Pirates of Poseidon

by Saviour Pirotta

  He turned to Onatas. ‘May we leave the workshop as quickly as possible? And can you leave the tool chest unlocked? But lock the workshop door. No one must come in till Nico and I have had a good look over it.’

  ‘Not even Onatas himself?’ exclaimed Master Ariston. ‘Boys, the master sculptor has work to do.’

  ‘It won’t be a problem staying away from the workshop until the boys have examined it,’ replied Onatas. ‘I’m too poorly to wield a mallet right now, and I have important clients to visit in town later this afternoon.’

  Back in the andron, Smilis and an older slave appeared with cups and jugs of wine. Cook came in too, with a herbal potion for Onatas’s nausea. It stank to the heavens.

  ‘No water in my wine, please,’ said Gorgias, sitting on the edge of a couch. ‘I need something strong to revive my spirits. I can’t believe the ring has slipped through my fingers again. Every time I think I can fulfil my promise to my dead brother, something happens to thwart me.’

  Smilis started filling Gorgias’s cup. ‘Did you not hear the master, you silly boy?’ snapped Onatas. ‘He wants pure wine to calm his nerves. Go and fetch a second jug and make sure the wine is undiluted.’

  ‘I’ll see to it myself, sir,’ said Cook, leading a confused Smilis away. The older slave followed them.

  Thrax nodded at the tablet stuck under my belt. ‘Nico, take notes.’ He turned to Onatas. ‘When did you obtain the ring?’

  ‘Five days ago,’ replied Onatas. ‘I brought it straight home and locked it in the tool chest.’

  ‘Master Gorgias said you were told about the ring by a jewellery collector. Does he know you bought it?’

  Onatas put down his cup. ‘I assume he doesn’t. I don’t know him very well. I only see him at social functions but he has the reputation of being a very honest man. He can’t be the thief.

  ‘The ring came up in conversation at a symposium. I was saying how I hate sculpting mythological creatures. They’re so old-fashioned. The collector mentioned the ring and how beautifully carved the harpies on it were. He said they looked so life-like you’d believe they could fly off the ring. He said I’d change my mind about sculpting mythological beasts if I saw them. The mention of that elusive ring made me prick up my ears at once, of course. I knew my friend Gorgias was looking for it. What a piece of good luck, it turning up in Aegina. It seemed the gods wanted him to have it back. I asked the collector where he’d seen it and I bought it from the crooked dealer the very next morning.’

  ‘Did you tell anyone you hid the ring in the tool chest?’ asked Thrax.

  Onatas shook his head. ‘Absolutely no one. I was alone when I opened the secret compartment and put it inside.’

  ‘Do you ever receive visitors in your workshop?’ asked Thrax. ‘Clients or benefactors?’

  ‘No, I only see guests in the andron. I don’t feel comfortable when people look at my work before it’s completely finished.’

  ‘And when was the last time you saw the ring?’

  ‘Yesterday, late afternoon,’ replied Onatas. ‘I opened the tool chest to get some money from the purse. I was going to a symposium and I wanted some coins to throw at the dancers.’

  ‘And you weren’t feeling ill then?’

  ‘No, I only started feeling ill at the symposium.’

  ‘But did you actually see the ring when you went to get the money, or just the woollen parcel?’ asked Thrax.

  ‘I saw the ring itself,’ said Onatas. ‘I took it out to admire it. My friend the collector was right. The harpies were some of the best work I’ve ever seen. It made me think I should accept commissions to carve beasts from the ancient stories after all.’

  Thrax glanced at me to make sure I was writing down everything Onatas was saying. ‘And you went straight to the symposium after that?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Who was left in the house?’

  ‘No one,’ said Onatas. ‘Smilis and Timon – that’s the older slave you’ve just seen – came with me to the symposium. Telephassa our cook went to the temple. No one else lives in the house. I am not married.’

  ‘I imagine you were in the workshop earlier that day. Did any of the slaves come in during that time?’

  Onatas nodded. ‘Telephassa brought me some food. Timon helped me move a heavy statue and Smilis came to watch me work. He likes doing that, especially when I’m carving animals. Sometimes he models for me.’

  ‘And you are absolutely sure you locked the tool chest and the door to the workshop when you left?’

