The Forest House Read online

  Gaius was still limping, but Cynric had taken the bandage from his ankle, saying it would do him good to walk on it. He walked carefully, breathing deeply of the cool air, doubly inebriating after so long spent lying down indoors. Two weeks ago it had seemed he would never walk under the open sky again. For the moment it was enough to be alive, watching the sunlight on the green leaves and the spring flowers and the bright clothing of the folk around him.

  Eilan had put on a long loose gown woven in crossed squares of pale golds and browns and a color like budding leaves over an undertunic of pale green. Her hair lay in a shining cape across her shoulders, brighter than the gold of her brooches and bracelets. It seemed to him that in all that glowing world she was the fairest thing of all.

  He paid little attention to their chatter about the festival. He had seen a few celebrations among his mother's people when he was a child, and he supposed this one would be much the same. He heard the noise of the festival before they got there, for the great Celtic festivals were generally combined with a market fair. The festivities had actually begun some days before, and would go on for some time after, but this - the eve of Beltane — was the focus of the festival. It was at dusk that the Priestess of the Oracle would appear.

  The woods had blossomed with tents and bothies of woven branches, for the festival had attracted folk from many days' journey away. Most of the people here were Cornovii, but Gaius recognized the tribal tattooing of Dobunni and Ordovices and even some Deceangli from up near Deva. After two weeks in the house of Bendeigid, the British speech of his birth came easily to his tongue, and Deva and the Legion were beginning to seem dim and far away.

  Around the base of the old hillfort were clustered stalls selling dishes and small wares, some looking as if they had been made by local peasantry, and some which could have been sold in Rome itself. Perhaps they were of Roman make, for there was a growing trade between Britain and Rome, and the Greek and Gaulish traders went everywhere. There were stalls of apples and sweets, markets where people were trading horses, and a hiring fair where you could find anything, so Cynric said, from a swineherd to a wet nurse.

  But when Gaius reached the flattened top of the hill that lifted like an island above the sea of forest, his eyes widened. The fair occupied the grounds of a great cleared earthwork, too full of booths and folk for the perimeter to be visible. But at the far end of the main aisle rose a great earthen barrow, whose entrance was of stone. Cynric made a sign of reverence as they crossed the road.

  Gaius asked, "Is that your temple, then?"

  Cynric gave him a curious look, but said only, "It is the burial place of a great chief among our forefathers. Unless some of the older bards know who he was, his name is lost, and if there was ever a song about him I have forgotten it, or never learned."

  Another, longer avenue led to a building like a small square tower surrounded by a thatched portico, and Gaius gave it a curious glance. Eilan whispered, "That is the shrine where they keep the holy things."

  "It looks like a temple," he said in a low voice, and she stared at him.

  "Surely you know that the gods cannot be worshiped in any house made with human hands, but only under the open sky?" She added after a moment, "On some of the western islands, where no trees grow, they hold the rites in forests of stone; but my father says that the secrets of the great ancient rings of stone here in the South were lost with the senior Druids who were killed when the Romans came."

  A booth where they were selling bangles of Greek glass caught her eye and she stopped talking. Gaius sighed. Better not ask anymore questions, he thought, lest he betray himself further. There were some things they would certainly expect even a Silure tribesman to know.

  There were stalls of brooms and mops, and pretty girls selling garlands — almost everyone wore a garland - flowers and a good many other things, some too alien for Gaius to recognize. The young people wandered among the booths, casually looking at their wares. Cynric inquired for a swineherd but said that they all demanded too much for their labor.

  "The accursed Romans have taken so many men in their levies that we must hire men to tend our beasts and till our fields," he said. "But so many folk have been driven from their lands that we can sometimes find men who will come for shelter and food alone. I suppose if I were a farmer I would be glad of that. But may the gods save me from tilling the land!"

  At noon Rheis gathered her family together beneath a spreading oak tree at the base of the hill for some cold meat and bread. The old hillfort was the focus for many pathways. From here they could see a broad and well-tended way that ran westward, lined with stately oak trees. At its very end the thatched roofs of the Forest House and its outbuildings showed pale against the deep green of the Sacred Grove.

  Cynric and Gaius had gone off to look at horses, and Rheis had drifted away to speak to an acquaintance. The girls were packing up the food, when Eilan froze and whispered, "Look, there is Lhiannon."

  The High Priestess, with a few of her attendants, was coming along the Sacred Way between the long line of trees. Her slight figure glimmered in the dappling of sunlight that sifted through the branches, and she moved with the gliding pace of a trained priestess, so that she did not seem quite like a human being at all as she drew near. Lhiannon stopped as if to wish them a joyous festival, and her eyes fell on the girls. "You are the kinswomen of Bendeigid," she said. Her gaze fixed on Dieda. "How old are you, my child?"

  "Fifteen," whispered the girl.

  "Are you yet married?" Lhiannon asked. Eilan felt her heart begin to thud heavily in her breast. This was the face of the High Priestess as she had seen it in her dream.

  "I am not," Dieda said in a still voice. She was staring at the Priestess as if entranced by that clear gaze.

