‘Purity is an aspect of the heart, not only of the body,’ Hannah said, but she stepped back and Saulos followed her in under the low lintel. She let fall the hide across the doorway, blocking out the strands of grey starlight and the peach fuzz of dawn.
In perfect darkness, she moved about, finding by feel flint and tinder and iron and the small, stubbed wick of the first lamp. Long before, she had done this. To do it now was to move backwards in time, to become younger, to re-find innocence and the joy that came with it.
Both youth and innocence departed as the first light brought her Saulos’ green-white face. His eyes followed her from lamp to lit lamp around the room, flinching from the walls and the things he read there.
He licked his lips for the second time. ‘The walls show death. I see treachery and slaughter, the punishment of innocence, the dominance of kings. Is there no chance of hope? Of life?’
‘We are the hope, you and I.’ The final lamp was lit. Hannah turned, watching her shadow spiral the room. ‘The way to life is across the river into death.’
‘Ferried there by Charon, who will ask me three questions.’ Even here, Saulos couldn’t resist a display of his learning.
‘Ferried there only if you can answer each of the three questions correctly.’
‘And if I don’t?’
Hannah stared at him flatly. ‘If you speak less than the truth, if you fail to answer any question correctly, you will not leave this place alive. As to the manner or duration of your death, I couldn’t say; a man can live a long time alone in darkness, I believe. But you needn’t face that. If you wish to walk away now, you may do so. Is that your wish?’
She had to ask; it was part of the entering and required truth as its answer, but she had never done so with so much of herself hanging on the answer. ‘Well?’
He closed his eyes, shutting her out. ‘Truthfully – is it the wish of my heart to leave this place? Of course. What sane man would not wish himself back in his bed, asleep, with dawn yet to come? Is it the wish of my courage? No. I was sent here by Akakios’ command, but having arrived I will not walk away at the first hurdle; we both know the cost of that.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes.’ His eyes sprang open. ‘That’s my truth and I stand by it. If it’s not enough, then you can seal the door and leave me here now.’
‘It’s enough.’
‘May I ask you a question now, before we go in?’
‘I can’t see why not.’
‘Have you conducted others into here? Or am I the first?’
That made her laugh, warming the air between them. ‘Would you like to be the first?’
‘Of course.’ Saulos pulled a wry face. ‘But I think I’d feel safer if there had been others before me.’
‘There were three,’ Hannah said. ‘Two men and a woman. I can’t tell you their names or which of them lived and which died – but more lived than died. Let that cheer you as we pass down into Hades.’
On that, she lifted a single lamp from its niche and stepped past him to the opening that led deeper into the heart of the maze.
‘Have you fasted?’
Pantera lay under his oiled cloth cover in the building site behind the Temple of Serapis, beneath which lay the greater, more secret, Temple of Truth.
From the sound of her voice, Hypatia was less than ten feet away. He turned his head to where he thought she might be. ‘As you instructed,’ he said, ‘I have eaten nothing, and drunk only water. I have also passed dung and urine and found the first ridiculously easy and the second ridiculously hard. I thought I had faced all evils a man could suffer, and so was without fear, which of course was hubris on my part. Do men usually find themselves rendered weak with terror when they come here?’
‘The wise ones understand their own terror,’ Hypatia said. ‘The others enter and never leave.’ He heard her move a little. ‘Were you going to lie there all day? Saulos has already gone in.’
‘I know. And three of Akakios’ men watched him do so. But they’re not watching here. You chose your entrance well.’
‘Then you are free to join me in it.’
A block of granite the size of a ram and ten times its weight had been Pantera’s company through the night. Giving it a final, friendly pat, he eased out from under his oil cloth and crawled towards the leaning planks that hid the entrance he had used before.
Framed in the shadows of the oak planking, Hypatia was the same sculpted perfection as when he had first seen her in a hidden house in Alexandria. As then, she was dressed in white linen, but had added a broad belt woven through with gold threads. Like his, her feet were bare. Her hair was swept back from her face and fell in a silk sheen to her shoulders. She smelled faintly, as ever, of unnamed wild flowers.
The entrance to the underground room lay at her feet, as uninviting as it had been before – more now that Pantera knew the uncomfortable wriggle that led from it, and the room beyond, with its images of herons that had disturbed his sleep these past nights. He found his mouth aswill with nervous saliva and swallowed.