  ‘Quite sure,’ replied Onatas without hesitation. ‘In fact I checked twice.’

  ‘What time was this?’

  ‘The last hour of the day. Sunset.’

  ‘And I assume you took the keys to the symposium with you?’

  ‘The keyring never leaves my belt,’ said Onatas. ‘It is on me day and night.’

  ‘And were Smilis and Timon with you all evening?’ asked Thrax.

  ‘Smilis was with me in the andron. The boy might be foolish but he’s very caring. He looked after me all night, especially when I started feeling out of sorts. He kept sending to the kitchen for herbal drinks. I should have come home early but there were a few potential clients at the symposium I was desperate to meet.’

  ‘And Timon?’ said Thrax.

  ‘He was in the stables, looking after the cart and donkey. The older slaves tend to gather there, to gamble the little bit of money their masters allow them to earn.’

  ‘And did both come home with you?’ asked Thrax.

  ‘Yes,’ said Onatas. ‘They went straight to bed and Cook arrived from the temple some time later. She made me a potion for my stomach. We have no slave quarters on the farm. Cook and Smilis sleep by the fire in the kitchen. Timon sleeps in a small hut next to the house, to keep watch over the goats.’

  ‘And could anyone have broken into the workshop at night, while you were sleeping?’

  ‘I didn’t go to sleep,’ declared Onatas. ‘I can’t sleep when I’m poorly. I spent the night in the workshop, gulping down potions and working on sketches for my next work.’

  ‘And are you sure the lock on the workshop door had not been tampered with?’ Thrax asked.

  ‘As sure as I am sitting here talking to you,’ replied Onatas. ‘I am very careful about these things. The statues in my workshop are worth a fortune.’

  ‘And the house itself had not been touched? You didn’t find any signs that someone had been through the andron, or your bedroom, looking for the ring?’

  Onatas shook his head. ‘Cook and Timon would have noticed if someone had been in the house.’

  ‘So,’ cut in Master Ariston who had been listening on the edge of his seat. ‘The ring was stolen from a locked tool chest, in a locked workshop with no windows. Yet the thief managed to get in and out. How did he do it? Is he a spirit?’

  ‘I assure you he’s flesh and bone like you and me, master,’ said Thrax.

  Master Ariston shook his head. ‘It’s a baffling mystery. Good luck on solving it, boys.’

  CHAPTER 7

  A Secret Meeting Place

  Thrax would have loved to search the workshop for clues right then but Master Ariston dragged us away. He had to give Hero his first lesson later that morning. He was so anxious about it, he forgot to give us a list of chores to do while he was teaching.

  ‘I think we need to have a meeting,’ said Thrax.

  I looked around the slaves’ room, which had a few rickety old couches around the walls. Tattered himations were spread out on the floor for beds. ‘Let’s find a proper meeting place,’ I said. ‘Somewhere we won’t be disturbed or overheard. This house is teeming with slaves and household staff.’

  We slipped out, closing the door behind us. The houses on the street were all spacious and well kept but at one end we came across an abandoned one. Most of its walls had collapsed, leaving mounds of mud bricks and broken roof tiles in the weeds.

  ‘Ha,’ I said, ‘what
an interesting place. It seems to have been hit by a thunderbolt.’

  ‘This house was knocked down by the authorities,’ Thrax corrected me. ‘Look, you can tell they started from the roof because the tiles are all trapped under the mud bricks, which were pulled down later.’

  I stared at the devastation around me. ‘Why would the authorities pull down a house?’

  ‘It’s a common enough punishment,’ Thrax said. ‘The people who lived here must have broken the law in a big way. Perhaps they committed murder, or insulted the gods.’

  ‘Where are they now?’ I wondered.

  ‘Sent into exile, I should imagine,’ said Thrax. ‘Never to return home.’

  I shuddered to think what it must feel like losing your home and being forced to live far from the people and places you loved.

  ‘Let’s explore,’ I said.

  The foundations of the house poked through the weeds and couch grass. A broken bread oven lay on its side in a corner of what had once been a kitchen. The faded reeds of a bread basket lay crushed underneath it. Something slithered inside it as I came closer. I caught a flash of yellow and brown scales. An adder. The oven had become home to a venomous snake. It hissed at me and I stepped back in a hurry.

