Death on Delos

by Gary Corby

  “The tale of the Hyperborean women,” Diotima said. “Meren told us.”

  “Meren told you true,” Damon said. “Except for one little detail. Karin and her friend didn’t die of illness. They liked it here so much that they decided to stay. They adopted Hellene names and settled on Delos.”

  “Were your people angry?” Diotima asked.

  “The people were upset at first, but when the guards explained what it was like here, how warm and lovely, the people understood. Over time, others departed to see this fabled land of Delos. They didn’t return either, but sent back word that they had settled in the village, pretending to be Hellenes, and learned how to fish.

  “In all that time, we continued the tradition of sending the Gift to Delos, and hid letters to our distant relatives in amongst the Gifts.”

  “How very remarkable,” Diotima said.

  “When my father inherited the chieftainship, he decided to move the entire tribe.”

  “Didn’t the people on Delos notice?” I asked.

  “We arrived in ones and twos, or a family at a time. People move between the islands all the time, you know? We adopted Hellene names, the Hellene way of life. Well, after we were all here we knew, we must keep giving the Gift, in thanks to our Goddess who had shown us the way here.”

  “Then you’re the Chief of the Hyperboreans?” I said to Damon.

  “I am.”

  “You’ve never been tempted to go back home?” I asked.

  “You’re joking, aren’t you? We could stay in our native land, where in winter we need a pickaxe to break the water out of the buckets, or we could move here.”

  “I see your point,” I said.

  “Of course, we have to worry about sunburn, which wasn’t much of an issue back home,” he allowed. “But that’s a price we’ll willingly pay to avoid having our balls freeze off.”

  “A very reasonable attitude.”

  “The problem is, if the priests find out, they’ll throw us off the island.”

  “I don’t see why,” I said.

  “We’re not even Hellene,” Meren pointed out. “Strictly speaking, I don’t belong here.”

  “Oh.” I hadn’t thought of that. “That is a problem,” I said, because everyone knew Hellene temples could only be served by Hellenes.

  “Meren is our priestess,” Damon said. “It made sense to get her to join the Hellene temple, since it’s the temple of our Goddess too.”

  “Very clever,” Diotima said.

  “Besides,” Meren said, “it means I can tend to Great Aunt Karin.”

  I began to say, “Who?”

  “You mean the priestess who brought the First Gift?” Diotima asked.

  Moira nodded. “One of them is Meren’s distant relative. We say great aunt, but it’s more probably great-great-great aunt.”

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” I said. “You don’t need to transport us anywhere.”

  “I suppose you’re going to promise not to tell anyone,” Moira said skeptically.

  “No, I’m going to promise to tell Anaxinos, eventually.”

  “We’ll have you on the first ship out,” Damon said.

  “No, listen to me first.” I sweated a little, despite the time of night. “Pericles wants the treasure of the Delian League—”

  “We’ve already said we don’t care about that—”

  “And he doesn’t care that you’re the Hyperboreans,” I interrupted. “Trust me, Pericles is not exactly the most religious of men.”

  “So?”

  “So anything that gets him what he wants is fine with him. If I tell Pericles that you were instrumental to solving this case, and if I tell him that you are necessary to the stability of Delos, then Pericles will force Anaxinos to accept you.”

  “Hmm,” Damon and Moira both said at the same time. Damon added, “Anaxinos won’t like you for that.”

  “Anaxinos already hates Athens, and I don’t think he’s too keen on me anyway.”

  “I will add to that,” Diotima said. “I think if you went to the High Priest and told him your story, you might find him a little more flexible than you expect.”

  “I doubt it,” Moira said.

  “You might not know that Anaxinos has a history of being destitute and homeless,” Diotima said. “I think he would listen to you with favor.” She hesitated, then added, “Also, without Geros here, it will be easier for him to show ecumenical leniency.”

  “That’s the truth,” Meren said.

  Damon’s and Moira’s eyes met. Something passed between them. Then Damon took a reaction from the Hyperboreans. Here and there I saw slight nods.

  “All right, you stay for now,” Damon said. “As to talking to anyone else, you don’t say a word until I say you can.”

  “Fair enough.”

  “And remember this, Nico. I like you, but we’ll all be watching you.”

  “Got it.”

  The Over-Enthusiastic Assistant

  Diotima slept in. I let her. She was so exhausted by everything that had happened the day before, I was worried she might fall ill if she kept up the pace.

  So I tiptoed out of the cottage and made my way to Apollo’s Rest.

  “Kalimera, Moira.”

  She looked at me suspiciously. “Kalimera,” she replied.

  I put coins on the bar, more than were needed.

  “Breakfast for me, please, and could you keep an eye on the cottage? When Diotima’s awake, could you bring her your best breakfast, please? She’s eating a lot at the moment.”

  “Aye,” Moira said. “I know how that works.”

  She began to ladle out a lentil stew and yesterday’s bread for me to eat.

  I put more coins on the bar.

  “You already paid,” she said.

