Scorpion Rising

Fourteen

With the approach of midsummer, preparations for the solstice were in full swing. Alternating between the force of her personality and her stentorian tones, Dora had conscripted a large percentage of the priestesses to help organize the festival that was dedicated to the mighty oak and everything it stood for. Leading her troops down the cliff and over the bridge towards the Field of Celebration, maturity, strength, courage and endurance would be the theme for a range of activities that would last a full twenty-four hours, commencing at sunset with the one event universal to all religious beliefs. The bonfire.

Here, in a wide open pasture edged with poplar and alder, the sheep that cropped the grass and kept the College in tasty lamb and mutton had been corralled into makeshift pens, while what appeared to be the entire male labour force had been put to work erecting daises for the priestesses and rigging up canopies to shield the crowd from the ferocious noonday sun. Dressed in his customary green shirt and pantaloons, Gurdo scribbled chalk marks on the grass as indicators for siting casks of healing spring water, while under the watchful eye of their plump, brown-robed general, novices in headdresses made from gilded acorns practised their routines. The older girls glided back and forth with graceful precision. The plates in the hands of the younger ones wobbled with nerves.

'No, no, no, Aridella.'

Dora's voice boomed out even over the sawing of timbers, the knocking of nails and initiates rehearsing the Oak Song.

'Good heavens, child, the flames you're supposed to be carrying will either have blown right out or set the whole congregation alight. Like this, dear.'

For her size, she was remarkably nimble and, as she balanced the dish high on splayed fingertips, Claudia caught a glimpse of the stunning sylph Dora once was.

'Try again, Aridella.' She handed the bowl back and watched the little novice imitate her actions. 'Excellent, absolutely perfect,' she said, even though there was little discernible difference. 'Now you try, Vanessia. Good girl!'

On the far side of the meadow, Claudia could see Orbilio and Manion, wordlessly engaged in the business of bonfire construction, aided by the youth she'd seen with Swarbric earlier. Though the sky was still mostly covered by cloud, the temperature had started to soar and all three had removed their shirts to cope with the heat, their bodies glistening with sweat. Connal's face was dark with something more than concentration on his task, though, and she wondered whether, like Pod and Sarra, he and Elusa were also planning to use these preparations as a cover for their illicit activities. How far would they get? she wondered dully. Connal was a foreigner and Elusa had never left the College grounds. Neither had a clue what lay beyond the vista they could see and frankly Claudia doubted they'd cover five miles before the guards tracked them down. Watching Connal's scowl deepen with every branch he threw on, she knew that either way the lovers were heading for tragedy.

But Pod's tryst had given her an idea and she, too, had decided to exploit this surge of activity by taking a peep inside the other cave — and in any case relief from this heat would be bliss. With the advent of cloud cover, the breeze had dropped, trapping the heat and generating humidity, and despite changing her robe for a fresh lilac one, the cotton was already sticking like skin to her back.

'Sarra, isn't it?'

The Willow Priestess's daughter was sitting on Clytie's stone, her knees drawn up to her chin, and from the red rims round her eyes and the puffiness to her cheeks it was clear she had been crying.

'Do you want to talk about it?' Claudia asked softly.

Sarra wrinkled her nose. 'Thank you, but I'm fine.'

'You look it.'

The girl smiled, and though she made no effort to respond, she didn't get up and walk away either. Encouraged, Claudia settled herself on the flat rock while swallows shrieked low over the meadow in search of flies.

'I suppose it must be a terrible blow, not to be admitted to the fifty elite?' she began.

Sarra blew her nose. 'It's not that,' she said, as indeed Claudia knew fine well. 'Beth called me in five years ago and told me I wouldn't qualify for Initiatehood. I don't have the necessary dedication to be a priestess, she said, but told me I'd make a wonderful supervisor for the middle novices, and do you know, she was right. I love it!'

'I've met three of your charges. Aridella, Vanessia and Lin. Spirited little fillies, wouldn't you say?'

Sarra pushed her long silky hair back from her face. 'Sometimes you'd think they were boys, the way they carry on, but don't be fooled by that rough-and-tumble. Those games stimulate their sharp little brains and believe me, they're clever, those girls. Vanessia's already qualified for Initiatehood, and without any shadow of doubt, the others will follow.' She sighed. 'Those three have the dedication and determination I never had, that's for sure.'