  Up against the remnants of one wall stood an altar with a headless statue on it. It was painted black on one side and white on the other. I shrank back from it in fear. ‘This is an altar to Melinoe,’ I gasped, ‘the dark goddess of ghosts and a bringer of nightmares and madness. Who would have such a statue in their yard?’

  ‘This bit of the house wasn’t the yard,’ Thrax said. ‘It used to be the andron.’

  ‘That’s even worse. People used to gather here to offer sacrifice to the most terrible goddess in the pantheon. No wonder they brought misfortune on themselves.’

  We moved away from the headless statue, further into the ruins, where we found an old well. Behind it, the lower half of a back wall was still standing, with a door hanging askew in it. There were traces of frescoes on the wall: the outline of a sea nymph holding a shell. A sunken boat full of ghostly sailors. Their round mouths were wide open in horror.

  Thrax tugged at the door and it opened. We found ourselves looking into a small orchard, full of fig trees gone wild. Overripe fruit hung on the branches, attracting wasps and sparrows. Their buzzing and chittering filled the air. Behind the trees, a red-tiled roof glowed in the sunshine.

  We picked our way carefully through stinging nettles to discover a small outhouse, derelict and long-forgotten. The authorities had obviously missed it when they pulled down the rest of the house, or perhaps they thought it was not worth their time demolishing it.

  It had a warped door with a handle shaped like a seahorse, and a window blocked up with a bird’s nest, long-abandoned. Thrax let us in.

  When our eyes got used to the dark, we saw old farm tools piled in a corner. A large harvest basket hung on a wall. Below it stood a krater with only one handle, and next to it a three-legged table. Someone had left a chipped drinking cup on it. Everything was covered in a thick layer of dust and cobwebs.’

  ‘This used to be a gardener’s store and hideaway,’ said Thrax.

  ‘And now it can be our secret meeting place,’ I added. ‘It’s perfect. We can clean it up and bring a store of snacks for when we have meetings. Come on, let’s get started.’

  Thrax made brooms out of twigs and I filled the krater at the well. Before long we had splashed water all over the place and swept the wet dust out into the orchard. Thrax unblocked the window. At last the hut sparkled like a newly minted coin.

  A quick hunt in the weeds yielded more treasure: two wobbly stools. We gave them a good wipe and carried them inside. Now it looked like a proper meeting place. All we needed was a small lamp for night meetings and some flowers in a jar to make it smell nice.

  ‘I think it’s time we had our first meeting,’ said Thrax, sitting down on one of the stools.

  I took out my tablet.

  ‘Read me the notes you have written. I want to make sure I remember every detail correctly.’

  I read them out carefully and Thrax listened, his eyes focused on the sunshine outside the open door. ‘Hmm,’ he said when I finished. ‘The ring was in the tool chest when Onatas left for the symposium at sunset but it was gone by the time he opened the parcel in front of us this morning. He was in the workshop all night, so the ring must have been stolen while he was at the symposium.’

  I tapped on the table with my stylus. ‘His slaves were all out of the house. It must have been a wandering robber.’

  ‘A robber would have taken the money and the silver amulets too,’ said Thrax. ‘No, this thief wanted only the ring. It had to be someone who knew it was there.’

  ‘But Onatas insists that he was alone when he locked the ring in the tool chest,’ I pointed out, ‘and he told no one about it.’

  Thrax smiled. ‘That could only mean one thing. Someone must have been spying on him.’

  ‘Exactly. And we need to find out who had the opportunity.’

  I scratched a plan of Onatas’s farmhouse in my tablet. ‘Onatas says he never receives guests at the workshop, only in the andron, which is in another building completely. I suppose one of them might have sneaked across the meadow without being noticed.’

  ‘Guests are never left unattended in a house,’ said Thrax. ‘A slave stays with them all the time.’

  ‘That only leaves the slaves themselves, then. Smilis, Timon and Telephassa.’

  ‘They are the main suspects,’ Thrax agreed. ‘Write down their names.’

  I smudged out the plan of Onatas’s farmhouse to make space for the names. ‘Smilis doesn’t look like he could steal a honey cake from a griddle let alone break into a workshop without leaving a trace,’ I said, ‘which leaves Timon and Telephassa.’

