The Forest House (26 page)

Caillean felt an unwilling pang of pity. Obviously Lhiannon was only too eager to unload the problem on to someone else's shoulders. In view of her poor health, perhaps this was not altogether surprising.

Eilan was still silent, as if this confession had taken all her strength. Her gaze was turned inward, as if what they said had nothing at all to do with her, or she no longer cared.

Say something, child!
Caillean glared at her.
This is your fate we are deciding!
Caillean knew that Ardanos could not do anything to
her;
he had tried, but Lhiannon was fond of her fosterling, and they had come to a certain accommodation by carefully pretending that Caillean did not exist. She, for her part, tried to avoid attracting his attention, or opposing him; but for Eilan's sake she felt she would even try to face the old Druid down.

"Very well then, send for Ardanos,” she said aloud. "But think twice before you put her into his power.”

 

"Well?” Ardanos frowned at the three women who awaited him in the High Priestess's dwelling. "What has happened that is so important that you had to send for me?” Lhiannon looked fragile and tired, and Caillean loomed like a shadow behind her. Was it her health? he wondered with a sudden stab of alarm as he noticed Eilan sitting beside the window. Had they sent for him because the High Priestess was dying? She did not look that ill, and surely they would not have already told Eilan…

"Be clear about this,” said Caillean clearly. "I did not send for you. And if it were my dying breath I would still deny that you have authority over the priestesses.”

"Woman!” Ardanos thundered. "What—?”

"And don't you say ‘Woman!' to me in that tone, as if they had nothing to do with you, as if your own mother had not been one,” Caillean retorted furiously. "Men who do not fear the Goddess—who are they to speak for Her?”

Ardanos grimaced and turned back to Lhiannon. "Well, you had better tell me what all this is about,” he said, none too gently. "It is for sure that I will not hear it from Caillean.”

This was not a good time for him to leave Deva, he thought in irritation. With the Governor away fighting in Caledonia, some of the local officials had begun to presume on their powers. He needed to be back where his agents could keep him informed, and if necessary he could use his contacts among the Romans to prevent trouble.

Lhiannon made an odd strangled sound, coughed, and tried again. "Eilan is pregnant by the Prefect's son, and we do not know what to do.”

Ardanos looked at her in amazement, then his gaze traveled to Eilan. "Is this true?”

Eilan said in a low voice, "I always tell the truth.”

"Aye,” grunted Ardanos, his mind whirling with calculation. "I'll give you that; you're no liar, girl.”

She looked as if she would much rather have told him nothing at all. Caillean moved to her side and took her hand protectively. He felt the anger rising.
Do these silly hens have any idea how devastating this could be?
The very survival of the Forest House depended on maintaining the myth of their purity! They must be made to understand!

"Why do you ask me?” His words rang with all the power of bardic training. "You know the penalty as well as I. It is death for a sworn priestess to lie with any man except the Sacred King.”

Death.
The word made a silence, even in the quiet of the room. Then Lhiannon moaned and Caillean moved quickly to catch her in her arms.

"You cruel, heartless old man!” she burst out. "And to think it is she who insisted on laying this before you!” She held the older woman against her, feeling for the pulse point at the neck. "Goddess! Her heart is leaping like a frightened horse! But you have not quite killed her, not this time.” She straightened as Lhiannon moaned and stirred. "You know her heart is weak. Would you like to try again?”

Ardanos bent over her. He said quietly, "She has only fainted; she will recover.” He felt more shaken than he had expected. "I did not know that it would upset her so.”

He helped Caillean to lift the old woman, surprised at how light she was beneath the robes, and lay her on the bed, raised a little on pillows so that she could breathe. Caillean poured a few drops of some potion into a cup of water and set it to the High Priestess's lips. Ardanos saw the muscles of Lhiannon's throat constrict as she swallowed, and after a few moments her eyelids fluttered open once more.

