by J M Alvey
‘I’ll give you some herbs. Put a palmful in this pot and fill it halfway with boiling water. Put the lid on tight, at once, and suck on the steam like this.’ As he spoke, he took a hollow reed from a bundle on the shelf. He slid it through the hole in the lid, miming taking the end in his mouth. ‘Make sure you keep your lips tight around it. Do that morning and evening and you’ll feel your breathing ease inside a few days.’
‘I will, thank you.’ Apollonides’ voice shook with relief.
Lysicrates and Menekles echoed his gratitude.
‘Honour Asklepios with an offering. That’s all I seek in return.’ Chresimos glanced at me. ‘Of course, in the right hands, hellebore’s a medicine, like thornapple. Whoever’s making this mischief for you certainly knows his herbs.’
‘So it seems.’ It was stretching credulity to snapping point to think that Dardanis had poisoned Eumelos to rob him and abscond, mere days before someone else entirely used toxic sap on our masks to ruin our play.
‘How long will the hellebore persist?’ asked Lysicrates. ‘When do you think the masks will be safe to wear?’
‘I have no idea,’ the doctor said bluntly. ‘As soon as anyone wearing one starts to sweat, whatever has soaked into the linen will most likely be reawakened to burn their skin.’
‘Then we’re fucked.’ Lysicrates threw up his hands. ‘We may as well go home.’
‘No,’ I said, adamant. ‘Whoever did this is not going to win.’
If I was the chorus master, I was going to have the final say.
‘Let me get you that ointment and those herbs.’ Chresimos took a lamp and left us looking at each other across the table.
Apollonides was swinging his feet. For a man who looked as if he’d blundered into a beehive, he was remarkably cheerful. ‘Do you think he can recommend a tavern? I don’t know about anyone else but I want something to eat and a decent jug of wine.’
‘Me too,’ Menekles agreed.
Lysicrates stayed silent, scowling. He didn’t say a word as the doctor returned with a small pot of ointment and a larger jar of dried herbs.
Once we’d expressed our thanks again, we made our way out through the doctors’ hall. Closing the door behind us, Menekles looked across to the temple. ‘We’ll come back first thing tomorrow and make an offering.’
‘Absolutely.’ Apollonides nodded.
Lysicrates still didn’t say anything as we made our way down the ramp. He didn’t offer an opinion when Menekles pointed to a bustling tavern and suggested we see what it had to offer.
We found a table and learned the evening’s dish from the kitchen was lamb stew and barley bread. That suited us all well enough and we asked for a jug of black wine to go with it. Once we were served, Apollonides filled our cups and offered his first sip to Asklepios. We all did the same, and the dark ruby drops vanished into the well-trodden earth floor.
Zosime dipped her bread in her bowl. ‘What are we going to do about the masks? Do you think Hyanthidas will know someone who could help?’
‘Someone discreet,’ warned Menekles. ‘We don’t want gossip doing our enemy’s work for them, telling the chorus their masks have been poisoned.’
‘Though if someone did start saying that, knowing who they were might tell us something useful,’ Zosime pointed out.
‘We don’t want whoever did this thinking we’ve found a way to frustrate them,’ Apollonides said thoughtfully. ‘They’ll just try something else.’
‘True enough.’ Menekles nodded. ‘Carrying our masks across the city to someone’s workshop will set tongues wagging from Lechaion to Kenchreai.’
‘And offer anyone who wants to wreak more havoc an easy target,’ Apollonides agreed.
I sipped my wine and pictured hero cultists ripping open our baskets and hurling our masks into the gutters, stamping on them to shatter the painted gypsum.
‘There’s plenty of room where we’re lodging.’ Zosime began spooning up stew.
I pictured some mob forcing their way through that gate, when she was there all alone. I imagined Perantas’ slaves scattering to let our enemies run riot. Why should they put themselves in harm’s way for the sake of an Athenian play?
I tore a hunk of bread in half and tried not to despair. ‘We’ve got to work out how to salvage the masks before we decide who’s doing what and where.’
