Chapter 7 A Death on the Isle of the Moon

The body was found washed up on the hard pebbles of the northern bay. The Novice who had found him had gone straight to the Chosen One to report the tragedy. There had been a strong storm from the North that night, or else his body would have washed far out to sea instead of being tossed high on the stones of the bay.

Cybele followed the girl to the place, and turned the heavy water-logged body over. He was fully clad in the thick brown robes of a Priest. His face was bloated and the eyes and lips missing, scavenged by small fishes no doubt. But she did not need to see features to know who this was. Ioin, who had been Consort until the last Full Moon. His heavy frame was now even larger than in life, sodden with sea water and bloated with the beginnings of decay.

'Did he drown, Chosen One?' asked the young girl. 'It has hardly been weather for bathing in the sea, and look. He wears his robes still. Who would go to sea in their gown?'

Of course this young Novice would not know of the drama of the last Full Moon ceremony, when this man had failed as Consort and run from the Temple, never to be seen again. Well, until now, anyways. The general feeling of his disappearance had been that he had taken his own life in shame, or tried to reach the mainland. Either would have meant the same thing, as the only boat on the Isle was safely locked away, and to try to swim to the mainland meant certain death even in the height of Summer, let alone in these heaving seas of late Leaf-fall.

'What is your name, my child?' Cybele asked, although at fifteen she was little more than a girl herself.

'Arithea, your holiness. I am new to the Hall of Novices, only come last week, so I had not the privilege of your holy company there.'

It was strange to think it was but one moon's cycle since she had been a Novice herself. And at that time, few had treated her with even the slightest respect, let alone as 'holy company'. She had always been teased for her blond Saxon looks, so unlike the others of the Isle. And now the young ones looked to her in awe. Yes, very strange.

Cybele looked down to he body at her feet. Yes, he could well have drowned. There were no obvious marks to his throat or head. And yet, since his very disappearance, she had felt uneasy. He had been shamed, it was true, but from what she knew of him, he was a simple man not given to morose contemplation. She had expected to find him the next day in friendly conversation with a farm-girl, happily helping her to tend her cows and relieved to have removed the cloak of the Consort. She had had her doubts when he went missing, but could do little. But now, she had a body. And it was possible that from this they could find if the death was through violence.

Was there the cut of a blade in his flesh under this clothing? Were the lungs empty of water, which would show he had stopped breathing before going into the sea? Although he could easily have been rendered senseless with wine or some more sinister drink, then thrown in the water to die. Or of course, he could have simply drowned himself as was generally supposed. As she mumbled to herself of these possibilities, the young Novice's ears burned.

'You think not that he drowned, Chosen One?' the girl asked.

Cybele felt unsure of the obvious opinion, that he had taken his own life. She wanted to seek the counsel of her friend Cabirius, who was a wise and learned Priest despite his youthful age. But then, he had not spoken to her since that Full Moon, and had avoided her gaze on the few occasions she had managed to catch glimpse of him. She knew not if it were because he now preferred the touch of his friend Attis, with whom she had found him coupling on that evening, or if it were through his regret as having been so caught. It was true that she had been wounded deeply by finding Cabirius and Attis together, but it had at least in some way assisted her own politics.

If Attis had not been brought from his trance that evening, the Consort would have been chosen by her enemy Thomias. In fact, Thomias may even have contrived to have himself made Consort, which repulsed her beyond measure. Yes, that would have well served Thomias's hunger for power, and he would have used the position to make the Goddess submit to Priapus, rather than the reverse, where the Consort is subservient to the Goddess.

Attis served the Goddess above all. His mother's mother had been the last Chosen One, and his mother had died a virtual prisoner of his father on the mainland, never allowed to return to the Isle of the Moon. On his mother's death, he had come to the Isle, a perilous crossing for a child of ten, alone in a small fishing boat. It must have been the hand of the Goddess herself who had protected him and brought him here. Surely he had been Chosen by the Goddess as much as Cybele.

Cabirius would have to speak to her now. A death was too grave a matter to be dismissed for some reason of personal conflict. She turned to the girl beside her. 'Arithea, wait here until I return. If any come, say you have come upon the body just now. Say nothing to anyone of my concerns.'

The small girl nodded eagerly, eyes wide as an owl's. 'Nothing. I will say nothing to anyone.'

