“She has not said anything to me,” the girl answered, a little sharply.
It was no business of Miellyn’s what Eilan might secretly long for, or the feelings that had stirred in her when she saw Lhiannon lift her arms in invocation to the moon. The longer she stayed here, the more vividly she remembered her childhood dreams, and every time she carried offerings to the shrine at the spring she stared into the water, hoping to see the Lady once more.
“I will be whatever my elders say. They know more about what the gods want than I.”
Miellyn laughed. “Oh, perhaps some of them may; but I am not sure,” she said. “Caillean would not say so. She told me once that the knowledge of the Druids is that which was given to all people, both men and women alike in the old days.”
“And yet even the High Druid defers to Lhiannon,” Eilan said, as she bent to cut a few leaves from a bunch of stitchwort she had found growing on the sunny side of a great rock.
“Or seems to,” Miellyn said. “But Lhiannon is different, and of course we all adore her —”
Eilan frowned. “I have heard some of the women say that even my grandfather would not dare to cross her.”
“Sometimes I wonder,” Miellyn said as she sorted through the leaves Eilan had cut. “Cut them closer to the branch; we cannot use the stems. Do you know, I have heard that in the old days the laws required that any man who cut a tree must plant another in its place so the woods would never be less. That has not been done since the Romans came here; they cut trees and plant nothing, so one day there will be no trees in all Britain —”
“There seem to be as many as ever,” said Eilan.
“Some seed and grow of themselves.” Miellyn turned and gathered up the plants they had cut.
“What about the herbs?” asked Eilan.
“We have not cut enough to make any difference; enough shoots will grow up in a day or two to replace what we have taken. That is enough. I think it may rain; we should hurry back. The priestess who taught me herb lore used to say that the wilderness is the garden of the Goddess, and men cannot gather from it without replacing what they use!”
“I had not heard before, stated in just that way, but, but I think it is beautiful,” Eilan said. “I suppose, if you think in centuries, that to cut down a tree is as foolish as slaughtering a breeding doe -”
“And yet some men believe – or seem to believe – that they have the right to do what they will to anything weaker than they are,” Miellyn said. “I do not understand how the Romans can do what they do.”
“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, ill-fed, 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.”