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.