The Forest House (17 page)

"Or perhaps they are more merciful than men," said Eilan, then blinked as if amazed at her own temerity.

It had never occurred to her to question the wisdom of men like her father and grandfather before. "Why did you leave your tower by the sea?" Eilan prompted after a time.

Caillean, lost in memory, started and said, "Because of the destruction of the shrine on Mona — you know that story?"

"My grandfather — he is a bard - has sung it. But surely that was before you were born —"

"Not quite," Caillean laughed. "But I was still a child. If Lhiannon had not been in Eriu, which you call Hibernia, at the time, she too would have died. For some years after that disaster the remaining Druids of Britain were too busy licking their wounds to take much thought for their priestesses. Then the Arch-Druid made some kind of treaty with the Romans that ensured sanctuary for the surviving sacred women within Roman lands."

"With the Romans!" Eilan exclaimed. "But it was the Romans who killed the others!"

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"No, they only despoiled them," said Caillean bitterly. "The priestesses of Mona lived long enough to bear the bastards the Romans had begotten on them, then killed themselves. The children were fostered out to loyal families like your own."

"Cynric!" exclaimed Eilan with a look of sudden comprehension. "That is why he is so bitter about the Romans, and always wants to hear the story of Mona, though it happened so long ago. They always hushed me when I asked about it before!"

"Your Cynric the Roman-hater has exactly as much Roman blood as that boy your father refused to let you marry," said Caillean, laughing. But Eilan hugged her arms and stared into the fire.

"Don't you believe me?" asked the priestess. "It is all too true. Well, perhaps the Romans feel some guilt for what was done, but your grandfather is as wily a political animal as any Roman senator, and he bargained with Cerealis, who was Governor before Frontinus. At any rate the Forest House was built at Vernemeton to shelter women and priestesses from the whole of Britain. And at last Lhiannon became High Priestess and a place was made for me among them, mostly because they did not know what else to do with me. I have attended Lhiannon since I was a little child, but I am not to succeed her. That has been made clear to me."

"Why not?"

"At first I thought it was the will of the Goddess . . .because of what I told you. But now I believe that it is because the priests cannot trust me to obey. I love Lhiannon, but I see her clearly, and I know that she will bend with the wind. Perhaps the only time she ever defied the Council was when she insisted on keeping me. But I see through their plots and speak my mind, though not," she shook her head ruefully,

"as I have spoken to you!"

Eilan returned her smile. "That must be true, for I cannot imagine saying even half the things I have heard this night in my father's hall."

"They would not dare let me speak with the voice of the Goddess - they would always be wondering what I was going to say!" Caillean found herself laughing again. "They will want someone more loyal. I thought for a time it was to be Dieda; but I overheard a bit of what Ardanos said when she was chosen. I believe that they had planned it should be you."

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"You said something like this before, but I think my father means to arrange a marriage for me."

"Truly?" Caillean raised one eyebrow. "Well, perhaps I am wrong. I knew only that the son of the Prefect of the camp at Deva had asked for you."

"My father was so angry . . ." Eilan blushed, remembering the things he had said to her. "He said he would have Senara married off before she could cause him any trouble. I thought he meant the same for me. But he said nothing of sending me to Vernemeton. If I cannot be with Gaius," she added dully, "I do not suppose it matters what I do."

Caillean looked at her thoughtfully. "I have never been tempted to marry; I have been pledged to the Goddess for so long. Perhaps because of what happened to me when I was a child I never felt I wished to belong to any man. I suppose if I had been unhappy in the temple, Lhiannon would have tried to find a way to give me in marriage; she has always wanted to make me happy. I do love her," she added. "She has been more to me than a mother."

She hesitated. "It galls me to think of giving way to Ardanos's plans, but the Goddess may have had a hand in this as well. Would you like to come with me to Vernemeton when I return?"

"I believe that I would," Eilan replied, and a flicker of interest leaped in those odd, changeable eyes that sometimes looked dark hazel, and sometimes gray replacing the pain. "I cannot think anything else would please me so well. I never really believed they

would let me and Gaius be together. Long ago, before I met Gaius, I used to dream of being a priestess.

