by Gary Corby
“All too often. It’s amazing what unscrupulous merchants will do. I had a problem with Telemenes of Athens only last month. He claimed spoilage far above reasonable expectation on a cargo of grain he carried for me on one of his ships. I suspected him of faking the loss and selling my grain for himself. I took him to court.”
“Did you win your case?”
“As Thorion advised I would. He told me Telemenes’ reputation, even within Athens, is, shall we say, more a question than a statement. As you say, having a proxenos in the family helps.” Pollion pulled a face. “This is a disaster. My nephew Onteles isn’t old enough to assume the proxeny, it will go to another family.”
“Do you by any chance happen to know Brion, the proxenos for Athens?”
He looked at me oddly. “Brion trades here, a charming and very successful man of business.”
“Excellent! Where is he?”
“I have no idea, he hasn’t been seen for days, and that’s a funny thing. I owe him money, profit from a joint venture. Quite a substantial sum, too, and it’s not like Brion to miss out on money. He’s rather fond of it.”
“Isn’t his wife worried?”
“He isn’t married.” Pollion chuckled. “Brion extends his charming nature to the women, who seem to find him attractive. Everyone loves Brion, if you get my drift.”
Pollion stood up. “I will write to my nephew at once. Thank you for bringing me this news.”
I stood too, looked out over the confused mass of men, and said, “I still don’t understand this trading. How can anyone follow what’s happening?”
“It’s simple enough. A man comes here with a cargo, which he stores in the warehouse behind the docks. Perhaps he has grain from his farm. He could make a handsome profit if he sold it in Kos, where the crops have failed, but he has no boat. Another man arrives. He has a boat but no cargo. They find each other in this agora and agree to a joint venture, sharing the profits and the risks.
“Or another man comes with money to invest, but no cargo or boat. He buys a cargo from a farmer who prefers to take the certainty of hard coins now for his produce, but fewer of them, incurring no risk himself. The farmer departs with his coins. The investor finds a captain to carry his venture, which he sells at higher than he bought.
“Or perhaps the investor has money to risk, but not enough to fill a hold. So he clubs together with his friends and they form a venture with many owners.
“Or perhaps the investor has no friends with money to risk. So he comes here to find men of a like mind, and they agree to invest together. They split the profits according to how much each contributes. Sometimes the captain is a partner, sometimes their employee.”
My head reeled. “You mean I could come here with a bit of money. I could join with men I’ve never met before, to buy something I didn’t make myself, to ship it on a boat I don’t own to a place I’ve never been, and the captain could sell the cargo and I’d make a profit?”
“Just so.”
“But that’s … that’s … immoral.” It wasn’t quite what I meant, but I couldn’t think of a better word for it.
“What do you find so objectionable?”
“Because I didn’t do anything to earn the money. I didn’t make anything, or move it, or sell it, but I made money.”
“On the contrary, you did do something. You and your fellow owners selected the cargo, and you selected the captain, and you probably chose the destination for your produce. Granted you performed no physical labor, but you did something much more valuable, for you are to consider, a cargo sent to the wrong place—grain to a city with a surplus, for example, or wine to Chios, or pottery to Athens—would be as wasteful as throwing your product into the sea. The work you have done as owner is to allocate resources to the places that need them most.”
“Because that’s where the most profit lies.”
“And the greatest need, or the profit would not be there.”
“Did I hear you correctly, a moment ago? You said that sending pottery to Athens would be a waste, like sending wine to Chios.”
Pollion laughed. “Athens is the largest producer of pottery in the civilized world. Athens exports pottery of every type by the boatload. No one in their right mind would ship pottery to Athens.”
“That’s funny, because Thorion imported pottery, from here—Ephesus—in fact.”
“You must be mistaken. He of all men would certainly know better.” He peered into the crowd. “Ah now, some trades are beginning. Observe the men in the middle. Each shouts what he has to offer. Those seeking approach and, if there is interest on both sides, they move to the edge to negotiate. Sometimes they agree, sometimes not. See? That man there returns to the center, he could not agree with his partners.”
“I suppose Brion used the warehouse you mentioned.”
“As does every man. A merchant rents space only when he requires it. The idea, after all, is for the goods to be on ships going elsewhere, and we already tithe the temple enough without having to pay those exorbitant storage fees.”
“The temple?”
“The Temple of Artemis owns the warehouse.”
* * *
I took a shortcut across the commercial agora to the warehouse. I wanted to see what Brion traded, and in particular if anything else was destined for Thorion. Diotima was far too competent to have missed so obvious a lead, but I knew more now than she had mere days ago and perhaps I could find something she hadn’t.
I entered through a rear door and wandered about, looking for the manager. The warehouse was a huge but flimsy looking structure, so wide it needed rough wooden pillars—tree logs that had been barely shaved—set at regular intervals to hold up the roof. It was hot. We were nearing the middle of summer, and there were practically no windows and only the large doors at the front and small ones at the back and side. The floor space had been divided into rectangles—you could see the scuffed and faded lines painted on the floor—and it was obvious each represented the space for a merchant, because each was piled with wildly different goods. To move around you had to squeeze between the gaps. There were boxes of tools in one spot, tents in another. Many held amphorae stacked in pyramids, some with olive oil, some with wine, some with preserved fruits. You could tell what was what by the smell and the puddles where amphorae had been dropped and cracked. I came across one rectangle with nothing but bronze ware, and another with giant pots, like the ones used to make garos fish sauce. How they were going to ship those I didn’t know.
