The Fires of Menai

By Susan Euler

In the year 60, Nero orders his legions to attack the sacred island of Mona off the coast of Wales. They are met on the beaches by a mob of Druids, screaming curses and waving torches. Two people from different worlds--Angharad,daughter of a Celtic freedom fighter, and Marcus Valens, a Roman tribune--find themselves caught up in the terrible events that follow as all Britannia erupts into flames.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Susan Euler
• Release date: Apr 21, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301311972

Susan Euler

Susan Ray Euler is an art historian and artist. She was born in California, and now lives in North Carolina. Her ancestors lived on Mona at the time of the Roman invasion.

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The Fires Of Menai

A Novel

by

Susan Ray Euler

Copyright 2013 Susan Ray Euler

Published by Susan Ray Euler, Smashwords Edition

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without the written permission of Susan Ray Euler except where permitted by law.

During the sixth year of the Emperor Nero’s reign, a terrible disaster befell Britain. Suetonius Paulinus, who competed for popular acclaim with General Domitius Corbulo, aspired to equal his rival's military glory by attacking the island of Mona off the coast of Wales. Although small and undefended, Mona had a powerful population, and was a haven for fugitives.

Cornelius Tacitis

The Annuls, Book 14

Chapter 1

The Island of Mona off the western coast of Wales

February 1st in the year 60 AD

The fog refused to lift. Gray day after gray day, the rocky coastline lay concealed beneath a dense veil of wintry mist. Angharad braced herself against the fierce cold, and peered deeply into the haze, searching the horizon for a ship.

No ship. No signs of life. The sea was deserted except for the occasional gull that wheeled and shrieked overhead. Perhaps the Mother Druid was wrong. Perhaps this time there would be no Romans.

Turning away from the angry wind that was howling across the headlands, Angharad pulled her cloak tighter as she made the difficult descent to the beach below. Slowly, deliberately, she picked her way down the steep trail, moving cautiously over black stones, wet and slick with salt spray. Although she had grown up on Mona and knew exactly how to place her feet, her boots unexpectedly lost their grip, pitching her sideways into a large boulder before sending her careening down the gravel path into the sand dunes. She landed in an ungainly heap just a few feet from the water. Angharad forced herself to sit up and cursed silently so as not to offend the gods. She leaned back against the damp sand to clear her head. It could have been worse, she smiled to herself. It could have been high tide...or I could have broken my neck and missed the lighting of the sacred fires of Imbolc.

Angharad closed her eyes. Something about the way the waves sounded as they crashed against the rocks reminded her of her childhood. Shifting her position slightly, she opened her eyes and stared through the haze at the sun, already an orange ball low on the horizon. Although she had not been back to her native village on the Welsh mainland for nearly twenty years, she could still remember in great detail all the weeks of strained excitement that always preceded the lighting of the bonfires. As the last storms of winter raged against the stone cottages, the women struggled out of bed even earlier than usual to begin baking all the traditional breads and cakes; a task that would keep them coughing over smoky hearths for days on end. Children, when not lugging firewood or stirring huge bowls of heavy dough, kept themselves in the holiday spirit by making corn dollies for the Goddess Bridget. Soon these humble effigies, with their straw bodies, seashell eyes, and feather headdresses, were festooned on every available bush, tree, gate, and fencepost, giving the otherwise drab, salt-bleached village a temporary air of optimism. Fluttering bravely in the wind, these cheerful little messengers signaled to the goddess that the villagers were expecting to receive prosperity in the coming New Year.

The real excitement of Imbolc began on the eve of the great fire festival. First, the minstrels danced into town, followed by peddlers pushing carts loaded down with every imaginable luxury. Although few villagers could afford to buy anything, all of them liked to at least look at the colorful bolts of exotic cloth, study their reflections in the polished bronze mirrors, and run their hands over the smooth surfaces of the burnished copper kettles. Angharad could still hear the animated conversations and boisterous country laughter as her neighbors and kinfolk elbowed and chatted their way from booth to booth through the crowded holiday marketplace.

