The Forest House

by Marion Zimmer Bradley

  Yet when he thought of the son they had lost, he could not help thinking about his son by Eilan. In Roman society, adoption of a healthy boy from another family was a traditional solution. If Julia had no male children, and after a consultation with the physician that began to seem improbable, she was less likely to object if he claimed Eilan's son. And he was fond of his daughters, although he felt no such bond as he had to his first-born boy.

  But there was time and enough for that once Julia had her health again. Hoping it would at least distract her from her grief, he agreed to take Julia on a pilgrimage to the shrine of the Mother Goddess near Venta, but the journey did little to help her recover her health and spirits, and when he offered to move the family back to Londinium, she did not want to go.

  "It is here that our children are buried," she told him. "I will not leave them here."

  Gaius privately considered this unreasonable. Despite native beliefs that the land of the Silures held the entrance to the Otherworld, it seemed to him that no earthly place could be nearer or further off than any other to the Land of the Dead, but he gave way to Julia's whim and they remained.

  Towards the end of that year news came that Agricola was dead as well.

  "As Tacitus is fond of saying," wrote Licinius Corax, " 'It is a principle of human nature to hate those whom we have injured.' But even our Divine Emperor could find little in Agricola to justify his anger, and so our friend escaped official disfavor. Indeed, the Emperor was remarkably solicitous throughout Agricola's illness, and though there are those who whisper that the General was taken off by poison; for myself, I think the cause was a heart broken by witnessing Rome's dishonor. It may be that he is well out of it, and it is we who will soon wish that we had gone on before. Be glad that you are safely out of sight in Britannia . . ."

  In the following year Licinius retired and came to make his home with them, and so they added another wing to the Villa Severina, and the final year of Gaius's service as Procurator for supplies began. He had hoped that when he completed his term of office Senator Malleus would be able to arrange to have him appointed to a higher position, but that year brought disturbing news. The Emperor was growing ever more autocratic and suspicious. As a military leader he had been reasonably successful, but he seemed to take his successes as proof of divine favor, and was doing his best, wrote Licinius's cousin Corax, to destroy what power remained to the patrician class.

  Gaius wondered if this would be the spark that set the embers of rebellion aflame, but the next thing they heard was that Herennius Senecio and several others had been executed for treason.

  Gaius understood that his career was likely to be on hold for some time. His patron Senator Malleus, while not accused, had found it prudent to retire to his estates in Campania. And so, when Gaius completed his term as Procurator, he put off the visit to Rome with which he had planned to follow it and, like his patron, decided to devote himself for a time to developing the productivity of his lands.

  Now he began at last to establish a stronger friendship with his remaining daughters, but Julia remained depressed and sickly. Though they still shared a bed, it was becoming ever clearer that she was unlikely to give him a son.

  By now Eilan's child would be ten years old. Even a father who was not precisely in the Emperor's favor could guarantee the child a better future than a British priestess who must hide the very fact of his existence, and surely Julia would rather raise a son of his than a stranger's child - although he could never be quite sure what Julia would feel. But after all, Gaius could assure her - and it would be the truth - that the boy had been fathered before he ever set eyes on her.

  The Forest House was scarcely an afternoon's ride away. His son could be living just over the next hill, reflected Gaius, gazing southward through the trees. But he found himself oddly afraid to face Eilan again. Did she hate Rome? Did she hate him? The girl he had loved when he was a boy was gone, transformed into the terrible priestess of Vernemeton. Sometimes it seemed to him that the woman he had married was gone too, all the playfulness that had attracted him dead with her son.

  Gaius had been reasonably successful in his career, though he had hardly fulfilled his father's dreams. But it occurred to him that he had little to love. In his life he had often been lonely, but his father's discipline, or that of the army, had kept him too busy to worry about it. But as the year wore on Gaius found that though managing the estate exercised his body it left his mind free to roam, and he was haunted by dreams of his childhood.

  Perhaps it was all the time he was putting in on the land that was stimulating his memories from that age when all the world was wonderful and new. He had not allowed himself to think about his mother when he was a child, but he dreamed of her now. He felt her holding him, heard her sweet lullabies and woke in tears, calling to her not to leave him alone.

  But she had gone away to the Land of the Dead, and Eilan had left him for the Goddess she served, and now Julia was withdrawing from him as well. Would there ever be anyone, he wondered, who could simply love without trying to change him, whose love would endure?

  Then Gaius would remember how he had felt when he held his son in his arms. But whenever he began planning how to find the boy, he would flinch from the possibility that when they did meet, his son would not care after all. And so he did nothing.

  One day when Gaius was riding out after the wild pigs that had been rooting in his gardens he realized that he had reached the woodland above the Forest House where Eilan had given birth to their son and found himself reining his horse down the path. He knew that Eilan would not be there, but perhaps there was someone who could give him news of her. Even if she hated him, she could hardly refuse to give him news of their son.