I found the manager, a harried-looking man with a stack of wax tablets. He pointed me to the back corner where Brion had space.
In the far corner I found a man in rough clothing with ragged hair and an instantly suspicious expression.
“What do you want?” he demanded at once.
“I’m looking for Brion,” I said, peering over his shoulder. Brion’s goods had been covered by a wide cloth sheet that had the look of a ship’s sail. Whatever Brion had here, he wanted hidden. “Where is he?”
“Got no idea. If I did I wouldn’t tell you.”
“For a slave you’re very good at being rude.”
“I ain’t his slave,” the man said.
Of course, the obvious answer: “You’re a hired guard.”
He nodded.
“Not exactly a prestigious job, is it?” I taunted him. Mercenaries consider sentry duty one short step above begging. Or mugging.
“What I’m doing’s my business, ain’t it?” he said.
“If you haven’t seen him for days how are you getting paid? I would have thought you’d be gone by now.” Mercenaries are not noted for extending credit.
“That’s my business too.”
He might have been a man down on his luck, but I didn’t think so from his attitude.
“So you stand here all day and all night. Must get boring.”
“It’s a day job. They got night watchmen for the warehouse.”
“What’s underneath the s
heet?”
“If you gotta ask, you don’t need to know. So push off.” He gave me a small push, daring me to make something of it.
“All right! All right!” There was no point in staying, and causing trouble wouldn’t take me any further. “Tell Brion that Nicolaos has a message for him, from Thorion.”
“Thorion. Right.”
I walked toward the back door, which was close by, but at the last moment turned to hide behind some tapestries that hung from the ceiling almost to the ground, down the back wall.
I parted the heavy materials to find someone already there. A woman.
“Diotima?”
“Don’t just stand there or someone will see!” She grabbed my tunic and pulled me in.
I let the layers of thick material fall together behind me and whispered, “What are you doing here?”
She whispered back, “The same thing you are, of course. When you told me Brion shipped ceramics to Thorion, I knew I had to get a closer look at his goods. I checked this warehouse two days ago, but then I only thought to ask after Brion. It was the same guard who’s standing there now, and he was as rude to me as he was to you.”
“I need more room. Move over.”
She wriggled over. We both peered around the edge of the tapestry at Brion’s corner, where the guard paced back and forth and looked bored.
The tapestry we hid behind was dusty. I’d brushed against it when I pushed in, and a gray cloud had erupted. Didn’t they ever clean this place? The front of my exomis was smeared with the stuff and I wanted to sneeze. I turned my head to the side. Diotima stood so close that her hair was directly below my nose. The perfume of her dark hair soothed the urge to sneeze. She always did smell nice. She in turn grabbed the material of my exomis and jammed her face into it to escape the dust. Through the material I could feel the warmth of her breath on my chest. It was oddly pleasant. Then she gave a little sneeze, fortunately muffled.
When the dust had settled she let go and we stood slightly apart.
I said, “The guard can’t keep up that pacing forever. Sooner or later he’ll get hungry, or need a toilet.”
Even as I said it, the guard stopped pacing, walked over to the covering sheet, and reached under. He pulled a low krater out from underneath, lifted his exomis, and proceeded to urinate into it.
Diotima said, “So much for that theory.”
The guard took a swig from a leather water pouch and resumed his pacing.
I said, “There’s still hunger. Or nightfall. He told me night watchmen take over. They’d be easier to elude.”
“With a light on? We’d need a torch to see anything. We’d be spotted in an instant.”
“Good point.” It would have to be daylight. “You can lure him away with your feminine wiles.”
“I don’t have any.”
“Yes, you do,” I said with feeling. Diotima looked up at me, and her eyes were large and dark and round and I wanted to kiss her, but I couldn’t; she wasn’t mine to be kissed. In my confusion I said to her what worried me most, “You didn’t tell me Brion isn’t married.”
“Let me rephrase that, my wiles aren’t available for commercial purposes, and what’s Brion’s marital status to do with you?”
I said, “I’ll wait forever if I have to.”
“To marry Brion?”
“For the guard to move.”
We waited, and waited. And waited. We sweltered in the hot air, made worse from being covered front and back by the heavy material of the tapestries. We took turns peering out, hoping the wretch would get hungry, or bored, or die.
He did none of those things. He paced back and forth, and when he got tired, he sat on a stool.
As we waited I whispered, “Diotima?”
“Yes?”
“Why did you leave Athens?”
For a moment I thought she wouldn’t answer, but then she whispered back, “After the disaster with you I realized no father would let his son marry me. I thought if I got far enough away, it wouldn’t matter.”
“So you do want to marry.”
“Do I get a choice? Women aren’t permitted to own property. It’s marry or join my mother as a prostitute.”
