Today, perhaps, I will tell the maidens the story of how we came here, for between the destruction of the House of Women on the Isle of Mona and the return of the priestesses to the Isle of Apples, the women of the Druids dwelt at Vernemeton, the Forest House, and that story must not be forgotten.
It was there that I learned the Mysteries of the Goddess and taught them in turn to Eilan, daughter of Rheis, who became the greatest High Priestess and, some would say, the greatest traitor to her people of all. But through Eilan the blood of the Dragon and the Eagle have mingled with the blood of the Wise, and in the hour of greatest need that line will always come to Britain’s aid.
In the marketplace men say that Eilan was the Romans’ victim, but I know better. In its time the Forest House preserved the Mysteries, and the gods do not require that we all be conquerors, or even that we all be wise, but only that we serve the truth that we are given until we can pass it on.
My priestesses are gathering around me, singing. I lift my hands, and as the sun strikes through the mists I bless the land.
ONE
Shafts of golden light shone through the trees as the setting sun dropped below the clouds, outlining each new-washed leaf in gold. The hair of the two girls who were making their way along the forest path glowed with the same pale fire. Earlier in the day there had been rain. The thick, uncleared forest that still covered much of the south of Britain lay damp and quiet, and a few low boughs still shook scattered drops like a blessing across the path.
Eilan breathed deeply of the moist air, heavy with all the living scents of the woods and sweet as incense after the smoky atmosphere of her father’s hall. In the Forest House, she had been told, they used sacred herbs to purify the air. Instinctively she straightened, trying to walk like one of the priestesses who dwelt there, lifting the basket of offerings in her best imitation of their balanced grace. For a moment, then, her body moved with a rhythm both unfamiliar and completely natural, as if she had been trained to do this in some ancient past.
Only since her moonblood began had she been allowed to bring the offerings to the spring. As her monthly cycle made her a woman, said her mother, so the waters of the sacred spring were the fertility of the land. But the rituals of the Forest House served its spirit, bringing down the Goddess herself at the full of the moon. The moon had been full the night before and before her mother called her in, Eilan had stood for a long time staring up at it, filled with an expectancy she could not define.
Perhaps the Priestess of the Oracle will claim me for the Goddess at the Beltane festival. Closing her eyes, Eilan tried to imagine the blue robes of a priestess trailing behind her, and the veil shadowing her features with mystery.
"Eilan, what are you doing?” Dieda’s voice startled her back to awareness, she stumbled over a tree root and nearly dropped the basket. "You are lagging like a lame cow! It will be dark before we get back to the hall if we do not finish soon.”
Recovering, Eilan hurried after the other girl, blushing furiously. But already she could hear the gentle murmur of the spring. In another moment the path dropped downward, and she followed Dieda to the cleft where the waters trickled out from between two rocks and fell into the pool. In some time long past men had set stones around it; over the years the water had worn their spiraled carvings smooth. But the hazel to whose branches folk tied their wishing ribbons was young, the descendant of many trees that had grown there.
They settled themselves beside the pool and spread a cloth for the offerings, exquisitely prepared cakes, a flask of mead, and some silver coins. It was only a small pool, after all, where the minor goddess of this forest had her dwelling, not one of the holy lakes where whole armies sacrificed the treasures they had won, but for many years the women of her line had brought her their offerings every month after their moon-times, that their link to the Goddess might be renewed.
Shivering a little in the cool air, they pulled off their gowns and bent over the pool.
"Sacred spring, you are the womb of the Goddess. As your waters cradle all life, may I bear new life into the world…” Eilan scooped up water and let it trickle over her belly and between her thighs.
"Sacred spring, your waters are the milk of the Goddess. As you feed the world, let me nourish those I love…” Her nipples tingled as the cool water touched them.
"Sacred spring, you are the spirit of the Goddess. As your waters well for ever from the depths, give me the power to renew the world…” She trembled as the water bathed her brow.
Eilan stared into the shadowed surface, seeing the pale glimmer of her reflection take shape as the waters stilled once more. But as she stared into the water, the face that stared back at her changed. She saw an older woman with even paler skin, and dusky curls in which red highlights glinted like sparks of flame, though the eyes were the same.
"Eilan!”