Dedication to duty and determination to succeed were not necessarily virtuous traits, Claudia mused, studying the girl who didn't meet the criteria yet was totally fulfilled in her work. But then again, only in her work. She looked at her, blonde and ethereal, the fairy in love with the elf. Come to think of it, didn't the Gauls call the elder the Elf King, believing that to wear clothes dyed from the juice of the tree would invoke the protection of the benevolent spirits that lived in the forests? Interestingly, it was the very dye Gurdo clad himself in 'So if it's not your career,' she said, carefully mirroring Sarra's pose, 'it must be love that's making you miserable.'

Without mentioning the pregnant Aquitani girl, she confessed to having been behind a boulder when Sarra met Pod the day before and to overhearing their conversation. Far from being indignant, though, the fairy seemed more relieved that she was at last free to talk about her dilemma and with someone objective who came from outside the

College, instead of keeping her feelings bottled inside. Thus for the next twenty minutes Claudia was treated to a comprehensive list of Pod's breathtaking features, his fine upstanding character and let's not forget all his other wonderful attributes. Dear me, if she hadn't already met the boy, she would have hated that young man on sight!

'I gather you don't find him physically unattractive, either,' she murmured. 'Though you might want to wash those grass stains off the back of your pretty pink robe before you go back.'

Sarra squealed in alarm, at least sparing Claudia further nauseous Pod-praising since the next twenty minutes were dedicated to the removal of stains which, though stubborn, were no match for four determined hands.

'These marks,' Claudia puffed, pummelling the pink robe against a boulder in the stream, 'and the fact that a girl who went out with the express intention of collecting mallow returned with only two dog-eared stems suggest to me that you two lovebirds didn't spend your afternoon quarrelling. So why were you crying?'

Sarra's face crumpled as she reached for a stick. 'It's this, don't you see?'

'Urn. Actually, Sarra, I don't.'

A stick is a stick is a stick. And unless it pokes you in the eye, Claudia couldn't see how it was remotely likely to make someone's eyes water.

'Look at these,' Sarra said, and suddenly the stick was no longer a stick, it was a document. Notches had been carved along the length. 'The College uses sign language as a sort of shorthand to communicate and for when we're conducting rituals and ceremonies, but since we have no written language, records are kept by the scoring of twigs.'

Similar, Claudia realized, to the memory aids employed by the Druids. 'So this is… what? The equivalent of a page that's been removed from a file?'

'It's a message.' One slim finger traced the notches. 'Ill seed begets ill reed, it says, and it's not the only one I've found on my pillow.'

Claudia thought of the writing tablet laid open beside her bed. It was the first thing she saw when she opened her door

(well, all right not the first, that was the headless corpse of a baby robin, a thank-you-for-bringing-me-back-to-Gaul present from Drusilla). But, having disposed of mangled remains, she noticed the message, especially the stylus laid elegantly across the tablet, almost like a signature.

No secret can ever be safe. That's what it said. No secret can ever be safe.

'Someone knows I'm meeting Pod,' Sarra was saying, as tears began to flow again. 'Oh, Claudia, if Beth finds out, the Hundred-Handed'11 vote him invisible, I'll never see him again, and then I'll be punished by being put to work in the kitchens instead of being responsible for the middle novices like I am now, and I'll be forbidden from even setting foot beyond the precinct.'

Claudia wrung out the robe as though it was Beth's neck. 'This note's nasty but, Sarra, if the author knew about Pod, she would say so.'

And it had to be a 'she', who else knew the language of sticks?

The fairy wasn't convinced. 'Ill reed, Claudia! It specifically says reeds and that's where Gurdo found Pod. Wandering by the reed beds. The message couldn't be clearer.'

Maybe. Maybe not. But there was no consoling the girl.

'They'll vote him invisible and ban him from setting foot on College land and I-' Her shoulders heaved with the sobs. 'I'll need to decide, won't I? Never see my darling Poddi again or risk both our futures… and… and I don't know that I'm strong enough to make that decision.'

There was no weakness in being unable to decide between love and duty. The flaw lay in its invidious choice.

'Why don't you talk this over with your mother?' Claudia suggested gently, throwing the dripping robe over the branch of a willow to drive the point home.