“I thought that was why you became a priestess.”
She didn’t reply except to say, “Has the guard moved?”
We both peered around the corner. The guard had his back to us but he wasn’t moving. We pulled back.
A question had been burning in my mind. “Diotima, if he doesn’t have a wife, who hired you to find Brion?”
She blushed. “No one hired me. I said right at the start, this is my own investigation. Brion is a friend.”
“A friend?” I didn’t like the sound of that.
“I wrote to him as proxenos to help arrange my move to Ephesus. After I arrived, he asked for me by name whenever he came to the temple. At first, he was the only one who was nice to me, and now he’s missing. I won’t stop until I find him.”
Diotima had woven a one-woman path of destruction through Athens in her determination to find her own father’s killer. I contemplated what would happen if she were left to find Brion on her own. Ephesus might never be the same again; I’d hate to see the place in ruins.
“What was Brion doing at the Artemision?”
“Reading the book.”
“What book?”
“I’ll show you when we get to the temple.”
I said, “Listen Diotima, nothing happened between me and the slave girl. I swear by Artemis, by Zeus, and Athena.” I put as much force into my whisper as I could.
She replied with as much contempt, “Oh, sure. I suppose next you’ll tell me you went into that brothel by mistake.”
“As it happens—”
Footsteps. A man walked from the front of the warehouse. We both fell silent and stood still, and I thought thin thoughts so the bump wouldn’t show in the material. Our faces were turned sideways so we could breathe, staring at each other in midargument but unable to speak.
Whoever he was, the footsteps passed by.
Diotima whispered, “When I saw you standing in the road, I thought you’d come to take me home. I was so happy, for that moment. I thought—”
She cut herself off, and her voice hardened. “Then I saw you were outside the brothel, with that girl.”
I whispered back, “Do you want to know why I ran in there? Because I was scared. Of you. There you were walking down the road, and I had no idea what I’d to say to you.”
The man returned and stopped right in front of us. If he bent down, he’d see our feet. Instead, after some loud heartbeats, he walked on.
“My feet hurt,” Diotima complained.
“Why don’t you go back to the temple? I can handle this.”
“And leave you to get all the information? I’ll see my feet fall off first.”
The sweat ran down her face and neither of us had water. I didn’t think she’d last much longer. Something had to be done.
“I have an idea.”
“You’ll lure him away with your manly wiles?”
“When he runs, go check the goods. You’ll be safe. Promise.”
“What do you mean, safe?”
I edged along the tapestries to the exit on the other side.
“Nico!” But I ignored her and slipped out.
I walked across the warehouse to the different stacks of amphorae, wandered along until I found the ones I wanted, then stopped and looked around. No one watched me. Apparently olive oil was too boring to guard. I pulled an amphora off the top and walked away with it balanced on my shoulder, whistling as if everything were normal.
I carried the oil over to the empty garos vat, unplugged the stopper of the amphora, and dropped it inside. While the oil poured I worked my way to the camping supplies. Sure enough, there were boxes of flints and tinder. I carried a box of flints back to the vat, and along the way snatched a handful of dry rags. Back at the vat, I dropped the rags into the oil to soak,
then draped the three longest over the side to act as wicks. The garos vat had been turned into a giant oil lamp. I used the flint fire starters to light the wicks.
The fire flared high. I screamed, “Fire! Fire!” and ran away, waving my arms. Anyone among the piles of goods would see only the bright flame, and smell the acrid, black smoke that began to fill the air. The conclusion was obvious: the high piles of flammable oil had caught alight. Other men took up the call of fire and ran for the exits in panic. They pushed me aside, knocking things over as they ran and adding to the confusion.
Diotima had the covers off by the time I returned to the corner.
She said, as she threw the sheet to the side, “He ran. Please tell me this is your trick.”
“It’s safe. Someone will soon put it out.”
Beneath the sheet was pottery. In the same style as the pieces I’d seen in Thorion’s office. Fired in browns and pastel reds and fauns, it looked nothing like the red and black of Athenian work.
Diotima said, “Brion set a guard over pottery?”
“Maybe it’s expensive.”
“Doesn’t look it to me. It looks old, and weird. Look, there are barely any figures in the decoration. It’s all patterns.”
The pieces ranged from small hydriai for storing water to large kraters. I bent to pick up a hydria, and stopped in surprise. “Zeus, this is heavy.” I yanked it up, but it was even heavier than I’d realized. The hydria slipped from my fingers and crashed to the floor. The stopper fell out and small coins tinkled across the floorboards in a stream. The jar was full of them. Diotima and I looked at each other in surprise. She snatched a handful of coins off the floor and put them in her pouch while I restoppered the rest.
“Are they all like this?”
We tried a few more.
“No, most of them are empty.”
“Nico.” Diotima took a step back from the largest piece, a krater with a lid, sitting in the very corner. She removed the lid and looked in. I joined her.
At the bottom of the krater was a jumble of human bones, and a skull staring up at us.
* * *
I said, “Do you think that was Brion?”
“No. The bones were too old.”
I nodded. In fact they were brown with age and jumbled together.