The Forest House

  “I tell you this—whatever madness came on Lhiannon at her ending, I will not allow it to destroy all that we have labored so hard to build!” He sighed. “There is no help for it. We shall have to choose again. There is a precedent; old Helve tried to pass her power to—what was her name?—that poor mad girl who died. And then the Council chose Lhiannon.”

  “You would like that, wouldn’t you!” Caillean began, but Eilan, who had been silent for so long the Arch-Druid had almost forgotten she was there, got to her feet suddenly.

  “Not until after the ordeal!” she said loudly. Spots of color flamed in her cheeks as the other two stared at her. “They named a new High Priestess after the chosen one failed to carry the power of the Goddess in the ritual, didn’t they? What kind of talk do you think there will be if I do not even attempt it? Everyone in Vernemeton knows that Lhiannon chose me.”

  “But the danger!” exclaimed Caillean.

  “Do you think the Goddess will strike me dead? If what I did was such a sin, then She is welcome to do so!” Eilan exclaimed. “But if I survive, you will know that She has chosen me indeed!”

  “And what do you propose that we should do with you if you live?” he said acidly. “Your condition will be showing soon, and the Romans will have a good laugh when they see our High Priestess wallowing around with a belly like a pregnant cow!”

  “Lhiannon thought of a way,” said Eilan. “It was the last thing she said to me. Once the ritual is over, Dieda must take my place and you must pretend that it is she who had to be sent away. You yourself cannot tell us apart, Grandfather, and you have known us both since we were babies!”

  Ardanos eyed her narrowly, calculation spinning in his brain. The wretched child might indeed have solved their problem. If the ritual killed her, as was most likely, they would have every right to choose her successor, and if Eilan died in childbirth, Dieda would already be in place, ready to take over with no one the wiser. They would do well enough, he told himself, with either girl, for neither would ever think herself quite secure in her office. If the High Priestess needed the support of the priesthood, she would do what she was told.

  “But will Dieda agree?” he asked.

  “Leave her to me,” Caillean replied.

  Still wondering at the summons, Dieda faced Caillean in the chamber that had for so long been Lhiannon’s.

  “Ardanos has agreed to let you substitute for Eilan after the ordeal of the Oracle. Dieda—you must help us now,” said Caillean.

  Dieda shook her head. “Why should I care what Ardanos wants when he has never cared about me? Eilan has brought her troubles on her own head. I will not consent to this deception, and you may tell my father so!”

  “Fine words, indeed, but if you are always determined to do exactly the reverse of what Ardanos decrees, then his will still rules you. I suppose if I had told you he opposes this you would have agreed?” Caillean replied.

  Dieda stared at the older priestess, her mind whirling.

  “He doesn’t at all like it, you know,” Caillean added, watching her intently. “He would rather reject Eilan now and make you High Priestess in her place. I think he agreed to suggest the substitution only because he thought you would react in just this way…”

  “High Priestess?” Dieda exclaimed. “I would never escape from this place then!”

  “It would only be temporary, after all,” Caillean reflected. “As soon as Eilan’s babe is born she would return to take up her duties, and then, in any case, you would have to go away—”

  “Would you let me go north to be with Cynric?” Dieda asked suspiciously.

  “If that is what you desire. But we had thought of sending you to Eriu for advanced training in the skills of a bard…”

  “You know perfectly well it is what I have always wanted most!” Dieda exclaimed.

  Caillean looked at her steadily. “Then it seems there is something I still can promise or deny you. If you do this for Eilan—and for me—I will see that you are allowed to learn from the greatest poets and harpers in Eriu. If you do not, Ardanos will surely make you Priestess, and I will make sure that you rot within these walls.”

  “You would not,” Dieda said. But she felt a chill of fear.

  “You shall see,” Caillean responded calmly. “There is no alternative. It was Lhiannon’s wish, and I will do her will as we all have always done.”

