"Morgan Llywelyn - Druids" - читать интересную книгу автора (Llywelyn Morgan)

thought, peeping at her through slitted eyelids.

When I thought I could stand it no longer, she finally got up,
joint by joint, in the manner of the very old. She took a small
stone bottle I had never seen before from the carved wooden chest
that held her personal belongings, and drank its contents in one
long swallow. Her wattled throat trembled. Then, with one hasty
glance at me to be sure I was asleep, she took her heavy cloak
from its peg and left the lodge. An icy blast of air eddied through
the briefly opened door.

I assumed she had gone outside to relieve herself. The bowels
of old people are unreliable. Seizing my chance, I bunched my
bedding to resemble a sleeping figure, then grabbed my own cloak
and hurried from the lodge.

The fort was asleep. The only living creature I saw was a cat

DRUIDS 7

hunting rats near a storage shed. The moon was shrouded in cloud,
but the wintry night had an icy luminosity that allowed me to see
well enough to make my way to a section of the palisade con-
cealed by the sheds of the craftsmen. The lone sentry at the main
gate was dozing at his post in the watchtower.

With a run and a leap I scrambled up the vertical timbers of
the wall, a forbidden feat that every boy in the fort, and not a few
of the girls, had mastered by the time they had all their meat-
eating teeth.

We were a people who dared.

The palisade was built atop a bank of earth and rubble with a
considerable drop on the far side. Though I landed with bent
knees, the shock of impact took my breath away. As soon as I
recovered I set off for the grove.

Camutian tribeland included much of the broad plain traversed
by the sandy-bedded river Liger and its tributaries. Beside one of
these, the Autura, a great forested ridge thrust upward from level
land, dominating the landscape, visible for a day's march. This
ridge, which was considered the heart of Gaul, was crowned with
the sacred grove of oaks that was the center of the druid network.

Sacred sites are not chosen by Man, but revealed to him. The
earliest settlers here had felt the power of this place. Anyone who
approached the oaks was gripped with awe. They were the oldest
and largest in Gaul, and Man was nothing to them. Through their
roots they fed on the supreme goddess, Earth herself, while their