'Who's trying to kill you?'
'How the hell should I know?'
Marcia seemed surprised by the question, and the rumours about the number of enemies she'd made through business replayed in Claudia's head. She thought about the villagers forced out of their homes after their water supply had been diverted. The sacred site that had been desecrated for the sake of vanity. And decided that Tarbel was one member of Marcia's staff who wasn't an extravagance!
'It might even be that creep who makes his home in these woods,' Marcia sneered. 'Who can tell what goes on in such minds? My slaves call him the Scarecrow, because the only way they know he's around is when the birds fly out of the trees.'
If that was meant to reassure her guest, it didn't work. Every time a jay squawked or a woodpecker drummed, Claudia's stomach clenched and her palms turned clammy, and it didn't help that the passage of time was marked by the arrow shaft, acting as a macabre sundial on the forest floor. Finally, there was a rustle in the undergrowth. A yelp, followed by a louder yelp, and suddenly Tarbel was propelling a youth through the bushes by an arm pushed up his back.
'You!' The contempt in Marcia's voice was colder than ice as she brushed the debris from her robe.
Hardly the Scarecrow. This boy could not have been more than seventeen, well kempt and clean in his plaid shirt and breeches, and he'd probably have been quite handsome, were his face not twisted in pain.
'Why not me?' he yelled. 'Zink you can treat me like dirt, just because you 'ave money? I am a man! I have feelings! I have — aargh!'
'And I'd have you by the balls, if only I could find them.' Marcia's voice was barely a rasp as she squeezed his testicles. 'You're not a man, Garro. You were never a man-'
'Zat's not what you said when I was in your bed!'
'Why do you think I turned you out? You weren't up to it then and you're not up to it now. You need to hide behind trees before you can kill and even then you miss! Take him away, Tarbel. Take this contemptible worm out of my sight!'
'You will be sorry,' Garro screamed, as Tarbel hauled him up the hill at knifepoint. 'You will be sorry for zis, you beetch!'
'I doubt that,' Marcia murmured under her breath as she linked her arm with Claudia's once again. 'It's down to Druid Law now, and that's no picnic, believe me. Oh, don't look so surprised, darling! I can revert to my roots when it suits me, and since he comes from the village it's best these things remain local. Now where were we? Yes, of course. I was telling you about the bridge I intend to span the river down there. As I said, there'll be an arch on each bank-'
Claudia ceased to listen. Instead, she was thinking that, all things considered, a year might be too long a wait for that tomb's completion.
Marcia had been wise to plan in advance.
High in the hills, inside the cave from which the Spring of Prophecy bubbled from the rocks, the Arch Druid Vincentrix sat cross-legged on the floor and watched the moon climb ever higher in the sky.
Far in the distance, foxes barked to one another, while outside the entrance to the cave voles and mice scuttled through the bracken, safe from the deadly hooks of sharp-eyed owls, and bats caught moths on silent wing.
With his hands laced together and his steepled forefingers pressed against his lips, the Head of the Collegiate remained motionless as the stars tramped round the heavens, moving only from time to time to lean across and throw more magic herbs on to his crackling fire.
In the valley below, his fellow priests would also be sitting, communicating in the secret language of the Druids as they convened on thrones of sacred oak round a table hewn from yew on which the Keys of Wisdom had been laid out. But the issues they would be thrashing out tonight were local ones. A boundary dispute, perhaps. The setting of a dowry, when the two parties involved could not agree the terms themselves. Passing judgement on other petty issues.
The Arch Druid was above these things. It always was, and must be thus, that he is feared and revered in equal measures by his people for the powers that he alone holds in his hands, the knowledge of the future that he alone can tell, and the wisdom of the ancients that only he alone is able to impart.
Vincentrix tossed another handful of herbs on to the flames and leaned over the smoke. One by one, his gods began to appear.
First, the Horned One, who guides the souls of the newly departed from the Abode of the Dead into the Halls of Change in preparation for a rebirth in which the Arch Druid is their only conduit back to Earth. Then the Shining One, who sees everything from the golden chariot that he steers across the sky, followed by his silver consort, who assumes the mantle of responsibility once darkness falls. Slowly, others joined the group. The Ancient One, bent and wrinkled, from whose tongue hang fine gold chains from which the Knowledge of the Universe falls in tiny drips. The Thunderer. The Flower Queen. Until, finally, the Gentle One, who heals the sick and brings comfort to the dying, took her seat to complete the synod.
You know why we are here.
No words were spoken. None were needed. Vincentrix nodded silently.
Our people no longer bend their knee to us, Vincentrix. They turn to other gods and foreign forces.
Vincentrix knew this to be true and made no reply.
Only you have the power to reverse this situation, Druid. With the wisdom you have learned and the power that lies within you, you must bring the people back.
One by one, they rose and left, until it was just the Horned One who remained silhouetted in the mouth of the cave.
Unless you stop the slide, Vincentrix, your people cannot be reborn.
Cannot be reborn…
Vincentrix kicked over the traces of the fire and sluiced his face in the icy spring water. When reincarnation ceases, the soul has no outlet. It dies. The people knew this, yet they continued to be seduced by soaring marble temples, by games, by circuses…
The Arch Druid drank deeply of the sweet Waters of Prophecy that gurgled from the rock, but for once no pictures formed. He drank again, and then again, and then again. Beyond the cave mouth, dawn began to tinge the eastern sky with pink.
Four
Due to its strategic importance in matters military and commercial as well as political, the Emperor had taken no chances when it came to town planning. You might think this would have been easy, all Roman towns being laid out on the same basic grid pattern, but this was Santonum, the capital of his newly created province of Aquitania, and it had to be not just good. It had to be right. So he had despatched that arch-strategist Agrippa to Gaul, and thus it was Rome's finest general who finally decreed that the town should be sited on a broad bend of the Carent (optimum defence), that the bridge should be built here (optimum impact) and that the port should be built slightly upriver (optimum profit, since merchants and sailors alike were then exposed to Santonum's temptations as they passed).
Agrippa had been in his tomb a full year now, but his name lived on in many of the public works he had undertaken, from the great baths in Rome to the thoroughfare that bore his name in Santonum, and it was down the mighty Agrippine Way that Claudia now strode.
Around her, charioteers cracked their whips as they rattled past ox carts plodding mournfully along laden with timber and hides, and mules pulling wagons piled high with barrels that were lashed together tightly with rope. Odd thing about the Gauls. They embraced so many modern techniques, yet they categorically refused to give up their oak barrels! Clumsy, heavy and cumbersome, they still preferred them to the far more manageable terracotta amphorae, and it wasn't as though these people weren't familiar with clay. No less than five separate potters' quarters were dotted round Santonum's fringes, producing some of the finest ceramics anywhere in Gaul. (Which, naturally, they exported packed in barrels!)