“What about?”
“What do you talk about, with a complete stranger you’re supposed to marry?”
“Beats me.”
“You two didn’t go through the same thing?”
“We arranged matters the other way around.”
“Lucky you. Ophelia and I spent all our time asking each other dumb questions. What do you like to do? What’s your favorite food?”
“And?”
“Her favorite food is apples.”
“No, I meant, what did you decide about each other?”
“Oh. I decided I liked her. She was nice. I was shocked when I realized she was more scared of me than I was of her.” He paused. “No, that’s wrong. We were both scared of marriage. That last evening, when they caught us-”
“They caught you meeting?” I said, aghast.
“Didn’t I mention that? It was because we were arguing. Our voices were raised.” He looked abashed. “Our first argument. I told her she had to do something about it, and she refused.”
“Do something about what?”
“Ophelia told me someone was trying to kill her. Those were the last words she said to me, before the temple staff found us.” He beat his fists on the ground until his knuckles bled. “She told me, and I didn’t do a thing to save her.”
There was a sudden silence between us. I broke it with one word.
“Why?”
“Why what?” He looked at his knuckles and winced.
“Why did Ophelia say someone wanted her dead?”
“It was when I told her to be careful-because Allike had been killed by the bear, you know.”
“No, we don’t know,” I said. “Doris the priestess said there were sightings, and Sabina told us Allike’s remains looked like she’d been torn apart, but everyone knows there are no bears in Attica. Have you seen this bear?”
“Well, no,” Melo conceded. “But other people have seen it.”
“Who? Name them.”
“I can’t. But everyone says it’s out there.” Melo paused, then added, “Ophelia was like you. She didn’t believe in the bear story either.”
“What?”
“We were talking about it. Ophelia said it couldn’t be the bear. She told me she knew a human had killed Allike. She said it was something to do with a scroll.”
Diotima and I shared a look.
“Did she tell anyone else this?” Diotima asked.
“She might have said something to Gaïs. Ophelia liked Gaïs.”
“Have you seen Gaïs?”
“I think so. Is she the thin one with the small breasts and the nice legs?”
“That’s her,” I said. “Shame about the face though.”
“A little horsey,” Melo allowed.
Diotima gave us both a sour look. “Is that really how men describe women?”
“Sorry about that,” I said to her.
Melo said, “I’ve seen her running around. A couple of times I approached her to ask her about Ophelia, but she saw me and ran away.”
“Where did Ophelia go, Melo?”
“If I knew that, I wouldn’t be looking for her!” The tone of exasperation in his voice seemed genuine to me.
“She said she had a friend who’d protect her,” Melo continued. “When I pressed her she wouldn’t say more. She just said that she’d stay with the friend.”
It seemed to me impossible that Ophelia should have a friend with a house in Brauron. It might be different if her family lived locally, but I knew they were in Athens.
I said, “If Ophelia’s in hiding, why are you skulking about the sanctuary?”
“I was investigating, or rather, I was wondering how to go about it. How do you investigate?”
“Mostly you ask people questions. You look for the contradictions in their answers.”
“What if there aren’t any?”
“There always are,” I said confidently, and hoped I was right. “Melo, if you want to help, you can do it best by continuing your search. But not near the sanctuary, all right? Stay away from this place. People might get the wrong ideas.”
“All right.”
“If Diotima gets together a search party, will you guide it?” I asked.
“Me?” Diotima said, surprised. “What will you be doing?”
“I’m off to Athens,” I said. “Somebody needs to trace that missing scroll,” I told her. “The question is, how many scrolls were in the case when the Basileus opened it? He’ll talk to me, but not to you.”
Diotima nodded reluctantly. She knew that was true.
“You can talk to Thea,” I said. “Get her to assign the slaves to cross the countryside.”
Melo nodded. “I know where to look,” he said. “I know every farmhouse, every hut, every estate within walking distance. I can ask if they have her.”
“Would they tell you the truth?”
“Yes. I’m her betrothed,” he said simply. “They can’t deny me. Besides, I’m a local, sort of. They’ll support me, I know it. But …” He paused, a long time. “If Ophelia was at a farm, she’d have contacted me by now. I fear she may have been on her way to that safe place she talked of when she was stopped.”
“Stopped?”
“By whoever killed Allike.” Melo picked himself up. “I’ll help you with your search, if you tell me what you know about what’s going on at the sanctuary.”
“Agreed.”
He ran off, over the hills and to the north. I worried about that bash to the head we’d given him, but he was a man, and he knew his own business. It was better to leave him be.
Diotima watched him go and said, “Poor fellow.”
“Do you believe him?”
Diotima looked down to where the blood from his knuckles had stained the sand. “Don’t you?”
I got up and dusted off my knees. So did Diotima.
“He’s not exactly bright. But yes, I believe him,” I said. “This means Ophelia wasn’t abducted. She’s out there somewhere.”
“Nico, if Ophelia trusted Melo like he says, why didn’t she go to him for that safe place?”
I was thunderstruck. “I didn’t think of that.”
Diotima’s face was troubled. “It’s hard to know whom to trust. Except for Doris. I trust Doris.”
“Let’s try something different.”
“What?”
“Everyone agrees Ophelia disappeared overnight, don’t they?”
“Yes.”
“And they said that guards had been set around the sanctuary, after Allike died?”
“Yes.”
“Then how did a child sneak past those guards?”
CHAPTER FIVE
Next morning I got my first proper look around. The sanctuary at Brauron was much more than a temple. In Athens, all the temples are within walking distance of home. At Brauron, the temple complex is the home.
The center of the sanctuary wasn’t the temple, as you might expect, but the courtyard in which Diotima and I had sat the night before. It was covered from side to side in thick grass that had been watered and scythed over and over until it felt like walking on a soft rug. Not once in all the time I spent at Brauron did I ever see that courtyard empty if there was light to see by; there was always a priestess or two, girls sitting on the grass and weaving, or singing, or dancing, or running or playing or doing all of those things at once.
Surrounding the courtyard was a stoa-three covered walkways with columns to support the roof and rooms behind-the whole built using stone blocks and constructed in the shape of the letter pi: π. Four small dorms for the girls on the left, each room six paces by six, and workrooms at the top. The right-hand eastern side was twice the length of the other two sides and contained rooms for the priestesses and temple administration. The stoa was open to the south to let in the sun, which made the courtyard and the surrounding rooms all the more pleasant and meant that girls who had spent too much of their lives indoors rapidly became sore with sunburn.
The temple to the Goddess lay at the left foot of the stoa. We stepped past the altar, up the steps and into the temple.
The pronaos was small, its only purpose to lead into the main temple space, but it had one remarkable feature: hung on the left-hand wall was an enormous mirror of beautifully polished bronze. It was so large that I could see all my face and chest merely by standing before it.