Someone else had thought so too. As he knelt, he touched bare skin. Someone yelped and there was a brief struggle before Gaius got the fellow pinned with a hand over his mouth.
“Longus?” he whispered. His captive nodded vigorously. “Your wager is off. Your companions have gone home, and if you know what’s good for you you’ll follow them.” Longus sighed, then nodded again, and Gaius let him go. But as the man crossed the yard, a door opened and lamplight spilled across the ground. Longus froze like a trapped hare. “Run, you fool!” Gaius hissed from the shadows.
Longus scrambled over the gate, but suddenly the place was alive with men in white robes. Druid priests! thought Gaius. What were they doing here? His hiding place would be revealed in a moment, for they were bringing torches. He began to edge around the building. Somebody swore in British behind him and he whirled, instinctively drawing his sword.
The man screamed as the blade went in and the others came pelting towards him. Gaius fought as well as he could, and he supposed he must have done some damage, from the brutality with which they clubbed and kicked him after superior numbers had finally brought him down.
“Well, Daughter, are you ready for the festival?” Bendeigid, arrayed in the ceremonial bull-hide cloak and the golden ornaments of the Arch-Druid over his white woolen gown, looked magnificent, but Eilan’s heart sank as she returned his salutation.
“I am ready,” she said quietly. The maidens had come as they did before every festival to prepare her. For the last time, her heart cried as they bathed her and set the sacred wreath of vervain on her brow. At least she would go to the Goddess cleansed and sanctified.
For a moment he leaned on his staff, looking at her. Then he gestured to the priests and her women to leave them.
“Listen, child, there is no longer any need to dissemble. They have told me how Ardanos used to come to you, and the tricks he used to bind your will. I am sorry I accused you of betraying us before.”
Eilan kept her gaze lowered, afraid he would see the anger in her eyes. For thirteen years she had been High Priestess, mistress of the Forest House, the most respected woman in the land. Why was he talking as if she were still a child? But this was the loving father who had once said he would rather see her drowned than a Roman’s bride. She could not afford to antagonize him; in the confusion, it had been afternoon before Senara and Lia had been able to leave the Forest House with Gawen. She had to buy time for them to get well away.
In the same neutral tone, she asked, “What do you want of me?”
“The Romans are tearing each other to pieces.” He grinned wolfishly. “There will never be a better time for us to rise against them. This is the season of slaughter, when the doors open between the worlds. Let us call on Cathubodva, let us raise the spirits of our dead against them. Raise the tribes against Rome, Daughter, summon them to war!”
Eilan repressed a shiver. Much as she had resented Ardanos, her grandfather had been a subtle man, never so blinded by his own dreams that he could not be talked round if he saw something else that would serve. Her father was far more dangerous, because he would sacrifice all else to his inflexible ideals. Yet all she had to do to stay safe was to agree with him. Then she felt the familiar throbbing in her temple, and remembered that whatever she did would not be for long.
“Father,” she began, “Ardanos interpreted my answers as it pleased him, and I suppose that you will do the same, but you do not understand about the sacred trance and how the Goddess comes.”
She heard a tumult outside and realized that he was no longer listening. The door crashed open, and priests with tangled hair and blood on their robes pushed through the crowd, dragging something that had been a man.
“What is this?” Eilan put all the hauteur a dozen years had taught her into her tone, and the babble stilled.
“An intruder, Lady,” said one of the priests. “We found him outside the House of Maidens. There was another man, but he got away.”