'My theory makes much sounder sense,' Dora was saying.
'She believes Clytie was the victim of someone who wondered what it would feel like to take a human life,' Fearn explained in a voice as rich as the hue of her gown. 'A would-be warrior perhaps.'
Claudia goggled. 'Who chose a twelve-year-old child as a soft target?'
'The whole thing was clumsily done,' Dora said bluntly. 'As was plain from the lividity marks on her body, not to mention the lack of blood in the spot where Pod found her, Clytie died in one place and was moved post mortem.'
Ailm said nothing, but her hands remained folded in front of her waist, while her dark narrow eyes kept darting from Beth to Dora and back. In the uncompromising light of the afternoon sun, Claudia noticed that the rich peat tones of her hair had been artificially aided and the first hint of age spots on her cheeks discreetly touched up with white lime.
'I just pray that whoever killed Clytie has been cured of his damned curiosity,' Dora said.
Claudia blinked. How old would the Oak Priestess be? Fifty-five? Sixty? It was hard to tell, since plumpness had rounded out most of her wrinkles, but she was old enough to have learned compassion! And what of Fearn? A child had died on the spring equinox, the very day that her sacred gorse took office for the month, and whether farmer or priest, blacksmith or beggar, this was an important moment in everyone's calendar. How could she not be touched by the sacrilege? And why did Death not have a word to say on the matter? Most of all, though, how could Beth, of all people, discuss this butchery without passion? Yet looking at her handsome face and straight carriage, there was nothing hard about the head of this order. She was simply resolute. Living proof that, unlike the Druids, the power of the HundredHanded was enforced through respect rather than fear.
'Also,' Fearn said, 'the painting was amateurish in the extreme.'
'That's because men tend not to know a lot about the application of cosmetics,' Beth replied, smoothing her gown over hips that a woman half her age would be proud of.
'Precisely my point.' Dora nodded forcefully, but then Claudia didn't imagine that woman was half-hearted in anything. 'And since there was no sign of sexual interference, which is the usual motive for such killings, until someone proves otherwise, I remain convinced that the arrangement of Clytie's body was a clumsy attempt to make it look like a replication of previous murders.'
Claudia thanked Jupiter that Gabali hadn't been privy to this conversation. Who knew what the assassin's reaction might be? Because he was wrong, she realized. The Spaniard was wrong. When a child was born into this society, it wasn't simply a matter of being placed into communal care. The worst part was that it was raised with a communal psyche.
'How do you choose who fathers your children?' she asked, changing the subject before her gorge rose at their insensitivity.
'Looks are an important consideration,' Beth said, stating the obvious, because from the moment she'd clapped eyes on Mavor, Claudia realized that all the women in this College were stunning.
'Other factors play a part, too,' Fearn said, with a toss of her raven-black hair.
'Strength. Intelligence.' Beth added to the list. 'Health, of course.'
'As it happens, there's a slave auction in Santonum tomorrow,' Fearn said. 'You're welcome to come along, if you like.'
Dora cast a sharp glance over her shoulder, where coils of smoke rose out of the trees on the hill, testifying to the presence of men who lived their lives behind a high palisade.
'About bloody time we augmented the workforce. Half the roofs are an absolute disgrace, the willows are long overdue cutting and the husbandry's on the verge of neglect.'
Beth leaned towards Claudia. 'Now you understand why I wish Swarbric was right and this Order was silent,' she whispered.
Claudia smiled, but the smile did not reach her eyes, and as she stared out over the bowl of the valley, something knotted deep inside and began to twist and tighten.
It was much later that she identified the knot as fear.
In the centre of the world, between earth, sky and sea, at the point where the realms of the universe meet, Rumour welcomed her old friend warmly.
Settling herself in a comfy chair, Falsehood poured herself a glass of poison and whispered all her lies into the ears of the children of Truth.
Sipping contentedly as her tales twisted in the telling, warped in their imparting and distorted in their repetition, she stared into the Mirror of Complacency.
And watched the Druids drink them in.
From his vantage point high on the cliff, the young man who had whispered those falsehoods followed the flight of a hunting bird and his heart soared with it. Thanks to him, rumours were spreading on wings every bit as sturdy, multiplying tenfold as his tales of witchcraft and sorcery filtered through the Druid priesthood.
To his right, the sun began to slide towards the horizon, but it was not on the sinking disc that the Whisperer's gaze was fixed. Watching the bird glide above the plateau where the Hundred-Handed had their College, he smiled to himself. The Chieftains talked about Rome putting an end to intertribal warfare, to isolation, to raids on livestock, raids on women, to going cold and hungry in the depths of winter, starving when the rains swamped the grain — ach, but these were old men. Greybeards, who'd grown as soft as the food their rotting teeth sucked on. As soft as the living they'd carved out for themselves under their corrupt regime. What did these old men know?
Tightening the strings on his leather wrist grips, the Whisperer straightened the bandana around his neck and wondered how they dared label him a traitor when they were the real traitors to Gaul. He only had to look back to his childhood. Running through meadows full of hay where the Records Office now stood. Climbing trees that had been felled long since to make way for a public bathhouse. Roly-polying down a hill that been turned, of all things, into a theatre. From a simple cluster of artisans making a living to the beat of their own drum, Santonum had become the jewel in the Occupation's provincial crown — and the Chieftains praised it. They actually praised those concrete eyesores that fouled a once-picturesque skyline. Applauded the wide cobbled roads that disfigured the landscape and, worse, roads which were now defaced with an ever-growing line of marble sarcophagi that housed the corpses of foreign intruders.
Watching the hunter soar above the twisting contours of the hills, the Whisperer snorted. Chieftains prattled on about wealth bringing prosperity to the tribes, but how? They claimed that before Rome the potters and metalsmiths had had to scratch hard to make ends meet, but at least their graft had been honest because how, in all conscience, could life under the shadow of the eagle ever be better than freedom? How did the creaking of winches down on the quay improve anyone's quality of life? How could the crack of a charioteer's whip be an asset to the Aquitani Nation? And what about when night fell. When silence descended over their precious new wharf, where did those hypocritical old farts think the sailors went then? Into town, that's where they fucking well went. Polluting the air with their dirty foreign tongues, making whores of the local girls, and who knew what villainy the bastards were plotting? What blasphemy they could be spreading?