Scorpion Rising

Sixteen

After the stifling heat, the cool of the cave was sheer heaven.

In the dark, though, it was sheer hell.

The flames of the torch cast flickering shadows that combined with the uneven surface to trip Claudia up, snag her robe on the cave wall and stub her toes against the stone. If this is the Cave of Resurrection, she thought, rubbing her shin, this wasn't the exit or new souls would come out deformed. But gradually, her eyes acclimatized to the gloom and, following the channel in the rock that diverted the spring water, she progressed deeper and lower into the hillside.

Very quickly the cave became a corridor, narrowing in places so that she needed to turn sideways to pass through the gap or duck under the rock. But always, always, the corridor twisted. Always, always, she was aware of descent.

The air grew cold. Echoes sighed and moaned the length of the tunnel. This must be what Hades was like. Full of whispers and murmurings as loss and regret mingled with sorrow and apathy, and perhaps this was what the spring water was for? To replenish the Pool of Forgetfulness that the dead drank of when they arrived in the Hall of Shades, that their grief at leaving loved ones behind would be erased.

Morbid thoughts were banished by something white near her feet. Bending, she realized it was a scrap of paper. A corner, torn round the edges. Peering closer, it seemed to be from a note about millstones. She turned it over, but that was all. Something about millstones grinding, which must have somehow blown in and got caught. The Gauls exported millstones, she remembered, and there was a quarry near here, where redundant male slaves were often sold on to. It had no connection at all to the poison-pen letters and as it fluttered to the ground like a white butterfly, her mind turned to the death spirits that hovered in this cave like invisible bees. Waiting to guide the souls of the dead Claudia pulled up sharp. To her surprise, the tunnel opened into a chamber of stone lit by flickering candles, whose walls danced with handprints and animals. She recognized lynx, antelope and panther exquisitely painted in black and red, while bones and clay offerings lay beside of a cairn of white rocks. Seven skulls that could have been bear faced outwards from the cairn in a semicircle, but the channel of water didn't end. In fact, it seemed to take great pains to skirt the edge of the chamber. She glanced back, but she'd come too far now to give up. With a purse of her lips, she followed the channel, entering deeper and deeper into the mountain. Now water dripped from places she couldn't see. The walls and the floor were wet to her touch. A rope had been attached to the rock with metal hooks, and the rope was smooth from centuries of soft female hands. The knowledge brought comfort in a comfortless place, where strange icicles formed even stranger shapes on the cavern ceiling while others rose upwards from the cavern floor.

What surprised her was that the icicles were formed in rings of differing colours. Black, purple, lilac and blue. A bizarre underworld rainbow.

The death spirits pass the time weaving shrouds on looms made of stone.

These, then, were the looms…

Further into the mountain, there came the sound of rushing water until finally, turning a bend, Claudia was confronted by a stream surging through the mountain, white and frothy, and it was into this that the water from the Cave of Miracles emptied. The balance of nature, she realized, as water was returned to water, and its discovery left her decidedly cheated. This was the place where souls were supposed to be judged, yet it was nothing. Just water pouring back into water, no clues — not a thing — to suggest the source of the Hundred-Handed's secret fears. Nothing to shed light on Clytie's murder.

Retreating along the rope handrail towards the painted chamber, her thoughts turned to the people who'd beautified this rock with their art. Who were they? How long ago had they lived here? And were those bear skulls part of some ancient religion, or simply a hunter's proud trophies? Approaching the white cairn, she noticed something else white behind it and bent to investigate. Another stone?

'Janus bloody Croesus!'

'I apologize if I startled you, my dear.' Beth stood up from where she'd been sitting and straightened the creases from her silver robe. 'I watched you go past, but decided against calling out in case I scared you.'

Liar. You could hear footsteps in this underground echo chamber a bloody mile off. The Head of the College had hidden on purpose.

'I'm surprised you take an interloper's presence so lightly,' Claudia said. 'Considering the cave is out of bounds for people like me.'

'It is indeed.' Beth sighed, and it was that, she realized, that had echoed round the tunnel. 'But there are so many things happening at the moment, so many changes afoot, that one tiny transgression doesn't seem worth getting angry over.'

