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.