The Forest House (15 page)

When the tea was ready, Caillean bent over Mairi, who was moving restlessly, and held the cup to her lips. "There, sip this now. It will make you feel stronger."

But in a few moments Mairi shook her head, her face growing red and contorted.

"It will not be long, my dear," said Caillean encouragingly. "Do not try to sit upright now."

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As Mairi slumped, gasping, after the contraction, Caillean said, low and quick, "Eilan, sponge her face, while I make all ready." She moved to the fire, and spoke to Mairi once more. "See, I have a fine swaddling ready for the little one, and it will not be long now till you hold her. Or do you think it will be another fine son like the one you have already?"

"I do not care," Mairi groaned, breathing hard. "I only want — it over - ahh - will it be long now - ?"

"Of course not. Just a little while, Mairi, and you will have your child in your arms . . .ah, that's right, just a little more . . .One begins just as another ends; I know it's hard, but it means your babe will be here all the sooner —"

Eilan felt almost rigid with fright. Mairi did not even look like herself any more. Her face was red and swollen, she cried out and seemed not even to know she was doing it. Then she gasped, arching her back and bracing her feet against the end of the bed.

"I can't — oh, I can't," came the hoarse cry, but Caillean was still crooning encouragement. It seemed to Eilan that the birthing had lasted a lifetime, but the sun was barely set.

Then Caillean's voice changed. "Now I think we are ready. Let her hold your hands, Eilan; no, not like that - at the wrists. Now, Mairi, push just once more. I know you are tired, child, but this will soon be over. Breathe — that's right, breathe hard, just let it come. There, there, now look!" Mairi's body heaved, and the priestess straightened, holding something, unbelievably red and tiny, that jerked in her hands with a thin cry. "Look, Mairi, you have a fine little daughter."

Mairi's red face relaxed in a blissful smile as Caillean laid the newborn child upon her belly.

"Ah, Lady," breathed the priestess, looking down at them. "More times than I can remember I have seen this, and always it is a miracle!" The thin mewing became a shrill and demanding cry, and Mairi laughed.

"Oh, Caillean, she's so beautiful, so beautiful. . ."

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With swift efficiency the priestess tied off the birthcord and cleansed the child. When Mairi began to deliver the afterbirth, Caillean handed the baby to Eilan.

It seemed impossible that anything so fragile should be a human child; its fingers and feet were thin and spidery, its head covered with a downy dark fuzz. As Mairi fell into an exhausted sleep, Caillean hung a small metal amulet around the infant's neck, and began to cocoon it in swaddling bands.

"Now she cannot be stolen by the elf-kind, and we have watched her every moment since she was born, so we know she is no changeling," Caillean said. "But not even the Good Folk would be likely to come out into this rain. So you see, even from such a flood some good can come."

Caillean straightened her weary back, realizing that a red watery sun was beginning to peer through the heavy low-lying clouds for the first time in many days.

The baby was long and frail. Her hair turned to a downy reddish fuzz as it dried.

"She looks so delicate- will she live?" Eilan asked.

"I see no reason she should not," Caillean replied. "It is a mercy of the gods we did not leave here last night. I thought it might be safer to take refuge in the Forest House after all; and then this babe would have been born beneath some tree or in an open field, and we might well have lost both mother and child.

My foresight is not always true."

The priestess sat down heavily on a bench before the fire. "Why, it is day again; no wonder I am weary.

And no doubt before long, the boy will wake and we can show him his little sister."

Eilan was still holding the baby, but as Caillean looked up at her a veil seemed to fall between them, like a breath of cold mist from the Otherworld. As it swirled, a dreadful sorrow chilled Caillean's bones; suddenly she was seeing an Eilan who was older, in the blue robe of the Forest House, with the blue tattooed crescent of a sworn priestess between her brows. In her arms she held a young child; and in her eyes Caillean saw a grief so great it tore her heart.

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Caillean shuddered, shaken by that flood of sorrow, and tried to blink the tears away. When she looked again, the young girl was staring at her in amazement. Involuntarily the priestess took a step forward and snatched Mairi's child, who mewed softly and fell asleep again.

