by Corby, Gary
Thus it was that Achilles opened the door to us, and we led Doris the priestess into the inner courtyard of what had once been Diotima’s father’s home. Achilles hobbled off to bring us wine. Diotima took his arm as he went and whispered to bring the best her father had stored. I knew the quality of the cellar in this house, and that told me as much as anything the high esteem in which Diotima held this priestess.
I said, “It’s an honor to meet you, Doris. Pericles said you can tell us what happened at the temple.”
“Do you know about the sanctuary at Brauron?” she asked me.
I shook my head. “It’s a girl thing.”
Doris laughed. “And therefore men don’t need to know about it? Wait until you have daughters.”
Achilles brought in a tray of food and set it before Doris: olives and bread and sliced quince and a bowl of lentils. He returned with a krater of wine mixed with water. Achilles ladled a cup for each of us.
Doris was hungry. She dipped her right hand into the lentils. “I haven’t eaten since breakfast, and that was before first light. I hope you’ll excuse me.”
“That’s why the food is there,” I said.
Diotima said, “It’s wonderful to see you, Doris. I often think back to my time at Brauron.”
“For our part we’ve been following your career with the greatest interest. You made quite a spectacle of yourself in that court case last year—our High Priestess wasn’t entirely pleased about that, by the way; she felt it might reflect on the temple—and the word we hear is something happened at the last Olympics. The truth is, my dear, that in the small world of our sanctuary, you’ve become something of a celebrity.”
Doris spoke between mouthfuls.
“Our temple has always been a haven for girls,” she said to me, licking her fingers. “The wealthiest and most powerful families in Athens send their daughters to us. The girls are called the Little Bears. For most of them, it’s the first time they’ve ever lived away from home. It’s good training for marriage.” Doris paused. “In fact, the reputation of the sanctuary for turning out young ladies of quality is unsurpassed. Fathers have been known to offer bribes and even fight to have their daughters admitted.”
“Yet Diotima got in?” I grinned.
“Thank you very much!” Diotima said, in mock anger. She threw a cup at me. I caught it easily, as she intended, and I set it aside.
Yet the question was genuinely asked, because although Diotima was a perfect lady in her manners and her education, and although her father had been a statesman of the highest regard, it was all too well known that her mother had also been at the top of her profession. Which was, unfortunately … prostitution. Or more accurately, until she married Pythax, Diotima’s mother had been a courtesan.
Diotima’s birth was as irregular as you could get. It meant she wasn’t even a citizen: Diotima was a metic, a resident alien, in the city of her birth.
“Diotima was something of an exception,” Doris said.
No surprise there.
Doris said, “Her father’s influence made a place for her, and though I have no knowledge of it, I wouldn’t be surprised if there’d been a significant donation to the temple treasury.”
I wouldn’t be surprised either. That’s how things were done in Athens, and her birth father was no longer around to ask.
“The girls stay with us for a year, usually when they’re fourteen. It’s the age right before their marriages are arranged. That was the situation with Ophelia.”
“Who?”
“The child who’s gone missing. Friend to Allike, the poor girl who died.” Doris wiped her brow and grimaced. “This is the worst I’ve ever known the sanctuary to be. You’ve no idea how distraught everyone is.”
“Could you start from the beginning, Doris?” Diotima said. “We need to know what happened, in the order it happened.”
“Yes, of course. I’m sorry, dear. I’m upset about the children. Who wouldn’t be?”
“Understandable.”
“I begin, then, with that accursed skeleton, the source of all our woes.” Doris turned to me. “You must know first of all, Nicolaos, that we allow the girls considerable freedom; well, you’d know that, wouldn’t you, Diotima dear? But not your Nicolaos, who knows nothing of daughters. We play outdoor games. The girls exercise, hold running races, sometimes cross-country runs that take them into the woods. It’s perfectly safe, I assure you—or at least, it used to be. There’s been talk of bear sightings recently—I don’t know if I believe it—and now of course there’s the murderer out there somewhere … but it used to be safe.
“Last month, two of the girls, Allike and her friend Ophelia, returned from the woods to say they’d passed by a cave. Well, Greece is hilly and there are many caves, but they poked their heads into this one, and there they saw a human skeleton.”
I interrupted. “Doris, you said this happened last month. What day, do you remember?”
“I can tell you exactly. It was hena kai nea.”
Old and new; the last day of the month, meaning the end of the old moon, with the new moon to follow.
“Go on.”
“The girls ran home to report it, very properly, in much excitement. It’s not the first time someone’s found a body, but usually it’s a traveler who’s died on the road, or an aged farmer who’s expired on his land. There was one of those only recently; he lived alone and nobody noticed for months, poor man. But a skeleton in a cave was a new one for all of us. I’m afraid Allike and Ophelia made the most of their notoriety. Their story enlarged with every telling.”
“Weren’t they afraid?”
“Children don’t fear death. They don’t understand that one day it will happen to them.”
“Oh.”
