The Marathon Conspiracy (20 page)

I resisted the urge to panic, in this dark, ice-cold place, in the presence of a corpse.

But was it? If I rose to the surface and raised the alarm and then was proven wrong, I’d look like an idiot. I opened my eyes; they were desperately sore from all the diving, but this was no
time to worry about that. I could see nothing but a blur. I slid my hand down to feel what might be a mouth. I had to be sure. I pushed my fingers against whatever this was. They slid right in and I felt teeth and what could only be a tongue lodged between my fingers.

I gagged and choked on my own vomit. Underwater, I was in the greatest danger. I dropped my rock and swam to the surface, barely able to hold onto my heaving stomach. The moment my head breached the surface, I spewed my stomach contents across the Sacred Spring. I trod water, desperately trying to breathe and release the mess in my throat at the same time. I still could have choked to death.

“Nico!” Diotima screamed in alarm; she would have dived in had Zeke not grabbed hold of her. He motioned to two of the slaves, who splashed in, grabbed hold of me, and hauled me to land, where I pushed myself up on all fours and sucked in lungfuls of clean, precious air.

Diotima knelt beside me and said, “Nico, are you all right?”

“What happened?” Thea asked.

Calm at last, I said, “There’s a body down there.”

M
Y PRONOUNCEMENT SET
off wailing among the girls for their departed sister, as was right and proper. The girls and the priestesses tugged at their hair and tore at their chitons. They would continue like this for days.

I ignored the noise as best I could. Feeling recovered enough now, I asked Zeke for a long rope, only to discover he’d already brought one. He was obviously a good man in a crisis, and I thanked the gods he was there.

I looped one end about me and tied it loosely with a simple knot. Zeke put a hand on my shoulder. “Are you sure you’re all right to do this? You’ve been up and down a lot this day.”

I nodded. “I can do it one last time. Have your men pull when I tug the line. I’ll guide her body up so it doesn’t snag.”

I walked into the water—it felt like home—prepared myself for what I was about to touch, eased myself under, and kicked down. After so much practice, I no longer needed the rock.

For a moment or two, I thought I’d lost the body, but then I connected with a chest and then an arm. I pulled the end of the rope, and it came free to drift beside me. Luckily for me Poseidon had decreed that things in the water should be lighter than on land. It was easy to raise the body with one hand—there was a slight sucking resistance from the mud, easily overcome. I looped the floating rope around and under, across the chest, under the armpits, did it twice more to be sure, then tied two tight knots. As I tightened I thought to myself it might be too tight for her to breathe, then realized at once how stupid that was: this body wasn’t breathing.

Though I’d worked as quickly I could, everything had been done by touch alone, and I was running short of breath. It didn’t matter, I was done. I pulled on the rope going up until it was taut, then tugged three times, sharply.

At once the rope slipped through my hand and the body rose. I waited for it to pass by, then followed with both hands on the back, gently guiding it past the rocks and, when we neared the point where Ophelia would be dragged across the bottom, added my own force to save her corpse the indignity of being dragged through mud before her friends.

She broke surface the instant before me, and I heard the screams even through the thin layer of water above my ears that rose to a crescendo as I came up for air. Two men had been waiting, ready to grab the body and carry it to land.

I took my time getting relief with a few deep breaths. After all, there was no urgency to inspect a corpse.

As I waded through the last of the water, I saw only glimpses of the body between the legs of the people clustered about, staring, pointing, and arguing. Something about their reaction didn’t seem quite right. I dripped my way across, the group parted, if
only to avoid getting as wet as me, and I looked down into the very dead face of Melo.

“HOW IN
H
ADES
did
he
get in there?” I said loudly.

There was no point in asking. No one knew any better than I did.

“This is very depressing,” I said.

“Especially from Melo’s point of view,” Diotima added, which was true enough.

I said, “We need to determine how he died.”

“He drowned,” said Zeke, frowning.

“Did he?” I asked. “We found him in the spring. It’s not the same thing.”

“Are we sure Ophelia’s not in there too?” Doris asked.

