Claudia wrung out the robe as though it was Beth's neck. 'This note's nasty but, Sarra, if the author knew about Pod, she would say so.'
And it had to be a 'she', who else knew the language of sticks?
The fairy wasn't convinced. 'Ill reed, Claudia! It specifically says reeds and that's where Gurdo found Pod. Wandering by the reed beds. The message couldn't be clearer.'
Maybe. Maybe not. But there was no consoling the girl.
'They'll vote him invisible and ban him from setting foot on College land and I-' Her shoulders heaved with the sobs. 'I'll need to decide, won't I? Never see my darling Poddi again or risk both our futures… and… and I don't know that I'm strong enough to make that decision.'
There was no weakness in being unable to decide between love and duty. The flaw lay in its invidious choice.
'Why don't you talk this over with your mother?' Claudia suggested gently, throwing the dripping robe over the branch of a willow to drive the point home.
'Sallie?' Sarra shook her head. 'The Willow Priestess gave birth to me,' she snivelled, 'and naturally I resemble her in appearance, but just because we deliver a baby, it doesn't follow that we bond differently with that child than we do from any other.'
'You make it sound like a cat having a litter of kittens.'
'And you make it sound like there's something wrong with that arrangement, when it's simply that our family structure is alien to you.' She splashed her swollen face with cold water. ' Admittedly we don't have mothers or fathers as such, but' — her smile was as weak as it was wry — 'we have a hell of a lot of sisters!'
Claudia examined the twig into which those sinister notches had been carved.
'That can't always be easy.'
Jealousies and resentment would be rife in such an isolated and blinkered environment, propelling emotions that would normally have a million mundane outlets to spiral in upon themselves and take on unnatural — and indeed artificial — proportions.
'It's not,' Sarra agreed. 'We may be brought up as equals, but, like all families, some of us rub along better than others.'
This was Claudia's chance and she seized it. 'You ought to know,' she said, fanning herself cool with the neck of her robe. 'Those novices must prove quite a challenge at times.'
Children have an inbuilt instinct to create pecking orders and so, in a society where hierarchy is determined by rigid rules, the girls would need to find other ways to establish their identity. With Vanessia, Aridella and Lin, this came in the form of tomboy rebellion. But what about the fourth member of the quartet? Of course, she could easily have broached the subject of Clytie at the beginning, when Sarra talked about the other three's qualification to Initiatehood and her own role as supervisor of novices. Only that wouldn't have evoked Sarra's confidence…
'I expect Clytie was a handful as well, wasn't she?' She took care not to look at Sarra as she nonchalantly kept the heat at bay.
'More so, in a way.'
In her undershift and with her silky hair hanging down over her shoulders, the fairy looked fifteen years old.
'Because she didn't share her friends' desire to climb rocks, swing from ropes or go poking around in caves and things, she'd come to me ostensibly to get thread to sew up a tear in Aridella's robe or a new ribbon because Lin had lost hers, but basically Clytie was lonely and wanted someone to talk to. And whilst I felt for the child, it… well, it put me in an awfully difficult position.'
She heaved a sad sigh.
'I didn't want to snub her, but at some point in the conversation it would slip out why she wanted these things — and once that happened, I was duty bound to put the girls on report.' Sarra rubbed her upper arms. 'It was such a shame. At the Disciplinary, Clytie would rush forward and speak up for her friends, apologizing for landing them in it, but the trouble was, the damage was already done and Beth was left with no choice. She had to punish the girls.'
Pretending to watch the tiddlers darting in and out of the shallows, Claudia tried to make sense of the mixed messages she was receiving.
On the one side of the scales, there was a society that was self-absorbed and self-contained in which duty overrode personal feelings to the extent that only those who could remain aloof qualified as priestesses. Heaped up alongside, keeping the balance weighed down, was their view that men were on the same level as draught beasts and that even their own babies were simply commodities to be parcelled up and classified according to the rulebook.
Yet — look at their enormously strong sense of loyalty, sisterhood and belief in their convictions; plus Elusa and Sarra were proof that the capacity for love and affection on a personal level hadn't been bred out of the women over the course of three hundred years. Among five hundred women, these could not be the only two who'd suffered heartbreak at having to choose between lover and family. At any given time, there'd probably be a score of women living in a similar state of anxiety, facing guaranteed separation from one of the two things they loved most in the world.
Now if it was simply ingrained responsibility that drove Sarra, then she'd be sitting here sad, but not wracked. Miserable but certainly not fearful. No, no, Claudia thought. Emotional attachments had to have been made time and again, it was basic human nature pulling the strings. The question was, how strong were they allowed to be formed? Was that why the men were forced to leave when they reached forty? To prevent too deep an attachment forming between College member and lover? Who knew, but the point was, very few women, no matter how deep the indoctrination, could simply hand their baby into communal care without watching or following or worrying about them. Dammit, someone in this College had to be grieving for the daughter who had been butchered!
'Sarra, who was Clytie's mother?'
The pink robe wasn't quite dry, but Sarra unhooked it from the willow branch anyway. 'Fearn,' she said, frowning. 'Why do you ask?'
'Why?' Was this girl kidding? 'For heaven's sake, Fearn's the Growth Priestess responsible for the spring equinox,' she said angrily, and it beggared belief that no one, not even Gabali, had seen fit to mention this fact. 'Didn't it occur to anyone that there might be a connection here?'
'Beth had reservations initially.' Sarra pulled the gown over her head. 'In fact, under her guidance the pentagram priestesses investigated that angle very thoroughly.' Her voice became muffled through the linen. 'But what you have to remember is that the Hundred-Handed only mix with local people on the first day of the month, when each tree priestess assumes responsibility for that month's protection, on the four quarter days-'
'You mean the two solstices and the two equinoxes?'
Sarra nodded as she wriggled into her robe. 'That's only sixteen days a year, plus of course when somebody dies and we administer the funeral rites. Otherwise we have no contact with outsiders, so it's hardly surprising that Clytie's killer picked one of those days. He didn't have any other choice.'
Claudia watched her go, light and ethereal as though nothing touched her, even though the girl's heart was as heavy as lead. Or was it? Were the children perhaps raised from the start to manage their own emotions? To 'work it out of their system' as it were? Again, Claudia thought of Connal and Elusa, of the tragedy they would face if they tried to elope.
And for some reason saw Manion's measureless blue-green eyes and the white band on his finger where a ring should have been…
At her feet lay the stick that had been left on Sarra's pillow.
She picked it up and twizzled it round in her hand. The notches were cut sideways in ones up to fives, and occasionally these marks had diagonal scorelines running through them, north-west to south-east. Again these were in lines one to five, but if there had been any doubt that the writer of the note in Claudia's room had been a male slave who'd somehow slipped in and out of the precinct unseen, the angle of the stylus put paid to the theory. It had been left at exactly the same angle as these diagonal scorelines.