by Meghan Ray
He walked along feeling sick and tired, but not as bad as he should have, all things considered. He knew that he looked pretty bad, he could tell by the reserved and suspicious looks of his fellow travelers. By the time he arrived in Piraeus, he was done in. He was about to head back to the captain’s house when he remembered a cot in his warehouse. It was small and hard, but by going there he could get some sleep, save himself a trip and get the coin back to Critias first thing in the morning. The idea had a simple appeal, so he changed his course slightly and made his way to the docks and his warehouse.
Even as he approached the building, instinct told him that something was wrong. It was probably the smoke pouring from the window that tipped him off. He ran up to the smoking building, kicked open the door, and found the guard unconscious just inside. The actual fire, though smoky, was still quite small and after he had dragged the watchman outside, he was able to extinguish the blaze using a few buckets of water hauled up from the pier. It also didn’t take long to revive the guard. Fresh air and a bucket of mucky water did the trick. Not that waking him up did much good as far as getting any information about the fire.
Phil shook him gently, “Wake up, come on now, you’re okay.”
The watchman nodded groggily. “Can you tell me what you remember?”
Even before the guard told his story, Phil knew that the man would remember nothing, that he had been surprised from behind and hadn’t heard anything. Still, Phil wasn’t the type to leave loose ends, so he went through the motions of questioning the man. He also knew that the longer they waited to have a conversation the faster any fleeting impressions would fade.
The guard tried his best to be helpful, probably because he figured that his job was on the line. But it made no difference because the man had been walking the perimeter of the building when he was clipped from behind and that was all there was to it no matter how you looked at it. The attackers had not spoken or made a sound or anything else that might have been of use. Phil brought the guard to a healer he knew and told her to do what she could. Then he found a couple of replacement watchmen from down on the docks and posted them outside the door with a warning to be especially alert and a couple of coins to reinforce the message. Only then did he go inside fully expecting to find the worst.
His head still ached and he was dreading what he would find, or more to the point, what he wouldn’t find, inside. The place was a holy mess and box after box of coins had been broken open and spilled onto the floor, but nothing of importance seemed to be missing, especially and amazingly, the coin that was probably the cause of it all. Phil’s first thought was that the hired help must be either really disciplined or really frightened to leave all these coins behind. Next he found the Demeter, after some searching in a pile of coins, the box overturned like all the others. The intruder had been looking for a single coin, something that was kept all by itself, not one mixed up with other coins and, when he couldn’t find what he had been told to look for, he hadn’t known enough to be able to pick it out of the hundreds of others.
That had been his idea when he hid the coin in a box with lots of others, all of similar size and shape and, in that at least, he hadn’t been wrong. Of course, he hadn’t counted on anyone setting his warehouse on fire or attacking his guard, or someone knocking him on the head, for that matter. The list of things he hadn’t counted on was growing by the minute and it was starting to make him angry. That he wasn’t any closer to understanding what was going on or of being out of it wasn’t improving his mood.
They, whoever ‘they’ were, were trying to get him to give up the coin. But instead, all they were doing was making Phil more determined to hang onto the damned thing and see this through to the end. He didn’t like to be threatened. He figured that after the intruder had failed to find the coin, they decided to use the fire as a threat, a warning, to give over the coin or else.
Well, he didn’t work like that; and their warning was having the opposite effect. Still, he thought, calming down a little, even now he would be willing to let it go. Common sense told him that he didn’t really have a stake in the outcome of this game. If the warehouse had been burned or the guard been really hurt, he would have been past walking away but, as it was, it was just his pride that was injured. And, while it was true that he didn’t like threats, he also didn’t like to be pushed. He never liked to be goaded into stupid mistakes. He looked down at the coin in his hand.
It glittered in the half-light, mocking him. He would be glad to be rid of the cursed thing; even holding it made him feel uneasy. He could only hope that whoever was behind this stupid campaign wouldn’t push him so far that he wouldn’t be able to give the coin back and walk away. They didn’t know it but they were working against themselves. If they would be patient for a few hours more, they could have what they wanted. But if they kept pushing him, Phil would have no choice but to go after them with everything he had. He hoped they would give him those few hours to get himself out of play.
In the morning things looked brighter. He was rested and cleaned up and his head felt fine. In the end, he had decided to go home after all, figuring that, after the fire, ‘whoever’ would take the night off. It had felt good to be at home. He hadn’t been able to spend much time there lately. The house was modest compared to Nicias’ but for a man living alone it was luxurious. The place was his father’s house really but a short time after his mother’s death, Myrsus had gone to Lydia on some unnamed business and Phil hadn’t heard from him in months.
Although the house was organized simply in traditional Greek style, inside it stood out in several ways. First, the walls were decorated with old family artifacts from Lydia, carvings of ancestors and historical scenes. This alone would be enough to set the rooms apart from the run of the mill Athenian home. Second, the furniture was drawn from the best objects collected over a lifetime of trading. It still seemed simple, deceptively so. The room contained very few objects but, what few objects there were, were richer and more detailed than the ordinary, even among aristocrats. The overall effect was most definitely not Greek.
