Scorpion Rising

Eight

Declining Fearn's offer to hang around the slave auction, Claudia opted for watching Marcus get snapped up by Dora then returning to the College to investigate Clytie's death. There were several good motives propelling that action, the most obvious being that if Beth was right and this was some sick copycat, it was vital to track him down before he claimed another victim. Conversely, should Clytie have been killed for a reason, the quicker Claudia picked up the spoor before the trail cooled completely, then so much the better. Admittedly, after three months, the spoor would have lost much (if not all) of its scent, but at the back of her mind there was another case to be made for solving this murder and taking the next boat back to Rome.

Dammit, she really must cover her head next time she went out, because the sun was clearly stronger than she had thought. Janus in heaven, of course her heart pounded like a kettledrum when she saw him. What criminal's wouldn't, when reduced to beg favours of the Security Police? And of course her breath would have been coming quick and shallow. In that steam, how could it not? And good gracious, the tightness in her chest was what any young woman would have experienced, faced with that amount of raw naked masculine muscle.

No, no. Definitely time to solve Clytie's murder and bugger off back to Rome, she decided, skipping down the wooden steps towards the caves. Because to feel that level of sympathy for the very man who was intent on stepping into the Senate on the back of her felonies meant heatstroke was deceptively potent. Though now she thought about it, and dammit knowing he'd be a prize asset to the College, she really ought to have hung a higher price tag round

Orbilio's neck. The derisory little sum that she'd pocketed in the end would barely cover her outstanding account at the bloody cobbler's …

Inside the cave, it was cool but not dark. Lamps inset in niches hacked out of the stone lit the interior as brightly as noon, and the scent of the roses and honeysuckle that decked the entrance mingled with the bunches of healing herbs that hung from the roof and whose fragrance had been released by a light crushing of leaves between fingertips. Claudia helped herself to a ladle of water from the stone basin that was fed by the constant trickle from the rock, and was just about to pour herself a second when she realized that the sound she'd assumed to be part of the spring was actually the sound of weeping.

The acoustics inside the cave were confusing, and it took a moment before she realized that the sobs came from outside, where the rocks at the entrance kicked back an echo.

'Oh sweet Janus!'

The woman lay on the ground where she had fallen, her fringed skirt up over her knees, the bruise on her shin already swollen and angry. And the reason she couldn't get up by herself was because she was heavily pregnant.

'Don't move.' Claudia scrambled over the rocks towards her. 'Stay right where you are, I'll go and get help, I just need to make sure you're all right first.'

'Go away,' she sobbed, pushing Claudia away. 'Leave me alone.'

'I certainly will not.'

Apart from the banged shin, there appeared to be no other damage and her stomach lurched, because that meant it was internal.

'Where were you when you fell?' she asked. Dammit, these boulders were huge.

'I didn't slip,' the Gaulish girl blubbered. 'I came here to be alone, so go away and leave me in peace.'

'My dear woman, if I thought you were in peace, I'd be gone before you could blink. But.' Claudia made herself comfortable on the ground next to her. 'Since you've gone to a lot of trouble to crawl into this space, curled yourself up like an animal and are obviously intent on creating a water course that not only makes the one inside the cave look like a tap-drip but will probably throw Gurdo out of a job in the process, I'm sticking to you like a wart until you tell me the problem.'

The smile was feeble, but it was a smile nevertheless.

'See for yourself,' she said, handing over a crumpled piece of parchment.

Claudia straightened it out the best that she could, and although tears and ink were not the best of companions, she eventually deciphered the gist.

While you let your horse starve, someone else is bringing him oats.

'Is that it?' She ripped the note into shreds and threw them into the air. 'You're risking your baby, your health and your happiness on someone else's resentment and jealousy?'

The girl blinked. 'You — you don't think it's true, then?'

Claudia had absolutely no idea whether she was married to a saint or a scoundrel, but she did know that an atmosphere of mistrust and anxiety isn't the best start to a newborn life.

'Mischief-making, pure and simple,' she said crisply. 'My advice is to go home and forget it.'

'But suppose it is true? Suppose he has been-'

'Does your husband spend a lot of time preening himself?'

