The Forest House (18 page)

"You would still be a widow —" Caillean said brutally, bringing the pannikin of warm milk from the hearth and setting it down.

Mairi's eyes widened. "What are you saying —" She looked up into the face of the priestess and her own grew pale at what she read there.

"I would have waited, but we no longer have that luxury. Rhodri was caught by the Romans when he tried to rescue the levies. They executed him, Mairi."

"It is not true . . .you are lying to me. He could not be dead and I not know! Better that the raiders had killed me — why didn't you let them, Caillean? Oh, I ought to be dead - I wish I were!" Mairi sank back into the feather bed, sobbing, and the baby began to cry.

Caillean handed the child to Eilan, bent over the other woman, murmuring softly.

"There, now, it's no use weeping. You have two fine children with their lives ahead of them. You must gather your strength, Mairi, to get them to safety before the Scotti come again!"

Main's eyes flew open and she reached out wildly. Eilan, shaken between tears and laughter, set the baby in her arms. Caillean had been right. Once Mairi was done weeping, she would go on living for her children. Caillean had experience of women's hearts.

A little while later, while Mairi still slept, exhausted with weeping, Eilan heard a horse's hoofs sloshing in the mud left by the storm. They came to a halt outside.
The raiders!
Eilan thought wildly. But no attacker would strike so slowly and heavily upon the door. Her heart beating like a war drum, Eilan drew the bar.

When she peered out, she saw her father there.

At the moment she could think only of Rhodri. Had her father come to bring Mairi the news? The young man had been one of their best warriors, living like a son of the house and treating her like a sister even
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before she was one. Now that Mairi knew about her loss, Eilan too could grieve.

She pulled open the door. Bendeigid stumbled as he entered, as if the ride had wearied him or he had suddenly become old. Then she felt the hardness of his hands closing on her shoulders. For a long moment he stood looking at her.

"Caillean has just told Mairi about Rhodri," she said in a low voice. "Did you know?"

"I knew," her father said with great bitterness. "I hoped that the word that had come to me was not true.

A curse will certainly light on all Romans for that deed. Now do you see, Eilan, why I would not allow you to marry into that accursed people?" He let go of her and dropped down upon the settle by the fire.

Gaius's people might be guilty of such evil, but she did not believe that Gaius himself would have done it.

But looking into her father's harsh face, she held her tongue.

"But that is not the worst evil we have to mourn." Bendeigid's face contorted suddenly, and Eilan felt the first twinge of real fear. "I do not know how to say it, Eilan."

"It may be that I already know," Caillean spoke behind them. "I am sometimes foresighted, and the night before I left the Forest House I dreamed I saw a house lying in ashes, and knew it for yours. But then I found Eilan here and thought I must have been

mistaken. Last night we had a visit from a band of raiders. I know the size of pack such wolves run in -

and I feared. Did the main body turn south, then, to you?"

"A band came here?" he croaked, turning to stare at her.

"Only a few of them, and I managed to frighten them off."

"Then I have you to thank that I have children yet alive!"

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Eilan needed no foresight to understand his words, but what she was hearing was too horrible to believe.

She felt the color draining from her face. "Father —"

"Child, child, how can I tell you? Word came that a mixed band of raiders were attacking Conmor's steading. I took my men to go to his aid. But there were more of them than we dreamed could come in such weather. While we were gone —"

"Are Mother and Senara dead then?" Her voice cracked, and Mairi, rousing, pushed back the bedcurtains and stood unsteadily, staring. Caillean went to her and the Druid continued.

"I dare to hope so." His face contorted with pain. "For the alternative, to be carried off as slaves beyond the sea, is worse still. To think that either might live in such dishonor —"

"Would you rather see them dead than alive in slavery?" Caillean asked in a low, tense voice.

"I would that," Bendeigid exclaimed fiercely. "Better a quick death, even in the flames, and a welcome in the Otherworld, than life with the memory of all our people's deaths to haunt them, as I must live now.

