by Laura Powell
After the ceremony was finished, we returned to the Sanctuary, and discovered the reason for all those emergency service sirens.
‘Sir Alan Greendale’s been assassinated,’ one of the cleaners told us breathlessly. ‘Gunned down, right outside the Royal Courts of Justice!’
‘The Green Knight!’ somebody cried out, amid exclamations and gasps.
Sir Alan Greendale was the chair of the Electoral Commission, which had condemned the recent election as being ‘riddled with abuses’.
The Green Knight will run red.
I closed my eyes, visualised blood pouring from gunshot wounds. I knew at that moment I should never have doubted my vision, or my memory of it. My first reaction was guilt. Something that had been predicted should have been prevented. My second reaction was anger – at Opis and Lionel. Why hadn’t they listened to me? Why hadn’t they done something?
Meanwhile, the cult crowded around the TV in the priestesses’ sitting room. Although we aren’t given internet access, we are permitted to watch a select number of TV channels, and BBC News is one of them. They reported that the assassin was a lone gunman who had escaped on motorcycle. Nobody was pointing the finger . . . yet. But it seemed clear the prime minister couldn’t survive this latest crisis, even though the main opposition party was split by infighting of its own.
The newsreaders adopted a slightly uncomfortable, jocular tone when they referenced the oracle. The religious correspondent said that a representative from the cult was expected to make a statement this evening. In the meantime, he observed that ‘many people will now be scouring the prophecy for clues as to Sir Alan’s killer, and the identity of the Iron Lord – the one who would save the match’.
My guilt increased. Only I knew that the prophecy was untrue, or rather mistaken.
The fate of the Green Knight had already revealed itself. The only other part I felt sure of was the Python’s Child. Python must be a reference to the Pythia, the ancient Oracle of Delphi, who was named after the snake that was killed by the god Apollo. Our own oracle was therefore her ‘child’ and heir. The Python’s Child shall preach . . . That seemed to suggest there would be more prophecies to come. But would they be given to Opis or me or someone else entirely? Could the man who threw snakes at the festival be somehow involved? The ‘double tongue’ was most likely a warning – the oracles of legend were full of double meanings.
Opis must still be occupied with Cally and might not even have heard the news. Even so, I felt increasingly unsettled as time went on and no message came to me from the Residence.
The priestess on night duty checked I was in my room at ten, but didn’t say anything except to wish me goodnight. I lay alone in the darkness, missing the quiet breathing and murmurings of the other girls, wondering when the call would come . . . and what Opis had planned for me. I couldn’t escape the feeling that something was very wrong.
Still sleepless at midnight, I got up and sat by the window. I thought of all the other people dreaming in this house, all the other people lying wakeful and restless in this city. I wondered if the goddess watched over them too.
Then I saw Opis outside the Sanctuary gates. She was hooded, but her figure was unmistakable in the glow of the street lamp. I couldn’t see the face of the man she was with, but from his height and pale hair guessed it must be the Lord Herne. Before I could think better of it, I grabbed a coat and hurried downstairs. I knew where the key to the side door was hidden. I was quick: by the time I got outside, Opis and the Lord Herne were just saying their goodbyes. I waited for her in the covered passageway that led through Artemisia House to the garden beyond.
She was on her phone. ‘Yes, I’ve just spoken to him,’ she said crisply. ‘We’re confident we can contain the situation. In fact, it may well work to our advantage. The girl won’t cause any trouble, I assure you.’
She put the phone back in her pocket just as I stepped out of the shadows. ‘Honoured Lady.’ I touched my hand to my brow, a little breathless at my own daring. ‘I need to speak with you.’
I didn’t mean to startle her, but she drew back with a hiss. Her slanting eyes glittered under the hood.
‘What? What is it you want, Aura? What do you think you know?’
‘I know the oracle everyone’s talking about is the wrong –’
She put a hand on my arm. The gesture looked gentle, but her grip was iron as she pulled me into the darkness of the passageway.
‘Be very careful, Aura. Choose your words wisely.’
