Now we are trapped here!” Ethne said in dismay to the gathered Druid when they were back in the nemed. “He will never let her escape—not unless he loses interest, which I highly doubt.”

The morning after the feast, Cadla consulted with his closest advisors, already inquiring about the suitability of taking a new chief wife. The girl was a Drui, a member of the highest rank of society. He began inventing excuses to bring her to court.

“I will personally convert her from her Pagani ways. I will bring her to the god Ísu. Máel Ísu will be pleased!”

“I have an injury that needs attention,” he would say in the morning.

“I need her to judge a poem I am attempting to compose,” he would say in the afternoon.

After she left, he would invent another reason to see her.

“I want her advice on which healing worts to grow in the garden. There is a wonderful new flower that I want her to see.”

He invited her for walks outside the gates to pick berries. He told her to open her mouth so he could feed her from his hand. He took her to the ancient stone circle on the hill outside the rath and asked her to invoke the Old Gods for his pleasure. She could hardly refuse.

He commissioned cloaks and dresses for her, all of bright colors and costly cloth. He gifted her with amber beads for her neck and golden balls for her hair, insisting that she wear them each night at his table.

When he was alone with her, he could barely keep his hands to himself.

“I haven’t felt this way since I was a newly made warrior!” he confided to Lorcan.

Aífe wore layers of clothing and kept her head modestly covered, sidling away each time he stood too close. He found her reluctance charming; it added mystery and fired his ardor to possess her completely.

For Aífe, he was old enough to be her father, and his attentions were revolting.

“You and my father would have been friends, I am sure,” she said once when Cadla’s hands were trying to find their way under a fold of cloth. “You are so much like my grandfather.” But these hints were futile.

Máel Ísu followed Cadla into his bedchamber to admonish him. “Stop chasing after this girl! It is beneath your dignity. Do you remember how the Druid tricked the Ard-Ri, Crimthann, into marrying that Pagan whore Ethne? She had a fennid lover right under his nose! Crimthann died a Pagani and no doubt went straight to hell. You will too if you don’t stop. It’s a Druid trick to bait you; they want to pull you and all of In Medon back to their heathen ways. It is obvious they’ve put a spell of druidecht upon you. I fear you are bewitched!”

But Cadla stopped his ears. He had not been this happy for years, and he was not about to give up the girl.

One night, after insisting that Aífe sit beside him at table in the place of honor, at a feast where dignitaries from far and wide were present, Cadla rose to make a speech. “Honored guests, as I raise this bowl of fion to take the first sip, I make a solemn oath. This beautiful golden lady at my side will be my wife at Lugnasad!”

Everyone stood up cheering and congratulating the king until even the dogs under the table barked in chorus. Aífe felt faint and lowered her head. Cadla mistook her pose for modesty.

“This oath, sworn over the ceremonial cup of liquor in the presence of my guests at table, is sacred. This oath has been heard by the gods, and I am willing to die in the fulfillment of it!”

Witness upon witness of noble rank stood about the hall. For Cadla to break his oath would mean a fatal loss of face. It would mean the loss of the kingship.

Cadla beamed down on Aífe. He had bestowed on her the highest possible honor.

Aífe felt sick. This was nothing she wanted nor had ever dreamed of. Riches, fine clothes, and the privileges of queenly rank were simply not in her nature.

“You have the soul of a poet,” Ethne used to say to her from the time she was an infant in the Forest School. She was still thirsty to learn from within the ranks of the Druid—the Brehon Laws, the mastery of magic, the ancient philosophy handed down from the ancestors … All this she wanted as if it was the very air she needed. She stood, trying not to show the trembling in her body. “Please excuse me; I must go to the nemed to tell them the news.”

As soon as she was free of the court, she ran to the nemed to find Ethne and Ruadh in Gaine’s roundhouse.

“I cannot, will not do this!” Aífe cried, with tears of frustration welling in her eyes.

Ethne remembered her own arranged marriage with Crimthann, the former Ard-Ri, so many summers before. Her heart ached for Aífe’s plight.

“I have felt such a dilemma would occur!” said Gaine. “I have thought long and hard about an honorable escape for Aífe.”

“How is that possible?” said Aífe. “He has sworn a sacred oath in front of the flaith! To let me go would cost too much. I am doomed.”

“Your education is not yet complete, my child. There is an answer to this within the ancient tribal laws. He seeks your company by day and by night. It should not be hard to tempt him into some intimacy by simply dropping your guard and letting him catch you. Then you must cry out so that others will hear you, and it will all be over.”

“I fully agree,” said Ruadh, who stood as foster father to Aífe. She was too valuable to the Forest Druids to be lost like this. Too many sun-seasons had been given to her schooling for her to be trapped as a Cristaide warrior’s queen. The people needed her, and the land needed her. Of this he was certain.