Her eyes are still beautiful,
Ardanos thought in surprise,
even now, when they are clouded by pain.
He would grieve when death took her, but that knowledge could not be allowed to interfere with what he had to do.

"Not death,” she whispered. "Is there no other way?”

Ardanos glanced at Eilan, who sat huddled on her bench with her knuckles against her lips, staring at Lhiannon.

"I would say the same if it were my own daughter, Dieda. I thought at first that it was she—”

"Dieda doesn't matter—” Lhiannon said more strongly. "We cannot let them hurt Eilan!”

"Of course not,” Caillean said soothingly. "Ardanos knows as well as you or I, that this penalty has never been exacted. After all, it is not as if this were an unknown thing.”

"Well,” Ardanos asked carefully, "what do you suggest we do?” It gave him a perverse satisfaction to see Caillean so subdued. Perhaps she would be less troublesome now.

"Miellyn's child was fathered by the Year-King, and in any case she miscarried, so the problem did not arise. But five or six years ago there was a case of this kind and the girl was quietly sent away.”

"That is true,” said Ardanos. "But the girl in question was not the daughter of an important Druid—”

"Nor the granddaughter of one,” snapped Caillean. "So now we come to it; you are afraid that it will reflect upon you!”

"Be quiet, Caillean,” said Lhiannon. "How can you sit here wrangling with Ardanos while this poor child”—she glanced over at Eilan—"is listening, not knowing whether she is to live or die.”

Ardanos looked at his granddaughter; he could read nothing from her expression. Was she being stubborn or did she really not care? He shook his head in exasperation. The work they had done here must not be jeopardized by one silly girl. "Is this known among the others?” he asked, and Caillean shook her head. "Take care to keep it that way, and perhaps we can find a way—”

"Oh, that's kindness!” said Caillean sarcastically. "To do for your own granddaughter as much as you would for a stranger…”

"Be quiet, child,” Lhiannon repeated tiredly. "You should not speak so to the Arch-Druid. He is trying, I am sure, to do the best he can for Eilan—and for us all.”

Caillean looked skeptical, but she held her peace.

"In any case, you are not the only ones concerned here,” Ardanos said grimly. The rape of a holy priestess, for that was what he would call it, whatever Eilan might say, was a torch that could set the whole of Britain aflame. He drew his cloak around him and looked down at them. There was one Roman, at least, who should be as anxious to see this handled discreetly as he. "I will go to Deva and speak with Macellius; maybe I will see the young Roman as well.”

 

During the next month, Eilan's sickness subsided and during much of the time she felt as well as ever. Her loose robes concealed the changes in her breasts, and with a firstchild it would be some time yet before any rounding was visible in her belly.

She wondered what Gaius had said when he learned of her pregnancy. She was not sorry that she had lain with him, but she saw now the power of the forces arrayed against her, and it seemed to her that she had been a fool to think that things might change. Her visions of being a great priestess in the old way were dimming. Now she wanted only to be the mother of Gaius's child. But even then, despite Ardanos's parting words, she did not dare to believe that they would let her marry him.

At least Caillean and Lhiannon did not seem to believe that her condition disqualified her from participating in the rituals. Most of the time she spent memorizing the full-moon ceremony along with the other sworn priestesses.

It had become a point of pride with her to prove that her loss of virginity had not affected her ability to function as a priestess, so she set herself to memorize the minutiae of the rituals. Of them all, Dieda was her closest match in intelligence. When they were children they had worked to produce the best spun wool or the neatest embroidery and win Rheis's praise. In those days Eilan had pitied her kinswoman because Dieda's mother had died whereas she herself had always had a mother's loving care and had drawn back from competition. Dieda needed to be first; Eilan did not. But now she had a reason to excel.

Eilan had a good mind and, put on her mettle by Dieda, she used it to the utmost. Dieda's memory was more precise, and of course no one could match her singing; but, of the two, Eilan often proved to have the better understanding.

