by Gary Corby
I saw why Diotima had persisted with her questions. Removal of the treasure must surely threaten Karnon’s job. It certainly forced a major change in his life.
There was sudden commotion from outside that made us all turn to the door. From the indignant squeals, the exasperated shouts of a woman’s voice, the thump of buckets, and the splash of water, I deduced that two boys were having a bath. Then there was sudden silence, if you didn’t count the spluttering. The slave woman Marika reappeared with an empty bucket in each hand and a smile of victory.
Karnon turned back to Diotima and said loudly, “The removal of the treasure would mean I go back to Athens. My job wouldn’t change. As I have told you, my appointment derives from the League.” He shrugged. “I would simply move this entire household and everyone in it to another city. One where we don’t have to ration water, or wonder whether the food supply will last until the next shipment.”
“So you would actually prefer the treasure to move?” I said.
“Either is fine with me.”
I decided to take a risk on something that I had guessed. I said, “I assume, sir, if you relocated back to Athens, then you would free Marika and make her your wife, so that she and your sons would arrive as free citizens.”
I thought that was an easy guess. When the boys had run past Karnon, I had seen they were the spitting image of their father. The only difference was that he was bald, while the youngsters had straight, black hair. Karnon would not be the first man to fall for a pretty slave woman.
“My wife?” Karnon managed to look innocent. “I’m afraid you are mistaken. My wife lives in Athens. Her name is Strateia.”
“Oh, I see,” I said politely, the situation suddenly becoming a little clearer. “I thought, with the easy familiarity between you and Marika—”
“My wife is the daughter of a wealthy man in Athens,” Karnon explained. “When I received this posting to Delos, I knew it would create something of a problem. You see, my wife is used to the greatest comforts in life. She is extremely fond of social events and enjoys the company of the wives of other successful men. Myself, I am happiest with my numbers. The opportunity to be accountant to the Delian League was one I could not resist.” He stopped to think about it, then added, “No, not even to please my wife could I refuse such a posting.”
“Then she was not pleased with your appointment?” Diotima asked.
“She viewed it as a hardship post, I’m sorry to say,” Karnon said. “It was she who suggested that she remain in Athens, to look after our children, and my estate of course.”
“Of course. Very sensible,” Diotima said, as if this were the most natural thing in the world.
Karnon nodded, then he added, somewhat defensively, “We do see each other from time to time, whenever I’m back in Athens on business.”
“I’m sure.”
“So those excellent young men are not yours,” Diotima said it as a statement.
“They are excellent young men, aren’t they?” Karnon said enthusiastically. “But I must deny paternity.” He said this with a straight face. “Marika had them with one of the men in the village.”
“I see,” said Diotima in a flat voice.
Karnon said, “I don’t know the father. I would never be so rude as to inquire.”
“No, of course not,” I said as deadpan as I could manage, to match Diotima’s effort.
“I merely ensure they are cared for,” Karnon insisted.
“You seem to do it well.”
“Thank you.”
Karnon stood. We rose too.
“Are we finished?” he asked, in a voice that suggested the answer was yes.
“Thank you for seeing us,” I said.
Diotima rode and I walked back to the village. It was midday by now, and thoroughly hot. The heat seemed to rise off the ground, as if we were walking on a giant cooking plate that had been set to simmer. Because of it my feet were hotter than the rest of me.
The donkey clearly had no interest in going anywhere at this temperature. I solved that by whacking it in the rear with a stick from time to time.
As we plodded along I said, “What do you think?”
“I think we just wasted out time. Those coins don’t mean a thing,” Diotima said.
“Unfortunately, I think you’re right,” I said.
“But we did learn something. Karnon is the only person we’ve met whose life would be disrupted if the treasure moved. You didn’t believe him, I assume, when he said the children aren’t his?”
“They’re his, all right. He obviously loves Marika. Did you see the way he looks at her?”
Diotima nodded. “He doesn’t want to go home. He wants to stay here with the woman he loves and his sons by her.”
“I’m sure that’s true,” I said. “But that’s only a motive to stop the treasure moving.”
“It’s a motive to kill Geros, if Karnon knew Geros had done a deal with Pericles,” Diotima said.
“That’s a big stretch,” I warned her. “You said this morning that there was only a tiny window of opportunity in which to kill Geros.”
“Yes.”
“That means there’s only the same tiny window for someone to find out that Geros had turned against Delos for money. How could Karnon, who wasn’t even at the protest, possibly learn that Geros had been bribed?”
“Oh. I didn’t think of that.” Diotima looked deflated. “That makes it much more difficult for my theory.”
“Look on the bright side,” I said. “It means the only people on Delos with a reason to kill Geros are the ones who had a chance to learn that he had been bribed. That should be simple. There can’t be many.”
“I see what you mean,” Diotima said. “But we also have to consider the other side.”
“What other side?”
“The people who wanted the treasure to move, and didn’t know that Geros had been bribed. That, my husband, means the Athenians.”