‘It’s just – the news – the Green Knight, the assassination – it proves my prophecy was real, true, but it’s the wrong version out there. I’m sure of it. We have to put it right, so people know.’
She laughed. It wasn’t a laugh I’d heard before. It was sharp, sour.
‘Oh, Aura. You’ve been listening behind closed doors, haven’t you? Sneaking and spying, spinning your little webs. And now lurking in the dark to ambush me . . . Do you take me for a fool?’
‘N-never, Honoured Lady!’ I stammered. ‘I only want people to know what the goddess said to me. The goddess –’
She gave another low hiss. ‘Don’t presume to lecture me about the goddess.’ Her nails dug deep into the flesh of my arm. ‘I am her oracle and High Priestess. You’re nothing, a nobody, and it will be far better for you if you stay that way. Because I’m warning you, Aura, the kind of attention you’re after can be very dangerous. Understand?’
I nodded. I was too shocked to do anything else.
Opis took a step back. This time, her smile was almost friendly. ‘I’m sorry to see this change in you. You used to be such a good girl – so quiet and dutiful. That’s the girl I want to see at your initiation. Perhaps a period of silence and reflection will help you find her again.’
She summoned over the night porter. All Sanctuary staff are female; those on security are ex-military or -police.
‘Aura is going to prepare herself for her initiation a little ahead of time,’ she told the woman. ‘I’d like you to make sure she settles in.’
Chapter 8
The Quiet Room, set up as a retreat for stressed-out cult members and those preparing for important rituals, wouldn’t be out of place in an upmarket spa. There were scented candles and white linen, and exotic fruit juices for those on a fast. I wasn’t taken there.
Instead, I was marched into one of the attic bedrooms that used to be for the maids, before the staff block was built. It was stuffy and cramped, with a painted-in window; the only furnishings were a lumpy single bed and a bare light bulb. There was a toilet in the adjoining room, but no washbasin. I was locked in.
What was swelling in me frightened me – something black and boiling, utterly foreign. As I paced back and forth, fists clenched, I hardly recognised myself. Mousy little Aura. Shadowy little Aura. So meticulous in the archives, so dutiful in Greek class . . . And now, according to Opis, a rebel and spy. For one thing was clear: Opis didn’t believe in my prophecy. She thought I’d overheard something I shouldn’t have and she’d exploited it to cause trouble.
All my life, I’d put my faith in the comfort given by our oracles, the beauty of our rituals. Now I realised this wasn’t enough. Our ceremonies had become too pretty, with their scented candles and choral songs, the purple prose. There was none of the stench and smoke of real sacrifice.
And maybe, I realised, there’s no real prophecy either. Opis has no oracles and no faith, and she doesn’t even care.
When morning light showed at the window, I tried to pray. I didn’t know where to start. I had always wanted to be sure that I was doing the right thing. I had wanted to feel Chosen. Now I’d been chosen as the oracle, and it terrified me. There was no doubt that if I failed my duty to Artemis I was marked out for a far worse punishment than anything Opis could devise.
That didn’t mean I wasn’t worried about Opis’s plans. We’re confident we can contain the situation, she’d said on the phone. The girl won’t cause any trouble. Was she
talking about me? All I’d done was speak the truth. But somehow the truth was getting in Opis’s way. Not just hers either. I sensed ‘the situation’ was bigger than both of us.
I kept replaying the accusations of the man who’d interrupted the festival speeches, the one who knew Opis’s Christian name. I wondered what had happened to him after he was dragged away.
The day wore on. I grew hungrier, thirstier, sweatier. The heat in the room had become stifling. I couldn’t turn off the radiator, which had been set to high.
At half past six in the evening, the key turned in the lock. I stiffened all over. Opis, come to see the effects of her punishment.
But it was Cally. She had a bottle of water for me.
I was so surprised I didn’t say anything. Neither did she, at first. Her face was very pale. She was holding the floral garland from her initiation ceremony and plucked at it nervously.
‘How are you?’ she asked at last.
‘I’m . . . OK. Opis is angry with me.’