  "Nor pledged in marriage?"

  "Not. . .yet, although I have thought. . ." her voice faltered.

  Tell her, thought Eilan. You are pledged to Cynric! You have to tell her now! But though her lips worked, Dieda stood frozen, like a young hare when the falcon's shadow falls.

  Lhiannon unfastened the heavy blue cloak that hung from her shoulders. "Then I claim you for the Goddess; henceforth you shall serve Her whom I serve and no other . . ." The cloak opened like a dark wing as the priestess swung it round, and light flared as the branches moved in a sudden wind.

  Eilan blinked. Surely it was only sunlight - but in the dazzle, for a moment she thought that the opening of the cloak had revealed a radiant figure. She closed her eyes, but imprinted upon her inner sight she saw still a Face with a mother's tender smile and a bird of prey's fierce eyes, and it seemed to her that it was she, not Dieda, who was fixed by that gaze. But Lhiannon had not spoken to her, nor seemed to see her at all.

  "From henceforward, you shall dwell with us in the Forest House, my child. Come to us there - well, tomorrow will be time enough." Lhiannon's voice seemed to come from a great distance. "So be it."

  Eilan opened her eyes once more and saw the shadow fall as the cloak settled across Dieda's slim shoulders.

  The women who followed Lhiannon intoned, "She is the beloved of the Goddess; Her choice has fallen. So be it."

  Lhiannon took the cloak from the girl's shoulders and her attendants helped her to fasten it again. Then she moved away from them, towards the festival.

  Eilan's eyes were still fixed on her. "The choice of the Goddess . . .you are to be one of them . . .What is the matter with you?" She came back to herself and saw that Dieda's face was deathly white, her hands locked together.

  Dieda shook her head, shivering, "Why couldn't I speak? Why couldn't I tell her? I cannot go to the Forest House - I am pledged to Cynric!"

  "But you aren't not yet, not formally," said Eilan, still dazzled by what she had seen. "Private promises aren't binding, and nothing has gone so far that it cannot be undone. I should think that anyone would rather be a priestess than marry my brother —"

  "You should think-" said Dieda furiously. "Yes, you really should
think, sometime - it would be a new experience for you, I dare say —" She broke off in something like despair. "You're such a child, Eilan!"

  Eilan stared at her, realizing that the other girl did not share her excitement. "Dieda, are you saying that you don't want to be a priestess?"

  "What a pity her choice did not fall upon you," said Dieda helplessly. "Maybe we should say it was you. Maybe, like Father, she mistook us. Maybe it was really you she meant —"

  "But that would be impiety, if the Goddess has chosen you," Eilan protested.

  "What am I going to say to Cynric? What is there that I can say to him?" Her control broke and she began to laugh helplessly.

  "Dieda," Eilan put her arm around the other girl, "can't you speak to your father? Tell him that you don't want this? If it were me, I should be happy, but if you hate the idea —"

  Numbly, choked with misery, Dieda said, "I dare not. Father would never understand, nor cross the High Priestess. There is something —" In a voice which hardly reached her kinswoman's ears, she said, "Father is so much Lhiannon's friend - it's almost as if he were her lover —"

  Scandalized, Eilan turned her eyes upon the other girl. "How can you say that? She is a priestess!"

  "I don't mean they've done anything wrong, but he has known her so long. He seems at times to care more about her than anyone alive — surely more than any of us girls!"

  "Take care how you say such things," Eilan warned, her face flushing. "Someone else might hear who would understand you no better than I did."

  Dieda said dismally, "Oh, what does it matter? I wish I were dead!"

  Eilan did not know what to say to comfort her. She was silent, clinging to the other girl's hand. She could not understand how Dieda might wish to refuse this honor. And how happy it would make Rheis, that her youngest sister should be chosen.

  Bendeigid too would be pleased; Dieda was like another daughter to him and he had always been fond of his wife's little sister. Eilan tried to forget her own disappointment.

  Gaius and Cynric moved through the holiday crowd, pausing from time to time to comment on the points of some pony, then moving on. After a time Cynric asked, "Is it true then, friend, that you know nothing of what befell on the Isle of Mona? I had thought -if you lived near Deva —"

  "I have never heard the story," Gaius said. "I'm from the country of the Silures, remember, away to the south." And knowing that my mother was married to a Roman officer, he thought then, it would have taken a braver man than most to tell me. "Is it some well-known tale?" he said aloud. "You said that the Druid Ardanos could sing it."

  "Hear it then, and wonder no more why I have little that is good to say of the Romans," said Cynric angrily. "There was - in the days before the Romans came - a sacred enclosure of women where now is nothing but a polluted pool. One day the Legions came - and did what they always do; cut down the grove and plundered its treasures, murdered such Druids as contested with them, and raped all the women - from the oldest priestess to the youngest novice. Some were near to grandmothers in age, some no more than little girls of nine or ten, but that did not matter to them!"

