“Don’t even ask him!” whispered one voice. “He’ll only spit at us, or hurt us.”
How I longed to take off the yellow tunic and find myself a toga to wear, and say to them, “I’m one of you. I’m a Roman, too!” But I had no toga, and I didn’t dare to speak. I hurried on.
At last I came to the temple steps, so crowded with restless sleepers they were almost impassable. The light of two burning braziers at the top of the steps helped me find my way.
Inside, the floor of the temple was likewise cluttered with sleepers. The flickering light of scattered lamps helped to guide me, but still I became disoriented within the vast interior. Weary and confused, I finally found my bearings and came to the hidden door. Slowly, with each footstep heavier than the last, I made my way up the stairs to the secret chamber in the pediment.
Zeuxidemus was where I had left him, snoring softly at the foot of the statue of Artemis.
I found a coverlet and some pillows and collapsed to the floor. Almost at once I fell into a deep sleep.
* * *
My slumber was filled with strange dreams.
I dreamed that I was not asleep at all, but lying awake amid the pillows at the feet of Artemis, with the young priest snoring nearby. Suddenly the goddess above me gave a sigh. She broke from her stiff pose, stretched her back, and shook out her arms. She looked down at me, and then leaned forward. The pendulous, fleshy orbs adorning the front of her body hung above me, swaying slightly, like heavy fruit from a tree.
“Gordianus,” she said, in a soft, pleasing voice. “They tell me you’ve come to ask a favor of me. They say you’ve gone mute and want your voice back. But you aren’t mute at all, are you?”
“No, goddess,” I said. It seemed a proper way to address her. “O great Artemis” would be too formal, while “Artemis” alone would be too familiar.
“But there is something you desire, is there not?”
I was suddenly heartsick and filled with dread. “Yes, goddess-that we all should be safe from harm.” I meant Antipater, but also Bethesda, and Amestris, and little Freny, and my father back in Rome.
I didn’t say their names aloud, but Artemis knew my thoughts. “That would be too much to ask. You must give up one of them, I think.”
“Then … if one of them dies, all the others will be well?”
“They must all die, sooner or later.” She shook her head. The motion caused the dangling orbs to sway, and now they were not fleshy at all, but more like dried gourds. They made a hollow, clacking noise that set my teeth on edge.
“Must Freny die, then?”
“Can you imagine any way that her death might be stopped? I can do nothing to interfere. She is not being sacrificed to me, but to them.” She made a gesture with one hand, seeming to indicate others who were behind her, out of sight because she blocked the view. By some magic, space itself was bent for an instant, so that I caught a glimpse of the dark things that lurked beyond her-things unspeakably hideous, hungry, and hateful. I heard a slithering of batlike wings and a shrill cackling.
I opened my mouth to cry out, but Artemis put a finger to my lips. “We must not name them,” she whispered. “Even to speak their names is to invite their wrath. That is why the poets of olden days called them Eumenides, ‘the Kindly Ones’-the very opposite of what they are.”
The rasp of slithering wings diminished, and the cackling faded. Suddenly we were no longer in the temple, but in a wood beside a stream. The goddess was no longer the Artemis of Ephesus, but Diana as I had grown up knowing her, a beautiful young maiden dressed for the hunt in a flimsy, loose-fitting tunic, tanned and tawny, bare-limbed and holding a bow. A warm breeze sighed through the sun-dappled wood, carrying a sound that came from far away, not the cackling of the Kindly Ones but something nonetheless disquieting, but still so faint and far away I paid it no attention as I stepped away from the goddess, toward the brook, where a little waterfall emptied with a babbling noise into a small pool surrounded by mossy stones. There in the pool stood Amestris, her nakedness lit by beams of sunlight and by glittering flashes of light bouncing off the water-naked as I had never seen her, for when we made love she had come to me by night and departed by dawn. I felt a stab of heartsickness and a desperate longing, for she was more beautiful than anything could be in the waking world. She radiated a kind of beauty that can be seen only in a dream, a beauty that brings pure bliss.
The disquieting noise carried on the warm breeze grew closer, and louder, but with the splashing of the waterfall in my ears I couldn’t make it out, and paid it no heed.
I stepped into the water, and realized that I was naked, too. The water was cold around my feet, while the fragrant breeze from the forest was warm upon my arms and legs. Patches of sunlight were all around me, on the mossy stones and on the leaves of the trees, on the splashing water and on the wet, glistening flesh of Amestris. I imagined that we were creatures made of sunlight, Amestris and I, and I longed for us to merge together into a single, pure beam of light. But when I reached out to touch her, she was flesh, and I was flesh, and then I wanted our flesh to touch, everywhere and all at once.
The baying of the distant hounds grew louder.
Then I realized it was not Amestris in the pool, but Freny. Still holding her by the arms, I looked over my shoulder, and saw that Diana, standing on the bank where I had left her, was very angry.
“How dare you gaze upon the virgin naked in the bath?” she shouted. “How dare you touch her?”
“But … I only wanted to save her,” I said.
The hounds were now very near, and very loud.
“Ha! Save yourself, Actaeon-if you can!” said Diana. “Run, Actaeon! Run!”
The hounds were almost upon us. I could see them in the woods beyond Diana. Freny slipped from my grasp. I looked all around and saw that she had vanished.
I ran. Naked and barefoot I bounded through the woods. Branches and twigs scraped my flesh. Brambles bit my ankles. Thorns stabbed my feet. I ran into a mass of hanging vines, which slithered around me like writhing snakes. I was trapped like a wild beast in a net, and then the hounds were upon me, tearing at me with their claws and their fangs-
“Have mercy on me, Artemis!” I cried. “Have mercy! I beg you!”
Then I remembered the talisman that hung from the chain around my neck, my lucky lion’s fang. I laughed aloud with relief, for as long as I possessed it-at least in the dream-no harm could come to me. I reached up to grab hold of it-only to find that it was gone!
I was naked and defenseless against the ravening hounds. Blood spattered my face. Thrashing in agony, I looked around me and saw that the leaves and vines were covered by a shower of blood, as if the sky had opened and poured down red rain. There was so much blood, it could not all be mine. No single mortal could contain so much blood! The rain grew even heavier, flooding the earth. There was such a rush of blood that it swept the hounds away, and the mesh of vines released me, and I found myself awash on the grisly current, wounded and weak and about to drown in a sea of blood-
“By sweet Artemis, wake up! Wake up!” someone said.
It was Zeuxidemus, shaking me awake. Above and behind him loomed the Artemis of Ephesus. The statue stared straight ahead, as stiff and silent as ever, but now silhouetted by bright sunlight.
XXV
Had I spoken in my sleep?
That was the first coherent thought that came to me, as I was gradually released from the clutches of that horrible dream. Had I muttered a name, or cried aloud for mercy? I looked at Zeuxidemus, to see by his face if I had given myself away. He only smiled and sat back, looking relieved.