  “That’s for your gift fund,” I told her. “That’s how it works, isn’t it? That’s what you were talking about last night. You Hyper . . . er . . .” I looked around to make sure no priest was listening, but we were alone. “That is, you nice people keep a common fund, from which each year you buy your gift for Artemis.”

  “That’s it,” Moira acknowledged. “Everyone contributes. You caught me last night telling people that the contributions are due. We’ve got a few skinflints who need to be reminded once or twice, or three times . . .”

  She put the bowl in front of me, and I immediately began scooping it in. I was starving. I said, between mouthfuls, “I suppose that means you’re quite good at accounting.”

  “Not like that Karnon along the way, if that’s what you’re thinking,” Moira said. “The man’s like a demigod of coins.”

  “I know what you mean.”

  I finished the bowl, thought about buying a second, and decided I could steal food from the Athenian camp instead, because that was where I was headed. I had had an idea the other day that, until now, I hadn’t had a chance to check. It was something for which I couldn’t bring my wife. This was the perfect moment.

  I left Apollo’s Rest, and saw the village doctor crossing the agora. He was a tall man with a loping stride, difficult to miss. I hailed him. He stopped and waited for me to catch up.

  “I don’t do free consultations,” he warned me immediately.

  “I’m not ill,” I told him. “Doctor, I wanted to ask you about Geros’s body.”

  He looked at me oddly. “You’re interested in dead bodies?” he asked.

  “Well . . . yes.”

  “That is probably the most bizarre thing I’ve heard this year.”

  “Is it possible for someone who has been stabbed in the heart to write a word in blood before they die?” I asked. We needed to know if perhaps Geros had written that final word Nemesis as a message to us.

  “It’s absolutely impossible,” the doctor said. “Of course, some wounds th
at look like they went through the heart can miss by a fraction. In that case, your victim might live long enough for a final message.”

  That was good to know. But had the knife cut Geros’s heart?

  “Could you look at Geros and recognize if his wound was instantly fatal?” I asked.

  The doctor snorted derision. “I doubt it. Do you know how many dead bodies I’ve seen since I moved to Delos?”

  “No?”

  “Not one,” he declared. “Not a single one. Because it’s illegal to die here.” He patted his brow with a clean rag. “You have no idea how stressful that is.”

  “Why?” I asked, puzzled.

  “Anywhere else in the world, and I mean anywhere, it’s no big deal if a doctor accidentally kills a patient, right?” The doctor spoke imploringly, as if he needed my understanding. I felt I should nod, so I did. “I mean, it happens all the time, and no one ever complains.”

  “Er . . . perhaps the dead man?”

  “They don’t tend to say much, and the families understand that nothing is ever certain in medicine.”

  “I understand.”

  “You might understand, but the priests who run this island certainly don’t. Whenever there’s a risk of some seriously ill person dying, I have the priests shouting at me, demanding that no one is to die on Delos.” The sweat ran freely. He patted his brow again. “I say priests, but Geros was the main offender. Perhaps now I’ll have some peace and quiet while I deal with the sick.”

  “I suppose that means you’re not very good with childbirths either,” I said.

  “I’m probably a little bit rusty,” he allowed. “The last time I delivered a baby was . . .” He counted on his fingers. “Thirty years ago?” He answered my question with the sort of rising inflection that made me think it might have been forty years rather than thirty.

  “Thank you, Doctor.”

  “See me if you need anything amputated. I might be weak on babies, but I’m damned good with an axe. Good day to you.”

  He strode off.

  This, and his wild talk about accidentally killing patients, didn’t instill any confidence in me that the doctor could help Diotima if the baby started to come while we were here.

  That was bad news. We had completely overstayed our welcome. Diotima was yet to perform the ceremony she’d been sent to do. The investigation had seen to that. We couldn’t leave until the murderer was caught.

  I did some counting on my own fingers, and calculated that the baby was due soon.

  I found Philipos exactly where I expected to find him: loitering close by Pericles’s tent. He was sitting on a camp stool, with a knife in his right hand and a piece of driftwood in his left. He was carving the wood.

  Even on the Holy Isle, Philipos managed to have an air of the military about him. Perhaps it was his closely shorn hair. Men who wore helmets often tended to cut their hair short, to fit easily beneath the metal and leather. His neck was thick, the sign of a man who often carried weight on his back, his body was stocky, and the skin of his face had the broken veins of a man who had spent years marching under a hot sun. Now he was doing what military men spent most of their time doing: he was waiting.

  Philipos wasn’t alone in his idleness. All up and down the narrow beach, Athenian sailors lay on the sand, in the shade of the boats they sailed, getting some sleep, or idly talking.

  Ever since the debacle of the first night, the Athenians had kept away from the locals. After the death of Geros, Pericles had made this official, giving the men strict orders to avoid contact.

  “Anything that makes matters worse has to be avoided,” Pericles had told the men. “Don’t let a fight start.”

  So the Athenians had been lying around, bored.

  I said to Philipos, “You must be as bored as the common men. Have you had a look around the island?”

  He shook his head. “I’ve stayed right here. You never know when Pericles might need me,” he explained.

  “Sure,” I said, not believing that for a moment. “So you haven’t been in to see the village?”

