The messenger boy from Pericles had asked me to come. That pleased me because we had last parted on poor terms. I wanted to mend fences with Pericles, and delivering important progress would smooth my way.
Pericles was busy with another visitor so a slave left me to wait in the courtyard. Paths formed a cross, splitting the courtyard into four quadrants, each grassed and with vines running about the entire space. The fragrance of the vines was sweet and so intense that even I, who normally ignored such things, was drawn to walk over and sniff. The mandatory statue of Zeus Herkeios was placed in the most distant corner, with flowers growing about it and a step placed in front for the daily sacrifice. There were a number of couches placed to form a large circle, and beside each couch was a table carved from marble. The grass was patchy; it was easy to see the spots where men commonly placed their feet when walking from one couch to another. This was a working courtyard for a man who regularly held large symposiums.
What the slave could not have anticipated was the raised voices, and the way the sound floated down to me from Pericles’ study.
“You will go to the estates,” Xanthippus’ voice roared.
I looked up to the second floor, startled, to see two heads framed within the window, facing each other, as if they were putting on a show for me.
“With the greatest respect, Father, I must say again that I decline. There are too many issues needing my personal attention here in town. I’m sure you understand that. Perhaps after this crisis has died down-”
“You must leave Athens, for your own sake, at least for a few months. The family estates need more attention than we’ve given them. This is the perfect time for you to learn the management of our property. I am sending you as your father, I expect you to obey as my son.”
It was going to be embarrassing if they looked down and saw me. I moved to stand directly underneath the window, where I wouldn’t be noticed if they glanced out. Besides, this was interesting and I didn’t want them to stop.
“I’m not a child any longer, Father.”
“In law you are.”
“I owe you all the loyalty and obedience a son owes a father, but I will not run away from Athens like a coward. We both know this has nothing to do with managing the family wealth.”
“You’re right, it doesn’t. I’ve done my best to protect you from your actions, but I can’t keep it up much longer.”
There was a lull in the conversation. I edged closer to the window.
“Son, I made a mistake when first I walked in here. I should have asked you to go, not told you outright. If you wish, I will apologize. But the fact remains it’s in your best interests to leave Athens for a while.”
“I disagree.” Pericles’ tone could have frozen water. “My interests lie right here. May I say, Father, how disappointed I am that we cannot seem to have any conversation these days without it turning into an argument.”
“I wonder whose fault that might be?”
“Both of us, I should imagine. I remember when we could discuss almost any subject, and even if we disagreed, it never became an issue for personal antagonism. I wonder what changed?”
“You became obsessed with this democratic movement.”
“I think rather had you been born at the same time as me you would have become a democrat yourself. You were a reformer as a young man. You were a champion of the people before the time of Themistocles. Where did it all go wrong?”
“It didn’t go wrong, young man. I still champion the best interests of the people. What I realize is the people cannot be trusted to champion themselves. Under this democracy of yours Athens will make mediocre decisions at best, and sometimes very bad ones.”
“Are you sure, Father, that that is not the opinion of a man accustomed to wielding power?”
“No, it is reality. When you are fighting in the ranks of the army, do you want the smartest, most experienced man to command, or an incompetent, the least experienced?”
“The answer is obvious.”
“Just so, it is obvious. Yet as soon as we start to talk about the leadership of our city, a subject of infinitely greater importance than any one battle, suddenly the idea of choosing the best man for the job disappears.”
Their voices had calmed, and were quieter. I edged my way up the stairs to a position where I could hear more clearly. Pericles was speaking.
“The Ecclesia can be persuaded by the wisdom of our best men. Men like you, Father. Trust them to respond to good advice.”
“Pericles, I am going to say something I don’t think I have ever said to you before: you are a fine man. I’m proud of you, son. But intelligence makes conservatives of us all in the end. Young men should have a social conscience. Old men must work with reality.”
“If you were proud of me you’d at least consider my words before you reject them.”
“I could wish you were prouder of me, and listen to the wisdom of my old age.”
“I will not leave Athens.”
“If you stay here, you will die.”
“If I leave, I might as well be dead.”
The door flung open without warning and Xanthippus stamped down, pushing me out of the way.
“You again!” he shouted. Then he stopped and turned to me. His face twitched into a bleak smile. “I think my son is looking for you.” Xanthippus continued on his way in a cloud of anger.
Pericles was not in a good mood.
