Authors: Laura Powell
Voices were shouting out for news. ‘What happened? What did she say? Where’s the oracle?’
Aiden had a protective arm round my shoulder. I shook him off, flung back my head and gave a shout of my own.
‘Westminster Abbey is under attack. The general’s going to arrest our MPs. We must defend –’
The next moment, I was seized by rough hands. After a brief panicked struggle, I realised these weren’t police, but supporters. A couple of men lifted me so that I stood above the crowd. My cap had fallen off so that my pale hair streamed free, my face was gilded by the dying sun. I hardly knew what I shouted: the words of the oracle, jumbled up with my own. But the goddess must have hushed the crowd, for my voice echoed around the square with uncanny strength, as if magnified by the City’s stones.
Whatever I said, it was received with roars of support from my fellow citizens. I was passed above their heads as they chanted my name. ‘Aura! Aura! Aura!’ There was a scrimmage at the temple steps, and somehow Opis’s chariot was unhooked from its horses and dragged into the crowd. I was thrust into it, so that I stood upright at the helm, as a group of burly young men began pull it through the square.
The police were trying to contain the crowd. They had their batons out and riot shields at the ready. There were scuffles and shouts, cracked heads and bloody noses. I’d lost Aiden in the confusion until, just for a second, I thought I saw him again. He had blood on his forehead and an older woman was trying to drag him free from under the body of a fallen protester. His eyes were closed. The next moment, though, I had lost him in the crowd.
Goddess, keep him safe
, I prayed. But I’d already prayed to Artemis to cut all trace of him out of my heart. She hadn’t answered yet. My only comfort was that the police’s efforts seemed curiously restrained. Perhaps they were inhibited by the TV cameras. Perhaps they heard the call of the goddess too.
The demonstrators poured towards Parliament Square, following the route of the Festival Day procession. I was leading the charge on my man-drawn chariot. I was jerked back and forth, trying desperately to stay upright.
Throughout the ride, I saw flashes of a different city. London, back when it was Troia Nova; when the Temple of Artemis was just one among many pagan monuments; when the city was crammed with gods now long forgotten. Their statues and shrines lining the roads, their temples crowning the hills, the smoke from a hundred sacrificial fires rising to the sky. I felt wild, loose, about to spin out of my own skin.
As the light faded, the hush of the city’s traffic-free streets felt more sinister than peaceful. By the time we reached Parliament Square, the horizon was streaked with crimson. The abbey’s windows glowed comfortingly, despite its crumbling carvings and soot-stained walls.
I jumped down from the chariot and ran across the green in the centre of the square. I was among the first to arrive at the abbey’s doors. We were too late. The Civil Guard was already stationed there, with a couple of armoured trucks waiting outside.
As the rest of the protesters poured into the square and saw what had happened, the roar of anger seemed to split the city’s skies. Rumours were flying that the army was on the way, with water cannons to disperse the crowds, troops to storm the square. A helicopter assault would land on the roof of the Houses of Parliament. Secret agents inside the abbey would machine-gun the prisoners at the general’s command.
Yet nobody was going home. Instead, the abbey was quickly surrounded, Parliament Square and its exits blocked by a dense mass of people. Among them, I thought I saw faces I recognised. Mrs Galloway with her Elite Cleaning boys. Harry Soames. Spidey, from the squat. Their faces all had the same look: nervous but determined. The journalists and TV crews were there too, jostling for the best shots.
I was standing right in front of the abbey, where a line of military police had cordoned off the area between the doors and the armoured trucks. I had a self-appointed guard of my own, made up of the men who had pulled my chariot.
A couple of clergymen were the first to emerge from the abbey, hands cuffed and led by two guards. The dissident MPs followed, stumbling along in frumpy suits with shell-shocked faces. They weren’t obvious hero material. But neither were we. Tonight, we were all rebels, all one. Both MPs and clergymen were greeted with a tumult of cheers.