The gods know those monsters would have paid in blood for their deaths, and mine, if I had only been there!"

He broke off and stared fiercely from Eilan to Mairi, who took a tottering step towards him. Groaning, he gathered both of his daughters into his arms. Sobbing, Eilan held on to her sister. Once she would have found comfort in her father's arms, but these were griefs from which he could not protect her.

"Senara's body was not found in the ashes," he said brokenly, "and she was not yet ten years old . . ."

Eilan thought,
Then it may well be that she still lives . . .
but she did not say it aloud.

"I had meant to bring Mairi home when the news about Rhodri was confirmed, but now I have no home to offer her. I can give no protection to anyone now . . ."

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"Lord Druid, perhaps you cannot," said Caillean quietly, "but your Order can. The Forest House will shelter Mairi and the little

ones for as long as they have need. And I want to ask if you would permit Eilan to enter as a novice priestess of the shrine."

Bendeigid sat up and looked sharply at Eilan. "Is that what you want, child?"

"It is," she said simply. "If I may not marry where I love, then let me give my love to the Lady. It would please me indeed, for I used to dream about such a life before I was old enough to think of marriage at all."

For the first time, her father smiled, albeit shakily. "It will please your grandsire, at any rate. I had not intended this life for you, Eilan, but if it is truly what you want, then I am pleased too."

"But what —" Eilan bit back the words. How could she have forgotten? Her mother would never say anything more to her at all. But her father seemed to have sensed what she could not say. He sank down again by the hearth, his face buried in his hands. She had never guessed that her father could weep. But when he looked up again she saw his cheeks streaked with tears.

Eilan was likewise bereft, but she had no tears.
Will Gaius think me dead when he hears? Will he
weep for me?
Better, perhaps, that he should think her dead than faithless to his memory. But it did not matter; she would be a priestess of the Forest House. Beyond that she could not make her mind go.

"They shall be avenged!" exclaimed the Druid, gazing into the flames. "In all of Britain shall those wild devils find no lives so costly as these! Even the Romans have never dared so far, and I tell you I would accept help even from them to get revenge! This will mean war! For it is not only rapine and murder, Eilan; it is sacrilege. To attack the home of a Druid, kill the wife and daughter and granddaughter of Druids; and destroy the sacred things - how could they do it? The Northerners are our kinsfolk, and I have studied with the Druids of Eriu."

"It has ever been the way of our people to fight each other when there was no common enemy," Caillean quietly observed.

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"But we do have such an enemy," exclaimed Bendeigid. "Do not we all hate Rome?"

"Perhaps the wild tribes think of us as Romans now . . ."

The Druid shook his head. "The gods will surely punish them; and if they do not, our people will. Cynric has been as a son to me, and I tell you, he will curse when he hears of this day! But he is away in the islands to the north. You and Mairi are all that are left to me, Eilan."

Indeed,she thought, remembering.
I have so few kin left and Dieda too has lost a sister. Will she
welcome me to the Forest House?

Well, whatever came of it, a priestess she would be. Of her father's blood remained Mairi, and her newborn daughter, and her son; she wished that these children might be a comfort to her father. He was not yet old; he might marry again and have others of his own or, more likely, Mairi would find a new husband and have more. But if Eilan went to the Forest House, he would get no grandchildren from her.

Bendeigid rose, looking at Caillean beneath bent brows. "I am in need now of your skills, priestess; Cynric must be recalled. Can you summon him for me? And will you do so?"

"With Lhiannon's help, I can," Caillean replied. "In any case she would need to know —"

"I also need your skills to seek out these men," Bendeigid interrupted.

"That is easily done; I saw them when they burst in here, and if they were not among those who burned your home yet they must be under the same command. Some of them were Caledonians, and the others Scotti from Eriu."

