"Fierce indeed must have been the fire, to burn when the straw was wet with rain," said Priscus.

 

"No doubt," Gaius numbly agreed, picturing little Senara, Eilan, all the family, prisoners in the hands of the wild raiders from the coasts of Hibernia, or worse still, heaps of charred bones among the tangle of burnt timbers that had once been a home. He must not let the men see how much this was affecting him; he pulled his hood over his face, coughing as if from the smoke that still drifted from the outbuildings. Priscus had been right. Nothing could have survived this blaze.

 

He said fiercely, "Let's get the men going then. We've no time to stand about staring at foundation stones if we're to have shelter before night falls!" His voice cracked and he turned it to another cough, wondering what, if anything, Priscus had deduced from his tone. But the optio, an old soldier, was familiar enough with the effects on the young of seeing pillage and slaughter.

 

Priscus gave him a kindly glance and looked away. "We promised these people peace when we conquered them - least we could do, you'd think, would be to protect them. But we'll catch up with the bastards that did it, never fear, and teach them not to meddle with Rome. What a pity the gods never invented any other way to civilize the world. Oh well, we could have been turnip farmers; but one way or the other, we picked soldiering for our job, and that's part of it. Friends of yours, were they?"

 

"I guested here," Gaius replied stiffly. "Last spring." At least his voice was back under control.

 

"Well, that's the way the world goes," Priscus replied. "Here one day and gone the next. But I reckon the gods must have known what they were doing."

 

"Yes," Gaius replied, as much to cut off the man's homely philosophy as anything else. "Give the order to march; let's get the men out of the rain as soon as we can reach the next town."

 

"Right, sir. Column, form up!" he bawled. "Who knows, maybe the family were all away visiting friends. That's the way it goes sometimes."

 

As they moved on through a gathering mist that was once more turning to rain, Gaius recalled seeing Cynric in the marketplace shortly before leaving Deva; there had been some talk of sending the young man to some college of weapons in the North, so he might very well have survived. The death of a Druid as important as Bendeigid would make some stir. Gaius suspected that his father had sources of information he kept secret. Surely he would know. He had only to wait and see.

 

Gaius tried to summon up some hope. Priscus was right. The burning of the house did not necessarily mean the death or imprisonment of the people who had lived there. Mairi might well have returned to her home; Dieda was not even a member of Bendeigid's household, at least not any more. But Eilan . . .probably it was too much to hope that Eilan, or little Senara, or the gentle Rheis, had survived. At that moment he would not have given the smallest of copper coins for his own career or for the whole of the empire.

 

He thought, If I had taken Eilan away she would still be living -if I had stood up to my father, even stolen her away . . .

 

A sudden memory made his throat ache - the vision of his mother lying cold and white in her sleeping place, and the women wailing over her body. He had wailed with them, but then his father had taken him away and taught him that a Roman does not cry. But he wept for her now, as he wept for these women who had for a little while, made him feel part of a family.

 

He could not let the soldiers see him cry. He put his cloak over his head and tried to pretend that the tears that rolled down his cheeks were rain.

 

 

 

 

 

Nine

 

 

 

"I want my husband." At mid-morning, the day after the birth of her child, Mairi had awakened, fretful and demanding. "Where is Rhodri? He would have protected us from those men —"

 

The roundhouse was warm after the cold outside. Eilan, who was beginning to feel the effects of her own interrupted night, looked at her sister in exasperation and sat down by the fire. It was bad enough that the raiders had driven off all their milk cows, and she had had to slog several miles through the wet woods to borrow a beast so that Mairi, whose own milk had not yet come in, could feed the child. At least the main herds were off in the summer pastures, so her sister was not without dowry if she married again, although Eilan was not heartless enough to speak of that yet.

 

"The cows would not have been taken if Rhodri had been here!"

 

"More likely he would have tried to fight the raiders, and you would still —" Eilan bit her lip, appalled at what she had been saying. She had forgotten that Mairi did not know. "Caillean —" She looked at the priestess in appeal.

 

"You would still be a widow —" Caillean said brutally, bringing the pannikin of warm milk from the hearth and setting it down.

 

Mairi's eyes widened. "What are you saying —" She looked up into the face of the priestess and her own grew pale at what she read there.

 

"I would have waited, but we no longer have that luxury. Rhodri was caught by the Romans when he tried to rescue the levies. They executed him, Mairi."

 

"It is not true . . .you are lying to me. He could not be dead and I not know! Better that the raiders had killed me — why didn't you let them, Caillean? Oh, I ought to be dead - I wish I were!" Mairi sank back into the feather bed, sobbing, and the baby began to cry.

 

Caillean handed the child to Eilan, bent over the other woman, murmuring softly.

 

"There, now, it's no use weeping. You have two fine children with their lives ahead of them. You must gather your strength, Mairi, to get them to safety before the Scotti come again!"

 

Main's eyes flew open and she reached out wildly. Eilan, shaken between tears and laughter, set the baby in her arms. Caillean had been right. Once Mairi was done weeping, she would go on living for her children. Caillean had experience of women's hearts.

 

A little while later, while Mairi still slept, exhausted with weeping, Eilan heard a horse's hoofs sloshing in the mud left by the storm. They came to a halt outside. The raiders! Eilan thought wildly. But no attacker would strike so slowly and heavily upon the door. Her heart beating like a war drum, Eilan drew the bar. When she peered out, she saw her father there.

 

At the moment she could think only of Rhodri. Had her father come to bring Mairi the news? The young man had been one of their best warriors, living like a son of the house and treating her like a sister even before she was one. Now that Mairi knew about her loss, Eilan too could grieve.

 

She pulled open the door. Bendeigid stumbled as he entered, as if the ride had wearied him or he had suddenly become old. Then she felt the hardness of his hands closing on her shoulders. For a long moment he stood looking at her.

 

"Caillean has just told Mairi about Rhodri," she said in a low voice. "Did you know?"

 

"I knew," her father said with great bitterness. "I hoped that the word that had come to me was not true. A curse will certainly light on all Romans for that deed. Now do you see, Eilan, why I would not allow you to marry into that accursed people?" He let go of her and dropped down upon the settle by the fire.

 

Gaius's people might be guilty of such evil, but she did not believe that Gaius himself would have done it. But looking into her father's harsh face, she held her tongue.

 

"But that is not the worst evil we have to mourn." Bendeigid's face contorted suddenly, and Eilan felt the first twinge of real fear. "I do not know how to say it, Eilan."

 

"It may be that I already know," Caillean spoke behind them. "I am sometimes foresighted, and the night before I left the Forest House I dreamed I saw a house lying in ashes, and knew it for yours. But then I found Eilan here and thought I must have been

 

mistaken. Last night we had a visit from a band of raiders. I know the size of pack such wolves run in - and I feared. Did the main body turn south, then, to you?"

 

"A band came here?" he croaked, turning to stare at her.

 

"Only a few of them, and I managed to frighten them off."

 

"Then I have you to thank that I have children yet alive!"

 

Eilan needed no foresight to understand his words, but what she was hearing was too horrible to believe. She felt the color draining from her face. "Father —"

 

"Child, child, how can I tell you? Word came that a mixed band of raiders were attacking Conmor's steading. I took my men to go to his aid. But there were more of them than we dreamed could come in such weather. While we were gone —"

 

"Are Mother and Senara dead then?" Her voice cracked, and Mairi, rousing, pushed back the bedcurtains and stood unsteadily, staring. Caillean went to her and the Druid continued.

 

"I dare to hope so." His face contorted with pain. "For the alternative, to be carried off as slaves beyond the sea, is worse still. To think that either might live in such dishonor —"

 

"Would you rather see them dead than alive in slavery?" Caillean asked in a low, tense voice.

 

"I would that," Bendeigid exclaimed fiercely. "Better a quick death, even in the flames, and a welcome in the Otherworld, than life with the memory of all our people's deaths to haunt them, as I must live now. The gods know those monsters would have paid in blood for their deaths, and mine, if I had only been there!"

 

He broke off and stared fiercely from Eilan to Mairi, who took a tottering step towards him. Groaning, he gathered both of his daughters into his arms. Sobbing, Eilan held on to her sister. Once she would have found comfort in her father's arms, but these were griefs from which he could not protect her.

 

"Senara's body was not found in the ashes," he said brokenly, "and she was not yet ten years old . . ."

 

Eilan thought, Then it may well be that she still lives . . .but she did not say it aloud.

 

"I had meant to bring Mairi home when the news about Rhodri was confirmed, but now I have no home to offer her. I can give no protection to anyone now . . ."

 

"Lord Druid, perhaps you cannot," said Caillean quietly, "but your Order can. The Forest House will shelter Mairi and the little

 

ones for as long as they have need. And I want to ask if you would permit Eilan to enter as a novice priestess of the shrine."

 

Bendeigid sat up and looked sharply at Eilan. "Is that what you want, child?"

 

"It is," she said simply. "If I may not marry where I love, then let me give my love to the Lady. It would please me indeed, for I used to dream about such a life before I was old enough to think of marriage at all."

 

For the first time, her father smiled, albeit shakily. "It will please your grandsire, at any rate. I had not intended this life for you, Eilan, but if it is truly what you want, then I am pleased too."

 

"But what —" Eilan bit back the words. How could she have forgotten? Her mother would never say anything more to her at all. But her father seemed to have sensed what she could not say. He sank down again by the hearth, his face buried in his hands. She had never guessed that her father could weep. But when he looked up again she saw his cheeks streaked with tears.

 

Eilan was likewise bereft, but she had no tears. Will Gaius think me dead when he hears? Will he weep for me? Better, perhaps, that he should think her dead than faithless to his memory. But it did not matter; she would be a priestess of the Forest House. Beyond that she could not make her mind go.

 

"They shall be avenged!" exclaimed the Druid, gazing into the flames. "In all of Britain shall those wild devils find no lives so costly as these! Even the Romans have never dared so far, and I tell you I would accept help even from them to get revenge! This will mean war! For it is not only rapine and murder, Eilan; it is sacrilege. To attack the home of a Druid, kill the wife and daughter and granddaughter of Druids; and destroy the sacred things - how could they do it? The Northerners are our kinsfolk, and I have studied with the Druids of Eriu."

 

"It has ever been the way of our people to fight each other when there was no common enemy," Caillean quietly observed.

 

"But we do have such an enemy," exclaimed Bendeigid. "Do not we all hate Rome?"

 

"Perhaps the wild tribes think of us as Romans now . . ."

 

The Druid shook his head. "The gods will surely punish them; and if they do not, our people will. Cynric has been as a son to me, and I tell you, he will curse when he hears of this day! But he is away in the islands to the north. You and Mairi are all that are left to me, Eilan."

 

Indeed, she thought, remembering. I have so few kin left and Dieda too has lost a sister. Will she welcome me to the Forest House?

 

Well, whatever came of it, a priestess she would be. Of her father's blood remained Mairi, and her newborn daughter, and her son; she wished that these children might be a comfort to her father. He was not yet old; he might marry again and have others of his own or, more likely, Mairi would find a new husband and have more. But if Eilan went to the Forest House, he would get no grandchildren from her.

 

Bendeigid rose, looking at Caillean beneath bent brows. "I am in need now of your skills, priestess; Cynric must be recalled. Can you summon him for me? And will you do so?"

 

"With Lhiannon's help, I can," Caillean replied. "In any case she would need to know —"

 

"I also need your skills to seek out these men," Bendeigid interrupted.

 

"That is easily done; I saw them when they burst in here, and if they were not among those who burned your home yet they must be under the same command. Some of them were Caledonians, and the others Scotti from Eriu."