‘She says you’ve been pretending to be the one who had the oracle.’ Cally sounded almost offhand about it.
‘That’s not true.’
‘Of course it can’t be you,’ she said calmly. ‘That would be ridiculous. You are unworthy.’
‘Did Opis send you to talk to me?’
‘No. I shouldn’t be here. So now that I am I don’t want to hear any more of your blasphemy.’
‘It was me who had the oracle, Cally. I swear it. I saw –’
She put her hands over her ears. ‘Stop it. You’re delusional. Anyway, that’s not what I came to talk about. I –’ She gave a pinched sort of smile. ‘Are you looking forward to your initiation?’
‘I suppose so.’ I waited, but she didn’t respond. ‘Did you, er, enjoy yours? Was it what you expected?’
‘Yes. I don’t know. I think . . .’ Cally sat down on the bed, wilted garland in her lap. Dead purple petals fell on to the floor. Amaranths – or love-lies-bleeding, as it’s more commonly known. She bit her lip. ‘I think the goddess might be angry with me.’
‘The goddess? Why?’
She spoke in a rush that became a gabble, so that I strained to hear the words. ‘It was my choice. I told myself it was what they all wanted. Opis, the Lord Herne, the council . . . and therefore the goddess must want it too. But now I think I was fooling myself. Because it was me who wanted it, really, deep down, and I let the others persuade me to make myself feel better. And now I think that it was wrong, after all, and the goddess will punish me.’
‘Why? What have you done?’
And why was she confessing to me, of all people? But, though she coloured all over, she didn’t answer.
I tried again. ‘What are you worried about? Arrows and thunderbolts and transformations? That doesn’t happen any more. It’s like most religious stories. They’re . . . metaphors.’
I knew how hypocritical I was being. The woman in my vision was capable of thunderbolts, all right. But Cally was frightened, and I’d never seen that before.
During the sacred rituals, she was always aquiver with attentiveness. She’d give an occasional nod, as if to reassure the goddess that her instructions were coming through loud and clear. When she stood before the altar, you could practically smell the holiness rolling off her in incense-scented waves. I’d always thought it was for show. Was it possible, in spite of all her theatrics and posturing, that Cally really did believe?
‘The gods are vengeful,’ she whispered. ‘People are vengeful. Do you remember that trip we had, when we were eleven, to the old punishment place?’
I nodded. We’d been taken to see the underground chamber where priestesses who broke their vows or betrayed the cult used to be buried alive. It’s a small stone room, sunk deep into the ground of the cult cemetery in Southwark.
‘It was so dark in there. It felt like even the air above it was stained.’ Cally shivered and rubbed her arms. ‘I used to have nightmares of being left there as they shovelled the earth in.’
‘It scared me too. But that place hasn’t been used for over a hundred years. We live in more civilised times. People don’t get tortured or executed any more.’
‘Yes, and look what a mess the country’s in.’ Her face hardened; suddenly, she was back to her righteously superior self. ‘Maybe people need to be frightened. Maybe you can’t have true faith without fear.’ She grasped my hand with chilly fingers. ‘And there are still all sorts of punishments, even now.’
Was she threatening me or warning me? I couldn’t tell.
‘Cally – Callisto, I mean – what’s all this about?’
‘Nothing. It doesn’t matter. I’m just saying it would be better for you if you did as you were told.’ She got up from the bed. ‘It’s for your own good, I promise.’
She reached into her pockets and brought out a handful of biscuits. ‘Don’t let anyone know I gave these to you.’
Then she was gone.
More hours passed. I fell into a fitful doze for some of them. At six o’clock in the morning, a terrible banging and crashing commenced on the other side of the wall. Workmen were starting some kind of renovation. The noise carried on, with little respite, for the rest of the day. Happy birthday to me.
I had tried to eke out the biscuits and the water but they didn’t last long. My stomach was hollow with hunger, my mouth dry with thirst. My head ached. I was sure the noise next door was part of the punishment. As the shadows lengthened, I began to wonder how long I would be left here. Days? Weeks? Months? Until I agreed to say and do whatever I was told?
