Then he lifted me, as easily as if I had weighed no more than Heron, and bore me away to the bower.
It was a round hut in the ancient fashion, made from branches loosely woven together. Flowers had been twined among them, and firelight gleamed through the gaps, dappling the rich cloth that covered the bed, and the walls, and our bodies, with golden light. Constantius set me on my feet again and we faced each other, silent, until the golden leaves of his wreath no longer quivered with the swiftness of his breathing.
“I am all that is, has been, and will be,” I said softly, “and no man has ever lifted my veil. Make pure your heart, oh you who would look upon the Mystery.”
“I have been purified according to the Law,” he answered me. Then he added, “I have eaten from the drum; I have drunk from the cymbal. I have seen the light that shines in the darkness. I will lift your veil.”
These words were not the ones the priests had taught him. Clearly, he was not only an initiate of the Soldiers’ God, but of the Mother and the Daughter as they are known in the southern lands. He reached out, and with steady hands lifted the hawthron wreath from my brow, and then drew off my veil. For a moment he simply stared at my face. Then he knelt before me.
“It is you! Even in the storm I knew you. You are the Goddess indeed! Did you show yourself to me first in the guise of a hag to test me, and is this my reward?”
I swallowed, gazing down at his bent head, and then, bending, took off his golden crown and laid it beside my wreath of flowers.
“With this crown or without it, you are the God to me…” I managed to say. “It was I indeed, and even then, I loved you.”
He looked up at me, his eyes still wide and unfocused, set his hands upon my hips and drew me forwards until his bent head rested at the joining of my thighs. I felt a sweet fire began to build between them, and suddenly, my knees would no longer bear me, and I slid down, down, between his hands until we knelt together, breast to breast and brow to brow.
Constantius gave a little sigh then, and his lips found mine. And as if that had completed a circuit of power, suddenly the fire was everywhere. I clutched at his shoulders, and his arms came tight around me, and together we fell to the bed that had been prepared for us.
Our clothing had been made so that at the removal of a few pins it would fall away, and soon there was no impediment between us. His body was hard with muscle, but his skin was smooth, sliding across mine, and his strong hands tender as he taught me ecstasies that had never been mentioned in my training. And then we came together. I set my arms about him as the power of the God came down, shaking him until he cried out in his extremity. And as he gave his soul into my keeping, the power of the Goddess bore my own away to meet him and there was only light.
When time had come back from eternity once more and we lay quiet, clasped in each other’s arms, I realized that outside the hut, people were cheering. Constantius stilled, listening.
“Are they cheering for us?”
“They have lit the bonfire atop the Tor,” I said softly. “On this night, there is no separation between your world and Avalon. The priests will huddle in their cells for fear of the powers of darkness, but the fire that is lit here will be visible all over the Vale. On other hills, folk are waiting to see it. They will kindle their own fires then, and so, from hill to hill, the light will spread across Britannia.”
“And what about this fire?” he touched me once more and I gasped as flame rippled upwards.
“Ah, my beloved, I think the fire we have kindled between us will light the whole world!”