His gaze moved slowly around the house and back to the girl. Her dress was of red-brown linen and she held a copper basin in her hand; she was tall, but younger than he had thought, her body still straight as a child’s beneath the folds of her gown. Light from the central hearth behind her glowed in her fair hair.
The firelight also showed him the older man, the Druid. Gaius shifted his head a little and looked at him from beneath his lashes. The Druids were learned men among the Britons, but he had been told all his life that they were fanatics. To find himself in a Druid’s house was like waking up in a wolf’s lair, and Gaius did not mind admitting that he was afraid.
At least when he had heard the old man calmly discoursing on the circulation of the blood, a thing he had heard from his father’s Greek physician was a teaching of the healer-priests of the highest rank, he had the sense to conceal his Roman identity.
Not that these folk made any secret of who they were. “We dug that pit for boars and bears and Romans,” the young man had said quite casually. This should have told him at once that he was a good long way outside the little protected circle of Roman domination. Yet he was no more than a day’s ride from the Legion post at Deva!
But if he was in the hands of the enemy, at least they were treating him well. The clothes the girl wore were well made; the copper basin she carried was beautifully worked — no doubt it had come from one of the southern markets.
Rushlights of reed dipped in tallow burned in hanging bowls; the couch where he lay was covered with linen, the straw mattress smelled of sweet herbs. It was heavenly warm after the chill of the pit. Then the old man who had directed his rescue came and sat down beside him, and for the first time Gaius got a good look at his rescuer.
He was a big and powerful man, with shoulders strong enough to throw down a bull. His face was rough-cast on his skull, as if carelessly chiseled out of stone, and his eyes were light grey and cold. His hair was liberally sprinkled with grey; Gaius thought he was around the age of his own father, about fifty.
“You had a remarkably narrow escape, young man,” the Druid said. Gaius had the impression that lecturing came very naturally to him. “Next time keep your eyes open. I’ll have a look at that shoulder in a minute. Eilan —” He beckoned to the girl and gave her instructions in a low voice.
She went away and Gaius asked, “To whom do I owe my life, Honored One?” He had never thought to show respect to a Druid. Gaius, like everyone else, had been brought up on Caesar’s old horror stories of human sacrifice, and tales of the wars which had been fought to subdue the Druidic cult in Britain and in Gaul. Nowadays those who remained were pretty well controlled by Roman edicts, but they could be as much trouble as the Christians. The difference was that while the Christians spread dissension in the cities and refused to worship the Emperor, the Druids could incite even conquered peoples to bloody war.
Still, there was something about this man that commanded respect.
“My name is Bendeigid,” the Druid said, but he did not question Gaius, and the young Roman remembered hearing his mother’s people say that among the Celts a guest was still sacred, at least outside Roman lands. A man’s worst enemy might claim food and shelter and depart unquestioned if he chose. Gaius breathed a little freer at the reprieve; this was one place it might be safer – and wiser — to claim hospitality as a guest than to exact it as the right of a conqueror.
The girl Eilan came into the alcove again, carrying a small chest of oakwood bound with iron, and a drinking horn. She said timidly, “I hope this is the right one.”
Her father nodded to her brusquely, took the chest, and gestured to her to give the horn to Gaius. He reached for it and found to his surprise that his fingers had not the strength to close.