‘What do we tell the chorus?’ Lysicrates demanded.
I sought for a plausible answer. Thankfully we had brought a collection of old masks with us for rehearsals.
‘We can say the masks for the actual performance need some repair and a little reinforcement after being bounced around on the voyage here.’
I silently asked Dionysos to make sure that word never got back to Sosimenes in Athens. He was arguably the city’s finest mask maker and would see this as a grave slur on his workmanship.
But it was true that a play’s festival masks are usually only worn once. If we’d been taking the play to one of Attica’s country theatres for the rural Dionysia, the actors would have used all-purpose wooden masks, proof against the rigours of travel, and the local chorus would have provided their own. But Aristarchos wanted our comedy to have the greatest possible impact, so he’d covered the costs of shipping everything here.
‘That’s a problem for tomorrow,’ Menekles said, bracing. ‘Let’s eat up, and get a decent night’s sleep.’
We finished our meal and made our way back to our temporary home. I don’t think Lysicrates said another word.
Chapter Ten
I lay awake at first light, trying not to disturb Zosime. Trying not to wonder if we’d be better off taking a ship back to Athens and leaving Corinth to its cultists’ quarrels.
She stirred and rolled over to face me. She smiled. ‘Slip.’
‘What?’ For all the sense that made, she could have been speaking Phoenician.
‘Slip,’ she repeated. ‘Liquid clay. The stuff that Disculos and the others use to paint their designs on the vases and bowls.’
It took some effort to picture the pottery where she and her father worked, back in Athens. I recalled marvelling at the way artists used liquid clay as paint to outline and detail their designs. That drab grey background was burnished to glossy black by the final, fierce heat of the kiln, leaving the rest bright red. Such mysteries are another divine gift to our city from our grey-eyed goddess.
‘I still have no idea what you mean.’
‘We can paint the insides of the masks with slip,’ she said confidently, ‘as long as we’re careful not to make them too wet and risk it soaking through to the outer layers of plaster. Once the clay dries, that’ll put a solid barrier between whatever the masks have been dosed with and anyone who’s wearing them.’
‘A layer that will scour their skin.’ I hated to think what gritty, clay-soaked cloth would feel like on Apollonides’ blisters.
‘Not if we add another inner layer of linen, and maybe some wool for padding.’
‘Perhaps.’ I wasn’t convinced, but I’m not a mask maker. On the other hand, I certainly didn’t have any better ideas.
She raised herself up on one elbow. ‘We need to find a pottery workshop to supply us with clay and some brushes. I’ll go and ask Nados for advice. He must know where Eumelos got the pots for selling his pickled fish locally.’
I reached up to cup my hand around the back of her head, and drew her down to kiss her. ‘I’ll go. I want to talk to him about something else. You go up to the Sanctuary with the others and I’ll see you there.’
I got up, dressed, and made my way quietly through the outer room where Kadous’ bed stood empty. Down in the courtyard, one of Tromes’ underlings was drowsing on a stool by the gate. At my nod, he got up, drew back the bolts and I left.
The streets were silent beneath the pale sky, and I didn’t see anyone on the short
walk to Eumelos’ house. One of the silent litter bearers opened to my knock.
‘I wish to see your master, Nados. Please offer my excuses for disturbing him so early.’ Though I wasn’t sure how the slave would do that, if he was truly mute.
He gestured to the painted porch. I took a seat and contemplated several battered chests stacked beside two rows of dusty baskets crammed with scrolls.
Nados appeared so swiftly that I guessed he was already up and dressed. A jaw-cracking yawn interrupted his attempt to greet me politely. ‘Excuse me.’
‘Not sleeping well?’ I offered a wryly sympathetic smile.
‘Barely at all,’ he admitted, rubbing one cheekbone with the heel of his hand.
I waved a hand at the battered scroll baskets. ‘I take it you’ve been turning the place inside out looking for Eumelos’ will?’
He nodded, dejected. ‘We’re about ready to strip the plaster off the walls.’
