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-”
But the priestesses had overheard us. They stared at Socrates in astonishment.
Thea said, “Did the child say he knows the answer? Yes? Speak up, lad. Is the spring polluted or clean?”
Socrates said, “Well, the water was polluted when the corpse hit it. So that water couldn’t cleanse anything.”
“This is your idea of a solution?” Diotima said, exasperated. “Socrates-”
“But that’s a big sacred spring,” Socrates plowed on. “Some of the water touched the corpse, and other parts of the water didn’t.”
Everyone nodded in unison.
“The water that didn’t touch the corpse was never polluted. Which means the unpolluted water cleansed the polluted water.”
“That’s really very clever,” Sabina said, half to herself.
“What made you think of such a thing?” Diotima asked.
“I remembered when Nico and I talked to that philosopher last year, the one who works for Pericles. Remember, Nico? He said everything was made of tiny particles? Well, if the water’s all tiny particles, then obviously the tiny particles that never went near the body never had a chance to be polluted.”
“What about the dead man’s psyche?” Sabina asked.
Thea said, “It must still be here.”
“Probably in the spring,” Doris added. “It’ll terrify the girls every time they go for water unless we do something about it.”
I exploded. “Do we care more about the religious problems here, or the killing?”
Diotima looked at me coldly. “This is a religious community, you know, Nico. I suppose you noticed that big building out there? They call it a temple.”
“Did anyone see anything in the night?” I asked the room in general. “Or hear anything?”
Silence. It had been a silly question-obviously if any innocent person had known something, they would already have spoken up-but I had to ask it to make my next point clear. Doris saved me the trouble.
“This means the murderer is among us,” Doris said. “Whoever it is, they’re here.”
Thea put her head in her hands. “This could end the sanctuary.”
“Permanent guards,” Zeke said. “I’ll set the men to guard every point. It means we won’t get any work done, but …” He shrugged.
“But staying alive is more important,” Gaïs said matter-of-factly. “I hope we can. Above all else, we must protect the girls.”
The meeting broke up in confusion. The priestesses left the room in a daze. Diotima left with Gaïs to see to the girls, and to arrange matters so that no child was ever on her own. The absence of both women gave me a chance I’d been hoping would come.
I asked to speak to Thea privately. She looked at me oddly but nodded. We remained in her office as the others left. They went with backward glances, obviously wondering what I was up to.
When we were alone, I said, “I wanted to ask you, High Priestess, what it is between Gaïs and Diotima.”
Thea had the grace not to look surprised at my question. “I thought I was the only one who’d noticed,” she said. “I don’t know. Perhaps it’s something that happened when they were children.”
“Gaïs said to me that something went wrong at Diotima’s initiation ceremony.” I was unwilling to repeat Gaïs’s claim that Diotima had cheated; not until I knew what had really happened.
Thea frowned. “If it did, I don’t know about it.”
“Then could you tell me what the initiation ceremony truly means?”
Thea, who had been standing, put a hand out to the desk beside her and used it to ease herself down to a chair. She said, “I understand you have no sisters? Well, when a girl is born we call her kore, which means maiden. This you know.”
“Yes.”
“When she is ready to be betrothed she becomes a nymphe, and nymphe she remains until motherhood, when we call her gyne. These are the three phases of a woman’s life: the maid, the nymph, and the mother. Every girl you see at this sanctuary is kore. They are children, we teach them as children, we treat them as children. Because they are children. But when they leave this place, they leave as nymphe. Brauron is a place of transformation.”
“When does it happen?”
“At that rite of transformation you mentioned. Each child enters the temple with those girlish things that were important to her in childhood.”
“You mean her toys?”
Thea gave one sharp nod. “The transformation to womanhood is one of the deepest mysteries in a woman’s life. At the end of her year with us, she marks her new status by dedicating her toys to the Goddess. She is no longer a child, you see, so she no longer needs them. When she leaves the temple, she leaves as a woman who has left her childhood behind her.”
“I see.” I thought about it. It seemed harsh, perhaps as harsh as a man’s time in the army, but at least it was over quickly.
“Don’t the girls ever fight?” I asked. “Nasty tricks? Booby traps? I know what happens when you lump boys together.”
“We’ve had catfights aplenty in the courtyard, when arguments overheat. We’ve had scratching and hair pulling and bared claws going for faces, but never, I say never, has one girl tried to kill another. Girls don’t fight with their fists, as boys do, Nicolaos; they do it with cold words and ugly behavior.”
“What do you do when a girl comes to you with such a problem?”