Sixteen
After the stifling heat, the cool of the cave was sheer heaven.
In the dark, though, it was sheer hell.
The flames of the torch cast flickering shadows that combined with the uneven surface to trip Claudia up, snag her robe on the cave wall and stub her toes against the stone. If this is the Cave of Resurrection, she thought, rubbing her shin, this wasn't the exit or new souls would come out deformed. But gradually, her eyes acclimatized to the gloom and, following the channel in the rock that diverted the spring water, she progressed deeper and lower into the hillside.
Very quickly the cave became a corridor, narrowing in places so that she needed to turn sideways to pass through the gap or duck under the rock. But always, always, the corridor twisted. Always, always, she was aware of descent.
The air grew cold. Echoes sighed and moaned the length of the tunnel. This must be what Hades was like. Full of whispers and murmurings as loss and regret mingled with sorrow and apathy, and perhaps this was what the spring water was for? To replenish the Pool of Forgetfulness that the dead drank of when they arrived in the Hall of Shades, that their grief at leaving loved ones behind would be erased.
Morbid thoughts were banished by something white near her feet. Bending, she realized it was a scrap of paper. A corner, torn round the edges. Peering closer, it seemed to be from a note about millstones. She turned it over, but that was all. Something about millstones grinding, which must have somehow blown in and got caught. The Gauls exported millstones, she remembered, and there was a quarry near here, where redundant male slaves were often sold on to. It had no connection at all to the poison-pen letters and as it fluttered to the ground like a white butterfly, her mind turned to the death spirits that hovered in this cave like invisible bees. Waiting to guide the souls of the dead Claudia pulled up sharp. To her surprise, the tunnel opened into a chamber of stone lit by flickering candles, whose walls danced with handprints and animals. She recognized lynx, antelope and panther exquisitely painted in black and red, while bones and clay offerings lay beside of a cairn of white rocks. Seven skulls that could have been bear faced outwards from the cairn in a semicircle, but the channel of water didn't end. In fact, it seemed to take great pains to skirt the edge of the chamber. She glanced back, but she'd come too far now to give up. With a purse of her lips, she followed the channel, entering deeper and deeper into the mountain. Now water dripped from places she couldn't see. The walls and the floor were wet to her touch. A rope had been attached to the rock with metal hooks, and the rope was smooth from centuries of soft female hands. The knowledge brought comfort in a comfortless place, where strange icicles formed even stranger shapes on the cavern ceiling while others rose upwards from the cavern floor.
What surprised her was that the icicles were formed in rings of differing colours. Black, purple, lilac and blue. A bizarre underworld rainbow.
The death spirits pass the time weaving shrouds on looms made of stone.
These, then, were the looms…
Further into the mountain, there came the sound of rushing water until finally, turning a bend, Claudia was confronted by a stream surging through the mountain, white and frothy, and it was into this that the water from the Cave of Miracles emptied. The balance of nature, she realized, as water was returned to water, and its discovery left her decidedly cheated. This was the place where souls were supposed to be judged, yet it was nothing. Just water pouring back into water, no clues — not a thing — to suggest the source of the Hundred-Handed's secret fears. Nothing to shed light on Clytie's murder.
Retreating along the rope handrail towards the painted chamber, her thoughts turned to the people who'd beautified this rock with their art. Who were they? How long ago had they lived here? And were those bear skulls part of some ancient religion, or simply a hunter's proud trophies? Approaching the white cairn, she noticed something else white behind it and bent to investigate. Another stone?
'Janus bloody Croesus!'
'I apologize if I startled you, my dear.' Beth stood up from where she'd been sitting and straightened the creases from her silver robe. 'I watched you go past, but decided against calling out in case I scared you.'
Liar. You could hear footsteps in this underground echo chamber a bloody mile off. The Head of the College had hidden on purpose.
'I'm surprised you take an interloper's presence so lightly,' Claudia said. 'Considering the cave is out of bounds for people like me.'
'It is indeed.' Beth sighed, and it was that, she realized, that had echoed round the tunnel. 'But there are so many things happening at the moment, so many changes afoot, that one tiny transgression doesn't seem worth getting angry over.'
Times are changing, Claudia, Rome's seen to that. Orbilio's words floated back. Thanks to us, the world has got smaller for the Gauls and this world, she remembered how he'd nodded towards the Hundred-Handed, has to adapt. If it doesn't, quite frankly, it dies.
'You choose what you get passionate about?' Claudia asked, wishing she could read the expression on the older woman's face.
'When several fires burn simultaneously,' Beth said with a sad smile, 'it's unwise to attempt to extinguish them all at once lest, instead of a few trees alight, one ends up with a forest fire raging out of control.'
If change comes too fast, its liable to have the opposite effect of what it's intended to do. Orbilio might as well have been in the damned cavern with them. It can destroy rather than build.
'I suppose you're concentrating on the Druids?'
'Then you suppose wrong.' Beth ran her hands over her chestnut-brown hair. Even in the torchlight it shone. 'Somehow, yes, we do need to get across to the Wise Fathers that we are neither sorceresses nor witches and I won't deny that isn't a problem. However.' She traced one elegant finger round the rim of the top stone of the cairn. 'It is the College that requires my full concentration.'
Claudia waited and for once, patience was rewarded.
'It is not the Conquest itself that has divided us,' Beth said quietly. 'Rather the philosophies it has brought.'
'Women in Roman society aren't equal,' Claudia pointed out. 'Far from it.'
'No, but whereas before Rome took administrative control of this region our status as priestesses was sacrosanct, now there are those within our community who would like to rewrite the rules.' There it was again, that sad, distant smile. 'Modernize is the word they use.'
'Keeping men for stud and breeding your own workforce sounds pretty progressive to me.'
'For a liberated female, I find your hostility surprising, but that is your prerogative, my dear. It is our policy not to judge,' Beth said, in what was clearly a calculated choice of non-passion. 'We believe everyone is entitled to her own opinion and, as pentagram priestesses, it is our role to listen to those opinions and then make decisions based on the views of everyone in the College. The trouble arises when opinions spread discord and that discord breeds division-'
'Which it does at the moment?'
'Seething is not too strong a word, since some of us are bitterly opposed to the change mooted, while others among us wish to embrace it with open arms.'
'And you?'
'Me?' Another long sigh. 'We need to move forward, one always must, but not by changing our teachings, my dear. What needs to change is the way that life is perceived here.'
'I'm sensing that we're not talking about how outsiders see you?'
'If only it was that simple,' Beth said. 'Unfortunately, there is a strong movement within the College that is pushing for priestesses to marry — and not just priestesses. Initiates, supervisors, they believe every one of us has the right to what they consider to be a "normal" life.'
'Which you feel will dilute your status as a religious body and lower your standing in the community?'