The Marathon Conspiracy (2 page)

I held in my hands the private notes of the man who forced us to fight the Battle of Marathon.

There was only one problem, and I voiced it. “But all the stories say that Hippias died among the Persians, after they were defeated.”

“We may be revising that theory.”

“Then the skull is—”

Pericles held up the skull to face me. He waggled it like a puppet and said, “Say hello to Hippias, the Last Tyrant of Athens.”

“Are you sure about this, Pericles?” I asked.

We moved over to two dining couches Pericles kept in the room. He’d sent a slave for watered wine. Now we sat in the warm sunlight that streamed through the window overlooking the courtyard, sipped the wine, and discussed the strange case of a man who’d been dead for thirty years.

“I’m sure of none of it,” he said. “That’s why you’re here. I’m not the only one asking questions. The skull and case were sent in the first instance to the Basileus.”

The post of Basileus was one of the most important, his job to oversee all festivals, public ceremonies, and major temples. A priestess who wanted to bring something to the attention of the authorities would naturally go to him first.

Pericles continued, “The Basileus took it to his fellow archons who manage the affairs of Athens, and they in turn brought it to me.”

I nodded. “Yes, of course.”

It was a strange fact that Pericles, who wielded enormous influence, held no official position at all. The source of his power was that melodious voice, and his astonishing ability to speak in public. Men who would otherwise be considered perfectly rational had been known to listen to Pericles as if bewitched, and
then do whatever he said. In the
ecclesia
, where the Athenians met to decide what was to be done, Pericles needed only to make a mild suggestion, and every man present would vote for it. Conversely, if Pericles disapproved of someone’s proposal, it had no hope of passing a vote. It had reached the point that no one bothered to introduce legislation without first getting his backing. That a man with no official position wielded so much power had become a source of unease among many of the better families, as well as among the elected officials, who were intensely jealous of his easy command.

Pericles said, “It was agreed this had to be investigated, and incredible as it may seem, your name was mentioned. The recent events at Olympia have gone some way to repairing your reputation.”

I’d been unpopular with the archons for some time, ever since I’d accidentally destroyed the agora during my first investigation. One archon had even called me an evil spirit sent to harass Athens, which I thought somewhat cruel.

“Reputation matters,” Pericles said, echoing my own thoughts. “Your standing with the older men will be particularly important.”

I puzzled over that, then asked, “Why, Pericles?”

“Because they’re the only ones who can tell you anything about Hippias. The tyrant belonged to their generation. Not ours. So don’t do anything to annoy them, Nicolaos.”

“Of course.”

“In particular, show the greatest respect to those who fought at Marathon.” Pericles paused before going on. “You know that Hippias was at Marathon, on the Persian side?”

“Yes.”

“The Persians tried to reinstall Hippias as tyrant over us. The veterans stopped them. You must treat the veterans with care, Nicolaos. They’re old men now, and respected, and powerful. The veterans tell a story, that after the battle at Marathon, a signal was flashed to the enemy from behind our own lines. The
rumor of a traitor among us has persisted ever since. They say one of the great families of Athens secretly supported Hippias the tyrant.”

“Is it true?”

“How in Hades should I know? That’s your job. I tell you only because this discovery is sure to revive the rumors. We don’t need men finding reasons to accuse each other of treason. We especially don’t need it when the elections are due next month.”

No, we didn’t. The other cities closely watched our grand experiment with democracy. It was in everyone’s interest, not only Pericles’s, that the voting go smoothly and without trouble. If there was any problem at all during the elections, the other cities would say it was because our form of government was unnatural.

Pericles said, “When word gets out about this body—and it will!—everyone will demand answers.”

“Will they? This happened thirty years ago, Pericles. It’s ancient history. Nobody cares.”

“That’s what I thought too. But I was wrong. I’m afraid, Nicolaos, that I’ve made one of my rare blunders. I’ve sat on this skull and these scrolls for ten days and done nothing about them; I didn’t call you in because I thought, like you, that they didn’t matter. But somebody cares. Somebody cares a great deal.” Pericles shifted in his seat and looked distinctly uncomfortable. “I told you two girls found the skeleton.”