  Thrax shifted on his stool. ‘We’ll have to investigate all three. Never leave a stone unturned, I say.’

  ‘Hey,’ I said suddenly, adding a fourth name to the list, ‘you don’t think Onatas could have stolen the ring himself, do you?’

  ‘Good thinking, Nico, but I’m afraid it wasn’t him. I watched his face closely when he realised the ring had been stolen. No one could have faked the shock and look of horror in his eyes. He wasn’t pretending.’

  I rubbed out Onatas’s name with my thumb. ‘Why did the thief leave the marble in place of the ring, I wonder?’

  ‘It might just have been a joke. Some thieves have a very peculiar sense of humour. But it might have been to give the parcel some weight. If Onatas picked it up but did not look in it, he would not have discovered the ring had been stolen.

  ‘But let’s concentrate on our three suspects. They all say that they were away from the house and the workshop. Smilis seems to have an alibi, Onatas himself. We need to check on the other two. Could one of them have sneaked back to the workshop while Onatas was lying on the couch at the symposium and stolen the ring? It’s time to find out. Let’s go and take a look at the workshop.’

  ‘Good idea,’ I said, ‘but let’s stop and get some lunch at Inacus’s house on the way. Thinking always makes me hungry.’

  CHAPTER 8

  Footprints in the Dust

  Coming out of the ruined house, we ran into Smilis. He was carrying a heavy basket on his shoulder and pulling a wooden horse on wheels behind him. The basket smelled sharp and briny and we could see fish tails sticking out of it.

  ‘Good day, Smilis,’ said Thrax.

  Smilis beamed from ear to ear. ‘Good day, kyrios.’

  ‘I am no master,’ replied Thrax. ‘I am a slave like you. That basket looks heavy. Where are you going with it?’

  ‘To Master Inacus’s house. It’s a gift from his friend Master Onatas.’ Smilis let go of the wooden horse and tried moving the basket from his right shoulder to the left.

  Thrax took it from him. ‘I’ll carry it for you,’ he said. ‘We’re on our way there. You look after your toy horse.’

/>   ‘Thank you, kyrios.’

  Thrax nodded at Smilis’s bare feet. ‘Your feet are all wet. Did you go and play with the other children in the fountain at the agora?’

  Smilis looked guilty. ‘Horsey wanted a drink.’

  ‘You should have washed your face while you were there,’ laughed Thrax. ‘It’s all sticky. Have you been scoffing pomegranates?’

  Smilis nodded and tried to wipe it clean.

  ‘Well don’t let Telephassa find out about it or you’ll be in trouble. Now go home before anyone notices how long you’ve been away.’

  We’d missed lunch by the time we got to Inacus’s house but the cook gave us honey cakes, which we wolfed down out in the yard. Master Ariston’s voice boomed out of the andron.

  ‘Now, Hero, I must tell you the story of Ulysses and how he managed to get past the wicked sirens...’

  We tiptoed silently across the yard, praying our master wouldn’t spot us and give us chores to do. Saddling Ariana, we rode over to Onatas’s farm. The sculptor was getting on to his own donkey as we arrived. He was dressed in a clean chiton, ready to go into town to see his important clients.

  ‘Good afternoon, sir,’ said Thrax. ‘I hope you are feeling better.’

  ‘Much better, thank you,’ said Onatas.

  ‘We’ve come to look for clues in the workshop,’ said Thrax. ‘Please can we have the key?’

  Onatas removed the key from the ring on his belt.

  ‘Thank you, sir,’ said Thrax. ‘We’ll be finished by the time you come back.’ We passed Timon’s hut on our way to the workshop. The dwelling was not much bigger than our secret meeting place. There was a pen for the goats on one side and a small vegetable patch on the other. A wooden statue stood in the middle of it. It had a horrible misshapen face with a leering grin and was painted a bright purple. Metal earrings dangled from its enormous ears. I noticed a mallet in one of its hands.

  ‘What in the name of the gods is that?’ I asked Thrax.

  ‘It’s a device to scare away the birds. We had a lot of them on the farm outside Thebes. The figure is Hephaestus, the god of smithies and Aphrodite’s husband. Farmers believe he’s so ugly, he scares away the birds before they can harm the crops.’