Chapter XIX
XIX
As soon as I wake up the next morning, I know something is wrong. I feel it in the pit of my stomach, foul and rotten.
The acolytes’ quarters are too bright, and that is in part due to the modest curtain, which usually covers the window, having been pulled back to let the morning sunlight in. It takes me a moment to appreciate the significance of that.
Sunlight.
The sun is up, which means…
I jump up from my bed pallet, horrified.
I am supposed to already be awake; my chores begin at dawn.
I glance at Apollonia’s pallet, directly beside mine.
It is empty, too, but made. That seems odd, as does the idea of Apollonia making up her pallet while leaving me to sleep in.
Did she get in later in the night, or never come at all?
No one else is in the quarters; I am alone here.
Quickly, I douse my face with water and change into a fresh chiton.
My head throbs violently, but I blink the pain away as I leave the sleeping quarters.
Blessedly, the temple is still quiet. It seems Apollonia and I weren’t the only ones who indulged in celebration of the last day of Panathenaia.
The priestesses who are awake are moving slowly, and several of them seem to be trying to avoid any direct sunlight.
It should be a peaceful morning, but the stillness only worsens my anxiety.
Where is Apollonia?
I step out onto the Acropolis’s lawns and at once regret it.
It’s too bright here as well. I fall to my knees and retch, upheaving the contents of last night’s meal across the grass.
The taste makes me want to vomit all over again.
I wipe my mouth and stand unsteadily. I have to find Apollonia, before someone else does.
“Meddy!”
The sound is faint, but I know it’s real.
I squint. There, at the front gates of the Acropolis, is a lone figure.
I half run, half walk. When I’m close enough to properly see Apollonia, I stop short.
Her chiton is ripped in several places, and one of her shoulder pins is gone so that she has to hold up the front of the chiton to prevent her breasts from being exposed.
There’s a small cut near her chin, and her beautiful brown hair is riddled with leaves and bramble.
“Apollonia, what happened?”
My friend stares at the ground. “I tried to find you last night.”
“What?”
She looks up at me, and her gaze is empty. “When you’d been gone awhile, I tried to find you,” she says slowly. “I left those shepherds we met and headed for the public latrines.”
A stone drops in my stomach.
“You weren’t there,” she continues, “so I started walking the streets, looking for you. There were some soldiers.” Her face twists. “I told them I was an acolyte, but they didn’t believe me.”
“Apollonia,” I whisper. “What did they do?”
She looks up at me. “I…they…” She looks down. “They hurt me.”
I think of Maheer, of the way he looked at me in his bedchamber all those weeks ago. I can still hear the phantom echo of his voice.
You’re just the age I like them.
I don’t know exactly how the soldiers hurt Apollonia, but I don’t need to know. Fresh anger blazes through me. “We’ll find them,” I vow. “And we’ll make them pay.”
Apollonia shakes her head. “There’s no point. I was drunk. I didn’t know their names, and I wouldn’t recognize their faces.”
My anger turns to something else, a sense of hopelessness and helplessness that leaves me nauseated. I open my mouth to say something, anything, to make Apollonia feel better, but there’s nothing.
It’s your fault, says a voice in my head. It’s your fault this happened.
“Meddy.” Apollonia sounds tired, more tired than I’ve ever heard her. That scares me most. “I just want to wash, I just…I need to change out of these clothes.”
“Of course.” I take her arm gently and put it over mine. “Here, see if you can walk. Lean your weight on me. We’ll go slow.”
I wasn’t there for Apollonia last night, and I know that truth is going to eat at me for a long while after today. But in this moment, I recognize that it isn’t about me right now. I was not a good friend to Apollonia before, but I can be one now.
The Acropolis’s bathing area isn’t far off, but Apollonia flinches every time she moves, as though her whole body hurts, so we move slower than usual.
Apollonia tries to shrug out of her chiton once we’ve reached the bath, but when she winces in pain again, I help her peel the clothes off, careful to avoid contact with her skin whenever possible.
What I see once her chiton is gone is even worse than I imagined.
There are bruises all over Apollonia’s back and arms. I help ease her into the bathing pool and note that there is spotting on her inner thigh, as though she has started her monthly blood. Some of it is on her tunic, too.
“I’ll get you a fresh chiton and some linens,” I say, rising.
“No.” Apollonia is up to her neck in the water now, but she turns, eyes wide. “Please don’t…please don’t leave me.”
