Whether trauma of that kind had crossed Pod's path, Claudia had no idea, but by drugging him, at least his stupor would slow everything down. It would give her time to grieve for a girl she'd barely known, yet who had been butchered with a savagery she would never forget. And it would give her time to think this whole thing through, because even as she first saw Pod, face blank in grief as he clutched Sarra to his breast, darker thoughts had run through her mind.
That his grief was genuine went without saying, but that four-year-old wandering the Capitol had triggered other memories. Like the cloak-maker's daughter who strangled her cousin ('I didn't know death meant for ever'). The cobbler's son, who started with kittens before slicing up his baby brother. And especially, yes especially, the poulterer's boy. Claudia remembered the story so vividly His father coming in from the back yard to find the boy kneeling over his mother, her chest so badly mangled there was hardly room for his blade. He kept stabbing and stabbing, as though he was an automaton, not recognizing his father, he couldn't say his own name and later, could remember nothing about it…
She pictured Pod as she'd left him, ashen and trembling, with only animal sounds coming from his mouth as he clutched a mangled spray of white rosebuds to his breast. The fact that there was no knife found at either murder scene didn't mean he hadn't thrown it into the undergrowth, while the fact that he had blackouts didn't mean he hadn't killed those two girls. And the fact that he'd killed Clytie and Sarra certainly didn't mean Pod wasn't sorry Claudia's footsteps echoed over the footbridge.
Two young girls, two crucial dates in the Hundred-Handed's calendar, copious amounts of blood. And yet… And yet…
As she ran up the steps onto the dais to wake Beth and break the bad news, there was only one thought tumbling around in her head. Assuming Sarra's arms had been spread out at her sides — and there was nothing to suggest they had been — her cheeks hadn't been reddened with rouge, her eyes hadn't been painted with kohl.
'Sarra?' Ailm barked, her voice still rough from sleep. 'I was only talking to the girl an hour or two back!'
Her face drained from shock, Beth couldn't speak. Dora, rising beside her, blinked rapidly.
'Are you sure she's dead and not pretending?' Luisa asked. 'Some of those novices are terrible practical jokers.'
'I'm so sorry, but there's no mistake.'
With a voice cracked with emotion, Claudia reported the multiple stab wounds that left Sarra's pink robe shredded in an attack that was almost orgiastic in its frenzy.
'If it helps,' she added, as finger signals flashed back and forth between the five women, 'Sarra put up one hell of a fight.'
The cuts in her hands stood proof to that. Her palms had been cut to ribbons.
'We have decided,' Beth said, and the calmness of her voice belied the shaking of her limbs. 'For once it is unanimous — ' she cast a glance at both Dora and Ailm — 'but it is our opinion that nothing of this must be broadcast to the outside world. It will achieve nothing while engendering panic'
Four heads nodded firmly in unison.
'I shall ask some of the sisterhood to take Sarra away to be prepared for the Journey, of course. But the pentagram will remain, the ceremony will continue, we will fire fifty blazing arrows into the sun's zenith as though nothing has happened.'
Like it did with Clytie, Claudia was tempted to snap, but then remembered that these women had just received a terrible shock. Arousing their animosity would gain nothing.
'You can't simply ignore it,' she pointed out calmly.
'Indeed, no,' Beth said kindly, holding up three bent fingers with the ghost of a smile. 'See? Swarbric has already been sent for.'
'So if you'll excuse us?' Ailm made no attempt to hide the hostility in her voice. 'We wish to mourn in private, if you don't mind.'
'Of course,' she replied, 'I understand perfectly,' and all things considered, was it any wonder they wanted her gone? Closing ranks was the one thing the Hundred-Handed did best. That, and covering up murder.
I suspect you meant to call me an angel, but you've just labelled me an old bat! The fairy's soft laugh rippled through the leaves in the forest. This is the cipher for angel
Absently watching half a dozen tearful women slip away as Beth whispered instructions to a stony-faced Swarbric, images floated before her.
For one more moment, Sarra was still trailing her spray of white roses down the path behind her…
Blushing furiously, but unable to meet Pod's eyes…
Timing her walk so that she'd bump into the young woodsman…
Through the thick sticky heat, Claudia saw the shine on the girl's long, silky hair. The even longer kiss the lovers had exchanged. The grass stains she and Sarra had laughingly removed from the girl's pale pink robe. At least Sarra's last hours had been happy, she thought, and dammit there was something in her eye that was making it water, and she just could not rub the bloody thing out.
While deep within the Cave of Resurrection, the spirits that buzzed like invisible bees guided a gentle soul down to the Underworld.
Nineteen
Midsummer for the Druids was also significant. Oak priests themselves and intermediaries of the gods, the sun was the fire from which all life began and Bel was the sun god, 'the Shining One', the god of light, and it was at midsummer that 'the Horned One', Hu'Gadarn, god of the underworld, died in the fire and was reborn on the winter solstice.
Light and fire.
Light and fire, that was the point, except this year they could not make their sacrifice in the fire, and the omens they read in the sky and in the entrails of beasts were not good.
With the wicker man standing empty and silent, the Druids cast runes then passed round the Keys of Wisdom written on yew, for yew was the tree of eternity. And as the Keys passed in silence from hand to hand, the air was heavy with foreboding. Human sacrifice was vital to maintain the balance of life and continue the thread of eternity. Quite simply, it was one life, good or bad, exchanged for another. It was the symbol of redemption and peace.
Without it, the gods would not be pleased. They would punish the Gauls for this terrible slight. Their insult would not be overlooked.
In the runes, the Druids saw cattle ailing, crops failing, they saw disaster and ruin, hunger and despair — and why? Why should this be? they asked themselves.
But the answer lay there. Written on yew. The Keys of Wisdom told them the reason. Rome sacrificed humans in the arena. They sacrificed men to wild animals in the name of execution, and if possible, so would the Druids. In fact, none of the present Council could recall a single instance where a criminal had not been burned at midsummer. It had always been their favoured method of execution, and keeping the offender alive for the wicker man had always been their preferred choice. A life for a life, in Rome and in Gaul. It was the sacred and eternal balance again.
Except now Thanks to fifty women the cycle was broken, the thread had been cut; no wonder the gods' anger was building. The Druids did not understand how Rome, whose dominion stretched for thousands of miles, could be fooled by a handful of simpering nature priestesses to the extent that the whole structure of Gaulish religion was crumbling. How could Rome possibly not see the damage these women were causing?
Until someone in their administration had marked out a territory and named it Aquitania (which it wasn't), the Druids had been left in peace. And though Rome might have called their headhunting and wicker men barbarous, they had not outlawed the practice until recently. Shortly after Santonum was chosen as the province's capital, as it happened, and how strange that the College of the Hundred-Handed was close by!