Goddess (2 page)

Several people started screaming. The twins began to cry. Those nearest the snakes pushed and shoved each other in a panicked effort to move back. I, however, was rooted to the spot. One of the serpents had reared its head and seemed to be looking straight at me, its eyes like two drops of shining black blood. Its forked tongue licked the air; my breath choked, as if the snake’s coils were already tightening round my throat.
Artemis, save us . . .

My prayer was answered. A resourceful councillor dragged over a plastic waste bin and threw it over the snakes. At the same time, the King Brutus impersonator jumped down from his horse and rugby-tackled the interloper to the ground. The man flailed about wildly, and managed to tear himself free, just for a moment. He flung himself towards Opis. I was nearest to her, and amid the shouting and panic and general confusion I was unsure whether anyone else heard him.

‘I’m warning you, Bella,’ he said. ‘You can’t go on –’

King Brutus slammed into him again and he came crashing down for a second time. Two policemen came to help and the man was dragged away, still ranting, with a bloodied nose. The crowd broke into applause.

I wanted to clap too. I felt a rush of pride in our High Priestess, so calm and so dignified.

But after the snakes were removed, the speeches finished, and we moved into line for the procession, I saw Brutus’s gold laurel wreath lying discarded on the ground. There was blood on it, from where the man had been dragged away.

Though I didn’t realise it at the time, it had been a night of omens. Sometimes the gods speak to us and we just don’t recognise the signs.

Chapter 2

The morning after the festival was shopping day. Once a month, representatives from the smart department stores are ushered into the priestesses’ sitting room to display their merchandise. There’s cooing and squealing, the rustle of tissue paper, and a tropical-scented mist from the competing perfumes sprayed in the air.

‘Girls, girls,’ scolded one of the older priestesses, as Phoebe and Iphigenia squabbled over a pair of designer sunglasses. ‘We are
pagans
, not savages. Only real ladies may serve the goddess.’

This was a bit of an exaggeration. Admittedly, it used to be a big deal to get accepted as a handmaiden. Deserving charity cases were occasionally taken in, but for the most part, only the crème de la crème could boast of having a priestess of Artemis in the family. These days, however, we were more of a mixed bag. Because Artemis is a virgin goddess, so are her attendants, and that kind of commitment didn’t hold much appeal in the modern age.

It was true that Phoebe’s parents were seriously posh and that Callisto’s mother was once an It Girl. But Arethusa was left here by her father, one of the bankers embroiled in the banking collapse. Last we heard, he was living off his ill-gotten gains in Brazil. Iphigenia’s dad is terminally ill; her mother asked the cult to take her in because she couldn’t cope with looking after five children on her own. The twins were orphaned in the Brighton terror attacks.

I assumed there was a similar story in my own family’s background. Bankruptcy, bereavement, breakdown. It was probably better not to know. Our pasts were wiped clean once we came here. We were given a new identity with our new names. The same names that Artemis’s priestesses had always been given, taken from her mythology and passed down through the centuries. I was the latest Aura among the hundreds, perhaps thousands, who had gone before.

And it was the name thing that was bothering me. I was thinking about it even as I was trying to decide which shade of nail polish would go best with my new turquoise sandals.

The man with the snakes hadn’t just called our High Priestess a liar and a fraud. He’d called her Bella. Her Christian name, not her pagan one. I’d heard her sister call her by it once, years ago, when she came to visit. Did that mean the madman knew Opis from her life before the cult?

Leto hobbled in as we were wrapping up our purchases. She was the oldest priestess here, wrinkled like a prune, with little wet blue eyes and a pinch as sly as Cally’s. She didn’t bother with shopping days, preferring an interchangeable selection of black velour tracksuits when she was off duty. ‘You’re wanted,’ she told me in her sourest voice. ‘Over in the palace.’

An impromptu chat with Opis wasn’t an everyday occurrence. I saw Callisto look at me, eyes narrowed.

