“Children of Don!” the Arch-Druid cried. “It is Samaine Eve! This is a time of changes! The new year is beginning, and a new era for this land! Let the changing of the seasons sweep away the Romans who have blighted Britannia! Tonight we shall gladden the gods of war with a sacrifice. But we must purge our ranks of all offenders. Traitor,” he turned to Gaius, “we can make your death hard or easy. Tell us what you came to Vernemeton to do!”
“Kill me, if you will, but ask no foolish questions!” Gaius said hoarsely. “I will say only that I meant no harm to any here.” Perhaps he had not lived well, but at least he could die with dignity.
“You were in the sacred precinct, where no men but the Druids may come. Have you seduced one of our maidens? Which of them did you come to carry away?”
Gaius shook his head and gasped as a spearpoint pressed into his side. There was a sensation of warmth and he felt blood trickling down.
“Was it Rhian, Tanais, Bethoc?” the litany went on. For each name they cut him again. Once he tried to drive himself upon the spearpoint, but his captors knew their business and held him still. Loss of blood and the ill-treatment he had already endured were making him dizzy. Soon, he thought, I will pass out and it will not matter what they do to me.
“Senara . . .”
At the name, Gaius jerked involuntarily. In the next moment he tried to conceal his reaction, but no one was watching him. Eilan had stepped forward and thrown back her veil.
“Stop!” she said clearly. “I can tell you who the Roman came for. It was I!”
What is she saying? Gaius stared at her in horror. Then he understood that she must be trying to protect Senara, and perhaps the child. In that moment she had an unearthly beauty. In comparison, Senara’s unformed prettiness was a star paled by the full moon’s majesty. As had happened sometimes in the moment before battle, Gaius saw his own heart with a terrible clarity. He cared about Senara, but his desire for her had not been love. In the younger woman he had only been trying to recover Eilan as she had been when he first knew her, the maiden that time and his own mistakes had put forever beyond his grasp.
In the shocked silence, the only sound was the crackling of the fire. For a moment some powerful emotion contorted the Arch-Druid’s features, then he mastered it and turned from Eilan to Gaius.
“For your sake and hers, on your honor I ask you to tell me if this is true.”
True . . .For a moment the word had no meaning. Torn between Rome and Britannia, he did not even know who he was himself. How could he know whom he loved? Slowly Gaius straightened and met Eilan’s clear gaze. Her eyes seemed to be asking him a question. At that, all the tension went out of him in a long sigh. “It is true,” he said softly. “I have always loved Eilan.”
For a moment Eilan closed her eyes, dizzied by a tide of joy. Gaius had understood her, but he had not spoken only for the sake of Senara. She had seen such a look – such an expression of wonder — on his face once only, when he held her in his arms on that Beltane so long ago.
“Have you betrayed us all along then?” Bendeigid hissed, bending close to her ear. “Were you lying when you swore to me that he had not touched you? Or did it begin later, when you were a sworn virgin of the temple? Has he been teaching you Roman lies along with his love-talk, and treason with his caresses? Did you lie with him in the sacred precincts, or in the Sacred Grove?”
She could feel her father’s fury, but she seemed to see him through a wall of Roman glass. In the end it had all become so simple. She was living under sentence of death already, and had faced its terrors. Now that the time was come, she was not afraid at all.