‘That seems a little extreme.’ I wasn’t entirely sure that was a joke. ‘I assume you have checked for loose flagstones?’
He nodded, yawning again. ‘There’s nothing hidden under these floors. So we’re going to Lechaion today, to search the house there from the rafters down. After that, we’ll head for Kenchreai. After that . . .’
He shook his head, teetering between exhaustion and despair. ‘We’ll have to start making the rounds of all the temples, to see if there’s a strongbox somewhere that none of us knew about. Assuming we can convince the priests and priestesses that we have a right to open it without Eumelos’ will to name us as his heirs.’
I thought of the dizzying number of shrines and temples in and around Corinth and its ports. ‘Good luck.’
Nados managed a weary smile. ‘Let’s just hope we find something before we have to hike all the way out to Isthmia and ask the priests at Poseidon’s temple there.’
I hadn’t even thought of that. I hesitated. Simias and Aithon must be as exhausted as Nados and it hardly seemed fair to add to their burdens. On the other hand, I needed their help.
Nados might be preoccupied, but he noticed my indecision. ‘What brings you here so early?’
I explained what had happened to Apollonides, and shared the doctor’s verdict on our poisoned masks, as well as Zosime’s idea for a solution. ‘We need supplies from a pottery brought discreetly up to the Sanctuary. Supplied by someone who won’t ask questions or gossip at his workshop gate.’
‘Let me think.’ Nados raked his fingers through his curls. ‘There’s a man who should be able to help,’ he said a few moments later. ‘He owes – he owed – Eumelos several favours. You can find him—’
‘Forgive me.’ I hoped he could see I was sincerely sorry. ‘Whoever’s behind this undoubtedly has people watching us. As long as they think they’ve succeeded and we don’t realise our masks are tainted, with any luck this is all they’ll do. We need someone else to make these arrangements. Can you do this for us? And please don’t tell anyone about this except Aithon and Simias. The fewer people who know, the better our chances are that somebody guilty will let something slip.’
Nados didn’t look thrilled but he nodded, nevertheless. ‘I suppose so.’
‘There’s one more thing.’ I steeled myself against his disbelieving look. ‘It could help us both.’
‘Go on,’ he said reluctantly.
‘If we find out who supplied this poison, we might discover who supplied the dose that killed Eumelos. If we were in Athens, there are people I could ask if I needed to find a herbalist or a doctor who’d trade his scruples for silver, but here in Corinth, or in Lechaion, or Kenchreai?’ Belatedly I realised that we needed to cast our net wider than the city. ‘How can I possibly learn who might do such favours for one of these hero cults set on wrecking our play? We need your help, yours, Aithon’s and Simias’.’
A sardonic gleam brightened the lad’s tired eyes. ‘You’ve changed your mind about blaming Dardanis for killing Eumelos?’
I held up my hands in surrender. ‘I was never certain that he had done it. I just couldn’t see any other answers.’
‘Where do you think he is?’ Nados’ chin quivered. He looked far too young to be bearing all these burdens.
‘We can hope he’s hiding somewhere,’ I said, bracing, ‘until he hears that the guilty man has been brought to justice.’
We could hope, though I reckoned that was as likely as that sour-voiced singer with the badly tuned lyre taking a winner’s wreath at the Isthmian Games. If Dardanis knew who’d killed his master, the slave would still be running, if he had any sense. Or he was already lying dead, hidden where no one would ever find him. But I didn’t want to say that, and Nados didn’t want to hear it.
The lad drew a resolute breath. ‘We’ll see what we can find out.’
‘Many thanks.’ I rose to my feet. ‘Please excuse me. I have other errands to run before today’s rehearsal.’
My route took me to the agora, where the market gardeners of the Corinthia were starting to set up their stalls and unload their handcarts and baskets. Friends and acquaintances greeted each other with cheery shouts that echoed back from the deserted shrines and empty colonnades. No one paid me any attention, busy with their own concerns.