Cybele climbed quickly back through the rocks and made her way back to the village. Instead of taking the path that led to the Temple, she skirted around the outside of the small stone wall that encircled the village and climbed over it to emerge near a hut. It was a small building attached by a wall to the larger classroom in which the Novices had their classes. She listened and heard the hard voice of Thomias raised to give a lesson in the larger building. That would mean that Cabirius should be alone in the small reading room, so without being seen she slipped behind the heavy door-curtain into the hut.

She instantly saw that her presumption had been wrong. Cabirius was not alone. Attis sat with him at a table, with an oil lamp burning before them. 'My apologies, good Priests, I should have called greetings at the door,' she said coldly. They looked up at her, and she could see that they had merely been bent over a large book, with Cabirius teaching Attis some letters.

'Chosen One..,' Cabirius said in a surprised tone. Not too unpleasantly surprised, she thought. The gloomy Attis said nothing, but returned his eyes to the book.

'I need your counsel, Cabirius. On a most grave matter,' Cybele said in a serious voice. Attis made no move to leave, but Cabirius arose.

'Do you wish to walk?' he asked her, aware that his friend had no intention to give them privacy.

'No, Attis may hear also.' She thought she saw his eyes move up from the book, but he pretended to take no notice.

'What think you of the disappearance of Ioin?'

'I know not. Perhaps it is true that he swam to sea, for he surely could not be hiding still under some pebble in a field. It has been a half-moon since he vanished.'

'You think that he would have done such a thing?'

'Honestly, no. He may have been shamed by losing the favour of the god in front of all, but I would not have thought his will to live so easily destroyed.'

'That was my feeling also,' she affirmed.

'What do you suggest then? He had no enemy. He was a gentle and harmless man, easily bidden and well liked.' Cabirius sounded so little changed from when they had met in secret and had long, serious conversations between passionate embraces. But then clearly his attentions had turned from her to this boy. She missed him acutely, and most of all their conversations.

'Know you of no-one who could have meant him harm? I feel some ill wind blowing across the Isle, and it is not the Goddess's hand.'

'Thomias,' he stated simply.

'Thomias? Why so? Was he not secretly at Thomias's bidding all these years as Consort?' she queried.

'Yes, but he failed Thomias more surely than he failed the Goddess by running from the Temple. If he had done so at another time, Thomias would have been able to contrive his replacement with another of his minions.'

'That is true. But he would have had no opportunity. Ioin was already missing when all left the Temple to return to the Halls that evening. Thomias was in full view of us all for the whole time. He could not even have arranged for another to do his bidding.'

'Well, who would have been able? A Novice? A villager? How could any such person wish him ill? To be sure, he coupled with many a village girl, but I cannot believe that any would bear him a grievance.'

Attis looked up from his book to Cybele. 'Jenna,' he said with a finality that knew no doubt.

'Jenna the Healer? No, she is my friend. She would hurt no-one, she is a Healer,' Cybele said angrily. The boy may be Consort, but he is still a boy, she thought.

'She does little to heal the minds of newcomers to the Isle,' Attis said.

'What do you mean?' Cybele demanded.

'Really...,' he said with a disturbing lack of respect. 'Who do you think makes the potions to remove the thoughts and memories of the children brought to the island?'

'No! Not Jenna,' she insisted, defending the friend who had so comforted her when she was distressed as a Novice.

'Who, then? Of course it is she. Or did she wipe your sense as well as your childhood from your mind?' he sneered contemptuously.

'Attis, hold your tongue!' Cabirius growled. 'You should not speak to the Chosen One in that way!'

'Oh. I can rut her, but I can't insult her?' he hissed. The lamp flew spattering to the ground as Cabirius leaped at Attis's throat. The two struggled, wrestling on the ground. The older Priest easily won a position of advantage and stuck Attis hard with a clenched fist on the side of his face. Blood burst from the boy's mouth and he stopped struggling.

'Hit me again Cabirius. Go on, hit me again,' he urged the other in an eerily chilling tone. 'You enjoy punishing me, so go ahead.' Cabirius recoiled from him and got to his feet.

Cybele was confused by what she saw, and realised how little she understood of the relationship between them. She broke the silence.

'What reason would Jenna have to harm Ioin, Attis?' she asked, in a tone that showed she accepted the possibility.