Then the general himself came out. Crisp and upright in his uniform, every inch the born leader.
He wasn’t fazed by the bellows of rage. He’d faced down worse. He stood on the steps of the abbey and surveyed the assembled mob.
He raised his hands in an appeal for calm. His voice rang out confidently. ‘I am not your enemy. These people are. Greedy, lying politicians who have done their best to destroy our country. Now they have formed an illegal assembly, to undo the good work of –’
The rest of his words were shouted down. There was a smashing sound – somebody had thrown a beer bottle into the cordoned area. Somebody else threw a stone. With frightening smoothness, the Civil Guard moved into position, guns drawn.
Facing them were the gangbangers and war veterans – ex-soldiers to whom the general was just another leader out for his own ends. But there were lots of ordinary women among the front ranks of the crowd too, as well as students and the elderly. The guards might be outnumbered but we were outgunned. Would they shoot into an unarmed crowd?
And was Aiden part of it? I pushed the thought away at the same time as pushing towards the youngest guard in the line, the one with the nervous mouth. ‘I want to speak to the general.’
‘Let her through,’ the general said.
I stepped past the guards and stood face to face with the Iron Lord.
The wild elation of the chariot ride had subsided, but the goddess was still with me. I tasted blood and ashes. I smelled charred flesh. I heard the goddess’s lamentation echo from the city’s stones. I was afraid of her. I was not of him.
His eyes flicked over me. ‘It’s the little clairvoyant,’ he said with a fatherly smile. ‘You should stick to palm-reading, not politics, my dear.’
‘We’re beyond politics. You’ve dragged us into war.’
‘What does a girl like you know about war?’ This time, he spoke with contempt.
‘And what does a man like you know about keeping the peace?’
The cameras rolled, bulbs flashed.
I felt a wave of exhaustion. I was exhausted from speaking for the goddess, exhausted from keeping her at bay. I couldn’t understand how I had got here. How it had come to this. I looked at the general and realised that perhaps this was true of him too. He wanted power on his own terms, but he wanted popularity too. He had been a hero for a long time. That must be hard to give up.
He narrowed his eyes. ‘Your moon-lady has no power over me.’
‘You’re free not to believe in Artemis. That’s your right. Just as we should be free to decide who we’re governed by, and how. That’s why you have to let these people go.’
One of the guards stepped towards me. He took my arm, and looked at the general.
The crowd raged and thundered. I barely heard them. I was waiting for what the general’s order would be. He could have me put in cuffs and dragged into the truck with the other prisoners. He could have me shot where I stood. Live, on TV. There was no going back from this moment, for either of us.
For a long moment, we looked at each other. Artemis wasn’t with me any more. Perhaps for the truly important moments the gods step back. They let our hearts and minds be human – nothing more or less.
Finally the general shook his head, let out a short and disbelieving laugh. I think he may even have been about to give the order to stand down. But the crowd had already lost patience. They surged towards us, a howling, rampaging tidal wave, so that everyone in front of the abbey’s doors – general, soldiers, civilians – was caught up in the current. We were flung against each other and the walls, then dragged under and trampled down, then pulled up again, thrashing and breathless, fighting for air.
It was a miracle no shots were fired. Perhaps this was Artemis’s doing. Perhaps it was the prayers of the Christian priests. Or maybe the soldiers just didn’t get the chance.
In the end, the general and his men managed to beat a retreat to the safety of their armoured trucks. Although the mob swarmed round the vehicles, banging their fists and screaming abuse, they weren’t able to topple them. The trucks stubbornly nudged their way out of the square, then sped off into the night.
Suddenly people were swarming around me too, laughing and applauding, chanting my name, plucking at my clothes and my hair. I was jostled and shaken; if one of the priests hadn’t taken me under his wing, I would have fallen again. He and a fellow clergyman shepherded me into the abbey, along with some of the injured protesters, and closed the doors.
