Read Online The Eagle and the Raven by Pauline Gedge - Free Book Online Page A

in and out of the thicket.
    “Where is Boudicca this morning?” Caradoc asked her.
    “She and Subidasto left sometime in the night,” she said without turning, her arms raised to reach the highest clusters. “Very rude of them, I thought, to go without the cup of farewell.”
    “Did…did the Druid go with them?”
    She lowered her arms and grinned at him slyly. “Of course. How transparently anxious you are! Everyone is talking about your midnight visitor.”
    He groaned. “Not you too, Aricia. No words, please. I do not know why he selected me for his silly maunderings and I do not care. Now shall we walk on, and find some blackberries?”
    He lifted the pouch now bulging with nuts and they sauntered on with no fear of being lost. He had grown up in these woods—they belonged to his family—and in the daylight hours he had explored every inch of them, and he knew the burrows and sets of every mole and badger, every fox and rabbit. They passed the big oak that was so good for climbing, and the little clearing with the ring of mushrooms that had always been “safe” ground to the pursued when he and Tog had hunted each other. They pushed their way into the dense thickets of trailing bramble bushes whose arching stems with the cruel thorns tore at their clothes and their hands.
    “There is no room in the pouch for berries,” Aricia said. “Let’s just eat them. There are so few left now. Most of them have rotted.”
    They lifted the fuzzed purple berries gently, and crushed them in their mouths, savoring the sweetness, and their fingers and mouths were soon stained with the dark juice. The mist was very thick in here, white and wet, and the cobwebs festooning the gaunt tree trunks were weighed down with thousands of shimmering, pear-shaped crystals. But it was not cold. Only still and secret and private, a hushed world within a world.
    Presently Caradoc raised his head. “Listen!” he whispered, and she paused, berry halfway to her mouth. In the silence the steady trickle of water could be heard. “A new spring has opened somewhere close by,” he said. “Come!”
    They followed the sound, and after a while found a clearing, not open to the sky but clear on the ground. Long, wet grass stood there, and pine needles lay dark around the feet of the surrounding trees. In the center, a well of water bubbled up and trickled away through the grass in two little channels already grooved in the spongy turf.
    Aricia knelt and fumbled at her girdle. “A new goddess has come to live here,” she said with awe. “Quick, Caradoc, have you any money?”
    “No, but I have my ring.” He drew it reluctantly from his thumb, and together they approached the spring, laying Aricia’s bronze coin and his own gold ring in the ice-cold, pure water, and for a moment they stayed there, hypnotized by the quiet tinkle of the gushing water.
    Soon Aricia sat back on her heels with a sigh. “Such a beautiful, hallowed place,” she said. “But I think we should go. Someone may steal our horses.”
    He put a hand under her elbow and helped her to her feet, then found that he could not let her go. She was a bright-clad and living thing here among this quiet, mute-colored wetness. Her breath was a warm cloud, her skin perfumed, and there was no one to see them and no one to know. Only they themselves would see his shame well up again. He took her other arm and turned her roughly to face him, then lowered his head and found her lips, cold, resistant, tasting of berry juice. For one moment she relaxed against him, then stiffened and wrenched her head away. He dropped his arms, feeling foolish.
    “Son of a dog,” she said viciously. “Will you marry me?”
    “No.”
    “Do you not love me?”
    “Aricia.”
    “It would not matter,” she whispered, her breath hissing into his face. “What you feel for me is something stronger, isn’t it, Caradoc? You will never be rid of me. Don’t think you can brush me aside, for I am buried