When he was a boy, Phil never wanted his friends to see where he lived because his house was different from everyone else’s. But, over the years, he had gotten so used to it all that he would be sorry to see any of it go. He had even become interested in the pottery that his father collected. He really only liked the Lydian things because they reminded him of his mother and her country. The Athenian in him was proudest of the vases. They had many old ones, good geometric pieces with patterns and fantastic animals painted in sharp relief. There were some with the elongated figures of the black period style, the long graceful characters painted in razor detail. They even had a few modern pieces, covered with scenes of symposia, gymnastics, all lively and true to life.
The whole place was quiet now. The vases were about the liveliest things in the room. When his mother was alive, they had many servants, plus visitors from all over, and family, staying for short or long visits. But after she died, the house went quiet. Eventually, his father let go all but two family slaves and even they kept out of the way, only appearing for the most basic housekeeping and basic was the nicest way you could describe it.
Today though, he walked through without even noticing the dust that was building up in the unused rooms and ignored the fact that he should probably have someone do something about it. He wasn’t in the mood for discussions with the staff. In fact, he had only stopped long enough to sleep and shovel some food, un-tasted, into his stomach, clean off the worst of the damage, and change out of the borrowed things.
Then he set out early with the brisk step of someone who knows what he has to do. He walked to the tavern Critias had mentioned and arrived as the cleaners were sweeping the previous night’s debris into the sewer that ran down the middle of the street. When he asked one of the men where the owner was the man shrugged in the general direction of the back of the taverna.
Phil went back, picking his way
through the must and broken pottery. “Hallo, anybody back here?”
“What is it,” the voice that called back was gruff and the man who appeared out of the back room was barrel-chested and surly.
“I am supposed to come here if I need to get in touch with a man named Critias.” Phil decided not to waste time with pleasantries.
The man looked confused for a minute and then his expression cleared and he said, “Are you that foreigner, the banker then?”
“That’s right,” Phil didn’t figure it was worth the effort to explain so he just nodded and gazed neutrally over the big man’s shoulder.
“The man, Critias, I guess, said if you came I was to tell you this.” The effort of remembering was giving the man a squint. “The house marked Elysium down by the Zea harbor. Pass the main ship sheds, pass the fish cleaning stations and pass the harbor entrance, carry on a few more houses along the walls and there it is. You know where I mean?”
Phil had lived in the Piraeus most of his life so he had a pretty good idea where the tavern keeper meant. The neighborhood was shady enough that Phil was pretty sure Critias wouldn’t be there in person. “Was that all he said? No other message or instructions or anything?”
“Nope, that’s it,” the man’s blank and already impatient face told Phil he wouldn’t get any more from him. He was also starting to move away, back to his usual business. So Phil shrugged at the retreating back, turned to the sunlit doorway and walked back into the bright, hot day.
He headed straight down to the Zea harbor. The Zea was a military harbor and contained many of the ship sheds that were used to protect the triremes in wartime. The sheds were also used to shelter the boats while repairs were made and supplies restocked. The sheds had proven their value time and again. Athens, like most of the powerful Greek city-states, had had more enemies in the past few decades than it cared to remember. You practically needed a scorecard. And for any enemy of Athens, the Piraeus was always first on the to-do list.
In fact, the port city had recently been bait used to draw out the Spartan general, Sophrodias and distract him from his responsibilities in Thebes. Like most good plans, it was simple. It played on the general’s desire for glory and offered him rich prizes, in this case the Piraeus and Athens. A merchant, in the pay of the Thebans, probably, persuaded Sophrodias that it was the perfect time to attack Athens and the best way to do it was by way of the Piraeus. It probably took some convincing but in the end, off he went on a misguided offensive.
The Athenians were warned of course and anyway Sophrodias’ soldiers lost heart at Eleusis, but the maneuver had served to goad Athens into renewed hostilities with Sparta. Just what the Thebans had wanted. Whether you believed they were responsible or not, you couldn’t help but notice that things had worked out pretty well for them. In the early days of the alliance with Thebes, the citizens of Athens had been jubilant but Phil could tell that the honeymoon would be short lived. He looked around as he neared the harbor.
The Zea might be a military harbor but it offered many of the same amenities of the larger, civilian harbor, Kantharos. For example, it stank. The smell of fish hit him like a wall. It wasn’t as if the whole city didn’t reek of fish but down at the harbors it was a palpable thing, thick and oily. He felt the salt of the water as he walked past the harbormaster’s house. He walked on past a sailor’s brothel and then some fish cleaning stations. “Lovely part of town,” he muttered. He could just imagine Critias down here, stepping carefully over the fish guts and garbage, trying not to get his expensive sandals dirty. He found the house after a while. It was peeling white plaster like all the others but the name was there written crudely in charcoal above the door. The door swung open when Phil banged on it. The swinging open filled him with misgivings. Unbarred doors were unusual in this neighborhood. When he got no answer to his call, he squared his shoulders and walked in. The small courtyard was dusty and filled with rubbish. He went straight back into the house and almost tripped over the body as his eyes adjusted to the half-light of the small room.
