'Those creatures weren't you in disguise. You don't have the magic'
'If you say so.' She tested the broom handle wedged so firmly between his elbows. 'But look around your lovely house, Vincentrix. Do you see any frogs hopping around this exquisite tiled flooring? Any owls battering against your magnificent frescoes?'
The only way to turn the tables on a Druid was to use his own beliefs against him, and he'd been so busy fighting leg irons and imprisoned arms that he hadn't noticed the door open and close. Surprise was the key. Surprise, and the play of light-and-dark. She looked at his bloodless face, the dilated pupils, and knew she'd judged him correctly. Ordinary people wouldn't dare play mind games with this elevated caste, least of all tangle with the most powerful Gaul in Aquitania! For a man who accepts shapeshifting as a truth, what other explanation was there?
'But now, Vincentrix, it's time for us to trade.'
'Trade what exactly?'
That was the down side of priests who swallow all that paranormal hocus-pocus. They bounce back straight away.
'Isn't it obvious? I don't stick this serrated blade into your neck, and in return you tell me what happened in Santonum fifteen years ago.'
'I would tell you, if I knew.' His green eyes shone with honesty. 'But I wasn't here. I was in Britain back then. Ask anyone.'
'I have. You were. But you know anyway.'
'I serve the gods on an astral plane; it is not in my remit to become involved in local affairs. Claudia Seferius, I swear on my life that I have no idea what may or may not have taken place fifteen years ago.'
'I hope you're ready for the Horned One, because if you think I won't slit your lying throat you can think again.'
'You won't kill me.'
'Spoken with confidence, but why? Because you think I like you? Because you think I feel sorry for you, after hearing your hard-luck virgin-wife story? How much of that was true, by the way?'
'All of it, as it happens, and, yes, I do think you like me. But the reason you won't use that knife is because it's impossible to kill someone face to face, especially once you've shared food and secrets with them.'
'Really? Then how come you're so adept at it?' Old trick. Win a person's trust and confidence while you probe their Achilles heel. Vincentrix was a past master at it.
He exhaled slowly, and in the lamplight his kestrel hair shone like polished chestnuts. 'Claudia Seferius, I have no idea what tonight's nonsense is about, but you are mistaken. Whoever, whatever, you think I am, you are wrong.'
'I may have my faults, but being wrong isn't one of them. Suppose we say a count of three?'
'Very well.'
Oh, dear. He still thought that business with the torc and Find the Pea had been a lucky guess. Claudia stepped back and examined the bloodied point of the blade. 'Vincentrix, you have no idea what I'm capable of. You kill people in cold blood and I am quite prepared to kill you in the cold light of reason, but the thing you need to remember is that your death won't just be the end of you. It puts paid to all hope of leading your people through the Halls of Change into the Light. That's count number one, incidentally.'
He wriggled in the chair to turn his piercing green eyes up at her.
'Do you think I have not trained up my acolytes? That other Druids have not been taught the Chant of Incarnation?'
'Undoubtedly, but it's you they look to, Vince. It's you the people trust, and this is count number two, by the way. If you're dead and they see your corpse left unburied-'
'You're planning to toss my body into the river?' Scorn rose in his voice. 'It's not far to the water, admittedly, but cadavers are heavy and you're not strong enough to haul mine on your own, and that Gaulish bodyguard won't lift a finger against a Druid, dead or alive.'
'I have no desire to contaminate the river with your poison. My intention is for the authorities to throw your corpse on the middens for the murderous scumbag that you are and now, sadly for you, your time's up.'
She yanked his head back by the hair.
'All right, all right.'
She held on to the hank, but relaxed the tension.
'All right,' Vincentrix repeated slowly, 'we'll trade, but not because I'm afraid of dying.'
Claudia nodded. Whatever else he might be, the Druid was no coward.
'The gods have visited me,' he said quietly. 'They have tasked me with a mission and it is for this reason, and this reason alone, that I agree to your terms.'
Sheathing the knife, Claudia felt a cold shiver run down her spine. She could not explain the feeling, but at the back of her mind was a horrible suspicion that, in doing so, she was making one of the biggest mistakes of her life.
There was still an hour or more before dawn would start to break over the forests of south-western Gaul and yet, on the Druid's island where three arms of the stream converged, the sense of a new beginning was already strong.
It did not come in the form of the sultry night air, nor the rasp of cicadas or the churr of a nightjar. There was no crack of light in the east, no change in the breeze, no leap of the first feeding fish. But it was there. Pulsing, throbbing, pushing through the soil and surging through the currents, to create a newness that only comes with rebirth, and for a split second Claudia understood what Vincentrix experienced when he began the Chant of Incarnation to guide the dead on their voyage through the Halls of Change until they finally emerged in their new bodies.
Then the moment was gone.
The island was simply an outcrop of land where three branches of the river met. Where bats swooped low over the slow-flowing waters. Where reeds whispered to one another on the wind. More than that, it was a solid physical island rooted in a solid physical world where people were people, not butterflies hatching out from some bloody chrysalis!
But that didn't diminish the sense of new beginnings that stirred in Claudia's blood. What she was experiencing had nothing to do with Druid magic or the Gauls' belief in reincarnation, not even any eerie prequel to dawn. It was the knowledge that a gateway had opened and she was taking the first real steps toward tracing her father, and the knowledge was as exhilarating as it was scary.
Listening to her little rowing boat clunk softly against the river bank, and with the light from Vincentrix's house shim mering like a glow worm behind her, she mulled over the Druid's story.
'First of all,' he'd said, 'you need to put this into context.'
Remember the history of this region, he reminded her. Remember how Julius Caesar sent an army to conquer these lands, and what happened to the legate and his men. Remember how Rome despatched more soldiers to avenge the dead legions, and how easily the Santons had them routed, too. Finally, he'd added, remember that although on the surface relations between the two parties were running smoothly fifteen years ago, with Augustus having proclaimed Santonum the capital of Aquitania and the tribes prospering on the back of the increase in trade, rancour and mistrust still tarnished the alliance.
Immediately, an image was conjured up of a twelve-year-old girl being kidnapped and sold into prostitution for no other reason than that she was Santon. Atrocities were committed by both parties, Marcia said, hinting of blood feuds and vendettas that lingered to the present day. What turmoil must have existed fifteen years ago when a Santon village was suddenly attacked by a band of renegades?
'An entire village was razed to the ground,' Vincentrix explained. 'The women were raped, the men killed so their heads could be taken for trophies, livestock were slaughtered, shrines desecrated. Even the smallest children were tortured, and it is said the smoke hung in the air for six days.'
It made no difference that this was an isolated village on the edge of the Empire. An entire community had been destroyed, butchered on an unimaginable scale, and feelings among the tribespeople ran high. Rome was supposed to protect them, they screamed. You siphon off our harvests, you force us to pay taxes, you yoke us to your imperial plough and subject us to your laws, yet, instead of defending us, villages are being wiped out!