The Forest House (3 page)

He knew that if he didn't bleed to death before nightfall, the smell of blood would certainly attract wild beasts who would finish him off. He tried to stave off memories of his nurse's tales of worse things that scent might bring.

The damp chill was seeping through his whole body; he had shouted himself hoarse. Now, if he had to die he'd do it with Roman dignity. He huddled a fold of his blood-soaked cloak around his face, then, his heart pounding wildly, dragged himself upright; for he had heard voices.

Gaius put all his failing strength into a cry, half shriek, half howl; he was ashamed of the inhuman sound moments after it left his throat, and he struggled to add some more human plea, but nothing would come. He clutched at one of the stakes, but managed only to pull himself to his knee and lean against the dirt wall.

For a moment a last ray of sunlight blinded him. He blinked, and saw a girl's head framed in light above him.

"Great Mother!” she cried out in a clear voice. "How in the name of any god did you manage to fall down there? Did you not see the warning marks they put on the trees?”

Gaius could not manage a word; the young woman had addressed him in an exceptionally pure dialect that was not altogether familiar. Of course, they would be Ordovici tribesmen here. He had to think a moment to turn it into the Silure patois of his mother.

Before he could answer, a second feminine voice, this one richer and somehow stronger, exclaimed, "Lack-wit, we ought to leave him there for wolf bait!” Another face appeared beside the first one, so like it that for a moment he wondered if his vision was playing tricks on him.

"Here, grab my hand and I think, between the two of us, we can get you out,” she said. "Eilan, help me!” A woman's hand, slender and white, reached down to him; Gaius put up his serviceable hand, but could not close it. "What's the matter? Are you hurt?” the girl asked more gently.

Before Gaius could answer, the other—Gaius could see nothing about her except that she was young—bent over to see for herself.

"Oh, I see now—Dieda, he is bleeding! Run and bring Cynric to pull him out of there.”

Relief washed over Gaius so powerfully that consciousness nearly left him, and he slumped back down, whimpering as the movement jarred his wounds.

"You must not faint,” came the clear voice above him. "Let my words be a rope to bind you to life, do you hear?”

"I hear you,” he whispered. "Keep talking to me.”

Perhaps it was because rescue was coming that he could allow himself to feel, but his wounds were beginning to hurt very badly. Gaius could hear the girl's voice above him, though the words no longer made sense to him. They rippled like the murmur of a stream, bearing his mind beyond the pain. The world darkened; Gaius realized that it was daylight and not his sight that had failed him only when he saw the flicker of torchlight on the trees.

The girl's face disappeared and he heard her call, "Father, there's a man caught in the old boar pit.”

"We'll get him out then,” a deeper voice replied. "Hmm…” Gaius sensed movement above him. "This seems a job for a stretcher. Cynric, you had better go down and see.”

The next moment a young man had scrambled down the sides of the pit. He looked Gaius over and asked pleasantly, "What were you thinking about? It must take real wit to fall in there when everyone around knows it's been there thirty years!”

Mustering the scraps of his pride, Gaius started to say that if the fellow got him out he would be fitly rewarded, then was glad he had not spoken. As his eyes gradually adjusted to the torchlight, the young Roman realized that his rescuer was about his own age, not much over eighteen, but he was a young giant of a man. His fair hair curled loosely about his shoulders, and his face, still beardless, looked as gay and calm as if rescuing half-dead strangers was all in a day's work. He wore a tunic of checked cloth and trews of finely dyed leather; his embroidered wool cloak was fastened with a gold pin bearing a stylized raven done in red enamel. These were the clothes of a man of noble house, but not one of those who welcomed their conquerors and aped the manners of Rome.

Gaius said simply, "I'm a stranger here; I don't know your markings,” in the language of the tribes.

"Well, don't worry about it; let's get you out and then we can talk about how you came to fall in.” The young man slid his arm beneath Gaius's waist, supporting the young Roman as easily as if he were a child.

"We dug that pit for boars and bears and Romans,” he remarked tranquilly. "Just bad luck you got caught in it.” He looked up at the pit top and said, "Let down your mantle, Dieda; it will be easier than finding something for a stretcher. His own cloak's all stiff with blood.”

When the mantle had been let down, the boy knotted it around Gaius's waist, then, fastening the other end about his own, he set his foot on the lowest of the stakes, and said, "Yell if I hurt you; I've hauled out bears like this, but they were dead and couldn't complain.”

Gaius set his teeth and hung on, almost fainting with the pain when his swollen ankle struck a projecting root. Someone at the top leaned over and grabbed his hands and at last he struggled over the edge, then lay there just breathing for a moment before he had strength to open his eyes.

An older man was leaning over him. Gently he pulled away Gaius's fouled and blood-smeared cloak and whistled.

"Some god must love you, stranger; a few inches lower and that stake would have gone into your lungs. Cynric, girls, look at that,” he went on. "Where the shoulder is still bleeding, the blood is dark and slow, so it is returning to the heart; if it were coming from the heart it would be bright red and spurting forth; and he would probably have bled to death before we found him.”

The blond boy and the two girls bent over, one after the other, to see. Gaius lay silent. A dreadful suspicion had begun to steal over him. He had already abandoned all thought of identifying himself and asking them to take him to the house of Clotinus Albus in return for a substantial reward. Now he knew that only the old British tunic he had put on that morning for traveling had saved him. The offhand medical expertise of that speech told him that he was in the presence of a Druid. Then someone lifted him, and the world darkened and disappeared.

Gaius awakened to firelight and the face of a girl looking down at him. For a moment her features seemed to swim in a fiery halo. She was young and her face was fair, but the eyes were an odd shade between hazel and grey; wide-spaced under pale lashes. Her mouth was dimpled, but so grave that it looked older than the rest of her; her hair was as light as her lashes, almost colorless except where the firelight lay red across it. One of her hands moved across his face and he felt it cool; she had been bathing his face in water.

