Death Ex Machina

by Gary Corby

  The High Priest poured the offending liquid into the dust.

  The man whose drink he’d destroyed stood up suddenly and punched the High Priest. Theokritos fell. The other vintners moved to defend their leader.

  The beer drinker’s friends stood up to defend their friend. They’d probably been drinking beer too.

  That was enough to start the riot.

  Fists flew. Strong men cursed. Women called for help and threw food.

  So far the fight was limited to the men about the High Priest. The problem with Athenians is, they’re always ready to lend a helping hand. The bystanders weren’t moving away from the trouble; they were moving toward it, to break it up or more likely to take sides, either for beer or for wine.

  There was plenty of that already. Even from my distance I could hear the debate as the punches flew.

  “Beer!”

  Whack.

  “Wine!”

  Thump.

  I jumped onto the plinth of a statue, the better to see what was going on. It was the statue of Hephaestus. I apologized to the god of artisans but didn’t let go of his arm. I didn’t know where my parents were. I could see Pythax on the other side. He had placed Euterpe on top of the table where they’d been sitting and now he was defending the position. Several other men had followed his example. Euterpe looked like a beleaguered heroine out of the ancient tales. I had a feeling she was enjoying every moment. Three rioters tried to overwhelm Pythax. Euterpe smashed a jug of beer down on the head of one of them. That evened the odds and Pythax disposed of the other two.

  This had to be stopped. Quelling riots was a job for the Scythian Guard. The problem was that Pythax was completely cut off in the dead center of the riot. Somehow he had to get out of there and take command.

  “What are your orders, sir?”

  It was a voice from below. I looked down to see the faces of the men of the Scythian Guard. A whole squad of them. They looked up at me expectantly.

  “Sir? Your orders?”

  Me? They were asking me for orders?

  Then it occurred to me that their chief was my father-in-law. In family-oriented Athens, where every business is a family business, that made me practically his lieutenant. The men had seen Pythax chew me out on more than one occasion for various faults, and probably sniggered behind my back. That didn’t make me lesser in their eyes, it made me a junior officer. The Scythians were always deferential to Diotima when she passed them in the street. Most of all, Pythax had given me his men in ones and twos for my own work. They knew me.

  “Sir? What are your orders?”

  The guard sounded worried. I knew him by name. Eusebius. We would nod to each other whenever I visited Pythax at the Scythian barracks.

  I had to say something.

  I’d never run a battle in my life. I had no idea what to do. I cast about, wondering what someone with experience would say.

  What about Pericles? He was a General. What orders would Pericles give in this situation?

  No, scrap that. I couldn’t even begin to imagine what Pericles would do.

  I felt the first stirrings of panic in my guts. Dear Gods, how did Pythax cope with this every day?

  Pythax! Yes, there was a man I could hope to emulate. What would Pythax do?

  I’d once seen Pythax quell a riot by hitting a troublemaker so hard he flew into a wall. But it was too late for that. The riot was well and truly underway. Besides, I couldn’t hit that hard.

  Had I ever seen Pythax deal with a mob?

  “The ropes!” I said. “Where are the ropes?”

  “At the barracks, sir.”

  “Bring them all! And wake up the other shift. I want every guardsman here.”

  Eusebius pointed to two men. They didn’t need more instructions. They took off up the Panathenaic Way as if Hades was on their tail.

  I breathed easier. I had once seen the Scythians deal with a mob by using long ropes strung out to make barriers. They had herded a rioting mob away from a trouble point and then got them into single file to deal with them one by one.

  “Here’s the plan,” I said. “We’ll use the ropes to pull rioters away from the center of the agora. We’ll pick them out in manageable groups by flinging the longest rope over their heads and pulling on both ends.”

  They looked dubious.

  “We don’t have enough rope for all that, sir,” Eusebius said.