“You again!” he shouted, sounding remarkably like his father. “What in Hades is this?” He snatched something from his desk and waved it in the air.
“It looks like a bill,” I said.
“And this?” He picked up another, which lay beside a rotting fish. The fish was propped up so that one eye stared at me accusingly.
“Er-another bill?”
“You trashed the Agora? What were you thinking?”
“Actually, the man I was chasing was doing the trashing,” I muttered. I didn’t think I’d be doing Diotima any favors if I told Pericles a priestess was stalking the streets, destroying everything in her path.
I shifted uncomfortably where I stood. My mother Phaenarete had bandaged my feet, both of which were cut to shreds. I had a black eye where the fish had hit me. I could barely move my left arm; the right was black and blue but at least I could use it. My head ached. This was not a good time for Pericles to be offering a critique of my work.
“He had information to do with the murder,” I said.
“And you know this how?”
“I caught him. Archestratus has no alibi for the time of the murder.”
“That’s the information I get for the price of one large fish, twenty-four jars of figs, and a small farm’s worth of olive oil?”
I didn’t think this would be a good time to mention the wine and the well-washed innkeeper, so I said meekly, “Yes, sir.”
“If you catch this killer, when you catch him, I will be deducting the cost of this mess from your reward.”
“I have other important information.” I gave Pericles the story of the bowman and the bowyer. Pericles’ reaction to this news was predictable. “It’s the Areopagus, of course. They must have hired this man from Tanagra.”
Pericles’ determination to implicate the Areopagus was starting to irritate me. Of course it would suit him politically for it to be true. But we hadn’t a scintilla of evidence to prove it.
“Find this man, Nicolaos. We must be able to prove who he’s working for.”
“I will. There are some things I need to know, Pericles, about politics.”
“Ask.”
“Ephialtes was killed by a man from the city of Tanagra. I think that very likely. But what does a man of Tanagra want with an Athenian populist politician? Could this be a political killing?”
“You are asking whether Tanagra has a reason for wanting Ephialtes dead; could the assassin have been sent by his city?”
“Precisely.”
Pericles considered for a moment. “Tanagra is a minor city, of no political power. I cannot imagine the Tanagrans doing anything that might bring the wrath of Athens upon them. No, the Tanagrans’ best strategy is to keep their heads down and hope no one notices them.”
“Then the odds are the Tanagran is a hired assassin. His city had nothing to do with it, and I am searching for his employer.”
“You’ll have to find the assassin first.”
“I doubt I can come to his master any other way.”
“You overheard my argument with Xanthippus?”
“Yes.”
“My father has become my enemy, Nicolaos, because of whoever is behind this plot. When you find him, you will come to me immediately. Tell no one else first.”
“So that you can hide the truth, Pericles, if it doesn’t suit you?” Archestratus had invited me to see him should I ever lose trust in Pericles. At the time I’d been sure it would never happen. Now I dismayed myself by contemplating the possibility.
“So I can extract revenge, regardless of whether my revenge must remain hidden for the good of the city.”
I turned to go, but Pericles stopped me.
“And Nicolaos?”
“Yes?”
“I hope you like fish.”
He picked up the rotting fish and threw it at me.
I started on my way home, pondering the relationship between Xanthippus and Pericles, and couldn’t help comparing it to mine with Sophroniscus. Did all fathers object to their sons’ careers, and if so, why? Was it some sort of initiation ceremony they gave you after your firstborn? It seemed no matter how much wealth, power, and privilege a family had, you still got the same argument.
I must have been deep in thought, because two Scythians appeared so quickly they might have been shades rising up from the earth at my feet, one on each side of me. There were beads of sweat and street grime on their faces and they were panting slightly. That and the dank, warm aroma wafting from beneath their leather jerkins told me they’d been running about for some time. I recognized them as having been in the exercise yard when I visited Pythax.
I grinned and greeted them. “Hello! Has Pythax been making you run again?”
Without a word they grabbed an arm each, picked me up so that my feet barely touched the ground, and marched me down the street. Men talking to one another stopped and stared as we passed.
I said, “Hey, what is this?”
They didn’t answer.
“You know it’s illegal for a citizen to lay hands on another!”
One of them spoke at last. “We’re not citizens, we’re slaves.”
That shut me up. So they were, and this was precisely why we had the Scythians: to manhandle citizens when they needed it.
