The Forest House

  “Don’t you recognize him, Lord Druid?” Dieda pushed her way forward. Eilan winced at the edge in her laughter. “Well, perhaps he is not so handsome now. Your men have netted a fine pig for our feasting. If you look, you will see the scar of the boar pit on his shoulder there.”

  Bendeigid should have been your father, thought Eilan hysterically, and Ardanos mine! They pulled the prisoner’s head up and for a moment he met her appalled gaze, then the sense left his eyes once more.

  “You!” Bendeigid’s voice held mingled astonishment and fury. “Have you not done enough damage to me and mine that you should trouble us now?” Suddenly his expression changed. “Well, you shall do so no longer. Dieda, show my men where they can bathe him and tend his wounds, but by no means unbind him. Garic and Vedras”—he pointed to the two most senior Druids—“we must talk. The rest of you, leave us alone!”

  The priests dragged Gaius away and the room emptied. Eilan sat back in her chair, wondering whether the pain in her belly was an echo of the throbbing in her head, or fear.

  “I see that you know the man,” said Vedras, the elder of the two Druids who had remained. “Who is he?”

  “His name is Gaius Macellius Severus the younger,” snarled Bendeigid.

  “The Prefect’s son!” exclaimed Garic. “Do you think he came for one of the priestesses as they say?”

  “It does not matter why he came,” said Vedras. “We must get him out of here. The Red-cloaks would deny our right to punish even an ordinary legionary. The gods alone know what they will do to us for laying hands on a chieftain’s son!”

  “Indeed.” Bendeigid smiled craftily. “But I do not believe his own people know where he has gone. And no one here knows his name or even that he is a Roman but Dieda and ourselves.”

  “Then you mean to kill him secretly?”

  “Not secretly.” Bendeigid’s gaze burned like a flame. “Do not you understand? For such a man as this to deliver himself into our hands is a sign from the gods. Let his death at least serve some purpose. We will never find a more noble offering!”

  He turned to Garic. “Go tell the men who are guarding the prisoner to dress him in the finest robe you can find.”

  Eilan felt a chill lift the hair on her arms. An image of the Year-King walking through the Beltane fair came to her, garlanded and clad in an embroidered tunic.

  “And if the Romans learn of it?” asked Vedras.

  “It is true, their wrath will be terrible,” said the Arch-Druid triumphantly. “So terrible that even those who call for peace now will have no choice but to follow us to war!”

  For a long moment, the other Druid looked at him. Then he nodded, and followed Garic out the door.

  “Did Gaius come with your knowledge, Eilan?” Bendeigid asked when they were alone. “Have you been seeing this monster all along?”

  “I have not,” she whispered, “by the Goddess I swear it!”

  “I suppose it does not matter whether I believe you,” the Arch-Druid muttered. “All truth will be tested at the Samaine fire.”

  “Behold, the Holy Priestess comes, the sacred herbs are in her crown,” the priests were singing, but tonight there were more verses to their hymn, with different words.

  “War! War! Let British woods

  A warrior bear for every tree;

  As ravening wolves attack the sheep

  So shall we make the Romans flee!”

  Gaius groaned, but the prick of a spear kept him moving. If only that bitch Dieda had not identified him! Macellius would grieve when he heard of the death of his son; but he would be shamed when the manner of it was known. How could he have blundered so badly, provoking the very incident he had hoped to prevent? He had not even succeeded in saving those he loved. The only ray of hope in all this was that he had not seen Senara anywhere, or the boy.

  The road up the Hill of Maidens had never seemed so steep before. He much preferred the last time he had come up here, he thought grimly, with a weapon in his hand and a detachment of cavalry behind him! The embroidered robe rasped his abrasions, and the sacred garland pricked his brow. They had cleaned him up and given him a drink that cleared his head, but Gaius had no illusions about what was in store for him.

