The Magic Circle by Katherine Neville (13 inch ebook reader .TXT) 📗

really been accomplished, of all they’d once hoped and planned? What would become of the objects the Master had wanted them to safeguard? Would they, or the Master, ever rise again?

It had been thirty years since the Master’s death. Joseph was now nearly seventy, and everything he’d fought so hard to preserve seemed to be washing away beneath his feet. When he’d returned here to the south last year, for example, it was only to discover that his small sod-walled church at Glastonbury—along with most of southern Britannia—had burned to the ground during the year-long civil unrest.

It seemed everything he’d lived for and the Master had died for was vanishing like a cloud floating off toward the horizon. Even those words of the Master’s that both Joseph and Miriam had fought so hard to preserve for so long were now back in clay cylinders, tucked away in a cave in the Cambrian hills. And lacking a proud tradition like that of the Druids—an oral tradition that the Master himself had hoped would preserve his words and actions in memory forever—all their lives, including the Master’s, seemed to be slipping away, lost in that no-man’s land somewhere between memory and myth.

Conquerors wrote history, as was often pointed out. But history was what had already happened, what was past and finished, thought Joseph. What of the future? That was precisely what he was about to return north to find out. For though, in these past thirty years, the Druids had helped Joseph spread the Master’s philosophy here in Britannia as well as across the straits in Eire and even in Gaul, today the Druids themselves were hunted to earth like wild beasts by the Romans.

But with their deeply religious feeling for life and the land, their ancient Celtic culture, and that peculiar strain of mysticism they chose to nurture in themselves and in others, Joseph was inspired to hope perhaps they could put him in touch once more with the mission the Master had set him upon so many years ago. Maybe even with the Master himself. That’s why he had offered himself as the messenger.

For the first time in thirty years, Joseph knew with certainty that something of great importance was about to happen—though whether for good or ill, he couldn’t foresee.

Black Lake, Britannia: Beltaine, A.D. 61

SENDING THE MESSENGER

All good things, my dear Klea, sensible men must ask from the gods

.

—Plutarch,

Isis

&

Osiris

, to Klea, priestess of Delphi

It was midnight when the Roman sentries finally departed the area and it was safe to build the fire. The rest of the tribe stood at a distance, sheltered by the dark woods.

Joseph, with the three other men who’d been chosen, stood beside the fire and watched in silence as Lovernios, his skin bronzed by the flame, mixed some lake water with the flour of five grains they’d brought and prepared the pancake, then wrapped it in damp leaves and cooked it in the ashes. When the pancake was done, he unfolded it and burned one corner a bit; then he broke it into five pieces, four cooked and one burned, and placed them in the bowl.

He held the bowl before each man, and each pulled out one piece. Lovernios accepted the last. When Joseph opened his hand, he found he had not chosen the blackened fragment of the pancake. He glanced at the others with a mixture of relief and discomfort as, one by one, each man looked up from his hand. Then the tall, handsome young man with russet hair and beard, Lovernios’s own son Belinus, smiled broadly in the firelight. He held open his hand containing the blackened fragment and displayed it for all to see. His smile was so radiant that, for just that fleeting instant, he reminded Joseph of the Master. Though Joseph hadn’t meant to disturb the ceremony no matter what might happen, he’d never expected Belinus to be the one.

“No!” Joseph heard himself say aloud.

Lovernios quietly put his hand on Joseph’s arm, then threw his other arm around his son’s shoulders and squeezed him, almost with a look of pride.

“Let it be me,” Joseph protested quietly to Lovernios. “Not your son: he’s only thirty-three with his entire life ahead of him. I’m nearly seventy, and a failure.”

Lovernios threw back his head and laughed aloud—which hardly seemed appropriate to Joseph under the circumstance.

“If that’s the case, my friend,” he told Joseph, “then why do you volunteer? What possible good could you be even to us, much less to the gods? Belinus is the perfect specimen—strong, healthy, unblemished. And he knows how to be the perfect servant, to submit to God’s will. Ask him if he isn’t happy to serve as our messenger.”

Joseph was suddenly flooded with the memory of the Master’s last meal, when he’d washed the others’ feet. He wondered why, whenever he thought of anything profoundly moving, instead of feeling inspiration he only wanted to cry. Belinus smiled almost beatifically at Joseph as he opened his mouth and happily popped in the blackened pancake. When he’d swallowed it, he came to Joseph and took him in his broad arms, rocking him gently just as Lovernios had once done, so many years ago.

“Joseph, Joseph,” he said. “I won’t be dying, you know. I’m going to eternal life. You must be happy for me. When I see your Esus on the other side, I shall bring him your loving thoughts.”

Joseph put a hand over his eyes and sobbed, but Belinus only glanced at Lovernios with a bemused shrug. His expression said: All these years living among the Druids and he still thinks like a pagan or a Roman.

They motioned for the others to come out of the woods as Joseph tried to collect himself. One by one, the people of the Celtic tribes moved from the shadowy thickets, came before the fire to be blessed, then carried their treasures of gold or copper to the lakeside and committed them to the waters. When all the vessels,