Camelot’s Shadow. Sarah Zettel
may rest assured, my lord, that I will keep myself and my purpose well hidden.’ It is, after all, something at which I am quite practised.
That answer seemed to satisfy him and Euberacon left. When he shut the door, the raven perched on the couch let out a single derisive call and flew to her shoulder, running its beak familiarly through her hair until she reached up to stroke its feathers.
In response to its call, first one then another of the great black birds glided in through the window, settling themselves on chests and chairs, on the bedstead and the couch and any other surface where they might find room. Soon they were as thick as autumn leaves, filling the air with their raucous conversation, and filling her mind with their mischief and impressions.
‘Yes,’ she murmured to her friends, and to the man who had just departed. ‘I have had much practice at keeping myself concealed.’
Euberacon knew little of her past and cared less, or so he had said. She had told him her grandmother had been a slave in a sprawling villa when the Romans still ruled the island. For the great family, grandmother had been herbalist and bone-setter and had been well rewarded for her work. She had also been fair on the way to teaching her own daughter her arts.
When the last of the Romans fled back to their own hot land before the fast-approaching Saxons, grandmother had simply dressed herself and her daughter up in travelling clothes and set them on the road. They would walk until they found a village or other settlement. A healer’s talents were always welcome, she reasoned, and would be well rewarded – perhaps with a cottage and some goats or pigs.
What Kerra had not told Euberacon was how badly grandmother’s plan had failed. He believed Kerra had been raised in the bosom of a noble house and come honestly by her bearing and manners. But the truth was, the Saxons had raged across the country like a wildfire, taking what they wanted and burning the rest. It was only slowly that they began to think of staying in this rich new land. As grandmother walked on, she found great need for her skills, but none who could afford to keep her and her swiftly blossoming daughter, so they continued to walk.
In time, the daughter had a daughter of her own. By then, mother had grown to love the roving life, and gave no thought to settling down. She walked contentedly from place to place, plying her arts, taking whatever payment in coin or kind she was offered, and moving on again.
All might have gone well, but as Kerra grew, it soon became clear that all was not right with her. Voices no one else could hear whispered in her ears. She suffered violent headaches, and would sometimes fall to the ground, foaming at the mouth, her body writhing uncontrollably. At such times, she saw visions and uttered prophecy in strange tongues.
The attacks became more frequent and no amount of prayer or physic seemed to help them. Mother found herself less welcome in the villages. Here and there a voice muttered ‘witch’, and pointed at Kerra. Once, the people drove them out with stones and clubs, the priest leading the way, his cross held high.
After that, mother started telling Kerra to stay behind, to hide in the woods until she could determine if it was safe for Kerra to come inside the walls of the town or the limits of the croft. Sometimes, Kerra would be smuggled in after dark and hidden in a barn or pantry. Other times, she would be left in the woods, with mother venturing out to bring her food when she searched for the plants and herbs that were her cures. These times became more frequent and Kerra began to fear the day that mother would decide to walk on and leave her mad, bedevilled daughter to fend for herself.
The dreams only made it worse.
At night when she closed her eyes, Kerra began to see a black-haired woman. At least, sometimes she was a woman. Sometimes she was a flock of ravens, or a great, black mare. The woman promised Kerra she could take away the fits, and make it so the voices only came when Kerra wished for them. All Kerra had to do was help her.
At first, Kerra tried to block out the dreams. She prayed herself to sleep and made herself a cross to clutch through the night. But gradually, she began to listen to the dream woman. No one else had ever said they could help. The midwives and cunning men mother consulted had done little more than shake their heads. The priests had laid their hands on her head and raised their eyes to Heaven, and nothing had changed. This woman swore she could help, and all she wanted in return was a healer. Her infant son was ill with a fever in his lungs, she said. The sickness had spread to her. She was weak. He was dying. If Kerra helped them, saved their lives as her mother surely would had she but known, then Kerra would be taught to control the power that was within her.
Kerra could not long resist such a promise. It was harvest time. They were staying with a cluster of fishers on the ocean shore who agreed mother’s ‘half-wit’ daughter could stay in the drying shed as long as mother played midwife for the two bearing women and healer for the men who worked with lines and nets.
At the dark of the moon, Kerra crept from her warm, stinking shelter and fled inland to where the woods began. There she found the woman who named herself Morgaine and the infant boy, her son, saved from drowning she said. His lungs were bad, and his fever was high, and his mother had little milk to give him. Kerra built them a shelter of branches such as she and her mother used when they were on the road. She brought them goat’s milk, and fish and mussels she searched out from the tide pools. She brewed them strong teas using her mother’s recipes and herbs she had filched from her mother’s bags or ferreted out from the woods.
Slowly, the babe improved. His cough subsided and his limbs grew round and strong again. When it became clear that he would live, Morgaine began to keep her promise to Kerra.
Kerra, Morgaine said, was not cursed, but blessed. It was only because she was untutored that her natural powers threatened to run wild. She taught Kerra the rites that would summon the voices and the visions, and send them peaceably away. Her fits faded away to memory and all her dreams were of the normal kind. She learned how to call the ravens to her as friends, and how to work with bone and poison to achieve her ends when the healer’s art was of no use. She learned the names of the powers that inhabited land and sea, their natures and which were to be avoided and which might be plied or pressed into service.
In time, she also learned manners, dress and bearing. She learned the ways of men and women and how they might be enhanced with her other arts. To all these studies and many more she applied herself willingly, until the day came when it was she who walked away. Leaving her mother to her roving, Kerra set herself firmly and finally to Morgaine’s campaign against the king in Camelot and his helpmeet and fellow conspirator, Guinevere.
The voices of her companions roused Kerra from her bitter reveries. Their thoughts pushed against hers. They did not like this place. They wanted her to come with them, to fly, and to sport on the winds.
Kerra smiled at the great flock gathered around her.
‘Yes, my friends,’ she said. ‘Yes, we will fly.’
Kerra retrieved her sewing basket. From under the meaningless pieces of fine work, she drew out a great black cloak. The basket itself was far too small to conceal such an object, but it came to her hand nonetheless. She shook it and the sunlight glinted on the rich black feathers borrowed from one thousand living ravens. Kerra settled the cloak over her shoulders, closed the bone clasp, drew the hood up over her hair and steeled herself against the pain.
Kerra’s bones began to shrink. Her legs lengthened and her joints buckled, feet and toes split and splayed. Her body solidified and her neck thickened even as her face lengthened and bone split skin to form a sharp, black beak. Feathers sprouted from every pore and from the tip of each finger as her arms reshaped themselves to become her wings and all around her the ravens voiced their approval.
Then, one bird among many, she took to the air, beating her wings joyfully until she was able to catch the wind and soar with the rest of the flock over the tops of the trees and away out into the countryside.
As Euberacon watched, the ravens one by one left their perches on the roof and in the trees beyond the fortress walls, joining Kerra in her eyrie.
He knew she had her own plans that she kept carefully hidden from him. She thought she was using him,