“Ah, you have it right. You have made the connections needed. The old religion knows me as Lugh. I’m not really a god though. I just have this small problem of being an immortal.”

“An immortal?” Guillaume spoke a bit too loudly, before Lugh, or was it Laurent, shushed him.

“Yes.”

“Then, the mother of my son? Was she also an immortal, a goddess?” The thought that he had bedded a goddess during the year he had lived in that forest village, was too much to believe. Goddesses don’t mate with humans. Or did they?

“Yes, the mother of your son is an immortal like me. In the old religion she was called Brighid,” Lugh affirmed. “Neither of us are really gods. Our people, the Belgae, Guillaume, are your people. Of course, you already knew that because of your grandfather. And that was why you were able to find the sacred village among the old oaks. But, unlike Brighid and myself, your son is not an immortal.

“Why did the goddess choose me?” Guillaume whispered in shock. “Why me?”

“Brighid is not a goddess, Guillaume. Remember that. It wasn’t about you, Guillaume. Your father had broken faith with our people, and you had only those vague stories that your grandfather told you about the old ways and people. It was about your son. He was necessary to the future of not only of your family, but also to the survival of the old religion and our people. He isn’t the only one. Your wife couldn’t bare you a son. You needed an heir. We needed the pact between your family and our people to continue.”

“Your son has been to the sacred village thanks to your honouring the pact to take him to the grove when he was of age. He knows and accepts who he is. This was kept from you for both his safety and your safety. There are others, both men and women, who unconsciously will be doing what is needed to prevent the old ways, the old beliefs, in the gods and goddesses from fading. People need gods and goddesses, even if they aren’t real.”

“Laurent, or should I say Lugh, why are you here? What do you need from me? You’re the immortal here. I’m just a mere mortal.”

“Not so loud, old friend. And here you need to call me Laurent, not Lugh,” he instructed as Guillaume’s voice and tone had begun to gather the attention of a few who were seated nearest their table. “You have a critical role to play, one that will advance the future of your family and of our people.”

For the next half-hour, Laurent gave Guillaume instructions. He was to wait in Amiens until Robert Curthose, Duke of Normandy, brother to King William of England, arrived with other princes and lords. He was to become part of their army charged with recovering the city of Jerusalem in this first crusade. Laurent also spoke the names of people he would meet on the road to the Holy Lands, people he would need to include in his own small circle of knights.

Only after that meeting with these knights from Spain would Guillaume then travel on to Rome to join the crusade forces. With the instructions given, Laurent sent Guillaume back to his group before disappearing, unnoticed by anyone in the inn, into the shadows.

In the night, while Geoffroi and Roland slept soundly, Guillaume tossed fitfully. His thoughts refused to be silenced. Each time he closed his eyes, scenes from thirty years earlier would re-appear. Again, he found himself entering the sacred circle of stones on All Hallows’ Eve in 1066, where Lugh and Brighid were waiting for him. Encircling the inner boundaries of the stones, men and women stood looking toward the centre where a small shelter had been hastily built safely out of the reach of a large bonfire that burnt brightly by a stone altar. Brighid had given him a wooden goblet filled with red wine which he then drank. It didn’t take long before he realised that the wine must have held a potion as he slipped into a trance-like state.

Guillaume didn’t protest as three nude women emerged from the small shelter and began to prepare him for what he could only assume would be a sacrifice. Only his eyes betrayed his terror. His clothing was removed and carefully laid upon the ground. Then, two of the women applied a green dye over his body while the third secured a headpiece with the antlers of a magnificent stag, using a web of fine leather strands. Guillaume felt the weight of the antlers, and saw his body turn green. No part of his anatomy was spared. He knew, from the stories of his grandfather, that he had been selected as the Green Man for a fertility ritual. Rather than celebrate, he only remembered that once he had fulfilled his duty of impregnating, he would be sacrificed.

The potion in the wine contained an aphrodisiac that had caused his member to swell, visible to all who could see him from the edges of the circle. All in the circle, men and women alike, were now as naked as he was. Turning to face Lugh and Brighid, he saw them glowing with a golden aura. Both were unclothed revealing perfect bodies, the most beautiful bodies Guillaume had ever seen. The three women who had attended Guillaume faded into the outer circle leaving only Guillaume, Lugh and Brighid. Brighid then led Guillaume into the small shelter. And then, the images stopped.

When Guillaume regained his senses, he found himself in the shelter he had been given upon his arrival. He stayed in that Celtic village for almost a year, taking part in the rituals of the old religion as the seasons passed him by. In August of 1067, Lugh led a woman carrying a newborn child to Guillaume’s hut.

“This is your son, Guillaume. He was conceived on All Hallows’ Eve. This is to be your son who will be your heir as your wife will remain barren. She will adopt the boy as hers. Evelyn, here, will be the boy’s nursemaid. And no, before you ask, she is not the mother of your son. Her child died during childbirth two weeks ago.”

“Then who is the mother?” Guillaume asked wanting to know and yet fearing the answer.

“The name of the woman is not for your knowledge. You are the boy’s father, but I am his spiritual father as Brighid is his spiritual mother. He is our child as much as he is yours. We have named him Guillaume and gifted him and his male descendants with long lives and the potency to ensure that your family will survive for more than a thousand years.”

Unable to sleep with all those memories flooding him, Guillaume remembered taking the boy child back to his Chateau beside the Somme River, and as predicted by Lugh, his wife, Lady d’Arras de Longpré beamed with joy at the opportunity to be a mother. She didn’t even mention that Guillaume’s men had returned a year earlier. The baby had hazel eyes just like his father, and a face that left no doubt that this was Guillaume’s son. She didn’t ask who the mother was as Evelyn placed the baby in her arms. From that instant, the baby boy was her son.

Guillaume now knew, with Lugh’s admission, that Brighid was his son’s mother.