The Eagle and the Raven by Pauline Gedge

am getting a cold.” He bowed perfunctorily and walked away quickly, his back hunched.
    Caradoc just stood there, his heart beating wildly. Aricia! He pushed past the skins and ran into his room, but it was not Aricia.
    The Druid sat in the bronze-plated Roman chair, his long legs stretched out before him and his hands, as before, still in his lap. The firelight haloed him, throwing his bony profile onto the wall, magnifying it and giving it life, and to Caradoc it seemed as if the man had grown, become grotesque. He stopped in fear and confusion, but the man did not turn his head.
    “Come in, Caradoc ap Cunobelin,” the Druid said, his voice young and strong.
    Caradoc took three steps and looked openly at the face. He was not old, this priest-philosopher. He was perhaps not more than half Caradoc’s own age again, and the beard that earlier had seemed gray was in fact pale gold. What do I say? he thought in a panic. What do I do? Has he come to put a spell upon me?
    The man laughed softly. “Why are you afraid, Catuvellaunian warrior? Come and sit.”
    Caradoc recovered his wits and walked to the other side of the fire, then lowered himself onto his stool and leaned forward to gaze into the orange depths of the flames. He felt curiously shy and could not look full into the thin face. The Druid slowly sat up straight, pushing his hands into the folds of his deep sleeves.
    “Forgive me for intruding, and for startling you, Caradoc,” the Druid said at last, after a long and speculative scrutiny of the youth before him. He nodded to himself, for what he saw seemed to satisfy him. The boy’s face was broad and cleanly boned, the nose broad, too, but not ill-formed. The chin was square and cleft, like the father’s and the two other brothers’, a sign of pride and great stubbornness. But whereas the eyes of the young Togodumnus were never still, never fixed for long in thought or observation, these brown eyes even now lifting to meet his own were steady and acutely perceptive, full of a wisdom that the boy was perhaps unaware he possessed. The hair fell dark and softly waving from a high, wide forehead, and the hands…The Druid stirred. Hands told him everything the eyes could not. These hands were large-palmed but not fleshy, the fingers long but blunt at the tips, the hands of a man who could combine foresight with impetuous action. So. Here was another tiny fruit of possibility, as yet tart and unripe, but to be watched carefully. He leaned toward Caradoc, and stretched out his arm. “I am Bran,” he said.
    Somehow, unwillingly, Caradoc found himself grasping the wrist of the man in friendship, and finding it wellsinewed and very warm, his fear seemed to flow from himself into the other and to be dissipated somewhere in the depths of the white woolen gown.
    Bran sat back once more with a smile.
    “What do you wish of me?” Caradoc asked.
    “I wanted to meet you,” Bran said, raising one shoulder, “and I think that if I had sat down beside you in the Hall tonight you would have gotten up and run away. Am I right?”
    Caradoc flushed angrily. “The House Catuvellaun runs from nothing and no one,” he said hotly. “But I will confess to a certain unease when I saw you there.”
    “Why?”
    “Because the Druithin are no longer seen in these parts. The traders…” He broke off.
    “The traders, being good and loyal sons of Rome, drove us away. Yes, I know.” The pleasant voice held no hint of bitterness. “And so the sons of Cunobelin forget that the Druithin do not exist to cast spells and make magic.” He was amused now, his eyes twinkling, and Caradoc felt like a clumsy peasant. “But we are still useful, Caradoc. What would your father have done if Subidasto and his daughter had not come under my immunity?”
    “Father would have kept Boudicca and perhaps slain her father, and then he would have made war on the Iceni.”
    “And called it self-defence, as he did when Tiberius sent to ask of him why