Across Time Part 31

What do you see?"

"Death, mighty one. There is no escape from it, only a lessening of the damage done."

"And what will my Druids do during this devastation?"

Lachlan shrugged. "We await your command."

The Chieftain stroked his great beard. "The Iceni and Ordovices *

206 *207.

are also planning to rebel, but they are far too slow in rallying their people. If you fight here with us, then our might is more concentrated, but if I send you off to the Isle of Mona, we can split their forces and weaken their numbers, as they shall surely come after you."

Lachlan looked at Maeve, who shrugged. This was when they needed Jessie's information the most. "If that is what you believe best."

Looking at Maeve, the Chieftain asked, "Think you we ought to send warriors to Mona to fight alongside our priests and priestesses?"

"I cannot say. My only sight reveals blood and death, misery and ruin. Whether we are on Mona or here with you, our people will suffer horrible losses."

"Aye. My reports indicate that the Governor's soldiers double daily.

I would think you might be safer here with me and my men."

Maeve glanced over to Cate, who spoke very softly. "We might have different answers for you in the morn."

The Chieftain stared into the fire. For a long time he sat motionless, just looking into the flames. When he finally spoke, his voice was soft yet cold. "Then my men will continue to prepare. We will be ready no matter where the Romans attack."

"We have not much time," Maeve added. "At all. Suetonius Paulinus's men will be here shortly."

He nodded. "I shall await your instructions regarding your people and the Isle of Mona and will send a message to the Ordovices to hold off on any attack until they hear from us. I will await your wisdom on the matter, Maeve, until it becomes too dangerous not to act. I trust in your guidance for you have never led me astray. Let us hope and pray that we continue in that manner."

When the Chieftain left them, the three of them sat at the fire thinking their own thoughts, searching any unthought-of options, and when one of them finally spoke, it was Cate's quiet voice they heard over the crackling fire.

"I am ready. Tonight. Now."

Maeve touched her shoulder lightly. "Are you sure?"

"Jessie fully understands our dire need. Wherever she was, I am sure she is no longer in its grasp. She, too is a fighter. We must do this *

206 *207.

Maeve, tonight. This may be our final opportunity."

Maeve took Cate's hand in hers. "There is so little time left."

"I know."

"Then we shall proceed." Maeve motioned to Lachlan to rise.

"And if nothing happens? If Jessie cannot be of help to us?" Lachlan asked.

"Then we will have stepped through into another world in vain."

"Suetonius Paulinus wanted to subdue the mutinous spirit of the Britons, so he resolved to attack them and drive them to the Isle of Mona, called Anglesey today." Dr. Rosenbaum was in the middle of his lecture to two rapt listeners. True to Ceara's instructions, Jessie had asked no questions nor interrupted his flow of speech, relying, instead, on her limited note-taking experience and her newly awakened mind.

"He ordered a number of flat-bottomed boats, new in that time period, to be constructed so that he could send men across with their horses. He knew how familiar the Celts were with their woods, and without horses he would never catch them. Many of those boats arrived with infantry as well. It seems to us like overkill, but Paulinus wasn't kidding around. He was trying to earn his own bragging rights, and to do so, he needed a high body count, especially of the Druids that even Julius Caesar had failed to eradicate.

"On the sh.o.r.e, the Britons were prepared to meet their attackers.

Tacitus writes a subjective piece about women pulling out their own hair and acting insane, but his point of view, like so many other Roman entries, is biased. Clearly, the women fought alongside the men as well, and were equally as prepared to die, but the hair pulling and screaming were Tacitus' paint- by-numbers rendition of the scene. Anyway, when the Romans finally arrived, the Druids called forth their G.o.ds and G.o.ddesses, and initially, this so scared the Roman soldiers that they failed to act. It wasn't until one of the leaders struck down a Druid that the soldiers realized they could, in fact, be killed. That's when-"

Jessie's sharp intake of breath made the professor stop. "Are you all right?"

208 *209.

"I'm fine. It's just such a waste of life, that's all. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to interrupt."

