One morning Cynric and Rheis suggested that it would do him good to get out into the sunshine for a little and try to walk. He hobbled painfully out into the courtyard, where little Senara found him, prattling that she and Eilan were going to the meadow to pick flowers and make garlands for the Beltane festival the next day.
Under normal circumstances the idea of going along with a couple of girls would not have attracted Gaius very much; but after his last few days in bed, he would have welcomed a trip to the cowshed to watch Mairi – or even the byre-woman – milk the cows. In fact it seemed more like a picnic; for Cynric and Dieda joined them. The younger girls bullied Cynric as if he were truly their brother, and gave him their shawls and the lunch basket to carry.
Senara escorted Gaius; he leaned harder on her than he really wanted to, and told himself that he was humoring the child. Cynric seemed to hover over Dieda in something other than a brotherly way, talking in low tones. Watching them, Gaius wondered if they were pledged to each other; he did not know enough of this tribe’s customs to tell, but he knew better than to bother them.
They laid the contents of the lunch basket out on the grass; there was fresh baked bread and cold sliced roast meat, and apples —rather withered and brown – the last, the girls said, of the winter store.
“Let me go find some berries.” Senara jumped to her feet, looking around her, and Eilan laughed.
“Silly, it’s springtime. Do you think our guest is a goat you can feed on flowers?”
Gaius did not care what they ate; he was exhausted.
There was a flask of pressed fruit juice and another of fresh brewed country beer. The younger girls would not drink it, saying it was too sour; but Gaius found it refreshing. There were sweet cakes too, which Dieda had made herself. She and Cynric shared a drinking horn and left Gaius to the company of the other girls.
When they had all eaten as much as they could hold, Senara filled a bowl with clear water from a spring in the corner of the meadow and told Eilan to see if she could see the face of her sweetheart in it.
“That is an old superstition,” Eilan said, “and I have no sweetheart.”
“I have,” Cynric said, seizing the bowl and staring into it. “Will the water show me your face, Dieda?” She came and looked over his shoulder. “It is all nonsense,” she said. Gaius thought she looked prettier when she blushed.
“Did you look in the water, Eilan?” asked Senara, tugging at her sleeve.
Eilan said, “I think it is blasphemous to try to compel the Goddess to speak that way! What would Lhiannon say?”
“Does anyone here care?” Dieda asked with a strange hard little smile. “We all know she says nothing unless it is given her by the priests.”
“Your father cares,” Cynric said soberly.
“True, he does,” Dieda said, “and so I suppose you must care too.”
Senara turned to her. “Tell me what you saw in the water, Dieda,” she demanded shrilly.
“Me,” said Cynric, “or at least I hope so.”
“You would really be our brother, then,” Senara smiled at him.
“Why do you think I want to marry her?” Cynric grinned. “But we have yet to speak to your father.”
“Do you think he will oppose it?” Dieda seemed suddenly anxious, and it occurred to Gaius that being the Arch-Druid’s daughter might be even more constricting than being a Prefect’s son. “Surely if he had pledged me elsewhere, he would have told me of it before now!”
“And who will you marry, Eilan?” Senara asked. Gaius leaned forward, his attention abruptly focusing.
“I had not thought of it,” Eilan said, coloring. “Sometimes it seems to me that I hear the Goddess – perhaps I should enter the Forest House as one of the maidens of the Oracle.”
“Rather you than me,” Dieda said. “I would never grudge you that life.”
“Ugh!” Senara shook her head. “Would you really want to live all alone?”