The Forest House (9 page)

Eilan opened her eyes once more and saw the shadow fall as the cloak settled across Dieda's slim shoulders.

The women who followed Lhiannon intoned, "She is the beloved of the Goddess; Her choice has fallen.

So be it."

Lhiannon took the cloak from the girl's shoulders and her attendants helped her to fasten it again. Then she moved away from them, towards the festival.

Eilan's eyes were still fixed on her. "The choice of the Goddess . . .you are to be one of them . . .What is the matter with you?" She came back to herself and saw that Dieda's face was deathly white, her hands locked together.

Dieda shook her head, shivering, "Why couldn't I speak? Why couldn't I tell her? I cannot go to the Forest House - I am pledged to Cynric!"

"But you aren't not yet, not formally," said Eilan, still dazzled by what she had seen. "Private promises aren't binding, and nothing has gone so far that it cannot be undone. I should think that anyone would rather be a priestess than marry my brother —"

"You should think-" said Dieda furiously. "Yes, you really should think, sometime - it would be a new experience for you, I dare say —" She broke off in something like despair. "You're such a child, Eilan!"

Eilan stared at her, realizing that the other girl did not share her excitement. "Dieda, are you saying that you don't want to be a priestess?"

"What a pity her choice did not fall upon you," said Dieda helplessly. "Maybe we should say it was you.

Maybe, like Father, she mistook us. Maybe it was really you she meant —"

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"But that would be impiety, if the Goddess has chosen you," Eilan protested.

"What am I going to say to Cynric? What is there that I can say to him?" Her control broke and she began to laugh helplessly.

"Dieda," Eilan put her arm around the other girl, "can't you speak to your father? Tell him that you don't want this? If it were me, I should be happy, but if you hate the idea —"

Numbly, choked with misery, Dieda said, "I dare not. Father would never understand, nor cross the High Priestess. There is something —" In a voice which hardly reached her kinswoman's ears, she said,

"Father is so much Lhiannon's friend - it's almost as if he were her lover —"

Scandalized, Eilan turned her eyes upon the other girl. "How can you say that? She is a priestess!"

"I don't mean they've done anything wrong, but he has known her so long. He seems at times to care more about her than anyone alive — surely more than any of us girls!"

"Take care how you say such things," Eilan warned, her face flushing. "Someone else might hear who would understand you no better than I did."

Dieda said dismally, "Oh, what does it matter? I wish I were dead!"

Eilan did not know what to say to comfort her. She was silent, clinging to the other girl's hand. She could not understand how Dieda might wish to refuse this honor. And how happy it would make Rheis, that her youngest sister should be chosen.

Bendeigid too would be pleased; Dieda was like another daughter to him and he had always been fond of his wife's little sister. Eilan tried to forget her own disappointment.

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Gaius and Cynric moved through the holiday crowd, pausing from time to time to comment on the points of some pony, then moving on. After a time Cynric asked, "Is it true then, friend, that you know nothing of what befell on the Isle of Mona? I had thought -if you lived near Deva —"

"I have never heard the story," Gaius said. "I'm from the country of the Silures, remember, away to the south."
And knowing that my mother was married to a Roman officer,
he thought then,
it would
have taken a braver man than most to tell me.
"Is it some well-known tale?" he said aloud. "You said that the Druid Ardanos could sing it."

"Hear it then, and wonder no more why I have little that is good to say of the Romans," said Cynric angrily. "There was - in the days before the Romans came - a sacred enclosure of women where now is nothing but a polluted pool. One day the Legions came - and did what they always do; cut down the grove and plundered its treasures, murdered such Druids as contested with them, and raped all the women - from the oldest priestess to the youngest novice. Some were near to grandmothers in age, some no more than little girls of nine or ten, but that did not matter to them!"

Gaius gasped. He had never heard that part of the story. The Romans spoke only of the Druids with their tossing torches and the dark-clad women who had shrieked imprecations, and said that the legionaries had been afraid to cross the boiling waters of the Menai strait until their commander shamed them into attacking. Mona had been the final stronghold of the Druid priesthood. Until meeting Bendeigid and Ardanos, he had thought most of them had been wiped out. Military logic made it obvious that Mona must be destroyed. But a good commander, he thought angrily, kept his men in line. Had the soldiers reacted so violently because the women made them afraid?

