The Double Tongue by William Golding Read Free Book Online

held out a string of blue worry beads and, biddable as ever, I touched it with a finger. She screamed in triumph, and I had done the wrong thing. In a second the crowd turned into a howling mob that fought with the soldiers. They struggled to thrust forward beads, a bracelet, an amulet, even a bit of stick so that I might touch it. At the back of the crowd someone was holding a baby over her head where I could see it. Men and women fell. A man was held up by the sheer press. There was blood on his face and his eyes were closed. The driver whipped the horse savagely and our brake surged forward. Little by little we left the crowd and its stench behind. There were open gates before us. We drove through and, glancing back, I saw them close again. Our brake slowed to a walking pace under the shade of tall trees that had even taller cliffs beyond them. Now I could hear the splash and chuckle of water. Ionides gave a huge sigh of relief.
    ‘Come. Let me help you down. Your maid can stay with your boxes.’
    It was a building of white stone, columned and porticoed. Ionides led me up the shallow steps to the great two-leaved doors. They moved back silently and we walked through into the coolness of a great hall. A colossal statue of the god stood at the farther end. His face was bleak and beautiful and unbearded as the God Alexander but he was the God Apollo. A thin streamer of incense rose before him from a tripod. He had been dressed for the day in chlamys and cloak. I followed Ionides forward and we each took incense and sprinkled it on the glowing charcoal. The streamer of smoke thickened. Face up and hand lifted, Ionides whispered to the god. Then he led me round behind the effigy and the door opened for us. Ionides’ voice became conversational again.
    ‘On the right are the apartments of the Senior Lady. On the left are the apartments, as you might suppose, of the Junior Lady. You will live through here.’
    A slave opened yet another door for us, a smaller one.
    Light flooded the room. Outside and over the rooftops of the city was the wild side of the mountain but in deep shadow. The slave was opening a window opposite to the first. I turned to watch. As the shutters swung back it was as if the light burst in, too much light, not direct light from Apollo’s sun but coming from everywhere, dazzling from what I now saw were buildings in white stone that seemed to lift and tumble up, up rather than down, as if they were escaping the earth and flying like a storm of birds into the sky. And as my eyes became accustomed and distance deepened, I saw how the separate buildings were picked out, adorned as a woman by jewels with delicate patterns of colour which danced round architraves and capitals or glowed in the shade of colonnades. Then, beyond all and as if it held up the deep blue sky, was the precipitous wall of the Shining Rocks.
    ‘Oh it is so beautiful.’
    ‘We Greeks can do that if nothing else. Well, Young Lady, congratulations on your first day of freedom. Welcome to your home.’
    I believe I smiled directly at him.
    ‘Thank you, Ionides Peisistratides.’
    I looked away, and round the cool shade of the room. There was no pallet or chair, no chest. Ionides laughed.
    ‘Not this room. It is merely your entrance hall. Come.’
    The slave hurried across the room and opened yet a further door.
    ‘Go through and examine your quarters, Arieka. I will stay here.’
    I am amused when I remember my astonishment and delight – sitting room, bedroom with a bed which made the pallet I was accustomed to seem fit rather for an animal than a girl! There was even a small room dedicated to the toilet which I used with some relief for it had been a long day since dawn. There was a maid’s room, smaller and plainer but still more comfortable than the one my parents had thought fit for me. In all the rooms there were objects of which I did not know the use or the name. As if divining what I wanted the slave had been round while I