‘I’m not, I’m not! I’m … frightened. That’s all.’
‘It’s much the same thing in the long run. Forgive me, I didn’t mean to say that and you must forget it. My sense of the dramatic makes off with me. Anything for a point, a squib, a paradox, a neat apothegm – What is truth? But you believe in the gods?’
‘Of course, Ionides.’
‘It is good.’
‘They are there, aren’t they? You do believe they are, even without being frightened?’
‘I believe it is entirely right for you to believe in them, poor babe. Never let go of them. Who knows –?’
There was a shout from some man or other and our procession ground and clopped to a halt. Men dismounted and hurried into the thorn bushes by the road. Ionides got down and went too. I had watched the floor of the vehicle or Ionides’ face. Now I lifted my eyes to the view and cried out. The whole of the deep blue gulf lay before me, and far away the great central mountains of the Peloponnesus lifted their snowy heads into the sky. Just across the gulf, yet seeming near enough to touch, was the glitter and smoke of Corinth with the fortress of Acrocorinth. I had not known that the world could look like this and I could have gazed at it for ever.
But the men had done their business and were returning. Ionides jumped up into the brake and nodded to the leader of the armed men. The leader gave a shout and dust began to rise again as we ground on up the road.
‘Honoured Ionides –’
‘Yes?’
‘The sacred besom.’
‘The god has his household too, you know – his cook, his bodyservant, his sweeper. You wouldn’t expect a god to do his own sweeping would you? But it’s entirely symbolic. His bodyservant shakes a few grains of gold dust out of a shoe and you wave the sacred besom over it seven times. I think it is seven times. On these occasions it is usually either three or seven and just now and then, nine. The gods can count, you see.’
‘I suppose so.’
‘I think you are feeling braver already.’
‘Look at all that, that world!’
‘I do, often.’
‘And our forest down there, and the pastures – Oh, Aetolia is beautiful!’
‘I am not an Aetolian myself, but yes, Aetolia is beautiful. By the way, I am an Athenian. You have heard of Athens?’
‘That is where the barbarians were beaten.’
‘Yes. A long time ago. Since then – Athens would be over there on our left, way beyond those hills, more or less in a line with Megara.’
‘That’s Corinth across there. Sicily would be on our right wouldn’t it?’
‘My goodness, you do know a lot. Yes. Sicily would be on our right and a bit south and also a long, long way away.’
We were silent for a time. I thought of my brother but said nothing about him. What was there to be said? Ionides broke the silence at last.
‘Now what are you wondering?’
‘The future. My future. All the questions. Where? How? What?’
‘As you probably remember there are two Pythias. One, the reigning Pythia, is a very distinguished lady indeed. She is blind but only to this world from which we are travelling backwards. The other is a younger lady. She is not … not such as the blind Lady. But the god permits himself to speak through whom he will. There is no merit in being an oracle, a Pythia. They are as they are, the reigning Lady is ancient, distinguished and, I would say, holy. The younger one is as you will find, for – symbolically – you will be her servant. Of course, we have slaves to do the actual work. Not that pert creature of yours, slaves born to the Foundation. Really, I sometimes think they know more about it than we do! Each of the gods, of the many, many gods, has his priest, his servant. Together they make up all souls and I am their Warden, or did I tell you that? Probably. It is my only claim to fame though. You are a good listener, my dear, and bring the worst out in me, I mean the most loquacious. You will live in your own apartment in what we call the palace of the Pythias. You will have your own servants. I shall teach you the duties and the methods of the position which I hope one day you will hold.’
‘What is that, Ionides?’
‘You will learn to listen and to speak the very words of the god.’
It was as if the world had fallen on me.
‘God help me! No! Ionides –’
He raised his voice.
‘It is a matter of some half-burnt fish and a child that recovered at the door of death.’
‘Ionides, please! It was a mistake – people made it bigger –’
‘Yes. Of course it was a mistake. Two mistakes. But you are exactly right. You are’ – and he gave a curious kind of wincing shrug – ‘a virgin. And you have … what you have. You are ignorant, and ignorance such as yours makes you look like a seer.’
