The Marathon Conspiracy

by Corby, Gary

  To our accusing stares, he said, “It was only talk, you know? We didn’t … well, you know … do anything else. I swear it. We just talked.”

  “What about?”

  “What do you talk about, with a complete stranger you’re supposed to marry?”

  “Beats me.”

  “You two didn’t go through the same thing?”

  “We arranged matters the other way around.”

  “Lucky you. Ophelia and I spent all our time asking each other dumb questions. What do you like to do? What’s your favorite food?”

  “And?”

  “Her favorite food is apples.”

  “No, I meant, what did you decide about each other?”

  “Oh. I decided I liked her. She was nice. I was shocked when I realized she was more scared of me than I was of her.” He paused. “No, that’s wrong. We were both scared of marriage. That last evening, when they caught us—”

  “They caught you meeting?” I said, aghast.

  “Didn’t I mention that? It was because we were arguing. Our voices were raised.” He looked abashed. “Our first argument. I told her she had to do something about it, and she refused.”

  “Do something about what?”

  “Ophelia told me someone was trying to kill her. Those were the last words she said to me, before the temple staff found us.” He beat his fists on the ground until his knuckles bled. “She told me, and I didn’t do a thing to save her.”

  There was a sudden silence between us. I broke it with one word.

  “Why?”

  “Why what?” He looked at his knuckles and winced.

  “Why did Ophelia say someone wanted her dead?”

  “It was when I told her to be careful—because Allike had been killed by the bear, you know.”

  “No, we don’t know,” I said. “Doris the priestess said there were sightings, and Sabina told us Allike’s remains looked like she’d been torn apart, but everyone knows there are no bears in Attica. Have you seen this bear?”

  “Well, no,” Melo conceded. “But other people have seen it.”

  “Who? Name them.”

  “I can’t. But everyone says it’s out there.” Melo paused, then added, “Ophelia was like you. She didn’t believe in the bear story either.”

  “What?”

  “We were talking about it. Ophelia said it couldn’t be the bear. She told me she knew a human had killed Allike. She said it was something to do with a scroll.”

  Diotima and I shared a look.

  “Did she tell anyone else this?” Diotima asked.

  “She might have said something to Gaïs. Ophelia liked Gaïs.”

  “Have you seen Gaïs?”

  “I think so. Is she the thin one with the small breasts and the nice legs?”

  “That’s her,” I said. “Shame about the face though.”

  “A little horsey,” Melo allowed.

  Diotima gave us both a sour look. “Is that really how men describe women?”

  “Sorry about that,” I said to her.

  Melo said, “I’ve seen her running around. A couple of times I approached her to ask her about Ophelia, but she saw me and ran away.”

  “Where did Ophelia go, Melo?”

  “If I knew that, I wouldn’t be looking for her!” The tone of exasperation in his voice seemed genuine to me.

  “She said she had a friend who’d protect her,” Melo continued. “When I pressed her she wouldn’t say more. She just said that she’d stay with the friend.”

  It seemed to me impossible that Ophelia should have a friend with a house in Brauron. It might be different if her family lived locally, but I knew they were in Athens.

  I said, “If Ophelia’s in hiding, why are you skulking about the sanctuary?”

  “I was investigating, or rather, I was wondering how to go about it. How do you investigate?”

  “Mostly you ask people questions. You look for the contradictions in their answers.”

  “What if there aren’t any?”

  “There always are,” I said confidently, and hoped I was right. “Melo, if you want to help, you can do it best by continuing your search. But not near the sanctuary, all right? Stay away from this place. People might get the wrong ideas.”

  “All right.”

  “If Diotima gets together a search party, will you guide it?” I asked.

  “Me?” Diotima said, surprised. “What will you be doing?”

  “I’m off to Athens,” I said. “Somebody needs to trace that missing scroll,” I told her. “The question is, how many scrolls were in the case when the Basileus opened it? He’ll talk to me, but not to you.”