  Dieda sighed. She did not want to see anything evil happen to Eilan. She had loved her once, but after the past few years she found it hard to love anyone. It seemed to her that the other girl had been a great fool. She had had the kind of love Dieda had been denied and thrown it away. Nor could she see why Caillean should care. Still, she would not cross her. Caillean could be a good friend or a dangerous enemy—both to her and possibly to Cynric as well. Dieda had dwelt in the Forest House long enough to know just how much influence the Irishwoman wielded in her quiet way.

  “So be it,” she said. “I pledge to stand substitute for Eilan until she is delivered if afterward you will be responsible for giving me my desire.”

  “I will,” Caillean lifted one hand. “And may the Goddess bear witness. And no one alive can say I have ever broken an oath.”

  Half a moon had passed since Lhiannon’s passing, and they were come to the Feast of Lughnasad. Eilan waited with Caillean in the separate dwelling where the High Priestess had so often prepared for the rituals. Hearing sharpened by anxiety alerted her to the scuff of sandaled feet outside the door. Then it swung open, and she saw the hooded figure, seeming impossibly tall in the half-light, standing there. She could just make out the shapes of the other Druids behind him.

  “Eilan, daughter of Rheis, the Voice of the Goddess has chosen you. Are you prepared to give yourself to Her completely?” Ardanos’s voice tolled like a great bell, and Eilan felt her belly tighten with fear.

  Now all the tales she had heard in the House of Maidens rose up to sweep her careful reasoning away. It hardly mattered whether the Goddess really cared about what she had done with Gaius, Eilan thought despairingly. To survive the ritual without damage would require a miracle. I meant only to challenge the Druids, but I have challenged Her, daring Her wrath this way. Surely the Goddess will strike me down! And what will this do to my child? Eilan wondered. But if the Goddess would punish an unborn baby for what the mother had done, She was not the loving Presence Eilan had sworn to serve.

  Ardanos was waiting for her answer—they were all waiting, watching with hope or judgment in their eyes—and slowly she calmed. If the Lady does not want me as I am, I do not wish to live. She took a deep breath, fighting her way back to the decision to which in the sleepless nights since Lhiannon’s death she had come.

  “I am ready.” Her voice trembled only a little. At least her own father was in the North somewhere with Cynric. She was glad. She did not think she could have met his eyes.

  “And do you declare yourself a fit vessel for Her power?”

  Eilan swallowed. Was she? The night before she had doubted it, and wept on Caillean’s shoulder like a terrified child.

  “Fit? Who is, if you put it like that?” Caillean had asked. “We are all only mortal; but it is you who have been chosen. Why else have you been preparing for so many years?”

  The Arch-Druid was watching her like a hawk waiting for some betraying rustle in the grass, waiting for her to perjure herself so that she would be in his power. She realized dimly that he was enjoying this.

  Lhiannon thought I was fit, she told herself then. Only by going through with this could she justify Lhiannon’s dying choice, and the choice she herself had made when she gave herself to Gaius beneath the trees. It had seemed to her then that she was affirming a more ancient law of the Goddess than the one pledging her to chastity. To refuse this test was to admit that act of love had been a sin. She lifted her chin proudly. “I am a fit and holy vessel. Let the earth rise up and cover me, let the sky fall down and crush me, and let the gods by whom I swear forsake me if
I lie!”

  “The candidate has been questioned, and she has sworn—” Ardanos said to the Druids who attended him. He turned to the priestesses. “Let her now be purified and prepared for the ritual—”

  For a moment he looked at her, and pity, exasperation, and satisfaction seemed to war in his gaze. Then he turned on his heel and led the men from the room.

  “Eilan, you must not tremble so,” Caillean said softly. “Don’t let that old buzzard scare you, there is nothing to fear. The Goddess is merciful. She is our mother, Eilan, and the Mother of all women, the maker of all things mortal. Do not forget it.”

  Eilan nodded, knowing that even if this moment had come to her in the ordinary course of events she would still have been afraid. If she must die, it should be at the hands of the Goddess, there was no need to perish of fear beforehand.