The woman's head shook tentatively. 'N-no.'

'Is he habitually late? Does he enjoy humiliating people? Is he reckless, feckless, unreliable and ruthless?'

'My Borrix?'

'There you are, then.'

It didn't follow, of course, that nice boys didn't stray. But serial adulterers followed a tediously consistent pattern and since 'her Borrix' didn't fit the profile, Claudia had been taking no risk. Whereas the mother-to-be had been reassured beyond measure.

'Thank you,' she gushed. 'Oh, thank you so much.'

Drawing the line at having her hands smothered in kisses, Claudia helped the girl to her feet. 'Come on, I'll give you a hand over these rocks, and then I suggest you and your Borrix take a stroll round the village, arm in arm so everyone can see you're devoted. Especially the author of that spiteful missive.'

Spurned lover, jealous mother-in-law, barren neighbour filled with resentment, who knows?

'How can I ever thank you?' the girl sniffed.

'By leaving before you give birth at my feet,' Claudia laughed, but as she watched her waddle off, the fringe of her skirt swinging jauntily, she was aware that the laughter was false. Seeing the woman curled up like that had given Claudia quite a shock. The Clytie factor, she supposed, and again she was struck by the close link between beauty and tragedy. For the birds still sang and the sun still shone. And the seasons continued to turn Her thoughts were interrupted by the sound of two sets of footsteps approaching from opposite directions.

'Sarra!' Pod's voice contained pleasure as well as surprise. 'Looking for Gurdo? He's away collecting his herbs this time of a day. You'd best give him an hour.'

Behind the boulders, Claudia watched a girl of the same age as the tousle-haired elf smile coyly back. Thanks to the acoustics, every word carried clearly.

'I wasn't looking for Gurdo,' Sarra said. 'I… was just taking a walk.'

Not the most convincing of liars, Claudia thought, as another blushing exchange passed between them. Either she expected to bump into the young woodsman or Sarra kept passing this way until she did.

'I was hoping to pick a few mallow to go with these,' she murmured, indicating the spray of pure white dog roses she held in her hand. 'But I can't seem to find any.'

'I know a spot where they grow real thick.'

Sarra's blush deepened to the pink of her robe, and, in the dappled shade of the trees, her long, silky hair shone the colour of primroses in spring. 'Perhaps you'd be kind enough to point that place out to me, then, Pod?' She pushed a loose tendril hair behind her ear and still didn't make eye contact with the young elf. 'If it's no trouble, I mean.'

'Better than that, I can show you.'

Though Sarra still stared at her roses, her lower lip trembled. 'I'd like that,' she whispered. 'I'd like that very much, but — suppose someone sees us together?'

'What will they see?' The depth of his grin dimpled his cheeks. 'A simple woodsman helping a girl from the College? Sarra, if it was Swarbric, it wouldn't pass notice.'

Blue eyes met his at last. 'That's because Swarbric's a slave and you're a free man,' she said quietly. Tod, you know the penalties for fraternizing with non-College men, and there's you to think of as well. You'll be cast out. Shunned. Oh, Pod, the Hundred-Handed will vote you invisible and-'

'Then let's be invisible!' He rushed forward and took both her hands in his, heedless ofthe roses' thorns. 'Sarra, I know these woods. I know a glade we can meet where no one will see us-'

'No, no, I can't. Even if we did manage to hide out of sight, there's no telling whether someone might hear-'

'Suppose we found another way to talk?' The youth's eyes danced as he flicked his fingers. 'No one can overhear that.'

'Holy heaven!' Her eyes turned to saucers of horror. 'Where did you learn to talk with your hands?'

'From watching you.'

'Oh, Pod, if they ever find out you can cipher-'

He silenced her protests by placing one finger gently over her lips. 'Tomorrow,' he whispered. 'Tomorrow afternoon, when everyone'll be busy with the solstice preparations.'

Even from behind the rock, Claudia could see the girl was shaking and she did not think it was from fear.

'Very well, then,' Sarra said at last. 'If you're sure?'

'I'm sure.' The youth placed a light kiss on her lips, then another, then a longer, much deeper one. 'But you have to admit,' he said, finally pulling away, 'I've picked up your sign language pretty well.'

