Shadows of Athens

by J M Alvey

  ‘You see clouds?’ Sosimenes flung a hand to the unsullied spring sky. Any actor would be proud to convey such incredulity.

  ‘I don’t see the masks Aristarchos has paid for,’ I retorted.

  ‘What’s the problem?’ Lysicrates appeared at my elbow and looked into the handcart. ‘Oh.’ He reached for one of the red-haired wigs. ‘Who’s got a chorus of Thracians?’

  Sosimenes slapped the actor’s hand away. ‘Leave off!’

  Were these for Euxenos? But his comedy was called The Butterflies. None of the competing titles announced yesterday had anything to do with Thrace. How could Euxenos get laughs out of barbarians and butterflies? I couldn’t think of a way but he’d been an actor for a decade before he became a playwright. He never failed to tell me that he knew more than I could ever hope to about what made people laugh.

  ‘Where are my masks?’ My voice rose to a shout.

  ‘They’ll be back in the yard.’ Sosimenes scowled at his slave. ‘Won’t they?’

  Before I could decide which one to grab first and shake until his teeth rattled, Lysicrates laid a firm hand on my forearm. ‘How soon can you get our masks to us?’

  ‘We’ll get these to—’ Sosimenes caught himself just in time ‘—to their destination and go straight back to fetch yours.’

  ‘That’s all we ask.’ Lysicrates’s grip tightened to make sure I stayed silent. ‘Now, let’s all get on. None of us have time to waste today.’

  Sosimenes cuffed his slave around the head, so hard that he sent the skinny old man sprawling. ‘Get a move on!’

  As they hurried off, I stood there trembling with anger, unable to string five coherent words together.

  Lysicrates patted my arm. ‘We all need a lunch break. You and Zosime go and eat somewhere nice in peace and quiet. The masks and costumes will be here by the time you get back.’

  I drew a deep, shuddering breath. ‘All right.’

  I’ll never say so to Apollonides or Menekles but Lysicrates was the first actor I spoke to after winning the right to stage a play at this Dionysia. Not just because he’s the best at playing women’s roles that Athens has seen for over a decade. When my first play at the Lenaia festival had been such a dismal failure, Lysicrates had come to find me afterwards, sitting with me while I tried to drown my humiliation in cheap wine. He’d encouraged me not to give up, but to learn from my mistakes. I will always be grateful for that.

  Zosime appeared. ‘Why don’t we go home for lunch? Then Kadous will know he needn’t come to fetch me later.’

  I wanted to argue. I wanted to strangle half the chorus. So it was probably best for everyone if I walked those urges off.

  We bought olives and cheese in the agora and walked through the cheerfully noisy crowds to the Itonian Gate. Outside the city, the road was less busy and the tensions that had racked me like some traveller on Procrustes’ infamous bed began to ease.

  Unfortunately, when we got home the last thing we found was peace and quiet. Mikos, who owns the house opposite, was squaring up to Kadous in the middle of the lane. He brandished a vicious-looking vine stave. ‘I’ll thrash you like a dog, you Black Sea bastard!’

  ‘You lay a hand on my property and you’ll answer to me!’ I advanced on the pair.

  ‘I caught him sniffing around my doorstep.’ Mikos gestured menacingly at Kadous. ‘You weren’t expecting me back till tomorrow. Thought you’d set my wife squealing!’

  ‘Put that stick down,’ I said sharply, ‘before I take it off you.’

  Doing that would be easy enough. At least twenty years older than me, Mikos had grown fat and lazy now that Athens was at peace. In theory he was still young enough to be called up for military service but any district official in charge of a muster would be a fool to think any general would take him on.

  Mikos dropped the stave but only so he could stride over and poke a pudgy finger into my chest. ‘I’ll see your slave executed for screwing my wife!’

  ‘What?’ I stared at him, incredulous. For one thing, the woman grizzling in the gateway opposite wasn’t Onesime, Mikos’s wretched wife. It was her sad little handmaid Alke.

  He shook a fist at Kadous. ‘He sneaks in to spread my wife’s thighs when I travel to Corinth to buy beads. This was my first trip of the year, so I hurried back to catch them—’

  ‘Did you? No,’ I retorted, ‘he’s no such fool!’

