Thief of Corinth

by Tessa Afshar

  I was whipping up a good storm of resentment when Theo stepped into my path.

  “I am glad you are here,” I said. “Smell this for me before I use it.” I stuck the green ball under his nose. “It will probably make me bald.”

  He pushed it away. “I need to speak to you,” he said in a wooden voice. He had turned the color of the soap.

  “What is it?”

  “In private.” He took my hand and tugged. We did not speak as we walked to our favorite spot, where we used to race and train. One week before, Justus had kissed me here. Now he avoided me. I heaved a sigh, distracted. It took me a few moments to realize Theo had become like the pulled string of a bow, ready to snap. His jaw jutted and the veins on his neck stood out against his smooth skin.

  Confusion turned me dumb. What ailed him now?

  Finally we stood beneath the tree we had once climbed together. “Ariadne, Galenos told me about the Honorable Thief.”

  My eyes bulged out of my head. “He told you?”

  “He said you helped him.”

  “I . . . might have. Are you angry?”

  He shrugged. “I understand why he did it. And I am glad you saved his life. But to continue! Were you mad?” He shook his head. “Do you know what could have happened to you if they’d caught you at Aniketos’s house?”

  I smirked. “They didn’t.”

  “Not that time. What concerns me is this: Have you truly given it up, Ariadne? It hasn’t occurred to Galenos that you could be that headstrong. But I know you. Do you have some deranged plan to save him from his financial troubles? Another house to rob?”

  My breath hitched. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Ariadne, will you listen to reason?”

  “I am the only reasonable person in this family!”

  Theo kicked a rock, sending it flying into the distance. “Tell me one thing: How are you any different from Celandine?”

  I felt like he had slapped me. He could not have paid me a greater insult. “Theo! I have nothing in common with that woman.”

  “You insist on having everything your own way, just as she did. You won’t listen to your father or to Dionysius or to me. You think everyone is wrong but you. You endanger all of us, Ariadne. Worst of all, you endanger yourself. I want you to promise that you will not attempt another robbery.”

  I was still in the grip of his earlier accusation. Did he truly think me like my mother?

  “Ariadne.” His voice softened as he took my hand. He looked at his shoes, shifted from foot to foot. “I have something to ask you.”

  “I know. You want me to stop stealing.” I was already forming an answer in my mind, coming up with the reasons I could not heed his request.

  “No. I mean yes. That too. But I have something else to ask. It . . . I . . . It is very important.”

  What could be more important than the Honorable Thief? I was growing restless. Pulling my hand out of his, I planted it on my hip and tapped my foot.

  “Ariadne. I must tell you something. A secret I have withheld from you.”

  Zeus’s eyeballs. Was he a thief too? “What is it, Theo?”

  “I . . . I love you.”

  I exhaled. “Is that all? I love you too. You know that. You must not allow the awkwardness of the past or this business with Aniketos to come between us.”

  “No. I mean . . .” He shoved a hand through his hair, making it stand on end, revealing the silver streak he tried to hide with careful combing and use of hair pomades. I reached a finger and caressed his hair softly back into place. I adored that silver mark. Although he thought it a flaw, an ugly defect, I always thought of it as a reminder of how special he was.

  “Theo, you are my own dear brother. My twin. More my brother than Dionysius in some ways, for you know me better.”

  “No!” He screamed the word so loud, I jerked back.

  “I am not your brother.”

  “Not that again.”

  “I was never your brother. I was your friend. Your companion. Yours in every way. But not in blood.”

  “What are you saying?” Even as the words emerged from my mouth, I wanted to take them back. I did not wish to hear what Theo had to say.

  “Ariadne, I love you. As a man loves a woman. We have never been brother and sister except in your mind. Not by blood. Not by law. Not in any way but in your imagination.”

  I staggered back, shaking my head. My stomach heaved. With those words Theo had sealed our pain. Our separation. I wanted to howl. I wanted to beg him to turn back time a few moments and undo what he had done.

