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  So no Phineus or Polystratus - apparently. Well, that was something. But then whatever poor Statianus went through, he endured it alone. I would not have let that happen. Dear gods, if the young fool was fully determined to suffer this pantomime, I would have escorted him to Lebadeia myself. I would at least have been waiting to lift up his comatose body and wrap him in a blanket once it was all over.

  The priest told us the story. Statianus had turned up, looking frantic. They were used to that. This oracle was not for the casually curious.

  The temple attendants had calmed him, and carefully explained what he would have to do. According to them, they used every means to dissuade him from going through with it. If that was true, the bastards were now making sure they were morally covered. No chance here of a compensation claim afterwards for personal injury. I was only surprised they did not make all applicants sign a disclaimer.

  ‘Do you suggest people make a will?’

  ‘Unnecessary, Falco!’

  Statianus chose to proceed. So they made him stay at an approved lodging to prepare himself, dwelling on it. On the third night, he was taken to the river by two teenaged acolytes, bathed, dressed in a special costume of tunic, ribbons, and very heavy boots, and anointed with oil. The priests transferred him to what they called the Fountain of Forgetfulness, from which he drank. After worshipping a secret image of Trophonius made by Daedalus, and praying (no doubt that it would all be over quickly, Statianus was led in procession to the oracle. He climbed the mound. Its trapdoors were opened, the ladder prepared, and he climbed down alone into the chamber. The ladder was removed; the heavy doors clanged shut above him.

  He knew what he must do then. Between the walls and the floor he would find a crevice, into which he had to press himself, feet first. Presumably he got that far.

  ‘Presumably?’ My voice was harsh with foreboding.

  ‘Something happens occasionally,’ the priest said, coldly. He made it oblique, distancing himself.

  I felt sick. ‘He was harmed there?’ I saw the priest’s face and guessed the worst. ‘You can’t mean this. You lost him?’

  Appalled, Helena Justina begged, ‘Tullius Statianus never emerged from the oracle chamber?’ The priest finally confirmed it with a stiff nod. ‘He vanished? Then you had better tell us, ‘Helena instructed fiercely,’ whether you have found that poor man’s body yet - and if not, where you suggest we look for him.’

  XLIX

  We never found him. I could tell the priests were nervous from the start. Whatever they planned to happen must have gone badly awry. Since they refused to admit what was normal procedure, we could only guess how.

  Sure of a tragedy, I made it official straight away. I chivvied the priests and involved the elders of the town. We scoured Lebadeia itself. Then parties of men searched in all directions: along the main road to Chaironia, up a track that led over Mount Helike to Delphi by a wilder route, and also out along the famous road to Thebes. Riders and youths with dogs came out to look for him. We beat the rocks and dragged the river. He was nowhere.

  When it grew dark, we had to abandon our efforts. The townspeople had done all I could expect. They had devoted a day to it. They wanted to exonerate their oracle, so they showed willing, even though we were foreigners and strangers. But when I gave up and returned to my room that night I sat wearily with my head in my hands, and knew they would do no more. We had all failed. By then I was sure we would never see Statianus alive again - and we might never even know if he was dead.

  At that point, Helena was not with me. When I stumbled back to our hired room, I failed to find her and assumed she had gone to eat without me. I was surprised. Soon, anxiety took me in search of the poet. Lampon said she had gone back to the sanctuary; she had wanted to try to find out what really happened to questioners down in the chamber. She was sure the oracle worked by some trick.

  That had been this afternoon.

  I crossed the river and raced to the oracle. Lampon came with me, guilty that he had not told me earlier. I wished he had gone with Helena, but I knew her independence and could not blame him for it.

  The grove was dimly lit with tiny lamps. The mound was more brightly illuminated, as if somebody might be consulting the oracle that night. But nobody much was there, just two boys in matching long white tunics, aged about thirteen. They were hanging about playing knucklebones and hoping for excitement. One saw me coming, took fright at my grim face, and decided he had to go home to his mother. The other either had a feckless mother who would never miss him, or else he just could not bear to miss anything. Lampon and I accosted him. I assured him he was not in any trouble, then slowly extracted news.

