by Gary Corby
She laughed, and stepped closer. I was starting to feel distinctly uncomfortable, and absolutely determined Diotima would not see me with Euterpe as I’d been last time.
“How then can I serve the young man this time?” she breathed.
“Actually, with your permission of course, I would like to speak with Diotima,” I said. “About the murder of Ephialtes, that is.”
Euterpe’s face froze for a moment, then transformed into a mask of incredulity. “You’ve come to see my daughter?”
“Does that surprise you?” a voice within the rooms said. Diotima emerged, looking more smug than I thought good for either of our futures with her mother.
Euterpe composed herself and asked sweetly, “And what does Diotima have to do with Ephialtes’ death?”
“You don’t know?” I was surprised. I’d thought Diotima was acting on her mother’s instructions, and the fact that she wasn’t was very interesting.
“Know what?” Euterpe asked suspiciously, looking at Diotima.
“I’m investigating his murder,” Diotima announced.
Euterpe turned to me and accused, “You’ve dragged her into this. How dare you!”
Diotima was defiant. “I dragged myself into it long before this idiot came by to gawk at you.”
“Idiot, is he?”
“I’m judging by results.”
Euterpe looked at Diotima, then to me, and back to Diotima with a calculating look in her eye.
“Ah well, run along and play, children.” She swept out of the courtyard in an indignant cloud of expensive perfume.
“Come with me,” Diotima said shortly, and led me to a set of small rooms at the back of the house. Unlike everything else I had seen, these were practical and furnished in a simple style, with not a rampant satyr or orgasmic nymph to be seen. I deduced I had come to Diotima’s private rooms. She sat me opposite her on couches.
“We can’t be heard here. There are no spy holes or listening tubes,” she said as a matter of fact.
“You mean there are elsewhere?”
“In all the public rooms.”
I decided I was not going to inquire into that any more closely. “Why am I here?”
“I have information.”
“Good, tell me.”
“Oh no! First, what do I get in return?”
“You cannot be serious. Do you want the murderer of your father caught, or don’t you?”
“Are you going to tell me everything you know?”
“No.”
“Then you’d better have something to trade.”
“All right, we take turns, like last time.”
“Go ahead.”
“My mother taught me better than that. Ladies first.”
“ My mother taught me better than that. Don’t give a man anything until he’s paid.”
“Can’t we even start a conversation without arguing? Who went first last time?”
“I did.”
“I thought you might say that. But I remember the conversation quite well.”
She said in disgust, “Then why did you ask? Oh, very well then. You recall Stratonike is the name of Ephialtes’ wife?”
“Yes.”
“She’s insane.”
“You mean that, or is this a figure of speech?”
“She is a genuine cursed-by-the-Gods lunatic.”
I thought for a moment. “And that wailing I heard at the wake?”
“I imagine it was genuine, though she might not even be aware her husband is dead. I don’t know. She spends her days hiding in fear of her life, because she’s convinced Ephialtes is trying to kill her.”
“And he’s failed to do it in twenty or so years?”
“Yes, I know. But the bad part is, she’s been trying to kill him in deluded self-defense for years.”
Diotima slumped against the whitewashed wall. “I know now why he refused ever to speak of her. Poor Father. I discovered this from her nurses. They have to keep knives away from her, or she uses them to attack him as soon as he appears, and if she doesn’t have a knife, she throws pots.”
“Is she sane enough to arrange for his death some other way?” I thought to myself, an arrow is a sharp implement too.
Diotima shrugged. “I asked the nurses the same question. They said she does have periods of apparent lucidity when she can be surprisingly cunning, but they don’t recall her talking to anyone outside the home.”
I gave that some thought. “What about Achilles?”
“I don’t think he did it. He’s been dead since the Trojan War.”
“Not that one.” I told her of the slave and his heels. “You said Stratonike has seen no one outside the home, but he’s inside, and he might bear a terrible grudge. Stratonike might have used him as a middleman.”