The two of us have more or less grown up together, and the older we got, the more our rivalry had sharpened. The reason was that in three or four years’ time, Opis would retire. After she’d served her time, a High Priestess could leave the cult and would be given her own home and living allowance. Opis had had enough cosmetic procedures to look considerably younger than her real age, but after twenty years of service she’d be thinking about an election to find her successor.

The Trinovantum Council and the cult all had a vote and Cally, like me, had been sizing up the competition. Seven handmaidens, eight priestesses. The handmaidens below us would be too young; six of the priestesses were already too old. That left Atalanta, who was fat and a giggler, and Cynthia, who’d tried to run away twice, though each time she was back within a week.

So it was between the two of us. I was the quiet and reliable one, clever at my studies, dutiful at my chores. Cally, though, had charisma. She’d tell the little girls that they were stupid and ugly and deserved to be thrown out on the streets. Later, she would relent – allow them to brush her hair or share a cookie – and they’d be giddy with joy. As for the priestesses, the younger ones were charmed in spite of themselves; the older ones thought her flighty. Old Leto screwed up her face whenever she saw her. But Leto hated everyone.

The cult was all I had ever known. My home and my identity. My family, my career. That was why I wanted to become High Priestess. I wanted to tell the stories and lead the prayers. I wanted to know the workings of the oracle and to take my place on the Trinovantum Council’s board. I wanted to retire, when I was forty or so, and have the choice of a new life . . .

Impressing the council and winning over the cult was important. But in the event of a tie Opis would cast the deciding vote. In any case, I was sure she could influence the outcome if she wanted to. That was why every meeting with her felt like an audition.

I nervously smoothed my clothes and set off across the wide lawn that separated our building, Artemisia House, from the High Priestess’s Residence. It wasn’t actually a palace, but a late-eighteenth-century town house of dark brown brick. The maid answered the bell. While she went to announce my arrival, I waited in the main reception room.

The room was lined with silver-grey silk and had little in the way of decoration. It didn’t need it. As soon as you saw the painting on the wall it was hard to notice anything else.
The Death of Actaeon
, by Titian.

The story goes that the hunter Actaeon surprised the goddess bathing, and in revenge she turned him into a stag so that his hounds would kill him. Titian set the scene in an autumnal wood of golden leaves and dark storm clouds. The pursuing goddess is both stern and radiant, her flesh rounded, a copper burnish in her hair. Actaeon is caught in the moment of transformation from man to beast. His body twists backwards as his own dogs tear at his flesh.

‘I never get tired of looking at it,’ said Opis’s voice behind me.

Startled, I turned round and touched my hand to my brow in greeting. ‘Honoured Lady.’

Her eyes remained on the painting. ‘It would be such a tragedy if we had to let it go.’

‘Let it go?’

‘Since the crash, our financial security cannot be guaranteed.’ She gave an elegant shrug. ‘Even a High Priestess needs to balance the books. But don’t look so dismayed, Aura – we won’t be selling the family silver just yet. I still have a few tricks up my sleeve.’

Opis’s salon was in feminine contrast to the formality of the ground floor. The furniture was inlaid with mother-of-pearl and the pretty wallpaper featured birds of paradise. A host of framed photographs displayed Opis with the American ambassador, Opis with an uncomfortable-looking Archbishop of Canterbury, Opis at the royal wedding.

Her PA brought us tea and cinnamon biscuits as the Irish wolfhound, Argos, pressed its nose against my knee. The High Priestess always keeps a dog, but Opis had the look of a cat person, being slim and dark, with slanting eyes and high cheekbones, a precise red mouth. She sat back on the sofa and kicked off her heels with little purr of satisfaction.

‘Did you enjoy the festival yesterday, Aura?’

‘Very much, Honoured Lady.’

We made chit-chat about the weather, the guests, the Lord Herne’s speech. Everything but the main talking point, in fact.

‘The man with the snakes . . .’ I began hesitantly.

Opis frowned. ‘Lunatics are not worthy of our attention.’

‘I know he must have been crazy. I just . . . I just wondered if you’d met him before, maybe? I mean, he knew your name. Your old one, that is.’

