an enchanted sleep, the summer had passed away.
She herself diagnosed her collapse as the cumulative effect of the hun-
ger and fear she had experienced at the Dun of Stones. And sorrow . . . she
had not known that grief could become an illness that sapped strength
from body and soul. The pain of losing Ardanos was still there, but if she
was careful she could go for as much as half a day without tears.
“Tell the children that I am grateful.” As she gained strength, she
found herself focusing on simple pleasures—the taste of new milk, the
colors of the turning leaves. “If they wish to visit me, they will be wel-
come.”
“They respect you too greatly, lady . . .” he said softly. “To them,
you are the white lady who turned herself into a cloud to save us from
the Romans, and they are afraid.”
“Well, you should reassure them,” she said tartly. “We Druids are
servants, not gods!”
“Of course, Lady Lhiannon,” he replied, flushing as he met her eyes.
In his, she caught the same look of awe with which they had regarded
the High Priestess when she bore the power of the Goddess in ritual at
Lys Deru.
Oh dear. She had assumed there would be rumors about the magical
mist that had saved the dun, but she had not realized that her long re-
covery would allow them to become so well rooted here.
“The farmers hereabouts have come to me,” he said then. “They
wish to build you a house on the slopes of the dun, near Cama’s spring.
They would be honored if you would make your home here . . .”
As their local goddess and tutelary spirit, Lhiannon thought wryly, with
Rianor as chief priest of my cult!
She shook her head. She needed peace, not worship. To stay here
would be ludicrous. But even the thought of returning to Mona, where
she would be reminded of Ardanos at every turning of the way, made
her spirit bleed anew.
“I cannot stay here,” she said gently. “We send those in need of
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healing to the Tor. I would like to spend the winter in retreat on Ava-
lon, and then we shall see . . .”
“We will need to gather provisions. The house will need repair. But it
is not so far.” His face brightened. “I will arrange it, lady, in your name.”
The days passed, and Boudica’s strength returned to her, though her
breasts continued to leak and her tears to fall. Had the mound-spirit
stolen the life of her baby? Or had it simply been an evil chance? As ev-
eryone was so eager to remind her, in any family more children died
than lived to bear children of their own. To be told that she was young
and would have others hurt even more. She would rather have blamed
someone, or something, than accept that the loss of her child had no
meaning at all.
She thought of sending for Lhiannon, but somehow it seemed to her
that she had called, and the priestess had failed her, and in any case, to
call would have required her to abandon her lethargy. Her husband
coped by staying at the dun he was building near the shore, as if, having
lost his son, earthen banks would be his immortality.
Perhaps the child had been taken as a sacrifice, she thought grimly,
for as the season progressed, it seemed as if the spirits of the sky had been
appeased. The clouds moved onward and the muddy ground dried. On
a few fortunate hilltops there was even a little grain. Boudica’s spirits,
however, did not improve, and Nessa began to suggest that she should
pay a visit to the sacred spring.
Her first reaction was revulsion. To return as she was now to that
place where her marriage had truly begun, where she had felt such hope
and known such peace, would seem a sacrilege. But as she thought
about it, she began to realize that the lady of the holy well had wronged
her by promising her so much and betraying it all. She should go, she
thought grimly. She had a few things to say to the spirit of the spring.
They rode south from the dun on a smiling day when the fi rst hint
of autumn touched the air. Boudica made no attempt to discourage at-
tendants. These days other people appeared to her as ghosts and shadows.
If such wished to follow her, she could not summon the energy to dis-
courage them.
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A half- day’s journey brought them to the shrine. The place was full of
pilgrims, some of whom were unceremoniously evicted from their shel-
ters when the entourage of the queen of the Northern Iceni arrived.
Boudica cared little where she slept, so long as it was not in the shelter she
and Prasutagos had shared before. While the others arranged their bed-
ding she walked among the trees. She ate the food they cooked for her,
but it was not until the next morning that she went to the spring.
Morning was for hope, she thought as the path curved and she
crossed the stepping stones through the marshy area below the spring.
But to her the sunlight seemed thin and the gurgle of water a mockery.
Bits of fabric, some old, some new, still fluttered from the branches of
the hazel tree. She reached up and untied the riband she had put there
almost a year before.
The cool breath of the water had not changed, and the water itself
continued to well upward from unknown depths, sweet and clear.
“I would rather have come here to thank you for a safe delivery,”
she said quietly. “If there is anything here to thank—” Her voice
cracked. “If you even care whether I give you a riband or take it back,
whether I give thanks or spit into your pool!”
