The Double Tongue (10 page)

‘Evooee-ee, Bacche!’

What was this? The drumming died in my ears and I heard from that sun-drenched crowd before the portico a stricken and sudden silence. The god. What god, which god, where? Suddenly the whole tomb place was full of rolling, rollicking laughter that went on and on, louder and louder and I knew as my body worked like some automaton that it came through my own mouth. Then, as sudden and horribly as it had come – no, not horribly that brazen clangour – but as suddenly as it had come there was silence. The shawms broke it and when they ceased the crowd itself took up the cry of the two gods and then the silence came again. I found I was kneeling, my two hands taking some of my weight before me. For a measureless time I was too exhausted for fear. But I spoke to the god who had laughed: ‘Have mercy!’; and it was so strange to feel that same mouth which had opened and bled at the passage of the god’s voice could now make words for a poor woman on her knees. Whoever god have mercy. My maiden’s clothes were heavy on me, clinging, and I guessed that they were soaked with sweat. I opened my eyes and saw. There was light now. It was not what would be called light in the world of the sun but down here in the underworld it might be seen by, or seen itself if there was nothing else about. It was a glow from the brazier; and with a flinch that moved me on the floor I saw the skeletal otherworldly creature standing on its three legs, the sacred tripod. I felt it was the god who helped me then to crawl towards it and lay hands on the thick, cool bronze of its ankles. I climbed a mountain, groaning, sometimes wailing but now there was no escape. The god would have me there in the holy seat whether I would or no, oh yes, it was a rape, this was Apollo who fitted me into the seat, twisted me anyway he would, then left me. I felt brave all of a sudden when he left me and I shouted out with my own voice though it hurt my jaws and even my lips.

‘One mouth or the other!’

The rollicking laughter came again.

Then as suddenly as it had all happened, it stopped. I mean the madness in my mind stopped as my heart and lungs eased. I was sitting in a seat, however uncomfortable, held up and away from the unseen floor. The faintly glowing charcoal in the round brazier a foot below my face looked like a full moon rising through mist. I had never felt so clearheaded. This was a woman’s place, the Pythia’s place. They trespassed, that over-male god, those two male gods coming in and forcing their cries of worship through my twisted mouth which still tasted blood. The simple answer to madness was just this: to refuse to do their bidding. I sat, now warming my hands in the gentle heat from the brazier. What had they made of it, that crowd out there? The shrouded Pythia descends into the adytum. There is a pause, then the two shouts more male than female and after that the laughter. Then ‘One mouth or the other!’ They will argue about that.

I could see more clearly now. There was daylight at the steps and the niches empty, all but one where I could just see the knees of Ionides projecting. He was crouched back in his niche. Had the laughter frightened him? Did he still believe nothing? Now the shape of his head appeared. He was staring into my darkness. He spoke in a conversational voice and there was no emotion in it at all.

‘A question from our Roman guests who agree that their names should be spoken aloud. They are Julius Caesar and Metellus Cimber. They ask the god which of them shall rise higher.’

It was in my mind to laugh. As if a god could care about their affairs and competitions! But I knew that if I laughed it would be my own laughter and not the Pythia’s. In my silence I could hear the crowd laughing. They took it as a jest the Roman guests had made to amuse them; good, kind guests that they were! Then I heard the High Priest of Apollo transmit to the crowd the answer which he had not heard and the Pythia had not given.

‘There will be a competition and one will be a cut above the other.’