As Dieda spoke, Eilan blinked, and the face looking back at her from the water was her own once more. Her kinswoman was shivering, and suddenly Eilan felt cold as well. Hastily, they pulled on their clothes. Then Dieda reached for the basket of cakes, and her voice soared, rich and true, in the song.
"Lady of the sacred spring,
To thee these offerings I bring;
For life and luck and love I pray,
Goddess, accept these gifts today.”
In the Forest House, thought Eilan, there would be a chorus of priestesses to sing the song. Her own voice, thin and a little wavering, blended with Dieda’s in an oddly pleasing harmony.
"Bless now the forest and the field,
That they their bounty to us yield;
May kin and kine be hale and whole,
Safeguard the body and the soul!”
Eilan poured mead from the flask into the water while Dieda crumbled the cakes and cast them into the pool. The current swirled them away, and for a moment it seemed to Eilan that its sound had grown louder. The two girls leaned over the water, letting drop the coins they had brought.
As the ripples stilled, Eilan saw their two faces, so alike, mirrored together. She stiffened, fearing to see the stranger there once more, but as her sight darkened, this time there was only one face, with eyes that shone in the water like stars in the dark sea of heaven.
"Lady, are you the spirit of the pool? What do you want from me?” her heart asked. And it seemed to her that words came in reply:
"My life flows through all waters, as it flows through your veins. I am the River of Time and the Sea of Space. Through many lives you have been mine. Adsartha, my daughter, when will you fulfill your vows to Me?”
It seemed to her then that from the Lady’s eyes flashed brightness that illuminated her soul, or perhaps it was sunlight, for when she came to herself she was blinking into the radiance that flared through the trees.
"Eilan!” Dieda said in the tone of one who is repeating a summons for the second time. "What is wrong with you today?”
"Dieda!” Eilan exclaimed. "Didn’t you see Her? Didn’t you see the Lady in the pool?”
Dieda shook her head. "You sound like one of those holy bitches at Vernemeton, babbling of visions!”
"How can you say that? You’re the Arch-Druid’s daughter—at the Forest House you could be trained as a bard!”
Dieda frowned. "A female bard? Ardanos would never allow it, nor would I want to spend my life mewed up with a gaggle of women. I’d rather join the Ravens with your foster brother Cynric and fight Rome!”
"Hush!” Eilan looked around her as if the trees had ears. "Don’t you know better than to speak of that, even here? Besides, it’s not fighting you want to do at Cynric’s side, but to lie there—I’ve seen how you look at him!” She grinned.
Now Dieda was blushing. "You know nothing about it!” she exclaimed. "But your time will come, and when you grow foolish over some man it will be my turn to laugh.” She began to fold up the cloth.
"I never will,” said Eilan. "I want to serve the Goddess!” And for a moment then her sight darke
ned and the murmur of the water seemed to grow louder, as if the Lady had heard. Then Dieda was thrusting the basket into her hands.
"Let’s go home.” She started up the path. But Eilan hesitated, for it seemed to her that she had heard something that was not the sound of the spring.
"Wait! Do you hear that? From over by the old boar pit—”
Dieda stopped, her head turning, and they heard it again, fainter now, like an animal in pain.
"We’d best go and see,” she said finally, "though it will make us late getting home. But if something has fallen in, the men will have to come and put it out of its misery.”
The boy lay shaken and bleeding at the bottom of the boar pit, his hopes of rescue fading with the ebbing light.
The pit where he lay was dank and foul, smelling of the dung of animals trapped there in the past. Sharp stakes were set into the bottom and sides of the pit; one of these stakes had pierced his shoulder—not a dangerous wound, he judged, nor even particularly painful as yet, for the arm was still numb with the force of his fall. But still, slight though it was, it was likely to kill him.
Not that he was afraid to die; Gaius Macellius Severus Siluricus was nineteen years old and had sworn his oaths to the Emperor Titus as a Roman officer. He had fought his first battle before the down was thick on his face. But to die because he had blundered like a silly hare into a deadfall made him angry. It was his own fault, Gaius thought bitterly. If he had listened to Clotinus Albus, he would now be sitting by a warm fire, drinking the beer of the South Country and flirting with his host’s daughter, Gwenna—who had put off the chaste ways of the upcountry Britons and adopted the bolder manners and bearing of girls in Roman towns like Londinium as easily as her father had adopted the Latin tongue and toga.