But at half past seven the door opened again. Fat Atalanta was there, pink and breathless, and holding a clean tunic and a Thermos of soup. So I’d been forgiven, or at least reprieved. They were still going to let me become a priestess.
I lay, lapped by water, in the marble basin. Through a gap in the curtains, I saw one of the nymphs on the wall, peeping coyly from behind a cypress tree. There were only five handmaidens, now, to sing the choral odes, and after a half-hearted verse or two they’d given up and were whispering and giggling among themselves.
Once I was dressed, the girls clustered around, trying to ooh and ahh with appropriate enthusiasm. I could tell they were struggling. In the mirror they gave me, I saw new hollows in my cheeks, and dark rings round my eyes.
The temple was half empty for the ceremony. People had come for Callisto because of the rumours that she was the girl who’d had the oracle. I was a nobody, as Opis said. Once, this wouldn’t have particularly mattered. This place was the only home, and family, I’d ever known or needed. But as I walked into the smoky glitter of the Sacred Hall I felt a stranger in a strange land.
As I finished the purification rituals – sprinkling the altar with holy water, brushing dust from the dais with a broom of cypress boughs – I glanced up and saw Aiden in the front row. It was enough to temporarily jolt me out of my daze. He stared back, expressionless. He wasn’t in his usual ill-fitting, grungy clothes. His suit was as sharp as his cheekbones. His shaggy hair was sleeked back. Every inch the Trinovantum Councillor.
It was a relief to turn away from him and take my place in front of the statue of Artemis. The High Priestess picked up her ceremonial silver arrow and held its point to my heart.
‘Do you vow to honour the laws of the temple and this land?’
Opis’s gaze was as serene as the marble woman who loomed behind us. For a moment, I wondered if I’d imagined our midnight meeting in the passageway. Then I felt the metal point of the arrow press through the thin silk, right against my skin.
‘I do, lest I suffer the arrows of Artemis and the waters of the Styx.’
The Lord Herne stepped forward with an impatient swish of his green velvet cloak.
‘Do you vow to serve the goddess in all her rites and works?’
Lionel Winter passed me a shard of rock, a symbol of Troy’s fallen walls, and folded my hand tightly round its jagged edge. His eyes burned into me from under th
e antler headdress.
‘I do, for I am bound by the blood of King Brutus and the stones of Troy.’
On it went. Question and answer, promise and threat.
I hardly knew what I was saying but I must have made the right responses, for at the end the Lord Herne led me to where the sacred fire flickered in its brazier, and guided my hand as I put a taper to the flame. The other priestesses gathered to form an escort as I carried the taper through the door behind the altar, down the dark stairs to the crypt below. I was bringing the light of the goddess into the underworld. As the door closed behind us, I heard the handmaidens raise their voices in the final song.
In the crypt, I stood in front of the rough slab of stone that was King Brutus’s altar. The narrow opening to the Chamber of the Oracle was in the wall opposite, concealed by a curtain. What was waiting for me there? Above ground was a sprawling modern city of concrete and neon and exhaust fumes. Below, I could be standing in the temple at Troy. The shrine at Delphi. The gateway to Hades.
I carried the only source of light; the darkness around me was filled with the rustlings of robed women: Opis, Leto, Aphaea, Cynthia, Amarysia, Atalanta, Aeginaea, Aetole, Agrotera, Callisto . . . Familiar faces made strange by the shadows.
Leto, as the oldest priestess, fastened my new mantle to my shoulders, with her usual scowl. It won’t do you any good, she’d told me. She’d been right, and I still didn’t understand why. One by one, the others stepped forward to kiss me on the cheek. When it was Cally’s turn, I felt her fingers close briefly and tightly round my wrist. I couldn’t tell if this was a blessing or warning. Cynthia was blinking and shivering. I felt a shudder of my own run down my back.
Finally the others withdrew. I was alone with the High Priestess and the Lord Herne. In spite of myself, the hand holding the taper shook.
