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CHAPTER SIX
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AD 270
When I woke, the pale light of early morning was filtering through the leaves of the bower. The air was moist and cool on my bare skin. I burrowed back under the covers, and the man beside me grunted, turned, and flung out a possessive arm to draw me close against his side. For a moment I stiffened in confusion, then my awakening senses flooded me with memory. I turned, fitting myself more closely against him, astonished, despite the unaccustomed soreness in my body, by how right it felt to lie this way.
I could hear no human sounds, but the birds were singing a triumphant welcome to the new day. I raised myself on one elbow, gazing down at the sleeping face of my—lover? That seemed too light a word for our union, and yet what had passed between us had surely been more personal than the transcendent joining of priest and priestess as they manifest the power of the Divine into the world.
Though that, certainly, had been part of it. A reminiscent tremor of energy quivered in the area of my solar plexus as I remembered. When we came together, the awakening earth had been filled by the radiant power of the sun. If I extended my senses groundward I could feel the aftermath of that conjunction, like ripples spreading through the stillness of a pool.
And what else had the ritual accomplished? I focused on my own body, lips swollen with kissing, breasts awakened to an exquisite sensitivity, the muscles of my inner thighs sore with unaccustomed stretching, and the secret place between them beginning to throb once more as memory stimulated new desire. I forced awareness deeper, into the womb that had received Constantius’s seed. Was I pregnant? Even my priestess-trained senses could not tell. I realized that I was smiling. If last night’s love-making had not planted a child in my belly, we would have to try again…
Relaxed in sleep, Constantius had a serenity I would not have suspected. His body, where the sun did not touch it, was like ivory. I gazed upon his face with growing delight, memorizing the strong lines of cheek and jaw, the high-bridged nose, the noble sweep of his brow. In the pale light the brand of Mithras was barely visible to the eye, but to my inner senses it glowed, focusing the radiance of the soul within.
As if that awareness had been a physical touch, he began to waken, first with a sigh, and then with a flutter of the eyelids, and then the muscles of the face tightening into their accustomed lines as he opened his eyes. He was, it would seem, one of those fortunate people who pass in one instant from unconsciousness to full awareness. The grey eyes that gazed up at me were wide, not with sleep, but wonder.
“Sanctissima Dea …” he whispered.
I smiled and shook my head, unsure whether that had been a title or an exclamation. “Not now,” I answered. “Morning has come, and I am only Helena.”
“Yes—now,” he corrected. “And when you came to me last night, and when you sat as a hag beside my fire, and when you summoned me to Avalon. The Greeks say that Anchises trembled in fear because he lay with a goddess all unknowing. But I knew—” He reached up, and very gently brushed the hanging lock of hair back from my brow. “And if the gods had blasted me for my presumption, I would have counted the price well paid.”
The gods had not blasted us, though there had been moments when we might well have been overcome by ecstasy. It was Ganeda, I thought suddenly, who was going to blast me when she realized I had taken Aelia’s place in the ritual.
“What is it?” he asked. “What is the matter?”
“Nothing—nothing you have done,” I said quickly, and bent to kiss him. Clearly reverence did not unman him, for his response was instant. He pulled me down beside him, and in the flood of sensation as he made love to me all thought was for a time submerged.