The Marathon Conspiracy

by Corby, Gary

  “That was during the second invasion, ten years after Marathon.”

  “Zeke couldn’t protect you?”

  “Zeke was away, serving with the army. The old High Priestess declared that it would be better to die in our temple than run, so when the men went off to war, we women remained behind, and tried to carry on with normal life, and wondered what was happening in the outside world.”

  Everyone gathered—the girls and Diotima and I—and listened to Thea’s simply told story in silence.

  “Then one day a messenger-slave stumbled across the bridge and into the sanctuary with word. Athens had fallen, and the Persians were on their way to sack our temple. The High Priestess ordered us to throw everything of value into the spring.”

  She gestured to the middle of the waters, the deepest part, beyond reach of the shore.

  “It was the one place we could be sure they wouldn’t find it.”

  “We priestesses worked nonstop. We tore down as much treasure as we could and threw it into the spring. We dedicated ourselves to the Goddess, and then we waited. We thought we were about to die.”

  Thea spoke quietly, matter-of-factly, but I had no trouble imagining the fear the women must have felt.

  “When the soldiers arrived, well …” Thea glanced over at the girls, who were listening to her words with open mouths. “Well, it was bad. But we lived. The soldiers took the statue of the Goddess and those heavy things we couldn’t lift to safety. They also found the hole we’d dug, in which we’d salted pieces of silver. The High Priestess said if we hid something for them to find, then they might leave. She was right.” Thea paused. “But before they left, they drove a sword through her heart. They killed our High Priestess.”

  “That was when you took over,” Diotima guessed.

  “Someone had to,” Thea said simply. “We were all in shock. Women staggered about or sat in the courtyard and cried. There was one particularly beautiful woman, who’d been repeatedly abused; she walked into the woods and hanged herself. We found her the next day.

  “I find it hard to describe, looking back after all these years, just how dire our predicament was. Our High Priestess was dead. None of us had ever known a time when she didn’t command. Normally we would have sent to Athens for instructions. But Athens had fallen to the enemy, and for all we knew the Athenians might never return. We were on our own.”

  Thea sighed.

  “The other priestesses did as I suggested—to do those things we did every day, to bake the bread and worship at the temple. The women obeyed me. By the time the Athenians had taken back their city and the enemy had been driven off, it was the settled order. The Basileus confirmed me in my position. I never thought to be High Priestess.”

  Doris walked up as Thea spoke those final words. “Your incumbency has been a time of remarkable peace,” she said.

  “I’m glad,” Thea said.

  We followed the river north. Doris chose to join us.

  As we walked, I asked, “Have you been a priestess all your life, Doris?”

  “Indeed not. I was married to a man for half my life. But he died one day—just collapsed without warning—and my children were grown. I suppose I should have retired gracefully to the home of my son—he’s a good man with a decent wife and they would have been happy to have me—or perhaps I should have married some lonely widower—but I thought instead to remove myself to the Sanctuary at Brauron. I’ve always loved children, you see; I missed my own daughters dreadfully when they married. Moving to the sanctuary was my way of reliving those lovely years when my own daughters were young. Who would have known it could lead to so much death?”

  I said, “Thea told us that Zeke served with the army during the second invasion. That was the year I was born. When did Zeke come to Brauron?”

  “Some time after Marathon. That’s all I know.”

  “What’s that smell?” I asked. I’d smelt something I hadn’t expected, something…“Is that … salt?”

  “It’s salt water, Nico,” Diotima said patiently.

  “Brauron is by the sea.” Doris pointed northeast. “See that hill? The one with the shrubs and not much else?”

  It was the hill where Melo and I had fought.

  “Walk over that and before you know it, you’ll be at a shallow bay that leads into the Aegean.”

  “I didn’t realize we were so close. Is it a port?”

  “The sea here’s far too shallow for that,” Doris said. “There’s a jetty and a rowboat. Sometimes the men will take the boat to Brauron town, to bring back heavy goods. Just row the boat down the coast, and you’ll come to Brauron.”

  “Is the town far away?”

  “Not even half a day.”

  “Could a child row it?”

  “No,” Doris said at once. “Not a chance.”

  We turned south to walk down the east side of the complex. Our tour ended at the most important room in the complex for us: a small room in the east wing of the stoa where the bones of the dead man had been placed pending a funeral.

  “I’ll leave you here,” Doris said, and she looked uneasy. “I don’t like dead bodies.” Doris walked off quickly.

  Diotima and I shared a look. I shot open the bolt, then slowly opened the door. I peered in.

  The skeleton was laid out on a board, which in turn lay on the floor: arms, legs, backbone, pelvis, ribs … everything in the right position. Everything except the head.

  A skeleton without a head looks wrong. Without it, the neck looked like a road that went nowhere.

  Without saying a word, I reached for the cloth bag I had with me, which we’d brought with us on the cart all the way from Athens. I pulled out the skull. The bag I tossed aside; I knelt and carefully placed the skull at the end of the line of vertebrae.

  “There,” I said. In the silence of the tiny room, my voice was louder than I intended.

