then I’ll let you know. But keep everything secret. They insist on your knowing nothing. They are really scared you see. So be a good girl and try to get the god to give an honest, divine opinion.’
‘I am not liking this, Ionides.’
‘You were highly recommended. But then so was that fat slug. Oh dear. This is life on a knife edge. It just occurs to me. Shall I ask you a question myself? One for me? My affairs? Slip it in among the others? After all I pass them on, don’t I? Until tomorrow.’
*
There was a much smaller crowd next day. I passed through patches of silence in my vehicle and here and there could hear single voices or two in a conversation that ignored my passing. Judging by the sound of it the sacrifice was a she-goat who consented, poor female thing, as I was consenting, both used, both apparently prized for some quality but not rewarded for it except by – what? It was a question I was still asking myself as I was lifted down and set upright on the step. Going down in such a meditative mood, interspersed with no more than tremors of awe, I knew in some strange mood of certainty that the gods would deal gently with me this time. I was able to unwind my scarf calmly, blink and look about me and wait for the darkness to become no more than gloom. While I was waiting I became aware suddenly of the depth of the silence from the crowd outside. It was small indeed; yet there was no murmur from it, no single voice raised, not a cough or snuffle. They were there, each passionately engaged to his question – perhaps life or death for them, wealth or poverty. First Lady, Pythia, is this pain in my side to continue increasing? How can I be healed? The doctor has given me up, First Lady. But she was an ordinary woman, not even a mother or a beauty, just a plain woman suffering the blight which the gods lay on her middle age.
The darkness was gone. I was seeing as in an evening light. The floor of the grotto was strange. There were lumps of worked stone here and there and in one place at least an iron bar stuck up from the stone and had been broken off. My Phocian ancestors, I thought to myself, this is where they found the treasure and tore it away from the stone, the nigh on life-sized statue of a woman in solid gold; one hundred and seventeen gold ingots each nine inches wide, three inches thick and eighteen inches long; mixing bowls, sprinklers, basins, a gold lion that had weighed nearly a quarter of a ton. Had that stone there, with leaded holes, held down the lion? Or were they so ignorant of man’s greed that they would think the mere weight of the beast sufficient protection? And there were girdles and necklaces for the Pythia, were there not? But they would have gone early, passing as the Pythia passed, evanescent in the long run as raindrops. Well, thought I to myself, earnest people outside, you raindrops with your little worries, I will do what I can for you! I climbed carefully into the seat at the top of the tripod, seeing for the first time how the craftsman had combined seat and bowl, seeming to make the conjunction inevitable. And the legs of the brazier, their bronze was intricate with snakes and mice. Many hands had cared for this stone box of a grotto, and as I climbed into the seat, still facing it, I saw that at the back of the place a curtain hung. It made the flesh creep on my bones. Did that then hide the fabulous cleft in the rock up which once upon a time vapours had risen from the centre of the earth? It was with an effort that I turned my back on the curtain and settled in the seat.
There was much silence and at the end of it a touch of that same comedy which Ionides so much feared. He contributed it himself. There came a roll of timpani from out in the open air then silence again. I saw Ionides peering round the edge of his niche.
‘I forgot to tell you. No shawms today.’
It was silly and made me laugh, not with the rollicking laughter of the gods but with my own voice,
‘I am not liking this, Ionides.’
‘You were highly recommended. But then so was that fat slug. Oh dear. This is life on a knife edge. It just occurs to me. Shall I ask you a question myself? One for me? My affairs? Slip it in among the others? After all I pass them on, don’t I? Until tomorrow.’
*
There was a much smaller crowd next day. I passed through patches of silence in my vehicle and here and there could hear single voices or two in a conversation that ignored my passing. Judging by the sound of it the sacrifice was a she-goat who consented, poor female thing, as I was consenting, both used, both apparently prized for some quality but not rewarded for it except by – what? It was a question I was still asking myself as I was lifted down and set upright on the step. Going down in such a meditative mood, interspersed with no more than tremors of awe, I knew in some strange mood of certainty that the gods would deal gently with me this time. I was able to unwind my scarf calmly, blink and look about me and wait for the darkness to become no more than gloom. While I was waiting I became aware suddenly of the depth of the silence from the crowd outside. It was small indeed; yet there was no murmur from it, no single voice raised, not a cough or snuffle. They were there, each passionately engaged to his question – perhaps life or death for them, wealth or poverty. First Lady, Pythia, is this pain in my side to continue increasing? How can I be healed? The doctor has given me up, First Lady. But she was an ordinary woman, not even a mother or a beauty, just a plain woman suffering the blight which the gods lay on her middle age.
The darkness was gone. I was seeing as in an evening light. The floor of the grotto was strange. There were lumps of worked stone here and there and in one place at least an iron bar stuck up from the stone and had been broken off. My Phocian ancestors, I thought to myself, this is where they found the treasure and tore it away from the stone, the nigh on life-sized statue of a woman in solid gold; one hundred and seventeen gold ingots each nine inches wide, three inches thick and eighteen inches long; mixing bowls, sprinklers, basins, a gold lion that had weighed nearly a quarter of a ton. Had that stone there, with leaded holes, held down the lion? Or were they so ignorant of man’s greed that they would think the mere weight of the beast sufficient protection? And there were girdles and necklaces for the Pythia, were there not? But they would have gone early, passing as the Pythia passed, evanescent in the long run as raindrops. Well, thought I to myself, earnest people outside, you raindrops with your little worries, I will do what I can for you! I climbed carefully into the seat at the top of the tripod, seeing for the first time how the craftsman had combined seat and bowl, seeming to make the conjunction inevitable. And the legs of the brazier, their bronze was intricate with snakes and mice. Many hands had cared for this stone box of a grotto, and as I climbed into the seat, still facing it, I saw that at the back of the place a curtain hung. It made the flesh creep on my bones. Did that then hide the fabulous cleft in the rock up which once upon a time vapours had risen from the centre of the earth? It was with an effort that I turned my back on the curtain and settled in the seat.
There was much silence and at the end of it a touch of that same comedy which Ionides so much feared. He contributed it himself. There came a roll of timpani from out in the open air then silence again. I saw Ionides peering round the edge of his niche.
‘I forgot to tell you. No shawms today.’
It was silly and made me laugh, not with the rollicking laughter of the gods but with my own voice,
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