 

"If they came here last night, the Scotti would have been on their way back to the coast and the Caledonians on their way north again." Bendeigid had risen to pace restlessly; now he resumed his seat by the fire. Caillean brought him a mug of ale and he sank his beard in it for a long draught, then repeated, "We need Cynric home, faster than even a mounted man can ride. Send the message, Caillean, with your magic —"

 

"I will," said the priestess. "I will stay here with your daughters while you ride to tell Lhiannon. Then go to Deva, for the Arch-Druid must know as well."

 

"You are right; my wife Rheis was his daughter," Bendeigid said, rubbing his brow distractedly. "Perhaps he will have some counsel for us as well."

 

News of the raid spread quickly through the countryside. On the lips of wandering peddlers it travelled, and with couriers of the Legions; it seemed that the birds of the air themselves bore the news on their wings.

 

Three days after the raid, Ardanos, the Arch-Druid, coming out of his house in Deva in the morning, heard a raven croak on his left and recognized an omen of disaster. But he had earned his rank by the kind of worldly wisdom that enabled him to out-think the Romans and undermine opposition among his own people. Not for the first time he regretted the worldly limit of his powers. Then he saw the mud-spattered man coming up the street and knew that he would not have to wait for the raven to tell him, for grief was written plainly in his son-in-law's burning eyes.

 

When Ardanos had recovered a little from the shock of Bendeigid's news, he went to Macellius Severus, who demanded a hearing from the Commander of the Adiutrix Legion.

 

"These raiders from over the sea grow too bold," Macellius said angrily. "These Britons too are our people, wards of Rome. No one shall oppress them while I live. The family of one of the Druids who lives near by, Bendeigid —"

 

"A proscribed man," interrupted the Commander of the Legion, frowning. "He should not be here at all!"

 

"That makes no difference! Do you not understand that Rome is here to protect all the men of this country — our citizens and the natives as well," Macellius insisted, still haunted by the memory of Ardanos's grief. Over the years he had come to respect the old man, and he had never known the Arch-Druid to be other than perfectly collected before. "How can we persuade them to lay down their arms if we cannot then protect them? With two Legions we could conquer Hibernia —"

 

"You may well be right, but it will have to wait until Agricola is finished with the Novantae. It has always been that way - with each province we settle we must pacify a new frontier. In the days of the Governor Paulinus, the Druids of Mona were broken so that they could not set the West Country afire. Now it is the Caledonians who must be taught they cannot raid the Brigantae. I suppose that when the Empire stretches to Ultima Thule we will have a peaceful border, but I doubt it will happen before.

 

"In the meantime all we can do is to hurry the construction of the new coastal fortresses," said the Legion's commander cynically, "and ready a troop or two of cavalry to go out if they should be sighted again. Your son is out there now with some troops, isn't he? Detail him to this duty when he reports in." The Commander grunted. "The people of Britannia are ours to oppress, and no one else shall do it."

 

But building fortresses and planning campaigns took time. Long before the log walls were finished or the grain that had survived the rains had been harvested, Bendeigid returned to escort his daughters to the Forest House. He brought gently paced mules for Mairi and the children to ride. Eilan rode with Mairi's older child before her, warmly wrapped against the light rain. She was not used to riding and it took all her concentration to balance behind the excited child. The distance was not great, but the unaccustomed journey seemed long.

 

Darkness was just falling as they came within the palisaded walls. Within the compound were half a dozen large buildings; Caillean took Mairi and her children to a guest house, lifting the little boy down from his perch before Eilan, and pointed out a large building of stout timbers, thatched almost down to the ground.

 

"There is the House of Maidens," she said. "The chief of the younger priestesses, Eilidh, has been told of your coming, and she will welcome you there. I will come later when I can; but first I must go and see if Lhiannon needs me."

 

The new moon - the first of Mairi's newborn's life — rode low on the western horizon. As the serving woman led her into the building and across an inner enclosure, Eilan was surprised to, find that already she missed her sister.

 

Then a gate opened and the woman led her into the inner court. Ahead of her was a long building something like her father's feasting hall. As she passed through the door a sea of strange faces surrounded her. She looked around, feeling abandoned. The serving woman had left her alone at the door. The hall seemed very large and there was a faint scent of sweet herbs in the air. Then one of the priestesses came forward.

 

"I am Eilidh," she said.

 

"Where is my kinswoman, Dieda?" asked Eilan nervously. "I had hoped to see her here —"

 

"Dieda attends on Lhiannon and is secluded with her in preparation for the rites of Lughnasad," said the priestess. "She is your cousin? I would have thought you even more closely akin; even twins.

 

"Caillean has asked me to take you in charge, for now that she is back she will have to attend Lhiannon. You are almost as beautiful as she told me."

 

Eilan colored shyly and lowered her eyes. The priestess was herself quite beautiful; fair-haired, with curly short hair that circled her face in the lamplight, like a delicate halo. She was dressed like the other junior priestesses, not in the dark robes they wore outside the walls but in a dress of undyed linen of an extremely old-fashioned cut, girdled with a woven belt of green.

 

"You must be half dead with fatigue," Eilidh said kindly. "Come to the fire, child, and get warm."

 

Eilan obeyed, feeling a little stunned by all the strange faces. She had not thought what might confront her here. Now she wondered what she would find, and whether she had made a decision she would regret all her life.

 

"Don't be afraid of us," said a grave voice behind her. The new speaker was tall and sturdy, with reddish hair. "There aren't half as many of us as there seem to be. You should have seen me when I first came here, staring about me and sobbing like a wild thing. My name is Miellyn. I have been here five or six years, and now I cannot imagine any other life. All my friends are here, and one day you will have friends here too. For all that we must seem so strange to you now." She took Eilan's cloak from her, and laid it aside.

 

"I think Lhiannon wishes to speak with you before anything else," said Eilidh, "so come with me." So saying, she led Eilan across a blustery courtyard to a separate dwelling and rapped on the door. After a moment they heard footsteps and Caillean peered out.

 

"Eilan? Come in, child," she said, gesturing to someone behind her. "Dieda, you see, I have brought Eilan to you at last."

 

"So you have," said Dieda, emerging from the shadows behind her. "My father, the Arch-Druid, is here too; and Bendeigid, so we shall be a regular family party, I suppose." She laughed, and Eilan thought she had never heard so cynical a sound. "And if he has his way Cynric will be brought here as well. I have heard they want to use your Sight, Caillean."

 

"Or yours, perhaps," said Caillean, and Dieda laughed a little. Eilan sensed hostility between the two and wondered why.

 

"I think they know what I would say to that," Dieda said. "If it is to seek out Cynric, yes; but to make an oracle for Lhiannon to deliver obediently as if she were no more than a puppet for the will of Rome —"

 

"In the name of the Goddess, any goddess, be silent, child," Caillean ordered, listening to a gate slamming somewhere near by. "What is it? Who is here?"

 

"Only his holiness, my father," Dieda muttered, "and the greatest priestess of all the Forest House, who will obediently deliver such oracles as he shall desire."

 

"Be silent, you wretched creature," hissed Caillean. "You well know that what you say is sacrilege."

 

"Or perhaps there is a greater sacrilege here, in which I have no part," Dieda replied. "Perhaps, with Sight, they want to make certain they send the Romans against the right party. If so, what will you do, Caillean?"

 

"I will do whatever Lhiannon commands," said Caillean, her voice sharpening. "As we all do."

 

Caillean was trying to speak reasonably to soften Dieda's wrath; but the other girl seemed angrier than ever. Dieda had always been sharp-tongued, but Eilan had never heard her so bitter before.

 

"I know what you would have us think —" Dieda began, but Caillean's face flushed with anger. Still she spoke calmly.

 

"You know perfectly well that it is not what you think, or what I think, that matters," she began, "but what the High Priestess wills; and that is what I will do."

 

"If it is her will," Dieda answered more quietly, "but under present conditions, how can Lhiannon's will be done - even if her will could somehow be determined or if she even has one any more." ,

 

"Dieda, I have heard this all before," Caillean said wearily. "But is it such an evil thing to summon our kinsman Cynric so that he may fittingly mourn his foster mother?"

 

"We could have done that weeks ago," Dieda began.

 

"Perhaps, but that is all that you - or I - are being asked to do," Caillean repeated. "Why have you set yourself so stubbornly against it now?"

 

"Because I know, if you do not," Dieda said, "that this use of power is to trick Cynric into doing what his whole life has been spent in learning to oppose; what Bendeigid himself would rather die than do, and that is to clasp hands with Rome. Know you not that for his sake it was that Bendeigid allowed himself to be proscribed?"

 

"Oh, in the name of the Goddess, girl! I know something of Cynric too, and of Bendeigid," said Caillean crossly. "And, believe it or not, even something of the Romans; at least I have lived under their rule longer than you. And I say that there shall be no violence done to your precious ethical precepts, nor to Cynric's. Do you think, perhaps, that you are the only person in all of Britannia who knows what Cynric wishes to do?"

 

"I know enough —" Dieda began, but Caillean said harshly "Hush; they will hear us. And Eilan must be thoroughly confused by now -"

 

Dieda's face softened. "I suppose so, and it is an ill welcome for her to hear us disputing so." She came and embraced Eilan, who knew enough not to protest lest she start the argument again.

 

At this moment the inner door opened and Lhiannon stood before them.

 

"Children, are you quarreling?"

 

"Of course not, my mother," said Caillean quickly. And after a moment Dieda added, "No, certainly not, Holy Mother; we were only welcoming the new novice."

 

"Ah, yes; I heard that Eilan was to come," said Lhiannon, and turned her gaze on the young girl who stood quietly between them. Eilan felt her heart thump loudly as she looked at the woman she had last seen standing like a goddess beside the Beltane fire.

 

"So you are Eilan?" Lhiannon's voice was sweet but a little thin, as if being the mouthpiece of the Goddess for so many years had worn its strength away. "It is true; you are very like Dieda; I suppose you are weary of being told that. But we must devise some way to tell you apart here at the shrine." She smiled, and Eilan felt an odd surge of protectiveness.

 

Lhiannon reached out one hand to Eilan, who was still standing nervously by the door. "Come in, child. Your father and grandfather are here with us, you know." Eilan wondered why she should be surprised, since her father had escorted her here. Was he then living among the priests?

 

Lhiannon took Eilan's arm gently and drew the girl into the inner room, adding to the two older priestesses, in her sweet voice, "Come in too. Both of you will be needed here."

 

The inner room seemed small, or perhaps it was only that too many people had crowded into it. Smoke curled thickly from herbs burning in a brazier in the center of the room; their smell made Eilan's head swim. Between the smoke and the crowd, for a moment she found it hard to breathe.

 

After a moment her focus steadied and she saw her father, his face made gaunt by the past moon's grief until he looked almost as old as Ardanos.

 

Her grandfather, who was adding something to the fire, looked up at the women and said, "So we are all here. And once again I am confused; which of you is which?"

 

Eilan stood silent, waiting for someone older to answer, but Dieda said boldly, "It is easy to tell, Father. Eilan has not yet been given the dress of a priestess."

 

"So that is how you expect me to tell my daughter from my granddaughter! Well, perhaps it is only the smoke in here. But I still find them too much alike for my comfort," said the older Druid briskly. "So, Eilan, you have arrived here at a sad time; we must summon Cynric to our Councils, and as he has been brought up with you as a foster brother your assistance will be helpful. Are you ready, Caillean?"

 

Caillean said quietly "If Lhiannon wills it."

