‘It’s fine. She’s not real.’
‘I hope you’re right.’ I shuddered. ‘The last thing we want to do is anger any supernatural powers.’
At that moment a flash of blue illuminated the inside of the temple and we heard a splash and a groan.
‘Oh no!’ hissed Dinu. ‘I think someone else has come through the portal!’
15
Party Crasher
‘Blow out the lamp!’ I hissed. ‘Don’t make a noise!’
Dinu blew out the flickering flame of the oil lamp and for a moment the world was black.
Then a familiar girl’s voice groaned in the darkness. ‘Dinu! Alex! Help!’
‘Onions!’ Dinu used one of his favourite Romanian swear words. ‘It’s my sister!’
I realised I had been holding my breath. ‘Your sister?’
‘Yeah.’ Then he called out, ‘Stay there, Crina! We’re coming!’
We groped our way back through the tripods, tables and vases until we reached the reflecting pool at the foot of the cult statue.
The portal was no longer glowing, but a single oil lamp still burned at the goddess’s feet. It dimly showed the shape of someone sitting in the water.
‘Crina, is that you?’ whispered Dinu.
‘Dinu!’ she cried. ‘Where are you?’
‘Right here.’ He splashed through the pool and helped her up.
‘Oh, Dinu!’ She threw her arms around her brother. ‘Going through the portal was horrible.’
The flickering oil-light at the base of the statue was just bright enough to show Crina in a wet dress plastered to her body. It looked like the turquoise one she had worn at dinner the first night.
‘Crina!’ I cried. ‘You’re wearing clothes! You’re supposed to come through naked!’
‘Yeah. Like that was ever going to happen!’ she groaned.
‘Why didn’t her clothes burn?’ Dinu asked me.
‘Maybe because she landed in water?’
‘My dress is linen,’ said Crina. ‘It’s one-hundred-per-cent-organic. Made of a pounded plant called flax.’ Suddenly she bent forward as if she had stomach cramps. ‘Oh, I feel sick.’
‘It will pass,’ I said. I squinted in the darkness and saw that her hair was plaited and pinned up in an ancient hairstyle.
‘Crina,’ I said, ‘are you wearing any metal hairpins?’
‘Of course not,’ she said. ‘They’re wood and bone. Organic. And I don’t have any metal fillings in my teeth.’
‘How did you know that metal fillings could explode but that organic material might not burn?’
There was a pause. Then, ‘From your diary.’
‘What diary?’ I said, but I had a terrible feeling I knew.
‘The one you wrote about your trip to Roman London.’
Dinu turned on me. ‘You wrote a diary about our trip? You weren’t supposed to say anything.’
‘I didn’t say anything,’ I protested. ‘But I did write some stuff down.’ I rounded on Crina. ‘You went through my things?’
‘Just a little. That time I came round to get Dinu and the two of you were still up on the common? You really shouldn’t leave private things lying around.’
‘It wasn’t lying around!’ I spluttered. ‘It was on my desk, in my room, hidden under some old school notebooks.’
‘Yeah. I asked your gran if I could use the loo, but your bedroom door was open and I couldn’t resist looking around. The first few pages were really good so I snuck it home to read it.’
‘You actually took it home? That’s stealing!’
‘You write really well,’ she said.
‘Really?’ I felt a flush of pleasure warm my cheeks.
‘Yeah. I thought it was fiction at first. Then I googled Solomon Daisy and realised he was real. When you won that free holiday to Athens I figured he was behind it.’
‘You what?’
‘Sure. It was obvious.’
Dinu shook his head. ‘She figured it out before we did, dude.’
I saw her eyes gleam in the moonlight as they grew wider. ‘You didn’t know he was planning to send you back? I thought you knew and were ignoring our deal.’
‘What deal?’
‘You promised that if you ever went back, you’d take me with you.’
‘I swear we had no idea what he was plotting until yesterday morning when he turned up in his limo.’
Dinu said, ‘How did you know to come through the portal here and now?’
