Next morning, before dawn, Diotima and I tried to sneak out of the sanctuary.
We failed. Doris was up early and saw us.
“What are you two doing?” Doris asked. “You both look too guilty for it to be anything innocent.”
I felt like a child caught stealing from the kitchen.
“We’re going on a bear hunt,” Diotima told the priestess.
“We’re going to catch a big one,” I added.
Doris stared at us before she said, “Diotima, my dear, when you were a child, I confess I thought you’d never find a man to match you. I was wrong. You’re both as strange as each other. Are you sure this is safe?”
“Don’t worry Doris,” I said. “We’ll be fine.”
The expression on Doris’s face said she didn’t believe me. She peered at Diotima’s companion. Her companion other than me, that is. “Is that a goat?” Doris asked.
“I believe it may be,” Diotima admitted. She gave the lead a tug and the goat bleated. “We … er … borrowed the goat from the sanctuary’s farm. I’d appreciate it if you didn’t tell Zeke.”
“I never tell lies, though perhaps I could avoid Zeke this morning. By then it’ll be too late. Possibly too late for you, too. You’ll be back today, won’t you?”
“Either that, or we’ll be bear food,” I wanted to say, but I saw no need to worry her.
“Why do you have a goat?” Doris asked.
“Because that’s how you catch a bear,” I said. “A professional bear keeper once told us that.” I thought it better not to tell her the professional was the man who’d lost the bear in the first place.
Diotima and I walked south, she leading the goat, which we kept happy by feeding it as we walked. I hoped it would survive the adventure. When we were out of sight of the sanctuary, I pulled out the broken pottery that I’d found on the drowned body of Melo. Diotima produced a map of the local area, one that she’d drawn the night before by mercilessly drilling Zeke on every piece of land, every feature, every landmark within walking distance.
I read Melo’s search list to Diotima. “Caves, hills, fields, coast, boats, and farmhouse. In that order, I suppose. The last two words were added later.”
Diotima nodded. “I know he covered the first four when he had use of the sanctuary slaves.”
“Those are the ones scratched out. We know he found nothing, but surely he was killed for something he knew.”
“Or discovered,” Diotima added. “Yet Melo was killed after we gave up our search of the countryside.”
“Therefore this discovery, whatever it was, must have occurred after the search,” I said. “We know the nearby boat can’t be rowed by a girl on her own. Therefore it must be the farmhouse.”
“Farmhouse, singular. That’s what he wrote,” Diotima said. “Yet there are many farmhouses in the area.”
“Therefore we’re looking for a singular farmhouse. We’re looking for the one and only farmhouse about which there’s something unique.”
In the satisfied silence that followed, I said, “We’re starting to sound like Socrates.”
“That’s a bad habit we’ll want to watch,” Diotima said.
We’d deliberately left Socrates behind, fast asleep in the men’s hut, because, frankly, I knew it would annoy him. If we ran into what I expected to find, my all-too-inquisitive brother would be safer away from the scene. Also, he was sleeping right next to Aeschylus, and I didn’t want to wake the playwright, or he’d insist on coming with us.
Our path took us to the main road. If we turned right, the way would lead us to Athens; if we went left, to Brauron in short order. We did neither. We crossed the road into the fields beyond. Straight toward the copse from which a bowman had shot at us on the day we first came to Brauron.
We passed by the copse, rather warily. All the while we kept a close eye on the goat. If the goat suddenly became scared, it would be time for us to worry about bears.
Soon the copse was far at our back, and we were well into the next field. We arrived at a line of horos stones, the white-painted rocks that Pericles had explained were used to mark boundaries in the country.
I read the first one we came to. This horos stone said, I BELONG TO GLAUCON.
Diotima and I shared a glance. I said, “He did tell me he had property near here.”
“But so close?” Diotima said.
I shrugged. “It’s a coincidence.”
We carried on across fields that were rich in corn, fields that belonged to Glaucon, the first man to confess to killing Hippias. We saw no one, which was no surprise this early in the morning. On the other side, we passed by another row of white-painted stones. They announced that we were now leaving Glaucon’s estate.
Before long we’d reached the middle of the neighboring property. We picked up an uneven dirt track into which dry, tough grass was determined to encroach. We followed the track until we saw at the end a farmhouse.
Diotima consulted her map. “This is the place where the farmer died.”
Doris had told us, when we first met her, that a farmer had been found dead in his fields. There was nothing suspicious about his death-he’d been an old man-but Diotima and I had agreed that it made his farmhouse singular: it was the only one in the area that was empty.
Which made it a good place to hide.
The building-the sole structure but for a pen beside-was more than a hut but less than a house, built of age-grayed wood that had seen better days. The windows had no shutters. It took no great imagination to see it was once the home of a lonely man.
From where we stood, the place looked empty. That was a disappointment. We’d hoped to find Ophelia here before trying the surrounding countryside with the goat in search of the bear.
The goat was bleating again. Diotima tied it to a shrub rather than have it warn anyone within the farmhouse as we approached. The goat instantly took a bite out of the shrub and munched contentedly.
We left the goat behind and, when we came close to our target, we split up. Diotima stayed on the near side, and I circled around to the other with some caution. I was all too aware that someone had taken potshots at us the day we first arrived at the sanctuary, and that the attacker had run in this direction.
I crept quietly through the long grasses, bent low, sometimes crawling when the ground rose, determined not to give away my position. When I reached the other side, I pushed aside the barley stalks to see through the open window. What I saw within took my breath away. With even more caution, I made my way back to Diotima. From the look on her face, I knew she’d seen what I’d seen.
“There’s a bear in there,” Diotima whispered.
“And a chair as well,” I whispered back. “I can see it from the other side. Diotima, someone’s sitting in the chair. I saw them from behind.”
“What sort of crazy person would sit in a house with a bear?”
We crept up slowly. When we reached the wall, with the greatest caution, we poked our heads up over the window base to peer inside.
All our caution didn’t do us the least good.
The bear got down on all fours to lumber through the doorway. He must have smelled Diotima and me, because he turned the corner and came straight at us.
“Don’t turn your back,” I said to Diotima.
She didn’t. We stepped backward, away from the approaching bear. In the distance I could hear a goat bleating. That was the goat we’d brought along to distract any bears; the goat we’d tied up a hundred paces away.
The creature was massive, like a walking wall of fur. Its beady little eyes fixated on Diotima and me, and I knew he wouldn’t let us escape. I thought of Allike, torn to shreds, and wondered if it had hurt for long.
“We could run in opposite directions?” Diotima suggested.
“With a one-in-two chance of either of us being the victim?” I said. “Thanks anyway. What say you turn and run right now?”
“Leave you here? No.”
I hadn’t expected any less. But it left us with a problem.