Free Goddess by Laura Powell Page A

tell.
    ‘Cally – Callisto, I mean – what’s all this about?’
    ‘Nothing. It doesn’t matter. I’m just saying it would be better for you if you did as you were told.’ She got up from the bed. ‘It’s for your own good, I promise.’
    She reached into her pockets and brought out a handful of biscuits. ‘Don’t let anyone know I gave these to you.’
    Then she was gone.
     
    More hours passed. I fell into a fitful doze for some of them. At six o’clock in the morning, a terrible banging and crashing commenced on the other side of the wall. Workmen were starting some kind of renovation. The noise carried on, with little respite, for the rest of the day. Happy birthday to me.
    I had tried to eke out the biscuits and the water but they didn’t last long. My stomach was hollow with hunger, my mouth dry with thirst. My head ached. I was sure the noise next door was part of the punishment. As the shadows lengthened, I began to wonder how long I would be left here. Days? Weeks? Months? Until I agreed to say and do whatever I was told?
    But at half past seven the door opened again. Fat Atalanta was there, pink and breathless, and holding a clean tunic and a Thermos of soup. So I’d been forgiven, or at least reprieved. They were still going to let me become a priestess.
     
    I lay, lapped by water, in the marble basin. Through a gap in the curtains, I saw one of the nymphs on the wall, peeping coyly from behind a cypress tree. There were only five handmaidens, now, to sing the choral odes, and after a half-hearted verse or two they’d given up and were whispering and giggling among themselves.
    Once I was dressed, the girls clustered around, trying to ooh and ahh with appropriate enthusiasm. I could tell they were struggling. In the mirror they gave me, I saw new hollows in my cheeks, and dark rings round my eyes.
    The temple was half empty for the ceremony. People had come for Callisto because of the rumours that she was the girl who’d had the oracle. I was a nobody, as Opis said. Once, this wouldn’t have particularly mattered. This place was the only home, and family, I’d ever known or needed. But as I walked into the smoky glitter of the Sacred Hall I felt a stranger in a strange land.
    As I finished the purification rituals – sprinkling the altar with holy water, brushing dust from the dais with a broom of cypress boughs – I glanced up and saw Aiden in the front row. It was enough to temporarily jolt me out of my daze. He stared back, expressionless. He wasn’t in his usual ill-fitting, grungy clothes. His suit was as sharp as his cheekbones. His shaggy hair was sleeked back. Every inch the Trinovantum Councillor.
    It was a relief to turn away from him and take my place in front of the statue of Artemis. The High Priestess picked up her ceremonial silver arrow and held its point to my heart.
    ‘Do you vow to honour the laws of the temple and this land?’
    Opis’s gaze was as serene as the marble woman who loomed behind us. For a moment, I wondered if I’d imagined our midnight meeting in the passageway. Then I felt the metal point of the arrow press through the thin silk, right against my skin.
    ‘I do, lest I suffer the arrows of Artemis and the waters of the Styx.’
    The Lord Herne stepped forward with an impatient swish of his green velvet cloak.
    ‘Do you vow to serve the goddess in all her rites and works?’
    Lionel Winter passed me a shard of rock, a symbol of Troy’s fallen walls, and folded my hand tightly round its jagged edge. His eyes burned into me from under the antler headdress.
    ‘I do, for I am bound by the blood of King Brutus and the stones of Troy.’
    On it went. Question and answer, promise and threat.
    I hardly knew what I was saying but I must have made the right responses, for at the end the Lord Herne led me to where the sacred fire flickered in its brazier, and guided my hand as I put a taper to the flame. The other priestesses gathered to form an escort as I