  From the top of the hill he could see the glow of a great bonfire. Memories of a time before he had entered his father’s world were returning with frightening clarity. The Silures had sacrificed one of their own princes in those last days before the Romans crushed them utterly. The man had been one of his uncles, with the royal dragons tattooed on his arms. Gaius’s mother had tried to hide her half-Roman child, but he had seen them take the Year-King away. He had been smiling, believing his death would help his people.

  And what is it, he wondered then, that I will be dying for?

  Then they were on the hilltop. A ring of priests surrounded them; beyond, Gaius saw a sea of faces, grim or gleeful as they listened to the Druids’ song. Was Eilan glad or sorry to see him here? He wished he could see her face behind the veil.

  Eilan stood beside her father with Dieda and two other priestesses behind her. For the first time he wondered if she also was a prisoner. She had rejected him. It seemed to him that he should be glad of her downfall, but even his own danger had not filled him with such fear as the thought of hers.

  “Destroy them all! Avenge our shame!

  Now let the slaughter be begun!

  In ranks the Roman troops shall fall

  As by the scythe the corn is mown!”

  The singing ended and the drums grew silent, but a murmur swept through the people and Gaius knew this was only a pause in the storm.

  “Children of Don!” the Arch-Druid cried. “It is Samaine Eve! This is a time of changes! The new year is beginning, and a new era for this land! Let the changing of the seasons sweep away the Romans who have blighted Britannia! Tonight we shall gladden the gods of war with a sacrifice. But we must purge our ranks of all offenders. Traitor,” he turned to Gaius, “we can make your death hard or easy. Tell us what you came to Vernemeton to do!”

  “Kill me, if you will, but ask no foolish questions!” Gaius said hoarsely. “I will say only that I meant no harm to any here.” Perhaps he had not lived well, but at least he could die with dignity.

  “You were in the sacred precinct, where no men but the Druids may come. Have you seduced one of our maidens? Which of them did you come to carry away?”

  Gaius shook his head and gasped as a spearpoint pressed into his side. There was a sensation of warmth and he felt blood trickling down.

  “Was it Rhian, Tanais, Bethoc?” the litany went on. For each name they cut him again. Once he tried to drive himself upon the spearpoint, but his captors knew their business and held him still. Loss of blood and the ill-treatment he had already endured were making him dizzy. Soon, he thought, I will pass out and it will not matter what they do to me.

  “Senara…”

  At the name, Gaius jerked involuntarily. In the next moment he tried to conceal his reaction, but no one was watching him. Eilan had stepped forward and thrown back her veil.

  “Stop!” she said clearly. “I can tell you who the Roman came for. It was I!”

  What is she saying? Gaius stared at her in horror. Then he understood that she must be trying to protect Senara, and perhaps the child. In that moment she had an unearthly beauty. In comparison, Senara’s unformed prettiness was a star paled by the full moon’s majesty. As had happened sometimes in the moment before battle, Gaius saw his own heart with a terrible clarity. He cared about Senara, but his desire for her had not been love. In the younger woman he had only been trying to recover Eilan as she had been when he first knew her, the maiden that time and his own mistakes had put forever beyond his grasp.

  In the shocked silence, the only sound was the crackling of the fire. For a moment some powerful emotion contorted the Arch-Druid’s features, then he mastered it and turned from Eilan to Gaius.

  “For your sake and hers, on your honor I ask
you to tell me if this is true.”

  True…For a moment the word had no meaning. Torn between Rome and Britannia, he did not even know who he was himself. How could he know whom he loved? Slowly Gaius straightened and met Eilan’s clear gaze. Her eyes seemed to be asking him a question. At that, all the tension went out of him in a long sigh.

  “It is true,” he said softly. “I have always loved Eilan.”

  For a moment Eilan closed her eyes, dizzied by a tide of joy. Gaius had understood her, but he had not spoken only for the sake of Senara. She had seen such a look—such an expression of wonder—on his face once only, when he held her in his arms on that Beltane so long ago.