This way, at least, I will have an honorable life and interesting things to learn."

"I think that could be arranged," Caillean said dryly. "No doubt Bendeigid will be delighted, and Ardanos as well. But Lhiannon is the one who must agree to it. Shall I speak to her?"

Eilan nodded, and this time it was the older woman who took her hand. At the touch of the girl's smooth skin Caillean felt the familiar dizziness of shifting vision, and saw Eilan grown older and even more beautiful, swathed in the Oracle's veils.
"Sisters, and more than sisters
. . ." Like an echo she heard the words.

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"Don't be afraid, child. I think it may be . . ." she paused and finally said, "fated that you come among us." Her heart lifted suddenly. "And I need hardly say that I would welcome you there." She sighed as the vision left her, and heard, like an echo, a lark outside, giving greeting to the dawn. "Dawn is breaking."

With an effort, Caillean made stiff muscles obey her and stumbled towards the door. "We have been talking all the night. I have not done that since I was younger than you." She opened the door, letting the rising sun flood into the room. "Well, at least the rain has stopped; we had better go and see if the byre survived the night - at least those wretches could hardly burn it in this rain - and if they have left us any cows, and anyone to milk them."

For the next four days Gaius slogged along at the head of the troop of Dacian auxiliaries whose sick decurion he was replacing, with Priscus, their optio, all of them cursing the mud and the damp that seemed to creep through every opening despite the capes of oiled leather, rusting armor and chafing wherever wet leather touched skin. The woodlands dripped steadily and the fields lay sodden to either side, pools of standing water rotting the roots of the young corn. Summer's end would bring a poor harvest, he thought grimly. They would need to bring in grain from parts of the Empire where the gods had been kinder. It was no wonder the raiders were roaming if the weather had been the same in Hibernia.

Despite the slow going, by the middle of the fifth day they were well into the country of his adventure.

They spent that night at the home of Clotinus. The next day they passed the very boar pit into which he had fallen and turned down the track that led to the household of Bendeigid. The rain was letting up at last, and westward between the banks of breaking clouds the sky glowed gold.

Gaius felt his pulse quicken as he recognized the home pasture and the wood in which he had hunted for primroses with Eilan. Soon she would see him, clothed in the majesty, however mud-spattered, of Rome.

He would say nothing; she could judge the depth of his suffering from his silence. And then, perhaps, she would seek him out, and -

"Gods below! Are those more stormclouds?" It was the optio, Priscus, behind him. "I hoped we'd have a day at least to get dry!"

Gaius focused on the outside world and saw that though the sky to the south was clearing, the clouds ahead were an ominous dark gray. His horse tossed its head nervously and a little prickle of apprehension roughened his skin.

"Not ramclouds," said one of the Dacians. "Smoke . . ."

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At that moment the rising wind brought him the reek of smoldering timbers. All the horses were snorting now, but they had smelled fire before, and the men kept them under control.

"Priscus, dismount and take two scouts through the woods to see," said Gaius, a little amazed at the cold precision of his tone. Was it training that kept him from spurring his horse forward, or was he simply numbed into inaction by the thought of what he might see? It seemed only a few moments before the scouts returned.

"Raiders, sir," said the optio, his seamed face set like stone. "The Hibernians we heard about, I would guess. But they're gone now."

"Any survivors?"

Priscus shrugged and Gaius felt his throat close.

"Warm welcome here, but no place to sleep, eh? Guess we ride on," said one of the men, and the others laughed. Then Gaius turned, and his face silenced them. He dug his heels into his mount's sides and in silence the troop followed him.

It was true. Even as they came around the edge of the wood to the rise on which Bendeigid's steading had been, Gaius had been hoping that Priscus was mistaken somehow. But it was all gone -only a few blackened timbers at the ends of what had been the feasting hall still stood in mute memorial. No sign of the building where he had convalesced, and no sign of life. Thatched buildings burned fast.

"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.

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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.

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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!"

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"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.