by Marilyn Todd
'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.
Nine
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br /> To be shunned was to be voted invisible, and once invisible the outcast was forbidden to speak, wash, even worship within his own community.
The length of expulsion was determined by a number of factors, though obviously it was influenced by the proportion of black pebbles over white in the voting jar. As a rule, the higher the number, the longer the exile and though a unanimous vote could result in a lifetime ban, such cases were rare. Shunning was intended as a deterrent. A hope that, by being forced to live on the edge of society for anything from a few weeks to a couple of years, with the penitent obliged to fend for himself and unable to communicate with friends and family - even drink water upstream from them for fear of polluting them with his guilt - he (and it was always a he) would return home humble, contrite, but most of all an example to others that rules were laid down for a reason.
Murder and rape were capital crimes, but there was no room in society for the likes of assault, theft or the sabotage of another man's crops, nor would extortion, slander, cowardice or arson be tolerated, either. For moving his neighbour's boundary stones, a farmer might expect to be shunned for three years, since he had callously planned to enrich his own life at the expense of another's and used deceit under the guise of friendship. However, falsely accusing one's sister-in-law of adultery might result in a couple of months, while stealing livestock or grain fell somewhere in between.
No one ever expected small communities to live in close proximity without flare-ups of temper and temperament, the Whisperer reflected. It was a question of weighing the damage.
If accusations of adultery went ignored, what level of
malicious lies might then follow? If one man moved his boundary by five yards and wasn't punished, why not claim fifteen yards? Fifty? In the eyes of the tribes, shunning was simply a piece of legal machinery. When your harvester starts bending the corn instead of cutting it, don't you dismantle the box and sharpen the metal teeth back to points? It was the same with recalcitrant tribe members. Unscrew them from the community, clean them up and then, once they're in a fit state to resume their original purpose, connect them back up to the machine.
The young patriot barely heard the chatter of jays in the branches or the distant thwack of an axe. He heard only the words of the Chieftains inside his head, declaring him guilty of treason against his own tribe and sentencing him to a lifetime of shunning. Even now, he wondered they could face themselves, hypocritical bastards that they were.
'It's you who've sold the people out, not me!'
They were the ones who advocated a laying down of arms before the Roman advance. They were the ones who insisted the tribes kowtowed to Roman rules and paid Roman bloody taxes. Taxes? Lenus almighty, we work our own soil, grow our own grain, cut our own timber, raise our own beasts and then have to pay ten per cent for the privilege?
'What right do these oppressors have, tramping in here, riding roughshod over good, honest people then telling them how to live their own lives?' he'd demanded. 'Are they gods? Superheroes? Tell me, are they monsters? Demons? Supernatural beings who cannot be slain?'
He'd challenged the Chieftains to deny it, but all he got back was the usual crap about how the Roman militia protected the Nation far better than they'd defended themselves, how ten per cent tax was a trifle compared to the profits Aquitania was reaping thanks to the new trade links and how the tribes were stronger, healthier, better educated under the eagle. Surely, they asked, he could see this?
'Fuck, no! All I see are cowards who cover themselves in metal and tell you it's glory. Bullies who oppress you and tell you it's freedom. What I see,' he'd told them, 'are jackals who feed off your flesh while telling you they're cuddly puppies, and by Lenus, you cretins believe them.'
'Do not talk to us of bullying,' the Chieftains had countered. 'We have seen for ourselves the weals you left on your wife.'
Women again, and which one of those bitches in the village had been telling tales this time? he wondered. Cooking up mischief, when they should have been cooking a decent meal for their family. Spreading rumours, when they should have been spreading their legs for their husbands. Too much time on their hands, that's the trouble.
'Nothing she didn't deserve,' he'd told the Chieftains.
Bloody Romans, this was. Putting ideas in his wife's head that women could answer back.
'And your children? Did they deserve their beatings, too?'
'Discipline's breaking down under these bastards and you're castigating me for enforcing it in my own home?' He couldn't believe what he was hearing. 'You ask whether I'm blind to progress, but it's you who can't see that Rome's cut off your balls under the pretext of friendship.'
His loyalty was to his bloodline, he thundered. Where was theirs?
'I won't stand by while the tribes are annihilated through your self-centred apathy. You say trade benefits our people? I say they're selling their souls. You say peace is a good thing? I say it's man's duty to fight, not only to defend what is his, but to take from his neighbour if his neighbour is weak, for weakness cannot be tolerated in any society, least of all ours!'