He gesticulated a few more words with his fingers and despite herself, Sarra laughed. 'I suspect you meant to call me an angel, but you've just labelled me an old bat! This,' she said, swishing her fingers, 'is the cipher for angel.'

She was still smiling as she disappeared round the curve in the path, trailing her spray of white roses and quite oblivious to the fact that those blooms which had survived the crushing embrace had lost at least half of their petals. Several minutes passed before Pod finally tore his eyes away from the empty track, yet when he turned round, Claudia noticed that the expression in them was harder than granite.

So then. Pod was a free man, she thought, watching him sprint off down the path to make up for lost time. Another point she would need to raise with Gurdo, but since the spring's belligerent guardian wasn't here, she decided to wait on a wide flat rock beside the stream that was surrounded by iris and willow. Out of sight, beyond a bend in the river downstream, the babble of women washing laundry mingled with midsummer birdsong, while the gurgle of water glugging round rocks merged with the droning of bees. And yet, as she lay face up to the sun, there was little peace in Claudia's heart.

I know.

She'd found the note the minute she returned from Santonum, and whoever wrote it hadn't bothered to flip the hinge of the wax tablet shut. They'd wanted her to see the message straight away — but who knew? What did they know? And how could they possibly know that Claudia was investigating Clytie's death? Yet:

I know, the note read. I know.

Two little words, but enough to chill her through to her marrow. Keeping secrets was not always wise. In fact, in a close, tight-knit community such as this, where mysteries were mandatory and rituals inscrutable, and where conspiracy already bubbled, knowledge could be a dangerous thing…

'We used to sit and make daisy chains on this rock,' a small voice piped up. 'In fact, until Clytie died here, it was our favourite spot.'

Spinning round, Claudia came face to face with the same beautiful flaxen-haired trio that Swarbric had castigated for climbing trees.

'Clytie died here?'

'You can still see the stains from her blood.' The little novice pointed to a series of smudges in the porous white limestone. 'I'm Aridella, by the way.'

'Vanessia,' the oldest one said, bobbing a curtsey.

'And I'm Lin,' said the one that was all blue eyes and dimples. 'It means pool.'

The girls were so alike that Claudia supposed it wasn't beyond the realms of possibility that three of the women had picked the same fair-haired hunk to father their children.

Since the Hundred-Handed held none of the usual concepts of individual possessions and family bonding, believing in communal ownership, she saw no reason why this philosophy shouldn't extend to the men they took to their beds, since share and share alike was the College's ethos. But sharing can't always be easy, she thought. Not where emotions are concerned.

'We'd come down after tutoring,' Aridella said, and an image of four little girls lying face down on the warm stone flashed before Claudia's mind. Three little blonde heads plus a brunette in her father's image pressed tightly together as they giggled and chattered, swapping jokes and homework in the manner of little girls everywhere.

'At least, when we weren't in detention,' Dimples muttered, with a roll of her enormous blue eyes.

A quick glance at the rope dangling from an alder over the stream brought back memories of the flaxen-haired trio dropping out of the oak tree, their skirts tucked into their knicker cloths, their knees grubby and skinned.

'Aren't novices allowed to have adventures?' Claudia asked.

'Officially, no,' Vanessia said, taking one of Aridella's plaits and tying it neatly. 'We're supposed to devote ourselves to the Wisdom, because it's our holy obligation to learn Nature's lore and store the knowledge inside our hearts.'

'It's our purpose for this reincarnation,' Lin added earnestly.

'But provided nobody gets to hear about it-'

'You mean Beth?'

'Any of the Hundred-Handed,' Vanessia said, tugging the second plait into order. 'We're accountable to them all, but providing they don't catch us in the act-'

'And no one reports us-'

'And as long as we still learn our lessons-'

'- then nobody minds.'

'You must miss Clytie a lot,' Claudia said, but instead of three blonde heads nodding in unison, a shutter came hurtling down. Vanessia dropped the plait without tying the ribbon and the girls stared at their feet.

'Don't you?' Claudia prompted.

'Yes, miss,' they chorused in a dull monotone.

