"Nor the granddaughter of one,” snapped Caillean. "So now we come to it; you are afraid that it will reflect upon you!”
"Be quiet, Caillean,” said Lhiannon. "How can you sit here wrangling with Ardanos while this poor child”—she glanced over at Eilan—"is listening, not knowing whether she is to live or die.”
Ardanos looked at his granddaughter; he could read nothing from her expression. Was she being stubborn or did she really not care? He shook his head in exasperation. The work they had done here must not be jeopardized by one silly girl. "Is this known among the others?” he asked, and Caillean shook her head. "Take care to keep it that way, and perhaps we can find a way—”
"Oh, that’s kindness!” said Caillean sarcastically. "To do for your own granddaughter as much as you would for a stranger…”
"Be quiet, child,” Lhiannon repeated tiredly. "You should not speak so to the Arch-Druid. He is trying, I am sure, to do the best he can for Eilan—and for us all.”
Caillean looked skeptical, but she held her peace.
"In any case, you are not the only ones concerned here,” Ardanos said grimly. The rape of a holy priestess, for that was what he would call it, whatever Eilan might say, was a torch that could set the whole of Britain aflame. He drew his cloak around him and looked down at them. There was one Roman, at least, who should be as anxious to see this handled discreetly as he. "I will go to Deva and speak with Macellius; maybe I will see the young Roman as well.”
During the next month, Eilan’s sickness subsided and during much of the time she felt as well as ever. Her loose robes concealed the changes in her breasts, and with a firstchild it would be some time yet before any rounding was visible in her belly.
She wondered what Gaius had said when he learned of her pregnancy. She was not sorry that she had lain with him, but she saw now the power of the forces arrayed against her, and it seemed to her that she had been a fool to think that things might change. Her visions of being a great priestess in the old way were dimming. Now she wanted only to be the mother of Gaius’s child. But even then, despite Ardanos’s parting words, she did not dare to believe that they would let her marry him.
At least Caillean and Lhiannon did not seem to believe that her condition disqualified her from participating in the rituals. Most of the time she spent memorizing the full-moon ceremony along with the other sworn priestesses.
It had become a point of pride with her to prove that her loss of virginity had not affected her ability to function as a priestess, so she set herself to memorize the minutiae of the rituals. Of them all, Dieda was her closest match in intelligence. When they were children they had worked to produce the best spun wool or the neatest embroidery and win Rheis’s praise. In those days Eilan had pitied her kinswoman because Dieda’s mother had died whereas she herself had always had a mother’s loving care and had drawn back from competition. Dieda needed to be first; Eilan did not. But now she had a reason to excel.
Eilan had a good mind and, put on her mettle by Dieda, she used it to the utmost. Dieda’s memory was more precise, and of course no one could match her singing; but, of the two, Eilan often proved to have the better understanding.
As Lhiannon spoke to them, Eilan found herself hanging on every word. The High Priestess had grown so frail that she found it hard to remember that Lhiannon was only in her sixties now.
Eilan wondered sometimes who would succeed her. It ought to be Caillean, but the Irishwoman had said the priests would never accept her. Miellyn was too outspoken, and bitter since the loss of her child, and Eilidh too retiring. It might be Dieda, she thought then, and wondered what it would be like to live here under her kinswoman’s rule.
By the time the moon was at the full once more, Lhiannon seemed much better, but as the ritual progressed, they could hear her voice grow fainter. She completed the ceremony, but it was clear to all of them how much it had cost her. On the following day she collapsed, and this time, when she was put to bed, she could not find the strength to leave it again.