 

"I do," Lhiannon answered. "Whatever comes of this, Cynric must know of the death of his foster mother and of these new outrages. The Romans are not our only enemies -"

 

Dieda said quietly through her teeth, "How would you like to say that to Mairi at this moment, Father?"

 

"Peace, child," Ardanos said. "Whatever you may think, Macellius Severus is a good man; he was as angry when I told him as if his own house had been burnt."

 

"I doubt that," Dieda murmured, but low enough so that only Caillean and Eilan could hear. ,

 

The old Druid frowned at her; then he said, "Caillean, my child -"

 

Caillean, with a glance at Lhiannon, went to a cupboard and took out a small silver bowl, simple but for an elaborate chasing of patterns on the outside. She filled it with water from a ewer and set it on the table. Ardanos pulled up a three-legged stool so that she could sit down before it, while Lhiannon took her place in a carved chair near by.

 

Ardanos waved Caillean aside. "Wait," he said; "Dieda, it was you who were closest to him; it is you who must look into the water and summon him."

 

Dieda flushed and for a moment Eilan wondered if she would refuse outright. Dieda had always had more courage than she - or had her grandfather mistaken them again? He was looking at her; then he turned aside and his eyes sought out Dieda. "You were pledged," he said. "I ask it of you, child —" and his voice was more tender than Eilan had ever heard it. "For your sister's sake I ask it; she was his foster mother before you were born."

 

Eilan thought, He plays on us all as if we were his harps. But Dieda could not ignore the tenderness in his voice either. She murmured, "As you will, Father," and took her place before the bowl.

 

Ardanos began, "So then, we are gathered here in this place that is already protected and purified to summon Cynric, the foster son of Bendeigid. All of you, who are of all the living the nearest he has to kindred, must hold his image in memory, and add the calling of your hearts to mine." He struck the floor with his staff, and Eilan heard the sweet jangle of silver bells.

 

"Cynric, Cynric, now do we call you!" his strong, bard-trained voice rang out suddenly, and Eilan blinked, for suddenly the room seemed to have become darker, and Ardanos — his whole body, not just his white robes - seemed to glow. "Strong son, beloved boy, your kindred call you . . .Warrior, Raven-son, we summon you by the powers of earth and oak and fire!"

 

As the echoes of his calling faded, Dieda's breathing, growing harsher as she drew in great lungfuls of scented smoke, was the only sound in the room. Eilan stifled a cough. Even the small amount of the smoke she had breathed in had made her dizzy; she could imagine what it was doing to Dieda, who gazed into the water unmoving.

 

Only now did Eilan notice Dieda's long hair hanging loosely to either side so that it framed the bowl. They had all moved into a loose circle. From where she stood Eilan could see the surface of the water. Her skin prickled a little as Dieda swayed, or was it she herself? Perhaps it was the world that was moving; she blinked as the shapes around her dimmed and flowed until the only thing on which she could focus was the surface of the bowl.

 

As she stared, it slowly clouded over, and after a moment there was a gray swirling that first darkened; then cleared. Eilan gasped; a face, a well-known face — that face of her foster brother Cynric -peered from the water.

 

Dieda stifled a cry; then said quietly but clearly, as if she spoke to someone a long way off, "Cynric, you must come. This time it is not a Roman outrage but the people of the North who have burned your house and have killed your mother and sister. Return to the Ordovici lands. Your foster father is alive and has need of you."

 

After a time the face disappeared, the water swirled darkly in the bowl, and Dieda stood up, clutching a little dizzily at the edge of the table. "He will come," she said. "The keeper of the college of priestesses there will give him supplies. With good roads and good weather he should be here in a few days."

 

Bendeigid said, "But what of the barbarians who burnt our house? If you are not too wearied, child, we must see them and know whence we go to punish them —"

 

"I will not," said Dieda. Her hair was still hanging about her face. "Always you can bend me to your will, but let Caillean do this; it is her will that we work with the Romans in this, not mine. I will find it hard to forgive you."

 

"My child —"

 

"Oh, I well know the necessity; but to use me to draw Cynric here, how could you?"

 

Caillean took the bowl and flung the water out through the door, letting in a welcome blast of fresh air. Yet in spite of the warmth of the summer night after a few moments Eilan began to feel cold. Caillean refilled the bowl and bent over it, motionless.

 

This time it seemed that the picture took longer to form, and the swirling clouds in the water lasted longer. Caillean's intent face grew paler, pale as death; then she spoke, softly still, and with a deathly weariness in her voice: "Behold, if you will."

 

Eilan never knew what the others saw, but as the surface of the water cleared, before her eyes a small picture formed: the raiders as they had been when they burst into Mairi's house, arrested, frozen on the doorstep; men clad in multicolored and ragged fabric. Some bore swords, which she had not seen at the time, and some bore spears. The picture was so clear that she could see the raindrops glittering on their ragged blond or reddish beards and long streaming hair. The men crowded around the bowl, blocking the image that Eilan saw still in memory and knew she would be able to call up at will until the day she died.

 

In her memory she saw Caillean rush forward, scooping up handfuls of live coals and scattering them towards the strange men. She supposed that her father and grandfather must have seen something like this, for her father's face was clenched and drawn tight. "Red Rian," he said between his teeth. "A curse on his sword and his shadow! And they are on the seashore still —"

 

"So be it, and I add my curse to yours for what that is worth," Lhiannon said, stirring in her chair." I declare to you that your people and the Romans together shall work to punish them."

 

Bendeigid began to speak but Lhiannon silenced him with a gesture. "Enough; I have said it. Now go; let it be as Caillean has seen and I have declared. You can take Red Rian on the seashore."

 

"Lady, how know you this?"

 

"Have you forgotten that I and mine can rule the winds when we choose?" Lhiannon said. "He will not find a breeze to bear him hence till you have caught up with him. Will all this content you?"

 

"For the sake of vengeance against those devils - if it must be so," Bendeigid declared. "But I swore to ally even with Romans if they would help me to vengeance, though it goes against the grain -and we will need their help to drive these raiders and murderers forever from our shores!"

 

Dieda drew a long breath. "Will you await the coming of Cynric?"

 

"That will be at least partly for Macellius to say," Bendeigid said grudgingly after a moment. Lhiannon's gaze fell on Eilan.

 

"But look you, our newest novice is quite perished with cold," she said. "Where is your cloak, child?"

 

"I left it in the other hall with the priestesses," Eilan murmured, unsuccessfully trying to control her shivering.

 

"You must go to bed soon. But the herbs have burned off now, come to the brazier and warm yourself, child. In a little, Caillean shall see to taking you to the novices' dormitory and give you nightclothes and the dress of a priestess."

 

"Well said," put in Ardanos, "and it is time we were going as well."

 

Lhiannon drew Eilan to the fire, and gradually the girl's shivering subsided. But still she trembled within. Caillean put an arm around her.

 

"It will pass, child, I know . . . It can be very cold between the worlds; I felt you riding with me, though it was not intended. We shall have to guard against that another time."

 

Bendeigid wrapped his cloak around him, but before he followed Ardanos out he paused before Eilan. "Daughter." He coughed as Eilan looked up to meet his gaze. "I do not know when we will meet again. But I leave you in safety, and that is a comfort to me. May the Goddess bless you here." He embraced her.

 

"I will pray to Her for your safety, Father," she said softly, her throat tightening.

 

Bendeigid reached out and touched the tendrils that had escaped from the braid coiled upon her brow. "Your mother's hair grew just this way," he whispered, and quickly, then, kissed her on the brow. She was blinking back tears when the door closed behind him.

 

"Well, that is done, and it is late indeed," Caillean said with a touch of relief. "Eilan, is there anything you want to ask me?" She came and took the girl into a hearty embrace. "If you are warm now, come along and I will get you settled into the novices' dormitory."

 

This time with Caillean at her side, Eilan crossed the windy courtyard which separated Lhiannon's dwelling from the hall where she had first been welcomed among the priestesses. Years later, when she knew every inch of these dwellings as well as the house in which she had been born, she was to remember her first sight of the Forest House and wonder that on this night it had seemed so enormous.

 

Eilidh and some of the other women were still gathered in the hall where Eilan had been first welcomed. They all looked at Eilan with curiosity, but a gesture from Caillean kept them still.

 

"We cannot ask you yet to take vows," Caillean said to Eilan, "But for your first year among us you must make promises." She stood upright and her face changed. Eilan watched her warily, wondering what was coming now.

 

"First of all — you have come among us of your free will? You have not been forced or threatened into seeking admission here?"

 

Eilan looked at her, astonished. "You know I have not been."

 

"Hush — it is routine. You must answer in your own words."

 

"Very well," Eilan said. "I came here at my own wish." This seemed very silly to her. She wondered if they had asked Dieda this, and what the other girl had answered.

 

"Do you promise that you will treat every woman in this dwelling as your sister, mother and daughter, as your own kin?"

 

"I will." She now had no mother living, and if she took permanent vows, she would have no daughter either.

 

"Do you promise that you will obey every lawful command given you by an older priestess here, and that you will lie with no man —" Caillean stopped and made a face, amending, "Saving only that you may lie with the Summer King, if his choice should fall on you."

 

Eilan smiled. "I will obey, and it is no hardship to promise to give myself to no man." Since the one man I could have loved is forbidden to me.

 

Caillean nodded. "So be it," she said. "In the name of the Goddess, who, though She has many names, is one, I accept you."

 

She embraced Eilan, and, one by one, the other priestesses did the same. By the time they were done, Eilan found herself weeping, as if in some odd way she had regained the kindred she had lost.

 

The older priestess put Eilan's cloak over her shoulders and led her through a thatched passageway to a roundhouse with about a dozen beds - not box beds such as she was accustomed to, but narrow cots - set round the wall. Some of them were already occupied. One or two girls sat up, blinking sleepily, as Caillean pulled back the curtain of the bed nearest the door, then lay back again.

 

"A place has been made for you here," whispered Caillean. She put Eilan into a coarse white shift which seemed a little too big. "Someone will wake you for the sunrise services in the grove. Do not expect to see me - I will be attending upon Lhiannon in preparation for the ceremonies of the full moon. Here is the dress you are to wear tomorrow." She took from a nearby chest a bundle of clothing.

 

Eilan got into the narrow bed and Caillean tucked her under the thick blanket. Then she bent down to embrace her, and Eilan sat up to hug her back.

 

"Whatever you may think, remember that you are welcome among us," Caillean said. "Even to Dieda; she is very unhappy now, but a day will come when she is glad you are here too."

 

She kissed Eilan on the forehead. "Tomorrow one of the girls will help you to dress in the robes of a priestess; most likely Eilidh. And for a day or two she will go everywhere with you and show you what to do."

 

Eilan lay back. The sheets were rough against her skin, and smelled of scented herbs. She asked, wanting to prolong the moment, "What scent is that on the sheet?"

 

"Lavender; we lay it among our linens when we wash them."

 

Eilan told herself not to be surprised. The priestesses were women, if not exactly like any others she had known; of course they took thought to the plucking of herbs and the washing of linens like anyone else. She too would learn all these things.

 

Caillean said quietly, "Sleep now, and don't worry. It is well that you have come here. I think you have a very special destiny among us."

 

Neither of them could have guessed how that prophecy was to be fulfilled.

 

 

 

Ten

 

 

 

Why do we keep secret from the common folk the names of those herbs that are most powerful for healing?" Old Lads, the most senior of their herbalists, turned to the girls who were sitting beneath the oak tree, holding a stalk of foxglove bells in her hand.

 

"So they will have to come to us and respect the priestesses?" asked one of the younger girls.