There’s a desperation in her voice that shatters me. I ease to the edge of the pool and nod. “All right,” I say gently. “I’ll stay with you.”
Apollonia tries, at first, to scrub herself clean, but soon I take over, letting her lean against the pool’s edge while I dab at her bruises and ease the mud and twigs from her hair. I work in silence awhile before I speak again.
“Do you want to talk about what happened?”
Apollonia’s eyes have been closed. Immediately, they open. “No.” Her voice is still strained with exhaustion, but the word is firm. “I…I can’t.” I don’t push her to say more, but she adds: “Meddy, no one else can know about this.”
I start. “What do you mean? Shouldn’t we report the soldiers? Shouldn’t we at least tell Eupraxia?”
“No!” This time Apollonia is more forceful. She half rises from the pool. I note that she’s trembling.
“I don’t understand, Apollonia…” I’m trying to mind my tone, trying not to let my confusion show. “If those soldiers hurt you, that was wrong.” I look away, thinking. “We’ll go to their commanding officer. They’ll be disciplined.”
Apollonia is still holding my gaze. She shakes her head. “That’s not the way things work in this city, Meddy. What those soldiers did to me…” She looks down and wraps her arms around herself. “Please promise me you won’t tell anyone, ever.”
I don’t understand Apollonia’s reaction, or why she doesn’t want anyone else to know what’s happened to her. In the end, I decide I don’t need to understand.
“All right. I promise.” I take her hand and squeeze it gently.
Tears fill Apollonia’s eyes. “Thank you.”
“You need fresh clothes,” I say, rising. “You can borrow my second chiton for now, then we’ll—” I pause, turning.
“What’s wrong?” Apollonia sinks lower into the pool, covering herself.
I don’t answer, but my eyes search the pillars around the bathhouse until I catch a slight movement behind one of them.
“Come out!” I shout. “We can see you.”
A beat passes before a figure steps out from behind a pillar, and my heart sinks when I see a head of blond curls.
“Well, well.” Kallisto’s voice is soft, but her eyes glint like blades. She’s not looking at me. “That was an interesting story, Apollonia. Fraternizing with Athenian soldiers in the night? I’m sure that’ll be of great interest to the high priestess.”
I look back to Apollonia. She’s gone impossibly pale. “Kallisto,” she whispers, “please.”
“I won’t tell her,” says Kallisto lightly. “But I want something in return for my silence. You.” Her eyes cut to me. “Kiss my feet.”
I stare for a moment, waiting to see if her words are in jest. When she raises her chin in challenge, I realize they are not.
“For that trick with the snake,” she says in a low voice.
Now I understand. I have caused this. I look from her to Apollonia and detachedly think of Theo. I think of that moment in my bedchamber when he once told me he was afraid because of something I’d done. Now, yet again, my actions have implicated someone else, someone innocent.
Kallisto cocks her head, waiting. I take one more look at Apollonia and then make my decision. Every step I take toward Kallisto costs me something, but I make myself walk until she and I are standing inches apart.
Her lips quirk as she points. “Down.”
I want to hit her, kick her, do something to wipe the triumphant look off her face.
But I think of Apollonia, still behind me in the pool, and take a deep breath.
I try not to imagine what my sisters would say right now if they saw me sinking to my knees.
I glare down at Kallisto’s sandaled feet, and my fists clench.
“Go on,” she says sweetly.
It seems to take a century for my spine to curl into a bow.
At the last second, I jerk back slightly, my mouth hovering inches from Kallisto’s feet in revulsion.
I take a second deep breath and force myself to bow lower, until my lips brush the top of them.
As soon as it’s done, I stand and back away.
Kallisto is grinning in earnest now. I turn in time to see Apollonia trying to lift herself from the pool and rush to her.
I have nothing but her old clothes to cover her, but I do my best, while Kallisto laughs.
“I don’t know which will be better, Apollonia,” she says, “the look on Meddy’s face after she kissed my feet or the look on your face when I tell the high priestess you were consorting with soldiers on the night of a holy festival.”
My head snaps back to her at the same time Apollonia gasps. “You said you wouldn’t tell—”
“What?” Kallisto’s brows rise in mock confusion. “I don’t recall that.”
“Kallisto.” There’s a tremor in Apollonia’s voice. She sounds like she’s on the verge of tears, and I find I can’t look at her. “We’ve known each other since we were little girls,” she says. “Please, don’t do this.”