by Laura Powell
I had a painfully vivid vision of Aiden’s face, flushed and intent, leaning close to mine as he extolled the importance of people power. I shook it away.
‘Causing a ruckus outside the temple is turning out to be a family trait,’ I said, trying to lighten the atmosphere. ‘Like father, like daughter.’
Harry blinked at me. ‘But I’m not your real father, Aura. You must know that. Don’t you?’
All the breath was knocked out of me. ‘Well, I thought . . . I mean . . . that’s what Leto and Apollonia . . .’
He was shaking his head. ‘No. I’m so sorry. Really – I didn’t realise they’d misunderstood. It was such a confusing, terrible time . . . You see, I said I’d marry Carya and care for the child. But Carya and I were never lovers.’
‘But you – but she –’
‘She didn’t feel like I did. When the scandal of her pregnancy broke, I still wanted to protect her. I wanted to take her and her baby away from the cult.’ He took my hand. ‘I loved her. I would have loved you.’
I pulled my hand away. ‘If you’re not my father, then who is?’
‘She said the goddess gave you to her. That was all. Carya was the true oracle though. She spoke for Artemis. Maybe we should believe her.’
His curls were sticking up all over the place, his eyes bright with conviction. A nice man. But he was only really interested in me for what I’d inherited from my mother.
The child of a virgin goddess, born to a virgin priestess . . . Well, it was no more impossible than the other impossible things that had happened to me.
I stood up abruptly. I felt emptied out, hollow with this new loss. ‘It was nice meeting you. And, er, thank you. For talking and everything. And helping my mother. But I’d better get to the demonstration. The chancellor will be at the temple soon.’
‘You don’t have to leave just yet. You must have more questions. I have questions –’
I was already out of the door, hurrying to lose myself in the crowd.
While I’d been in the café, the stream of people going to the demo had turned into a flood. They were becoming more animated the closer we got to the temple. Strangers were shaking hands and clapping each other on the back; an occasional cheer could be heard, along with bursts of nervous laughter.
As soon as the temple loomed into view, I felt a surge of homesickness. I’d tried not to have great hopes of Harry, but the idea of not being an orphan was more seductive than I’d let myself admit. Now I knew for certain that the temple was the only home I’d ever have, even if I’d been cast out of it. Its dome shone like a pearl in the early evening sun, the gilt-tipped columns soared heavenwards. Across the pediment, the carvings of Brutus, Artemis and Herne looked both solemn and peaceful, utterly sure of their power and their place in the world.
The square was already heaving with people. The late prime minister had been widely regarded as a crook, if not a murderer, but there were still a lot of Justice 4 Riley signs. Most of the banners called for free elections, free speech, a free UK. Others demanded a free oracle. Aura IN, Callisto OUT. When Artemis Speaks, Let Us Listen.
A much smaller counter-demonstration in support of Cally had gathered at the bottom of the temple steps. Police were a heavy presence but there was no sign of the Civil Guard. Perhaps the foreign TV crews that had gathered had something to do with it. They were busy interviewing people in the crowd.
They had a wide variety to choose from. Scruffy student types, like Aiden and his activist friends. Middle-aged housewives. Veterans of the wars in the Middle East, many of whom were on crutches and in wheelchairs. Office drones, unshaven construction workers. And groups of muscular, flinty-faced young men in red or purple bandanas. The gangbangers were out too – and on a truce.
Shortly after I squeezed into the throng, a fleet of cars from the Sanctuary drove through the space cleared by the police. Veiled handmaidens and priestesses emerged to boos and jeers from the crowd. I looked for Leto’s hunched figure. The handmaidens were holding hands, the little twins stumbling on their drapes as they hurried into the shelter of the temple. They must be terrified. Why was the whole cult attending a private oracle? Opis and Cally must have already made their grand entrance, for the High Priestess’s gold chariot was parked at the bottom of the steps. All this pomp and ceremony seemed unnecessarily provocative.