 

"Their respect must be earned, child," Lads said sternly. "Unlearned they may be, but they are not stupid. The reason for secrecy lies deeper - that which is most powerful for good is also powerful for evil, handled wrongly. Foxglove can stimulate an ailing heart, but give too much and it will gallop like a frightened horse until it breaks down. For the healer, judgment is all."

 

Eilan frowned, for she had never thought of it quite that way. Later, looking back on her years in the Forest House, she wondered what she had expected. Peace, perhaps, or mystery, and even a little boredom. She had not expected that days spent studying with a group of other women would be simply so interesting.

 

Her nights were harder, for in the first months she often dreamed of Gaius. At times she saw him riding with his men, or practicing with the sword. He swore sometimes as the blade bit into the man-shaped wooden post — This for Senara, arid this for Rheis. This, for Eilan! When he finished his brow would be damp with sweat, but the moisture on his cheeks was tears.

 

Eilan would wake, then, weeping for his sorrow. She understood now how the grief of the living could torment the departed. She thought of sending a message to let him know she still lived, but there was no way to do it, and presently she began to realize that she was indeed dead to him, and the sooner he accepted that, the better for both of them.

 

In these early months, she was only one of a group of potential priestesses. She spent much of her time beginning to memorize the whole body of Druidic lore. Just as the gods might not be worshipped in a temple made with human hands, none of the divine lore might be entrusted to writing. Sometimes she thought this strange, for the human memory was itself so fragile. But she had seen her teachers perform amazing feats of memorization. Much of the old knowledge had been lost when Mona was destroyed, but much remained. Ardanos, for instance, could recite the whole of the Law from memory.

 

She was happy enough with her fellow priestesses. The ones she knew best were the two who had welcomed her to the House of Maidens that first night: Eilidh and Miellyn.

 

Eilidh was older than she looked and had been in the Forest House since early childhood. Miellyn was closer to her own age. Apart from these two, she best knew a woman named Celimon who was about forty, whose major task was to instruct the youngest priestesses and officiate at some of the less important rituals.

 

Her first task was to memorize every detail of those rites in which the maidens assisted, for if a mistake were made, a ceremony would have to be begun again. Two or three times Eilan had caused such an interruption. She felt foolish, but Miellyn assured her that they had all been through it.

 

Eilan was also instructed in the motions of moon and stars. She spent many night hours lying between Miellyn and Eilidh in a secluded part of the enclosure, watching the Great Wain swinging endlessly about the North Star, and the solemn march of the planets as they rose and fell and the Northern Lights flashed and circled in the summer sky. She learned that the earth went round the sun — of all the wonders, the hardest to believe. From all her early years in the Forest House these nights best captured her imagination; lying warmly cloaked on the damp grass with Caillean's voice floating above them in the darkness, intoning long stories of the stars.

 

She wished sometimes to learn to accompany the singing, but on one of the few occasions when she was allowed to spend some time with Caillean, she was told that women did not play the harp in the ceremonies.

 

"But why? Women can be bards now, can't they, like Dieda? And you play a harp, do you not?"

 

It was warm, and in the grove outside the walls one of the younger priests from the Druidic college across the fields was practicing. He was not very good at it, but it was very hard to play a harp so badly that listening would be painful. Even though the melody halted, each note was pure and clear.

 

"My instrument is a lyre, Lhiannon's first gift to me, and I have played it for years, so no one dares object. And talent like Dieda's cannot be denied." Caillean's dark eyes flashed.

 

"It does not make sense. Why is it I cannot learn?" asked Eilan. However badly she might play, she could surely do better than that fellow outside, who did not seem to have noticed that as the day grew warmer his upper strings were going out of tune.

 

"Of course it does not make sense," Caillean replied. "A great deal that the priests do makes no sense; and they know it. That is one reason why I will not be allowed to succeed Lhiannon. Ardanos is aware that I know it too."

 

"Do you want to be High Priestess?" asked Eilan, her eyes rounding.

 

"Heaven forbid," said Caillean fervently. "I would be running head-on against the will of the priesthood - which is like a stone wall - every day of my life. Leadership is another thing the men wish to keep for themselves. I think it has got worse since they encountered the Romans. They wish to keep the weapons, and the harps, and everything else save for the suffering of childbirth and the toil of the cooking pot and the loom. I dare say they would like to say women cannot serve the gods, but no one would be foolish enough to believe that. But why do you want to learn to play a harp?"

 

Eilan said, "Because I love music, and I cannot sing."

 

"Your voice is soft but sweet, for I have heard it."

 

"Grandfather says that next to Dieda, I croak like a frog," Eilan said bitterly. "In our house it was always left to her to sing."

 

"I think he is mistaken; but this time I will not argue, for even I must admit that he is one of our greatest bards. Dieda has a very beautiful voice, perhaps from him. Next to such a voice as your kinswoman's we are all frogs croaking, child, so do not grieve. You can learn the stories of the gods, even if you cannot sing them as well as she; I think you will have no trouble becoming a spell singer anyway. We cannot all have the finest voices, even among the bards."

 

And, indeed, Eilan was taught to sing many of the spells she had to memorize, and a few of the simpler Words of Power were confided to her, even that first year.

 

One day when she was being instructed in spells by Caillean, the older woman asked, "Do you remember that night after Mairi's child was born, when I frightened away the raiders by throwing fire at them?"

 

"I will never forget it," Eilan said.

 

"Remember I told you that you could learn to do it, if you had the proper teaching?"

 

Eilan nodded, her heart beginning to pound, whether with excitement or fear, she did not know.

 

"Well, I will teach you now. The important thing to remember is that the fire cannot harm you; you have seen me handle it, and so you know within yourself that it can be done." She picked up the girl's slender white fingers in her own cool ones and breathed on the palm of Eilan's hand.

 

"Now," she said, "The important thing is to trust yourself. Reach quickly into the fire, and pick up a handful of live coals; the fire can only harm you because you believe it is in the nature of fire to burn; once you know its true spiritual nature, you can handle it as you would a handful of dry leaves. Fire burns within you as it burns on the hearth. How can one flame harm another? Let the spark of life within you welcome fire!"

 

Eilan quailed, but it was true that she had seen Caillean do this trick; and she trusted the older woman completely. She reached towards the brazier of live coals; heat touched her face, but Caillean said firmly, "Do not hesitate — do it quickly!" And Eilan thrust her hand into the flames.

 

On her cheeks she could still feel heat, but to her astonishment, the coals felt like a handful of winter snow. Caillean, watching her wondering face, said, "Drop it; quickly now." Eilan opened her fingers against a sudden blast of heat and the coals rolled on to the hearthstone. She stared at her hands in wonder.

 

"Did I really do that?"

 

"You did," Caillean said. The coal had reached a cloth lying in the hearth, which began to smolder. A strong stink of burning cloth rose suddenly from the singed edges as Caillean picked it up and blew it out.

 

Eilan stared at her in astonishment. "How did you know that in another moment it was going to burn?"

 

Caillean said, "I could feel you beginning to think and wonder -and doubt. Doubt is the enemy of magic. We are taught to do things like this to astonish the common people with wonders and marvels, or to guard ourselves in danger. But you must learn," she cautioned, "that it is not right to do miracles for the sake of merely astonishing the once-born. Even to preserve yourself against danger, you must be wary of doing what may seem miracles. It may not have been altogether wise to use it that night in Main's house; but done is done. Now that you know it is possible, you shall learn when it is right to use such things, and when it is not."

 

As the year's passage was marked by the festivals, the girls received not only the lore of the gods each festival honored but the meaning behind the tales, many of which, true in symbol, were not true in fact. They argued about the virginity of the goddess Arianrhod, and the fate of the bright son she so unwillingly bore; they analyzed the transformations of Gwion who tasted the brew in the cauldron of wisdom. They learned the secret lore of the Sacred King and the Lady of Sovereignty. And in the darkest days of winter, they contemplated the mysteries of the shadowy goddesses whose bloody faces and withered flesh were the embodiment of men's fears.

 

"But why do men fear old women?" Eilidh asked. "They do not feel that way about old men!"

 

"The old man becomes a sage, something for a man to aspire to," Caillean told them. "They fear the hag because she is beyond their power. With the coming of her moonblood a girl becomes a woman. She needs a man to become a mother, and a mother needs a man to protect her children. But the old woman knows all the secrets of birth and death; she has rebirthed herself and needs nothing. So of course the man, who knows only the first change that brings him to manhood, is afraid."

 

Lhiannon's name was sacred even when the younger girls giggled about their elders late at night in the Hall of Maidens, but Eilan could not help wondering if the High Priestess had gone through the rebirth Caillean had described. Old as she was, one could not imagine that any human grief or passion had ever touched her. She had lain with no man, borne no child; she drifted through the Forest House in a cloud of lavender scent and trailing draperies, her smile sweet and vague and distant as if she moved through her own private reality.

 

And yet Caillean loved her. Eilan could not allow herself to forget that the older priestess, with whom that night of Mairi's childbirth had given her so deep a bond, saw something in the High Priestess that she herself had not seen; but she would take it on faith that it was there.

 

When they began to teach the girls the disciplines that would give them access to the inner planes, Eilan applied herself with diligence. Such things — dreams and intuitions — had always come to her easily and without warning. Now she learned to bring the visions at will, and when it was necessary, to wall them away.

 

She learned the work of seeing visions in a bowl of water and the use of spells for far-seeing. One of the first things she saw through her scrying was the battle with the raiders who had destroyed her home.

 

"A blessing on the Lady of Vernemeton, if it is she who has sent this wind!" said Cynric, sniffing the mist that was blowing past him, heavy with the scent of the sea.

 

"She was as good as her word," answered Bendeigid beside him. "Since the third day after they burned my hall this wind has blown. When the scattered bands came back to load their curraghs with their spoils they found the breeze dead against them." He grinned mirthlessly. "We shall pin them between the strand and the sea!"

 

From near by came a hard-edged order, and the rhythmic tramp of hobnailed sandals came to a halt. Cynric grimaced, glad the wind had not carried the sound to the enemy. As well to go in with clarions shrilling than to let the raiders hear that ominous tread. The Britons were not nearly so orderly, but a great deal quieter.

 

He still found himself stiffening whenever the crest of a Roman helmet appeared through the mist. He had never expected to be fighting side by side with his enemy. But if, for the sake of a greater good, even Bendeigid could suspend his hatred, he supposed he could do the same.

 

Then Bendeigid laid a hand on his sleeve and Cynric halted, peering through the fringe of scrubby alders that stretched between them and the shore. He could smell woodsmoke and the rank odor of the privy trench - not very well tended. It was true, one could track vermin from the smell. He eased his shield down from his shoulder and got a better grip on his spear.

 

Cynric's heart was pounding oddly and his mouth was dry. You longed for real battle, how can you be afraid? he asked himself. Would you have hidden behind Rheis's skirts if you had been there when they attacked the hall? At the thought, his panic changed to fury.

 

Then the Roman trumpets blared. Bendeigid gave tongue with a guttural roar and Cynric found his own throat opening. Howling,

 

the Britons ran forward. Cynric pushed through the trees, spear ready, and heard the Roman charge beating out an accompaniment to the British cries.

 

As the Romans drove down upon the foe the Britons fell upon their rear. A warrior turned, his form distorted by the mist to that of a monster. He was a monster! Cynric's training took over and he jabbed upward; felt the shock and heard the cry as the blade went in. But he had no time to react, for another man was coming at him. A swordstroke clattered on his shield. Side-vision showed him the Roman troopers, cutting through the foe with mechanical efficiency. Cynric jerked the spear free and swung, seeing in each contorted face his enemy.