But even in her anger Boudica could not bring herself to go that far.
This might be no more than water, but it was no less, an element to be
respected even now, when they had had so much of it. The Druids
would have taken this as the cue for some mystic sermon, but at the mo-
ment their wisdom seemed worthless as well. All they had accomplished
with their magic was to bring the Romans more quickly to Britannia’s
shores. In fact, just now she could not think of anything in which she
did believe. As if with hope she had also lost the power of motion, she
sank down on a piece of log that had been set as a bench nearby.
“I would hate you, if I had the energy,” she addressed the pool.
“They say your waters are bountiful as the Mother’s breasts. My breasts
are dry. They say your pool is the womb of life. My womb is empty!” It
was also said that the tears of the Goddess filled the spring. As she leaned
over the dark water, her own tears fell into the pool.
When Boudica was here before, she had thought the Lady of the
Well spoke to her. She would have resisted any such fancy now. But she
could not resist the one thing the waters offered her . . . a place to at last
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be still. This was neither comfort nor forgiveness nor peace, but a place
beyond them all. The sun moved inexorably westward; water continu-
ally welled upward and then trickled down the hill;
reeds and grass and
trees continued to grow. She lived.
For a time she sat without thinking, but presently she became aware
of a sound that did not belong to this woodland harmony—an intermit-
tent whimper, coming from a patch of reeds. With the first twitch of
curiosity she had felt since the baby died she got up to see. A twist of
dirty linen was moving, half in and half out of the water. She peeled the
cloth back to reveal what looked like a drowned rat, if there had ever
been a rat that was white with one red ear and absurdly large paws.
A puppy—someone had tried to drown a puppy in the sacred spring.
Now that was surely a blasphemy! She felt her guts clench as the tiny
thing wriggled in her hands. She wanted to be sick, and she wanted to
kill whoever would do such a thing. But already she was stripping away
the soggy linen, rubbing at the sodden fur with her shawl. She cradled
the shivering creature against her breast and the small head turned and a
very pink tongue licked her hand.
Boudica wrapped the puppy in her shawl and took a step down the
path. Then she stopped, picked up her riband from the ground, and
draped it back over a branch of the hazel tree.
When she returned to the shelter the relief on the faces of her ser-
vants made her wonder how long she had been gone. If any of them
were curious about what she had wrapped so carefully in her shawl none
dared to ask.
“Do you wish to stay here tonight, my lady?” asked Calgac. “If we
left now we could be back at the dun before darkness falls . . .”
She stared at him. Go back to Eponadunon, where every sight
would remind her of what she had lost? She could not do it. She wanted
space, and light, and a bed where she had never lain in the deceptive
shelter of her husband’s arms. There was a farm to the west of here that
she had visited once with Prasutagos, when he was introducing her to
his people and his land. According to the wedding settlements, it be-
longed to her.
“I will do neither . . .” she said slowly. “We will pack the wagon and
take the road west to Danatobrigos. Go back to Eponadunon.” She nod-
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ded to the warriors. “You may tell my husband where I have gone, and
that it is now safe for him to return to his dun. I will not be there to
reproach him—” or to be reproached in turn . . .
She did not expect to find happiness, but perhaps in time some heal-
ing would come. But first, she thought as the puppy burrowed against
her breast, she would have to find some milk for the little dog.
T H I RT E E N
Snow fountained as the puppy hit the bank, his pale form disappear-
ing and then bursting free like some winter spirit manifesting in canine
form. He slid a few feet, then leaped again, leaving a series of splash
marks down the hill.
“How he loves the snow!“ said Temella. With a shawl wrapped
around her head, only the girl’s big gray eyes and the tip of a red nose
could be seen.
“Bogle loves everything,” Boudica replied in amusement. When
they had settled into the farmstead at Danatobrigos the previous au-
tumn, bags and baskets and anything else within reach of his tiny teeth
had become a plaything. As the puppy grew into the promise of his big
paws he had found immense sport in the drifted autumn leaves. From
his coloring they guessed him to be part hunting hound, but the other
parent must have been something much larger. And now, as high as her
knee and still growing, he had discovered snow.
The red mare stamped and snorted as the puppy slid under her
hooves, barked, and was off again. But Roud was accustomed to his an-
tics, since riding or walking, where Boudica went, the dog was never
more than a whistle away. Temella was almost as constant a companion.
