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4

In the year that I turned eighteen I left the House of Maidens to dwell in a separate enclosure with Heron and Aelia and Roud, for the time of initiation was approaching, and the disciplines which prepared us to receive the Mysteries required solitude. But though we three novice priestesses were to be kept apart from the rest of the community, we could not be isolated completely from the rumours that swept the isle.

It was a time of death and omens, on Avalon as well as elsewhere. A network of connections kept the High Priestess informed of what was going on in the Empire, and from time to time one of the boatmen of the Lake village would bring a leather tube containing a message, or the messenger himself, who was led blindfolded to the house of the Lady to give his news. I always suspected that the High Priestess heard much that was never passed on to the rest of our community.

However, the news that the self-made emperor Postumus had been assassinated by his own troops when he refused to hand over the spoils of a captured town was deemed essential knowledge, for it was he who had divided the West, including Britannia, from the remainder of the Empire. A man called Victorinus had assumed his title, but rumour held that he was a warrior of the bed-chamber whose adulteries were already eroding his support. It was his mother Victorina, said the reports, who really ruled the Imperium Galliarum now.

But to those of us who dwelt on the holy isle these tales meant little, for at the end of the winter Sian, Ganeda's daughter and likely heir, lost her own battle with the illness that had come upon her after the birth of her second child, and the community of Avalon was plunged into mourning.

The year that followed seemed to promise little improvement. We heard that the people of the Mediterranean, swept by plague and famine, were blaming their troubles on the Emperor, and Gallienus, like his western rival, fell to an assassin's blade. Of his successor, Claudius, little was known save that he came from somewhere on the Danu, and was said to be a good general. We worried more about the Saxon sea-raiders who were attacking the southern coasts of Britannia in ever greater numbers.

Still, the Saxon shore was far away. As the year turned towards harvest, my own time of testing was approaching quickly, and that gave me a more immediate reason to fear. Our final lessons were the responsibility of the High Priestess, and now that Ganeda was once more forced to acknowledge my existence, it was clear that she had not learned to love me any better than before.

Sometimes it seemed to me that she blamed me for being alive and healthy when her own child lay cold in the ground. I knew that she hoped I would fail the tests that determined who was worthy to be called a priestess of Avalon. But would she so far betray her own vows as to use her powers to make sure?

I woke each morning with a knot in my belly, and approached the garden beside the house of the High Priestess where we had our lessons as if it were a battlefield.

"Soon you will be sent out beyond the mists to the outer world, to bend time and space, if you can, to return to Avalon."

It was a fair day just after midsummer, and through the leaves of the hawthorn hedge I could glimpse the blue glitter of the Lake. Today the mists were only a thin haze on the horizon. It was hard to believe that beyond them lay a different world.

It seemed to me that the gaze of the High Priestess rested on me a little longer than on the others. I glared back at her, but I retained a vivid memory of how it had felt to come through the mists the first time, when Suona opened the gateway between the isle of the priestesses and the world of men. At that moment, with no training whatsoever, it had seemed to me that I almost understood what was happening. If the test was a fair one, with all the training I had received I did not think that I would fail.

"But you must understand," Ganeda continued, "that you are not only being given a challenge, but a choice. You will go forth in the dress of a woman of that world, with gold enough to take you wherever you might wish to go, and provide you with a dowry when you have got there. No vows will bind you, save only a geas against revealing the secrets of Avalon. You are young yet, for all our learning, and have barely begun to taste life's joys. To discipline the mind and the body, to go without food or sleep, to lie with a man only for the Lady's purposes, never your own, is to give up what the Goddess offers every woman born. You must consider whether you truly wish to return."

There was a long silence. Then Aelia cleared her throat.

"This is my home, and I want no other, but why must it be so hard? If those folk out there know nothing of Avalon, what is it that we are doing for them, and why?"

"The princely families know," I ventured to reply. "When the crops in their lands are failing, they send for one of us to perform the Great Rite—that is how I came to be born. And they send their daughters to us for training in the old ways of our people."

"But the Romans have temples, and tax the people to support them. Let them win favour from the gods with their offerings. Why must we give up so much, when we receive so little in return?"

The High Priestess was watching with a sour smile, but she did not seem angry, so I dared to answer once more.

"Because the Romans have forgotten what the rituals mean, if indeed they ever knew! My father used to say that they think that if every word and action of a ceremony is performed correctly, the deity must do their bidding, and that no amount of sincere belief will matter if one syllable is wrong."

My tutor Corinthius, that kind and gentle man, had believed that rituals were only a means of holding society together, and the gods were some kind of philosophic ideal.

"The people of my village knew better than that!" exclaimed Heron. "Our festivals put us in harmony with the cycles and seasons of the world."

"And the rituals of Avalon can change them," Ganeda put in at last. "We are halfway to the Otherworld already, and what we do here resonates on all the planes of existence. There have been times when we worked more openly within the world, and times when we have stayed behind our mists, invisible, but we work with the energies of the cosmos, according to the teachings that have come down to us from the land of Atlantis that lies now beneath the waves. It is real power, that would destroy the mind and body of any who tried to channel it unprepared or untrained…"

Aelia's eyes dropped before the fervour in her gaze, and then Heron and Aelia looked away. Her gaze moved to me, and I realized I was looking not at my aunt, who hated me, but at the Lady of Avalon. I bowed my head in homage.

"And that is why we offer ourselves to the Goddess, to do Her work within the world, not in pride, but because She has called us in a voice that compels an answer," she said softly. "Our lives are the sacrifice."

After that day, the tension between Ganeda and myself seemed to ease a little, or perhaps it was only that I was beginning to understand her now. Indeed, each day seemed to bring new understanding, as we refined skills we thought we had mastered before.

The vision was fading. Reluctantly I released the image of the Tor, ablaze with light, and willed myself to retrace my steps around and around and back again to the garden. The Voice of my Guide continued in its steady direction, keeping me from straying until the brilliant memory of my inner journey became the familiar scene I saw every day.

I opened my eyes, blinking at the sunlight, and set my hands upon the earth to root myself once more in her power. The hawthorn hedge and the carefully-tended herbs were still beautiful, even though they had lost the glowing edges I saw in the Otherworld. Roud and Heron were beside me. I took a deep breath of the scented air and blessed the Goddess for bringing me safely back again.

"Does the Sight come only to those who have been trained in the old ways, as you are training us here?" asked Roud.

The High Priestess shook her head. Since the death of her daughter, age had come fully upon her, and the morning light that filtered between the leaves of the apple tree showed each line and furrow in her face with merciless clarity. If Ganeda had not made it so obvious that she was teaching me with the others only because it was her duty, I could almost have pitied her.

"There are many among our people in whom the Gift runs strongly," she answered, "but it does them little good, for it comes unbidden, without direction or control. Untrained, they know neither how to keep such vision from coming when they do not want it, nor how to focus and control its power when they do, and so for them the Sight is more a curse than a blessing."

Heron frowned thoughtfully. "And that is why you are so careful about when and where you allow it?"

Ganeda nodded. I wondered whether she feared for the safety of the visionary, or that the vision might be beyond her control? It seemed to me presumptuous to think that one could set such limits upon the speech of the gods.

For a week now she had been speaking of the many ways in which one might divine the future. The Druids knew the craft of reading omens, and the bard-trance, and the dream-vision that comes when the priest sleeps wrapped in the hide of the sacrificed bull. Such skills were also practised by the Druids of Hibernia. The folk of the Lake village used the little mushrooms that can bring visions even to the ungifted, and would trade them to us in exchange for our medicines.

But there were other means, practised only by the priestesses. One of them was the art of scrying in the sacred pool, and another the rite in which a priestess was set on high to seek visions at the time of the great festivals. I had heard talk of this last, but if the rite had been performed since I came to Avalon only the priestesses of the higher grades knew.

"Go now and rest," Ganeda said then. "You think you are seers already because you can journey in the spirit, but that is only the first step. Roud has her moonblood, and must wait for another opportunity, but tonight the other three will attempt to scry by fire and water. We shall see if any of you has the Gift to be an oracle."

Her voice had grown harsh, and none of us dared to meet her eyes. Her daughter Sian had been highly gifted in that way, and since her death Avalon had no seeress. It must hurt my aunt to be reminded of her loss, even as her duty pushed her to seek a replacement. The inner work had always come easily to me, and I wondered whether I would have an aptitude for scrying as well. Such gifts were said to run in families, so it was quite possible. But somehow I did not think Ganeda would be pleased to see me step into her daughter's shoes.

That afternoon was spent in scrubbing the stones of the Processional Way, for Ganeda was a great believer in physical labour as a way to tire the body and occupy the surface of the mind. Also, I suppose, the drudgery was intended to keep us from putting on airs, now that we were training to be seeresses.

But even with the distraction, I could feel tension knotting my belly as the shadows lengthened. When the bell summoned the rest of the community to dinner, we four went instead to the Lake to bathe, for this work was best done purified and fasting.

By the time we were brought to the sanctuary above the holy well darkness had fallen. We were dressed alike in plain white garments that hung uncinctured from an shoulders to our bare feet, and cloaks of undyed wool. Our hair lay loose upon our shoulders. Torches had been set along the path; their wavering light gleamed from Heron's dark locks, and touched Aelia's hair with fire. My own fine hair, undisciplined since its recent washing, blew across my face, edged with light.

Seen through that golden veiling the familiar way appeared mysterious and strange. Or perhaps it was only that the day's fast and the expectation of trance was beginning to affect me. It seemed to me that it would be very easy to let go of ordinary awareness, and travel between the worlds. I wondered whether the rule that one must seek visions while fasting was always wise. It was keeping control of the vision that was likely to be a problem now.

A stool had been set upon the stone terrace. Before it, coals glowed in a brazier. A small carven table stood nearby bearing a silver pitcher and a piece of folded cloth. Silently we took our seats on the bench beyond it and waited, hands resting on our knees, breathing deeply of the cool night air.

It was some sense other than hearing that made me turn. Two priestesses were approaching with the silent gliding step it had taken me so long to learn. I recognized the rigid set of Ganeda's shoulders even before she came into the light. Suona followed, bearing something wrapped in white linen in her hands.

"Is it the Grail?" Aelia whispered beside me.

"It cannot be—the only novice who is allowed to see it is the Maiden who is its guardian," I murmured in reply as Suona set her burden on the table. "This must be something else, but clearly it is very old." Old, and holy, I thought then, for it seemed to me that I could already feel its power.

Suona drew the linen cloth away from the thing she held and lifted it so that it caught the torchlight. It was a silver bowl, a little dented, but lovingly polished, chased around the rim with some design.

"It is said that this bowl was used for scrying at Vernemeton, the Forest House whence came the first priestesses to dwell on this holy isle. Perhaps the Lady Caillean herself once gazed into it. Pray to the Goddess that some of her spirit may touch you now…" She set the bowl beside the pitcher on the little table.

I blinked, my sight of the bowl overlaid for a moment with another image, of the same vessel, bright and new. Was this imagination, or recognition?

But I did not have much time to wonder, for the High Priestess stood before us, and between one moment and the next she drew the glamour of her calling around her, so that from a little bent woman, always frowning, she became tall and stately and beautiful. I had seen that transformation many times now, but it never ceased to amaze me, or to remind me that I must never discount this woman's powers, no matter how she treated me.

"Do not think," said the High Priestess, "that what you are about to do is any the less real because you are still being trained as priestesses. The face of Fate is always both wonderful and terrible—beware how you lift Her veil. Certain knowledge of what is to come is given to few. For most, even a holy seer, foreknowledge comes in glimpses only, distorted by the understanding of the one who sees and the ones who hear the prophecy." She paused, fixing each one of us in turn with a gaze that pierced to the soul.

When she spoke again her voice had the resonance of trance. "Be still, therefore, and make clean your hearts. Let go the busy mind. You must become an empty vessel waiting to be filled, an open passageway through which illumination can flow."

Smoke swirled up from the brazier as Suona sprinkled the holy herbs upon the coals. I closed my eyes, awareness of the outside world already beginning to slip away.

"Heron daughter of Ouzel," said the priestess, "will you look into the sacred waters and seek wisdom there?"

"I will," came the answer. I heard the rustle of clothing as she was assisted into the chair.

I did not need my eyes to know when she looked into the bowl, nor did I need to hear the murmur of instruction by which the Lady drew her deeper into trance. As Heron spoke, I also glimpsed the images, broken and chaotic—storms and armies, and dancers at the sacred stones.

Presently they ceased. I was vaguely aware that Heron had been brought back and it was now Aelia's turn to look into the bowl. Once more I shared the visions. The Lady's voice had sharpened, commanding her look for a time closer to the present, and events of import to Avalon. For a time there was only swirling shadow, and then, dimly, I saw the marshes that edged the Lake. Figures with torches moved along the shore, calling. Then the image disappeared. There was a splash as the bowl was emptied, and Aelia sat down beside me once more. I could feel her shaking, and wondered what it was that her mind had refused to see.

But now I could feel the High Priestess standing like a flame before me. "Eilan daughter of Rian, are you willing to seek visions?" the voice came out of the darkness.

I murmured agreement, and was assisted to the chair. Awareness shifted once more and I opened my eyes. Suona poured more water into the bowl and set it before me.

"Lean forwards and look within," said the quiet voice beside me. "Breathe in… and out… wait for the waters to still. Let your vision sink beneath the surface, and say what you see."

Suona had put more herbs on the coals. As I breathed in the heavy sweet smoke my head swam and I blinked, trying to focus on the bowl. Now I could see it—a silver rim surrounding a shifting darkness shot with gleaming flickers of torchlight.

"If you see nothing it is no matter," the priestess continued. "Be at ease—"

It does matter, I thought with a twitch of annoyance. Does she want me to fail?

Perhaps it would be easier without the distraction of external vision. I did not quite dare to close my eyes again, but I let them unfocus, so that I saw only a dim blur surrounded by a circle of light. Look for the marshes, I told myself; what had Aelia been trying to see?

And at the thought, the vision began to emerge before me, first in scattered flickers, and then complete and whole. Dusk was fading into evening. The Lake gleamed faintly in the last of the light. But the mixture of marsh and islet that stretched around to the south and east were all in shadow. Torches moved along the higher ground, but my vision was drawn to a dark pool in the shadow of a twisted willow tree.

Something moved there. With a gasp, I recognized Dierna's bright head. With one arm she clutched a fallen log. The other reached down as if she were holding onto something beneath the surface. I strove to see more clearly, and the scene shifted.

The searchers had found her. In the torchlight I could see Dierna sobbing, though I heard no sound. Two of the Druids were in the water beside her. One lifted her into Cigfolla's waiting arms. The other was fixing a rope around something beneath the water. The men pulled, a pale shape surged upwards—

"Becca! Drowned!" The words tore from my throat. "Please, don't let me see it—don't let it be true!" I convulsed away from the table, and bowl and pitcher went flying. I fell to the ground, curled in anguish, grinding my palms against my eyes as if to erase what I had seen.

In another moment Suona had my wrists and was holding me close, her voice a soothing murmur beneath my sobs.

"Of course she will be all right," Ganeda's voice came from behind me. "These hysterics are only to gain attention."

I jerked upright, though the movement made my head spin. "But I saw it! I saw it! You must guard Becca or she will drown!"

"You would like that, wouldn't you?" snarled Ganeda. "One less of my blood to compete with for my place when I am gone!"

The manifest unfairness of this deprived me of speech, but I could feel Suona stiffen with shock at her words.

To move into the trance state had been easy. Recovering, especially when I had been so suddenly recalled from it, was harder. For several weeks thereafter I was disoriented and subject to fits of weeping. In the days immediately after the scrying session even my sense of balance was upset so that I could hardly walk, and at every step a headache stabbed my skull. When it became clear that a single night's sleep would not restore me I was sent to the House of Healing. The reason given was that the other maidens would tire me, but I think now that it was really because Ganeda did not wish me to speak to the others, and especially to Dierna, about what I had seen.

And so it was that I was still there, being cosseted by Cigfolla whenever I emerged from my uneasy dreams, when I heard shouting from outside the house, and sitting up, saw the flicker of torches in the darkness through the open door.

"What is it?" I cried. "What is going on?" But a familiar fear had begun to uncoil in my belly. I tried to get out of bed, but the pain in my head struck me back down, moaning.

I was still sitting there, trying to control the agony by careful breathing, when the door flew open and Heron darted in.

"Eilan—we cannot find Dierna or Becca!" she whispered, looking over her shoulder to make sure she had not been seen, and from that I knew that no one had come to see me because Ganeda had forbidden them to come. "In your vision, where did you see her? Tell me quickly!"

I clutched at her arm, describing as well as I could where the willow pool that I had seen lay in relation to the path. Then she was gone and I lay back, tears leaking from my closed eyes.

An eternity of misery later I heard the searchers returning, voices deadened by sorrow or hoarse with weeping. I turned my face to the wall. It did not help that without my vision Dierna might have died with her sister. I had wanted so desperately to prove to Ganeda that my Seeing was true, but now I would have given anything to have her accusations proven right, and little Becca safely home again.

Gradually my own health improved and I was allowed to return to the House of Maidens. Heron told me that Dierna had gone hunting herbs in the marshes, leaving her sister behind. But Becca, who since their mother's death had been her sister's shadow, had followed, and fallen in, and by the time Dierna reached her, had already been sucked under by the bog. Even if no one else blamed her, Dierna must be tormenting herself with guilt by now.

I was not surprised to hear that the chill she had taken from the water had turned to lung fever. Now it was her turn to be nursed in the House of Healing. I asked to visit her, but Ganeda forbade it. I remembered a story that my tutor Corinthius had once told me about an oriental king who responded to bad news by executing the messenger. It made no sense for her to blame me for what had happened, particularly since she had not believed me, but I had learned long since that where I was concerned the actions of the High Priestess rarely made sense at all.

Our training went on, but we were given no more lessons in scrying, and I for one was content to have it so. I had learned the first paradox of prophecy, which is that glimpsing the future does not necessarily mean one can understand it, much less alter what one sees.

In time, Dierna also recovered, to creep about with eyes like holes in a blanket and a face pale as whey against the fire of her hair, as if she had died with Becca, and it was only her ghost who remained with us on Avalon.

And so that dreadful summer drew to a close at last. The cat-tails in the marshes grew full and brown, nodding in the wind that fluttered the turning willow leaves, and the mists that surrounded Avalon seemed suffused with gold. One evening as the new moon was rising I was returning from the privies when I glimpsed a pale shape moving down the path towards the Lake and recognized Dierna. My pulse leaped in instant alarm, but I stifled the cry that rose in my throat and whistled instead to Eldri to go after her.

When I caught up with them, Dierna was sitting beneath an elder bush with her arms around Eldri, weeping into the little dog's silky fur. At the sound of my footstep she looked up, frowning.

"I was all right. You didn't need to send Eldri after me!" she said sullenly, but I noticed that she did not let the dog go. "But maybe you think I ought to walk into the Lake and just keep going, in punishment for letting my sister drown!"

I swallowed. This was worse than I had thought. I sat down, knowing better than to try to touch the girl now.

"They all say it wasn't my fault, but I know what they're thinking…" she sniffed, and wiped her nose on her sleeve.

"I saw what happened, you know, in the scrying bowl," I said finally. "But nobody believed me. I keep thinking that if I had only tried harder to convince them…"

"That's stupid! You couldn't know when—" Dierna exclaimed, then paused, eyeing me suspiciously.

"We both feel guilty," I said then. "Perhaps we always will. But I will try to live with it if you will. Perhaps we can forgive each other, even if we cannot forgive ourselves…"

For a moment longer she stared at me, her blue eyes filling with tears. Then, with a sob, she threw herself into my arms.

We stayed that way, weeping, while the white sickle of the moon swung across the sky. It was only when Eldri growled and pushed her way out from between us that I realized how much time had passed, and that we were not alone. For a little while I had felt peace, holding the child, but now my belly tensed once more. The cloaked shape confronting us was that of the Lady of Avalon.

"Dierna—" I said softly. "It is late, and you should be in your bed." She stiffened as she saw her grandmother, but I was already pushing her to her feet. "Run along now, and may the Goddess bless your dreams."

For a moment I thought she would insist on staying to defend me. But perhaps Dierna realized that to do so would only increase Ganeda's wrath, for although she glanced backwards several times, she left us without arguing. I confess that as I sensed the menace in the Lady's silence I almost called her back again, but this confrontation had been a long time coming, and I knew I must face it alone.

I got to my feet. "If you have something to say to me, let us walk out along the shore, where our voices will disturb no one." I was surprised to hear my own voice sounding so steady, for beneath the shawl I was trembling. I led the way down to the path that edged the Lake, Eldri trotting at my heels.

"Why are you angry?" I asked when the silence had grown unbearable, like the stillness before a storm. "Do you begrudge your grand-daughter a little comfort just because it comes from me?"

"You killed my sister when you were born…" hissed Ganeda, "you ill-wished Becca, and now you are trying to steal the last child of my blood away."

I stared at her, anger replacing my fear. "Old woman, you are mad! I loved that little girl, and surely my mother's death was a greater loss to me than to you. But have our choices no part to play in all this, or has all the teaching of Avalon been a lie? My mother chose to act as priestess in the Great Rite, and when she knew she had conceived, to keep the child, understanding the risk she ran. And Becca had been told not to follow her sister and chose to do otherwise."

"She was too young to know—"

"And you chose to keep me away from both girls!" I raged on. "Don't you know I would have watched them like a mother bear with two cubs to stop what I had seen from coming to pass? From the moment I first set foot on Avalon you have hated me! What have I ever done to deserve that? Can you tell me why?"

Ganeda gripped my arm, and as she jerked me around to face her, I sensed her energy expanding, and before the wrath of the Lady of Avalon, my anger seemed suddenly the petulance of a child.

"You dare to speak so, to me? With a single Word, I could obliterate you where you stand!" Her arm swung up in a sweep of dark draperies like the wing of the Lady of Ravens, and I cowered. For a moment the lapping of wavelets against the shoreline was the only sound.

And then, from the rich scent of wet earth and the whisper of water another kind of power began to flow into me, a steady, enduring strength that could absorb whatever lightnings Ganeda's majestic fury might call down. For a moment then I touched something fundamental within, although whether it was the Goddess or my own eternal soul I could not tell. Slowly I straightened, and as she met my gaze, the power ebbed from Ganeda's body until she was no more than an old, bent woman, shorter than me.

"You are Lady of Avalon," I said with a sigh, "but we are both daughters of the Lady who rules over all. In everything that concerns the good of Avalon I will obey you, but it is because I choose to do so."

She looked up at me, her seamed features carved in lines of light and shadow by the moon.

"You are young," she said in a low voice, "young and proud. Refuse to fear me if you will—life itself will teach you to be afraid, aye, and the meaning of compromise!" She began to make her way back along the shore.

"Dierna is my kinswoman too," I called after her, "and I will not let you keep me from being with her!"

At that Ganeda turned once more. "Have it your own way," she said tiredly, "but when I was younger, I too had visions. I have looked into the Sacred Well, and seen that it is Dierna who will be my heir. You do well to make a friend of her, for I tell you now that it is she, not you, who will be the next Lady of Avalon!"

Slowly, the terrible summer of Becca's death faded into memory. I knew what that tragedy had done to her sister, but as time passed it became clear that Ganeda had also been affected, more deeply than we, or perhaps she herself, knew. In body she was still vigorous—indeed, I do not believe that anyone without superior stamina could do the work required of the Lady of Avalon. But the edge that could cut friend and foe alike, was gone.

I found it hard to be sorry, and being young, I did not understand how life's buffets can wear down the spirit. Nor did I care enough to try. Strong in body and delighting in my own rapidly maturing powers, I went eagerly to my testing, and, certain of my decision, bestowed the bag of gold aureii with which I had been provided upon the family of the boy who had given me Eldri ten years before.

And so I entered the mists, and drew up from the depths of my being the Word of Power that would open the way, laughing because in the end it was so easy, as if I were simply remembering something I had learned long before. Heron and Aelia did likewise when their turn came, and like me were received back with rejoicing. But Roud never returned to us.

In the year of silence that followed, I was forced to look inward in a way that the myriad demands of my training had never before allowed. It was this, I think now, that was the true initiation, for it is not the adversaries outside oneself, that can be confronted and defied, that are most dangerous, but the more subtle antagonists that dwell within.

Regarding the oath with which that year ended, I must also keep silence, save that it was, as Ganeda had promised, an act of making sacred, of sacrifice. But though I offered myself to the Lady to be used as She willed, I did not then understand the warning that we cannot predict or control what the Goddess will do with us once that commitment has been made. Nonetheless, when my oath had been given, I passed through the Mystery of the Cauldron, and the blue crescent of a priestess was placed upon my brow.

With my attention fixed upon my own struggles, I did not at first realize that things were not going so well in Avalon. During our year of silence, Aelia and I grew ever closer. I was surprised to find that wordless, I understood more of what was in her heart than ever I had when we concealed our thoughts in conversation, and knew she felt the same for me. Using our voices only to sing the offices of the Goddess, words themselves took on a new and sacred meaning.

Thus, the deliberations at the first full meeting of the consecrated priests and priestesses to which I was admitted after my year of silence seemed charged with unusual significance. In truth, matters were serious enough. It had been several years since any new youths or maidens had come to be trained at Avalon, and Roud was not the only one who had gone out for her testing and never returned. In addition, the princes whose contributions helped to maintain the community on the isle had become increasingly unwilling to pay what was due.

"It is not that we have no money," said Arganax, who had become chief among the Druids the previous year. "Britannia has never been more prosperous. But the Emperor Claudius in Rome seems to have forgotten us, and with the death of Victorinus, the Imperium Galliarum has concerns more pressing than collecting taxes here."

Cigfolla laughed. "It is his mother, Victorina, who rules there now, despite those young cousins she has set up to warm the throne, and she is twice the man he was, from all I hear. Perhaps she would welcome the assistance of Avalon!"

"The princes supported us gladly when the foot of Rome was on their necks," said Suona. "It is almost as if they feel they no longer need us—as if they can abandon the old ways of Britannia now that they are free of direct control by Rome."

For a moment we stared at her in bemused silence. Then Ganeda cleared her throat.

"Are you proposing that we work magic to bring the emperors back again?"

Suona flushed and fell silent, but the others were babbling with speculation.

"We can decide nothing without knowing what we face," Ganeda said finally, "and we have exausted the knowledge available by any ordinary means…"

"What are you proposing?" asked Arganax.

Ganeda looked around the circle with the exasperated frown I remembered so well from my days as her student.

"Are we Greeks, to waste our lives debating the limits of our philosophy? If our skills are worth preserving, let us use them! The Turning of Spring is almost upon us—let us make use of this balance point between the two halves of the year to invoke the Oracle!"
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5

"Seekers on the ancient ways,
Seekers on the Path of Light,
Now the Night gives way to Day,
Now the Day has equalled Night…"

Singing, the line of dark-robed priestesses moved with gliding steps around the circle, matched by the Druids in their white garments marching in the opposite direction. Dark and light in perfect balance completed the circle and came to rest. Arganax stepped forwards, lifting his hands in blessing. Behind him another priest stood waiting with the gong.

The Arch-Druid was a vigorous man in his middle years, but Ganeda, who had moved out to face him, seemed ageless, empowered by the ritual. Her robe, of so dark a blue it was almost black in the lamplight, fell in straight folds to the polished stone of the floor and the moonstones in the silver ornaments of the High Priestess glowed unwinking from her breast and brow.

"Behold, the Sun rules in the House of the Ram, and the Moon rests in the arms of the Twins," the Druid proclaimed. "The winter is past, and herbs are pushing their way towards the sunlight, birds return, proclaiming their readiness to mate, beasts emerge from their long sleep. Everywhere life arises, and ourselves with it, moved by the same tides, kindled to action by the same great energies… Keep silence, and behold the rebirth of the world, and as we are all One, behold the same great transformation within…"

I closed my eyes with the others, trembling to the vibrations of the gong that echoed from the pillars of the Great Hall of the Druids. It seemed to resonate in every atom of my being. Lost in the beauty of the moment, I forgot to feel envy that it would be Heron and not I who would be sitting on the three-legged stool and descending to the Well of Prophecy.

"Awake! Awake! Awake!" came another voice, high and clear.

"Companions of the Cosmic Light,
The hidden splendour will appear!
Greet it on high and in your hearts,
Return to life, cast off your fear!"

I opened my eyes. Four youths stood now in the corners of the hall, bearing torches. Someone had cast the first handful of herbs onto the brazier, and in their light the sweet smoke glowed as if it had ignited the air. Now I could see the images painted on the plaster of the walls—an island surrounding a harbour, great temples, a pyramidal mountain spouting flame, and other scenes from the fabled land that in one day of doom had sunk beneath the wave. Like this ritual, those tales belonged to a wisdom of which the Druids were only the inheritors.

With question and response, the ritual rolled onwards, defining the sacred moment when, Night and Day being equal, a doorway opened between Past and Future and one who was properly prepared and guided might see between the worlds.

The circle opened to reveal a veiled figure, half-supported by Wren and Aelia. Carefully they guided her to the three-legged stool, steadying her until she found her balance there. The sacred drink has taken her swiftly, I thought, watching. Goddess grant it does not take her too far…

In the old days, I knew, they had called on the Goddess Herself to speak through the lips of Her priestess. Now, though the gods might come down sometimes to dance with us at their festivals, it was considered more useful for the Seeress to become open and empty of any personality, even her own, with no will save to describe the images she saw.

The High Priestess moved forwards to stand at her side. The little table with the silver bowl had already been set before her. Berries of mistletoe floated on the water along with other herbs. From where I stood I could see the glitter of torchlight on the dark water. I felt myself sway and blinked quickly to break the spell, then turned my gaze away, hoping no one had noticed my momentary disorientation. I was a trained priestess now, and should have had better control.

"Sink down, sink down… sink deeper and sink deep…'

Ganeda's voice was a murmur, leading the Seeress on her journey inwards, downwards, until the bowl of gleaming water became one with the sacred well beside the white cypress tree. Then she straightened and stepped away.

"What passes now among the Romans? What is the Emperor Claudius doing now?" Arganax asked.

For a long moment there was silence.

"Tell us, Seeress, what you see?" Ganeda prompted her.

A shudder vibrated through the sheer folds of the veil. "I see… cypresses against a sunset sky… no, it is firelight. They are burning bodies… one of the watchers staggers and falls…" Heron spoke softly, her voice calm as if she watched from some vantage point outside of the world. "The scene changes… an old man lies in a rich room. His bed is hung with purple, but he is alone… he is dead… Would you know more?"

"Plague—" whispered someone. "May the gods grant it does not come here…'

"Is the Roman power ended, then? Will they return to Britannia?" the Druid asked, and this time Heron's answer came without prompting.

"I see armies and ships—Briton fighting Briton… blood, blood and fire—" she shook her head in confusion, as if the images were overwhelming her.

"Sink back down to that place where there is only the shining water," said Ganeda in a low voice. "Tell me, who will come to our aid?"

Heron stiffened. "The Sun! The sun blazes in splendour! It blinds my eyes!" For a moment she remained transfixed, then let out her breath in a long sigh. "Ah—He comes… his armour is Roman, but his eyes are those of one who knows the Mysteries. There is a city… I think it is Londinium. In the streets people are cheering—"Redditor lucis… redditor!"

She stumbled on the unfamiliar Latin, but I could translate it: Restorer of the Light!

So could Arganax. He traded glances with Ganeda. "If this man is an initiate, he could help us greatly," he said in a low voice. Then he bent forwards again.

"Who is he—no, where is he now?"

Once more Heron swayed above the scrying bowl. "I see him… but he is younger. Hair like dandelion—" she added in response to further questions. "He is riding a chestnut mule along a Roman road… but it is in Britannia… the road to the lead mines in the hills…"

"Here!" exclaimed Arganax. "Surely the gods have destined that he shall come to us!"

The seeress was still mumbling to herself, but at the Druid's words she straightened, quivering like a drawn bow. "Destiny!" she echoed, and then cried out suddenly in a great voice quite unlike her own. "The son of the sun, greater than his father! A cross of light burns in the sky! All things changing! Fate hangs in the balance, the son will blaze across the world!" With a last ringing cry the Seeress threw out her arms, sending the scrying bowl spinning across the floor. I saw her begin to crumple, and Aelia and I were just in time to catch her as she fell.

