The Double Tongue Read online

  ‘Goodbye, Ionides, son of Ionides, Priest of Apollo. My advice to you is that you confine yourself strictly to your religious duties.’

  I was beginning to understand things. You will think me blind not to have done so before. But one hears of conspiracies and revolts in other places, one does not expect to stumble over the possibility of one among people one knows. The crossing was calm and under oar. I pestered Ionides with anxious questions but to no avail.

  ‘Let it be, Arieka. These things are not for women.’

  ‘Not even for the Pythia?’

  ‘Not even for her – or at least, not where six oarsmen and a pilot are within earshot.’

  ‘What did you think of our ruler?’

  ‘An excellent man in every way. What do you suppose?’

  ‘I wonder if they –’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Nothing. That crown was wonderful. And the girl. To think that such beauty can be bought!’

  ‘The boy was a dirty-minded little bastard.’

  ‘I thought you rather liked him.’

  Ionides did not answer but I saw that old wince and shiver about his mouth which told me, knowing him as I did, that it was time to change the subject.

  ‘At least we have the money for the roof.’

  ‘I only hope this snow hasn’t made it worse.’

  ‘We shall soon know.’

  But in fact we did not soon know. There was much difficulty in getting our sacred cart ashore and more in finding enough horses to get it up the icy road. I even had to walk like a poor woman, and indeed it was fortunate for the exercise warmed me. Had I sat in the wagon as the snow started again and the wind got up, blowing the snow horizontally, I should probably have died.

  VIII

  When we reached the hall of the Pythias I invited Ionides in with me. Directly the door was shut behind us I sensed something wrong. The wind still blew. It was so. There was a pile of snow in the corner of the hall. Little Menesthia appeared and when she saw me burst into tears. Yes, the roof had fallen in, or some of it. She had not known what to do nor had the house dame. She said Perseus had contrived to get timber and canvas up there but had not been able to have the roof properly blocked off because when anything was moved everything moved. Perseus himself appeared and told us that this was only the half. The roof of the bookroom was giving way. Could we come and see? Ionides left me to settle back into my apartments which I was thankful to see had not suffered, though there was an indefinable feeling of homelessness about them now that I knew the roof was damaged. Quite soon Ionides came back with Perseus and the Foundation’s master carpenter. The carpenter said the two jobs would last into the festival season even if the snow held off and gave him a chance to start. As it was, with this weather showing no sign of letting up … Ionides questioned him closely and got as much information as he could. He dismissed him, saying he would let him know his decision. Then he said,

  ‘May I join you in your apartments?’

  ‘Of course, Holy One. Menesthia, stop whimpering, child. You may come with us.’

  The largest of our braziers was glowing. I warmed my hands at it and dropped my scarf to my neck. Menesthia stood, sniffing. Ionides walked up and down the long way of the atrium.

  ‘Ionides, I have to say this. The decision is mine, you know.’

  ‘What decision?’

  ‘This is the Pythion. I am the Pythia.’

  ‘Of course, dear Lady. I was merely aiming to save you trouble.’

  ‘Well then, I have decided to start as soon as the weather is better.’

  ‘Can you tell him what to do?’

  ‘No. Can you?’

  ‘Do you not see the difficulty? We have enough brought back from Athens to start, but where?’

  ‘On the roof of course!’

  ‘Yes, but which?’

  ‘Take me with you, Ion.’

  ‘Which roof?’

  I was silent. Ionides went on.

  ‘You see, the books will suffer. They are fragile. Irreplaceable.’

  I was still silent, thinking.

  Books. That huge and magnificent roll of names.

  ‘Both the Pythion and the bookroom must be looked after. Repaired. That is obvious.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘It is not obvious.’

  ‘Well then, make it obvious for me.’

  ‘What is Delphi for?’

  ‘The oracle. That, surely, is obvious.’

  ‘Can Delphi exist without the oracle?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Or the bookroom? I mean, did the oracle do without a bookroom at some time?’

  ‘The oracle was here before writing was invented.’

  ‘I think not. But I cannot imagine that monster which Apollo slew with his arrows didn’t have a bookroom. I don’t think that as soon as he had slain the monster Apollo said “Let there be a bookroom.”’

  ‘I can’t bear this – my bookroom!’

  ‘Where you learnt what a power the hexameter could be!’

  ‘Ion – what can we do?’