'Sallie?' Sarra shook her head. 'The Willow Priestess gave birth to me,' she snivelled, 'and naturally I resemble her in appearance, but just because we deliver a baby, it doesn't follow that we bond differently with that child than we do from any other.'

'You make it sound like a cat having a litter of kittens.'

'And you make it sound like there's something wrong with that arrangement, when it's simply that our family structure is alien to you.' She splashed her swollen face with cold water. ' Admittedly we don't have mothers or fathers as such, but' — her smile was as weak as it was wry — 'we have a hell of a lot of sisters!'

Claudia examined the twig into which those sinister notches had been carved.

'That can't always be easy.'

Jealousies and resentment would be rife in such an isolated and blinkered environment, propelling emotions that would normally have a million mundane outlets to spiral in upon themselves and take on unnatural — and indeed artificial — proportions.

'It's not,' Sarra agreed. 'We may be brought up as equals, but, like all families, some of us rub along better than others.'

This was Claudia's chance and she seized it. 'You ought to know,' she said, fanning herself cool with the neck of her robe. 'Those novices must prove quite a challenge at times.'

Children have an inbuilt instinct to create pecking orders and so, in a society where hierarchy is determined by rigid rules, the girls would need to find other ways to establish their identity. With Vanessia, Aridella and Lin, this came in the form of tomboy rebellion. But what about the fourth member of the quartet? Of course, she could easily have broached the subject of Clytie at the beginning, when Sarra talked about the other three's qualification to Initiatehood and her own role as supervisor of novices. Only that wouldn't have evoked Sarra's confidence…

'I expect Clytie was a handful as well, wasn't she?' She took care not to look at Sarra as she nonchalantly kept the heat at bay.

'More so, in a way.'

In her undershift and with her silky hair hanging down over her shoulders, the fairy looked fifteen years old.

'Because she didn't share her friends' desire to climb rocks, swing from ropes or go poking around in caves and things, she'd come to me ostensibly to get thread to sew up a tear in Aridella's robe or a new ribbon because Lin had lost hers, but basically Clytie was lonely and wanted someone to talk to. And whilst I felt for the child, it… well, it put me in an awfully difficult position.'

She heaved a sad sigh.

'I didn't want to snub her, but at some point in the conversation it would slip out why she wanted these things — and once that happened, I was duty bound to put the girls on report.' Sarra rubbed her upper arms. 'It was such a shame. At the Disciplinary, Clytie would rush forward and speak up for her friends, apologizing for landing them in it, but the trouble was, the damage was already done and Beth was left with no choice. She had to punish the girls.'

Pretending to watch the tiddlers darting in and out of the shallows, Claudia tried to make sense of the mixed messages she was receiving.

On the one side of the scales, there was a society that was self-absorbed and self-contained in which duty overrode personal feelings to the extent that only those who could remain aloof qualified as priestesses. Heaped up alongside, keeping the balance weighed down, was their view that men were on the same level as draught beasts and that even their own babies were simply commodities to be parcelled up and classified according to the rulebook.

Yet — look at their enormously strong sense of loyalty, sisterhood and belief in their convictions; plus Elusa and Sarra were proof that the capacity for love and affection on a personal level hadn't been bred out of the women over the course of three hundred years. Among five hundred women, these could not be the only two who'd suffered heartbreak at having to choose between lover and family. At any given time, there'd probably be a score of women living in a similar state of anxiety, facing guaranteed separation from one of the two things they loved most in the world.

Now if it was simply ingrained responsibility that drove Sarra, then she'd be sitting here sad, but not wracked. Miserable but certainly not fearful. No, no, Claudia thought. Emotional attachments had to have been made time and again, it was basic human nature pulling the strings. The question was, how strong were they allowed to be formed? Was that why the men were forced to leave when they reached forty? To prevent too deep an attachment forming between College member and lover? Who knew, but the point was, very few women, no matter how deep the indoctrination, could simply hand their baby into communal care without watching or following or worrying about them. Dammit, someone in this College had to be grieving for the daughter who had been butchered!

'Sarra, who was Clytie's mother?'

The pink robe wasn't quite dry, but Sarra unhooked it from the willow branch anyway. 'Fearn,' she said, frowning. 'Why do you ask?'