After the noble stonework of Avalon, the round daub-and-wattle huts of the monks on Inis Witrin seemed clumsy and mean. I drew down my veil to hide the crescent on my brow as we climbed the slope, and Con, the young Druid who had been assigned to escort me, moved forwards to take my arm. Nearly six weeks had passed since the Oracle rite, and Beltane was hard upon us. After the usual debate regarding the meaning of the oracle's pronouncements, Arganax had sent out some of his young men to the Mendip Hills to see if any Roman fitting Heron's description could be found, and we had had to wait for their reply.

"You will have to let me talk to them. These holy men are forbidden to speak with a female," he said softly. The monks allowed us to keep the few horses belonging to Avalon in their pasture, in exchange for herbs and medicines. I wondered where they thought we came from.

"What, do they think I will tempt them to impurity?" I snorted derisively. "I will need to put on the guise of an ugly old woman when we meet the Roman. I might as well begin practising now." My father had made sure his children learned good Latin—it was one of the reasons I had been chosen for the task of bringing the Roman to Avalon.

As the path curved around, I could see the round church, the lower ambulatory supporting a central tower, whose thatch shone golden in the sun. Con showed me a bench near the sanctuary where I could wait while he went off to see about the horses. It was a surprisingly peaceful place in which to sit, listening to the soft drone of chanting that came from within as I watched the meandering progress of a butterfly above the grass.

The singing in the church soared suddenly and I turned to listen. When I looked back, the butterfly had alighted on the outstretched hand of an old man. I blinked, wondering how he had come there without my seeing him, for the area all around the church was clear. The other brothers I had seen wore rough tunics woven from the undyed fleece, but the old man's garment shone snowy white and the beard that covered his chest was as white as the wool.

"The blessing of the Most High be upon you, my sister," he said softly. "And my thanks to Him for allowing me to speak with you once more."

"What do you mean?" I stammered. "I have never seen you before!"

"Ah—" he sighed. "You do not remember…"

"Remember what?" Defiantly, I pushed back my veil. "You are a follower of the Christos, and I am a priestess of Avalon!"

He nodded. That is true—today. But in ages past we were both of the same order, in the land that now is sunk beneath the waves. Lives and lands pass away, but the Light of the Spirit shines still."

My lips parted in shock. How could this monk know about the Mysteries? "What—" I stammered, struggling for focus. "Who are you?"

"My name in this place is Joseph. But it is not my name you should be asking, but your own."

"I am called Eilan," I answered swiftly, "and Helena…'

"Or Tiriki…" he answered, and I blinked, finding a strange familiarity in that name. "If you do not know who you are, how can you find your way?"

"I know where I am going—" With an effort I stopped myself from blurting out my mission, but it struck me that the old man already knew.

He shook his head and sighed. "Your spirit knows, but I fear that the flesh you wear now must walk a weary way before you understand. Remember: the symbol is nothing. It is the reality behind all symbols that is all."

I was still no closer to comprehending who or what this old man might be, but I had training enough to know that what he said was true.

"Good father, what must I do?"

"Seek ever for the Light…" he answered, and with his words, the sunlight on his white robe grew blinding.

I blinked, and when I looked up, Con was standing before me, saying something about the horses, and the old man was gone.

"The horses are waiting down by the gate," the young Druid repeated, "and the day is wearing on."

Still wondering, I allowed him to help me to my feet. I knew better than to speak of what I had seen, but I knew that I would be thinking about it for a long time to come.

Dusk was drawing its cloak across the Vale of Avalon, covering marsh and meadow alike with the same dim purple-grey. From my post by the Mendip road I could see from the higher ground in the east almost all the way to the Sabrina estuary, where the sun was setting into the sea. Now all but the Tor lay in shadow, with a gleam of water below. For ten years I had said farewell to the sun from within that scene; it was fascinating to observe it from outside. Indeed, it was in all ways strange and fearful and oddly exciting to be back in the world of humankind, even if only for a little while.

Con touched my elbow. "It is almost dark. The Roman should be coming soon."

"Thank you," I nodded, glancing up at the clouds that loomed to the north. Even the folk of Avalon could not call rain from an empty sky, and we had had to wait for a weather pattern that would serve my purpose. I had held the clouds at bay throughout the afternoon. Now I released some of the energies that bound them, and felt on my cheek the chill damp breath of the storm.

To learn that Heron's vision of the death of the Emperor had been a true Seeing was encouraging. The men who drank at the taverna near the lead mines were full of gossip. It was said that Claudius had willed the Empire to another general called Aurelian, by-passing his own brother, Quintillus, who, after an abortive attempt at a coup, had died by his own hand.

"He will come, never fear," said the Druid who had been waiting for us. "These Romans are creatures of habit, and every evening for the past week he has come this way."

"He is fair-haired?" I asked once again.

"As fair as bleached flax, with the mark of Mithras between his brows."

I reached up beneath my veil to touch the blue crescent tattoed on my own forehead. He is an initiate, I reminded myself, and may see more than an ordinary man. I will have to be careful.

From beyond the curve of the road came a curlew's piping call, an unlikely sound for the high moors, but the Roman whose coming it signalled would not know that. I took a deep breath, lifted my arms to the heavens, and released the clouds.

In moments I felt the first spatterings. By the time the figure on the red mule came into view the rain was driving down in sheets, as several storm fronts that would have passed over one at a time simultaneously released all their stored rain.

Our quarry had pulled up in the tenuous shelter of an elder bush, holding his sagum cloak half over his head in a vain attempt to protect it. For a little longer I watched him.

"Stay out of sight," I told the two Druids, wrapping my mantle more securely, "but when I move, follow me." I gave my mount a kick and reined it across the slope below the road.

"Help—oh, please, help me!" I called in the Roman tongue, pitching my voice to carry above the storm and hauling on the reins of the pony, who had started to plunge as if to make my plight a reality. For a moment nothing happened, and I let the pony move forwards, clutching its mane. "Can anyone hear me?" I cried again, and saw the red mule at the rim of the hill.

I was wearing a white mantle so that the Roman should be able to see it even through the storm. I screamed and gave the pony a good kick, hanging on desperately as it galloped down the hill. I heard a Roman oath and the crashing of brush as the mule scrambled after me, but we were all the way down the hill and well into the tangle of oak and alder beyond before the Roman caught up with me.

"Lady, are you hurt?" His voice was deep, and so far as I could see beneath his sagum, his body seemed sturdy, though he was tall. He grabbed for the reins that I had artistically allowed to fall as he arrived.

My pony ceased to struggle, recognizing a master's hand, and freed of the need to divide my strength between my mount and the storm, I drew the next squall shrieking down upon us.

"Thank you! Thank you! The pony ran and I feared I would fall!"

He edged the mule closer and put his arm around my shoulders. I leaned against him gratefully, aware now just how long it had been since I had done much riding. His warmth spread through me faster than I would have expected. Perhaps Heron was right, I thought dimly, and he really was the sun.

"I must get you to shelter," he muttered against my hair, and a shiver ran through me at the touch of his warm breath. The storm had expended its first fury, but the rain was still driving down.

"That way—" I said, pointing south. "There is an old tile shed." The tile-makers had not yet started work for the summer: we had slept there on our journey here.

By the time we reached the shed, I did not have to feign exhaustion. My knees gave way as I slid down from the pony, and only the Roman's quick reactions saved me from falling. For a moment he held me, and I realized that we were matched in height. In what else would we be a match? I wondered then, feeling the strength in his arms.

Not that I was likely to find out. The Council, in its wisdom, had decided to bind the Roman to our cause by giving him one of our number in the Great Rite at the Beltane fires; but the priestess whom the lots had selected to be his consort was not me, but Aelia.

I watched, shivering, as the Roman proceeded with swift efficiency to build a fire. At least the tile-makers had left plenty of fuel for it. The little flame leapt and kindled, revealing a sinewy arm, strong cheekbones, short hair plastered close to his head and darkened to old gold by the rain. As the fire began to catch in the larger branches, he stood to unfasten his sagum and drape it, dripping, over one of the low beams. He wore a tunic of good, grey wool edged with red. A short sword in a well-worn leather sheath hung at his side.

"Let me take your mantle, Lady," he said, turning. "The fire will warm the air in here soon, and perhaps it will dry—"

The fire flared suddenly, for the first time revealing him fully, and my world stood still. I saw intelligent grey eyes that enlivened a rather ordinary face, permanently reddened by exposure to sun and wind and pinker than ever from the cold. Tired and wet, he was hardly at his best, but he would never be famous for beauty. His colouring proclaimed him Roman by culture rather than ancestry; he hardly seemed the stuff of prophecy.

Yet I knew him.

In the ceremony that made me a woman, the Goddess had shown him to me. He was the lover who would claim me at the Beltane fires, and I was the woman who would bear his child…

The Druids found the wrong man, I thought desperately. This is not the hero of Heron's vision, but of my own…

And if they were the same?

I do not know what my face showed at that moment, but the Roman took a step backwards, lifting his hands in self-deprecation.

"Please, domina, do not be afraid. I am Flavius Constantius Chlorus, at your service."

I felt myself flushing as I realized that I hardly looked my best either. But that was as it should be. He must see me as ugly, old even, until I knew… until I knew whether he was my destiny…

"Julia Helena thanks you," I murmured, giving my own Roman name. It felt as strange on my tongue as the Latin. The girl who bore that name had lived another lifetime, ten years ago. But suddenly I wondered if she was destined to live again.

A leather flask hung at his side. He pulled the strap over his head and held it out to me. "It is only wine, but it may warm you—"

I managed a smile, and turned to rummage in my saddlebags. "And I have here a little bread and cheese and dried fruit that my sisters packed for me."

"Then we will feast." Constantius seated himself on the other side of the fire and smiled.

It transformed his face, and I felt a rush of heat that seared my flesh like fire. Wordless, I held out the loaf of bread, and he took it from my hand. I had heard once that in the hill country, to share a meal, a fire and a bed made a marriage. We had the first two already, and for the first time in my life I felt the temptation to deny my vows.

When my fingers brushed his, he had trembled. My extended senses knew that at a level below thought, he was responding to my nearness. My Druid escorts were outside somewhere. They would not disturb us unless I screamed. It would take very little, a step in the Roman's direction, a shiver as if I was cold and needed his arms to warm me. A man and a woman, alone together—our bodies would do the rest without direction.

But what of our souls?

To come to him without honour would destroy that other thing, sweeter even than the desire that heated my body: the potential that I sensed between us. And so, although I felt like a starving woman pushing food away, I edged back, drawing ugliness around me like a tattered cloak, the reverse of the glamour a priestess knows how to wear.

Constantius shook his head a little, cast a frowning glance at me and looked away. "Do you live nearby?" he asked politely.

"I dwell with my sisters on the edge of the marshes," I answered truthfully, "near the isle where the Christian monks have their sanctuary."

"The isle of Inis Witrin? I have heard of it—"

"We can come to my home tomorrow before the sun is high," I said. "I would be grateful for your escort—"

"Of course. The men who oversee my family's holdings would rather I had never come here—they will not care if I miss a day or more," he added bitterly.

"How did you come to riding the back roads of Britannia? You seem a man of authority," I asked with real curiosity.

"Not to mention family connections." There was an edge to the bitterness now. "My grandmother was sister to the Emperor Claudius. I wanted to make my own way by ability, not patronage. But since my great-uncle tried to seize the Imperium, and failed, I will settle for simply staying alive. The new Emperor has good reason to distrust men of my family."

He shrugged and took a pull from the wineskin. "My mother's family has investments here in Britannia—an import company in Eburacum, and an interest in the lead mines, and it seemed a good time to send an agent to check on them. At the moment, the Gallic Empire is safer for me than Rome."

"But will not Tetricus and… what is his name, Marius, consider you a danger?"

Constantius shook his head and laughed. "It is Victorina Augusta who really rules. They call her the Mother of the Camps, you know, but she has little attention to spare for Britannia. So long as she gets a share of the profits, they will leave me alone. Emperors may come and go, but business makes the world go round!"

"You do not sound very happy about it," I observed. "I would not have guessed you for a merchant."

For a moment that grey gaze held my own. "And what did you think I was?"

"An army man," I answered, for thus, in vision I had seen him.

"Until a few months ago that was so." His face darkened. "I was born at an army post in Dacia. It is all I know, all I ever wanted to be."

"Are you so eager for battle?" I asked curiously. He did not seem bloodthirsty, but how could I know?

"Say rather, that I want what battle can win," he corrected. "Justice. Order. Safety for the folk beyond the frontier so that peace can grow…" He fell silent, his ruddy skin reddening further, and I judged he was not a man who often let his feelings show.

"Your fortunes will turn," I assured him. For a moment he eyed me uncertainly, and I reinforced the illusion that disguised me. "But now we should sleep," I went on. "Tomorrow's journey will be difficult after such a storm." But in truth, it was not the riding that had exhausted me, but the effort to conceal my essence when what I really wanted was to offer him my body and my soul.

The rain had stopped by morning, but as I had anticipated, as the day grew warmer, the saturated ground gave up its excess moisture in wisps of fog. As we rode it grew thicker, until tree and meadow disappeared and the only thing visible was the path.

"Domina," said Constantius, "we must halt, before we wander from the road and end up sinking in some bog."

"Do not be afraid. I know the way," I answered him, and indeed, I could feel the power of Avalon drawing me forwards. We had come around by the higher ground to the north and east, where a narrow neck of land ran out to the isle.

"I am not afraid, but I am not a fool, either!" he snapped back at me. "We will go back to the shelter and wait for the weather to clear." He reached out to take my bridle rein.

I kicked the pony forwards and reined it sharply around. "Flavius Constantius Chlorus, look at me!" I let the illusion of ugliness fade and called up the power of the priestess to take its place. I could tell I was succeeding when his face changed.

"Lady—" he breathed, "now I see you as I did before…"

I wondered what he meant, as this was the first time I had used the glamour, but the power was continuing to build around me.

"I have been sent to bring you to the holy isle of Avalon. Will you come with me freely and of your own will?"

"What will I find there?" He was still staring at me.

"Your destiny…" And Aelia, I thought then. For a moment I wanted to cry out to him to turn, to flee.

"And will I return to the human world?"

"It is there that your fate will be fulfiled." Ten years of discipline spoke through me now.

"And will you go with me? Swear!"

"I will. I swear it by my eternal soul." Later, I told myself that I had believed he was asking if I would go with him to Avalon, but I think now that a deeper wisdom made that vow.

"Then I will come with you now."

I turned, lifting my arms to draw down the power, and as I spoke the spell, the world changed around us, and with the next step the mist was rolling away to either side and we entered Avalon.

Since dawn the drums had throbbed through the earth of the holy isle, the heartbeat of Avalon, filled with the excitement of the festival. White hawthorn weighted the hedges, and creamy primroses and bluebells flourished beneath the trees. It was Beltane eve, and all the world trembled with expectation. All but Aelia, who was trembling with fear.

"Why has the Goddess laid this upon me?" she whispered, curled upon the bed that had been hers while we awaited initiation. There were currently no priestesses in training, and they had given the house to us to prepare the Beltane Bride for the festival.

"I do not know," I answered her. "But we have been taught that often Her reasons for setting our feet upon a path are not apparent until we reach its ending…" I spoke for my own sake as much as for hers. In the three days since I had brought Constantius to the isle I had not seen him, but he haunted my dreams.

Aelia shook her head. "I never intended to go to the Beltane fires. I would happily have lived a virgin until my life's end!"

I put my arms around her and rocked her gently. Our unbound hair mingled on the pillow, dark gold and light. "Constantius will not hurt you, darling. I rode with him for two days—he is a gentleman…"

"He is a man!"

"Why did you not tell them of your fear when they chose you?" I stroked her hair. And why, I asked myself, had the lot not fallen on me?

"We swore obedience to the Council at our initiation. I thought they must know best…"

I sighed, understanding how it must have been. Of us all, Aelia had always been the most biddable. For the first time I wondered it the lot had fallen upon her entirely by chance.

"They said the Goddess would give me the strength to do it, but I am afraid… Help me, Eilan! Help me to escape this, or I will drown myself in the sacred pool!"

I stilled, understanding in a single instant how I might fulfil both her desire and my own. Or perhaps I had already planned it in some secret part of my soul, and only now, like some moulting insect hidden in the soil, had the idea emerged into the light of day. Justifications came easily—Aelia was the choice not of the Goddess, but of Ganeda. All that was required was a virgin priestess.

It did not matter who she was, so long as she came willingly to the fire. And the substitution would be so easy. Though she was paler in colouring than I, and thinner as well, Aelia and I were enough alike for newcomers to mistake us. The younger girls nicknamed us the sun and the moon.

The one reason I did not give myself was the true one—that Constantius Chlorus was mine, and it would be like death to see him lead another woman to the bridal bower.

"Ssh… be easy…" I kissed Aelia's soft hair. "Both the Bride and her attendants go veiled to the ceremony. We will exchange clothing and I will take your place in the ritual."

Aelia sat up, gazing at me wide-eyed. "But if you disobey, Ganeda will punish you!"

"It doesn't matter…" I answered. Not once I have spent the night in Constantius' arms!

The firelight, seen through the sheer linen of my veil and the screen of branches, filled the circle with a golden haze. Or perhaps it was the aura of power that the dancers were raising, for with each circuit around the bonfire it grew stronger. All the folk of Avalon were here in the meadow at the foot of the Tor, and most of the people from the Lake village as well. My whole body vibrated as the earth shook to their footfalls, or perhaps it was the beating of my heart. I could feel the dancing building to its crescendo. Soon… I thought, licking dry lips. It would be soon…

The other maidens shifted restlessly on the bench beside me, Heron and Aelia and Wren, all of us clad alike in green gowns and veils and garlands of spring flowers. But only I bore the hawthorn crown. My skin still tingled from the water of the sacred pool, for we had all helped to bathe Aelia, and in the process been cleansed ourselves. I had shared her fast and her vigil; all the ritual requirements had been completed. This substitution might be disobedience, but at least it would not be sacrilege.

"The Roman has been bathed and prepared as well," said Ganeda, who waited with us. "When he arrives, you will be brought out to him. Together, you will partake of the sacred food, and together you will enter the bower on the far side of the dancing floor. You are a virgin field, in which he will sow the seed that will engender the Child of the Prophecy."

"And what will I give to him?" I whispered.

"In the outer world, the female is passive while the male initiates action. But on the inner planes, it is otherwise. I have spoken with this young man, and at present fortune does not smile upon him. It is for you to awaken his spirit, to arouse and activate the higher soul within him, that he may fulfil his own destiny and become the Restorer of the Light for Britannia."

I dared not ask more, lest my voice be recognized, and then I heard a change in the drumming and my throat began to ache so with tension that I could not have spoken if I had tried.

The Druids were coming in, their white robes washed with gold by the firelight, wreaths of oak leaves upon their hair. But as I watched I caught a glimpse of brighter gold among them. The people were cheering; the air throbbed with wave upon wave of sound. Dizzied, I shut my eyes, and when I opened them again I blinked, dazzled by the golden figure who stood before the fire.

As my sight adjusted I saw that it was only a saffron tunic to which the light had added a deeper gold, but the wreath that crowned Constantius was fashioned of the true metal, like that of an emperor. I realized that when I had last seen him, splashed with mud and worn out by our battle with the storm, Constantius had not been at his best either. Now, his skin glowed against the tunic, and his fair hair was as bright as the wreath of gold.

"He is Lugos come among us," breathed Heron.

"And Apollo," whispered Aelia.

"And Mithras of the Soldiers," added Wren.

He stood like the sun god in the midst of the Druid oaks. If I had not loved him already, in that moment I would have adored him, for the body of the man had become a clear vessel through which shone the light of the god within.

If I had watched for much longer, I think I might have passed into an ecstasy that precluded movement, but now the drumming was giving way to the music of bells and harpstrings. The maidens beside me assisted me to my feet as the screen of branches was lifted away. The noise of the crowd became a hush of awe, and there was only the music.

Constantius turned as we came forward, and his exalted expression focused suddenly, as if he could see past the veil to the woman, or the goddess within. Wren scattered flowers before me, Aelia and Heron walked to either side, and then they too fell back and I went on alone. Constantius and I faced one another, priest to priestess, across a little table that bore a loaf of bread, a dish of salt, and a cup and flagon filled with water from the sacred spring.

"My lord, the gifts of the earth I offer you. Eat, and be strengthened." I broke off a piece of bread, dipped it in the salt and offered it to him.

"You are the fertile earth. I accept your bounty," Constantius replied. He ate the piece of bread, tore off another and held it out to me. "And I shall spend my strength to care for the sacred soil."

When I had eaten, he picked up the flagon, poured some of the water into the cup and held it out to me. "I am poured out for you like water. Drink, and be renewed."

"You are the rain that falls from heaven. I receive your blessing." I sipped from the cup, then offered it back to him. "But all waters are at last reborn from the sea."

He took the cup from my hand and drank.

The drum began to beat once more. I took a step backwards, beckoning, and he followed me. The music moved faster, and I began to dance.

My feet no longer seemed to belong to me; my body had become an instrument to express the music as I bent and swayed in the sinuous spirals of the sacred dance. My garment, of a linen almost as fine as the veils that hid my face, clung and flared as I whirled. But always as I circled, Constantius was my centre, to whom I turned as a flower to the sun.

First he swayed, and then, as the music broke through the last of his Roman conditioning, he began to move, a stamping, vigorous kind of dance, as if he marched to music. Closer and closer we came, mirroring each other's movements, until he caught me in his arms. For a moment we stood breast to breast. I could feel his heart beating as if it were my own.

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!"
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6

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.

When I became capable of coherent thought once more, the light that was filtering through the leaves of the bower was bright and golden, and I could hear the murmur of voices from outside.

"We should dress," I murmured against his cheek. "The priestesses will be coming soon."

His grip tightened suddenly. "Will I see you again?"

"I… do not know…" Yesterday, I had not really thought beyond the ritual. I had known I wanted Constantius, but I had not considered how difficult it would be, once I had lain with him, to let him go.

"Come with me—"

I shook my head, not in denial, but confusion. I believed that I had been justified in taking the place of the Beltane Bride because Constantius was the lover promised to me by my vision. But if that was so, then what of the images of foreign lands that I had seen? Much as I loved him, I did not want to leave Avalon.

"What does this mean to you?" Gently I brushed the sign of Mithras on his brow.

For a moment he looked taken aback. I waited as he struggled to frame an answer, understanding how deep was the inhibition against speaking of the Mysteries.

"It is a sign… of my devotion to the God of Light…" he said finally.

"As this sign signifies my own dedication to the Goddess—" I indicated the blue crescent between my own brows. "I am a priestess of Avalon, and bound by my vows."

"Was it only obedience to your vows that brought you to me last night?" he asked, frowning.

"Can you truly think that, after this morning?" I tried to smile.

"Helena—I beg of you, let there always be truth between us!" His face had gone grim.

For a long moment I met his gaze, wondering how much I dared say. But surely he was going to hear about it as soon as I emerged from the bower and they saw it was not Aelia.

"I took the place of the priestess they meant for your bride. I have the Sight, and it showed me your face long ago. And then I was sent to bring you here, and… I began to love you…"

"You disobeyed?" In his face anxiety warred with satisfaction. "Will they punish you?"

"Even the Lady of Avalon cannot change what has happened between us," I managed a smile. But we both knew that I had not really answered him.

There was a sound outside and I stiffened. Someone was knocking softly against the upright of the door.

"Eilan, can you hear me? Is the Roman asleep?"

It was Aelia's voice, and I remembered suddenly that she had been told that after she lay with him she must make sure Constantius drank the contents of the silver flask in the corner so that he would sleep while she slipped away.

"Eilan, come quickly, and no one will—" She broke off with a gasp. I heard the sound of several people approaching, and the pit of my stomach went suddenly cold. With a leaden certainty I knew it would be Ganeda even before I heard the next words.

"Is she still sleeping? It would seem she did not fear a man's touch so greatly after all. You will have to go in and wake her…" The laughter stilled. "Aelia!"

There was a short, charged, silence. As I started to drape the coverlet around me Constantius gripped my arm.

"You shall not face them alone—"

After a moment I nodded, and waited while he twisted my veil about his loins, reminding me of the statues I had seen in Londinium. One arm went protectively around me. With the other, he pushed aside the woven curtain that covered the doorway, and together we emerged into the uncompromising illumination of the new day.

It was worse than I had expected. Not only Ganeda and the priestesses, but Arganax and his Druids, were standing there. Aelia still crouched by the doorway, weeping silently. I reached down to touch her shoulder and she clung to me.

"I… see…" said the High Priestess in a voice like grating stones. She looked around her at the dancing floor, and I saw that the people who had dropped down to sleep there, in couples or alone, were beginning to awaken and cast curious glances at the scene by the bower. With an obvious effort she controlled the words that trembled on her lips.

"Aelia… and Eilan—" she ground out the names, "—will come with me." Her gaze turned to Constantius. "My lord, the Druids wait to attend you."

His grip on me tightened. "You will not harm her!"

Ganeda's face darkened further as she realized just how much I must have told him.

"Do you think we are barbarians?" she snapped, and he responded to the note of command and let me go, though in truth that was no answer at all.

"It will be all right," I said in a low voice, though my gut was still knotting in apprehension.

"I will not lose you!" Constantius replied, and it occurred to me that not only had I not anticipated how this night would bind me to him, I had not even imagined how it might affect his feelings for me.

I helped Aelia to rise, and putting my arm around her, started towards my reckoning.

"Why does it matter?" I exclaimed. "Both of your purposes have been accomplished. You wanted a man of destiny for the Great Rite, and you wanted to win his friendship for Avalon."

The sun was nearing noon, and we were still arguing. By now, my belly was cramping not from fear but from hunger.

"You forget the third reason, and that was the most important of all," Ganeda said grimly. "Constantius was to engender the Child of Prophecy!"

"And so he shall, with me! In my womanhood vision I saw myself with his child!"

"But not the child of the Great Rite—" the High Priestess said grimly. "Why do you think Aelia was intended as his consort in the ritual?"

"Because you could bend her to your will!"

"You little fool—she was chosen, indeed, but not for that reason. In your arrogance you thought you knew better than the Council of Avalon, but you were an untried maiden, ignorant of the Mother's Mysteries. Last night Aelia was at the height of her fertile time. If the Roman had lain with her she would have come away pregnant, and the child would have been born here in Avalon."

"How do you know I am not?"

"Your moontime is barely three days past," she answered me, "and I have examined you. There is no spark of new life in your womb."

"There will be. Destiny cannot be denied—" I answered, but the first breath of doubt stole the force from my words. "Constantius has pledged his faith to me—a priestess will bear his son!"

"But when? Even now do you not understand? A child begotten last night would have preserved the Mysteries for a thousand years. Even if your fantasies were true, what stars will rule the fate of the babe you finally bear?"

"He will be my son," I muttered. "I will raise him to serve the gods."

Ganeda shook her head in disgust. "I should have sent you back to your father long since. You have been a trouble-maker since the first day you arrived!"

"You missed your chance!" I hissed, touching the crescent on my brow. "He is dead, and I am a priestess now."

"And, I am the Lady of Avalon!" she snapped in return, "and your life is in my hand!"

"All your anger, Ganeda, cannot change what has been done," I said wearily. "At least I have won Constantius's friendship for Avalon."

"And what about that which was undone? Do you think the man will come back every Beltane like a stallion to stud until he gets you with child?"

Some tension eased within me. I had feared she would forbid me ever to see him again. Surely he would come back, I told myself, and somehow I would endure until that day.

"So, what is my punishment?"

"Punishment?" There was venom in her smile. "Did I not promise the Roman I would do you no harm? You have chosen your own condemnation, Helena. When Constantius leaves, you shall go with him…'

"Leave… Avalon?" I whispered.

"That is what he is demanding—be grateful you are not being turned out like a beggar to wander the world!"

"But what about my vows?"

"You should have thought about your vows last night, before they were broken! In the old days you would have burned for that crime." In her lined face, a sour satisfaction was replacing the fury.

I stared at her. I had disobeyed her order, certainly, but surely I had given myself to Constantius as the Goddess willed.

"You have until the sun goes down to make ready," Ganeda said then. "When the sun goes down and the festival is over, you will be banished from Avalon."

The Christians, I had heard, had a legend that told how the first parents of humankind were exiled from Paradise. When the mists of Avalon closed behind me I understood how they must have felt. Had it comforted Eve to know that Adam was still beside her? Knowing that my own choices had forced this destiny upon me was little comfort.

I told myself that if Constantius had gone alone, leaving me behind, I would have been weeping bitterly, but the grief that kept me numb and silent as the barge bore us through the mists was of a deeper order entirely.

As we slid up onto the shore below the Lake people's village I felt a sudden disorientation, as if one of my senses had disappeared. I staggered, and Constantius lifted me in his arms and bore me up the bank. When he set me on my feet again I clung to him, trying to understand what had happened to me.

"It is all right," he whispered, holding me against him. "It is all behind us now."

I looked back across the Lake, and realized that the psychic sense that had always told me where to find Avalon was no longer there. Physical sight showed me marshland and blue water, and the beehive huts on the Christian isle. But when I had left before, I had only to close my eyes in order to sense, at an odd angle to the mortal world, the way to Avalon. I had taken the link for granted. Through it, the High Priestess could check on the well-being of her absent daughters, for even when priestesses were sent on errands away from the holy isle a thread of connection remained.

But now, Ganeda had severed it, and I was like a sapling that the flood uproots and whirls away. By the time I ceased my weeping, a cold grey dawn was breaking once more.

I do not know whether the fact that Constantius tolerated me for the next few weeks was a measure of his honour or his love. He told the keeper of the posting-inn where we spent the next night that I was ill, and it was true, though my sickness was not of the body, but of the soul. By day, my only comfort was Eldri's devotion, and by night, the strength of Constantius's arms. And when it became clear to him that it was a constant torture for me to live where every clear day showed me the Vale of Avalon, he concluded his business at the mines and we set out for Eburacum, where the workshops his family owned turned some of the lead into pewterware.

Constantius hired a trader to guide us cross-country through lanes and by-ways to the great Roman road that runs northeast from Lindinis to Lindum. For the first few days I rode in dismal silence, too wrapped up in my own grief to notice my surroundings. Still, if any time of the year could reconcile one to the loss of Avalon, I suppose it must be the smiling season that follows Beltane.

Cold though the wind might sometimes blow, the bone-deep chill of winter was gone. The triumphant sun laid a golden blessing across the land, and the land with joyous abandon made it welcome. The brilliant green of new leaves resounded with the songs of returning birds, and every hedgerow and woodland ride was adorned with flowers. As day followed glorious day, my body, like the earth, responded to that radiant light.

For so long—too long—I had searched out herbs only for their utility. Now I picked the creamy primroses and the nodding bluebells, bright celandine and hidden violets and forget-me-nots like pieces of fallen sky, for no other reason than that they were beautiful. The training of Avalon was intended to develop the spirit, and all the resources of mind and body were put at its service, under the direction of a disciplined will. The needs of the flesh were given grudging recognition only at the festivals, and those of the heart, no honour at all. But Constantius had conquered my awakening senses, and my heart was carried along in their triumph, a willing prisoner. I made no attempt at resistance: banished from the realm of the spirit, the world and its pleasures were all that remained to me.

We travelled slowly, staying sometimes at villas and farmsteads, and sometimes sleeping under the stars in some woodland thicket or in a field by the side of the road. The first significant town along our route was Aquae Sulis, tucked into the hills where the Abona curved round on its way to the Sabrina estuary. I know now that it was a small place, but at the time I was impressed by its elegance. Since ancient times the healing springs had been considered holy, but the Romans, for whom bathing was a social necessity, had made of the place a spa that could compete with any in the Empire.

As we rode in I marvelled at the buildings, constructed from warm golden stone. The people who thronged the streets were well-dressed, and I became abruptly conscious of what a week of journeying had done to my only gown. And my hair—I drew my veil up hastily, and nudged my pony closer to Constantius's mule.

"My lord—"

He turned with a smile, and I was surprised by how naturally he fitted into this civilized scene.