‘At the hotel, I used a glass pressed against the wall to eavesdrop, like before. I heard you talking about being picked up tonight at eleven thirty. So I put on black jeans and a black hoodie over my Greek-style dress. Then I snuck down early, around eleven fifteen. I hailed a taxi and got him to wait across the street. When you guys left, I followed you to the first place and then here to the Parthenon …’
‘I knew somebody was following us!’ said Dinu.
‘Then,’ said Crina, ‘I watched you go through.’
I flushed. ‘So you saw me …?’
‘Yeah. I saw you naked. No biggie. Anyway, when the guards were talking to Solomon Daisy and the tech guys, I took off my jeans and hoodie and ran through after you.’
Dinu started speaking in urgent Romanian.
She interrupted him in English. ‘No way am I staying here until the portal comes on again! And I’m not going straight back either. I’m better prepared for this than you are.’
She took a step towards the edge of the pool but her knees wobbled and if we hadn’t jumped forward to catch her, she would have fallen back in the water. When I put my arm around her, to help her out, I could feel her shivering.
I almost felt sorry for her but then she giggled. ‘What are you wearing, Alex? You’re dressed like a girl.’
I took my arm from around her shoulders. ‘This place isn’t exactly TK Maxx,’ I snapped. ‘This was all I could find.’
‘So what is plan?’ she said.
In Greek.
Once again, I was impressed.
‘You’ve been learning Greek?’
‘Panu gay,’ she said. Certainly. ‘I can say “Hello”, “I’m lost” and “I would like …”’
‘That last one is modern Greek,’ I said.
‘Alay-thay leg-ace, O Soak-rah-tace,’ she said. You speak the truth, Socrates.
I couldn’t help grinning, but Dinu was not so easily charmed. He folded his arms across his chest. ‘The plan is to find Socrates and then come straight back here in twenty-four hours. For that, Alex and I get ten mil each.’
‘I can help.’
‘You’re not getting a penny of my money,’ he said.
‘I don’t care about your stupid money. I want to see what ancient Athens looks like.’ She turned to me. ‘You promised I could come with you.’
I said, ‘You can come with us on one condition. Promise to stay close and not talk. Right, Dinu?’
‘Right.’ I could hear the grin in his voice. ‘You have to be like our slave.’
A noise near the front of the temple made us all turn.
‘What was that?’ hissed Dinu.
‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘We’d better get out of sight.’
But it was too late. The massive double doors of the temple swung open to show a bearded man with a brightly flaming torch.
He was flanked by two archers wearing something like striped pyjamas and Smurf hats. They looked utterly bizarre.
But I didn’t laugh.
They already had their arrows notched and pointed at us.
16
Threshold Guardians
Most languages have a singular and a plural. Singular is the form a word takes when there is only one.
You, for example.
As in, ‘I am pointing an arrow at you’ when there is only one of you.
Plural is for more than one.
As in, ‘We are pointing arrows at you’ when there are lots of you.
But ancient
Greek has something called a ‘dual’ which they use for just two things, especially a pair:
As in, a pair of oxen, a pair of hands, a pair of ears …
So when the man with the beard shouted ‘Don’t move or we’ll shoot the two of you!’ using the dual form of ‘you’, I was confused at first.
Then I realised what it meant.
He hadn’t seen Crina.
She must have slipped into the shadows.
As Dinu and I put up our hands like in the movies, I hissed, ‘Don’t look for Crina! They haven’t spotted her.’
He gave a small nod and kept his eyes front.
The archers came forward and grabbed us roughly by an arm each. They smelled so strongly of sweat and urine that I wondered if they ever bathed. The two of them shoved us, over the threshold of the temple and down three massive stairs. Once outside the sacred precinct of the temple, they forced us down on our knees at the feet of Beardy Guy, who wore a long robe and fancy sandals. The stony ground was just as hard back then as it was in our time.
‘Who are you two?’ demanded Beardy Guy, who I reckoned had to be a priest. ‘What were you doing in the Temple of the Maiden at this hour?’
