Gaius nodded. “But they can’t have gone far. Set the men to scouring the area. They can report back to me here.”
Stiffly he swung his leg over the pony’s neck, slid to the ground, and walked forward, the horse plodding behind him. As he neared, Ardanos stirred, looking at him pleadingly.
“It was not my doing,” he mumbled. “Called the Goddess — suddenly Cynric was there!”
Gaius nodded. He knew the Arch-Druid’s policies well enough to believe him. It was the woman whose shriek had paralyzed them who had given the rebels the extra moment they needed to melt into the crowd. He continued walking towards the group of women. Somehow he was not surprised when Caillean turned, staring at him defiantly, but it was the woman who lay on the ground he wanted to see.
He took another step and found himself staring down at a woman’s face; white, unconscious, identifiable only in its broadest outlines with the Fury who had appeared to him. And yet with a sick certainty he knew that it was She, and at the same time that it was Eilan.
Twenty-Three
As the Romans hunted Ravens in the days that followed the fight at the Hill of Maidens, Gaius felt as if he had become two people, the one dispassionately reporting the results of the operation to the Commander in Deva and then returning to Londinium to repeat the story to the Governor, while the other tried to reconcile the mask of fury he had seen there with the image of the woman he loved. Julia hovered about him with wifely solicitude, but after the first nightmare, they both agreed that for a time it might be better if he slept alone.
Julia did not seem to mind. She was as affectionate as ever, but during the two years he had been away her focus had shifted to her children. The girls were growing fast, miniatures of their mother, although there were times when Gaius thought he saw a gleam of Macellus’s determination in his elder daughter’s eyes. But though they were dutiful, he had become a stranger. It hurt a little to hear their laughter cease when he entered the room, and it occurred to him that perhaps if he could find the time to get to know them better the distance between them would disappear.
But he could not bring himself to try to bridge it, not now, when his heart was telling him that whatever love had remained between him and Eilan had been swept away by the Power that possessed her. At times the strain of concealing his anguish made him want to howl. Gaius was relieved when the Commander at Deva requested him to return for consultation, a postscript indicating that his father was hoping that instead of staying in the fortress, Gaius could pay him a visit in the new house he had built in the town. Perhaps it would be easier there to reconcile the conflict that was tearing at him.
“Have they captured any more fugitives from the Raven conspiracy?” Macellius poured wine for Gaius and handed him the cup, good but not gaudy, like the dining chamber itself and the mansion that surrounded it. His father’s place was one of the better houses that had been built around the fortress, evidence of a growing civilian presence as the country settled down. Gaius shook his head.
“That fellow Cynric — he was their leader, wasn’t he?” Macellius said then. “Didn’t you capture him at Mons Graupius?”
Gaius nodded and took a long drink of sour wine, wincing as the movement stretched the healing slash on his side. He had not noticed it until the fight at the Hill was over, but it was more annoying than serious; he had had far worse on the German frontier. The shock of realizing that the Fury who had cursed them all was Eilan was his worst wound. After a moment he realized that his father was waiting for an answer. “I did – but later he got away.”
“Seems to be good at that,” observed his father, “like that bastard Caractacus. But we got him in the end, and eventually somebody will betray your Cynric too, someone from his own side . . .”