"Constantius, we cannot stay here. I have nothing to wear."

"That is precisely why I wanted to stop here, my love," he grinned back at me. "It's little enough I have to offer in return for all you have given up for me, but Aquae Sulis contains, in miniature, the best of the Empire. I have enough funds for us to stay for a few days in a decent inn, and enjoy the baths, and buy clothing that will do justice to your beauty."

I began to protest, but he shook his head. "When we arrive at Eburacum, I will be introducing you to my associates in business, and you must do me credit. Think of the shopping as something you can do for me."

I sat back in the saddle, my face flaming. It was still a wonder to be reminded that he thought me beautiful. I did not know if it was true—there were no mirrors on Avalon—but it mattered little so long as I found favour in his eyes.

Shopping in Aquae Sulis was rather overwhelming to one who had grown up with one gown for everyday and one for ritual, though even Constantius widened his eyes at the prices. I came away with a tunica the colour of terra cotta, banded at the hem with green and gold, and a palla of green wool to wear with it, and another ensemble in the rosy shades of dawn. I acceded willingly to whatever Constantius wanted me to wear, so long as it was not priestess-blue.

Leaving Eldri to guard our gear in the inn, we dined in the garden of a taverna on the main street, and then proceeded to the temple complex that included the baths. It was becoming clear that Aquae Sulis was not an ordinary Roman town. Dominated by the religious buildings that had grown up around the sacred spring, it was as dedicated, in its own way, as Avalon. I was accustomed to fine stonework, though the carvings that adorned the buildings seemed ornate after the stark simplicity of the isle. And though it was true that my people had carved images of their deities, the Druids of Avalon taught that the gods were most truly worshipped beneath the open sky.

Thus, I could tell myself that the image of Sulis Minerva that stood in the round tholos in the square before the bath precincts was only a statue, though I avoided meeting the calm gaze of the bronze head beneath the gilded helmet as I hurried by. I hung back as Constantius purchased a bag of incense to cast on the fire that burned on the altar in the courtyard, resenting his unselfconscious piety even as I admired it. But what had such observances to do with me, who had known the Mysteries of Avalon? Known, and lost them … a deeper self reminded me. Very well, I told myself, I would learn to survive with no gods at all.

A Gorgon-face glared fiercely from the portico of the temple, its hair and beard writhing in contorted rays. Another solar deity reigned from the arch that led into the baths. For Constantius's sake, I thought then, I might make an exception of that one.

He paid our fees and we passed beneath the arch, and I coughed at the sudden gust of moist, heated air. It had a faint odour of old eggs, not strong enough to be unpleasant, but distinctly medicinal. Before us, glimmering faintly in the light that came through the high arched window, lay the sacred pool.

"The water rises here and is piped to the other pools," said Constantius. "This place has been sacred since long before the Divine Julius brought his legions to this isle. It is customary to make an offering…"

He opened his pouch and took out two silver denarii. Other coins gleamed from the bottom of the pool along with lead votive tablets and other offerings. He drew the hood of his cloak up over his head, his lips moving silently, and tossed his denarius in. I followed his example, though I had no prayer to offer, only a voiceless need.

"You are in luck: the attendant told me that the hot pools are reserved for women at this hour. I will go to the steam room at the other end of the baths and meet you at sunset by the altar outside." Coristantius squeezed my hand and turned away.

For a moment I wanted to call him back again. But after a week on the road all other considerations were overwhelmed by the desire to get truly clean. I turned in the other direction and passed from the first chamber into the colonnade adjoining the large pool. Talk in the taverna had suggested that it was early in the season for the numbers of visitors the baths were built to receive. The warm pool was almost empty, its water green where sunlight slanted in from above, its sides mysteriously shadowed by the colonnade. I continued around it, looking for the smaller pools I had been told lay beyond it.

The pool I chose was heated by water that rushed from beneath a stone slab, its stones blurred by an accretion of minerals from the spring. It reminded me of the Holy Well at Avalon, but this water was as warm as blood. Sinking into its embrace was like a return to the womb.

I lay back with my head on the smooth curve of the coping, letting the water support my body, and muscles I had not known were tense began to unkink at last. The two women who had been soaking when I arrived climbed out of the pool and went off, chattering about a new cook. A slave girl came in with an armload of towels, saw I needed no assistance, and departed. The water grew still. I was alone.

For a timeless interval I floated, without need or desire. In that moment, undisturbed by demands from either mind or body, I did not realize that the defences I had thrown up around my spirit were dissolving away. The gentle lapping of wavelets against stone faded, until the murmur of the water flowing into the pool was the only sound.

And after a while that subtle murmur became a song—

"Ever flowing, ever growing,
from the earth to the sea,
ever falling,ever calling
ever coming to be…"

I relaxed into the music, and without intention, my soul stirred and reached out to the spirit of the waters. The singing continued. I found myself smiling, uncertain whether my own imagination was supplying words to the music or I was indeed hearing the voice of the spring. Now new words were whispering through the hushed trickle—

"Ever living, ever giving,
all my children are free;
ever turning, ever yearning,
they return unto me …"

But I was cut off from that eternal source, and forbidden to return. At that, a great grief rose up in me, and the tears rolled down my cheeks and mingled with the waters of the Goddess in the pool.

It seemed an eternity before the slave girl came back into the chamber, but I suppose that in truth not so much time had passed. I felt empty, and when I left the water and saw the blood running down my inner thighs, I realized that I was empty in truth. Ganeda had been right in her calculations, and despite the ecstasy of our loving, Constantius had not got me with child.

When the girl had provided me with clouts and padding, I sat for a long time in the moist shadow, gazing at the swirling waters and waiting for more tears to come. But for the moment I had no more emotion. My life stretched before me, devoid of magic. But not, I reminded myself, of love. By now, Constantius would be waiting. It was not he who had broken my heart—I had done that all by myself.

Deceived, lured from his ordinary world into Avalon and then burdened with a disgraced and weeping priestess when he left it, Constantius had not complained. He at least deserved a cheerful companion. By this time my hair was drying, the shorter strands curling in moist tendrils around my brow. I called to the slave girl once more to dress it high with pins and help me to disguise my puffy eyes with kohl and my pale cheeks with rouge. When I looked into the bronze mirror I saw a fashionable stranger.

When I came out of the baths the sun was about to sink behind the hills that sheltered the town. I turned from the dazzle of light and stopped short, facing a pediment that was the twin to the one that led to the sacred spring. But here, the dominant figure was a goddess, her hair twisted up on each side and caught in the middle by a ring. She was haloed by a crescent moon.

For a moment I simply stood, staring, as a traveller will stop who suddenly glimpses someone from home. Then I remembered how I had come here.

"It will do you little good, Lady, to lie in wait for me," I said softly. "It is you who cast me out—I owe you no loyalty!"

From Aquae Sulis, the military road angled northeast across Britannia. After we left Corinium it rose gradually, passing through wild hill country as it approached Ratae. Nonetheless, we continued to find mansios and posting inns spaced a day's travel apart along the road, and from time to time I would glimpse through the trees the red-tiled roof of a villa. This, Constantius assured me, was a gentle land compared to the mountains near Eburacum, but I, accustomed to the marshlands of the Summer Country, gazed at the blue distances and wondered.

As we neared Lindum, we came to flat green countryside like the Trinovante lands where I had lived as a child. I took refuge in those memories, and began to talk to Constantius about my father and my brothers, fitting together my memories like some Roman mosaic of the life of a British prince who had adopted, for the most part, the ways of Rome.

"My own family is not so different," said Constantius. "My people come from Dacia, the land away to the north of Greece, where the Carpatus mountains curve around the great plain. I was born in a villa on the Danuvius, where the river cuts through the grasslands. Dacia is still a frontier province—we became Roman even later than you Britons—and the Goths keep trying to make us barbarian once again…"

"We heard that the Emperor Claudius had beaten them at Nissa," I said when the silence had continued for too long. It had been some time since we had passed a villa, and though the road was elevated, a tangle of trees pressed close on either side. The clip-clop of our mounts' hooves seemed loud in that empty land.

"Yes… I was there…" answered Constantius, rubbing at the spot on his thigh where I remembered seeing a scar. "But it was a near thing. They came from the east, across the Euxine Sea. Our garrison at Marcianopolis fought them off, but they sailed south and managed to break through into the Aegeum, where they split into three armies. Gallienus wiped out the Herulians in Thracia, but the Goths were still rampaging around Macedonia.

"We finally caught up with them at Nissa. It's hard to defend against wandering bands that hit a village and run, but barbarian troops can't stand against our heavy cavalry…" His eyes were bleak with memory. "It was a slaughter. After that, it was mostly a matter of mopping up. Hunger and bad weather killed as many of the stragglers as we did. That, and the plague." He fell silent, and I remembered that the plague had killed Romans as well, including his great-uncle the Emperor.

"Was your home safe?" I asked in an attempt to turn his mind from thoughts of battle.

He blinked, and managed a smile. "Yes, it was—the Goths were after older and richer towns. It was one time when living on the frontier worked to our advantage. My people have been there since Trajan conquered the land."

"My father's family ruled the country north of the Tamesis even before the Romans came," I observed a trifle smugly. The sun was breaking through the clouds, and I unhooked my broad hat from the saddle and put it on. "But my ancestor made alliance with the Divine Julius, and took his family name."

"Ah—" answered Constantius, "my own ancestry is less illustrious. One of my ancestors was a client to Flavius Vespasianus, the great Emperor, hence the family name. But the first of my line to settle in Dacia was a centurion who married a local girl. But that's nothing to be ashamed of. Some say that Vespasianus himself was descended from one of the founders of Rome, but I am told that the Emperor laughed at that idea, and admitted that his grandfather had been a ranker in the legions. It does not matter. We are all Romans now…'

"I suppose so," I replied. "I know Coelius kept the Roman festivals. I remember going with him to the great temple of Claudius in Camulodunum to burn incense to the Emperor. In matters pertaining to government he was a Roman, but he kept to the old ways when it was a question of the health of the land. That is how I came to be conceived," I added unwillingly. "In the year of the great floods he appealed to Avalon, and my mother, who was the High Priestess then, travelled to Camulodunum to perform the Great Rite with him."

"So you are royal on both sides." Constantius smiled at me, then grew thoughtful. "Did your father ever formally adopt you?"

I shook my head. "What need?" I said bitterly. "I was always intended for Avalon… Does it matter to you?" I added, seeing his frown.

"Not to me—" he said quickly. "It may have some legal implications… for our marriage."

"You want to marry me?" In truth, I had not thought much about it, having grown to womanhood in Avalon, where the priestesses did not bind themselves to any man.

"Of course! Or at least," he added, "make some legal arrangement that will protect you—was not that ceremony we performed at your festival a wedding?"

I stared at him. "It was the union of the earth and the sun, meant to bring life to the land—the god and the goddess were wedded, as was the case with my parents, not the priest and priestess who performed the rite."

He reined in abruptly, blocking my pony, and faced me. A pair of warblers lifted from the hawthorn hedge, calling. "If you do not consider yourself my wife, why did you come with me?"

My eyes filled with tears. "Because I love you…"

"I am an initiate, but not an adept of the Mysteries," Constantius said after a long moment had passed. "The only way I knew how to make those vows was as a man. And you were my lady—the first time I saw you I knew you were the woman whose soul was bound to my own."

It occurred to me suddenly that Ganeda's plan could never have worked even if I had not interfered. If Aelia had been the priestess, Constantius would have refused to go through with the ritual. He reached out and seized my hand.

"You are mine, Helena, and I will never abandon you. This I swear to you by Juno and all the gods. You will be my wife in fact, whether or not you bear the name. Do you understand?"

"Volo—" I am willing," I whispered past the lump in my throat. At least I had had a vision. Only honour, and his noble heart, kept this man at my side.

I think it was at that moment, standing in the road somewhere in the middle of Britannia, that my marriage to Constantius truly began.
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7

The wicker back of my round chair creaked as I leaned into it. The pose was deceptively casual: from here I could see past the frescoing of fruits and flowers around the doorway to the kitchen, where Brasilia should be readying the next course of the meal. Our guests, two of the more successful merchants based at Eburacum, had just about finished the pickled eggs and the oysters served raw in the shell with a sharp sauce. This was one of several little dinners Constantius had held in the year we had been here, building a network of goodwill among the merchants in the town.

It seemed to be working. The pewter business was prospering. I knew that Constantius would rather have been with the men of the Sixth Victrix in the great fortress across the river, though in truth, since the wild tribes beyond the Wall had for some time been peaceful the legion was rather under-strength, and there was not much activity there. The busy town, which since the time of Severus had been the capital of Britannia Inferior, was where the real power lay now, and Constantius seemed to be one of those men who could do well at anything to which he put his mind.

I glimpsed Philip, a Greek boy whom we had recently added to the household, hovering in the passage, and beckoned to him to clear away the platters. Constantius, who was still listening attentively to the older of the merchants, one of the large Sylvanus clan who traded in linen from Eburacum and pottery from Treveri, gave me an encouraging smile.

I smiled back, though acting the part of a Roman lady still felt a bit unreal. Avalon had trained me for many things, but they did not include planning a formal banquet and making small talk over the wine. For this, I would have been better prepared if I had grown up with the other simpering girl-children in my father's hall. Still, Constantius needed a hostess, and I did my best to pretend I was at ease.

I had learned to paint my face, and dress my hair in a complex knot with a Greek bandeau to hide the crescent moon upon my brow. Constantius's business was prospering, and he delighted to give me things. I now had a chest full of linen shifts and tunicas in finely-woven coloured wool, and earrings and a pendant of the locally worked jet, the roundel carved with Constantius's face and my own.

Spinning was a traditional woman's occupation among the Romans, and that was a craft that I knew well. But when we arrived in Eburacum I had no more known how to manage a house than fight a battle. I had no time to pine for Avalon—there was too much to learn. Fortunately, we had an excellent cook in Brasilia. Constantius had grown visibly more solid this past year. She would have resented any attempt on my part to direct her, even if I had had any notion of cookery. She did, however, require me to memorize the ingredients, so that if any of the guests inquired, I could do justice to her artistry.

Philip brought in the next course, a dish of tiny cabbages called coliculis cooked with sweet green peppers, and mustard greens. It was seasoned with thyme and served over a puree of jellied hare. With the gravity of one engaged in some holy rite he served out portions onto the plates, good red Samian ware, probably purchased from Lucius Viducius, whose couch was next to my chair. His family had been leaders in the pottery trade between Eburacum and Rothomagus in Gallia for as long as Constantius's relations had been manufacturing pewter,

I took a bite, then set the spoon down again. It tasted well enough, but my stomach was rebelling. I had not even attempted the oysters.

"You do not eat, domina—are you unwell?" asked Viducius. He was a big man with blond hair going now to grey who looked more like a German than a Gaul.

"A momentary upset," I answered. "No need for concern… Please eat, or my cook will never forgive me. Constantius tells me that you travel to Gallia twice a year. Will you be going oversea again soon?"

"Very soon," he nodded. "Your man is hoping to persuade us to carry his wares to Germania on the ship that will bring back our own. May Nehalennia keep us safe from storms!"

"Nehalennia?" I echoed politely. This was a goddess of whom I had not heard.

"She is a goddess much favoured by traders. They have made a shrine for her on an island where the Rhenus flows into the ocean. My father Placidus set up an altar for her there when I was a child."

"Is she then a German goddess?"

I cast a swift glance around. Constantius had drawn the second man, a ship-owner, into his conversation. There were more dishes on the table now: broiled mullets braised in olive oil with pepper and wine, and lentils with parsnips cooked with herb sauce. I took a little of each, though I did not try to eat them, and turned back to Viducius with a smile.

"Perhaps," he was answering, "my father came originally from Treveri. But I think she likes best the lowlands that face the north sea. It is there that the sea lanes and the land roads meet; from there, she can guard all the ways…"

My face must have shown something then, for he stopped, asking what was wrong.

"Not wrong: I was only reminded of a British goddess, whom we call Elen of the Ways. I wonder if they could be the same?"

"Our Nehalennia is shown sitting, with a dog at her feet and a basket of apples in the crook of her arm," the trader replied.

I smiled and leaned down to pat Eldri, who lay, as usual, at my feet hoping that some morsel would fall. She sat up, nostrils quivering, and I realized that Philip was bringing in the roasted boar. I saw it come with mixed feelings—the rich scent further upset my stomach, but its appearance meant that the meal was almost over. I took a careful sip of watered wine.

"Elen is said to love dogs as well, for they show the way," I said politely. "Did your father make a dedication to the goddess here in Eburacum as well?"

Viducius shook his head, "Only to Jupiter Dolichenus, sovereign of the sun, and to the genius of this place—wherever one may go, it is always wise to propitiate the spirits of the land."

I nodded, aware by now of the Romans' compulsion to honour, not only the genius loci, but any concept or philosophical abstraction that brought itself to their attention. Every crossroads and public well had its little shrine, with the name of the donor prominently displayed, as if without such a label the gods would not know his identity. Even Constantius, who had studied the philosophies of the Greeks that were so close to the theology of Avalon, insisted that his ancestral lares and the penates that guarded the storeroom of this house must receive their offerings.

"Your man has a good head for business, but he was never meant to spend his life as a trader," Viducius went on. "One day the Emperor will call him back to his service. Perhaps then you will cross the sea yourself, and pay your respects to Nehalennia."

I tried to say something polite, but the odour of the roasted meat was too much for my rebellious stomach. Excusing myself, I made a dash for the atrium and vomited into the terra cotta pot that held the rose tree.

By the time I had finished, I could hear the louder murmur of conversation that meant our dinner guests were leaving. I sat down on one of the stone benches, taking deep breaths of the cool, herb-scented air. It was close to the ending of the month of Maia, and the evening was still pleasant. There was yet enough light for me to appreciate the graceful lines of the two-storeyed wings that formed the long atrium, bordered, on the inside, by a colonnade. The house had been built by the same architect who had designed the nearby palace of the Emperor Severas, and though, like most homes in this part of town, it stretched back from a narrow frontage, it had a classic elegance.

I felt much better, now that my stomach was empty. I hoped, for our guests' sake, it was not anything I had eaten. I washed out my mouth with water from the fountain and leaned back against a column, gazing up at the open sky above the atrium where the young moon was already high.

And as I contemplated the moon, I realized that by now I should have had my courses. My breasts, too, had been unusually tender. I touched them, acutely aware of their new weight and sensitivity, and began to smile, understanding at last what was wrong with me.

A shadow moved among the potted shrubs. I recognized Constantius and stood up to meet him.

"Helena—are you all right?"

"Oh yes…" My smile grew broader. "Were your negotiations successful, my love?" I put my arms about his neck, and he murmured something into my hair as his own tightened around me. For a moment we stood locked together. He smelled of good food and wine and the spicy oil his slave rubbed into his skin at the baths.

"You may congratulate me as well…" I whispered into his ear. "I am about to bring you a greater profit than any trader. Oh, Constantius, I am going to bear your child!"

As spring ripened into summer, and my own body began to ripen with pregnancy, for the first time in my life I tasted true happiness. I even knew it, a gift not always allotted mortal men. I had defied, if not the gods, at least the priestesses of Avalon, and now I carried the child the oracle had foretold! It was not until many years later that I questioned that prophecy, or reflected that in order to obtain the right answer it is necessary first to have asked the correct question.

It was a smiling season, and Eburacum was the queen of the north, where traders from all over the Empire brought their wares.

Merchants prospered here, and shared their good fortune with their gods, from Hercules to Serapis. The square before the basilica was studded with dedicatory altars, set up in payment of vows. I paused sometimes to pay my respects to the matronae, the triple mothers who guarded fertility, but otherwise I had little to say to the gods.

With Eldri trotting at my heels, every day I would go out of the gate by the bridge and walk down the path by the Abus River to its confluence with the Fossa, where the boats that came up from the coast to the wharves disputed the right of way with the swans. In the evening, the white walls of the fortress were reflected in the water, and the setting sun overlaid the shining surface with opal and pearl. In the past year the little dog had slowed down, as if age had suddenly come upon her, but these expeditions, when she had a chance to nose through all the fascinating detritus left at the water's edge, were the high point of her day. I hoped that it consoled her a little for losing the freedom of Avalon.

But more than trade goods came in with those ships, and though the western and eastern parts of the Empire might be politically divided, news travelled freely between them. Just after midsummer there came two arrivals which were to alter our lives: a messenger with a letter from the Emperor, and the first case of plague.

We were sitting in the atrium, where I had asked Drusilla to serve the evening meal. I was just beginning to enjoy food again, and our cook delighted in finding ways to tempt my appetite. I was not certain whether it had been diffidence on my part or the lofty scorn of an old family retainer for a native-born concubine on hers that had initially created the distance between us. But my incipient motherhood had clearly elevated my status in her eyes.

I had made my way through several of the appetizers when I noticed that Constantius was not eating. After a year in his company, I could see the man in him as well as the hero. I now knew, for instance, that he was at his best in the mornings and increasingly irritable after sundown; could be honest to the point of tactlessness; and except when he was in bed with me, lived more in his head than his body. What some people perceived as coldness I would have called focus. He could not abide shellfish, and when his interest was engaged in some project, he had to be reminded to eat at all.

"You haven't touched the food," I said. "It is very good, and Drusilla will be upset if you do not appreciate her effort."

He smiled and speared a piece of leek and sausage, but sat with it uneaten in his hand. "This morning I received a letter."

Suddenly I felt chilled. "From Rome?" With an effort I kept my voice calm.

"Not exactly. When he wrote it he was in Nicomedia, though he has undoubtedly moved elsewhere by now."

I looked at him, thinking. No need to ask who he might be. But if the Emperor wanted Constantius's head, surely he would have sent an officer along with his message to take him into custody.

"It was not, I take it, a warrant for your arrest?"

He shook his head. "Helena, he has offered me a place on his staff! Now I can make a real life for you and our child!"

I stared at him, suppressing my first panicked assumption that he meant to leave me. Constantius had done his best to seem happy, but I knew how much he had missed his military career.

"Can you trust him?"

"I think so," he said seriously. "Aurelian has always had the reputation of being honest—a little too forthright, in fact. It was because he did not hide his anger that it seemed best for me to go into exile. He is already rid of me—to lure me back just so that he could have me murdered would require uneccessary subtlety."

Too forthright? I suppressed a smile, understanding why Constantius had been exiled, and why the Emperor might want him back again.

His gaze went inward, calculating, planning, and I realized with a pang that if he was to fulfil the destiny I had foreseen for him, his attention would be inevitably drawn away from me. In that moment I wished passionately that he and I could have been ordinary people, and lived out an ordinary contented life together, here at the edge of the Empire. But even in the fading light there was something luminous about him that drew the eye. If Constantius had been an ordinary man, he would never have come to Avalon.

"With Tetricus still in power in the West, I wouldn't be able to use the posting relays anyway," he said at last. "It is just as well, with an entire household to transport. We can do part of the journey by water—make the crossing over the British Sea, and then take a barge up the Rhenus. That will be easier on you…" He looked up at me suddenly. "You will come with me, won't you?"

One advantage to not being properly married, I reflected wryly, was that Constantius had no legal right to compel me. But the child in my belly bound me to him—the child, and the memory of a prophecy.

Constantius might have been able to leave at a moment's notice when he was a bachelor, but now there was an entire household to shift, and control of a business to transfer into competent hands. The pewterworks had grown in the year he had been in charge of it. The slaves who did the actual labour were all very skilled, but the volume of production was beyond the capacity of the agent who had handled things before, and it took time to find a suitable manager and break him in.

And in that time, the first case of plague became many. It occurred to me that if the disease had decimated the Emperor's staff the way it was going through Eburacum, Aurelian's invitation might be less a mark of magnanimity than of desperation.

The slave boy Philip fell ill, and despite Drusilla's protests, I nursed him. This disease was characterized by a racking cough and a prolonged high fever. But by wrapping him in cool wet cloths and giving him the infusions of white willow and birch that I had learned to use in Avalon I managed to keep Philip alive until the fever broke at last.

No one else in our household took the illlness, but the long hours of strain had drained my strength. I began to bleed, and after a few hours of wrenching cramps, I miscarried my child.

The summer, and our preparations to leave Britannia, were drawing to an end when Philip came into my chamber to announce a visitor. I was lying wrapped in a shawl on one of the couches with Eldri at my feet. It was summer, but clouds had moved in from the sea the night before and a damp chill weighted the air. Constantius had gone off to a meeting at the Mithraeum—not a ritual, as those were always conducted by night, but some business connected with the temple. I did not know what rank he had attained in the Mysteries, but his administrative responsibilities suggested it was a high one.

I had been pretending to look at the romance by Longus that Constantius had brought home so that I could brush up on my Greek. It was called Daphnis and Chloe and its exotic adventures should have been a potent distraction. But in truth I had been asleep. I slept a great deal—it made it easier to forget that the bright spirit that for a little while had made its home in my womb was gone. As Philip spoke I let the parchment roll up again.

"I will tell her to go away—" said Philip protectively. Since his recovery and my own illness, he had been my shadow, as if we were bound together by our pain.

"No—who is it?" I asked, with a quick glance around the room to make sure it was fit to be seen.

The walls had been painted in tones of warm gold, with festoons of acanthus leaves, and some of the striped rugs the local people wove took the chill off the tiled floor. A basket with wool and a spindle had been left on one of the tables, and several book rolls lay on another, but the room was clean. If the wife of one of Constantius's associates had come to see me, I should make the effort to be polite to her.

"I think she is a seller of herbs. She has a covered basket… She said she had a medicine for what ailed you," he added unhappily. "I didn't tell her, mistress, I promise you—"

"It is all right, Philip. These people all talk to each other—no doubt she has learned of my trouble from someone in the town.

Perhaps she will have something useful." I sighed. "You may as well bring her in."

In truth, I had little hope of it, but it was bad enough that Constantius must drag a wife halfway across the Empire; he should not have to deal with an invalid. But deep down I understood that for any of the nostrums with which well-meaning people were plying me to work, I had to truly want to get well.

In a few moments Philip was back, standing aside as an old woman came into the room. Even before I saw her face, senses long unused were sending a prickle of shock across my skin. As the woman began to unwrap her basket, I realized it had been recognition.

One moment she was an old, bent woman in a tattered shawl, like a hundred others who came to sell their wares in the town. In the next, she had gathered the glamour around her, and stood in all her majesty before me, seeming almost too tall for the room. Philip's eyes widened.

"Lady—" Without thinking, I had risen to my feet, head bowed in salutation. Then anger flared through me and I straightened. " What are you doing here!"

Philip, bless him, took a protective step forwards. I bit back my next words.

"I could ask the same question of you," said Ganeda, "shut away within these walls! We must talk. Come out into the light and the air."

"I have been ill—" I began, automatically on the defensive.

"Nonsense—you will never be better if you curl up like a lapdog! Come!" Assuming obedience, she started through the door.

Eldri jumped down from the couch, growling faintly, and my lips twitched in the beginnings of a smile. At least in the atrium we would be less likely to be overheard. Motioning to Philip to stay inside, I picked up my shawl and followed her.

"So, what have I done to deserve this honour?" I asked dryly, seating myself on a stone bench and indicating that Ganeda should do the same.

"Stayed alive…" the High Priestess answered starkly. "The plague has come to Avalon."

I stared at her in horror. How could that be possible? The holy isle was separated from the world.

"A girl from Londinium was sent to us for training. She was ill by the time she arrived. We did not recognize the sickness, and by the time word of the plague had reached us it was too late to stop the contagion. Four of the maidens and six of the senior priestesses have died."

I licked dry lips. "Not Dierna?"

Fractionally, Ganeda's grim expression lightened. "No. My granddaughter is well." I listened as she gave the names of those who had succumbed, women with whom I had shared the unique intimacy of ritual, some who had cared for and taught me, and others whom I had taught in turn… and Aelia.

I shut my eyes against the tears I could feel leaking out beneath my eyelids, drawing hot tracks across my cheeks. If I had not left Avalon I could have nursed her, I thought numbly. I had saved Philip, for whom I felt no more than kindness, surely my love would have kept Aelia in the world. Or perhaps the plague would have taken me too. In that moment both fates seemed equally desirable.

"I thank you for coming to tell me…" I said at last.

"Yes, I know you loved her," the priestess answered tersely, "but that is not why I have come. You are needed by Avalon."

At that, my eyes flew open. "How… generous…" Through stiff lips I got out the words. "You are desperate, so now you will welcome me back again!" I rose to my feet, the shawl slipping from my shoulders, and began to pace back and forth along the path. "No." I turned to face her. "You severed my link to Avalon. During that first moon, when the wound was yet bleeding, you might have called me back again. Now there is only a scar."

Ganeda shrugged impatiently. "The link can be restored. It is your duty to return."

"Duty!" I exclaimed. "What about my duty to Constantius?"

"He has no legal authority over you, nor are you linked in the flesh since you have lost the child—"

"Is that all you can understand?" I cried, hands crossed protectively before my empty womb. "What of the bonds that link the heart and the soul? What of the prophecy?"

"Do you think that justifies your rebellion?" Ganeda sniffed scornfully. "A simple attack of lust would have been more forgivable, my dear—"

"I don't need your forgiveness! I don't want it!" I could hear my voice rising, and fought for control. "You had the right to banish me, but not to jerk me back and forth like a child's pull-toy on a string. It was you, not I, who cancelled my oaths to Avalon. Nor shall I break the vows I have sworn to Constantius. I lost this child, yes, but there will be another. I have seen the babe in my arms!"

Ganeda contemplated me sourly. "When we planned that ritual, Arganax calculated the movements of the stars. We know what they would have destined for a child conceived in that Beltane ritual. Who knows what the child you bear to Constantius will do? I tell you now that there may come a day when you wish he had never been born!"

I lifted one eyebrow and looked down at her. "Oh—I see. It is wrong for me to set my will above yours, but you are perfectly justified in setting yours above that of the gods! Did you not teach us yourself that the Fates weave our lives as they will, not as you or I would have it? My son will not be the tool of Avalon!"

"Then you had better pray that he will at least know how to serve the gods!"

"Can you doubt it?" I exclaimed in my pride. "He will be the son of the Restorer of the Light and a Priestess of Avalon!"

"I do not doubt the gods," Ganeda answered very quietly, "but a long life has taught me not to put my trust in men. I wish you well, daughter of my sister." Leaning heavily on her staff she got to her feet, and now she looked truly old.

"Wait," I said despite myself. "You have had a long journey and I have offered you no refreshment—"

But Ganeda only shook her head. "You shall be troubled no longer, either by me or by Avalon…"

I understood her words, but as I watched her go it seemed to me that the memory of this conversation would haunt me for a long time to come.

Whether it was because my healing was complete or Ganeda's challenge had stimulated me, I do not know, but from that time onward my energy began to return. I took a more active part in preparing to move the household, and when, a few days before we were scheduled to take ship for the continent, Conscantius mentioned that he had to ride out into the countryside to bid farewell to one of his father's cousins, I asked if I could come along.

As our sailing date approached, I found myself viewing Eburacum with new eyes. I had not been there long enough to think of it as home, but it was nonetheless part of Britannia, which I was so soon to lose. Still, the town itself was Roman, not British, and only along the river could I feel the spirits of the land. In the countryside, I would surely sense them more easily, and be able to make my farewells.

Constantius had rented a two-wheeled cart for the journey, drawn by the faithful red mule. The land here was low and rolling, rising gradually to the west, where mountains lay on the horizon, more sensed through the misty air than seen. On the second day we came to Isurium, the old tribal capital of the Brigantes, which was now a thriving market town. Isurium lay in the bend of the Abus, just before the road crossed the river once more.

Flavius Pollio had retired here after a successful career in Eburacum and was now a magistrate. He was clearly delighted to show off his newly-built townhouse, particularly the mosaic of Romulus and Remus with the wolf which adorned his dining room floor.

"I see that your little dog appreciates fine artwork," said Pollio, flipping a bit of roast mutton to Eldri, who had flopped down next to the mosaic of the bitch-wolf as if to join the twins in nursing from her dugs. I blushed.

