The Forest House

by Marion Zimmer Bradley

  "Why not?"

  "At first I thought it was the will of the Goddess . . .because of what I told you. But now I believe that it is because the priests cannot trust me to obey. I love Lhiannon, but I see her clearly, and I know that she will bend with the wind. Perhaps the only time she ever defied the Council was when she insisted on keeping me. But I see through their plots and speak my mind, though not," she shook her head ruefully, "as I have spoken to you!"

  Eilan returned her smile. "That must be true, for I cannot imagine saying even half the things I have heard this night in my father's hall."

  "They would not dare let me speak with the voice of the Goddess - they would always be wondering what I was going to say!" Caillean found herself laughing again. "They will want someone more loyal. I thought for a time it was to be Dieda; but I overheard a bit of what Ardanos said when she was chosen. I believe that they had planned it should be you."

  "You said something like this before, but I think my father means to arrange a marriage for me."

  "Truly?" Caillean raised one eyebrow. "Well, perhaps I am wrong. I knew only that the son of the Prefect of the camp at Deva had asked for you."

  "My father was so angry . . ." Eilan blushed, remembering the things he had said to her. "He said he would have Senara married off before she could cause him any trouble. I thought he meant the same for me. But he said nothing of sending me to Vernemeton. If I cannot be with Gaius," she added dully, "I do not suppose it matters what I do."

  Caillean looked at her thoughtfully. "I have never been tempted to marry; I have been pledged to the Goddess for so long. Perhaps because of what happened to me when I was a child I never felt I wished to belong to any man. I suppose if I had been unhappy in the temple, Lhiannon would have tried to find a way to give me in marriage; she has always wanted to make me happy. I do love her," she added. "She has been more to me than a mother."

  She hesitated. "It galls me to think of giving way to Ardanos's plans, but the Goddess may have had a hand in this as well. Would you like to come with me to Vernemeton when I return?"

  "I believe that I would," Eilan replied, and a flicker of interest leaped in those odd, changeable eyes that sometimes looked dark hazel, and sometimes gray replacing the pain. "I cannot think anything else would please me so well. I never really believed they

  would let me and Gaius be together. Long ago, before I met Gaius, I used to dream of being a priestess. This way, at least, I will have an honorable life and interesting things to learn."

  "I think that could be arranged," Caillean said dryly. "No doubt Bendeigid will be delighted, and Ardanos as well. But Lhiannon is the one who must agree to it. Shall I speak to her?"

  Eilan nodded, and this time it was the older woman who took her hand. At the touch of the girl's smooth skin Caillean felt the familiar dizziness of shifting vision, and saw Eilan grown older and even more beautiful, swathed in the Oracle's veils. "Sisters, and more than sisters . . ." Like an echo she heard the words.

  "Don't be afraid, child. I think it may be . . ." she paused and finally said, "fated that you come among us." Her heart lifted suddenly. "And I need hardly say that I would welcome you there." She sighed as the vision left her, and heard, like an echo, a lark outside, giving greeting to the dawn. "Dawn is breaking." With an effort, Caillean made stiff muscles obey her and stumbled towards the door. "We have been talking all the night. I have not done that since I was younger than you." She opened the door, letting the rising sun flood into the room. "Well, at least the rain has stopped; we had better go and see if the byre survived the night - at least those wretches could hardly burn it in this rain - and if they have left us any cows, and anyone to milk them."

  For the next four days Gaius slogged along at the head of the troop of Dacian auxiliaries whose sick decurion he was replacing, with Priscus, their optio, all of them cursing the mud and the damp that seemed to creep through every opening despite the capes of oiled leather, rusting armor and chafing wherever wet leather touched skin. The woodlands dripped steadily and the fields lay sodden to either side, pools of standing water rotting the roots of the young corn. Summer's end would bring a poor harvest, he thought grimly. They would need to bring in grain from parts of the Empire where the gods had been kinder. It was no wonder the raiders were roaming if the weather had been the same in Hibernia.

  Despite the slow going, by the middle of the fifth day they were well into the country of his adventure. They spent that night at the home of Clotinus. The next day they passed the very boar pit into which he had fallen and turned down the track that led to the household of Bendeigid. The rain was letting up at last, and westward between the banks of breaking clouds the sky glowed gold.

  Gaius felt his pulse quicken as he recognized the home pasture and the wood in which he had hunted for primroses with Eilan. Soon she would see him, clothed in the majesty, however mud-spattered, of Rome. He would say nothing; she could judge the depth of his suffering from his silence. And then, perhaps, she would seek him out, and -

  "Gods below! Are those more stormclouds?" It was the optio, Priscus, behind him. "I hoped we'd have a day at least to get dry!"

  Gaius focused on the outside world and saw that though the sky to the south was clearing, the clouds ahead were an ominous dark gray. His horse tossed its head nervously and a little prickle of apprehension roughened his skin.

  "Not ramclouds," said one of the Dacians. "Smoke . . ."

  At that moment the rising wind brought him the reek of smoldering timbers. All the horses were snorting now, but they had smelled fire before, and the men kept them under control.