I thought of fighting back, but decided I didn’t need my fellow citizens to see me being beaten by slaves. So I acquiesced to the ride and let them guide me where they would.
We wound our way through the narrow streets that make up most of Athens. Citizens were going about their business along the sides, we three abreast filled a lot of the width, and my captors were in a hurry, so they marched me straight down the center where no one walks, because that’s where the sewage always pools. Streets in Athens are raised at the edge and low in the middle, so when people throw their buckets of slop out the window it flows away from their walls. If they’re lucky, the street is on a slope and the sewage flows away; if they’re not lucky, it doesn’t. Either way, my feet were dragged through the muck; all manner of vile objects became lodged between my sandals and the soles of my feet. Some of the things were squishy. I had to hop on one foot so I could shake the other loose of rubbish, then swap feet and do the same again.
The guards stopped at a small crowd of people at a crossroad. A herm, a bust of the God Hermes, rose above the crowd, upon a tall, narrow plinth, looking down upon the confusion. Besides being Messenger of the Gods, Hermes is also, logically enough, protector of travelers; every cross street in Athens has a herm as a charm for passersby. My guards demanded the crowd part to let us through. Men shuffled back to reveal what all the fuss was about.
Unfortunately the herm at this cross street had failed Brasidas. He lay faceup in the dirt. His throat had been slit from side to side. I’d seen pigs slaughtered, and this looked just the same. His eyes were dull but wide open in horror, telling me he’d known what was happening to him. The blood had spurted, but a pool had encircled his head and then trickled to the center to mix with the garbage lying there. I saw some paw prints that suggested a couple of dogs had licked at it.
Pythax crouched over the body. I shook my arms free, and now the guards let me go but stayed at my back. I walked over, careful to avoid the blood, until my shadow crossed Pythax. He looked up and grunted. “Oh, it’s you. You took your time getting here.” He sniffed twice then screwed up his nose. “Zeus, your feet stink! Don’t you ever wash?” I tried to think of something witty to say, but failed, unable to take my eyes off the corpse. Brasidas was staring straight up at me.
“Hey!” My gaze shifted from Brasidas to Pythax. He looked into my eyes. “Is this your doing, little boy?”
I had a horrible feeling it was, but not in the way Pythax meant.
“I had nothing to do with it, Pythax.”
He grunted again and rose, wiping his hands on his tunic.
“I found this lying beside him.” Pythax held out a potsherd.
I recognized it immediately and nodded. “Yes. I scratched in my name myself. I left it with Brasidas to come to me if he remembered anything else. I guess he was carrying it.”
“Sure. Or else you didn’t notice dropping it when you were here cutting his throat.”
There were splashes of blood high on the wall next to us. I noticed one drop had landed on the nose of the herm.
“He was killed standing up,” I said.
Pythax said, “Way I see it, whoever did him came up behind, probably covered Brasidas’ mouth and pulled his head back, and then killed the poor bastard with one stroke. Real neat. I like his work.”
“Well, that proves it couldn’t have been me then, doesn’t it?”
Pythax glared at me but said nothing.
There may have been more clues on the road, but if so they’d been trodden in by the feet of the crowd. A few men had stood in the blood, which was still gooey enough that they had tracked bloody footprints all over the place. Any hope of finding the killer’s prints was gone.
Pythax asked, “Could he have been going to see you?”
I thought about it, then shook my head. “I don’t think so. My father’s house isn’t in this direction if he was traveling from his own home.”
“So what do you reckon he was doing, little boy?”
I had a feeling I knew. He was heading in the right direction for Pericles’ house. I cursed silently. Brasidas must have found the man from Tanagra. And the man from Tanagra had found him.
“I couldn’t say, Pythax.”
“What I don’t like about this, little boy, is I tell you where to find Brasidas. You go straight there and threaten to kill him, and the next day he’s dead. It don’t look real good, does it?”
“That’s a lie! Who says I threatened him?” I demanded.
“He does.” Pythax pointed, and for the first time I noticed the son of Brasidas, standing apart, head bowed, with a guard beside him.
“He says his dad left before dawn, and didn’t say where he was going. When he failed to return to meet customers, the son went looking for him, and found him here. He called the guard.”
At mention of this, the son looked up, and his dark, angry eyes stared straight into mine.
“Murderer! Murderer!” He started toward me but the guard held him. Every eye present turned to me. I knew the crowd was waiting to see what I would do.
