Death Ex Machina

by Gary Corby

  “Weird.”

  The man with the stick smiled but said nothing. He was young and quite good looking. I wondered what had made him move to Athens.

  AS WE LEFT the house, Diotima and I were approached by a man. He’d been waiting in the street.

  “Nicolaos! Nicolaos, I must speak to you.” His expression was grave.

  “Yes, Theophrastus, what is it?” I asked. For Theophrastus was a neighbor; he owned the house beside Diotima’s. I thought he was about to complain about the mice in the roof.

  “It’s these new tenants of yours.”

  “What’s wrong, Theophrastus? Are they making too much noise?”

  “No, they are very quiet, except when they make repairs, and they have apologized for that. They are much quieter than your previous tenants.”

  I was not surprised. The diplomats and wealthy merchants who had previously rented our house had held loud and frequent parties.

  “Do they cause trouble in the street?” I asked. “Do they steal things?”

  “By no means. They keep to themselves.”

  “Then I don’t understand the problem, Theophrastus.”

  “They’re metics,” he said. He glanced left and right, to make sure no one was listening.

  “Yes, I know,” I said. “But you just agreed they’re not causing trouble.”

  “They bring down the tone of the street,” Theophrastus said. “All the neighbors agree. Everyone says your other tenants were much better.”

  I blinked. “Let me see if I understand,” I said. “You would rather have neighbors who hold constant, loud parties, who urinate on your walls when they’re drunk, and who let their house fall into disrepair, but who are wealthy and from good families?”

  “Yes! Precisely! I knew you’d understand, Nicolaos,” he said in relief. “They’re not even Hellenes. They’re from Phrygia. I asked and they told me so. If you could tell them to leave—”

  “I’m afraid I can’t do that.”

  It was his turn to blink. “You can’t?”

  “I made an agreement with them.”

  “Agreements can be changed.”

  “There’s a contract,” I said. I made a mental note to make a contract with Petros as soon as possible. “The actors have kept their end of the bargain. More than kept it. You see, Theophrastus, it’s out of my hands.” I held up my hands so he could see they were empty.

  Theophrastus was taken aback. “This is very inconvenient, Nicolaos.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Does the contract allow you to evict them for bad behavior?”

  “Did we not just agree that they are well behaved?”

  Theophrastus rubbed his chin. “I’m sure I and a few of the other men in the street could testify to antisocial goings-on. If it came to court, that is. A jury would believe anything of non-Hellenes.”

  “I’m sorry, Theophrastus,” I repeated.

  “Think of the street’s reputation, Nicolaos.”

  “I shall give it every consideration, Theophrastus.”

  THE MOMENT WE were out of the street and out of earshot, I said, “Diotima, I have an idea.”

  “What?” she asked.

  I told her my thought. When I finished explaining she bit her lip and said, “Well, it’s easy enough to check.”

  “Yes, let’s go.”

  We found Euboulides and Pheidestratos, the guards who had failed their duty at the theater, outside the barracks of the Scythian Guard. They stood at attention in the middle of the combat training square, in the heat of day.

  Diotima and I walked up to them.

  “Good morning, sir, and you too, Lady Diotima,” they said in unison.

  “How long have you two been standing here?” I asked.

  “What day is it, sir?” Euboulides asked.

  “The ninth,” I said automatically. Then I realized it had been the ninth for three days in a row. I corrected myself.

  “Then we’ve been here three days, master.”

  “What, without moving?” I asked, incredulous.

  “Chief Pythax mentioned something about tearing the skin off of us while we were still alive if we moved, sir. On account of us failing our duty. He said it would learn us not to doze. We gotta stand here till he says we can go. The other guards brung us water.”

  “What if you have to piss?” I asked.

  “Look down, master,” Euboulides said.

  I did. I was standing in a wet spot. I took one step to the right.