  “Have you betrayed us all along, then?” Bendeigid hissed, bending close to her ear. “Were you lying when you swore to me that he had not touched you? Or did it begin later, when you were a sworn virgin of the temple? Has he been teaching you Roman lies along with his love-talk, and treason with his caresses? Did you lie with him in the sacred precincts, or in the Sacred Grove?”

  She could feel her father’s fury, but she seemed to see him through a wall of Roman glass. In the end it had all become so simple. She was living under sentence of death already, and had faced its terrors. Now that the time was come, she was not afraid at all.

  “I lay with the Sacred King once only,” she said calmly, “as was my right, at the Beltane fires…”

  “What do you mean?” Miellyn exclaimed behind her. “It was Dieda who had to be sent away—it was Dieda who had a child!”

  “It was not!” The shocked echo of speculation ceased as Dieda hurried to the Arch-Druid’s side. “They made me agree to the deception. I took her place while she went away to have the baby, and when she returned, they exiled me! She has queened it over the Forest House ever since as if she were as chaste as the moon, but it was all a lie!”

  “But I always served the Goddess, not the Romans!” Eilan cried, her composure cracking at the threat to her child. She saw fury replacing the questions in Bendeigid’s eyes as he turned on her. The people crowded closer, trying to hear; voices rose in query or condemnation. Rumors of trouble among the Romans had made them like tinder that any spark could set aflame. If she appealed to them, would she set in motion the very catastrophe she had suffered so to avoid?

  “Why should I believe you, bitch?” snarled her father. “Your whole life has been a lie!”

  He lifted his hand to strike her. A bulky form burst through the line of Druids; Huw, with his cudgel upraised to defend her one last time. But more priests were running between them. Before Huw could reach Bendeigid, bronze blades flared in the firelight, came away a deeper crimson, and stabbed once more. Again the Druids struck, and again, and Huw, still struggling towards her, fell without a cry.

  Huw would have attacked the Arch-Druid himself, if he had threatened me… Eilan thought numbly, and in the end, he had.

  “Take him away,” Bendeigid was breathing hard. “He was a fool.” Abruptly he turned, and grasped Eilan by the arm. “If you had been true, I would have asked you to invoke the Goddess to bless us. But instead, you shall be Her sacrifice!”

  Why should that frighten me? My life has been one long offering, thought Eilan as her father dragged her across the circle to stand at Gaius’s side. There was a mutter from the people at that. Some of those who had heard the accusations wanted her blood immediately, others thought it sacrilege to lay hands on the High Priestess, whatever her crime.

  “Eilan, can you forgive me?” Gaius said in a low voice. “I was never worthy of your love. You wanted me to be your Sacred King, but I am only an ordinary man…”

  She turned to look at him, and found a nobility in his bruised face that had never been there before. She wished that she could take him in her arms, but the priests were holding her and she realized that he did not need it; she no longer saw the lost child that before had always waited in his eyes. He met her gaze without flinching, at peace with himself at last.

  “I see a god in you,” Eilan answered fiercely. “I see a spirit that will never die. We did what was required of us, and if we did not do as well as we would have wished, the Lady’s purpose was accomplished all the same. Surely it will be given to us to walk together in the Summerland for a time before we come back again.”

  “You have called him a Sacred King,” said Bendeigid hoarsely, “and as such he shall die.”

  Slowly she saw the stern acceptance that had upheld Gaius deepen to a kind of wonder. He continued to gaze at her as they slipped the noose around his neck and began to tighten it. But before the sword went in beneath his ribs, his eyes had lost focus, fixed forever on something beyond the world. The blood was still pumping from his breast when they carried him to the fire.

  “Tell me, Priestess, what omens do you read in this sacrifice?”

  Eilan turned her gaze from the flames to her father, and something in her face made him take a step backwards, though she had not moved.

  “I see royal blood that sanctifies the ground,” she said in a still voice. “In this man the seed of Rome and Britannia was mingled, and you have bound it forever to the land by giving him to the sacred fire.”

  Eilan took a deep breath. Her head was pounding so that she could hardly see, but it no longer mattered. The final thing she had desired to see in this world was the glory in Gaius’s eyes. There was a roaring in her ears. She felt the surge of trance taking her, though she had not tasted the sacred herbs, and heard a voice that was not her own ring out.

