Nubia stretched out a trembling hand and took the piece of green silk cord.
‘Eureka!’ Flavia snatched it from Nubia and gripped it so hard that her knuckles turned white. ‘We’re still on his trail!’ She closed her eyes. ‘Dear Castor and Pollux,’ she prayed, ‘help us catch Aristo and bring him to justice. If you do, I vow to erect an altar to you in Ostia. This is my pledge.’ She reached around her neck and pulled off a bronze good luck charm that her old nursemaid Alma had given her the month before. Carefully she placed the pendant in the shrine among the other offerings.
Then, drawing back her arm, she threw the piece of curtain cord far out into space. Nubia watched it describe a high arc before it fell down and down, onto the jagged rocks far below.
‘Why do you think Aristo is leaving his green cord in the shrine where anybody could see it?’ asked Nubia, as the mules began their winding descent. The road had widened and they were riding in the carruca again.
‘No idea,’ said Jonathan, and Lupus shrugged.
‘Megara,’ said Atticus.
‘Yes?’ said Nikos, with a look of alarm.
‘That’s Megara over there,’ said Atticus. ‘The town in the middle of that plain.’
‘Oh,’ said Nikos. ‘Of course.’ He was trembling again, pulling his cloak around him.
‘Maybe Aristo wants to give thanks for his escape,’ said Nubia. ‘So he leaves green rope in the shrine.’
Lupus nodded his agreement.
‘Or maybe,’ said Jonathan, ‘it was a kind of thanks offering to the gods for setting him free.’
‘The gods aren’t on his side,’ growled Flavia. ‘They’re on ours.’
‘Those twin citadels rising behind the town walls are sometimes called the Breasts of Megara,’ remarked Atticus.
Lupus guffawed.
‘Maybe,’ said Nubia, ‘Aristo wants us to know where he goes.’
Lupus frowned at Nubia and silently mouthed the word, Why?
‘Of course!’ cried Nikos, pointing at Lupus. ‘You’re the boy with no tongue! Aristo often talked about you.’
‘Good gods!’ cried Jonathan. ‘Did you sit begging under his bedroom window?’
Nikos flushed. ‘Actually,’ he said after a moment, ‘actually, yes. I did sit by their house sometimes.’
‘And you heard Aristo talking about us?’ said Flavia.
‘Yes,’ said Nikos. ‘I mean . . . well, one time I heard him mention one of his pupils, a little Greek boy who’d seen his father murdered and then had his tongue cut out to stop him from talking. Isn’t that a terrible story?’
‘Yes, it’s terrible,’ said Jonathan, glancing at Lupus. ‘Did he ever talk about his other pupils?’ he added quickly.
‘Yes. There was a Jewish boy who signed up to be a gladiator – Oh! That must be you!’
Jonathan nodded.
‘And you must be his master’s daughter, bright and bossy.’
‘Bossy!’ growled Flavia. ‘I’ll boss him plenty when I get my hands on him!’
‘Did he mention me?’ asked Nubia.
‘What’s your name again?’
‘Nubia.’
Nikos gathered his blue cloak around his shoulders. ‘No,’ he said presently. ‘I can’t remember him ever mentioning an African girl or anyone named Nubia.’
‘Oh,’ said Nubia, and hung her head.
‘Here, Lupus,’ said Atticus, ‘you can take the reins now that the road’s levelling out.’
‘You’re in love with him!’ cried Nikos suddenly.
‘Of course I’m not,’ said Atticus, ruffling Lupus’s hair. ‘I just think he’s special. Last month on the ship during a storm there was a light glowing round his head and that means he’s favoured by the gods.’
They all stared at the grey-haired Greek.
‘I wasn’t talking to you,’ said Nikos. ‘I was talking to Nubia. You’re in love with Aristo, aren’t you?’
Nubia covered her face with her hands.
‘Of course she’s not!’ cried Flavia, putting a protective arm around her friend. ‘We saved your life and all you can do is call me bossy and accuse Nubia of loving a murderer.’
‘Sorry!’ said Nikos. He turned his head to look towards the twin mounds on which the town was built. ‘I’m just trying to help you catch the fugitive.’
‘Um . . . according to my guidebook,’ said Jonathan quickly, ‘there’s a famous well in Megara. It’s um . . . called the Fountain of Theagenes. They say the water of the nymphs flows into it. Its roof stands on a hundred columns made of soft white stone full of seashells.’