And sometimes if the air was exactly right, she could even hear the lilting cadence of her father Caerwyn’s voice as he greeted old friends and caught up on all the latest gossip.

Caerwyn and a group of his fellow fishermen had the duty (it was an honor, really) of presenting a traditional Imbolc play called The Conquest of the Sun, a dull, pretentious religious drama about the coming of spring that always began the festivities. For months beforehand, this elite company of villagers would rehearse for hours on end, trying hard to get all of the lines and each of the characterizations exactly right. During the actual performance, however, discipline invariably broke down as soon as the crowd began their time-honored practice of shouting rude comments; which made everybody—especially the men on stage—laugh hysterically. Before long, the actors would be adlibbing their lines to such an extent that the play would become almost unrecognizable. But that was the fun of it.

Angharad assumed that The Conquest of the Sun was still being presented in much the same raucous manner, although by a different cast since her father and brothers had long since left the village.

Turning away from the sun, she gazed intently in the other direction towards Wales. On clear days she could easily see the mainland across the narrow Straits of Menai. But today the sky was opaque, as gray and malevolent as the sea that was writhing and frothing at her feet. Even if the Romans are coming, she reassured herself, it’s unlikely they would try to cross the Irish Sea in weather such as this. Her father Caerwyn would never have sailed under such dangerous conditions, and surely the great Roman legions employ men of the sea who can read the tides and winds as well as her father.

Angharad forced the gloomy thought of a Roman invasion to the back of her mind. Even though she had grown up under Roman rule, and had been taught to read, write, and speak Latin, she had no love for the Romans. Her father had seen to that.

Caerwyn was a Coritani Celt from the Thames Valley of England. Angharad had to smile as she remembered how quick her father had always been to point out how he was no ordinary peasant fisherman, but a member of the nobility, a close kinsman of the feared warlord Caractacus. He had been raised, however, not in the wild hill country of his ancestors, but within the relatively civilized confines of the newly established Roman trading post of Londinium. And although Caerwyn constantly bragged about being a warrior, in truth he had fled into Wales at the age of fifteen to escape being drafted into the Roman army.

Taking refuge in the Welsh highlands among a motley band of resistance fighters, Caerwyn had spent the better part of his youth harassing the Roman legions by burning down their forts in the middle of the night, and tearing up their finely engineered roads almost as soon as the troops passed over them. Then, when his comrades were arrested and sent back to Rome as slaves, Caerwyn had been forced to flee yet again, this time to the Welsh coast. Here he settled on a rugged, windy stretch of land opposite the sacred Isle of Mona. His rebel days at an end, he gradually slipped into the uneasy life of a fisherman. At eighteen, he married a local girl, and together they quickly produced five children; four boys, and one girl. The girl they optimistically named Angharad after the Welsh heroine.

Knowing no other way of life, Caerwyn’s four sons had been eager to follow the life of the sea. Almost as soon as they could walk, they happily led their ponies down to the sands to gather shellfish and trade stories with the older boys who had already become fishermen. Angharad was different. As a girl, there was no question of her becoming a fisherman—girls didn’t do that kind of work—but she did not seem suited to become a fisherman’s wife either. An extremely intelligent and intuitive child, her father never allowed his only daughter to forget her noble heritage. Someday, he would continually remind her, you will return to the Coritani people and take your rightful place among kings.

When she was little, the prospect of becoming a princess sounded exciting, even possible. But as she grew into a sullen adolescent, she began to question how something like this could ever happen. Thinking her father’s dream ridiculous, she preferred to hang out with her girlfriends at the village pier, giggling and eyeing the muscles of the young men as they unloaded their boats and mended their nets. Like girls everywhere, Angharad and her friends made wonderful plans for the future; a future in Wales, married to the best looking boy, the one with the blackest hair, the biggest smile, and the fastest boat.

