“Is there a bed there?” I asked.
“I’m sure you’ll make do. I’ve never looked inside, myself. The smell of all those unwashed men drives me away.” Sabina turned to Diotima and frowned. “Normally a visiting priestess would be housed with the rest of us, in the east wing, but there are no spare beds at the moment. We could make up a pallet, of course, but you’d be sleeping on the stone floor. We do have two spare beds in the west wing, if you don’t mind sleeping with the girls in a dorm room.”
“That might be better,” Diotima said at once, and I knew she was thinking the farther away she was from Sabina, the better. She probably didn’t realize when she said it, but the two spares must surely have belonged to Allike and Ophelia.
Dinner that night was an interesting affair. Diotima ate with the women and girls, while I ate with the men. The conversation among the men was, predictably, about the women. Not that much of what they had to say was useful, nor repeatable if it came to that, though the speculation about what Sabina might do in her lonely bed was amusing and, based on what I knew of her, quite possibly correct.
There were eleven men, some of them slaves, some of them free men so poor they had to work at the temple for the few coins it paid. The slaves were the better off; they at least had guaranteed food and a place to sleep at no cost.
Zeke puzzled me. Normally you can tell which city a man is from by his accent, but Zeke I couldn’t place at all. He wasn’t from Attica, of that I was certain. I wasn’t even sure whether he was a slave or a free man. His job was menial; normally a foreign man with a menial job must be a slave, yet Zeke neither behaved nor was treated like one. He was clearly the leader, by age, by experience, by force of personality. Zeke kept apart, spoke little, except to tone down with his soft voice any argument that threatened to become a fight, treated slave and free man alike, and let the men have their way. He reminded me of Pythax, my future father-in-law: a man who lived outside the system, while supporting it to the core.
Diotima and I met after dinner on the lush, green grass of the courtyard. A quarter of the girls had set about clearing up, while the others sang and danced in the moonlight. We sat and listened to the girls’ voices. The moon was beautiful in the sky, and a soft, warm breeze blew across the sanctuary.
Lying back on the grass, I said, “It’s hard to believe such a lovely place could harbor evil.”
“Clearly you’ve never been to a girls’ school before,” Diotima said.
I looked over at her. “You didn’t like it here?”
“I loved the place. I didn’t like the other girls.”
“Did you really know Gaïs when you were children? Was she always crazy?”
“Yes to the first. She was here before I arrived. She was still here when I left. But she’s changed a lot.”
“You mean she wasn’t always crazy.”
“I don’t remember her like this,” Diotima admitted. “She was always something of a loner. But then, so was I.”
“You didn’t become two loners together?” I asked.
Diotima snorted. “Not with her. I remember she was arrogant even back then. She always pushed people away.”
“How come she’s still at Brauron? I thought everyone stayed for a year.”
“The sanctuary takes in a few orphan girls, ones with nowhere else to go. Gaïs was one of those. She grew up here.”
“It’s a wonder she isn’t married,” I said. “She certainly should be.”
“Yes, I wondered about that too,” Diotima said. “I never expected to find her still here.”
It was the norm for girls to have marriages arranged for them by the time they were fifteen. Any significant age past that, and eyebrows were raised: people would start to wonder what was wrong with the girl. Diotima had been preserved to twenty because of her unorthodox parentage, but that was all to the good, because it had saved her for me, who otherwise would never have met my perfect girl. Gaïs had no such excuse.
I thought about the temple complex. Although it was beautiful, it was also very small; a world totally enclosed, with the same priestesses, who never came or went, and children who were replaced every year. A child who lived here had no chance to make any permanent friends. It was no wonder Gaïs went crazy. Then I thought about what the crazy woman had said. I hesitated, slightly afraid to ask, but I wanted to know.
“Diotima, why did Gaïs say that Artemis would prevent you from marrying?”
“I’d rather not talk about that, Nico.”
“Oh.” I was taken aback. I’d thought we had no secrets.
“Didn’t we just agree she was crazy?” Diotima said. “Crazy people say crazy things.”
I asked, “What was she going on about, with all that talk of the dead drinking dust in Hades?”
“It’s true,” Diotima said.
“The subject doesn’t usually come up in casual conversation.”
Diotima hesitated. “I don’t know. It sounded to me like she thinks Ophelia’s dead.”
“Or she knows Ophelia’s dead.”
“You might be right,” Diotima admitted. “I don’t like Gaïs, but I’d hate to think she had something to do with this.”
“Let’s find out.” I nodded in the direction of the Sacred Spring. Torches had been set up there, the spikes of their long, thin wooden poles pushed into the soil. In the flickering yellow-red light, I could see only silhouettes, but the shape of Gaïs was distinctive, even when she was wearing clothes. She was taller than the girls, but thinner than every other priestess. No one could miss her as she jumped and spun. A handful of the Little Bears were with her. They all weaved in and out of the light, and as they moved they sang. I could barely hear the words, but it sounded like a hymn to Artemis. Gaïs seemed to have a thing for Artemis even above what you might expect of a priestess.
I helped Diotima to rise, and together we walked to where the girls danced. I noticed that though the spring was nearby, the torchlight didn’t quite extend to its edge. I hoped nobody would fall in.
Diotima and I watched the dance for a few moments. It was something you’d never see in Athens, where girls are mostly kept inside, and certainly never allowed out on their own. It occurred to me that the only girl-children I’d ever seen in Athens were either slaves or the daughters of citizens out on errands in the company of their mothers, or on special ceremony days when the girls would lead the public processions. But girls playing in the street? It never happened in the city. Only boys played outside. Here, it happened every day. I wondered how a child might react to such sudden freedom. It was a good thing they had a sensible woman like Doris to keep them in line, like the mother she was. Gaïs, I could see, being so much closer to the girls in age, was more like a big sister. She danced with every bit of the same energy as the children, as she laughed and sang to her Goddess. There was nothing now of the oddness that we’d seen in Gaïs that afternoon.
I waved to the leader of the pack. “Gaïs! Can we have a word with you?”
Gaïs started. She hadn’t noticed us, standing in the dark. She told the girls to keep going and walked over to us. She was dressed in a priestess chiton, but one she had torn down to fit her slimness. She stood before us and said nothing.
I said, “Gaïs, did you shoot an arrow at us this afternoon?”
“No, was I supposed to?” She looked at us as if we were the mad ones.
“They say Allike was torn apart,” I said to her. “I’m sorry to mention it, but I must. They say there’s a bear out there. Do you think a bear might have killed Allike?”
Gaïs almost recoiled. “Never! The Goddess would never allow the greater servant to harm the lesser.”
“Huh?”
“She means a bear wouldn’t have hurt Allike,” Diotima translated for me. “When Artemis walks the earth, she’s attended by the wild bears of the wood, who are her sacred servants. That’s why the girls here are called the Little Bears, Nico, because they’re the little servants of Artemis. Gaïs is saying that the larger servant-the bear-wouldn’t harm the smaller, Allike.”