There was laughter and applause. It was as if Ionides and the two Roman guests were playing a game at a party. But I myself was the Pythia, had given no reply – and I had forgotten the laurel leaves! They were there, in flange-like depressions round the central charcoal of the brazier! I put my hand into the nearest pile. It was dust, the leaves broken up and ground down. I was about to scatter the leaves when I saw that a tenon or bar had been left unlatched across the front of the tripod. Quite clearly it was meant to be brought across my waist and latched into the other side of the tripod. Without it, if the leaves made me dizzy I might easily fall forward with my face in the charcoal. I was frightened again all of a sudden. Everything was unknown, nobody had warned me. It was part of the ritual of any oracular sanctuary to take risks with the devoted – what else could that word mean? The goat had taken a risk. He had lost. Were the gods supposed to protect me? Did he think Apollo would have touched me on the shoulder and murmured in my ear ‘Do please remember to latch the safety bar, dear. We don’t want you to burn your face.’ Or he might want me to, my father all those years ago saying, ‘Well your face will never be your fortune, dear.’ Apollo might think there was a joke there for the Immortals to enjoy. She had said it, that nameless Pythia sitting in this same chair, her chair, my, our chair, ‘You’ll be killed by the fall of a house.’
And
inextinguish
able
laughter
rose
among
the
gods.
My body convulsed at the thought of it. Suddenly a great convulsion twisted me again. My hand rose – the very grotto of the god! – and made the apotropaic sign. The dust and shattered leafage spilled and flew in a cloud. Some of it fell on the charcoal. There were bright sparks that seemed to dance over the surface. There were sudden small flames. There was smoke. It seemed to come at my face as if aimed like a weapon. I gasped in fear and got a lungful. I fell into a paroxysm of coughing. The whole cave or grotto grew immense and then contracted, seemed to diminish the movement into a pulsing. I heard a high note and then nothing.

I woke up, conscious of little but a headache. It was a long time before I dared to open my eyes. I was lying in the sumptuous bed of the First Lady. I turned my head and groaned at the pain of it. Ionides was sitting on the other side of the room. He stood up when he saw me move.

‘Drink.’

I got myself up on one elbow. It was bitter-tasting stuff, willow bark I guessed, but almost at once my head cleared.

‘What happened?’

‘You very nearly started a fire, that’s what happened. Enough smoke came out of the grotto for a volcano.’

‘How did I get out?’

‘I don’t know. It’s a strange place. There were people, attendants, moving about down there. I saw you carried sideways out of sight.’

‘Where did they come from?’

‘I told you the mountain has been excavated. They took care of the Pythia, that’s all. I found you here.’

‘The crowd –’

‘They had the time of their lives, what with the laughter and the smoke. I only hope they will think it’s holy, not comic.’

‘The gods were there.’

‘Gods?’

‘Him. And him.’

‘The fellow up the hill? Dionysus as well?’

‘You heard them.’

‘I heard you, that’s what I heard. But still –’

‘Ionides. What did the crowd hear?’

‘Your two shouts first and that odd saying “One mouth or the other”. Some sniggers. After that I gave our Roman guests their oracle. Then for a time you were mouthing. They all do it. Why can’t the god do a clean job? Then it was the Athenian’s turn, the official question of course, not the one about the corn and the Hellespont. I gave the answer we’d agreed on but you were still mouthing – mostly as far as I could hear you were mouthing about “lies and lees”. That wouldn’t do for an official party would it?’

‘I suppose not. Ionides, did I really say things? I mean while I was what you call mouthing.’

‘Of course you did. Like anyone else, there’s no magic and nothing holy about it. It’s just like any sleeper. After that came your little conflagration and those dark-clad attendants hauling you out. Don’t worry. Nobody saw anything they shouldn’t. We know about those things.’

‘It’s so mixed. I don’t like it.’

‘You aren’t asked to like it. You’d better rest as much as you can. You’re on again tomorrow.’

‘But it’s supposed to be one day!’

‘Only two answers, the Romans and the Athenians? Oh yes, they’re the most important of course. But we can’t ignore the others, the whole crowd of them. After all, First Lady, it’s how we get our living. It’ll be little people mostly. You don’t have to bother about them.’

‘I don’t want to bother about them!’

‘Why do you suppose we had three Pythias? We were caught out this time by two so inconsiderately dying. But don’t worry. Our spies are out. Well, not spies. Agents. The Athenians have a girl themselves and are putting her forward. Don’t be surprised if you suddenly see a strange face.’

‘A pretty one?’

‘Are you remembering your Chloe? I don’t know. Nobody tells me anything – I have to find it all out for myself. Well, I must go off and make friends with young Caesar, Julius. That young man asks too many questions for my comfort. By the way, the Athenian question will be slipped in among the small ones tomorrow. I mean the real one, the one that matters. I’m afraid we can’t play about with that one.’