  Helena Justina had come to the oracle, and had found these same boys. She sat down and made friends with them. She guessed they were the pair who took part in the ritual, leading questioners to the river for ceremonial washing. Winningly, she asked whether they knew more about the oracle than that. Of course they did. They knew how the priests worked it.

  I gazed at the lad who was telling me. Helena and I had already discussed this. We had heard numerous tales of temple ‘magic’ from Marinus and Indus. Egypt was particularly good at trickery, but delusion happened everywhere. Statues that eerily nodded or talked, for instance. Temple doors that swung open mysteriously, after priests lit fires on altars, activating buckets of water or mercury, hidden beneath, so they operated pulleys; doors that then miraculously closed when the altar fires were doused. Compared to these manoeuvres, it would be simplicity to bamboozle a man you had locked up in the dark underground - especially in a contraption built specifically for that purpose.

  ‘I bet I know what Helena suggested. When the initiate is down there in the chamber, somebody else goes inside?’ The boy seemed amazed I too had worked out this obvious ploy. ‘Is there a secret passage?’

  With an eagerness that suggested he had a guilty conscience, the boy admitted it. He knew of the passage for the simplest of reasons. ‘When the doors shut and the questioners are in the dark, most of them shit themselves. I get paid a bonus to go in next day and clean up.’

  Then to my horror, he confessed he and his friend had shown Helena where the secret passage was. She had gone in. She was a long time there. They called, but she never came out. They knew Statianus had vanished and were too scared to investigate. Frightened, the two boys had hung around outside, hoping somebody would come along and deal with the situation for them.

  Like most boys in trouble, our informant had not confessed until he was asked. He was very relieved to be telling me at last. I myself was hysterical. I ordered him to show me the hidden entrance immediately. My urgency was a mistake. The lad leapt to his feet and fled.

  L

  There was still a way in. Lampon and I took lights. With the poet trembling behind me, I strode to the top of the mound. He made a limp effort to help me, as I heaved up one of the bronze doors and flung it over on its hinge so the hole was accessible. We clung to the edge and peered down. I thought I could see a white figure lying about twenty feet below.

  Statianus had been put down there yesterday, using the shrine’s famous narrow ladder. Ladders of that length are rarely stored far from their operation area. Lampon and I ran around the sanctuary like trapped rats until we found it.

  ‘Don’t fail me, Lampon. I need you, man. I’m going down, but you make sure you stay here holding the ladder steady. Then I may need you to fetch help.’

  The dark shaft was horribly like a well-head I once had to be lowered into. Still, I scrambled over and I went down that ladder almost without touching its rungs. I was holding a lamp; scalding oil splashed my hand. I found myself entering a conical cave, fashioned like a kiln or bread oven. The walls were about ten feet apart, the depth twice that. Foul, musty air chilled me.

  When my feet hit the rough earthen floor, I looked up. A pallid semicircle showed where the entrance door was open. Lampon’s head was outlined dimly against a far-off starlit sky. I yelled up to h
im not to shut down the trapdoor whatever happened.

  Now there was no time for panic. I dropped to my knees beside the motionless figure. It was Helena - thankfully warm and still breathing. As soon as I touched her, sliding my hands along her arms to rub life back into her, she groaned and struggled.

  ‘I’m here. I’ve got you. Relief and joy swamped me as I held her in my arms. On principle, I found a few words of admonishment. Now I know why the Greeks lock up their women indoors…’ But I also knew why she had done it. She remembered how many fearsome wells, tombs, and underground shrines I had had to endure; she had wanted to spare me yet another dose of terror in a dark confined space. In the end I just clasped her tightly, forgetting her folly and thanking that wonderful idiot for her bravery and love.

  Then we heard angry voices above us. Sanctuary guards were accosting Lampon. He protested with vigour, but we heard him being dragged away. Somebody pulled up the ladder and, despite my shouts, they banged the door shut. My lamp went out.

  ‘Oh thank you, gods!’

