Free The Double Tongue by William Golding Page A

yard or two he had me by the wrist.
    ‘It means going back to your parents.’
    There was a time, I do not know how long, during which I fought with my shudders. Gradually his hold on my wrist relaxed.
    ‘Brave girl.’
    That made me laugh. He let go of me entirely.
    ‘That’s better. If you laugh like that then you’ve won.’
    ‘Is there any other way to laugh?’
    ‘Oh yes.’
    ‘It came up out of the earth.’
    ‘Where else? Come!’
    ‘No nearer!’
    ‘Make yourself. I won’t touch you.’
    There was a time in which I examined the fear. It was round and solid and heavy, was an impossibility lying between me and that place.
    ‘Remember. I rely on you.’
    I suppose all men have this small craft when they know they have found the weakness of a woman. It is unfair and perhaps, though I do not know, it is unmanly. But then, how can it be unmanly? Perhaps it is a man’s weakness. Men and women – we are of little account.
    ‘I am ready.’
    Together we walked forward. The shuddering had gone. The fear was still there, but mixed, I do not know how or why, with grief. It was grief about women I think. Grief for them as instruments to be played on by gods or men. Beyond the portico some steps led down, but not very far. It looked like a little hall. There was some light, not just from the steps, but I now saw two small lamps were burning either side of the steps and about halfway down.
    ‘Go down and stand.’
    Obediently and accepting my fear I went down and stood at the bottom of the steps. Here there were no lights. It was a hall, a plain one. And dark – not entirely dark, for daylight filtered down the steps even in winter and in the shade of the mountains but a darkness only just qualified, modified by dim light. Where was the brightness of Apollo – where was the Sun God?
    Now my eyes were a little accustomed to the dimness. The hall was not entirely bare. There was an opening in the wall before me. It was black. That, then, was the entrance to the adytum, the place of the tripod and the brazier, the gap going down into the earth whence the air of oracular utterance was breathed forth to become the breath of the Pythia on her tripod as she writhed and cried out when the god had her in his hands. That was the fate of little Arieka whom nobody loved.
    I turned back at last and joined Ionides in the street.
    ‘Well?’
    ‘I shall die of terror.’
    ‘They don’t, you know.’
    ‘They have their mouths torn, though.’
    ‘That is figurative. You will be the most honoured woman in Greece – in the world.’
    ‘Perhaps the Romans will consult this oracle.’
    ‘They have done so. The story is that the oracle used to be consulted in political matters – what alliances should be made, what wars undertaken or stopped. They say that kind of oracle, that kind of question, ceased hundreds of years ago. It isn’t true. It’s just that those questions are asked in secret. Why give your enemy information which might be useful to him? Mankind learns, you see.’
    ‘Have you read Herodotus?’
    ‘Yes, child, I have read Herodotus. Why?’
    ‘I was thinking of the treasure. All that gold! Even just the gold given by Croesus. Where did they keep it?’
    ‘Until your honourable Aetolian or should I say Phocian ancestors removed it, in that entrance hall. Also some down in the adytum, more on either side in accommodation you did not see. The mountain has been excavated on either side of the portico. There are rooms. Nowadays the guardians of the complex live there, but once it was filled on both sides with gifts. Some of them have been donated by Romans. I must say, I think they are – frugal. Perhaps our dear masters did not get the answers they wanted, though I can hardly believe that.’
    But my thought had returned to my own affairs.
    ‘I dread the day.’
    ‘Think of yourself as a soldier. A Greek soldier – Thermopylae, Marathon, even Salamis! Your dread is that of a soldier who knows that one day