Her nights were harder, for in the first months she often dreamed of Gaius. At times she saw him riding with his men, or practicing with the sword. He swore sometimes as the blade bit into the man-shaped wooden post—This for Senara, and this for Rheis. This, for Eilan! When he finished his brow would be damp with sweat, but the moisture on his cheeks was tears.
Eilan would wake, then, weeping for his sorrow. She understood now how the grief of the living could torment the departed. She thought of sending a message to let him know she still lived, but there was no way to do it, and presently she began to realize that she was indeed dead to him, and the sooner he accepted that, the better for both of them.
In these early months, she was only one of a group of potential priestesses. She spent much of her time beginning to memorize the whole body of Druidic lore. Just as the gods might not be worshipped in a temple made with human hands, none of the divine lore might be entrusted to writing. Sometimes she thought this strange, for the human memory was itself so fragile. But she had seen her teachers perform amazing feats of memorization. Much of the old knowledge had been lost when Mona was destroyed, but much remained. Ardanos, for instance, could recite the whole of the Law from memory.
She was happy enough with her fellow priestesses. The ones she knew best were the two who had welcomed her to the House of Maidens that first night: Eilidh and Miellyn.
Eilidh was older than she looked and had been in the Forest House since early childhood. Miellyn was closer to her own age. Apart from these two, she best knew a woman named Celimon who was about forty, whose major task was to instruct the youngest priestesses and officiate at some of the less important rituals.
Her first task was to memorize every detail of those rites in which the maidens assisted, for if a mistake were made, a ceremony would have to be begun again. Two or three times Eilan had caused such an interruption. She felt foolish, but Miellyn assured her that they had all been through it.
Eilan was also instructed in the motions of moon and stars. She spent many night hours lying between Miellyn and Eilidh in a secluded part of the enclosure, watching the Great Wain swinging endlessly about the North Star, and the solemn march of the planets as they rose and fell and the Northern Lights flashed and circled in the summer sky. She learned that the earth went round the sun—of all the wonders, the hardest to believe. From all her early years in the Forest House these nights best captured her imagination; lying warmly cloaked on the damp grass with Caillean’s voice floating above them in the darkness, intoning long stories of the stars.
She wished sometimes to learn to accompany the singing, but on one of the few occasions when she was allowed to spend some time with Caillean, she was told that women did not play the harp in the ceremonies.
"But why? Women can be bards now, can’t they, like Dieda? And you play a harp, do you not?”
It was warm, and in the grove outside the walls one of the younger priests from the Druidic college across the fields was practicing. He was not very good at it, but it was very hard to play a harp so badly that listening would be painful. Even though the melody halted, each note was pure and clear.
"My instrument is a lyre, Lhiannon’s first gift to me, and I have played it for years, so no one dares object. And talent like Dieda’s cannot be denied.” Caillean’s dark eyes flashed.
"It does not make sense. Why is it I cannot learn?” asked Eilan. However badly she might play, she could surely do better than that fellow outside, who did not seem to have noticed that as the day grew warmer his upper strings were going out of tune.
"Of course it does not make sense,” Caillean replied. "A great deal that the priests do makes no sense; and they know it. That is one reason why I will not be allowed to succeed Lhiannon. Ardanos is aware that I know it too.”
"Do you want to be High Priestess?” asked Eilan, her eyes rounding.
"Heaven forbid,” said Caillean fervently. "I would be running head-on against the will of the priesthood—which is like a stone wall—every day of my life. Leadership is another thing the men wish to keep for themselves. I think it has got worse since they encountered the Romans. They wish to keep the weapons, and the harps, and everything else save for the suffering of childbirth and the toil of the cooking pot and the loom. I dare say they would like to say women cannot serve the gods, but no one would be foolish enough to believe that. But why do you want to learn to play a harp?”