  I knew Kadous wouldn’t risk the hazards for any slave dragged into a citizen’s adultery. Though it was possible the Phrygian had been tickling little Alke’s fancy. As soon as we got a moment alone, I’d get the truth from him. For the moment I could only gesture for Kadous to get behind me.

  ‘Where’s your proof?’ I demanded.

  I couldn’t let Mikos’s accusation go unchallenged. Not with gates opening up and down the lane. I didn’t want spiteful rumours taking wing around the neighbourhood. Once a slave gets a bad reputation, he gets blamed for everything and anything that goes awry.

  It’s not as if slaves can defend themselves. In any mire of claim and counter-claim in court, slave evidence must be tested by the public torturer. Most admit guilt or simply flee before risking such agonies.

  ‘I caught that slut letting him in,’ Mikos snarled.

  Alke, the thin-faced slave girl, buried her face in her hands. I noticed vicious marks from that vine stave on her bare arms, freshly red and starting to bruise.

  I stood toe to toe with the fat jeweller, raising my voice to make sure that all those flapping ears along the lane could hear me. ‘She gave Kadous some charcoal yesterday when we had run short. He was carrying water from the fountain for her by way of thanks.’

  Mikos sneered. ‘A likely story.’

  With a silent breath of thanks to Poseidon, I pointed to a bucket I recognised sitting in a puddle of slopped water. ‘Why else was my man carrying that? If that’s your case, I’ll happily see you in court.’

  Mikos wasn’t about to back down. ‘If he sets foot in my house again, I’ll gut him like a fish!’

  ‘You won’t get the chance,’ I assured the bead seller.

  Not that I imagined he’d try. Kadous was big and strong enough to beat the fool to a bloody pulp with his bare hands. I was thankful he’d had the sense not to respond to this provocation.

  ‘Send your own slaves to fetch water in future, or your wife, if you dare. Meantime, if you lay a finger on my property outside your own walls, I’ll see you answer to the magistrates.’

  ‘Backed by your new noble friends?’

  Before I could ask what he meant by that, Mikos stormed into his own house, dragging Alke with him. As the gate slammed, I winced. We all heard her rising wail cut short by a brutal slap.

  I picked up the vine stave and handed it to Kadous who was standing in our gateway, scowling. ‘Let’s get some lunch.’

  He nodded, his expression thunderous, turning away and muttering something in his mother tongue.

  I looked at Zosime as I closed our own gate behind us. ‘Do you think he could have killed that Carian?’

  She grimaced. ‘A stranger knocking on the wrong gate during a festival? Surely Mikos would have asked his business before butchering him?’

  I wasn’t so sure. ‘He must have had some reason to think he’d find Onesime with a lover. Are there rumours around the fountains?’

  Zosime nodded. ‘She’s as false as that coloured glass that Mikos swears is garnets. She’s been spreading her legs for Pyrrias since last summer, so the whispers say.’ She didn’t hide her contempt.

  ‘She must have a taste for fat old men.’ Pyrrias was much the same age as Mikos. He traded in spices from a warehouse down in Piraeus.

  ‘She has a taste for their fat purses,’ Zosime said curtly. ‘Besides, Mikos married her to get some sons with citizen rights to inherit his business. That was nearly two years ago and I
imagine he ploughs her furrow often enough. If he can’t plant a seed to swell her belly, she has to find someone who can. If she’s divorced for being barren she’ll be sent back to her father’s house and stuck there for life.’

  That made distasteful sense. Pyrrias has eight or ten children thanks to his exhausted wife. ‘There’ll be trouble if they’re caught.’

  ‘Maybe this uproar will warn Pyrrias off.’ Zosime shrugged.

  I nodded. ‘Let’s hope so.’

  Though who knew what tale Onesime might tell, especially if Mikos tried to beat the truth out of her. After this morning’s farce, he’d be the laughing stock of the neighbourhood unless he could salvage his pride by proving he was right.