A gull unexpectedly screeched loudly overhead, jarring her mind back to the present. Angharad stood up quickly, and whipped her head in the direction of the Irish Sea, half expecting to see the black silhouette of a Roman galley on the horizon. But no. It was a false alarm. Even so, she scanned the waves for several minutes to make absolutely certain that the island was not under attack.

As she made her solitary trek down the beach, Angharad’s thoughts were now consumed with bitter memories of the last time she had celebrated Imbolc with her family. Thinking back, it seemed as if the winter storms had been especially slow in retreating that year, with strong winds driving the waves high and furious against the shore even on the eve of the great fire festival. As an experienced fisherman, her father realized it was dangerous to sail under such unpredictable conditions, but it had been a hard winter, and the family desperately needed him to bring in a good catch. Obstinate and foolhardy to the end, instead of taking the day off as he usually did to help out with last minute holiday preparations, Caerwyn argued that he had no choice but to go out.

Early that morning just as the sun was coming up, he and his three oldest sons pushed their small craft into the sea from the rocky cove near their cottage. Angharad was only eleven years old at the time, but she would never forget watching them leave or how she and her younger brother Garreth had huddled nervously around the family’s hearth all morning while their mother paced back and forth on the beach below, staring with hard eyes into the freezing wind.

Sometime around midday, many hours after Caerwyn had promised to return, a loud keening was heard from the direction of the pier. As a fisherman’s daughter, Angharad knew immediately what weeping like this meant. Someone had been lost at sea. Throwing on her shawl, and grabbing Garreth firmly by the hand, she raced down to the beach to join their mother. They arrived just as Caerwyn and her two brothers Caradoc and Ifan were wading towards shore through chest-high waves.

Caerwyn! her mother shrieked against the roar of the tide. For the love of the gods, where is Dafydd?

Angharad had no distinct memory of the rest of the day, for it was lost in a burning haze of tears, recriminations, and anguish. Even so, a great wave of sadness would always wash over her every time the tides of February took on that particular shade of gray, or the north wind began blowing across the headlands just as it had on the day Dafydd had been lost forever to the sea.

His body was never recovered, so there had been no proper funeral. And as the weeks slowly, painfully turned into months, she and her mother had been forced to stand by helplessly as Caerwyn grew increasingly embittered, withdrawn, and angry, refusing to let his three remaining sons go to sea.

You were born to be warriors, not fishermen, he would growl, and warriors you shall become. As for his daughter…as soon the weather cleared and the days turned warmer, he ferried her in his fishing boat across the Straits of Menai to the sacred Isle of Mona. In silence, father and daughter had traveled together over the sparkling water until a great stone building come into view, appearing suddenly like an immense black raven on the craggy cliffs above. This is your new home, Caerwyn announced unemotionally to his astonished child. Here you will be given an excellent education as befits your station. Here you will be trained as a Druid.

At first, Angharad did not quite understand what her father had said. He knew she was afraid of the Druids. Living apart from ordinary people and speaking only to the nobility, in Celtic society the Druids were more powerful than kings. She had often watched them from a respectful distance as they paraded through the village dressed in their voluminous white robes, waving wands of mistletoe, and chanting in a strange secret language that only they could understand. Marching to the beat of drums and dancing to the mournful wail of pipes, on feast days the Druids would solemnly disappear into the sacred grove to wait like wolves for night to quiet the land. Then they would light the sacred bonfires and begin their rites, offering bloody sacrifices to a pantheon of ferocious gods. Children were kept away from these ceremonies, which caused Angharad to suspect that something sinister must be going on, although her parents told her otherwise. Nonetheless, even though she wanted to believe that blood sacrifices were necessary if the village was to prosper in the coming season, she remained unconvinced. Pushing her face deep into her quilts whenever the sound of drums reverberated ominously off the blue-grey slate of the cliff walls, she would lie awake all night, wide-eyed and terrified, not daring to close her eyes until her mother and father returned safely at dawn.