‘That’s true,’ said Atticus. ‘I’ve seen it.’
‘Flavia,’ said Jonathan, ‘back in Ostia, whenever your cook Alma wants to hear the latest news, she always goes to the public fountain, doesn’t she?’
Flavia nodded. ‘The fountain is where all the women go to gossip.’ Her grey eyes widened. ‘We could go there now!’ she said. ‘It’s almost noon and it probably won’t be very crowded, but still . . . someone might have seen Aristo. Atticus, do you remember where the fountain is?’
‘Of course,’ said Atticus with a chuckle. ‘It’s in the cleavage between the breasts of Megara.’
*
‘So this is the famous Fountain of Theagenes,’ said Flavia.
‘It resembles more a temple than fountain.’ Nubia tipped her head back to look at the lofty red-tiled roof. ‘Look!’ she said. ‘The women carry jars on their head like in my country.’
Lupus grunted and brought his nose close to one of the white columns.
‘It does have little shells in it,’ said Nikos. ‘Tiny sparkly shells.’
‘No, Tigris!’ cried Jonathan. ‘Not at the base of the column! Do it by a tree and then wait with Atticus by the carruca.’
Flavia led the way through the columns into a shady, cool space full of the echoing sound of running water and women’s chatter. Although it was noon, there were more than twenty women there. At both ends marble lions spouted water into long troughs, into which the women dipped their water jars.
As the women saw the strangers, they grew quiet and some of them covered their heads or faces with their mantles.
Flavia stepped forward and in a clear voice she recited the Greek phrase she had been practising: ‘Good day, women of Megara. We are looking for this man. Do you know him?’
Lupus stepped forward and held up the picture he had painted on the wax tablet. Then he slowly revolved, so they could all see the portrait.
A few women shyly moved forward and began to whisper excitedly to each other as they studied the image. Nikos leaned forward with interest, too, and when he saw the portrait he raised his eyebrows in surprise. Other women came up to look and once again the space beneath the roofed fountain was full of echoing chatter.
‘What are they saying?’ Flavia asked Lupus. ‘Do they recognise him?’
He nodded his head and two slender young women pushed forward.
‘My friend and I,’ said one of the women in Latin, ‘we see this man on the road to Athens at daybreak.’ The woman was pretty despite a strawberry-coloured birthmark on her cheek. ‘He frightens us because he has dried blood on his tunic.’
‘And because he is saying crazy things,’ said her brown-eyed friend.
‘He told you crazy things?’ asked Flavia.
‘Not to us. No. He is speaking with himself,’ said the girl with the birthmark.
The brown-eyed girl nodded vigorously. ‘He is saying in Greek, “Go away, leave me alone!” He is sometimes running and sometimes walking and sometimes looking behind him.’
The first girl interrupted. ‘He says they are after him and he keeps saying, “Forgive me! I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to do it!” and he brushes at his clothings as if flies are crawling on him.’
‘He keeps speaking of the Kindly Ones,’ said the brown-eyed girl. ‘He is crazy.’
‘But he is handsome,’ added her friend, and they began to giggle.
‘I saw him, too,’ said a quiet voice, ‘and I think my friends are mistaken.’
Flavia turned to see an older woman with eyes as black as her garments. Her face was lined but still beautiful.
The woman touched Aristo’s portrait with her forefinger. ‘I saw this man on the road to Athens. I was milking my goats in a field by the side of the road. He was striding down the road and his red mantle caught my eye. When he saw me looking at him, he stopped and asked me for a drink of goat’s milk. I gave him one. He looked tired and pale but he was very polite and quite sane. He said he could not pay me for the goat’s milk, but he asked the gods to reward me. He was certainly not crazy.’
‘When was this?’
‘An hour or two after dawn.’
‘Did he have blood on his tunic?’
‘I couldn’t tell. He wore a red cloak over it.’
Flavia turned to the two younger women. ‘But the man you saw definitely had a blood-stained tunic.’
The brown-eyed woman nodded. ‘My husband is a butcher. I know very well what dried blood looks like. It was a white tunic with dried blood here and here.’ She pointed to her chest and thighs. ‘We did not see that he was wearing a cloak.’
Flavia grasped Lupus’s wrist and made him hold up the tablet again. ‘You’re absolutely positive this is the man?’