"I am sorry—she always sits at my feet when we dine at home. She must have got out of our bedchamber—"

"No, no—let her stay. We are not formal here." Pollio smiled at me. "This is a country of goddesses and queens, and ladies have their privileges… Cartimandua, you know—" he added when I looked inquiring. "She held the Brigante lands for Rome, even when her husband rebelled." He shook an admonishing finger at Constantius. "Let that be a warning to you, my boy. A man is only strong when his wife is behind him!"

Now it was Constantius's turn to colour, always a notable sight with his fair skin. "Then I must be Hercules," he answered, but I shook my head.

"No, my dear, you are Apollo."

He blushed even more brightly then, and I laughed.

When the meal was over, the two men retired to Pollio's study to go over the papers Constantius had come to see, and I took Eldri out for a walk through the town. After a day and a half of jolting in the cart and a heavy meal, I needed exercise, and soon found myself striding through the gate towards the open country beyond the town.

Here in the north country the day lingered longer than I was used to. A ground fog was rising from the fields, catching the sunset light so that it looked as if skeins of golden flax had been laid across the land. Soon after I crossed the bridge I saw a cowpath leading away to the west and turned off the road. With Eldri to guide me I had no real fear of being lost, even if the mist should thicken as darkness fell.

My steps slowed as I went on, for at last I had found the solitude I was seeking. The air had the peculiar hush one finds at dawn and at sunset, broken only by the cawing of three crows flying towards their roost, and the distant lowing of a line of cattle moving towards the milking shed and home.

I came to a halt, hands lifting in instinctive adoration. "Brigantia, Exalted One, holiness upwelling! Lady of this land, I am soon to fare across the sea. Grant me your blessing, goddess, wherever my wanderings may lead…"

The stillness deepened, as if the land itself were listening. Although the air was cooling rapidly, I felt on my cheek a breath of warmth, as if the earth were giving back the last heat of the day. Eldri scampered up the road, more energetic than I had seen her for some time. The white tuft of her tail wagged as it did when she was on an interesting scent, and I hurried to follow her.

I reached the top of the rise just in time to see her white form disappearing into the alder thicket that edged the right side of the road.

"Eldri! Come back here!"

The dog did not turn, and I began to run, calling again. I could see now that a path led through the thicket, barely wide enough for me to force my way through.

The meadow beyond it was hazed with gold. Through the glimmer of ground mist I glimpsed Eldri, trotting towards a pillar of dark stone. I stopped short, staring. There were three of them, spaced across the meadow in an uneven row, about the width of a forum apart. I had seen megaliths before, but never any as tall as these, nearly the height of the columns in the Temple of Serapis's portico.

"Eldri, be careful," I whispered, but I should have remembered that she was a faerie dog, accustomed to marvels, for she sat down before the nearest, panting, and waited for me to catch up with her.

"Well, my dear one, what have you found?"

The dog cocked her head and then turned back to the pillar, watching it expectantly. Slowly I circled it, out of habit moving sunwise. The stone was very dark, more smoothly finished than was usual for one of the works of the ancients, narrowing slightly towards the top, which was marked by several grooves. Orange and white lichens spread lacy swathes across the dark surface. I understood the purpose of circles like the one upon the Tor, but I could not imagine why these three pillars had been erected here.

Very softly I approached and set my two palms against the stone. The surface was cold, but I let my awareness move out through my hands and into the rock, seeking the flow of energy that rooted it to the earth below.

It was not there. Instead, I felt as if I were holding onto some firm object while floating, except that the thing I held was floating too, as if I had taken a boat to the centre of the Lake to go swimming there. The sensation was rather pleasant, like the dislocation of trance, and for me, starved for over a year of such sensations, far too seductive. I let out my breath in a long sigh, allowing my awareness to sink ever more deeply into the stone.

For a timeless moment I knew nothing but sensation. Then I realized that the sense of vertigo was passing. The pillar was once more solid beneath my hands, but as I straightened and looked around me, I realized that the world had changed.

The pillars stood now on an open plain. The golden light of sunset had transmuted to a silvery radiance that had neither source nor direction, but was quite sufficient to illuminate the radiant figures that danced in a double helix around the stones. Eldri was running with them, darting in and out among the dancers like a puppy, barking with joy.

I stepped away from the pillar to go after her, and found myself being swept into the dance. Strong hands swung me around, fair faces invited me to join in their laughter. Suddenly my feet were light, the last, dragging exhaustion from my miscarriage vanishing. I felt joyous and free as I had not been since… I had wandered into Faerie.

In that moment I understood how, coming to the stones at sunset, I had opened a doorway between the worlds. Or perhaps it was Eldri who had led me here. Certainly she was gambolling about as if she had shed the years, ecstatic as one who, having been long exiled, returns at last to her home.

I saw her coming to rest at last at the feet of one of the fair folk who stood before the central pillar, and at last the dance cast me up in the same place. With the blood still racing in my veins from the swift motion, I halted, realizing that the person who waited there was the Faerie Queen.

This time she wore the colours of summer's harvest, a crown of woven wheat and a gown of pale gold. Eldri was nestled in her arms.

"Lady, how come you here?" I stammered, straightening from my bow.

"Where else should I be?" Her low voice was honeyed with amusement.

"But we are far from Avalon—"

"And when you dreamed of it the other night, how far away were you then?" she asked.

"I was there… but it was only a dream."

"Some dreams are more real than what men call reality," the Lady said tartly. "The gateways to Faerie are fewer than the Doors of Dream, and yet there are more than most men believe. One has only to know the times and seasons to find the way."

"Will I be able to find the way from the lands across the sea?" I asked then.

"Even from there, if you have need, though you may see us in another guise in those lands where men know us by other names. Indeed, unless you learn to honour the spirits that dwell in the other lands, you will not prosper there."

And she began to tell me of the beings I should encounter, names and descriptions that dissolved into my awareness, not to be recalled until many months, or even years, had passed. In the timeless present of Faerie I had no sense of hunger or fatigue, but at last the Lady ceased her instructions, and it occurred to me that I ought to be returning to the human world.

"My thanks to you, Lady. I will endeavour to do as you say. Now let me take the dog, that she may show me the way home."

The queen shook her head. "Eldri must stay. She is old, and her spirit is bound to this land. She would not survive your journey. Let her remain—she will be happy with me here."

In that land where there is no weeping, nonetheless tears came to my eyes. But the gaze of the Faerie Queen was implacable, and it was true that Eldri looked very happy, nestled in her arms. For the last time, I scratched behind those silky ears. Then I let my hand fall.

"How shall I go back, then?" I asked.

"You have only to walk widdershins around the stone."

I began to move, and with each step the light faded until I found myself standing in the meadow in the gathering darkness, alone.

When I reached the bridge I saw torches bobbing along the main road and found that Constantius had come out to look for me. I told him only that Eldri had run away, and I had been searching for her. He knew how I had loved the dog, and so my sorrow needed no explanation. And that night I found comfort in the shelter of his arms.

A week later, we were on one of Viducius's ships, bound for the mouth of the Rhenus and Germania.
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Part II

The way to power


8


To travel on the sea is to move outside time. One sits, with neither tasks nor duties, contemplating the dim grey ribbon of shoreline on the horizon, and the ever-changing, undulant landscape of the sea. The scene in the boat's wake alters as swiftly as the view from the prow, so there is no way to recognize where one has been, and after a time the succession of ridges and valleys begins to repeat itself, so that one wonders if any progress has been made at all.

Still, after a week of travel I could sense a new warmth in the air, and the land wind brought me a scent that I recognized from childhood. Since we had left Eburacum the weather had been fair, with a following wind. The big trading ship wallowed doggedly southward, not even needing to anchor when night fell. But now we were angling towards the shore. I put my arms around the curving prow, leaning out over the water.

"You look like the figureheads I have seen on some Greek vessels," said Constantius behind me. He seemed younger and more sturdy somehow than I remembered, and I realized for the first time just how much it meant to him to be returning to his real life once more. Thoughtfully, I let him assist me back to the deck.

"What is that?" I gestured towards the headland, where the grey-green waters of a great river flowed steadily down to mingle with the blue sea.

"It is the Tamesis," said Constantius, beside me. I turned to gaze with new interest at the low, rolling country above the line of sandspits.

"I played on that beach when I was a little child, while my father inspected the watchtower on the point," I replied. "I remember wondering where the passing ships were going."

"And now you are going with them," Constantius smiled.

I nodded, leaning against his solid strength. There was no need to burden him with my sudden longing to go home. It was, in any case, impossible. My father was dead, and one of my brothers as well. The other was serving with the false emperor Tetricus in Gallia. In the palace at Camulodunum a distant cousin ruled now. The home of my childhood was gone as surely as the little girl who had once gathered shells on that sandy shore.

I clutched at the rail as the ship leaned into the wind that blew down the river, tacking across its mouth towards the narrow channel between the isle of Tanatus and Cantium. We spent two nights at an inn, while Viducius supervised the loading of additional cargo, but before I had quite got my land-legs back we were afloat once more.

Now, we had not even a glimpse of shoreline to show us our direction, only the sun and the stars, when the clouds parted and we could see them. But I began to wonder if the senses that Ganeda had stripped from me were returning, for I found that even when the mists surrounded us I could feel Britannia behind us, and as the hours passed, I began to sense a new energy ahead. On the third day, as the sea-mist dissipated in the morning sun, I saw ahead a horizon smudged with islets, the many-branched channels of the delta of the Rhenus that guarded the way to Germania Inferior.

Our destination was Ganuenta, where the River Scaldis flowed into the delta of the Rhenus, a major transfer point for shipping from the continent to Britannia. While Constantius made arrangements for our transport up the Rhenus, I was free to explore the marketplace that adjoined the port, the faithful Philip at my side. Like all frontiers, it was an amalgam of cultures, where the gutturals of the Germanic tongues mingled with the sonority of Latin. Since the days when Arminius destroyed Varus and his legion, the Rhenus had been the border between Free Germania and the Empire. But for over a century it had been a peaceful boundary, and the folk who brought their furs and their cattle and their cheeses across the river to market seemed little different from the tribes on the Roman side.

I was looking at wood carvings at one of the market stalls when someone called my name. Turning, I recognized Viducius, got up in a toga with a basket of apples under his arm.

"Are you going to a party?" I asked, indicating the fruit.

"No, although I will see a noble lady—I am on my way to the temple of Nehalennia to give thanks for the safe voyage. You would be welcome to accompany me."

"I would like that. Philip, you must find Constantius and tell him where I have gone. Viducius will escort me home."

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.

Thus we heard of the bitter victory at Mons Gessax in Thracia, where the Romans had encircled the last of the fleeing Goths. But the ineptitude of the commander, who had not had the wit to use his heavy cavalry to press his advantage, had cost many lives. Aurelian was now continuing his operations against the Vandals in Dacia. At least it appeared that the barbarian threat had been dealt with, for a time.

By the time we boarded our boat once more a new passenger had joined us. He was called Father Clemens, a round little priest of the Christian cult who had been sent by the Bishop of Rome to visit the congregations in the western lands. I observed him with some curiosity, for apart from the monks of Inis Witrin, he was the first priest of his faith whom I had seen.

"Oh yes, there are Christians in Eburacum," he assured us when Constantius mentioned our point of departure. "A small congregation, to be sure, meeting in a house-church belonging to a virtuous widow, but they are strong in the faith." Father Clemens eyed us hopefully, reminding me painfully of Eldri when she thought I might throw her a scrap.

Constantius shook his head, smiling. "Nay, I serve the Soldiers' God, and the eternal light of the sun, but there is much good to be found in your belief. Your churches care for the unfortunate and the needy, I have heard."

"God has so commanded us," he said simply. "And what of you, lady? Have you heard the good Word?"

"There was a community of Christians near the place where I grew up," I said carefully. "But I follow Elen of the Ways."

Father Clemens shook his head. "It is the Christos who is the Truth, the Way and the Life," he said gently. "All others lead to damnation. I will pray for you."

I stiffened, but Constantius smiled. "The prayers of a man of good will are always welcome." He took my arm and drew me away.

"I am a priestess of the Goddess!" I hissed when we had reached the prow. "Why should he pray for me?"

"He means well," answered Constantius. "Some of his fellow-believers would damn us both, without waiting for their god to take a hand."

I shook my head. The monk, whoever he had been, who had appeared to me at Inis Witrin, had spoken otherwise. Still, in Eburacum I had met many pagans who dealt only in the forms and ceremonies of their religion. I wondered if among the Christians, there was also a difference between the common folk and those who understood the Mysteries.

Constantius put his arm around me and I leaned against him, watching the long vistas of plain and forest, edged by marsh or mudflat or sandy strand, slide by. One side was Roman, the other, German, but I could not see much difference between them. I had looked at the maps the Romans made in an attempt to define their territory, but the land knew no such divisions. For a moment I hovered on the edge of some crucial understanding. Then Constantius turned his head and kissed me, and in the flood of sensation that followed, the moment was lost.

Our journey halted again at Colonia Agrippinensis, a flourishing city built on an eminence above the Rhenus. There was more news here—the Emperor had pursued the Goths all the way across the Danuvius and destroyed them in another great battle, killing their king, Cannabaudes, and five thousand of their warriors. The Senate had voted him the title of Gothicus Maximus and a Triumph. But despite his victory, Aurelian had apparently decided that Dacia north of the river was indefensible, and was pulling the limits of the Empire back to the Danuvius.

"And I can't say but that he has good reason," said the centurion we were talking to, "just as when he abandoned the agri decumates south of here and withdrew all the troops back to the Rhenus. Rivers make nice clear borders. Maybe Aurelian thinks the barbarians will be too busy fighting each other to trouble us. But it galls, just the same, when I think of all the blood we shed to hold that land."

Constantius had grown very silent. "I was born in Dacia Ripensis. Strange to think that it will become the frontier. I suppose the Goths will be fighting what's left of the Carpi, the Bastarnae and the Vandals for it now."

"Not the Vandals," corrected the centurion. "Aurelian has brought them in as federates and enlisted them as auxiliaries."

Constantius frowned thoughtfully. "It may work; the gods know the Germans breed good fighting men."

The barge took us as far as Borbetomagus. There, we joined a party of traders who were taking their pack mules along the Nicer and through the hills to the Danuvius. The farther we travelled the stronger my awareness of the density of the land around us became. In all my life I had never lived more than a day's journey from the ocean, but now solid earth surrounded me, and even the mighty rivers were no more than the blood flowing through her veins.

These lands might have been abandoned by the legions, but they had not yet reverted to barbarian rule. The villas and farmsteads the Romans had carved out of the forest still prospered, and we were glad of their hospitality. And for me, this leisurely journey through Germania brought the unexpected benefit of my husband's undivided attention. When he first joined the army Constantius had been posted to the German limes and knew them well. To hear his stories of garrison and battlefield gave me a picture of who he truly was that was to stand me in good stead thereafter.

But with each league we travelled my own past fell farther behind me. I became Julia Helena only and entirely, and memories of that Eilan who had been a priestess of Avalon dwindled until they had no more substance than a dream.

A moon of travel brought us to the upper reaches of the Danuvius, where we found another boat that would take us downstream. Here the great river flowed east between the Suevi hills and the lowlands of Rhaetia. When the autumn haze cleared, we could see the snow-clad Alpes glittering on the southern horizon, drawing gradually closer and lower until the river passed through a gap in the hills and presently made a sharp turn southward through the broad Pannonian plain.

This river was in fact far longer than the Rhenus, but going with the current, we moved faster. Presently we turned eastward once more, heading, so Constantius told me, towards the Euxine Sea. To the south lay the lands of Graecia of which Corinthius had told me so many stories, to the north, Scythia and the unknown. The land itself told me that we had journeyed far indeed. As the season advanced towards winter, cold winds blew down from the mountains, but the days were not appreciably shortened, and the trees and plants were different from the ones I knew.

I had thought that we would stay with the boat all the way to the Euxine, but when we stopped at Singidunum, Constantius reported to the fort's commander and found there orders that had been waiting in case he should come that way. The Emperor, having settled the barbarians, was preparing to march on Palmyra, where Zenobia had attempted to wrest her desert kingdom free from Roman rule.

Aurelian wanted Constantius, and he wanted him now. Authorization for posthorses was therefore included, and chits for lodging in the government mansios along the way. Leaving Philip and Brasilia to follow with our goods, Constantius and I set out by horseback along the good military road that led through Moesia and Thracia to Byzantium. From there, a ferry took us across the Straits of Marmara to the province of Bithynia, and the city of Nicomedia, where the Emperor and his court were now in residence.

"Wait until summer—this can be a beautiful land," said Constantius. His tone was bracing, as if I were a homesick recruit. It was not so far from the truth, I thought, tucking my heavy shawl more firmly around me. We had been here for over four months, much of which Constantius had spent riding back and forth between Drepanum and Nicomedia, where the Emperor was preparing for the Palmyran campaign. Zenobia, who called herself Queen of the East, had laid claim not only to her native Syria, but to Egypt and parts of the province of Asia as well. In another moon, the army being sent to punish her would be gone.

"This is February," I reminded him. Though we were too near to the straits for snow, the chill had settled in my bones. The villa he had rented for me was damp and draughty—a house built by people who refused to believe it would ever get cold. Not surprising, I thought glumly, since the town of Drepanum, just down the coast from Nicomedia and across the strait from Byzantium, was a popular resort to which the court escaped during the summer heat. In winter, it had only the spa with its hot springs to recommend it.

"Britannia is colder—" he began, the plates of his cuirass creaking as he turned. I had not yet become accustomed to how he looked in uniform, but it was clear to me that the merchant he had played in Eburacum was only half the man Constantius was meant to be.

"In Britannia," I retorted, "they build their houses to keep out the cold!"

"It's true that it was summer when I was here before," he capitulated, looking through the opened shutters at the rain that was dimpling the waters of the lily pool in the atrium. For most of the past two months it had rained. He turned to me again, suddenly serious.

"Helena, did I do wrong to take you from your homeland and drag you all the way here? I was so accustomed to the army, you see, and all the officers' wives who have travelled with them from post to post all over the Empire, I never thought that you were not bred up to this kind of life, and might… not…" He shrugged helplessly, his eyes fixed on my face.

I swallowed, searching for words. "My love, you must not mind my complaining. Don't you understand? You are my home now."

His bleak gaze brightened, like the sun breaking through clouds. I had a moment to admire him, then he took me in his arms, carefully, for we had already learned that his armour could leave bruises, and for the moment, I was not cold any more.

"I must go," he said at last, murmuring the words into my hair.

"I know…" Reluctantly I stepped away from his warmth, trying not to remember how soon he would be gone indeed, on the Palmyran campaign. The overlapping plates of the cuirass scraped slightly as he bent to pick up his heavy coat. I noted with sour satisfaction that it was a byrrus, the hairy, hooded kind we made in Britannia.

"By the time you reach the city, you will be wet through," I told him, not entirely sympathetically.

"I'm used to it," he grinned back at me, and I realized that not only was this true, but that he actually , liked confronting the weather.

I accompanied him to the entry and opened the door. Our house was halfway up the hill above the main part of the town. Tile roofs and the marble columns of the forum gleamed through drifting veils of rain. Philip was holding Constantius's horse, an old woollen mantle drawn over his head against the rain.

"I am sorry, lad—I did not mean to keep you waiting!" Constantius reached for the reins. As he started to mount, there was a squeak, and the horse, a skittish chestnut gelding, tossed its head and swung away. Constantius wrestled it down, and Philip made a step with his laced hands so that his master could swing a leg over the beast and settle himself between the horns of the military saddle.

But I was no longer watching. That odd squeaking noise had come again, or perhaps it was a whimper. My searching gaze fixed on a pile of debris swept against the corner of the wall by the overflow from the gutter. Had it moved, or was it only the wind? I picked up a twig blown down by the storm and bent to poke at the pile. It quivered, and suddenly I was staring down at a pair of bright black eyes.

"Helena, take care! It might be dangerous!" Constantius nudged the horse closer. From the rubbish came a faint but unmistakable growl. Bending closer, the debris proved to be a sodden huddle of hair, as if someone had lost a fur cap in the rain.

"It's a puppy!" I exclaimed, as a black button of a nose appeared beneath the eyes. "The poor thing!"

"Looks like a drowned rat to me." muttered Philip, but he was already pulling off his wool mantle and thrusting it at me to keep me from using my own shawl.

Gently, I scraped away the leaves and mud in which the puppy was tangled and lifted it out. There was no hint of warmth beneath my hand: I would have thought it dead had it not been for the desperate regard of those bright eyes. Murmuring softly, I cradled it against my breast, and imperceptibly, an emptiness that had been there since I lost Eldri began to fill.

"Be careful," said Coristantius. "It may be sick, and it will certainly have fleas."

"Oh yes," I answered, though in truth, I wondered if even a flea would be interested in the skin and bone beneath my hands. But I could feel the flutter of a heartbeat. "I will give this poor mite every care."

"I will be going, then," said Constantius as the horse sidled nervously.

"Yes, of course." I looked up at him, and something that had been strained in his face eased. His returning smile was like a caress. Then he pulled up the hood of his byrrus, reined the horse around, and put it into a splashing trot down the road.

When he had gone, I settled the puppy securely against my breast and carried him inside. A bath and a good meal improved his looks, though his breeding was as mixed as the population of the Empire. His ears were floppy, his coat a mixture of black and white, and there was a hint of a plume to his tail. The size of his paws suggested that if early starvation had not stunted him, he might grow to be a big dog indeed.

The eagerness with which he lapped up the bowl of broth Drusilla prepared for him demonstrated a commendable will to live.

"What will you call him?" asked Philip, less dubious now that the dog was clean.

"I was thinking of "Hylas", after the lover of Heracles whom the nymphs drowned in the pool. In these parts that is a popular tale." Indeed, it was in Chios, a few days' journey to the east along the coast, that Hylas was supposed to have been lost when the Argonauts stopped there on their way to capture the Golden Fleece.

"He certainly looks as if someone tried to drown him," the boy agreed, and so the dog was named.

That night Hylas slept in my chamber, and although my bed was still empty, it comforted my heart a little then and during the lonely months after Constantius had followed the Emperor southward to Syria to once more hear the patter of paws at my heels.

Constantius had been right about the weather. With summer, the sun shone triumphant from a cloudless sky and baked the grass on the hills to gold. The windows that had admitted so many draughts in February were thrown open to let in the sea breeze in the morning, and the wind off the lake in the afternoon. The local people said it was quite reasonable for the season, but after the mists of Britannia, I found the heat oppressive indeed.

By day, I dressed in the sheerest of gauzes and lay beneath a linen shade by the fountain in the atrium, Hylas panting by my side. At night I sometimes walked by the lake, the dog scampering ahead of me and Philip, clutching a cudgel and glaring suspiciously around him, a step behind. From time to time I would receive a letter from Constantius, who was marching, in armour, through country that made Drepanum sound as cool as Britannia by comparison. When we heard of the victory at Ancyra, the magistrates had ordered a great bonfire lit in the forum, and again after the good news from Antiochia.

With summer, a number of noble families from Nicomedia had transferred their households to Drepanum. Several of the women also had husbands who were with the Emperor, but we had little in common. Drusilla, who picked up all sorts of gossip at the market, told me that the word was going about that I was not Constantius's wife, but a girl he had found at an inn and made his concubine, and I understood why the ladies had been so distant. She was full of indignation, but I could hardly resent an opinion that from the legal point of view was true. There had been no marriage contract, no exchange of gifts or alliance of relatives to solemnize our union, only the blessing of the gods.

And in truth, I was glad to be relieved of social obligations, for with the nobles had come some of the Emperor's philosophers, and one of them had a skinny young apprentice called Sopater, who in exchange for what I could spare from the housekeeping money and a taste of Brasilia's cooking, was willing to tutor me.

The Greek I had learned as a child was rusty, and in this country I needed the common tongue to speak with tradesmen, and the more rarefied language of the philosophers to read the works of Porphyry and others who were making such a stir.

Sopater was both young and earnest, but once he relaxed sufficiently to look me in the face at our lessons, we got on well, and if during those long summer days it was too hot to move my body, at least my mind was active. I needed the distraction; for after the great battle at Emesa, I had received no word from Constantius, or of him, at all.

But just at dusk one evening shortly after midsummer, when I had finished my bath and was considering a walk by the lakeside, I heard a commotion outside, and above Hylas's furious barking, a voice that made the breath catch in my throat. I dragged the nearest garment over my head, and with tousled hair and the sheer tunica unbelted, ran out into the entry.

In the light of the hanging lamp I saw Constantius, fined down by the campaign to bone and muscle, his hair bleached to pale gold and his skin brick-red from the sun. He was alive! Only in that moment did I admit to myself how deeply I had feared his death in those desert sands. From the look on his face I realized that with the light behind me I might as well have been naked. But what I saw in his gaze was something more than desire, it was awe.

"Domina et dea…" he whispered, which was a title even the Empress did not claim, and yet I understood, for in that moment I saw him, as I had seen him at that Beltane on Avalon, as the god.

I motioned to the servants to leave us, and then, holding out my hand, drew him after me into our bedchamber. Hylas, after the first flurry of barking, had fallen silent; perhaps he had recognized Constantius's scent as belonging to this room. As we moved towards the bed, I heard him flop down before the door.

After that I ceased to think about the dog or anything else beyond my own need for the man in my arms.

We came together in that first frantic encounter like wanderers in the desert who finding an oasis, were desperate to assuage our thirst. Struggling with each other's garments, we fell upon the bed. Later, I was to find my tunica in a corner, torn in two. When we had shuddered to completion, I held Constantius in my arms, waiting until his galloping heartbeat slowed.

"Was the fighting very bad?" I asked as I helped him to remove the remainder of his clothing.

Constantius sighed. "The Arabs plagued us all the way through Syria, picking off men with arrows, trying to raid the baggage train. When we reached Palmyra, Zenobia was ready for us. We couldn't take the place by assault—the Emperor himself was wounded—so we had to sit down to a siege. Aurelian offered terms, but she thought the Persians would save her. Only their king, Sapor, died, and they were too busy fighting each other to worry about Rome. Then Probus finished dealing with Egypt and came to reinforce us. It was all over, and Zenobia knew it. She tried to flee, but we caught her and brought her back in chains."

"So you won—you should be triumphant," I commented, reminded of Boudicca, and repressing my instinctive sympathy.

He shook his head, stretching out and settling me with my head pillowed on his arm. "Zenobia had sworn to kill herself if captured, but she panicked, put all the blame on Longinus and the other men who served her. And Aurelian executed them. So she will walk in his Triumph after all… I understand why they had to die," he added after a moment had passed, "but it left a bad taste all the same. At least the Emperor… did not appear to enjoy it."

Oh my poor love, I thought, turning to cradle his head against my breast, you are tempered too finely to be used for this butchery.

"When we had won the city… the other officers took women," he whispered then. "I could not do it, not with all that death around."

I tightened my grip, unreasonably pleased, whatever the reason, that he had been faithful. It was not something I had a right to ask, but it certainly, I thought with secret amusement, explained the intensity of his need.

"You are life…" murmured Constantius.

His lips brushed one nipple. I could feel both of them harden at his touch, and the rekindling of the fire between my thighs.

"I have seen so much killing… let me make life in you…"

His hands moved upon my body with a deliberation and a need more compelling than his first compulsion, and I found myself opening to his touch more deeply than ever before. At the ultimate moment he rose above me and I saw his features by firelight, focused in ecstasy.

"The sun!" he gasped. "The sun shines at midnight!"

At that moment my own completion came upon me, and I could not tell him that it was only the light of the bonfire they had kindled to celebrate the Emperor's victory.

In the silent hour before dawn, the only time, at this season, that it was truly cool, I rose to relieve myself. When I returned from the privy, I stood for a time, gazing out of the window and enjoying the touch of the chill air on my bare skin. The fire in the forum had burned out, and sleep, that next to death was the greatest of conquerors, had overwhelmed the revellers. Even Hylas, who had roused when I did, had lain down again.

A sound from the bed made me turn. Constantius was clutching at the bedclothes, groaning. As I watched, tears squeezed from beneath his tight-shut eyelids and began to roll down his cheeks. I hurried back and lay down beside him, winding him in my arms. Once, I thought, I had been the one who had the nightmares, but since I left Avalon I did not dream any more.

"It's all right," I murmured, knowing it was the tone that would reach him, not the words. "You are all right now—I am here…"

"The sun shines at midnight—" he groaned. "The temple burns! Apollo! Apollo is weeping!"

I soothed him, wondering if this was something he had seen on the campaign. The Emperor's personal deity was the sun-god—I could not believe he would willingly destroy a sanctuary, but I had heard that in warfare the destruction sometimes got out of hand.

"Hush, my love, and open your eyes—it is morning, do you see? Apollo is driving his chariot above the rim of the world—"

With lips and hands I set out to awaken him, and was rewarded presently when he quickened to my touch once more. This time our loving was slow and sweet. By the time we had finished, Constantius was awake once more, and smiling.

"Ah, my queen, I have brought gifts for you—" Naked, he padded over to the bag that someone had brought while we slept and set just inside the door. "I meant to array you in this for our first night back together, but you are more beautiful clad only in your night-dark hair…'

He rummaged in the bag, and pulled out something wrapped in unbleached linen. As the rough cloth fell away, a blaze of colour smote the eye. Constantius shook out a silk chiton dyed the true, imperial purple, and held it out to me.

"My love, it is too splendid!" I exclaimed, but I took the garment, wondering at the fine weave of the fabric, and slipped it over my head. I shivered as the silk caressed my skin and swayed, feeling the soft folds mould themselves to my body.

"By the gods, purple becomes you!" he exclaimed, his glance kindling.

"But I can never wear it," I reminded him.

"Not outside," he agreed, "but in our bedchamber you are my Empress and my Queen!"

And in bed or out, you, my beloved, are my Emperor! I thought, admiring the powerful balance of his naked body, but even here I dared not speak those words aloud.

Constantius put his arm around me and drew me to the east-facing window. I sighed, replete with loving, feeling in my body a sense of fulfilment I had not known before. Surely, I thought then, I must come away from such a night as this had been with child.

Together we stood watching as the sun, like a victorious emperor, lifted above the horizon and banished night's mysteries from the world.



« Poslednja izmena: 10. Dec 2005, 13:43:06 od Makishon »
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In Britannia, September had been a month of misty sunshine, but the forum at Naissus blazed with light beneath a brilliant blue sky. From the shade of the awning that had been raised to shelter the families of the imperial officers I could feel the waves of heat rising from the cobbles of the square. I had hoped, when Constantius told me of his new posting, that the plains that bordered the Danuvius in Dacia, being farther north, would be cooler than Bithynia, but in the summer, this inland city seemed even hotter than Drepanum, which had at least sometimes got a breeze from the sea. I could feel perspiration gathering beneath the fillet I wore to hide the crescent moon tattooed upon my brow. I took a deep breath, hoping I would not faint. Three months into pregnancy, I was still sick in the mornings and at intervals throughout the day.

Perhaps it was hunger that was making me feel so light-headed, I thought then, for I had not dared to eat before the ceremony, or perhaps it was the heavy scent of the incense. Two priests swung censers beside the altar; with each swing, more smoke swirled into the air. The haze drifted like a gauzy curtain before the columns that formed the western side of the square where the ground fell away towards the River Navissus. Beyond the tiled rooftops, a gleam of water, fields gold with stubble and low blue hills wavered in the heated air, insubstantial as a dream.

"Are you unwell?" Someone spoke nearby.

I blinked, and focused on the bony, dark face of the woman beside me. With an effort I remembered that she was called Vitellia, the wife of one of Constantius's fellow Protectores.

"I will be," I answered, flushing. "I'm not ill, it's just—" I felt myself colouring agin.

"Ah, of course. I have borne four children, and I was sick as a hound-bitch with three of them—not that dogs generally have morning sickness—" she added, large teeth showing as she smiled. "The first one I bore when we were stationed in Argentorate, the second and the third in Alexandria, and my last boy was born in Londinium."

I gazed at her in respect. She had followed the Eagles all over the Empire. "I come from Britannia…" I said then.

"I liked it," Vitellia gave a decisive nod, setting her earrings swinging. A little golden fish winked from her breast, suspended from a fine chain. "We still have a house there, and perhaps we'll return when my husband retires."

The procession was almost at an end. The flute players had spread out to one side of the altar, and the six maidens, having scattered their flowers, took up their position on the other. The priestess who walked behind them halted before the altar and cast a handful of barley into the fire that burned there, calling on Vesta, who lived in the flame.

