by J M Alvey
Reaching the end of the lane, I looked to left and right along the alley. There were mouldering piles of rubbish dumped here and there. Clearly this wasn’t anyone’s route to anywhere else, so there wasn’t much chance of anyone reporting their neighbours for dumping refuse over their back wall instead of taking it to the official middens outside the city.
All this exertion had set my head thumping again and the stink made my unhappy stomach churn. I reminded myself that I’d fought more than once in Boeotia on little sleep, less food and a dose of the shits from bad water. Today’s hangover hardly compared.
I picked a spot away from the worst of the smell where I could look back towards the gravelled side street. I was mostly hidden by the corner of the end house’s wall and I slid down to sit on my heels, the better to stay unnoticed. As soon as I heard voices or saw a gate open, I’d duck still further back, only risking a look when I heard someone walking away. If they decided to head in this direction, I’d just have to make a run for it and find out where this alley went.
Not too much later, a couple of men appeared at the far end of the lane. They’d followed the same route as I had, coming from the main road. I had no way to know if they’d seen me lurking as I hastily withdrew around the corner. I flattened myself against the wall like a lizard, my heart pounding.
I heard a latch rattle. I snatched a glance. The men were going into the third house on the far side of the lane from the corner where I was hiding. Better yet, I got a good look at these new arrivals. I had no idea who one of them was, but I definitely recognised the other. I couldn’t say for certain if this was Leptines but he was definitely the man who’d played the Ionian in the agora. Today he was dressed as an Athenian and either those long Persian locks had been a wig or he’d visited a barber since that performance.
I’d wager good money that’s where this so-called Archilochos was hiding and that all these men were yoked together. But I had no way of letting my own allies know without leaving this vantage point. If I did that, I’d have no way of knowing who else might join this treacherous gathering or where any of them might go when they left.
That was assuming that some or all of them were going to leave. I grimaced, and not just at the reek of the refuse. I could end up spending the rest of the evening crouched in this stinking alley while they settled down to a leisurely banquet. That wasn’t an inviting prospect when my legs were already beginning to cramp.
I decided to wait a little longer, all the same. If one or other of the men who’d come here left, I would follow. Where they went should tell me something, and then I could go home. On the other hand, if a troupe of dancing girls and flute players arrived, I’d know they were making a night of it and head for Aristarchos’s house. He could send someone to make enquiries and discover who owned this house.
The afternoon wore on. Somewhere out towards the main road I heard a swell of voices, laughter and the slap of countless feet. I realised the satyr play must be long done. The day’s trilogy had been thoroughly debated over wine and food in the city’s taverns and the theatre audience was heading home.
I found a scrap of broken pot in a nearby heap of rubbish and used a stone to scratch a crude map on it to fix this location in my mind. Once I’d done that, I studied the most obvious scrapes and dents on the gate I was watching, to be certain I could describe it so there could be no chance of mistake.
I heard voices several times, though never from the house I was watching. I crouched low, ready to pretend to be tying my sandal if someone came out to dump a bucket of slops. Then I’d stroll away, back towards the main road. I couldn’t risk the uproar of being chased away like some thief.
Thanks to Athena, no one appeared and I stayed there, safe enough. The daylight yellowed and I wondered what Zosime and Menkaure were doing. I hoped they had gone home to Alopeke. Hopefully the Pargasarenes would simply go back to the house where Aristarchos had lodged them. Sarkuk and Azamis would want to see Tur after all.
I wondered if Kadous was still hunting fruitlessly for me. I had no idea how long he’d search before he gave up. But if he went home and confessed he couldn’t find me, I had no idea what Menkaure and Zosime might do. If they went to tell Nymenios, my whole family would end up frantic.
Dusk deepened. I decided I couldn’t stay here. For one thing, it wouldn’t be long before someone could sneak out of that gate without me seeing them, hidden by the gathering darkness.
A fiery glow appeared in the house’s courtyard. A pine torch. Someone was leaving. I stood up and flexed my feet to ease my legs, stiff from waiting so long.
