“Lhiannon —” Caillean got an arm around the old woman’s shoulders and felt some of the tension ease. “This is not good for you. Calm yourself, Mother; let me get you some tea.” She passed her hand across the older woman’s brow and Lhiannon sagged in her arms. One-handed, Caillean poured tea from the flask into a beaker and held it to Lhiannon’s lips. A minty fragrance spread through the room. The High Priestess drank, then let out her breath in a long, shuddering sigh.
Eilan still stood numb and tearless before her. It had taken all her strength to come here. What happened next was in the lap of the gods, and at this moment, still appalled by Lhiannon’s fury, she obviously found it hard to care. When Lhiannon roused, she seemed to have forgotten her fury.
“Sit down!” she said querulously. “It hurts my neck to look up at you.”
Caillean pointed to a three-legged stool, and Eilan, still hot-eyed and resentful, complied.
“Very well,” Lhiannon said in something closer to her normal tone. “Now what’s to be done? I’m sorry I slapped you, but this upsets plans . . .” She stopped, frowning. “Well, we must manage something. I suppose we had better tell Ardanos.”
“For the life of me I cannot see what he has to do with it,” said Caillean. Unless, she thought, it is his plans that have been upset by Eilan’s disgrace! “It’s not as if she were the first to kindle from the Beltane fires, nor will she be the last, I am sure. It would be easier if Eilan were any other man’s daughter. But Ardanos and Bendeigid will just have to live with it! Surely the fate of a priestess of Vernemeton is our own affair. Do you mean to say we cannot find the right thing to do?”
“I did not say that,” Lhiannon answered fretfully, “but Ardanos should be told.”
“Why? What law requires it except the Roman law which makes women no more than chattels of their menfolk?” Caillean grew angry. “Do you really have such respect for his wisdom?”
Lhiannon passed her hand over her eyes. “Why must your voice be so sharp, Caillean? You will give me a headache. You must know by now that it is not a question of wisdom but of power. By the treaty that protects this place, everything to do with the Forest House is in his charge.”
“Yes, more’s the pity,” said Caillean bitterly. “Tell me, who appointed him to be the god?”
Lhiannon rubbed her left arm as if it pained her. “In any case he is one of Eilan’s few surviving kinsmen, and it is only right to tell him,” she said tiredly.
Caillean felt an unwilling pang of pity. Obviously Lhiannon was only too eager to unload the problem on to someone else’s shoulders. In view of her poor health, perhaps this was not altogether surprising.
Eilan was still silent, as if this confession had taken all her strength. Her gaze was turned inward, as if what they said had nothing at all to do with her, or she no longer cared.
Say something, child! Caillean glared at her. This is your fate we are deciding! Caillean knew that Ardanos could not do anything to her; he had tried, but Lhiannon was fond of her fosterling, and they had come to a certain accommodation by carefully pretending that Caillean did not exist. She, for her part, tried to avoid attracting his attention, or opposing him; but for Eilan’s sake she felt she would even try to face the old Druid down.
“Very well then, send for Ardanos,” she said aloud. “But think twice before you put her into his power.”
“Well?” Ardanos frowned at the three women who awaited him in the High Priestess’s dwelling. “What has happened that is so important that you had to send for me?” Lhiannon looked fragile and tired, and Caillean loomed like a shadow behind her. Was it her health? he wondered with a sudden stab of alarm as he noticed Eilan sitting beside the window. Had they sent for him because the High Priestess was dying? She did not look that ill, and surely they would not have already told Eilan . . .