"What is the matter?" Eilan asked. "Why were you looking at me like that?"

"A draught," Caillean murmured. "It chilled us both." But they could both see that the rushlights burned unstirringly.
My foresight is not always true,
she told herself.
Not always . . .

She shook her head. "Let us hope the streams are still impassable," she said. Even the thought of raiders was a welcome distraction after that vision.

"Why do you say that, Caillean? My father will certainly want to come as soon as he can, and my mother too, to see their new grandchild. And all the more so if, as you say, Mairi is widowed —"

Caillean started. "Did I say that? Well, surely the weather will do as it will; never did I hear that even for the will of the High Druid we had more either of sun or rain. But I cannot help thinking that your kinsmen are not the only ones who can ride the roads. Come," she added, "The babe must go back to her mother's breast. She moved toward the box bed, the swaddled child in her arms.

Eight

Over the Roman camp at Deva rain continued to fall with maddening insistence. The men stayed in their barracks, dicing or repairing worn gear, or made their way to the wine shop to drink the afternoon away.

In the midst of the all-encompassing wetness, Macellius Severus sent for his son.

"You are familiar with the country to the west," he began. "Do you think you could guide a party along
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the roads to Bendeigid Vran's household?"

Gaius stiffened, letting his oiled leather cape drip on to the tiled floor. "Yes, but, Father —"

Macellius guessed his meaning. "I am not suggesting that you should spy on a friend's household, my boy, but Hibernian raiders have been sighted off Segontium. Every British housestead in the region will be at risk if they slip by. It's for their own good, though I don't suppose they will see it that way. But if I must send a troop in to see what's happening, is it not better that it be led by a friend than by a Celt-hater, or some idiot fresh from Rome who thinks the Britons still go about painted blue?"

Gaius felt himself coloring. He hated the way his father could suddenly make him feel like a child.

"I am at your service, Father - and at Rome's," he added stiffly after a moment, feeling so cynical about the polite formula that he half-expected a sneer in response.
How corrupt I am becoming, but at least I
know when I am being a hypocrite. Will I be so accustomed to putting on that air of benign
superiority by the time I am my father's age that I believe it?

"Or do you fear that your temper will run away with you because Bendeigid refused you his daughter's hand?" his father went on. "I told you how it would be."

Gaius felt his fists clench and bit his lip hard. He had never bested his father in a confrontation and knew he would have no chance now. Still, those words had been like salt on a raw wound.

"You told me, and you were right," Gaius said through his teeth. "Trot out whatever heifer you will - any girl with broad hips and good bloodlines, this Julia if you like - and I will do my duty."

"You are a Roman and I expect you to behave like one," Macellius said more gently. "You acted honorably, and you will continue to do so. In Juno's name, boy, the girl you loved may be in danger.

Even though you can't marry her, don't you want to make sure she is safe and well?"

And to that, of course, he could make no answer at all, but he felt his stomach curdling with a dread that owed nothing to physical fear as he saluted and went out of the door.

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Perhaps I am simply afraid to face them all,Gaius thought as his little troop of horsemen detached from the Auxilia trotted through the gate of the fortress and splashed down the hill.
In a way I did betray their
trust, and they were all kind to me.
During the confusion of detailing the men and packing he had been able to suppress his feelings, but now the sick apprehension washed over him once more.

He had only seen Cynric once after leaving the house of Bendeigid . . .One day in the market town of Deva he had turned and recognized the blond young giant bartering for a sword at a smith's stall. Cynric was so deeply engaged in conversation with the weapons seller that he had not seen Gaius, and, in spite of his upbringing, Gaius had turned on his heel and fled. It was just after he had received his reply from Bendeigid. If the household knew of the offer Gaius would be shamed, and if not, what could Cynric, seeing the lad he had befriended wearing the uniform of a Roman tribune, presume but that they had been betrayed?

He wondered who had written the Druid's Latin response for him. Gaius had burned the wax tablets on which they were written, but the words remained engraved on his memory. They were simple enough.

The Druid did not feel he could give his daughter in marriage, because of her youth and Gaius's Roman heritage.

