The Forest House Read online

  They laid the contents of the lunch basket out on the grass; there was fresh baked bread and cold sliced roast meat, and apples —rather withered and brown - the last, the girls said, of the winter store.

  "Let me go find some berries." Senara jumped to her feet, looking around her, and Eilan laughed.

  "Silly, it's springtime. Do you think our guest is a goat you can feed on flowers?"

  Gaius did not care what they ate; he was exhausted.

  There was a flask of pressed fruit juice and another of fresh brewed country beer. The younger girls would not drink it, saying it was too sour; but Gaius found it refreshing. There were sweet cakes too, which Dieda had made herself. She and Cynric shared a drinking horn and left Gaius to the company of the other girls.

  When they had all eaten as much as they could hold, Senara filled a bowl with clear water from a spring in the corner of the meadow and told Eilan to see if she could see the face of her sweetheart in it.

  "That is an old superstition," Eilan said, "and I have no sweetheart."

  "I have," Cynric said, seizing the bowl and staring into it. "Will the water show me your face, Dieda?" She came and looked over his shoulder. "It is all nonsense," she said. Gaius thought she looked prettier when she blushed.

  "Did you look in the water, Eilan?" asked Senara, tugging at her sleeve.

  Eilan said, "I think it is blasphemous to try to compel the Goddess to speak that way! What would Lhiannon say?"

  "Does anyone here care?" Dieda asked with a strange hard little smile. "We all know she says nothing unless it is given her by the priests."

  "Your father cares," Cynric said soberly.

  "True, he does," Dieda said, "and so I suppose you must care too."

  Senara turned to her. "Tell me what you saw in the water, Dieda," she demanded shrilly.

  "Me," said Cynric, "or at least I hope so."

  "You would really be our brother, then," Senara smiled at him.

  "Why do you think I want to marry her?" Cynric grinned. "But we have yet to speak to your father."

  "Do you think he will oppose it?" Dieda seemed suddenly anxious, and it occurred to Gaius that being the Arch-Druid's daughter might be even more constricting than being a Prefect's son. "Surely if he had pledged me elsewhere, he would have told me of it before now!"

  "And who will you marry, Eilan?" Senara asked. Gaius leaned forward, his attention abruptly focusing.

  "I had not thought of it," Eilan said, coloring. "Sometimes it seems to me that I hear the Goddess - perhaps I should enter the Forest House as one of the maidens of the Oracle."

  "Rather you than me," Dieda said. "I would never grudge you that life."

  "Ugh!" Senara shook her head. "Would you really want to live all alone?"

  "That would be a shameful waste." Gaius said. "Is there no man you wish to marry?"

  Eilan looked up at him and was silent a moment before speaking, then she said slowly, "None to whom my parents would be likely to give me. And life in the Forest House can be very rewarding. The holy women learn all manner of wisdom and the healing arts."

  So, Gaius thought, she would like to be a healer-priestess. As he had said to Senara, he thought that would be a great waste of one who brought such beauty to the world. Eilan was quite different from everything he had heard of British girls, whom he had thought were like Clotinus's daughter. His father had sometimes spoken of pledging him in marriage to the daughter of an old friend, a high official in Londinium, but he had never seen the girl.

  Now it occurred to him that it might be more useful for him to marry someone like Eilan. After all, his own mother had been a British tribeswoman. He looked at Eilan so long that she grew uneasy.

  "Is there a spot on my face?" she asked. "We should get started on our festival garlands." Suddenly she jumped up and started across the meadow, which was liberally starred with blue, purple and yellow flowers. "No, not the bluebells," she said to Senara, who had followed her. "They will fade far too soon."

  "Show me which ones I should use, then," Senara demanded. "I like these purple orchids - last year I saw the priestesses wearing them."

  "I think their stems are too stiff to braid, but I will try," Eilan said, taking the handful of flowers from Senara. "No. I cannot do it; no doubt Lhiannon's maidens know some skill I do not," Eilan declared. "Let's try the primroses."

  "They are as common as weeds," Senara complained, and Eilan frowned.

  "What happens at the festival?" Gaius asked to distract her.

  "They drive the cattle between the fires, and Lhiannon calls down the Goddess to deliver the Oracles," Eilan declared, her hands full of flowers.

  "And lovers meet at the fires," said Cynric, looking at Dieda, "And pledged couples make known their vows. Here, Senara, try these."

  "They are the ones I was trying to weave," Eilan complained, "but their stems are too stiff. Dieda, will those blossoms work?"

  The older girl was kneeling before a hawthorn bush in full, starry bloom. At the question she turned and pricked her finger on a thorn. Cynric came over to her and kissed it, and she blushed and asked quickly, "Shall I make you a wreath, Cynric?"

  "As you wish." Then a raven cawed from somewhere in the trees and his face changed. "What am I saying? I should not be thinking of garlands now."

  Gaius saw her open her mouth as if to ask Cynric why not, then stop, and wondered if it was because he was a stranger. She cast the blossoms away, and began to pick up the platters from which they had eaten. Eilan and Senara had finished their garlands.