"If they came here last night, the Scotti would have been on their way back to the coast and the Caledonians on their way north again." Bendeigid had risen to pace restlessly; now he resumed his seat by the fire. Caillean brought him a mug of ale and he sank his beard in it for a long draught, then
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repeated, "We need Cynric home, faster than even a mounted man can ride. Send the message, Caillean, with your magic —"

"I will," said the priestess. "I will stay here with your daughters while you ride to tell Lhiannon. Then go to Deva, for the Arch-Druid must know as well."

"You are right; my wife Rheis was his daughter," Bendeigid said, rubbing his brow distractedly. "Perhaps he will have some counsel for us as well."

News of the raid spread quickly through the countryside. On the lips of wandering peddlers it travelled, and with couriers of the Legions; it seemed that the birds of the air themselves bore the news on their wings.

Three days after the raid, Ardanos, the Arch-Druid, coming out of his house in Deva in the morning, heard a raven croak on his left and recognized an omen of disaster. But he had earned his rank by the kind of worldly wisdom that enabled him to out-think the Romans and undermine opposition among his own people. Not for the first time he regretted the worldly limit of his powers. Then he saw the mud-spattered man coming up the street and knew that he would not have to wait for the raven to tell him, for grief was written plainly in his son-in-law's burning eyes.

When Ardanos had recovered a little from the shock of Bendeigid's news, he went to Macellius Severus, who demanded a hearing from the Commander of the Adiutrix Legion.

"These raiders from over the sea grow too bold," Macellius said angrily. "These Britons too are our people, wards of Rome. No one shall oppress them while I live. The family of one of the Druids who lives near by, Bendeigid —"

"A proscribed man," interrupted the Commander of the Legion, frowning. "He should not be here at all!"

"That makes no difference! Do you not understand that Rome is here to protect all the men of this country — our citizens and the natives as well," Macellius insisted, still haunted by the memory of Ardanos's grief. Over the years he had come to respect the old man, and he had never known the Arch-Druid to be other than perfectly collected before. "How can we persuade them to lay down their arms if we cannot then protect them? With two Legions we could conquer Hibernia —"

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"You may well be right, but it will have to wait until Agricola is finished with the Novantae. It has always been that way - with each province we settle we must pacify a new frontier. In the days of the Governor Paulinus, the Druids of Mona were broken so that they could not set the West Country afire. Now it is the Caledonians who must be taught they cannot raid the Brigantae. I suppose that when the Empire stretches to Ultima Thule we will have a peaceful border, but I doubt it will happen before.

"In the meantime all we can do is to hurry the construction of the new coastal fortresses," said the Legion's commander cynically, "and ready a troop or two of cavalry to go out if they should be sighted again. Your son is out there now with some troops, isn't he? Detail him to this duty when he reports in."

The Commander grunted. "The people of Britannia are ours to oppress, and no one else shall do it."

But building fortresses and planning campaigns took time. Long before the log walls were finished or the grain that had survived the rains had been harvested, Bendeigid returned to escort his daughters to the Forest House. He brought gently paced mules for Mairi and the children to ride. Eilan rode with Mairi's older child before her, warmly wrapped against the light rain. She was not used to riding and it took all her concentration to balance behind the excited child. The distance was not great, but the unaccustomed journey seemed long.

Darkness was just falling as they came within the palisaded walls. Within the compound were half a dozen large buildings; Caillean took Mairi and her children to a guest house, lifting the little boy down from his perch before Eilan, and pointed out a large building of stout timbers, thatched almost down to the ground.

"There is the House of Maidens," she said. "The chief of the younger priestesses, Eilidh, has been told of your coming, and she will welcome you there. I will come later when I can; but first I must go and see if Lhiannon needs me."

The new moon - the first of Mairi's newborn's life — rode low on the western horizon. As the serving woman led her into the building and across an inner enclosure, Eilan was surprised to, find that already she missed her sister.

Then a gate opened and the woman led her into the inner court. Ahead of her was a long building something like her father's feasting hall. As she passed through the door a sea of strange faces surrounded her. She looked around, feeling abandoned. The serving woman had left her alone at the door. The hall seemed very large and there was a faint scent of sweet herbs in the air. Then one of the priestesses came forward.