It was strange to be in such a place. All through the centuries, we’d been competing faiths, authorities, tourist attractions. I thought the abbey draughty and gloomy, and pitifully plain when compared to the temple’s glitter. Yet it was somehow also like home. There was the same smell of incense and candle smoke, the same solemn, hushed air. And the Christian priests – the dean and a canon – were kind.
They sat me down in one of the side chapels and brought me water. A couple of the MPs were there too. Like me, they were a little dazed, but soon began to regain their spirits.
‘It’s the beginning of the end,’ said a middle-aged woman who said she was a shadow health minister. ‘The Emergency Committee members are already fighting like cat and dog. After an embarrassment like this, there’s no way General Ferrer can hold them together.’
‘We can’t be complacent,’ said the dean. ‘That’s what got us into this mess in the first place.’
‘And it was Artemis who got us out,’ I said.
The clergyman gave me a wary smile. ‘Faith does indeed move in mysterious ways. You were very brave to challenge the general as you did.’
I shook my head. It wasn’t courage. It was the exhaustion of someone with nothing to lose. Just for a moment, part of me wouldn’t have minded if the general had shot me where I stood.
A couple of medics were attending to the injured, and now the canon went outside to appeal for any more doctors in the crowd. He came back to report that bonfires had been lit on the green, bottles were being passed around, and there was laughter and dancing. A lot of people were camped outside the main doors, waiting for me to emerge and perform miracles. One of them, he said, claimed to be a friend of mine and had left a message for me.
Aiden
, I thought, with a clench of my heart. I remembered the glimpse of his bloody face, among the crush of bodies and police batons. I’d thought I’d caught sight of him urging on the crowd in the final push. But the priest said the friend was a young woman, and that her face was covered. She seemed frightened, he said.
The note was from Cynthia, though her handwriting was so cramped it was nearly illegible. She said that she had run away from the Sanctuary just before Malcolm Greeve’s visit and now she didn’t know what to do or where to go. She would wait for me behind the abbey, on the corner of Solomon Street.
One of the medics agreed to be my decoy. We were about the same build and colouring. After we’d swapped clothes it wasn’t a bad match, in the dark. She left through a side entrance, to draw attention away from me as I made my own exit through the back.
The streets were full of people out in defiance of the curfew, even though the telephone networks were still down and the roads closed to traffic. Some of them were heading home after the demonstration, but many others were coming to join the ongoing celebrations. The city was being reclaimed by its citizens.
Cynthia was waiting on the corner, her face part-covered by a scarf. When she saw me, she started, looked around in a panicky sort of way, and headed down the street. I called for her to wait, then reluctantly followed.
The road was well lit and there were plenty of people about. We were only a few minutes away from the abbey. Even so, I regretted turning down offers of an escort. I had been worried that the presence of strangers might alarm the fugitive.
When she turned into an alleyway, I kept my distance. I didn’t like this. ‘Cynthia?’
She stopped and turned. ‘It’s not Cynthia,’ said Cally’s voice from behind the scarf. ‘I’m sorry –’
There was an engine’s roar, squealing brakes, screeching tyres. A felt hood was already dropping over my head, as an unknown assailant pinned my arms behind my back and bundled me into a car.
My heart was speeding, a thin, dry buzz. I felt smooth leather seats, smelled the faintest trace of cigar smoke and perfume. I thought I might be in one of the Trinovantum Council’s limos, the ones with blacked-out windows, and a pass for the curfew. After only a short drive – at high speed – the car came to an abrupt halt, and I was marched along the pavement, then down a steep flight of stairs.
A trickle of sweat ran down my back. I had already guessed where I was being taken. Then I smelled smoke and herbs and knew for certain.
Sure enough, when my hood was removed, I found myself standing in the Chamber of the Oracle. There was Artemis Selene in her alcove. There was the tripod seat and brazier on the stand. There was the little bronze door.