"Human life meant nothing to the Romans if that life wasn't of taxpaying Roman citizenship." The professor pushed his gla.s.ses back up the bridge of his long nose. He was a short, bald man with a graying tincture surrounding his head like a halo. Like a throwback to the Sixties, he wore a brown tweed smoking jacket with patches on the elbows and b.u.t.toned at the waist. The faint scent of pipe tobacco lingered in the air.

"Tacitus goes on to say that the island and the oak groves they so cherished perished in the very flames the Druids had set themselves.

Much of Mona was destroyed by fires that burned out of control, and though Tacitus would like to blame the Druids for starting fires, many historians today believe that the Romans sent flaming arrows into the woods to prevent the Druids from fleeing there. They were too afraid to give chase, but not to fire flaming arrows. Anyway, the island was eventually conquered and the army was garrisoned there in order to kill any uprisings and destroy any future Druidic activity. Paulinus concentrated his attack in South Wales and Snowdonia, where he managed to drive the Druid population further into the mountains of Scotland and across the water to Ireland. Druidry survived there and in the Welsh mountains for decades, but did not make a revival until the Middle Ages when the stories of King Arthur and Merlin abounded."

Here, the professor stopped and looked at them both for questions. "Is that what you were wanting to know, Ceara?"

Ceara nodded and lightly touched a tense Jessie. "It is very good, thank you."

"Questions, Jessie?"

Jessie looked up from her notes. She took a deep breath. It felt like she hadn't been breathing. "So the Silures were not completely destroyed?"

"Can anything be completely destroyed? Remember, ninety-five percent of our information about the Druids comes from Roman sources, so it's not likely to be one hundred percent accurate. In history, we tend to give historical data an eighty to twenty ratio of correctness.

208 *209.

Given how little information there is on this particular subject, one would have to lower that to an easy seventy to thirty."

"What do you think, Professor? What has all your research shown you about the Silures?"

Professor Rosenbaum took off his gla.s.ses, leaving two red indentations on either side of his nose. "I believe the Britons had the means and the manpower to fend off the Roman invasion, but since they were so factioned off into tribes and clans, they did not have the central leadership needed to push back tens of thousands of Roman soldiers Paulinus sent into the forests."

"But you think some survived."

The professor looked down at Jessie and nodded. "Oh, of course.

There are tales, mind you, not historical data, proclaiming how they were driven deep into their beloved woods, where they managed to remain for centuries, hiding in burrows and underground caverns.

They continued their illegal practices under cloak of darkness. Up until the myth of Merlin, Druidry remained an underground operation, so to speak."

"So these tales say some did escape," Jessie said insistently.

"Yes, but there is little evidence supporting it. Doc.u.mentation of the Druids is as elusive as a unicorn, I'm afraid, and so much of what we know about them is pure conjecture."

Jessie inhaled deeply in prelude to her final question. "How many died on Mona?"

The professor shrugged. "Thousands. The Druids had been sent to Mona because they'd been given faulty information from one of the other tribes. I do not believe the Silures would have left their people on Mona had they known Paulinus was going to put both man and horse on boats. That was a new strategy even to the Romans, but it paid off.

Going to Mona was a huge and costly mistake for the Silures."

Jessie swallowed hard, feeling almost claustrophobic in his cramped office.

"I hope this hasn't been too confusing. It is difficult to cram a college quarter's worth of information into a half hour. Is there anything else I can answer for you?"

210 *211.

Jessie rose and nodded. "One last thing. Let's say you could step back in time and you were on the island. What would be the best way to get as many people as you could off of it before the Romans came to sh.o.r.e?"

The professor cast a curious look to Ceara before replying. "The only way to save yourself during that particular attack would be by boat, of course. Without a boat, you'd be pinned by the Roman soldiers. If, of course, you survived the fiery forests, there would still be no place to go unless you had the foresight to station boats on the opposite side of where they attacked."

Jessie nodded. "Thanks. And thank you so much for your time. I was mostly interested in the possibility of escape."