“The priestesses assembled as a group—after Ophelia and Allike managed to convince us they weren’t making this up—and the two girls led us to the cave. It was slow going, because the High Priestess insisted on accompanying us, but we got there eventually. Sure enough, there was the skeleton. The cave was large, as caves go, but to spot it one had to round a large rock and squeeze through a gap. It was no wonder no one had discovered the place until now.”
“What did you do?”
“The first problem was the lingering psyche.”
Diotima and I both nodded. A dead person’s psyche lingers on earth until the body has been buried according to the proper rites.
“We left offerings to placate the psyche, then gathered the bones and carried them back to the temple. To give whoever it was a proper ceremony, you see. At least, that was the plan. But the next day was Noumenia, and it would have been terrible bad luck to perform any ceremony during the new moon.”
Noumenia is a particularly sacred day, when no Hellene would willingly conduct business of any importance. Little wonder that the women of the temple had recoiled at the idea of a burial.
“The day after that, two of the girls came down with high fevers—”
“Not Allike and Ophelia?”
“A different two. It’s not like we’re short of girls to fall ill. Fever in a place such as ours can spread like wildfire, and children are much more likely to die than adults. Whenever a girl in our charge is sick, we drop everything to treat her and make sure the others don’t get it. The girls survived, I’m happy to say, but days passed before anyone thought of the bones.
“That was when we discovered that Sabina had gotten it into her head to tell the Basileus. She’d read the scrolls in the case—I think she was the only one to do so—and sent him the material.”
“Sabina is?”
“One of the priestesses, and an interfering little busybody, if you ask me. The High Priestess was furious. She felt that whatever this was, whoever it was, it was all in the past, and the publicity would do no one any good, and I must say I agree. But what was done was done.”
“Did you bury the bones?”
“We planned a cremation, but there was no point until the sk
ull was restored, or we’d only have had to do a second ceremony.”
“I have the skull. Would you like it?”
“No, thank you very much! You can bring it with you when you visit Brauron. You are coming to Brauron, aren’t you?”
“Of course. We have a murder to investigate.”
“I’m very sorry about Allike,” Diotima said. “How did she die?”
Doris hesitated. “She was … badly hurt. I don’t like to think about it.”
“Beaten?” I asked. “Stabbed?”
Doris hid her head in her hands and wept deeply. Hellenes like to declare their grief with lavish display, but it was clear that Doris’s was from the heart.
Diotima left my side, to put her arm around Doris. “I’m so sorry,” she said once more.
I said, “But Doris, we need to know what happened. Can you tell it now?”
“Yes.” Doris used the hem of her chiton to wipe her face. “The girls take it in turns to do the after-dinner chores. We insist they do it themselves and not rely on the temple’s slaves, because when they’re grown and mistresses of their own households, they’ll need to know everything about running a house, or how will they manage their own slaves? That night, Allike carried the bucket of scraps out to the compost, and she never returned.”
Which probably meant that the killer had been stalking the sanctuary grounds.
“When did you notice she was missing?”
“When we sent the girls to bed. It’s hard to keep track of who’s where in the evenings, but an empty bed in the dorm rooms is obvious. Someone said, ‘Where’s Allike?’ We searched, we walked all about with bright torches and called her name, but she never appeared.”
“Go on.”
“We mounted a major search the next day. Every adult, even the slaves. We found her body that afternoon, some distance away, beyond several hills.”
“Then whoever took her knew the area.”
“Or carried a torch,” Diotima said.
Doris said, “We thought there was some madman out in the woods. We didn’t connect Allike’s death with the skeleton. Not until Ophelia disappeared two days later.”
“You didn’t lose her the same way, did you?”
“It’s inexplicable! After the disaster of Allike, we ringed the sanctuary with guards and forbade all the girls to be alone. But Ophelia just disappeared, overnight.”
“Maybe she ran away on her own?”
“Ophelia wasn’t the type. I can spot them. That was when we realized Allike and Ophelia were the two who’d discovered the skeleton. The coincidence was too much.”
It was too much for me, too. I said, “You think she was taken too, then.”
“It seems the obvious answer, doesn’t it? When our problems came upon us, and we didn’t know what to do, someone suggested we call for you. The High Priestess resisted at first—she has a horror of publicity and thought your presence might call unwanted attention to our problems. But when time passed and the child Ophelia didn’t appear, well, it was clear what had to be done.”
So that was why my name had come up. Not because of the archons, but because the High Priestess of the sanctuary had asked for me by name, because one of her former pupils was my betrothed.
“Then my client is the sanctuary,” I said.
Doris shrugged. “If you think of it like that. I’m more inclined to think of a child who needs your help, if she’s still alive. But I’m very much afraid that her body’s out there in the woods, somewhere. And now I wonder, who else might die?”
CHAPTER THREE
NEXT MORNING, BY the time I had finished breakfast, there were already men at our door, all wanting to confess to murder, every one of them a candidate for a post in the new democratic government. Every one of them looked confused when I asked about dead and missing girls. Not a single one of them knew anything useful.
I was considering putting a CLOSED FOR BUSINESS sign on our front door when I was saved by a slave boy with a message from Pericles. He wanted to see me.
