In the same neutral tone, she asked, “What do you want of me?”
“The Romans are tearing each other to pieces.” He grinned wolfishly. “There will never be a better time for us to rise against them. This is the season of slaughter, when the doors open between the worlds. Let us call on Cathubodva, let us raise the spirits of our dead against them. Raise the tribes against Rome, Daughter, summon them to war!”
Eilan repressed a shiver. Much as she had resented Ardanos, her grandfather had been a subtle man, never so blinded by his own dreams that he could not be talked round if he saw something else that would serve. Her father was far more dangerous, because he would sacrifice all else to his inflexible ideals. Yet all she had to do to stay safe was to agree with him. Then she felt the familiar throbbing in her temple, and remembered that whatever she did would not be for long.
“Father,” she began, “Ardanos interpreted my answers as it pleased him, and I suppose that you will do the same, but you do not understand about the sacred trance and how the Goddess comes.”
She heard a tumult outside and realized that he was no longer listening. The door crashed open, and priests with tangled hair and blood on their robes pushed through the crowd, dragging something that had been a man.
“What is this?” Eilan put all the hauteur a dozen years had taught her into her tone and the babble stilled.
“An intruder, Lady,” said one of the priests. “We found him outside the House of Maidens. There was another man, but he got away.”
“He killed Dinan!”
“He must have been after one of the priestesses!”
“But which one?”
This time it was the Arch-Druid who brought silence by striking the floor with his staff. “Who are you, fellow, and what were you doing here?”
Eilan shut her eyes, hoping no one would notice that the man’s ripped tunic was made from good Roman cloth. Even grimed with blood and dust she knew Gaius, but perhaps no one else would, if she made no sign. Did he come here for Senara, she wondered, or for his son?
“Don’t you recognize him, Lord Druid?” Dieda pushed her way forward. Eilan winced at the edge in her laughter. “Well, perhaps he is not so handsome now. Your men have netted a fine pig for our feasting. If you look, you will see the scar of the boar pit on his shoulder there.”
Bendeigid should have been your father, thought Eilan hysterically, and Ardanos mine! They pulled the prisoner’s head up and for a moment he met her appalled gaze, then the sense left his eyes once more.
“You!” Bendeigid’s voice held mingled astonishment and fury. “Have you not done enough damage to me and mine that you should trouble us now?” Suddenly his expression changed. “Well, you shall do so no longer. Dieda, show my men where they can bathe him and tend his wounds, but by no means unbind him. Garic and Vedras” – he pointed to the two most senior Druids — “we must talk. The rest of you, leave us alone!”
The priests dragged Gaius away and the room emptied. Eilan sat back in her chair, wondering whether the pain in her belly was an echo of the throbbing in her head, or fear.
“I see that you know the man,” said Vedras, the elder of the two Druids who had remained, “Who is he?”
“His name is Gaius Macellius Severus the younger,” snarled Bendeigid.
“The Prefect’s son!” exclaimed Garic. “Do you think he came for one of the priestesses as they say?”
“It does not matter why he came,” said Vedras. “We must get him out of here. The Red-cloaks would deny our right to punish
even an ordinary legionary. The gods alone know what they will do to us for laying hands on a chieftain’s son!”
“Indeed,” Bendeigid smiled craftily. “But I do not believe his own people know where he has gone. And no one here knows his name or even that he is a Roman but Dieda and ourselves.”