by Corby, Gary
“Of course,” I said, certain of no such thing.
“But no father would risk such a daughter-in-law, and those that are desperate enough to take her … well, I wouldn’t do that to Gaïs. I love her too much.”
“Was Sabina an orphan, too?”
“Goodness me, no.” Thea laughed. “Sabina’s like Doris: a widow. I believe her husband died young and she had no children. She refused further offers—a woman doesn’t have to remarry unless she’s an heiress—and she’s lent her facility with numbers to the temple. We’re lucky to have her. A most unusual woman.” Thea paused before she added, “None of this can have the slightest bearing on Ophelia.”
Diotima and Gaïs returned from their work at the Sacred Spring, where they had rededicated every offering. I excused us and led Diotima away from the temple by saying, “Let’s go for a walk.” She looked at me oddly, but agreed. We went to the jetty, where the rowboat bobbed gently against the steps, and looked out to sea.
“Diotima, I’ve got a question for you.” I said it hesitantly, because I had a feeling this might be a sensitive question.
“Yes?” she said, seeming puzzled.
“When we met, on that first case … at one time we were at your mother’s house and you had to search for your bow. You opened a cupboard.”
I paused.
She waited for me to finish the question.
“It’s just that I remember all of your toys fell out.”
Diotima burst into tears.
IT TOOK SOME time to calm her down. We sat on the jetty, our legs hanging over the side, almost touching the water. I had my arm around her while she sniffed away the last of the tears.
Diotima said, “I suppose you want to hear about it?”
I nodded. “Yes.”
She said, “What a girl’s supposed to do, when her bleeding starts, is go to the temple and dedicate her toys to the Goddess, because she isn’t a girl anymore, you see, she’s become a woman. So she gives all her toys to Artemis, and then goes home to wait for her marriage, with all the things of her girlhood gone. They take every single toy from you, Nico. I hated that. I loved my toys too much.”
“Do all the girls feel the same?”
“Some of the girls can’t wait to be women and have a husband. Not me.”
“Terrific,” I said, demoralized.
Diotima realized what she’d said. “Oh, Nico! That was what I thought when I was a child. I may have changed my mind slightly since.”
“All right,” I said, slightly mollified. “So what did you do?”
“What do you think? I cheated, of course! I didn’t see any need to lose the toys I loved just to be a grown-up.”
“But they’d know at once if you didn’t hand over the toys.”
“Which is why I handed over toys to the Goddess. It’s just that the toys I dedicated weren’t … er … they weren’t mine.”
“You gave away some other girl’s toys?” I was shocked.
“Actually, I bought them from her.” Diotima shrugged. “Sometimes it helps to be the spoiled child of a wealthy mother. I hid my toys, which I loved more than my parents, then took an expensive vase I knew Mother would never miss. I traded it for the toys of another girl. The other girl agreed! Father never looked, Mother didn’t care, and I had something to fool the priestesses.”
“What about the other girl? Didn’t she get into trouble?”
“The other girl was Gaïs.”
“Dear Gods!”
Diotima nodded. “She was a poor orphan. She didn’t have much. I gave her a lot of money, Nico.”
“So when Gaïs called you a cheat—”
“She’d be in a position to know,” Diotima admitted. “Obviously, she’s disgusted with me.” She blushed deeply. “I never thought Gaïs would still be here. I thought I was safe to come back. Gaïs should have been married long ago and gone from the sanctuary. When you pointed her out, running in the woods, and then when she turned up at the sanctuary and Doris said she’d become a priestess … well … I thought I’d die. The funny thing is, it was because I cheated the Goddess that I became her priestess.”
“That doesn’t make sense.”
“No, listen. The dedication is a very solemn moment for the girl. She stands before the Goddess and says a prayer. A priestess goes with her to make sure she says it right. With me it was Doris. The girl lays her toys at the foot of the Goddess, and drapes her hair ribbons over the Goddess’s hand, and then she walks away, a woman.
“So when my time came, I stepped forward with the toys of Gaïs. Until that moment, I’d thought I had it all worked out, I knew I’d been smarter than all the grown-ups, but when I looked up I realized I’d made a huge mistake: I could fool my parents and the priestesses, but I couldn’t fool the Goddess. The moment I laid down the toys, Artemis would know I’d cheated her.
“But it was too late to back out! I walked across the stones to the statue. It was early morning, chilly. I remember feeling the coldness of the stone under my bare feet. Doris and I stopped before the statue and I recited the prayer, word perfect of course. Doris said, ‘Very good, Diotima, I knew you were one of the clever ones. Now lay your toys before her.’
“I hesitated then, sure that the moment I did so the Goddess would strike me dead, and I didn’t want to die. I stood there for a long time. I can’t imagine how silly I must have looked.
“Doris leaned over me and said, ‘Do it, child. I promise the Goddess wants you to.’
“So I said my own silent prayer to Artemis and put down the toys. I was shaking so much I almost dropped them! I looked down at my dedication and saw at once how shoddy and simple it looked: a wooden doll with a rough face and no hair, a skipping rope of old rag—not at all the things of a girl with a rich father. I looked up into the face of Artemis, thinking she would come to life and strike me, but she didn’t, in fact it was almost like she was smiling. So I placed my ribbons in her outstretched hand. I can’t begin to tell you how relieved I was!