  At first he thought the place deserted. The promise of spring was blushing in the branches with their hard buds of green, but the thatched roof of the hut was ragged and weather-bleached, and the ground littered with sticks blown down in the last storm and last year's dead leaves. Then he saw a thin haze of smoke filtering up through the thatching. His pony snorted as he reined in and a man peered out at him. "Welcome, my son," he said, "Who are you and why have you come?"

  Gaius gave his name, eyeing the fellow curiously. "And who might you be?" he asked. The man was tall, with a sun-browned face and night-dark hair, dressed in a coarse goat-hair robe above an untidy straggle of beard.

  Gaius wondered if he were some homeless wanderer who had taken refuge in the unused building; then he saw the crossed sticks that hung from the man's neck on a thong and realized he must be some kind of Christian, perhaps one of those hermits who were, in the last two or three years, springing up from one end of the Empire to the other. Gaius had heard of them in Egypt and Northern Africa, but it was strange to see one here. "What are you doing here?" he asked again.

  "I have come to minister to God's lost ones," the hermit answered. "In the world I was known as Lycias; now I am called Father Petros. Surely God has sent you to me because you are in need. What can I do for you?"

  "How do you know it was God who sent me to you?" Gaius asked, amused in spite of himself by the man's simplicity.

  "You're here, aren't you?" asked Father Petros.

  He shrugged and Petros went on. "Believe me, my son, nothing happens without the knowledge of the God who set the stars in their places."

  "Nothing?" Gaius said with a bitterness that surprised him. He realized that at some point during the past three years, perhaps when he heard of the death of Agricola, or perhaps while he was watching Julia's suffering, he had ceased to believe in the gods. "Then perhaps you can tell me what kind of deity would take a son, and a daughter, from a mother who loved them?"

  "Is that your trouble?" Father Petros pulled the door wider. "Come in, my son. Such matters are not explained in a breath, and your poor beast looks tired."

  A little guiltily, Gaius remembered how far the pony had carried him. When he had tethered the animal with a long enough lead to let it reach th
e dry grass, he went in.

  Father Petros was setting out cups on a rough table. "What can I offer you? I have beans and turnips and even some wine; the weather is such, here, that I cannot fast as often as I did in a warmer climate. I drink nothing but water, myself, but I am permitted to offer these worldly things to such guests as come to me."

  Gaius shook his head, realizing he had happened upon a philosopher. "I will try your wine," he said, "but I tell you plainly; you will never convince me your god is either all-powerful or good. For if he were all-powerful, why can he not prevent suffering? And if he can and does not, why should men worship him?"

  "Ah," said Father Petros, "I can tell by that question that you have been trained in the Stoic philosophy; for the words are theirs. But the philosophers are wrong about the nature of God."

  "And you, of course, are right?" Gaius's tone was belligerent.

  Father Petros shook his head. "I am only a poor minister to such children as seek my counsel. The only Son of God was crucified and returned from the dead to save us; that is all I need to know. Those who believe in Him will live eternally in glory."

  It was the usual childish oriental legend, Gaius thought, remembering what he had heard about the cult in Rome. He supposed he could see why the story appealed to slaves and even a few women of good family. Suddenly it occurred to him that this fellow's ramblings might interest Julia, or at least give her something to think about. He set down his cup.

  "I thank you for your wine, Father, and for your story," he said. "May my wife call upon you? She is devastated with grief for our daughter."

  "She will be welcome whenever she comes," Father Petros replied graciously. "I am only sorry I have not convinced you. I haven't, have I?"

  "I'm afraid not." Gaius was a little disarmed by the man's regret.

  "I am not much of a preacher," said Father Petros, looking somewhat crestfallen. "I wish Father Joseph were here; I am sure he could convince you."

  Gaius thought it highly unlikely, but he smiled politely. As he turned to go, there was a knock at the door.

  "Ah, Senara? Do come in," the hermit said.

  "I see you have someone with you," a girl's voice replied. "I'll come another time, if I may."

  "It's all right, I'm just leaving." Gaius pushed aside the flap of leather that covered the door. Before him was one of the prettiest young girls he had seen at least since his first sight of Eilan, so long ago. But of course he too had been very young then. She was about fifteen, he thought, with hair the color of copper filings in a blacksmith's fire and eyes very blue, dressed in an undyed linen gown.

  Then he looked at her again and realized where he had seen her before. Despite the Celtic coloring, there was a distinct look of his father's old secretary Valerius in the line of her nose and jaw. That would explain her knowledge of Latin.

  It was not until he was untying his horse that he realized he could have asked - what was it the hermit had called her, Senara? -how he might arrange a meeting with Eilan. But by that time the doorflap had closed behind her, and one of the few things he knew about women — not that he knew that much, and since his marriage he felt he knew even less — was that it was never wise to ask one woman about another.

  It was well past sunset by the time Gaius reached the villa, but Julia's greeting, if subdued, was friendly. Licinius was already awaiting them in the dining room.