All three of them nodded.
On the road from Megara to Eleusis they stopped to speak to a farmer in his vineyard, an imperial messenger on horseback and an oxcart transporting a large cube of Pentilic marble. The farmer identified the man in Lupus’s portrait as tired but polite when he asked for food. But the messenger and cart-driver had seen the man painted on Lupus’s tablet jogging and babbling to himself. ‘Ran straight for my oxen,’ the cart-driver had said. ‘Almost got himself trampled into the dust.’ None of the three remembered seeing a red cloak.
‘If only we could catch him before he gets to Eleusis,’ said Flavia, as the carruca rattled on through the bright morning. ‘This mystery seems to get more confusing every time we meet someone. First we hear that Aristo is mad and raving, the next he’s politely asking for food. It’s almost as if there were two Aristos.’
‘Now what?’ said Jonathan. He stood at a fork in the road with his hands on his hips looking up at an inscribed column of marble. The red-painted letters in the white marble milestone told him that the road on the right led to Eleusis and Athens, while the road on the left would take them to Thebes and Delphi. Tigris was sniffing among the wildflower-dotted grasses by the side of the Athens Road.
‘Which way do we go?’ said Jonathan. ‘Athens or Thebes?’ He absently kicked a pile of cinnamon-coloured feathers at the side of the road, where some animal had caught a turtle-dove.
‘I don’t know,’ said Flavia, staring around in frustration. ‘I don’t understand why we haven’t caught him by now.’
‘Maybe he got a lift or stole a horse,’ said Jonathan.
‘Unless he heard our carriage coming and hid in the bushes,’ said Flavia. ‘Which means he knows we’re after him.’
‘Where do you think he was headed, Miss Flavia?’ asked Atticus. ‘Any idea?’
‘I thought you said he was going to Athens,’ said Nikos.
‘No,’ said Flavia. ‘We said he’d been seen on the Athens Road. That doesn’t necessarily mean he’s going there, though he probably is,’ she added.
‘Why?’ said Jonathan. ‘Why would he go to Athens?’
‘To get a fast ship away from Greece?’ said Flavia.
‘There are far more ships sailing from Cenchrea and Lechaeum,’ said Atticus. ‘You Romans always forget that Athens is just a small academic town these days. Corinth is much bigger and richer, and it has ten times as much sea traffic.’
‘I suppose there’s no reason for him to go to Thebes or Delphi,’ said Jonathan, looking at the milestone.
‘Wait!’ cried Flavia. ‘Yes, there is! Of course! Why didn’t I think of it sooner?’
‘What?’ they all cried.
‘Remember the women at the fountain in Megara? One of them said he was ranting about the Kindly Ones?’
‘Does that mean something?’ said Jonathan. ‘It sounded like gibberish to me.’
‘The Kindly Ones. How do you say that in Greek, Atticus?’
But Nikos answered first. ‘Eumenides,’ he said.
Atticus nodded and said in a harsh whisper, ‘The Ones Who Must Not Be Named!’ He spat and made the sign against evil.
‘What?’ said Jonathan. ‘What are you all babbling about?’
‘Orestes,’ said Flavia. ‘Remember the story of Orestes, the son of Agamemnon?’
‘Wasn’t he the one who killed his own mother?’ said Jonathan.
‘He kills his own mother?’ gasped Nubia.
‘Yes,’ said Atticus, ‘because she killed his father.’
‘That’s right,’ said Flavia. ‘Clytemnestra murdered her husband Agamemnon the night he returned from Troy.’
‘But Clytemnestra only killed Agamemnon because he killed their oldest daughter, Iphigenia,’ said Nikos. ‘Agamemnon sacrificed their daughter to bring favourable winds, so the fleet could sail to Troy.’
Nubia frowned. ‘So the father kills the daughter and then the mother kills the father for revenge and then the son kills the mother for more revenge?’
Flavia nodded. ‘Terrible, isn’t it? Poor Orestes didn’t even want to kill his mother but the god Apollo told him to do it.’
‘Although he did it at Apollo’s command,’ said Atticus, ‘the deed brought down the wrath of the Kindly Ones, who pursue the guilty.’
‘I still do not understand who these Kindly Ones are,’ said Nubia.
Flavia whispered something in her ear.
‘The Furies?’ said Nubia.
‘Shhh!’ they all cried. Flavia, Nikos and Atticus all made the sign against evil.