I stood my ground and said quietly, “The best I can say is I didn’t kill him, Pythax. Are you going to arrest me?”
“I can’t do that. It’s for the man’s relatives to charge you, if they think they can prove it.”
“The son?”
“He’s not of age. They say there’s a brother.”
“So I’m free to go.”
“All the way to Hades if you like.”
I made to go but Pythax called to me. “Hey!”
“Yes?”
“Watch your back, little boy.”
“I’ll do that.”
Several men stood in my way as I tried to leave, silent but plainly sympathetic to the boy now fatherless. I wasn’t willing to give them the satisfaction of turning away, so I pushed my way through. It was reckless, but I calculated that with the city guard watching, they wouldn’t make anything more of it. Luckily for me, they didn’t, but once around the corner I departed at a trot.
I didn’t stop moving until I reached my door, berating myself every step of the way. How could I have been so stupid as to let Brasidas go searching without me? The moment he reacted to the mention of a reward, I knew he had more than he’d told; why didn’t I force him to tell me? I shouldn’t have lost my temper. I should have assured him he could have all the reward. I should have waited outside and followed to see where he went. I should have done any number of things other than what I did do. For the first time, I wondered if I had the skills to do this, and contemplated failure.
A messenger boy was waiting for me in the anteroom.
“Are you Nicolaos, son of Sophroniscus?”
“Yes, that’s me, what do you want?”
“My mistress sends this.” He handed me a note, and disappeared. The note said, “Come to the house of Euterpe. News.” Now what could she want? Then I noticed the name at the bottom, and I worried.
I was back at the home of Euterpe once more, but this time I gave the house slave the name of her daughter Diotima. In any decent household I would have been thrown out for daring to ask after a maiden. In this highly unusual home, the slave raised his eyebrow and led me to the courtyard, where I was left standing. I gathered the public room I’d been taken to last time was reserved for Euterpe’s clients.
I admired the frescoes on the surrounding walls, which were predictable and rather interesting, while wondering whether Diotima would come with a chaperone, and if so who in this house could possibly be appropriate for the job. Euterpe as a chaperone would be like throwing oil on a fire.
Euterpe must have seen me through one of the upper-story windows, for she came gliding down the staircase wrapped in something tight.
“Have you come by your fortune then?” She smiled at me.
“Not yet, Euterpe. It’s only been a few days.” I said, backing away.
She laughed, and stepped closer. I was starting to feel distinctly uncomfortable, and absolutely determined Diotima would not see me with Euterpe as I’d been last time.
“How then can I serve the young man this time?” she breathed.
“Actually, with your permission of course, I would like to speak with Diotima,” I said. “About the murder of Ephialtes, that is.”
Euterpe’s face froze for a moment, then transformed into a mask of incredulity. “You’ve come to see my daughter?”
“Does that surprise you?” a voice within the rooms said. Diotima emerged, looking more smug than I thought good for either of our futures with her mother.
Euterpe composed herself and asked sweetly, “And what does Diotima have to do with Ephialtes’ death?”
“You don’t know?” I was surprised. I’d thought Diotima was acting on her mother’s instructions, and the fact that she wasn’t was very interesting.
“Know what?” Euterpe asked suspiciously, looking at Diotima.
“I’m investigating his murder,” Diotima announced.
Euterpe turned to me and accused, “You’ve dragged her into this. How dare you!”
Diotima was defiant. “I dragged myself into it long before this idiot came by to gawk at you.”
“Idiot, is he?”
“I’m judging by results.”
Euterpe looked at Diotima, then to me, and back to Diotima with a calculating look in her eye.
“Ah well, run along and play, children.” She swept out of the courtyard in an indignant cloud of expensive perfume.
“Come with me,” Diotima said shortly, and led me to a set of small rooms at the back of the house. Unlike everything else I had seen, these were practical and furnished in a simple style, with not a rampant satyr or orgasmic nymph to be seen. I deduced I had come to Diotima’s private rooms. She sat me opposite her on couches.
“We can’t be heard here. There are no spy holes or listening tubes,” she said as a matter of fact.
“You mean there are elsewhere?”
“In all the public rooms.”
I decided I was not going to inquire into that any more closely. “Why am I here?”
“I have information.”
“Good, tell me.”
“Oh no! First, what do I get in return?”
“You cannot be serious. Do you want the murderer of your father caught, or don’t you?”
“Are you going to tell me everything you know?”
“No.”