‘We aren’t playing about with anything! The gods were there!’

‘Of course. If I can find anything out between now and then I’ll let you know. But keep everything secret. They insist on your knowing nothing. They are really scared you see. So be a good girl and try to get the god to give an honest, divine opinion.’

‘I am not liking this, Ionides.’

‘You were highly recommended. But then so was that fat slug. Oh dear. This is life on a knife edge. It just occurs to me. Shall I ask you a question myself? One for me? My affairs? Slip it in among the others? After all I pass them on, don’t I? Until tomorrow.’

There was a much smaller crowd next day. I passed through patches of silence in my vehicle and here and there could hear single voices or two in a conversation that ignored my passing. Judging by the sound of it the sacrifice was a she-goat who consented, poor female thing, as I was consenting, both used, both apparently prized for some quality but not rewarded for it except by – what? It was a question I was still asking myself as I was lifted down and set upright on the step. Going down in such a meditative mood, interspersed with no more than tremors of awe, I knew in some strange mood of certainty that the gods would deal gently with me this time. I was able to unwind my scarf calmly, blink and look about me and wait for the darkness to become no more than gloom. While I was waiting I became aware suddenly of the depth of the silence from the crowd outside. It was small indeed; yet there was no murmur from it, no single voice raised, not a cough or snuffle. They were there, each passionately engaged to his question – perhaps life or death for them, wealth or poverty. First Lady, Pythia, is this pain in my side to continue increasing? How can I be healed? The doctor has given me up, First Lady. But she was an ordinary woman, not even a mother or a beauty, just a plain woman suffering the blight which the gods lay on her middle age.

The darkness was gone. I was seeing as in an evening light. The floor of the grotto was strange. There were lumps of worked stone here and there and in one place at least an iron bar stuck up from the stone and had been broken off. My Phocian ancestors, I thought to myself, this is where they found the treasure and tore it away from the stone, the nigh on life-sized statue of a woman in solid gold; one hundred and seventeen gold ingots each nine inches wide, three inches thick and eighteen inches long; mixing bowls, sprinklers, basins, a gold lion that had weighed nearly a quarter of a ton. Had that stone there, with leaded holes, held down the lion? Or were they so ignorant of man’s greed that they would think the mere weight of the beast sufficient protection? And there were girdles and necklaces for the Pythia, were there not? But they would have gone early, passing as the Pythia passed, evanescent in the long run as raindrops. Well, thought I to myself, earnest people outside, you raindrops with your little worries, I will do what I can for you! I climbed carefully into the seat at the top of the tripod, seeing for the first time how the craftsman had combined seat and bowl, seeming to make the conjunction inevitable. And the legs of the brazier, their bronze was intricate with snakes and mice. Many hands had cared for this stone box of a grotto, and as I climbed into the seat, still facing it, I saw that at the back of the place a curtain hung. It made the flesh creep on my bones. Did that then hide the fabulous cleft in the rock up which once upon a time vapours had risen from the centre of the earth? It was with an effort that I turned my back on the curtain and settled in the seat.

There was much silence and at the end of it a touch of that same comedy which Ionides so much feared. He contributed it himself. There came a roll of timpani from out in the open air then silence again. I saw Ionides peering round the edge of his niche.

‘I forgot to tell you. No shawms today.’

It was silly and made me laugh, not with the rollicking laughter of the gods but with my own voice, deep enough for a woman but not all that deep. Ionides began to pass on the questions one at a time. I forget what the first one was, but I found myself waiting for the god or gods and then talking to them. It seemed trivial enough. Here I am, I said, ready and willing. Do your will. Are you there? Both there, Dionysus, winter god for the three winter months, Apollo, you who mastered me yesterday, are you to do your will again? I am your Pythia.

There was no answer. Nothing. I thought to myself, long ago when they all turned their backs on me, I came to the void. Am I talking to it again? Apollo? Are you there? Or are you away hunting up on Parnassus? Or chasing a laurel tree? Apollo, I believe in you. They want to know. Each one of them has brought you a gift. Will you answer?