  "Priscus, dismount and take two scouts through the woods to see," said Gaius, a little amazed at the cold precision of his tone. Was it training that kept him from spurring his horse forward, or was he simply numbed into inaction by the thought of what he might see? It seemed only a few moments before the scouts returned.

  "Raiders, sir," said the optio, his seamed face set like stone. "The Hibernians we heard about, I would guess. But they're gone now."

  "Any survivors?"

  Priscus shrugged and Gaius felt his throat close.

  "Warm welcome here, but no place to sleep, eh? Guess we ride on," said one of the men, and the others laughed. Then Gaius turned, and his face silenced them. He dug his heels into his mount's sides and in silence the troop followed him.

  It was true. Even as they came around the edge of the wood to the rise on which Bendeigid's steading had been, Gaius had been hoping that Priscus was mistaken somehow. But it was all gone -only a few blackened timbers at the ends of what had been the feasting hall still stood in mute memorial. No sign of the building where he had convalesced, and no sign of life. Thatched buildings burned fast.

  "Fierce indeed must have been the fire, to burn when the straw was wet with rain," said Priscus.

  "No doubt," Gaius numbly agreed, picturing little Senara, Eilan, all the family, prisoners in the hands of the wild raiders from the coasts of Hibernia, or worse still, heaps of charred bones among the tangle of burnt timbers that had once been a home. He must not let the men see how much this was affecting him; he pulled his hood over his face, coughing as if from the smoke that still drifted from the outbuildings. Priscus had been right. Nothing could have survived this blaze.

  He said fiercely, "Let's get the men going then. We've no time to stand about staring at foundation stones if we're to have shelter before night falls!" His voice cracked and he turned it to another cough, wondering what, if anything, Priscus had deduced from his tone. But the optio, an old soldier, was familiar enough with the effects on the young of seeing pillage and slaughter.

  Priscus gave him a kindly glance and looked away. "We promised these people peace when we conquered them - least we could do, you'd think, would be to protect them. But we'll catch up with the bastards that did it, never fear, and teach them not to meddle with Rome. What a pity the gods never invented any other way to civilize the world. Oh well, we could have b
een turnip farmers; but one way or the other, we picked soldiering for our job, and that's part of it. Friends of yours, were they?"

  "I guested here," Gaius replied stiffly. "Last spring." At least his voice was back under control.

  "Well, that's the way the world goes," Priscus replied. "Here one day and gone the next. But I reckon the gods must have known what they were doing."

  "Yes," Gaius replied, as much to cut off the man's homely philosophy as anything else. "Give the order to march; let's get the men out of the rain as soon as we can reach the next town."

  "Right, sir. Column, form up!" he bawled. "Who knows, maybe the family were all away visiting friends. That's the way it goes sometimes."

  As they moved on through a gathering mist that was once more turning to rain, Gaius recalled seeing Cynric in the marketplace shortly before leaving Deva; there had been some talk of sending the young man to some college of weapons in the North, so he might very well have survived. The death of a Druid as important as Bendeigid would make some stir. Gaius suspected that his father had sources of information he kept secret. Surely he would know. He had only to wait and see.

  Gaius tried to summon up some hope. Priscus was right. The burning of the house did not necessarily mean the death or imprisonment of the people who had lived there. Mairi might well have returned to her home; Dieda was not even a member of Bendeigid's household, at least not any more. But Eilan . . .probably it was too much to hope that Eilan, or little Senara, or the gentle Rheis, had survived. At that moment he would not have given the smallest of copper coins for his own career or for the whole of the empire.

  He thought, If I had taken Eilan away she would still be living -if I had stood up to my father, even stolen her away . . .

  A sudden memory made his throat ache - the vision of his mother lying cold and white in her sleeping place, and the women wailing over her body. He had wailed with them, but then his father had taken him away and taught him that a Roman does not cry. But he wept for her now, as he wept for these women who had for a little while, made him feel part of a family.

  He could not let the soldiers see him cry. He put his cloak over his head and tried to pretend that the tears that rolled down his cheeks were rain.

  Nine

  "I want my husband." At mid-morning, the day after the birth of her child, Mairi had awakened, fretful and demanding. "Where is Rhodri? He would have protected us from those men —"

  The roundhouse was warm after the cold outside. Eilan, who was beginning to feel the effects of her own interrupted night, looked at her sister in exasperation and sat down by the fire. It was bad enough that the raiders had driven off all their milk cows, and she had had to slog several miles through the wet woods to borrow a beast so that Mairi, whose own milk had not yet come in, could feed the child. At least the main herds were off in the summer pastures, so her sister was not without dowry if she married again, although Eilan was not heartless enough to speak of that yet.

  "The cows would not have been taken if Rhodri had been here!"

  "More likely he would have tried to fight the raiders, and you would still —" Eilan bit her lip, appalled at what she had been saying. She had forgotten that Mairi did not know. "Caillean —" She looked at the priestess in appeal.

  "You would still be a widow —" Caillean said brutally, bringing the pannikin of warm milk from the hearth and setting it down.