“Could he have pulled the bow himself?”
“I doubt it, he looks weak. But he has the freedom to walk the city. He could have paid an assassin.”
“I will find out what I can about the slave Achilles. Now it’s your turn.”
I hadn’t expected Diotima to turn up anything with Ephialtes’ family. I wasn’t sure she had, at that, but what she’d told me was worth something. “I have a very important piece of information worth more than you’ve given me. You can have it in return for one more question answered.”
Diotima frowned and she spoke quickly. “Nicolaos, son of Sophroniscus, if you are not willing to share information with me, then why should I tell you anything?”
“I am sharing, a great deal. That’s why I want more in return. Priestess, believe me, you want to hear my questions. Unfortunately I think you’ll get more from this than me, but I need the answers.”
“Ask away then, but this had better be very good indeed, or I’ll tell you nothing else.”
“Tanagra.”
“That’s a noun. Even if you put a question mark at the end it still wouldn’t be a question.”
“Does the name mean nothing to you?”
“Tanagra is a city in Boeotia. Beyond that it means nothing. I’ve never been there.”
“Did Ephialtes meet anyone from Tanagra?”
“No.”
“Did he correspond with anyone there?”
“Not that I know of.”
“Has your mother had any visitors from Tanagra? Does she know anyone there?”
“How should I know? She could have slept with half their statesmen in her younger days. I don’t keep records.”
“You have earned one question.”
“I answered four.”
“If you ask me the right one I’ll give you much more than you gave me.”
Diotima thought carefully. “If this is a trick I’ll ask my Goddess to put a curse upon your hunt. Very well, why are you asking me about Tanagra?”
“Ephialtes was shot by a man from Tanagra.”
Diotima leaned forward, her brown eyes wide. “Tell me how you know this.”
In more detail than I had for Pericles, I repeated the story of the Scythian who wasn’t a Scythian and the bow in the barracks. “So I went straight to the bowyer, a man you won’t have heard of called Brasidas.”
“I certainly have. He made my bow.”
That stopped me in total amazement.
“Say that again?”
“He made my bow.” She paused. “Your mouth is hanging open like some dead fish. I realize there’s a close match in personality, but you really shouldn’t advertise it.”
“Show me your bow,” I ordered.
“Not until you tell me why.”
“I’ll tell you that after I’ve seen your bow.”
“Wait,” she said in a frosty tone. Diotima rummaged through a small storeroom next to the room we were in. She started pulling out things and leaving them in the corridor. Pretty soon there was enough junk piled up to fill a small house. I looked at the pile in some interest. There were several balls, a couple of old writing slates, children’s wooden toys, well used, a doll, a box of m
aterial of some sort, rolls of wool, countless scrolls.
“It seems to be missing.” She picked up two more boxes and suddenly stopped. “Oh, of course!” She dropped the boxes, which scattered more scrolls, and went to a cupboard where she removed two dresses to reveal a bow.
I inspected it closely, to give the impression I knew what I was doing. It certainly resembled the other bows I knew Brasidas had made.
I repeated the bowyer’s description, trying to sound as professional as possible. “Hunting weapon. Accurate over long distance but slow rate of fire. It should be hard to pull, how do you manage it?”
“Brasidas altered the material slightly so it isn’t so stiff. See here? The bow is thinner at the curve and the reinforcing is wider. But the length is the same as a man’s bow. I lose some power but it’s still accurate. I see you know something about weapons.”
“What’s a nice girl like you doing with a weapon like this?”
“I’m a priestess of Artemis, remember? What is the favorite weapon of the Goddess?”
The bow, of course. Artemis is always drawn hunting with a bow. “Can you use this thing?”
“Oh, I’m fairly good, but I’m out of practice,” she said, in the sort of tone which in a man would mean, “I can put out your eyeball at a hundred paces; you pick the eye.”
“Can all the priestesses do this? Why haven’t I heard of mobs of deadly women?”
