To Love Again - Bertrice Small [27]
“My brothers, Titus and Flavius, were also twins,” Cailin said, and then to her great mortification, tears began to slide down her face. Desperately she attempted to scrub them away.
The three older men looked away, giving the girl time to compose herself as Corio put a shy arm about his cousin’s shoulder and gave it a squeeze. It was almost the undoing of Cailin, but she somehow managed to find humor in her situation. Poor, good Corio was making an attempt to soothe her, while in reality his kindness was close to sending her into a fit of hysterics. She needed to weep and to grieve for her family, but not now. Not here. It would have to be later, when she could find a private place where no one else would see her tears. Cailin drew a deep, calming breath.
“I am all right now,” she said, removing Corio’s protective arm.
Her three uncles met her steady gaze with admiration, and Eppilus said, “You still wear your bulla, I see.”
“I am not married,” Cailin told them.
“Inside your bulla there is a small bit of stag’s horn, and a flat droplet of amber within which is a perfectly preserved tiny flower,” Eppilus told her. “Am I not right, Cailin?”
“How did you know what my amulet contains?” she asked, surprised. “I thought that my mother and I were the only ones to know. Not even my grandmother knows what is within my bulla. It is blessed.”
“Aye, but not by any of your phony Roman deities,” he replied. “The stag’s horn is consecrated to Cernunnos, our god of the Hunt. The amber is a bit of Danu, the Earth Mother, touched by Lugh, the Sun; the flower caught within it signifies fertility, or Macha, who is our goddess of both Life and Death.” He smiled at her. “Your mother’s brothers sent you this protection before you were even born. I believe it has kept you safe so that you might one day come to us.”
“I never knew,” Cailin said softly. “My mother said little about her life before she wed my father. I think the only way she could not hurt missing the ones she loved was to put them from her entirely.”
Eppilus smiled. “How well you knew her, Cailin. Such wisdom in one so young is to be admired. I bid you welcome to your mother’s family. I imagine that my father did not. He has never been able to forgive Kyna for marrying Gaius Drusus, and that prideful attitude has cost him so much. He loved your mother greatly, you know. She was his joy.”
“Why does he hate Romans, or anything touched by their culture? Few real Romans have been in this land for years now. My father’s family has intermarried with Britons for so long that there is little if anything Roman left in us. Only my original ancestor was a pure Roman. His sons married Dobunni girls just as my father did.”
“Our father,” said Lugotorix, “is a man very much enmeshed in the past. Britain’s past. The past glories of the Dobunni. A past that began to fade and change with the arrival centuries ago of the Romans. Our history is not a written one, Cailin Drusus. It is a spoken history, and Berikos can recite that history like a bard. Ceara, who is closest to him in age, remembers Berikos as a young boy. He was always consumed by our people and their past. He knew that he would one day rule us, and he secretly longed to restore the Dobunni to their former glory. When the legions left, Ceara said he wept with joy, but in the years since, little has happened to change Britain.
“Still, he saw the disintegration of the towns built by the Romans, and of the form of government that they left in place here. Vortigern, who calls himself King of the Britons, has never really consolidated the tribes. He is old now, and has no real power over the Dobunni, or any of the other Celts. To Berikos, your mother’s marriage to your father was a great betrayal. He had planned to match her with a warrior named Carvilius. Our father hoped that Carvilius would help him regain all the Dobunni territory lost to the Romans over the years, but it was not to be. Kyna loved