The Forest House Read online

  "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 darkened 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 up-country 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 arm 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 d
amp 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.

  Gaius said simply, "I'm a stranger here; I don't know your markings," in the language of the tribes.

  "Well, don't worry about it; let's get you out and then we can talk about how you came to fall in." The young man slid his arm beneath Gaius's waist, supporting the young Roman as easily as if he were a child.

  "We dug that pit for boars and bears and Romans," he remarked tranquilly. "Just bad luck you got caught in it." He looked up at the pit top and said, "Let down your mantle, Dieda; it will be easier than finding something for a stretcher. His own cloak's all stiff with blood."

  When the mantle had been let down, the boy knotted it around Gaius's waist, then, fastening the other end about his own, he set his foot on the lowest of the stakes, and said, "Yell if I hurt you; I've hauled out bears like this, but they were dead and couldn't complain."

  Gaius set his teeth and hung on, almost fainting with the pain when his swollen ankle struck a projecting root. Someone at the top leaned over and grabbed his hands and at last he struggled over the edge, then lay there just breathing for a moment before he had strength to open his eyes.

  An older man was leaning over him. Gently he pulled away Gaius's fouled and blood-smeared cloak and whistled.

  "Some god must love you, stranger; a few inches lower and that stake would have gone into your lungs. Cynric, girls, look at that," he went on. "Where the shoulder is still bleeding, the blood is dark and slow, so it is returning to the heart; if it were coming from the heart it would be bright red and spurting forth; and he would probably have bled to death before we found him."

  The blond boy and the two girls bent over, one after the other, to see. Gaius lay silent. A dreadful suspicion had begun to steal over him. He had already abandoned all thought of identifying himself and asking them to take him to the house of Clotinus Albus in return for a substantial reward. Now he knew that only the old British tunic he had put on that morning for traveling had saved him. The offhand medical expertise of that speech told him that he was in the presence of a Druid. Then someone lifted him, and the world darkened and disappeared.

  Gaius awakened to firelight and the face of a girl looking down at him. For a moment her features seemed to swim in a fiery halo. She was young and her face was fair, but the eyes were an odd shade between hazel and grey; wide-spaced under pale lashes. Her mouth was dimpled, but so grave that it looked older than the rest of her; her hair was as light as her lashes, almost colorless except where the firelight lay red across it. One of her hands moved across his face and he felt it cool; she had been bathing his face in water.

  He looked for what seemed a long time, until her features were drawn forever on his memory. Then someone said, "That's enough, Eilan, I think he's awake," and the girl withdrew.

  Eilan . . .He had heard the name before. Had it been in some dream? She was lovely.

  Gains struggled to see, and realized that he was lying in a bench bed built into the wall. He looked about him, trying to understand where he was. Cynric, the young man who had drawn him out of the pit, and the old Druid whose name he did not know, were standing beside him. He was lying in a wood-framed roundhouse built in the old Celtic style, with smoothed logs radiating out from the high peak of the roof to the low wall. He had not been in such a house since he was a little child, when his mother had taken him to visit her kin.

  The floor was thickly strewn with rushes; the wall of woven hazel withies was chinked and plastered with whitewashed clay, and the partitions between the bed boxes were made of wicker as well. A great flap of leather curtained the entrance instead of a door. To lie in this place made him feel very young, as if all the intervening years of Roman training had been stripped away.

  His gaze moved slowly around the house and back to the girl. Her dress was of red-brown linen and she held a copper basin in her hand; she was tall, but younger than he had thought, her body still straight as a child's beneath the folds of her gown. Light from the central hearth behind her glowed in her fair hair.

  The firelight also showed him the older man, the Druid. Gaius shifted his head a little and looked at him from beneath his lashes. The Druids were learned men among the Britons, but he had been told all his life that they
were fanatics. To find himself in a Druid's house was like waking up in a wolf's lair, and Gaius did not mind admitting that he was afraid.

  At least when he had heard the old man calmly discoursing on the circulation of the blood, a thing he had heard from his father's Greek physician was a teaching of the healer-priests of the highest rank, he had the sense to conceal his Roman identity.

  Not that these folk made any secret of who they were. "We dug that pit for boars and bears and Romans," the young man had said quite casually. This should have told him at once that he was a good long way outside the little protected circle of Roman domination. Yet he was no more than a day's ride from the Legion post at Deva!

  But if he was in the hands of the enemy, at least they were treating him well. The clothes the girl wore were well made; the copper basin she carried was beautifully worked — no doubt it had come from one of the southern markets.

  Rushlights of reed dipped in tallow burned in hanging bowls; the couch where he lay was covered with linen, the straw mattress smelled of sweet herbs. It was heavenly warm after the chill of the pit. Then the old man who had directed his rescue came and sat down beside him, and for the first time Gaius got a good look at his rescuer.