‘I told you,’ hissed Atticus, glancing around nervously, ‘they are the Ones Who Must Not Be Named! They’re terrible creatures who look like women but have snaky hair.’
‘Like Medusa,’ said Nubia, ‘who is making men stone with one look?’
‘Exactly,’ said Flavia, ‘only they don’t turn you to stone. They drive you slowly insane. They don’t just have snaky hair but they also have snakes coiling round their arms and slithering all over their bodies. They have red eyes and dripping fangs and black tongues and long sharp fingernails. They crack whips and carry torches because they always come in the night.’ She made the sign against evil.
‘I do not like people with snakes slithering over their bodies,’ said Nubia in a small voice.
‘But what do the . . . the Kindly Ones have to do with Thebes?’ asked Jonathan.
‘Not Thebes,’ said Flavia. ‘Delphi. They pursued Orestes after his crime, and no matter where he went he couldn’t escape them. Finally he journeyed to Delphi to seek sanctuary.’
‘What is seek sanctuary?’ asked Nubia.
‘If you commit a crime,’ said Flavia, ‘especially murder, and you go to a temple and cling to the god’s altar then nobody can harm you. You’re safe until the priests purify you.’
‘Why did Orestes go all the way to Delphi?’ asked Jonathan. ‘Weren’t there any altars where he lived?’
‘I think it’s because Delphi is where Apollo’s special sanctuary is located. So he went there to ask Apollo how he could be set free from the Kindly Ones.’
‘Did it work?’
‘I can’t remember exactly,’ said Flavia. ‘I was sick on pater’s tunic.’
They all stared at her.
‘He took me to see the play,’ she explained. ‘But I was only seven and I ate too many currants and when the Kindly Ones appeared on stage I was so terrified that I threw up in pater’s lap. So we had to leave the theatre and I don’t know what happened after that. That’s why I don’t like currants,’ she added. ‘Or raisins.’
‘So you think Aristo is being hounded by the Kindly Ones becaus
e of his guilt,’ said Jonathan, ‘and that he’s gone to Delphi to ask Apollo how to stop them tormenting him?’
Flavia nodded. ‘Just like Orestes.’
‘I think you are right,’ said Nubia quietly. ‘I think Aristo has gone to Delphi.’
‘You sound very certain,’ said Nikos.
‘It is not me who is certain,’ said Nubia, ‘but Tigris.’
She pointed to a pomegranate tree about twenty paces along the left-hand fork of the road. The big puppy’s nose was buried in the wildflowers at the base of its trunk, and his tail was a blur of excitement.
Lupus crouched beside Tigris and examined the grasses at the base of the pomegranate tree. After a few moments he stood up and shook his head.
‘No trace of anything?’ said Atticus. ‘Are you sure it’s Aristo he smells, and not a rabbit or a weasel?’
‘Tigris knows who we’re looking for,’ said Jonathan, and gazed thoughtfully back towards the main road where the carriage stood beneath some pine trees. The four mules dozed in the shade.
‘I think I can guess what happened,’ he said. ‘Aristo probably got a cart-driver to give him a lift, or hitched a ride on the back of one, but it was going to Athens rather than Delphi so he jumped off there at the crossroads. He started along this road and probably stopped to make water here.’
Lupus nodded. That made sense.
‘Let’s carry on, then,’ said Atticus. ‘We can’t be far behind him now.’
‘Good!’ said Flavia, and turned to Nikos. ‘Well, I guess we have to say goodbye here; you’ll want the road to Athens.’
Nikos stared at them with his long-lashed brown eyes.
‘Aren’t you going to Athens?’ asked Flavia. ‘You said the pickings might be better there.’
Nikos looked at the Athens Road, then back at them. ‘If you don’t mind,’ he said, ‘I . . . I’d like to come with you to Delphi. I’ve never seen it and you’ve all been so kind to me. I’ll help you find Aristo,’ he added quickly.
When Lupus saw that Flavia was about to agree he flashed her a quick warning frown.
‘Um . . . let me just say something to Lupus,’ said Flavia. She took Lupus a few steps further up the road. ‘What is it, Lupus?’ she said in a low voice. ‘Don’t you want Nikos to come with us? He speaks Greek and could be very useful. Also, he knows what Aristo looks like.’
The Roman Mysteries Complete Collection Page 134