“Yes?”

“One of them’s been killed. They say the child was torn apart by some terrible force—”

“Dear Gods!”

“And the other girl’s missing.”

W
HY WOULD ANYONE
care about an old skeleton, let alone kill a child over it? It didn’t make sense.

I contemplated this as I made my way home. Pericles had
no more to tell me. He’d arranged for one of the priestesses—the one who’d walked from Brauron to Athens to report the disaster—to see me at my home that afternoon.

My family lived in the
deme
of Alopece, which lay just beyond the city wall to the southeast; Pericles lived in Cholargos, beyond the city wall to the northwest. I had to cross virtually all of Athens to make my way home.

I knew these city streets like most men knew their wives. I knew which of the dark, narrow, muddy paths between the houses were shortcuts—these I slipped down, sometimes forced to edge sideways where owners had extended their houses into the street. I knew which routes ended in the blank wall of a house where some builder had encroached a step too far. Most important of all, I knew which alleys afforded the deep, dark shadows, the ones where the cutpurses and the wall-piercers liked to ply their trade. Those streets were good places to avoid.

I knew these things because for a year now I had been an agent and investigator, the only one in Athens. It was a job that didn’t pay well. In fact, so far, it hadn’t paid at all—Pericles still owed me for my very first commission. Despite my occasional prompts, he’d never quite gotten around to delivering on his end of the bargain. That was Pericles all over. Though he was liberal with expenses when the crisis was upon us, Pericles was a different man when all was calm and the bill arrived. I’d managed to survive so far because my needs were few. I lived in my father’s house, as all young men do, and when I was on a job, I could extend the definition of “expenses” beyond its usual borders. Soon, though, I would have no choice but to corner Pericles and force him to cough up my fees, and for a very good reason: when the night of the full moon after next arrived, I would become a man of responsibilities. I would become a married man.

I entered the city proper through the Dipylon Gates in the northwest corner of the city walls, then walked down the Panathenaic Way, which is the city’s main thoroughfare. The road is paved,
which keeps down the dust, and is so wide that two full-sized carts can pass each other without touching. The Panathenaic Way runs like a diagonal slash through the city. I passed by the Stoa Basileus on my right, the building in which the Basileus who had first received the skull and the scrolls has his offices. Opposite it was the shrine of the crossroads, which confers good luck on all who pass through the busiest intersection in Athens. I hoped some of the luck might pass to me; I would probably need it.

The Panathenaic Way continued along the northern edge of the agora, then down the eastern side. I came to the temple of Hephaestion, which is surrounded by statues of heroes and gods, and then finally to the marketplace, the perfect opportunity to stop for a cup of wine, to sit in the shade of one of the stoas where men liked to congregate, and to watch the crowds as they haggled. I bought the cheapest vintage I could find and walked away with it in a clay cup. I sipped the wine and stood back to watch the chaos that is the agora of Athens.

Any man who wished to sell his wares that day had paid a permit fee to the state official who oversaw such things, then set up his stall. Each stall was a rickety affair, with a crate at each end and a plank across for a bench. The stalls had to be put up with a minimum of fuss at first light, and come down when it was too dark to trade any longer.

Many of the stalls were manned—if that’s the word—by women: the wives of the men who had rented them. The fishwives sold the catch, and swore loudly as they did. Their fish-smelling husbands had already worked a full day and now had to tend their boats and mend their nets back at the port at Piraeus before they could sleep. Likewise the farmers’ wives had walked into town with their husbands, in the dim dawn light, to sell the farm’s vegetables. The men erected stalls for their women to work from, and then returned to tend the farms. So too for the pottery and the bronze ware: the women of the family traded
while the potters potted. In Athens, every business was a family business. I reflected that this was true for me as well. My fiancée Diotima had been my work partner from the moment we met, and that wouldn’t change after we married.

