Yes! Oh, yes, she remembered that all right! She thought back to that extraordinary night and reminded herself how she had quashed her panic and used her common sense. I could do that here if I had to, she told herself firmly. And, walking on, raised her chin as if in answer to an unspoken challenge.
Huathe was moving more swiftly now and she broke into a trot to keep up with him. Under a broken branch, over an outcrop of stones, past the great bulge of a yew tree’s thick foliage; they were still climbing and she was panting. Then a sudden sense of light as the forest canopy thinned: Huathe had stopped and, coming to stand beside him, she found herself looking at brilliant sunshine illuminating a wide glade right at the summit of the hill.
He did not speak but stood with a gentle smile on his face, allowing her to see for herself. And Joanna, already drugged with the very essence of spring, tried to take in everything at once and made herself dizzy in the attempt. Shaking her head, laughing, she tried again.
Gradually her eyes became accustomed to the dazzle of light on the amazing scene before her. Most of the trees had been cleared away, so that sentinel oaks stood in a protective circle around an all but bare hilltop; the exception was a lone oak under which there grew an ancient hawthorn that seemed to crouch like an old man huddled in upon himself. A long, thin white banner had been fastened to an upper branch. The hawthorn stood above a small cairn of granite rocks whose purpose she did not immediately discern.
Then she realised that the sound of water was much louder here. Leaping forward, she saw that the rise of the ground immediately in front of her had in fact concealed the stream that flowed out from the hillside, shallow across stones and as clear as light, running away down to her right, towards the valley below. Looking to her left, up to the very top of the hill, she saw now that the cairn marked the place where the water issued out of the earth. She glanced at Huathe and, at his nod of permission, she walked slowly up the stream to the cairn.
Beside the cairn, at the spot immediately above the sparkling spring, there was a huge, flat piece of granite, almost like a platform. It had an aura of power about it and she knew not to stand on it. Instead she fell to her knees and peered down into the hollow basin into which the spring flowed out of the hillside. The bed of the basin was pale, as if white powder had been spilt there, and at frequent intervals a small line of air bubbles would rise out of it and come up to the surface. It was quite hypnotic; Joanna wriggled round until she was lying on her stomach and, gazing into the water, she noticed that some of the flat stones on the stream bed had developing newts clinging to their smooth surfaces.
Presently Huathe spoke. ‘This is the spring of Barenton,’ he intoned, ‘although some call it Merlin’s Fountain.’
She knew he was going to speak again and so she did not answer. After a pause, he said, ‘To us, this place is Nime, for that is the name of the goddess whose spirit is here. It is she who brings the Mother’s gift of water from the Otherworld that is the source of life. Her presence blesses the water and the place and her power protects both.’
Nime, Joanna repeated to herself. Still she did not speak; there was something in the air — tension, anticipation — that told her not to.
‘You have felt the power and the presence, Beith; I read this in you.’ She nodded. ‘I observed your glance at the stone’ — he indicated the huge slab of granite — ‘and I sense that you knew without being told that it is a force focus and not a place for the casual footstep.’
Joanna watched as he approached the stone platform and, after a low bow, knelt before it and put his hands on its glassy surface. Then he reached down into the basin and dipped his fingertips into the bright water, straightening up and allowing drops to fall on the granite.
It seemed to Joanna that a mist began to form immediately over the flat stone, as if the spring water were vaporising; the creamy mist swirled, forming itself into shapes that endured for the blink of an eye before dissipating and reforming as something else. Joanna thought she saw shadowy robed figures; a running horse; an arrow’s flight; a sword. She felt a sort of pulse briefly beat through the warm air, as if thunder had exploded in the distance and its shock waves had reached her before its sound. Then, to complete the image, she heard a muffled thunderclap.
She whispered, ‘What is it? What are you doing?’
Huathe smiled. ‘Do not be alarmed; you are quite safe. People sometimes scare themselves here; for the unwary hear the rumours and the old tales and they come here to test them out. More than once we have had to treat foolhardy men who stamp on this sacred stone and then are terrified when the predicted response comes.’
‘What happens?’
Huathe shrugged. ‘Usually a storm, or what is perceived to be a storm.’
‘And they — these people — they are injured?’
‘Their minds are injured, for sometimes they imagine that lightning strikes them, or that it strikes trees which then fall upon them.’
‘But. .’ She was struggling to understand. ‘But these things don’t really happen?’
Huathe was smiling again. ‘Beith, there is so much you must learn. First, you have to open your mind to possibilities. Our great task is to search for the sublime, to delve into what is secret and arcane and, by so doing, achieve the uplifting that is our destiny.’
Reeling from his announcement, from the concept of opening a mind that she had never actually considered closed, she realised that he was speaking again; thankfully, for she was not sure how much more she could absorb, he had turned to matters which, in the light of her own experience, she felt better able to comprehend.
‘We use the spring water to make our divination mirror,’ Huathe was saying. ‘The water is collected in a bowl of red granite. On clear nights, Moon’s reflection in the still, dark water of the basin gives the illusion that she is drawn down to Earth and so we tell ourselves that she is temporarily within our reach.
‘But,’ he went on after a moment, ‘the water has another purpose, and it is to do with this that you have been sent here.’ He had moved away from the granite slab as he spoke and now stood beside her once more. Looking right into her eyes — into her soul, she thought, for she had no defence against his penetration and did not dare look away — he said, ‘Beith, I know what you have done. You took life and an adjustment must be made.’
Adjustment. She did not know what he meant. ‘I am to be punished?’ She heard the shake in her voice.
‘No, that would not be appropriate,’ he said quickly, looking away from her and out across the glade, ‘for to kill in self-defence or to protect those who cannot protect themselves is to us no crime. But because of your actions two men died, and your spirit carries the burden of that. The adjustment of which I speak involves recompense; in order to balance what has happened to you, you must save the lives of two people who are dying.’
‘Me! I can’t save life, I don’t know how to!’ Huathe, still serenely smiling, ignored her outburst. She forced herself to think sensibly. Save lives. Did that mean she was to treat the sick? ‘It is true that I have a little herb lore,’ she said tentatively, ‘for I was well taught in my youth and have studied the matter more intensively in the course of the last two years. But I do not know nearly enough to save lives!’
‘Not yet,’ he remarked. ‘And it is a good beginning, young Beith, to recognise one’s ignorance.’ He turned back to face her again. ‘But you will learn,’ he said in a tone that allowed no argument, ‘and that is why you are here.’
Joanna stayed at Folle-Pensee throughout the spring and summer. It was a period of such intensive study and learning that at times she had to isolate herself from the community and, alone in the forest, try to order and make sense of the endless lore, the legends and stories, the whirling thoughts and inspirational possibilities that her teachers were instilling into her. She realised that, while people came and went from Folle-Pensee quite regularly, there remained a core of elders and teachers who were healers or instructors; sometimes, like Huathe, they were both. These elders lived in the relative comfort of the low granite cottages; for temporary residents such as Joanna, it was the shelter under the birch trees.