Scorpion Rising

by Marilyn Todd

Well, let's see the bitch answer back now. See who calls him a drunk and a loser, then.

  As the gong summoned the new male slaves to assemble, the Whisperer counted the hours until he set the beehive buzzing.

  And could finally step out of the shadows.

  Ten

  Suls?'

  Giv

  Given that her role was devoted entirely to death, Ailm seemed the obvious person to ask, and it was no sacrifice on Claudia's part that the questioning took place in what the Hundred-Handed termed the Hall of Purification - and everyone else called a bathhouse.

  'It's not often a Roman enquires what happens to a Gaul's soul,'Ailm added drily, 'but since you ask, its future is determined by Avita the Mother, who lives deep in the earth and breathes life into all living things.'

  Unlike the bathhouses Claudia was accustomed to, this was no stone-built complex of steam rooms, promenades and gymnasia. No works of art hung on its walls, no statues lined its entrance, no attendants wafted round with wine and sweetmeats. Indeed, there was little to differentiate the Hall from the rest of the rectangular, windowless, single-roomed buildings within the sacred precinct apart from the hyssop that decked the lintel for purification. Lit by candles tinted with green dye and scented with fragrant oils, and with its interior walls insulated with colourful woven withies, the Hall oozed peace and serenity. Begging the question, how stressful could watching trees be?

  'Souls have three paths,' Ailm said. 'First, those that are judged to be honest and pure Avita ensures are reborn into a better life.'

  While she explained the system, a young girl with a cap of blonde, almost white, hair helped Claudia to undress, then escorted her to a wooden table which was warm to the touch and on which Claudia was invited to lie face down. Carefully positioning her arms and brushing her hair free of her neck, the girl then placed a row of heated stones

  down the length of Claudia's spine. It was not a therapy she had encountered before and she wondered who'd first thought of laying hot stones on a backbone. And why it took them so long.

  'Those whose deeds encompassed wickedness and sin she returns to a life of misery,' Ailm explained, 'that they might make amends and find redemption.'

  Her voice made no distinction between those who'd been good and those who'd been bad, but that didn't surprise Claudia in the slightest. Remembering how the Death Priestess had distanced herself from Claudia and the others last night, keeping her hands folded neatly in front of her, she'd sensed a woman who preferred observation to participation, and the repressed rarely voice their opinions. And yet was Ailm repressed? Her black robe had the sharpest pleats she'd ever seen, and did you see the filigree on those bracelets and rings? There were whorls and serpents and figures-of-eight that must have sent the silversmith blind as he squinted, while the embosswork on her belt of linked gold chains smacked of a woman who took immense pride in her appearance. Were women like that repressed? Claudia did not believe so.

  'Finally,' Ailm said, 'those souls that are found to contain nothing but evil are thrown to the three-headed dragon that stalks the Underworld.'

  'Who feeds off the heads of his enemies and slakes his thirst with the blood of the wicked,' the fair-haired girl added cheerfully.

  'Thank you, Elusa.'

  Ailm didn't sound like she meant it, but the blonde didn't seem to notice the edge in her voice.

  'Don't forget the exception to the paths of incarnation, O Lady of the Yew,' she said, replacing the rocks on Ailm's back with fresh ones.

  'I had not forgotten, Elusa. Now massage my head, if you will'

  As pale skin plunged into the rich swirl of peat-coloured hair, Claudia noticed that the dye was so artful that not a single silver strand was showing through, not even at the roots, and Ailm was the only woman she'd known who wore

  cosmetics in the bathhouse. They'd surely cake to a crisp in this steam.

  'The exception Elusa is referring to is that every priestess who qualifies for the fifty elite is reborn as a raven.' The Death Priestess smiled contentedly. 'Ravens mate for life, did you know that?'

  The stones on Claudia's back suddenly cooled. For binding themselves in servitude to the earth, the Hundred-Handed's sole reward was for their souls to be given freedom to fly? That was it? What they'd been forced to forsake in this world would be theirs in the next? And maybe it wasn't so much that the priestesses didn't care about Clytie. Maybe they'd never been taught how ...