'Why?' Was this girl kidding? 'For heaven's sake, Fearn's the Growth Priestess responsible for the spring equinox,' she said angrily, and it beggared belief that no one, not even Gabali, had seen fit to mention this fact. 'Didn't it occur to anyone that there might be a connection here?'

'Beth had reservations initially.' Sarra pulled the gown over her head. 'In fact, under her guidance the pentagram priestesses investigated that angle very thoroughly.' Her voice became muffled through the linen. 'But what you have to remember is that the Hundred-Handed only mix with local people on the first day of the month, when each tree priestess assumes responsibility for that month's protection, on the four quarter days-'

'You mean the two solstices and the two equinoxes?'

Sarra nodded as she wriggled into her robe. 'That's only sixteen days a year, plus of course when somebody dies and we administer the funeral rites. Otherwise we have no contact with outsiders, so it's hardly surprising that Clytie's killer picked one of those days. He didn't have any other choice.'

Claudia watched her go, light and ethereal as though nothing touched her, even though the girl's heart was as heavy as lead. Or was it? Were the children perhaps raised from the start to manage their own emotions? To 'work it out of their system' as it were? Again, Claudia thought of Connal and Elusa, of the tragedy they would face if they tried to elope.

And for some reason saw Manion's measureless blue-green eyes and the white band on his finger where a ring should have been…

At her feet lay the stick that had been left on Sarra's pillow.

She picked it up and twizzled it round in her hand. The notches were cut sideways in ones up to fives, and occasionally these marks had diagonal scorelines running through them, north-west to south-east. Again these were in lines one to five, but if there had been any doubt that the writer of the note in Claudia's room had been a male slave who'd somehow slipped in and out of the precinct unseen, the angle of the stylus put paid to the theory. It had been left at exactly the same angle as these diagonal scorelines.

I know, the first note had read.

I know. I just cannot decide who to tell, said the second.

And now: No secret can ever be safe.

At first she'd thought the note was left by someone who knew about Clytie and was tortured inside by that knowledge. Someone who, in their second message, was wondering if it was safe to confide in Claudia, a stranger, a foreigner and a Roman. That suspicion had been reinforced by the fact that someone had been through her belongings. A slipper out of place here, a gem out of place there, and the stopper on her perfume phial had been pressed down too hard. Little things that gave the searcher away.

And even when she'd found that third note, it seemed that the author was worried. Not so much that the secret about Clytie would have to come out. More the way it would be exposed. But now, reading this — Ill seed begets ill reed — and knowing it wasn't the first twig Sarra had found on her pillow, Claudia was reminded of an incident that took place the day she arrived. A mile or so outside Santonum, the gig had passed a Gaulish funeral which was so unlike anything she was used to — I mean why enclose the dead inside a moated cemetery? Were they worried they'd try to get out? And what was this ridiculous preoccupation with burying the deceased with all their belongings? If they believed in an afterlife, she could understand it, but they didn't. They believed in the reincarnation of souls. Captivated by their obscure rites and shadowy customs, and curious why the Aquitani denounced gravestones to mark their dead in fear of malevolent spirits rooting them out, Claudia had asked Junius to pull over.

At first she'd imagined it to be another part of the ritual when a young urchin thrust a note into the distraught widow's hand — until the poor woman collapsed. Someone, her brother judging from the resemblance, snatched at the note and read it aloud, prompting every mourner in the group into a frenzy of anger, outrage and/or indignation. Intrigued, Claudia asked Junius to translate and it appeared that the widow had just received a note to the effect: Are you sure it was the sea that claimed your husband, not the wine?

Even when that young mother-to-be had been brought to the edge of reason with that malicious note, Claudia had paid it little attention. While you let your horse starve, someone else is bringing him oats. Babies can engender a tremendous amount of spite and resentment. A spurned lover, a barren neighbour, even a jealous mother-in-law can be vicious when her nose is put out of joint. But put those notes together, add in Claudia's missives and the notched twigs on Sarra's pillow and this was no longer coincidence.

Whoever left those messages for Claudia hadn't been owning up to knowing about Clytie. The author was out to make mischief. The question was, how many others had received those invidious notes? And how much damage had that poison inflicted?