Gary Corby - Sacred Games

Sandals hung up outside a tent mean the occupant is open for business. Sandals, because pornê means “walker,” as in a woman who walks the streets. At Olympia there are no streets to walk, so the women for hire hang their sandals beside their tent entrances. I could see how a drunk man in the dark could make a mistake, but that wasn’t going to save anyone who threatened Diotima.

Diotima read my thoughts. “It’s all right, Nico. I dealt with them.”

“Are they still alive?” I asked, wondering if we’d need to hide any bodies.

“Mostly,” she said.

I decided not to pursue that.

“I’m in no danger, Nico,” Diotima tried to reassure me.

“Keeping you safe is my job.” Merely saying it made me feel good. I liked the idea of protecting Diotima.

“Stop worrying about me, Nico. You didn’t used to behave like this.”

“We didn’t used to be married.”

“We aren’t married now either. We still have our fathers to convince.”

I sighed. “I know.”

“And even if they do let us marry, it doesn’t mean I’m suddenly helpless.”

I could see life with Diotima was destined to be unusual. “We have a problem,” I said, using the same words the Spartan Markos had said to me over the body.

I told her what had happened while she slept and/or knifed intruders. I only got a few words in before she sat up, excited, and wrapped the blanket around her for warmth.

I ended by saying, “We need the evidence of Klymene, the Priestess of the Games, as soon as possible. Once the Games begin, she’ll be locked into her box at the stadion, and she won’t be free to tell her story until tonight. A whole day’s delay for her evidence might be a killing problem.”

“Literally killing, for Timodemus,” Diotima added.

“A fellow priestess like you could give me an entrée.”

“Good, let’s go.” She hopped off her bed and tossed aside the blanket to reveal her outstanding body in all its glory.

“Diotima, you sexy woman, why don’t we stay here for a while and-”

“I have to decide what to wear for this priestess.” She began to rummage through the wooden trunk that she’d brought with her from Asia Minor. She pulled out clothing and tossed it on the camp bed.

On our last mission, before we’d left Magnesia, Diotima had been given a whole new wardrobe as a gift from the people we’d helped. A slave who specialized in Persian fashion had sniffed noisily when asked to make simple Hellene chitons, but after lavish flattery and some physical threats, the dressmaker had measured Diotima and, in the space of a only a few days, had cut and embroidered ten new chitons from a large range of exotic, brightly patterned fabrics. Some were of a shiny new material called silk, fabulously expensive stuff the Persians imported from a country so distant no one even knew its name. When we got back to Athens, Diotima would be the envy of every woman.

Diotima liked wearing the silk, and I liked it when she did, because when I held her against me the effect was intense.

“Wear the red silk,” I encouraged her.

“No. I know what will happen, and we have work to do.” Diotima stopped to consider. “I think I’ll wear the blue chiton. And some jewelry.” She rummaged through her travel chest. “Help me put on this chiton, will you?” She wrapped the large rectangle of material around herself and turned her back to me to fix the brooches that held the dress over her shoulders. Last of all, she carefully hooked in the silver bear earrings I’d bought her the day before.

Then she said, “Let’s go. I’ll do the talking.”

“She might respond better to me, Diotima.”

“I doubt it. She’s probably some withered prune with no interest in men. They always pick the old, ugly ones for the top jobs.”

“I woke up, and there he was, naked.”

Klymene spoke to us while a red-haired slave girl fussed about arranging her hair. She turned her lovely neck so the slave girl could pin up the dark tresses. Another slave washed Klymene’s feet. A slave apiece attended to her hands, which she was holding out for them to clean her nails.

“Then the guards ran in and tackled him. They took him away.” She spoke as if Timodemus had been a stray dog.

The slaves stepped back, and Klymene examined herself in a polished bronze mirror. She gave herself a smile.

Klymene was about to be the only woman present among thousands of excited men at the stadion, and there would be times when she was the center of attention. She knew it, and knew exactly what effect she would have on all those men. She stood and smoothed down her chiton.

I was glad Diotima had stopped to put on her fine clothes and her necklace and silver earrings. Klymene was a stunner, no doubt about it, but my girl was her match.

“You didn’t hear him enter?” Diotima asked.

“What? Oh no, of course not. I would have called or something.”

“You seem to have a relaxed attitude to naked men staring at you in the middle of the night,” Diotima remarked. “Does this sort of thing happen often?”

“First time. Of course, if I hadn’t woken, I wouldn’t know, would I?”

“Hmm.”

It was clear Klymene wouldn’t blame a man for breaking in to see her. Come to that, I wouldn’t blame a man either.

“You’re not married?” I asked.

“No.”

Diotima said, “What about your mother? Shouldn’t she be here with you?”

“She died when I was young.”

“I’m sorry,” Diotima said.

“So am I. I miss her. It would have been nice to have a mother.”

“How did you come to be a priestess?” Diotima asked. “You don’t seem like the usual sort.”

Klymene looked my wife up and down. “I could say the same for you, honey. Artemis, I think you said?”

“I served at the Temple of Artemis Agroptera in Athens and the Artemision in Ephesus.”

Klymene looked impressed. These were serious credentials. The two haughty priestesses faced each other eye to eye and, I noticed in appreciation, breast to breast.

What Diotima had neglected to mention was that she’d been barely tolerated as a junior priestess in Athens and had been cold-shouldered at the Artemision after fighting with the other priestesses.

Diotima returned to the subject at hand. “You find a strange man in your bedroom, and this is your total reaction?”

“Well, I may have screamed a little. That’s what brought the guards running. Everyone’s looked after me so well.”

I said, “What’s your function, Klymene, here at the Games?”

Klymene glanced over the assembly of rings, necklaces, and headbands that littered the table before her. She pointed at several items, all of which looked elegantly expensive.

As the slave girl decorated her with jewelry, Klymene said, “The Priestess of Demeter oversees the Sacred Games. She’s had this role since time immemorial.”

“Yes, but why Demeter? Why not Zeus, or even his queen Hera? There’s no temple to Demeter at Olympia, is there?”

“None. The ancient temple is the Heraion, the temple to Hera that also housed her husband Zeus until this Olympiad. Have you seen inside the new Temple of Zeus?”

“Not yet.”

“It’s amazing. They left space to erect a huge Zeus.” She frowned into the mirror. “Xenia, the tresses aren’t quite right.”

The redheaded slave girl stifled a sigh, picked up a comb made of fine bone, and began reworking the hair. Klymene watched the girl’s progress in the mirror as she spoke. “They say that in ages past, my goddess Demeter ate the shoulder of King Pelops, and that’s why her priestess must attend the Games, but if you ask me it’s a load of old wash water. A goddess eats better than that. All I can tell you is Demeter opens each day, blesses each contest, and closes every day with a prayer, and this Olympiad, it’s me who represents the Goddess.”