Phemonoe
I can’t explain it, still, after all these years, not well at least. The closest I’ve ever gotten to the words to describe what happened to me when I saw Paulos cast the daemon out of the girl are the words he used to describe his conversion to following Iesus Christos: He said the Lord God had knocked him off the donkey he was riding, down into the stones and dust of the road. Of course, I wasn’t riding a donkey, and I didn’t fall. I just sat there where I had been sitting in the dust of the forum. But I felt the daemon come out of that girl, I can tell you that. I didn’t see it, any more than I had ever seen Apollo seat himself in the Pythia. But I felt it. There was a pressure in the air, a twisting of it, like when an arrow or a blade just misses your head.
I had to follow the girl to make sure of what I had felt, and sure enough, I couldn’t mistake the light in her eyes as she said, “It’s gone.” I knew where she was headed the moment she took off running from her masters’ house. She was running back to Paulos to ask him how he had done it.
It took her a while to find him. I couldn’t have done any better, not being from Philippi. Eventually by asking around, she ended up at the house of a wealthy dyer named Lydia. Just as Dia and I had at the masters’ house, I climbed the brick walls of her compound and watched from a rooftop spread with drying flax as the girl pounded on the portal, and then when they let her in, came and threw herself at Paulos’s feet. She begged him to let her serve him and his God, who had freed her from the daemon. “Since I was twelve and my mother sold me to the temple of Apollo at Hamaxitos I have not had my own mind and body. I did and thought what I did not want.” My heart stopped beating for what felt like half a minute. I couldn’t breathe. It was as if she were speaking for me, as if I were a god and she were my priestess.
She talked with Paulos for a long time, and I listened. He talked about how Iesus Christos had set him free as well, how he had also not done what he wanted but what he felt compelled to do by his family and his religion. At last, after some hours of this, Lydia came and took the girl away to bathe her and give her fresh clothing and some food. I sat on the roof, shivering uncontrollably even though the roof was still warm. It was sundown. I was supposed to be meeting Dia at our lodgings. But I couldn’t move. I couldn’t go down into that courtyard and ask Paulos the questions I wanted to, and I couldn’t go back to Dia and help her hunt people like animals for the Pythia anymore. I was stuck in place.
What unstuck me was pure habit. I heard trouble brewing in the street outside Lydia’s house, and without even thinking, as if I were in Delphi and heard a drunken revelry getting out of hand, I glided over to the edge of the house overlooking the street to see what was going on. It was the girl’s masters. They were there with a small posse, carrying torches. They started banging on the door and demanding Paulos pay them for the girl. “You stole our livelihood as sure as if you stole our boat or our horse!” They bellowed. I poked my head up to look into the compound and saw Paulos’s two companions, whose names I had learned were Silas and Tiimothy, restraining the prophet from going to the gate to try to calm the angry men. Several of the posse started putting their shoulders to the door, slamming into it, and the hinges creaked alarmingly. I took a deep breath and dropped over the wall into the street.
They didn’t see me at first. I peeled two of them off the group by their collars and spun them flying backward across the street. Doors on the other side, open to see what the fuss was, slammed shut. Then, the masters turned and saw me. They looked me up and down. “Are you from the temple?” One asked.
“Leave the girl alone,” I said. The man snorted and turned back to pound on the door. One of his friends stupidly reached out and tried to grab me. He ended up on the ground with a broken wrist. In another three strides, I had all of them away from the door and my daggers drawn. “I really,” I said, “do not like repeating myself.”
I saw them considering their next move. They hadn’t come prepared for a real fight, and two of the six were now injured. “We’ll be back with the magistrate!” Said one of the masters, spitting blood around a split lip. And then they jostled off back down the street.
The doors to Lydia’s house opened behind me, and there were Silas and Timothy with Lydia’s head steward. Silas blinked at me, at my daggers. “Who are you?” He asked.
Lydia and Paulos welcomed me as if I were an invited guest and not a strange, armed woman who had just beaten six men away from their door. They gave me water to wash my hands and feet, wine, and fresh figs. We sat in Lydia’s spacious salon, painted with frescos of water birds and lilies. Now that I was close to Paulos, I felt an incredible power radiating from him—not the cold, queasy power of a daemon, something different. It was like…it was as if I were dying from the cold, and he were holding out a cup of steaming hot wine. Something tickled my cheek, and I reached up to see if I had been cut somehow during the fight, but my fingers came away wet and clear. I was crying. Tears were streaming down my face, and I couldn’t stop them. But I didn’t feel sad or even upset. I felt…like I imagined the girl had felt when she straightened up and set the divination bowl aside because she knew she would never need it again.