And yet it was for his own knowledge of the British dialects that he had been sent on this journey, Gaius remembered now, and his mouth curled grimly. The elder Severus, his father, was Prefect of the Camp of the Second Adiutrix Legion at Deva, and had married the dark-haired daughter of a chieftain of the Silures in the early days of the conquest, when Rome still hoped to win the tribes by alliance. Gaius had spoken their dialect before he could lisp a word of nursery Latin.
There had been a time, of course, when an officer of an Imperial Legion, stationed in the fort of Deva, would not have troubled himself to phrase his demands in the language of a conquered country. Even now, Flavius Rufus, tribune of the second cohort, cared nothing for such niceties. But Macellius Severus senior, Prefectus Castrorum, was responsible only to Agricola, Governor of the Province of Britain, and it was the responsibility of Macellius Severus to keep peace and harmony between the people of the Province and the Legion that occupied, guarded and governed them.
Still licking their wounds a generation after the Killer Queen Boudicca had attempted her fruitless rebellion—and had been fiercely punished by the Legions—the people of Britannia were peaceful enough beneath the heavy impositions of tax and tribute. Levies of manpower they bore with less meekness, and here, on the outskirts of the Empire, resentment still smoldered, fostered adroitly by a few petty chiefs and malcontents. Into this hotbed of trouble, Flavius Rufus was sending a party of legionaries to supervise a levy of men being sent to work in the Imperial lead mines in the hills.
Imperial policy did not admit of a young officer being stationed in the Legion where his father held a post as important as Prefect. So Gaius now held the post of a military tribune in the Valeria Victrix legion at Glevum, and, despite his British half-blood, from his childhood he had undergone the severe discipline of a Roman soldier’s son.
The elder Macellius had sought no favors for his only son as yet. But Gaius had taken a slight wound in the leg during a border skirmish; before he had quite recovered, a fever had sent him home to Deva, with permission to convalesce there before returning to his post. Recovered, he was restless in his father’s house; the chance to go with the levy to the mines had seemed nothing but a pleasant holiday.
The trip had been largely uneventful; after the sullen levies had been marched away, Gaius, with a fortnight of his leave yet to run, had accepted the invitation of Clotinus Albus, seconded by the daughter’s immodest glances, to stay for a few days and enjoy some hunting. Clotinus was adept at this too and—Gaius knew—had been pleased at the thought of offering hospitality to the son of a Roman official. Gaius had shrugged, enjoyed the hunting, which was excellent, and told Clotinus’s daughter quite a number of pleasant lies, which was excellent too. Just the day before, he had killed a deer in these same woods, proving himself as adept with the light spear as these Britons with their own weapons; but now…
Sprawled in the filth of the pit, Gaius had poured out despairing curses on the timorous slave who had offered to show him a short cut from Clotinus’s home to the Roman road that led straight, or so he said, to Deva; on his own folly in letting the simpleton drive the chariot; on the hare, or whatever it was that had dashed in front of him and frightened the horses; on the ill-trained animals themselves, and on the fool who had let them bolt; and on the off-guard moment in which he had lost his balance and been thrown, half stunned, to the ground.
Stunned, yes, but if he had not been half out of his mind from the fall, he’d have had sense enough to stay where he’d fallen; even such a fool as the driver must sooner or later have regained control of his horses and come back for him. Even more than this he cursed his own folly in trying to find his own way through the forest and for leaving the path. He must have wandered a long way.
He must have been still dazed from the earlier fall, but he remembered with sickening clarity the sudden slip, the slither of the leaves and branches as the deadfall gave way, and then the fall, driving the stake through his shoulder with a force that had deprived him of consciousness for some minutes. The afternoon was getting on before he had recovered enough to take stock of his injuries. A second stake had torn the calf of his leg, ripping open his old wound; not a serious injury, but he had struck his ankle so hard that it had swollen to the size of his thigh; it was broken—or felt like it at least. Gaius, unwounded, was as agile as a cat and would have been out in moments; but now he was too weak and dazed to move.
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.