Eilan wondered sometimes who would succeed her. It ought to be Caillean, but the Irishwoman had said the priests would never accept her. Miellyn was too outspoken, and bitter since the loss of her child, and Eilidh too retiring. It might be Dieda, she thought then, and wondered what it would be like to live here under her kinswoman’s rule.
By the time the moon was at the full once more, Lhiannon seemed much better, but as the ritual progressed, they could hear her voice grow fainter. She completed the ceremony, but it was clear to all of them how much it had cost her. On the following day she collapsed, and this time, when she was put to bed, she could not find the strength to leave it again.
Sixteen
Ardanos might have found a certain satisfaction in telling Macellius Severus what his son had done, but, whatever he hoped for, in the Perfect he had met his equal. Macellius heard him out with great courtesy and then informed him quietly that Gaius had gone to Londinium to be married. And as soon as the Arch-Druid had gone away, he set about making it so.
Macellius had no doubt that Ardanos was telling him the truth. The only surprise was how he could have deluded himself about his son’s passion. There was a stubborn streak in the boy that came from him, and a romantic streak that was his legacy from his mother. Macellius rubbed at his eyes. Moruadh had braved the displeasure of all her relations to marry him. He should not have underestimated the force of that wild, Celtic blood.
With so unruly a horse or slave he would have known to take sterner measures. Perhaps it was harder for him to discipline Gaius because so often he saw Moruadh looking out of her son’s eyes. But marriage to a good Roman girl would settle the lad. As the Druid’s footsteps receded along the tiled corridor, Macellius called for his secretary.
The sight of his employer’s stormy face stopped young Valerius from making any of his customary jokes. He saluted smartly, and went in search of Gaius. He found him in the library, reading the account of Caesar’s Gallic wars.
“I’ll go at once.” Gaius put down the scroll. “Do you have any idea what my father wants?”
“No. None. But I think he’s angry,” Valerius warned. “He had a visit this morning from the old Druid, Ardanos, and he came out looking like thunder, master Gaius.”
“Oh? I wonder what the old fellow wanted?” Gaius asked, feeling a tiny shiver begin to work its way up his spine. Ardanos had been in and out of the place since he was a child about some native problem or other. People were always turning up with requests, legitimate and otherwise, and when they proved too unreasonable, it was likely to put his father out of temper. There was no reason for this summons to have anything to do with Ardanos being Eilan’s grandfather, but as he strode down the tiled corridor, he could not help worrying.
The elder Severus was holding a set of military orders. “You are to set out for Londinium at once,” he barked out.
Gaius looked at him, startled. He opened his mouth to ask why, and realized that his father was in a towering rage.
“I told you to leave that girl alone!”
Comprehension began to dawn. Ardanos must have told the Prefect that he had been with Eilan. Had someone seen them? Surely Eilan had told no one. Gaius would have been happy to proclaim his love from the housetops; it was she who had insisted on secrecy.
“With respect, sir, I don’t think -”
“No, you don’t think. That’s half the trouble,” Macellius snarled. “I suppose you do know that you could hardly have done anything worse if you had hunted all over Britain, unless you had raped their High Priestess in broad daylight on their High Altar, or cut down their Sacred Oak. Do you want to get us all massacred?”
Macellius did not wait for an answer. “The folk around here need no excuse for rioting. No, not a word,” he said with a peremptory gesture as Gaius would have spoken, “I trusted once to your word – and never again. I don’t think for a moment that you raped the girl, but I can believe, all too easily, that you got her pregnant. I have no doubt whatever she’s a very good girl in her own way, and that she deserves better of you than this. A sworn virgin, and the Arch-Druid’s granddaughter!”