  Even sinking into a well of misery as I was, my mind worked on. Reason gave me understanding. Theo had never seen himself as part of our family, never felt that he belonged. To him, I had never been a sister. I had been his friend. His champion. The single stable ballast in his precarious life.

  That his love for me had grown from the affections of a child into the love of a man was utterly natural, especially for a man as loyal as Theo.

  Why had I never foreseen this? Why hadn’t Father?

  Theo’s heart had led him to a road I could not travel. Unlike him, to me, he had ever been a true brother. My heart had claimed him so even if the law did not. There had not been a single day when in my eyes he had been less than my own twin. We had not shared the same womb, but I was as attached to him as if we had.

  I could not cast a spell on myself and change what I held as true. I could not undo the weavings of my heart. I loved Theo. But I could never bind myself to him as anything other than a sister.

  He saw it in my face. Saw the implacable rejection. Saw the impossibility of his desire. He turned. Without a word, he began to walk away. I did not call him back. I sank to the ground, under the tree that had witnessed so many of our conversations, so many skinned knees and scratched shins, so many tears, so much laughter, so much love. Under that tree, I watched him go and wept for his loss.

  The following day, Theo vanished. None of us knew where he had gone, though he sent word to Justus of his safety. I told no one what had transpired between us. I felt ashamed of the pain I had caused him.

  More importantly, his declaration was more his secret than mine. His to share with others if he chose. Theo would not want me to spill his confidences. I dared not add betrayal to the mountain of suffering I had already caused.

  His loss ground me down; I became like dust at threshing. Theo was my anchor, and without him, I was adrift. I did not even have Justus to cling to. Since the day he had kissed me and called me a thief, he had avoided me.

  I only had one goal I could hold on to. I wanted to give my father the stability he would not forge for himself. It became like a lifeline, the one purpose to which I clung. In my mind, it was the only good thing left me.

  CHAPTER 23

  A WEEK LATER, Claudia arrived at our doorstep, distraught and in tears. It took me a few moments to calm her. “He threw me out of the house!” she wailed.

  “Your father?” I asked, shocked.

  “Spurius Felonius.”

  “Your sister’s husband? Why? Did you have a fight with her?”

  “Ariadne, I cannot explain the matter. One moment, the man seemed rational. The next, he spewed the most awful accusations. He had me physically removed from the house. His brute of a freedman picked me up and dropped me in the street as if I were the day’s leavings. I have never felt such humiliation.”

  “No!” I felt outraged on behalf of my friend. “Start from the beginning. What happened?”

  “My sister had asked me to join them for dinner that evening. She enjoys showing off her riches to me, pointing out how important she has grown. I go because my father makes me. And the food is better than what we have at home.”

  I nodded my understanding. A street vendor had better food than what they served at Claudia’s house. Her mother had transformed economizing in the kitchen to a new art form.

  “We were eating supper, the three of us. Partway through th
e second course, Felonius received a message and left the table, promising to return promptly. We finished dessert, and still he had not made an appearance.

  “After several hours in the company of Claudia the Elder I was eager to leave, as you can imagine.”

  “You should win a prize for tolerating one hour. Several would be beyond me.”

  Claudia attempted a watery smile and failed. “My sister insisted that I should take proper leave of her husband. It is her way of grinding my nose in Felonius’s importance. I knew I would never hear the end of the matter if I left without a formal farewell. So I went in search of my brother-in-law, and came upon him in an alcove attached to his tablinum. You would never have known it existed, for usually it is hidden behind a tapestry. I would have missed it entirely, except that I heard the rustling of papyrus when I went to his room. I called out his name and stepped inside the alcove. ‘I have come to take my leave,’ I said.

  “He began screaming at me, accusing me of being a spy, a thief, a snoop.” Claudia blew her nose in her handkerchief.