  Diotima nodded reluctantly. She knew that was true.

  “You can talk to Thea,” I said. “Get her to assign the slaves to cross the countryside.”

  Melo nodded. “I know where to look,” he said. “I know every farmhouse, every hut, every estate within walking distance. I can ask if they have her.”

  “Would they tell you the truth?”

  “Yes. I’m her betrothed,” he said simply. “They can’t deny me. Besides, I’m a local, sort of. They’ll support me, I know it. But …” He paused, a long time. “If Ophelia was at a farm, she’d have contacted me by now. I fear she may have been on her way to that safe place she talked of when she was stopped.”

  “Stopped?”

  “By whoever killed Allike.” Melo picked himself up. “I’ll help you with your search, if you tell me what you know about what’s going on at the sanctuary.”

  “Agreed.”

  He ran off, over the hills and to the north. I worried about that bash to the head we’d given him, but he was a man, and he knew his own business. It was better to leave him be.

  Diotima watched him go and said, “Poor fellow.”

  “Do you believe him?”

  Diotima looked down to where the blood from his knuckles had stained the sand. “Don’t you?”

  I got up and dusted off my knees. So did Diotima.

  “He’s not exactly bright. But yes, I believe him,” I said. “This means Ophelia wasn’t abducted. She’s out there somewhere.”

  “Nico, if Ophelia trusted Melo like he says, why didn’t she go to him for that safe place?”

  I was thunderstruck. “I didn’t think of that.”

  Diotima’s face was troubled. “It’s hard to know whom to trust. Except for Doris. I trust Doris.”

  “Let’s try something different.”

  “What?”

  “Everyone agrees Ophelia disappeared overnight, don’t they?”

  “Yes.”

  “And they said that guards had been set around the sanctuary, after Allike died?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then how did a child sneak past those guards?”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  NEXT MORNING I got my first proper look around. The sanctuary at Brauron was much more than a temple. In Athens, all the temples are within walking distance of home. At Brauron, the temple complex is the home.

  The center of the sanctuary wasn’t the temple, as you might expect, but the courtyard in which Diotima and I had sat the night before. It was covered from side to side in thick grass that had been watered and scythed over and over until it felt like walking on a soft rug. Not once in all the time I spent at Brauron did I ever see that courtyard empty if there was light to see by; there was always a priestess or two, girls sitting on the grass and weaving, or singing, or dancing, or running or playing or doing all of those things at once.

  Surrounding the courtyard was a stoa—three covered walkways with columns to support the roof and rooms behind—the whole built using stone blocks and constructed in the shape of the letter pi: π. Four small dorms for the girls on the left, each room six paces by six, and workrooms at the top. The right-hand eastern side was twice the length of the other two sides and contained rooms for the priestesses and temple administration. The stoa was open to the south to let in the sun, which made the
courtyard and the surrounding rooms all the more pleasant and meant that girls who had spent too much of their lives indoors rapidly became sore with sunburn.

  The temple to the Goddess lay at the left foot of the stoa. We stepped past the altar, up the steps and into the temple.

  The pronaos was small, its only purpose to lead into the main temple space, but it had one remarkable feature: hung on the left-hand wall was an enormous mirror of beautifully polished bronze. It was so large that I could see all my face and chest merely by standing before it.

  “What’s that for?” I asked.

  “This is the temple where, at the end of their year, girls perform their coming-of-age rite,” Diotima said.

  “So?”

  “So a girl wants to look her best. She stops here to adjust her clothing and fix her hair before she walks into the temple proper.” Diotima brushed away a tear. “I stopped at this very spot, Nico, on my own initiation. Doris held my hand. I remember I watched in the mirror while she threaded the flowers in my hair. My parents waited inside, to watch me perform the dedication.”

  “And then she cheated,” a voice said from behind.

  I whirled round to see Gaïs standing there. She’d been listening in.