She looked embarrassed. “The priestesses are all supposed to be the daughters of citizens. Ephialtes was my father, of course, but not of his wife, so I was excluded. I wanted to be a priestess more than anything else in the world. I begged him to help me. Father wouldn’t allow it at first, but in the end he relented. I think he was hoping I’d get it out of my system. He used his influence to have me appointed a trainee. The older women who run the temple were not entirely pleased because of who my mother is. They resented Ephialtes forcing me upon them. So I thought if I could do the things Artemis did then the older women would look on me more kindly. There’s a ceremony we hold once a year, when one of the women shoots an arrow at a deer. I was the chosen one last year. I hadn’t seen the ceremony before. So I learned how to shoot.”
“I’m beginning to see where this is going.” And I was beginning to understand this girl. Being Diotima, she turned herself into a crack shot, because perfection was her normal standard.
“Yes, how was I supposed to know they had a flimsy little toy in the temple for the initiates?”
“So you turned up with your marksman’s recurve bow with the reinforced horn…”
“The deer never knew what hit it. It was flung sideways and landed on the high priestess, who fell in the mud. Then they told me I wasn’t supposed to hurt the animal. Father had to buy them a new sacred deer. I was scrubbing the temple floors for months after that.”
We both laughed.
“Are you sure you want to be a priestess?”
“Absolutely. I’d rather die than become like Mother, and the life of a wife shut up at home and never allowed out doesn’t bear thinking of. Priestesses are the only women with even a hint of freedom to do as they wish.” She paused, then demanded, “So now you are going to tell me how Brasidas comes into this.”
“He sold the bow that killed your father to a man from Tanagra.”
Diotima jiggled in her seat in excitement. “Good! What else did you learn?”
“That’s it. Brasidas shut up when he thought he might get a big reward later. That’s why I have the word Tanagra and nothing else. And now he’s dead.”
It was her turn to look like a gasping fish. “Brasidas? He’s dead?”
“Couldn’t be deader.” I described the scene of this morning.
“But this is wonderful!”
“It is?”
“Don’t you see? If Ephialtes’ killer was here to silence Brasidas this morning, then he’s still in Athens.”
“You do look on the bright side, don’t you?” But here was a thought I hadn’t considered. “Why would a hired assassin stay in Athens after doing his work?”
I answered my own question. “Because he hasn’t been paid yet, or because he is so obvious he can’t safely be seen in public, or because he has more work to do.”
“You can forget about number two. Those slaves took no particular notice of him when they saw him walking to the Areopagus.”
“And whoever heard of not paying a successful assassin? They’re not the sort of people you want to annoy.”
Diotima and I looked at each other. “There’s going to be another murder,” we said in unison.
She asked, “Did Brasidas keep a list of all his customers?”
“I doubt it. Why would he bother?”
“Then we must search Athens looking for anyone from Tanagra.”
I laughed. “And how long do you think that would take? Besides, it isn’t possible.”
“So you’re going to sit there doing nothing, are you?”
“I’m certainly not going to run around wasting my energy on fruitless exercises. The killer is still lost.”
She covered her eyes and groaned. “What a disaster! Brasidas could have told us the name, or at least where to find him. You fool, Nicolaos, how could you let this happen?”
“What do you mean, let this happen? I didn’t kill him,” I sputtered.
She sighed. “It’s too late now. We’ll just have to mend the damage you’ve caused as best we can.”
I said heatedly, “I suppose you would have done better?”
Diotima nodded. “Almost certainly,” she said as a matter of fact. “You shouldn’t have put the idea in Brasidas’ head he could be in trouble for selling the bow. You should have put money down on the table right away. You should have waited outside to see if he went anywhere and followed him.”
This evaluation was so close to what I’d been saying to myself that I squirmed, but I had no wish to hear it from an inexperienced girl.
“It’s all very well thinking of these things in hindsight.”
“But you thought of none of them at the time. I expect then you were dreaming of the glory of catching the killer, and Pericles’ reward.”