  Now that they mentioned it, I could smell a certain aroma wafting from their presence. The two Scythians hadn’t washed in a couple of days. Their skin must have been unbearable in itchy sweat.

  To confirm it, Pheidestratos lifted his arm to scratch his armpit, and the smell increased.

  “I’ll speak to my father about this,” Diotima promised.

  Euboulides and Pheidestratos looked horrified. “Don’t do that, mistress. This is our just punishment for failing you.”

  I said, “I think you can earn forgiveness if you can answer a question.”

  “Sir?”

  “That drink the woman gave you … was it wine?”

  “No, master,” Euboulides said. “It was beer.”

  As I thought. I shot a triumphant look at Diotima. But that left another question.

  “How would two men of the lowest possible class know about an exotic drink like beer?”

  “Everybody knows about beer, sir,” Euboulides said. “There’s people who sell it for a small coin.”

  Pheidestratos added, “I heard tell that in Egypt, even the slaves get to drink beer.” He looked wistful.

  WE HEADED BACK toward home, but took a detour past the records warehouse, to see if Socrates had made any progress. The slave-guard out front nodded his acquaintance. I slipped him a drachma, purely because I thought he had the most boring job in Athens.

  I tapped on the door but didn’t open it. It was smelly in there. I called out, “Socrates? How are you doing?”

  A small voice replied through the door. “I’m doing all right, Nico. I haven’t found anything about Romanos yet. Nico? When can I come out—”

  “I’ll send more food,” I said firmly.

  Then as an afterthought, I opened the door a crack and poked my head in.

  Socrates had cleared a space around the door. He sat in the clear space with a scroll jar beside him, its contents spilled out onto the floor.

  Diotima followed me in. She wrinkled her nose and said, “Phew.”

  “What are you doing?” I asked Socrates, because he seemed to have spent all his time making space.

  “First I’m rearranging all the scroll jars by age,” Socrates said. “I pick up one at random, then bring it to this place near the door. I empty out the scrolls, clear away the dead mouse bodies … Nico, have you ever wondered why bodies mummify? While I was sitting here scraping away the dead mice I wondered about it. I was thinking—”

  “Try not to think so much, Socrates,” I said. “Go on about the records.”

  “Oh,” he said, crestfallen. “Well, it seems all the scrolls in the same jar are from the same year.”

  “That makes sense.”

  “So I only have to read one scroll to know which year it’s for.”

  “Good.”

  “It saves a lot of time,” Socrates said. “The only problem is, I don’t know the order of the years.”

  “Why wouldn’t you?” I asked, confused, then realized the answer to my own question. In Athens, every year is given the name of the Eponymous Archon who served at the time. This year was the Year of Habron. When I had begun my first case, three years ago, it had been the Year of Conon. Everyone knew who had served in what order, but of course a child wouldn’t.

  “How did you know which order the archons go?” I asked.

  “Oh, I go out on the street and ask passersby,” Socrates said.

  “Don’t they ask why you want to know?” Diotima said.

  “
Sure,” Socrates said. “I tell them.”

  Terrific. The way rumors spread in this city, that meant all of Athens knew I was searching for information about metics. So much for a discreet investigation.

  Socrates went on, “When I know what year a jar belongs to, I put it on the floor. The oldest on the left.” He stood up and pointed to a dismal pile against the left wall. “The newest on the right.” Socrates indicated a much larger collection against the right hand wall. “And all the other years in between, in order.”

  Socrates was only a fraction of the way into his task, but already from the number of jars in each pile left to right I could see how the influx of migrants had grown. It was more than a steady rise. If the size of the records was anything to go by, then each year there were almost twice as many migrants as the year before. No wonder the metics were becoming noticeable.

  I wondered if anyone else had worked this out. But of course they had. The Polemarch must know, for one.

  “It’s a funny thing though,” Socrates said. “None of the records are older than twenty-one years ago.”

  “That’s because the Persians sacked Athens during the wars,” I said. “They destroyed everything.”