'She is with the Priests,' he said, wiping the blood and spittle from his mouth with his sleeve.

'In what manner?'

'She supports them for they offer her changes to our ways that would permit her entry to the Temple.'

It was true that Jenna, as a cripple, was not permitted to become Priestess. Ceres was a ruthless and demanding Mother and only the very strongest and most dedicated could tend her Temple.

'How do you know of this?' she asked.

'I am quiet and small, and the Priests took no heed of me when as a child I collected their conversations.'

'Why would you do such a thing? They are not such matters as would interest a child.'

'I wanted to discover why my mother's mother had fled this place, and why she had been killed. I soon realised the cause, and so I have listened and waited. I may be Priest, but I serve the Goddess.'

'As all are intended to do,' she said. 'but do no longer. Have you not seen how Thomias leads them further from her lap? Our own ceremonies in the Temple of Priapus mean more to many of the Priests than the true Moon Rites in the Temple of Ceres.'

'Is this true?' she asked Cabirius, horrified.

'I thought you would know that,' he answered her.

'We Priestesses know so little of the Priests, it seems, even though they do our teaching. Oh, how have be let ourselves fall so under the control of the Priests?'

'Because they have shifted the focus so slowly,' Attis offered. 'It has taken a hundred turns of the stars. And always, they have used the name of the Mother when offering homage to the son.'

Cybele shook her head. 'Who could be so patient as to intrigue over generations?' she thought out loud.

Attis answered her. 'Only a God.' The three fell back into silence. After some time, Cybele spoke.

'I have found him. Ioin. His lips cannot speak, but there may be some other way he can tell us of what befell him.'

'He is dead?' Cabirius asked.

'Very much so. His body has washed ashore on the North Beach.'

'Did he die by some violence?'

'Not that I could clearly see, but it is not impossible. I came to you straight away.'

'We may be able to prove some foul play if there are injuries, or marks to show his body was weighed down.'

'I would not hold too much hope that we can answer our questions from the corpse I have seen. He has been at sea some time.'

'We should go to him and see what small clue we may find,' Cabirius said. Cybele nodded slowly in agreement, and moved to the door. Cabirius reached his hand down to help Attis up, but his friend ignored the gesture and climbed to his feet unaided, wiping his face. Cabirius shook his head at him. 'You cannot go out like that or you will draw notice. Here....' He licked his own sleeve and wiped the smeared blood from Attis's cheek. Attis pouted sulkily, but did not pull away.

The three of them slipped unseen from the village, and followed the uneven flagged path to the bay of pebbles. As they came down over the rocks, Cybele called to them over the noise of the crashing sea. 'Strange. I thought we would see them by now...'

'Them?'

'I left a Novice with his body.'

'Was that wise, to let another know?'

'It was she who found him, not I.' They struggled over jagged crags and down the path to the beach. There was no body to be seen.

'Perhaps the sea has taken him back?' Cabirius asked.

'Arithea would not have left him.'

'Perhaps when the sea rose, she came to seek you?'

'Well, she was certainly too small to have lifted his body away from the waves. But somehow, I think she would have kept to the spot still and done what she could.'

'Then we must go back to the village and find her,' Cabirius shouted over the roaring wind and waves.

'We have found her already.' It was Attis, who had trailed behind them. He pointed back to the small cliff that they had skirted around. A tiny body lay on the rocks at the base, with small limbs bent as impossible angles. Cybele rang back to her, her damp gown slapping heavily at her heels in the blustering northerly wind. Cabirius put his hand to her shoulder and she let out the sharp cry of a wounded beast and sank to her knees beside the small body.

'How could they?!?' she cried. 'A tiny child !'

'They are covering their previous crime,' Attis said without emotion.

'How so? By another death? And of a small child?' Cybele asked.

'She was wandering here by herself when she found the corpse, so who would not think that she may have slipped on her walk? It is clear her killer thought she had not yet raised an alarm.'

'By the Goddess, then this is my fault!' Cybele gasped. 'I told her that if anyone came to say that she had only just come upon the body herself. Otherwise they would have not killed her as a witness.'

'It was not you who threw her onto the rocks, Cybele, you cannot blame yourself,' Cabirius soothed.

Attis spoke in a solemn and distant voice. 'There is real evil at work now on the Isle, and we must find it.'

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