All this happened many years ago, of course. Even so, Angharad could not forget how she had pleaded desperately with her father not to leave her on Mona, a windswept island cut off from everything she knew. She remembered begging him to take her home again, even offering to take Dafydd’s place on the boat, realizing of course that such a thing was impossible. But Caerwyn had only smiled sadly and shaken his head. In truth, he hated to see his only daughter so distressed, and wanted badly to take her back with him. But he remained steadfast. After the death of Dafydd, his firstborn son, the village had become a prison to him; one that kept him tightly locked in a spectral existence of endless drudgery, poverty, and mind-numbing sorrow. He had grown weary of watching young widows endlessly walk the beaches with their eyes narrowly focused on the horizon, searching, always searching for husbands who would never return from the sea. He was tired of going out day after day with a crew of courageous young men like his own beloved Dafydd, only to lose them just as their lives were about to begin.

But what bothered the self-absorbed Caerwyn most was how he had been forced to stand by quietly while his own brave spirit withered until it was nearly snuffed out like the smoldering embers of last night’s sacrificial bonfire. And who would have thought it? As a young man Caerwyn had been so handsome, so passionate, so optimistic and filled with inner brightness that his friends had nicknamed him the Sun God. Now, the closest he came to that deity was when he painted his face gold to play the sun god on stage at Imbolc once a year.

Thinking about her father caused Angharad’s childhood fears to suddenly return, raising the hair on the back of her arms, sending an icy chill racing down her spine. As hard as she tried to avert her eyes, she could not stop herself from glancing up in the direction of the Druid compound, which was perched on the cliffs above, black, sinister, and eternal, just as it had been twenty years earlier when she had first seen it from her father’s boat.

Remembering the scene with the greater understanding of an adult, she now realized why her father had suddenly turned away from her. And why, once he managed to speak again, his voice had been husky with emotion. No, Angharad, she recalled him whispering as he ineffectually reached over to pat his sobbing daughter on the knee. Your mother and I are leaving the village for the land of my people who live east of Wales, far from the sea. We will be taking your three brothers with us, for they are strong young men and can easily join the ranks of warriors. But you, my child, are a scholar. I’ve always marveled at your ability to learn, and this is a place of learning. Study hard, and always remember that you are of royal blood. When your studies are over, and you take your final vows as a Druid, then you can return to us.

Walking now on the very beach where she and her father had landed their boat twenty years before, Angharad began to cry. Not the same anguished cry of long ago, for she was past that, but a soft cry, the kind that causes a lump to form in the throat, and hot stinging tears to cloud the eyes. In a few months time, on her thirty-first birthday, her long novitiate would be over and she would be taking her final vows as a Druid—but she would not be returning to Wales. The Romans had declared Druidism against the law, and Angharad realized that once she left the island of Mona and the safety of the Druid compound and school, her religion would make her the target of their relentless persecution. Visitors to the island had told her appalling tales of Druids being crucified, burned at the stake, or thrown to wild beasts in the arena, and the thought of dying such a gruesome and painful death terrified her. Yet the thought of remaining on Mona terrified her as well. Even though she had become used to the dull routine of daily prayers interspersed with long hours of tedious study, she could not see herself living such a cloistered existence forever, shut off from the ordinary joys and sorrows of life like a fish trapped in a tide pool.

Perhaps it was the dreariness of the day, or maybe it was the bitter realization that all her hard work had been for nothing, but looking out across the shallow stretch of cold water that separated her from her homeland, she could no longer contain her anger and frustration. Think back, she commanded herself, wiping away tears. Think back to the happy times. And there had been happy times, even on Mona. Not at first, of course. At first she had desperately looked for any means of escape, running out to greet every tradesman who docked his boat at Aberffraw pier, imploring him to take her back to the mainland. But the men who traded with the Druids were from many different villages, and none of them knew her father, although one elderly gentleman did say one time that he thought a Caerwyn and his family had left the coast for the Black Mountains hundreds of miles inland. Well it that were true, Angharad knew she would never see them again.

