“In the Goddess’s name, what do you want of me, woman?”
“Don’t dare to speak of the Goddess; you have shown me over and over that you know less than nothing of Her,” Caillean said angrily. For the sake of Lhiannon who – the gods know why — loved you and believed in your plans, I have helped you so far.
“But you cannot intimidate me as you did Lhiannon, nor frighten me; I have too little to lose. I would be willing to go to the priests and let them judge between us. Treating with the Romans and interfering with Oracles is a nasty business, or at least they would think it so, not understanding —” she stopped to sneer – “your high purpose.”
“Why are you doing this? Eilan is no kin of yours.” Ardanos was gazing at her as if he really did not understand.
Caillean sighed. She had loved Lhiannon as a mother, but she was coming to realize that Eilan was like a sister, or like the daughter she had never had — and never would, now that her moonblood had ceased to flow. Barren as she was, and in a way that would have been impossible when she was younger, she understood Eilan’s passionate need to keep her child.
“It should be enough to know that you really cannot stop me. I suggest that you believe that, Ardanos, for you have more to lose than I. Do you think the other priests of your Order would not inquire why this child should live at all? You have a hold over Eilan while she knows you can take her child; you have – thanks be to all the gods at once – none over me.”
The Arch-Druid looked thoughtful, but even as she began to hope that she was convincing him, Caillean realized that what she had said was not strictly true. Ardanos threatened her by threatening Eilan.
“Bring the baby back, Ardanos,” Caillean, who in her years with Lhiannon had learned all about compromise, softened her voice. “Even if Eilan has the child with her, they are still in your power.
Do you think it is a small thing to have the Priestess of the Oracles in the hollow of your hand?”
“Perhaps I did act a little hastily -” he said finally. “But what I told the girl was true. If she flaunts her son at the Forest House we might as well proclaim her shame to the world. How do you suggest we maintain the deception if I let her keep him there?”
Caillean’s shoulders slumped as she realized that she had won. “I have thought of a way —”
The day appointed for Gaius’s wedding dawned clear and bright. Gaius woke when the spring sun shone in through his window, and blinked as it glowed blindingly on the whiteness of the toga draped across the chair. In the past year he had been required to wear the garment at the social and diplomatic occasions at which he had accompanied his prospective father-in-law and had become a little more used to handling its draperies, but he still found it awkward. Agricola boasted that he had taught the sons of British chieftains to wear the toga, but Gaius wondered. He had been brought up as a Roman, but he was still more comfortable in uniform or in the tunic and trews of the tribes.
He sat up, surveying the garment in dismay. His father, who had come in from Deva the day before and was sleeping in the same room, turned over and lifted one eyebrow.
“I do think they could invent a better ceremonial garment,” Gaius grumbled, “or at least something more convenient.”
“A toga is more than a garment,” said Macellius. “It is a symbol.” He sat up and to the amazement of his son, who was never at his best the first thing in the morning, began to discourse on the toga’s honorable history.
But presently Gaius started to understand. Even, or perhaps especially, here at the far end of the Empire, the right to wear the white toga of a citizen was a way of distinguishing between the masters of the world and those they had conquered, and the narrow purple stripe of the eques that marked his tunic an honor dearly won. And that was very important to men like his father. Compared to that, the comfort of the garment was irrelevant.