  Gaius gasped. He had never heard that part of the story. The Romans spoke only of the Druids with their tossing torches and the dark-clad women who had shrieked imprecations, and said that the legionaries had been afraid to cross the boiling waters of the Menai strait until their commander shamed them into attacking. Mona had been the final stronghold of the Druid priesthood. Until meeting Bendeigid and Ardanos, he had thought most of them had been wiped out. Military logic made it obvious that Mona must be destroyed. But a good commander, he thought angrily, kept his men in line. Had the soldiers reacted so violently because the women made them afraid?

  "What happened to the women? You may well ask," said Cynric. As a matter of fact, Gaius had not asked; but he knew that Cynric was telling the tale as he had been taught, and would sooner or later get around to that.

  "The Romans left most of the women pregnant," Cynric went on. "When the babies were born, the girls were drowned in the sacred pool the Romans had already desecrated, and the boys were fostered with the families of Druids. When they came to manhood they were told of their background, and they were given training at arms. And one day they are to avenge their mothers and their gods; and, believe me, they will! They will swear it by the Lady of Ravens who hears me!" he added vehemently. He fell silent, and Gaius waited uneasily for him to go on. Cynric had spoken of an underground movement called the Ravens. Was the other boy, then, one of them?

  After a moment Cynric continued, "That was when all the women of the Druids on this isle were brought here to the Forest House where they could be guarded."

  Gaius listened, wondering if the tale had been told him for a reason. But Cynric did not know he was Roman, and Gaius was very glad. At the moment he was not sure he wanted to be a Roman himself, although it had been the wellspring of his pride.

  As dusk began to fall young men in white robes with golden torques about their necks began piling up two great heaps of wood in the open space before the barrow, making sure - as Cynric informed him in a whisper - that each included the wood of the nine sacred trees. Gaius had no idea what those were, but was afraid to admit it, so he simply nodded. Between them a plank of oak had been placed with a piece set upright like an axle. Nine Druids, old, imposing men in spotless white robes, took turns to spin the axle to the beat of a drum. As the sky darkened, people gathered around them, watching, and silence spread through the crowd.

  And then, just as the sun slipped beyond the trees, Gaius glimpsed a spark of red. Others had seen it as well. A murmur rippled through the crowd, and in the same moment one of the Druids cast something powdery at the base of the axle and it seemed to explode into flame.

  "The fires will burn till dawning, while folk dance around them," said Cynric. "And some of the lads will keep watch over the Beltane tree." He gestured towards a tall pole that stood at the other end of the hilltop. "The rest will be out until dawn with their sweethearts gathering greenery, or at least that is what they say" — he grinned suggestively - "and will bring it back in the morning to crown the pole and dance in the day."

  The need-fire had been carried to the woodpiles, which were now beginning to crackle merrily. It was growing dark; Gaius stepped back as the first blast of heat tingled on his skin.

  A line of dancers formed and began to circle the bonfires. Someone set a wine flask to Gaius's lips. Already the crowd was getting rowdier, dipping freely into the vats of ale and mead. He had seen rites like this before and knew what to expect. He noticed now that the smaller children had been taken away; the young priestesses in the blue robes and fillets and veils of the Forest House were no longer among the crowd.

  Gaius and Cynric wandered together through the laughing throng until, near the fires, they encountered Eilan and Dieda.

  "There you are!" exclaimed Cynric, hurrying forward. "Dieda, come dance with me."

  All the color left Dieda's face and she held on to Eilan's hand.

  "You have not heard?" asked Eilan brightly.

  "Heard what, Sister?" Cynric began to frown.

  "She has been chosen for the Forest House — by Lhiannon herself, this very afternoon!"

  Cynric reached out to Dieda, and then, slowly, let his hands fall. "The Goddess has spoken?"

  "How can you accept this?" Dieda's spirit seemed to come back to her. "You know I cannot marry you if I must take vows."

  "And you know what vows already bind me," he said somberly. "I have been torn to pieces trying to decide. I love you but I cannot encumber myself with a wife and children for years, if ever. Perhaps the gods have chosen this way for us."

  He drew a shaken breath and this time when he reached out she came to him. Dieda was a tall girl, but she seemed fragile, encircled by his strong arms.

  "Listen, beloved, there is still a way," he said softly, taking her aside. "Three years you can give the Goddess — you need not pledge yourself lifel
ong. There is a battle college in the northern islands, and it is there that I am bound to go. But you are no battle-maiden; even if we were publicly pledged you could not come to me there. Perhaps it is as well you are to serve in the sanctuary for a time - you will be safer there. And if war should come . . ."

  Dieda gave a little sob and buried her face against his shoulder. Gaius saw Cynric's big hands close on her arms.

  "For three years other vows will bind us," he whispered, "but tonight is ours. Eilan, stay here with Gawen," he added, his voice muffled by Dieda's hair.

  Eilan hesitated. "Mother said that Dieda and I were to stay together - it is Beltane —"

  Dieda lifted her head, and her eyes were wild. "Have some pity! Rheis dares not cross your father - and my father —" She swallowed. "If they knew, they would not let us have even this little time!"