Somewhere on the island the drums had started. Angharad looked up at the sun again, now only a few degrees above the horizon. Soon it would be dark and her fellow Druids would be making their pompous way across the headlands to light the sacred bonfires. She knew people were already looking for her because she should have been back hours ago. A search party may have already been sent—more for something to do than because anyone seriously thought she had gone missing. With one last look towards Wales, she turned around and headed back for the compound, pulling her hood over her head as she faced directly into the icy wind.

Although her fall had left her with a few scrapes and bruises, it had also given her needed time to think. By reviewing the past, she had been able leave behind some of the anger and resentment that had always shadowed her since that spring day when her father had sailed back for the mainland, leaving her confused and sobbing among strangers. Now, by the time she reached the sand dunes at the foot of the cliff trail, her mood had lightened considerably. Her mind was no longer focused on her father and the wrongs he might have done her long ago, but on better times to come. Tonight the Druid Order would be celebrating Imbolc, and while there would be solemn religious observances, there would plenty of dancing, feasting, and drinking as well. Men and women from all over the Celtic world had gathered on Mona to take part in the festival, and Angharad was looking forward to joining them. Who knows? Maybe if she had enough to drink she might even find a way to forgive the Romans for their treachery. After all, wasn’t that in the true spirit of Imbolc?

Since there was apparently no immediate danger on the horizon, she allowed herself the luxury of walking back more slowly than was her usual practice, following the shoreline rather than immediately taking the shorter route up the steep cliff trail. Splashing around a bit in the water, she let the tide wet her boots and the hem of her long dress as she searched for seashells and other interesting bits of flotsam. Reaching down, she dislodged what she thought was an unusual shell half buried in sand. It turned out to be a Roman coin. Although blackened and encrusted from years of exposure to salt water, the face on the bronze sestertius was immediately recognizable. It was Julius Caesar. Angharad stared hard at his foreign, hawked-beaked profile. How many thousands of her countrymen had been killed in the hundred years since this brutal tyrant had first invaded Britannia? How many villages had been burned? How many Celtic princes put to death? And for what? The invaders kept coming, traveling in ships that rode low on the tide, struggling under heavy cargos of ornate marble columns, and hideous bronze statues of alien gods. Even the coins of the hated enemy were washing ashore on this sacred island at this most holy time of year.

All thoughts of forgiving the Romans disappeared from her mind as she held the coin up to the fading sunlight to study it. Had it washed ashore from a shipwreck, the property of some soldier who had perished in Rome’s long campaign of conquest? She imagined the soldier’s dying moments when, weighted down by his heavy armor, he sank terrified beneath the waves.

Serves him right, she said aloud. Then she caught herself, remembering that many who served in the Roman army were her own countrymen, pressed into service. She let herself imagine that this encrusted coin had belonged to one of these—a man of Wales, a Celt like herself who had managed to swim to shore off a sinking ship to take refuge among the Druids of Mona.

Angharad sat down near the same sharp rocks that had caused her fall earlier in the day and stared out to sea. She sensed that something was about to happen. Perhaps even now at this sacred time of year, the Romans were lurking off the coast, hidden in the fog like the Banshee, waiting for the right moment to come ashore.

She gripped the coin tightly, preparing to fling it back into the sea in an angry gesture of defiance, but suddenly thought better of it. This coin must be an omen she thought as she looked back over her shoulder towards the Druid compound looming high above her on the cliffs. Standing up, she carefully tucked the coin into the beaded purse that hung from a cord around her waist. Spreading her arms wide in the kind of overly theatrical gesture that would have played well during her father’s performance of The Conquest of the Sun, she spoke aloud to all the sea creatures imprisoned within the glassy depths of the many tide pools and inlets that dotted this rocky stretch of coast.

