Heather Oak and Olive Read online

  First Paul Dry Books Edition, 2015

  Paul Dry Books, Inc.

  Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

  www.pauldrybooks.com

  Copyright (c) 1965, 1966, 1968, 1971 by Rosemary Sutcliff

  Illustrations copyright (c) 1967, 1968, 1971 by Victor Ambrus

  All rights reserved

  ISBN: 978-1-58988-106-8

  E-ISBN: 978-1-58988-312-3

  Contents

  The Chief’s Daughter

  A Circlet of Oak Leaves

  A Crown of Wild Olive

  The Chief’s Daughter

  The Dun, the Strong-Place, stood far out on the headland, seeming almost to overhang the Western Sea. Three deep turf banks ringed it round, and where the hawthorn stakes of the stockade had taken root here and there, small stunted branches with salt-burned leaves grew bent all one way by the sea wind.

  The Chief’s big round Hall where the Fire of the Clan never died on the hearth, stood at the highest part of the enclosure, with his byres and barns and stables, and the women’s huts clumped about it. But in quiet times only the Chief himself and his kindred and household warriors lived there, while the rest of the Clan lived in the stone and turf bothies scattered over the landward side of the headland. Only when the raiders came out of the West in their skin-covered war boats, would the whole Clan drive their cattle into the spaces between the sheltering turf banks, and take refuge in the Chief’s stronghold.

  It was such a time now, the whole enclosure crowded with men and women and children and dogs and lean pigs, while the cattle lowed and fidgeted uneasily in their cramped space. For, three days ago, the war boats had come again, and the Irish raiders were loose along the coast of Wales, scouring the hills for cattle and slaves.

  On the sloping roof of the hut where the black herd bull lived, a boy and a girl were sprawling side by side. The boy would rather have climbed to the roof of the Hall, because from there you could get a further view to the west, but the turf of the Hall roof, tawny as a hound’s coat, was growing slippery with the dryness of late summer, while the bull-house was thatched with heather that gave you something to dig your toes and heels into, so that you did not keep sliding off all the time.

  The girl was ten years old, dark and slight, like most of the folk in the headland Strong-Place below her. She had found a grey and white seagull’s feather caught in the rough thatch, and was trying to twist it into her long dark hair. The boy, who lay propped on one elbow staring out to sea, was older, with hair and eyes almost the same color as the string of amber round his neck. He did not belong to the girl’s People, but was a prisoner in their hands, left behind wounded, the last time the Irish war boats came.

  The girl gave up trying to make the feather stay in her hair, and sat chewing on the end of it instead. “Dara, why will you always be staring out towards the sunset?”

  The boy went on staring. “I look towards my home.”

  “If you loved it so much, why did you leave it and come raiding in ours?”

  He shrugged. “I am a man. When the other men go raiding, should I sit at home spinning with the women?”

  “A man! You’re only twelve, even now! Only two years older than I am!”

  That time the boy did not answer at all. The sea creamed on the rocks under the headland, and from beneath the heather thatch came the soft heavy puffing of the herd bull. After a while the girl threw the feather away, and said crossly, “All right, go on staring into the sunset. I am not wanting to talk to you.”

  “Why should you want to talk to a prisoner?” Dara snapped, looking round at last. “You did not have to come climbing up here after me.”

  “You would not have been even a prisoner, if I had not pleaded for you. They meant to sacrifice you to the Black Mother; you know that, don’t you?”

  “I know that. You’ve reminded me often enough,” Dara said between his teeth. “It is a great honour that Nessan the Chief’s daughter should plead for me. I must remember and be grateful.”

  The girl seemed to have got over her sudden crossness, and looked at him consideringly. “Yes, I think you should,” she said after a moment, “for besides pleading for you with Father and with Laethrig the Priest, I gave my best blue glass arm-ring to the Mother, that she might not be angry with us for keeping you alive!”

  And then someone came past the bull-house with a clanking pail, and looked up and called to Dara that it was time he came down and took his share of the work, for the cattle needed watering.

  Just below the Chief’s Hall, where the land began to drop, a spring burst out from under a grey boulder. It filled a small deep pool almost like a well, then spilled over and away down the narrow gully it had worn for itself, through the gap left for it in the encircling banks, and dropped over the cliff edge making a thread of white water among the rocks, until it reached the sea. That evening it seemed to the men watering the cattle that it was running unusually low, and when the pails were brought up out of the well-pool, it took longer than usual to refill. Some of them looked at each other a little anxiously. But the spring had never been known to dry up, no matter how many men and cattle drank from it. They were imagining things. It would be its usual self in the morning.

  But in the morning, when it was time to water the cattle again, and the women came to draw the day’s pitcher-full for their households, there was scarcely any water spilling over into the little gully at all.

  “It has been a dry summer, I am thinking,” one woman said.

  Another shook her head. “We have had dry summers before.”

  “It is in my mind,” said a man standing by with a pail for his cattle, “that this thing must be told quickly to the Chief.”