  Whatever Onesime or Alke said, I’d defend Kadous to the hilt. The distance between slave and master closes up after you’ve been in battle together. Even so, Kadous and I are closer than most. My father had bought him as a young slave when my brother Lysanias reached his eighteenth year and went off for his military training. When the phalanxes were called up for that disastrous Egyptian campaign, the Phrygian was at my brother’s side. They were both trapped on Prosopitis, that thrice-cursed isle that the Persians encircled for a year and a half. When the Mede’s army finally overran the mud banks, Kadous saw Lysanias die.

  I don’t know if the Phrygian ever told my father how he escaped the slaughter, or why he came back to Athens to tell us how Lysanias had fallen. He could so easily have vanished in such confusion. As long as he stayed clear of Attica, there’d have been little enough chance of meeting anyone who would know his face and could condemn him as a runaway slave. But he’d come back and he had seen Chairephanes and me through our own hoplite training, fetching and carrying our gear and advising us how to sleep comfortably camped out on a mountainside. He’d taught us when to move quickly and quietly to avoid a commander’s wrath. I’d never asked why he had come home. It was enough for me that Kadous could tell us Lysanias hadn’t died alone.

  He came out into the porch from the storeroom to the left of the central chamber where Zosime and I sleep. The room on the right houses Zosime’s loom and wools, and a spare bed for Menkaure or my brothers on nights when they’ve stayed too late to walk back to the city after dinner.

  ‘There are some sardines left from last night. I bought fresh bread before I fetched Alke’s water.’

  ‘We’ve brought olives and cheese.’ I handed them over.

  ‘I’ll fetch some plates.’ Zosime headed for the storeroom.

  We all ate in thoughtful silence. I took care not to drip oil onto my clean tunic. Zosime gathered up our scraps for the hens. With any luck they’d soon be laying eggs again now that they were over their autumn moults and winter sulks.

  I looked at the unfinished dining room to the left-hand side of our gate, opposite Kadous’s quarters. At the moment, it housed an old, scarred table, my scrolls and papyrus scraps, pens and ink, together with a couple of stools, and my modest store of wine. When I got rich, it would have plastered and painted walls, with sumptuously cushioned couches and a mosaic floor. If I ever got rich. I couldn’t imagine wealthy men would shower me with commissions after they’d seen the shambles of my play at the festival.

  I wanted to run out to prostrate myself before the ancient statue of Dionysus Eleutherios in the little shrine overshadowed by the Acropolis. It wasn’t too late to beg for his favour or, failing that, his pity. Alas, his most revered icon had been carried out of the city to the Academy’s grove. It wouldn’t be brought back to the theatre until this evening, and I had to be there to see it. There was no getting out of such duties.

  I heaved a sigh. ‘I’d better get back to the rehearsal.’

  Zosime leaned over to kiss me. ‘We’ll see you at the theatre later, to honour Dionysos’s return.’

  Chapter Six

  When I reached Aristarchos’s gate, Mus opened up. Lysicrates hurried towards me, grinning from ear to ear.

  ‘Your masks are here and the costumes have just arrived.’

  I didn’t give Mikos or the dead Carian another thought. Better yet, the difference between the morning’s pandemonium and that afternoon’s rehearsals was like comparing a bawdy satyr play with the finest high tragedy. All three actors were perfect in word and gesture while the chorus danced and sang as though the muses performed among them. We ran through the market scene several times, and if their costume changes left Apollonides and Lysicrates breathless, that only added to the overall effect.

  Menekles nodded approvingly as Hyanthidas saw the chorus off stage with a last flourish of his reed pipes. ‘Euxenos is a fool to think he’ll have the best music.’

  As everyone murmured agreement, I wondered idly where my old pipe might be. As a boy I’d wanted to be a theatre player and my favourite uncle found me a battered instrument from somewhere. I’d practised and practised and practised until my brothers threatened to shove that pipe up my nose – or my arse – if I didn’t stop.

  Naturally I defied them until Father made his own disapproval clear. Making a living writing was one thing. That offered opportunities for respectable fame. But scratching around for chances to play music at private parties, in temple processions or at drama competitions? I might as well go begging for scraps at rich men’s doors. After that I only played for my own amusement, and at family gatherings so my sisters could dance, until I had no sisters left at home.

  Apollonides looked up at the gathering dusk. ‘I think we should call it a day.’

