Glaucus had just made love to the most beautiful woman in the whole world. The footsteps of the most perfect girl he had ever imagined, and could ever imagine, had fallen silent now. She was so beautiful that it made him sick to think about her. Sick with joy. Sick, also, with fear. A turmoil began to erupt within him, violent and heated. The stillness of the dark chamber hummed in his ears.
Standing, he felt a weakness in his legs and gave a sigh, bracing himself for a decision he had to make. As he stood, a tremor passed through the room, followed by a low rumble and another vibration. Glaucus listened intently, but all fell quiet again.
On one side of the dark space in which he stood, the ceiling became low, and prevented him from exploring further. On the opposite side was the doorway through which he had entered. He felt for the handle, but could not find one. He pushed the door, but it did not open. Fearing all of a sudden that she might have locked him in, he pushed again, harder, and again, harder still, but it did not open. Stepping a pace back, he hit his head on a joist. Careful to make no noise, he felt with the tips of his fingers along the edge of the door and then explored the narrow space between the body of the door and its jamb, and found that it opened inwards.
The most exquisite sense of relief flowed through him. Then the anxiety returned.
She had told him to wait, but he had no intention of doing so.
Outside, in the dark passage, he could just make out the form of the walls. After a short distance, the passage turned to the left and into view came a doorway. The passage was long, but he could see that beyond the doorway was a large flight of stairs. Footsteps sounded, and Glaucus stood very still. They came closer and he stood as still as he could within the darkness of the corridor. Then a sight flashed briefly before him that struck terror into his soul. A woman, naked, with the most cruel lacerations all over her body, followed by a man, also naked. Glaucus had never before felt the roots of his hair tingle as they did now. But his thought was as clear and as calm as he could remember. He stood perfectly still, thinking.
Glaucus edged towards the doorway at the end of the corridor, listening intently, and could hear no sound. On the left-hand side of the stairway, columns rose from stepped platforms and looked down onto a hall of colonnades with a central lightcourt. As he climbed the first flight of stairs and turned to his right to climb a second, shorter flight, which led on to the next main ascent, a beautiful fresco appeared before him; an underwater scene of rocks striped yellow and blue with brown crabs fencing one another amongst fronds of waving weed.
Glaucus descended a little way again, leaned beside a large column, tapering downwards, and peered up at the sky far above the lightcourt. Then he quietly returned to the foot of the staircase. It was far too exposed. He walked softly away from the stairway and into the hall of colonnades, then returned to the darkness of the corridor from which he had emerged. Waiting; listening, he crouched motionlessly, for how long he could not tell, but all seemed to be quiet.
He hoped that he could find his way out unnoticed. Carefully, he followed the edge of the hall, past columns surrounding the central lightcourt and walked through a doorway into a small passage that passed the foot of another flight of stairs. Faint sounds drifted down from one of the floors above and his heart began to beat faster. Quickly, he moved past the stairs, followed the passage and paused carefully to listen before passing two open doorways. The corridor turned once more to the left, and came into a small but beautifully decorated hall. On the wall to his left was a fresco of dolphins, which he remembered. It was lit by an area where columns faced another lightcourt. The frond that had cut him sat in a large blue pot between rectangular columns which fronted the hall. He stopped to have a listen and a think. The sounds above disturbed him and he did not want to step out into the open.
Nearby was the entrance to a small, deep alley, open to the sky, and possibly also to windows or terraces above the high walls that enclosed it. He leant around and saw that it led to a passage which he recognised.
The way was narrow and looked to be secluded, but he could not be sure. There must have been a reason why the girl had led him past the pot plant and not along this alley. But the lightcourt itself might be tiered with balconies, like the one further on which he knew he had to enter next. Gathering his courage, he crossed the hall, stepping carefully with bare feet over the warm woollen rugs and the cold gypsum, and stood at the low partition, behind a column and beside the plant. From this vantage point it became suddenly apparent that the exit he was looking for led not from the lightcourt but from the side of the area between the rectangular columns and the round columns tapering downwards. The way forward did not entail moving into the lightcourt at all. Which was just as well, because two Ladies of the Goddess were sitting there.
Glaucus moved as quietly as he could to the back of the hall again. Suddenly, a scream as though of agony pounced at him from the direction of the passage along which he had come, followed by hysterical laughter. Glaucus froze, his back to a wall, as another scream lunged towards him like a knife. His frantic retreat led him blindly across the alley and through a doorway as another burst of laughter tumbled down towards him from above. Glaucus ran along corridors, down steps and across lightcourts, through rooms, up steps, past two deep pits that he nearly fell into, past shields in the shape of a figure eight hanging against the wall, and at last fell into a narrow passage that led into a long, dark corridor. He stopped to catch his breath. He had been running–so hard that–that he had to stop. In order to escape he had to retrace–the route along which he had been led, but that was impossible; obviously not possible, not in daylight. He would have to find another way out. His heart thumped inside his chest and made knocking noises in his neck as he contemplated what kind of a place he had been lured into. He pressed himself flat against the wall, against the cold gypsum. All along one side of the dark corridor were doorways into long, narrow cells filled with pithoi and other jars. He would have to wait here until nightfall.
·
Splash! Splash! 'Stop it!' Theseus ducked as Hermione cupped her hand again over the surface of the bath water in the cramped space between her knees, and shot another volley of drops in his direction. Her aim was not perfect because she had her eyes tightly shut against a torrent that streamed from her hair from a bowlful of cold water that Theseus had just tipped over her head. 'Hurry up!' he said. 'We must get back to the Court of the Verandas.'