  “No.”

  “Nor the temples?”

  “Not except for the night of the protest.” He looked at me oddly. “Why do you care? Aren’t you supposed to be solving this murder? I suppose you know that you’re holding up Pericles with all the time you’re taking.”

  “I’m holding up Pericles?” I said, astonished.

  “Of course you are,” Philipos said. “Every moment you waste on this dead priest is time we could have spent moving the treasure. People are getting antsy, Nicolaos, and it’s your fault. You need to get a move on.”

  “Those men don’t look particularly antsy to me.” I pointed at the long row of dozing sailors. “The men are getting paid a drachma a day to lie in the sun and sleep,” I pointed out. “Do you see anyone complaining?”

  “Did you know that some of the men formed a party and started walking toward the village in search of women?”

  “Urrk,” I managed to splutter. That would have been a disaster.

  Philipos nodded. “I got word of it and alerted Pericles. He reached them before the men were halfway there. He turned them back.” He paused. “That’s why I’m alone here,” he said. “The men know it was me who reported them.”

  Now that he mentioned it, there was a considerable gap between Philipos and the other Athenians.

  Nobody likes a snitch, but this was Philipos all over. He had done the right thing in the wrong way. Instead of using his natural authority, he had gone to Pericles. If he had confronted those men himself he might have won their respect.

  “The men might not want to talk to you, but I do,” I said. “Let’s go for a walk.”

  “Where to?” he asked suspiciously. “The last time you went for a walk with someone, they ended up dead.”

  “You don’t think I did it, do you?” I said, incredulous.

  “What am I supposed to think?” Philipos looked left and right in a most calculating way. Then he hissed, “I know what your real mission was. You don’t have to lie to me, Nicolaos.”

  I had no idea what he was talking about. “Do you want to explain that?”

  “You know I can’t. Not here!” he said. “What if they find out?”

  “Who?” I asked.

  “Them! Everyone!” He waved his arms about wildly.

  I wondered if Philipos had always been insane, and I just hadn’t noticed. Even so, what I needed to say required privacy.

  “Why don’t we go for that walk?” I said.

  “And what if I don’t come back?” Philipos demanded.

  “Then everyone will know I did it.” I pointed down the beach, where the entire row of bored sailors had turned their heads our way. “Half the Navy is watching us.”

  That was in fact the reason why I wanted to get Philipos away. What I had to say wasn’t for anyone else’s ears.

  “Very well,” he said reluctantly.

  Philipos picked himself up off the stool, with evident effort. There was only one way to go from where we were that didn’t involve walking through crowds, and that was north, towards the scene of the crime. The coast on this stretch of Delos had sand, but it was a surprisingly narrow strip. The feet didn’t sink in; it was easy to walk upon.

  We walked in silence for some time. Philipos wasn’t feeling talkative, it seemed. He was favoring his left foot. This was what I’d seen before, and it was the reason I needed to see him. He hadn’t been limping when we arrived on Delos.

  “How did you hurt yourself?” I asked.

  “Twisted my ankle on that path to the village,” Philipos said. “It’s not as easy as it looks, in the dark.”

  I could sympathize, but there was a problem. “Didn’t you tell me that you hadn’t visited the village?”

  Philipos negotiated an unsta
ble stone upon the sand before he replied, “I didn’t go all the way there.”

  “That seems strange.”

  “I turned around after I hurt my ankle,” he said.

  “Now there’s a funny thing, Philipos,” I said. “Because I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve walked up and down that Sacred Way, and I can tell you it’s the flattest track on this whole island.”

  Philipos shrugged. “I’m clumsy.”

  “You? An army man who regularly walks night marches?” I scoffed.

  “I don’t know what you expect me to say,” Philipos said, becoming angry. “It’s the truth.”

  “It’s a lie,” I said confidently. “But I know a place where it’s easy to hurt yourself in the dark—the same place where I banged my foot into the wall—the area north of the sanctuary.”

  “I didn’t walk into your accursed wall,” Philipos said. “My foot slipped. It could happen to anyone.”

  “You’re right, it could happen to anyone, and the place it’s most likely to happen is the old graveyard. I noticed it myself. The graveyard is uneven, there are fallen stele all over the place. Some of those funeral monuments have broken up and there are round stones to snap an ankle. The place is just perfect for hurting yourself in the dark.”

  “So?”

  “So that’s where you hurt yourself,” I said. “The only question is, when were you in the graveyard, Philipos?”

  He said nothing.

  “It must have been before Geros was killed,” I wheedled. “When I summoned Pericles to the body, you came with him, and you were hobbling badly then. The ankle looks a bit better now, less swollen. I’ll bet you’d only recently hurt it, when I saw you after I discovered the body.”

  By this time we had walked so far that we were in sight of the abandoned village. Philipos suddenly stopped. He looked down, kicked the sandy grit with his good right foot, and said, “All right, I admit it. I was there. I followed you that night. I saw you wait around on the steps of the Oikos. I saw you follow that old priest. When you followed him, I followed you.”

  “I didn’t see you.”