Sour Grapes

Twenty-Six

Many things change but the land never does, and regardless of who conquers whom, the soil is enduring and the cycles of the moon never waver. She begins as a crescent, young, fresh and pure. The virgin who waits her turn. Then she matures into womanhood, ripe, round and fecund, adored by all who gaze up at her. Finally, though, her time comes. She grows old, shrinking away until she fades into nothingness, then a brand new moon is born and the sequence starts over again.

No moon is ever the same. What has passed once can never be repeated, not in the same manner, Aplu's weather staff will see to that. Each moon is revered for her own self, and there was a saying among the Etruscans: no moon, no man — meaning that any child born between the moons was cursed by the gods — and thus, of all the traditions dear to their heart, it was this the people held closest. Fufluns and his brides stood at the very soul of the fatherland. Life versus death; harvest versus crop failure; happiness versus sorrow. The cycle of three, like the cycle of the moon. Sacred. Respected. Sacrosanct.

Each moon had her role to play in the farming year, and no role was more valuable than her sister's. Without the planting moon there could be no harvest moon. The ploughing moon was as crucial to farmers as the hunter's moon, the lambing moon and the midsummer moon.

Claudia watched the first little bride take her place inside the candle-lit circle, but her mind was not on the dance. She saw only a small girl with fair hair and freckles whose face was creased up in pain, yet who still turned to her best friend first. The invisible Indigo.

'I found her in the mountains when she was a baby,'

Candace mouthed over Amanda's head as she ferociously cradled her daughter. 'She'd been abandoned, exposed and left to die, and believe me, I know how that feels. I gave her a home and I gave her love, and that's why I keep earning,' she added. 'That's why I need gold so badly.'

Claudia sighed. If only money was what children needed! It helps. God knows it helps. But what Amanda needed more was her mother's time, not her money — and the girl needed stability, too.

'Darius told Mummy that Indigo was bad for me and Mummy should stop moving round and that would get rid of her, but I told Indigo not to worry, no one's going to get rid of her, because why should Mummy listen to what Darius tells her? She 'll be moving on soon, we always do, but this time it won't matter, because Indigo and me are running away to live with my father in Rome, only you promise not to tell Mummy, won't you?'

Dammit, the bastard was right. It wasn't fair on the girl to keep uprooting and moving on. She needed real children to be friends with.

Taking a deep breath, Claudia had clenched her fists and broken her oath to Amanda.

But it was better Candace heard from an impartial source that her daughter was so unhappy that she planned to run away, and it shocked her rigid to learn that Amanda preferred to start a new life with an imaginary father and an imaginary friend, rather than continue with the life she already had. Feeling like an intruder, Claudia had left mother and daughter mingling their tears of pain, hugging each other tight. Will anyone ever understand love, she wondered? Has anyone ever actually got it right?

Absently, she watched the little moons dance in the flickering, fairy-lit circle. The first was dressed in diaphanous silver, another in a headdress of crescent horns, the third clad in a costume of clinging ivy. And now Claudia's attention was focussed.

For a split second, she swore she could smell the stale sweat of the sailors, hear their coarse jeers ringing once again in her ear. She was their age when she began, too. The difference was, it had been every night, not just once a year, but orphaned, penniless and alone in the slums, dancing was her only escape. Like a dam bursting its barricade, memories flooded back with every sensual sway. The rhythm. The pulse. The arched back and the come-on look in the eye. As the fifth moon swept into the ring, chin held high, skirts billowing, Claudia recalled her own half-parted lips, the pretence to each leering sailor that this dance was for him and that she couldn't get enough of his pawing as she stretched, coiled and gasped her way through her routine. Except the performance here tonight was authentic. As the fire moon stroked her budding breasts with teasing sensuality, arousing the earth god with the thrust of her hips, Claudia realized the girl wasn't acting. Of course, it wasn't the same for all the performers. Three had danced stiffly and had been acutely self-conscious. But when a virgin bride peels off her clothes and gyrates with erotic abandon…

'I see you have to scrape around to find a virgin these days,' she quipped to Timi, standing at the edge of the circle.

So far, three out of five needed no husband to initiate them into the art of the bedchamber. These were practised seducers who knew exactly what they were doing.

'Lady Claudia!' Timi bridled with indignation. 'It is the girls' very innocence that arouses Fufluns to the state of excitement where He can no longer contain His seed and in spilling it, makes the earth fertile. I personally verify my pupils' virginity!'

'If they're not pure, they don't dance?'

'Virginity is the gift they bring to the earth god,' she snapped. 'Without it, they dishonour Him.'

'But there are no half measures here,' Claudia pointed out. 'The girls are either completely inhibited or… um… they're not.'

Timi flattened her hackles. 'That is the god's own will,' she stated. 'I must admit, I have been extremely surprised by some of my brides. Their movements are more… how can I say… suggestive than any choreography I've taught them.'

She let Claudia into a secret. That it was her quest to enlighten her pupils that, although they lived in a male-dominated society, there was no reason for men to have it all their own way. There was fun to be had for women too in the bedchamber, and, although she didn't tell Tarchis, she emphasized the pleasures of receiving, rather than giving.

'But they're not,' Claudia said. 'What those girls are enacting out there — in fact, exactly what your little fire moon is doing with that tinder stick at the moment — is pleasing her man.'

'My point precisely,' Timi said, smiling. 'We can impart our personal viewpoints till the cows come home, but when the time comes to dance, it is the god's will inside the pupil's, not a mortal's. It is Fufluns who shows His virgins the way.'

Maybe so, Claudia thought. But it wasn't Fufluns who showed Vorda how to tie a rock round her waist. And it wasn't Fufluns who stuck a knife into Lichas!

I can see you working out how Candace did it, what Darius's game is, what's behind the run of bad luck and why Lars married Eunice before the moon combs her lovely red hair.

Perhaps it was seeing Supersnoop over there, leaning nonchalantly against a pillar with his arms folded over his chest, that made Orbilio's words echo in Claudia's head. But either way, she had done it. She'd worked out how Candace summoned the spirits, what Darius's game was, how he was behind the run of bad luck, why Lars married Eunice, and now here was the moon combing her lovely red hair.

Except Claudia hadn't been able to connect Felix to Lichas… or Tages… or Vorda — and without hard evidence the bastard would walk.

Frankly, she had a better chance of solving that political crisis in Mauritania.

The flames of the torches flickered on the temple walls, and the candles round the idol shimmered like sun on the ocean. As the wine flowed freely and the music grew wilder, the harvest moon skipped into the circle and as Flavia offered herself to the earth god, no one noticed a young woman with flaming red hair pass through the crowd.

Or the knife in her hand.

The patrician she sought was leaning with his back against one of the salmon-pink pillars. He had his arms folded over his chest and was concentrating hard on the dance. Rosenna waited until he raised his hands to applaud.

Then aimed her blade straight for his heart.