“How that child has grown!” Caillean commented as Senara went out to fetch the meal. “It seems just yesterday she came here, and now she is the same age as you were when I first met you, and almost as beautiful!”
With some surprise Eilan realized that Senara was indeed a young woman, old enough for vows; one day soon she should be pledged as a priestess. There had been no word from the girl’s Roman relatives for years, and she had no reason to think there would be any objection. But for this at least there was no hurry.
“And what have you been doing this bright sunny day, my dear child?” Caillean asked as Senara set the food down.
A strange look passed over the girl’s face. “I walked by that little house in the forest. Did you know, a hermit has come to live there?”
“Indeed, we gave our permission. He is a strange old man from somewhere in the South, Christian, is he not?”
“He is,” Senara answered with that same strange look. “He has been kind to me.”
Caillean frowned. Eilan knew that she would say it was not suitable for a priestess of the Forest House to be alone with a man, no matter how staid or elderly. But after all, the girl was not sworn to them; besides, she had heard somewhere that Christian priests swore themselves to chastity. In any case, Eilan thought wryly, she herself was no one to question a young girl’s modesty.
“My mother was a Christian,” Senara said. “May I have your permission to visit this priest and take him some food from our kitchen? I would like to learn more about what my mother believed.”
“I do not see why not,” Eilan answered. “That all the gods are one God is a part of our most ancient teachings. Go, and learn which face of Him the Christians see . . .”
They ate for a time in silence.
“Something has happened,” said Eilan finally, watching Caillean’s face as she stared into the flames.
“Perhaps —” Caillean answered her. “But I am not entirely sure what it means. The Tor is very powerful, and the lake . . .” she shook her head. “I promise that when I understand what I felt there, you will know. In the meantime —” her eyes lost their softness as she looked up at Eilan. “I am told that something has happened here as well. Dieda says you had a visitor.”
“Visitors, rather; but I assume you were speaking of Cynric.”
“I meant Macellius Severus,” Caillean said. “What did you think of him?”
Eilan thought, I could have wished for him as my father-in-law. But she could not, after all, say that to Caillean. She compromised by saying, “He seems both kindly and fatherly.”
“That is how the Romans take more and more of our world,” said Caillean. “I would rather they were all evil without compromise. When even you can think well of Macellius, who will rebel?”
“Why should we rebel against them? You speak like Cynric.”
“I could do worse,” said Caillean.
“I do not see how,” Eilan said resentfully. “Even if we must have a Roman peace, what is wrong with that? Peace is certainly better than war however it comes.”
“Even a peace without honor? A peace in which everything that makes life worth living has been taken away?”
“The Romans can be honorable —” Eilan began, but Caillean interrupted.
“I would have thought you the last person to say so!” Her voice trailed off into an appalled silence, as if she had realized that whatever she said could only make it worse.
But I do say so, thought Eilan, feeling her flush of shame die away. Gaius’s mother married Macellius to bring peace, and I let Gains marry a Roman girl for the same reason. She wondered what sort of person his Roman wife was, and whether she had made him happy. Not all women sought peace, she knew, remembering Boudicca, who had started a rebellion, and Cartimandua, who betrayed Caractacus, and Brigitta, whose daughters she was sheltering, but she had made her decision, and she would stand by it.