"What happened to the women? You may well ask," said Cynric. As a matter of fact, Gaius had not asked; but he knew that Cynric was telling the tale as he had been taught, and would sooner or later get around to that.

"The Romans left most of the women pregnant," Cynric went on. "When the babies were born, the girls were drowned in the sacred pool the Romans had already desecrated, and the boys were fostered with the families of Druids. When they came to manhood they were told of their background, and they were given training at arms. And one day they are to avenge their mothers and their gods; and, believe me, they will! They will swear it by the Lady of Ravens who hears me!" he added vehemently. He fell silent, and Gaius waited uneasily for him to go on. Cynric had spoken of an underground movement called the Ravens. Was the other boy, then, one of them?

After a moment Cynric continued, "That was when all the women of the Druids on this isle were brought here to the Forest House where they could be guarded."

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Gaius listened, wondering if the tale had been told him for a reason. But Cynric did not know he was Roman, and Gaius was very glad. At the moment he was not sure he wanted to be a Roman himself, although it had been the wellspring of his pride.

As dusk began to fall young men in white robes with golden torques about their necks began piling up two great heaps of wood in the open space before the barrow, making sure - as Cynric informed him in a whisper - that each included the wood of the nine sacred trees. Gaius had no idea what those were, but was afraid to admit it, so he simply nodded. Between them a plank of oak had been placed with a piece set upright like an axle. Nine Druids, old, imposing men in spotless white robes, took turns to spin the axle to the beat of a drum. As the sky darkened, people gathered around them, watching, and silence spread through the crowd.

And then, just as the sun slipped beyond the trees, Gaius glimpsed a spark of red. Others had seen it as well. A murmur rippled through the crowd, and in the same moment one of the Druids cast something powdery at the base of the axle and it seemed to explode into flame.

"The fires will burn till dawning, while folk dance around them," said Cynric. "And some of the lads will keep watch over the Beltane tree." He gestured towards a tall pole that stood at the other end of the hilltop. "The rest will be out until dawn with their sweethearts gathering greenery, or at least that is what they say" — he grinned suggestively - "and will bring it back in the morning to crown the pole and dance in the day."

The need-fire had been carried to the woodpiles, which were now beginning to crackle merrily. It was growing dark; Gaius stepped back as the first blast of heat tingled on his skin.

A line of dancers formed and began to circle the bonfires. Someone set a wine flask to Gaius's lips.

Already the crowd was getting rowdier, dipping freely into the vats of ale and mead. He had seen rites like this before and knew what to expect. He noticed now that the smaller children had been taken away; the young priestesses in the blue robes and fillets and veils of the Forest House were no longer among the crowd.

Gaius and Cynric wandered together through the laughing throng until, near the fires, they encountered Eilan and Dieda.

"There you are!" exclaimed Cynric, hurrying forward. "Dieda, come dance with me."

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All the color left Dieda's face and she held on to Eilan's hand.

"You have not heard?" asked Eilan brightly.

"Heard what, Sister?" Cynric began to frown.

"She has been chosen for the Forest House — by Lhiannon herself, this very afternoon!"

Cynric reached out to Dieda, and then, slowly, let his hands fall. "The Goddess has spoken?"

"How can you accept this?" Dieda's spirit seemed to come back to her. "You know I cannot marry you if I must take vows."

"And you know what vows already bind me," he said somberly. "I have been torn to pieces trying to decide. I love you but I cannot encumber myself with a wife and children for years, if ever. Perhaps the gods have chosen this way for us."

He drew a shaken breath and this time when he reached out she came to him. Dieda was a tall girl, but she seemed fragile, encircled by his strong arms.