As Lhiannon spoke to them, Eilan found herself hanging on every word. The High Priestess had grown so frail that she found it hard to remember that Lhiannon was only in her sixties now.

Eilan wondered sometimes who would succeed her. It ought to be Caillean, but the Irishwoman had said the priests would never accept her. Miellyn was too outspoken, and bitter since the loss of her child, and Eilidh too retiring. It might be Dieda, she thought then, and wondered what it would be like to live here under her kinswoman's rule.

By the time the moon was at the full once more, Lhiannon seemed much better, but as the ritual progressed, they could hear her voice grow fainter. She completed the ceremony, but it was clear to all of them how much it had cost her. On the following day she collapsed, and this time, when she was put to bed, she could not find the strength to leave it again.

A
rdanos might have found a certain satisfaction in telling Macellius Severus what his son had done, but, whatever he hoped for, in the Prefect he had met his equal. Macellius heard him out with great courtesy and then informed him quietly that Gaius had gone to Londinium to be married. And as soon as the Arch-Druid had gone away, he set about making it so.

Macellius had no doubt that Ardanos was telling him the truth. The only surprise was how he could have deluded himself about his son's passion. There was a stubborn streak in the boy that came from him, and a romantic streak that was his legacy from his mother. Macellius rubbed at his eyes. Moruadh had braved the displeasure of all her relations to marry him. He should not have underestimated the force of that wild, Celtic blood.

With so unruly a horse or slave he would have known to take sterner measures. Perhaps it was harder for him to discipline Gaius because so often he saw Moruadh looking out of her son's eyes. But marriage to a good Roman girl would settle the lad. As the Druid's footsteps receded along the tiled corridor, Macellius called for his secretary.

 

The sight of his employer's stormy face stopped young Valerius from making any of his customary jokes. He saluted smartly, and went in search of Gaius. He found him in the library, reading the account of Caesar's Gallic wars.

“I'll go at once.” Gaius put down the scroll. “Do you have any idea what my father wants?”

“No. None. But I think he's angry,” Valerius warned. “He had a visit this morning from the old Druid, Ardanos, and he came out looking like thunder, master Gaius.”

“Oh? I wonder what the old fellow wanted?” Gaius asked, feeling a tiny shiver begin to work its way up his spine. Ardanos had been in and out of the place since he was a child about some native problem or other. People were always turning up with requests, legitimate and otherwise, and when they proved too unreasonable, it was likely to put his father out of temper. There was no reason for this summons to have anything to do with Ardanos being Eilan's grandfather, but as he strode down the tiled corridor, he could not help worrying.

The elder Severus was holding a set of military orders. “You are to set out for Londinium at once,” he barked out.

Gaius looked at him, startled. He opened his mouth to ask why, and realized that his father was in a towering rage.

“I told you to leave that girl alone!”

Comprehension began to dawn. Ardanos must have told the Prefect that he had been with Eilan. Had someone seen them? Surely Eilan had told no one. Gaius would have been happy to proclaim his love from the housetops; it was she who had insisted on secrecy.

“With respect, sir, I don't think—”

“No, you don't think. That's half the trouble,” Macellius snarled. “I suppose you do know that you could hardly have done anything worse if you had hunted all over Britain, unless you had raped their High Priestess in broad daylight on their High Altar, or cut down their Sacred Oak. Do you want to get us all massacred?”

Macellius did not wait for an answer. “The folk around here need no excuse for rioting. No, not a word,” he said with a peremptory gesture as Gaius would have spoken, “I trusted once to your word—and never again. I don't think for a moment that you raped the girl, but I can believe, all too easily, that you got her pregnant. I have no doubt whatever she's a very good girl in her own way, and that she deserves better of you than this. A sworn virgin, and the Arch-Druid's granddaughter!”

Gaius's mouth slowly closed again. Eilan pregnant! Eilan, carrying his child! He remembered the sweetness of her mouth and the softness of her body beneath him and swallowed, scarcely hearing his father's next words.