‘But for what? For what?’
‘Look out there, all that. Achaia on one side of the gulf, Aetolia here. That was Sparta and Argos. Over there, shining Athens, Thebes, the Islands – so many names, so much history – but Athens is a village. She is full of fake men holding fake offices. Aetolia – a string of farms – and Delphi – Delphi to which kings sent their embassies, and Alexander begged to come – Socrates – oh, child! I will tell you! See, over there to our right, yes, is Sicily. But also, far nearer, is an awful future. There is a danger far deeper than anything that the King of Kings threatened.’
‘Why are you looking like that? It is hateful!’
‘Oh yes it is. They are. They are Romans.’
The scarf had fallen from my head and lay loosely round my neck.
‘But what can I do? I know nothing of all this.’
‘You? You can help to rescue Hellas. Rescue Athens and bring back Delphi.’
It was by the narrowest of margins that I escaped bursting into laughter. It would not have been a happy laugh. This strange man who was apparently now my guardian was becoming stranger and more unpredictable by the moment. He seemed to be stepping out of the straight, dull road of life in which generally the events of the morrow are easy to foresee from those of today. My mind dipped away towards a memory of a slave we had had, a house slave too, a slave mild even by the standards of our house, where life was more regular even than the ferry. But one day and inexplicably he had started to dance and laugh and would not stop so that at last he had to be restrained, and died so. Something, some thing indeed, had been able to get at him. After his death we had no end of trouble purifying the whole place, for that sort of thing is very disturbing. Now this distinguished and important man was bending towards me and using huge names – Hellas, Aetolia, Achaia – as if they had been pebbles to be tossed about in a game on the beach. He must have read something in my eyes, though I felt then as I have since that the capacity to read things, feelings, opinion, intentions in a face is exaggerated. Also, despite my inclination to laugh, I was afraid. That at least he was able to see, and drew back.
‘It is too soon. What would you know about these questions? Have you even heard of the Romans?’
I thought back. My brother? He had talked in my presence about Rome and Carthage. There had been fighting in Sicily.
‘A very little, my brother –’
‘Demetrios.’
‘You knew him?’
‘I knew of him. That is not as surprising as you might think. Delphi knows most things, Young Lady. And there you can see some of the topmost buildings climbing up under the Shining Rocks.’
Why describe Delphi? All the world knows how it hangs on the flank of Apollo’s mountain. We had reached very nearly to where the road opens up the valley and river below it. People talk about the air of Delphi. They seldom mention the fear that settles on you when you see it, fresh and beautiful and deadly. There are gods hiding everywhere but allowing themselves to be sensed, as if at any moment with a flash of light and a clap of thunder one would start into presence and purpose and power. I had seen Corinth across the water but never been there. So Delphi was my first city, a small and strange
one. I tried to extinguish myself.
‘Leave your eyes uncovered, Arieka. You must get used to it.’
There were crowds everywhere, and attracted by our soldiers they seemed to clot round our procession. Now the soldiers changed from their solemn walk, with spears lying over the shoulder, and used the butts. They beat the crowd back so that there was shouting and shoving and cursing. Men reached through and touched our brake. It seemed they thought it would bring them luck. A woman held out a string of blue worry beads and, biddable as ever, I touched it with a finger. She screamed in triumph, and I had done the wrong thing. In a second the crowd turned into a howling mob that fought with the soldiers. They struggled to thrust forward beads, a bracelet, an amulet, even a bit of stick so that I might touch it. At the back of the crowd someone was holding a baby over her head where I could see it. Men and women fell. A man was held up by the sheer press. There was blood on his face and his eyes were closed. The driver whipped the horse savagely and our brake surged forward. Little by little we left the crowd and its stench behind. There were open gates before us. We drove through and, glancing back, I saw them close again. Our brake slowed to a walking pace under the shade of tall trees that had even taller cliffs beyond them. Now I could hear the splash and chuckle of water. Ionides gave a huge sigh of relief.
