"The better ones among them would be as angry as you and I at some of the outrages,” Eilan ventured. She was thinking of Gaius. He had seemed almost as angry as Cynric when he heard the story of the Romans on Mona. She could not imagine him slaughtering the helpless; and yet he must know perfectly well how short and dreadful a life could be expected by the Roman levies in the mines, illfed, poorly clothed, and breathing the poisoned dust of the ore they mined. If this punishment were limited to criminals and murderers it would be bad enough, but the byre-woman’s husband?
Yet Gaius believed that the Romans were making civilized people of barbarians. Perhaps he had never really thought about the mines, because being taken to them had never happened to anyone he knew. Even she had not thought about it much until it happened to one of their own. But if she did not know what was going on, surely her father and grandfather did, and they had done nothing to stop it either.
The wind gusted round to the west and suddenly the clouds let loose their burden of rain. Miellyn squealed and pulled her shawl up over her head. "We’ll be drowned if we stay here!” she exclaimed. "Pick up your basket and come! If we run, we’ll be indoors before we’re wet through.”
But the girls were soaked by the time they came into the central hall of the priestesses. Eilan felt Miellyn had welcomed the opportunity to run.
"Get yourselves dry now, lasses, or you’ll catch a rheum and I’ll be using up all my medicines nursing you!” Latis, who was so old now she could no longer go into the forest to gather the herbs, cackled with laughter and shooed them towards the door. "But mind you come back then to lay out the herbs you’ve brought me, or they’ll mildew and both the plants and your labor will be wasted!”
Skin still glowing from brisk rubbing, Miellyn and Eilan returned to the still-room. Built on behind the kitchen where heat from the ovens kept the air warm and dry, the rafters were festooned with bunches of hanging herbs. Woven trays upon which roots or leaves were spread to dry hung beneath them, turning lazily. Shelves with earthenware crocks stood along one wall, and bags and baskets of prepared herbs were stored along another, neatly labeled with the sigils of the herbalists’ craft. The air was pungent.
"You’re Eilan, are you not?” Latis peered at her. She looked rather like a dried root herself, thought Eilan, seamed and wrinkled with age. "Goddess help us, they get younger every year!”
"Who does, Mother?” asked Miellyn, hiding her grin.
"The girls they send to serve the Priestess of the Oracle.”
"I told her she would be sent for training to the Lady soon,” Miellyn said. "Well, Eilan, do you believe me now?”
"Oh, I believed you,” Eilan said, "but I thought surely it would take someone older and with more skills than me.”
"Caillean would say that they do not want anyone too learned near Lhiannon for fear she would ask too many questions. If the Priestess were forced to think about what she was doing, the Oracles she gives might not always serve the Druids’ policies so conveniently.”
"Miellyn, hush,” Latis exclaimed. "You know you must not say such things—not even in a whisper!”
"I will speak the truth and if the priests object, I will ask them by what right they ask me to lie.” But Miellyn lowered her voice. "Eilan, be careful; you are holding that basket aslant. We took enough trouble to gather these leaves, I do not want them dirtied by a fall to the floor.”
Eilan readjusted the angle of the basket she was holding.
"There are some truths which should never be spoken aloud, not even in a whisper,” Latis went on soberly.
"Yes,” Miellyn said, "so I am told; and usually they are the truths that should be proclaimed from the rooftops.”
"In the sight of the gods this may very well be true,” replied the other. "But you know very well we are not in the presence of the gods, but of men.”