as a filly around the tower of flames, the antlered stag following half a circle behind, the drums pounding harder and the pipes swirling toward some kind of climax.
'Morrigan of the horse! Her belly promises spring!' Fearing that something irrevocable was about to happen, the goddess kept darting ahead. She'd pause, allow Dagda to approach, and then bolt. Around and around they danced, Dagda ducking and rearing in feigned impatience, Morrigan whirling to give a glimpse of her thighs. The heat made them sweat, and the night made them shiver.
The drums were accompanied by pounding feet and clapping hands in rhythmic thunder, the pace accelerating as Dagda drew ever nearer to the goddess whose fecundity would bring back light and food. She was slowing from exhaustion, looking over her shoulder at the antlered buck, her movements becoming more liquid and seductive as her soul was swallowed by her costume. Her hips were in rhythm with the music, her bare feet skipping on heat-curled grass. The sweat and heat picked out the points of her breasts, the geometry of her hips. The stag's arms were bare and powerfully muscled, a bone necklace rattling on his chest as he danced.
'Catch her, good god! Give us promise for the end of winter!' Yet still she darted away. It seemed the tension of the dance might never end.
Then Dagda suddenly stopped, crouched, and whirled, darting swiftly around the fire the other way. He met a surprised and dazed Morrigan on the other side before she realized he'd changed direction. He grasped her with his arms and swept her around in great, dizzying, dancing turns, the two animal heads muzzle to muzzle, his horns like the branches of the bare trees that reached for the moon. He'd captured her! Or had she allowed herself to be captured? And even as the goddess stumbled, exhausted, he swept her off her feet and into his arms, her horse's head falling off. Valeria looked up at the beast who held her with dazed, surrendering eyes.
The Celts howled.
Then the stag ran off into the dark, still carrying her.
Savia was weeping.
Arden's horse was waiting, and he cast his own headdress aside, the antlers tumbling away on the meadow. Valeria was lifted up onto the stallion's back, and he vaulted up behind her. 'Let's reclaim our home from the dead,' he whispered. They pounded toward the sentry line of lighted lanterns, their candles guttering, the moon orange as it set in the west. The horse galloped up the winding line of light as the others watched from the meadow below, and then it disappeared into the hill fort.
It was dark and silent inside Tiranen. Arden slipped from the horse and caught Valeria as she slid down, holding her tight to keep her bare feet out of the frosty mud. Then he strode toward the Great House where the dead had feasted, banging open the doors with the confidence of the greatest of all the gods. He saw with satisfaction that the mugs of milk had been drained and the platters had been emptied of their apple and barley. Their ancestors had been satiated. The ghosts were gone.
He carried her past the fire pit, his boot kicking a fresh log onto the embers of a fire. Then through a tapestry of winged birds to a chamber she'd never seen before.
There was a winding wooden stair, its balustrade carved with the scales of a snake. At its top was a sleeping loft. Thin windows looked out over moors and mountains silvered with starlight. Valeria had swooned as he'd carried her, not entirely sure if she were goddess or mortal woman, alive or dead, in a dream or reality. Now Arden laid her on a bed piled high with bear and fox fur, closed the chamber's shutters, and lit a fire on its hearth. She watched him dazedly, and all she knew was that she wanted the arms, chest, and heart of Dagda.
He knelt to whisper. 'Let's tear down the Wall, Valeria.'
He grasped her hand and gently slipped off her silver wedding ring with its intaglio of Fortuna, goddess of Fortune. She'd forgotten she even wore it. Then he produced the sea-horse brooch she'd abandoned in the forest so long ago. 'I've kept this since I first saw you. For Samhain we join these in a golden goblet.'
The ring and brooch rang as he dropped them into a cup.
She was trembling. 'I don't know where I am. Who I am.'
'You're one of us.'
He came to her then, the warmth of his skin a renewed fire, and kissed with a tenderness she'd never known. Instead of the rough urgency of the stag, he was gentle as he undressed her, murmuring words and stroking her skin in transcendent wonder.
She was more beautiful than he'd imagined, her breasts high and full, her nipples roseate, her hips like the curve of the polished apple that had fallen from her hand.
His body was hard and hot like sanded wood, and as they continued to kiss, his passion and urgency grew.
She opened to him like a flower.
The gods joined and cried out even as the setting moon sent beams of radiance through the cracks of the shutters. Then the east glowed with promise, and the last of the grinning gourds, in the smoky line far below, finally burned out.
The New Year had been achieved.
XXXII
Valeria woke at midafternoon to a world that seemed utterly changed and newly magical. She stretched her drowsy body in its nest of fur and woolens with languid laziness, physically satiated. What joy, followed by what an odd combination of depletion and fulfillment! Who'd known her body could be made to feel like that? Their beings had joined like flash and thunder, every nerve on fire, and now it was the aftermath of a vast and wonderful storm, everything wet and glistening in its wake.
She and Arden had made love well into morning before falling into exhausted sleep. At some point he'd awakened, kissed her tenderly, and left to attend to the clan. She'd lain in a cocoon of heat and musk, drifting randomly, dreaming of forest gods and a gourd-glow moon and the swirling stars of a winter's night. Now she came awake as if from a spell. How magical Samhain had been!
And then, as she remembered where and who she was, her contentment began to be polluted with guilt.
She had betrayed her husband.
Everything seemed turned upside down. She was in love with a man she once thought of as a dangerous and uncouth barbarian, and impossibly distant from a man she'd traveled more than a thousand miles to wed. She felt more at home in this timbered building than in the commander's house that was a reminder of Rome. She had more freedom and authority in the wilderness than she'd ever had in civilization, and thus more power with this poor tribe than she'd had in the Roman Empire. She was happier than she'd ever been, but only because everything she once scorned she now accepted.
How strange life had turned out to be!
Now she dreaded seeing Savia. The maidservant would no doubt start lecturing her about Christian ideas of sin.
Where was Arden? Suddenly she felt lonely with her doubts. Why had he left her like Marcus? Was this the way of all men? And why was her heart so suddenly and miserably confused? What mischief were the gods inflicting on her?
She got up, filled now with disquiet and a premonition that something was more deeply awry than she knew. It was wrong to have danced as a Celtic goddess, of course, no matter how weirdly thrilling it had been. Wrong to have gone to the bed of Arden Caratacus, sworn enemy of Rome. Yet how she savored the memory of his embrace, sometimes gentle, sometimes rough! Never with Marcus had she felt the passion and ecstasy she'd felt with Arden. It made her half dizzy even to remember it. So was the greatest moment of her life a mistake? Had she lost all sense? What did that foretell for future happiness?
What if she became heavy with child, hidden here away from her husband?
Why hadn't Marcus ever come for her?
The room was cold outside the coverings of the bed, and the sky had clouded over. It was already dim, slipping again toward long winter night. She looked outside and saw men leading strange horses toward the hill-fort corral. Who would come so late in the year? Or rather, so early in the next? Smoke rose from cooking fires, and she
