Philip eyed the trader a little suspiciously, but after all, we had just spent an entire sea voyage in his company. As the boy trotted off, Viducius offered me his arm.
The temple was located on the rising ground at the northern end of the island, a square cloister surrounding the central shrine, whose tower was just visible above it. In between the votive altars that lined the path, vendors had set up stalls offering copper medals with images of dogs or the figure of the goddess, more apples for offerings, and wine and fried breads and sausages for hungry worshippers. The fruit Viducius was carrying was much better than anything for sale here, and we swept past disdainfully and passed through the entryway into the cobbled courtyard.
I had seen finer temples, but there was a comfortable informality about this one, with its red-tiled roof and cream-coloured walls. There were more altars here—Viducius paused to show me the one his father Placidus had dedicated long ago. Then he handed an aureus to the priestess, and pulled the end of his toga up to cover his head as we entered the sanctuary, lit by arched windows high in the tower. On a plinth in the centre of the chamber stood the image of the goddess, carved from some warm reddish stone. She held a ship in her hands, but a basket of apples was carved at her feet and beside it a dog that looked so much like Eldri that tears came to my eyes.
When I could see again, the trader was setting his apples down before the plinth. The image of the Goddess gazed serenely past him, her hair drawn back into a simple knot, her draperies falling in graceful folds. Meeting that carven gaze, I felt a shiver of recognition, and put back my veil to bare the crescent moon upon my brow.
Nehalennia… Elen… Elen of the Ways… Lady, in a strange land I find you! Guard and guide me on the road I must travel now…
For a moment then, my inner silence overwhelmed all outside sound. In that hush, I heard, not a voice, but the sound of water flowing from a pool. It sounded like the Blood Spring at Avalon, and it came to me then that all the waters of the world were connected, and where there was water, the power of the Goddess flowed.
Someone touched my arm. I blinked and saw Viducius, his prayers completed. The priestess of the shrine was waiting to escort us out. Without intention, words came to me: “Where is the spring?”
She looked at me in surprise, then her gaze moved to the crescent on my brow and she nodded with the respect due a colleague.
Motioning to Viducius to stay where he was, she led me around the image to an opening in the floor. Carefully I followed the woman down the wooden steps into the crypt beneath the sanctuary, walled with raw stone and smelling of damp. The flickering light of oil lamps glinted from plaques and images fixed to the walls and gleamed in slow-moving whorls from the dark surface of the pool.
“The water of the Rhenus is brackish where it mingles with the sea,” she said softly, “but this spring is always pure and good. Which goddess do you serve?”
“Elen of the Ways,” I answered her, “who may be the face your Lady wears in Britannia. She has guided me here. I have no gold, but I will offer this bracelet of British jet if I may.” I worked the round bangle over my hand and let it fall into the hidden depths of the spring. The reflections scattered in a burst of spangles as it hit the water, then came together once more in a bright swirl.
“Nehalennia accepts your offering…” the priestess said softly. “May your journey be blessed.”
The transport Constantius had found for us was a barge laden with salt fish and hides that laboured upriver by the efforts of the twenty slaves who toiled at the oars. It stopped often to take on more cargo, but the delays allowed me gradually to gain a sense of this new land into which I was travelling. At Ulpia Traiana, set at the edge of the river as it meandered through the gently-rolling countryside, we were given dinner by the commander of the fortress. In theory he served Tetricus, but information from the eastern empire also flowed down the river, and Constantius was eager for news.