  'No,' she said, as Elusa helped her back into her robe. 'No, I didn't know that.'

  'The penalty for slaying a raven is severe,' Ailm said, turning her head to face the wall. 'The perpetrator is cast into the Pit of Reflection, as are runaway slaves and, of course, any man found inside the walls of our precinct.'

  At the door, the blonde girl glanced nervously over her shoulder to check that Ailm wasn't looking, then whispered in Claudia's ear.

  'So are any women who try to escape,' she said. 'They're thrown into the Pit of Reflection, too.'

  There were tears in Elusa's eyes as she turned away. Not of sorrow, though. Tears of pain.

  Late rooks cawed from the treetops and the last vestige of sunlight leached from the sky as Claudia slipped away from dinner pleading a headache. In stark contrast to the dormitories, the kitchens and the rest of the buildings that made up the College, the dining complex consisted of a series of large and small rooms arranged round three sides of a courtyard, and it was here that the priestesses and initiates, novices and workers broke their fast, took their midday meal and celebrated the close of another day with their dinner. Claudia had never seen anything like this complex, indeed had never heard of people eating like this, and yet its very oddness rang a bell. Three sides of a courtyard ... Three sides of a courtyard ...

  Architecture wasn't the only thing that niggled at the edge of her brain, either. Looking at Sallie, the Willow Priestess, dressed in catkin green and seated, appropriately enough, between Fearn and Dora, Claudia was reminded of the ancient proverb.

  When tempests blow, the oak might fall but the willow just bends in the wind.

  Willow wasn't merely supple and easy to transplant, thus symbolizing a capacity to adapt and adjust. Willow was one of nature's true survivors, and taking in the blonde's slender figure and long slim fingers, she realized that the girl Pod met by the cave, the girl in the pink robe called Sarra, was the spitting image. The Willow priestess was her mother.

  But with so many women crammed into a relatively tight space, all of them clucking like hens in a coop, it was impossible to sustain an intelligent conversation for more than two minutes. Perhaps that was the designer's intention? But from casually chatting to Beth about how long she'd been in the job, an interesting detail was thrown up.

  'I took office almost to the day that Rome took up official occupation in this province,' she'd told Claudia with a laugh. 'And whilst it's not for me to say whether that was propitious or not, I do feel fate had a strong input in the matter.'

  Fate? Claudia wondered. Or a more secular hand at work?

  Promotion in their society was accorded by age rather than merit. Now if the previous Birch Priestess had been antiRoman, for instance, while an ambitious initiate held opposing views, how easy would it have been to nudge the ailing (or even not so ailing) incumbent towards divine ravenhood and fill the gap that was left before another priestess died and she was allocated that role instead?

  Studying once more Beth's youthful figure and chestnut-brown hair, the Head of the Hundred-Handed didn't look like a murderess.

  But then again, few of us do ...

  At the tip of the arrowhead of rock, the first bats of the evening flittered and an owl swooped low over the treetops. It was too late to investigate this mysterious Pit of Reflection, but she resolved to search out Swarbric at first light, because

  if anyone could tell her about the punishment that brought anguish to a pretty girl's face, it was the man in charge of College security.

  Hedgehogs snorted matin
g calls in the undergrowth, mice and voles searched for beetles among the crispy leaf litter, but night hadn't cloaked the landscape completely. And in the midsummer twilight, Claudia could just about make out a curvaceous figure hurrying home to the College. In the fading light, haste was understandable, and even in the dusk, she saw that Mavor was flushed and dishevelled. Yet she wasn't scurrying home down the hill from the village where the male slaves were kept, and, judging from her expression, her untidiness did not stem from passion. Alarm, Claudia thought, was too strong a word. But that was certainly concern on the redhead's face, and if she could 'just happen' to meet her at the gate and engineer a conversation—

  'Oof!'

  Something grunted as it collided with her bosom when she turned round.

  'Jupiter, Juno and Mars, the last thing I expected in the sacred precinct at dusk was to find myself tripping over something short, green and exceedingly solid.'

  'Then next time watch where you're going!' the object retorted, rubbing its nose.

