'I am not against love, how could I be? Love is the pivot upon which the world turns and it is the reason we expel our menfolk at the age of forty, while they are still young enough to raise families of their own — I see that surprises you.'
Claudia shifted her torch to the other hand while her eyebrows returned to their customary level. 'Actually, yes.'
'Did you honestly think we wouldn't want people we cared for to be happy?' Beth asked. 'Of course we want them to have wives, children, grandchildren and all the other things they deserve but which we cannot give them.'
'And which you yourselves are denied?'
'Our system is far from ideal, I agree, but I am prepared to lay down my life to preserve it, flaws and all, in order to retain the respect of the tribes.' In the torchlight, she looked older than her forty-six years. 'These people,' she said wearily, 'look to us for spiritual guidance and healing, and in doing so, they look up to us as well. We cannot teach them that nature is constant if the very College that serves it keeps changing.'
Claudia stared at the ancient handprints daubed on the walls. At the bears, which, she realized now, had undoubtedly been sacrificed to long-forgotten gods.
'What happens to those who rebel?' she asked dully.
And how could such a hideous death chamber be sited in so beautiful a location?
'Ah.' Beth clucked her tongue. 'You know about the Pit, then.'
For several long minutes, both women remained locked in their own silence. It was the Head of the College who finally broke it.
'Fearn argues that by changing our way of life to incorporate marriage, it will eliminate the necessity for the Pit, and such a philosophy is bound to gather momentum.'
'Especially among the younger girls,' Claudia said, picturing Elusa's blonde, almost white, hair.
'Who cannot imagine old bags like me ever had feelings,' Beth replied with a soft laugh. 'But instead of bending and thus making the College weaker, I believe we must show strength by believing in ourselves and standing by our convictions.'
'Whatever the cost?'
An eternity seemed to pass before she finally answered. 'Yes,' she said at last. 'Whatever the cost.'
Maybe it was the cool of the chamber that kept Claudia bound to the place. Maybe it was the pull of ancient religions, a sense of holiness in pagan surroundings. But she couldn't have walked away if she tried.
'What happens to priestesses when they die?' she asked. Because the Gauls liked to honour their dead every bit as much as a Roman, though instead of lining their approach roads with sumptuous tombs, they opted for moated graveyards way out of town. Yet Claudia had seen nothing resembling a cemetery round these parts, even though the Hundred-Handed had been established here for three hundred years.
Beth pointed upwards, and Claudia lifted her torch. High above their heads, with access that could only be reached by a ladder, a ledge had been gouged out of the rock. On it sat a series of huge painted pots. At an educated guess, they numbered fifty, and each was as tall as a man.
'Their ashes are kept in these urns.'
Ashes? This was contrary to all Gaulish principles, where they liked to line their graves with planks of wood, preferably oak, and send their loved ones into the next life with as many personal possessions as they could cram in. Oh, and yes. Where it was crucial that the corpse remained as close to physically perfect as possible! Then she remembered Orbilio saying how the Greeks came to Gaul and the Gauls went to Greece, and how the cult of the water priestesses had somehow merged into this cult of nature priestesses. The women who talked with their hands.
And the Greeks, like the Romans, cremated their dead 'I must go,' Beth said. 'Tomorrow is midsummer, there is much work to do, and my absence will be noticed before long.'
All the same, she seemed in no hurry to return to the upper world.
'This is your escape,' Claudia said.
'My dear, as head of the order, there is no escape,' the Birch Priestess laughed. 'But down here I am at least free to think.'
'Among the dead?'
'Among old friends,' she corrected with a smile. 'And when there is so much discord among the living, believe me, this is no bad place to reflect.'
Claudia studied the rows of pots high above her head. 'Is Clytie here?' she asked softly.
'Only those who qualify for the fifty elite may have their ashes added to their predecessors',' Beth said, and her dark eyes were sad. 'For the rest, their ashes are scattered to nature and this is one of the hardest tasks that falls upon me. Telling the novices that they will not be admitted as Initiates of Light.'
'The scattering of ashes doesn't seem to bother them.'
'It is because they know no better, but to us, to the HundredHanded, the preservation of remains is sacrosanct. It is a secret that we, quite literally, carry with us to our graves.'
And beyond, Claudia thought, and now she looked closely she realized that the paintings on the pots were not random. Yellow for gorse, silver for birch, black, green, purple for heather, red like Luisa's shiny bright rowans.
'What disqualifies a novice?' she asked.
'I prefer to think of it in terms of what gifts they can bring,' Beth said, smoothing her robe. 'But basically we look for balance, sound judgement, sensitivity and altruism. There is certainly no room for fluster or panic'
Don't be fooled by that rough-and-tumble, Sarra had said, talking of Vanessia, Aridella and Lin. Those games stimulate their sharp little brains and believe me, they're clever, those girls. Vanessia's already qualified for Initiatehood, and without any shadow of doubt, the others will follow. Those three have the dedication and determination I never had, the fairy had added. That's for sure.
'Was Clytie up to the job, Beth?'
'No.'
The answer came without hesitation. Only with sadness.
'Did you tell her?' Claudia asked, biting her lip.
'No.'
The answer still came without hesitation. Except this time, it was accompanied by relief.
'No, my dear, it is my one consolation that I hadn't got round to telling the poor child.' Beth sighed. 'At least Clytie died without knowing she'd been rejected.'
As Gauls from the surrounding forests flocked to celebrate the summer solstice in revels that would last through until sunset the following day, Marcus Cornelius Orbilio tossed the last log on the bonfire. It was a giant of a pile, the biggest he'd ever seen that was for sure, although he wasn't sure the night would need additional heat. Hot and sticky, the temperature had barely dipped as the light faded and he decided he wouldn't fancy being close to this fire once it was lit. In these pants, he saw himself poaching to death.
Whereas the spring equinox, now. He brushed the dust off his hands down the length of his trousers. The spring equinox was celebrated by many religions, not purely Roman, with beacon fires to represent the sun's triumph over darkness and with gorse representing the golden rays of the sun. Glancing at the crowds pouring into the Field of Celebration, Orbilio wasn't convinced either that Clytie's killer used the festival to sate some demonic bloodlust — how could they, for a start? The meadow was fenced off with a forbidding palisade whose gates were guarded by local men armed with knives and spears.
And the murder seemed a lot more complicated than mere logistics, too. Clytie had been lured, undoubtedly by prior arrangement, down to that rock by the river. Now a young woman might be tricked into such a meeting — love makes fools of us all — but no twelve-year-old child would be duped by a stranger. Especially when that child lived her life in a bubble. And if Orbilio needed a seal on that hypothesis, it was that sex wasn't the motive for Clytie's murder.
He wished he knew what the hell was.