 

Cynric could not tell if half a day or half a lifetime had passed when he realized there was no one attacking him any more. All around him lay bodies, and Bendeigid was methodically giving the mercy stroke to any that still lived. He was covered with blood, but none of it seemed to be his own. Once he had fallen and thought himself done for, but a legionary had stood above him, covering him with that big oblong shield until he could rise.

 

He realized that you could hate someone and still admire .them. He would never love Romans, but he could see now there might be something to be learned from them. At this moment, even his own Roman blood did not seem so evil a thing. He heard a crackle of flame and saw that Ardanos was directing the burning of the enemy curraghs. The smoke stank of burnt meat, but the round, leather-covered boats burned merrily. Cynric turned away, wondering if he were going to be ill.

 

But one boat had been kept back, and one of the raiders had been saved alive, though blinded, to man it.

 

Ardanos lifted his hands to the skies, shouting something in the old speech that only the Druids used. For a moment the breeze died, then it backed and began to blow from landward. Ardanos set his hand upon the rim of the curragh, holding it.

 

"I have called the winds to speed you," he told the man inside. "If the gods love you, you will come to Eriu once more. Be you our messenger, and take them this word," Ardanos said fiercely, "that if you come again to these shores, the same will be done to every one of you."

 

The vision faded, and Eilan sank back, shuddering. She had never seen serious fighting, and it filled her with horror, yet she found herself rejoicing fiercely as the raiders died. One of these men had certainly killed her mother and probably her younger sister, and set aflame the house in which she had been born.

 

She peered into the water, seeking the face of Gaius, but caught no sight of him. Had he fallen in some earlier skirmish with the enemy, believing her dead in the ruins of her home? Well, better that he should think her dead than faithless, she told herself, but she was surprised at how much, even now, the thought that he was the one who might have died brought her grief. The night they sat beside the Beltane fires they had seemed one being. Surely if he were killed, she could not help but know.

 

But presently the steady flow of her life in the Forest House washed the pain even from the memory of Gaius and what might have been.

 

With the others, she took her turn at gathering the sacred plants and herbs, learning which of them should be gathered by a particular light of sun or moon.

 

"This lore is older than the Druids," Miellyn confided to her once when they were paired. Miellyn, although she had come to the Forest House long ago, was not many years older than Eilan and the two, as the two youngest in the house, were often paired off in their work. Miellyn had chosen to become a priestess of the healing arts, and had already had extensive training. "Some of it comes down from the old days, even before our people came into this land."

 

It had been a wet spring, and along the banks of the brook that wandered through the fields behind the Forest House, the mugwort plants were waist high. The sharp pungent scent of their leaves was almost dizzying as she stripped them from their stalks. The priestesses used them to induce visions, and in an infusion to ease sore muscles.

 

"Caillean told me something of this," Eilan answered. "There was a time, she says, when there were no Druid priests in Britannia. When our people came they killed the priests of the tribes they conquered, but they did not dare to kill the priestesses of the Great Mother. Our own sacred women learned from them, and added the ancient knowledge to their own."

 

"It is true," Miellyn said, moving along the riverbank. "Caillean has studied these things more than I, and she is a priestess of the Oracle. They, at least, go back to a time well before the Forest House was built and long before the Order of Druids came to this island of Britain. They say that their first priestesses came here from an island far out in the western ocean that now is sunk beneath the waves. With them came the priest men called the Merlin, who taught the lore of the stars and of the standing stones."

 

For a moment they contemplated an almost unimaginable antiquity. Then a little breeze fluttered their skirts, and brought them back to the beauty of the green world around them.

 

"Is that feverfew or chervil?" Eilan pointed at a mass of low-growing bright green foliage with small jagged leaves.

 

"Chervil. See how tender the stems are? It has just sprung up here. Feverfew lives through the winter, and its stem is woody. But it is true, the leaves look much the same."

 

"There is so much to remember!" Eilan exclaimed. "If our people did not always live here, how did we learn all this lore?"

 

"Men are by nature wanderers," said Miellyn, "though you may not think it, rooted among us here. Every people has moved from somewhere, and had to learn the ways of the land from the people who were there before. The last of our own tribes came to this island only about a hundred years before the Romans, and from much the same part of the world."

 

"You would think the Romans would know more about us, then, if we were neighbors," said Eilan.

 

"They knew enough about our warriors to be afraid," Miellyn grinned fiercely. "Maybe that is why they spread such scandals about us. Tell me, Eilan, have you ever seen any man burnt on our altars? Or any woman either?"

 

"No; nor anyone put to death except for criminals," replied Eilan. "How can the Romans say such things about us?"

 

"Why should they not? They are ignorant men," said Miellyn scornfully. "They set down all their knowledge on bits of leather or waxed wood or tablets of stone and think that is wisdom. What good does it do a piece of stone to have knowledge? Even I, a young priestess, know it is the understanding graven in the heart that makes men wise. Can you learn the ways of the herbs from a book? It is not enough even to be told. You must seek out the plants yourself, handle them, love them, watch them grow. Then you can use them for healing, for their spirits will speak to you."

 

"Perhaps their women know more," said Eilan. "For I have heard the Romans do not teach the craft of letters to all their womenfolk. I wonder what wisdom the mothers pass on to their daughters that the men do not know?"

 

Miellyn made a face. "Perhaps they are afraid that if women learned bookcraft too there would not be enough work for scribes and the letter writers of the marketplace."

 

"Caillean said something like that, soon after I came here," Eilan said and shivered, though the day was warm, remembering the cold winds during the scrying. "But I have not seen much of her since then. I wonder sometimes if I have angered her."

 

"You must not pay too much attention to what Caillean says, or does not say." Miellyn cautioned. "She has suffered a great deal, and she is . . . immoderate in her opinions sometimes. But it is true the Romans do not think much of what women can do."

 

"Then they are foolish."

 

"I know that. You know that," Miellyn said. "But there are some Romans who do not yet know it. Let us hope that they learn it during our lifetime. Our own priests can be foolish too. Someone told me you wished to learn to play the harp. Have you heard Caillean play her lyre?"

 

Eilan shook her head. "Not often." Suddenly she remembered the occasion where Caillean had taught her to handle fire, and shivered.

 

Miellyn said, "You really must not mind Caillean's strange ways; she is very solitary. Sometimes for days she speaks to no one, except perhaps to Lhiannon. I know Caillean likes you; I have heard her say so."

 

Eilan looked at her and then quickly away. It had certainly seemed so that night at Mairi's, after Caillean had driven the raiders away. She realized now how unusual it had been for the older woman to reveal herself that way. Perhaps that was why she had avoided Eilan so much since then.

 

Miellyn had spotted a place where wild thyme grew beneath a tree and was using her little curved knife to cut the stems. The scent came sweet and sharp to Eilan's nostrils as she bent to gather it.

 

"Speak to her of her harp," Miellyn added then.

 

"I thought you said it was not a harp -"

 

"Indeed, Caillean went to considerable trouble to explain the difference —" Miellyn grinned. "The strings go into a box at the base instead of the side, but the sound is much the same. She knows many songs of Eriu. They are very strange indeed; somehow they all sound like the sea. She knows all of the old songs too, though because of our training we all remember more than most people. If they had been willing to train women as bards before so many of the priests had been killed, perhaps she would have been one." Irresistibly, Miellyn began to giggle. "Or she might have been the High Druid - if it is not blasphemy to say so - after your father."

 

"Ardanos is my mother's father, not mine. Dieda is his daughter," Eilan told her, gathering up the last of the thyme.

 

"And your foster brother is one of the Sacred Band?" Miellyn asked. "Truly you come from a priestly family. They will probably try to make you a priestess of the Oracle one day."

 

"No one has said anything about it to me," Eilan answered her.

 

"Would you dislike it?" Miellyn laughed at her. "The rest of us have our duties, and I, for one, am happy with my herbs. But the seeresses are the ones the people worship. Would you not like to be the voice of the Goddess?"

 

"She has not said anything to me," the girl answered, a little sharply.

 

It was no business of Miellyn's what Eilan might secretly long for, or the feelings that had stirred in her when she saw Lhiannon lift her arms in invocation to the moon. The longer she stayed here, the more vividly she remembered her childhood dreams, and every time she carried offerings to the shrine at the spring she stared into the water, hoping to see the Lady once more.

 

"I will be whatever my elders say. They know more about what the gods want than I."

 

Miellyn laughed. "Oh, perhaps some of them may; but I am not sure," she said. "Caillean would not say so. She told me once that the knowledge of the Druids is that which was given to all people, both men and women alike in the old days."

 

"And yet even the High Druid defers to Lhiannon," Eilan said, as she bent to cut a few leaves from a bunch of stitchwort she had found growing on the sunny side of a great rock.

 

"Or seems to," Miellyn said. "But Lhiannon is different, and of course we all adore her —"

 

Eilan frowned. "I have heard some of the women say that even my grandfather would not dare to cross her."

 

"Sometimes I wonder," Miellyn said as she sorted through the leaves Eilan had cut. "Cut them closer to the branch; we cannot use the stems. Do you know, I have heard that in the old days the laws required that any man who cut a tree must plant another in its place so the woods would never be less. That has not been done since the Romans came here; they cut trees and plant nothing, so one day there will be no trees in all Britain —"

 

"There seem to be as many as ever," said Eilan.

 

"Some seed and grow of themselves." Miellyn turned and gathered up the plants they had cut.

 

"What about the herbs?" asked Eilan.

 

"We have not cut enough to make any difference; enough shoots will grow up in a day or two to replace what we have taken. That is enough. I think it may rain; we should hurry back. The priestess who taught me herb lore used to say that the wilderness is the garden of the Goddess, and men cannot gather from it without replacing what they use!"

 

"I had not heard before, stated in just that way, but, but I think it is beautiful," Eilan said. "I suppose, if you think in centuries, that to cut down a tree is as foolish as slaughtering a breeding doe -"

 

"And yet some men believe - or seem to believe - that they have the right to do what they will to anything weaker than they are," Miellyn said. "I do not understand how the Romans can do what they do."

 

"The better ones among them would be as angry as you and I at some of the outrages," Eilan ventured. She was thinking of Gaius. He had seemed almost as angry as Cynric when he heard the story of the Romans on Mona. She could not imagine him slaughtering the helpless; and yet he must know perfectly well how short and dreadful a life could be expected by the Roman levies in the mines, ill-fed, poorly clothed, and breathing the poisoned dust of the ore they mined. If this punishment were limited to criminals and murderers it would be bad enough, but the byre-woman's husband?

 

Yet Gaius believed that the Romans were making civilized people of barbarians. Perhaps he had never really thought about the mines, because being taken to them had never happened to anyone he knew. Even she had not thought about it much until it happened to one of their own. But if she did not know what was going on, surely her father and grandfather did, and they had done nothing to stop it either.

 

The wind gusted round to the west and suddenly the clouds let loose their burden of rain. Miellyn squealed and pulled her shawl up over her head. "We'll be drowned if we stay here!" she exclaimed. "Pick up your basket and come! If we run, we'll be indoors before we're wet through."

 

But the girls were soaked by the time they came into the central hall of the priestesses. Eilan felt Miellyn had welcomed the opportunity to run.

 

"Get yourselves dry now, lasses, or you'll catch a rheum and I'll be using up all my medicines nursing you!" Latis, who was so old now she could no longer go into the forest to gather the herbs, cackled with laughter and shooed them towards the door. "But mind you come back then to lay out the herbs you've brought me, or they'll mildew and both the plants and your labor will be wasted!"