"I had heard you were from the Isle," said Vitellia. "Your man came back from exile there and did so well in the Syrian campaign he's been made a tribune."

I nodded, appreciating her matter-of-fact acceptance of my somewhat ambiguous marital status. Since Constantius's promotion, some of the women who had pointedly ignored me before had become gushingly respectful, but Vitellia struck me as the sort of woman who would behave the same to a fish-wife as to an empress. The thought turned my gaze back to the forum.

The Emperor presided from a shaded dais behind the altar, with his senior officers around him. Seated on his throne, Aurelian looked like the statue of a god, but when Constantius presented me I had been surprised to find him a small man, with thinning hair and tired eyes.

Automatically, my gaze moved to the end of the line where Constantius himself was standing, just at the edge of the shade. When he moved his breastplate caught the sunlight. I blinked—for a moment he had seemed to stand in an aureole of light. But of course, I thought, smiling, he always looked like a god to me. The armour flashed again as he straightened, and I saw that the priests were coming through the archway with the sacrificial bull. The animal was white, its horns and neck garlanded with flowers. It moved slowly; no doubt it had been drugged to prevent any inauspicious struggle from marring the ceremony. The procession came to a halt before the altar and the priest began to intone the prayers. The bull stilled, its head drooping as if the droning incantation had been a sleep spell.

A second priest moved forward, hard muscle bunching in his arms as he lifted the pole-axe. There was a moment of stillness, then it blurred downward. The resounding 'thunk' as it struck the animal's skull reverberated from the columns. But the ox was already sinking to its knees. As it fell, one priest caught its horns, holding them long enough for the other to plunge the knife into the beast's throat and jerk crossways.

Blood rolled across the stones in a red tide. Several of the men who were watching averted their eyes, crossing themselves in the Christian sign against evil. It is only evil for the bull, I thought ruefully, or perhaps not even for him, if he consented to be the offering. Surely the Christians, who worshipped a sacrificed god, knew that death could be holy. It seemed rather small-minded of them to deny that sanctity to all religions but their own.

Holy it might be, but as the sickly-sweet scent of blood overwhelmed the incense on the air I felt my gorge rise. I drew my veil across my face, and sat very still, breathing carefully. It would be impolitic as well as unlucky to disgrace myself at the ceremony. A pungent whiff of herbs cleared my head and I opened my eyes.

Vitellia was holding out a spray of lavender and rosemary. I took another deep breath and thanked her.

"Is it your first child?"

"The first that I have carried this long," I answered.

"May God's Holy Mother bless you then, and bring you safe to term," said Vitellia, looking back towards the forum with a frown.

It was not a scene to enjoy, I thought, but I did not quite understand her disapproval. I tried to remember if her husband had been one of the men who crossed himself when the bull was killed.

The beast had mostly bled out by this time, and the lesser priests were sluicing the blood towards the gutters. The others had the body cavity open and had set the liver in a silver bowl so that the haruspex could examine it. Even the Emperor was leaning forward to listen to his muttering.

For me, trained in the oracular tradition of Avalon, augury by entrails had always seemed a clumsy method of divination. When the mind had been properly prepared, the flight of a bird or the fall of a leaf could be an omen, triggering the insights of prophecy. At least the bull had been killed cleanly and with reverence. When we feasted on its flesh that night, we would accept our own place in the cycle of life and death, even as we shared in its blessing. I placed my hand on my belly, just beginning to harden as the child within me grew.

The haruspex wiped his fingers on a linen towel and turned towards the dais.

"All honour to the Emperor, favoured of the gods—" he declaimed. "The Shining Ones have spoken. The winter that is coming will be a mild one. If you take the field, you will have victory over your enemies."

I only realized how tense the crowd had been when I heard the murmur of comment. Several strong men were dragging the bull away to be cooked for the feast. The maidens came forwards, lifting their arms to the heavens and began to sing.

"Hail, Thou resplendent and sovereign sun,
Adore we Thy glory, oh Thou holy one!
So help us and heal us, until as above,
Below, all is beauty and all know Thy love…"

I felt the tears start in my eyes as the pure sweet voices intertwined, remembering how I used to sing with the other maidens on Avalon. It had been a long time since I had called upon the Goddess, but the singing awakened in me a longing I had almost forgotten. The chant was for Apollo, or whatever name they used for the sun-god in the Danuvian lands. It was the custom for each emperor to exalt the deity who was his patron, but it was said that Aurelian wished to go further, and proclaim the sun to be the visible emblem of a single, all-powerful being who was the highest god of all.

At Avalon also I had encountered such an idea, though it was the Great Goddess whom we saw as Mother of everything. But I had been taught also that any honest impulse of worship will find the Source behind all images, no matter what name is called, and so I set my hands upon my belly and closed my eyes and sent forth a plea that I might carry this child the full term and bear it healthy and alive.

"Come, Lady Helena," said Vitellia. "The ceremony is over, and you won't want to keep your lord waiting. They say that Constantius is a man with a future. You must make a good impression at the celebration."

I had hoped that Vitellia and I might be seated near each other at the banquet, but Constantius escorted me to a couch just below the dais, while she and her husband remained near the back of the room. She had been correct, I thought as I stretched out and spread my skirts modestly over my ankles and watched him speaking with the Emperor. The fact that my husband had won Aurelian's favour was becoming clear. I tried to ignore the murmur of speculation from the women nearby. Constantius would not have brought me here without the blessing of Aurelian, and what the Emperor approved, no gossiping woman, however exalted her status, might deny.

On the next couch lay one of the largest men I had ever seen. Obviously he was a German, from his flaxen hair to his cross-gartered breeches, with muscular arms showing beneath the short-sleeved tunic. But around his neck was a golden torque, and the bands on his upper arms and wrists were also gold.

"You are Lady Helena, yes?" he asked. I flushed, realizing he had caught me watching him, but he did not seem to mind. With such a physique, I thought then, he must be accustomed to attracting attention. "Constantius says much about you." His accent was guttural, but he spoke good enough Latin, by which I concluded that he had served with the legions for some time.

"You were on the campaign?"

"In the desert—" he grimaced, holding out one brawny arm, where the fair skin had been baked nearly to the colour of brick by the sun.

I nodded in understanding. I had learned quickly that it was not modesty but necessity that impelled women to go veiled when they walked outside in this land.

"I am a leader of auxiliaries—of Alamanni spears. You Romans cannot pronounce my name." He grinned. "So Crocus I am called. Your man saved my life at Ancyra, more than his duty. I give him my oath, I and my kin."

I nodded, understanding him as, perhaps, a Roman woman could not, and understanding as well that this loyalty extended to Constantius's family.

"Thank you. My father was a prince among the British tribes, and I know what this means to you. I accept your service—" I set my hand upon my belly, "for myself and my child."

Crocus bent his head with even greater reverence than before. "I see that it is true, what he says about you." He paused as I lifted an eyebrow, and then continued. "Among my people we know that women are holy, so when he says you are like a goddess, I know it is true."

That Constantius should think so did not surprise me, but such talk was for the privacy of the bedchamber. I could not help but wonder in what extremity of danger he and this man had found themselves, for him to have revealed his inner mind so far. But I had realized already that there were things that a soldier did not speak of at home, things that Constantius strove to forget when he lay in my arms, and I would probably never know.

"To you and your child," he repeated my words, "I pledge my troth, to protect and defend against all foes."

The babble of conversation had receded, leaving the two of us in a great silence. I bowed my head, my eyes blurring with tears. It seemed a long time since I had used the senses by which the spirit sees truly, but even though there was no altar here, and neither priest nor sacrifice, I knew that the oath that Crocus had just sworn had been witnessed by the gods.

"I see that the two of you have met." Constantius spoke beside me and I looked up, blinking the tears away.

"Crocus tells me that you saved his life," I said quickly, lest he misunderstand my emotion, and moving over so that he could recline on the couch at my side.

"Did he tell you that he saved mine as well?" His smile to Crocus was a warning not to frighten the womenfolk with soldiers' tales.

"She does not need to be told."

Constantius's eyebrows twitched, but he thought better of enquiring further. He leaned on one elbow and waved towards the dais.

"Aurelian is honouring all the heroes of the campaign—he has Maximian up there with him, I see."

I followed his gesture and saw a thick-set man with a shock of greying brown hair, as formidable as a bull. He looked like a farmer, as indeed, his parents had been, but he had a gift for war.

"And there is Docles beside him," Constantius went on. Next to Maximian sat a big man with thinning reddish hair above a broad brow. Lines of rigid control marked his features despite, or perhaps because of, the colour of his hair.

"Now there's a man to watch. His father was only a herdsman in Dalmatia, unless some god begot him. He seems to have been born with a genius for fighting, anyhow, and he is a good administrator as well, which is even more valuable in a general."

"And more rare?" I asked. But just then the slaves began to serve us the first course of the banquet, and he forbore to reply.

Constantius had been posted to the Cohors Prima Aurelia Dardanorum, who were garrisoned near the junction of the Navissus and the Margus. I had hoped that this meant he would be commuting between the fort and the house he had rented for me in Naissus, but at the beginning of November, the Dardanians were ordered to assist in the pursuit of the retreating Goths, and Constantius, his baggage packed with woollens against the suddenly chilly weather, marched north and left me alone.

Only a thin line of hills protected Naissus from the winds that swept across the open Danuvian plain, winds born in the steppes of Scythia that had warmed only enough to pick up some moisture in their passage across the Euxine Sea. Soon, I thought as I wrapped a shawl around my shoulders, there would be snow. Still, in this country they knew how to build for cold weather, and not only did the house have a hypocaust that kept warmth rising from the tiled floors, but in the large room Constantius had chosen for our bedchamber, there was an actual hearth. It was for that reason that Constantius had rented it, he had told me, so that the warmth of an open fire would remind me of home.

As my pregnancy progressed I spent much of my time in that chamber. It seemed unfair that Constantius, who had comforted me through the first three months, should have had to leave me just as the sickness was passing and my belly began to round out as the child grew. I had passed through the phase when women most often miscarried their children, and I now felt certain that I would carry this babe to term. Indeed, I had never felt better. When the weather permitted, I would walk with Drusilla to the market-place in the centre of town; Philip, who had become very protective, a half-step behind us and Hylas scampering ahead.

Good food and affection had transformed the little dog, who now stood nearly as high as my knee, with a silky black and white coat and a wildly-waving plume of tail. To Hylas, the market was a place of infinite possibility, full of fascinating smells and even more interesting and odoriferous objects. It was poor Philip's task to keep the dog from trying to drag them home. For the human members of the household the market was a source of gossip that kept us informed about the progress of the campaign.

The Goths they were fighting were the last survivors of the great incursion that had shaken the Empire two years before. But even in the days when Rome still claimed Dacia, its northern mountains had resisted the penetration of the legions. The Goths had melted into the wilderness like snow in summer. But it was winter now, and a dwindling food supply would put them at a disadvantage before the well-fed legions.

Or at least we could hope so. To think of Constantius on the march, wet and hungry while I sat warm before my fire, chilled my soul. But there was nothing I could do to help him. Only my yearning spirit reached out across the leagues that separated us, as if by doing so I could bring him some comfort.

And more and more, as winter drew in, it seemed that I was indeed touching his spirit. I had tried to do this when Constantius was in Syria, without success. Was it because I now carried his child that the link had strengthened, or perhaps because my successful pregnancy had restored a confidence lost when I was exiled from Avalon?

I dared not question too closely. It was enough, in the long winter evenings, to sit before the hearthfire, humming softly as I combed out my hair, and allow a vision of Constantius to take shape among the glowing coals.

On one such evening, just before the solstice when soldiers celebrate the birth of Mithras, I found the visions I saw in the coals taking on an unusual clarity. A chunk of charring firewood was transformed into a mountainside, and below it, on an outcrop, glowing sticks became the square palisade of a Roman marching camp with neat rows of tents laid out inside. Smiling, I indulged the fancy. Constantius might be settling down for the night in just such a camp even now. I leaned forwards, willing myself to see the tent in which he lay—

—and suddenly I was there in the camp, staring at falling tents and running men lit by the flames of the burning palisade as the Goths burst in. Spearpoints flickered like exploding sparks as the Romans rallied, swords darting in and out in tongues of flame. Frantic, I searched for Constantius, and found him standing back-to-back with Crocus. He was defending himself with a legionary's pilum, while the big German fought with a longer German spear, and their valour had swept a circle of safety around them.

But even together they could not defeat the entire Gothic army, and the rest of the Romans were getting the worst of it. There were so many! Now another contingent drove towards Constantius. Instinctively I leapt forwards with an inarticulate cry. I do not know what the Goths saw, but they recoiled.

Suddenly I remembered a fragment of teaching from Avalon, offered as a historical curiosity, since surely we would never have any use for it now. In the ancient days, the Druid priestesses had been taught battle-magic, spells to protect their warriors, and the shriek of the Raven-Goddess that had the power to unman a foe.

It was that shriek that I felt building in my breast now, a cry of rage, of despair, of utter negation. I extended my arms and they became black wings, bearing me upward as that fury filled me, body and soul.

The Goths looked up, mouths opening, fingers flexing in the sign against evil as I swooped towards them. They were no Romans, to make divinities of abstractions and abstract principles of their deities. They knew the spirit world was real…

"Waelcyrige! Haliruno!" they cried as I bore down upon them. And then I opened my throat, and the scream that left my lips separated them from their senses, and me from consciousness as well.

When I opened my eyes once more, Drusilla and Philip were bending over me, faces blanched with fear.

"My lady, my lady! What was it? We heard a cry—"

I looked at them, thinking that I did not want the love with which they served me to change to fear.

"A nightmare, I think," I muttered. "I must have fallen asleep before the fire."

"Are you all right? Is the child—"

In sudden alarm I set my hand to my belly, but all was well. "He is a soldier's son," I managed to grin at them. "It will take more than a little noise to frighten him."

It was the Goths who had been frightened, I thought in satisfaction, if what I remembered had been true vision, and not a dream.

After that I sent Philip to the market-place each morning, seeking news, until a letter came from Constantius, telling me that he was well, and not to worry if I heard there had been a battle. He had not been hurt, and in the fighting the Gothic king Cannabaudes had been killed. And by the way, and here I could almost hear the uneasy laughter with which Romans responded when they thought the powers they worshipped might actually be real—Crocus said that the enemy had been routed by a goddess with my face…

When we had first come together in the Great Rite, Constantius had seen me as the Goddess; and he had done so on the night I conceived my child. Why then, I wondered, should he be surprised?

The Romans, I reflected as I wrapped my shawl around me, were prone to fall into one error or its opposite—either to hold that the visible world was only an imperfect reflection of the Ideal, which the philosopher sought to transcend, or to live in a world of unpredictable forces which must be constantly propitiated. The one despised the world while the other feared it, and the Christians, I had heard, did both, calling on their god to save them from his own judgment.

But everyone believed in omens. If Constantius had not provided for me I could have made a good living as a seeress, using the skills I had learned on Avalon. And what omen, I wondered then, should I find in my vision of the battle? I set my hand on my belly, smiling as I felt the flutter of movement within.

Was it your valiant spirit that inspired me, my little one? Surely you will be a great general, if you are helping to win battles even before you are born!

And what, I asked myself then, did I believe? I did not fear the world, but neither did I reject it. We had learned a third way, on Avalon. My training there had taught me to sense the spirit in everything, and to recognize that for the most part the world went its way with little interest in humankind. The raven that croaked from the rooftop did not know that the man who listened would hear a message—it was the man whose mind must be altered in order to find meaning in it, not the bird. Spirit moved through all things; to learn to live in harmony with that movement was the Way of the Wise.

The babe stirred once more in my belly, and I laughed, understanding anew why we saw a Goddess when we sought to give a face to the Highest Power. Now that the first months of adjustment to pregnancy were over, I had never felt so well. Filled and fulfilled, I was simultaneously acutely aware of my body and one with the life force that flowed through everything.

As the winter progressed and my belly grew ever larger, my euphoria was tempered with an understanding of why the Goddess might sometimes want to let her creation fend for itself. I gloried in my role as human cornucopia, but it would have been a relief at times if I could have set my fertile belly down. By the time Constantius and the Dardanians returned from their campaign, early in the second month of the year, it seemed to me that I could have posed for a statue of Taueret, the Egyptian hippopotamus goddess who presided over pregnancy.

Upon learning of my condition, the wives of Constantius's fellow-officers had been quick to share every story of childbed trauma to be found in what was obviously a rich folklore, while cheerfully offering me the services of Egyptian physicians and Greek mid-wives. When I was still at Avalon birthing had never been one of my specialties, but fortunately it was covered as part of our training in healing. When I woke in the still hours, still trembling from some nightmare of a botched delivery, I knew enough to quiet my worst fears.

But the midwife I chose was a woman Brasilia had found for me called Marcia, who had a good reputation among the wives of the town. A sturdy, matter-of-fact soul with a frizz of auburn hair and an ample bosom, she insisted on consultations with the mother-to-be well before the delivery, and consented to work only for those who would follow her directions regarding diet, exercise and rest.

When she had measured my girth and calculated my due date Marcia recommended activity. The child was large already, she told me, and the birth would go easier if I could deliver him early. I understood what she did not say. When an infant was too big, it came down to a choice between cutting into the mother, as they said the great Caesar had been born, or dismembering the child to extract it from the womb. It was then that I began to make offerings to Eilythia for a safe delivery. I was willing to die for the sake of the Child of Prophecy, but if it came to a choice between us, I knew that Constantius would wish to save me.

And so as February drew on I walked to the market with Brasilia in the mornings, and down to the river and back up the hill every afternoon, ignoring Constantius's worried frown. I walked on the occasional day of watery sunshine, ignoring the twinges as my womb prepared for its task, and through the rain, even when it turned to sleet and snow.

"You do not train your soldiers for battle by keeping them idle in camp," I told Constantius. "This is my battle, and I intend to go into it as fit as I can."

And on the twenty-seventh day of that month, coming back up the hill to our house I slipped on a wet cobblestone and sat down hard. As Brusilla helped me back to my feet I felt the gush of warm water from my womb mingling with the cold water that soaked my gown, and the first hard pang as labour began.

The household clucked and bustled in panic around me, but I had hoped for just such an accident. As one of the maids rushed off to find Marcia and Philip took horse to go out to the fortress for Constantius, I lay back upon the bed with a grin of triumph, until the next contraction came.

My time had come upon me early, but my womb, once started in its labour, seemed in no hurry to expel its contents. Through the rest of that day and the night that followed the contractions continued. The merciful amnesia that allows a woman who has given birth to face the prospect again has dimmed my memories of most of that time. Indeed, sometimes it is the fathers who remember so vividly that they fear to let their wives suffer so again.

If I had not been in such good condition I doubt I would have survived, and even so, as the second day drew on and my pangs, instead of becoming closer together, began to slow, the women who attended me looked grave, and I remember telling Marcia that if it came to a choice, she must cut me and save the child. The rain had stopped and the light of the westering sun, coming through the window, flamed in her hair.

"Nay," she said then. "It is true that once the waters have broken the birth must not be too long delayed, but fear not to let your body rest for a little while. I have a trick or two left in my bag that can get things going once more."

In my exhaustion I found it hard to believe her. I closed my eyes, wincing as the child within me kicked. This must be hard for him as well, trapped in a constricting bag that was squeezing him into a passageway too narrow for his frame. But he had no choice about it now, and neither did I.

"Goddess, was it so terrible for You, when You gave birth to the world!" came my silent cry. "I have seen the passion that drives Your creatures to reproduce their kind. Help me to deliver this child! I will give you whatever you ask"

And it seemed to me then that from the depths of my pain there came an answer.

"Whatever I ask? Even if it means that you must lose him?"

"So long as he stays alive!" I replied.

"You will keep him, and you will lose him. He will trample your heart as he pursues his destiny. The changes that he brings you can neither predict nor control. But you must not despair. Even when they bring pain, growth and change and alteration are all part of My plan, and all that is lost will one day return once more…"

I was in pain already, and could not understand. I knew only the need to bring forth my child. I made some motion of assent, and abruptly I was back in my body once more. Marcia set a cup of tea to my lips whose bitterness was perceptible even through the honey they had mixed in. I tried to identify the herbs, but caught only the astringent taste of yarrow and red cedar.

Whatever it was, when it hit my empty stomach it began to work immediately. The contractions returned with a wrenching agony that overwhelmed my intention not to scream. Again and again I was wracked by the pain, but presently I was able to discern a kind of rhythm in it. Marcia got me up onto the birthing stool and gave me a wad of cloth to bite down on. Brasilia braced herself behind me and one of the maids took either arm. I learned later that I had gripped their wrists so tightly I left bruises, but I was not aware of doing so at the time.

I felt the warm seep of blood and the hot oil with which Marcia was massaging me. "You're doing well," she told me. "When the urge comes, bear down with all your might!"

Then the giant hand squeezed once more, and I pushed, past caring whether anyone heard my cry. Again and again it came, until I thought I must split in two.

"I have the head," said Marcia, and then a last convulsion seized me and the rest of the child slid free. A purplish, struggling form swung across my vision as she lifted it, ummistakably male, and then the room resounded to a roar of protest that must surely have been as loud as any of my own.

Dimly I was aware of being lifted to the bed once more. Women bustled around me, packing me with cloths to stop the bleeding, washing me, changing the bedding. I paid no attention to their chatter. What matter if I was too badly torn to bear another—this child lived! I could hear his lusty cries even from the next room.

A face appeared above me. It was Sopater, with a man in the robes of a Chaldean priest whom I remembered being told was an astrologer.

"Your son was born at the fifth hour past noon," said Sopater. "We have a preliminary horoscope already. Mars is in Taurus and Saturn lies in Leo. This child will be a warrior, stubborn in defeat and unyielding in victory. But Jupiter reigns in the sign of Cancer and there also sits his moon—your son will care strongly for his family. But above all, Aquarius will rule, rising with his Venus and his sun."

I nodded and he turned away, still excited. I heard the clink of glassware and realized that they were drinking to the baby's health in the next room. How unfair, I thought then. All the work was done by me! But that was the custom, when a man claimed his son, and I should be glad for it.

I was, by Roman reckoning, an illegitimate child, and though my father had acknowledged me in the British fashion, he had never bothered to draw up papers of formal adoption, having always intended me for Avalon. In Roman law, I was Constantius's concubina, a relationship which was legally recognized, but lower in status than a formal wedding. But even had we been married confarreatio, in the most ancient and formal of patrician styles, it would still have fallen to my husband to claim the infant as his own and to decide whether he should live.

As I lay in the bed, too exhausted to open my eyes, yet still tense with excitement, it seemed wrong to me that the man should have that power. It was not he who had formed the child out of his own flesh, nor he who would nurse it. A memory came to me of Avalon, when I sat listening with the other maidens while Cigfolla taught us the midwife's skills.

The woman of ancient times had possessed a strength we no longer claimed. If she had too many children, or not enough strength to rear another child, or if feeding it would deprive the tribe at the wrong time of year, she could look into the face of the child and put forth her hand and send that child back into nowhere and nothingness as if it had never been born.

Lying in my bed, listening to the murmur of talk from the men in the next room, I understood her meaning as I had not when I was a girl. I realized then that a woman is never free to bear a child unless she is also free to abort it. A man must know that he is breathing because his mother looked on his face and saw that it was good and chose freely to nourish him. This child, who lived because I had given up so much in order to conceive and bear him, must never be allowed to forget that he owed his life to me.

And then the men came back into the bedchamber, and my little son was laid in my arms. Constantius looked down at us. His face bore the marks of an anguish which I suppose must have been the echo of my own pain, but his eyes were shining with joy.

"I have given you a son," I whispered.

"He is a fine boy," Constantius answered, "but I would have considered him a poor trade for you! We will call him Constantine."

I looked down at the fuzz of golden down on the baby's head, whose curve repeated the round of the breast against which he nuzzled, already hungry. In law he might be his father's, but it was I, who by my care or my neglect, would determine whether he survived.

And he would survive! For the sake of this child I had suffered through this birthing, and abandoned Avalon and everyone there that I loved. He must be worth saving, to justify my pain! Nonetheless, as I put him to the breast I took a secret satisfaction in remembering that every woman has within herself this tremendous power to give life… or to deny it.
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10

In the year that Constantine was ten years old, we took up residence in the old palace in Sirmium. Since his birth, we had moved regularly as Constantius was shifted from one posting to another, contriving not only to survive but to rise in rank through the turmoil that had followed the assassination of the Emperor Aurelian when Constantine was two. That first imperial death had shocked me, for I had come to respect the little man whose order had wrenched us from Britannia into this new life. But by the time Aurelian had been followed by Tacitus, and Tacitus by Florianus, and Florianus by Probus, we had all learned to give the current wearer of the purple no more than a wary courtesy.

Probus was proving to be an effective emperor, suppressing barbarian invasions in Gallia and recruiting the defeated Burgunds and Vandals as federati forces which he then sent to Britannia to put down a revolt led by its current governor. With my mind, I understood the military necessity, but my heart wept at the thought that a Roman had loosed a barbarian horde against my native land. When Probus chose Constantius as one of his tribunes and ordered us to Sirmium I found it hard to rejoice.

Constantine had been quite excited to hear we were going to live in a palace. But by this time I had some experience of administrative housing, and would have been much happier with a snug little villa on the outskirts of town. A newly-built villa. The palace which Probus had chosen as his headquarters had been constructed originally by Marcus Aurelius a century before. There was no telling when it had last been repaired. The frescoes on the walls were disfigured by ominous stains where the damp had got in, and the hangings had holes where mice had done the same.

But here, the Emperor had decreed, was where he and his staff would live, and since Constantius was the most senior officer whose wife was with him, it had fallen to me to make the place habitable for us all. I wiped perspiration from my forehead, for it was one of the hottest days in an exceptionally warm summer, and directed the maidservants to change the water with which they were scrubbing the wall.

"When I am a man, I am going to build new palaces," Constantine had told me when we moved in. I believed him. When he was little he had constructed fortresses out of the furniture. These days he bullied the children of the other officers into helping him erect buildings in the gardens—pavilions and play-houses, guarded by fortifications laid out with military precision.

I could hear the sound of young voices raised in laughter, and my son's bellow of command overriding them all. Atticus, the Greek whom we had bought to be Constantine's tutor, had given them an afternoon's holiday, saying it was too hot to do lessons indoors. Play was apparently another matter. The boys seemed to be working more willingly than the soldiers whom the Emperor had set to digging ditches through the marshes below the town.

"Perhaps he will be an engineer for the legions," Constantius had commented when he came home the evening before, evaluating the design with an experienced eye.

But I did not think our child would be satisfied with building walls to military specifications, or draining marshland, either. Whatever Constantine created would reflect his own vision of the world.

The doors of the dining chamber had been thrown open to the gardens in the hope of letting in a little air. At least here, on the higher ground at the southern edge of the city, we could expect a breeze. Beyond the garden wall the ground fell away to the River Savus. Down there, where several hundred legionaries were sweating in the sun, it must be stifling. At least Constantius did not have to labour with a shovel, but I knew that he would be hot and thirsty by the time he returned.

Even the boys might be grateful to stop their play long enough for a drink of something cool. I told the maidservants they could rest for a little and sent one of them to bring the earthenware jug of barley-water from the kitchen.

Constantine stood near the back wall of the garden, directing two other boys as they lifted a framework of wickerwork to roof the structure they had made. As always, the sudden sight of my son could make my breath catch, and now, with the strong sunlight blazing on his fair hair, he was like a young god. He was going to be tall, like my father, but he had Constantius's sturdy bones—he was already bigger than most boys his age.

He would be a magnificent man. Drusilla had tried to console me when it became clear that I would never bear another child. But in time, seeing women of my own age made old by constant pregnancies, I had realized I should be grateful. And why should I wish for other children, with such a son?

"No, it is not quite right—" Constantine stood with hands braced on his hips, head cocked to one side. "We must take it down."

"But Con—" protested the younger of his helpers, a son of one of the centurions who was called Pollio, "we just got it up there!"

I smiled to hear the nickname. It was an obvious shortening of the Latin name, but in my own tongue 'con' was the word for a hound.

"And it's hot," added the other boy, Marinus, who came from a merchant family in the town. "We can rest in the shade until sunset and finish it then."

"But it's not right…" Constantine gazed at them in incomprehension. "The slope has to be at an angle or it will be unbalanced—"

My heart went out to him. He could see the desired result so clearly in his mind, and reality kept falling short of his dreams. Well, life would teach him soon enough that one cannot always order the world to one's liking, I thought, remembering my own girlhood. Let him enjoy his illusions while he could.

But it was hot. Even Hylas, who usually frisked at my feet like a puppy when we went outdoors, had flopped down in the shade of the disputed wickerwork and lay panting.

"I have brought some barley-water to cool you," I interrupted, taking pity on the two younger boys. "When you have drunk it perhaps the task will seem easier."

I poured cups from the sweating terra cotta jug for the boys and took my own to the garden wall, pausing to pour out a few drops before the image of the nymph of the garden in her shrine. It had taken me some time to become accustomed to the Roman preoccupation with images, as if they needed markers to tell if something was holy. But the shrine did serve as a reminder, and sometimes, in the evening, I would come into the garden to spend half an hour in her company.

Beyond the wall, the ground fell away in a tangle of greenery. Between the slope and the gleaming curve of the river the marshland shimmered in heat-haze, distorting the shapes of the men who laboured at the ditches and the tall column of the siege tower the Emperor had ordered brought in so that he could observe their progress. In this weather even the iron-clad tower could not offer much comfort.

I could imagine Probus standing there, thin and intense and as obsessed with his project in the marshes as my son was with his work in the garden. Another idealist—everyone had heard of the Emperor's plan to hire foreign auxiliaries to guard the frontiers. If Probus had his way, there would be no need for the Empire to tax its citizens to maintain a standing army. If so, perhaps I could persuade Constantius to retire to Britannia, where my friend Vitellia and her husband had gone.

In the shade of the linden tree the tiles that topped the wall were cool enough to lean on, though the sunlight that filtered through the leaves was making me perspire beneath my thin gown. Even slaves should not be made to work in such heat, I thought, shading my eyes with my hand. I wondered how Probus had persuaded his men to do so.

But the men in the marshes were moving with surprising vigour—it was hard to see clearly, but there seemed to be some commotion around the tower. My heart began to race, though I could see nothing wrong. As I watched, the wavering of the tower became more pronounced, for a moment it leaned, then dust billowed in a dun cloud as it fell.

"What is it?" asked Constantine at my elbow, as that sense that had connected us since before his birth had communicated my unease.

"Listen—" The clangour of the iron plates that had covered the tower still reverberated in the heavy air. But now another sound was growing, a many-throated roar that I had heard the one time I had gone with Constantius to see the gladiatorial games at the amphitheatre in Naissus, the sound a crowd makes when a man goes down.

It seemed to me that the mob of moving men was swirling towards the road. Suddenly I turned.

"Pollio, Marinus, there is trouble down at the marshes. I want you to return to your homes now!" Unthinking, I had used the voice of command in which I had been trained at Avalon. My son stared at me as the boys, eyes widening, set down their cups and hurried away.

"We can't stay here," I told Constantine, thinking aloud. "They will know where the Emperor keeps the pay-chest. Go—pack a change of clothes and whatever books you can carry in one bundle." I was already calling to Brasilia and the maids.

"But why are we running away?" protested Con as I shepherded my household down the road. The maids were weeping, clutching their bundles in their arms, but Brasilia looked grim. "Surely the Emperor will stop the riot before it can get this far."

"My guess is that the Emperor is dead, and that is why the soldiers are rioting," I answered. Philip crossed himself, and I remembered that he had been attending the Christian church in town.

Constantine stopped short, staring, and I reached out to drag him along. He knew in theory that most emperors did not reign long, but Probus was the only emperor he could really remember, a man who in his rare moments of leisure had played board games with the child.

"But what about Father?" he said. Now it was he who was pushing me forwards. My son was as close to me as my own heartbeat, but it was Constantius whom he idolized.

I managed a smile, even though that was the question that had been knotting my belly ever since I realized what was going on.