The Chieftains had glanced at each other, but more in pity, he'd thought, than discomfort.
'You are still a young man,' they said. 'You have a wife, who will be married off to another should you be cast out, and whose husband will raise your children as his own. Think carefully. You are denying yourself, as well as them, the chance to speak to or hug them again, and you might wish to consider those consequences before we cast our votes.'
'Men are born to be warriors and though my sons might be forbidden from speaking to me, you cannot strip away their respect!'
As they grew up, they'd see it was their father who led
Aquitania to freedom and drove the oppressors from Gaul. Standing in that circle of longhouses, surrounded by browbeaten weaklings, the Whisperer's heart had swelled as he pictured his sons growing into warriors in his own image. Tearing up law courts, pulling down temples, putting an end to the trade that brought foreign ways into the region. What use were aqueducts anyway, when women were perfectly capable of fetching water from the river in buckets? Thanks to him, there would be a return to the old ways, when life was simple, the only tongue heard was their own and men went to war, as they should do. A return, moreover, to a morality in which children obeyed their fathers and wives didn't dare question how their husbands spent the household income.
He snorted. Stupid bitch couldn't understand that men drank to relieve the pressures of raising a family, that it was them who went out to work, them who deserved a treat for their slaving. Ach, the man who took on that lazy cow, good luck to him, that's what he said. Let some other poor bugger listen to her whining on about having no money for food because he'd drunk it away. Let some other poor bastard find out what it's like, coming home late at night and wanting his woman, then having to fight for what's his because she objected to being bent over the bloody table or was cramped up with a toothache. Who the hell wanted to look at her fucking face anyway? Good riddance to that selfish bitch.
'If you cowards won't back me,' the Whisperer had shouted to all the tribespeople who'd gathered to vote, 'there are enough Aquitani who aren't happy shouldering this foreign yoke. Who needs you?'
It was them who'd need him, watch and see. Them who'd bloody need him. Because who had united the Nations, eh? All right, some of these hotheads were bitter for all the wrong reasons, but who was it who'd stirred up passion among the dispassionate? Who'd inspired the disenchanted? Who'd roused the anger that had lain dormant for a whole generation? Through him - through his carefully executed crimes and his extensive contacts - an arsenal of weapons and supplies had been amassed, traps set, pits dug, nets sewn that would spring down from the trees, and when the battle
cry rose up, the Oppressors wouldn't know what bloody hit them.
And if the Chieftains thought shunning would teach him a lesson, they were right. Instead of standing on the steps of the basilica and railing again
st his people's indifference, the Whisperer had adopted patience and stealth in his quest to rid Gaul of these pigs. Changing his name, changing his identity and being all things to all men, he moved from daylight into the shadows, conducting his business in secret and discussing rebellion in whispers. Oh, but soon. He smiled. Soon he'd be free to emerge from the darkness and lift his face to the sun. No more shadows. No more whispers. Only screams.
The screams of Roman women as his sword ripped their throats and hacked the heads of their children clean off their shoulders. The screams of Roman babies, the screams of filthy half-breeds, but most especially the screams of the Hundred-Handed, who'd done so much to suck the power from men, even to preaching that all life in the universe stemmed from a woman. Well, let's see how swiftly this earth mother rides to their rescue when their eyes are being gouged out and their precious gesticulating hands are chopped off. By the axe of the Thunder God, he'd leave so much carnage in his wake that the beehive of Rome would buzz wild with anger. And once grief and outrage had blinded it to all reason, that's when the Whisperer would slough off his disguise and lead the charge for freedom.
No armour. Not for him. He'd ride down on them shirtless to prove he had nothing to fear, and it wouldn't only be Rome who paid the price. The Chiefs would pay dearly for not backing him. Them, and that bitch of a wife.
He thought back to this morning, to the slave block in Santonum, and spat. He didn't hold with these Roman-style auctions. Slaves should be captured in combat and brought back as trophies. Let the bastards understand every day for the rest of their lives who was boss. But what he wouldn't have given right then to put the cow that he'd married on that auction block and see her sold into bondage.
That was another lesson he'd learned since that voting jug was upended with not a single white pebble in sight. Just
how many different ways there were to hurt women. How many methods by which he could inflict pain.