  Claudia grabbed him by the arm and dragged him against the wall. 'Gurdo, what the bloody hell do you think you're playing at?' she hissed. 'If Beth finds you up here—'

  'Ah, don't get your knicker cloth in such a twizzle. I've got the run of this place, or didn't they tell you?'

  'No, they didn't tell me,' she snapped. 'But it explains why you go skulking around in the dark in search of cheap thrills.'

  'Can I help it if you're not flat-chested?'

  'I hope you broke your bloody nose, you little green pervert.'

  From the corner of her eye, she noticed Mavor straighten her robe, push back her hair and saunter into the Dining Hall with her normal composure. Damn.

  'Why does the Guardian of the Sacred Spring have access where other men don't?' she asked.

  'Lady, in the eyes of the Gauls, dwarves aren't real men,' Gurdo said and in the moonlight she saw mischief dancing in his eye. 'But like my dear old mother used to say, if life's intent on throwing eggs at you, make sure you catch 'em then whisk up an omelette, coz that way you'll never go hungry.'

  'Have you become a good fielder or just a good cook?'

  'Me, Lofty Legs,' he tapped his chest with his finger, 'I'm both, and before you accuse me of being vain and fanciful, which also happens to be true, let me tell you, life might not have dealt me the fairest of dice, but I'm a free man and that counts for a lot.'

  'Guardian of one of Aquitania's most important religious sites, freedom of the College, Pod, food, shelter—' Claudia reckoned up the tally on her fingers.

  'No persecution, no being made to turn tricks.' He twisted up one half of his face. 'See? The dice of life don't fall too badly for Gurdo.'

  She thought about the dwarves given mock swords and forced to clown around in the arena. Until now, she'd laughed with the rest of the crowd ...

  'What about women?'

  Gurdo let out the dirtiest laugh she'd ever heard. 'You'd be surprised how many local lasses have been healed by that water then insist on showing their gratitude! But if you're asking, do I want a woman fluffing round me day and night, making my bed, washing my shirts, sweeping my floors, then I've got 'em coming out of my ears. The College girls do all that, since these caves run deep under their sacred ground, so I lack for nothing, Lofty Legs, trust me.'

  'I'd rather trust a nest of spitting cobras,' she told him truthfully. 'But how come Pod's still free?'

  'That lad was knee-high to a crab when I found him wandering the reed beds, naked as the day that he was born. Three, four weeks passed and still no one came forward to claim him, so I took him on. Raised him as my own from that day on, and I told Beth straight. The boy remains freeborn or else I'm off. And,' he glowered, 'since the HundredHanded do believe us little folk have inbuilt healing powers, she didn't want the spring to lose its lucky charm.'

  'Although I'm sure you pointed out how attractive the alternatives were for a dwarf under Roman occupation?'

  'Is it my fault these women aren't streetwise?'

  Claudia wasn't sure that was entirely the case.

  'What happens to male babies?' she asked.

  Gurdo sniffed. 'Stand here in the daylight and to every horizon on the clearest day, that's College land you'll be looking at. Most of it's forest, giving them timber and fuel and yielding fruit trees and nuts, but there's fields of grain to be cared for, livestock to tend, vegetable gardens that require back-breaking work.'

  'You're saying the boys grow up as slaves, as opposed to those girls who don't qualify for the fifty elite and merely provide a free labour source?'

  'You want to be careful, that tongue of yours'll rip your cheeks to shreds, but no, that's not what I'm saying.'

  He folded his arms over his chest.

  'Have you any idea how many mouths there are to feed between this College and the men? These vast lands allow the Hundred-Handed to be self-sufficient and in a good year they might sell a few hams, but because it's mostly forest, like the rest of Aqui-bloody-tania, they don't have anything that other Gauls in the region want.'

  Something flipped over in Claudia's stomach. 'Except babies.'

  'Who are you to judge, huh?' This time the finger prodded her breastbone. 'We all trade something we're not proud of, lady.'

  She thought of her marriage vows to Gaius Seferius. Of trading her beauty, her wit, her youth, her vitality for a man who was three times her age, three times her girth and whose wine business earned him a fortune.