There were a few pieces of furniture, shabby but upright, some pottery and Critias’ body, dead and stiff enough to have been that way for a while but still intact and not too noisome. Phil rolled him over to see the damage. It didn’t take a skilled physician to notice that he was stabbed in several places. “Okay, so it’s no mystery what happened to him,” Phil grimaced. He steeled himself and rummaged the body, checking for anything that might lead him past this very dead end.
The search was distasteful but not unrewarding. He didn’t find much on Critias’ person. There were some obols and drachmas and a piece of parchment with a women’s name. Unlikely as it was, there was a name written out, maybe part of a draft of a letter. He figured he knew who the owner of the coin was now, anybody who lived or worked in Athens would, and he understood why Critias’ has been so secretive. The name on the parchment was one of the most famous heterai of the times and she was inaccessible to all but the richest and most highly placed citizens. If she was the owner of the coin, it was no wonder that Critias had been careful not to reveal her identity. It had probably cost him a fortune to gain this woman’s confidence. A client/lover was not likely to squander such a privilege on an insignificant metic banker. Phil spent about a second considering his options. He could either wait for whoever had killed Critias and was trying to kill him to finish the job or he could try to return the coin to one of the most privileged and secluded people in Athens. He didn’t consider long. It didn’t seem like much of a choice. He left the rank cabin and set out to meet the famous Xenodora.
-5-
She was reputed to have several residences. An admirer had given her a luxurious townhouse in Athens and that was where she spent most of her time. She was also supposed to have a working farm in Attica and an island retreat on Samos, maybe some others, no one was sure. But since Xenodora was the subject of so much myth, fantasy and speculation, it was difficult to know what was fact and what fiction. The one thing Phil knew for certain was that he needed to get back to Athens as soon as possible and it was possibly the last thing he felt like doing. Nevertheless, he made his way through the harbor and up to the Athens road. Traffic was heavy and eventually he caught a ride on the back of a trader’s cart. His thought had been that this would be less tiring than walking. The extreme knocking and bouncing of the cart soon shook him of his idealism with regard to cart travel but, since it did make a change and was possibly slightly faster, Phil stayed put and held onto the sides of the cart as it rattled its way up the road.
He used the time to consider the best way to get in to see Xenodora. He would either have to find someone to wrangle him an invitation into her house, something even the richest Athenians had trouble doing. And while Phil did know a few aristocratic Athenians and many rich merchants, his acquaintance didn’t extend to the very richest and most powerful men in Athens and these were the only people who would be able to offer him access to Xenodora’s inner sanctum. The only other option was to discover some time when she would be out in the open and he could talk to her. But, since every young man in Athens wanted to talk to her for free, Phil knew those opportunities would be extremely limited.
However unlikely, he decided that he would concentrate upon the second course and try to discover, either through tradesmen or servants, a time when he could waylay Xenodora without getting his neck broken by her professional and competent bodyguard. It wasn’t much of a plan but it was the best he could come up, the extreme rattling of the bouncing cart making it hard to think.
Phil arrived in the city bruised and hungry. He went to a taverna and ate thin fish soup, watered wine and dark bread. The food wasn’t too bad if he didn’t look at it and swallowed quickly. He left feeling good enough to make a start on his project. He walked over to Xenodora’s townhouse. Once there he set himself in a doorway a little way down and across the street to wait. There was no point knocking on the door to get in. It was one thing to push one’s way
into a house guarded by an old porter and a young girl as he had done at Meno’s, but this was a household where strong young men were always trying to push their way in uninvited, and the servants would be well equipped to deal with the situation. He also knew that, however much he wanted to be rid of the coin, he would never be able to come up with a wilder plan than the usual crowd of Xenodora’s hangers-on. This group of lovesick nineteen year olds, who had never been denied anything in their short and pampered lives, had plenty of time and imagination to invent schemes to get in to see their love.
He looked around the street from his hiding spot and was amused to notice two other watchers lurking in various doorways down or across the street. He assumed that they were jealous suitors but he would remember to keep an eye on them just in case they turned out to be more dangerous than they seemed. Phil spent a quiet day watching the comings and goings. It was quiet but not boring. In addition to the usual servants and tradesmen, he noticed several famous clients arrive discreetly and depart. After evaluating his options, he had decided to approach some of the trades-people for information. He knew that the servants would be accustomed to such overtures and would be well armed against them.
He had his eye on a dressmaker. He seemed soft and corruptible with his luxurious fabrics and vacant expression. He was also considering the wine merchant. He didn’t know why exactly except he had the impression that maybe the man drank. He had settled on those two because they were important enough to have information about Xenodora’s activities, but they were still independent of the household and, he hoped, bribable. Phil watched the dressmaker reload his cart and start down the street and he decided to start with him.