The Winged Man

CHAPTER 3-1

CHAPTER 3

The Oracle of SulIn the region he entered next, the hills were high and the forests thick. To guard its secrets the very earth itself seemed to place obstacles in the way of the casual traveller. Only those who were serious seekers it seemed might penetrate to the deepest mysteries, and the directions given to him at Trinovantum were too vague to be reliable at this stage. Bladud reflected on the noise and bustle of his father’s court, the endless comings and goings, the pressure on him to conform to his father’s ideal of the heir to the High Kingship. He knew that his younger brother, Liel, passionately wanted the throne, and with his prodigious warrior skills he would no doubt be the people’s choice. But Bladud remained his father’s choice and, being the elder son, would have this advantage when the councils met throughout the land to elect a new High King at the death of Hudibras. How much time had he spent in his short life learning to kill? How often had he balked at the days and nights spent with the warrior bands listening to their boasting of conquests past and to come, while stirring up conflicts for the present as though they knew of nothing better to do with their lives than butt their heads against a fellow man or drive a dagger into his heart? Sometimes he wondered if there was something wrong with him that he lacked enthusiasm for the heroic pursuits of his fellows. He was never happy riding into battle, though the eyes of others glowed with excitement at such a challenge. He preferred galloping alone on the hills with only the sun and wind as companions, and nothing at the end of the ride but a pleasant weariness and a memory of joy. He preferred the songs and stories that told of magical journeys and exploits, of mysterious and shining beings, of monsters defeated by cunning, and beautiful women won by love.

On this journey, he had felt happier than he had ever been, cherishing the solitariness of his days, exhilarated by the challenges of his quest. Many tales had been told of the Oracle of Sul — but not many men had ever encountered her. Was she indeed as frightening as they said? Did she curse as readily as she blessed? Did she truly know the future and foretell the minutest detail of one’s life? Could she read the thoughts buried deep in one’s heart, even those one refused to acknowledge to oneself? Would she be able to cure him of his restlessness — that inner itch of dissatisfaction that bedevilled him? He knew he was seeking something, but he did not know what. The constant fear that haunted him was that he would die an old man looking back on a life that he had wasted.

He was near his destination now. He knew it. But not wanting to arrive weary and in the shadows of evening, he chose to spend one more night in the open.

He left the tangled forest in the river valley and climbed one of the many hills that guarded the entrance to the oracle’s domain. He reached the top just as the sun set: the whole sky was suffused with a pale glow ranging from delicate pearl green to gold and ultimately, nearest the sun itself, to red. In the valley below, the curve of the river he had left behind blazed like a polished copper sickle among the darkening foliage. Wild geese flew above him: black ciphers on the tablet of the sky — black sparks in a dying conflagration. Ah, to be able to wing it like the birds! Bladud watched them longingly as they covered in moments wide distances that would take him a day of exhausting effort to traverse. For a moment they were silhouetted against the vast red-gold ball of the sun, and then they were gone. Soon the sun, too, was gone, sinking into the blue distance on its mysterious journey into the Otherworld, leaving the earth without light — life barely tolerable in the dark.

Bladud stood on the top of the hill and watched the great drama that never ceased to amaze him, no matter how often he saw it.

‘Sul,’ he prayed. ‘Mighty goddess! Guide me. Help me. Protect me.’

He had known of her long before he set out on this journey, but had never experienced her presence before — as now he did. In the cool breeze of evening he felt her breath; in the blue and gathering dark he saw the drawing of her cloak over the land; in the hush of all nature preparing to sleep he thought he heard her whisper his name. He knew now it had been his destiny to come to this place. He had thought it was his own decision to leave home and embark on this journey, but he had been wrong. She was drawing him to her. She was calling to him. She was guiding him, preparing the way for him, preparing him to meet her.

He watched until the daylight was gone, and then he lay down. But above him the mighty procession of the stars was in progress, and that night — the night before he reached her oracle — he could not sleep.

* * * *

He had seen stars before but never so brilliant, so intense. They seemed much closer as he lay flat on his back and he had the distinct impression that he was moving, wheeling with them; that he was amongst them, no longer separate, no longer apart. He was on a journey passing through them, as easily as a boat passes through water-flowers on a still pond. He stared in amazement as the ground dissolved beneath him, as he hovered bodiless in an immense space — as filaments of light floated past him, from darkness... going into darkness. Strange how on earth one lamp can illuminate a huge chamber, but here in the night the powerful light of the stars made no impression on the blackness of the spaces between them. He had never been so aware of the contrast between dark and light — nor so little afraid.