Gaius had resolved to put the whole thing completely out of mind. After all, he was a Roman, trained to discipline both mind and body. But it was proving harder than he had expected. He could control his thoughts during the daytime, but last night he had dreamed once more that he and Eilan were sailing westward together on a white ship. Yet even if there were any land to the west where they might flee, he did not have the faintest idea how one would go about abducting even a willing girl, nor whether Eilan would be willing to run away. He had no intention of facing down all his kinsmen, to say nothing of hers.

Nothing could come of that except misery for them both.

Perhaps Eilan was betrothed to somebody else by now, despite what her father had said about her youth. Certainly most Roman girls were married by that age. His father could go ahead, if he wished, and pledge him to whomever he willed. Licinius's daughter was young too, so perhaps he need not face it for a while. Better, Gaius thought, to stop thinking about women entirely. The gods knew he had tried. But now and again, seeing - perhaps in some Gaulish slave - a flash of fair hair and grey eyes, her image would return to him so vividly he wanted to cry.

He would have liked to learn from Cynric how the family fared. But by the time he had got up his courage again the young giant had vanished. And all things considered, it was probably just as well.

Eilan woke suddenly, blinking as she tried to remember where she was. Had the baby cried? Had she
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dreamed? But Mairi and the babe lay quiet in the bed box on the other side of the fire. As she moved, her nephew, Vran, turned in his sleep and nestled closer against her. The priestess, Caillean, lay still against the wall. Eilan, at the edge of the bed nearest the fire, had slept badly, restless. If she had been dreaming, she could not remember it; she knew only that she was awake and staring at the red coals where the fire had burned to embers.

In the dark Caillean said softly, "I heard it too. There is someone outside the house."

"At this hour?" She listened, but there was only the dripping of water from the eaves and the hiss of the fire.

But Caillean said with peremptory haste, "Be still." She slipped from the bed and silently tested the bar across the door. It was secure in its slot, but after a moment Eilan heard again the sound that had wakened her and saw it bow slightly as the door was pressed inward.

Eilan shivered. She had been weaned on tales of raiders, but had always lived in the great house of Bendeigid, protected by her father's armed men. The two serving men who helped with the farm work slept in the other roundhouse, and the homes of the other men oathed to Rhodri were scattered through the hills.

"Get up - quietly - and dress as swiftly as you can," whispered Caillean. The door shook again, and Eilan obeyed, trembling.

"My father always said to hide in the woods if raiders came —"

"That is no good to us now, with this rain, and Mairi still weak from childbirth," Caillean murmured.

"Wait."

The door groaned as someone thrust more strongly, and Mairi woke, muttering. But Caillean, fully dressed now, had her hand over her lips. "Be silent, as you value your life and your child's," she whispered. Mairi subsided with a gasp, and the baby, luckily, slept on.

"Shall we hide in the storage pit?" Eilan whispered as the door shook again. Whoever was outside was
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determined to force his way in.

Caillean said softly, "Stay here, and whatever happens do not scream," and went to the door. Mairi cried out as Caillean began to lift the bar. The priestess said fiercely, "Do you want to put this door back together after they break it down? I do not."

As she drew back the bar, the door banged open. A dozen men burst through it as if blown by the wind and stopped short as Caillean cried out a single word that sounded like a command. They were big men with wild and untrimmed hair streaming over their shoulders, swathed in skins and hairy cloaks of heavy wool over tunics even more brightly checked than those the Britons wore. Caillean seemed slender as a willow wand before them. Her dark hair flowed to her waist over her ungirt blue robe, lifting a little as the wind blew through the door. It was the only thing about her that moved.

Mairi dived beneath the covers, clutching her child. One of the men laughed and said something just audible, and Eilan shuddered. She felt like following Mairi, but was too paralyzed to move.

Caillean cried out again in a ringing voice and took a step backwards to the hearth. The men seemed mesmerized by her gaze. They stood, staring, as she knelt and plunged her hands into the embers. Then suddenly she was rising, casting the coals at the intruders with both hands. She shouted again and the strange warriors gasped and recoiled; then they were gone, surging back over the doorsill, cursing in an odd sort of British and another tongue she did not know, knocking each other off their feet as they struggled to get away.