  ‘The bookroom will have to suffer. We’ll try a temporary measure there and hope for better days. I daresay Perseus can shift the books about. When there’s a lull we’ll go and look.’

  *

  The lull was a long time coming. It seemed the snow would last for ever. I think the climate must have been better when the Pythion and the bookroom were built. But at last the snow ceased to fall, though it lay frozen hard on the ground and the roofs. One of the main reasons for thinking that the Pythion and the bookroom were the oldest buildings in Delphi, except the oracle itself, was that the pitch of those two roofs was different. They were flatter, as if the builders had never supposed they would have to bear the weight of snow. As for the oracle itself, built against and indeed, into the mountain, it was too small for the snow to make much difference. Also, as if Apollo had inspired the builders, the slope of the roof was greater so that the snow slid off.

  As soon as the snow had stopped falling we huddled ourselves into outdoor clothes and picked our way the few yards to the bookroom. Perseus received us looking doleful. Indeed, at first sight the damage was terrible. Fortunately, however, we discovered that it was almost all confined to that part of the bookroom which contained the Latin books and which for that reason was called the librarium. The scrolls and codexes, as Ion called some curious blocks of paper, had been removed and stacked at the other end of the bookroom, out of danger. I believe both Ion and I – particularly Ion, I should say – were secretly a little pleased that Apollo should have spared the Greek books but made a real mess of the barbarian Latin ones.

  Ion even said as much.

  ‘That’ll show them!’

  ‘Ion – Lucius Galba! The Propraetor! He’d be bound to see this put right, for the credit of Rome!’

  Ion thought.

  ‘I’m not in good odour. You detected that at least?’

  ‘At least? Your Sanctity is not always very observant. I received a distinct warning from our Lord and Master.’

  ‘Your Holiness was all politeness I thought.’

  ‘Remember the child. Menesthia – aren’t you shocked?’

  ‘Oh no, Your Holiness. It’s right to call you Holiness, isn’t it?’

  Ion laughed, then turned to me again.

  ‘But you could write a letter to him, First Lady.’

  ‘I? Write a letter?’

  ‘Why not? If you can read, you can write.’

  ‘I would get Perseus to do it. I could sign it Pythia. The Pythia.’

  ‘You’d far better let me do it. But you’d better practise signing it – I’ll think about that – but for a start practise writing the word Pythia. We’ll decide later whether you sign it also with your given name.’

  ‘I don’t think that would be proper. Besides, someone might use it.’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘Well – you know – magic.’

  ‘
We’ll think. Can you write, Young Lady? Or do you prefer just being an object?’

  ‘What on earth do you mean, Ion?’ I said.

  ‘Do you understand, Young Lady?’

  ‘Yes, Your Holiness,’ replied Menesthia, ‘of course I do.’

  ‘Do what? Understand or prefer to be an object?’

  ‘Both of course, Your Holiness.’

  ‘You had better explain to me, Ion. I suppose I’m slow-witted.’

  ‘Of course you’re not. You just don’t think in those terms. Menesthia knows she’d prefer being a pretty girl and wearing pretty clothes to sitting in a bookroom all day looking at dull old books. Right?’

  ‘Yes, Your Holiness.’

  ‘Menesthia! How can you use hexameters if you haven’t read them?’

  ‘You’re forgetting, Dear Lady. Once you had only heard them, not read them; and even when you read them you spoke them out loud. I heard you.’

  ‘Menesthia, did you sit in the portico as I said you could? While we were away?’

  ‘Yes, First Lady, of course I did. There weren’t many enquirers to begin with, but quite a lot came later on after I got known. I used to sit there. Of course I always had Lydia standing behind me –’

  ‘You didn’t squat, surely!’

  ‘No, First Lady. I had Lydia carry a milking stool for me and I sat on that. It was quite comfortable, you know, and really rather like being back on the farm. I was well wrapped up of course. It’s cold on that portico and I didn’t go inside. But I quite enjoyed myself most days. I had my funny feeling to begin with but, you know, later on it wasn’t really necessary.’

  ‘But what did you do – say?’

  ‘Well of course when I had my funny feeling I don’t know what I said! But later on I realized that it was quite simple. If it’s a young man you tell him he’ll be lucky in love. If he’s old you tell him he will have a long life and some unexpected good fortune is coming his way.’