Times are changing, Claudia, Rome's seen to that. Orbilio's words floated back. Thanks to us, the world has got smaller for the Gauls and this world, she remembered how he'd nodded towards the Hundred-Handed, has to adapt. If it doesn't, quite frankly, it dies.

'You choose what you get passionate about?' Claudia asked, wishing she could read the expression on the older woman's face.

'When several fires burn simultaneously,' Beth said with a sad smile, 'it's unwise to attempt to extinguish them all at once lest, instead of a few trees alight, one ends up with a forest fire raging out of control.'

If change comes too fast, its liable to have the opposite effect of what it's intended to do. Orbilio might as well have been in the damned cavern with them. It can destroy rather than build.

'I suppose you're concentrating on the Druids?'

'Then you suppose wrong.' Beth ran her hands over her chestnut-brown hair. Even in the torchlight it shone. 'Somehow, yes, we do need to get across to the Wise Fathers that we are neither sorceresses nor witches and I won't deny that isn't a problem. However.' She traced one elegant finger round the rim of the top stone of the cairn. 'It is the College that requires my full concentration.'

Claudia waited and for once, patience was rewarded.

'It is not the Conquest itself that has divided us,' Beth said quietly. 'Rather the philosophies it has brought.'

'Women in Roman society aren't equal,' Claudia pointed out. 'Far from it.'

'No, but whereas before Rome took administrative control of this region our status as priestesses was sacrosanct, now there are those within our community who would like to rewrite the rules.' There it was again, that sad, distant smile. 'Modernize is the word they use.'

'Keeping men for stud and breeding your own workforce sounds pretty progressive to me.'

'For a liberated female, I find your hostility surprising, but that is your prerogative, my dear. It is our policy not to judge,' Beth said, in what was clearly a calculated choice of non-passion. 'We believe everyone is entitled to her own opinion and, as pentagram priestesses, it is our role to listen to those opinions and then make decisions based on the views of everyone in the College. The trouble arises when opinions spread discord and that discord breeds division-'

'Which it does at the moment?'

'Seething is not too strong a word, since some of us are bitterly opposed to the change mooted, while others among us wish to embrace it with open arms.'

'And you?'

'Me?' Another long sigh. 'We need to move forward, one always must, but not by changing our teachings, my dear. What needs to change is the way that life is perceived here.'

'I'm sensing that we're not talking about how outsiders see you?'

'If only it was that simple,' Beth said. 'Unfortunately, there is a strong movement within the College that is pushing for priestesses to marry — and not just priestesses. Initiates, supervisors, they believe every one of us has the right to what they consider to be a "normal" life.'

'Which you feel will dilute your status as a religious body and lower your standing in the community?'

'I am not against love, how could I be? Love is the pivot upon which the world turns and it is the reason we expel our menfolk at the age of forty, while they are still young enough to raise families of their own — I see that surprises you.'

Claudia shifted her torch to the other hand while her eyebrows returned to their customary level. 'Actually, yes.'

'Did you honestly think we wouldn't want people we cared for to be happy?' Beth asked. 'Of course we want them to have wives, children, grandchildren and all the other things they deserve but which we cannot give them.'

'And which you yourselves are denied?'

'Our system is far from ideal, I agree, but I am prepared to lay down my life to preserve it, flaws and all, in order to retain the respect of the tribes.' In the torchlight, she looked older than her forty-six years. 'These people,' she said wearily, 'look to us for spiritual guidance and healing, and in doing so, they look up to us as well. We cannot teach them that nature is constant if the very College that serves it keeps changing.'

Claudia stared at the ancient handprints daubed on the walls. At the bears, which, she realized now, had undoubtedly been sacrificed to long-forgotten gods.

'What happens to those who rebel?' she asked dully.

And how could such a hideous death chamber be sited in so beautiful a location?

'Ah.' Beth clucked her tongue. 'You know about the Pit, then.'

For several long minutes, both women remained locked in their own silence. It was the Head of the College who finally broke it.

