Child of the Phoenix by Barbara Erskine

‘Here. The sempstresses sat up all night to make you a new gown.’ It had helped to pass the time while Eleyne was away; helped to quiet her conscience; and she too had noticed the previous day Eleyne’s shabbiness as the child stood next to her mother.
    Chivvying her impatiently, she dressed her charge in a new shift and slipped the gown over the girl’s head.
    ‘Say nothing to her,’ Einion had said, the unconscious girl still in his arms. ‘She will think it all a dream. The gods have marked her. She’s theirs. In due time they will claim her for their own.’
    ‘And you will make her father annul the marriage?’
    Einion had nodded and smiled. ‘Have no fear. I shall speak to him when she is of an age to choose a man. Then she will take whoever she wishes amongst the Druids. She will belong to no man and to any man as the goddess directs.’
    ‘No!’ Rhonwen pleaded. ‘She must remain a virgin – ’
    ‘Virginity is for the daughters of Christ, Lady Rhonwen, for the nuns. The followers of the old gods worship as they have always worshipped, with their bodies.’ He looked at her with piercing eyes and for a moment his gaze softened. ‘If you have kept yourself a virgin, Lady Rhonwen, it was to assuage your own fears, not to please the Lady you serve. Do not wish the same fate on this child.’
    Less than an hour of the night remained when Rhonwen tucked Eleyne, still deeply drugged, into her bed, her ice-cold body rigid next to Luned’s warm relaxed form. Looking down at the two girls as Luned turned and put her arm over her friend, Rhonwen felt her tears begin to fall.
    It was as Rhonwen was brushing her hair that Eleyne remembered. ‘You knew he would be there, didn’t you!’ She jerked her head away from Rhonwen’s hands and stood up. ‘You knew, and you took me to him!’ Behind her Luned, who had been sitting on the edge of the bed pulling on her stockings, looked astonished at the sudden vehemence. ‘How could you! I thought you loved me, I thought you cared. You betrayed me!’
    Eleyne had thought she was safe at Aber. She had thought he would not dare to follow her. She stood up, pushing Rhonwen aside: ‘What did he do to me?’
    ‘He gave you to the goddess.’
    ‘Father Peter and the bishop would not like that.’ Father Peter was one of the chaplains at Aber.
    ‘You mustn’t tell them. You mustn’t tell anyone, ever.’
    Rhonwen had realised that Luned was all ears. She turned towards her. ‘Nor you, Luned. No one must ever know, no one.’
    ‘What will happen to me now?’ Eleyne still had her back to them. Her hands were gripping the stone sill of the window as she tried to clamp down on the horror and fear which had broken through the barriers and flooded through her. She was shaking.
    ‘It means you can stay here in Gwynedd. When you are old enough Einion will tell your father what has happened.’ Rhonwen’s voice was calm and soothing.
    ‘I won’t have to go and live with Lord Huntingdon?’
    ‘No.’
    No, you will be given to the Druids; who will use your body for worship; for a temple; or for their plaything. Oh, great goddess, have I done right? Would she have been happier married to Huntingdon, living far away …?
    ‘I don’t want to see the future, Rhonwen.’ Eleyne was looking out at the russet hillside. There the old gods lived; the stones of their temple lay there still, tumbled on the hillside.
    ‘You have no choice, child. You have the gift.’
    ‘Einion would never have known if you hadn’t told him.’
    ‘I had to, Eleyne,’ Rhonwen said guiltily. ‘It would have destroyed you. Don’t you see? He will tell you how to use your powers for good. To help your father, to help Gruffydd and perhaps Owain and little Llywelyn after him. For Wales. Besides, don’t you see? I have saved you from marriage. I have saved you from going to a stranger like your sisters.’
    There was a long silence. Then Eleyne turned back to her. ‘I am not going to stay here.