Hedgehogs snorted mating 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.