  ‘No, Marcus; that was men - men protecting their mysteries.’

  ‘We must stop getting ourselves entombed in dank places. Don’t panic.’

  ‘I am perfectly calm, darling - Marcus, Marcus, I have to tell you. I know how they do it. Someone hits them on the head!’

  ‘Someone hit you too!’

  ‘Not hard.’

  My palm went to her scalp, feeling for damage. She squeaked. I pulled in a long, ferocious breath. Any man who attacked Helena Justina was as good as dead. But I had to get us out of here and find him first.

  To keep her still as she thrashed about trying to talk to me, I went along with the revelations. Right! The poor fools with questions are brought here, weak from fasting. They have been drenched with cold water, inside and out, so their brains are frozen. Disorientated by fear, they fail to notice when somebody slides out of the cleft they themselves have to wriggle into. ‘Where was it, incidentally?

  ‘No, I don’t think anyone waits in here, or crawls in either. They would be noticed. My theory is, they lie in wait outside in the secret passage. They pull the victim feet first through the cleft - then bop them and push them back in here. The questioners have been told to hold barley cakes soaked in honey in both hands - so they can’t defend themselves,’ Helena burbled. ‘And they have been told they will experience being dragged helplessly into the cleft as if pulled by the force of a river. She was shaking with cold, after lying here all afternoon. I had to take her out of this filthy cave, and quickly.

  ‘Tell me later, sweetheart. You came through this secret passageway - now where is it?’

  Then Helena helped me feel at floor level for the hole where the questioners inserted themselves. Through this crack ‘supernatural forces’ sucked them and then - if they were lucky - the so-called gods later spat them out back into the chamber. The cleft was about two feet long and one foot high; a chubby gourmet would get stuck.

  Oh pig’s piss. It was too small. Hot waves of primeval fear swept over me. This was my worst nightmare. Before I came down here, I had told myself there must be a nicely hewn corridor. Even if the secret tunnel had been made for boys and dwarves, I had imagined it as walkable - perhaps with a decent door into this chamber…

  No chance. Bad luck had caught me out again. We had to lie down and squeeze out feet first through the sacred pothole.

  No force of nature or divinity seized us. We lay down, used our own strength to push our feet through the gap, then wriggled our bodies after them. Helena went first, before I could stop her - but she had come in this way, so she was more confident. I felt her slip away from me, then heard muffled shouts of encouragement. I followed Helena and squeezed through into another dark cavity where it was possible only to crouch half upright. Feeling the wall on our left hand, she then pulled me for some distance along a back-breaking tunnel, to a door which led outside. With huge relief we emerged into the moonlit grove.

  We straightened up and breathed the cool night air.

  ‘Well, that’s drastic - but effective! A sanctuary attendant creeps inside with a mallet. Some questioners are so badly concussed they never get over it. Dear gods, love, that could have been you.’

  Helena hugged me to comfort me. ‘It may not have been the priests. In fact, that is rather unlikely. Someone may have overheard me talking to the boys and followed me in there. When I had scrambled into the main chamber I could see nothing in the dark, so I started wriggling back to the tunnel. I heard someone there. I backed into the main chamber again but he followed. I gave his hair a good pull and poked him in the eye, I think. His blow glanced off, but I groaned very loudly and pretended to be done for.’

  ‘You passed right out. Don’t pretend otherwise.’

  ‘Just play-acting, Marcus.’

  ‘Cobnuts. I found you, remember. Helena Justina, you will promise me now - you will never, ever do anything that ridiculous again.’

  ‘I promise,’ she said quickly. It had all the weight of a market-trader telling me her eggs were fresh. ‘They will never admit how they cheat, Marcus.’

  ‘No, not even with your evidence.’

  ‘The boys who showed me the way told me everyone at the shrine thinks a stranger got in yesterday and stole away Statianus. Whatever happened to him was quite unplanned by the authorities.’

  ‘So the priests don’t believe the gods took him?’ I asked drily.

  ‘They had seen someone, lurking in the grove.’

  ‘Description?’