  Macellia and Tertia were playing with a toy chariot on the veranda; they had dressed Julia's pet monkey in baby clothes, and were trying to stuff it into the chariot. He rescued the little animal and handed it to Julia. Sometimes he wondered how three small girls and one woman, with only seven servants, could make so much chaos in one house.

  The little girls screamed, "Papa! Papa!" and Quartilla came running to join them. Gaius hugged them all round, called for Lydia to take charge of them, then went into the dining room with Julia.

  She still had the monkey on her shoulder; it was about the size of a baby, and for some reason, seeing it dressed in baby clothes annoyed him. He couldn't imagine what Julia wanted with the creature; it was a hot-weather animal and had to be cosseted as if it really were a child. Of all places to keep such a pet, Britain was certainly the worst; even in summer, he supposed, it was too cold for the little animal. "I wish you'd get rid of that wretched beast," he snapped irritably as they sat down to the meal.

  Her eyes watered. "Secunda was so fond of it," she whispered.

  The comment made him wonder, not for the first time, if Julia had lost her mind. Secunda had been six years old when she died, and he didn't think she had ever paid the slightest attention to the monkey. Still, if it pleased Julia to think so . . . Seeing Licinius's warning glance from across the table, he sighed and abandoned the subject.

  "What were you doing today?" she asked, making an obvious effort to speak cheerfully as the servants brought in the boiled eggs, a platter of smoked oysters and salt fish, and a selection of salad greens dressed with olive oil.

  Gaius swallowed a piece of onion too quickly and coughed, mentally editing his day. He reached across the table for a fragrant roll of fresh bread. "I was trying to track those wild pigs and ended up on the other side of the hills," he began. "The old hut in the woods down there has a new tenant, some kind of a hermit."

  "A Christian?" asked Licinius dubiously. He had never had any good to say of the oriental cults that were invading Rome.

  "Apparently so," said Gaius neutrally, letting the girl take his plate away while others brought in the dish of ducklings sauced with plums soaked in sweet wine. He dabbled his fingers in the bowl of scented water and wiped them. "At any rate he believes that his god rose from the dead."

  Licinius snorted, but Julia's eyes filled with tears. "Does he really?" The helpless look in her eyes wrung Gaius's heart even while it exasperated him. Whatever gives her comfort. He put down the duck wing, turning on his dining couch to face her.

  "Do you think he would let me come and speak to him? Will you allow me to go?" she asked pleadingly.

  "My dear Julia, I want you to do whatever will give you comfort." He meant it in all sincerity. "Whatever makes you happy will please me."

  "You are so good to me." Her eyes filled with tears again. She gulped apologetically, and fled from the room.

  "I don't understand her," admitted Licinius. "I raised her to live a virtuous life and honor her ancestors. I loved the child too, but all of us will die one day, be it late or soon. I chose well for my girl," he added. "You have been kinder to her than I could be, even though she did not give you a son."

  Gaius sighed and reached for the wine. He felt like a monstrous deceiver, but held his peace. He had become responsible for this woman's happiness, and to hurt her feelings was the first of many things he did not want to do. But he could not help thinking that Eilan would never have been foolish enough to be seduced by some Christian monk's ramblings.

  When the sweets had been cleared away, Gaius went to the room where Julia was supervising as the little girls were put to bed. Gaius was glad to see the monkey had escaped; feeling very mean-spirited, he hoped it would run off and, if they were lucky, get caught by a marauding dog.

  The slave trimmed the wick and he and Julia stood for a moment, watching the soft light flickering on smooth cheeks and dark lashes. Julia spoke a phrase of blessing, and touched the amulet against fire that hung on the wall. Of late she had become very superstitious. Of course a fire would be disastrous, but the house was newly built and not at all drafty. On the whole he had rather more faith in the fire-fighting abilities of their household slaves than in most goddesses or charms.

  As they came out into the hallway, she said, "I think I will go to bed now."

  Gaius patted her shoulder and kissed the cheek she presented. He might have expected that. The idea was that by the time he came to bed she would be - or pretend to be - so deeply asleep that he would not disturb her. He might as well not have a wife at all. And how could she expect him to give her a
nother child if she would not sleep with him?

  But it was pointless to censure her. He wished her a good night and turned towards his office in the other wing of the villa, where a scroll containing the latest installment of Tacitus's Life of Agricola was waiting for him.

  And there he discovered where Julia's monkey had taken refuge; it was on his desk and had defecated, evil-smelling monkey excrement, all over his papers. He shouted with rage, grabbed the little beast and flung it with all his force into the yard. He heard an odd crunch and then a whimper, then nothing more.

  Good. If the creature was dead, he would not mourn; and tomorrow he would have no compunction in telling Julia that a dog must have caught it. The Christian priest could comfort her; though he had heard that they preferred to have nothing to do with women. At the moment, he wished that he need not either.