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said hastily, "I see I have made a mistake —" and turned away. "Here, I think these will fit you; I borrowed them from my sister Mairi, they're her husband's. Come, I'll help you to the bathhouse and get father's razor for you if you want to shave - though you're old enough, I would think, to grow a beard. Careful - don't put all your weight on that foot or you'll fall on the floor."

    Bathed, shaved and, with Cynric's help, dressed in a clean tunic and the loose breeches the Britons wore, Gaius felt able to get up and hobble. His arm throbbed and burned, and his leg ached in several places, but he could have been much worse, and he knew that his muscles would stiffen if he remained in bed. Even so, he leaned gratefully on Cynric's arm as the taller boy guided his steps across the yard to the long feasting hall.

    A table of hewn boards ran down the center, with heavy benches to either side. Warmth was provided by a hearth at either end of the hall. Near these a mixed number of men and women and even a few children were assembling. Heavily bearded men in roughly woven smocks talked to one another in a dialect so crude Gaius could not understand a word.

    Although his tutor had taught him that the Latin familia originally meant all who shared living quarters: master, children, freedmen, and slaves, the Romans now kept their serving folk apart from the family.
    Cynric mistook his look of mild distaste for weakness, and hastened to lead him to a cushioned seat at the upper end of the long room.

    Here, a little apart from the mixed crew at the lower end of the table, the lady of the house was seated on a wide chair. Near by, another seat, covered with a bearskin, was evidently reserved for the master.
    Other wide settles and benches were occupied by several young men and women whose finer garments and well-bred manners proclaimed them children or fosterlings of the household, or perhaps upper servants. The lady of the house nodded at the boys but did not interrupt her conversation with an old man seated near the hearth, tall and gaunt as an elderly ghost, with grey hair curled and cut in almost foppish fashion. His beard was grey, too, and elaborately curled. Green eyes twinkled in the old man's face; his long tunic was of snowy white, embroidered lavishly, and the small wire-strung harp by his side was Page 29
    trimmed and ornamented with gold.

    A bard! But that was not so surprising in a Druid's hall. It needed only a soothsayer to have all of the three classes of Druid that Caesar had described represented here. But a diviner might have seen through the young Roman's disguise. As it was, the old bard favored Gaius with a long glance that made the skin prickle along his backbone before the old man turned to his hostess again.

    Cynric said in an undertone, "You know my stepmother Rheis; this is the bard Ardanos, I call him grandfather, for he is my foster mother's father; I am an orphan."

    This silenced Gaius completely, for he had heard of Ardanos in the headquarters of the Legion. He was believed to be a powerful Druid, perhaps the chief of those who remained in the British Isles. Although at first glance Ardanos looked like any other harper about to play, his every gesture compelled the eye. Not for the first time, Gaius wondered how he would escape with a whole skin.

    He was glad to drop on to a bench near the hearth and be ignored. Although it was still bright outside, he felt a chill, and welcomed the heat of the fire. It had been a long time since he had needed to remember the ways of his mother's kin. He hoped he would not make a mistake that would betray him.

    Cynric went on, "My sister Eilan you know; beside her is my mother's sister Dieda." Eilan was sitting near Rheis. Cynric laughed at Gaius's astonishment as next to Eilan he saw another girl in green linen, leaning against the back of her chair and listening to the old bard. For just a moment she seemed as like to Eilan as one oak leaf to another; then he