The Marathon Conspiracy (11 page)

“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 sheepishly, and she disappeared around the corner.

A
T 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.”

“That was during the second invasion, ten years after Marathon.”

“Zeke couldn’t protect you?”

“Zeke was away, serving with the army. The old High Priestess declared that it would be better to die in our temple than run, so when the men went off to war, we women remained behind, and tried to carry on with normal life, and wondered what was happening in the outside world.”

Everyone gathered—the girls and Diotima and I—and listened to Thea’s simply told story in silence.

“Then one day a messenger-slave stumbled across the bridge and into the sanctuary with word. Athens had fallen, and the Persians were on their way to sack our temple. The High Priestess ordered us to throw everything of value into the spring.”

She gestured to the middle of the waters, the deepest part, beyond reach of the shore.

“It was the one place we could be sure they wouldn’t find it.”

“We priestesses worked nonstop. We tore down as much treasure as we could and threw it into the spring. We dedicated ourselves to the Goddess, and then we waited. We thought we were about to die.”

Thea spoke quietly, matter-of-factly, but I had no trouble imagining the fear the women must have felt.

“When the soldiers arrived, well …” Thea glanced over at the girls, who were listening to her words with open mouths. “Well, it was bad. But we lived. The soldiers took the statue of the Goddess and those heavy things we couldn’t lift to safety. They also found the hole we’d dug, in which we’d salted pieces of silver. The High Priestess said if we hid something for them to find, then they might leave. She was right.” Thea paused. “But before they left, they drove a sword through her heart. They killed our High Priestess.”

“That was when you took over,” Diotima guessed.

“Someone had to,” Thea said simply. “We were all in shock. Women staggered about or sat in the courtyard and cried. There was one particularly beautiful woman, who’d been repeatedly abused; she walked into the woods and hanged herself. We found her the next day.

“I find it hard to describe, looking back after all these years, just how dire our predicament was. Our High Priestess was dead. None of us had ever known a time when she didn’t command. Normally we would have sent to Athens for instructions. But Athens had fallen to the enemy, and for all we knew the Athenians might never return. We were on our own.”

Thea sighed.

“The other priestesses did as I suggested—to do those things we did every day, to bake the bread and worship at the temple. The women obeyed me. By the time the Athenians had taken back their city and the enemy had been driven off, it was the
settled order. The Basileus confirmed me in my position. I never thought to be High Priestess.”

Doris walked up as Thea spoke those final words. “Your incumbency has been a time of remarkable peace,” she said.

“I’m glad,” Thea said.

We followed the river north. Doris chose to join us.

As we walked, I asked, “Have you been a priestess all your life, Doris?”

“Indeed not. I was married to a man for half my life. But he died one day—just collapsed without warning—and my children were grown. I suppose I should have retired gracefully to the home of my son—he’s a good man with a decent wife and they would have been happy to have me—or perhaps I should have married some lonely widower—but I thought instead to remove myself to the Sanctuary at Brauron. I’ve always loved children, you see; I missed my own daughters dreadfully when they married. Moving to the sanctuary was my way of reliving those lovely years when my own daughters were young. Who would have known it could lead to so much death?”

I said, “Thea told us that Zeke served with the army during the second invasion. That was the year I was born. When
did
Zeke come to Brauron?”

“Some time after Marathon. That’s all I know.”

“What’s that smell?” I asked. I’d smelt something I hadn’t expected, something…“Is that … salt?”

“It’s salt water, Nico,” Diotima said patiently.

“Brauron is by the sea.” Doris pointed northeast. “See that hill? The one with the shrubs and not much else?”

It was the hill where Melo and I had fought.

“Walk over that and before you know it, you’ll be at a shallow bay that leads into the Aegean.”

“I didn’t realize we were so close. Is it a port?”

“The sea here’s far too shallow for that,” Doris said. “There’s a jetty and a rowboat. Sometimes the men will take the boat to
Brauron town, to bring back heavy goods. Just row the boat down the coast, and you’ll come to Brauron.”

“Is the town far away?”

“Not even half a day.”

“Could a child row it?”

“No,” Doris said at once. “Not a chance.”

We turned south to walk down the east side of the complex. Our tour ended at the most important room in the complex for us: a small room in the east wing of the stoa where the bones of the dead man had been placed pending a funeral.

“I’ll leave you here,” Doris said, and she looked uneasy. “I don’t like dead bodies.” Doris walked off quickly.

Diotima and I shared a look. I shot open the bolt, then slowly opened the door. I peered in.

The skeleton was laid out on a board, which in turn lay on the floor: arms, legs, backbone, pelvis, ribs … everything in the right position. Everything except the head.

A skeleton without a head looks wrong. Without it, the neck looked like a road that went nowhere.

Without saying a word, I reached for the cloth bag I had with me, which we’d brought with us on the cart all the way from Athens. I pulled out the skull. The bag I tossed aside; I knelt and carefully placed the skull at the end of the line of vertebrae.

“There,” I said. In the silence of the tiny room, my voice was louder than I intended.

The skeleton had been laid out on the floor in the same position it had lain for decades in the cave. That wasn’t to make our job any easier, it was because the psyche of the dead person might be angered if the remains weren’t treated with due respect.

Diotima and I looked down at the now-complete skeleton. The middle part was a complete mess. The clothing had rotted to tatters, and the flesh beneath had been eaten—by rats, no doubt.

We both waited for the other to speak.

When I realized this would go on forever, I said, “What do we do now?”

“I was hoping you’d have an idea,” Diotima said.

“You’re the one who always has the bright ideas.”

“Not this time. There’s nothing we can deduce from a musty pile of bones. We can’t even tell if it’s a man or a woman.”

“Obviously not,” I agreed. “The priestesses said they moved everything
exactly
as they found it?”

“He was on this board when they found him. They moved the entire board.”

“Does this fellow look to you like he was buried properly?”

“Not even slightly,” Diotima said. “I wonder if the killer gave him a coin?”

The most basic ritual anyone will give to the dead is to place a coin underneath the tongue of the deceased, so that the dead can pay Charon the ferryman to carry their psyche across the river of woe. The observance is so fundamental to common decency that a man will pay this service to his worst enemy.

“We know he didn’t. We have the skull.”

“But a coin would have fallen through and remained in the dust beneath,” Diotima said. “It’d be easy to miss in all this accumulated muck.”

Diotima scraped her hand along the space above the vertebrae, where the skull had been. The lower jaw had fallen to the ground, no doubt when the sinews and flesh had decayed to dust. The upper jaw was still attached to the skull. With the skull returned to its proper place, it gave the skeleton the appearance of screaming for eternity. The muck Diotima referred to was thirty years’ worth of blown dirt and rat droppings. Her fingers scrabbled in the bones and dirt and raised a cloud of dust that filled my nostrils and made us both cough. It put me in mind of what Gaïs had said before—that in Hades the dead drink dust.

Diotima sat back and said two disconsolate words: “No coin.”

Now
that
was interesting. Whether the victim on the floor
was Hippias or someone else, the killer had really, really hated him. Hated him enough to deny his psyche access to peace in Hades.

Diotima asked, “Nico, do you think this man’s psyche might still be around?”

I was sure of it. Without a coin to pay Charon, the psyche of the man was trapped in the living world, and everyone knew a psyche stayed close to the body it used to inhabit.