Our talismantra did not save us.
Although Archer One did raise his eyebrows in a questioning look, Archer Two scowled and tipped his head back for a ‘no’.
They pushed us on again and I almost tumbled down the monumental stairway that tourists would use two and a half thousand years later.
My heart was still thudding hard as we passed the small Temple of Athena Nike on our left, and we caught our first glimpse of ancient Athens below us. My gran and I have spent the last few summers in Greece at my aunt’s seaside apartment and I’d been into the centre of Athens a couple of times. But what I’d seen then looked nothing like the ancient city.
In the moonlight it seemed hardly bigger than a village. The scattered houses looked like little white Lego bricks with red tile roofs. Although it was night, it was warm and I could hear the rhythmic creaking of cicadas, those tiny little cricket things that sit on tree branches and make up for their invisibility by filling the world with their noise.
Could this sleepy village really be the home of some of the greatest minds who had ever lived? Playwrights like Euripides, Sophocles, Aeschylus and Aristophanes? The father of history, Herodotus, and his brilliant successor, Thucydides? Beautiful and clever women like Aspasia? And of course the philosophers, the men who first examined the meaning of life? Could they really be found in this moonlit village?
When we finally reached the foot of the Acropolis stairs, the smelly Smurf guards prodded us to the right.
They made us hurry along a road of hard-packed earth flanked by two-storey buildings I took for houses. Up close the sleeping houses presented blank plaster walls with only a few high slits for windows. Where the plaster was coming off, I could see mud brick underneath.
We were barefoot and I tried not to yelp every time my tender sole landed on a shard of clay or a piece of grit. But then I stepped in something squishy and smelly. My worst fears were confirmed as I caught a whiff of dog poo.
‘Dude, you stepped in it!’ groaned Dinu.
‘That’s the least of our problems,’ I muttered. ‘They’re taking us to prison, and I just remembered what they do to criminals.’
‘What?’
‘The worst ones include nailing you to a plank alive–’
‘Oh my God!’ groaned Dinu.
‘– or they make you drink a kind of poison called hemlock. That’s how they executed Socrates.’
We came to a crossroads with a giant fig tree, where we could go north, south, east or west. Our guards prodded us north along the dirt road and my stomach flipped as we approached a high, stone-walled building up ahead on the right. Was it the prison?
No.
We passed it. From within its walls, I heard the faint sound of a flute and tambourine. It sounded spooky on this deserted, moonlit night.
‘Aghh!’ I cried at the sudden sight of a pale man standing stock still up ahead.
But it wasn’t a man. It was a painted marble head of a man on a square column. His eyes and beard were painted black and he wore a strange frozen smile. In place of arms he had two square stubs with garlands hanging from them.
‘Dude, what’s that?’ hissed Dinu.
‘I think it’s called a herm,’ I whispered back. ‘After the god Hermes. They guard crossroads, doorways and boundaries against evil spirits.’
‘Creepy,’ said Dinu.
‘Quiet!’ snapped one of the Scythians.
But as we passed it, both our guards reached out to touch the herm’s chin behind his short painted beard, presumably for good luck.
I spotted a slab of marble on the other side of the road. It had letters carved into it, a Greek inscription. There were no spaces between the letters but they had been filled in with dark paint and I managed to read it:
IAMTHEBOUNDARYOFTHEAGORA
‘I am the boundary of the Agora,’ I murmured.
‘What?’ said Dinu miserably.
‘We must be coming into the Agora. The ancient marketplace. The place where Socrates liked to hang out. So near and yet so far,’ I added. That was something my dad used to say.
‘Wait!’ hissed Dinu. ‘Didn’t they put Socrates in prison for a whole month before he had to drink hemlock? Maybe he’ll be in the prison. Maybe he can help us escape. If he’s the wisest man in the world …’
For a moment my spirits lifted. Then I did the maths.
‘Nice idea, but I think his prison was near the Acropolis. And Socrates won’t be arrested until at least another ten or twelve years in the future.’
‘The future,’ said Dinu with a bitter laugh.
‘Yeah,’ I muttered as one of the guards shoved me forward, ‘I don’t see us having much of a future now.’