'Fearn argues that by changing our way of life to incorporate marriage, it will eliminate the necessity for the Pit, and such a philosophy is bound to gather momentum.'

'Especially among the younger girls,' Claudia said, picturing Elusa's blonde, almost white, hair.

'Who cannot imagine old bags like me ever had feelings,' Beth replied with a soft laugh. 'But instead of bending and thus making the College weaker, I believe we must show strength by believing in ourselves and standing by our convictions.'

'Whatever the cost?'

An eternity seemed to pass before she finally answered. 'Yes,' she said at last. 'Whatever the cost.'

Maybe it was the cool of the chamber that kept Claudia bound to the place. Maybe it was the pull of ancient religions, a sense of holiness in pagan surroundings. But she couldn't have walked away if she tried.

'What happens to priestesses when they die?' she asked. Because the Gauls liked to honour their dead every bit as much as a Roman, though instead of lining their approach roads with sumptuous tombs, they opted for moated graveyards way out of town. Yet Claudia had seen nothing resembling a cemetery round these parts, even though the Hundred-Handed had been established here for three hundred years.

Beth pointed upwards, and Claudia lifted her torch. High above their heads, with access that could only be reached by a ladder, a ledge had been gouged out of the rock. On it sat a series of huge painted pots. At an educated guess, they numbered fifty, and each was as tall as a man.

'Their ashes are kept in these urns.'

Ashes? This was contrary to all Gaulish principles, where they liked to line their graves with planks of wood, preferably oak, and send their loved ones into the next life with as many personal possessions as they could cram in. Oh, and yes. Where it was crucial that the corpse remained as close to physically perfect as possible! Then she remembered Orbilio saying how the Greeks came to Gaul and the Gauls went to Greece, and how the cult of the water priestesses had somehow merged into this cult of nature priestesses. The women who talked with their hands.

And the Greeks, like the Romans, cremated their dead 'I must go,' Beth said. 'Tomorrow is midsummer, there is much work to do, and my absence will be noticed before long.'

All the same, she seemed in no hurry to return to the upper world.

'This is your escape,' Claudia said.

'My dear, as head of the order, there is no escape,' the Birch Priestess laughed. 'But down here I am at least free to think.'

'Among the dead?'

'Among old friends,' she corrected with a smile. 'And when there is so much discord among the living, believe me, this is no bad place to reflect.'

Claudia studied the rows of pots high above her head. 'Is Clytie here?' she asked softly.

'Only those who qualify for the fifty elite may have their ashes added to their predecessors',' Beth said, and her dark eyes were sad. 'For the rest, their ashes are scattered to nature and this is one of the hardest tasks that falls upon me. Telling the novices that they will not be admitted as Initiates of Light.'

'The scattering of ashes doesn't seem to bother them.'

'It is because they know no better, but to us, to the HundredHanded, the preservation of remains is sacrosanct. It is a secret that we, quite literally, carry with us to our graves.'

And beyond, Claudia thought, and now she looked closely she realized that the paintings on the pots were not random. Yellow for gorse, silver for birch, black, green, purple for heather, red like Luisa's shiny bright rowans.

'What disqualifies a novice?' she asked.

'I prefer to think of it in terms of what gifts they can bring,' Beth said, smoothing her robe. 'But basically we look for balance, sound judgement, sensitivity and altruism. There is certainly no room for fluster or panic'

Don't be fooled by that rough-and-tumble, Sarra had said, talking of Vanessia, Aridella and Lin. 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. Those three have the dedication and determination I never had, the fairy had added. That's for sure.

'Was Clytie up to the job, Beth?'

'No.'

The answer came without hesitation. Only with sadness.

'Did you tell her?' Claudia asked, biting her lip.

'No.'

The answer still came without hesitation. Except this time, it was accompanied by relief.

'No, my dear, it is my one consolation that I hadn't got round to telling the poor child.' Beth sighed. 'At least Clytie died without knowing she'd been rejected.'