  “Yes, I know. We’ll use the narrow streets that run off the major roads. We’ll use them like corridors,” I said. “To split the mob. The more we can separate them, the less they’ll fight. We’ll station men at the other ends. The rioters will have no choice but to keep moving along because we’ll be feeding more citizens in.”

  I felt proud of myself for already having thought of that. For once the narrow backstreets of Athens would turn out to be useful. I did a quick calculation. With three hundred men we could run two corridors side by side, with enough men left over to intervene if things got ugly.

  The men looked happier.

  “Like pushing sheep through a run,” Eusebius said.

  “Precisely.”

  “What if they argue, sir?”

  “Then knock the bastards out.”

  “Yes sir!” Eusebius said happily.

  That was a command any Scythian could understand. But I was betting there wouldn’t be many who argued. The people of Athens were too used to following the lawful commands of their guardian slaves, as long as we could calm the people down long enough to listen.

  The two runners returned with the rope plus every spare man who’d been off duty, more than a hundred men in double file. They quickly created a rope cordon that led away from the agora.

  “You need any help?”

  I turned. It was Akamas, the well-muscled stage crewman.

  “Stand there.” I pointed. “Hit anyone who tries to turn back to the agora.”

  “Can do,” Akamas said.

  The Scythian at the front flung the rope over the heads of the nearest people, then pulled them in toward the cordon. Those Scythians not involved in the cordon stood alongside, with their unstrung bows in hand. Several times an Athenian sought to break through the barrier or continued fighting. Every time two Scythians leapt to the trouble spot and dealt with it. As each group was pushed into the cordon the Scythians at the front flung the first rope again. It was like net fishing for people.

  Under the urging of the guard the crowd flowed away from the trouble, into the narrow side streets of the city, from whence they dispersed, most of them carrying as much food as they could from the free stalls.

  Eventually we came to the core of the troublemakers. Euboulides and Pheidestratos, the two guards who had fallen asleep at the theater, were stationed alongside the cordon.

  “You two! Do you want to redeem yourselves?”

  They both stood at attention. “Yes, sir!”

  “Then come with me.”

  I left the Scythians to their work. The remainder of the crowd were the serious rioters. I ignored them and instead jumped onto the long benches. I ran along these with Euboulides and Pheidestratos at my heels. Euterpe and the other women had taken refuge on the heights. I knocked one matron over into a fish pie in my haste, but didn’t stop to apologize.

  The route brought us to where the vintners of Athens were brawling with the Phrygians and the dedicated beer drinkers.

  The two Scythians and I reached them only moments after Pythax got there. Between the four of us, we made short work of anyone who still felt like fighting.

  When it was over, I said to the man who stood defiant amongst the vintners, “Theokritos, High Priest of Dionysos, I charge you with crimes against Athens.”

  Theokritos raised an eyebrow above a black eye. “For inciting a riot?” he asked.

  “No. For murder.”

  SCENE 37

  THE FALSE TRIAL

  “YOU HAD BETTER have a good reason for this,” said the Eponymous Archon.

 
; “I do, sir,” I said.

  We were assembled once more in the courtyard of Pericles, everyone who had been there for the first meeting, plus Diotima, and Petros and Maia of the Phrygians.

  The Eponymous Archon crossed his arms and stared at me in obvious anger. “You do realize, don’t you, that Theokritos is one of the most respected men in Athens? This charge is grotesque.”

  I said, “I promise you that Theokritos is responsible for the death of Romanos.”

  I turned to face the assembled personages, none of whom were smiling. Though this wasn’t a trial, it felt very much like one to me. I was all too aware that I had to defend my position here, or I might be the one who ended up facing the jurors.

  I said, “Let me explain. The problem all along was to decide which of the three versions of Romanos was the victim. Was it Romanos the professional actor, or Romanos the metic with an extended family in Athens? Then there was the character Romanos played, Thanatos, the god of death.”

  I paused to let them consider that, then added, “Initially it seemed the last option was best, that the killer had been out to murder Death.”

  The Eponymous Archon snorted derision at that.