“I will not soon forgive you for putting me in a position where we cannot even make honorable amends, but, as things are now around here, I cannot even order you to marry her.”

“But I want to—” Gaius began.

Macellius shook his head. “The South would explode as it did twenty years ago if the people heard of it, a fact of which the old man is very well aware. He's already wrung a concession on the levies out of me, and I daresay it won't end there. But at least he shall not use you against me. I have told Ardanos you were in Londinium, and that, my lad, is where you shall go. I'll give you a letter to Licinius, and with luck not see you again until you are properly married.”

Gaius heard him in disbelief. “Married? But that's impossible!”

“We'll see about that,” snapped his father. “Can you think of any other way to undo your folly? Ardanos has promised they won't hurt the girl, provided you stay away from her, and I can't think of any better way to make certain you never go near her again. You know that Licinius and I have talked of this, and dowry and settlements will be no problem. If she will still have you after this, you will marry that girl.”

Gaius shook his head, trying to find words to protest, and his father glared at him.

“You will,” he commanded softly but with so much concealed anger that Gaius did not dare protest. “I've gone to too much trouble to save you from your own folly to let you destroy yourself now. You set out in half an hour.” His father scribbled his signature on a roll of papyrus and looked up at Gaius. “If you refuse, I don't know what they'll do to the girl. You might try thinking of her for a change.”

Gaius stared at him, trying to remember the Roman penalty for a Vestal who broke her vows; as he recalled, they buried them alive. He realized abruptly that nothing he could say would be taken as anything but self-defense. Indeed, he could endanger Eilan's life. Fear for her dried up the words in his throat.

Macellius rolled up the letter, sealed it, and handed it to his son. “Take this to Licinius,” he instructed. “My orderly Capellus will go with you,” he added. “I have already sent word to him to pack your things.”

Within the hour, Gaius found himself on the road to Londinium with the massive figure of old Capellus at his side. All his attempts to begin a conversation were politely, but firmly rebuffed. When, almost desperate, he offered the man a bribe—he had to stop, to get word somehow to Eilan—the big man only snorted.

“No offense, sir, but your father told me you'd probably try that, and he paid me well to see you didn't go nowhere but directly to Londinium. And I works for your father and I don't want to be out of a job, see? So you relax sir, and do like the Prefect says. When you think it over, sir, it'll all be for the best, see?”

 

The journey to Londinium took the best part of six days. By the third day Gaius's natural optimism had begun to reassert itself, and he watched with increasing interest the neat villas that were springing up across the land. He could see now how untamed the West Country was still. But this ordered landscape was what the Empire was meant to be. He admired it, but he was not sure he liked it.

It was nearing dark when they passed the city gates and drew up in front of the Procurator's mansion, set between the Forum, where the treasury offices were located, and the new palace that Agricola was building, with its ornamental pools. He had been to Londinium several times as a child, and when he assumed the toga and officially became a man, but never since Agricola had become governor there.

The city had a gracious glow in the summer dusk, and a cool wind off the river dispelled the mugginess of the day. The scars of Boudicca's burning were mostly hidden now, and the Governor's building plans suggested the noble proportions of the city that would one day be. Of course it would never rival Rome, but in comparison to Deva it was a metropolis.

Gaius handed his letter to an imposing freedman at the portico and was bidden to enter and take a seat in the central courtyard. Here it was still warm, and fragrant with shrubs and flowers set round in pots. From the fountain came a tinkle of falling water and, somewhere in the rooms beyond the courtyard the music of a young girl's laughter. After a time an old gardener came out and began to cut flowers, probably for the table, but he knew, or feigned to know, none of the languages in which Gaius addressed him. For a time Gaius wandered about, glad to stretch his legs after the long day in the saddle. Presently he took a seat on a stone bench, all the fatigue of the journey overtook him, and he fell asleep.