"He is not the one who ordered them to work in this heat. I am sure they will do him no harm," I said stoutly. "Come along now. The basilica has stout walls, and not much that's worth looting. We'll be safe there."

We were almost in time. The riot exploded with volcanic swiftness, and by the time we reached the Forum, the first bands of maddened soldiers were already rampaging through the town. Some of them might have been from my husband's command—men whom I had nursed when the flux swept the camp the winter before. But they had already broken into at least one taverna, and the unwatered wine in the flasks they were carrying was speedily drowning what reason bloodlust had left them.

As my little group emerged from the colonnaded cloister that surrounded the square, a band of perhaps twenty men came pounding down the main street, their hobnailed sandals ringing on the cobblestones. In another moment we were surrounded. Hylas began to bark furiously, struggling in Brasilia's arms.

We should have stayed at the palace! I thought desperately. We could have hidden in the stables— Then I saw Con fumbling for the Parthian dagger his father had given him on his last birthday and pushed myself in front of him.

"Make no move!" I hissed as one of the soldiers made a grab for me, tearing my tunica from the fibula that held it at the shoulder so that it fell, leaving one breast bare.

Abruptly the men grew still, lust transfixing them like lightning as they stared. In another moment they would kill the boy and throw me spread-eagled to the ground. Rape I could endure, but not the loss of the child for whom I had given up Avalon!

"Goddess!" I cried in the British tongue, "save your Chosen One!" And as my arms lifted in invocation, it seemed as if a great wind swept down and whirled my awareness away.

As if from a great distance I heard a voice too resonant to be human calling down curses, coming from a figure that seemed head and shoulders taller than the diminutive beings that surrounded her, a figure that radiated light. A great hound stood beside her, growling like thunder. She swept down her hands, and her puny assailants recoiled, falling over each other in their haste to get away. The goddess beckoned to the ones she was defending, and led them towards the basilica. When she reached its door she turned, drawing a circle in the air as if to claim the place as her own.

In the next moment I felt myself falling, all power leaving my limbs as I returned to my body and crumpled to the ground.

Exclaiming, my servants half-dragged, half-carried me inside. It took some time for me to catch my breath and calm them enough so that I could speak with Constantine.

"They would have killed my mother!" he said hoarsely, clinging to me as he had not done since he was a little child.

This did not seem the time to point out that killing was the least of what the rioters had had in mind. "It is all right," I soothed him. "We are safe now…"

"No one is safe if the Emperor loses control," he muttered. "It should not have happened. I am young, and they were too strong for me, but I swear to you, mother, such things will not be allowed when I am a man!"

I shook my head, thinking how much he had to learn, then put an arm around him and held him close. "When you are a man, you will set all things right!" I murmured to comfort him, and only when I had said it did it occur to me that even this might be possible for the Child of Prophecy.

Night came, and with it came the rest of the legion, seeking to drown the knowledge of what they had done in wine and violence. If the officers had survived, like us, they had found some bolthole in which to hide. I believed that Constantius was among them. Surely I would have known if death had broken the bond between us. To the south, where the wealthy had built their homes around the palace, we could see flames, and I thought that I had been right to bring my people here after all. Some of the shopkeepers and the clerks who worked in the basilica were here when we arrived, so we were about thirty in number, in all.

When for a time there was a pause in the sounds of destruction and revelry I could hear chanting from the Christian church.

"Kyrie eleison, Christe eleison…"

"Lord, have mercy," whispered Philip, behind me.

They had no more defence than the sheep of which they sang so often, but even drunken soldiers knew there would be nothing worth looting there. I pitied any poor souls who had no refuge at all, for the Roman legionary, who could fight like a hero under discipline, without it was closer to the beast than any barbarian.

Through that night we huddled in the basilica, sitting with our backs against the wall, and though it was the season when the hours of darkness are at their least, to us it seemed very long. But at last I must have dozed, Constantine's solid torso lying across my lap, as if in this extremity he had become once more a little child. I opened my eyes to see a pale light filtering through the high windows. The city outside was, at long last, still.

Con stirred in my arms and sat up, rubbing his eyes. "I'm thirsty," he said, blinking at the others, who were beginning to wake as well.

"I'll go," said Philip, and when I opened my lips to stop him, shook his head. "The troops will all have passed out and be sleeping it off, or wishing they were. Why should anyone bother me?"

I sighed and nodded acceptance. Philip had filled out as he grew older, but early underfeeding had stunted him and with his crooked nose and shock of wiry reddish hair he was not likely to invite attack of any kind.

"Are you still afraid of the soldiers, Mother?" asked Con. "I have been thinking, and I am certain now that we will be safe. A goddess protects you, as I have seen, and I know that I am not destined to die here, for have you not told me many times that I am the Child of Prophecy?"

I stared at my son, wondering now if that had been wise. When the rioters surrounded us the day before, I had suddenly remembered that visions showed only what things might come to pass. It was my own desperation that had summoned the Lady's power, not destiny. I still believed that Constantine had been born with the potential for greatness, but his own deeds must determine whether, and how, that potential was to be fulfilled.

By the time Philip returned, most of the others were awake. He had picked up an empty amphora and filled it at the fountain, and had found a cup to go with it. The water tasted faintly of wine.

"I am surprised that you found anything unbroken," I said as I passed the cup to Brasilia. "How is it, out there?"

"Like the morning after a battle, except that most of the gore is not blood but wine. A tribune on his first campaign could command them, ashamed as they are right now. I heard one man sobbing about how good Probus had been as a general, and they ought to build him a monument." He shook his head disgustedly.

By mid-morning, the shop-keepers felt brave enough to begin sweeping up the wreckage, and the owners of food-stalls, whose wares were not so breakable, were in business once more. Many of the legionaries had ended their riot in the forum and were now awakening, and as the morning drew on, more joined them, to gather in arguing groups. I was not quite ready to try returning home, however, always supposing the palace was still there to return to, and so we were sitting on the steps of the basilica eating sausages wrapped in flat-bread, when the rhythmic tramp and jingle of soldiers marching in formation brought everyone—mutineers and townsfolk alike—to attention.

It was not a junior officer who had rallied them, but the Praetorian Prefect, Carus. As he rode into the forum my heart beat faster, for behind him, with a face that seemed chipped from stone, came Constantius. I rose to my feet with our son beside me, and his gaze, moving across the crowd, came to the porch of the basilica and found me. You are all right, for a moment his features contorted. I can live once more. I should not have been surprised—he had two of us to worry about. At least I had known that our son was safe. Then Constantius got his face under control, but it no longer seemed made of stone.

No doubt my own face would have displayed a similar transformation if anyone had been watching me, but all eyes were fixed on Carus, who rode as calmly as if he were on his way to the Senate, where he had served before resuming his military career. He had apparently been picking up stragglers as he came through the city, for more soldiers followed, crowding into the square. In the centre of the forum was a fountain raised on three steps. Carus slid off the horse and as it was led away, stepped up onto the broad stone rim of the fountain, from which he could see and be seen. He must be near sixty, but he was still strong and fit, with a bald head which he protected with a shapeless cap, and a preference for the simple dress of the old Republic.

"Soldiers of Rome—" Carus began, "what god has maddened you? You have done to death the Emperor who was your kind father, made yourselves orphans, dishonoured the spirits of your fallen brothers and the emblems you carry."

For some time he continued in this vein, speaking with a measured elegance that indicated an excellent education. Soon the men, who had begun by listening in sullen silence, were weeping. But Con had left the shelter of my arm and moved forwards to watch with shining eyes.

"Centurions! Step forwards, and the rest of you, rally to your commanders!" he cried then, and the chaotic scene slowly resolved itself into something resembling military formation. "You will return to your tents, cleanse yourselves and your gear and present yourselves in formation on the parade ground at the second hour after noon."

I supposed that even standing in full kit under the blazing sun would be better than digging mud, but fortunately a breeze from the north was bringing the temperature down.

But perhaps, in their current condition, even that much discipline was too much for the men, for a murmur was growing among the ranks. I saw Constantius rein in a suddenly-restive horse, and Carus frowned.

One of the centurions stepped forwards. "Sir!" He brought his arm to his chest in salute. "As you say, we are orphans, who need a father's strong hand. Who will be our commander now?"

"The Senate, in Rome—" Carus began, for Probus had not named an heir, but he sounded less certain now.

"Bugger the Senate," said someone in the ranks, and there was an echo of laughter.

Con shook his head, and I bent my own to hear his whisper. "The Senate has no power, only the army. Why cannot he see?"

I thought that perhaps Carus did, for there was a tension in his posture as he waited for their silence that had not been there before. Was it hope or resignation? I could not be sure.

"My lord, we need an emperor!" The centurion raised his arm in salutation. "Hail, Caesar!"

"Hail Caesar!" the men responded with a full-throated roar. "Carus shall be Emperor!" Suddenly they surged forwards, chanting his name until the columns of the basilica's porch trembled to the sound. I was certain that the rioters had looted the palace when I saw a flash of purple and they draped one of the dead Emperor's togas across his shoulders. At least one of the men had his shield, and the mob that had surrounded Carus got him onto it and raised him high.

"Will you truly have me for your Imperator?" Carus might be a republican by preference, but he must know that if he refused them now they could pull him down as swiftly as they had killed Probus.

"Ave! Ave!" they cried.

"I will not treat you gently—I will punish those who killed Probus, and then I will take up the old war in Parthia, that has waited so long—"

The cheering redoubled in volume.

Why are they so happy!? I wondered. He has just promised to lead them to battle in a land where it is as much hotter than Dalmatia as this land is than Britannia. But the lands of the East held riches, and if the heat killed them, they would die not like slaves but as soldiers.

The noise, as they carried Carus in procession around the forum, deafened the mind as well as the ears. The other officers had drawn back to the shelter of the colonnade. Carus belonged to the legionaries now.

"Ave Carus!" came a new cry from beside me. Constantine had extended his own arm in a stiff salute, and he gazed at the figure of the new Emperor with visions in his eyes.

The new Emperor, with no more than a curt announcement of his accession to the Senate in Rome, set about establishing his authority. The Romans rioted in protest, but so long as the army supported him, Carus did not appear to care. Probus had valued his abilities so much that he had requested the Senate to award him a marble palace and an equestrian statue. Now, with the exception of the palace in Sirmium, which was a charred ruin, he had palaces in plenty, and no doubt the statues were already being created, along with the panegyrics that came in from every corner of the Empire. Carus had no time to read them. He had promised the army glory in Parthia, but before the expedition could set out, there was much to be done. If he was grateful to the legionaries of Sirmium for raising him to the purple it did not prevent him from executing the men who had been the first to attack Probus, an act which apparently did him no harm in the eyes of the survivors, for that autumn they followed him willingly into battle against a horde of Sarmatians who had come down upon Illyria, and gained a resounding victory.

The succession was also provided for. Carus had two sons, both now grown, whom he raised to the rank of Caesar. Carinus, who was the elder, was directed to deal with the latest barbarian raids into Gallia and then take charge in Rome, while his brother Numerianus became the Emperor's second-in-command on the Parthian campaign.

I dared not speak my fear that the Emperor would drag Constantius along with him, but the Goddess must have heard my prayers, for shortly before the army was to depart, my husband returned to Sirmium with the news that Carus had appointed him Governor of Dalmatia.

In my dream, I was moving along the Processional Way at Avalon. I knew it for a dream because I seemed to see everything from a vantage point of several feet off the ground, and because when I spoke, no one noticed me. But in every other regard, I was fully present. I could feel the moist chill of the night air and smell the resins in the torches. I trembled to the reverberations of the great gong that was used to summon initiates to the greater ceremonies.

It had summoned me, I realized, all the way from Sirmium. This was no dream but a spirit journey. But what was the ceremony?

Cloaked and hooded, the priestesses in black and the priests in white, they passed between the last of the pillars and began the spiral ascent of the Tor. Drawn along with them, I could neither lag nor hurry. Soon I recognized Cigfolla and some of the others, and realized that I was in the place in the line in which I would have marched had my body been there. I knew then that in the depths of my spirit I had never ceased to be a priestess of Avalon, and that was why I had answered this call.

Presently we reached the top, and in the midst of the circle of stones I saw the intricately-stacked logs of a funeral pyre. The body was shrouded, but it seemed small to be the centre of so much ceremony. Yet only a High Priestess or Arch-Druid received such a funeral.

Holding a torch beside the pyre I saw Ceridachos, wearing the Arch-Druid's tore of gold. He had taught the boys music when I was at Avalon. It was not the Arch-Druid, then, who lay upon the pyre, but the Lady of Avalon.

For a moment amazement held me, that in the end Ganeda should be so little, whose spirit had been such a towering presence, dominating us all. And now she was gone. I wondered whom they had chosen to follow her.

"I was justified! See, I bore my son and my man still loves me! I wanted to cry, as if we were still in contention, but I would never have the chance to tell her so, unless her spirit could hear.

The gong had ceased to resound. Ceridachos stood away from the pyre, turning to face it, and I saw another torch on the other side. A priestess held it: no, it was the new Lady of Avalon, for beneath the open front of the cloak gleamed the ornaments of moonstone and river pearl. Then her hood fell back and I recognized Dierna's blazing red hair.

But she was just a child! Then I looked again and thinking hard, realized that Dierna must be twenty-five years old. When I last saw her, she had been a child, but we would be women together, were we to meet now. She lifted her arms in invocation.

"Hail to Thee, Dark Mother who art the Mistress of Souls! This night we remember before Thee Ganeda, who is passing through Thy kingdom. Her blood flows in the waters, her breath is one with the wind. The holy Tor will receive her ashes and the spark of her life return to the fire that enlivens all."

The warriors and kings who were Avalon's guardians were buried on the Watch Hill, but the great priests and priestesses, whose ascending spirits might have been constrained by too much adulation, were sent to the gods by fire.

Ceridachos lifted the torch. "Let the holy fire transform that which was mortal, and the spirit fly free!" A glittering ribbon of sparks trailed behind it as he moved around the pyre, touching it at intervals to the oil-soaked logs. The wood caught quickly, and in moments the shrouded form was hidden behind a veil of flame.

"No part of her will be wasted, nothing lost," said Dierna as she followed him around the pyre. Her voice was calm, as if she had put herself into an altered state for the ceremony, where no grief could trouble her serenity. "Even her spirit, taught by life's pains, still evolves towards her true identity." From the pouch at her waist she took a handful of incense and cast it onto the stacked logs.

Ceridachos turned to face the others. "But we, remembering that particular coupling of body and spirit in which she walked the world, pray to Thee to guide and guard her on the path she now pursues." His voice was hoarse as if he had been weeping, and I realized how closely he, as Arch-Druid, must have worked with the Lady over the years. He cleared his throat and continued.

"We have not forgotten—bear Thou our love to her, and ask her to pray for us with the wisdom she has now. And when in time we also come to Thee, receive us gently, oh Thou Dark Mother, as a child is lulled to sleep, and wake us to the Light."

All around the circle, heads bent. I bowed my head as well, though no one could see. For so many years I had feared my aunt, and fought her, and in the end, tried to forget her. And yet she had done the work of Avalon and done it well. Having managed my own household for a dozen years, I could in some wise appreciate her achievement now. Were there things that Ganeda could teach me?

Dierna handed the pouch of incense to Ceridachos, and he cast a handful onto the pyre, which was now well alight.

"The dead has her release, and the answer to all questioning," she said gravely. "It is those who remain who suffer now, from loss, from memory, from regret for things left unsaid or undone. Let us pray now for the living left behind…" Her hand swept out in a wide circle to include us all.

Pray for me! I thought grimly, amazed to discover that even my astral body could shed tears.

"Oh Thou Lady of Darkness, lift Thou the darkness that lies upon our souls. As Thou hast cut the thread of life, break Thou the bonds that constrain our spirits, lest our feelings should bind the one we would set free."

It came to me in that moment that I was not the only one who might have had mixed feelings about the Lady of Avalon, and the spirit of any adept could make a dangerous ghost. The community had the best of reasons for making sure nothing held her here.

Now the incense was being passed around the circle. As each one threw a pinch on the flames I heard the words, "Thus I release you," followed sometimes by a murmured message of more personal farewell. Smoke and sparks billowed upward to join the stars. And though my fingers could not grasp the incense, I too moved close to the pyre, and with all the truth of my being, offered the woman who had in so many ways shaped my life both forgiveness and farewell.

"The Lady bounds life with death, and out of death creates life anew," said Dierna when all had finished. "We are the children of earth and starry heaven. By our response to this loss let us transcend it." She took a deep breath. "I bear now the ornaments of the High Priestess. I pray to the Goddess to give me the strength and the wisdom to lead Avalon!"

As the night drew on the others made their vows, then drew aside to keep watch as the pyre became a framework of glowing lines, and the central core, which had been built with faster-burning fuel, fell to ash. And just as the eastern sky was beginning to pale with the approach of the sun, I willed myself to approach the heap of coals and ashes that remained.

"Lady, it was you who exiled me, but the Goddess who showed me my way. By example and by opposition you taught me much. Though I walk now in the world beyond the mists, I will do so as a priestess of Avalon!"

I drew back, for suddenly the world was filled with light as the newborn sun rose above the eastern hills. And in that moment, the dawn wind, rising, lifted the ashes like a swirl of smoke and swept them outwards to fall like a blessing upon the green turf of the Tor.

It had made me shiver sometimes, when I first learned of that custom, to think that I might be treading on what was left of Caillean or Sianna or one of the legendary priestesses who had followed them. But in truth, the earth of the Tor was just as holy as they. Their dust hallowed it as it blessed them. They were one and the same.

The priests and priestesses stirred from the stillness of their vigil as if released from a spell. As Dierna looked up, her eyes widened and I knew that she, alone among that company, could see me standing there.

"This should be your place," she whispered, touching the ornaments she wore. "Will you return to us now?"

But I shook my head, smiling, and using the full imperial obeisance with which I had always honoured the Lady of Avalon, I bowed.

At breakfast I was silent, still thinking about the night's visions. The palace burnt in the rioting had been rebuilt and most mornings we took our first meal in a pleasant chamber that opened out onto the shaded walkway that surrounded the gardens. Constantius, finishing his gruel, asked me if I was well. I shook my head. "It is nothing—I had strange dreams."

"Well, then, there is something I need to discuss with you. I should have spoken of it before."

I forced my attention away from my own concerns, wondering what on earth this could be. Since Carus's accession, over a year had passed. The reports from the East had been glorious—the cities of Seleucia and Ctesiphon had surrendered almost without resistance, and the enemy, distracted by warfare on their own eastern borders, seemed unable to resist the Roman advance. It seemed possible that the Parthians, who had been a looming menace since the days of the first Augustus, might be finally overcome. But what did all that have to do with Constantius or me?

"Does the Emperor think you can somehow curb Carinus?"

In the preceding months it had become clear that the gift of imperial power in the city of the Caesars had gone to the young man's head. He had executed the advisors his father had given him and replaced them with his drinking companions. In a few months he had married and divorced nine wives, leaving most of them pregnant, in addition to his other amusements. If Constantius tried to advise him, he was likely to go the way of the others. Surely no amount of devotion to duty would require that useless sacrifice.

"No… the Emperor has always been a man of justice rather than mercy, and I fear he has ceased to hope that his elder son will prove worthy. So he is looking for a substitute…" he slowed, stirring his spoon around and around in the empty bowl. "He wants to adopt me."

I stared at him. This was my own Constantius, his hairline somewhat higher and his frame stockier than that of the young man who had stolen my heart thirteen years ago, but the honest grey eyes were still the same. I gazed at the features of the man who had been my mate for a dozen years overlaid by the splendour he had worn when he first came to me in the light of the Beltane fire. If he became Caesar, everything would change.

"It is not an honour that one can easily refuse."

I nodded, thinking that I had known from the beginning that Constantius had the potential for greatness. Was this the meaning of my vow to Ganeda's spirit? I would never be Lady of Avalon, but I might indeed become Empress one day.

"But why you?" I blurted suddenly. "No one could be more worthy, but when did he have a chance to know you so well?"

"The night of the mutiny, after Probus died. Carus and I hid in a fisherman's hut at the edge of the marsh while the men were rioting, and as men will when the situation is desperate, we bared our souls. Carus wanted to bring back the old virtues of the Republic without losing the strength of Empire. And I… talked to him about what I thought was wrong with us now, and what, with honest government, Rome could be."

I reached out to take his hand, that warm flesh that I had come to know as well as my own.

"Oh my dearest, I understand!" With the powers of a Caesar he could do so much—such an opportunity must outweigh any consideration either for his comfort or my own.

"Until the Emperor returns from Parthia I will not be required to decide," said Constantius, managing a smile. But we both knew that there would only be one possible decision when that time came.

I heard a clatter of sandals on the flagstones of the walkway and then the door crashed open. For a moment Con clung there, panting.

"Father, have you heard the news?" he cried when he had got his breath once more. "They are saying that the Emperor is dead in Parthia—struck by lightning in a storm, and Numerian is bringing the army home!"
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11

As the Empire mourned Carus so did I, though my sorrow was more for Constantius's lost chance for greatness than for the Emperor, whom I had known only for a little while. If I had understood the inevitable consequences of my husband's elevation, I should have rejoiced. Because Carus died when he did, I had Constantius for almost ten more years.

The Emperor had died as a consequence of the flux which was a constant hazard on campaign. But the death had occurred during a thunderstorm, and when the Emperor's tent caught fire, the troops believed he had been killed by lightning, the most evil of omens. Our forces had been well on the way to conquering Parthia at last, but there were prophecies, it was said, that the River Tigris would forever mark the limits of Rome's eastern expansion. Indeed, there were any number of signs, omens and portents for folk to gabble at in those first, horrified weeks after the news arrived.

The troops acclaimed Numerian as co-emperor with his brother Carinus, but refused to continue the war. And so the Army of the East was making its slow way back home while Carinus ran riot in Rome. Did he know that Carus had intended Constantius to supplant him? Suddenly Dalmatia seemed entirely too close to Italia, and when Maximian, who now held the command in Gallia, requested Constantius to join his staff, we agreed that he would be prudent to resign his post as governor of Dalmatia and accept the invitation.

Our new home was a villa in the hills above Treveri. It was not Britannia, but the country folk here spoke a language not unlike the British tongue, and even two hundred years after Julius Caesar had suppressed them, the Druids were remembered. Someone among the servants whom we had engaged to assist our household slaves must have recognized the fading blue crescent upon my brow, for I soon found they were treating me with a respect that went beyond duty. When I went about in the countryside people would bow before me, and from time to time offerings of fruit or flowers appeared by the door.

Constantius thought it was amusing, but it made Constantine uncomfortable, and from time to time I would catch him watching me with troubled eyes from beneath the shock of fair hair. It was his age, I told myself, and pretended unconcern. He was twelve now, leggy as a young hunting dog, the big bones out of proportion, and the superb co-ordination that had carried him through childhood likely at odd moments to let him down. If he could have laughed at himself it would have been easier, but Constantine had never had much of a sense of humour. With the approach of adolescence he was becoming reclusive, fearing to expose himself to ridicule.

But there was nothing wrong with his mind, and Atticus found that he suddenly had a willing pupil, eager to sink his teeth into the meat of Greek philosophy and literature. At present they were studying the works of Lucian. As I directed the girls who were cleaning the mosaic of Dionysos with the dolphins on the floor of the dining room, I could hear the murmur of voices from the study, Constantine's uncertain tenor rising and falling as he translated the passage his tutor had assigned.

Tomorrow would see the beginning of the month the Romans had named after Mercurius's mother, Maia. In Britannia, I thought, smiling, they would be preparing for the festival of Beltane. If I read the signs rightly they celebrated here as well. The weather, which had been chill and rainy, had suddenly turned warm, and wildflowers starred the green hills.

I took a deep breath of the sweet air, then paused to listen, as the maids opened a door and Con's voice grew suddenly louder.

"They saw that… the thing that both the ones who fear and the hopeful ones needed and, uh… wanted the most was to know about the future. This was the reason Delphi and Delos and Clarus and Didyma had ages ago become rich and famous…"

I paused to listen, curious to learn what they were reading and what my son would make of it.

"I don't understand," said Constantine. "Lucian says this man Alexander was a fraud, a deceiver, but it sounds as if he thinks that Delphi and the rest of the oracles are just as bad."

"You must take the statement in context," Atticus said soothingly. "It is true that Lucian was one of the leading Sophists of the last century, and naturally prefers to base his conclusions on reason rather than superstition, but what has aroused his ire in this essay is the fact that Alexander intentionally set out to trick people, pretending to discover the snake in the egg, and substituting another, big one, with its head hidden by a mask in the ritual. Then he told everyone it was Aesclepius reborn and said it gave him the oracles that he had written himself. But it is true that he sent clients to the great shrines to keep the priests from denouncing him."

I remembered now hearing something of the story. Alexander had been quite famous at one time, and Lucian had not only written about him, but actively tried to unmask him as well.

"Do you mean to tell me that none of the oracles are true?" Constantine said suspiciously.

"No, no—my point is that you must learn critical thinking, so that you will be able to judge for yourself whether something is reasonable, rather than accepting blindly what you are told," Atticus responded.

I nodded: that was more or less what we had been taught at Avalon. It was as foolish to deny that oracles could be faked as to blindly believe in them.

"That doesn't make sense," protested Constantine. "Those who are wise should decide what is true and be done with it."

"Ought not every man be allowed to decide for himself?" Atticus said reasonably. "Learning how to think should be a part of everyone's education, just as everyone must learn to care for a horse or use numbers."

"For simple things, yes," answered Constantine. "But when the horse falls sick you call in a healer and you employ a mathematicus for higher computations. Surely in the realm of the holy, which is so much more important, it should be the same."

"Very good, Constantine, but consider this—the flesh is tangible, and its ills can be perceived by the senses. Numbers are symbolic of items that can be physically counted, and they are always and everywhere the same. But each man experiences the world differently. His nativity is ruled by different stars, and he has a unique history… Is it so unreasonable to allow him his own perception of the gods? This world is so rich and varied—surely we need myriad ways to understand it. Thus, there are the Sophists, who doubt everything, and the followers of Plato, who believe that only archetypes are real, the mystical Pythagoreans and the Aristotelian logicians. Each philosophy gives us a different tool with which to understand the world."

"But the world stays the same," objected Constantine, "and so do the gods!"

"Do they?" Atticus sounded amused. He had been sold into slavery by his uncle, and I suspected he found it more comfortable to believe in no gods at all. "How then, do we reconcile all the stories about them, or the claims of all the different cults, each of which declares that its deity is supreme?"

"We find out which is the most powerful, and teach everyone how to worship Him," Constantine said forthrightly.

I shook my head. How simple it all seemed to a child. When I was his age, there had been no truth but that of Avalon.

"Come now," Atticus was replying, "even the Jews, whose god permits them to worship no other, do not pretend the other gods do not exist."

"My father is beloved of the greatest of gods whose face is the sun, and if I prove worthy, He will extend that blessing to me."

I lifted an eyebrow. I knew that Constantine had been impressed by the solar cult of Dalmatia, to which most of the officers Constantius had served with belonged, but I did not realize how far his attempt to model himself on his father had gone. I must find some way to teach him about the Goddess as well.

Constantine continued, "There is one Emperor on earth and one sun in the sky. It seems to me that the Empire would be much more peaceful if everyone worshipped alike."

"Well, you are certainly entitled to your opinion, but remember, Alexander the Prophet gave his oracles in the name of Apollo. Just because a man speaks in the name of a god does not mean he is speaking true."

"Then the authorities should stop him," Constantius responded doggedly.

"My dear boy," said Atticus. "The Governor Rutilianus was one of Alexander's most devoted supporters. He married the prophet's daughter for no better reason than because Alexander said her mother had been the goddess Selene!"

"I still think people should be protected from false oracles."

"Perhaps, but how can you do that without taking away their right to decide for themselves what they believe? Let us continue the translation, Constantine, and perhaps matters will become clearer…"

For the first time, I wondered if we had been wise to let Constantine study philosophy. He did tend to take things rather literally. But the flexibility of mind that characterized Greek culture would be good for him, I told myself, secretly relieved that it was Atticus who had the task of getting the point across, not I. Still, I told myself as I opened the door to let in the soft spring air, the time was coming when I must talk to my son about Avalon.

I had sung him to sleep with the teaching songs I had learned as a little girl, and amused him with wonder tales. He knew how the swans returned to the Lake at spring's beginning, and how the wild geese sang in the autumn skies. But of the meaning behind the tales, and the great pattern to which swans and geese both belonged, I had said nothing. Such matters were taught to initiates of the Mysteries. If Constantine had been born on Avalon as Ganeda planned, he would have learned these things as part of his training. But I had willed otherwise, therefore it must be my responsibility to teach him.

Constantine was a child, I thought as I listened to the two voices. It was natural that he should focus on the surface of things. But it was the external face of the world that was the most varied and full of contradictions. On the surface, there was truth in all the different cults and philosophies. It was only at a deeper level that one could find a single truth behind them.

"All the gods are one God, and all the goddesses are one Goddess, and there is one Initiator." I had heard that watchword more times than I could count when I was at Avalon. Somehow I must get its meaning across to Constantine.

The breeze that wafted through the open doors came laden with all the scents of spring, and suddenly I could no longer bear to remain inside. I slipped through the open door and stepped out along the path that led between two rows of beech trees to the high road. I should tell Atticus to give his pupil a holiday—it was too lovely a day to spend locked in one's head debating philosophy. That was the mistake that some of the Pythagoreans, despite their understanding of the Mysteries, had made, to fix their minds so firmly on eternity that they missed the Truth proclaimed by this green and lovely world.

From our hill I could see fields and vineyards, and the gleam of the Mosella. The town nestled along the river, protected by its walls. Treveri was a place of some importance, a centre for the production of woollen cloth and pottery, with good communications to both Germania and Gallia. Postumus had made it the capital of his Gallic empire, and now Maximian had made it his base of operations as well. They were repairing the bridge again; the local reddish stone glowed pink in the bright sun, but the temple of Diana, higher up on the hillside, was a glimmer of white amid its sheltering trees.

A good road ran up the hill and past our villa. A rider was moving swiftly along it, passing a farmer's cart and continuing up the hill. My interest sharpened as he drew close enough for me to recognize the uniform and realize that he was coming here.

Had there been some disaster? I could see no unusual bustle of activity in the city. I waited, frowning, until the man drew up, relying the neckcloth with which he had been wiping his brow. I recognized him as a youngster on Constantius's staff, and acknowledged his salutation.

"And what has my husband sent you up here in such haste to say? Is there some emergency?"

"Not at all. The Lord Docles has arrived, my lady, and your husband bids me tell you that they will be dining with him here this evening."

"What, all of them?" I shook my head. "It is an emergency for me! We were planning to spend the day spring cleaning, not preparing a banquet."

The young man grinned. "That's right—Maximian will be coming as well! But I have heard about your dinners, lady, and I feel sure you will gain the victory."

It had not occurred to me to view a dinner as a military engagement, but I laughed as I waved him on his way. Then I hurried inside to consult with Brasilia.

Despite my words, a meal for three men accustomed to the food of army camps would not place any unusual demands upon my kitchen. They might not be so devoted to austerity as Carus had been, but I knew from experience that all three would pay more attention to what they were saying than to what they were eating. It was Drusilla who felt that both the cooking and the service must be, if not elaborate, at least accomplished with restrained perfection.

Fortunately it was a season when fresh food was plentiful. By the time Constantius and our guests came riding up the hill, we were prepared for them with a salad of spring greens dressed in olive oil, hard-boiled eggs and new bread, and a roasted lamb, garnished with herbs and served on a bed of barley.

The evening was mild, and we opened the long doors in the dining chamber so that our guests could enjoy the flowerbeds and the fountain in the atrium. As I moved back and forth between the diners and the kitchen, supervising the service, I could hear the deep rumble of masculine voices growing more mellow as more of the tangy white wine of the countryside was served.

It was clear that this was to be a business dinner, not a social occasion, and I had not sat down with them. Indeed, even though it had been years since I had celebrated the Eve of Beltane, old habit kept me fasting. The men were talking of troop strengths and city loyalties, but as the evening drew on, I felt the energies that flowed through the land increasing in intensity. Drusilla was complaining because some of the kitchen servants had disappeared as soon as the first course was served. I thought I knew where they had gone to, for when I walked in the quiet of the garden, I could feel the throbbing in the earth and hear the drums that echoed it, and a hilltop above the town blazed with Beltane fire.