More time passed. The shadows lengthened; the sun was a low, rich gold. The protesters weren’t tiring, though. In fact, they were only getting more energised. When Malcolm Greeve’s car finally arrived, the place erupted.
I’d seen a lot of General Ferrer in the news and I could see the appeal of his firm jaw and kind eyes. His ally, and the official leader of the coup, didn’t make such a good pin-up. Malcolm Greeve was just as creepy-looking as I remembered from his visits to the temple. Seb and Lionel Winter were waiting by the doors to welcome him.
The smatter of competing shouts and slogans had turned into an angry roar. ‘Oracle Out! Committee Out! Free Oracle! Free UK!’ The ranks of police stared on, impassive. The counter-demonstration stamped and yelled.
I shook my head, trying to clear it, and fixed my eyes on the last person I wanted to see. The only person I wanted to see.
Aiden.
At once I turned and tried to get away, but the crowd was too tightly wedged. ‘You can’t talk to me,’ I hissed. ‘You can’t look at me. You can’t be here. I told Scarlet to keep you away.’
‘Hey – I don’t need your or anyone else’s permission to be here. This thing is a lot bigger than the two of us, and whatever issues we have.’
Issues? I stared at him in incomprehension. He glowered back.
‘Scarlet should never have helped you leave. We could have worked it out, Aura. What the hell were you thinking, vanishing like that?’
He was angry. That was no good; I needed him to be afraid.
‘I had to keep away from you for your own safety! Don’t you get it? The goddess possessed me to punish you. I can’t let that happen again.’
Aiden wasn’t even listening. ‘I was sure you’d be here,’ he was saying. ‘I’ve been looking for you in the crowd for the last hour. You can’t run away this time. You have to –’
It was too much. Too much noise, too much energy and anger. The air throbbed with it. I covered my ears.
It didn’t make any difference.
Artemis Selene was already here and burning through my blood. I thought my bones would crack from the force of her.
Aiden’s face loomed into view, as I twisted and groaned. He was briefly replaced with gawping onlookers. ‘Get back,’ he shouted, pushing them off. ‘It’s the oracle! The true oracle. Aura, your High Priestess. Listen to her! Listen to the goddess!’
Hot tears sparked from my eyes. My body was arched like a drawn bow, pulled back to breaking point. My voice would be the arrow: shining and merciless. I begged for release. I begged the goddess to let it fly.
I was not broken, not yet.
I was not released either. Instead, I was standing in a great city, its temples and watchtowers and palaces silent and peaceful in the night. I knew, though, that their quiet was an illusion.
The moon waxed and waned. Clouds rushed over it, fog rolled through the city’s streets. It stung my eyes and my lungs, bringing with it the stench of burning.
There was something dark and slick under my feet. Not oil, blood. The sky was on fire. I could hear clashes and shouts and wailing. And a voice of rage and grief in my head that wasn’t my own. I stood in a shadowed colonnade and watched Troy burn, as the goddess lamented her lost city.
Torn flesh, wrecked bone.
Rubble and ash.
A city of ruins, then of wilderness – creeping weeds and brambles, tangled grasses, spindly trees. And still the keening sobs of grief in my head. Not one voice, now, but a multitude: old and young, men and women, on and on.
‘For who will save the holy places? The old temple despoiled, the new one besieged. Now the iron men a
re on the march, and they will drag the lawmakers from the sacred altars. Alas for Troy, alas for her children –’
Chapter 20
My eyes snapped open. I was surrounded by a ring of strangers: tightly packed, silent, staring.
‘What did I say?’
Yet the words of the prophecy were already coming back to me. This time, however, I didn’t need a Lord Herne to interpret. I knew what the holy places were.
The old temple: the building we were standing in front of, where Opis and Lionel and Malcolm Greeve were busy despoiling the oracle.
The new temple: Westminster Abbey, where the rebel MPs had gathered to form an alternative government. The Gothic building wasn’t ‘new’ in the usual sense of the word. But the Christians came after us pagans. It was new as far as Artemis was concerned.