  ‘The women?’

  ‘There weren’t many women.’

  ‘Menesthia. You may go now.’

  The girl curtsied and withdrew.

  ‘Somebody will have to take her in hand.’

  ‘Your job, First Lady. I don’t envy you.’

  ‘Most men would.’

  ‘Would they? Yes, I suppose so. She’s a pretty little’ – and again, that wince and shudder – ‘thing.’

  We were defeated. Menesthia proved as intractable as a wild ass. Even her ‘funny times’ became less frequent, and I am quite sure that she ended by pretending that she had them. As spring broadened out from the lowlands and climbed the winding road up to Delphi she became pale and tearful and whiny. In the end she begged so hard to go home that we had to let her go for she was a free woman, and her father agreed to take her back, dowry and all. He was soft and entirely unlike my own father. He made me wonder about myself far more than she did. For she was quite easily understood – a spoilt priestess. He on the other hand was a man – little more than a smallholder – who spoilt his animals, let alone his children.

  I did wonder about Menesthia’s ‘funny times’. They made me uneasy because though I had been First Lady for many years I had never experienced anything like them. I needed the smoke of laurel leaves, yet their magic power seemed to lessen. The Olympians seemed to be going farther and farther away. I had become – but by fits and starts – increasingly uneasy about them and in particular Apollo. I had read a great deal by now and was confused. Nobody seemed to know precisely who the Olympians were and whether Apollo had originally been one of them. I communicated this unease to Ion who had very little counsel to give. He said to go on as I was and hope that there would be light shed by the gods themselves. In addition to this worry there was the question of some girl to select as a possible Second Lady, for, as I said to Ion, I was not going to live for ever.

  ‘Dear Lady! Will not the oracle look after itself?’

  ‘I wish I could be sure of that.’

  ‘If you are not, who is?’

  ‘You of course!’

  Ion gave me a long, critical look.

  In the end we repaired the roof of the Pythion properly and left the sodden corner of the bookroom, which had been the librarium, remain ‘a temporary solution’. It did mean that the whole great room was colder and Perseus complained that he would snuffle the whole year round. But as I told him, what would Delphi be without a Pythia and he had to agree.

  Phocis sent us a girl. She was a skinny little thing and we caught her at the moment when she was about to shoot up, which she did. She was dark as I was and called Meroe. I think she had some connection with Egypt. She was a solemn creature and extremely pious. Indeed, I made up my mind that I would not be intimidated by her piety, but I never quite succeeded in ridding myself of the feeling that she disapproved of her First Lady. She had no ‘funny feelings’ but did not think she should learn to read until Serapis indicated that she should. Serapis was a new god, not one of the old Egyptian ones, and it made me uneasier still. If we were about the business of inventing gods where would it end?

  Then Ionides disappeared. It was some time before I noticed that he was missing, having got so used to his presence I supplied it unconsciously even when he was not there. There was a confusion when I went to the tripod to utter the oracular response and realized that Ion wasn’t there. In the end one of the Holy Ones stood in for him but I had to prompt him for he could not manage the hexameters. It was not edifying. People had begun to expect the verse form from me and, though I used it, this untrained young man gave out a lame version in prose. So what some people were kind enough to call ‘the revival of the oracle’ suffered a setback as they say. I was eager for Ionides to return. I had learnt to lean on him. Then I discovered that Perseus had been missing, too. I learnt this because he asked to see me and confessed that he had been absent.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I went with His Holiness, First Lady.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Epirus.’

  ‘But – I think you had better explain.’

  So it all came out. The information gathering, the speed of communication, the couriers, the whole organization I had thought was for the support of the oracle, had been turned by Ion and some of the Holy Ones into a plot against the Romans. I do not expect anyone who has bothered to read this far to credit the situation. But Delphi and some of the lesser-known oracles were trying to persuade mainland Greece to shake itself free from Roman rule! What made the whole scheme preposterous was that there was nothing wrong with Roman rule! Of course there are rotten apples in any barrel, but the Romans were giving Greece what she had never been able to give herself. For hundreds of years mainland Greece had been nothing but a collection of large villages fighting each other with every kind of trickery and treachery and savagery. Now there was the rule of law and peace. Of course the Romans made us pay cash for it, but we were glad, too. Even now when it looks as if the Romans themselves are going to have a civil war and fight it out in our country rather than their own, the situation is more peaceful than it was in the days when every village thought it had a holy duty to fight its neighbour. I used to think – but privately – that we should have avoided two hundred years of bickering if the Persians had only conquered us the way the Romans did. And now here was Ionides of all people meeting conspiratorially in Epirus with other madmen against the most powerful country in the world!