The gate opened and four men came out. I couldn’t tell if they were the four I’d followed here or if one or more were later arrivals. Even with the torch, the night hid the colours of their clothing. Ruddy light gleamed on a balding head though. With any luck, that was Archilochos.
I watched them make for the street that led towards the main road. As they rounded the corner, I followed as quickly as I dared. All the while I watched warily in case that gate opened again. If it did, I’d have to brazen it out, looking straight ahead and walking purposefully past.
Hermes be thanked, I passed his pillar without incident. I could see the torch heading northwards. I smiled, relieved. With the night to hide me, I didn’t have to get too close. I only needed to see which direction they took when they reached the junction with the main road.
Cloth flapped, loud in the quiet night. Someone swallowed an oath. Out of the corner of one eye, I glimpsed a fluttering cloak. Men rushed at me from a lane to my left. Masked men, with eyeholes and open mouths eerie black voids against pale paint.
No chorus ever attacks a drama’s principals like this though, and I wasn’t about to play the defiant hero. Forget declaiming some defiant speech. I took to my heels, as swift as if I wore winged sandals.
Not swift enough. They were young and fit, not battered and bruised from brawling, or sluggish from a hangover. One long-legged runner drew level with me, his grasping fingers reaching for my shoulder. I flung out a fist to knock his forearm away.
Another sprinter appeared on my other side. He carried a long, solid stick. A spear shaft. He rammed its end into the back of my thigh. My knee buckled and I fell hard, landing with all the wind knocked out of me. That meant I was too slow to see the booted foot coming for my guts. At least curling up around that agony meant the next kick intended for my balls only bruised my thigh.
The spear shaft slammed into my shoulder. I yelled with pain and fury but managed not to arch my back and expose my belly again. I rolled away, onto my front. Another kick came for my head. I seized that fucking foot and twisted it hard.
Taken unawares, my assailant fell over. His flailing arm sent the man beside him stumbling. I seized my chance and scrambled to my feet. The man with the spear shaft swung again, aiming for the backs of my knees. This time I saw him first and spun around to avoid the blow. All the while I shouted curses and insults, desperately yelling for help.
It seemed everyone in this neighbourhood was deaf. Was this how Xandyberis had died? Fuck that. I wasn’t going down to the Underworld without a fight.
I grabbed for the spear shaft, one hand taking a firm grip between my attacker’s hold and my other hand seizing the middle of the wood. One fist pushing, the other pulling, I twisted the long stick like an oar and sent him staggering backwards.
He’d forgotten one of the first things he should have learned in his hoplite training. Never let go of your spear. Now I had a weapon, even if it lacked a metal point. At least the bastard was bright enough to shout a warning to the others.
Burning pain seared my arm. One of these fuckers had a knife, but I couldn’t see who it was in this darkness, surrounded by shadows and swirling cloaks. A hand darted forward, holding steel betrayed by a glint of light. I smashed the spear shaft downwards. Not at the blade. Not at the hand that held it. I hadn’t forg
otten my training. Knowing the man would flinch from my blow, I aimed for his withdrawing arm. The wooden shaft struck solidly with a crack of bone. The man cursed foully, spitting with pain.
A voice bellowed orders from the darkness. ‘Rush him! He can’t hit you all at once!’
Curse him to Hades, he was right. But as the men surged forward, Kadous yelled from the end of the street. ‘Philocles! Is that you?’
‘Yes!’ I barely got the word out before an assailant tried to silence me with a punch to the face. I was mobbed like an eagle pursued by murderous crows. Without room to use the spear shaft, I let it fall. Reaching for the closest man’s mask, I wrenched it askew. That cost me a painful flurry of punches to the ribs and guts but I tightened my belly muscles and endured it. This close, they didn’t have the elbow room to hit me as hard as they hoped.
I got a good handful of another wig and yanked it hard. The man yelled, startled, and reeled away, deaf and blind now his disguise was twisted around on his head.