  “Hear me, ye men of the Cornovii and the Ordovices and all you others of the tribes, for this is the last time a priestess shall prophesy from this sacred hill. Hide your swords, oh warriors, and put away your spears, for not until the ninth generation has been born and died shall the Roman Eagles depart. And when they have flown, those who bear your blood and theirs together shall be left to defend the land!”

  “You are lying! You must be lying!” Bendeigid’s voice cracked. “You betrayed your oaths!”

  Eilan felt herself falling back into her body; pain stabbed her temple, but she shook her head. “I did not, for Gaius was the Year-King. You yourself have made it so, and thus my love for him was no sin!”

  Bendeigid swayed, his face contorting with the agony of a man who sees all his certainties crumbling. “If what you say is truth,” he cried, “let the Goddess show us a sign before I give you living to the fire!”

  Even as he spoke, it seemed to Eilan that a great thunder crashed through her head; startled by the weight of it, she felt herself slip to her knees. Her father reached out, but she was sliding down a long tunnel away from him. Her heartbeat was a fading drum; then it ceased suddenly, and she was free.

  So the Goddess struck me down after all, Eilan thought with an odd clarity. But it was Her mercy, not Her wrath!

  Far below she could see people bending over her motionless body. This was the ending that had awaited her since she had lain in Gaius’s arms, but she had delayed it long enough to build a bridge between her people and his. Two of the Druids were holding her father upright; he was still shouting, but the people were turning from him with frightened faces, beginning to stream away down the hill.

  She saw the priests lifting the flesh she had abandoned and carrying it to the pyre on which Gaius was already burning. Then she turned away from that lesser light to the radiance that was opening before her, brighter than the fire, more lovely than the moon.

  EPILOGUE

  CAILLEAN SPEAKS

  When I arrived at the Forest House the following evening, all the Samaine fires had burned out and only ashes remained. It took some time to find anyone who could give me a coherent account of what had happened. Miellyn had not been seen; some people thought she had died trying to shield Eilan. Eilidh had been killed in the fighting that followed the sacrifice. Dieda was dead also; she lay in the sanctuary, and it was clear that she had fallen by her own hand.

  There was certainly no sense to be got from Bendeigid and, except for
those Druids who had stayed to tend him, the priesthood had scattered. So, thank the gods, had the warriors who had gathered for the festival. But I found that the folk who remained were eager to obey me, for I was the closest thing they had to a High Priestess now.

  I moved through the tumult, giving orders with a calm that astonished me, for I dared not give way to a grief that might prove measureless. Yet there had to be some meaning to all this; a life—or a death—must not be wasted.

  The following day I was awakened by the news that a party of Romans had requested an interview with the High Priestess. I went out and saw Macellius Severus with his secretary behind him and another man whom they said was the father of Gaius’s Roman wife, sitting their horses under a weeping autumn sky. I was impressed by the fact that he had come here without a detachment of soldiers to back him. But, then, his son had been brave enough too, at the end.

  It was hard to face Macellius, knowing the answer to the question he did not quite dare to ask me, and realizing that I could never tell him how his boy had died. By now the most amazing rumors were flying about the countryside. Gaius had died as a British Year-King, and though some thought he was a Roman, the only people who knew his name had a powerful reason for keeping silence.

  Disorganized the Romans might be, but they still had the force to drown the countryside in blood if they found proof that a Roman officer had been sacrificed on that hill. But of course there was no body, only a pile of ashes mingled with the embers of the Samaine fire.

  As they were leaving, Macellius turned to me, and I saw that hope was not quite dead in his eyes. “There was a boy living in the Forest House,” he said. “They called him Gawen. I believe he is…my grandson. Can you tell me where he is now?”

  This time, at least, I could answer truthfully that I did not know, for Gawen had not been seen since Samaine Eve, the day that his nurse and Senara had also disappeared.