  I said, “Yes sir, yet ridiculous as it sounds, Romanos died dressed as Thanatos, in a manner identical to the entrance of Thanatos in the play. We kept our eye out for someone so disconnected from reality that he thought killing fictional characters was a sane way to behave.”

  “Was there such a man?” Pericles asked.

  “There was one suspect who might fit the description,” I said. “A fanatical theater fan. But he proved innocent. The evidence he gave corresponded exactly with what we’d deduced not long before we met him: that Romanos must have been killed by more than one man.”

  I explained the logic that one man alone could not have used the machine, that it must have been a group. I didn’t mention that it was Socrates who had deduced it.

  I added, “One insane killer was believable, but no one could credit a whole group of them.”

  Everyone nodded in agreement. Athens had its fair share of crazy people, but that would be stretching it even for us.

  “This took us back to the first motive,” I said. “That Romanos had been killed because of his work as an actor. Here we had more luck. We discovered that Romanos the actor was prepared to do anything to claw his way to the top of his profession. Romanos was blackmailing Lakon.”

  “Here now!” Lakon objected. “Surely we don’t need to go into that.”

  “But I’m intrigued,” said the Basileus. He was obviously a gossip. “What did Romanos have against Lakon?”

  Lakon looked into my eyes, imploringly.

  “It was a … er … personal peccadillo,” I said. “One that might reflect on the first actor’s popularity with theatergoers.” It was technically true, while at the same time being a complete lie. Yet Lakon didn’t deserve to have his life destroyed.

  Every man in the room contemplated Lakon with varying expressions of interest and intrigue. I could almost see the speculation running riot in their heads.

  To quell it I said, “Gentlemen, we all have one or two little peccadilloes in our past, do we not? Ones that we’d rather our friends and acquaintances didn’t know about?”

  Every man present older than thirty nodded.

  I said, “Imagine how much harder such things must be for an actor, who relies on his good name for work.”

  “Then it should be Lakon who murdered Romanos,” Sophocles said.

  Lakon turned bright red with anger.

  “This is a lie!” he shouted.

  I shook my head.

  “Your idea is very natural, Sophocles,” I said. “But there’s an objection to Lakon killing Romanos: why would he choose the moment that did himself the greatest possible harm? Lakon would have been better off waiting until after the Dionysia was over. Lakon himself pointed this out, and he was right.”

  “Sometimes men act too soon,” Aeschylus said. “Or they act against their own interests. We all know the old saying, whom the Gods would destroy, they first cloud their minds and muddy their senses, so that their mistakes betray them.”

  I said, “Aeschylus is correct that Lakon might have decided to murder Romanos. But we know that he didn’t, because of the evidence of the theater fan, the rather intense fellow I mentioned before. I can produce him for court. He was there that night. He saw a group kill Romanos, not a single actor. What group could that possibly be?”

  There were expressions of bewilderment among my audience.

  I said, “That brings us to the final version of Romanos: the private man. The most obvious candidate for a group of killers was the family of Romanos: the Phrygians.”

  Everyone turned to stare at Petros and Maia, who stood side by side in a corner of the courtyard. They glanced at each other in open-mouthed surprise, then they said as one, “That’s not true!” Maia added, “I loved my brother.”

  I ignored that and said to the assembly, “The Phrygians would certainly be convenient. Metics never get a fair trial, do they?”

  “But what of a motive?” asked the Polemarch, whose job was to manage the affairs of metics. He was also a fair-minded man.

  “The Phrygians are followers of Sabazios, who is a rival god to Dionysos,” I told them. “Maia and Petros and the other Phrygians had long been planning to hijack the Dionysia to promote their own faith … and their own drink.” I paused, then added, “We all know what that led to.”

  There were growls of unhappiness from around the room, particularly from Pericles, whose party it was that had been destroyed.