When I’d fought in Boeotia, we’d soon identified the men in our phalanx who’d performed in a chorus, used to singing and dancing wearing theatre masks and wigs. They were far better prepared for an infantry helmet’s eyeholes narrowing their field of vision, and the bronze enclosing their heads to muffle their hearing.
‘Hey! Shit-for-brains!’ A solid thud of wood on flesh followed up the insult. One of the men surrounding me howled and lurched away. Kadous had found the spear shaft that I’d dropped on the ground. I heard it smack into my assailants again.
Two more attackers quickly retreated from this unexpected intervention. That gave me more room to manoeuvre. I hooked my fingers around another mask’s upper edge and pulled down hard. Plastered linen cracked in my hands, and the man tore himself free before I could smash his face into my rising knee.
Somebody’s agonised yell followed the thwack of another bone-cracking blow. That broke the nerve of the rest. Some fled for the main road. Others scarpered back down the alley where they’d been lurking.
One stumbled and went sprawling. As he recovered and raced after the rest, I saw he’d stepped on the fallen knife, losing his footing as the blade slid away under his foot. Wincing as I stooped, I retrieved the weapon. The next person to attack me tonight would end up gutted like a fish.
I had a whole new collection of bruises to add to my battering in the agora. Thankfully, as far as my cautious fingers could tell, the cut on my arm was only a shallow slice. The man with the knife had been too wary, afraid that he’d stab an ally. Of course, the wound could still fester and kill me or claim the limb. I needed to wash it clean with wine as soon as I could.
Kadous was leaning on the spear shaft, breathing hard. ‘You weren’t easy to find. It’s a good thing I heard you yelling.’
‘Thank all the gods above and below that you did,’ I said fervently. ‘I’d have been dead meat before anyone here got off their arses and sent for the Scythians.’
The Phrygian looked at the silent, shuttered houses. ‘Shall we go before someone gets up the nerve to come and see who’s left alive?’
‘Good idea.’ Before the festival, I was just another face in a crowd. Now anyone who’d been in the theatre had heard my name, my father’s name and my voting affiliation. If someone here recognised me, I didn’t want gossip blaming me for a disgraceful fracas disrupting their neighbourhood.
‘Who do you suppose they were?’ Kadous bent down to pick up a fallen mask.
Several of the attackers had discarded them. That was hardly a surprise. Being caught with such disguises if the Scythians turned up would make it pretty hard to deny their involvement.
‘Men who didn’t want to be recognised.’ I picked up two more masks. ‘Much good that’ll do them.’
‘Oh?’ Kadous heard the satisfaction in my voice.
Once we reached the main road, a few houses had lanterns outside their gates to guide revellers home. I paused beneath one and examined the knife. I hadn’t been mistaken.
‘This is Tur’s knife. He lost it in the agora riot. I need to let Aristarchos know.’ That was only one of the things I had to tell him.
‘Can’t it wait till morning?’ Kadous looked pointedly at me. ‘You should let Zosime know you’re not lying murdered in some alley.’
I winced, and not just from my bruises. ‘Was she very cross, when I left her at the theatre?’
Kadous shrugged. ‘She knows something important is amiss. What’ll make her furious is being left in the dark any longer than necessary.’
I looked up and down the road. There was no sign of the men I’d been following. Now that my blood was cooling, heading somewhere safe to nurse my injuries and get a good night’s sleep seemed a sensible notion.
Aristarchos couldn’t usefully do anything so late in the day, even if I went to his house at once. He could hardly send messengers out to make enquiries or slaves to knock on doors with spurious excuses in the dead of night.
I nodded at Kadous. ‘Let’s go home. Lend me that stick to lean on.’
Chapter Nineteen
I didn’t sleep well. Not because of any row with Zosime, she was too relieved to see me safely home to berate me. Not just because of my second beating in three days. It was realising what lay ahead of me this morning that had me staring at the ceiling in the dead of night. I’d rather face the labours of Heracles.