  “Oh yeah,” he said. “Why didn’t I think of that?”

  Socrates hadn’t thought of it because he hadn’t lived through it. He’d always known Athens as a wealthy city. I was born a few months after the Persians were defeated—my childhood had been spent in streets where the entire city was being rebuilt, bit by bit.

  “Listen, Socrates,” I said, “I also want you to find everything you can about Petros and Maia. They arrived after Romanos, so their records will be in a different jar.”

  “Oh, I can tell you about them,” Socrates said.

  “You can?” I said amazed.

  “I saw their papers in passing,” Socrates said. “They’re somewhere over there …” He gestured vaguely to the right side. “I can’t remember which pile though.”

  “You didn’t keep hold of their records?” I said, annoyed.

  “You didn’t ask me until now, did you?” Socrates pointed out, not unreasonably.

  “Can you remember what it said?” I asked.

  “Of course,” he said confidently.

  “Good. Who is their citizen sponsor?”

  “He’s from the deme of Bate,” Socrates said. “Someone named Theokritos.”

  SCENE 32

  THE HIGH PRIEST

  I HAD TO GO to Sophocles next morning, to ask where I might find his friend Theokritos, the High Priest of Dionysos.

  Sophocles smiled and said, “Where do you think you’d find a priest of Dionysos? At a winery of course.”

  Theokritos’s estate lay to the north, along the route to Decelea, which meant that his land was as inland as you can get and still be in Attica.

  It took me most of the morning to walk there, and I knew I would spend most of the afternoon walking back home. Not for the first time I wished for a good horse, but alas, our family wasn’t rich enough to afford one. At least the road was a major route, wide enough that two carts could pass each other unhindered. It made travel faster.

  The estate of Theokritos, when I arrived, was a revelation. I had never imagined that any farm could be so immaculate, so well-ordered. The horos stones that marked the border of his land were painted fresh white, and every one bore the name Theokritos in clear letters, which was how I knew I’d come to the right place. The orchards were extensive. Some slave with a scythe had walked over all of it, cutting back long grasses and weeds. It gave the property a look as manicured as any wellborn lady.

  The grapevines stood at attention, like soldiers in their ranks. The arms of their vines were strung out to either side. The posture of the plants was so reminiscent of the standard army maneuver—the one in which every man holds out his arms to evenly space the lines—that I instantly thought of Theokritos’s grapevines as being like an army in phalanx. The plants were old and gnarled, grizzled veterans who’d seen one war too many.

  There were so many rows of plants that I couldn’t count them. Slaves walked back and forth along the rows. They stopped at each plant and poked their fingers in each one. I stopped one of the slaves and asked him what they were doing.

  “Inspecting the vines for pests, sir,” the man replied, as if it were obvious.

  Theokritos had set his slaves to personally grooming each one of the thousands of vines on his land. At the theater I had thought of Theokritos as a jovial fellow. On his home ground he appeared to be a nitpicking sort of man.

  I asked the slave where I might find his master. He pointed me to a large wooden shed in the distance.

  The shed held a vast array of amphorae. They were stacked up high along every wall and each was tightly plugged. I had no doubt they all held wine.

  Theokritos had his back to me when I entered. He was intently watching what was happening in the middle of the room, where there was a very wide vat. The vat held grapes, the tops of which I could see over the edge. A wooden device above the vat was lowering an enormous stone upon a flat, circular board. The board looked made to exactly fit the space into which it was being lowered. Men with long poles stood about the edge. Some of the partially crushed fruit tried to escape over the sides and they were scraping it back into the mix.

  The wooden slats around the sides bulged under the pressure.

  I recognized the vat and the machine. I had used a much smaller version on my own tiny farm.

  Theokritos turned to me as I walked in. He was puzzled for a moment, then said, “Greetings. You are Nicolaos, aren’t you? The agent.”

  “Yes.”