He looked for what seemed a long time, until her features were drawn for ever on his memory. Then someone said, "That's enough, Eilan, I think he's awake,” and the girl withdrew.

Eilan
…He had heard the name before. Had it been in some dream? She was lovely.

Gaius struggled to see, and realized that he was lying in a bench bed built into the wall. He looked about him, trying to understand where he was. Cynric, the young man who had drawn him out of the pit, and the old Druid whose name he did not know, were standing beside him. He was lying in a wood-framed roundhouse built in the old Celtic style, with smoothed logs radiating out from the high peak of the roof to the low wall. He had not been in such a house since he was a little child, when his mother had taken him to visit her kin.

The floor was thickly strewn with rushes; the wall of woven hazel withies was chinked and plastered with white-washed clay, and the partitions between the bed boxes were made of wicker as well. A great flap of leather curtained the entrance instead of a door. To lie in this place made him feel very young, as if all the intervening years of Roman training had been stripped away.

His gaze moved slowly around the house and back to the girl. Her dress was of red-brown linen and she held a copper basin in her hand; she was tall, but younger than he had thought, her body still straight as a child's beneath the folds of her gown. Light from the central hearth behind her glowed in her fair hair.

The firelight also showed him the older man, the Druid. Gaius shifted his head a little and looked at him from beneath his lashes. The Druids were learned men among the Britons, but he had been told all his life that they were fanatics. To find himself in a Druid's house was like waking up in a wolf's lair, and Gaius did not mind admitting that he was afraid.

At least when he had heard the old man calmly discoursing on the circulation of the blood, a thing he had heard from his father's Greek physician was a teaching of the healer-priests of the highest rank, he had the sense to conceal his Roman identity.

Not that these folk made any secret of who
they
were.
"We dug that pit for boars and bears and Romans,”
the young man had said quite casually. This should have told him at once that he was a good long way outside the little protected circle of Roman domination. Yet he was no more than a day's ride from the Legion post at Deva!

But if he was in the hands of the enemy, at least they were treating him well. The clothes the girl wore were well made; the copper basin she carried was beautifully worked—no doubt it had come from one of the southern markets.

Rushlights of reed dipped in tallow burned in hanging bowls; the couch where he lay was covered with linen, the straw mattress smelled of sweet herbs. It was heavenly warm after the chill of the pit. Then the old man who had directed his rescue came and sat down beside him, and for the first time Gaius got a good look at his rescuer.

He was a big and powerful man, with shoulders strong enough to throw down a bull. His face was rough-cast on his skull, as if carelessly chiseled out of stone, and his eyes were light grey and cold. His hair was liberally sprinkled with grey; Gaius thought he was around the age of his own father, about fifty.

"You had a remarkably narrow escape, young man,” the Druid said. Gaius had the impression that lecturing came very naturally to him. "Next time keep your eyes open. I'll have a look at that shoulder in a minute. Eilan—” He beckoned to the girl and gave her instructions in a low voice.

She went away and Gaius asked, "To whom do I owe my life, Honored One?” He had never thought to show respect to a Druid. Gaius, like everyone else, had been brought up on Caesar's old horror stories of human sacrifice, and tales of the wars which had been fought to subdue the Druidic cult in Britain and in Gaul. Nowadays those who remained were pretty well controlled by Roman edicts, but they could be as much trouble as the Christians. The difference was that while the Christians spread dissension in the cities and refused to worship the Emperor, the Druids could incite even conquered peoples to bloody war.

Still, there was something about this man that commanded respect.

"My name is Bendeigid,” the Druid said, but he did not question Gaius, and the young Roman remembered hearing his mother's people say that among the Celts a guest was still sacred, at least outside Roman lands. A man's worst enemy might claim food and shelter and depart unquestioned if he chose. Gaius breathed a little freer at the reprieve; this was one place it might be safer—and wiser—to claim hospitality as a guest than to exact it as the right of a conqueror.

The girl Eilan came into the alcove again, carrying a small chest of oakwood bound with iron, and a drinking horn. She said timidly, "I hope this is the right one.”

Her father nodded to her brusquely, took the chest, and gestured to her to give the horn to Gaius. He reached for it and found to his surprise that his fingers had not the strength to close.

The Druid said, "Drink that,” with the unmistakable manner of a man who is accustomed to giving orders and to having them obeyed. He added after a minute, "You'll need it by the time we get through with you.” He sounded pleasant enough; but Gaius had begun to be frightened.

Bendeigid gestured to the girl and she came back to Gaius's bedside.

She smiled, tasted a few drops in the traditional gesture of hospitality, then held the horn to his lips. Gaius tried to raise himself a little but his muscles would not obey him. With a compassionate cry, Eilan lifted his head in the curve of her arm so that he could drink.

The young Roman sipped at the cup; it was strong mead, to which some bitter, obviously medicinal spice had been added.

"You had almost won through to the Land of Youth, stranger, but you will not die,” she murmured. "I saw you in a dream, but you were older—and with a little boy by your side.”

He looked up at her, already too deliciously drowsy to find that disturbing. Young as she was, lying against her breast was like being back in his mother's arms. Now, when he was in pain, he could almost remember her, and his eyes stung with tears. He was vaguely aware when the old Druid cut away his tunic and the old Druid and the young man Cynric washed his wounds with something that stung—but not any worse than the stuff old Manlius had put on his leg when he hurt it before. They smeared his leg with something sticky and stinging, and bound it tightly with strips of linen. Then they moved the swollen ankle, and he watched without much interest as somebody said, "Nothing much wrong here—not even broken.”