The voice of the priestess came into focus again. “In the old days there was a sisterhood of nine high priestesses, one for each region of this land. They stood behind the queen of each tribe, advising and supporting her.”
Eilan sat back against the sturdy trunk of the oak tree, linking into its steady strength, and tried to keep her eyes open.
“They were not queens themselves?” Dieda asked.
“Their role was a less public one, though they were often of the royal line. But they were the initiators of kings, for when a king came to his hallowing, it was the priestess who became the channel by which the Goddess accepted his service, conferring a power that he in turn passed on to his queen.”
“They were not virgins,” Miellyn said sourly, and Eilan found herself suddenly wide awake, remembering the Merlin’s words. Had she been the Goddess for Gaius? What then was his destiny?
“The priestesses lay with men when the service of the Lady required it,” responded Caillean in a neutral tone. “But they did not marry, and they bore children only when it was the only way to preserve a royal line. They remained free.”
“In the Forest House we do not marry, but I would not call us free,” Dieda observed, frowning. “Even though the Priestess of the Oracle chooses her successor, the Council of Druids must approve her choice.”
“Why did things change?” Eilan asked, need adding intensity to her tone. “Was it because of Mona?”
“The Druids say that our present seclusion is for our own, protection,” Caillean answered with the same careful neutrality.
“They say that only if we remain pure as Vestals will we be respected by Rome.”
Eilan stared at her. Then what I did with Gains was not flouting the Law of the Lady, but only the Druids’ rules!
“But will we always have to live like this?” Miellyn asked wistfully. “Is there no place where we can speak the truth and serve the Goddess without interference from men?”
Caillean’s eyes closed. For a moment it seemed to Eilan that the very trees stilled, waiting to hear what the priestess would say.
“Only in a place outside time . . .” Caillean whispered. “Protected by a mist of magic from the world.” And for a moment then Eilan seemed to see what the older woman was seeing – mist drifting like a veil across the silver waters, and white swans singing as they took the air.
Then Caillean started and opened her eyes, staring in confusion around her, and through the trees they heard the gong summoning them to the evening meal.
For a time Eilan’s anxieties were eased, but as the days lengthened towards Midsummer, she began to guess why the Goddess had not stricken her at once. At first, when the usual time came to seclude herself for purification according to the customs of the Forest House and there was no bloodsign, she was unconcerned; she had never been regular. But when the second month had come and gone, she became certain that the fertile magic of Beltane had worked on her only too well.
Her first, instinctive joy soon yielded to terror. What would Bendeigid say? Or do? She wept then, wishing that she could go back in time and seek the comfort of her mother’s arms. Then, as the days went by, she wondered if instead of pregnancy some serious illness had seized upon her as punishment for her sacrilege.
All her life she had been healthy and strong, but now she grew sick whenever she tried to eat or drink; shudders racked her every day and she had no appetite for her food. She longed for harvest and thought wistfully of its fruits, as if they would not make her so sick. About all she could swallow without retching was the thinnest and sourest of buttermilk. Surely her sister Mairi’s pregnancies had not tormented her this way, so this could hardly be an early symptom. Even the waters of the Sacred Well, when the priestesses gathered on the longest day to drink of them and see the future, racked her with icy shudders.
From time to time she sensed Caillean watching her, but the older woman was sick too; Eilan, who was perhaps closer to her than any other, did not know what ailed her. When asked, Caillean said that her moon cycle was troubled, but the older woman’s ill-health only filled Eilan with greater fear. Surely Caillean could not be pregnant! Eilan wondered sometimes if her sin had cursed the whole Forest House, if her illness would spread first to Caillean, and presently kill them all. She dared not ask.