  The Chief came, and looked down into the sullen stillness of the well, and then up into the heat-milky sky, pulling the dark front-locks of hair on either side of his face as he always did when troubled. “It must surely rain soon,” he said after a while. “Maybe rain is all we need. But meanwhile the cattle must be doing with half measure, and see that the women take their pitchers away only half full.”

  What he did not say, and no one else said either, for even to speak of such a thing would be unlucky, was, “If the water fails, the stronghold fails also.”

  All that day the people went about with anxious eyes, returning again and again to look at the spring. By evening, the pool had barely filled up again, and not one drop was spilling over into the stony runnel.

  Then the Chieftain sent for Laethrig the Priest. And Laethrig came, very old and brittle, like a withered leaf, in his mantle of beaver skins with his necklaces of dried seed pods and slender seabird bones rustling and rattling about his neck. And he sat down beside the spring and went away small inside himself so that looking into his eyes was like looking through the doorway of an empty hut. And it seemed a long time, to the men and women waiting about him, before he came back and looked out of his eyes again.

  “What is it?” they asked, softly like a little wind through the headland grasses. “What is it, Old Wise One?”

  The old man said, “It is as I feared. The Black Mother is angry with us because we did not slay in her honour the Irish captive.”

  The Chieftain had grown fond of the red-haired boy, and a shadow crossed his face, but he only said, “The Will of the Goddess is the Will of the Goddess. What must we do, Old Wise One?”

  Laethrig the Priest got slowly to his feet, and drew his beaver-skin mantle about him. “At first dark, we must begin to cry to the Goddess, on the sacred drums, and at moon-set we must make the sacrifice. Then the Black Mother will no longer be angry with us, and she will give us back the living water, so that our spring will run full again.”

  Nessan, on the outskirts of the crowd, had the sudden dreadful feeling of being tangled in a bad dream. In the dream she saw Dara standing quite still in the grip of the huge warrior who had caught hold of him. He looked more bewildered than afraid, and she thought that he had not really understood what Laethrig said. He and she could manage well enough when they talked together, but the tongue of the Irish raiders was different in many ways from the tongue that her own people spoke, and he might not have understood.

  Despite the hot evening, her feet seemed to have frozen to the ground, and she could not move or make a sound; and still in the bad dream she saw them take Dara away. She knew that he had begun to be afraid now; he looked back once as though with a desperate hope that someone would help him. And then he was gone.

  Nessan unfroze, and her head began to work again. It whirled with thoughts and half-ideas chasing each other round and round, while she still hovered on the edge of the murmuring crowd. And then quite suddenly, out of the chase and whirl, a plan began to come, detail after detail, until she knew exactly what she must do.

  The three Drummers of the Clan stepped into the open space beside the spring, and began to make a soft eery whispering and throbbing with their finger-tips on the sacred wolfskin drums, and all the Clan who were not already there, came gathering as though at a call. The sun was down and the shadows crowding in, made sharp-edged and thin by the moon, as she slipped away unnoticed by the crowd. The rest of the Dun was almost deserted now; no one noticed her as she slipped by like another shadow. She ran to the place where the stream gully zigzagged out through its gap at the cliff’s edge—everything depended on that—then to the out-shed where tomorrow’s bread was stored; then to a certain dark bothie among the sleeping-places. It was easy to find the right one, for the huge warr
ior who had taken Dara away stood on guard before its door-hole, leaning on his spear. Her heart was beating right up in her throat as she started to work her way round to the back of the bothie, so that she was sure only the throbbing of the drums kept the spear man from hearing it, and was terrified that they might stop.

  But she reached the back of the bothie, and checked there, carefully thinking out her next move.

  Many of the living huts had a loose strip of turf in the roof, which could be turned back to let in more air in hot summer weather, and by good fortune, this was one of them. She reached up (the rough stone walls were so low that the edge of the roof came down to only just above her head) and felt for the rope of twisted heather that held the loose end of the summer-strip in place, and found it. She pulled it free, but standing on the ground she could not reach up far enough to raise the turf flap more than a few fingers’ lengths. Well, that did not matter, so long as she could get a hand inside. She got a good hold on the top of the hut wall; it was easy enough to find a toe-hold in a chink between two stones, and she was as light as a cat. Next instant she was crouching belly-flat along the edge of the roof, listening for any sound from the man on the far side of the hut.

  No sound came. She found the edge of the summer-strip again, and lifted it a little and then a little more, until she could let it fold back on itself, with no more sound than a mouse might have made in the thatch.

  In the pitch darkness below the square hole, she thought she heard quick breathing and then a tiny startled movement. She ducked her head and shoulders inside. “Dara! It’s me—Nessan.”

  And Dara’s voice whispered back, “Nessan!”

  “Don’t make a sound! There’s a man with a spear outside. Have they tied you up?”

  “Yes—to the house-post.”

  “I am coming down.” Nessan felt for the right hold, and swung her legs into the hole, and dropped. Any sound that she made was covered by the wolfskin drums which woke at that moment into a coughing roar. Then she had found Dara and pulled her little food knife from her belt and was feeling for the rawhide ropes that lashed his hands behind him to the tall centre pole of the bothie.

  “What does it all mean?” he whispered. “What have I done?”