Farewell, my friends, she shouted over the roar of the waves. You are content to stay captive in your small tide pools where everything is brought to you by the sea. I, however, will take my chances in the larger world even though it may mean death at the hands of Caesar. Patting the coin in her purse to be sure it was safe, she turned away from the beach and began her climb up the steep trail, loudly singing a song of the Celtic Resistance she had learned at her parent’s hearth many years ago.

Ang...HAR...ad! Angharrrrrad!

Someone was calling her name, so loudly that it could be heard over the howl of the wind and the crashing of the waves. She stopped singing and listened intently, trying to discover the direction of the voice.

Angharad, where are you? Ang...har…ad!

It was a man’s voice, that of the portly, middle-aged Garth whose job it was to tend the beacon fires and watch the coastline for signs of invasion during the long, quiet evening hours. Brother Garth. Good natured, friendly, and helpful Brother Garth. It was obvious he would never amount to much in the Druid Order, for as hard as he tried, his dancing was clumsy, and his singing off-key, and when it came time to offer gifts to the gods, he could never bring himself to kill the sacrificial animals. Always pretending to be sick on feast days, at least until the ritual slaughter was over, he would hover about the kitchen taking medicine and complaining about the cold. But since Garth was a fine cook and experienced herbalist, the Order kept him around. There were plenty of other less squeamish Druids, as well as their assistants the Vates, who were more than willing to wield the sacred knives.

Being careful not to fall a second time, Angharad hurried up the cliff trail. As she neared the top, a worried face peered down at her. Yes, it was Garth all right, breathing heavily from his unusual expenditure of energy.

Where have you been? he asked anxiously. Then immediately turning away, he shouted back over his shoulder, I’ve found her! Come quickly. Her face is all covered with blood!

Angharad pulled herself up over the edge of the cliff. Safely standing on the headland once more she reached up and discovered for the first time that there was indeed a bit of dried blood on her forehead. Good, she chuckled to herself, this will make my story all the more believable.

Then putting on a tragic expression, she turned to Brother Garth and the other Druids who were running towards her. I slipped on the rocks. she whispered in a weak, melodramatic voice. Must have passed out. Have I been gone long?

Long! A stern voice answered from the back of the group. With her black cloak beating about her in the wind like the wings of some huge vulture, Sister Ethelberta stepped forward. Long! My word, you have been gone all afternoon. Can’t you see it’s nearly dark?

Sister Ethelberta was from central England. Although she and Angharad were almost the same age, she always talked to the Welsh woman as if she were a child, carefully choosing her words, and enunciating everything in a condescending, exaggerated way as if to imply that the Welsh were far too ignorant to understand simple spoken Celtic. High minded, deeply religious, and singularly unattractive, Ethelberta had been a mediocre student. Nonetheless, she regarded herself as a great intellectual who was destined to rise to the rank of Mother Druid, and because of this, she hated Angharad who she viewed as her only rival for the coveted post.

Like Angharad, Ethelberta had been brought to Mona as a girl, but unlike Angharad, she immediately took to Druid life, organizing prayer groups and volunteering for altar duty at every opportunity. Although she obviously cared nothing for her fellow novices, she was always the first to offer insincere words of comfort to anyone who had received bad news from home or was feeling ill. Making a huge show of concern while repeating her favorite phrase—May the gods bless you in your time of need—she would spend hours by the side of a disconsolate girl, smiling that reptile-like smile of hers. Currently, she was busy ministering to a nondescript student named Frieda. Overweight, shy, and with bad skin, Frieda had been sent to Mona from Gaul late last year after the death of her family from plague. Although she diligently applied herself to her studies, it was obvious that the boorish teenager was of only average intelligence, and would never be able to master the rigorous memorization required to become a Druid. In fact, there was already talk about sending her back to the mainland to serve as nanny to the children of a rich couple near Colwyn Bay. Even though