'Of course, it was a long time ago.' Three months at their age must seem like a lifetime. 'But I wonder… do any of you remember Clytie slipping out that particular night? Perhaps you saw someone talking to her the day that she died?'

Three pairs of eyes stared steadfastly at the ground, then Lin muttered something about not feeling well and going to bed early, while Aridella couldn't remember anything about it at all.

'It was just a normal day,' Vanessia said, shrugging one shoulder. 'What's to remember?'

'I don't know,' Claudia replied. 'But since the spring equinox is one of the four big events in your calendar, and considering novices play a major role in the festival, I thought something about it might have stuck in your memory. Apart from the fact that your friend died.'

Vanessia's lower lip trembled. 'I must have got the days muddled up,' she said, and the other two nodded eagerly, desperate to grasp at the lifeline.

'Me, too.'

'And me.'

As one they turned and belted back across the meadow, and Claudia reflected that it wasn't simply the one life that had been destroyed on the spring equinox. Three others had been shattered as well — but then wasn't it always the way? Wasn't it bloody well always the way? Staring at the rock where she'd sat without even sensing its tragedy, Claudia hugged her arms to her chest. What happened here, Clytie? What were you doing so far from the College, and at night all on your own? Who on earth lured you away from the compound?

Without warning, Claudia was suddenly the same age as Vanessia. It was a warm day, warmer than this, and she was returning home to the apartment that her father had left four years before. A day like any other, she recalled. No money, no food, no furniture even, since that had been sold so her mother could drink herself into the oblivion that was all Claudia had ever known. Oh, yes, a day like any other.

The sound of the slums reverberated across time. The bawling, the yelling, the barking of dogs. The unmistake-able stench of boiled cabbage, stale sweat and, above all, hopelessness that was trapped in the air. Slipping in cat pee, tripping over broken toys, she is climbing the six flights of stairs the same as she has done every day for the past fourteen years of her life. She opens the door, calls out hello, receives nothing back in return, which is no great surprise. Her mother is always dead to the world before noon. What is unusual, however, is finding her mother surrounded by blood, blowflies and the stink of cheap wine Unable to control the shuddering, Claudia tugged at a clump of bright yellow trollius and laid them at the place where a twelve-year-old girl with her whole life ahead of her had bled to death from the same wounds she'd seen herself, a long time — a lifetime — ago.

Gaping red mouths, calling silently for help from two wrists…

What the hell were the Hundred-Handed covering up? She sniffed angrily. Even in their upside-down world where duty outweighed family, where love was dispensed like so many bread rolls and equality was as cold as the frost, Beth struck Claudia as the sort who might tolerate lies and half-truths perhaps through omission, but somehow she didn't imagine the head of the College condoning out-and-out falsehoods. Yet that was exactly what that lovely little flaxen-haired trio had done. They had lied. Lied through their exquisite white teeth.

Shoving her hair out of her face with the back of her hand, she thought, Their friend was dead. Killed right here, on this stone.

What did those children fear more than the truth?

Sunlight slanting through the willows cast dappled shade on the meadow, and as it gurgled over the rocks the stream sparkled like glass. Fresh from pupation, a fritillary supped from the pale pink blooms of the bramble, dragonflies patrolled their favourite stretches of water and yellow wagtails darted from stone to stone in search of flies. Claudia stared into the crystal-clear water. It seemed inconceivable that a child could have been murdered in a place so lovely, so peaceful, and on the day of the spring equinox, too. A day, like Beth said, when the whole world rejoices in balance and harmony, decking their houses with gorse and celebrating with dancing, with feasting, with music — but was the date relevant? Would the fact that Clytie was the only brunette among the little quartet have been a factor? In other words, had the girl been chosen at random — or had she been picked out for a reason?

'Looking for fish for your supper, Lofty Legs?'

Gurdo marched purposefully round the bend in the stream. In his left hand he held monkshood, hedge hyssop and hellebores. Under his right arm was tucked a bunch of osiers.

'These tiddlers?' Claudia straightened up from where she'd been dabbling her hands in the water, though strangely her mother's blood never washed off. 'Even the herons leave them alone.'

Dark eyes glittered with cunning. 'Angling for a bigger fish, are we? Well, let me tell you, size isn't everything, lady, which reminds me.' He grunted. 'How's that pain in the neck?'