  “Perhaps he was in his cups.”

  “He was as sober as ever I have seen him.”

  “What was he doing?”

  “Nothing exciting. Riffling through scrolls in a large black-and-white box on his table. It’s not as if I caught him canoodling with a slave girl.”

  “He threw you out for that?”

  “And forbade me from ever stepping over his threshold again.”

  “Well, that’s a mercy. Now you have an acceptable excuse for avoiding Claudia the Elder.”

  My friend sniffed. “Father isn’t speaking to me. He says we cannot afford to offend Felonius. He called me a disaster walking on legs.”

  Families! Was there ever one that did not give you hives?

  Part of me was outraged on behalf of my friend. How could her father lay the blame at her feet when Felonius was clearly in the wrong? A smaller part of me was perversely comforted to hear of Claudia’s troubles. At least I was not the only one to bring grief to my family.

  I waited until the dark of the new moon to strike Grato’s house. I had a simple plan. Climb the perimeter wall. Grab seven diminutive boxes. Climb out.

  I remembered the circuitous route Father had taken the night he was almost caught on Brutus’s property, and planned a similar trail to Grato’s villa. This would make it hard for anyone to follow me home, should they chance to see me. In the light of day, I had traveled that route several times, learning it by heart so that in the cover of darkness I would not grow confused.

  Following Father’s example, I snuck out of the house through the side door. I was wearing men’s garb, Theo’s clothes, which lay abandoned in his chamber. Walking briskly, I came upon Grato’s villa after an hour. I waited in the shadows to ensure no one was in the street to catch a glimpse of me.

  The street near Grato’s house boasted a few bulky bushes but no convenient trees that grew by the side of the perimeter wall. Smooth marble covered the facade of the villa, making it impossible to climb without rope or grappling hooks. I wished to avoid such tools. Grappling hooks were noisy and could slip. An untended length of rope could be discovered by a passing slave. They were not ideal for stealth in an occupied house. My success depended upon speed and silence.

  Like most Roman architecture, the sidewalls of Grato’s house, which were not in public view, were made of brick and stucco. Sensible and cheap. The stucco had disintegrated in places, causing cracks and chips. Enough to slip a finger or toe into if someone were agile enough.

  I began to climb, lizard-like, and in moments I was lying stretched out on the top edge of the perimeter wall, my body a small hump, barely noticeable should someone happen to glance in my direction. They had left a lamp burning inside the courtyard. In its weak light, I could see the figure of a sleeping slave stretched out in the atrium in front of the main gate.

  A voice in my mind whispered that it was not too late. That I could turn back. I swiped at it like a buzzing fly, ignoring its plaintive plea.

  I lay still long enough to ensure that the slave was asleep. Then I began to creep. The interior wall was covered completely in marble. Slippery and long, it offered an intruder no help for climbing down into the courtyard.

  It did not matter. I had no intention of going down. I aimed to climb up. The main body of the villa, where the bedchambers and Grato’s tablinum were located, was two stories high, while the rest of the villa—its atrium, triclinium, and peristyle—were only one story.

  The perimeter wall was so high that I only needed to ascend half a story to reach the roof with its overlapping clay tiles. Once I climbed onto the roof and crawled far enough, I would be able to hang down by my fingers and swing into Grato’s tablinum.

  I started to scale the second-story wall, again using the chips in the stucco and bricks for handholds. The roof posed a precarious challenge. Tiles were not always properly installed. They were slippery. If I caused one to fall on the ground below, it would make enough of a racket to raise the household. Or my foot could slip, causing me to fall over two stories.

  I gripped the edge of the roof with one hand. I was now half on the wall, my toes tucked into a wide crack, my left hand wedged into a broad chip, and half hanging in the air, the fingers of my right hand clinging to the tiles of the roof. If the tiles shifted, I could easily fall backward.

  They held. I brought my other hand up and pulled my whole weight until I could swing my legs onto the roof. I took a deep breath as the pressure eased off my arms and shoulders.