“Then you’d better have something to trade.”
“All right, we take turns, like last time.”
“Go ahead.”
“My mother taught me better than that. Ladies first.”
“ My mother taught me better than that. Don’t give a man anything until he’s paid.”
“Can’t we even start a conversation without arguing? Who went first last time?”
“I did.”
“I thought you might say that. But I remember the conversation quite well.”
She said in disgust, “Then why did you ask? Oh, very well then. You recall Stratonike is the name of Ephialtes’ wife?”
“Yes.”
“She’s insane.”
“You mean that, or is this a figure of speech?”
“She is a genuine cursed-by-the-Gods lunatic.”
I thought for a moment. “And that wailing I heard at the wake?”
“I imagine it was genuine, though she might not even be aware her husband is dead. I don’t know. She spends her days hiding in fear of her life, because she’s convinced Ephialtes is trying to kill her.”
“And he’s failed to do it in twenty or so years?”
“Yes, I know. But the bad part is, she’s been trying to kill him in deluded self-defense for years.”
Diotima slumped against the whitewashed wall. “I know now why he refused ever to speak of her. Poor Father. I discovered this from her nurses. They have to keep knives away from her, or she uses them to attack him as soon as he appears, and if she doesn’t have a knife, she throws pots.”
“Is she sane enough to arrange for his death some other way?” I thought to myself, an arrow is a sharp implement too.
Diotima shrugged. “I asked the nurses the same question. They said she does have periods of apparent lucidity when she can be surprisingly cunning, but they don’t recall her talking to anyone outside the home.”
I gave that some thought. “What about Achilles?”
“I don’t think he did it. He’s been dead since the Trojan War.”
“Not that one.” I told her of the slave and his heels. “You said Stratonike has seen no one outside the home, but he’s inside, and he might bear a terrible grudge. Stratonike might have used him as a middleman.”
“Could he have pulled the bow himself?”
“I doubt it, he looks weak. But he has the freedom to walk the city. He could have paid an assassin.”
“I will find out what I can about the slave Achilles. Now it’s your turn.”
I hadn’t expected Diotima to turn up anything with Ephialtes’ family. I wasn’t sure she had, at that, but what she’d told me was worth something. “I have a very important piece of information worth more than you’ve given me. You can have it in return for one more question answered.”
Diotima frowned and she spoke quickly. “Nicolaos, son of Sophroniscus, if you are not willing to share information with me, then why should I tell you anything?”
“I am sharing, a great deal. That’s why I want more in return. Priestess, believe me, you want to hear my questions. Unfortunately I think you’ll get more from this than me, but I need the answers.”
“Ask away then, but this had better be very good indeed, or I’ll tell you nothing else.”
“Tanagra.”
“That’s a noun. Even if you put a question mark at the end it still wouldn’t be a question.”
“Does the name mean nothing to you?”
“Tanagra is a city in Boeotia. Beyond that it means nothing. I’ve never been there.”
“Did Ephialtes meet anyone from Tanagra?”
“No.”
“Did he correspond with anyone there?”
“Not that I know of.”
“Has your mother had any visitors from Tanagra? Does she know anyone there?”
“How should I know? She could have slept with half their statesmen in her younger days. I don’t keep records.”
“You have earned one question.”
“I answered four.”
“If you ask me the right one I’ll give you much more than you gave me.”
Diotima thought carefully. “If this is a trick I’ll ask my Goddess to put a curse upon your hunt. Very well, why are you asking me about Tanagra?”
“Ephialtes was shot by a man from Tanagra.”
Diotima leaned forward, her brown eyes wide. “Tell me how you know this.”
In more detail than I had for Pericles, I repeated the story of the Scythian who wasn’t a Scythian and the bow in the barracks. “So I went straight to the bowyer, a man you won’t have heard of called Brasidas.”
“I certainly have. He made my bow.”
That stopped me in total amazement.
“Say that again?”
“He made my bow.” She paused. “Your mouth is hanging open like some dead fish. I realize there’s a close match in personality, but you really shouldn’t advertise it.”
“Show me your bow,” I ordered.
“Not until you tell me why.”
“I’ll tell you that after I’ve seen your bow.”
“Wait,” she said in a frosty tone. Diotima rummaged through a small storeroom next to the room we were in. She started pulling out things and leaving them in the corridor. Pretty soon there was enough junk piled up to fill a small house. I looked at the pile in some interest. There were several balls, a couple of old writing slates, children’s wooden toys, well used, a doll, a box of material of some sort, rolls of wool, countless scrolls.