His accent was bizarre, nothing like what they’d taught us at the Living Greek School, but I could understand him enough to know he was still using the dual form.
‘Please, sir,’ I said, ‘we are travellers from a faraway land. We were seeking refuge in the Temple of the Maiden.’
‘They are obviously runaway xlave,’ said one of the Smurf-hatted guards. His accent was even stranger than the priest’s. He left off the last consonant of some words and used an X sound instead of an S.
‘We are not slaves!’ I protested. ‘We are …’ I managed to remember the word: ‘freeborn!’
‘Even if you’re not slaves,’ said the priest, reaching down to grasp my emerald-and-pearl necklace, ‘you are thieves! I recognise this as a recent tribute to the Maiden.’
‘I knew it was a bad idea to take offerings to the goddess,’ I muttered in English.
‘Maybe this whole trip was a bad idea,’ groaned Dinu.
‘Quiet!’ commanded the priest. ‘Do not profane the sacred precinct with your barbarian babbling!’ He turned to the archers. ‘Strip them and take them to prison. I will inform the council in the morning.’
‘No!’ I cried. I clung to his knees in the time-honoured fashion of the conquered to the conqueror. ‘Please, sir. We were robbed. Have mercy on us.’
I glanced up but his face was as hard as granite.
We had to strip.
Although it was a warm night, we stood shivering as the priest took our clothes and headed back into the temple.
‘I hope he doesn’t catch Crina,’ I said.
‘She may be a pain,’ said Dinu, ‘but she’s sensible. She’ll stay hidden until the portal comes on tomorrow night. I’m more worried about us.’
‘I know,’ I whispered. ‘I wonder what they do to temple thieves?’
As I looked around for a means of possible escape, moonlight showed the famous smaller temple called the Erechtheum. Its columns were shaped like women and they seemed to stare at me accusingly.
‘Who are these Smurf guys, anyway?’ muttered Dinu as they set about tying our wrists behind us. ‘They stink.’
‘I think they’re Scythian archers. The ancient Athenians used them as a police force.’
‘I don’t remember that from Ancient Greek Assassins,’ he said.
After our wrists were bound, the two smelly archers marched us away from the Parthenon. They had no torches, but the moon was bright enough for me to see a forest of bronze statues.
Then I caught sight of the biggest one of all and for a moment I almost forgot to be afraid. The colossal bronze statue of Athena stood with her back to us, as tall as a cathedral. She held a spear in her right hand and a massive shield leaned against her left leg. The moonlight painted her silver and black.
As her lofty face came into view I felt a shiver go through me, and not just because I was naked, bound and barefoot.
‘Wow!’ I breathed, looking up. And then, ‘Ow!’ as one of the smelly Scythians shoved me forward.
But I couldn’t keep my eyes off the massive statue of Athena with a bazillion stars blazing above her head. I turned and sank to my knees before her.
‘Forgive us, Athena,’ I prayed loudly in ancient Greek, hoping to soften the Scythians’ hearts. ‘We were going to return your gifts to you. We were only borrowing them.’
‘Quiet!’ growled one of the archers. He tugged me roughly to my feet and then shoved me towards the Propylaea, the giant gateway of the Acropolis.
‘I think I’m going to be sick,’ whispered Dinu, as we plunged into the black shadows of the marble gateway. ‘What should we do?’
‘In situations like this,’ I said, ‘there’s only one thing to do – pray!’
‘Was our God around back then?’ he asked.
‘Of course, you fool. God is eternal.’
So we both prayed under our breath, him in Romanian and me in English. We prayed to God and Jesus Christ and Mary and even Saint Nektarios, patron saint of bees.
As we came out of the inky shadows cast by the gatehouse roof, I prayed again to Athena. ‘Dear Athena,’ I said out loud in ancient Greek, ‘please save us and help us find Socrates.’
At this, Archer One grabbed my arm and turned me to face him. ‘Xocrate?’ he said. ‘You want Xocrate?’
‘Yes!’ I said eagerly. Then I recited: ‘We seek Socrates, the lover of wisdom, the wisest man in Athens!’