Paulos just nodded to me and smiled slightly in his bristling black beard. “If the son makes you free,” he said, “you are free indeed.”
It took Dia two days to find us. She hadn’t, after all, had the girl to lead her straight to Lydia’s. So she had to do a fair bit of detective work—guessing where the girl would have run to, then asking around about where Paulos was staying. I was proud of her. That was the first thing I thought, as I came into the room I was sharing with the unmarried women and found Dia with her dagger to Euodia, the ex-prophetess’s, throat.
When Dia saw who it was, she hissed, “Shut the door.” I did. And then, without moving her blade, or relinquishing the handful of Euodia’s curly red hair that she was using to hold her fast, turned on me, “What in the Python’s name is going on, Noe? I thought they’d kidnapped you and were holding you hostage here. Are they?”
“No, Dia, no they’re not.” I held up my hands, whether to show her I wasn’t armed, or to try to soothe her, as if she were a wild horse, I don’t know. “Let Euodia go, and we’ll talk.”
“Euodia? We’ll talk?” Dia’s eyes narrowed to black slits, and Euodia yelped as a thin trickle of red appeared under the blade at her throat. “About what? I’ve got a better idea: let me kill this bitch, and let’s get the hell out of this town like we should have two days ago. Where the hell have you been? Do you realize that those pimps are on their way with a mob to throw this rabble-rouser Paulos into jail? What’s it going to look like if two of Delphi’s Hosioi get swept up in the net with the rest of these sorry fish?”
“Dia.” I stilled my body, set my stance, put as much force into my voice as I could without shouting and drawing attention. Any moment someone would try the door and find it locked. “As your captain, I command you to release the girl.”
Dia hesitated. The girl whimpered. Finally, Dia shoved the girl to the floor with a disgusted snarl and sheathed her dagger. “I don’t know what’s got into you, Noe.” I laughed.
“Parakleios. The Holy Spirit.”
“What?” Dia came to me and grabbed my hand, as she had in the forum when I had frozen up. “You’re babbling. You must have a fever. We’ll find you a doctor when we get to Neapolis.” She pulled. I didn’t move. She looked back at me, and I watched as the surprise in her eyes hardened, darkened. I covered her hand with mine where it held my wrist.
“Dia,” I pleaded. “I can’t leave. I’ve finally…I’ve found what I’m looking for with these people, with their God. I’m free. At last—of my family, of all the horrible…. We don’t have to kill people anymore, Dia. We don’t have to marry decrepit men, or men who hit us. We don’t have to have baby after baby until we die of fever or exhaustion. We can live among the Christians and be free there to…just be ourselves. As women. As people. Finally.”
“She’s right,” Euodia said quietly. “It was the same with me before, and now we’re free.”
Dia looked from Euodia to me and back again. She twisted her hand out of my grip. I recognized the black light in her eyes and knew what was coming next, dreaded it so much that tears started to my eyes: “You’ve found yourself a new pet. That’s all it is. I knew I never meant anything to you—just a distraction to pass the time until you found something better. Now apparently you’re into redheads.”
“Dia, that’s not at all what’s going on….”
“Don’t ‘Dia’ me…” she snapped. “You’ve always looked down on me. Poor little Dia, poor little slave girl. Here’s what I think: you’ve found your level again with this insanely rich woman and her insane pet prophet. If Lydia supports you, you can escape your father but still live in the luxury you’re accustomed to. Perfect exit strategy, Phemonoe. Jump from one cult to another. Too bad it’s not what you promised me. But I’m the idiot for believing you in the first place.” She laughed, hiccuped, and for the first time, I could hear the pain bleeding along the back edge of the words she was slicing me with.
“Dia…. Dionysia, please. I’m sorry….”
“Save your apologies.” Dia swiped at something on her cheek, but her voice was rock hard as she went on. “You’re not my captain anymore. You’re not my friend. You’re a traitor to Delphi, and the next time I see you, I’m going to kill you.” And she pulled her tablos up over her head, threw open the door to the sleeping quarters, and walked out.
When I ran out after her, she was nowhere to be seen. A couple of Lydia’s servants were turning vivid swaths of purple dyed linen on their drying racks. “Did you see a woman wearing a red tablos?” I asked them. “Where did she go?” But they just looked at each other, shrugged, and shook their heads.
Dia was gone.
The Rookery 