Goddess (24 page)

Authors: Laura Powell

It was over, and I was free.

I gave my final oracle two weeks later. It was my first and last fake.

Live on TV, I rode from the Sanctuary to the temple in the High Priestess’s gold chariot, through cheering crowds. I was crowned with the moonstone headdress and dressed in robes the colour of sea-foam with a girdle of amethysts. Lilies and amaranths were thrown in my path. As the handmaidens sang the processional hymn, I walked through the Sacred Hall and descended to the crypt. There I lit the candles on King Brutus’s altar, and drew back the curtain to the Chamber of the Oracle.

I sat on the tripod seat and contemplated the statue in the alcove. I prayed to Holy Artemis, Lady of the Moon, Queen of Beasts, to approve my words.

Then I gave my oracle to Harry Soames, the new Lord Herne.

The oracle was long and digressive. It quoted from Homer, Euripides and Rilke. You can read the full text, along with those of my other prophecies, in the display room in the cult archive.

The references may have been rambling, but the interpretation was clear. There was no place for the army in government. The principal evildoers within the cult had been purged, but much work remained to be done and we, the people of Britain, must remain vigilant. Reform must start with free and fair elections. And a new era called for a new oracle. My service to the goddess was done.

Afterwards, I put away the headdress and the jewelled girdle, the floral wreaths. I went back to Artemisia House and signed the papers formally releasing me from the cult.

Leto is High Priestess now. She’s the oldest on record, but in spite of her grumbles I reckon she’ll be going strong for a good few years yet. At least until one of the younger ones is ready to step in.

Perhaps it will be Cynthia. After a lot of thought, she decided she wanted to remain in the cult and has taken charge of its new community outreach programme – hospice work and soup kitchens and battered women’s shelters. The last time I visited she was almost like the girl I remembered, the girl with the dancing eyes.

Cally, though, has gone. I was the first person she told. We sat side by side in our bedroom, holding hands, in a way we’d never done even when we were little girls. Her voice faltered as she asked, ‘Do you think Artemis will forgive me?’

‘Of course. You were a victim in all of this too.’

‘Not at first, I wasn’t. It was exciting, all the attention and the fuss. All the people bringing me presents and compliments, telling me how special I was. How I’d been Chosen. And I did feel Chosen, to begin with. By Opis and Lionel and . . . and Seb.’

She winced. ‘Aura,’ she whispered, ‘I’m so ashamed. I just . . . I’d never felt that way about anyone before. It was overwhelming. And Seb said he felt the same, and that Artemis wanted the two of us to be together. That we had a special responsibility. Opis and the Lord Herne kept saying what a terrible state the country was in, and how my oracles could bring new believers to the cult, and help restore order . . . They brought my mother in, too, and she was so proud. So excited for me. Yet I knew it was wrong, inside. And it got more wrong as time went on. But I was trapped, because I’d agreed to the lies. I just had to keep on lying.’

‘How do you feel about Seb now?’

‘That I wish I’d kicked him harder.’ She lifted her chin, with a flash of the old Cally. I knew then that she’d be all right.

She’s touring the States now, to promote a book about her time as the fake oracle. Noah Evans, Rick Moodie’s agent, is representing her. He reckons she’s going to go far. Cousin Seb, meanwhile, has also left the country, though in much murkier circumstances. There’s a warrant out for his arrest.

The Emergency Committee didn’t survive Lionel Winter’s death. He was too important a figure within the coup, and his and Opis’s murder–suicide was too huge a scandal to be covered up. Despite General Ferrer’s efforts, the committee had already lost the support of the army, and soon collapsed in disarray. Most of its members are in prison now, awaiting trial.

The woman I met in Westminster Abbey, the one-time shadow health minister, is acting prime minister. She’s got her work cut out. There are still protests and strikes, hardly any money, not enough jobs. Yet we came back from the brink, and – goddess willing – things won’t get so bad again.

After my last oracle, I left the city. Aiden had helped me leave the cult, and now he was helping me build a new life, for the two of us. We spent some time on a faraway island, where there was sunshine and sand dunes and nobody had heard of Artemis, let alone me. When I came back, Harry Soames had strong-armed the Trinovantum Council to come up with the funds for a new home. I even have a new name, which took a bit of getting used to. Aiden helped pick it out.

I have never felt the goddess again. I still listen for her, under autumn trees in a gathering darkness, when the sky is streaked with gold. Or else it will be a night when the moon is bright as ice, and a dog howls into the wind. Once you have experienced the divine as a living presence, once you’ve known the beauty and terror of their touch, the ordinary world can seem a pale and faded thing. Only sometimes, though. And not for long.

Once, all I ever wanted was to be Chosen. But it’s far better, in the end, to choose.

Author’s Note

Up until the sixteenth century, the story of King Brutus that Opis relates in Chapter One of this book was widely believed to be historical fact. The source for this was Geoffrey of Monmouth’s
History of the Kings of Britain
,
written circa 1136. Geoffrey claimed to have uncovered the true story of the founding of Britain in an ancient manuscript given to him by Walter Mapes, Archdeacon of Oxford. It is unknown what became of the manuscript, if it ever existed.

The London Stone, sometimes called the Stone of Brutus, is a block of limestone set within an iron grille on Cannon Street, in the City of London. Although its origins are obscure, legend has it that it was brought by Brutus from Troy to be the altar in the Temple of Diana (Artemis) in his new capital. According to superstition, as long as the stone is safe the city is too.

The Cult of Artemis is inspired by Greek mythology and the practices of the Vestal Virgins in Rome. The punishment for a Vestal Virgin who broke her vows was to be buried alive in the Campus Sceleratus or ‘Evil Field’.

You can see Titian’s painting
The Death of Actaeon
in the National Gallery in London.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Ellen Holgate for her heroically patient and perceptive editing, Natalie Hamilton for some very clever suggestions, and Isabel Ford and Clare Balham for their eagle-eyes.