  The curtain stirred again and four of the youngest priestesses, among them Senara and Eilidh, came into the room carrying pails of water from the sacred spring. They stopped just inside the door, looking at her in awe. The hand of the Goddess has descended on me, she thought, and it seemed that she saw in their faces something of that same wonder with which she herself had always looked on Lhiannon. They were all young; not one of them, except Eilidh, even as old as she was herself…

  She wanted to cry out, “Nothing has changed; I am still Eilan—” but in fact everything had changed. Yet when they stripped off her gown and she looked down, she was startled that her body still looked so little altered.

  But these were virgins. So it was not surprising that they should not see the slight changes her pregnancy had made. As Eilan had done so often for Lhiannon, the girls helped her to bathe. She stood shivering in the chilly room, feeling the icy touch of the clear water on her body as, curiously, a purification; as if somehow it were dissolving away not only the last traces of her contact with Gaius, but the whole of her previous life.

  It was an entirely new Eilan who allowed them to robe her in the ritual garments. About her forehead they bound the traditional garland. As she felt the vines tighten around her forehead, she had a moment of dizziness, and wondered if this was the first, faraway touch of the Goddess.

  She felt strange and light-headed, altogether unlike herself; vaguely she recognized hunger. The sacred herbs in the potion given her at the commencement of the ritual must be taken on an empty stomach, lest they make her very ill. Caillean had once said that she believed that Lhiannon’s ill health was partly caused by her protracted use of these herbs. Briefly Eilan wondered if before long her own health would be endangered as well. Then she smiled, thinking there would be time enough to worry about her future if she survived this evening.

  They brought her the chased golden bowl with the magical potion of Vision. She knew that it contained berries of mistletoe and other sacred herbs; she had more than once seen Miellyn gathering those herbs. The sacred potion also contained various mushrooms; the common people avoided them, as much for their sacred character as for belief that they were poisonous, and certainly they were useless as food. The priestesses knew, however, that taken in small quantities they could amplify the ordinary clairvoyance in which she had been trained.

  Trembling, Eilan did as she had often enough seen Lhiannon do, and took it from Eilidh’s hands. Caillean had been right, she thought as she raised the bowl to her lips. She had assisted in this ritual so often that she did know what to do.

  And from her ceremonial sips she had thought she knew what to expect from the potion as well. But as she tipped it upward, she realized that the Priestess was required to drain it at a single draft because otherwise no one would ever have been able to get it down. It was intensely bitter, and when she had swallowed it, she began to wonder if it was poison after all. That would have been a good way for Ardanos to get rid of her. But Caillean had assured her that she would prepare the herbs herself and let no one else have access to them, and she had to trust her.

  Her head swam and for a moment her stomach revolted. Perhaps her punishment was beginning now. But after a short, sharp struggle she controlled herself, swallowed a few sips of water to clear her mouth of the taste and closed her eyes, waiting.

  Presently, the acute feeling of sickness passed. Eilan closed her eyes against the wave of dizziness, and sat down, waiting to recover her balance. Vaguely she remembered that this, too, had been part of the procedure with Lhiannon. At the time, Eilan had thought it the weakness of age. But Lhiannon had really not been so old. Would she, too, age before her time? Well, she could only hope she would have a chance to grow old!

  There was a little stir in the room, and the young girls drew away. Eilan realized that Ardanos was standing before her. She lifted heavy eyelids to look at him, and he met her gaze with an unsmiling stare.

  “Eilan, I see they have prepared you. You look very beautiful, my dear. The people will be sure the Goddess has come to them…” The kindly words sounded strange from his lips.

  Will they? she wondered muzzily. And what do you think, old man, if you believe in the Goddess at all? By your rules, these garlands should be withering on my brow! But it no longer mattered; she felt as if she were floating above all this; with every moment she drifted further away.

  “The drink is taking her swiftly,” he muttered, and gestured to the maidens to stand away. “Listen, my child—I know you can still hear me…” His voice slipped into the melodic intonation of ritual as he went on.