I found Pericles at his desk, bent over piles of notes and papers. He held a stylus in his right hand with which he scribbled notes on a wax tablet. He looked up as I entered.
“I hope you’re not about to confess to killing Hippias,” I said.
Pericles put down the stylus and looked at me strangely. “How can you say such a thing, Nicolaos? I was only a child at the time.”
“Thank goodness for that.”
“No,” Pericles continued. “It was my father who killed Hippias. I admit it in the interests of justice.”
I groaned.
“After you left yesterday, I gave it some thought, and looked through the papers of my father Xanthippus. Imagine my surprise when I came across a note in which he says he killed Hippias.”
“I’m imagining your surprise.”
“I can certify the authenticity of the handwriting—”
“I’m sure you can.”
“So you see, Nicolaos, you’ll be able to stop the investigation early. I’ll take the note to the courts tomorrow and explain everything.”
“You’ll have to stand in line.”
“What do you mean?”
I told him of the queue of wannabe killers. Pericles looked chagrined. No doubt he was thinking he should have thought of the scam earlier.
“You’re not standing for election, by any chance, are you?” I asked.
“As it happens, by sheer coincidence, I am,” he said. “I’m running for the office of strategos. The advantages of the post will be immediately obvious to you.”
“Yes, of course,” I told him, while desperately trying to think of the advantages. A strategos is a commanding general of the army. The Athenians elect ten strategoi each year, one from each of the ten tribes, to command the armed forces of our city on both land and sea.
“Er … why don’t you go for archon instead?” I asked. “I would have thought a civil administration position would be more your style.”
Pericles sighed. “You don’t understand, do you? The archons run Athens, which I’ll grant you is a post of great importance. But the archons have no say in foreign policy, a subject in which I must have influence if I’m to guide Athens. The voice of a strategos, on the other hand, carries weight in any subject concerning other cities. Furthermore, an archon holds the job for only a year, and then can never hold it again. A strategos, on the other hand—mark this closely, Nicolaos—a strategos can be re-elected year after year, with no limit to the number of times he holds the post.”
Pericles’s grand vision swam before my eyes. Every public role was to be filled by election. Pericles had selected the only position of influence that a man could hold repeatedly, because whereas the city can survive an incompetent archon for a year, an incompetent general in charge of the army could destroy us in a single battle.
Pericles intended to control Athens for the rest of his life by getting himself elected to strategos and re-elected year after year, which given his abilities he surely could.
“That’s brilliant. It’s almost like being a tyrant, without being a tyrant,” I mused.
“It’s no such thing!” Pericles shouted in horror. “And don’t you dare say those words outside this room. I tell you this only so you will understand the importance of your actions. With all this talk of Hippias and Marathon going around, people’s minds are fixated on the older men, the heroes who fought at Marathon. It means the old men are more likely to be elected. Again. That’s wrong, Nicolaos. Athens needs younger men to guide her. Men of the next generation.”
By which he meant himself. Apparently, being the son of one of our greatest war heroes wasn’t enough. Xanthippus, the father of Pericles, had died three months before. I’d attended his funeral, and not out of politeness. I’d come to like Xanthippus, and was sad to see him go. He was a crusty old war hero, demanding, difficult to get on with, but honorable as few men are. I was glad he’d lived to see his son become leader of Athens.
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br /> “I need all this talk shut down. As soon as possible. So voters will stop thinking about the past and start thinking about the future.”
“There’s another problem, Pericles,” I said. I told him the evidence of Doris the priestess. “So you see, your suspicions about the girls are almost certainly correct. Whoever killed Hippias probably attacked the children.”
“But Nicolaos, a gap of thirty years? No killer hangs around the scene that long.”
“Then they must be associated, somehow. Nothing else makes sense. Either way, as long as there’s a chance she’s still alive, finding the girl must be the priority.”
“She’s only a girl. Affairs of state come first.”
I barely prevented myself from shouting, only by grinding my teeth and reminding myself that Pericles’s attitude was normal. I’d known he’d take this view and come prepared. I said, “Then think of it this way, Pericles. The death of Hippias is so old, it’s almost impossible to trace. I could beat my head against that case for months and get nowhere. The recent action against the children must be an easier path, and will surely lead to the same person.”
Pericles paced for a moment, as he liked to do in private, while he thought about it. “Very well, I can see the logic of that. Yes, the girls are the quickest route to the mystery of Hippias, which has implications for the coming elections. I see your plan. I suppose you intend to go to Brauron?”
“Yes. But I’ll need some fast transport. I must be back and forth to Athens. I have an appointment with fate.”
“Oh?”
“I’m getting married,” I said proudly.
Pericles pursed his lips in distaste. “That Diotima woman, no doubt.”
“Of course.”
“You’re young to be marrying,” he said.
I shrugged. It was true, but I was happy. Most men married at thirty. I would be wed at twenty-one.
“A man of your station, with your prospects, you could do better.”
I knew Pericles had never liked Diotima, but his words made me angry. So much so that I raised the thorny issue between us. “There’s another matter we must discuss, Pericles, before I continue. My pay.”