“I laughed then, because the Goddess had accepted me for what I was. Nico, that was the moment I knew I wanted to be a priestess. I didn’t want to be a married woman, and I didn’t want to be a prostitute, high class like my mother or otherwise; Artemis had selected me to be hers; it explained why I felt so different from the other girls.”
“You got away with it, Diotima. Gaïs might not be impressed, but do you really care?”
“I’m scared, Nico.”
“Scared of what?”
“That Gaïs is right. That Artemis is only waiting until I’m married before she wreaks revenge on me. I did cheat the Goddess, and at the very ceremony that made me a nymphe. What if our marriage is a disaster, Nico, and it’s all my fault?”
I put an arm around her and hugged her tight. “It won’t be a disaster.”
“But what if it is?”
I sighed. “It won’t be. You’re the woman I want to spend the rest of my life with, and nothing will ever change that. Besides, if there’s going to be a disaster, there’s nobody I’d rather have it with than you.”
“Is that supposed to make me feel better?”
I helped her up, and we walked back to the sanctuary to collect some dinner. We ignored Sabina’s ugly stare and carried two bowls of lentils and bread out to the lawn. The moon was new, and the Temple of Artemis was a black shape.
As we ate, I told Diotima everything that had happened to me during the trip to Athens. Diotima, anxious to get her mind off her fears, listened closely.
“The man in the helmet said Hippias was wounded in the fighting?” she said.
“Yes,” I replied. “Of course, there’s no reason to believe him.”
“But if he’s telling the truth, then how did Hippias get from Marathon to Brauron?” Diotima asked. “Did he walk?”
I said, “Across what was effectively enemy territory? Surely someone would have spotted him.”
“Well, I don’t know then.”
“We n
eed a map,” I said.
“We don’t have one.”
“We’ll draw our own.” I picked up a stick and began to scratch in the dirt at our feet. “Here’s the coastline.” I scratched in a rough outline of the coastline of Attica, the large area of southern Greece that was controlled by Athens.
“Here’s Marathon.” I marked the spot on the upper right of the map.
“The Persians landed their boats on the beach at Marathon, and that’s where the army of Athens marched to meet them.” I drew an oval to mark the beach, and a picture of a boat.
“The Athenians and the Persians fought.” I drew an X in the oval that represented the beach. “Everyone agrees Hippias was at Marathon.”
“All right,” Diotima agreed. She stared down at the map intently.
“After the battle, the Persians boarded their boats. They sailed to Phaleron.” I drew in another oval to denote Phaleron, a large expanse of beach to the south of Athens. I placed a pebble to show Athens on the left hand side of the map.
“Obviously the Persians hoped to unload at Phaleron and attack Athens before our army could return. But our men force-marched across all of Attica. When they got there, the Persians found lined up against them the same army that had whipped their asses at Marathon. The Persians gave up and went home.”
“Hooray for our side,” Diotima said. “But you haven’t explained Hippias … oh, hold on … wait …” I could see Diotima’s brain working hard. “Nico, Hippias was seen at Marathon, but no one saw Hippias at Phaleron.”
“Right. To get from the beach at Marathon to the beach at Phaleron, the Persians had to take this route.” I swept the stick in a long arc, from the top right of the map to the bottom.
“Brauron is here. On the coast.” I placed an X a third of the way along the arc. Diotima said excitedly, “This is beginning to make sense. Hippias was dropped off at Brauron by the Persians on their way to Phaleron.”
“Yes!”
“No,” Diotima said, unhappily.
“No?”
“Wouldn’t the people at Brauron have noticed a Persian warship pulling up at their dock?”
“Doris said that Hippias came from around here. Were the people of Brauron noticeably pro-Persian during the wars?”
“They can’t have been that pro-Persian,” Diotima said.
“No, you’re right,” I said glumly. “All right, they put him off nearby at a small beach. There must be lots of them around here.”
“How old was Hippias?”
“I don’t know. Fifty? Sixty? Seventy? They put him on a small boat and rowed him in.”
“This is all supposition, Nico.”
“But you know it’s right,” I said.
“Yes, I think it is. Why would Hippias split from the Persian force? They were the only ones who could guarantee his safety.”
“Things can’t have been too pleasant between them after that defeat,” I said. “Maybe he was homesick?”
“That’s idiotic, Nico.” Diotima shook her head. “Failed tyrants don’t risk death to see their old homes. It would have to be something urgent.”
It came to me like a lightning flash. “I’ve got it!” I yelled. “The man in the helmet said he almost killed Hippias during the battle. He said he struck the tyrant with his spear.”
“So?”
“Don’t you see? Hippias came ashore to a place he knew, because he needed a doctor.”
TO FIND THE right doctor in Brauron was straightforward. There was only one. We obtained the address from Doris. Next morning, we walked into Brauron. Although it was a small town, we managed to get lost instantly. Brauron was an ancient settlement, and nothing was in the normal place. Eventually I stopped a passing stranger.