She pictured Orbilio being fitted with pantaloons in place of his long patrician tunic, set to work mending roofs or (if I dedicate a bracelet to you, Minerva?) mucking out the pigsty or the stables.

'Coming along very nicely,' she said.

'That Mavor does a good job on joints,' Gurdo said, rinsing the dirt off his herbs in the fast-flowing water. 'Between her and the Cave of Miracles, we don't see many dissatisfied customers.'

Claudia studied the herbs he'd been gathering. Medicinal herbs, even though his job was purely guardian of the spring. And noted that each plant was deadly in the wrong hands.

'And even then, I'm sure you charm them out of lodging a complaint,' she said smoothly. 'What's in the other half of the cave?'

'None of your business.'

'Did I say it was?'

The dwarf tipped his head back and hooted. 'Pity you hadn't contracted some lingering sickness that'd take several months to put right. I'm kind of getting used to having you around. But if you must know, the second mouth leads to the Cave of Resurrection deep inside the mountain.'

Claudia turned and peered into the twinkling lights that lit up Gurdo's half of the cavern, where floral bouquets hung from hooks in the rock and where water oozed from the rock into stone channels. A matter ofjust a few feet from total, Stygian blackness.

'Resurrection, not reincarnation?'

His dandified shoulders shrugged. 'Same thing. The soul's immortal, Lofty Legs. When that lovely body of yours eventually dies, your soul passes into another.'

'In that cavern?'

Gurdo chortled. 'Babies come from gooseberry bushes, lady, not holes in the rock.' His expression quickly became serious again. 'I'm warning you, though, don't go in there. That entrance, see? That's reserved for the spirits. There's a passage there that leads straight to the Underworld.'

Claudia watched a kingfisher dart upstream and thought that often the run-up to the summer solstice was bedevilled by storms. No sign of them so far. But the sense of oppression was building.

'Reincarnation isn't immediate, then?'

'If you're asking whether the soul flies in the dark side and flits out the other, this is the Cave of Miracles, not Impossi-bloody-bility. Souls aren't bats, you know. These things take time.'

The spirits buzz round the cave like silent, invisible bees, Gurdo added, waiting to lead the souls of the dead to the Underworld to be judged, while the spirits passed time weaving shrouds on looms made of stone.

'How much time?' she asked. 'Is three months long enough for a twelve-year-old soul to hang around before it is reborn?'

'Clytie?' Gurdo's eyes darted to the rock beside which she stood. To the bouquet of yellow globe flowers. 'Lady, for that you'll need to talk to someone a lot more experienced in the spiritual line of work than a guardian of springs.' His face was devoid of emotion as he shook the drips off his herbs. 'Can't speak for the fish in this stream,' he said carefully, 'but there's an awful lot of eels, though.'

'Eels?'

'Right slippery things, and just when you think you've caught one, blow me, it's slid straight through your fingers.' He clucked his tongue. 'You want to watch out for them eels, Lofty Legs.' Then he chuckled. 'Ah, but they're beauties to look at.' He winked. 'A real treat for the eye.'

Was that a warning, she thought as he marched off, his ponytail swinging jauntily? Or wasn't he referring to the priestesses at all, but was suggesting she was the beautiful but untrustworthy creature?

Beyond the meadow, the forest opened out into oak, ash and hazel, chestnut, apple and holly. Each tree was sacred to the Hundred-Handed for different reasons — rowan was a charm against evil, hawthorn released love, ash was the tree of rebirth. On a more practical side, their wood turned everything from cradles to clogs, charcoal to wheels, and where hawthorn-blossom tea was good for the heart, the juice of the rowan gargled sore throats away and willow bark reduced fever and pain.

Twelve sacred trees, one for each month of the year.

They furnished everything from dyes to whistles via divining rods and brooms, they provided heat, shelter and food. Without these trees, the people of the forests could not survive. This was the universe without which they would die.

Yet the roots of the ash strangled those of its neighbours. The smoke from burning rowan was believed to summon demons. Willow had long been associated with the dark side of the moon.

Light and dark.

Good and evil.

The sacred and eternal balance.