‘If this is Hades, the beginning will be the least of it, I imagine?’ His voice was not as shaken as he had feared it might be.
Hypatia raised one brow. ‘I imagine you may be right. If you—’
An owl called nearby. In daylight. Hypatia spat an oath in a language Pantera didn’t know. A small, wicked blade sprang into her hand; he hadn’t known she was armed.
He caught her wrist. ‘Wait.’
She twisted free, her face frozen with fury. ‘We must not be followed. This matters more than your life or mine.’
‘This man won’t follow if we don’t want him.’
He dropped her arm and, putting his cupped hands to his lips, blew a soft, answering cry. The reply came immediately. Relieved, Pantera said, ‘If you don’t want him to come in here, I’ll go out and tell him so.’
‘If you can find him.’ Hypatia had her eye to a crack in the wood. Her voice was thoughtful now. ‘How many men could have tracked you here, do you think?’
‘Until a moment ago, I would have said none.’
‘Exactly. So there’s a reason your young Briton has found us. Let him come.’
Ajax made a brief silhouette in the triangle of oak and then was on one knee before Hypatia.
‘Lady …’ He spoke in Egyptian, language of the Sibyls, which Pantera only barely understood. ‘I have fasted and drunk only water this past day. I am cleansed in body and of clear intent. If it is your will, I would enter this place.’
Astonished, Pantera said, ‘How do you know—’
‘He was trained on the island of Mona.’ Hypatia had laid her hand on Ajax’s crown. ‘The dreamers there know more of the oracles than anyone else on earth.’
‘Lady, I spent my youth badly and did not learn as much as I could have done. There may be ways in which I am in error. If so, I will leave this place and undertake not to return.’
‘You have come to protect Hannah?’
‘I have, lady. And to offer whatever other service I may.’
There was a weight to his voice that Pantera did not understand. Hypatia, though, clearly did. She was silent a long moment and Pantera saw her lips move twice, as if in conversation with someone or something unseen.
‘Do you have the questions and their answers?’ she asked, eventually. A sense of wonder lit her voice.
Ajax said, ‘I do.’
‘And you could navigate the two paths that lead to the river, the one straight as a staff, the other coiled like a snake and branched as often as an oak?’
‘I believe so.’
‘Then, by all means, you should go and take the role allotted. Tell Alexandros you come with my blessing.’
* * *
Step by slow step, caught in a shivering bubble of lamplight, Hannah and Saulos moved on and in and down through the labyrinth of ancient, man-made tunnels with their smooth stone walls and barely perceptible incline that took them ever deeper beneath the Serapeum.
Following a memory laid down in her childhood, they turned and wove, taking a right here, or a left there, with the lamp always pushing back the dark, but never so much that they could see more than two steps ahead.
Warm air swept Hannah’s ankles, so that at times she felt as if she were walking through tepid Nile water. She had been there before and knew it was not so, but Saulos looked down as often as he looked forward, and soon began to lift his feet higher, not trusting the evidence of his eyes and the patchy lamplight.
Not only their feet were affected. From their knees up, tendrils of warm air, even heat, snaked up from the tunnel’s depths to wrap their chests, their arms, their necks, to caress their faces and kiss their cheeks. The air was damp, with the smell of old breath.
‘Like walking into the mouth of a god,’ Hannah observed, as they turned yet another corner and faced a wall of damp air.
Archly, Saulos said, ‘My god does not open his mouth thus, but rather—
Hannah!
’
He clutched at her arm. The wall of air had become, briefly, a gale, and had blown out the lamp. With Saulos clinging as a dead weight on one arm, Hannah reached out her free hand and sought the smooth wall, searching forward amidst the fine cracks and old scars until her questing fingers found the first in a series of small cupped depressions up at shoulder height that told her where she was.
She followed them forward, counting, dragging Saulos with her, step by unwilling step.
‘Have you no fear?’ His voice quavered, full of tears.
‘If I have fear in this place,’ Hannah said, ‘you are dead. Pray that I don’t.’
They walked on in silence. The air became intolerably humid. A wind soughed past, like the premonition of a desert storm, hissing, whispering, deafening.