I regretted it at once. ‘You are mistaken,’ Opis said acidly. ‘That is an absurd idea. Frankly, I find it a little disturbing that you are so determined to dwell on yesterday’s unpleasantness. It suggests an appetite for drama and scandal that is unbecoming in a handmaiden of the cult.’

I lowered my head, ashamed. I sometimes worried that I had a knack for rubbing Opis up the wrong way. ‘I’m very sorry, Honoured Lady. I didn’t mean to cause offence.’

‘Very well.’ Opis granted me a gracious smile. ‘We won’t speak of it again. After all, there are much more important matters to attend to. The oracle warned us of tests to come.’

An oracle is always given at the festival, after the parade is over and the High Priestess and the Lord Herne enter the temple alone. The High Priestess then descends to the Chamber of the Oracle, inhales the smoke of laurel leaves and other secret herbs, and waits for divine inspiration to strike. The prophecy that Opis had given yesterday spoke of ‘a time of trial and a new hope’.

‘What do you think of this election business, for instance?’ she asked.

I nearly choked on my tea. Then I realised that she was talking about the general election. We didn’t follow politics very closely in the cult, but I knew that the prime minister, Nicholas Riley, had just won a new term in office despite the Electoral Commission finding evidence of vote-rigging and fraud.

‘It’s very troubling, Honoured Lady. The country lacks leadership.’ I searched for something intelligent to say. ‘However, maybe this could be a chance for the cult to take a more active role in public life?’

‘Indeed it could. I worry, however, that some of us have become a little too set in our ways. A little too
complacent
.’ She paused. ‘However, I believe you, Aura, are different. It strikes me that you are a realist. Not a romantic.’

‘I think priestesses need to be a bit of both.’

‘Well, it’s clear you’re a credit to the cult. Your teachers speak very highly of you. I enjoyed reading the choral ode you composed in Greek class last week. “Star-jewelled queen of the midnight chase . . .” ’ She repeated it in Greek. ‘Quite charming.’

‘Thank you, Honoured Lady.’

‘But learning is not everything, you know – leadership requires something more. Grace and poise can’t be learned from books.’

I realised I was fidgeting with my teacup and, with effort, stilled my hands. ‘No, Honoured Lady.’

‘As it happens, I’m holding a supper party here tomorrow. Just a few Trinovantum guests and their friends. I’d like you to come.’

I was given little chance to express my thanks. Opis was already ringing for her assistant to show me out. As I was leaving, she licked a smudge of cinnamon off her finger, neat as a cat. ‘Ask Callisto to pop round, will you?’

I had been a guest at quite a few society events. Horse racing at Ascot . . . rowing at Henley . . . opera at Glyndebourne. On these occasions, cult representatives were mostly silent and decorative. A private dinner party was different. It was an honour to be asked, but it would also be a test of my social skills and networking ability. Cally’s too, presumably.

I went back to Artemisia House and into the handmaidens’ sitting room to tell Cally that Opis wanted to see her as well. She and the rest of the girls were sprawled on the over-sized velvet sofas, watching a Disney film. The floor was littered with shopping bags and wrapping paper, as well as boxes of chocolates that had been left at the temple for us on Festival Day. Since our allowance was given in the form of credit marks rather than money, I didn’t know much about the actual business of pounds and pence. Until Opis threatened to sell the Titian, I’d never really thought about how our shopping habit was paid for.

Artemisia House was by far the largest of the set of buildings, known as the Sanctuary, that occupies the block between the Temple of Artemis and Newgate Street. The house was rebuilt at the height of Victorian swagger and was far too big for us.

A grand staircase of treacle-dark wood led to a warren of shadowy corridors and cavernous rooms. In spite of their size, they always looked cluttered, thanks to an abundance of antiques (gifted to the cult by wealthy patrons) and temple bric-a-brac. Embroidered altar cloths and tapestries lined the walls; the alcoves were filled with statues of classical heroes and decorative bronze urns. And then there were the stuffed animals, which lined the halls in glass cases like a zoo for the dead. Wolves, boar, even a leopard . . . eyes glassy, fangs bared.