The Forest House (2 page)

A cold wind was whipping the torches into fiery tails. Angry light glittered on the dark waters of the strait and the shields of the legionaries waiting on the other side. The priestess coughed at the reek of smoke and sea fog and listened to the clangor of camp Latin echoing across the waters as the Roman Commander harangued his men. The Druids sang out in answer, calling down the wrath of the skies, and thunder shook the air.

Women's voices rose in a shrill ululation that sent a chill through her body, or perhaps it was fear. She swayed with the other priestesses, arms raised in imprecation; their dark cloaks flaring out like raven wings.

But the Romans were howling too, and now the first rank surged into the water. The Druid war harp throbbed with a dreadful music, and her throat was scraped raw with shrieking, but still the enemy came on.

The first red-cloaked soldier set foot on the shore of the Holy Isle and the gods did not strike him. Now the singing faltered. A priest pushed the priestess behind him as Roman steel caught the torchlight; the sword fell and blood sprayed across her dark robe.

The rhythm of the chant was lost. Now there was only screaming and she ran for the trees. Behind her the Romans were scything the Druids down like grain. Too quickly, they finished, and the red tide swept inland.

The priestess stumbled through the trees, seeking the sacred circles. An orange glow filled the sky above the House of Women. The stones loomed up ahead, but from behind her came shouting. She turned at bay, clinging to the central altar stone. Now, surely, they would kill her…She called out to the Goddess and straightened, waiting for the blow.

But it was not weapons of steel they meant to use against her. She struggled as hard hands grabbed at her body, tearing off her robes. They forced her down upon the stone, and then the first man battered against her. There was no escape; she could only use the sacred disciplines to withdraw her mind from this body until they were done. But as awareness winged away, she cried out: "Lady of Ravens, avenge me! Avenge!”

 

"Avenge…” My own shout woke me, and I sat up, staring. As always, it took a few moments for me to realize that it was only a dream, and not even my own, for I was still a child in the year when the Legions murdered the priests and raped the women of the Holy Isle; an unwanted girl-child called Caillean, safe in Hibernia across the sea. But since first I heard the story, soon after the Priestess of the Oracle brought me to this land, the spirits of those women have haunted me.

The curtain at my door fluttered and one of the maidens who served me looked in. "My Lady, are you well? May I help you to robe? It is almost time to greet the dawn.”

I nodded, feeling the cold sweat dry on my brow, and allowed her to help me into a clean gown and arrange the ornaments of a High Priestess on my breast and brow. Then I followed her out onto the summit of another isle, a green Tor that rose from the mingling of marsh and meadow that men call the Summer Sea. From below came the singing of the maidens who watch over the sacred well, and from the vale beyond it the bell that calls the hermits to prayer in the little beehive church beside the white thorn tree.

They were not the first folk to seek sanctuary on this island at the end of the world beyond the narrow seas, nor do I suppose they will be the last. So many years have passed since the death of the Holy Isle, and though in my dreams ancient voices still cry out for revenge, a hard-won wisdom tells me that the mixing of blood strengthens a breed, so long as the ancient knowledge is not lost.

But to this day I have never found any good in the Romans or their ways. This is why even for Eilan, who was dearer than a daughter to me, I could never trust in any Roman, not even Gaius, whom she loved.

But no tramping of iron-shod legionary sandals on stone-paved roads disturbs us here, for I have cast a veil of mist and mystery to keep out the straight-edged Roman world.

Today, perhaps, I will tell the maidens the story of how we came here, for between the destruction of the House of Women on the Isle of Mona and the return of the priestesses to the Isle of Apples, the women of the Druids dwelt at Vernemeton, the Forest House, and that story must not be forgotten.

It was there that I learned the Mysteries of the Goddess and taught them in turn to Eilan, daughter of Rheis, who became the greatest High Priestess and, some would say, the greatest traitor to her people of all. But through Eilan the blood of the Dragon and the Eagle have mingled with the blood of the Wise, and in the hour of greatest need that line will always come to Britain's aid.

In the marketplace men say that Eilan was the Romans' victim, but I know better. In its time the Forest House preserved the Mysteries, and the gods do not require that we all be conquerors, or even that we all be wise, but only that we serve the truth that we are given until we can pass it on.

My priestesses are gathering around me, singing. I lift my hands, and as the sun strikes through the mists I bless the land.