  Mairi's eyes widened. "What are you saying —" She looked up into the face of the priestess and her own grew pale at what she read there.

  "I would have waited, but we no longer have that luxury. Rhodri was caught by the Romans when he tried to rescue the levies. They executed him, Mairi."

  "It is not true . . .you are lying to me. He could not be dead and I not know! Better that the raiders had killed me — why didn't you let them, Caillean? Oh, I ought to be dead - I wish I were!" Mairi sank back into the feather bed, sobbing, and the baby began to cry.

  Caillean handed the child to Eilan, bent over the other woman, murmuring softly.

  "There, now, it's no use weeping. You have two fine children with their lives ahead of them. You must gather your strength, Mairi, to get them to safety before the Scotti come again!"

  Main's eyes flew open and she reached out wildly. Eilan, shaken between tears and laughter, set the baby in her arms. Caillean had been right. Once Mairi was done weeping, she would go on living for her children. Caillean had experience of women's hearts.

  A little while later, while Mairi still slept, exhausted with weeping, Eilan heard a horse's hoofs sloshing in the mud left by the storm. They came to a halt outside. The raiders! Eilan thought wildly. But no attacker would strike so slowly and heavily upon the door. Her heart beating like a war drum, Eilan drew the bar. When she peered out, she saw her father there.

  At the moment she could think only of Rhodri. Had her father come to bring Mairi the news? The young man had been one of their best warriors, living like a son of the house and treating her like a sister even before she was one. Now that Mairi knew about her loss, Eilan too could grieve.

  She pulled open the door. Bendeigid stumbled as he entered, as if the ride had wearied him or he had suddenly become old. Then she felt the hardness of his hands closing on her shoulders. For a long moment he stood looking at her.

  "Caillean has just told Mairi about Rhodri," she said in a low voice. "Did you know?"

  "I knew," her father said with great bitterness. "I hoped that the word that had come to me was not true. A curse will certainly light on all Romans for that deed. Now do you see, Eilan, why I would not allow you to marry into that accursed people?" He let go of her and dropped down upon the settle by the fire.

  Gaius's people might be guilty of such evil, but she did not believe that Gaius himself would have done it. But looking into her father's harsh face, she held her tongue.

  "But that is not the worst evil we have to mourn." Bendeigid's face contorted suddenly, and Eilan felt the first twinge of real fear. "I do not know how to say it, Eilan."

  "It may be that I already know," Caillean spoke behind them. "I am sometimes foresighted, and the night before I left the Forest House I dreamed I saw a house lying in ashes, and knew it for yours. But then I found Eilan here and thought I must have been

  mistaken. Last night we had a visit from a band of raiders. I know the size of pack such wolves run in - and I feared. Did the main body turn south, then, to you?"

  "A band came here?" he croaked, turning to stare at her.

  "Only a few of them, and I managed to frighten them off."

  "Then I have you to thank that I have children yet alive!"

  Eilan needed no foresight to understand his words, but what she was hearing was too horrible to believe. She felt the color draining from her face. "Father —"

  "Child, child, how can I tell you? Word came that a mixed band of raiders were attacking Conmor's steading. I took my men to go to his aid. But there were more of them than we dreamed could come in such weather. While we were gone —"

  "Are Mother and Senara dead then?" Her voice cracked, and Mairi, rousing, pushed back the bedcurtains and stood unsteadily, staring. Caillean went to her and the Druid continued.

  "I dare to hope so." His face contorted with pain. "For the alternative, to be carried off as slaves beyond the sea, is worse still. To think that either might live in such dishonor —"

  "Would you rather see them dead than alive in slavery?" Caillean asked in a low, tense voice.

  "I would that," Bendeigid exclaimed fiercely. "Better a quick death, even in the flames, and a welcome in the Otherworld, than life with the memory of all our people's deaths to haunt them, as I must live now. The gods know those monsters would have paid in blood for their deaths, and mine, if I had only been there!"

  He broke off and stared fiercely from Eilan to Mairi, who took a tottering step towards him. Groaning, he gathered both of his daughters into his arms. Sobbing, Eilan held on to her sister. Once she would have found co
mfort in her father's arms, but these were griefs from which he could not protect her.

  "Senara's body was not found in the ashes," he said brokenly, "and she was not yet ten years old . . ."

  Eilan thought, Then it may well be that she still lives . . .but she did not say it aloud.

  "I had meant to bring Mairi home when the news about Rhodri was confirmed, but now I have no home to offer her. I can give no protection to anyone now . . ."

  "Lord Druid, perhaps you cannot," said Caillean quietly, "but your Order can. The Forest House will shelter Mairi and the little

  ones for as long as they have need. And I want to ask if you would permit Eilan to enter as a novice priestess of the shrine."

  Bendeigid sat up and looked sharply at Eilan. "Is that what you want, child?"

  "It is," she said simply. "If I may not marry where I love, then let me give my love to the Lady. It would please me indeed, for I used to dream about such a life before I was old enough to think of marriage at all."