  “They say the Black Mother is angry, and that is why the spring is failing. They say that they must kill you at moon-set tonight, and then she will not be angry any more.”

  Dara gave a gasp, and jerked in his bonds.

  “Hold still, or I shall cut you! But they shan’t do it! I will not let them!”

  “How can you stop them?” Dara’s voice shook a little in the dark. “Go away, Nessan—go away before they find you!”

  Nessan didn’t bother to answer that. She went on sawing at the rawhide ropes, until suddenly the last strand parted. She gave a little sound like a whimper, under her breath. “There. Now come!”

  She could feel him rubbing his wrists to get the feeling back. “You first; you’re lighter than me.”

  She did not argue. There was no time. She reached up for the rough wall top, and felt Dara heave from below. She came up through the glimmering sky-square, and went right over in a kind of swooping scramble, to land on the earth outside. There was a faint grunt and a scuffle, the dark shape of Dara’s head and shoulders appeared through the hole, and next instant he had dropped onto his feet beside her.

  She caught his hand, and began to run, out towards the seaward side of the Dun, away from those terrible drums. When she pulled up, panting, they were at the gap in the turf walls where the stream gully passed through.

  “Look! This is the way you must go—they don’t guard this side. And when you’re away, you’ll be able to find a war band of your own people.”

  They had scrambled down the dry runnel-bed, right to the far edge of the gap, and the cliff plunged almost from their feet to the sea creaming among the rocks far down below. Dara looked—and down—and down—and swallowed as though he felt sick.

  “You’ve got to go that way!” Nessan whispered fiercely. “It’s easy.”

  “If it’s so easy, why don’t they guard it?”

  “Because the water from the spring makes it slippery, and no one could keep his footing on the wet rocks. But now it’s dry. Don’t you see? It’s dry!” She fished hurriedly down the front of her tunic, and held something out to him.

  “Here’s a barley cake. Now go quick!”

  But the boy Dara hesitated an instant longer. “Nessan, why are you doing this?”

  “I—don’t want you to be killed.”

  “I don’t want to be killed either. But Nessan, what will they do to you?”

  “They will not do anything. No one will know that I had anything to do with it, if only you go quickly.”

  Dara tried to say something more, then flung an arm round her neck in a small fierce hug and next instant was creeping forward alone.

  She was half crying, as he crouched and slithered away, feeling for every hand- and foot-hold along the grass-tufted cliff edge, and disappeared in the black moon-shadow of the turf wall. She waited shivering, ears on the stretch for any sound. Once she heard the rattle of a falling pebble, but nothing more. At last she turned back towards the Chief’s Hall, and the quickening throb of the wolfskin drums.

  To Dara, that time of clinging and clambering along the shelving ledges of bare rocks and summer-burned grass, with the turf wall rising steeply on his right side, and on his left the empty air and the drop to the fanged rocks and the sea, was the longest that he had ever known. And at every racing heart-beat he was terrified of a false step that would send him whirling down into that dreadful emptiness with the rocks at the bottom of it, or betray him to the terrible little dark men within the Dun. But at last the space between the turf wall and cliff edge grew wider, and then wider still, and soon he was clear of the Dun, and the deserted turf huts scattered inland of it, and he gathered himself together and ran.

  After a while he slowed down. No sense in simply running like a hare across country, and he had no idea in what direction he would find the war bands of his own people. And at that moment he realized that he had no weapon. Nessan had slipped her knife back into her belt after she had cut his bonds, and neither of them had thought of it again. He was alone and unarmed in an enemy country. Well, there was nothing to do but keep going and hope that he would not need to kill for food or run into any kind of trouble before he found his own people.

  Presently, well into the hills, he came upon a moorland pool, where two streamlets met. It was so small and shallow that he could have waded through it in several places, and scarcely get wet to the knee. And the moon, still high in the glimmering sky, showed him an upright black stone that stood taller than a man, exactly between the two streamlets where they emptied themselves into the pool. A black stone, in a countryside where other stones were grey; and twisted about the narrowest part near the top, a withered garland of tough moorland flowers: ling and ragwort and white-plumed bog-grasses.

  Dara stood staring at it with a feeling of awe. And as he did so, a little wind stirred the dry garland, and from something fastened among the brittle flower-heads, the moonlight struck out a tiny blaze of brilliant blue fire! Nessan’s blue glass arm-ring! He caught his breath, realizing that this must be the Goddess herself, the Black Mother. But at the same instant, he noticed the spear which stood upright in the tail of the pool. A fine spear, its butt ending in a ball of enameled bronze; an Irish spear!

  His own people must have passed this way and come across the Goddess whose People they had been raiding, and left an offering to turn aside her anger. He noticed also that the spear, set up in what seemed to be the place where the two streams joined before the feet of the Black Mother, had caught a dead furze branch on its way down and twigs and birch leaves and clumps of dry grass, even the carcase of some small animal, had drifted into the furze branch and clung there, building up into something like a small beaver’s dam, and blocking the stream so that it had spread out into a pool. And as the pool grew high enough, it had begun to spill over a new runnel that it was cutting for itself down the hillside.