“It seems to be missing.” She picked up two more boxes and suddenly stopped. “Oh, of course!” She dropped the boxes, which scattered more scrolls, and went to a cupboard where she removed two dresses to reveal a bow.
I inspected it closely, to give the impression I knew what I was doing. It certainly resembled the other bows I knew Brasidas had made.
I repeated the bowyer’s description, trying to sound as professional as possible. “Hunting weapon. Accurate over long distance but slow rate of fire. It should be hard to pull, how do you manage it?”
“Brasidas altered the material slightly so it isn’t so stiff. See here? The bow is thinner at the curve and the reinforcing is wider. But the length is the same as a man’s bow. I lose some power but it’s still accurate. I see you know something about weapons.”
“What’s a nice girl like you doing with a weapon like this?”
“I’m a priestess of Artemis, remember? What is the favorite weapon of the Goddess?”
The bow, of course. Artemis is always drawn hunting with a bow. “Can you use this thing?”
“Oh, I’m fairly good, but I’m out of practice,” she said, in the sort of tone which in a man would mean, “I can put out your eyeball at a hundred paces; you pick the eye.”
“Can all the priestesses do this? Why haven’t I heard of mobs of deadly women?”
She looked embarrassed. “The priestesses are all supposed to be the daughters of citizens. Ephialtes was my father, of course, but not of his wife, so I was excluded. I wanted to be a priestess more than anything else in the world. I begged him to help me. Father wouldn’t allow it at first, but in the end he relented. I think he was hoping I’d get it out of my system. He used his influence to have me appointed a trainee. The older women who run the temple were not entirely pleased because of who my mother is. They resented Ephialtes forcing me upon them. So I thought if I could do the things Artemis did then the older women would look on me more kindly. There’s a ceremony we hold once a year, when one of the women shoots an arrow at a deer. I was the chosen one last year. I hadn’t seen the ceremony before. So I learned how to shoot.”
“I’m beginning to see where this is going.” And I was beginning to understand this girl. Being Diotima, she turned herself into a crack shot, because perfection was her normal standard.
“Yes, how was I supposed to know they had a flimsy little toy in the temple for the initiates?”
“So you turned up with your marksman’s recurve bow with the reinforced horn…”
“The deer never knew what hit it. It was flung sideways and landed on the high priestess, who fell in the mud. Then they told me I wasn’t supposed to hurt the animal. Father had to buy them a new sacred deer. I was scrubbing the temple floors for months after that.”
We both laughed.
“Are you sure you want to be a priestess?”
“Absolutely. I’d rather die than become like Mother, and the life of a wife shut up at home and never allowed out doesn’t bear thinking of. Priestesses are the only women with even a hint of freedom to do as they wish.” She paused, then demanded, “So now you are going to tell me how Brasidas comes into this.”
“He sold the bow that killed your father to a man from Tanagra.”
Diotima jiggled in her seat in excitement. “Good! What else did you learn?”
“That’s it. Brasidas shut up when he thought he might get a big reward later. That’s why I have the word Tanagra and nothing else. And now he’s dead.”
It was her turn to look like a gasping fish. “Brasidas? He’s dead?”
“Couldn’t be deader.” I described the scene of this morning.
“But this is wonderful!”
“It is?”
“Don’t you see? If Ephialtes’ killer was here to silence Brasidas this morning, then he’s still in Athens.”
“You do look on the bright side, don’t you?” But here was a thought I hadn’t considered. “Why would a hired assassin stay in Athens after doing his work?”
I answered my own question. “Because he hasn’t been paid yet, or because he is so obvious he can’t safely be seen in public, or because he has more work to do.”
“You can forget about number two. Those slaves took no particular notice of him when they saw him walking to the Areopagus.”
“And whoever heard of not paying a successful assassin? They’re not the sort of people you want to annoy.”
Diotima and I looked at each other. “There’s going to be another murder,” we said in unison.
She asked, “Did Brasidas keep a list of all his customers?”
“I doubt it. Why would he bother?”
“Then we must search Athens looking for anyone from Tanagra.”
I laughed. “And how long do you think that would take? Besides, it isn’t possible.”
“So you’re going to sit there doing nothing, are you?”
“I’m certainly not going to run around wasting my energy on fruitless exercises. The killer is still lost.”
