The Forest House (17 page)

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; he 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 sword-stroke 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, illfed, 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?