'If you're asking me whether I sympathize with men who have become wheelwrights instead of warriors, then the answer is no,' Junius said. 'It's a man's duty to provide for his family and keep them safe, and sometimes, regrettably, it becomes necessary to go to war to do that. But, in my view, madam, wealth is the best security a man can bestow on his family. It buys physicians when they fall sick, education for the children, servants to fetch water from the well and gives them a roof over all their heads for life.'
'I'll drink to that.'
A girl doesn't drag herself up from the gutter not to appreciate the rewards, and she was just about to compliment him on his passionate defence when she realized he hadn't finished.
'But if you're asking me whether I condemn young men for wanting to be warriors, the answer again is no.' He gaze fixed on a point in the distance. 'It is man's nature to fight,' he said. 'To prove himself the best in the pack.'
Except not all the hounds can be top dog. What happens to those who don't make the grade? All in all, she decided, as the cart clopped through the artisan quarter, teeming with potters, coppersmiths and caulkers, being a woman was by far the best deal. Because what on earth was the point in having eyelashes if you couldn't flutter them in an emergency?
'So working for me gives you the best of both worlds. You get to fight-'
'When you're not tethering me like a billy goat.'
'- and as head of my bodyguard,' she ignored the sulking, 'you're top of your own little pack, too.'
An explanation for his odd behaviour at last!
Slowly, the city opened out to lush water meadows that nourished sheep, crops and long-horned cattle, and as Junius steered the gig off the main road and through the Santon countryside, memories of last year flooded in. When Claudia was ten, her father marched off to war and never came home. That campaign had been here, in Aquitanian Gaul, and, determined to discover whether he was dead or whether he'd simply abandoned her, she'd come in search of the truth. The truth hurt. The only discovery was that the answers are rarely those which we'd choose. Keep the memories, she thought bitterly, keep them by all means, but keep them where they belong. Precious, blurred, but most importantly in a place where they cannot be sullied. Firmly locked in the past…
But Gabali had left her no option. Thanks to him, she was plunged back into the nightmare, deeper even than before.
Santonum was where he'd been brought as a captive, bought as a slave, it was here that his daughter had died. Gabali and Santonum were one. He was linked to the town through tragedy twice over — and who could imagine his emotions, disembarking in chains (younger even than Junius was now) knowing his family were dispersed across Gaul, maybe even the Empire, and that he'd never see them again. What hopes had still blazed in Gabali's heart? Dreams of a future with a wife, children, grandchildren would have shattered like glass when he'd been bought up by the College. How had he felt once he'd escaped the harpies' clutches, only to end up in servitude to a misguided fanatic?
At what point, she wondered, had the assassin in Gabali been born …?
As Junius coaxed a reluctant mule round a steep hairpin bend, her thoughts drifted to the task the Spaniard had forced upon her. To listen to him talk about the Hundred-Handed — which he'd done at length during the journey here from Rome — their ideals sounded noble enough. Fifty priestesses, each responsible for a different aspect of nature, preaching peace and spiritual harmony since according to their beliefs nature was a living personification of the universe. Birth, he added, was the most important aspect of the pentagram and for that reason Beth — the Birch Priestess — topped the College hierarchy, the silver birch being the first tree to cover new ground in the forest and thus symbolic of all new beginnings.
'The very word beth means silver birch,' he'd explained.
As the stately birch stood guard over the first month of the year, so her job was to ensure a propitious birth to that new year, commencing at the winter solstice.
'Then the roles are hereditary?'
'More a rota basis.' Gabali had fixed Claudia with his penetrating brown gaze. 'When a priestess dies, the oldest Initiate steps forward, adopting her predecessor's name as well as her responsibilities.'
Not necessarily the gentle, soulful creatures people might imagine, then.
Once the children are born, they 're placed into communal custody. His soft Andalusian accent echoed round the Santon woods. They're raised by those women who, for one reason or another, didn't qualify for the fifty elite, so you see, even the mothers don't spend time with their own children, much less the poor fathers.
And yet, though isolated, the Hundred-Handed were hardly an insular and archaic society. They used men for sex, moved with the times when it came to the purchase of foreign slaves, and held considerable sway over much of Aquitania. So how, she wondered, as the gig made its descent down a steep, winding hill, could so powerful and so feminine an influence have stood back and let a child-killer go unpunished? Especially when that child was one of their own?
'Sorry, driver.'
A young man with a shock of prematurely grey hair, tight-fitting pantaloons and thoroughly disarming grin stepped from behind the barrier that blocked the road.
'This is as far as non-College men are allowed.'
In his right hand he clutched a short sword in a loose but professional grip, while his left thumb hooked itself in his belt in a manner far too casual to be coincidental that his dagger just happened to hang adjacent.
'The name's Swarbric, my lady — ' he stepped neatly in front of her bodyguard to help her dismount — 'and it's a pleasure, believe me, to escort you the rest of the way.'
'The lady Claudia will need a translator,' Junius said through gritted teeth.
'The lady Claudia will lack for nothing here.' Swarbric didn't take his twinkling eyes off her. 'Especially a translator.' And just when she thought his grin couldn't widen further, more strong white teeth were revealed. 'The HundredHanded communicate in silence.'
'Are you serious?' she asked.
'Am I ever anything else?' He performed a broad and sweeping gesture that put his pants seams in serious jeopardy. 'This way, if you will.'
Claudia hefted a crate out of the gig, from which a blueeyed, cross-eyed demon vented its fury in a series of hissing snarls. 'Do all the sentries flirt as wildly as you?'
'Since I'm the only sentry, I suppose the answer's yes,' Swarbric replied, taking the wooden crate as though it was a pell of parchment. His voice, she noticed, held a slight Teutonic accent.
'You… you're the only guard?'
'Quality outweighs quantity every time,' he said cheerfully. 'And this is one nasty temper your cat has on him, if you don't mind my saying so.'
'Her,' she corrected, following him down the steep incline. She really didn't want Drusilla disbarred from entry as well. 'And this seems as good a time as any to let her out. As I recall from our previous visit, there's something about Gaulish mice that makes her mouth especially water — Jupiter, Juno and Mars!'
So busy flipping the lock as her mind tried to wrap itself round Swarbric's revelations about the Hundred-Handed's code of silence that Claudia hadn't taken stock of her surroundings. Until now.
'This is..
'Incredible, yes.'
Swarbric nodded in a way that suggested everyone who came here needed their sentences finished for them.