My blood was warming in answer to the drumming. I smiled, thinking that if our guests did not stay too late, Constantius and I might have time to honour the holiday in the traditional manner ourselves. The laughter in the dining room had deepened. Perhaps the men did not recognize the energy in the evening, but it seemed to me that they were responding to it all the same. As for me, the scent of the night air had made me half-drunk already. When I heard Constantius calling, I draped a palla across my shoulders and went in to them.

My husband moved over on his couch so that I could sit and offered me some of his wine.

"So, gentlemen, have you decided the future of the Empire?"

Maximian grinned, but Docles's heavy brows, always startling below that high bald brow, drew down.

"For that, Lady, we should need a seeress like Veleda to foretell our destinies."

I lifted a eyebrow. "Was she an oracle?"

"She was the holy woman of the tribes near the mouth of the Rhenus in the reign of Claudius," Constantius replied. "A Batavian prince called Civilis, who had been an officer in the auxiliaries, began a rebellion. They say the tribes would make no move without her counsel."

"What became of her?"

"In the end, I think we feared Veleda more than we did Civilis." Constantius shook his head ruefully. "He was the kind of enemy we could understand, but she had the ear of the eternal powers. Eventually she was captured, and ended her days in the Temple of Vesta, as I have heard."

In the pause that followed the chirring of the crickets seemed suddenly very loud. Beneath that audible rhythm I sensed rather than heard the heartbeat of the drums.

"I have heard," Docles said into the silence, "that you yourself have some training in the seeress's craft."

I glanced at Constantius, who shrugged, as if to say it was not he who had spread that word. It should not have suprised me to learn that Docles had his own sources of information. His parents were freed slaves who had become the clients of Senator Anulinus, their old master. For Docles to have risen from such humble origins to command the young Emperor's bodyguard indicated that he was a man of uncommon abilities.

"It is true that I was trained as a priestess in Britannia," I answered, wondering whether this was only idle conversation or if some deeper meaning was implied.

Maximian raised himself on one elbow. He was country-bred himself, and I had noticed his fingers twitching to the drumbeat, though I did not think he realized he was doing it.

"Mistress, I know what powers fare abroad this eve," he said solemnly." 'Tis a night when the doors do open 'tween the worlds. Don't waste the moment, lads—" he gestured a little tipsily with his goblet, and I realized that they had stopped watering the wine. "Let the strega use her powers for us, an' show us th' way out o' the tangle we're in!"

I drew back, startled at his language—in my own country folk did not speak so of a priestess of Avalon—and Constantius laid a protecting hand on my arm.

"Take care, Maximian—my wife is no hedge-witch to brew you up a pot of spells."

"Nor did I ever say she was." He gave me an apologetic nod. "Shall I call her a Druid priestess, then?"

They all twitched at that, remembering how Caesar had dealt with the Druids of Gallia. But I had recovered myself: it was no more than the truth, after all, and better they should think my craft a survival of lost Celtic wisdom than suspect the existence of Avalon. Constantius's grip tightened, but my sudden fear had left me. Perhaps it was the power of Beltane Eve, like a fire in the blood. I felt my head swimming as if I already scented the smoke of the sacred herbs. It had been so long, so very long, since I had done trance-work. Like a woman meeting an old lover after many years, I trembled with re-awakened desire.

"Lady," added Docles with his usual dignity, "it would be an honour and a privilege if you would consent to divine for us now."

Constantius still looked uncertain, and I realized that he too had grown accustomed to seeing me as his mate, the mother of his child, and forgotten that I had once been something more. But the other two out-ranked him. After a moment he sighed. "It is for my lady to decide…"

I straightened, looking from one to the other. "I promise nothing—it has been many years since I practised this craft. Nor will I instruct you how to interpret what you may hear, or even whether what you are hearing is my own ravings or the voice of some god. I can promise only that I will try."

Now all three men were staring, as if, having got what they asked for, they were wondering whether they wanted it after all. But with every breath the ties that bound my spirit to the waking world were loosening. I rang the little bell that would summon Philip and asked that he take the silver bowl that was kept in Constantius's study, fill it with water, and bring it to us here. Hylas, who had somehow escaped from my bedchamber, settled himself across my feet, as if understanding that I would need an anchor when I fared between the worlds.

When the basin had been brought, and the lamps positioned so that their light swirled in a liquid glitter on the surface of the water, I instructed Philip to make sure we would not be disturbed. He looked disapproving, and I remembered that the Christians were forbidden to seek pagan oracles, though in their own meetings it was said that sometimes young men and women would see visions and utter forth prophecies.

When he had gone, I unbound the fillet that hid the crescent upon my brow, and loosened my hair from its knot so that it tumbled down about my shoulders. Maximian swallowed, his eyes widening. This one is still close to the earth, I thought, lowering my gaze. His soul remembers the old ways.

Docles's eyes were hooded, his features unreadable. I admired his control. But Constantius was gazing at me as he had when first I came to him by the Beltane fire. Look well, I said silently. For nigh on fifteen years I have ruled your household and shared your bed. Have you forgotten who and what I am? Abashed, he looked away, and I smiled.

"Very well, gentlemen, I am ready. When I have blessed the water, I will gaze into its depths, and when I begin to sway, you may ask your questions."

I cast a little salt into the water, consecrating it in the old tongue of the wizards who had come to Avalon from the drowned land across the sea. Then I leaned forwards so that my hair hung down about the bowl like a dusky curtain, and let my eyes unfocus, gazing within.

Light rippled across the dark surface as my breath stirred it. With an effort of will I controlled my breathing, in and out, ever more slowly, sinking into the rhythm of trance. Now the light on the water flickered in time to my breathing. Awareness narrowed to this circle of light in darkness, water and fire. I suppose that by that time my body had begun to move as well, for from what seemed an immense distance away I heard someone calling me.

"Say then, seeress, what shall come to the Empire in times to come. Will Numerian and Carinus rule well?"

The light on the water flared. "I see flames…" I said slowly. "I see armies that harry the land. Brother against brother, an emperor's funeral pyre… Death and destruction will come of their reign."

"And what comes after?" came a new voice that some part of my mind recognized as that of Docles.

But already the scene before me was changing. Where I had seen bloodshed now lay peaceful fields. Words came to me.

"All hail to the Emperor who is blessed by Fortune. One becomes four, and yet the first is the greatest still. For twenty years he will reign in glory, Jupiter with Hercules at his side, and Mars and Apollo serving him.

"The son of Jupiter is here, but you will bear another name. Your strong right arm bears witness, and another, who blazes like the sun. Only Mars is missing, but when you have need of him he will appear. Fear not to seize the moment when it comes. You will rule in splendour, Augustus, and die full of years, having at length released the sceptre to younger hands…'

"And what comes after?" This voice was golden, blazing in my mind with its own light.

"The son of the sun rules in splendour, but sets too soon. And yet a brighter dawn shall follow, and a new sun shall rise whose light will blaze across the world."

Light blossomed within my vision, shaping itself to a face I knew. Constantius, I thought, for a fair beard fringed the strong line of the jaw. But the face was altogether more massive in structure, with a long nose and eyes deeply set under the curve of the brow, a face of such stubborn strength it made me a little afraid.

Then this vision also, faded. I sagged forwards and my hair touched the water. Then Constantius had his arms around me, holding me as I shuddered with reaction. I opened my eyes, and as I tried to focus, the after-image of my vision superimposed itself upon a shape that was emerging from the darkness of the doorway.

I blinked, and realized it was Constantine. How long had he been standing there? And how much had he heard? I sat up, suddenly aware of how I must look to him, with my hair unbound, my eyes dazed with trance. I stretched out one hand towards him in an unvoiced plea. For a moment longer he stood there, on his face an expression half-avid and half-appalled. Did he think I was like Alexander the Prophet? My eyes filled with tears as he turned and disappeared.

"Lady," said Docles in his deep voice, "is it well with you? You have given us a great blessing." His face had its usual calm, but his eyes shone. In Maximian's face I saw something almost like fear. I looked from one to the other, knowing that all three would wear the purple one day.

"Only if you make it so," I whispered, remembering how the last two emperors had died.

"You have told me what I needed to know," answered Docles. "Constantius, take your lady to her chamber. She has done us good service this night and should rest."

"And what will you do?" asked Maximian.

"I shall return to Numerian and wait. Jupiter smiles upon me, and will make my way clear."

In the months that followed, all seemed confusion. In November of that year, Numerian died. Docles seized the opportunity, accusing the Praetorian Prefect, a man called Arrius Aper, of having poisoned him, and executing him on the spot. The next thing we heard was that the army had acclaimed him Emperor. But he had changed his name, and now he was calling himself Diocletian.

Carinus, who was a good commander when he put his mind to it, roused himself from his debaucheries to defend his throne, and Roman warred against Roman once more. Maximian and Constantius declared for Diocletian and prepared to hold the West against Carinus. But when the compaigning season opened the following spring, the gods, or perhaps it was Nemesis, decreed against another lengthy civil war. In the confusion of a battle a tribune whose wife Carinus had seduced seized the opportunity to slay his commander and take his own revenge.

Diocletian was now supreme. His first act was to name Maximian as his junior colleague. And that summer, when the new Caesar, who had appointed Constantius to be his praetorian prefect, was busy dealing with the latest incursion of Germans, Diocletian sent a letter requesting that my son Constantine join his household in Nicomedia.

Constantine's bedchamber was strewn with gear and clothing. I paused in the doorway, arms full of linen undertunics fresh from the clothesline. In such confusion, it seemed impossible that all this gear would be packed and ready by tomorrow's dawn. A brief fantasy of a midnight raid to steal the baggage played through my imagination. But no attempt to delay my son's departure could achieve more than a momentary confusion, and Constantine was of an age to be embarrassed by his parents even when they were acting sensibly. Even Constantius, had he been at home, could not have resisted an imperial command.

"Has your bodyservant packed your woollen leggings?" I asked, handing the tunics to the maidservant to add to the pile.

"Oh, Mother, I won't need those old things. Only peasants wear them: I'd look like a peasant parading through Diocletian's marble halls."

"I remember very vividly just how cold it got in Bithynia, the year we lived in Drepanum, and imperial halls are likely to be draughty. If it is cold enough for you to wear the leggings, I assure you that you will also be wearing enough outer gear to hide them from view."

The young Gaul we had bought to be Constantine's body-servant when he turned thirteen looked from one of us to the other, comparing frowns, then turned towards the chest that held the things his master had intended to leave behind.

"Come with me, Constantine, and let us leave the slaves to their work. Here, we will only get in the way." In truth, I would have preferred to pack his gear myself, with a blessing on each garment as I put it in, but that was something that others could do. No one else could tell my son what was in my heart.

Gravel crunched softly beneath our feet as I led him to the garden and sat down on a bench carved from the local reddish stone. The summer had been a good one, as if the gods were blessing Diocletian's reign, and the garden was bright with flowers.

But soon enough, they would fade. And in the morning my son would be gone. I had thought to have five years more before I lost Constantine to the army, time enough for Atticus to train his mind, and for me to awaken his soul. Con was tall for his age, his muscles developed by exercise. He would be able to meet whatever physical demends might come.

But he still viewed the world with a child's rigid convictions regarding right and wrong. Diocletian might well be the most virtuous emperor since Marcus Aurelius, but his court would be a hotbed of intrigue. How could I armour my son against it without myself compromising his innocence?

"Don't be sad, my mother—"

I had not realized how my face betrayed me. I managed a smile. "How can I not be? You know how much I love you. You are a man, and I knew that you must leave me one day, but this seems very soon." I was choosing my words carefully, for it would not do to frighten the child, since this separation must be.

"When the letter first came, I was frightened too, but now I want to go," said Constantine. "But I will not forget you, Mother. I will write to you every week, as surely as the sun shines above!" He lifted a hand as if calling on Apollo to bear witness.

I gazed at him in surprise, for that oath had been spoken with adult sincerity.

"It will not be easy," I told him. "There will be new things and new people, exciting things to do…"

"I know—" He paused, searching for words. "But kindred are important, and since you have no other children, I must be your whole family."

My eyes filled with tears. "Would you have liked brothers and sisters?"

Constantine nodded. "When I am a man I want a big family."

"I am sorry I was not able to provide them," I said with difficulty. "But I always thought that the purpose for which the gods had put me in this world was to give birth to you."

His eyes rounded, for I had never spoken of this so explicitly before. "Do you believe that my stars have ordained some great destiny?"

I nodded. "I do. That is why I have been so concerned about your education."

"Perhaps living at the court of Diocletian will be part of it," Constantine said soberly.

"Oh, I am sure that it will." I tried to keep the bitterness from my tone. "But will it be what you need? I had hoped to teach you something of the Mysteries in which I myself was trained when I was young."

Constantine shook his head. "I do not think I am meant for a priesthood. When I am grown I will enter the army and command troops, or perhaps even a province, in time. I think I would do well at that, don't you?"

I suppressed a smile. Certainly he did not lack for confidence. I wondered if he, too, saw himself wearing the purple one day. Carinus had been an appalling example of the dangers of gifting a man unprepared for it with imperial power. My son might well be right to think that he could learn much from the Emperor if that was his destiny.

"If you rise high, Constantine, you must never forget that the gods are still above you, and the Theos Hypsistos, the Power that is beyond the gods. You must seek to fulfil their will for the people you rule."

"I understand that," he said confidently. "The Emperor watches over his people as a father rules his family."

I lifted one eyebrow. Apparently the boy had thought about it, and perhaps he had reason. His father had almost become heir to the Empire, after all. Constantine might well dream of an imperial diadem.

"The sun watches over me, just as He does my father." Constantine patted my shoulder. "Do not be afraid for me."

I took his hand and held it against my cheek. My son certainly had the confidence to make his way in the world. Only later did it occur to me to wish that he had possessed a little more humility.
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12

"The court has become ever more splendid," Constantine's large script straggled across the page. In the eight years since he had gone to join the Emperor's household he had no doubt learned many things, but elegant handwriting was not one of them. I shifted the page so that the wavering lamplight fell full upon it. The house which Constantius had rented for me in Colonia Agrippinensis was elegant, but not quite proof against the winds of a German spring.

"A simple salutation is no longer enough, when one approaches the Emperor. Our deus et dominus, Diocletian, now requires a full prostration, as if he were the Great King of Parthia instead of the Augustus of Rome. But I must admit it is all very impressive, and the foreign ambassadors appear to be appropriately awed."

Maximian, thank the gods, remained the same bluff, hearty soldier he had always been, even though he was now co-Augustus with Diocletian. But no one could doubt which of the two was the senior partner. Diocletian's coins bore the image of Jupiter, while those of Maximian were adorned with the muscular form of Hercules.

But even if Maximian had been inclined to indulge in ceremony he would have been too busy to do so. The year he became Augustus, Carausius, the Menapian admiral they had appointed to defend Britannia from Saxon raiders, had been charged with misappropriating the spoils. Rather than stand trial in Rome he had rebelled and proclaimed himself Emperor of Britannia. The man was a brilliant seaman, who had roundly defeated not only the Saxon pirates, but the fleet Maximian sent against him. After that, our forces had been fully engaged with incursions of Franks and Alamanni in the east, and slave rebellions in the west of Gallia, with no time to worry about Britannia.

I missed my garden in Treveri, but Colonia, on the banks of the Rhenus in Germania Inferior, was close enough to the fighting for Constantius to visit me between campaigns. Our house was near the eastern wall, between the Praetorium and the temple of Mercurius Augustus, and had been occupied by the families of many commanders before us.

At least at the moment I did not have to worry about my husband's safety, for he had been summoned to Mediolanum, which Maximian had made his capital, to confer with him and Diocletian. I wondered sometimes if during those months spent away from me Constantius remained faithful, but in truth, if I had a rival it was not another woman but the Empire. When first we met I had loved him for his dreams. I could hardly complain because he now had an opportunity to make some of them reality. Still, with my husband off fighting and my son away with the Emperor there was little for me to do, and I found myself missing the responsibilities that would have been mine on Avalon.

For the moment, Diocletian and Maximian had accepted Carausius as a brother emperor. I wondered how long that would last. When I heard a rumour that Carausius was married to a British princess who had been trained on Avalon I was astonished. Ganeda had always feared and discouraged contact between Avalon and the outside world. That policy of isolation had been one of the reasons I left. But now I could not help thinking that if I had become High Priestess, it would have been I, not Dierna, who would now be deciding what role Avalon should play in this rapidly changing world. Sometimes I wished I could return to Britannia and find out what was happening there, but such a voyage was unlikely so long as Carausius ruled the British Sea.

On a bright day in the middle of March, when the wind, brisk as a hunting wolf, chased the little clouds across the sky, Constantius returned from Italia. At first, seeing his face as stony as it had been once after a lost battle, I thought the Emperor must have given him some reprimand, though I could not understand why Diocletian should be displeased. Surely it was Maximian, if anyone, who would be blamed for not having disposed of Carausius. If Diocletian was unhappy, I thought angrily as I directed the unpacking, he could come to Gallia and try his own hand at dealing with the situation here.

But the Germans led by Crocus, who had become Constantius's permanent bodyguard, were in fine fettle, filling the courtyard with their deep laughter, and surely they would have been gloomier if something were wrong. Most of them were quartered in the barracks at the Praetorium, of course, but there were always a round dozen or so about the house when Constantius was here.

I had grown accustomed to their size and their sometimes grim humour. I was a little surprised, to be sure, that Crocus himself had not come to greet me, as he had treated me with the deference due one of his own seeresses ever since our first meeting. Had something happened to him? That might explain my husband's mood.

I was in our bedchamber, sorting through the tunics from Constantius's baggage to see which ones might require mending, when my husband appeared in the doorway. I looked up, smiling, and saw him flinch. His face grew more forbidding as he glanced around the room.

"Constantius," I said softly, "what is wrong?"

"Come for a walk with me," he said harshly. "We need to talk, and I cannot do it… here."

I could have assured him that none of our servants would eavesdrop, but it seemed better to change my slippers for sturdier sandals and take up a warm wrap without argument, and in truth, I would not be sorry to get out of the house on such a brilliant, restless day.

Ever since the rebellion of Civilis, in the time of the first Agrippina after whom the city had been named, Colonia had been a frontier town. Other cities might neglect their defences, but Colonia's walls had been rebuilt at regular intervals until they rose high and strong, punctuated at regular intervals by guard towers. In times of peace, citizens could climb up by the stairs at the north gate and walk around to the east all the way to the gate by the Praetorium. Here, the banks of the river were already high, and the walls gave one a spectacular view of the bridge across the Rhenus and Germania Libera beyond.

I followed Constantius up the stone stairs, reassuring myself that it was not his health that was the problem, for he climbed without a pause for breath, the hard muscles of his calves flexing with each step. I, on the other hand, began to wish I had taken more regular exercise, for by the time we reached the walkway I was panting, and had to stop to catch my breath. Constantius put out a hand to steady me, then retreated to the wall, where he stood, arms resting on the crenellations and gazing northward where the barges moved smoothly down the river, until I joined him.

By this time my belly was knotting with apprehension. After so many years, I knew Constantius's moods as well as my own, and an angry confusion of emotion emanated from him so that he seemed wrapped in shadow, even while he stood in the sun. As I began to speak he started off and I followed him, recognizing that I would have to let him get to it in his own time and way.

The walls of the fortress at the other end of the bridge glowed, and sunlight glanced and sparkled from the blue waters of the river, very wide at this point and flowing strongly towards the sea. On the eves of festivals I would pour a little wine into the river, asking the gods of the waters to carry it to Britannia. As we passed the corner tower and turned towards the Praetorium, we moved into the wind off the river and I clutched at my shawl.

Constantius's steps slowed, and I realized that here, halfway between the tower and the gate where the cobbled road between the wall and the cloisters of the Praetorium was widest, must be the best place in Colonia to speak without being overheard.

"Surely," I said aloud, "You have not brought me here to speak of treason to the Emperor!" I stopped short, surprised how much anxiety had sharpened my tone.

"Do not be so sure!" Constantius answered harshly. "He has put me in a position from which I must betray someone. The only choice I have is whom—"

"What do you mean?" I touched his arm and his other hand covered mine, gripping so tightly I winced with pain. "What did he say to you?"

"Diocletian has had an idea… a way to extend the imperial power equally across the Empire and secure a peaceful succession. He vows that when he and Maximian have reigned for twenty years, they will retire in favour of their Caesars, who will then take the title of Augustus, and appoint two more."

I stared at him, amazed at the idea that a man would voluntarily give up the supreme power. But it might just work, if all four of the emperors remained loyal to each other. The idea of an empire that was not torn apart by civil wars of succession seemed like some fantasy.

"So he means to appoint two Caesars…" I prompted, when the silence had gone on too long.

Constantius nodded. "For the East, it will be Galerius. He's another man from Dalmatia, a hard fighter. They call him "the Herdsman" because his father kept cows—" He realized that he was babbling, and paused. "For the West… he wants me."

It seemed to me that I had known this even before he said it. It was the dream of a lifetime, this gift from the Emperor. Or perhaps it was not a gift, for why was Constantius so unhappy? I looked up into his dear face, permanently reddened by exposure to weather, the flaxen hair fading now to silver and receding from his broad brow. But to me he was still the fair lad I had met in Britannia.

"But there is a price," he answered the question I could not ask. "He requires that both Galerius and I marry into the imperial families."

I could feel the colour draining from my face, and reached out to the stone to keep from falling. Constantius had his eyes fixed on the horizon, as if he were afraid to see. I had heard that when a man is severely wounded, he feels first the shock, and only later, the pain. In that pause between the blow and my own agony, I found a moment to pity Constantius, who had had to bear this knowledge all the way from Mediolanum. And I understood now why Crocus had not come to see me. He was a man whose thoughts showed clearly in his face, and I would have read the truth of this disaster in his eyes.

"Galerius will marry Diocletian's daughter Valeria," he said tone-lessly. "They want me to take Maximian's step-daughter Theodora."

"I didn't even know he had a step-daughter," I whispered, and then: "They want you to take her? You mean you have not yet agreed?"

He gave a violent shake of the head. "Not without speaking with you! Even the Emperor could not require that of me. And Maximian remembers you with kindness—he gave me this much reprieve, that I should be allowed to tell you myself, before everything was arranged—" He caught his breath on a sob. "I vowed my heart's blood to the service of Rome, but not my heart! Not you!" He turned to me at last and gripped my shoulders so hard that the next day I would find bruises there.

I leaned my head against his chest and for a long moment we simply stood, locked together. For more than twenty years my life had revolved around this man; I had wondered sometimes if it was because I had given up so much for him, that I dared not feel any other way. And surely he, with so much more to occupy his mind, must be less dependent on me. But now I realized it was not so. Perhaps because his career had required him to be a creature of mind and will, all his heart was given to me.

"At the end of that river lies the sea," he murmured against my hair, "and across the sea is Britannia. I could take you there, offer my services to Carausius, and to Hades with the rest of the Empire! I have thought about it as I tried to sleep in the posting-houses on the way home…"

"Constantius," I whispered. "This is the opportunity you have dreamed of. All your life you have been preparing to be an emperor…"

"With you by my side, Helena, but not alone!"

My arms tightened around him, and then, like a spear to the heart, the realization came.

"You will have to do it, my beloved. You cannot defy Diocletian—" My voice cracked. "He has Constantine." And with that, the ice that had armoured me cracked suddenly and I wept in his arms.

Night was falling by the time we made our way back home, our eyes swollen with weeping, but for the moment emptied of tears. I drew my palla down and turned my face away when I told my maidservant to have a meal brought to our bedchamber. Drusilla would have known immediately that something was wrong, but Hrodlind was new, a German girl who was still learning Latin.

Constantius and I lay down together on our bed, while the food sat untouched. I had not even removed my palla, for I was chilled to the soul. If I killed myself, I thought numbly, it would be no better for Constantius, but at least I would be spared the pain. I said nothing, but Constantius had been the other half of my soul for too long not to sense what I was feeling, or perhaps it was his own experience that told him.

"Helena, you must live," he said in a low voice. "In every campaign, when danger threatened, it has been the knowledge that you were safe at home that gave me the courage to carry on. I can only do the duty that is being forced upon me now if I know you are still living, somewhere."

"You are unjust. You will be surrounded by people, distracted constantly by responsibilities. Who will there be to need me, when you are gone?"

"Constantine…" The name hung in the darkness between us, my hope and my doom. For his sake I had left my home to follow Constantius, and for his sake we now must part.

We lay together in silence for a long time, while Constantius stroked my hair. I would not have thought that with our spirits so exhausted, the body could make any demands, but after a while, despite my despair, his familiar warmth began to relax me. I turned in his arms, and he brushed my hair back from my face and almost hesitantly, kissed me.

My lips were still stiff with grief, but beneath that gentle touch I felt them softening, and soon my whole body warmed and opened, yearning, one final time, to welcome him in.

In the morning, when I woke, Constantius was gone. On the table he had left a letter.

"Beloved—

'Call me coward if you will, but only thus, when your beautiful eyes are closed in sleep, can I leave you. I will inform the household of the coming change in our situation, so as to spare you the need to explain to them what seems, even to me, to be an evil dream.

'I will be at the Praetorium for a short while, but I think it best, for my peace and yours, if we do not meet again. I am transferring this house to your ownership, with all of the slaves. In addition, my bankers have been instructed that you may continue to draw upon my account for whatever you may need, and if you should desire to move elsewhere, to transfer funds in your name.

'I will communicate with our son, of course, but I hope that you will be able to write to him as well. It will be you for whom his heart grieves, even as, I suppose, loyalty will compel him to congratulate me. But indeed, he ought to grieve for me as well.

"I hope, if the bounty of your heart allows it, that you will find a way to let me know where you go, and whether you are well. Whatever may befall, believe that while my heart beats, it is yours—"

His usually careful signature trailed off, as if, at the end, his resolve had failed. I let the piece of papyrus fall, staring at the empty bed, the empty room, and an endless, empty succession of days through which I must somehow learn to live, alone.

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.

As for this temple, how could it be expected to impress me, now that I had seen the great shrines of the Empire? And how could the Goddess speak to me, now that I had lost my soul?

But I had brought a garland of spring flowers to lay before her, and when I had done so I stood with head bowed, and despite my depression, the peace of the place began to seep into my soul.

The temple was quiet, but not entirely silent. Somewhere in the eaves sparrows were nesting, their cheeps and twittering the grace-notes to a deeper murmuring which I eventually identified as the sound of the spring. And suddenly I had no need to descend to those waters, for the sound of them was all around me, an overwhelming sense of Presence that told me the Goddess had entered into her temple and I stood on holy ground.

"Where have you been?" I whispered, tears smarting beneath my closed eyelids. "Why did you abandon me?"

And after a while, as I waited, I sensed an answer. The Goddess was here, as She had always been here, and in the running water, and upon the roads of the world, for those who were willing to be still and listen with their souls. Hylas had poked his head above the rim of the basket and was staring at a spot near the statue with the look usually reserved for me when I came home after a journey. I thought the place was just above the hidden spring.

I turned, lifting my hands in salutation. "Elen of the Ways, hear my vow. I am a wife no longer, and I have been cast out of Avalon, but I will be Your priestess if you will show me what you wish me to do…"

I closed my eyes, and perhaps the sun, descending, chose that moment to shine through the high windows, or perhaps one of the temple servants had brought a lamp into the room, but suddenly I sensed a blaze of light. And though my eyes were still shut, that glow shone into the darknesff that had engulfed my spirit when Constantius left me, and I knew that I would survive.

Londinium was the largest of Britannia's cities, larger than Sirmium or Treveri, if not so great as Rome. I was able to purchase a comfortable house in the northeastern part of the city, near the main road that led out towards Camulodunum. It had belonged to a silk merchant before his trade was disrupted by Carausius's wars, and in this part of the city, there was still enough open land for vegetable gardens and pasture, so that it was almost like being in the countryside.

I settled into the quiet life suited to the widow most of my neighbours believed me to be. I did not trouble to correct them, but made a regular circuit to the baths, the theatre, and the markets. And little my little, my inner turmoil eased. Like a legionary who has lost a limb in battle, I learned to compensate, and even at times to enjoy the things I had without immediately remembering those I would never have again.

From time to time, news would reach us from Rome. Constantius had taken Flavia Maximiana Theodora in marriage at the ides of Maia, a month which was said to be unlucky for marriages. I could not help hoping that in this case the tradition would prove to be true. But if Constantius still mourned for me, it did not prevent him from doing his husbandly duty, for at the end of the year we heard that Theodora had borne him a son, whom they called Dalmatius.

Theodora was not only younger than I, but she appeared to be the kind of woman who gets pregnant as soon as her husband hangs his belt on the bedpost, for after Dalmatius, another son, Julius Constantius, and two daughters, Constantia and Anastasia, were born in quick succession. I never saw Theodora, so I do not know whether she was, as the panegyrists were bound to say, beautiful.

I was now cut off from army gossip, but I could not help hearing talk in the market-place, and the political situation was degenerating. After getting Theodora pregnant, Constantius had returned to the army, and used his new authority as Caesar to mount an attack on Gesoriacum, the port from which Carausius had maintained his foothold in northern Gallia. The naval fortress was impregnable, but by building a mole across the entrance to the harbour, Constantius was able to cut the place off from support by sea, and shortly after mid-summer the garrison surrendered.

His next move was an attack on the Franks who were Carausius's allies at the mouth of the Rhenus. Trade was already suffering, and now, for the first time, people began to murmur against their upstart Emperor. It was said that his wife Teleri, the one who had been trained on Avalon, had gone back to her father, the prince of Durnovaria. Had she loved her Roman husband, I wondered, or was the marriage a political arrangement from which she was happy to be freed? And if so, had the alliance been made by the Prince of Durnovaria, or the High Priestess of Avalon? Teleri might be the only woman in Britannia who could understand me. I would have liked to talk with her.

And then, just before the feast that begins the harvest, men came crying through the streets with the news that Carausius was dead, and his minister of finance, Allectus, had claimed his throne, rewarding his old master's Frankish auxiliaries richly to support his claim. When it was announced that he would marry Teleri I shook my head. Allectus might call himself an emperor, but clearly he meant to be High King in the old way, by wedding the queen, and with her, the land.

I stood among the crowds who watched them on their way to their wedding feast. Allectus waved with a feverish gaiety, though there was tension in the way he gripped his reins. When the carriage in which Teleri was riding with her father passed by, I caught a glimpse of a white face beneath a cloud of dark hair, and thought she looked like a woman going to her execution, not her marriage bed.

Surely, I thought, Constantius would put an end to the pretensions of Allectus soon. But one year passed, and then another, with no challenge from Rome. Allectus pressed out an issue of hastily-minted coins and then lowered taxes. I could have told him that short-term popularity might prove a poor trade for repairs to fortifications when the Picts attacked or Rome decided to reclaim its errant province.

But I had taken care that no one should learn my identity. Constantine wrote regularly, letters filled with robust good cheer but few personal opinions, as if he suspected someone in the Emperor's household was reading his correspondence. I doubted that anyone was reading mine. It was not unusual to have a son in service abroad, after all. It was not my connection with Constantine that was the danger.

I had not heard from Constantius since he left me, but sometimes I saw him in my dreams and I did not think he had forgotten me. I would have made a valuable hostage, if Allectus had known who was living in his capital.

In the third year since I had come to Britannia, at the beginning of autumn, I had a series of dreams. In the first of them, I saw a dragon that emerged from the waves and coiled itself along the white cliffs of Dubris, guarding the shore. A fox came, and fawned upon it until the dragon ceased to pay attention to it, and then the fox leapt and bit the dragon's throat, and so the great beast died. And now the fox grew great, and decked himself in a purple mantle and a wreath of gold, and rode in a golden chariot about the land.

That dream was not hard to interpret, though I wondered why the gods had sent me a vision of something that had already come to pass. Still, I thought that perhaps some change was coming, and sent Philip more often to the forum to hear the news.