The tantalising scent of warm bread drew me to a bakery on a nearby corner and I bought a small barley loaf. There were no wine sellers out this early but the Peirene Spring flowed clear and cold and I was able to quench my thirst. As I did so, I prayed to Athena, asking for her favour, for the sake of Athens’ ancient ties with Corinth.
As I went on my way, I saw mighty Apollo was looking down on me from the silent temple precinct, sitting aloft with his lyre. I paused to salute the god and to ask for his assistance in seeing this poisoner punished, not least for so foully misusing the medicines that his son’s devotees at the Asklepion used for good.
Even so, it was still indecently early when I arrived at Perantas Bacchiad’s house. The double gate was firmly closed and the high walls looked blankly down on me. The Brotherhood of Bellerophon were presumably still snoring in bed.
I knocked briskly on the iron-studded wood. When there was no answer, I knocked again, harder. After another pause, I tried a third time.
A small shutter behind criss-crossed metal bars slid open. ‘Yes?’
‘I am Philocles Hestaiou of Athens and I need to see Perantas Bacchiad.’
Whoever was behind the gate was unimpressed. ‘Wait there.’
I heard retreating steps instead of sliding bolts. I waited. Two sets of footsteps returned.
‘Good morning. How may I help you?’
That was a Nubian accent. Perantas’ secretary, Wetka.
‘You can open this gate and tell your master I need to speak to him.’ I was in no mood to compromise.
‘If you could come back—’
‘No. I need to see him now, before today’s rehearsals. Unless he wants us to abandon the play.’
Silence on the other side of the gate lasted so long that I feared the shrewd Nubian was calling my bluff. Then the bolts rasped and the latch rattled as the gate opened, just an arm’s length. The nightwatchman peered suspiciously past me, to be certain I was alone before he stepped back to let me enter.
‘This way, if you please.’ Summoned from his bed so early, Wetka didn’t look nearly as crisp and neat as he had done on our previous meetings.
He led me to a porch running alongside this outer courtyard. As he went into the house, a girl brought me bread and fruit. I could have saved my obols at that bakery. I had time to eat every last grape and crumb before Wetka reappeared to take me to Perantas.
The Bacchiad was eating almond cakes and sipping sweet spring water, sitting beneath his painted olive trees. He looked at me with something between amusement and irritation. ‘What can I do for you so early in the day?’
I noted
he didn’t invite me to sit.
‘Good morning,’ I said politely. It was time to be diplomatic. ‘Please excuse me, but this couldn’t wait. There’s been an attempt to destroy our costumes and masks.’ I’d already decided that was as much as I was going to tell him. As I’d said to Nados, the fewer people who knew the details, the better.
Perantas tossed his half-eaten cake aside. ‘What happened?’
‘It’s of no consequence.’ I fervently asked Dionysos to make that true. ‘But we don’t want a second foray to enjoy more success. No one will risk a run-in with Demeter’s slaves during the day, but we need the Brotherhood of Bellerophon to stand guard over our gear at night.’
Hard as I’d tried to find an alternative, this was the only solution I could come up with. I couldn’t spare Kadous every night, if I wanted him awake and guarding Zosime by day.
Perantas’ expression was distinctly unfriendly. ‘I’m to make your apologies to Thettalos, am I? He told me what you said to him at Eumelos’ funeral.’
‘I will make my own apologies,’ I said steadily, ‘for any offence I have caused. But the central issue is seeing the play successfully staged. You said yourself that we owe it to Eumelos’ memory. As I will explain to the Priestess of Demeter. She is the one who banned the Brotherhood from the Sanctuary, not me,’ I reminded him.
‘Do you have her permission for their return?’ His surprise suggested he’d had his own encounters with the goddess’ formidable servant.
‘I will have, by the end of the day,’ I assured him.
Though that really wasn’t a conversation I was looking forward to. I silently begged Athena to intercede on my behalf with Demeter.
Perantas gave me a long, measuring look and then turned his attention to the almond cakes again. ‘I will send word to Thettalos.’
‘Good day.’ I didn’t wait to be dismissed, bowing politely and turning to Wetka with a cheery smile. Stony- faced, he led me back to the gate.