The Pericles Commission (10 page)

Pythax asked, “Could he have been going to see you?”

I thought about it, then shook my head. “I don’t think so. My father’s house isn’t in this direction if he was traveling from his own home.”

“So what do you reckon he was doing, little boy?”

I had a feeling I knew. He was heading in the right direction for Pericles’ house. I cursed silently. Brasidas must have found the man from Tanagra. And the man from Tanagra had found him.

“I couldn’t say, Pythax.”

“What I don’t like about this, little boy, is I tell you where to find Brasidas. You go straight there and threaten to kill him, and the next day he’s dead. It don’t look real good, does it?”

“That’s a lie! Who says I threatened him?” I demanded.

“He does.” Pythax pointed, and for the first time I noticed the son of Brasidas, standing apart, head bowed, with a guard beside him.

“He says his dad left before dawn, and didn’t say where he was going. When he failed to return to meet customers, the son went looking for him, and found him here. He called the guard.”

At mention of this, the son looked up, and his dark, angry eyes stared straight into mine.

“Murderer! Murderer!” He started toward me but the guard held him. Every eye present turned to me. I knew the crowd was waiting to see what I would do.

I stood my ground and said quietly, “The best I can say is I didn’t kill him, Pythax. Are you going to arrest me?”

“I can’t do that. It’s for the man’s relatives to charge you, if they think they can prove it.”

“The son?”

“He’s not of age. They say there’s a brother.”

“So I’m free to go.”

“All the way to Hades if you like.”

I made to go but Pythax called to me. “Hey!”

“Yes?”

“Watch your back, little boy.”

“I’ll do that.”

Several men stood in my way as I tried to leave, silent but plainly sympathetic to the boy now fatherless. I wasn’t willing to give them the satisfaction of turning away, so I pushed my way through. It was reckless, but I calculated that with the city guard watching, they wouldn’t make anything more of it. Luckily for me, they didn’t, but once around the corner I departed at a trot.

I didn’t stop moving until I reached my door, berating myself every step of the way. How could I have been so stupid as to let Brasidas go searching without me? The moment he reacted to the mention of a reward, I
knew
he had more than he’d told; why didn’t I force him to tell me? I shouldn’t have lost my temper. I should have assured him he could have all the reward. I should have waited outside and followed to see where he went. I should have done any number of things other than what I did do. For the first time, I wondered if I had the skills to do this, and contemplated failure.

A messenger boy was waiting for me in the anteroom.

“Are you Nicolaos, son of Sophroniscus?”

“Yes, that’s me, what do you want?”

“My mistress sends this.” He handed me a note, and disappeared. The note said, “Come to the house of Euterpe. News.” Now what could she want? Then I noticed the name at the bottom, and I worried.

I was back at the home of Euterpe once more, but this time I gave the house slave the name of her daughter Diotima. In any decent household I would have been thrown out for daring to ask after a maiden. In this highly unusual home, the slave raised his eyebrow and led me to the courtyard, where I was left standing. I gathered the public room I’d been taken to last time was reserved for Euterpe’s clients.

I admired the frescoes on the surrounding walls, which were predictable and rather interesting, while wondering whether Diotima would come with a chaperone, and if so who in this house could possibly be appropriate for the job. Euterpe as a chaperone would be like throwing oil on a fire.

Euterpe must have seen me through one of the upper-story windows, for she came gliding down the staircase wrapped in something tight.

“Have you come by your fortune then?” She smiled at me.

“Not yet, Euterpe. It’s only been a few days.” I said, backing away.

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 material 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…”