The girl was the oldest of the children to whom Boudica had taken the
soup the day she gave birth to her baby. She had appeared at the farm
about a month after Boudica moved there and attached herself as maid,
messenger, and shadow.
Boudica took a deep breath of crisp air. Some snow was to expected
at this season, but a blizzard of the size that had kept them indoors for
the past three days was unusual. Field and pasture had been transformed
by the snowfall, all irregularities smoothed to an expanse of pristine
white. Even the leafless branches of the ash tree that shaded the ritual
hearth were mantled in white, and the ancient trackway that ran toward
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the coast was no more than a depression in the snow. Beneath that white
blanket many things lay sleeping, from the body of her child to the seeds
of next year’s grain.
In the months since she had come to Danatobrigos, there had been
times when she wanted to lie down beneath just such an obliterating
coverlet, without thought or movement, until all feeling also disap-
peared. Even her husband’s rare visits had not disturbed her lethargy. It
was Bogle, thrusting his shaggy head beneath her palm to be petted, or
dropping some amorphous slobbered object in her lap to be thrown,
who had kept her connected to the world of the living. Sometimes, she
even laughed.
She watched, smiling, as he dashed past a stand of leafless oaks down
the road, barking furiously.
“Someone is coming,” said Temella as the dog bounced back toward
them.
“Bogle! Be still!” Boudica reined in and whistled, and the dog
slowed, a low growl vibrating from his throat, plumed tail waving gen-
tly. He was uncertain, not alarmed, though at his age, she wondered,
how would he tell the difference between what was dangerous and what
was merely new? Still, it was unlikely any enemy would be abroad in
this weather, especially now, when they were safe beneath the protect-
ing hand of Rome.
On the heels of her thought came the strangers themselves, Romans
by their gear, moving in good order past the trees. As they drew closer
she recognized Pollio with his escort, all mounted on native ponies whose
shaggy coats shrugged off snow.
“Well met, my lady!” he called, his breath making white puff s in
the chill air. “But I did not expect to meet you so soon! I was on my
way to the ferry—I have a mission to the Brigante lands—and regretted
not being able to break my journey at Eponadunon. Are you and your
husband visiting hereabouts?” He drew up beside Boudica.
“The king is at Eponadunon,” she said flatly. “I live here.”
His dark gaze grew more intent. “Truly? Then fortune is with me.”
She lifted an eyebrow, wondering what he could possibly wish to
say to her rather than to the king. “Temella, ride to the steading and tell
them we will have guests.” The girl nodded and urged her pony into a
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trot. Bogle lurched after her, circled her pony, and then skidded back
to Boudica.
>
“Will you ride with me a little up the road?” Pollio asked, moving
his mount closer to hers. “Our horses should not stand in this cold.”
That was true. She loosened the rein and let Roud fall into step be-
side his gray.
“Winter agrees with you, lady.”
“You do not seem to be suffering, either,” she observed. The cold
had brought an unaccustomed color to his sallow cheeks and brightened
his eyes, though she noticed that even Romans grew out their beards
in this cold. “I suppose this is very diff erent from your home.”
“Not as much as you might think—I was born in Dacia, and the
winters there can be bitter indeed.”
“That would explain how you come to be traveling in this weather.
I thought you Romans spent Britannic winters stoking the furnaces of
your hypocausts and cursing the cold.”
This time he laughed out loud, a surprisingly pleasant sound. “No
doubt they are doing so in Camulodunum, but even your dog knows
there is sport to be had in the wintertime . . .”
Her gaze followed Bogle, who had flushed a hare from the woods
and was pursuing it through the snow, barking ecstatically, though it
was not clear whether he was trying to hunt or to play.
“My mother was a noblewoman in Dacia.” Pollio’s eyes flicked to
her face and then away. “My father married her when he was stationed
there. This is how the new provinces become part of the Empire.”
I already have a husband— why is he saying this to me? But she herself
had told him that she and Prasutagos were living separately. She had
heard that divorce was easy among the Romans. Perhaps he did not
consider her married state an impediment. She glanced at him, seeing
him for the first time as a not ill-looking man who clearly enjoyed her
company. As if he had felt her gaze he turned to her once more, and she
looked away.
As they passed through the wood, the horses, sensing their riders’
inattention, had slowed. Pollio reached out and took her hand.
“Boudica, you are like a flame, burning in the midst of the snow.
I thought so when I first saw you, glowing like a torch in the imperial
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purple gloom, but you were still a child. You are a woman now, and you
are magnifi cent!”
Since that day she had borne and lost a child. If that was the qualifi -
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