I groaned. “This is so confusing.”
“I thought a moment ago you said this was simple?”
“That was before I realized there were so many combinations.”
“Then let’s list them,” Diotima said.
“All right.”
Diotima said, “There are two sorts of people on this island: people who want the Treasury of the Delian League to move to Athens and those who want it to stay on Delos.”
“That covers every possibility,” I said.
“Then there are another two sorts of people,” Diotima went on. “The ones who knew Geros had been successfully bribed by you, Nico, and the ones who didn’t.”
“Yes, and the vast majority could not have known.” I paused, then said, “Do you realize we’re starting to sound like Socrates?”
Diotima shuddered. “That’s a scary thought. But you’re right, this is the way Socrates would think.”
Socrates, my little brother, had a tendency to be depressingly logical. Though he wasn’t so little any more. He had turned eighteen just as we left for Delos, and was now serving his compulsory two years in the army. I wondered which recruiting sergeant had been given the job of trying to make Socrates obey orders without question. Whoever he was, the poor man would probably be suicidal before the year was out.
Diotima was thinking aloud. “Possibly only you, Pericles, and Geros himself knew about the deal, but that remains to be seen.”
“I agree.”
“Now let’s list which of those combinations might want Geros dead,” Diotima continued. “First there are those who want the treasure to remain on Delos. Of those, if they don’t know Geros has been bribed, then they definitely want him alive.”
“Very much so,” I agreed. “That must be the vast majority of the Delians.”
“Yes,” Diotima said. “But if you want the treasure
to remain on Delos and you know Geros is corrupt, then you definitely want him dead.”
“Those people would be furious with him,” I said. “They would have a very strong motive.”
“The only problem is, as far as we know, the number of people in that category is zero,” Diotima said.
“Yes, that is somewhat annoying.”
“Let’s move on,” Diotima said. “And by the way, when I say move on, I mean this donkey is incredibly uncomfortable.”
“He probably feels the same way,” I said. “You could try walking?”
“I doubt I’d make the distance, in this heat,” she said. It was the first time I’d heard Diotima even suggest that carrying the baby was difficult. “But every time this animal takes a step, every part of me goes up and down, but at different speeds.”
“That’s all right then, babies like to be bounced.”
“Very funny.”
“Go on with your analysis. So far, I agree.”
Diotima held onto the donkey’s neck while it negotiated a particularly steep hill. “All right. Let’s say you want the treasure to go to Athens, and say you know Geros has been bribed, then you want to keep him alive.”
“Of course. That covers Pericles and me,” I said.
“On the other hand, if you want the treasure to move, and you don’t know a deal has been done, then killing Geros looks like a good idea.”
“Yes.”
“That must include most of the Athenians,” Diotima said.
I could only nod to that.
Diotima said, “On the face of it, there are many more Athenians who might have wanted to kill Geros than any other group: the ones who didn’t know there had been chicanery. What if one of them struck Geros on their own initiative?”
I laughed. “Every one of those men without exception is a soldier or a navy man. Do you know the first rule of all military?”
“No, what is it?”
“Never volunteer. It’s inconceivable that one of them would have . . .”
But by then we had reached the first outlying houses of the village. We wouldn’t be able to continue the conversation on a public road surrounded by inquisitive villagers. There were people in the streets, doing the sorts of things villagers always do. Women were cooking, cleaning, or carrying baskets to and from the small local agora. Further down the road, fishwives sat together and gossiped as they mended fishing nets. Men hauled loads on carts, did carpentry on houses or fixed their boats. One was fixing a broken axle. Through a large open window I could see Moira in the tavern, serving drinks.
It was the stuff of everyday life, but every one of these people stopped and stared at us as Diotima and I passed.
Diotima noticed the same thing. “It’s like they’ve never seen a pregnant woman,” she said.
“No, they’ve never seen two Athenian investigators on the job,” I replied. “They’re wondering what we’re going to do, and what it means for them.”
“I wonder if it truly means anything to them?” Diotima asked.
“They think it does.”
But Diotima was right. It wasn’t at all obvious why an ordinary villager in Delos cared about what she and I did.
“Do you know what we don’t have any of?” I asked Diotima.
“Clues?” she suggested.
“I was thinking a bit more specifically. We don’t have a single witness.”
“Well, you made sure of that, didn’t you?” said my wife. She was still annoyed about my part in the bribery.
I sighed. It was because I had set up a clandestine meeting that no one had seen anything. Or at least, as far as we knew. Geros had been killed in the dark, in an abandoned village, after an all-night party that had left anyone still awake too drunk to be a witness, and those not drunk at home asleep in their beds.
For the first time in my career, we were facing a failure so total that we didn’t even know where to start.
The Village People
I noticed Damon by the village dock. He noticed me at the same time and waved.
“There’s my friend of last night, the one I told you about,” I said to Diotima. “I didn’t introduce you when he came to collect the body. Let’s go say hello.”
