The baby whimpered sleepily and then began to squall, and Mairi sat up with a sigh, her curly hair an aureole around her face. She got up to change his breech-clout, then came back and laid him across the bed. He gurgled and she patted him.
Eilan put her feet into clogs and said, “Listen; I hear Mother outside. I suppose we had better get up.” She pulled on her gown, and Dieda opened her eyes and said, “I’ll be dressed in a minute.”
Mairi laughed. “I’ll help Rheis as soon as I’ve fed the babe. You and Eilan can stay here and make yourselves beautiful for the festival. If any of the young men have caught your fancy, you’d best be prepared to shine.” She smiled kindly at her young kinswoman. Dieda, with two younger brothers at home, was not accustomed to being pampered, and they all connived to spoil her a little whenever she was here.
When Mairi and her child had gone, Dieda smiled and said sleepily, “Is it truly festival day? I thought that was tomorrow.”
“It is today,” teased Eilan, “when you and Cynric will plight your troth.”
“Will Bendeigid approve, do you think?” Dieda asked. “He is” Cynric’s foster father after all.”
“Oh, if your father gives his consent, it does not much matter what mine thinks,” observed Eilan shrewdly. “And if he did disapprove of the two of you being together, I suppose he would have said so before now. Besides, I dreamed last night about you and Cynric at the festival.”
“Did you? Tell me!” Dieda sat up, wrapping the bedclothes around her, for the air was still cool.
“I don’t remember much about it. But your father was happy. Are you sure you want to marry that brother of mine?”
“I do, indeed,” said Dieda with a small smile, and Eilan knew she would say no more.
Eilan said, “Maybe I should ask Cynric — he might have more to say!” and laughed.
“And maybe he would not,” said Dieda. “He does not talk that much either. You do not want to marry him yourself, do you?”
Eilan shook her head emphatically. “He is my brother!” If she had to marry, surely the great hulking lout who used to put frogs in her bed and pull her hair was the last boy she would choose!
“That’s not really so, you know,” Dieda said.
“He is my foster brother, and that is like kin,” Eilan corrected. “If Father wished us to marry, he would not have fostered him.” She reached for a comb of carved horn and began to unbraid the glistening strands of her hair.
Dieda lay back with a sigh. I suppose Lhiannon will be at the festival. . .” she said after a time.
“Of course she will. The Forest House lies by the spring at the foot of the hillfort after all. Why?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Now that I’m thinking about getting married it makes me shiver to imagine spending one’s life that way,” said Dieda.
“No one has asked it of you,” said Eilan.
“Not in so many words,” said Dieda. “But Father did ask me once if I had ever thought of giving myself to the gods.”
“He asked you that?” Eilan’s eyes grew wide.
“I said I had not,” said Dieda, “but for weeks after I had nightmares that we had quarreled and he had imprisoned me in a hollow tree. And I do love Cynric. Anyway, I could not bear to live my whole life within the Forest House – or confined in any other house whatever. Would you?”
“I do not know – Eilan said. “Perhaps if I were asked I would agree —” She remembered how the priestesses moved through the festival, so serene in their dark blue gowns. They were honored like queens. Wouldn’t that be a better life than being at some man’s beck and call? And the priestesses were taught all the hidden lore.
“And yet I saw you looking at the young stranger,” Dieda teased; “the one Cynric rescued. I think you would make a worse priestess than I!”
“Maybe you are right,” Eilan turned away so that the other girl would not see the color that was heating her brow. She was concerned about Gawen because she had spent so much time tending him, that was all. “I have never thought much about it. But now I remember,” she said thoughtfully, “Lhiannon was also in my dream.”