'This water is freezing cold!' she exclaimed. 'Why don't you come in with me!'
'You must be joking! There is barely enough room for you.'
She shot another spray of water, dirty with red ochre, which this time spattered only the walls, because Theseus had gone out to fetch another jug of rainwater from the cistern along the corridor. He returned quickly with a large sponge.
·
The darkness of the space in which Glaucus sat, wakeful and waiting for dusk, gave no indication of the state of daylight outside. Sleep was his enemy, because then he would have no idea of the time, so he tried to remain alert, listening to the soft hiss of silence and the beating of his heart. But he could not be certain how much time had passed and he didn't want to risk another attempt in daylight.
At last, he judged that night must by now have fallen.
The passage outside the cell was in total blackness as he ventured into it. Feeling his way along the wall, trying to remember every step of the route he had taken, trying to find any clue that might lead to a door into the fresh air, any exit that might release him from this nightmare, or failing that a way back to the hall with the dolphins, the great hall of balconies, and the outer door on the east side of the Temple, Glaucus sensed a turning that held out the promise of a paler gloom and came almost immediately upon a flight of stairs. He could remember descending some stairs when he had run through this part of the Temple and gingerly mounted the first step. As he climbed, he became aware of a faint, monotonously sounding chord; it blew about like a breeze, dying briefly only to gust again into a faint audibility. After a while it became louder and more continuous. As Glaucus stood on a landing at the top of the first flight, listening, the chord began to fill the space around him. He could see light coming diffusely from around a corner.
Glaucus moved onto a second small flight; the noise seemed to be coming from that direction and gave the impression of having no human agency. This thought gave him comfort and drew him on as he climbed quietly upwards into daylight. The sound had no direction to it; but then, as Glaucus stepped onto a landing, he found himself at the entrance to what looked like an outside door and the sound had direction again; it came from beyond the doorway. His heart leapt as he opened the door a little wider and felt the warmth of early evening air against his face. Outside! Was this the other side of the building? Had he been so close to freedom all this time! There was no keeper to be seen.
He peered around and saw a three-quarter moon looking down at him, against a blue sky. A white cloud brushed across it with ferocious speed. The chord moaned, three notes together, but Glaucus suppressed a desire to make a dash for freedom. Something was wrong. The moon hung above a tall facade of the Mansion opposite, looming on the other side of a large quadrangle that looked immense and sinister as the light from a low sun cast crenulated shadows upon a long facade of windows and steps and columns opposite.
And against the backdrop of this architecture were five naked women, holding each others' hands and moving slowly around in a circle. And as they moved, and as the sound continued to emanate from somewhere, a dove flew down onto the paving of the court, followed by another. Glaucus searched with his eyes, but could see no sign of any musicians and there seemed to be no focus to the chord at all. It was a single, continuous sound that rang in his ears and seemed to fill the whole quadrangle.
A small tree grew near to where the women were dancing, and in its low branches appeared another bird, which flapped and settled itself on a frond, perched for a few moments, flapped again and settled. Another bird flew down from somewhere and settled nearby. The dancers continued to revolve and the chord continued to sound.
And then suddenly the whole quadrangle was full of birds, like a snowstorm of life, darting and wheeling above and around the dancers. Then, from within the circle of revolving women, a head arose; at first Glaucus could see only a silhouette of a figure rising from within the circle; her black hair hung in ringlets upon her shoulders - and then the ample bosom and the slender, aproned waist of this beautiful and captivating creature rose above the circle and the shining epiphany floated, levitating as the sun cast streaks of light and shadow on the upwards-curving crescents that adorned the very top of the roof line. She was astoundingly beautiful and she held Glaucus transfixed. He was beyond fear. The Goddess hung high above the dancing karpathia, the birds wheeling around and perching upon her head and upon her shoulders and upon her feet. Glaucus pressed the edge of his forehead hard against the side of the door in wonderment.
The epiphany turned her gaze towards Glaucus and looked directly at him, her eyes piercing and questioning, as though he had no right to be looking at her. Dashing down the stairway, Glaucus found the cool gloom in the lower passageway as inviting as a dip into icy water. He touched his face and felt a deep line on the left side of his forehead where he had been pressing it against the door. There was no point in stopping to listen because the noise from his heart was deafening.
Glaucus ran the long length of the dark passageway and tripped up some steps at the other end. A sound in a large hall as he entered it sent him hurrying back down into the long passage once more. Relieved to be in the comforting darkness, he crept forward. To his right were the long narrow cells and in one he could feel a pithos and a lot of boxes on the floor. There was a tiny window by the ceiling and as he looked more closely in the half-light he began to see that the boxes were full of clay tablets. He had wandered into a part of the Temple where records of mortuary gifts were archived. Glaucus leaned against the pithos to recover his breath and to try desperately to think what to do next. All he could hear was the beating of his own heart. Beside the boxes a large statue loomed, a huge creature with the head of a bull and the body of a man.
Terrified that the Goddess might be pursuing him, Glaucus looked towards the doorway into the passage and listened, sensing indeed that something was coming down the corridor; then to his horror he felt himself lifted up off the ground, felt himself turned upside down, sickeningly inverted, a pithos above his head, falling, plunging, head first into the jar and then he hit a surface, a sticky, messy, suffocating, suffocating...