The children of the traders ran in and out among the legs of the shoppers. Sometimes a child might run into a leg, and then an irritated shopper might give the child a whack about the head, but for the most part the men and women in the agora were tolerant of the children at their feet. And no wonder, because these children were our future. In Athens—in all of Hellas—to survive to adulthood was a minor miracle. There were too many diseases, too many infections, too many ways for a child to die.

There’d been an explosion of babies after the Persian Wars. I’d been one of them. Soldiers who’d fought throughout the duration came home to their wives, and ten months later the midwives had more work than they could handle. It was a good thing, too, because the loss of life had been fearful. Athens desperately needed to renew her citizens. Athenians prayed to Hestia, the goddess of the hearth, that not too many of the children would die before they grew.

I returned home to find my fiancée and my mother together in our courtyard. Diotima stood on a statue plinth—my father being a sculptor, we had plenty of spares—with her arms stretched out to both sides. She was a woman of extraordinary beauty, two years my younger, with long, dark tresses that lay curled that moment over her shoulders. My mother, Phaenarete, held a measuring stick to her side and frowned in concentration.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

My mother, with several sewing needles in her mouth, mumbled, “Measuring her for the wedding dress, of course.”

“You want a new dress for your wedding?” I said to my intended. “Don’t you already have enough dresses?”

Both of them gave me scathing looks. My mother continued with her measurements.

“How did the meeting with Pericles go?” Diotima asked, quite deliberately changing the subject.

“Interesting,” I said. “I have more work.” I told her the tale of the strange skull. Diotima listened and didn’t move a muscle, which was most unlike her, but she probably didn’t want a needle stuck in her while my mother fussed about. When I came to the dead girl and the missing one, my mother gasped and almost choked on the needles. After she’d spat them out, she said, “That’s awful!”

I’d known Mother would be displeased. Phaenarete was a midwife and had strong views about children.

But Diotima’s reaction astonished me. She staggered backward. She almost fell off the plinth, but managed to step off at the last moment. There were several dining couches in our courtyard. Diotima collapsed onto the nearest and put a hand to her head.

“Diotima, what’s wrong?” I said. “Are you all right?”

“Nico, they killed these girls at the sanctuary at Brauron?”

“Yes. Why? Have you heard of it?”

“Of course I’ve heard of it,” she snapped at me, but I could hear the tears forming. “I spent a year there. Nico, I used to be one of those girls.
That was my school
.”

At that moment the house slave walked in to tell me there was a man at the door, demanding to see me. He couldn’t have sounded unhappier if he’d been announcing a plague victim. The house slaves had never reconciled themselves to my chosen trade.

“Something about a dead man,” the slave said, and jerked his thumb at the front door. “He says he wants to confess to murder.”

“M
Y NAME IS
Glaucon. I’ve come about the death of Hippias,” the visitor said.

We spoke in the andron, the room at the front of every house reserved for men to talk business. I’d directed the slave to take Glaucon there.

Glaucon was an older man, perhaps fifty. Well, that was no surprise. Fifty was the minimum age for anyone who might have information about a death that had happened thirty years ago.

“How did you hear about me?” I asked.

“Word is passing among all the veterans of Marathon. They say the body of Hippias has been found.”

“That’s supposed to be a secret. Only Pericles and the archons and their assistants know.”

“Oh, word gets around,” he said vaguely.

“I see.” I guessed the assistants to the archons had been talking.

“I’ve come to confess,” Glaucon said. “I killed Hippias.”

I blinked and waited for the punch line, but then I realized he wasn’t joking.

Glaucon said, “When I heard you were on the case, I realized there was no hope of hiding my crime. My best chance was to throw myself on the mercy of the Athenian people.”

I rubbed my hands and tried not to look too gleeful. This was going to be my fastest case yet. Pericles would be amazed. But still, I had to make sure. There was one vital point.

I asked, “What of the girls, the dead one and the missing one? Is she still alive? Where is she?”

Glaucon looked at me with an odd expression. He said, “What girls?”