"Listen, beloved, there is still a way," he said softly, taking her aside. "Three years you can give the Goddess — you need not pledge yourself lifelong. There is a battle college in the northern islands, and it is there that I am bound to go. But you are no battle-maiden; even if we were publicly pledged you could not come to me there. Perhaps it is as well you are to serve in the sanctuary for a time - you will be safer there. And if war should come . . ."

Dieda gave a little sob and buried her face against his shoulder. Gaius saw Cynric's big hands close on her arms.

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"For three years other vows will bind us," he whispered, "but tonight is ours. Eilan, stay here with Gawen," he added, his voice muffled by Dieda's hair.

Eilan hesitated. "Mother said that Dieda and I were to stay together - it is Beltane —"

Dieda lifted her head, and her eyes were wild. "Have some pity! Rheis dares not cross your father - and my father —" She swallowed. "If they knew, they would not let us have even this little time!"

Her eyes wide and grave, Eilan nodded.

"Was I wrong to leave Eilan alone with the stranger?" Dieda whispered as Cynric led her away. "After all, he has lived among the Romans and may have their ways with women."

"He is a guest in our house; even if he were the son of the Procurator himself . . ."

"He can't be," Dieda giggled suddenly. "My father says that the Procurator has only a single daughter."

"— if he were, surely, he would respect the daughter of his host. And Eilan is only a child," Cynric replied.

"She and I were born in the same year," Dieda said. "You think her a child because she is your sister."

"What were you expecting?" Cynric asked irritably. "That I should tell you how much I love you before them both?"

"What is there left to say? Certainly not enough -" And she stopped, for his arms were around her, and he stooped to cut off her words with a kiss.

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She clung to him for a moment, then broke uneasily away. "That doesn't help," she said. "And if we should be seen . . ."

He laughed mirthlessly. "They haven't put you under vows yet, have they? And I could always say it was Eilan I kissed." He put his hands under her elbows, lifting her on tiptoe, and bent to kiss her once more.

After a moment all her resistance melted, and she let him mold her against him, kissing her again and again. When he broke away, his voice cracked, "How sane I sounded, a few moments ago! But I was wrong. I can't let you do this thing!"

"What do you mean?"

"I can't let you be walled up with all those women."

"What else can I do?" Now she had to be the sensible one. "Cynric, you're Druid-bred, you know the laws as well as I. Lhiannon has chosen. Where the hand of the Goddess has fallen . . ."

"You are right, I know it, but still . . ." He pulled her to him roughly, but his voice was very gentle as he said, "It's Beltane. Lie with me tonight, and your family will be glad enough to let us marry."

Her mouth was too young to be so bitter. "Perhaps you would like to explain nicely to my father how it happened? Or to yours."

He said, "Bendeigid is not my father."

"Yes, I know," she said. "Not that it makes any difference. But whether he is your father or not, Ardanos is mine, and he would strangle me and take a bullwhip to you. It is done, whether I like it or not. I am now a pledged virgin of the Sacred Grove and you are a Druid's son - well, at least you have been raised as one - and you are the son of a priestess in any case," she added quickly. "Cynric, you said it yourself.

I can ask to be released at the end of three years. And then —"

"And then," he promised, "I will take you away to the other end of the earth if that is what I have to do."

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"But you said you ought not to encumber yourself with wife or children," she protested, for the sake of hearing him say, "I don't care what I said; I want you."

Then he added, "Sit here beside me, then; let us watch the fires. It may be for the last time. Or for three years, which," he added despondently, "is almost the same thing."

The Arch-Druid of Britain stood at the gateway to the Forest House, watching the last light fade from the sky. From the hilltop he could hear the sounds of many voices, their clamor faded by distance to a music like a lake full of migrating birds, and beneath the other sounds, the deep heartbeat of the drums.

Soon they would be lighting the Beltane fires.

Though time was passing, Ardanos felt curiously unwilling to move. That morning he had been in Deva, listening to the Roman Prefect. Tonight he would have to hear the complaints of the people the Romans ruled. There was no way he could satisfy all of them. The best he could hope for was to maintain an uneasy balance until - what, really, was he waiting for? — for all the old wounds to heal?