As Jessie and Ceara turned to go, the professor opened the door for them. "Oh, and one last thing in case you're interested. If you were to escape the island, you could have gone to the east side of the island, because the Romans launched their attack from the southwestern part of the country and did not even bother surrounding the isle. If that helps any."

Jessie smiled. "It does. Thank you."

"I do hope I've been of some help. It's not every day someone is interested in what happened to another people from history. Even my students find it boring at times."

As Jessie stepped out of his office, she turned to him one final time.

"Can I ask you a personal question, Professor?"

Dr. Rosenbaum put his gla.s.ses back on. "You can try."

"Do you believe the Druids had powers outside our scope of our comprehension?"

Professor Rosenbaum looked over at Ceara, shook his head, and smiled. "What I wouldn't give to have her for a student." To Jessie, he answered, "I'll deny saying this, Jessie, but I believe the Druids, along with the Native Americans and the Aborigines, were the only individuals capable of keeping mankind from destroying the planet and himself along with it. You can call it a craft, voodoo, magic, or miracles if you want, but those cultures had something we lost a long time ago."

210 *211.

"Do you think we can ever get that back? Is it possible we can find it again?"

Professor Rosenbaum shook his head. "Not unless we could turn the clocks back, Jessie. I'm afraid our time on this planet is going to be rather limited."

With that, Jessie and Ceara hustled down the hall feeling the hands of time slowly wrapping around their necks.

When Tanner dropped Jessie and Ceara off at Ceara's shop, he handed Jessie another business card. "In case you lost the last one. I'm always just a phone call away."

Taking the card, Jessie smiled at him. "Thanks for everything. I don't know how to thank you."

"Be my friend, Jess. Good friends are hard to come by in this world.

I'd be mighty pleased to be one of yours."

"Done."

"I better get going and get the car back to my dad."

Jessie waved to Tanner as he drove away, feeling like she had really made a good friend.

"He is." Came Ceara's soft voice from the doorway. "He's one of the best. You could do far worse than have a friend like Tanner Dodds on your side."

"Been there already, Ceara."

"Yes, I believe you have. Come on, girl, we have work to do."

Once in the shop, Ceara left Jessie to read more Internet historical pieces to fill in any gaps from their history lesson, while Ceara returned to the boat to pick up the rest of her printouts.

Sitting at the table where Ceara did her tarot readings, Jessie laid her head down on the table and tried to absorb all the information.

She wondered if Cate had any desire to know what had happened to the once powerful Roman Empire. Wouldn't she be surprised to learn that Latin was a long dead language and that Rome was now only the capital of a single European nation? Would Cate want to know? Would she even care? Jessie's head felt thick and she needed a nap.

212 *213.

Rubbing her burning eyes, she sighed loudly. So much had happened since Cate's time. Would Cate want to know about the plague, or that man could fly? Would she just fall over backward to learn that man had actually walked on the moon they so valued? Would any of that knowledge change Cate's life or make it better? Would knowing that man could teleport his molecules as a means of travel ten thousand years from now do anything to improve the quality of her own life?

She didn't think so. Sometimes, people were so transfixed on the future that the moment slipped quietly away without ever being noticed. She didn't want to live her life like that. She wanted to experience all life had to offer in this moment, whether it was good or bad, pretty or ugly, light or dark. She wanted to live now.

And suddenly, Jessie understood that that was all Cate wanted, too.

She wanted Maeve and Lachlan to live through their now together.

Nothing else really mattered. All this time, Jessie had only thought about saving Maeve and helping the Druids to live beyond sixty-one AD, but she had never even considered the possibility that Cate might not live through the ma.s.sacre on Mona.

Jumping to her feet, Jessie paced back and forth across the room.

The idea of Cate dying was like a bone caught in her throat. While failure wasn't an option, death was even less of one. She knew Cate would eventually die, but to die because Jessie couldn't come up with a few important facts, well, that was more than she could bear.

"Maybe she doesn't die for a long, long time," Jessie said aloud.