Eight hundred blind paces, two left turns and a right-angled, right-sided bend later, Hannah’s fingers dropped into the deepest yet of the dimples on the wall. She stopped. Saulos slammed into her shoulder and backed off, cursing.
She said, ‘Don’t move. The river Styx runs at your feet, flowing at right angles to this path. If you step forward, you’ll drown. If, instead, you reach to your left, you’ll find a lamp. You must light it. Everything from here on must be done by you.’
Saulos found the lamp and struck the iron truly. The lamp took his spark and fed on it, sending a tall flame up the wick in a way that augured well. Hannah saw him smile, and say something to himself, or his listening god.
Then he turned, and saw the steaming water of the river, and the caped, hooded figure who stood by its edge and the ferryboat beside him, and the smile fell from his face.
‘Welcome to the Styx, Saulos of Idumaea,’ said the Ferryman pleasantly. ‘For due payment, I will take you across.’
Which was exactly as it should have been.
Except that the shadowed figure spoke in the voice that lined the halls of her sleep and carved its own path through her heart, and no part of Hannah’s training had prepared her for that.
‘W
her’s your driver?’
It was an hour after dawn. Poros leaned at his ease against the barn’s doorpost. His beard shone with oil and the garlic on his breath swept four stalls down to where Math was washing Sweat ready for the race trial.
‘He’s gone to pray,’ Math said. ‘He’ll be back in time for the race.’
‘He prays in Alexandria now, does he?’ Poros sauntered down the aisle as if he owned it. The stench of garlic filled the entire box. ‘Strange thing for an Athenian,’ he said, leaning in over the stall door. ‘I didn’t know they worshipped Serapis in Greece?’
Math kept his head down, below Sweat’s neck. It gave him a view of the barn while keeping him clear of his enemy; there was nobody around who could help him.
‘Ajax has travelled a lot. On the boat, he prayed to Manannan of the waves. In the city, I think he calls to the spirit of Alexander himself.’
Poros pursed his lips and raised his brows. Leaning over the door, he lifted a green ribbon from the rack and began idly to braid one into the colt’s tail. ‘So we will find him at Alexander’s tomb, if we go to look?’
Math hefted his bucket of water, threw the entire contents down Sweat’s neck and stood back. ‘Why would you choose to disturb his prayers? I’m second driver. If you have a question for the team, I can answer it.’
Poros’ laugh sent doves clattering from the rafters. With his head thrown back and his beard jutting forward, he was Zeus in all his thunderous glory.
‘Boy, you’re ten years old! You did well enough in the display the other day, but there are still things that are beyond you.’ He finished his braid and slapped Sweat on the rump. By a miracle, the colt did not kick him. He pushed himself away from the door. ‘Find your driver. Bring him to Akakios below the emperor’s podium one hour before the race.’ At the doorway he paused, caught half in the shadows, half in colour. With an unusual gravity, he said, ‘Don’t try to run this race. You’re not ready yet. Remember what happened to Icarus when he flew too near the sun.’
Math finished braiding Sweat’s mane and went round to his tail. The ribbon Poros had set was perfect. Math ripped it out with shaking hands and set about replacing it. At the fifth attempt, he had one that was almost as good. He had no idea who Icarus was, but he had no wish at all to try to fly towards the sun.
The midday meal passed without sign of Ajax and the grooms took themselves off to lie down for an hour out of the day’s worst heat.
Math couldn’t sleep and didn’t try, but took advantage of the rare privacy to sit on one of the benches in the tack room, close his eyes and pray to his father, to the more distant memory of his mother and most urgently to Ajax, that he might hold true to his promise.
Get the colts harnessed and ready. You know everything we need by now. I’ll be back to race them
.
But he wasn’t back, and the race was coming ever closer and Math had a new nightmare now; that if Ajax wasn’t there when the colts were led on to the track, Nero would name Math as the substitute driver.
In complete darkness, Pantera followed Hypatia through the tunnel that led to the Temple of the Oracle, which lay beneath the Temple of Serapis.
As far as he could tell, they had walked downward for the entire labyrinthine journey, but Hypatia had declined to light the lamp and they had walked in darkness the whole time, with the walls smooth as a tomb on either side and the weight of Serapis’ temple overhead, waiting at every step to crash down on the heads of those beneath.