  'You have all the qualities for being reborn as a wasp,' she told Gurdo.

  'Skip the flattery, it only goes to my head, and when you're my size, Lofty Legs, that's not a long journey.'

  He disappeared into the blackness, whistling happily, while high overhead Hercules strode through the heavens, the Swan spread her wings and the Pole Star twinkled like torchlight. Twisting her head up to the blackness, Claudia could see

  why the lovely Sarra was worried. Like the dark half of the cave, Pod was out of bounds, too, because chirpy and virile though he was, the elf was a free man, not a slave. And free men want a say when it comes to raising their children. They really don't like their sons being sold on.

  Once again, though, their clandestine courting emphasized that, whilst advocating peace through the worship of nature, the Hundred-Handed operated rules which brooked no disobedience. Claudia understood how such guidelines might reinforce their sense of identity and lend weight to their gentle authority, but what lengths would they go to protect their mysteries? What price would the dwarf's son and the Willow Priestess's daughter have to pay for their forbidden love?

  Yet for all Pod's intensity, it was impossible to forget the granite in his eyes after Sarra had left, still trailing her spray of battered white roses. Or the fact that he'd picked up sign language from watching her.

  It was only much later, as she made her way to bed, that Claudia remembered that it was Pod who'd found Clytie's body.

  This time there was no arched-back, spitting, cross-eyed demon to impede the search. Deft hands rifled through soft linen underwear and smooth cotton robes, holding up pendants set with amber, earrings shaped like leaves and bracelets inlaid with mother-of-pearl. They flipped open a fan of peacock feathers and wafted the air for a while. They held up finely dyed sandals and examined the tooling. They eased the stopper off an alabaster phial and dabbed rich Judaean perfume on their own wrists.

  Then they lifted the mattress, searched through the satchel, poked under pillows and sheets. They checked under the couch, behind the cushions, searched for secret compartments in the jewel chest.

  Eventually, they reached for the wax tablet beside the bed and flipped open the hinge. Picking up the metal stylus, they began to write.

  In the centre of the world, between earth, sky and sea, at the point where the realms of the universe meet, Rumour gath-

  ered her friends all around her. Envy, Confusion, Malice, Resentment, Flippancy, Folly and Pride. Huddling close together for warmth, for Rumour's house has
no doors and the windows no shutters, their murmurings echoed through the brass chambers like the sound of the sea's waves heard at a distance, or the last rumbles of Jupiter's thunder.

  But in the heat of their embrace, Sorrow was smothered, Truth became suffocated and Remorse died in the womb.

  Falsehood poured another glass of poison and toasted her own success.

  Eleven

  Swarbric was engaged in conversation with a youth with a fuzz of dark curls when Claudia approached his hut shortly after breakfast. Actually, she thought, conversation might be too strong a word. What Swarbric was actually engaged in was grabbing the youth by the fabric of his collar, pressing the boy's back against the wall and snarling into his face. Which, when you looked closely, was quite a handsome young face. But then she'd never seen so many hunks to the square mile before.

  Having taken a stroll round the perimeter of the village on the way to his hut, from glimpses through the palisade she'd noticed that the workforce was universally young, universally strapping, universally unblemished and universally intelligent. Perfect sires for the priestessly foals, and yet not one of them over the age of forty. What must it feel like? she wondered. What must it feel like to be valued for your physical attributes and your core characteristics, but never, not once, for yourself?

  She hid behind a holly bush and watched the exchange. Overhead, low clouds began to cover the sky.

  'It doesn't matter whether you like it or not,' Swarbric was growling. 'You bloody well do your job.'

  'Never,' the boy hissed back. 'I'm not some sodding bear that can be forced to dance or be beaten to within an inch of its life.'

  'Wrong, Connal, that's exactly what you are. See these?' Swarbric indicated his own tight linen pants. 'See this?' He ruffled his shirt whose drawstring hung open halfway to his waist, revealing the sort of chest armourers used when fashioning models for breastplates. 'This is the livery of a performing bear, Connal, and you either get used to it—'

  'Not all of us are like you,' the boy spat, 'and maybe when you fall in love, you'll know how it feels.'