  “What do you mean?” I said. “Don’t be ridiculous. You can’t cheat a ceremony.”

  Gaïs tilted back her head. She pointed at Diotima with her chin. “Ask her.”

  Diotima said, “Go away, Gaïs.”

  The tension between the two women was thick enough to cut with a blade. It made me wonder if the history between these two was more complex than Diotima had let on. After all, they’d been children here together.

  I said, “Tell me Gaïs, what was Ophelia like?”

  “Ophelia’s pretty,” Gaïs said softly and wistfully.

  “She’s also betrothed to Melo,” Diotima said.

  Gaïs said angrily, “Don’t you think I know that?” She turned and walked out.

  “What is it between you and Gaïs?” I asked my own betrothed.

  “Don’t ask, Nico,” Diotima said, in a tone that told me I shouldn’t ask.

  Instead I peered into the next room, to make sure no one else was listening in. No one was.

  “Did you notice something, Nico?” Diotima said. “Something about Gaïs?”

  “I certainly did,” I told her. “I always do with women. The curve of her upper thighs is excellent—”

  My betrothed hit me. “Did you pay the slightest attention to what she said?”

  “Of course!”

  “So you noticed her tense.”

  “Um …”

  “That’s what I thought. Nico, she said Ophelia’s pretty.”

  “Well?”

  “Gaïs is the only person in the whole sanctuary who talks about Ophelia in the present. Everyone else talks of her in the past tense, like she’s dead.”

  “Maybe the wacky, naked priestess who talks in riddles is an optimist.”

  We passed through to the main room of the temple. The cult statue of Artemis stood at the end. Ancient temples almost always house an ancient statue, but to my surprise, this one was new, made in bronze, painted in brilliant colors, and a thing of beauty. Artemis stood tall and proud, a young woman in her prime. The Goddess was attended by a bear, her traditional servant. The bear crouched beside her, on all fours—not in repose, but ready to protect his divine mistress.

  “The old statue was destroyed when the Persians sacked the sanctuary,” Diotima explained. “I heard it was made of wood and it went in the fire.”

  “The sacking was that bad?” I asked.

  “Everything you see here is new. The whole place had to be rebuilt from the ground up. Of course, you and I weren’t even born when it happened. I can only tell you what the priestesses say.”

  On the wall behind the Goddess were hung row upon row of dedications. It’s the norm in any temple for people to give to the gods that which they value most. A man will leave his spear and shield in the temple of his choice when he’s no longer strong enough to hold them. But what I saw here was nothing I’d ever seen before on any temple wall. There were skipping ropes, and leather balls attached by straps, and tiny wooden pet animals that ran on wheels, and dresses that were too small to fit any person. Beautifully carved dolls hung from hooks; they sagged like sad little wooden corpses.

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  “Oh, those are the toys,” Diotima said. “The girls dedicate their toys when they become women.”

  “Like a warrior who dedicates his arms when he’s too old to fight?”

  “I suppose, except in this case the girl dedicates what was most important in her childhood. She walks in with her child’s toys and walks out without them, a woman.”

  We stepped out into the day, and both of us had to blink away the sunlight when we emerged from the darkness. It brought us face to face with one of the girls. A scrawny thing, which seemed to be the fashion at the sanctuary. I wondered whether all teenage girls were this thin.

  “You’re the investigators, aren’t you?” she said.

  “Yes.”

  “I wanted to see what you looked like. They say you two have sex without being married.”

  “Who says that?” I demanded.

  “Oh, everyone,” she said vaguely. “My father would beat me if I did that. How come your father doesn’t beat you?” she asked Diotima.

  “My birth father’s dead,” Diotima said.

  “Oh,” the teenager said.

  “Is my private life all that anyone talks about around here?” Diotima said.

  “I guess. Everyone talks about you because you’re so famous. They say you tore your clothes off in a courtroom full of men.”

  “No, that was my mother.”