  “Ariadne!” a voice whispered.

  I jerked with shock and lost my hold. My body started to slip. Tucking my toes into the overlapping tiles, I managed to stop myself from sliding off.

  “Ariadne, stop!”

  I looked down in the direction of the sound. Father was climbing the perimeter wall. He had one leg on the edge and was pulling himself over. My blood ran cold. He did not have my skills. He was older and, in spite of his athleticism, weaker than I was. This was no place for him. There were no trees to sustain him. This kind of vertical climbing required a level of dexterity and power that was beyond him.

  “Leave,” I hissed at him.

  “Not without you.”

  He pulled himself fully onto the edge and began to crawl toward me. When he came to the portion of the wall that sat under the second-story roof, he stretched up and began his ascent, one fingertip at a time.

  “Stop. Stop! I will come down,” I whispered, almost frozen with terror.

  He gave me a brilliant smile and shifted so he could return to the perimeter wall. To my horror, his foot slipped. He caught himself, fingers gripping the crack into which he had wedged them. I was clambering as fast as I could, scrambling off the roof, off the fragile tiles, and down to reach him.

  In the midst of my frenzied scrabbling I saw my father lose his hold and slip. Frantically, he flailed, hands grasping for a hold. They found purchase at the very edge of the wall. But only for a fleeting moment. The rolling force of his torso proved too great, and his fingers loosened.

  He fell over the wall, into the darkness of the street. I heard the sickening crunch of his body as it hit the pavement, and a low sound of anguish, followed by silence.

  My stomach heaved. I was mad with terror, dizzy with it. My ears were ringing. How I managed to get off the roof, shinny down one wall, crawl over the ledge, and fling myself over the perimeter wall, I cannot say.

  In the periphery of my vision, I saw the slave stir, sit up, and look about just as I heaved my body over the wall and began the climb down. I could hear the man calling out. Time had become my enemy.

  I threw myself next to Father and saw to my relief that he was stirring. “My leg,” he said with a groan.

  Even in the darkness I could see the unnatural angle of his calf, twisted to one side. The bone had broken in two, though the skin remained intact. I turned aside and vomited. I could hear the slave within pulling on the bar, opening th
e front gate.

  “God in heaven, help us!” Those words, brief as they were, were my first honest prayer to God, dragged out of my depths by desperation and horror.

  Grabbing Father under the shoulders, I pulled him upright. The cry that came out of his lips made the hair at the back of my neck stand. It was the anguish of a wounded animal. I put his arm around my neck and began to walk toward the next villa. Grato’s door was being pulled open as I half walked, half dragged my father. We were still in the open street, easily discovered.

  Just as the slave stepped into the street, I pulled Father inside the doorway of the neighboring villa and hid behind the protruding edge of the postern. Father was barely conscious, his body slumped against me.

  Grato’s slave walked a few steps into the street, holding a burning lamp above his head. “Who is there?” he demanded.

  He could not see Father and me, hidden as we were in the dark by the edge of the gatepost. Giving up, Grato’s slave returned to the door. He placed the lamp inside a diminutive alcove built into the postern of the house for the purpose. The light was supposed to discourage intruders, though he need not have bothered. I had finished with my intrusion. The slave returned inside, and I heard the door being barred again.

  “Can you walk?” I whispered to Father.

  He answered with a low groan. I took that as affirmation and dragged him a few steps. He tried to hop along, tamping down his cries of pain.

  I was covered in sweat within moments. My heart beat like a hollow drum. It dawned on me that dragging him this way was futile. Soon he would collapse from the agony I caused him. I stopped, bent my back, and drew my father over my shoulders, grunting as his weight settled on me. He murmured an objection. Ignoring him, I readjusted his body and staggered forward. Every few steps, I would stop and rest, shifting him. Sometimes I would sling his body over one shoulder and then back again.