The Forest House (51 page)

I
see rainbows around the moon
. . .
in the sunlight . . .in the waterfall. . .all the world is
shimmering . . .

Cool water . . .a fire's warmth . . .softness of a duckling's down . . .my mother's arms . . .

In this melding of sound all the senses were confounded. Only Dieda's mind remained distinct from the others - critical, and still unsatisfied.

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Breathe now, and hold . . .Tanais is wavering. Wait, wait — Rhian should come in now with the fifth note - that's better. Now let's lift it, moving up the scale - stay with me, all of you — maintain the harmony!

The last irregularities disappeared. The women's joined voices moved upward together to become the Voice of the Goddess. For a time even Dieda's inner monologue ceased. Caillean felt some tension in the other woman relax as the chord vibrated with inhuman intensity. And though Caillean herself was self-taught, and had no words to describe the
Tightness
of what she heard she was singer enough to apprehend the ecstasy of a trained musician experiencing perfect harmony.

It took an effort for Caillean to collect herself, to reach out to the energy that was pulsing around her and gather it in, holding in her mind the image of the sick woman they were working for. She could see it now, a mist of power that grew brighter with every breath.

Caillean drew the Power inward, projecting upon it the image until they could all see it, shimmering above the pile of stones. The sound built until it seemed she could bear it no longer. Her arms were rising

- all their arms were lifting unbidden as the Power fountained upward in a pillar of light, a surge of pure sound to send strength to the sick woman. And then it was gone. They settled back, breathing as if they had been running, knowing they had succeeded.

They raised the Power twice more that night for healing, and a last time, gently, to replenish some of the energy they had lost. When it was over, a measure of peace had returned even to Dieda's eyes. And then, with a final murmur of thanks, they filed back to the Forest House for food and bed. But Caillean, tired as she was, went to the separate building where the High Priestess had her chambers to tell Eilan how it had gone.

"You do not have to tell me —" said Eilan as Caillean came into her room. "Even from here I could hear you, I could feel the Power." The older woman looked lit up from within.

"It's true, Eilan. This is the work we were meant for! When I was a child serving Lhiannon, this is the kind of thing I dreamed of, but then the Druids penned us up here, and the vision was lost. With all my knowledge, I did not know how to find it again until you showed me the way."

"You would have found it . . ." Eilan sat up in bed and forced a smile. She still felt out of sorts and achy, as she often did at this time of the moon. More and more, she had become convinced that in ages past Caillean had been one of the greatest of priestesses. So much of what they were doing now in the Forest
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House came in spurts of certainty, as if they were not inventing it, but
remembering.
She supposed that she herself had been a priestess too, but while she had vision, there were times when Caillean was able to summon up an amazing power. "I have often thought that you should have been chosen High Priestess instead of me."

Caillean gave her a quick glance. "Once, I would have thought so too," she said. "I do not want it now."

"Sensible woman! But none the less, if you had to, you could do it." There was more silver now in Caillean's dark hair, thought Eilan, but otherwise she looked little different from the woman who had delivered Mairi's child ten years ago.

"Well I don't have to do it now," Caillean said briskly. "Only to get a few decisions out of you! We have had a rather odd request. A strange fellow from that Roman sect they call Christians wants to live in the old hut in the forest. He calls himself a hermit. Shall I say he may stay there or send him away?"

"He may as well," said Eilan, considering. "I don't intend to send any more of our women there for punishment, nor, I suppose, do you, and the Ravens have all found new hiding places." It gave her a pang to think of a stranger living in the place where she had borne and suckled her child, but there was no point in sentimentality.

"Very well," said Caillean. "And if Ardanos objects I can point to the precedent set when they let Christians build the chapel of the white thorn on the Isle of Apples below the Sacred Well."

"Have you been there?" Eilan asked.