S
hafts of golden light shone through the trees as the setting sun dropped below the clouds, outlining each new-washed leaf in gold. The hair of the two girls who were making their way along the forest path glowed with the same pale fire. Earlier in the day there had been rain. The thick, uncleared forest that still covered much of the south of Britain lay damp and quiet, and a few low boughs still shook scattered drops like a blessing across the path.

Eilan breathed deeply of the moist air, heavy with all the living scents of the woods and sweet as incense after the smoky atmosphere of her father's hall. In the Forest House, she had been told, they used sacred herbs to purify the air. Instinctively she straightened, trying to walk like one of the priestesses who dwelt there, lifting the basket of offerings in her best imitation of their balanced grace. For a moment, then, her body moved with a rhythm both unfamiliar and completely natural, as if she had been trained to do this in some ancient past.

Only since her moonblood began had she been allowed to bring the offerings to the spring. As her monthly cycle made her a woman, said her mother, so the waters of the sacred spring were the fertility of the land. But the rituals of the Forest House served its spirit, bringing down the Goddess herself at the full of the moon. The moon had been full the night before and before her mother called her in, Eilan had stood for a long time staring up at it, filled with an expectancy she could not define.

Perhaps the Priestess of the Oracle will claim me for the Goddess at the Beltane festival.
Closing her eyes, Eilan tried to imagine the blue robes of a priestess trailing behind her, and the veil shadowing her features with mystery.

"Eilan, what are you doing?” Dieda's voice startled her back to awareness, she stumbled over a tree root and nearly dropped the basket. "You are lagging like a lame cow! It will be dark before we get back to the hall if we do not finish soon.”

Recovering, Eilan hurried after the other girl, blushing furiously. But already she could hear the gentle murmur of the spring. In another moment the path dropped downward, and she followed Dieda to the cleft where the waters trickled out from between two rocks and fell into the pool. In some time long past men had set stones around it; over the years the water had worn their spiraled carvings smooth. But the hazel to whose branches folk tied their wishing ribbons was young, the descendant of many trees that had grown there.

They settled themselves beside the pool and spread a cloth for the offerings, exquisitely prepared cakes, a flask of mead, and some silver coins. It was only a small pool, after all, where the minor goddess of this forest had her dwelling, not one of the holy lakes where whole armies sacrificed the treasures they had won, but for many years the women of her line had brought her their offerings every month after their moon-times, that their link to the Goddess might be renewed.

Shivering a little in the cool air, they pulled off their gowns and bent over the pool.

"Sacred spring, you are the womb of the Goddess. As your waters cradle all life, may I bear new life into the world…” Eilan scooped up water and let it trickle over her belly and between her thighs.

"Sacred spring, your waters are the milk of the Goddess. As you feed the world, let me nourish those I love…” Her nipples tingled as the cool water touched them.

"Sacred spring, you are the spirit of the Goddess. As your waters well for ever from the depths, give me the power to renew the world…” She trembled as the water bathed her brow.

Eilan stared into the shadowed surface, seeing the pale glimmer of her reflection take shape as the waters stilled once more. But as she stared into the water, the face that stared back at her changed. She saw an older woman with even paler skin, and dusky curls in which red highlights glinted like sparks of flame, though the eyes were the same.

"Eilan!”

As Dieda spoke, Eilan blinked, and the face looking back at her from the water was her own once more. Her kinswoman was shivering, and suddenly Eilan felt cold as well. Hastily, they pulled on their clothes. Then Dieda reached for the basket of cakes, and her voice soared, rich and true, in the song.

In the Forest House, thought Eilan, there would be a chorus of priestesses to sing the song. Her own voice, thin and a little wavering, blended with Dieda's in an oddly pleasing harmony.

Eilan poured mead from the flask into the water while Dieda crumbled the cakes and cast them into the pool. The current swirled them away, and for a moment it seemed to Eilan that its sound had grown louder. The two girls leaned over the water, letting drop the coins they had brought.

As the ripples stilled, Eilan saw their two faces, so alike, mirrored together. She stiffened, fearing to see the stranger there once more, but as her sight darkened, this time there was only one face, with eyes that shone in the water like stars in the dark sea of heaven.

"Lady, are you the spirit of the pool? What do you want from me?”
her heart asked. And it seemed to her that words came in reply:

"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 upcountry 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 shoulder 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.