A booth where they were selling bangles of Greek glass caught her eye and she stopped talking. Gaius sighed. Better not ask anymore questions, he thought, lest he betray himself further. There were some things they would certainly expect even a Silure tribesman to know.
There were stalls of brooms and mops, and pretty girls selling garlands — almost everyone wore a garland – flowers and a good many other things, some too alien for Gaius to recognize. The young people wandered among the booths, casually looking at their wares. Cynric inquired for a swineherd but said that they all demanded too much for their labor.
“The accursed Romans have taken so many men in their levies that we must hire men to tend our beasts and till our fields,” he said. “But so many folk have been driven from their lands that we can sometimes find men who will come for shelter and food alone. I suppose if I were a farmer I would be glad of that. But may the gods save me from tilling the land!”
At noon Rheis gathered her family together beneath a spreading oak tree at the base of the hill for some cold meat and bread. The old hillfort was the focus for many pathways. From here they could see a broad and well-tended way that ran westward, lined with stately oak trees. At its very end the thatched roofs of the Forest House and its outbuildings showed pale against the deep green of the Sacred Grove.
Cynric and Gaius had gone off to look at horses, and Rheis had drifted away to speak to an acquaintance. The girls were packing up the food, when Eilan froze and whispered, “Look, there is Lhiannon.”
The High Priestess, with a few of her attendants, was coming along the Sacred Way between the long line of trees. Her slight figure glimmered in the dappling of sunlight that sifted through the branches, and she moved with the gliding pace of a trained priestess, so that she did not seem quite like a human being at all as she drew near. Lhiannon stopped as if to wish them a joyous festival, and her eyes fell on the girls. “You are the kinswomen of Bendeigid,” she said. Her gaze fixed on Dieda. “How old are you, my child?”
“Fifteen,” whispered the girl.
“Are you yet married?” Lhiannon asked. Eilan felt her heart begin to thud heavily in her breast. This was the face of the High Priestess as she had seen it in her dream.
“I am not,” Dieda said in a still voice. She was staring at the Priestess as if entranced by that clear gaze.
“Nor pledged in marriage?”
“Not. . .yet, although I have thought. . .” her voice faltered.
Tell her, thought Eilan. You are pledged to Cynric! You have to tell her now! But though her lips worked, Dieda stood frozen, like a young hare when the falcon’s shadow falls.
Lhiannon unfastened the heavy blue cloak that hung from her shoulders. “Then I claim you for the Goddess; henceforth you shall serve Her whom I serve and no other . . .” The cloak opened like a dark wing as the priestess swung it round, and light flared as the branches moved in a sudden wind.
Eilan blinked. Surely it was only sunlight – but in the dazzle, for a moment she thought that the opening of the cloak had revealed a radiant figure. She closed her eyes, but imprinted upon her inner sight she saw still a Face with a mother’s tender smile and a bird of prey’s fierce eyes, and it seemed to her that it was she, not Dieda, who was fixed by that gaze. But Lhiannon had not spoken to her, nor seemed to see her at all.
“From henceforward, you shall dwell with us in the Forest House, my child. Come to us there – well, tomorrow will be time enough.” Lhiannon’s voice seemed to come from a great distance. “So be it.”
Eilan opened her eyes once more and saw the shadow fall as the cloak settled across Dieda’s slim shoulders.
The women who followed Lhiannon intoned, “She is the beloved of the Goddess; Her choice has fallen. So be it.”