"Long ago, when I was much younger," Caillean replied. "The Summer Country is a strange land, all marsh and lake and meadow. If there's any rain at all, the Tor turns to an island. Mist lies on the land sometimes so that you think the next turning will bring you to the Otherworld; and then a flare of sunlight cuts through the clouds and you see the holy Tor with its ring of stones."

Listening to Caillean, Eilan felt as if she could almost see it. Then she
was
seeing it, in a flash of vision as unexpected as it had been transitory - but Caillean had been in the vision too, gliding through the mists towards the hill in a flat-bottomed boat poled by the little dark men of the hills, with several of the novice priestesses huddled in the stern. But Caillean stood upright, with gold upon her neck and brow.

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"Caillean," she began, and from the widening of the other woman's eyes, something of what she had seen must have shown in her face, "you will be High Priestess on the Isle of Apples. I have seen it. You will take the women there."

"When -" Caillean began, and Eilan shook her head.

"I don't know!" She sighed, for the vision, as so often happened, had been only a glimmering. "But it sounds a safe place, hidden from Roman eyes. Perhaps we should think about installing some priestesses there."

Gaius's new position kept him much on the move about the country. Since for the time, the main supply depot had been established at Deva, now occupied by the Twentieth Legion, it made sense for him to move his family to a pleasant estate that they called Villa Severina, south of the town. Julia was not happy about leaving Londinium, but she settled in to country life with a stoic resignation, and a year after their arrival in the West gave birth to twin girls whom she named matter-of-factly, Tertia and Quarta. The latter was so tiny they soon took to calling her Quartilla instead.

"But why?" asked Licinius. The old man had come to pay a visit to see his new granddaughters.

"Can't you guess?" Julia asked, but without humor. "If she were a jug, we would have to name her half-pint, not quart at all." Her father looked at her oddly, and she realized that it was not much of a joke

- but then Quartilla was not much of a baby.

She found it hard to warm to the twins. When her belly grew so large, she had been certain she was about to bear Gaius a strapping son at last. Surely to go through such a hard labor with no more result than a pair of daughters, one of whom was sickly, was a reason for depression?

She recovered slowly, for she had been much torn during the delivery, and when it became clear that she could not nurse these children herself, gave them up to wet nurses with hardly a pang. The sooner she was fertile once more, the sooner she could try again for a son. The Greek physician had hinted that it might be dangerous, but he was only a slave, and Julia's threats kept him from saying anything to Gaius or her father.

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Next time,she swore,
I will build a temple to Juno in Deva if I have to — but next time it will be a
boy!

Yet, as the children grew, Julia became accustomed to living most of the time among the gentle hills south of Deva and staying in her father's house in Londinium only during the wintertime. Licinius loved the children, and was already looking around for families with whom to ally them in marriage.

Gaius was a somewhat indifferent father, but she had expected no more. She knew that when she was unwell he sometimes slept with one of the slave girls, but so long as he did his duty in her bed as well she could hardly object to it. She had married to gain the status of a matron and to give her father an heir.

Her relationship with Gaius was one of mutual respect and affection; for a Roman girl of good family anything else would have been unseemly.

Observing the scandals and divorces that occurred even in the pale imitation of Roman society that was Londinium, it seemed to her that she and Gaius were one of the few couples who had managed to preserve the old Roman values. Her marriage was a good one, and there were even times, seeing her daughters playing together in the garden of the villa, their bright tunics like flowers against the greenery, when Julia felt that perhaps she had not done so badly as a mother.

And soon after the twins celebrated their second birthday, she was pregnant once more.

After a long rainy spell, when the children chafed and whined at being kept inside, the weather had turned warm at last. Julia sat on the veranda they had built along the front of the house when they added the wings to either side. Ostensibly she was going over the household accounts, but actually she was dozing in the sunshine. Her hands rested lightly on the round of her belly, where she could sense the movements of the child within, surely a son. He had not moved much lately and she supposed that the warm weather had made the baby as torpid as she was.