The MPs were the lawmakers. And General Ferrer’s soldiers – the iron men – were on their way to arrest them. Malcolm Greeve’s visit was a deliberate distraction, designed to draw the protesters away from Parliament Square, and the real business of the day.
Voices were shouting out for news. ‘What happened? What did she say? Where’s the oracle?’
Aiden had a protective arm round my shoulder. I shook him off, flung back my head and gave a shout of my own.
‘Westminster Abbey is under attack. The general’s going to arrest our MPs. We must defend –’
The next moment, I was seized by rough hands. After a brief panicked struggle, I realised these weren’t police, but supporters. A couple of men lifted me so that I stood above the crowd. My cap had fallen off so that my pale hair streamed free, my face was gilded by the dying sun. I hardly knew what I shouted: the words of the oracle, jumbled up with my own. But the goddess must have hushed the crowd, for my voice echoed around the square with uncanny strength, as if magnified by the City’s stones.
Whatever I said, it was received with roars of support from my fellow citizens. I was passed above their heads as they chanted my name. ‘Aura! Aura! Aura!’ There was a scrimmage at the temple steps, and somehow Opis’s chariot was unhooked from its horses and dragged into the crowd. I was thrust into it, so that I stood upright at the helm, as a group of burly young men began pull it through the square.
The police were trying to contain the crowd. They had their batons out and riot shields at the ready. There were scuffles and shouts, cracked heads and bloody noses. I’d lost Aiden in the confusion until, just for a second, I thought I saw him again. He had blood on his forehead and an older woman was trying to drag him free from under the body of a fallen protester. His eyes were closed. The next moment, though, I had lost him in the crowd.
Goddess, keep him safe, I prayed. But I’d already prayed to Artemis to cut all trace of him out of my heart. She hadn’t answered yet. My only comfort was that the police’s efforts seemed curiously restrained. Perhaps they were inhibited by the TV cameras. Perhaps they heard the call of the goddess too.
The demonstrators poured towards Parliament Square, following the route of the Festival Day procession. I was leading the charge on my man-drawn chariot. I was jerked back and forth, trying desperately to stay upright.
Throughout the ride, I saw flashes of a different city. London, back when it was Troia Nova; when the Temple of Artemis was just one among many pagan monuments; when the city was crammed with gods now long forgotten. Their statues and shrines lining the roads, their temples crowning the hills, the smoke from a hundred sacrificial fires rising to the sky. I felt wild, loose, about to spin out of my own skin.
As the light faded, the hush of the city’s traffic-free streets felt more sinister than peaceful. By the time we reached Parliament Square, the horizon was streaked with crimson. The abbey’s windows glowed comfortingly, despite its crumbling carvings and soot-stained walls.
I jumped down from the chariot and ran across the green in the centre of the square. I was among the first to arrive at the abbey’s doors. We were too late. The Civil Guard was already stationed there, with a couple of armoured trucks waiting outside.
As the rest of the protesters poured into the square and saw what had happened, the roar of anger seemed to split the city’s skies. Rumours were flying that the army was on the way, with water cannons to disperse the crowds, troops to storm the square. A helicopter assault would land on the roof of the Houses of Parliament. Secret agents inside the abbey would machine-gun the prisoners at the general’s command.
Yet nobody was going home. Instead, the abbey was quickly surrounded, Parliament Square and its exits blocked by a dense mass of people. Among them, I thought I saw faces I recognised. Mrs Galloway with her Elite Cleaning boys. Harry Soames. Spidey, from the squat. Their faces all had the same look: nervous but determined. The journalists and TV crews were there too, jostling for the best shots.
I was standing right in front of the abbey, where a line of military police had cordoned off the area between the doors and the armoured trucks. I had a self-appointed guard of my own, made up of the men who had pulled my chariot.
A couple of clergymen were the first to emerge from the abbey, hands cuffed and led by two guards. The dissident MPs followed, stumbling along in frumpy suits with shell-shocked faces. They weren’t obvious hero material. But neither were we. Tonight, we were all rebels, all one. Both MPs and clergymen were greeted with a tumult of cheers.