We sat in a subdued circle to eat our breakfast. Kadous was desperate to explain why he hadn’t reached my side any sooner. ‘Menkaure had a real struggle to find me.’
‘I’m not surprised,’ I assured him. ‘It really wasn’t your fault.’
I’d tell the Egyptian the same, when he woke up. For now, he was still asleep in the end room, staying the night after seeing Zosime home.
She was just as concerned that I knew the Phrygian hadn’t let me down. ‘My father gave Kadous a good description of those men you’d seen.’
‘I don’t doubt it.’ I squeezed her hand.
‘I asked everyone I met outside the theatre,’ the slave went on unhappily, ‘until I found some people who’d seen that group passing by.’
Unfortunately, once the men I was tailing had turned off the main road, the trail had gone cold.
Kadous’s face reflected his despair. ‘All I could do was search every side street for some sign that you’d been there.’ He tried to make a joke of it. ‘I couldn’t face telling Nymenios or Chairephanes that I’d come back without another of their brothers.’
I dutifully did my best to laugh. Zosime sat between us, stony-faced.
‘Then I heard the uproar.’ Kadous heaved a sigh.
‘At least the night was quiet enough for the noise to carry,’ I said, bracing.
He shook his head. ‘It took me far too much time to find a way to the fight.’
‘You got there. That’s all that matters.’ He’d have to get over this in his own good time. Meanwhile, I had to go and tell Aristarchos what I’d discovered and what I suspected. I really didn’t want to, but I couldn’t see that I had any other choice. I rose from my stool.
‘You’re not going into the city until I see how badly you’re hurt,’ Zosime said curtly. ‘And you’ll need to soak that rag off otherwise you’ll set your arm bleeding again.’
‘Of course.’ I’d rebuffed her concerns last night, binding up my wound with a scrap of cloth and saying it could wait until morning. ‘You were right, as always.’ I offered my apology as an olive branch. ‘I should have let you put a proper bandage on this.’
The cut on my arm stung evilly when I eased the makeshift dressing off. At least it was still reassuringly superficial in the daylight. Zosime sniffed as she cleaned off clotted blood with sour wine and coated the slice with hyssop lotion. I gritted my teeth and kept quiet as she used a strip of clean linen to bind it up again.
‘Stand up. Take off your
tunic.’
I did as she asked.
After she had anointed the worst of my bruises and grazes, she explored my ribs with carefully probing fingers. ‘Where does it hurt?’
‘Ow! There!’ I winced. ‘Never mind. I’ll be fine, soon enough.’
Zosime wasn’t going to be comforted. ‘A broken bone could have skewered your lung, leaving you to drown in your own blood.’
I tried to change the subject. ‘What happened in the theatre, after I left?’
She gave me a long, measuring look. I offered her a hopeful smile. She rolled her eyes, still exasperated, but at least she decided to answer.
‘Oloros had satyrs invade Pirithous’s wedding feast, rather than centaurs. Theseus reached for the closest weapons, which turned out to be bread rolls, to help the Lapiths drive off Silenos and his mob.’
‘It sounds a lot of fun.’ More fun than I’d had. Much more fun than I was going to have. But there was nothing to be gained by delaying my first unwelcome task.
‘I’m so sorry, my love, but I can’t come to the theatre today. There are things—’
‘I’ll go with my father.’ Zosime shrugged.
I wished I could tell if she genuinely understood that I was forced to let her down, or if she had just given up on me after yesterday. I forced another affectionate smile. ‘Thank you for being so understanding, sweetheart, and Kadous is going with you both.’
‘Master?’ He didn’t like that.
‘I cannot be distracted today by worrying about you left here on your own.’ He definitely wasn’t staying on watch, in case last night’s killers tried again.
‘Do what you must.’ Zosime gathered up her salves and bandages, leaving me to find a clean tunic and my sandals.
Menkaure came out into the porch, yawning. He nodded at me. ‘Good to see you in one piece.’