I’m older than I look.” Was he evading my gaze, there, for just a second? “In any case: I’m quite resigned to the druids being dead as last year’s mutton, but it kills the heart in me to know their more, ah, arcane knowledge will be lost. The sciences. The sacred rites, the ceremonies and all that. Now, I couldn’t ever tell you Christians certain things, being sworn to secrecy, but if you happened to overhear me talking to myself—say if we happened to be sitting in the same room at the time—and you happened to write down what you heard, well, it wouldn’t be a sin for you, would it?”
“I’m not so sure about that.” I sat to consider it. “Preserving heathen history and legends is one thing. Preserving a false faith … I seem to remember the Blessed Patrick stating quite clearly that druid books ought to be burned, not preserved.”
He sighed and had another sip of mead. “I know what you’re thinking: what if this is some pagan plot to keep the Old Religion going? I’ll tell you what you can do: once you’ve made my Codex Druidae , you can bury it in a lead casket ten feet below the floor of this room. I’ll swear any oath you like that it’ll remain there, undisturbed, unseen for a thousand years and more.”
“It’s a strange request …” I tugged at my beard. “Still, I know how I’d feel in your position. Couldn’t we finish this cycle of stories about Finn MacCool first?”
“Naturally.” He brightened up, setting down his mead and reaching for the harp. “How’s your cramp? Feel up to some white-knuckle iambic pentameter? I was just about to come to the part where Finn’s woman is stolen by demons of darkness …”
“Finn married?” I grabbed up my pen.
“Not exactly. It was like this …”
So we went on like that, he and I, and the hours lengthened into days. From sunrise until midday we’d work on the stories of Finn, or the tale of Conchobar’s
quest for the Four Blind Boys, or other fascinating material, with me copying fast in simple brown ink, leaving margins and capitals to be elaborated on and illuminated later. If the weather was fair we’d move outdoors, where the light was better and Lewis wouldn’t have to keep retuning his strings. Sometimes the Abbess would come to us, unable to restrain her desire, and read over my shoulder or listen with her eyes closed, to hear about Fergus and the Seal-Woman. But in the afternoons, when she had gone, we’d go inside and work on the Codex Druidae , the forbidden book. The actual text took no more than a week or so to rough in. I planned to spend more time on the illumination.
I must say, any reservations I had melted away once I actually heard the so-called sacred knowledge of my ancestors. No wonder they’d kept it secret! Most of it was utter nonsense. I remember one absurd formula for producing children out of nature, by combining tiny bits of the parents’ flesh in a glass dish. Some of their astronomy was fairly good, at least. They knew, like Pythagoras, that the Earth was a sphere, but they had this notion that the Earth revolves around the Sun! In fact, they thought—but it’s just too stupid to waste the ink in telling over again. I confess I was laughing as I took most of it down. No wonder Lewis had abandoned the priestly caste to be a bard.
And in any case, he was a kindly young man, and I couldn’t imagine him shutting unfortunate criminals into wicker cages and burning them alive. Not that he wouldn’t have been strong enough; one time he
I stopped pacing. “It’s nothing sinful, I trust.”
“Not at all, at least not by your standards. Look, it’s simply this: I’m a bit more than a simple bard. I have some religious credentials as well, in my religion I mean. I was trained for certain rituals I’ll never be able to perform nowadays, with so few of us left.”
“But you’re a young man,” I said doubtfully. “I thought most of the vates had died off years ago.”
“I’m older than I look.” Was he evading my gaze, there, for just a second? “In any case: I’m quite resigned to the druids being dead as last year’s mutton, but it kills the heart in me to know their more, ah, arcane knowledge will be lost. The sciences. The sacred rites, the ceremonies and all that. Now, I couldn’t ever tell you Christians certain things, being sworn to secrecy, but if you happened to overhear me talking to myself—say if we happened to be sitting in the same room at the time—and you happened to write down what you heard, well, it wouldn’t be a sin for you, would it?”
“I’m not so sure about that.” I sat to consider it. “Preserving heathen history and legends is one thing. Preserving a false faith … I seem to remember the Blessed Patrick stating quite clearly that druid books ought to be burned, not preserved.”
He sighed and had another sip of mead. “I know what you’re thinking: what if this is some pagan plot to keep the Old Religion going? I’ll tell you what you can do: once you’ve made my Codex Druidae , you can bury it in a lead casket ten feet below the floor of this room. I’ll swear any oath you like that it’ll remain there, undisturbed, unseen for a thousand years and more.”
“It’s a strange request …” I tugged at my beard. “Still, I know how I’d feel in your position. Couldn’t we finish this cycle of stories about Finn MacCool first?”
“Naturally.” He brightened up, setting down his mead and reaching for the harp. “How’s your cramp? Feel up to some white-knuckle iambic pentameter? I was just about to come to the part where Finn’s woman is stolen by demons of darkness …”
“Finn married?” I grabbed up my pen.
“Not exactly. It was like this …”
So we went on like that, he and I, and the hours lengthened into days. From sunrise until midday we’d work on the stories of Finn, or the tale of Conchobar’s
quest for the Four Blind Boys, or other fascinating material, with me copying fast in simple brown ink, leaving margins and capitals to be elaborated on and illuminated later. If the weather was fair we’d move outdoors, where the light was better and Lewis wouldn’t have to keep retuning his strings. Sometimes the Abbess would come to us, unable to restrain her desire, and read over my shoulder or listen with her eyes closed, to hear about Fergus and the Seal-Woman. But in the afternoons, when she had gone, we’d go inside and work on the Codex Druidae , the forbidden book. The actual text took no more than a week or so to rough in. I planned to spend more time on the illumination.
I must say, any reservations I had melted away once I actually heard the so-called sacred knowledge of my ancestors. No wonder they’d kept it secret! Most of it was utter nonsense. I remember one absurd formula for producing children out of nature, by combining tiny bits of the parents’ flesh in a glass dish. Some of their astronomy was fairly good, at least. They knew, like Pythagoras, that the Earth was a sphere, but they had this notion that the Earth revolves around the Sun! In fact, they thought—but it’s just too stupid to waste the ink in telling over again. I confess I was laughing as I took most of it down. No wonder Lewis had abandoned the priestly caste to be a bard.
And in any case, he was a kindly young man, and I couldn’t imagine him shutting unfortunate criminals into wicker cages and burning them alive. Not that he wouldn’t have been strong enough; one time he
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