“I’m sure,” I said. “The spot where I found Melo was the last left on my sweeps. Why didn’t he rise to the surface? I thought bodies did that.”

“Not necessarily at once, I believe,” Zeke said. “We live close to the coast. Every now and then I’ve been in town when a drowned man was brought in. They seem to stay under until they bloat. Then they rise.”

“How long had Melo been in the water?” Doris asked.

“It can’t be more than three days,” Diotima said. “We spoke to him then, after we gave up the search.”

“And how in Hades did he manage to drown without being seen, in the middle of a sanctuary full of girls and women walking back and forth?”

Then Diotima and I answered my question in unison. “He fell in at night.”

“But Nico,” said Socrates, frowning, “didn’t you say it yourself?”

“Didn’t I say what?”

“When you tried to dive. You said, ‘How does anyone manage to drown?’ ”

It was a fair point. “You’re right, Socrates. Something’s … er … fishy. We’ll have to inspect the body. But not here in front of the girls.”

Zeke ordered the slaves to carry the body to the same storeroom where was stored the skeleton of Hippias. In the absence of a courtyard not inhabited by young girls, the storeroom would have to do for observance of the rites. The slaves would place Melo’s feet toward the door, and the priestesses would clean his body and place the coin. I wondered if they’d find room enough for both bodies. If things kept on like this, the sanctuary might need to build an extension.

“What do we do with all this other stuff?” Diotima asked. She sat amongst a small fortune in gold and silver ornaments. No, not a small fortune: a large one. A family could probably live for a hundred years on the value of what she had scattered on the grass. Pots, vessels, statuettes, a whole pile of mirrors made of bronze, tarnished beyond repair, rings, gems, wooden spindles and spindle whorls, a case of sewing needles made of bone.

“Throw it back into the spring,” Thea said.

“You must be joking!” I said it without thinking, before I could stop to think I was correcting the High Priestess.

Thea was not amused. “No, young man, I’m
not
joking. Everything you see lying on the grass was dedicated to the Goddess. Women long dead gave their most precious possessions to our Goddess, that she might grant them favor in life. They might be dead, and their psyches in Hades, but their gifts were forever, and I
will not see that undone
.”

The lady had a point. I sighed and reached for the first, a beautiful statuette of a young child.

“I’ll do this, Nico,” Diotima said. “You go get yourself warm.”

I smiled in gratitude, because I was shivering beyond control. As I left, I saw Diotima begin. Gaïs bent to help her, and together the two priestesses blessed each object with all their power before each was returned to its home.

It had been clever of me to strip. I used my exomis as a towel and then, in the absence of anything else to wear, put it on. I was damp, but at least I wasn’t frozen and the shivers had left me.

I took Socrates with me to see the body.

A slave guarded the entrance. I told him there was little chance of the occupants escaping, and he replied that Zeke had ordered him to stay, not to keep the bodies in, but to keep the more curious girls out.

“They’re already playing dare games to see who’s willing to come closest,” he said.

So much for protecting the children’s innocence. I opened the door and we went inside. Socrates had seen death before, and I didn’t expect such a clean body to be any concern.

He didn’t disappoint me. But he stood back, looking somewhat askance, and said, “Nico, what do you look for? How do you inspect a body?”

“Like this.” I knelt beside Melo and heaved him over. He’d been a light man in life, but in death he was heavy as a sack of rocks.

Despite having been in the water, the exomis he wore had nettles and seeds stuck to it. Well, that was no surprise. He’d spent his days wandering the countryside in search of his betrothed.

I pulled down the tunic and ran my fingers over his body. I said to Socrates, “I’m searching for any sign of a wound.”

Socrates gave a moue of distaste. “Can’t you just look?”

“With some wounds you have to find the broken bones beneath.”

It was the idea of touching a dead body that upset him. We Hellenes have a horror of touching the dead. A man who’s been in contact with a corpse is forbidden to eat or have sex or enter the holy places until he’s been ritually cleansed.

“What’s this?”

At the corpse’s back, beneath the leather belt of his exomis, was something solid. I pulled it out, to find it was a piece of
broken pottery. I held it up to Socrates and said, “Easy to see how a killer missed it.”

