The Marathon Conspiracy (10 page)

“What are you doing out here then?”

“What do you think? When my father told me he’d found me a wife, I wanted to meet the girl. He said why bother, when he’d already checked her out and decided. I insisted I meet the girl before I’d agree to marry her. He was angry. He said I should trust him.”

“You didn’t, of course,” I said.

“No, of course not. What son in his right mind trusts his father’s judgment?”

Melo and I shared a moment of empathy.

“So I found an excuse to come down to Brauron—I told Father I was worried the slaves might be slacking off, and he believed me (the truth is, our farm workers are excellent); anyway he praised me for my care and I hurried to Brauron as quickly as I could to meet my fiancée.” He paused, then admitted, “I might have been somewhat brusque when I demanded to see Ophelia.”

“Oh?”

“I still bear the bruises from that old man of theirs.”

“Zeke?” I said.

“Yes, him. Of course, you two just added to them.”

“
Zeke
hit you?” Diotima said, amazed.

“Twice my age, but he packs a mean punch. I’m glad I didn’t have to face him when he was young.”

“I wish I’d been there,” Diotima said with feeling. “Nothing like that ever happened when I was a Little Bear.”

Melo said, “Imagine the disgrace if I struck a man older than my grandpa. There wasn’t anything I could do but go away.”

Two hundred paces away, the lights went out one by one at the Sanctuary of Brauron. Diotima’s assurance had done its work, and the priestesses were getting the girls back to bed. But I knew we’d have some explaining to do when we returned. Somehow Melo didn’t come across as the crazed homicidal type. He spoke like a fine citizen.

“What’s your plan?” I asked.

“I’m sure Ophelia’s not far from here. She said she would be. I’ll search until I find her.”

Diotima snorted. “She
said
she would be? You don’t know the girl, not even slightly.”

“That’s not true! I know lots about her.”

“What?” Diotima demanded.

Melo looked abashed. “I have a confession to make. Tonight wasn’t the first time I crept into the girls’ room.”

“Dear Gods.”

“After the slave punched me and the High Priestess sent me away, I crept back that night. I really wanted to meet her,” Melo said in a rush. “I woke her up and we talked. Ophelia was as curious about me as I was about her. Ophelia and I managed to meet a few times. We met beside the pond, where no one would hear us.”

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?”

N
EXT 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.