The Marathon Conspiracy (21 page)

But the priestesses had overheard us. They stared at Socrates in astonishment.

Thea said, “Did the child say he knows the answer? Yes? Speak up, lad. Is the spring polluted or clean?”

Socrates said, “Well, the water was polluted when the corpse hit it. So that water couldn’t cleanse anything.”

“This is your idea of a solution?” Diotima said, exasperated. “Socrates—”

“But that’s a big sacred spring,” Socrates plowed on. “
Some
of the water touched the corpse, and other parts of the water
didn’t
.”

Everyone nodded in unison.

“The water that
didn’t
touch the corpse was never polluted. Which means the unpolluted water cleansed the polluted water.”

“That’s really very clever,” Sabina said, half to herself.

“What made you think of such a thing?” Diotima asked.

“I remembered when Nico and I talked to that philosopher last year, the one who works for Pericles. Remember, Nico? He said everything was made of tiny particles? Well, if the water’s all tiny particles, then obviously the tiny particles that never went near the body never had a chance to be polluted.”

“What about the dead man’s psyche?” Sabina asked.

Thea said, “It must still be here.”

“Probably in the spring,” Doris added. “It’ll terrify the girls every time they go for water unless we do something about it.”

I exploded. “Do we care more about the religious problems here, or the killing?”

Diotima looked at me coldly. “This
is
a religious community, you know, Nico. I suppose you noticed that big building out there? They call it a temple.”

“Did anyone see anything in the night?” I asked the room in general. “Or hear anything?”

Silence. It had been a silly question—obviously if any innocent person had known something, they would already have spoken up—but I had to ask it to make my next point clear. Doris saved me the trouble.

“This means the murderer is among us,” Doris said. “Whoever it is, they’re here.”

Thea put her head in her hands. “This could end the sanctuary.”

“Permanent guards,” Zeke said. “I’ll set the men to guard every point. It means we won’t get any work done, but …” He shrugged.

“But staying alive is more important,” Gaïs said matter-of-factly. “I hope we can. Above all else, we must protect the girls.”

T
HE MEETING BROKE
up in confusion. The priestesses left the room in a daze. Diotima left with Gaïs to see to the girls, and to arrange matters so that no child was ever on her own. The
absence of both women gave me a chance I’d been hoping would come.

I asked to speak to Thea privately. She looked at me oddly but nodded. We remained in her office as the others left. They went with backward glances, obviously wondering what I was up to.

When we were alone, I said, “I wanted to ask you, High Priestess, what it is between Gaïs and Diotima.”

Thea had the grace not to look surprised at my question. “I thought I was the only one who’d noticed,” she said. “I don’t know. Perhaps it’s something that happened when they were children.”

“Gaïs said to me that something went wrong at Diotima’s initiation ceremony.” I was unwilling to repeat Gaïs’s claim that Diotima had cheated; not until I knew what had really happened.

Thea frowned. “If it did, I don’t know about it.”

“Then could you tell me what the initiation ceremony truly means?”

Thea, who had been standing, put a hand out to the desk beside her and used it to ease herself down to a chair. She said, “I understand you have no sisters? Well, when a girl is born we call her
kore
, which means maiden. This you know.”

“Yes.”

“When she is ready to be betrothed she becomes a
nymphe
, and nymphe she remains until motherhood, when we call her
gyne
. These are the three phases of a woman’s life: the maid, the nymph, and the mother. Every girl you see at this sanctuary is kore. They are children, we teach them as children, we treat them as children. Because they
are
children. But when they leave this place, they leave as nymphe. Brauron is a place of transformation.”

“When does it happen?”

“At that rite of transformation you mentioned. Each child enters the temple with those girlish things that were important to her in childhood.”

“You mean her toys?”

Thea gave one sharp nod. “The transformation to womanhood is one of the deepest mysteries in a woman’s life. At the end of her year with us, she marks her new status by dedicating her toys to the Goddess. She is no longer a child, you see, so she no longer needs them. When she leaves the temple, she leaves as a woman who has left her childhood behind her.”

“I see.” I thought about it. It seemed harsh, perhaps as harsh as a man’s time in the army, but at least it was over quickly.

“Don’t the girls ever fight?” I asked. “Nasty tricks? Booby traps? I know what happens when you lump boys together.”

“We’ve had catfights aplenty in the courtyard, when arguments overheat. We’ve had scratching and hair pulling and bared claws going for faces, but never, I say
never
, has one girl tried to kill another. Girls don’t fight with their fists, as boys do, Nicolaos; they do it with cold words and ugly behavior.”

“What do you do when a girl comes to you with such a problem?”

“I tell her to sort it out, and send her back to the other girls.”

“You can’t be serious!”

“I am. These girls must learn to deal with each other. It’s essential. The girls we teach are destined to marry the most powerful men in Athens. I can’t be there for the rest of their lives to protect the weak ones. Somehow they have to find that balance for themselves. No, Nicolaos, I want as many personal issues as possible sorted out here at Brauron, where I can keep an eye on things, and that means letting nature take its course.”

I said, “You must end up with some unhappy girls.”

“I’m not here to make them happy,” said the High Priestess. “I’m here to turn them into the backbone of Athens. The men might make the decisions at the
ecclesia
, and they fight the wars, but where would the men be, where would we all be, if the women weren’t running the homes and raising the children and nudging the men in the direction they need to go? There’d be no point to life, would there? Men might deny it in public, but in the
privacy of their homes they listen carefully to their wives. Sons respect their mothers. Husbands respect their wives and care for their daughters.”

I’d never thought of this before, but of course, the High Priestess was right. Out here, in the backwoods of Attica, at a tiny temple few ever thought about, this remarkable woman was inventing our future.

I said, “Gaïs was an orphan. Does the sanctuary take in many?”

“No. The sanctuary’s taken in a mere handful of foundlings over the years. There are restrictions on whom we’ll accept. To start with, the babe must be a girl! There must be no possible legal guardian for the child. There must be a high likelihood the child is born of citizens.”

“Why?”

“Because nobody wants to encourage slaves to have illegitimate children and then abandon them on our steps. An awful ethical position.”

“Oh,” I said, taken aback. “Of course.”

“Also, a girl-child raised by us has almost the same status as the daughter of a well-born citizen. A poor father with too many mouths to feed might be tempted to try his luck, to give his daughter a chance at a better life. One of the first things we do when a child turns up is check to see which local family is missing one.”

“How is it that Gaïs isn’t married?” I asked.

Thea raised her arms in despair. “We tried. Believe me, we tried. But every time a prospective suitor arrived with his father, Gaïs would run in and … well, you’ve seen how she looks after those wild runs. And then she says those strange things that often sound slightly threatening … The men can’t wait to get away from her. One time I ordered her to be held down; we brushed her hair and made her put on a pretty dress. It didn’t help. She still managed to scare away the suitor. You and I know there’s no harm in her—”

“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.

I
T 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.”