 

Skin still glowing from brisk rubbing, Miellyn and Eilan returned to the still-room. Built on behind the kitchen where heat from the ovens kept the air warm and dry, the rafters were festooned with bunches of hanging herbs. Woven trays upon which roots or leaves were spread to dry hung beneath them, turning lazily. Shelves with earthenware crocks stood along one wall, and bags and baskets of prepared herbs were stored along another, neatly labeled with the sigils of the herbalists' craft. The air was pungent.

 

"You're Eilan, are you not?" Latis peered at her. She looked rather like a dried root herself, thought Eilan, seamed and wrinkled with age. "Goddess help us, they get younger every year!"

 

"Who does, Mother?" asked Miellyn, hiding her grin.

 

"The girls they send to serve the Priestess of the Oracle."

 

"I told her she would be sent for training to the Lady soon," Miellyn said. "Well, Eilan, do you believe me now?"

 

"Oh, I believed you," Eilan said, "but I thought surely it would take someone older and with more skills than me."

 

"Caillean would say that they do not want anyone too learned near Lhiannon for fear she would ask too many questions. If the Priestess were forced to think about what she was doing, the Oracles she gives might not always serve the Druids' policies so conveniently."

 

"Miellyn, hush," Latis exclaimed. "You know you must not say such things — not even in a whisper!"

 

"I will speak the truth and if the priests object, I will ask them by what right they ask me to lie." But Miellyn lowered her voice. "Eilan, be careful; you are holding that basket aslant. We took enough trouble to gather these leaves, I do not want them dirtied by a fall to the floor."

 

Eilan readjusted the angle of the basket she was holding.

 

"There are some truths which should never be spoken aloud, not even in a whisper," Latis went on soberly.

 

"Yes," Miellyn said, "so I am told; and usually they are the truths that should be proclaimed from the rooftops."

 

"In the sight of the gods this may very well be true," replied the other. "But you know very well we are not in the presence of the gods, but of men."

 

"Well, if the truth cannot be spoken in a house built by the Druids," Miellyn replied stoutly, "where in the name of the gods can it be?"

 

"The gods alone know!" said Latis. "I have survived so long by sticking to my herbs, and you would do well to do the same. They, at least, speak true."

 

"Eilan doesn't have that choice," said Miellyn. "She'll be tied to the High Priestess for the next six moons."

 

"Remain true to yourself, child." Old Latis touched her chin so that Eilan could not look away. "If you know your own heart, you will always have one friend who does not lie."

 

The priestess had spoken the truth. With the coming of the next moon, Eilan was brought to Lhiannon and taught the ceremonious etiquette for attending upon the High Priestess in public, which, in effect, meant every time that Lhiannon went out of her own dwelling in the Forest House. She learned the rituals of robing Lhiannon for the ceremonies, which was more complicated than it looked; for from the beginning of the ritual, not even with a fingertip's weight could any human being touch the Priestess. She shared with Lhiannon the long ritual seclusion with which the Priestess prepared for the rites, and helped her through the physical collapse that followed.

 

That was when she learned the price Lhiannon paid for the great reverence in which she was held. For the delivery of the word of the gods there was a heavy reckoning. Vague and forgetful as Lhiannon, in her own person, might sometimes be, when she assumed the ornaments of the Oracle another power came upon her. She had been chosen, Eilan realized, not so much for force of will or wisdom, but because when it was needful, she was able to let her own personality go.

 

It was then, when the human identity had been put off with her ordinary clothes, that Lhiannon opened herself so that the Goddess might speak through her. And in those moments, she was a great priestess indeed — almost, Eilan thought, more than human. The price of becoming the vehicle for so great a power was both physical and mental, and Eilan's respect for the older priestess grew as she saw Lhiannon pay it without grudging the cost, or at least without complaint.

 

When Eilan left the Forest House and the woods around for the first time she was accompanying Lhiannon. It was then that she realized how the preceding weeks had changed her. Even the House of Maidens seemed remote and strange. When the newest novices scurried out of her way she scarcely noticed, and only afterwards realized that they had seen in her the same unearthly serenity she associated with Lhiannon.

 

It was, she supposed, a fairly ordinary Midsummer Festival. She had seen the Games and the market and the lighting of the big sun-fire many times before, but after her months of seclusion in the Forest House, the yammering of so many people was painful, and she shrank from the strong scents of humans and horses. Even the bright cloths the merchants had put up to shade their wares assaulted her senses.

 

Midsummer was a time when men put forth their strength in competitions, to entertain the gods and the people, and to strengthen the crops as they grew. But as Eilan watched the footraces and the wrestling it was the sweating bodies of the competitors that seemed the most gross and distorted of all. She could not imagine why she had ever wanted to lie with a man.

 

The winner of the Games was garlanded with summer flowers and escorted to preside over the ceremonies. Remembering what she had learned of the Mysteries, Eilan watched with a new appreciation. In time of need, or in some tribes every seven years, the new Year-King would have watched his predecessor burn, and even now some of the old sacredness attached to him. The Empire had killed or Romanized the heirs of the British princes, but so long as men were willing to offer their lives for the people, they could not eradicate the Sacred Kings, who each year stood surety for those who no longer understood their role.

 

If there were some great disaster, and a sacrifice were needed during the coming year, despite the Romans' prohibitions it was on this young man that the blow would fall. And, in recognition of his risk, he alone of all men was allowed to lie with whichever woman took his fancy - even a maiden from the Forest House if it was there that his eye should fall.

 

Eilan kept close to Lhiannon, watching as the warriors snatched brands from the great bonfire and vied to throw them high to make the crops grow. The people had grown rowdy with drink and the release of the festival. But no one would trouble her while she was with the High Priestess. Even the Year-King had never been known to push his rights that far.

 

She sat with Caillean and Dieda, glad of the protection of Lhiannon's presence and the hulking strength of her bodyguard Huw behind them, and hoped that the other priestesses who had come with them to the festival had fared as well.

 

It was not until several weeks had passed that she learned why her friend Miellyn had come away from the festivities so pale and thoughtful, and why she was so often ill. It was Eilidh who told her, one day when Miellyn was nowhere to be found, but by then everyone in the Forest House was buzzing with the news.

 

"She is pregnant, Eilan," Eilidh murmured and shook her head as if she still found it amazing. "By the winner of the games. Lhiannon was troubled and very cross when she learned of it, and has sent Miellyn to the seclusion of the hut by the white pool to meditate alone for a time."

 

"That is not fair!" exclaimed Eilan. "If he chose her, how could she deny him? It would be an impiety." Had the priests forgotten their own theology?

 

"The older priestesses are saying she should have kept herself out of his way. There is no shortage of women in this part of Britain, after all. I would have found a way to evade him if he had started looking at me!"

 

Eilan had to admit that she too would have sought some way to avoid being chosen. But when Miellyn reappeared among them, her loose robes no longer able to hide her rounding body, she had the sense not to say so.

 

And so the summer rolled on, and time came round to the second anniversary of her arrival at the Forest House.

 

By the time Eilan had assisted the High Priestess at half a dozen festivals, she had lost all enthusiasm for becoming the Oracle herself, but she knew that her desires would make no difference if she should be chosen by the Druids. She could not help knowing that the priests came to Lhiannon before each ritual, to help, they said, to prepare her. But once, when a half-closed door swung open, she saw the older woman slumped in trance as Ardanos droned into her ear.

 

She watched with extra interest that night when the Goddess was called down upon Her Priestess, wincing as Lhiannon twitched and muttered, garbling some answers while others came clear. It was like watching a horse fighting a tight rein, as if something within the Priestess struggled against the power that flowed through her.

 

They have bound her, she realized in horror as she sat by Lhiannon's beside that night when all was done. They set spells upon her so that she could say only those words that accorded with their will!

 

Perhaps that was why, despite the ritual, there were times when the Goddess did not come, and Lhiannon's answers arose from her own wisdom, or perhaps the words that the priests had taught her. It seemed to Eilan that those times were the most exhausting of all. And even when the trance was a true one, the Oracle could answer only those questions that were put to her; as time passed, Eilan began to suspect that the Druids controlled who was allowed to question her as well. A few genuine Oracles were indeed delivered; but only, Eilan discovered, in matters of small moment. And these, if they came from the Goddess, generally made little difference either to those who asked or those who heard.

 

Eilan's first reaction had been to protest, but to whom? Caillean was away, carrying a message from Lhiannon to the new queen of one of the tribes, and Miellyn too concerned about the coming child for Eilan to trouble her. By the time there was anyone she could have told, it had come to her that Caillean and Dieda, at least, must know already. It would explain some of their arguments, and the somewhat exasperated tenderness with which Caillean cared for Lhiannon.

 

And the High Priestess, above all, must understand what was being done to her. Lhiannon had chosen to come to the Forest House, and to remain in the power of the priesthood. If they were making her their mouthpiece, surely it was with her own consent and will.

 

It was in this state that matters stood when Eilan accompanied Lhiannon to the Beltane festival almost three years after she had been given to the temple.

 

 

 

Eleven

 

 

 

Gaius had not been in the Ordovici lands for almost two years when the third Beltane since he lost Eilan arrived. His father had not spoken again of the proposed marriage with the daughter of Licinius, but had seconded him to the Governor's staff. He had spent the past two seasons marching across Alba with Agricola, engaged in what they fondly hoped was a pacification of the lowland tribes. Raiders like those who had killed Bendeigid's family were bad enough but it was the still free tribes of the North who threatened the Empire's hold on Britannia. For a serving officer of the Roman army, grief was an indulgence. Gaius did his duty, and if the sight of some girl's bright hair and grave eyes set his old wounds to aching he took care not to weep where anyone could see.

 

He succeeded so well that when the campaign in Caledonia came to a temporary halt he was rewarded by being sent to escort a party of wounded men back to the Legion's permanent quarters in Deva while the remainder of the Twentieth labored on a new fortress in the Caledonian highlands. So it was that he found himself in the South again, trotting down the road to the Hill of the Maidens with a centurion at his side and a detachment of regulars tramping along behind.

 

"We need a man we can trust to keep an eye on the festival, and you're the only one available just now who can speak the language well enough to pass. You'll have to face it sometime, lad," his father had told him when he protested. "Best get it over with." But not until Gaius saw the bare crown of the hillfort rising from the sea of forest and heard the lowing of the assembled cattle did he realize just how hard it would be. He reined in, staring, and the centurion barked an order to halt the men.

 

"Looks peaceful enough," said the centurion. "Wherever you go, market fairs are pretty much the same. They can get ugly, though, when you mix religion in." The soldier laughed. Gaius had already found that the man was a garrulous soul who required a minimum of response from his audience. "I spent my first three years with the Legions in Egypt. A god for every day of the week, they had, and each one with his own festival. Had some pretty messy riots sometimes when two processions collided in the center of town."

 

"Oh?" Gaius asked politely, though he did not really care that much whether the man had served in Egypt or at the end of the world. This was the gate through which they had entered the festival grounds three years ago. He remembered how little Senara had jigged down the road ahead of them, laughing.

 

As before, he was wearing native clothing, for his assignment was to watch out for sedition at the festival, but that happy family with whom he had last come this way was no more. "What was Egypt like?" he said quickly, trying to wall the memory away.

 

"Oh, like everywhere else," the centurion said and yawned. "Great temples and dreadfully rich kings, and equally great poverty in the marketplace. It was warm though," he added and shivered. "I wouldn't mind a little of their sun right now; it's too cold and rainy here in Britannia."

 

Gaius looked up at the overcast sky. The man was right; he had not noticed the weather before. That was one thing that was different anyway. He did not think he could have borne to see this place again on a day of bright sun.

