Diotima wasn’t a tall woman, yet she had to stoop to be on a level with the High Priestess. Diotima said, “The last time I stood in this office, I was a scared little girl.”
“Not any longer,” Thea said.
“High Priestess, I wish to present Nicolaos; son of Sophroniscus, who is to be my husband.”
Thea looked me up and down. Her only comment was a noncommittal, “Hmm.”
I felt like I’d failed a test.
The overweight woman spoke up. “I’m Sabina,” she said.
This was the woman who’d sent the original package of skull and scroll case to Athens and started all the trouble. I made a mental note to interview her later, and noted too the way Doris and Thea tried to ignore Sabina.
I said, “I understand you’re a priestess here too?”
“I’m the treasurer of the sanctuary.”
“Is that permitted?” I asked. For a woman to manage accounts was almost unheard of.
Sabina said, in a voice that bristled, “Administration of the Sanctuary of Artemis Brauronia falls within the office of the Basileus, who is back in Athens. The Basileus trusts me to manage things here.”
Doris, in the background, rolled her eyes. Thea chose not to comment. I guessed Sabina’s claim to manage the sanctuary was a sore point.
“I see.” The Basileus had more than enough to do in Athens without having to worry about a small complex on the other side of Attica. He probably sent an assistant once a year to sign off on the books and approve funding for the next, and then tried to forget that Brauron existed.
“What can you tell us about the missing girl?” I asked.
Thea the High Priestess said, “She’s the daughter of a wealthy landholder named Polonikos-”
“I’ve met him. Are all fathers that unconcerned when their children go missing?”
“We don’t lose many girls, so I can’t form a general opinion. But to answer your real question, I wrote a letter to Polonikos the moment we knew Ophelia was missing. I sent the letter by runner and instructed him not to stop for anything but water. A return message arrived next day. Polonikos asked me to let him know when the girl showed up.” Thea grimaced. “Since then, I’ve had no news to send him.”
“Have children gone missing before?” I asked.
“Yes. They always turn up the next day, usually in the company of a passing merchant who found the child walking the road back to Athens. They get homesick, you see. But I knew right away that Ophelia’s case was different.”
“Why?”
“She liked it here. Besides which … You said you met the father?”
“Oh. Right.” It was hard to imagine the girl would be welcomed home.
Sabina said, “Of course, the whole matter might be much simpler than everyone thinks, given the unusual state of Allike’s body.”
Thea glared at her treasurer. “Sabina, there’s no need to bring that up.”
“Anything might be relevant,” I said. “What unusual state?”
“Didn’t Doris tell you? I thought she told you everything.”
“Tell us what?”
“That Allike, when we found her, she wasn’t just dead-”
“Sabina!” Thea shouted. Doris had turned green.
“She was ripped to little pieces. Torn limb from limb. Like some wild animal had gotten her. It took ages to find all the bits.”
CHAPTER FOUR
No wonder Doris had been upset, back in Athens, when we asked her how Allike died. Doris had been first to see the body of Allike. She must have been one of the ones who had to pick up what was left of her former student and put the pieces in a sack.
After that revelation, no one was inclined to say anything more.
As we emerged from Thea’s room, a skinny, naked woman with hair flying behind her leaped over the fallen logs that served as a boundary to the sanctuary. She skidded to a halt. She was breathing heavily, and not merely at the sight of me. Her hair was straggly and unkempt, her face thin and dripping. She was the runner from the woods.
We all stopped dead; it was that or walk into each other in the narrow corridor. She eyed me up and down. A slight smile crossed her lips.
“This is Gaïs, the youngest of our priestesses,” Doris said helpfully. “Gaïs, do you remember Diotima? You were both children the last time you met. And Gaïs, this man is Nicolaos son of Sophroniscus. Nicolaos and Diotima are to marry next month.”
“I remember her, and no, they won’t marry,” Gaïs said at once.
They were the first words I ever heard Gaïs speak, and I was taken aback by her strange ferocity. It was like I’d been dropped into a conversation whose first half I’d missed.
“What did you say?” I said.
She ignored me. Gaïs transferred her attention to Diotima. “The Goddess will stop you.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Diotima said. “Nico’s the most important thing in my life. Nothing will stop me marrying him.” But somehow, though her words were strong, my betrothed didn’t sound as confident as I expected.
Everyone but Gaïs turned to look at me. I blushed. Why were we suddenly having this conversation about our private lives with a stranger? What did she care about our marriage?
Gaïs stayed fixated on Diotima. She said, “If that were true, you’d have given up everything else, wouldn’t you? But I know you didn’t. She’ll stop you, somehow. Maybe she’ll kill one of you. Arrow-shooting Artemis can’t be denied.”
Diotima stepped back as if Gaïs had struck her.
“Are you threatening us?” I said, confused and angry at the effect these words had had on my girl.
Gaïs turned to me, but her eyes looked right through me, and it was clear her mind was in another place.
I said, to bring her back to reality, “Allike’s dead, and Ophelia’s missing. What do you think happened to them, Gaïs?”
Gaïs said nothing.
I repeated, “Gaïs, what happened to the girls?”
“Do you know what they drink in Hades?” Gaïs asked.
“What?”
Gaïs crouched to scrape her hands across the ground between us, then she raised her cupped hands in front of my face.
“They drink dust.”
She opened her fingers, and the dry, dry dust fell between us.
Gaïs had walked off, after that extraordinary statement, leaving the rest of us to stare at one another. Thea and Doris were obviously embarrassed by their young priestess but said nothing. Sabina seemed to enjoy their discomfort. We made small talk before Diotima pointed out that the sun had fallen below the horizon.
In a single day, we had hired a cart and donkey, traveled the breadth of Attica, interviewed men, women, and a crazy priestess, and been attacked by an unknown archer. I reflected that this job didn’t pay enough. In fact, since I was still waiting on Pericles, it didn’t pay anything at all. But now it was evening, there was nothing else we could do, and Diotima and I were exhausted.
Sabina had assigned us sleeping spaces.
“You’re not married?” was the first thing she asked.
“No. Not yet.”
“Then you certainly won’t be sleeping together.”
I protested, “But-”
“I don’t care what you do back in Athens,” Sabina snapped. “Though I’m shocked to hear one of our own, a former Little Bear no less, could so forget herself as to descend into debauchery. Did we teach you nothing about proper conduct, girl?” Sabina glared at Diotima, who blushed bright red.
Sabina said, “Here, you will conform to the proprieties. We have standards to maintain before the girls.”
Diotima said, “Please, Sabina, we are betrothed, and soon we’ll be-”
“I’m not interested in your rationalizations either. That’s for your own conscience. Now where was I? Oh yes, accommodation … beds. You can sleep with the maintenance men,” she said to me. “There’s a wooden hut out back.”