Claudia glanced at the cliff, thinking of the slave village that lay hidden by trees on the hill. For all the silver birch's ability to self-propagate, this remained the one thing the Hundred-Handed could not do. For their line to continue they needed men. Men like Gabali, who were healthy, handsome, strong and intelligent, but who also possessed other qualities — a deep capacity for love, for instance. His treasured Andalus was one example, not to mention a daughter he'd been forbidden from seeing but which didn't stop him from wanting to protect her. In denying Gabali what came naturally to him, hot (but forbidden) love had mutated into cold (but remunerated) justice.

What of the other men who lived locked inside that palisade? How might their anger and suppression find an outlet?

Gabali wasn't unique. Like it or not, prime specimens had been sold into slavery since the dawn of time, but there had always been an order to their subjection. They'd married, raised kids, and even though those children had been born into slavery, family order had still been maintained. Stability was part of the deal. Admittedly, from time to time stories surfaced of sadists who beat their servants and sold them like cattle, but these, thank Jupiter, were the minority. An isolated few, who made the news for all the wrong reasons and simply because of their wrongdoings.

Brushing against banks of wild mint as she strolled by the river, Claudia's hems released clouds of its invigorating fragrance. The Hundred-Handed weren't cruel to their male captives in the physical sense — indeed, Beth would be outraged at the very suggestion. But their behaviour flew in the face of every convention as these 'prime specimens' were kept not only locked up, but under the control of women who used them for work and sex and then, when they'd outlived their usefulness in the eyes of the priestesses, sold them on like redundant cookpots. If that wasn't cruelty, Claudia didn't know what was, the only surprise was that more hadn't snapped. The question was, would that rage extend to taking it out on a twelve-year-old child?

Maybe this magnificent, chained and powerless male believed that, in killing a novice, it was the start to sparing future generations from becoming like him? That if the Hundred-Handed were eliminated — cut off at the root, as it were — the plant would wither and die?

If so, that put three little flaxen-haired beauties in the path of some very real danger.

'What happened to you, Clytie?' she whispered. 'Were you the victim of a sick, twisted mind who looked to an executed butcher as some kind of hero?'

Beth clearly thought so.

'Or is Dora right? Were you the tragic result of a warrior's trial run, or is my theory closer to the mark? That you were sacrificed on an altar of despairing male principles?'

Quite literally, given the shape of the rock, and maybe that in itself was important. But tempting as it was to seek logic in murder, Claudia's notion of putting an end to the sect by killing novices would only work if every priestess was beyond child-bearing age. Dora and several others certainly were, and although Beth, Fearn and Ailm were fast approaching that stage, there were still plenty of nubile Initiates on hand to do their duty. If Clytie's killer hoped to eradicate the Hundred-Handed, his object was self-defeating. The College would probably double in numbers overnight.

Watching a grass snake slither through the thyme, another theory began to take shape.

Orbilio had called the Hundred-Handed idealists, but idealists came in many forms. Suppose someone believed that by killing Clytie they were setting her little soul free? Once again, Claudia's eyes were drawn to the cave with two mouths. One for humans to pass through, decked with honeysuckle and rose. The other garlanded with yew that was reserved for the spirits, and which led straight down to the Underworld.

It's our holy obligation to learn Natures lore and store the knowledge inside our hearts, Vanessia had said.

It's our purpose for this reincarnation.

This reincarnation, that was the point. Suggesting the Hundred-Handed were not reborn into their own cult and thus begging the question, if not back here, where did their saintly souls go? As a flock of finches swooped down to drink from the shallows, she remembered Dora remarking that, in her view, the painting and arranging of Clytie's body was a clumsy attempt to imitate the previous murders.

Until now, Claudia had assumed the killer was male, but as both Gabali and the Oak Priestess had taken pains to point out, no sexual assault had taken place and was that what the Hundred-Handed were hiding? That they knew — or suspected — she'd been killed by a woman? One, in fact, of their own…?

I know, the note by her bedside had read and despite the heat of midsummer, Claudia shivered.

She couldn't see them. She couldn't hear them. But around the dark side of the cave, spirits hovered like bees.

Waiting to lead another soul down to be judged.