She nodded. ‘I think Mama is dead.’ She looked out to sea. ‘There’s been something missing – something gone-’ She lost her battle with tears and subsided into his shoulder.
Satyrus wept with her, clinging to her. They wept for a few minutes, until the tears had no point, and then they both stopped, as if on cue.
‘Coenus is still alive,’ Satyrus said.
‘Our father’s friend,’ Melitta added. They got up together. Hand in hand, eyes red, they walked up the shingle towards the town, such as it was.
Behind them, a long triangular sail cut the horizon.
They found the Temple of Herakles two stades outside of town, on a small bluff that looked over the bay and seemed free of the smell. It was the only temple that the town had, and the priestess was old and nearly blind, but she had a dozen attendants and a pair of healthy slaves. She received them on the portico of the temple, seated on a heavy wooden chair. Her attendants gathered around her, sitting on the steps.
Satyrus thought that she looked friendly, but she scared him too. It was Melitta who first gathered the courage to speak.
‘We need to make sacrifice for a friend who is sick,’ Melitta said. They were still holding hands, and they bowed together.
‘Come here, child,’ said the crone, raising her head to look at them around her cataracts. ‘Handsome children. Polite. But unclean. You are both unclean. At your age!’ She sniffed.
Satyrus bowed his head. ‘Unclean, despoina?’
She gripped his right hand in hers, and he felt the bite of her nails in his palm. She raised it to her nostrils. ‘I can smell blood even through the fish sauce, boy. You killed. You have not cleaned yourself. And your sister – she too has killed.’ She raised her head again, and smoke from the temple brazier behind her rose in a fantastic curl behind her head like a sign from the god.
Satyrus made the satyr’s head sign with his left hand to avert misfortune. ‘How may I become clean?’ he asked.
She tugged at his hand. ‘You are a gentleman, I can see that. Where are you from?’
He didn’t want to resist her tug. He looked into her eyes, but the cataracts made them hard to read. He felt a rush of fear. ‘We – we come from Tanais,’ he said.
‘Ahh,’ she said, as if satisfied. ‘And how do a pair of children come to me soaked in blood?’
‘Men tried to kill us,’ Melitta said. ‘Bandits. We shot them with bows.’
‘One of them was a girl,’ Satyrus said, the words coming from deep within him. ‘I shot her to end her pain. She had an arrow in her guts and she begged-’ He sobbed. He could see her sweat-filled hair.
The priestess nodded. ‘Life-taking is a nasty business,’ she said. ‘Horrible for children.’ She turned to her attendants. ‘Bathe the boy for the ritual. Then bathe the girl.’ To Satyrus, she said, ‘When you are clean, you may sacrifice a black kid – each – and I will say the prayer lest some uncleanness cling to you.’ She looked unseeing out over the bay. ‘Where is your friend?’ she asked.
‘Friend?’ asked Satyrus, who was still thinking of the girl he’d killed. He wondered if her face would ever leave him.
‘You have a friend who is sick, yes?’ the priestess asked. Her voice rasped like the sound of a woman scraping cheese with a grater. ‘This temple also serves Artemis and Apollo. Did you not know?’
‘We did not,’ Melitta said. She saw now the statue of her patron goddess among the Greeks, a young woman with a bow. She bowed deeply to the priestess. ‘We have a sick friend in town.’
The priestess nodded. ‘The men in the trireme are searching for you. You will be safe here, and nothing is more important than that we make you clean. I will send a slave to your friends. They must come here.’
Satyrus turned and for the first time saw the trireme coming into the harbour under sail.
Coenus came up the bluff in a litter while the trireme was performing the laborious task of turning around under oars and backing her stern on to the beach. She was full of men – Satyrus could see the warm wink of sun on bronze on her deck. Philokles put the horses in a stand of oaks behind the temple.
‘You bet your life on an old priestess,’ he said.
Satyrus stared at the marble under his feet. ‘You didn’t lie to the people in the wine shop.’
Philokles nodded. ‘I didn’t tell them the truth, either. They assumed that we were small merchants from up the coast, and I let them think it.’ He shrugged. ‘It doesn’t matter. The navarch on that fucking trireme will be on to us in twenty questions.’
Theron dumped a heavy wool bag inside the precincts of the temple. ‘Are we asking sanctuary? Or running?’
The old priestess emerged, supported by the larger of her two slaves. ‘The children are bathing to be clean in the eye of the gods,’ she said, ‘a process that would benefit you too, oath-breaker.’ Then she pointed at Coenus with a talon-like finger. ‘Take him to the sanctuary. We will not give him up, nor will those dogs from Pantecapaeum have him. The rest of you should ride as soon as you are clean. He’ll only slow you.’
Philokles bowed. ‘As you will, holy one. Why do you help us?’
She shook her head in annoyance. ‘I can tell the difference between good and evil. Can’t you?’
‘Then you know why I broke my oath,’ Philokles said.
‘I?’ she asked. ‘The gods know. I am a foolish old woman who loves to see brave men do worthy deeds. Why did you break your oath?’
‘To save these children,’ Philokles said.
‘Is that the only oath you’ve broken?’ she asked, and Philokles winced.
She turned. ‘The girl is bathed and clean,’ she said. ‘Come, boy.’
He followed the old woman into the sanctuary, which was sumptuous beyond anything in Tanais, with walls picked out in coloured scenes showing the triumph of Herakles, the birth, the trials of Leto and more than he could easily take in. There was a statue of Apollo as a young archer, in bright orange bronze, his eyes and hair gold, and his bow of bronze shooting a golden arrow. In the centre of the sanctuary was a pool. The water moved and bubbled. Above the pool stood a great statue of Herakles, nude except for a lion skin, standing in the first guard position of the pankration. The sight of the statue made the hair stand up on the back of Satyrus’s neck, and he smelled wet fur, a heady, bitter smell like a cat. Or a lion skin.
‘This is the pool of the god,’ she said. ‘It was here before there was a temple. We do not let just any traveller enter this pool. Remember as you go in that Herakles was a man, but by his deeds he became a god.’
An attendant took his chiton, unpinned the pins and threw the garment into the fire that burned on the altar. He dropped the brooches – not his best pair, but solid silver – into a bowl on the altar, and the fire on the altar flared and smoked.
‘The god accepts your offering and your state,’ the priestess said. ‘Into the water with you.’
Satyrus thought that his sister had just done this. He wondered why he hadn’t seen her.
Strong hands grasped him and he hit the water and was under it in a moment. The water was warmer than blood and bubbled fiercely, fizzing around his limbs and with bubbles rising between his legs and up his chest. He rose to the surface and took a breath, eyes tightly closed, and somebody placed a hand on his head. ‘Pray,’ he was commanded, and the hand pressed him down into the pool.
He could hear the voice counting above him. The bubbles continued to rise around him and he was on the edge of panic, his hair rising in the water and his skin scoured and his breath stopped so that coloured flashes came before his eyes, and still the hand pressed on his head. The pool was too small for him to stretch his arms. He was trapped.
‘Pray!’ the voice said.
Lord of the sun, golden archer, he began. What was he praying for? He wanted to live! Not drown!
Coenus.
Golden archer, take your shaft from the side of my friend Coenus, he prayed. And forgive me for killing that girl. I only did it because – she begged – I couldn’t stand her pain!