 

"You don't seem to mind it much, though," the centurion added enviously. "You were born here, weren't you? I'm from Etruria myself. Getting to be a rarity, these days, to find another native-born Latin in the Legions. I've served all over the Empire — Egypt, Hispania, Parthia. My cohort got cut to pieces in Parthia, and when they promoted me to centurion - probably because I was one of the few left alive — they sent me out here. If Apollo really discovered this country, I don't admire his taste."

 

"We'll dismount here," Gaius nerved himself up to it suddenly. "And leave a man with the horses. No room for them inside."

 

They heard lowing behind them as another contingent of cattle was driven in. The centurion bawled a command to the soldiers to move aside, and he and Gaius stepped back.

 

"No sense in getting under their hoofs," he added lazily. "I don't know about you, but I've better uses for my feet than having 'em stepped on by these cows. You ready to go in now?"

 

Gaius sighed. He would never be ready, but he was a Roman, and he could no longer run from his memories. He shivered and drew a fold of his mantle over his head.

 

"What's going on here anyway?" asked the centurion as they passed through the gateway in the wake of the cattle. "Is it some kind of festival for the farmers? They did that in Egypt - had a big white bull they called a god. Paraded him through the streets with garlands around his neck, and fanned incense over the cattle till you could hardly breathe. Trying to make them healthy, they said."

 

"Here, they throw herbs on the flames and drive the cows between the fires to bless them." Gaius answered him.

 

"Funny thing, how people keep fighting about religion, when really it's all the same. Seems to me it's the priests who make all the problems; most folks just want good harvests and healthy babies, just trying to get along. If it's not the cattle stampeding, it's the priests haranguing the crowds. Do the Druids run this festival?"

 

"Not exactly," said Gaius. "There's a priestess, something like a Vestal, who calls down blessings from their gods." For a moment he closed his eyes, once more seeing that veiled figure lifting her arms to the moon.

 

"Is she going to do the sacrifices?" They moved slowly towards the central square, for the herd of cattle was still ahead of them, lowing anxiously and pressing together at the strange sights and smells.

 

Gaius shook his head. "These days, anyway, the Druids or whoever runs their worship don't sacrifice anything except fruit and flowers."

 

"I heard they did lots of sacrifices—even human," said the centurion.

 

"Gates of Tartarus, no." Gaius remembered how indignant Eilan had been when he asked the same question. "Really, this festival's pretty tame. I was here once, and —"

 

"Oh, by Caligula's balls! Somebody's scared the cows," the centurion exclaimed, peering ahead of them. "That was what I was afraid of."

 

A big man in a checked robe had upset a lantern, and the cows were shifting about, lowing uneasily.

 

Beyond him an older man was haranguing the crowd. More than a hundred people had gathered to hear. Gaius edged forward to listen. This was why he was here, in case someone used the peaceful gathering to stir up rebellion. People in the crowd were yelling in agreement, ignoring the growing unease in the herd.

 

A lad came running with a bucket of water, splashing one of the shouters as he went by. The man turned, yelling, and the nearest cow threw up its head with a bellow, pricking its neighbor with a twisted horn.

 

"Oh, Hades, that's done it; those cows are going to stampede," Gaius shouted, even as one of the lead cows burst into a clumsy gallop, knocking into her drover and sending him head over heels into the crowd.

 

The speaker was still haranguing the crowd, but his audience were shouting at each other now. Two or three men were crowded off their feet, and a woman screamed, and then the whole front line of cattle burst into a lumbering run. A cow bellowed, swerving, and Gaius saw red on its horn. Somebody screamed. Men, women, and a few children surged backward, yelling.

 

Now everyone was pushing, trying to get out of the way. Within moments the central square was a confusion of motion and sound. Mothers reached for their crying children; one of the legionaries, not accustomed to cattle, was pushed off his feet and went down howling. Gaius struggled to keep his feet and was swept away from his men.

 

Someone grabbed at his arm. "Here, you look strong, you must help me; the Lady will fall." A tall, dark-haired woman in a blue robe gripped Gaius's arm and pulled him towards the edge of the square where an old woman swathed in a blue cloak had collapsed against two women in linen dresses with wreaths of green leaves over their unbleached linen veils.

 

Gaius reached out cautiously and the women let their burden sag into his arms. He blinked, recognizing the Priestess who had invoked the Goddess two years before. Carefully he lifted her, amazed at the fragility of the form within the heavy robes. Most of the people had fled, but cattle were still bucketing about angrily, or drifting in twos or threes with lowered horns and switching tails, lowing defiance at anyone who tried to herd them.

 

Near by lay the still form of the giant who accompanied the Priestess everywhere. "What's the matter with him?"

 

"Huw? Oh, he's all right," the older priestess said carelessly. "One of the cows gored somebody; he's afraid of the sight of blood."

 

Some bodyguard, Gaius could not help thinking. "We've got to get her out of the way of the cows," he said aloud. "Where shall I carry her?"

 

"This way." The taller of the two attending priestesses quickly led the way through the tumble of wrecked booths. Gaius settled his burden so that her head rested against his shoulder, relieved to hear the rasp of her breathing. He did not want to think what would happen to him if the High Priestess of Vernemeton died in his arms.

 

His nostrils flared at a sudden scent and he realized that the priestess had led them to the booth of a herb seller. The herbalist, plump and worried, was lifting the hanging rug aside so that Gaius could carry the High Priestess in. He knelt and laid her on the piled sleeping furs.

 

The place was dim and dusty, pungent with the fresh summery smell of the herbs suspended from the beams or shelved in linen bags. Gaius straightened, and his cloak fell back. From behind him came a sudden cry of surprise. Gaius felt his heart begin to thud heavily in his breast. Slowly, for suddenly he needed more courage than it had taken to face a charge of Caledonian tribesmen, he turned.

 

The smaller of the attending priestesses had thrown back her veil. From its shadowy folds he saw Eilan staring back at him. He felt the blood leaving his head; the world darkened, then flared into brightness as he got his breath again. You're dead . . . he thought. You died in the fire! But even when all other vision failed, shining down at him he saw Eilan's eyes. He felt a breath of air on his face and gradually his senses came back to him.

 

"Is it really you?" he croaked then. "I thought you had burned . . . I saw what was left of your house after the raiders came."

 

She stepped backward, motioning him towards the end of the booth, while the other priestesses bent over Lhiannon, and Gaius, his head still reeling, got up and followed her.

 

"I was away helping my older sister with her new child," she said quietly so they would not be overheard. "But my mother and little Senara were there." Her voice broke. Then she stopped and sent a quick guilty glance at the other priestesses.

 

In the dim light, wrapped in pale robes, she looked like a spirit. He reached out to her. He could hardly believe she was there, alive, unharmed. For a moment his fingers brushed cool linen, then she twitched away.

 

"We cannot talk here," she said breathlessly, "even though you are not in uniform."

 

"Eilan," he said quickly, "when can I see you?"

 

"That is not possible," she said. "I am a priestess of the Forest House, and not allowed —"

 

"You are not allowed to speak to a man?" A Vestal, he thought. The girl I love is as forbidden to me as if she were a Vestal.

 

"It is not so bad as that -" she said with a faint smile. "But you are a Roman, and you know what my father would say."

 

"Indeed I do," he said after a moment, and then thought of what his father would say. Had the Prefect let Gaius grieve, knowing there was no need? Along with his wonder at her presence came a surge of anger.

 

Looking into Eilan's hazel eyes, he realized suddenly that in all the time since he had left the house of Bendeigid, he had not felt so alive.

 

She shifted uneasily. "Dieda is looking at us; she may well recognize you. And Caillean, the older priestess —"

 

"I remember Dieda," he said harshly. "And I must get back to my centurion. Gods! I am glad to see you alive," he said, suddenly and intensely, but he did not move. The other priestesses were both looking at them now, and she raised her hand in a gesture of blessing.

 

"I thank you," she said in a voice that shook only a little. "Lhiannon is too heavy for any of us to lift. If you see Huw and he seems recovered, will you send him to us here?"

 

"To keep him safe from the cows," he said, and was rewarded by the sudden flicker of her smile.

 

"Go now."

 

"I must," he agreed. At that moment Lhiannon stirred; one of the women bent over and spoke soothingly to her, and hearing those low tones, it finally reached him that Eilan was a priestess of the Druids now.

 

He stumbled towards the entrance, and it was only when he was outside, blinking in the light, that he realized that he had not said goodbye or wished her well. Was she happy in the Forest House? Had she chosen that life, or had they forced her into it? But the door flap had fallen closed behind him. As he strode away, he heard Dieda's voice behind him.

 

"Eilan, what were you saying to that man? He walks like a Roman!"

 

"Oh, I don't think so," he heard Eilan say slowly. "Wouldn't he have been in uniform? The rest of them all were."

 

He slowed, amazed at her guile. It was at least partly her innocence that had at first attracted him.

 

Now where the devil had his centurion got to? He forced himself into motion again. Was the man likely to tell Macellius about this? And, more important, how would Gaius manage to see Eilan again? Now that he had found her once more, he could not simply let her go.

 

Behind him in the tent, Eilan clasped her hands over her pounding heart. It seemed almost impossible that the other priestesses could not hear it.

 

Lhiannon stirred, and murmured, "What happened? Was anyone hurt?"

 

"Some fool frightened the cattle and they stampeded," Caillean answered.

 

"How . . .how did I get here?"

 

"A passer-by carried you. Huw fainted - the great halfwit," Caillean said crisply. "No, your rescuer is gone; Eilan blessed him in your name."

 

Eilan, hearing, thought it lucky Gaius had not been wearing Roman uniform and wondered why. She wondered what he would look like in the uniform of the Legions. Handsome, she imagined, but then, he was nice-looking anyhow. She shook her head, knowing that she should not be thinking of him that way, certainly not here. That part of her life was over.

 

"First make certain that Huw is all right, then bring him in here." Lhiannon ordered. "If the cattle have stampeded, they probably cannot be rounded up at once, and we will be here for the rest of the day."

 

Eilan went out into the sunlight. She found Huw sitting on the ground, barely conscious, shaking his head dizzily.

 

"Is the Holy Lady safe?"

 

"No thanks to you, if she is," Eilan said crossly. "She fainted, and a passer-by carried her into the herb seller's booth."

 

"Where's all the cattle?"

 

Eilan looked around her and realized that Lhiannon had been wrong. The square was busy with folk setting up fallen booths and chattering, but there was not a cow to be seen.

 

"Only the gods know that, and maybe their drovers; they stampeded." The man who had been gored, she noticed, had been carried away by his friends. "That's why they gored that man; they were frightened," she said crisply.

 

"It was the Romans frightened them," Huw mumbled, getting painfully to his feet again. "Marching in all clanking and glittering that way. A murrain on them; why did they come here anyway? Did they think the blessing of the cattle was some kind of unlawful gathering?"

 

"There'll be no blessing of the cattle this day," he went on, shaking his head, "I'd best carry the Lady home. With Romans around there's more likely than not to be some kind of trouble," he added in a grumbling undertone.

 

Not for the first time, Eilan wondered why Lhiannon tolerated this great oaf. He was little use to her as a bodyguard; Eilan could not see that he was any use at all. If she should be ever in the position of the Oracle priestess - little as she desired it - the first thing she would do would be to rid herself of the services of this great bobby.

 

About a month after Beltane, Eilan was summoned to Lhiannon, and found her with a man who reminded her oddly of Cynric, and a little girl of eight or ten years with light reddish hair sun-touched with gold.

 

Eilan smiled at the child, who returned her gaze bashfully. Lhiannon said, "Hadron is one of the Raven Brotherhood. Tell her your story yourself, Hadron."

