drinking watered wine and talking, endlessly talking, about old battles and lost heroes and the ways of the neighbours. I could not see the sense in it but I had been ordered to accompany the suppliants and I would never have disobeyed Master Glaucus.
After hours of this conversation, the suppliants were taken, one by one, into the temple next door, where they were stripped of their clothes and jewellery, bathed with lychnis and warm water and clad in the white robes of those who go to meet the god. I went with the pregnant girl Païs, horrified by the distension of her belly, which curved out abruptly from slim legs and narrow hips.
There was no shame in nakedness before the god and his priests, although the Achaeans required such modesty of their women that we often received suppliants who had concealed some disease of childbearing so long out of shame that they were incurable except by the god himself. Most of them died. At least at the temple they died without pain, possessed by the sleep of Hypnos the dreamer.
Païs was carried in Achis' arms to the entrance of the temple. I stripped off my cloak behind a laurel bush, straightened my wreath, and came forward to take her hand.
`I am your guide, Lady,' I said giving her the honorific for all women - Pronaea, the Mistress, whom the Athenians call Palla Athene. Her hand was strong in mine, sweating and hot. `Can you walk?'
She leaned on Achis a little and then straightened, her back arched against her burden, walking on her heels with her free hand cradling her belly. `I will walk,' she said proudly. `I will thus die sooner. I want to die.'
I drew her gently forward into the dark, and the dazzling brightness faded as we paced along a dry, sandy incline. We turned the first corner, and the light was cut off. Her hand clutched mine.
`Do not let me go!' she cried, and I held tight, saying, `Lady, I will not let you go,'
First turn to the left, and the first god. Ares, god of war in his golden mask appeared and Païs gasped. `Hatred butchers in the heart,' said the god, and vanished. I led her on, slowly, second to the right and the next god. Aphrodite, goddess of love, masked, scented with jasmine, stroked the suppliant's cheek. `Love is stronger than death,' she said. Païs sobbed. Further into the soft dark, and another goddess; Artemis the virgin, masked and angry; `You betrayed me!' she cried and I felt Païs flinch. Zeus appeared and said nothing, only laid a heavy hand on her shoulder, and Demeter, pregnant with Spring, whispered, `Don't be afraid, little daughter.' Hera, the crowned queen, bent her head in acknowledgement, then we were past into the cavern, Païs sobbing and stumbling behind me, Hermes the guide of the spirits, psychopomp, in purple and gold.
She lay down in her place and I covered her with a blanket made of the finest white lamb's wool. Achis, who had come the direct way and was waiting for her, sat down at her head and she slept. There was only one more god for her to meet, and it was Apollo, the Sun God, who would come in her dream.
My next suppliant was the old soldier, Milanion, whose hand was cold and calloused in mine. He started when Ares loomed out of the dark.
`Your comrades are dead,' said the god in a great voice. `Dead and gone, resting in the Elysian fields or paid the toll to Charon. You cannot call them back, warrior.' Then we went on, past Aphrodite, who smiled; Hera, who frowned; Artemis, who seized his wrist and hissed, `Release my warriors, old man, they are my huntsmen now!'; and Zeus, who extended a shadowy hand and laid it on his head. `Live,' said the god. I led Milanion down into the cavern and delivered him to sleep. He had not said a word.
I went back to the direct tunnel to the surface, and took the barren woman by the hand. Her skin was chill and dry. She did not speak and never altered, although Ares ignored her, Aphrodite slapped her, and Demeter the Mother sprinkled her with pollen, honey scented in the dusty darkness.
The others had all been led through the back passages to their sleeping places. I carried the only light, a pearly bead of flame in my oil lamp. Usually I went back to the surface once my task was done - I did not really like the dark - but I had been ordered to watch. I sat down by the wall and cradled my little light.
Each sleeper lay outstretched, head to the north, feet to the south. Each attendant priest sat at the sleeper's head, listening to whatever words might fall from their lips as they dreamed. I wondered whether I would see a god, one perhaps as splendid as Thanatos had been when I was so young.
I saw no god. I heard the sleepers muttering. The Achaean with the broken foot began to scream, a hoarse, sobbing cry of mortal pain. It seemed to go on for years. I nudged his attendant, my friend Itarnes.
`It's all right, little brother,' he whispered. `That is the scream he has been keeping inside all these years. He needed to release it.'
`Won't he wake the others?'
Itarnes smiled and shook his head. He was right. Everyone was concerned with their own inner torments.
A priest in the mask of Demeter approached Païs, knelt, and ran his hands up her thighs, so that she parted them. I could not see what he was doing. My friend explained. `The baby is twisted in the womb and cannot be born. We can move it into the right position and thus she will be lighter of her son.'
`Then why send her here to lie down in the dark?'
He hushed me with a finger on my lips. `To give the god a chance to intervene. The gods are benign, but they need means to their hand, and we are their instruments. Hush, little brother. You are here to watch.'
I watched. I saw Milanion's finger scratching at his jaw, where the spear point was immovably fixed in the hinge of the bone. I had examined him myself. The injury had partially locked the jaw, and no force would have removed the metal. Now he was so relaxed by poppy-laced broth and the holy sleep that he was clawing a slit in the skin and removing the spear point with his own fingers.
A priest in the mask of Apollo lay down next to the barren woman. In her sleep, she moaned, an animal noise full of desire, and pulled at the robe, dragging the priest on top of her. I do not know who it was, the mask covers the whole head. Should she have opened her drugged eyes she would have seen the golden face of the god looming over her, a man's body caught in her arms.
I watched in astonishment as the suppliant's robe was pushed aside and the bodies joined. The barren woman cried aloud in what sounded like triumph.
Itarnes laid a whole hand over my mouth, sensing that I was about to say something unwise and far too loud.
`While he is in that mask he is the god,' he hissed. `Sit down, Chryse!' When I struggled, he said coldly, `Diomenes!' At the sound of my real name I sat still and listened. `He is the god, and she needs a child. It may be that there is no fault in her, but that her husband is barren. However good the soil, it needs fertile seed. The god will give her a child. Will you behave if I let you go?'
I nodded and he released me. I was shocked and said nastily, `What of the impotent man? Do we mate with him, too?'
`No need. His impotence is in his mind. The mind is our province, little brother. There. The birth is imminent.'
Païs' cries had changed. She was panting. Shudders were running up and down her body. Her legs twitched. Two attendants lifted her gently onto a stretcher and carried her up the direct path to the outside world. They moved at a brisk jog trot and I followed them, blinking and crying in the sudden sunlight. They laid Païs in the cool temple of women and her attendant priest Achis caught the baby as it emerged, blue and red and ugly, on a burst of blood. I felt ill.
He then wiped the creature clean, and tied and severed a throbbing blue cable