  The skeleton had been laid out on the floor in the same position it had lain for decades in the cave. That wasn’t to make our job any easier, it was because the psyche of the dead person might be angered if the remains weren’t treated with due respect.

  Diotima and I looked down at the now-complete skeleton. The middle part was a complete mess. The clothing had rotted to tatters, and the flesh beneath had been eaten—by rats, no doubt.

  We both waited for the other to speak.

  When I realized this would go on forever, I said, “What do we do now?”

  “I was hoping you’d have an idea,” Diotima said.

  “You’re the one who always has the bright ideas.”

  “Not this time. There’s nothing we can deduce from a musty pile of bones. We can’t even tell if it’s a man or a woman.”

  “Obviously not,” I agreed. “The priestesses said they moved everything exactly as they found it?”

  “He was on this board when they found him. They moved the entire board.”

  “Does this fellow look to you like he was buried properly?”

  “Not even slightly,” Diotima said. “I wonder if the killer gave him a coin?”

  The most basic ritual anyone will give to the dead is to place a coin underneath the tongue of the deceased, so that the dead can pay Charon the ferryman to carry their psyche across the river of woe. The observance is so fundamental to common decency that a man will pay this service to his worst enemy.

  “We know he didn’t. We have the skull.”

  “But a coin would have fallen through and remained in the dust beneath,” Diotima said. “It’d be easy to miss in all this accumulated muck.”

  Diotima scraped her hand along the space above the vertebrae, where the skull had been. The lower jaw had fallen to the ground, no doubt when the sinews and flesh had decayed to dust. The upper jaw was still attached to the skull. With the skull returned to its proper place, it gave the skeleton the appearance of screaming for eternity. The muck Diotima referred to was thirty years’ worth of blown dirt and rat droppings. Her fingers scrabbled in the b
ones and dirt and raised a cloud of dust that filled my nostrils and made us both cough. It put me in mind of what Gaïs had said before—that in Hades the dead drink dust.

  Diotima sat back and said two disconsolate words: “No coin.”

  Now that was interesting. Whether the victim on the floor was Hippias or someone else, the killer had really, really hated him. Hated him enough to deny his psyche access to peace in Hades.

  Diotima asked, “Nico, do you think this man’s psyche might still be around?”

  I was sure of it. Without a coin to pay Charon, the psyche of the man was trapped in the living world, and everyone knew a psyche stayed close to the body it used to inhabit.

  Diotima looked about us.

  “There’s nothing to worry about,” I said, trying to sound more confident than I felt. “We’re here to help. If nothing else, we can swear to observe the rituals for this man.” But I, too, looked about nervously.

  “You’re right,” Diotima said, and in a louder voice, as if to someone farther away, she continued, “Hear me, Artemis, my Goddess of Brauron and Athens, as I am your priestess, so I swear to observe the rites for this man. I will place the coin, and build the pyre, and carry the remains in a fine urn, and with my own hands I will carry him to the cemetery at Ceramicus, where dwell the Athenians for eternity.”

  We waited. Nothing happened. Which was exactly the response we both wanted.

  Then an idea occurred to me. I lay down on the ground.

  “You’re feeling tired already?” Diotima asked.

  “Would you say this skeleton is longer than me?” I asked.

  Diotima stood back for a better look. She glanced from me to the skeleton and back again. “Yes,” she said. “By a hand’s length.”

  “That’s what I thought. This is the skeleton of a man. Men are taller than women.”

  “Either that, or it’s the skeleton of an unusually tall woman.”

  “You only said that to be difficult.”

  “Tall women do exist, you know. But you’re right, I was only being difficult. It probably is a man.”

  “Where does that get us?”

  “Nowhere. Did you know that half of all dead people are male? Besides, I thought we’d already agreed this was Hippias.”

  “All we know for sure is that scrolls that were probably written by Hippias were found beside this skeleton. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could confirm it?”

  “Bones don’t come with names engraved, Nico.”

  I sat up. “There must be something we can discover. What about damage to the bones?”

  “Like what?”

  “Like … if someone killed him with a club, there’d be broken bones.”

  We both looked down. What we could see of the bones showed they were unbroken.

  “What about nicks and cuts?” Diotima suggested.

  “If he was killed by a sword? Good idea.”

  With enormous distaste, we peeled back the rags that had once been a fine chiton. We picked up the pieces between thumb and forefinger and dropped them on the floor, to reveal what was left of the body beneath. The ribs lay where they had fallen, flat on the bottom of the board. They formed an odd travesty of a human being.

  We both got down on hands and knees to inspect the bones.

  “There are cuts and nicks on most of them,” Diotima said.

  “Rats and mice,” I said. “They ate him.”

  “What about these?” Diotima pointed to several cuts, deeper than the others, in the ribs, about where the heart would have been.

  I squinted. “Maybe. Not a sword, though.”

  “A knife?”

  “Or a really big rat.”

  “What’s this?” Diotima pointed. There was something amongst the bones and muck at the bottom of the board. It had been covered by the tattered clothing, and even with the rags removed, it was almost identical in color to the dust and, like the bones, was long and thin. Easy to miss.

  “I’ve done my bit, it’s your turn,” Diotima said.