What was he as he moved through the stars as freely as a bird moves through the air? For he could not believe that he was still the man he had once been. He remembered how, as a small child, he had leaped off a high rock, shouting to his companions that he was flying. He could still see their faces looking up at him in that long moment before he crashed to the ground — some with awe, some with hope, some with scepticism, but all with close attention. For the brief moment when he was not attached to the earth or anything on it, he really believed that he was flying. He strained every muscle in his small body to lift himself up. In his dreams it was so easy, and often he dreamed he was flying over hills, over forests.

He had dreamed once that he soared above his father’s rath in the city of Trinovantum, looking down on the great White Mound in which his ancestors were buried and at the High King’s great house from which his father controlled the lives of thousands upon thousands. They had seemed small and insignificant from that vantage, his father’s formidable warriors no more dangerous than ants. But what was so easy in a dream was not so easy in reality. His child’s body, light as it was, was too heavy for the air. He could feel himself falling. He could feel his bones crack against the rocky earth, and he screamed and screamed with pain and frustration. The other children laughed and mocked, all the more so because for one moment he had led them to believe that they too were not bound to the earth but could fly like the birds if they so willed it.

Bladud remembered, clearly as yesterday, the face of Fergal, his father’s Druid priest, who had been watching the whole humiliating incident. The man looked down into the tear-stained face of the hurt and disappointed child, and there was something in his expression that came vividly back to Bladud at this moment. At the time he could only wonder why the priest did not pick him up and comfort him, as grown-ups usually did. Now it seemed to him the Druid had been in trance, as he had often seen him since, and was seeing not the weeping child but something else, something extraordinary.

Suddenly Bladud felt afraid. Was it some memory of the pain he had suffered as a child that day — the shock of falling? Or was it rather the Druid’s strange expression that made him feel he faced a destiny that was too difficult for him — a task for which he was not yet ready?

He found he was no longer moving through the stars. He was back on earth, where the rough grass of the hilltop pricked his skin and made it itch. But was it the cold night breeze alone that made him shiver?

Above him, immensely far away, the stars were again minute points of light in a solid black dome, as remote and unattainable as they had always been.

With a start he turned his head at hearing a movement near him on the bare hilltop. As though to mock him, a huge owl flapped over his head and winged away into the dark — a hunting owl seeking earth-bound prey.

* * * *

Dawn came at last — the sky at first a pale translucent grey. He watched the stars disappear one by one until only one was left, and that seemed loth to go. It shone like a shoulder brooch on a cloak of fine grey silk, focusing the eye and holding all together. It still remained like a faint flush of gold as the east prepared the world for the return of the sun. Stiff from the long hours on his back, Bladud hauled himself to his feet. His clothes were damp from the dew and he shook and rubbed off the stray grasses clinging to him before he looked around. It seemed the world had disappeared behind a white mist, and he alone was there to celebrate the first rays of sunlight. He was awed by the magnificence of what he had been shown.

‘I will be worthy,’ he whispered.

He could now feel the sun’s warmth loosening his stiff limbs and bringing him comfort. He watched the world gradually reappearing: the trees at first like faint smudges — and then like delicate black filigree — until at last they blazed in every shade of living green. Birds were on the move high in the sky, pulling the luminous curtain of day across the earth.

As hill after hill appeared he counted. He had been told the oracle was guarded by seven hills. This was the place.

When the whole emerging landscape lay bathed in full sunlight, he left the hilltop and made his way down into the valley which lay to the west. He thought about Fergal, and wondered why the Druid priest had been so hostile to this pilgrimage, doing everything short of casting spells to prevent the young prince setting off. He could picture him now standing tall and lean and disapproving beside the gate, to deliver his last dire warning.

‘Your destiny is to be High King of this mighty and civilised land. Meddle with the superstitions of savages at your peril!’

But Bladud was not prepared to listen. He had learned about this oracle from his friend Yaruk who was one of those very ‘savages’, one of the race who had inhabited this land long before Fergal’s Celtic people had arrived — even before Brutus, descendant of that great Trojan Prince Aeneas, forefather of his own royal line, had come ashore on this island with his stolen Greek princess, to seek sanctuary. How many times had he been told that his ancient and noble family was far superior to all the local races — even superior to the powerful warrior Celts who imposed their will upon the indigenous population with such arrogant ease. He did not know what skilful and cunning manoeuvre his father’s people had used to achieve this liaison with the Celts, so that Hudibras, with blood from Troy and Greece and Rome in his veins, held the most coveted throne in all the land.

But, growing up in the town founded by the Trojan Brutus and called at first New Troy, then Trinovantum, Bladud was not unaware of the tensions that often threatened that royal position. On the whole the Druids served his father’s dynasty loyally, and over the generations any differences between the two so-called ‘civilised’ races had become minimal through intermarriage since both united in despising the ‘savages’. Occasionally however one of the despised race was given a place at court to help keep the peace, and Yaruk was such a one. The boy had caught the eye of the High King on one of his regular royal progresses, because of his skill in carving.