“Excuse me, can you tell me how to get to Sesamon Street?”
He pointed straight down, at our feet.
We were on it.
Brauron’s main street ran parallel with the shore; Sesamon joined it at the middle, to form a T. The main wharf, the warehouse, the fishing boats, and pretty much everything else of value in Brauron was to be found at that corner, including the doctor’s residence. It was on the side of the street opposite the water.
We knocked and were admitted by a slave. The doctor had converted the front rooms of his house to see patients. We walked straight into his iatrion, his surgery.
Diotima and I despaired the moment we saw Ascetos the Healer. He was a man in his midthirties. Not nearly old enough to have treated an injured tyrant three decades ago.
“Mostly I treat fishing injuries,” he said, when we introduced ourselves. “You wouldn’t believe how many hooks I’ve removed from flesh. Lots of broken bones, drownings, that sort of thing.”
“Were you involved in the unfortunate incident at the sanctuary?” Diotima asked.
“The girl who died? I heard about that.”
“Her name was Allike. The sanctuary didn’t call you in?”
“No, why should they? The girl was dead. I’m a doctor, not a god.”
“There’s also a girl who’s missing,” Diotima said.
“Sorry, I can’t help you.”
We were getting nowhere.
“We’re wasting the doctor’s time and our own, too,” I said to Diotima. To Ascetos I said, “I’m sorry, Doctor. We only asked about the children when we saw you wouldn’t know about our real reason for coming.”
“And what was that?”
“Whether Hippias the Tyrant had ever come here.”
“Well, why didn’t you say so?” he said. “I can tell you all about that.”
NOW THAT HE had a story to tell, Ascetos called for wine and settled us on dining couches, as if we were honored guests.
“You should know my father was doctor here before me. Doctors’ sons almost always take up the profession.”
“The same thing happens with sculptors’ sons,” I said. It was my strong desire to avoid sculpture that had first moved me to take up investigation.
Ascetos said, “I was five years old, I think, but I already knew I was destined to become a doctor, so when the stranger bashed at the door in the dead of night, I took particular interest. Only the most interesting—that is to say, urgent—cases come at night.”
“It was Hippias?”
“It was he. Though I didn’t know that until my father told me later, and I didn’t realize the fame of our patient, or the import of what had happened, until many years had passed. All I knew back then was, when Father opened the door, a stranger staggered in.”
“How was he?”
“Except for the gaping wound in his throat, perfectly fine.
Father placed him on the examination couch. That’s the one you’re lying on at the moment, young lady—I’ve lost count of how many people have died on that couch … Where was I? Oh yes, the strange patient. He lay down, and there was a wound in the lower throat. Father peered in. So did I. I’m afraid I made rather a nuisance of myself.
“Hippias was unbelievably lucky. The slash that had opened the skin had missed everything vital. I could actually see the blood vessel pulsing. Sometimes when someone’s been torn open by a ship’s grappling hook, the blood pulses out in great spurts and then the man dies—sometimes the man lives long enough to reach me, but there’s nothing anyone can do. Somehow, Hippias had managed to survive. The gods must have favored him like no other man. He could speak; he could eat. Amazing.”
“Did he say how he came to be in Brauron?”
“If he did, it wasn’t in my presence.”
“What did your father do?”
“Closed the wound as best he could, and told his patient to lie still. Very, very still. For a very, very long time. Hippias asked if he was going to die—they always ask that—Father said it lay with the gods—the usual reply.”
“How long was a very, very long time?”
“Until the flesh had healed and Hippias could stand up without the risk of bits of his throat falling out. Months, I should think, g
iven what I know now.”
“Surely Hippias didn’t lie here all that time!”
“A few days later, men came and carried him away to recuperate.”
“Where?”
“To a local estate.”
A long pause, from both Diotima and me. This was the discovery we’d been looking for. I said, slowly, “You wouldn’t happen to remember which estate he was taken to, would you, Doctor?”
“I was only five. Nobody tells a five-year-old anything. Father went to visit his patient from time to time, to check his recovery. I never accompanied him.”
“Your father went to the estate where Hippias was hidden?” Diotima repeated. “How long was he away on each visit?”
Ascetos saw her point. “You want to find this place, don’t you? Well, Father always left first thing in the morning and returned in time for his afternoon practice. I presume he ate lunch before he returned. A typical consultation would last the amount of time required to pray to the gods, perform a small sacrifice, and perhaps even inspect the patient. The place you’re looking for is within half a morning’s walk of this surgery.”
“You said men came to carry Hippias. That’s a long way to carry a man,” I said.
“They used a board. It’s a standard technique: the patient lies on a wide plank of wood; we strap him down so he doesn’t roll off. With such an arrangement, men fore and aft could carry him forever.”
“A board,” Diotima said in an even tone. I knew what she was thinking. The bones of Hippias had been found laid out on a board. That board was now back at the sanctuary.
“I know this is a lot to ask,” I said, “but is it possible you might recognize that board if you saw it again?”
“Surely it’s rotted away by now, or been used for firewood.”
“Just supposing.”
Ascetos cocked his head to one side and puzzled. “It’s possible. Father always used a particular size, and I never varied from his practice.”