She covered her eyes and groaned. “What a disaster! Brasidas could have told us the name, or at least where to find him. You fool, Nicolaos, how could you let this happen?”
“What do you mean, let this happen? I didn’t kill him,” I sputtered.
She sighed. “It’s too late now. We’ll just have to mend the damage you’ve caused as best we can.”
I said heatedly, “I suppose you would have done better?”
Diotima nodded. “Almost certainly,” she said as a matter of fact. “You shouldn’t have put the idea in Brasidas’ head he could be in trouble for selling the bow. You should have put money down on the table right away. You should have waited outside to see if he went anywhere and followed him.”
This evaluation was so close to what I’d been saying to myself that I squirmed, but I had no wish to hear it from an inexperienced girl.
“It’s all very well thinking of these things in hindsight.”
“But you thought of none of them at the time. I expect then you were dreaming of the glory of catching the killer, and Pericles’ reward.”
I felt my face flush with embarrassment. I had been thinking of precisely that, but nothing was going to make me admit it. I said, feeling somewhat testy, “Why don’t you go walking the streets investigating if you can do it so much better?”
“I may have to at the pace you’re going.”
I was instantly horrified. “Don’t! I was only joking. What will you do if a mob attacks you?”
“I’m not an aristocrat.”
“You look as if you could be, and you’re a woman, and it’s getting lawless out there. A mob’s not going to stop and think until after they’ve raped you.”
“Who is going to attack a poor, modest, defenseless maiden, and a priestess at that?” She held up a small knife with a curved blade that looked sharp enough to split a hair. “We use this for sacrifices.”
Defenseless was the last word I would have used to describe Diotima.
I had been relating my adventures each night to my family over dinner. This wasn’t merely for entertainment. I was showing Sophroniscus that I had become my own man. So far I had skipped only a few items, such as the episode with Euterpe, Pericles’ offer of reward, and all mention of Diotima. If my family discovered I was talking to women in the street I’d have a marriage arranged for me before the month was out. Tonight, for the first time, I found most of the day required careful editing. I certainly could not speak of the argument between Xanthippus and Pericles, and I was too embarrassed to relate Pericles’ lambasting me with the bill of damages. But I was able to make a great tale of tracking down Brasidas and his dramatic death. Father looked troubled at this but did not say a word.
Sophroniscus was an unusual head of family; in most households the women and children eat in a room separate from the men, but he allowed my mother Phaenarete and Socrates to dine with us. She and Socrates sat at a low table in the middle of the floor while Sophroniscus and I reclined on couches. Socrates was plunging his fingers into the dishes as fast as the kitchen slave could bring them. He was sopping up the last of the lentils with the barley cake when the slave came in carrying a large plate of eels, which she deposited as far from him as possible. That didn’t stop Socrates from stuffing the last of the cake into his mouth and reaching for the eel, and Phaenarete was moved to tell him to slow down, and eat less, or people would think she’d raised a barbarian. Phaenarete was a small woman, fair, with brown hair that she tied back out of the way when she worked. She scooped out a good handful of eel into a bowl for Sophroniscus and then another bowl for me. Resting as we were on the couches, he and I could eat with only one hand.
As she handed me my bowl Phaenarete said, “Tell us about Pericles, Nicolaos, what’s he like?”
“Smart, assertive, charming, and persuasive. I like him, I think. Or it may be he wants me to like him because that suits his purposes, I’m not sure which. He looks like someone you’d want for a model, Father, except for his head. It’s strangely long.”
Phaenarete nodded. “Yes, it happens often in birth that a babe will be born with a head that is pointed. It flattens in a month or two. But sometimes-rarely-the head does not entirely flatten. The bones set as they are. And so the child grows with a head that is shaped like a cone.”
There may be a creature in this world more irritating than a younger brother; but if there is, I am not aware of it. Eight years lie between us, but this has never prevented him from giving me advice, nonstop since the day he learned to speak. Not even when his mouth is full.
“Nico, I’ve been thinking-” Eel juice dribbled down his chin.
“Try not to think too much, little brother. This is a matter for adults. What could you possibly say that would help?”
“How did the assassin know the barracks was empty?” he asked.
My jaw dropped. Phaenarete looked puzzled. Sophroniscus laughed heartily.
“The boy has a point. Your man with the bow must have known about the Scythian exercise. Who could have told him?”
Who indeed?