For the better part of a week I scarcely left my bed, as devastated as I had been after I lost my first child. There was no further word from Constantius, though a badly-spelled note did arrive from Crocus, pledging his continued loyalty. I ate when Drusilla forced food upon me, but I would not let Hrodlind dress my hair, or change the bedding that seemed to me still to bear the impress of Constantius’s body and the scent of his skin.
Hylas’s silent devotion was the only sympathy I could bear, and I think now that it was the dog’s warm body curled against my own and the poke of a cold nose when he wanted to be petted that kept me from losing contact with the outside world entirely. He was white-muzzled now, and moved stiffly when the weather chilled, but his heart was still warm. It would have been so easy, in the first shock of my loss, to retreat into madness. But as long as one creature needed me, as long as Hylas still offered me his unquestioning love, I was not completely alone.
I was not aware of any logic to my mourning, but when Philip came to me one afternoon to tell me that Constantius had departed Colonia for Mediolanum and his wedding, I realized that this was the news for which I had been waiting. Now I was truly alone. It was easy enough, in the end, to dissolve our union. No negotiations over the return of a dowry were required, for all I had brought to him were my skills as a priestess and my love, which could not be priced; or the custody of children, since our only son was in the keeping of the Emperor. In Rome, we had never truly been married, only in Avalon.
My mind seemed to move very slowly, but eventually I allowed Hrodlind to bathe and dress me, and the servants to come in to clean the room. But I did not leave the house. How could I bear to go abroad, where any passer-by might point to the cast-off concubine of the new Caesar, and laugh?
“Lady,” said Drusilla, setting down a platter with spring greens dressed with a little olive oil, hot barley cakes, and some new cheese. “You cannot live like this. Let us go back to Britannia. You will be better at home!”
Home is Avalon … I thought, and ,” cannot go there, where I would have to admit before them all that Constantius has abandoned me. But though relations with Carausius’s island empire were tense, Britannia and Rome were not yet at war. Ships still sailed across the British Sea to Londinium. Surely there, a wealthy woman could live alone in respectable anonymity.
Philip made arrangements for us to embark from the port at Ganuenta just after the first day of summer. My first act, when I finally emerged from my chamber, had been to free him and the other slaves Constantius had left to me. Most of those we had purchased to staff the house in Colonia accepted their manumission gratefully, but I was surprised by how many of the older members of my household chose to remain. So it was that Philip and Drusilla and Hrodlind, whose own father had sold her into slavery, along with Decius, the boy who had tended my garden, and two of the kitchen maids, were to take ship with us for Londinium.
On the day before we were to depart, I walked out along the road to the old temple of Nehalennia. Hrodlind followed, carrying Hylas in a basket, for he could no longer walk so far, yet he whined pitifully whenever he was parted from me.
Perhaps the lichens covered more of the stones, and the tiles of the roof had a more mellow glow, but otherwise the place seemed unchanged. And the Goddess, when I confronted Her inside the temple, gazed past me with the same serenity. It was only I who was different.
Where was the young woman who had made her offerings at this altar, the British tongue still adding its music to her Latin, her gaze apprehensive as she faced this new land? After twenty-two years my speech had flattened, though it was much more eloquent, and it was Britannia which I would view with a stranger’s eyes.