I felt my face flush with embarrassment. I had been thinking of precisely that, but nothing was going to make me admit it. I said, feeling somewhat testy, “Why don’t you go walking the streets investigating if you can do it so much better?”
“I may have to at the pace you’re going.”
I was instantly horrified. “Don’t! I was only joking. What will you do if a mob attacks you?”
“I’m not an aristocrat.”
“You look as if you could be, and you’re a woman, and it’s getting lawless out there. A mob’s not going to stop and think until after they’ve raped you.”
“Who is going to attack a poor, modest, defenseless maiden, and a priestess at that?” She held up a small knife with a curved blade that looked sharp enough to split a hair. “We use this for sacrifices.”
Defenseless was the last word I would have used to describe Diotima.
I had been relating my adventures each night to my family over dinner. This wasn’t merely for entertainment. I was showing Sophroniscus that I had become my own man. So far I had skipped only a few items, such as the episode with Euterpe, Pericles’ offer of reward, and all mention of Diotima. If my family discovered I was talking to women in the street I’d have a marriage arranged for me before the month was out. Tonight, for the first time, I found most of the day required careful editing. I certainly could not speak of the argument between Xanthippus and Pericles, and I was too embarrassed to relate Pericles’ lambasting me with the bill of damages. But I was able to make a great tale of tracking down Brasidas and his dramatic death. Father looked troubled at this but did not say a word.
Sophroniscus was an unusual head of family; in most households the women and children eat in a room separate from the men, but he allowed my mother Phaenarete and Socrates to dine with us. She and Socrat
es sat at a low table in the middle of the floor while Sophroniscus and I reclined on couches. Socrates was plunging his fingers into the dishes as fast as the kitchen slave could bring them. He was sopping up the last of the lentils with the barley cake when the slave came in carrying a large plate of eels, which she deposited as far from him as possible. That didn’t stop Socrates from stuffing the last of the cake into his mouth and reaching for the eel, and Phaenarete was moved to tell him to slow down, and eat less, or people would think she’d raised a barbarian. Phaenarete was a small woman, fair, with brown hair that she tied back out of the way when she worked. She scooped out a good handful of eel into a bowl for Sophroniscus and then another bowl for me. Resting as we were on the couches, he and I could eat with only one hand.
As she handed me my bowl Phaenarete said, “Tell us about Pericles, Nicolaos, what’s he like?”
“Smart, assertive, charming, and persuasive. I like him, I think. Or it may be he wants me to like him because that suits his purposes, I’m not sure which. He looks like someone you’d want for a model, Father, except for his head. It’s strangely long.”
Phaenarete nodded. “Yes, it happens often in birth that a babe will be born with a head that is pointed. It flattens in a month or two. But sometimes-rarely-the head does not entirely flatten. The bones set as they are. And so the child grows with a head that is shaped like a cone.”
There may be a creature in this world more irritating than a younger brother; but if there is, I am not aware of it. Eight years lie between us, but this has never prevented him from giving me advice, nonstop since the day he learned to speak. Not even when his mouth is full.
“Nico, I’ve been thinking-” Eel juice dribbled down his chin.
“Try not to think too much, little brother. This is a matter for adults. What could you possibly say that would help?”
“How did the assassin know the barracks was empty?” he asked.
My jaw dropped. Phaenarete looked puzzled. Sophroniscus laughed heartily.
“The boy has a point. Your man with the bow must have known about the Scythian exercise. Who could have told him?”
Who indeed?
8
Diotima’s news that Stratonike was mad posed an interesting conundrum. Archestratus had said Ephialtes’ wife would be forced to marry Ephialtes’ nearest male relative. But who would marry a madwoman? Maybe someone else stood to inherit his property. I had to find out, and there was only one man who could tell me: the Eponymous Archon, the chief executive of Athens, in charge of all business relating to citizens, including the estates of orphans, widows, and heiresses.