Julia lay still, eyes half-closed against the sunshine, listening to the singing of the birds and the voices of the household slaves as they busied themselves about the tasks of the farm. Gaius used to say that Julia's household always ran with the efficiency of a Legion making camp. She knew without checking where each of her servants would be and what he or she would be doing at each hour of the day.

". . .playing in the garden." That was the voice of the strapping Gaulish girl whose job it was to keep track of the children.

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"That they are not!" Old Lydia, who ran the nursery, replied. "The twins are eating their noon meal, and Cella is helping the cook make pies. But Secunda is just at that age when if they are unwatched they will go exploring —"

"She was in the garden . . ." the girl said weakly.

"And where were you? Flirting with the master's groom again?" Lydia replied. "Well, she can't have gone far. You get out there and find her, and I will call some of the men to help you. But I promise to personally see you whipped if any harm has come to the child! What were you thinking of? You know the mistress must not be worried with her time so near!"

Julia frowned, debating whether to get up and speak to them. But this pregnancy had sapped her energy and her will, and surely Secunda would turn up soon.

In the distance she heard more voices, and Gaius's deep tones questioning.
Good,
she thought then,
they have got him out looking. It is high time he bestirred himself more on the children's behalf.

She lay back again, knowing that she ought to relax for the sake of her unborn child, but as the moments wore on, she found tension bringing her upright again. She could hardly hear the calling now. How far had Secunda gone?

The shadow on the sundial had moved almost to the next hour when she heard muted voices and footsteps crunching on the gravel of the path. They had found her then — but why were they so silent?

Secunda ought to have been wailing if her father had paddled her as she deserved. A chill swept through Julia's body. She hauled herself upright, clinging to the pillar, as the little procession emerged from among the trees.

She saw Gaius's dark head and tried to call out to him, but words would not come. Then the gardener moved aside and she saw that he was holding Secunda in his arms. But even asleep she had never seen her little girl lie so still.

"Why isn't she moving?"Her lips twitched soundlessly.

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Gaius came forward, his face working, already blotched with tears. More water dripped from Secunda's pink gown, and her black curls were plastered tight to her skull. Julia stared, shock sending ice through her veins.

"She was in the stream," he said hoarsely, "at the edge of the field. I tried to breathe life back into her. I tried . . ." He swallowed, looking down at the small closed face, pale as marble now.

No, thought Julia numbly, Secunda would never breathe again. She blinked, wondering why the world had gone so dim around her. Then she felt a wrenching pain in her belly.

The next few hours were a confusion of grief and pain. She remembered hearing Gaius swear he would have the Gaullish girl flayed, and Licinius trying to calm him. Something was wrong with Secunda . . .She tried to get up and go to her, but her women kept pushing her back down. And then the ache in her belly would begin again. In her more lucid moments Julia knew this was wrong. She was familiar with the pangs of labor, but she was barely six months along.
Gods, if you have any mercy, make it stop. You
took my daughter — don't let me lose my son!

It was nearly dawn when she convulsed and felt a last hot gush of blood between her thighs. Lydia bent over her, swearing softly. Julia felt the pressure as the woman jammed more cloths between her legs to stop the bleeding. But for a moment she had glimpsed something else, something small and purplish that did not move.

"My son." Her whisper was a thread of sound. "Let me hold him, please!"

Weeping, Lydia brought something wrapped in a bloody cloth and laid it in the curve of her arm. The face had been wiped clean, and she could see the tiny, perfect features, like the petals of a blighted rose.

She was still holding him when they finally let Gaius in to see her.

"The gods hate me," she whispered, tears sliding from her eyes.

He knelt beside the bed, lifted the damp hair from her brow and kissed her with more tenderness than
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she expected. For a moment he looked down at the stillborn child, and then, gently, he drew a fold of cloth across its face and lifted it. She made a convulsive movement to stop him, but she could barely move. For a moment he stood with the child in his arms, like any father about to acknowledge his new-born son, then handed the still form to Lydia to take away.