  "Rheis will be very cross if we forget to carry back any of these plates," Dieda pointed out. "And you girls had better finish these cakes."

  Senara took one of the cakes and broke it in half, handing the remainder to Gaius.

  "Now we have shared a single cake, you are my hearth-guest," she said. "Almost my brother."

  "Don't be so silly, Senara," Eilan said reprovingly. "Gawen, don't let her pester you."

  "Oh, let her alone," Gaius said, "she isn't bothering me." He thought again of his own dead sister, and wondered what his life would have been like had she lived. As he rose to his feet, he stumbled a little and Eilan came to take his arm, handing her garlands to Dieda.

  "I'm afraid we have tired you, Gawen," she said. "Here, lean on me. Careful, don't knock your arm on anything," she warned, guiding him away from a tree.

  "Why, Eilan, you are a healer-priestess already," Cynric said. "Gawen, you can lean on me if you like. Of course, Eilan's much prettier than I am, so perhaps I should help Dieda," he said, his face brightening, and he took Dieda's arm as they started back

  along the path. "I think you had better go straight back to bed instead of getting up for supper, Gawen. Eilan will bring it to you. I worked too hard on that arm to have you undo all my labor."

  Three

  The dwelling of the Priestess of the Oracle was square, like a shrine, surrounded by a roofed portico and set a little apart from the other buildings within Vernemeton's walls. Although folk referred to the whole enclosure as the Forest House, in truth it was an entire community whose clustered buildings were connected by covered walkways. Gardens and courtyards lay between them so that the whole was like a maze. Only the dwelling of the High Priestess was set apart from the others, just as only she was surrounded by the kind of absolute simplicity that is harder to maintain than the most rigid ritual.

  When the Arch-Druid Ardanos arrived, he was ushered into her presence at once by her attendant priestess, a tall dark-haired women called Caillean. She was clothed much like the High Priestess in a robe of dark blue linen, but Lhiannon's arm rings and the' torque at her throat were of pure gold, while those of her attendant were of silver.

  "You may go, child," Lhiannon told Caillean.

  Ardanos waited until the striped door-curtain had closed behind her, then smiled. "She is no longer a child, Lhiannon. Many winters have passed since you came here with her to the Forest House."

  "True, I lose t
rack of the years," Lhiannon replied.

  She was, the Druid Ardanos reflected dispassionately, an exceptionally beautiful woman still. He had known her for many years and was probably the nearest thing to a friend of her own generation yet living. When he had been younger, this had cost him many sleepless nights; he was now elderly and seldom even remembered how she had disturbed his peace.

  All the priestesses of the Forest House at Vernemeton, the Most Sacred Grove, were chosen as much for their beauty as for any

  other attribute. It always surprised him. He could understand that a god might wish to be served by beautiful women, especially if he were some worthless Roman deity, but it did not accord with what he knew of women that a goddess should wish her servitors to be too beautiful.

  His silence was not in the least constrained by the presence of the great churl Huw, who bore a cudgel and was stationed at the door, and who would immediately dash out the brains of any man -even the Arch-Druid himself - who made an offensive move or spoke a disrespectful word to the Priestess. Ardanos, of course, had no such intention; Huw's presence simply assured Lhiannon's safety and allowed her a freedom in entertaining visitors not permitted to others.

  Ardanos knew that he did not look sufficiently venerable to grace the office of Arch-Druid, nor was he the Merlin of Britain reborn. But he consoled himself with the thought that Lhiannon no longer looked much like the living incarnation and prophetess of the Holy Goddess of Wisdom and Inspiration either. She was gracious and gentle and her face was refined by austerity, but for the rest she was just an aging woman, though her hair was so fair it was all but impossible to detect the graying strands he knew must be there. Her dark blue sacramental gown fell in stiff and unbecoming folds. The straight shoulders had begun to droop a little with fatigue. Ardanos felt his own age the more in beholding such clear signs of hers.

  In recent years, in deference to her age, Lhiannon had begun to wear a headcloth, as most matrons and older women did, except when her hair was unbound for ritual. And yet, Ardanos reflected, for twenty years — and he had known her for most of them - this woman's face and form had been central to their faith, and through her lips had come, if not the literal word of the gods, then that word as it was interpreted by the priests of the Oracle.

  And so perhaps there was something of divinity in the aging woman's face after all, a divinity that clung like a fragrance. Perhaps it was something invested there by the multitudes for whom this woman appeared as the Goddess herself; not, for them, a mere symbol of their faith, but in their literal child-minds, the Goddess-self - the great Virgin Mother of the Tribes, Lady of the Land in living form.

  Lhiannon raised her head. "Ardanos, you have been staring at me for long enough to milk a cow! Did you come here to tell me

  something, or to ask? Out with it, man! The worst I can do is to refuse. And when have I ever been able to say no to you?"

  And these were the words of divinity, thought Ardanos, glad to pull a mantle of cynicism over a mood that was becoming oppressive.