“Hello, Nico,” he said as we approached. “Have you solved the murder yet?”
“Not quite, but we have hopes,” I told him, and then wondered why I made the pretense. Wasn’t it obvious we had got nowhere?
“It’s hot today, isn’t it?” Damon said.
That was like saying water was wet.
“Damon, I’d like you to meet my wife.”
He held up a jar. “I thought you might be thirsty. I have watered wine, and cups too.”
We sat by the water’s edge, in the shade of some trees, with our feet in the water and our behinds on mats that had been left lying there, because the sand was too hot for comfort.
The wine tasted better than the vintage would have suggested.
“Geros sure got himself killed, didn’t he!” Damon said, as if this was some remarkable achievement on the priest’s part.
“I suppose he did,” I said, then asked, “I know his wife and child are gone, but did he have any other family? Any brothers, perhaps, anyone who needs to be told?”
“Nah.” Damon shook his head. “You know the priestly families all come from other places?”
“You said so yesterday.”
“Well, most get family visitors from time to time, but Geros never had a single family member come here to see him.”
“That’s sad,” Diotima said. “Was he lonely?”
Damon shrugged. “Who can say? Geros liked to talk, but not about personal things.”
“What about the homes? Do the priest families stay together? Or do the villagers and priests mix?” Diotima asked.
“Mix mostly, I guess,” Damon said.
“I feel foolish to have to ask you,” Diotima confessed. “All my adult life I’ve been a priestess, yet I know nothing about Delos.”
“Do you want a guided tour?” Damon asked.
“That would be lovely,” Diotima said.
Damon stood. Diotima tried to stand, couldn’t, and was helped up by me holding her right hand and Damon her left.
“Ups-a-daisy!” he said, as if she were a child. “Let’s start here.” He spread his arms to take in the idyllic scene of the well-maintained boats and the blue water. “This is the dock for the fishing boats,” he said, which was obvious enough.
“Fish is your main food?” I asked.
“Oh yes,” Damon said. “Nothing much grows on the land, but we do our best. Almost everyone has their vegetable patch.”
“Isn’t that difficult?”
“Very, but we’re desperate for fresh vegetables. We catch rain in whatever buckets we can, and of course we men pee on the gardens. It’s great fertilizer.”
I made a mental note not to eat the vegetables at Apollo’s Rest.
“Right there is our agora,” he said, turning so we followed his gaze.
It was completely deserted but for a couple of people walking through.
“Not much going on today?” I asked, with a raised eyebrow. In Athens at the agora you couldn’t have seen the ground for all the feet on it.
“The agora doesn’t get much use,” Damon admitted. “When people need to trade, they know who to go and see. But it wouldn’t be a village without an agora, would it? Over on the other side is Apollo’s Rest.”
“We’ve met Moira,” I said.
“Yeah, she’s a nice woman,” Damon said. “She likes to clean things.”
“So we noticed,” Diotima said. “What about the villagers and the priests?”
“We’re at the far south end of the island,” Damon said. “Fisher folk live close to their boats, of cours
e. We villagers live along the coast, mostly; the priests and their families live along the north road to the sanctuary, mostly. They call it the Sacred Way, but we just call it the north road. But everyone gets mixed up, too, like I said before.”
“Have the villagers always lived here?” Diotima asked.
“This is the new village.” Damon shrugged. “They say a lot of people left the island when the old village was abandoned. I wouldn’t know, I arrived after that myself. We get new arrivals trickling in. Maybe one or two every year, sometimes a family wants to settle. You know how it goes. Nobody minds, so long as they’re good people and willing to work.”
“What’s the story about the old village?” I asked. “Why was it abandoned?”
“You’ll have to ask Anaxinos about that, ’cause I don’t understand it at all. Apparently it’s cathartic.”
That made no sense to me. I made a note to ask Anaxinos, when he was sober.
“Do the holy people and the villagers get along?” Diotima asked.
“Oh yes,” Damon said without hesitation. “You have to, on an island this small. It’s like living on a boat, you know.”
“No fights?” I prodded.
“Only over women. You know how it goes,” Damon said. “The daughter of some priest family likes the handsome son of a fisherman and the father doesn’t approve. Or some ambitious villager wants to marry his daughter to an up-and-coming young priest, but some other man wants the girl.”
“So there’s intermarriage,” Diotima said.
“Sure is, once we’ve cleaned up after the fights.”
None of this sounded like something an old priest like Geros would become involved in.
“Do the priests help out around the village?” I asked.
“They do if they want to eat,” Damon said. “The younger ones, at least. The older ones have got other things to do. Come along!”
We came along. There was the sound of hammering in the distance, metal on metal.
“That’s the smithy,” Damon said when I asked about it. “Old Mandro is our man. We make him work over that hill there, close to the water but away from the village.”
Damon didn’t have to explain why. Sensible villages kept their furnace far away from anything that can burn, such as, for example, their homes.
