“Is she alive?” Gaius’s voice cracked.
“No thanks to you,” Caillean retorted. “Ardanos would have put her to death when he heard what you had done! But he was persuaded to spare her, and she told me everything. Why did you never come for her? Is it true that you have married someone else as we were told?”
“My father sent me away—”
“To Londinium,” she confirmed. “Then it was one of the Arch-Druids’s lies that you had been married off to some Roman girl?”
“Not yet,” he said. “But I have been on service and was not free to come. If Eilan was not punished, why do I not see her here?”
Caillean looked at him with contempt; and Gaius felt it withering him. At last she said, “Would you expect her to be out here dancing when she has just given birth to your son?”
Gaius’s breath caught. “Is she alive? Is the child?” It was dark here, away from the fires, but it seemed to him that Caillean’s stern expression softened.
“She is alive, but weak, for the birth was hard; I have been very frightened for her. You do not seem to me worth dying for, but seeing you might be the medicine she needs. The gods know I am no judge. I care nothing what Ardanos might say. Come with me.”
Caillean was only a dark shadow in the night as she led him around the crowd and back along the road, away from the Forest House and the Hill of Maidens. When they could no longer see the light of the fires, Gaius asked, “Where are you taking me?”
“Eilan is not in the Forest House now; she has dwelt in a little house in the deepest part of the woods since the child began to show.” After a moment Caillean added hesitantly, “I have been very troubled for her. Women are sometimes very sorrowful after they have had a child, and the gods know that Eilan has enough reason to be unhappy; perhaps when she sees that you have not abandoned her, she will recover more quickly.”
“They told me that if I did not attempt to see her, she would not be mistreated—” he protested.
Caillean laughed, a brief bitter sound. “Ardanos was furious, of course, the wretched old tyrant. He is convinced that only if you Romans think of our priestesses as Vestals will you protect them. But the choice of the Goddess had fallen on Eilan, and he could not deny it, when Lhiannon with almost her dying breath had proposed this deception.”
Caillean did not speak again. After a time Gaius saw through the trees a small glimmer of light against a greater darkness.
“There is the house.”
Caillean’s voice came soft in his ear. “Wait in the shadows while I get rid of the old woman.” She opened the door.
“The blessing of the Lady to you, Eilan; I’ve come to keep you company. Annis, I’ll care for her now. Why don’t you go out and enjoy the festival?”
Presently he saw the old woman emerging, well-swaddled in shawls, and as she passed down the pathway he drew back beneath the trees. Caillean stood in the open doorway behind her, framed by the light. She gestured, and as he came forward, heart thumping like a charge of cavalry, said quietly into the golden glow behind her, “I have brought you a visitor, Eilan.” He heard her going out to keep watch behind him.
For a moment Gaius’s eyes were dazzled by the light. When he could focus again, he saw Eilan lying on a narrow bed, at her side the bundle that he knew must be the child.
Eilan forced her eyes to open. She supposed it was kind of Caillean to come to her, but why should she bring a visitor? She did not want to see anyone except Caillean, but she had been sure the older priestess would be busy with the festival. A dull curiosity stirring within her, she opened her eyes.
A man’s shape was standing between her and the light. Her grip on the child tightened in instinctive alarm and the baby made a little squeaking sound of protest. At that, the man took a quick step forward, and as the light fell full upon his face, she knew him at last.