  ‘Thank you, all of you,’ I said fervently. ‘Take things easy tonight. You’ve earned your rest – but not too much wine, I beg you. Tomorrow we dedicate our performance to Dionysos, then we’ll set Athens laughing loud enough to be heard in Delphi!’

  That won me a rousing cheer.

  ‘Let’s have your masks and costumes, please.’ Chrysion dragged three big baskets out from the shelter of the colonnade.

  Aristarchos appeared in the archway from the inner courtyard. His personal slave Lydis was behind him, nimble and quick-witted, with a shock of unruly black hair. ‘We should probably make our way to the theatre, Philocles.’

  ‘Of course.’ I ducked my head obediently.

  A burly slave escorted us as we followed the road around the eastern end of the Acropolis. I contemplated the scaffolding framing the new shrines rising from the ashes and rubble on the heights. Whatever you say about Pericles, and safely behind closed doors my family says a lot, he’s brought peace to our city. Peace and prosperity, enabling us to finally restore the temples burned by Persian barbarians ten years before I was born. Peace had secured the silver to refurbish the theatre where we were headed.

  How dare that Carian lout accuse us of greed? Our forefathers had left those blackened ruins untouched to remind us every day that we must defeat the Persians. We saw them from first light to dusk, whenever we turned a street corner to glimpse the Acropolis high above us. That boy thought we didn’t know suffering? We had seen Attica’s farms and olive groves burned as well as our sacred city sacked. Regardless, Athens defied Darius at Marathon with only the Plataeans to help us. We cut down those invaders for the sake of all Hellenes. We defeated them at Salamis and Mycale and Eurymedon. Three generations of Athenians shed their blood in that once-endless war.

  How quickly our ungrateful neighbours forgot how much they owed us. After he returned from Egypt, Kadous marched behind me when my contingent from Alopeke followed General Tolmides as he led Athens’ soldiers to quell dissent in Boeotia. We’d celebrated the capture of Chaeronea with captured wine and women. Then we’d retreated shoulder to shoulder, step by dogged step, from the bloody battlefield at Coronea, leaving Tolmides lying dead behind us.

  The price of our army’s safe passage home had been Boeotia’s release from the Delian League that had once sworn such fervent unity against Persia. They’d been happy to hand over their coin, while Athenian armies spent
their lives saving all Hellas from slavery. Once we had peace though, they bickered and moaned at every turn.

  ‘I’ve been thinking about our conversation this afternoon,’ Aristarchos remarked as we took the path leading to the theatre. ‘About these Carians and this story about the Delian League’s tributes being reassessed at this festival. How likely is it that they’ve confused the Dionysia with the Panathenaia?’

  ‘Unlikely,’ I conceded. Every Hellene from Sicily to the Black Sea knows when it’s a Great Panathenaic Year, just like everyone knows when to head for the Olympics or the Pythian or Nemean Games.

  Aristarchos stopped walking. ‘Our allies know exactly when they must pay tribute. No one wants to risk defaulting.’

  ‘And no one would come all the way across the Aegean to plead poverty without good reason to believe they’d be heard.’ I recalled the young Carian’s conviction when he’d accosted me in the agora. ‘So who persuaded this Xandyberis that the Archons would listen?’

  I was beginning to think whoever was stirring up trouble had miscalculated, not imagining that the Carian would enlist an Athenian to write a rousing speech for him. That risked the lie becoming the talk of the agora and a lot of people asking awkward questions. The first thing the authorities would want to know was who had started this rumour.

  ‘Why do you suppose your dead man’s throat was cut, if not to silence him?’ Aristarchos asked with an edge to his voice as he started walking again.

  ‘I think we had better find out,’ I said grimly.

  But that would have to wait. By the time we reached the theatre, the approaches were thronged. The marble seats for the great and good had long since been claimed by keen folk who’d come prepared with cushions, along with the slaves sent even earlier to reserve places for the likes of Aristarchos. Lydis waved to a skinny youth in a dark tunic whom I thought I recognised from my patron’s household.

  ‘I’ll see you after the procession and we’ll make our own private libations.’ Aristarchos dismissed me with a courteous smile.