 

Somehow the sound of a girl's laughter wove itself into his dream…Gaius started awake, staring about him, but there was no one to be seen except a heavy-set, middle-aged man on crutches, draped in a formal toga. Gaius sprang to his feet, flushing with embarrassment.

“Gaius Macellius Severus?”

“Yes, sir—”

“I should have known it.” The old man smiled. “My name is Licinius, and your father and I have been friends most of our lives. It is a real pleasure to welcome his son. Is your father well?”

“He was when I last saw him a few days ago, sir.”

“Good. Good. Well, young man, I had of course hoped he could get away to pay me a visit, but you are most heartily welcome in his stead. Given our arrangement, you can imagine that I've been eager to meet you.”

Gaius had been telling himself all the way from Deva that he would not be hurried into any such ill-considered wedding, but he could not burst out into protest before the eyes of his father's old friend. He had agreed to this because of the danger to Eilan and knew he ought to be grateful Licinius was so kindly.

“Yes, sir,” he said, temporizing. “Father did say something of this…”

“Well, I should hope so,” Licinius said gruffly. “As I say, we've had it in our minds since you were born. By Mithras, boy, if Macellius had said nothing of this, I'd have wondered what he was using for a head these days.” Despite its gruffness, this was the first wholly friendly voice Gaius had heard for a good many days, and, almost against his will, he was warmed by it. It was good to be welcomed. The Procurator took it for granted that he should be treated as a valued friend and a prospective son-in-law, and it had been a long time since Gaius had been made to feel a part of a family. He realized with a pang that the last time he had been made to feel so had been in the house of Bendeigid. Eilan, Cynric, what would become of them? Would he ever know? He had worried about this all the way to Londinium—he had to stop now.

“Well then, son,” said Licinius, “you must be longing to meet your bride.”

Speak up,
Gaius said to himself. But he could not bring himself to put out the light that glowed in the old man's eyes, and mumbled something noncommittal instead.
They will punish Eilan if I try to see her again,
he reminded himself sternly. The best thing he could do for her would be to go through this ceremony as expected of him.
Or is that just an excuse to avoid a confrontation?
he wondered.

But Licinius had already beckoned to a well-dressed upper servant. “Send for the Lady Julia,” he ordered.

Gaius knew that now was the time to say that he would have nothing to do with this farce of an arranged marriage—but without waiting for him to reply, the Procurator had hauled himself to his feet.

“She'll be with you in a moment. I'll leave you young people alone to get acquainted.” Before Gaius could find the words to stop him, he was limping away.

 

Julia Licinia had been keeping house for her father since her mother's death three years earlier. An only child, from girlhood she had assumed she would be married off to whatever man her father chose. He had told her that he had arranged a marriage with the son of Macellius; at least this meant she would not be given to some unknown patrician twice her age, as had happened to more than one of her friends. Trying to look unconcerned she plucked a ripening fig from one of the trees growing in the pots in the colonnaded atrium as her father came towards her.

He grinned broadly. “He is here now, my dear, Gaius Macellius the younger, your promised husband. Go and see what you think; it's you, after all, who is to marry him. But I think if you do not like the look of the young man, you'd be hard to please.”

Julia stared at her father. She said, “I was not expecting this so soon.”

And yet it occurred to her that there was no point in delay. She was eager to have something all her own; and certainly when she had borne this young tribune legionary a son, he would value her above all things. She was already used to running a household, but she wanted children who would love her. She was determined not to fail at giving her husband a son as her own mother had done.

“Nor was I,” her father said good-naturedly. “I wanted to keep my little girl a bit longer. Now I'll probably have to marry some old widow to keep house for me. But the young man's evidently got himself entangled with some native woman, and Macellius feels that marriage will settle him. And so—”

A native girl?
Julia's brows rose. She was aware that most fathers would not have spoken to a daughter so frankly, but she had always been as much a companion for Licinius as a child. “And so?”

“And so the young man's turned up on our doorstep, and it's time for you young folks to get acquainted with one another. I suppose you're eager to see him?”