Then the general himself came out. Crisp and upright in his uniform, every inch the born leader.
He wasn’t fazed by the bellows of rage. He’d faced down worse. He stood on the steps of the abbey and surveyed the assembled mob.
He raised his hands in an appeal for calm. His voice rang out confidently. ‘I am not your enemy. These people are. Greedy, lying politicians who have done their best to destroy our country. Now they have formed an illegal assembly, to undo the good work of –’
The rest of his words were shouted down. There was a smashing sound – somebody had thrown a beer bottle into the cordoned area. Somebody else threw a stone. With frightening smoothness, the Civil Guard moved into position, guns drawn.
Facing them were the gangbangers and war veterans – ex-soldiers to whom the general was just another leader out for his own ends. But there were lots of ordinary women among the front ranks of the crowd too, as well as students and the elderly. The guards might be outnumbered but we were outgunned. Would they shoot into an unarmed crowd?
And was Aiden part of it? I pushed the thought away at the same time as pushing towards the youngest guard in the line, the one with the nervous mouth. ‘I want to speak to the general.’
‘Let her through,’ the general said.
I stepped past the guards and stood face to face with the Iron Lord.
The wild elation of the chariot ride had subsided, but the goddess was still with me. I tasted blood and ashes. I smelled charred flesh. I heard the goddess’s lamentation echo from the city’s stones. I was afraid of her. I was not of him.
His eyes flicked over me. ‘It’s the little clairvoyant,’ he said with a fatherly smile. ‘You should stick to palm-reading, not politics, my dear.’
‘We’re beyond politics. You’ve dragged us into war.’
‘What does a girl like you know about war?’ This time, he spoke with contempt.
‘And what does a man like you know about keeping the peace?’
The cameras rolled, bulbs flashed.
I felt a wave of exhaustion. I was exhausted from speaking for the goddess, exhausted from keeping her at bay. I couldn’t understand how I had got here. How it had come to this. I looked at the general and realised that perhaps this was true of him too. He wanted power on his own terms, but he wanted popularity too. He had been a hero for a long time. That must be hard to give up.
He narrowed his eyes. ‘Your moon-lady has no power over me.’
‘You’re free not to believe in Artemis. That’s your right. Just as we should be free to decide who we’re governed by, and how. That’s why you have to let these people go.’
One of the guards stepped towards me. He took my arm, and looked at the general.
The crowd raged and thundered. I barely heard them. I was waiting for what the general’s order would be. He could have me put in cuffs and dragged into the truck with the other prisoners. He could have me shot where I stood. Live, on TV. There was no going back from this moment, for either of us.
For a long moment, we looked at each other. Artemis wasn’t with me any more. Perhaps for the truly important moments the gods step back. They let our hearts and minds be human – nothing more or less.
Finally the general shook his head, let out a short and disbelieving laugh. I think he may even have been about to give the order to stand down. But the crowd had already lost patience. They surged towards us, a howling, rampaging tidal wave, so that everyone in front of the abbey’s doors – general, soldiers, civilians – was caught up in the current. We were flung against each other and the walls, then dragged under and trampled down, then pulled up again, thrashing and breathless, fighting for air.
It was a miracle no shots were fired. Perhaps this was Artemis’s doing. Perhaps it was the prayers of the Christian priests. Or maybe the soldiers just didn’t get the chance.
In the end, the general and his men managed to beat a retreat to the safety of their armoured trucks. Although the mob swarmed round the vehicles, banging their fists and screaming abuse, they weren’t able to topple them. The trucks stubbornly nudged their way out of the square, then sped off into the night.
Suddenly people were swarming around me too, laughing and applauding, chanting my name, plucking at my clothes and my hair. I was jostled and shaken; if one of the priests hadn’t taken me under his wing, I would have fallen again. He and a fellow clergyman shepherded me into the abbey, along with some of the injured protesters, and closed the doors.