 

"It is soon told," the man said. "I have a foster brother who-has joined the Legions as an auxiliary, and he interceded for me or I would have been taken and sent to the lead mines. After his intercession, the penalty was removed and my life spared, and so I was given only ten years of exile from any Roman possession. I must now flee to the North, and I cannot take a girl child with me where I go."

 

"So what is the problem?" Eilan knew Lhiannon had the authority simply to take the girl into the Forest House without consulting anyone. The fact that she had not already done so meant that there was some difficulty.

 

"She seems to me to be too young for a place among us," Lhiannon said, frowning. "I do not know what to say to him."

 

"If that is all," Eilan replied, "I should be happy to care for her until she can be sent to fosterage elsewhere. Or is there a female relative to whom she might be consigned?"

 

"There is not," said the man. "For my wife was Roman born, and I know very little of her near kinfolk."

 

"So your child is partly Roman? Cannot you send her to her kin among them?" Lhiannon asked."

 

The man answered sullenly, "My wife quarreled with her kindred to marry me; she begged me with her dying breath to make certain her daughter never fell into their hands. I thought if I might leave her in the care of the priestesses . . ."

 

Lhiannon said sternly, "We are not a refuge for orphans. Although for one of the Brotherhood of the Ravens we might possibly make an exception."

 

Eilan looked at the child and thought of her own little sister, dead at the hands of raiders three years ago now. If Senara were alive, who was looking after her? She had looked forward to tending Miellyn's baby as a kind of substitute for her lost sister, but the older woman had miscarried the Year-King's child.

 

"I would willingly care for her, Lhiannon."

 

"That is why I called you. You are not yet committed to any very exacting duties here among us," Lhiannon replied. "Although this goes beyond the usual requirements. Still, if you will have it so, I will put this little refugee in your charge." She paused and asked Hadron, "What is her name?"

 

"My wife called her Valeria, My Lady."

 

Lhiannon scowled. "That is a Roman name; she cannot be called by it here."

 

"My wife had given up all her kin to marry me," said Hadron. "The least I could do was allow her to give her family name to her child."

 

"Even so, she must have a new name if she is to live here among us," Lhiannon said firmly. "Eilan, will you give her one?"

 

Eilan looked at the child, who was gazing at her with frightened eyes. She had lost all else; now she was to lose her father and even her name. Eilan said gently, "By your leave, I will call her Senara."

 

"That will do very well," said Lhiannon. "Now go; find her a place to sleep and suitable clothing. When she is of a proper age she may take vows among us as a priestess, if she wishes."

 

When Hadron had gone, Eilan looked once more at the little girl, who stood gazing raptly at the Lady.

 

"I am sorry to lay this upon you, Eilan. I have never had to deal with a child this age. What are we to do with her?" said Lhiannon.

 

"Perhaps she can run errands." Eilan put her arm around the little girl and smiled.

 

Lhiannon nodded. "Since she is not under vows, perhaps she could carry messages beyond our walls."

 

"She is a little young for that, but if you are truly uncertain about having her stay here, perhaps we should ask among the Romans," Eilan suggested. "Despite what Hadron said, her mother's people might want her. We should at least make inquiries."

 

"That is a good thought," Lhiannon agreed a little vaguely, her attention already flitting away. "Look after it, Eilan, if you will."

 

The little hand slipped trustingly into her own, and something in Eilan's heart that had been sore since she lost her sister at last began to ease. As they walked across the courtyard, she asked the child, "You are not unhappy to be called Senara? It was my sister's name."

 

"Not at all," the little girl answered. "Where is your sister? Is she dead?"

 

"Dead or carried off beyond the seas," Eilan replied. "Alas that I do not know." And then she wondered why she had not asked Caillean for some word of her sister's fate, and her mother's when the older woman was scrying. Was it perhaps that she preferred to think of Senara peacefully dead than living in slavery?

 

She looked at the child, seeking some sign of her Roman parentage, and thought of Gaius. As the Prefect's son, Gaius could find out if there was anything to be known. Before Valeria became Senara forever, she owed it to the child at least to try.

 

As Eilan showed her charge where she was to sleep and found a linen novice's gown that could be cut down for her to wear, she found herself thinking about Gaius as much as about the girl.

 

Where was he now? Was he thinking of her as eagerly as she was of him? Had he put some spell on her, that she could not only think of nothing else, but did not particularly want to? She sighed, remembering the strength of his voice, his handsome face and form; the slight accent with which he spoke her name, his lingering kiss at the Beltane fires.

 

I did not then realize fully what he wanted of me, she thought. I was too young to know - or care. But now I am older, and I am beginning to understand. What have I thrown away? The thought came to her then: For the rest of my life am I to dwell unloved — until I am as old and loveless as Lhiannon?

 

Who could she ask? Who could she tell? Dieda would understand, but separated from her own beloved, she would hardly sympathize. Caillean, mishandled and unloved so young, would be angry. And if Caillean would not understand, how could she expect it of anyone else here?

 

There was no one to whom she could describe the hungry need in her heart just to look on him once more, even if after that she should never set eyes on him again.

 

The next morning, as she was cutting bread and cheese for Senara, she asked, "Do you remember anything about your kin in the Roman town?"

 

"They are not in the town, Eilan. I think my mother's brother was some kind of Roman official; he wrote the letters for the Prefect of the camp, and other such things."

 

"Indeed?" Eilan stared at her. Surely the gods were smiling, for this man must be the secretary to Gaius's own father.

 

She thought for a moment of taking the child into her confidence, but after a moment's reflection decided against it. If a priestess of the Forest House should be discovered in the company of a Roman, no matter how innocent her motives, it would mean trouble for anyone involved. And would it be all that innocent?

 

 

 

Twelve

 

 

 

That very day, Valerius, who was secretary to Gaius's father, had arrived out of breath and looking shaken. "I have just heard that my sister is dead," he told Gaius.

 

"Tell me about it," suggested Gaius as they walked across the parade ground towards his father's offices.

 

"It's a long story," Valerius replied. "I lost contact with my sister when she married; I haven't seen her a dozen times in as many years."

 

"Did she move far away?"

 

Valerius gave a short laugh. "Only so far as Deva, but she married a man of the tribes, and my father disowned her."

 

Gaius nodded. It was bad enough for a Roman to marry a native woman of a princely house. He knew only too well how Roman" society would view a daughter who ran off with a native lover.

 

"An old woman who used to be my sister's nurse and mine sent me the news of her death," Valerius went on, "and I found out by asking some questions about the trouble her husband's in. I've seen him only a time or two, but he had a foster brother who's with the auxiliaries who told me that Hadron is one of the Ravens and has been proscribed. The thing is, she left a small daughter, and I don't know what's become of the child. Didn't you know a couple of the Ravens?"

 

"I knew some of them, yes," said Gaius, thinking of Cynric. Considering the conditions of Cynric's birth, he did not wonder that he had joined a secret society dedicated to revenge. In similar circumstances, he thought, he might have felt much the same.

 

"Somehow or other I must find my sister's child. Hadron's foster brother is one of the auxiliaries, as I said, and he has no wife to whom he could consign a female child, which leaves me the girl's nearest relative. Can you think of me as the guardian of a little girl?

 

I have not seen the child since she was in swaddling clothes; I suppose she must be eight or thereabouts."

 

"First you have to find her . . ." said Gaius slowly. Cynric might know where Hadron had gone with his child. And in the process Cynric, who knew what it was to be separated from his beloved, might be able to help him see Eilan.

 

"Can you really help me?" Valerius slowed. They were almost at the Prefect's offices now, and the secretary was well aware of Macellius's disapproval of any contact between his son and his mother's people.

 

"Perhaps . . ." Gaius said cautiously. "I might know someone who could inquire for you."

 

He had heard that Cynric had been summoned south to ride with the legionaries who had been despatched to punish the raiders who had burned the house of Bendeigid. It had amazed him at the time, but revenge made strange bedfellows. The word was that Cynric was now working with the auxiliaries as a guide and interpreter, Gaius wondered if he had changed his mind or if he still belonged to the Ravens.

 

If he tried to contact Cynric through army channels, his father would hear, but he was bound to see the young Briton sooner or later, hanging around the taverns that served the fortress.

 

"May Bona Dea bless you!" Valerius reached out to clasp Gaius's hand. Then the door opened, and both men stiffened to military attention.

 

Only a few days later Gaius, making his way through Deva's crowded marketplace, saw Cynric standing head and shoulders above the crowd. His curls had darkened somewhat, and his face now bore the beginnings of a beard. Gaius shouted, saw Cynric frown, decide this young officer was no one he knew, and prepare to move on.

 

Gaius swore and thrust through the crowd to face him. "Wait, man - don't you know me?" He stopped, tensing as the blue gaze descended and darkened. Surely the lad wouldn't hold his own deception against him now, when he too was serving Rome! "I think I still owe you a drink for hauling me out of that boar pit," he said companionably. "There's a wine shop here; let's try its wares."

 

Gaius drew a breath of relief as Cynric's frown changed to a rueful grin. "I remember you now," he said, adding, "but I don't suppose your name is Gawen. What do I call you, Tribune?"

 

"As a matter of fact," Gaius said, "my mother named me Gawen and called me so until the day she died. I told you the truth as far as I dared. But in the Roman town I bear my father's name: Gaius Macellius Severus. My mother was a woman of the Silures; I bear the cognomen Siluricus after her."

 

"If I had known this at the time I would have killed you," admitted Cynric. "But a lot has happened since then. I'll drink with you, Roman, or whatever you may be."

 

In the dusty darkness of the wine shop, Gaius said, "I was sorry when I heard of the burning of your house; I could hardly have been more distressed if my own kin had been killed by those Hibernian bastards. I am glad that your father was not hurt, and more sorry than I can say that your mother died."

 

"She was my foster mother," Cynric remarked, "but for her sake I thank you. We have a saying in the North that blood binds for three generations, but fosterage for seven. And indeed my foster father's wife was as good to me as if I had been born to her."

 

"She was a gracious lady indeed," Gaius agreed. "And for your sake I grieve for her." If he had married Eilan he would have welcomed this man as a brother. And yet, by accident of birth, he and Cynric had been on opposite sides of this struggle until now. At least others than Romans commit outrages, he thought. "I saw the ashes of your home, but my father sent me north immediately thereafter. Perhaps I struck a blow or two on her behalf against those Caledonians. I was glad to hear that the Hibernian raiders were punished."

 

"At least I, too, got to strike a blow for them. That was the first time in my life I was not ashamed of the Roman blood in my veins." Cynric went on. "I think that Beltane when you guested with us was the last time we were all happy together. All who survived are scattered now."

 

"I was at the Hill of the Maidens this last Beltane," Gaius said carefully. "I saw Dieda, and Eilan your foster sister, there. I was glad to know she had survived."

 

"Aye," Cynric said shortly. "She is in the Forest House, a priestess of the Great Goddess. As for Dieda, she is Eilan's kin, but none to me. Nor likely to be, if she stays there!"

 

"I have a friend in the Legions -" Gaius said then.

 

Cynric laughed. "Well, I am not surprised at that-"

 

Gaius shook his head. "His sister married a Briton, and was cast off by her kin. They had a daughter, but the sister's dead now, and they say her husband is on the run. My friend wants to find the little girl."

 

"On the run . . ." Cynric said thoughtfully. "Why are you asking me?"

 

"Because they say he was one of those who fly at midnight —"

 

"Many birds fly at midnight." Cynric gazed into his wine. "What was the man's name?"

 

"Hadron," said Gaius. "His wife was called Valeria."

 

"I know little of birds," said Cynric, "but I can ask around."