  “I remember your wife well. She did good work during the theater ceremony. Pity about that actor.”

  I said, “Yes. I’m sorry to bother you, Theokritos. I can see you’re busy. But I need to ask you some questions.” Then, because I was truly impressed, I added, “That’s a huge press.”

  Theokritos looked at me questioningly. “You know about wine making?” he asked. “You recognize a wine press. Are you a vintner?”

  I said, “No, but I make some olive oil.”

  I explained to Theokritos that I owned a small plot on which we grew olives and kept chickens. Each year I borrowed Pericles’s press to turn the olives into oil, which we sold in the agora. It was a very small business indeed. I ended with the words that I was fascinated by his winery.

  “These are the early pickings,” he said. “We always do a small pressing at the start of the harvest, to see how the fruit is coming along. I find the flavor of early pressed wine quite distinctive.”

  That vat was a small pressing?

  Theokritos spoke about how the press worked. He talked with all the animation of an enthusiast. Sophocles had told me that the High Priest of Dionysos was an expert vintner. He would get no arguments from me; I was convinced.

  When he was finished, Theokritos moved on to the rest of the operation. The High Priest of Dionysos took me by the arm and led me out to view his estates. I might have been an honored guest, not a troublesome agent.

  Theokritos took me to the highest point of his land, from which we could see all the rest. It was an impressive sight. He spoke knowledgeably about soil, sunlight, and rain. He enumerated the dangers of too much rain or too little. He discussed drainage and how to collect fruit, and of the overwhelming importance that the slaves not bruise it. He showed me the proper way to handle large loads of fruit.

  I paid close attention to the words of Theokritos. I thought to myself I would like to have a place like this one day.

  There was even a small temple. It stood upon the hill to which Theokritos had led me. I boggled at this. Theokritos was the only man I knew who kept a temple on his land. It didn’t look new either. I asked him about this.

  “My father was High Priest before me,” Theokritos explained. “He thought a temple to the god of wine would be perfect overlooking a fine vineyard. I find myself agreeing with him.”<
br />
  His enthusiasm for every aspect of wine making was infectious. I found myself imagining what it would be like to be a wine maker. But a man who can’t afford a horse definitely can’t afford a winery.

  By this time Theokritos had led me back into the shed, where he ordered a slave to break out a small amphora of one of each wine he kept stored. Theokritos had the slave pour a cup from each. He then practically ordered me to relax on one of his couches and to drink his wine, one cup after the next, to appreciate the different flavors.

  As we drank I said, “Theokritos, I must ask you some questions.”

  “Certainly.”

  “I understand that you are the patron of some metics,” I said.

  “Yes, I am,” he agreed readily enough.

  “How did that come about?” I asked.

  “From my association with the theater,” Theokritos said. “I am, as you know, devoted to Dionysos. Not only in wine, but in all his aspects. The theater is very dear to me. I’ve been a supporter ever since I assumed the position of High Priest.”

  “When was that?” I asked.

  “When I was a young man. I inherited the title at an early age, as I did these estates.”

  “I see.”

  “Some years ago, I was approached by one of the actors—Romanos, in fact, the one who died. He told me his family wanted to come to Athens. They would need a patron. He asked would I oblige.”

  “So you did,” I said.

  “I asked a lot of questions first! I needed to know that they were not wanted criminals, that they were people of good character, that I would not regret my generosity in becoming their patron.”

  “Of course.”

  “I also reserved the right to withdraw after I’d interviewed them. As it happened, they seemed fine people and I was happy to lend my support. I haven’t had cause to regret it. No one’s complained to me about the Phrygians.”

  “You’re on good terms with them then,” I said.

  “I haven’t spoken to them since,” Theokritos said.

  “You haven’t?”

  “There’s no reason why I should,” he said. “Sponsorship isn’t a sign of friendship, young man. It merely means that a responsible member of the community has checked out the applicants and found them worthy of a place in Athenian society.”