I saw the two Scythians exchange surprised glances.
Was it possible our talismantra might actually work?
17
Ways to Die in Athens
Our talismantra did not save us.
Although Archer One did raise his eyebrows in a questioning look, Archer Two scowled and tipped his head back for a ‘no’.
They pushed us on again and I almost tumbled down the monumental stairway that tourists would use two and a half thousand years later.
My heart was still thudding hard as we passed the small Temple of Athena Nike on our left, and we caught our first glimpse of ancient Athens below us. My gran and I have spent the last few summers in Greece at my aunt’s seaside apartment and I’d been into the centre of Athens a couple of times. But what I’d seen then looked nothing like the ancient city.
In the moonlight it seemed hardly bigger than a village. The scattered houses looked like little white Lego bricks with red tile roofs. Although it was night, it was warm and I could hear the rhythmic creaking of cicadas, those tiny little cricket things that sit on tree branches and make up for their invisibility by filling the world with their noise.
Could this sleepy village really be the home of some of the greatest minds who had ever lived? Playwrights like Euripides, Sophocles, Aeschylus and Aristophanes? The father of history, Herodotus, and his brilliant successor, Thucydides? Beautiful and clever women like Aspasia? And of course the philosophers, the men who first examined the meaning of life? Could they really be found in this moonlit village?
When we finally reached the foot of the Acropolis stairs, the smelly Smurf guards prodded us to the right.
They made us hurry along a road of hard-packed earth flanked by two-storey buildings I took for houses. Up close the sleeping houses presented blank plaster walls with only a few high slits for windows. Where the plaster was coming off, I could see mud brick underneath.
We were barefoot and I tried not to yelp every time my tender sole landed on a shard of clay or a piece of grit. But then I stepped in something squishy and smelly. My worst fears were confirmed as I caught a whiff of dog poo.
‘Dude, you stepped in it!’ groaned Dinu.
‘That’s the least of our problems,’ I muttered. ‘They’re taking us to prison, and I just remembered what they do to criminals.’
‘What?’
‘The worst ones includ
e nailing you to a plank alive–’
‘Oh my God!’ groaned Dinu.
‘– or they make you drink a kind of poison called hemlock. That’s how they executed Socrates.’
We came to a crossroads with a giant fig tree, where we could go north, south, east or west. Our guards prodded us north along the dirt road and my stomach flipped as we approached a high, stone-walled building up ahead on the right. Was it the prison?
No.
We passed it. From within its walls, I heard the faint sound of a flute and tambourine. It sounded spooky on this deserted, moonlit night.
‘Aghh!’ I cried at the sudden sight of a pale man standing stock still up ahead.
But it wasn’t a man. It was a painted marble head of a man on a square column. His eyes and beard were painted black and he wore a strange frozen smile. In place of arms he had two square stubs with garlands hanging from them.
‘Dude, what’s that?’ hissed Dinu.
‘I think it’s called a herm,’ I whispered back. ‘After the god Hermes. They guard crossroads, doorways and boundaries against evil spirits.’
‘Creepy,’ said Dinu.
‘Quiet!’ snapped one of the Scythians.
But as we passed it, both our guards reached out to touch the herm’s chin behind his short painted beard, presumably for good luck.
I spotted a slab of marble on the other side of the road. It had letters carved into it, a Greek inscription. There were no spaces between the letters but they had been filled in with dark paint and I managed to read it:
IAMTHEBOUNDARYOFTHEAGORA
‘I am the boundary of the Agora,’ I murmured.
‘What?’ said Dinu miserably.
‘We must be coming into the Agora. The ancient marketplace. The place where Socrates liked to hang out. So near and yet so far,’ I added. That was something my dad used to say.
‘Wait!’ hissed Dinu. ‘Didn’t they put Socrates in prison for a whole month before he had to drink hemlock? Maybe he’ll be in the prison. Maybe he can help us escape. If he’s the wisest man in the world …’
Adventure in Athens Page 5