As Gauls from the surrounding forests flocked to celebrate the summer solstice in revels that would last through until sunset the following day, Marcus Cornelius Orbilio tossed the last log on the bonfire. It was a giant of a pile, the biggest he'd ever seen that was for sure, although he wasn't sure the night would need additional heat. Hot and sticky, the temperature had barely dipped as the light faded and he decided he wouldn't fancy being close to this fire once it was lit. In these pants, he saw himself poaching to death.

Whereas the spring equinox, now. He brushed the dust off his hands down the length of his trousers. The spring equinox was celebrated by many religions, not purely Roman, with beacon fires to represent the sun's triumph over darkness and with gorse representing the golden rays of the sun. Glancing at the crowds pouring into the Field of Celebration, Orbilio wasn't convinced either that Clytie's killer used the festival to sate some demonic bloodlust — how could they, for a start? The meadow was fenced off with a forbidding palisade whose gates were guarded by local men armed with knives and spears.

And the murder seemed a lot more complicated than mere logistics, too. Clytie had been lured, undoubtedly by prior arrangement, down to that rock by the river. Now a young woman might be tricked into such a meeting — love makes fools of us all — but no twelve-year-old child would be duped by a stranger. Especially when that child lived her life in a bubble. And if Orbilio needed a seal on that hypothesis, it was that sex wasn't the motive for Clytie's murder.

He wished he knew what the hell was.

To a slow beat of drums, the Oak Priestess mounted the dais resplendent in a brown robe embroidered with thousands of tiny gold acorns. As the choir sang sweet hymns in praise of courage and strength, the four other pentagram priestesses joined her, holding hands to form the eternal circle of life, from birth through until death. Novices of all ages came skipping forward and each was handed a bowl by a smiling Dora, who seemed totally unconcerned that the sky was full of clouds rather than stars as her finger joints repeated the same quick triple flick to each girl before they skipped off. The bowls, he'd been told, were to collect the midsummer dew. The novices would have their work cut out for them with this dawn, he thought.

Stifling a yawn as the bonfire was lit to deafening cheers, Marcus knew sleep was out of the question. Tonight he had been co-opted to turn the ox on the spit. Tomorrow he was one of the fifty men chosen to fire an arrow into the zenith of the sun (they'd be lucky as well!). But as a seasoned investigator and with his military background, he was well used to the concept of catnaps. He could catch up on sleep if he wanted.

He didn't.

All afternoon, he had been building up that bonfire with the help of a man who called himself Manion. The man who Orbilio now knew was the Scorpion.

Watching children dance round the fire as the dull grey clouds fused with the night and Gauls in bright chequered plaid and with jewellery adorning every spare inch of their body tossed back horns brimming with beer, he mulled over what Roman intelligence had been able to gather about the Scorpion's background.

His tribe was the Bituriges; it translated as 'Kings of the World', which was precisely what they were to the Gauls. Through shrewd political alliances (plus some pretty resolute defending), their influence extended over every tribe from the centre of Gaul to the Pyrenees and right up to the River Loire. Ferocious warriors with a penchant for guerrilla tactics, Julius Caesar had wisely left the Bituriges alone and even Augustus had resorted to diplomacy to win them over. Well. Diplomacy with the twin carrots of prosperity and autonomy dangled before them, but who's counting?

And since it was one of life's ironies that the Bituriges only ever went to war to maintain peace, they were more than happy to have other men fight their wars, whilst taking ostentatious pleasure in policing the lesser tribes to ensure they abandoned their old headhunting ways and gave up their wicker-man sacrifice. In fact, revelling in their status as imperially approved overlords, the Kings of the World broadcast the fact that there was no room in this prosperous, modern, forward-thinking society for any hothead with insurgent tendencies.

So when an impatient young man pushed for war against Rome, they decided the most effective way to deal with this burr under the tribal saddle was to expel it.

Similarly, there was no room in the impatient young man's life for cowards and, styling himself the Scorpion, he turned to crime to finance his cause. Heaven knew there were enough Gauls who had not settled happily under the yoke, malcontents who didn't work and didn't want to, and thus didn't profit from the occupying force. And when you took in the sheer number of tribes that comprised the Nation as a whole, the Carnutes, the Pictones, the Vocates to name just a few, the Scorpion wasn't short of allies. Cunning, passionate and wholly dedicated to ousting Rome from Aquitania, he managed to turn small-scale theft into a large-scale, well-organized syndicate that then became a burr under the imperial saddle instead.