‘Come. Let me help you down. Your maid can stay with your boxes.’
It was a building of white stone, columned and porticoed. Ionides led me up the shallow steps to the great two-leaved doors. They moved back silently and we walked through into the coolness of a great hall. A colossal statue of the god stood at the farther end. His face was bleak and beautiful and unbearded as the God Alexander but he was the God Apollo. A thin streamer of incense rose before him from a tripod. He had been dressed for the day in chlamys and cloak. I followed Ionides forward and we each took incense and sprinkled it on the glowing charcoal. The streamer of smoke thickened. Face up and hand lifted, Ionides whispered to the god. Then he led me round behind the effigy and the door opened for us. Ionides’ voice became conversational again.
‘On the right are the apartments of the Senior Lady. On the left are the apartments, as you might suppose, of the Junior Lady. You will live through here.’
A slave opened yet another door for us, a smaller one.
Light flooded the room. Outside and over the rooftops of the city was the wild side of the mountain but in deep shadow. The slave was opening a window opposite to the first. I turned to watch. As the shutters swung back it was as if the light burst in, too much light, not direct light from Apollo’s sun but coming from everywhere, dazzling from what I now saw were buildings in white stone that seemed to lift and tumble up, up rather than down, as if they were escaping the earth and flying like a storm of birds into the sky. And as my eyes became accustomed and distance deepened, I saw how the separate buildings were picked out, adorned as a woman by jewels with delicate patterns of colour which danced round architraves and capitals or glowed in the shade of colonnades. Then, beyond all and as if it held up the deep blue sky, was the precipitous wall of the Shining Rocks.
‘Oh it is so beautiful.’
‘We Greeks can do that if nothing else. Well, Young Lady, congratulations on your first day of freedom. Welcome to your home.’
I believe I smiled directly at him.
‘Thank you, Ionides Peisistratides.’
I looked away, and round the cool shade of the room. There was no pallet or chair, no chest. Ionides laughed.
‘Not this room. It is merely your entrance hall. Come.’
The slave hurried across the room and opened yet a further door.
‘Go through and examine your quarters, Arieka. I will stay here.’
I am amused when I remember my astonishment and delight – sitting room, bedroom with a bed which made the pallet I was accustomed to seem fit rather for an animal than a girl! There was even a small room dedicated to the toilet which I used with some relief for it had been a long day since dawn. There was a maid’s room, smaller and plainer but still more comfortable than the one my parents had thought fit for me. In all the rooms there were objects of which I did not know the use or the name. As if divining what I wanted the slave had been round while I had withdrawn and opened all the shutters so that the cool light of a Delphi late afternoon lay over all. It was a refreshing air, and now I realized that up here among the hills and mountains, even though my new home lay next to the bed of a river so could not at all be described as ‘up the mountain’, nevertheless the air was distinctly fresher. I saw that in winter it might indeed be cold and that made me aware of the metal bowls in each room which I had not really noticed. They were braziers. Even the servant of the Junior Pythia would be cherished and kept warm. I actually ran back to the entrance hall. Ionides laughed.
‘You will soon be accustomed to it. Tell me how delighted you are!’
‘I am! I am indeed!’
‘Now, if you are at liberty – I think you are, for your official mistress sleeps at this hour – and if the truth be told a good many other hours, too – if, as I say, you are at liberty, there is another room I want to show you. Come.’
We went back into the great hall but turned through a side door which was set in the wall behind Apollo. Steps led down, rather dark steps. Then there was another door and we went through it into the mingled brightness and shade of the colonnade which ran along the side of the building. Then we climbed some steps to a separate building. There were wide doors, open, and then an entrance hall: then more doors. We went through. I supposed it to be a temple.
