Claudia marched on, overtaken by despatch runners jogging effortlessly along the camber, by merchants cantering along on horseback with their slaves trotting at their heels like hunting hounds, and by strings of strong, Gaulish mules whose packs bulged with onions, blankets and salt.
'Are you sure I shouldn't hire a gig?' Junius asked, as he steered his mistress through a jostle of athletes heading in for the Games.
'Nonsense. The exercise will do both of us good,' she retorted, 'and besides we're nearly there. It's left at that stand of poplars.'
'You mean right.'
'I mean left.'
'The baths lead off to the right, my lady.'
'And?'
'Left leads to the Druids' village,' he said, as they approached the shade of the poplars.
'So we're agreed, then? It's left.' Claudia tossed a handful of coppers into the fountain as she passed.
The bodyguard paused. Fished the last three sesterces out of his purse.
'Junius, you're a Gaul, you don't even believe in our gods.'
'Never say never,' he muttered, 'and anyway this is for you. The Guardians of the Crossroads will be far better disposed towards your ladyship if they receive a more substantial offering.'
'And just why do you think I would need to be invoking their protection?'
Half a dozen moth-eaten dolls dangled from the lower branches of the poplars, and maybe four times as many woollen balls, offerings that dated back to last autumn's equinox, when each household hung a doll to honour the Guardians of the Crossroads, and each slave a woollen ball.
'Because you're a Roman!' he expostulated. 'You can't just go marching up to a Druid-'
'Absolutely right, Junius. I have no intention of marching up to any old Druid. I intend to speak to Vincentrix.'
The colour drained from the bodyguard's face as he made the sign of the horns to avert the evil eye. 'Vincentrix is Head of the Guild!'
'Exactly.'
If a job was worth doing, it was worth doing well, because even though Roman occupation had diluted much of the Druids' power they still held enormous local influence. Teachers, priests, advisers, judges, they were a class apart from and above their fellow Gauls, who quite unaccountably revered their priests for keeping them in intellectual subjugation.
'And now, Junius, if you have any desire whatsoever to earn the bonus I promised, you will kindly stop giving me grief.'
His sandy mop shook in puzzlement. 'I don't remember you promising me a bonus.'
'Good. Then you won't miss it. Ah, here we go!'
Give them credit, the Druids didn't sell themselves short. Downstream from Santonum, no doubt so they could keep track of the vessels that passed, a cluster of roundhouses far superior in size and materials to anything found locally nestled on a bank of lush green grass beside the river, where willows dangled lazy fingers in the slow-moving waters and ducks dabbled around in the margins. However, for a caste who purported to be at one with the universe, the flash of silver candelabra in this house and the gleam of mirror in the next showed they weren't averse to taking advantage of a few earthly pleasures while they were about it! On the far bank, a heron stalked stealthily, its crest raised in concentration, frogs croaked out a warning from the reeds and a nightingale trilled her sonata from high in an evergreen oak.
Since they were equally prosperous, there was nothing to distinguish one Druid home from another and Claudia continued along the path to where a group of small boys kicked an inflated pig's bladder back and forth as dogs snoozed in the shade and the breeze whispered through the leaves of the poplars. Considering Junius had nearly burst a blood vessel on the way in, warning her about their powers of shapeshifting and sorcery, not to mention an ability to travel different astral planes, she'd been braced for the dogs to be unleashed, at the very least, and a horde of angry Gauls coming at her, snarling with menace. The dogs didn't so much as bark. Of a Gaul, angry or otherwise, there wasn't a sign. And either the children were too well bred to gawp or they preferred footing their ball to conversing with strangers.
'Where is everyone?' she asked.
'There's a council meeting in the forest,' Junius stammered. 'The whole village goes along, though the women have to wait a good distance off. But because the visions drain the priests, they need help getting home, and the older children are left behind to look after the young ones.'
'Ask them which is Vincentrix's house.'
'I don't need to, it's that one,' he whispered, pointing towards the lush green island standing at the point where three arms of the river met. 'But I really think we should leave.'
'You go. Wait for me by that dead tree down the road, that's an order.'
Not because his face had turned the sort of colour you'd expect if you mixed porridge with ash, then added mud. It was crucial that no one discovered the reason behind Claudia's business in Gaul, not even her bodyguard, and everything has its price. Even loyalty.
Access to the island was via a little wooden bridge, half hidden by the Druids' personal granary, built on greased stilts to thwart the mice, and Claudia was not remotely surprised that such a fork had been chosen as the site of the Arch Druid's house. If Vincentrix could make the river branch three ways, what other powers must the old man hold? She smiled. Whatever magic Vincentrix might con his people with, this was one old man who didn't frighten her…
On the bridge, she paused to watch a shoal of silver fish dart in and out of the shallows. Nearly sixteen years had slipped by since her father had marched off, but a lifetime had passed in the meanwhile and, closing her eyes, she plunged herself back to her childhood. Smelled the stench of stale piss in the hallways, the rotting cabbage stalks that clogged up the gutters, heard the bawling of babies left unattended, the howling of dogs locked inside darkened apartments, the moans of the dying, too poor to send for a physician. Even then, she'd known she had to get out of the slums and, though her little heart had been breaking when he didn't come home, part of her nevertheless wished her father luck if he'd started a new life somewhere else.
She opened her eyes, and the past slithered back under its stone.
It had taken several years of hardship, poverty and pain, but eventually, by adopting the identity of a woman who'd died in the plague and inveigling herself into marriage with a wealthy wine merchant, Claudia's life had been transformed.
The water beneath the bridge was so still and so pure that her reflection came back as a mirror, and in it she could see each strand of her pearl choker. The gleam of her silver bracelet. Even the cluster of emeralds in her gold ear studs. Dammit, those gems are mine, I bloody well earned them. She had no intention of seeing them wrenched from her grasp, just because some blabbermouth discovered her past and had her husband's will overturned. Clipping a rebellious curl back in its ivory hairpin, she continued on over the bridge, scattering sparrows from dustbaths in the path, as well as the tabby cat that lay in wait for them under a bush.
'Claudia Seferius. I am honoured.'
She spun round. She hadn't noticed him on the river bank, fishing rod in his hand, for the simple reason that his shirt was the same green as the grass and his pantaloons the same brown as the soil. Like the tabby cat, which had been equally camouflaged, he'd been content to observe and absorb, and it was only now that he decided to cast his line into the water with the gentlest of splashes.
'Where I come from, gentlemen stand up when they greet a visitor.'
'Except you're not in that place,' he replied, flicking the rod. 'What can I do for you?'
She looked at the strong, straight back. The muscles that bulged out under his sleeves. The long, barbered hair that was neither red nor brown, but somewhere in between, reminiscent of a kestrel's flight feathers.