Luckily for Orbilio, newly promoted to this equally new branch of the Security Police, most of the crime centred around Santonum, since this was the seat of most trade and therefore the most profitable to rob. Fine. Orbilio was well used to handling gangsters and, embracing the challenge of scotching rebellion, he'd pored over the intelligence reports. And could see why the Governor was worried.

After several months of concerted investigation, everything his men knew about the Scorpion could still be written on a thumbnail with room to spare. Average height, average build, no distinguishing features: he became the garrison's nightmare. Paste on a false beard, he was an Assyrian. Comb his hair back, loop up his tunic and he was a Spaniard. He'd proved as oily as grease, the reports stated with monotonous regularity, covering his tracks more thoroughly than an

Egyptian sand tracker and ensuring that no felonies could be traced directly to him. Any that were, he swiftly dealt with, they added. Or rather employed shadowy figures to deal with on his behalf. And the reports were clear. No one crossed the Scorpion and lived to tell the tale.

Turning the giant handle on the spit, Marcus watched the juices drip off the ox and recalled one particular instance where the soldiers thought they had this self-styled sponsor of Aquitanian independence cornered. A reliable informant had passed on details of a meeting between the Scorpion and his deputy, a man called Ptian, another of society's outcasts. This was good news, since Ptian was rumoured to be as cunning and callous as his general and, surrounding the tenement, the captain in charge saw promotion writ large as two birds were felled with the same stone. Yet when his informant gave the signal that the ringleader had passed inside the building, a thorough search of all six storeys revealed no Scorpion, no Ptian and sod-all by way of evidence, either. It was only one pen-pusher's afterthought that mentioned a pair of drunks slumped in the gutter, and Orbilio raised a wry smile as he'd read it. The slippery bastards had sloughed their skins when the first shout of Raid! hit the rafters.

Around him, revellers feasted on roast meats, cheeses and bread while the men sang loud songs which talked of brave deeds and heroes, victories and blood feuds, while small boys waved imaginary swords and the women clustered in small knots to gossip.

'… dreadful…'

'… don't believe a word of it…'.. me neither. If she was going to cuckold her husband, I'm sure it wouldn't be with his spotty apprentice.'

'The boy hotly denied it, but the miller had evidence and he threw the lad out on his ear.'

'Evidence?'

'Yes, somebody saw them, didn't you know, and sent the miller a note. The lowest millstone grinds as well at the top. Couldn't be plainer, could it, my dear?'

'Yes, but what about our flour, that's what I want to know. There'll be a backlog now that they're one hand short-' Marcus Cornelius turned his attention back to the Scorpion and the problem he had been faced with. Namely, how could he hope to achieve what his predecessors could not and trap the Scorpion and thwart his uprising? Well. For a start, he had at his disposal the Governor's foresight to form a new branch of the Security Police. And since insurrection relies on good communication and sound information, Orbilio had set this dedicated force to wreaking as much havoc as possible within the Scorpion's own intelligence network. In the same way that Rome received masses of misinformation, part of the role of his taskforce was to plant informants of their own and relay the same equally incorrect information back down the communication lines. A tactic that would cause sufficient confusion to at least delay any uprising until it was too late and the campaigning season was over. Until yesterday, Orbilio thought that tactic was working.

He wiped the sweat from his brow with the back of his hand.

That Manion had staged that business of the lost signet ring was beyond doubt, just as he'd swapped the task that he'd originally been allotted to work alongside Orbilio to build up the fire.

He needed to be careful he was not growing paranoid. It might well have been nothing more than an elaborate charade to draw another disenchanted sucker into his scorpioidal net.

But his money was on Manion knowing exactly who Pretty Boy was.

Orbilio listened to the fats sizzle as they dripped into the flames and, as slices of beef were carved off and passed round, his thoughts turned to rebellion, to blood feuds and Claudia Seferius.

And the way the Scorpion had wiped the honey away from her mouth …