  I could see that in the back of her head the teenager was wishing she had parents like Diotima’s. Diotima’s mother, Euterpe, had indeed made a display of herself, but that was before she’d married Pythax.

  “I suppose you knew Allike and Ophelia,” I said to the girl. “Do you miss them?”

  “Not much.” Then, realizing that didn’t sound good, she added defensively, “We were in different groups of friends.”

  “What group was Allike in?”

  “Allike was one of the smart ones,” the girl said. “She could read anything.”

  “Can’t you all?” I asked.

  She shrugged. “They make us learn that stuff, but everyone knows it doesn’t matter. Your husband can read anything you really need.”

  Diotima grimaced. “You have an opportunity most girls would kill for. Don’t you care?”

  The girl waved her arm with the airy, all-knowing nonchalance of a teenager. “Everyone knows the important thing’s to get a good husband. Men don’t care if a girl can read. You should know how it works; after all, you’re old,” she said to my twenty-year-old fiancée. “Men judge women by other standards.” She puffed out her near-nonexistent chest. “I’m working on it.”

  “What about Ophelia?” I asked, before Diotima could explode. “Was Ophelia one of the smart ones too?”

  “Oh, no! She was normal.”

  Diotima’s skin turned an unhealthy purple color.

  “But they were friends?” I persisted.

  “I guess. Not everyone can be in the popular group.”

  “What did they do together, Allike and Ophelia?”

  “I dunno.” She glanced about for something more entertaining. We’d become bores. “Allike and Ophelia spent a lot of time walking about.”

  Diotima and I followed their good example. We walked away.

  “Was it like this when you were here?” I asked.

  “Yes,” said Diotima shortly. “That’s why I have no friends. Except for you.” She reached out to hold my hand.

  Sabina walked past us, going the other way. She looked down to see our hands linked. Without breaking step she glared and ordered, “No immorality in front of the girls!”

  We let go s
heepishly, and she disappeared around the corner.

  AT THE REAR of the temple gurgled the Sacred Spring. Water bubbled in nonstop from some place deep underground. The source of the flow was probably the massive rock outcrop immediately south of the temple, an outcrop so large you could have built a small fort upon it. The water in the Sacred Spring overflowed into a runnel that went to the river that passed by the sanctuary—the river over which we’d passed when we arrived. In reality it was not much more than a large stream. I’d seen real rivers, such as the Meander when we visited Ionia, and the Erasinos River at Brauron didn’t even begin to compete.

  Diotima said to me, “This spring was blessed by Artemis herself in ancient times. It’s the most sacred water in all Attica.”

  It was a very pleasant place to be, in the shade, with the sound of the running water. Thea was sitting beside the spring with a group of girls. She recited Homer to them, but as we approached she broke off and listened to what Diotima said.

  “Don’t fall in!” Thea called out to us.

  “Does that happen?” I asked.

  “Ten times a year. There’s always some girl daring another to go closer, and of course we draw our water from here. Accidents happen.”

  “It doesn’t look that dangerous,” I said, toeing the edge and finding it firm. The Sacred Spring was shaped in a rough oval, with an indented curve along one side. Water flowed in from a large rock that rose out of the ground to the south. The earth was solid and well-grassed all the way to the edge, but the drop-off into the water was surprisingly sudden.

  “Nor is it dangerous, in daylight,” Thea said. “But you have to be careful at night. One morning many years ago, we found a thief drowned in there. It seems he’d come in the darkness to steal from the spring, slipped, and fallen in. But that’s the only fatality we’ve ever had, and that was decades ago. All the other idiots who go in do it during daylight.”

  I asked, “Is there truly stuff in the spring to steal? You said a thief drowned, trying.”

  “Oh, goodness me yes. Before the temple was built, women made their dedications by throwing them into the waters. And, what’s more, when the Persians sacked the temple, we priestesses threw as much treasure as we could into the deepest part, to save it.”