“Nico, there are words on the other side.”

I flipped it over. Socrates was right. Scratched into the fired clay were these words:
caves hills fields coast boats farmhouse
. A line had been scratched through the first four words. The final two were inscribed in the same hand but with slightly thicker lines. I guessed they’d been added later.

People used broken pottery to scratch notes all the time. This, it seemed to me, must have been notes Melo had scratched for himself. It didn’t take much imagination to realize this was his checklist of places to search for Ophelia.

I said, “Socrates, don’t tell anyone else about this, except for Diotima of course. All right?”

“Why not?” he asked.

“Because …” I was stumped for an answer. “Because you shouldn’t give away information unless you need to.”

Socrates nodded, but I could tell he didn’t believe me.

My prodding and my close inspection of the body provided nothing more, either front or back. It was when I touched his head that I made progress. The bone beneath the hair moved. I poked around, gently at first, then more firmly, until I was certain. The skull at the back of his head had been broken. There was no blood, but then nor should there be, since the body had spent at least a day in cold running water.

I took Socrates out and returned to the spring for another look, and then we joined the others in Thea’s office. It was crowded with everyone present, but at least the Little Bears couldn’t hear us.

As I walked in, Thea was speaking. “The explanation is obvious,” she said. “This annoying young man was in the habit of skulking around the sanctuary. Obviously, he fell into the water in the dark and drowned. It’s happened before, and sadly, it will probably happen again.”

They all stopped and turned to me as I entered.

Diotima said, “What did you find?”

“Melo was knocked on the head,” I said. “From behind.”

There was a pause before they understood the implication, then startled gasps from the women, except for Diotima. She’d expected as much.

“Are you sure?” Thea asked.

“It’s certain,” I said. “His skull is broken inward. Anyone can feel it.”

Zeke nodded. He understood.

“Is there a chance he fell backward, knocked his head on a rock, and rolled in?” Doris asked in hope.

I shook my head. “Find me a rock on the edge with blood on it. You won’t. I looked.”

“Then Melo was murdered,” Doris said sadly. “How long will this go on?”

Thea, Doris, and Sabina seemed upset, or if they weren’t they acted it well. They pulled at their hair or clothing. Zeke clenched his hands in anger. Of them all, Gaïs seemed the least concerned. But that was consistent with her personality.

“Yes, Melo was murdered,” I said. “I’ve touched a dead body, that makes me unclean. Ritually, that is.”

Thea understood. Of course she did, she was a High Priestess. “We have plenty of cleansing water on hand,” she said. “It’s …” Her voice faded to a mumble, and she blushed. “I’m afraid our ritually clean water is the Sacred Spring. The spring from which you pulled the body.”

It was an interesting theological point. Was I already clean because I’d had my head under sacred water for most of the day?

“Am I spiritually clean?” I asked Thea.

“Perhaps if you wash your hands, just to be sure.”

Gaïs said, “High Priestess, is there not a larger question? Has the Sacred Spring been polluted by the presence of the body, or was the body cleansed of impurity when it touched the water?”

Thea, Doris, and Sabina all stood there, thunderstruck. “You know,” Doris said at last, turning to her colleagues, “I don’t think in all the history of the Hellenes there’s ever been a case like this. A murdered corpse is the ultimate pollutant. A sacred spring blessed by a goddess is the ultimate cleanser. What happens when one touches the other?”

Sabina said, “If the spring’s polluted, we have nothing to clean it.”

In the background I could see Socrates frown. He began to mutter to himself and stared vacantly out the window. I knew that he was thinking about the priestess’s question. We didn’t have time for a long-winded explanation that no doubt wouldn’t finish until midnight, so I took him by the shoulders and said quietly, “Socrates, pay attention to me, will you? Don’t go bothering these people with your wild ideas.”

“But Nico, don’t you want to know the answer? The priestess asked—”

“I don’t care what the priestess said—”

“I’ve solved it already, Nico. It’s obvious.”

“Socrates,” Diotima said gently, “don’t you think you should leave the ecumenical questions to the experts—”