  Not that the conspiracy got very far. There was a certain pathos about it. Perseus – whom Ion had just ordered to go along without telling him more than ‘he needed to know’ – Perseus told me what happened. They reached the place where they were supposed to meet with the other conspirators – passwords and all – and no one was there. They waited, sitting on a rock in the middle of nowhere and examining the future by means of birdwatching. The future was exceptionally favourable it appeared. But then what appeared was Romans who rose, apparently out of the ground, and arrested them both. They were searched in a mos
t humiliating and unnecessary way, for Ionides was not carrying anything and Perseus was carrying some food and all the relevant papers in a leather bag. A further humiliation, said Perseus, was that the officer in charge wasn’t even a colonel. But they knew everything – why the other conspirators were not there, who they were and what the plan was. The Romans had been – to use a Latin word for which Greek has no exact equivalent – efficient.

  ‘I know I’m a slave,’ said Perseus, ‘and I was resigning myself to the probability of being tortured since they couldn’t torture His Holiness. Even so I have my pride and it was the last humiliation when they told me to run along.’

  ‘They let you go!’

  ‘I’m afraid so.’

  ‘How could you leave him?’

  ‘Indeed, First Lady, I did all the things you read about. You know – faithful slave stuff – but it didn’t work. Even when I tried to follow they prodded me in the tum with the butt end of a spear.’

  ‘They took him away –’

  ‘The last I heard of him he was declaiming. He said he was in the hands of god. The officer said, “Come, sir, Your Holiness, it’s not as bad as that!”’

  ‘Oh – what shall I do?’

  ‘It’s not for me to say, First Lady. I shall go back to the bookroom which I should never have left.’

  He paused in his going and turned to me again.

  ‘He said to give you this.’

  It was a silver key, but of an extraordinary shape. The two ends were each shaped as a labrys, the Cretan double axe. But this was doubly doubled.

  ‘Which end is which?’

  ‘I don’t know, Lady. I thought you would. The officer was most respectful of it, wouldn’t touch it. Oh, every courtesy as they say, after they’d searched us.’

  I had no idea what to do with the key, or even if it was more than symbolic. I threaded a silver chain round the barrel to remind myself what it was and put it away. What to do? It was an ideal moment for the obvious recourse – ask the oracle of Delphi! But how can a Pythia ask herself a question and then transmit to herself the god’s answer, if, if – if there is a god to give the answer? I thought to myself, the seven wise men of Greece might well be asked in vain for an answer to that situation. Even in my anxiety for Ion I could not but think the situation unique and in a rueful kind of way, amusing. Nevertheless I was drawn towards the building. I veiled myself and stole along to it. The great doors set back in the colonnade whined loudly as I pushed one leaf open enough to let me through. Here it was, the steps down, the niches in the wall, each for a Holy One, and the last niche for the holiest of all, the High Priest of Apollo, his Holiness the Warden of the Holy Ones. There was the tripod, by it, the brazier, empty now, since the seventh day of the month was past. There beyond and behind the tripod were the curtains, the drawstrings hanging down the right-hand side. A stiff, not to say crude image of Apollo woven into the stuff of the left-hand curtain faced some misshapen monster in the right. As always they made the goose pimples rise on my skin, and the rhythm of my breathing quickened. It was a holy place, the most holy in Greece, most holy in the world. I tried to explain this to myself, said to myself that I was the Pythia faced with temptation. No. I was Arieka, the little barbarian afraid of the dark. But dark herself, oh yes. I went on tiptoe through the dusk of the adyton and stood close to the curtain, so close I felt my breath might stir it – and had a convulsion of pure fear when I thought that my breath might lend the monster breath and he/she start into life and overwhelm me. I did not think of Apollo in the other curtain but only of the monster, surely now stirring into life. I began to back away, keeping my eye on him, and presently he stilled and my breathing slowed and I knew some woman had woven him and woven the god, some woman of flesh and blood, even a Pythia perhaps, instructed by the god to make this image of him and the darkness he had faced.