“I lay with the Sacred King once only,” she said calmly, “as was my right, at the Beltane fires . . .”
“What do you mean?” Miellyn exclaimed behind her. “It was Dieda who had to be sent away – it was Dieda who had a child!”
“It was not!” The shocked echo of speculation ceased as Dieda hurried to the Arch-Druid’s side. “They made me agree to the deception. I took her place while she went away to have the baby, and when she returned, they exiled me! She has queened it over the Forest House ever since as if she were as chaste as the moon, but it was all a lie!”
“But I always served the Goddess, not the Romans!” Eilan cried, her composure cracking at the threat to her child. She saw fury replacing the questions in Bendeigid’s eyes as he turned on her. The people crowed closer, trying to hear; voices rose in query or condemnation. Rumors of trouble among the Romans had made them like tinder that any spark could set aflame. If she appealed to them, would she set in motion the very catastrophe she had suffered so to avoid?
“Why should I believe you, bitch?” snarled her father. “Your whole life has been a lie!”
He lifted his hand to strike her. A bulky form burst through the line of Druids; Huw, with his cudgel upraised to defend her one last time. But more priests were running between them. Before Huw could reach Bendeigid, bronze blades flared in the firelight, came away a deeper crimson and stabbed once more. Again the Druids struck, and again, and Huw, still struggling towards her, fell without a cry.
Huw would have attacked the Arch-Druid himself, if he had threatened me . . .Eilan thought numbly, and in the end, he had.
“Take him away,” Bendeigid was breathing hard. “He was a fool.” Abruptly he turned, and grasped Eilan by the arm. “If you had been true, I would have asked you to invoke the Goddess to bless us. But instead, you shall be Her sacrifice!”
Why should that frighten me? My life has been one long offering, thought Eilan as her father dragged her across the circle to stand at Gaius’s side. There was a mutter from the people at that. Some of those who had heard the accusations wanted her blood immediately, others thought it sacrilege to lay hands on the High Priestess, whatever her crime.
“Eilan, can you forgive me?” Gaius said in a low voice. “I was never worthy of your love. You wanted me to be your Sacred King, but I am only an ordinary man . . .”
She turned to look at him, and found a nobility in his bruised face that had never been there before. She wished that she could take him in her arms, but the priests were holding her and she realized that he did not need it; she no longer saw the lost child that before had always waited in his eyes. He met her gaze without flinching, at peace with himself at last.
“I see a god in you,” Eilan answered fiercely. “I see a spirit that will never die. We did what was required of us, and if we did not do as well as we would have wished, the Lady’s purpose was accomplished all the same. Surely it will be given to us to walk together in the Summerland for a time before we come back again.”
“You have called him a Sacred King,” said Bendeigid hoarsely, “and as such he shall die.”
Slowly she saw the stern acceptance that had upheld Gaius deepen to a kind of wonder. He continued to gaze at her as they slipped the noose around his neck and began to tighten it. But before the sword went in beneath his ribs, his eyes had lost focus, fixed for ever on something beyond the world. The blood was still pumping from his breast when they carried him to the fire.
“Tell me, Priestess, what omens do you read in this sacrifice?” Eilan turned her gaze from the flames to her father, and something in her face made him take a step backwards, though she had not moved.