The next dream came with more urgency. Across the sea I saw coming two flights of eagles. The first group was driven back by the wind, but the second used mist and cloud to hide its approach and soared to the land. A flock of ravens rose up to combat it, and I saw they were protecting the fox, but the eagles overcame them and killed the fox, and the ravens retreated, shrieking, towards Londinium. Then the first group of eagles reappeared, descending just in time to defeat the ravens once and for all. And when they had done so, a lion appeared among them, and the people came out of the city to greet it, rejoicing.

When I awoke, a storm was lashing the rooftops. Bad weather for sailors, I thought sleepily, and then sat bolt upright with the sudden conviction that Constantius was out in that storm. But he would be safe, if my dream was a true one. It was Londinium which was likely to be in danger if the Frankish troops, whom I had seen as ravens, were defeated and in retaliation attacked the town.

I told Brasilia to lay in enough food to last us for several days. By sunset, we knew that the Roman army was on its way at last. Some said the legions would attack Portus Adurni, where Allectus's fleet was waiting for them, while others thought they would come to Rutupiae and march on Londinium. But if I had dreamed true, Constantius was splitting his forces and would attack both places. That night I slept badly, waiting for what the morning would bring.

Throughout the next day, reports and rumours flew through the city. The storm had driven the Romans back, said some, while others told of an advance north from Clausentum and fighting near Calleva. Darkness had already fallen when Philip came back from the forum to tell us that a rider had come with the word that Allectus was dead, and his Frankish barbarians, who had taken most of the casualties, were falling back towards Londinium, vowing to make the city pay for their losses.

Philip was all for fleeing, having lived through the sack of a city when he was a child, but so far, all I had dreamed was coming to pass, and I had faith that Constantius would arrive in time. I had not yet determined what I would do when he did. Could I resist the temptation to see him once more, and if I did so what would become of my hard-won serenity? I went to bed that night as usual, partly to reassure my household, and somewhat to my surprise, I dreamed once more.

The fox lay dead on the battlefield. From its side rose a black swan that winged desperately through the stormy air, pursued both by the eagles and the ravens. When it settled to earth at last beside the governor's palace, it was the lion that menaced it. But from one of the side-streets appeared a greyhound, that held off the lion until the swan had the strength to make her escape.

When I woke, the first light of morning was filtering through the bed-curtains. From outside I could hear shouting, but someone would have roused me if there had been immediate danger. I lay still, going over the details of my dream until I was sure I could remember it.

When I did rise, I found the household gathered in the kitchen.

"Oh, Mistress," exclaimed Drusilla, "there's been a battle outside the city! Asclepiodotus, the Praetorian Prefect, beat Allectus at Calleva, and here's the Master's fleet come up from Tanatus to save us from the Frankish barbarians!"

He is here— I thought, or he soon will be. I felt my heart beat more quickly, and the wall which had protected me from my memories was beginning to crumble away. If we met, would he still find me fair? I was past forty now, my body grown more solid with time, and there was silver in my hair.

"They are saying that by afternoon his legion will enter the city," said Philip. "The garrison Allectus left here has already fled, and his ministers and clerks and the rest of his household are scurrying about, gathering up their belongings and preparing to be gone before Constantius arrives." He laughed.

But in my dream, I thought then, the swan had been unable to flee. I finished my porridge and set down the bowl.

"Philip, I will want the carriage in an hour, with you and Decius to walk beside it. Bring your sticks to discourage any trouble from the crowds."

His face showed his amazement, but he had learned that commands given in that tone were not open to discussion. A little before noon we were turning out of our gate into the road. The cart was more suitable for country transport, but the top had leather curtains which could be drawn. Through the space between them I could see that the streets were full of people in a holiday mood. Some were already building an arch of greenery across the main road that led to the forum and adorning it with flowers.

I fingered the fabric of my gown nervously. I had bought it many years ago, because it was almost the blue of Avalon, and for the same reason rarely worn it. My thin woollen palla, of a darker blue, shadowed my face like a veil. Philip had not dared to question me. If we came home empty-handed he would think me mad, though he might doubt my sanity more were we to succeed.

There was no one guarding the gates to the palace. I directed my driver to a side door that I remembered from the one time I had accompanied Constantius on a visit to Britannia, descended, and slipped inside. The corridors showed the signs of a hasty departure.

I made my way swiftly to the suite of rooms that were normally occupied by the Governor, which I suspected Allectus had made his own.

And there, sitting alone in the great bed, half-dressed and staring, I found my black swan.

As I had expected, she was very lovely, with white skin and curling black hair that fell about her shoulders. And not as young as she had looked at first glance, for there were lines of bitterness at the corners of the full lips and shadows beneath the dark eyes.

"Teleri—"

It took a long moment, as if her spirit had been wandering, before she stirred. But her vague gaze focused as she saw the blue gown.

"Who are you?"

"A friend—you must come with me, Teleri. Gather up whatever you would take with you."

"The servants took my jewels," she whispered, "but they were not mine, but his. I have nothing… I am nothing, on my own."

"Then come as you are, but quickly. The Caesar would do you no harm, but I do not think you would wish to be a trophy of his victory."

"Why should I trust you? Everyone else has betrayed me, even Avalon."

I was glad to see she retained some sense of self-preservation, but this was no time to waver. In the distance I could hear a sound like the surf on the shore and knew that the people of Londinium were cheering. I pulled back my palla so that she could see the faded crescent between my brows.

"Because I too was once a priestess. In the name of the Great Mother of us all, I beg you to come away."

For a long moment we stayed with locked gaze. I do not know what she read in my eyes, but when I held out my hand and turned to go, Teleri gathered up one of the bedcovers for a mantle and followed me.

We were just in time. As my carriage creaked through the gate and turned down the side-road, from the direction of the forum I heard the blare of military clarions and the rhythmic slap of hobnailed sandals. My grip on the wooden seat of the waggon tightened until the knuckles showed white. The people were shouting—the words came clearer as we moved on:

'Redditor Lucis, Redditor Lucis!'

Restorer of the Light…

My closed eyes could not shut out the brightness that was blossoming in my awareness. Constantius was coming, his presence a radiance in my soul. Did he feel that I was near, or were the responsibilities of his office and the tumult around him a sufficient distraction?

As the people of Londinium cried out in welcome to their saviour, my cheeks grew wet with silent tears.
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13

During the weeks that Constantius spent in Britannia I remained true to my vow and made no attempt to see him, but my self-discipline took its own toll. My woman's courses, never regular, had almost ceased, and now a variety of other symptoms, from a pounding heart to waves of heat that left me drenched as if even my body were weeping, added to my misery.

Meanwhile the city was rejoicing at the word that Theodora had borne Constantius another child. I knew he had been devastated by our parting, but by now he must be appreciating the advantages of a wife who was royal, young and fertile. Prudence, which had kept me out of his sight before, gave way to despair.

The counsels of wisdom I had meant to give Teleri went unspoken. For her sake I had missed even the glimpse of him I might otherwise have had, though at the time I had thought even that much unwise. Constantine wrote to tell me that he was going to Egypt with Diocletian to fight someone called Domitius who had started a rebellion there, and so to my other troubles I could add anxiety for his safety.

And then Constantius left Britannia, and I learned the true meaning of despair. Lying with curtains drawn in my bedchamber I refused to rise and dress myself, and neither Drusilla's most delicate recipes nor Hrodlind's pleading could persuade me to eat. For most of a week I lay, accepting no company but that of Hylas, who was now grown so old that he spent his days dozing by the brazier, though when I was in the house he still insisted on following me from room to room. I rejoiced in my growing weakness, for though I had promised Constantius I would not take my life, this gentle slide into oblivion seemed a welcome surcease to my suffering.

And as weakness loosed the fetters of my mind, a vision came.

It seemed to me that I was wandering in a misty landscape like the borders of Avalon. I had come to confront the Goddess, to learn the next step in my own passage, to go beyond the Mother and meet the Crone. Before, I could never see beyond the Mother, who must be the central face of the Goddess, and the two on either side, Nymph and Crone, only Her handmaidens.

But what I was enduring now was the ultimate childbirth, the ultimate test of strength and courage. Now, confronting my own transition from the status of motherhood, I was forced to see the world-tragedy of mothers. Even Jesus, according to the Christians, had a mother, and again and again and again I saw him leaning on her arm, and when life deserted and defeated him he cried out to her too. I said, "Just like a man; he went on and died bravely and left the women to put his work together again afterwards." Fear for my own son overwhelmed me and I cried bitterly, "Does the Mother have to let her children go just to be crucified?"

I asked what was beyond. Again and again I received only the sense of being a ship's figurehead cleaving water towards the unknown.

Then I seemed to perceive woman's central tragedy. I had lost my own mother before I could even know her, and was left alone, lost, desperate, crying out for comfort. It was a situation in which we women continue to find ourselves lifelong. We are forced to lend strength to men, to bear and feed our own children. Outsiders saw me as strong, but I was a child crying in the dark for comfort and my mother had gone away and would never be there for me again.

And then the twist of the knife. Before I was barely old enough to stand alone, before I had had time or strength to know who I was, a smaller hand had been tucked into mine and the Voice had said, "Here. This is your little cousin. Look after her."

And this is the confrontation with Life, the first awareness that perhaps we should cry out, "No," and strike down that little form and batter it until it lies dead and cold and no longer demanding, and run on free, untrammelled, shouting, "Mother, wait, there's only me."

Or else we must make the other choice, being deprived of the Mother, to become the mother, and pick up the little one when she falls down, and wipe away her tears, and rock her to sleep, clinging together against the dark because she is as much in need of comfort as you, and you are the stronger so it is yours to give…

And that, I realized as the bright images misted away, was what I had done, first for Becca and Dierna, and later for a succession of maidservants and soldiers' wives and junior officers in my husband's command. And for Teleri, though I had failed her, at the last.

And then I realized that someone was with me in the room. I had left strict orders that I was not to be disturbed, but I was too weak now even for anger. I opened my eyes.

Teleri was sitting beside my bed, slumped a little in the chair, as if she had been there for some time. In her lap she held a bowl of porridge. It still steamed, and the scent brought back memories of the Hall of the Priestesses on a frosty morning, when we had all gathered to eat our daymeal around the central fire. It was this scent, I realized, that had brought me back from my vision, the fragrance of porridge with honey and dried apples as they made it in Aval on.

"Your servants dared not trouble you," she said softly, "but I will not add to the sins I already bear that of letting you die when there is something I can do."

I reached out for the bleak security of despair, but my stomach was growling. Apparently my body had decided to live, and it was no use arguing. With a sigh, I held out my hand for the bowl.

"When you are well," said Teleri, "I will leave you. I am going back to Avalon. I should never have left it, and if Dierna casts me out, I will wander until death takes me in the Mist between the worlds."

That was what I had been doing, I thought grimly, and without the trouble of travelling to the Summer Country, but it seemed to me that I had lost the right to criticize.

"Come with me, Helena. I do not know your story, but it is clear that you are a priestess of Avalon."

I swallowed a bite of porridge, considering. Had I been forgotten already? Ganeda might well have been bitter enough to erase my name from the rolls of priestesses. But perhaps the explanation was simpler.

"When I dwelt on the Holy Isle I was called Eilan," I said slowly, and saw her eyes widen.

"You are the one who ran away with a Roman officer! Not since the days of the first Eilan who was High Priestess at Vernemeton has there been such a scandal. But Dierna said that you were kind to her when she was a little child, and always spoke well of you. Is your Roman dead, then? Your servants do not speak about him."

"Not dead, except to me," I said through stiff lips. "He is Constantius Chlorus, the father of my son Constantine."

Teleri's eyes filled with tears. "I was married to Carausius, who was a good man though I could never love him, and to Allectus, whom I did love, though he was good neither for Britannia nor for me."

"This was Dierna's will?" In the end, it would seem that Ganeda had trained her grand-daughter well.

"She wanted to bind the Defender of Britannia to Avalon."

I nodded, understanding that this was the same hope that had originally sent me out to seek Constantius.

"Dierna is a great priestess, however badly things turned out for me," Teleri said earnestly. "I am sure that she would welcome you—"

And then attempt to use me, all for the good of Avalon, I thought bitterly. Once, I might have had as good a claim to be Lady of the Holy Isle as she, but I had been away too long, and though Constantius had abandoned me, his son, whose last letter lay even now on the table beside my bed, had more need of my counsel than the priestesses of Avalon.

"To Dierna, and to her only, you may say that I still live, and that I send my love to her. But I think that the Goddess may still have work for me in the world."

A week later, when I came down to breakfast, they told me that Teleri had gone. She had what was left from the money I had given her to buy clothing, and all I could do for her now was to ask the blessing of the Lady upon her journeying.

Spring had come to Londinium. The Tamesis ran high with rainfall and new leaves were springing from every branch, welcoming the returning birds. Life returned to my limbs, and suddenly I needed to be outside, walking through the pastures and along the stream that divided the city. At other times I would go past the forum and over to the baths, or farther still, to the Temple of Isis that had been built near the western gates to the town. With each day I grew stronger, and less content to sulk at home, brooding on my misery. I missed the patter of paws at my heels, but as soon as I began to recover, Hylas had died, as if he felt his duty was now done. He had lived a long time for a dog, but I could not bring myself to get another.

A stone-carver had his workshop between the Isaeum and the Temple of Diana, and I conceived the idea of commissioning from him a relief of the matronae, the trio of ancestral mothers who were honoured all over the Empire. But it had come to me that my carving should be different, and so in addition to the usual three figures, two of them holding baskets of fruit and the third a child, I asked the sculptor to carve a fourth Mother, this one holding in her lap a dog.

Perhaps the Mothers were grateful, for within a moon, I met three people who were to make a profound difference in my life during the remaining years I spent in Londinium.

I encountered the first immediately after finishing negotiations over the carving. I had set out in search of a cookshop where I could have a bit of bread and sausage before starting home. But as I turned the comer, I nearly tripped over something furry, and looking down, found myself surrounded by cats. If this was an omen, I did not understand it. There must have been two dozen, of all shapes and colours, waiting impatiently in front of a rather ramshackle building that had been added on to the back of the Temple of Isis.

I heard a ripple of words in some foreign tongue, turned and saw a small, round woman draped in several tunicas and a palla of brightly clashing colours, and leaning on a cane. Dark hair was partly covered by windings of purple, and she was carrying a basket that smelled strongly of fish even from here.

She looked up and saw me. "Oh I am sorry," she said in Latin. "They get very insistent, the greedy pusses, but I am the only one who will feed them, you see."

As she opened the bag and began to dole out fish heads I could see that her dark eyes had been elongated with kohl, and her skin had a warm glow that had never come from a British sun. Around her neck hung a pendant of a cat in the Egyptian style.

"Are you a priestess?" I asked.

"I am Katiya, and I serve the Lady Bast—" She started to touch one hand to her forehead in homage, realized that she was holding a piece of fish, laughed, and cast it to a big orange tomcat who waited to one side.

"Eastward we gaze upon Bast, the Queen-Cat," she chanted softly. "In the east we seek for the soul of Isis, Light-bearer, Moon-mother, gentle protectress. To the shrine of Per-Bast we direct our prayers… But I am the only one in Londinium who does so," she added, shaking her head. "In Egypt all people know that the cat is sacred to the Goddess, but merchants bring cats to Britannia and leave them, and no one seems to care. Only the priests of Isis let me stay here because they know that Bast and Isis are sisters. I do what I can."

"My goddess favours dogs," I told her, "but I suppose that Bast is her sister as well. Will you accept an offering?"

"In my Lady's name," she answered, and from amongst her draperies fetched out a net bag, somewhat less redolent of fish than the basket, into which I could drop a few coins. "I feed my little ones, and I make songs. Come to me when you are sad, noble lady, and I will cheer you."

"I think it very likely you will!" I answered, laughing in spite of myself. And thereafter, for as long as I lived in Londinium, I would visit Katiya every week or so and make my offering. Just to keep the scales balanced, however, I made a donation to the Temple of Diana, who loves hounds, for the care of the city's stray dogs. From time to time I would take one of these foundlings home with me, but though I enjoyed the patter of paws about the house, with none of them did I find the bond I had had with Hylas and Eldri.

The second meeting occurred one day when I noticed the name "Corinthius" on a sign above a door and paused, remembering the old Greek who had been my tutor when I was a child. From inside I could hear the sound of young voices declining Greek verbs. Corinthius had told me he intended to set up a school. I asked Philip, who was with me, to knock and enquire, and soon I was taking wine with a young man who told me he was the son of my old tutor, who had married when he got to Londinium, and begotten this son to eventually inherit his school.

"Oh yes, my lady, my father often spoke of you," said Corinthius the Younger. Crooked teeth showed as he grinned. "He used to say that you were brighter than any boy he ever taught, especially when I had not done well at my lessons."

I could not help smiling in answer. "He was a good teacher. I wish I could have studied with him longer, but I was lucky my father believed a girl-child should be educated at all." I did not tell him that my studies with the old Greek had been followed by a much more extensive education at Avalon.

"Oh indeed," Corinthius nodded. "I am so sorry sometimes, when I see my lads with their sisters, that I am not able to teach the girls as well. I think that some of their parents would be willing, but they do not like to send their girls to a male teacher, and of course there are not so many educated women here as in Rome or Alexandria…" He poured more wine.

"Do you know," I said eventually. "I have always wished that I had a daughter, to whom I could pass on some of the things I know. You might suggest to the mothers of some of these hoys who have sisters that they pay a call on me. My husband left me with enough to live on, but I find myself a little lonely, and would welcome a… circle… of friends."

"You will be like Sappho in the meadows of Lesbos," exclaimed Corinthius, "beloved of the gods!"

"Perhaps not quite like Sappho," I replied, smiling, for when we lived in Drepanum I had read some of her poems that my tutor had never shown me. "But tell the women, and we shall see."

Corinthius kept his word, and by the time the carving of the matronae was finished and installed in a shrine, a group of mothers and daughters were coining to my home at the new moon and the full, and if what I taught them owed more to Avalon than it did to Athens, it was no one's business but our own. But not even to these, the first sisters in spirit I had had since I left the Holy Isle, did I confide whose wife I had been.

The third meeting took place at the baths, where one was assured of eventually meeting everyone in the city, during the hours reserved for women. Seen through clouds of billowing steam, everyone looks mysterious, but it seemed to me that the voice that was so loudly complaining about the price of wheat was familiar, and the long-boned, dark face as well.

"Vitellia, is it you?" I asked when she drew breath at last. Through the steam I could see that the golden fish still hung from its chain about her neck.

"By Heaven's blessings, it is Helena! When I heard about—the marriage—I wondered—"

"Hush!" I held up one hand, "I do not speak of that here. I was well provided for, and people think me a rich widow with a son serving abroad."

"Well then, let us be widows together! Come, let us eat a bite, and you shall tell me all that has happened since your son was born!"

We dried and dressed ourselves and went out through the marble portico. As we passed the statue of Venus I saw Vitellia glance at it nervously, but there was nothing there to account for the disgust with which she hurried past, only a garland of flowers that someone had draped across the pedestal.

"I am sure that people would not do that if they knew how difficult it is for us," she muttered as we passed out into the road. "I know that you are not of the true faith, but in the days when our husbands were serving together, all the officers paid honour to the Highest God, so perhaps you can understand. We are commanded to avoid idolatry, you see, and yet we are surrounded by graven images and sacrifices."

She gestured down the street, and I saw, as I had seen a hundred times without thinking anything of it, that we were surrounded by gods. An image of Neptune rose from a fountain, nymphs and fauns grinned from the corbels of houses, and the crossroads was marked by a shrine to some local spirit who had recently received a plateful of food and a bunch of flowers as an offering. I remembered being struck by the lavish display when first I came from Avalon, where we knew that all the earth was holy, but saw no reason to emphasize the point with all these decorations, but I had become accustomed to it, after more than twenty years.

"But no one asks you to honour them," I said slowly—for it had been years since any emperor had tried to enforce that requirement.

"Even to touch them, to see them, is a pollution," Vitellia sighed. "Only in the church we have built in the woods outside the walls can we feel truly free."

I lifted one eyebrow. I had walked out along the north road at Beltane, when even the fields inside Londinium were too confined for me. I thought now that I remembered the building, a modest daub-and-wattle structure with a simple cross over the door. But the woodland that surrounded it had hummed with the power of the spirits that were abroad that day, and patches of flattened grass showed where young couples had honoured the Lord and the Lady in their own way the preceding eve. How could the Christians imagine they would avoid the old gods by moving outside the town?

Still, it was not for me to open their eyes to what they so manifestly did not desire to see. Vitellia was still talking:

"And one of our older members donated a building near the wharves that we have made into a refuge for the poor. Our Lord commanded us to care for the widow and the orphan, and so we do, nor do we ask what faith they hold, so long as they speak no demon's names within our walls."

"That seems a worthy work," I told her. Certainly it was more than any of the magistrates were likely to do.

"We can always use helpers, to treat their ills, and serve out the food," said Vitellia. "I remember hearing that you knew something of herb-lore, when we were in Dalmatia."

I suppressed a smile. Teaching had blessed, but did not quite fill, my days. It might prove interesting, I thought, to work with these Christians for a while.

And so it proved, and for the next seven years, my life was both rich and full, and more useful, I suppose, than it had been when my only responsibilities were to keep Constantius's house and share his bed.

It was at the end of February in the third year of the new century that the news that was to change everything arrived. I was on my way home from my weekly visit to the priestess of Bast, when I heard a tumult from the market-place. When I turned in that direction, Philip, who had been my escort that day, stopped me.

"If there is a riot, Mistress, I may not be able to protect you. Stay here—" He grimaced as he realized we were in front of the Mithraeum. "Here you will be safe, and I will go and see what the excitement is all about!"

I smiled a little as I watched him stride down the road, remembering the scrawny boy he had been when he first joined our household. He was still lightly built, but he had a very solid presence now. I tried to remember whether that change had come when he became a Christian, or when Constantius freed him. I rather thought it was the former, that had liberated his spirit even before his legal status was altered. Perhaps that was why, given his freedom, he had chosen to stay with me.

It seemed a long time before he returned. I seated myself on a bench in front of the Mithraeum, contemplating the relief of the god slaying the bull. I wondered if Constantius had visited this place when he was in Britannia. I knew that he had continued to rise in rank in the cult, for I remembered times when he had been absent for additional initiations, but of course the worship of Mithras had no place for women and he was forbidden to tell me what went on. Still, to sit here was almost like being under his protection. I was glad to find that the thought made my heart ache only a little, now.

Then I heard quick footsteps and saw Philip coming, his face white with shock and anger.

"What has happened?" I rose to meet him.

"A new edict! Diocletian, may God curse him, has begun the persecutions again!"

I frowned, hurrying to catch up as he started down the street again, for the murmur of the crowd was beginning to sound ugly. I remembered hearing rumours of trouble a few years before when the presence of Christians was said to have spoiled the Emperor's ritual. A few officers in the army had been executed for refusing to join in the sacrifices, and some others expelled, but nothing more had come of it. In most places, the Christians, though considered peculiar, got along well enough with their neighbours.

How could Diocletian be so stupid? I had been around Christians long enough by now to know that far from fearing martyrdom, they welcomed it as an easy way to cancel out all sins and win the favour of their gloomy god. The blood of the martyrs, they said, was the nourishment of the Church. Killing them only reinforced their belief in their own importance and made the cult stronger.

"What does the edict say?" I repeated as I caught up with Philip.

"Christianity is outlawed. All copies of the scriptures are to be turned in and burnt, all churches to be seized and destroyed." He spat out the words.

"But what about the people?"

"So far, only the priests and bishops are mentioned. They are required to offer sacrifice in the presence of a magistrate or be jailed. I must get you home, Lady—the garrison is coming out, and the streets will not be safe."

"And what about you?" I asked, between breaths.

"With your leave, I will go out to the church and offer my help. Perhaps something can be saved if we are in time."

"You are a free man, Philip," I said, "and I do not presume to command your conscience. But I beg you in the name of your god, take care!"

"If you will also do so!" He managed a smile as we neared my door. "Keep the rest of the household indoors. Though you are still a worshipper of demons, the High God loves you well!"

"Thank you! I think!" I watched him hurry off down the road. Still, blessings should be welcomed, from whatever quarter. Shaking my head, I went in.

For a day and a night, the detachment from the fortress tramped through the streets, searching out Christian leaders and property. By the time it was over, the bishop of Vitellia's church was in custody, and the little church in the woods by the north road had burned to the ground. The holy books, however, had been hidden safely, and a pile of church accounts given to the authorities to destroy.

The smoke of the burning was carried away by the wind, but the stench, both physical and metaphoric, lingered longer. Diocletian had ruled wisely for almost twenty years, but in his attempts to preserve our society, the Emperor was effectively dividing it. As I had predicted, persecution only made the Christians more stubborn, and there were more of them than most of us had realized.

These days the Christians met in secret in their houses. Philip reported to me that letters from the eastern part of the Empire told of arrests and executions. But to my relief, Constantius did no more than enforce the letter of the new law in those portions of the Empire under his control. And once the first excitement was over, the general population showed little enthusiasm for persecuting their neighbours. How those Christian neighbours might view the rest of us was not a question which at that moment applied.

Still, it seemed to me that in times such as these, I ought to offer the maidens I was teaching something more relevant than Homer and Virgil, and so, from time to time, I would turn our discussions to the issues that divided men today.

"It is necessary," I said one morning, "that the educated person understand not only what she believes, but why she believes it. And so I ask you, who is the Supreme God?"

For a long moment the girls looked at each other, as if not quite certain I really meant what I was asking, much less that it applied to them. Finally, Lucretia, whose family exported wool, raised her hand.

"Jupiter is the king of the gods, that's why the Emperor puts his image on his coins."

"But the Christians say that all deities except the god of the Jews are demons," offered Tertia, the sandal-maker's daughter.

"That is very true, and so I ask you, how many gods are there?"

This elicited a babble of discussion, until I held up a hand for silence once more. "You are all correct, according to our way of thinking. Every land and district has its own deities, and in the Empire, our practice has been to honour them all. But consider this, the greatest of our own philosophers and poets speak of a supreme divinity. Some call this Power "Nature", and others "Aether", and still others, "the High God". The poet Maro tells us,

"Know first, the heaven, the earth, the main,
The moon's pale orb, the starry train,

Are nourished by a Soul,
A Spirit, whose celestial flame
Glows in each member of the frame,

And stirs the mighty whole."

"But what about the Goddess?" asked little Portia, pointing towards the altar in the corner of the sunny chamber we used as a classroom, where a lamp was always kept burning before the relief of the Mothers. Sometimes, when no one else was present, I would pat the head of the dog in the fourth Mother's lap, and feel it warm and smooth beneath my hand as if Hylas had come back to me.

I smiled, having hoped that someone would raise this point.

"Certainly, it makes more sense to see the Highest Power as female, if one must assign a gender to Deity, for it is the female who gives birth. Even Jesus, whom the Christians say was the son of God, or even God himself, had to be born from Maria before he could take human form."

"Well of course!" answered Portia. "That's where the heroes and demi-gods come from—Hercules, and Aeneas, and the rest of them."

"But the Christians say their Jesus was the only one," observed Lucretia. The rest of the girls contemplated this lack of logic and shook their heads.

"Let us return to the original question," I said when the discussion came to an end. "Pythagoras tells us that the supreme Power is 'a soul passing to and fro, and diffused through all parts of the universe, and through all nature, from which all living creatures which are produced derive their life.' This is very much the same teaching as I received among the Druids, except, as I said, that we tend to think of this Power as being female when we give it a gender.

"This being so," I gestured towards the matronae once more, "why do we feel impelled to make images of that which cannot, in truth, be pictured, and divide it up into gods and goddesses and give them histories and names? Even the Christians do it—they say their Jesus is the Supreme God, and yet the stories they tell about him are just like our own hero tales!"

There was a long silence. In a way, I thought, it was unfair to ask these girls to answer a question whose solution had eluded the theologians and philosophers. But perhaps, just because they were female, they might find it easier to understand.

"You have dolls at home, don't you?" I added. "But you know they are not real babies. Why do you love them?"

"Because…" Lucretia said hesitantly after another pause, "I can hold onto them. I pretend they are the babies I will have when I grow up. It is hard to love something that has no face or name."

"I think that is a very good answer, don't you?" I asked, looking around the circle. "In our minds we can understand the Highest God, but so long as we are in human bodies, living in this rich and varied world, we need images that we can see and touch and love. And each one of them shows us a part of that supreme Power, and all the parts together give us a glimpse of the whole. So the people who insist there is only One God are right, and so are those who honour the many, but in different ways."

They were nodding, but I could see a glaze of incomprehension in some of their eyes, and others were looking out into the garden, as if they found more truth in the play of light on the leaves. Still, I could hope that something of what I had said would stay with them. Laughing, I dismissed them to go out and play.

For two more years, Diocletian's edict remained in force in Britannia. The year after the edict, when everyone was ordered to sacrifice, a soldier named Albanus had been put to death in Verulamium for refusing to do so, and one day I found Vitellia weeping because she had heard that her fourteen-year-old nephew, Pancratus, had been killed in Rome, but in Londinium there were no executions, though the bishop had been imprisoned and stayed under guard.

The Christians continued to meet in their houses, and when even that became too dangerous, I allowed them to hold services in mine. Or rather, in my atrium, since even with veils thrown over my images and altars, the interior was considered too polluted for them to expose the holy things of their god. They were happy, however, to welcome me to those parts of their service open to the uninitiated.

Nathaniel the rope-maker, who, since he was only a deacon in the church, had escaped arrest with the others, was holding forth to his congregation, the men on one side of the garden and the women on the other, heads covered and eyes cast down in piety.

"Oh God, the heathen have come into thy inheritance;" he intoned, moving his finger along the line of writing.

Vitellia sat in the first row, eyes closed and lips moving. Why did they not allow her to speak, I wondered, since obviously she knew the holy writings as well as he?

"They have defiled thy holy temple; they have laid Jerusalem in ruins. They have given the bodies of thy servants to the birds of the air for food …"

As he continued I reflected on the appropriateness of the words, which had been written, so I was told, by one of the ancient Jewish kings.

"We have become a taunt to our neighbours, mocked and derided by those round about us…"

Apparently those who served the god of the Jews had always had difficulty in getting along with their neighbours. Was it because they were wrong, or because, as they believed, they were ahead of their time? I had suggested that since the Christians did not believe in our gods, it could do no harm for them to go through the motions of making an offering, but Vitellia reacted with horror. I realized then that the Christians did believe in the gods, and considered them evil. I did not understand her reasoning, but I had to admire her integrity.

"… let thy compassion come speedily to meet us, for we are brought very low. Help us, O God of our salvation, for the glory of thy name…"

For the past few minutes I had been aware of a distant murmur. As Nathaniel paused, it grew louder—the sound of many feet and many voices. The Christians heard it too.

Softly, one of the women began to sing—

"The eternal gifts of Christ the King,
The martyrs' glorious deeds we sing;
And all, with hearts of gladness, raise
Due hymns of thankful love and praise…"

I caught Philip's eye and nodded, and he got up and went through the house towards the door.

Then we heard a heavy banging, and even Nathaniel's voice failed. Some of the women were weeping, but others sat straight with burning eyes, as if hoping for martyrdom. And they continued to sing.

"They braved the terrors of the time,
No torment shook their faith sublime;
Soon, holy death brought peace and rest
And light eternal with the blest."

I rose to my feet. "Do not be afraid. I will go out to them."

When I got to the door, Philip had it open, confronting the crowd. I stepped past them, and as the first man opened his lips to speak, stared him down.

"I am Julia Coelia Helena. For twenty years I was the wife of Constantius who is now your Caesar, the mother of his first-born son. And I promise you, it is his wrath that you will feel if you dare to invade my home!"

Behind me, the Christians were still singing—

"Redeemer, hear us of thy love,
That, with thy martyr host above,
Thy servants, too may find a place,
And reign forever through thy grace."

"Oh Lady!" the leader shook his head, and I saw that he was laughing. Now I could see that many of those in the crowd had garlands on their heads, or carried wineskins, and I began to realize that the fervent souls who were singing behind me were going to be frustrated in their desire for martyrdom.

"That was never our intention! In the name of Jupiter and Apollo, we are not bent on slaughter, but celebration! Have you not heard the news? Diocletian and Maximian have abdicated, and your Constantius is now Augustus!"
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