  I apologized to the psyche that surely was watching, then put my hand between the ribs to hold what looked remarkably like a very tarnished knife.

  I removed it from the jumble of bones. It was a knife—not one for cutting food, but the long, thin type for killing people.

  Diotima and I shared a triumphant look. This was progress. I rubbed at the dirt with the edge of my chiton, and though most of it came away, the deep, dark tarnish remained. My futile attempt at cleaning did, however, reveal something important.

  “There’s something scratched into the blade,” I said. “I can feel it when I rub.”

  We both peered at the blade. The scratches appeared to be letters, but neither of us could see enough to read it. Diotima tried to trace the indents with her more sensitive fingers, but that didn’t work either. Then, by dint of holding the blade up to the light at the window so that the sun reflected off the debased metal, we managed to make out these words:

  ‘APMO∆IOΣ KAI ’APIΣTOΓEITΩN

  Harmodius and Aristogeiton.

  “The names of the killers?” Diotima suggested.

  It was a good theory. There was only one problem. “Unlikely,” I told her. “Harmodius and Aristogeiton died twenty years before the Battle of Marathon.”

  Harmodius and Aristogeiton were famous. They had attempted to assassinate Hippias and had been executed for their pains. Though they’d failed miserably, they were credited with starting the movement that eventually succeeded. Their statues stood in the agora.

  “Turn the blade over,” Diotima said.

  I did. On the other side, using the same method, we read:

  ΛEAINA

  “Leana?” The word meant “lioness.”

  “It’s also a girl’s name,” Diotima said.

  “Who’s Leana?”

  “I’ve no idea.”

  What was important was that the men named Harmodius and Aristogeiton had died on the orders of Hippias. It made the death of Hippias look like a revenge killing.

  “Did you find what you’re looking for?” a voice said from the doorway.

  We both looked up, startled. Neither Diotima nor I had paid the slightest attention to who might be listening in. There, standing in the doorway, was Sabina, the treasurer of the temple, the woman who had taken the skull from the skeleton and sent it to the Basileus.

  I hid the knife behind my back.

  “I’m glad you’re here, Sabina,” I lied. “I wanted to ask: What made you tell the Basileus about this skeleton?”

  “Isn’t it obvious? A find like this is far beyond the remit of the priestesses of Brauron. Our task here is to turn girls into young ladies. Clearly it was for the archon in charge of all the state’s temples to decide what to do. That’s the Basileus. My action was the only responsible one.”

  Her answer was perfectly reasonable on the face of it, and yet I didn’t believe it for a moment.

  “Didn’t the High Priestess order everyone to let the matter rest?” I asked.

  “She suggested something along those lines.”

  “You disobeyed your high priestess,” Diotima pressed, making it clear what she thought of that.

  Sabina lifted her chin. “Thea advised that it was better to ignore the matter. I thought otherwise.” She sniffed. “I report to the Basileus,” she said, making much of her once-yearly report. “In any case, Thea won’t rule here much longer.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Thea’s an old woman,” Sabina said. “Old women die.”

  She spoke with relish. Naked ambition can be ugly, and Sabina’s ambitions were written across her face.

  “Did you look inside the case?” I asked to change the subject.

  “We had to know what was in there.”

  “Did you read the scrolls?” Diotima asked.

  “Only part of the first, enough to see that this was something that needed to be dealt with by Athens. I never even opened the other four.”

&
nbsp; “You mean the other three,” I corrected her.

  She looked at me with an odd expression. “I mean four.”

  “There were only four scrolls in the case.”

  “There were five, tightly packed.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Is this some sort of test to see if I’m telling you the truth? You’re not going to fool me that way. There were five scrolls, as you know perfectly well. I’m not the only person here who saw them.”

  Diotima and I shared a look. I knew what she was thinking.

  There’d been five scrolls at the sanctuary. There were four scrolls in the office of Pericles ten days later. Here at last was proof that the killer was among us: not a stranger, but someone trusted.

  The scrolls had traveled from the priestesses at Brauron to the Basileus, then to Pericles himself. Every one of those people was trusted, and yet somewhere along the line, someone must have removed a scroll, because Sabina had sent five scrolls, and a skull.

  “Why did you send the skull along?” I asked Sabina, genuinely intrigued. “It wasn’t the sort of thing most people would think of.”

  “I thought no one would believe me if I didn’t. I imagined some fool assistant to the Basileus would read my note and think it a case of a silly woman having the vapors, not realizing that I’m one of his trusted representatives. But you can’t ignore a skull.”

  No, you couldn’t. The skull had gotten exactly the reaction she wanted: attention from the men who ran things, so that when it came time to choose the next High Priestess at Brauron, Sabina’s name would be the one everyone knew. Sabina was no fool.

  OUR NEXT PORT of call was the jetty over the hill. Just because Doris said the rowboat couldn’t be used by a child, didn’t make it true. Sabina showed us the way.

  In the north field, there was a burnt patch of ground. It looked like there’d been an intense fire, but isolated to one spot.

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  “That’s where we cremated Allike,” Sabina said. “Her parents came to collect the ashes.”