  Eilan knew that he was saying something of great importance, something that she must remember…what, she was not certain. Time passed, and he was no longer there. Did any of it matter, she wondered then? She felt as if she were floating above a green darkness. The very tops of the trees were far below. She was being carried in something—a litter—then they set her down and helped her to stand. She could feel Caillean beside her and someone else, she thought it was Latis, on her other side. They took her hands and drew her into the procession towards the torches that ringed the sacred mound.

  Eilan was aware enough to hang back for a moment when she saw the three-legged stool. There had been some reason why she should not sit there; some sin upon her soul. But her attendants drew her forward, and she thought that if she could not remember it, perhaps it made no difference.

  They had sacrificed the sacred bull already and shared its meat among the people. The priests had played out the ritual in which the young god wrested the harvest from the old. Now it was time to seek omens for the autumntide. In the east the harvest moon was rising, golden as the ornaments that her Priestess wore.

  Look down on me, Lady, Eilan fought to form the prayer. Ward me well!

  One of the attendant priestesses had placed in her hand the little curved golden dagger of ritual. She raised the dagger, and with one swift movement plunged it into her fingertip. She felt a sharp pain, and one heavy drop of blood gleamed on the surface; she held it over the golden bowl, letting three drops of blood fall. The bowl was filled to the brim with water from the Sacred Well, and floating on the surface were leaves of the sacred plant, the mistletoe. Planted by no human hand, and growing between air and earth, it partook of the very nature of the lightning which had engendered it.

  Now they were turning her; she felt the hard wood against the backs of her knees and sat down. There was a moment of dizziness as the priests lifted her and carried her to the mound. The attendant priestesses had drawn back.

  As the priests began to sing Eilan felt as if she were falling, or perhaps rising, borne away by the song in some direction that had no relation to ordinary reality. She wondered why she had been afraid. In this place she floated; needing and wanting nothing, content simply to be…

  A blaze of torches assaulted her eyes; below her all the assembled crowd seemed to blur into a single face. Their eyes, upon her were like a weight, a positive physical pressure drawing her back to a place that was in, and yet not of, the world.

  “Children of Don, why have you come here?” Ardanos’s voice seemed very fa
r away.

  “We seek the blessing of the Goddess,” a male voice replied.

  “Then call Her!”

  Eilan’s nostrils flared as smoke swirled around her, heavy with the scent of sacred herbs. Involuntarily she breathed in and her breath caught; the world whirled and she fought for balance; she heard a voice whimpering and did not know it was her own. From below rose the sound of many other voices, calling, calling:

  Dark Huntress…Bright Mother…Lady of Flowers, hear us…Come to us, Lady of the Silver Wheel…

  I am Eilan…Eilan… She clung to her own identity, crying out as the need in those voices assaulted her until she felt their pressure as a physical pain. At the same time, another pressure was building up behind her, or perhaps within her, demanding that she let it in. Spasms shook her body as she fought; she felt terror as the Self that she knew was constricted between them; she could not breathe. Help me! her spirit cried.

  She slumped forward, seeing the glimmer of water before her, and a voice that seemed to come from within her said then:

  “Daughter, I am always here. To see Me, you have only to gaze into the Sacred Pool.”

  “Look into the water, Lady—” a voice that was very near commanded. “Look into the bowl, and see!”

  An image was forming in the troubled surface of the water, but as it cleared Eilan saw that the face reflected there was not her own. She jerked back in panic, and heard the voice once more.

  “My daughter, rest now. Your spirit will be safe with Me…”

  With the words came a tide of love that Eilan remembered, and with the same trust with which she had given herself to Gaius she sighed and slid away into the warm comfort of the Lady’s arms.

  As if from a great distance, she was aware that her body was straightening, she was putting back her veil, lifting her hands to the moon.

  “Behold, the Lady of Life has come to us!” in a great voice Caillean cried. “Let us welcome her!”