The room was huge. There was no statue at the other end but open windows. Indeed, at the tops of the walls all round there were openings in which pigeons strutted and cooed. Below them the walls were criss-crossed with wooden boards which left square holes like nesting boxes. But the pigeons had deceived me. They were not nesting boxes.
‘Here we are then, Young Lady. Didn’t you know? Goats give milk. Kings give gold. What are poets to do? We call it the bookroom. You can use it when you like, since you read. Yes we knew that too. Ever since heaven knows when, and now of course, it’s the custom for every author to send a copy to the Foundation. Some of them are – well we have the script of all the plays that have been produced here. I wonder what we should start with?’
Now I had ceased looking at the walls with their rows of what were not nesting boxes I could see that there were rows of sitting places and also large chests lifted on legs. There was not much room between them. Ionides sidled towards the middle one, right in the centre of the great hall.
‘Homer, I think.’
He opened the two flaps of the lid. There was a roll on the wooden surface inside, a roll partly opened.
‘Could you read the first words to me?’
‘I – “The anger sing, O Muse – ”’
‘Yes. Very good. No. Of course it’s not Homer’s copy! He very probably couldn’t write, at least not with the alphabet. But I tell you what though. This actual copy was sent to us here, generations ago, by my ancestor Peisistratus. You won’t have heard of him, you being an Aetolian. But he was chief man of Athens and he decided what version of Homer was the best one, then sent us this copy. Of course you can’t say it’s his handwriting. A clerk probably did it or perhaps as many as ten or twenty clerks, to make what we call an edition. But you see the little note written at the side? That’s what we call a scholiast and I think, indeed I’m very nearly sure, that it was jotted down by Peisistratus’ brother – the one who did all those forgeries of our oracles! He was very naughty, but clever. Here, as you can see, he’s noted a misspelling. Well so much for the Iliad. Now this is your particular favourite, one of the twenty-four books of the Odyssey. There’s a lot of reading for you in that, isn’t there? Then Arctinus – what we call the Little Iliad. Personally I don’t think it’s called that because it’s shorter than Homer’s work but because it’s inferior. You’ll read that too I expect. Euripides. The Ion.
You’ve heard of Ion? He wasn’t my ancestor but he filled the same position as I do here. Euripides wrote the play – this roll here, rather tattered, was the prompt copy and he allowed us to keep it. It’s a rather cruel story and I think that perhaps you wouldn’t like it. Sophocles. Aeschylus – oh, any tragedian you care to mention. But we don’t have the originals of them all, you know. King Ptolemy sent round asking for the originals so that he might copy them for his great bookroom in Alexandria. What we got back were not the originals but the copies. That was really, really wicked. You can see how a decent Greek gets corrupted by eastern influences. Of course, Ptolemy – the first one – was only a Macedonian, which isn’t quite – well now what have we here? Ah yes, the Lyrists. Pindar, and I think his master, Simonides, Bacchylides, Erinna – she was a girl like you. Over here though, all on her own, we have – See!’
It was another book box on legs. He laid back the lids and I looked in. There was a book, of course. There was also a plain gold ring and a tuft of rather mousy hair pushed through it. There was an old goose feather, rather crumpled and stained here and there with black.
‘The Tenth Muse, Young Lady. Sappho of Lesbos, the island where the head of Orpheus was washed up on the beach after the Wild Women tore him to pieces. I think Sappho is going to be a particular friend of yours. Now don’t get the idea you’ll meet her in the flesh. She died hundreds of years ago, but what difference does that make? She was a young lady like you, very emotional, very passionate, I think, though she was happiest with girls as I am happiest with – well, I suppose you can guess. Perseus! Could you spare us a moment?’
A young man whom I had not noticed appeared between two of the book chests.
‘Ionides. Gracious Lady.’
‘This is Perseus, my dear, our infinitely precious slave. Aren’t you ever going to accept your freedom, Perseus?’
‘And leave this bookroom, Ion? Never! What can I do for you?’
‘Could you tell this Young Lady – you know about her – tell her about the book and the rest.’