  I said, “Of course Romanos must have known of his family’s plan to spread the word of Sabazios by distributing beer. But the same grasping ambition that caused him to blackmail Lakon then surfaced against his own sister. Romanos decided to make beer and sell it, like we do wine.”

  “What’s this?” Petros and Maia exclaimed.

  I had no choice but to tell Maia of her brother’s plan to turn beer into a money-making venture. She didn’t believe me until I produced his notes, and told her of the hideaway he kept secret. I finished by saying, as gently as I could, “No doubt he did it to promote his own interests to become a citizen.”

  Maia was visibly shaken.

  “Then the case is simple,” said the Eponymous Archon. “The Phrygians, having learned that one of their number was set to betray them, killed the man before he could do so. Nothing could be simpler.” The city’s highest official spoke with obvious relief. “Any jury would convict them on that evidence.”

  “Yes, sir, but the jury would be wrong,” I said. “The Phrygians had no idea what Romanos was planning. You need only look at Maia and Petros here to see how surprised and devastated they are by this news.”

  “That’s not evidence,” the archon scoffed. “They could be acting.”

  “They could be,” I agreed. “But it’s definitely evidence that the Phrygians invited my wife and me to attend their … er … religious observances.”

  “So they’re a religious people,” said the Basileus.

  “You could say that, sir,” I said with feeling. “The point is they made no attempt to hide their beer. If you had killed a man for such a reason, you would hide your motive, would you not? The fact that they went ahead and gave away the beer at the festival shows that they didn’t think they had anything to hide.”

  “Who else, then?” the Basileus challenged.

  I said, “Theokritos the High Priest of Dionysos is a popular man. The workers at his vineyards would do anything for him.”

  I paused, then added. “Theokritos also leads the association of vintners.”

  “Surely you are not about to accuse all of our winemakers!” the Eponymous Archon said.

  Athens would still need her winemakers after this was over. I said, “I merely point out the economic motive, sir. Theokritos himself was moved by his religious devotion. Anyone who’s spoken to him can tell you he
is devoted to Dionysos.”

  “That’s fairly normal for a high priest, don’t you think?” the Eponymous Archon said sarcastically.

  “Yes, sir. But the point is Theokritos had a ready-made group of followers, if he chose to use it.” I quickly drew breath before he could argue again and carried on. “Then there is Thodis, the choregos, who also has a group: the friends who advised him to get into the theatrical business.”

  Thodis scowled angrily but remained silent. No doubt he would speak after he’d taken advice from his friends.

  “What of Lakon?” Aeschylus asked.

  I said, “Lakon might have been able to persuade his fellow actors to join him in revenge on Romanos, particularly if they knew it had been Romanos who was sabotaging them. The family of Phellis might happily have joined in.”

  That completed the list of possible murderous conspiracies. Everybody whom I’d mentioned was glaring at me.

  “Which of these groups, then?” I asked. “Or more to the point, which of their leaders? Theokritos, Thodis, Petros, or Lakon?

  “None of them make any sense,” Sophocles said. “You forget, Nicolaos, that my play was sabotaged right from the start. Thodis would not wish to destroy the play; he paid for it! Lakon would not damage his biggest role. The High Priest of Dionysos would sooner die than harm the Great Dionysia, and I dare say the metics desperately needed the income Romanos brought in.”

  “Yes, that confused me too, sir,” I said. “But there was another possibility: Romanos himself. Romanos yearned above all else to become a citizen of Athens. We know this because he said so, to Diotima and me, under a rain-soaked stoa. He questioned Diotima closely as to how her father Pythax had achieved his citizenship.”

  “Through his vast merit,” Aeschylus said. “I know Pythax and I would be proud to stand beside him in the line as a fellow citizen.”

  “I said the same thing,” I said ruefully. “I didn’t know then that Romanos had already reached the same conclusion. How many men are gifted with an opportunity to display their talents in the way that makes a whole city admire them? It’s not a question of merit, it’s a question of a crisis occurring that brings you to the fore, or being in the right place at the right time.”