Dionysia
By the time we docked at Neapolis, I felt good again–better than good. I felt things were back to the old ways. Phemonoe and I were back on the hunt. We put our merchant disguises back together for the day’s ride to Philippi, which had always sat in a strategic location at the foot of the mountains in the only plain between Persia and Greece that you could easily march an army across. Now that the Romans had colonized it, it was a city bustling with traders from everywhere: the African and Greek merchants were familiar to me from growing up in Antikyra. But I gawked at the traders from Byzantium and Persia in their rich clothing, at men with red turbans who Noe told me were Jewish rabbis. There were even a few enormous, salt-traders with pale skin and braided beards, wearing animal skins.
“Where do they come from?” I murmured to Noe as we slid quietly through the shadows behind their stall. She shrugged.
“Germania, probably. The Romans will trade with anyone for anything.” The disdain in her voice was plain even at a whisper. Many Greeks felt the same, I knew, but few could get away with saying it. At Delphi, we were sheltered. Sulla had sacked the sanctuary three generations ago, but the Emperors since had left Delphi to the Amphictyony, and so it was easier for us than for most to pretend we weren’t constantly under the beady eye of the Roman eagle.
Here, it was impossible to pretend. Roman detachments openly patrolled the streets. We studied them carefully: they were in cadres of six, lightly armed in the warm weather–no helmets, just leather guards, short swords, and daggers for close fighting in the streets. “Do you think they will get involved?” I asked Noe again as we hunkered in the shade of what we would have called a stoa but the Romans called a portico. We had asked around for the false Pythian prophetess under the guise of being rich merchant wives who wanted to consult with her. Fortunately, the local shopkeepers still all spoke Greek. I tried to keep all of my weapons from knocking together under my red tablos as we asked. Eventually we discovered that the forum was the most likely place to find the girl in the mornings.
I glanced at Noe to find her shaking her head slightly even though I couldn’t see her face. “What do they care if two Greek pimps wind up in an alley with their throats cut?” she muttered. “Saves them the trouble.”
“And if the girl makes a scene?”
Noe hesitated for so long I thought she hadn’t heard me, so I repeated the question and added, “I know you don’t want to kill her, Noe. But if it’s her or us….”
“Let’s not cross the pass while we’re still in the valley,” Noe said shortly. “We’ve got to find this girl first.”
As it turned out, we didn’t have long to wait. But the scene that unfolded in front of us was the strangest thing I had ever seen. I was distracted first by a small crowd that strolled into the forum led by a slight, vigorous man with a short black beard, dressed as the rabbis had been but with a bare head. He was with two other younger men and trailed by a small throng of onlookers, men and women both. He seemed to be in dialogue with some of them. But close behind that group came a girl in white, her hair wild. She was shrieking over and over, loud enough for everyone in the forum to hear:
“These men are servants of the Most High God, who are telling you the way to be saved!”
Noe and I blinked at each other. Clearly, this had to be our girl, but what on earth was she saying? What God was she talking about? The three men she was shouting at certainly didn’t look like any priests we had ever met. Before we had a chance to learn anything else, though, the man with the black beard stopped and turned. He pointed squarely at the girl and said in a voice that vibrated the bones in my head even though he wasn’t shouting:
“In the name of Iesus Christos I command you to come out of her.”
Noe and I had been through a lot of rituals at Delphi, for all kinds of things. We had participated in sacrifices. We had seen the Pythia go into her trances dozens of times. We had never seen anything like this. The girl dropped to the dust as if the bearded man had struck her with his fist. Then, she started writhing and snarling like a dog. Everyone drew back; all business in the forum stopped, and everyone turned to watch the girl on her hands and knees, back arched, gagging, but nothing I could see came out of her mouth. She collapsed to the ground like a discarded bundle of white rags.
The bearded man strode across to the girl, knelt beside her, and put his hand gently on her head. His lips moved, but I couldn’t hear what he said. She stirred, and the man’s followers came and helped her to sit. Then, two men rushed up. They were dressed as wealthy merchants, and so I was surprised to see them lay hands on the girl, pulling her up and away from the men. They must have been her owners. But she cried out and struggled against them. Tears made dark streaks down the pale dust clotted on her skin. I heard one of the bearded man’s followers call out to her masters: “Let her go. She is of no use to you anymore. The spirit of divination in her has fled before the Lord God.” But they dragged her away with them, out of the forum, boxing her ears when she tried to resist.
I nudged Noe’s flank with the back of one hand, our usual signal to move out, and started to follow the men with the girl, but I somehow sensed my captain wasn’t following, and sure enough, when I turned back, I saw Noe frozen in place. Her brown eyes were swiveling between the girl and the bearded man–whose entourage, larger now, was moving off in the direction they had been heading originally–as if she couldn’t decide whom to follow. I looked back: already the girl and her masters were almost lost in the forum crowd. I swore under my breath, ran back to Noe, and pulled her by the wrist after me.
After a half dozen strides, she twisted out of my grip and picked up her pace so we were abreast. “Are you unwell?” I asked as we dodged a donkey train and I strained to keep the dirty white back of the girl in sight.
“I’m fine,” Noe said.
We followed the men and the girl to a house on the southern wall of the city. They went in and shut the portal behind them. But there was an alley that ran back to a stable on one side, with hay stacked for the animals, so we were able easily to climb the wall onto the roof of one of the compound buildings, probably the kitchen, and hide ourselves behind the chimney. One of the men pushed the girl down to sit on a mat, and the other threw a bowl of black and white stones in her lap, much like our Pythia’s bowl. The men came to the building we were in, went in the door (without seeing us above) and came out a moment later dragging a servant, whom they deposited in front of the prophetess.
“Ask her a question,” snapped the man to the servant, and when the girl quailed, he struck her across the face. “Ask! Something that only you know the answer to. Yes or no.”
“Was…was I born on the sea?” the servant stammered out.
The prophetess just sat for a long time hunched over the bowl. Finally, she looked up. Tears still streamed from her eyes, one of them swollen shut from the beating her masters had given her. She shook her head. “I don’t know. I see nothing. I see nothing.” She kept repeating it, but as she did, a smile spread across her face, and she straightened. “It’s gone,” she said finally, and it was as if she was talking about a great weight that had been across her shoulders. A black bull.
Like a reflex, I looked at Noe. She was pale and had the same frozen look on her face that she had before. The men started screaming at the prophetess, beating her again, dragging her to the compound gates. We slipped off the roof and into the alley again in time to see the girl go sprawling into the street and the door slam shut behind her.
The girl struggled to her feet, wiped her face, and then took off, half-running, half-limping, back toward the forum. I felt Noe grab my arm, hard. “Stay with the men and find out what they do. I’ll follow the girl. We’ll meet back at our lodgings by sundown.” I opened my mouth to say something, but nothing came out. All I could do was watch Noe run off down the street after the girl in white.
The Rookery 