  ‘Just ‘a shadowy figure,’ I’m afraid.’

  ‘Oh the old ‘shadowy figure’ is at it again? I wonder if he’s now called Phineus or Polystratus - or did somebody else trail our man here?’

  ‘It must be someone who knows how the oracle really works,’ said Helena.

  ‘Someone who works in the travel industry would probably have a good idea!’

  We tackled the priests. They released Lampon into my custody, claiming their security guards had mistaken the poet for a thief. He bravely made a joke agreeing that he had a furtive manner and communicated badly. This had my style. A few more weeks with me, and Lampon would give up scribbling, marry for love, and learn how to earn hard money boot-mending…

  I accused the priests of fiddling the oracle. They accused me of blasphemy. We settled on calling what was perpetrated on questioners. ‘divine manipulation in the cause of truth’ - where my definitions of ‘divine’ and ‘truth’ differed from theirs.

  To protect the good name of their oracle, they were eager to prove that some evil doer had taken Statianus from the chamber, and that the same man then attacked Helena. They could not risk other pilgrims hearing that descent into the cavern was genuinely dangerous. The official story was that only one man had ever died at the hands of Trophonius, and that he - known to be the lowlife bodyguard of a man called Demetrius - had deliberately gone into the cavern to steal gold and silver. His fate was divine vengeance, according to the priests. I told them I had a healthy respect for revenge.

  After a stupid feint when the priests suggested to us that Trophonius had claimed our man for the underworld, they stopped messing with the mystic tosh and confessed themselves baffled. They absolutely denied sending in a man with a mallet to strike people on the head; I never decided whether that had happened to Statianus or if the mystery man got to him first.

  Nervous about future takings, the priests now told me all they knew. Tullius Statianus came to them about a day after Helena and I met him in Delphi. Somebody had told him of a rocky short cut, so he had made good time.

  At the shrine, Statianus had claimed he was in danger. The priests simply assumed that like many of their customers he was haunted by demons - figments of a tormented imagination. Thinking no more of it, they prepared him with the rituals and sent him into the chamber. According to them, when the bronze trapdoor was opened again after the regulation period, instead of finding him in shock on the floor, he was simply gone.
r />   I believed them. There would have been no benefit to them in lying. They needed to pull questioners out after their ordeal, alive. Dead men would only deter future trade.

  Only after they found that Statianus had vanished, had attendants talked among themselves and recalled sightings of the unknown man in the grove. By then it was too late. Nobody had spoken to him at the time. Nobody had seen him since.

  ‘Has a travel company from Rome, called Seven Sights and led by a man called Phineus, ever brought clients to this oracle?’ Occasionally. The priests discouraged it. Tourists in general took one scared look, then declined to carry out the ritual. There was no money in their visit and it wasted time. ‘Still, you do know Phineus. Could he be your skulking man?’ Too far away to tell. ‘Anyone ever met his sidekick, Polystratus?’ Not that they were aware of.

  Exhausted and frustrated, we had to give up. We had searched; we had asked the right questions. If anything new was discovered, messages would be sent to the governor. Our business at the oracle was over.

  It was hard to leave, beset by guilt that we were abandoning Statianus. We had no choice. There was nothing more we could do in Lebadeia. Next day the priests supplied transport and we travelled to the coast. At a fishing village, we picked up a boat and sailed back across the Gulf of Corinth. Our mood was bleak.

  We landed at Lechaion, feeling that the past few days had been a disaster. The first person we saw was a soldier in uniform. He told me he had been ordered to the port by Aquillius, watching for Phineus. He was not much use as a lookout. Helena clutched my arm. Disembarking from another vessel was another suspect. This was a man we had not seen for weeks. We watched as he oversaw the unloading of several large amphorae, wine or seafood containers, presumably. He was joking with the sailors and looked completely unconcerned.

  I sent Helena ahead into Corinth with Lampon, to find our young folk at the Elephant. Without bothering to alert the lookout soldier, I walked across and hailed the new arrival, as he shouldered an unwieldy round amphora on to an already laden donkey-cart.