  "Forgive me, Lady of Holiness," he said mildly. "My thoughts were elsewhere."

  He saw her surprise as he rose again, paced restlessly a few steps, then said abruptly, "Lhiannon, I'm worried; I heard a rumor in Deva, and it was repeated by no less a person than the son of the Prefect: Rome may withdraw the Legions. It's the third time that I have heard it spoken, and granted there is always a faction howling, 'Down with Rome', but —"

  "And too many of those who pass rumors on and howl, are expecting - or at least hoping — that we will get up and howl along with them. I do not believe your rumor," said Lhiannon bluntly. "But if it should be so, I am sure we could live without them. Is that not what we have been praying for since Caractacus walked the streets of Rome in chains?"

  "Have you any idea what chaos that would create?" Ardanos asked. "The very same faction howling, 'Down with Rome' —" He was still pleased with the metaphor . . .

  "- certainly do not understand what will happen if they get their wish," said Lhiannon.

  Ardanos thought, She knows me very well; even now, we finish"' one another's thoughts. But he did not wish to finish that train of thought.

  "Granted that there has been such a faction since Caesar won the fame he needed to rule Rome by invading Britannia! Even now, they will expect those of us from the Sacred Grove to join in their cries," Ardanos said, "and will not understand when we are silent. Just now I am worried that it will erupt into rioting at Beltane -"

  "No, I think Beltane is safe enough," Lhiannon said. "People come for the games, the fires and feasting, and all the rest. If it were Samaine, now —"

  "These last levies have made things worse," said Ardanos. "They took thirty of Bendeigid's men, all the slaves set free when he was proscribed, and his own sworn man. Proscribed!" He laughed mirthlessly. "He doesn't know how lucky he was; only forbidden to live within twenty miles of Deva! And even so he hasn't found out about all the levies yet, but when he does - well, he's called me worse things than traitor before; his name-calling doesn't bother me.

  "I have permission to hold the Beltane gathering — I went to Macellius Severus himself and asked him for leave to hold a peaceful festival - as it's been this last seven or eight years — in the name of Ceres, and it's because he knows and trusts me that they didn't send along a few legionaries to make sure they don't get out of order and - shall we say - decide to worship Mars instead."

  Lhiannon sighed, and he knew that she was remembering those days of blood and fire when Boudicca had sacrificed men to the Goddess in return for victory. They had all been so young in those days, so sure they could bring back the days of glory with a little courage and a sharp sword.

  "If there's any disturbance," said Ardanos, "any demonstration even, you know as well as I do that this part of the country will be cut to pieces. But how could I know their Legions had just marched through and levied thirty good men to rot in those filthy Mendip mines?"

  But he should have known; he was supposed to know what the Romans were up to almost before they knew it themselves. He had to be ready for the next outrage, whatever it might be.

  She said, "Canceling the rites at this late date would probably create unrest even where there was none. Do you want me to try it? Have there been any incidents, reaction to the levies, perhaps?"

  "I'm not sure," Ardanos said. "Someone seems to have tried to arrange for the Prefect's son to . . . disappear -"

  "The Prefect's son?" Lhiannon raised one thin eyebrow as if wondering why anyone should care. "To protest, or to make trouble for our people? Wouldn't it be more like Bendeigid to murder the men who came to take away the levies?"

  "He found the lad trapped in a boar pit and saved his life, and now the boy is a guest in his home."

  Lhiannon stared at him for a moment and began to laugh. "And your son-in-law Bendeigid does not know?"

  "The lad looks enough like his Silure mother to pass for one of ours, and he's self-possessed enough not to give himself away. But he'll need to do some healing before he can be moved. If anything happens to the youngster, who's never, as far as I know, done anything much either good or ill, you know as well as I do that we'll be blamed for it. We get blamed for everything else, all the way back to and including the sack of Troy, and the very fact that the Legions are here and not back in Gaul where they belong. There are all the old atrocity stories that go back to the deified Julius - may he rest in peace," Ardanos added with a fierce grin that meant, she was certain, the exact opposite.

  "Still, there is an element of rebellion," he said. "You don't see it, placed as you are; I don't see it much, living among Romans as I've done for so long. But it's my business to watch the winds. To see signs and omens. For instance - where ravens fly at midnight; I speak of the secret society that worships the Lady of Battles."

  This made her laugh. "Oh, Ardanos! Those half-crazy old men who sacrifice to Cathubodva, telling fortunes and looking for omens in dead birds' guts - as bad as th
e Legions with their sacred chicken-coops - no one has ever paid the slightest attention to them -"

  "That's what they were," Ardanos said. He told himself that he welcomed being able to tell Lhiannon something she did not know. In the old days, the priestesses had been equal with the Druids in their councils, but since the fall of Mona they had learned to be secret in order to survive. On occasion, the Arch-Druid even had to act on his own. Ardanos wondered sometimes if they might not be carrying it too far - if the priestesses might carry out the decisions of the Council better if they had a voice in making them. Then he would not have felt so alone with the problem.