by Gary Corby
“Hmm, I see your point.”
“I have not explained the next part of the mystery,” Diotima said. “Here I hand over to my husband.”
I knew what had to come next. We had discussed this beforehand, and saw no choice if we were to solve the killing.
I said, “I must admit my own complicity in a crime. You see, ladies and gentlemen of Delos, I was sent to find Geros on a mission.”
“You are treading into dangerous territory, Nicolaos,” Pericles said icily. “This is not open to discussion.”
“I fear it must be, Pericles, if you ever want this treasure to live in Athens.”
I turned quickly to the crowd, before Pericles could argue.
“Pericles sent me to offer Geros whatever it would take to convince him to cease his resistance.”
There were outraged murmurs and a few shouts amongst the priests at this news.
“You admit this?” Anaxinos said in shock.
“I do, High Priest, and I am sorry to say I accepted that commission. I can only console myself that from what we know now, Geros would probably have died anyway.”
“I suppose, after all that you have said, that you will tell us that Geros accepted this bribe,” Anaxinos said sadly.
“He did.”
“I ask out of curiosity, to find out how much the integrity of a priest of Delos is worth. How much did you offer?”
“Geros demanded thirty talents,” I said.
There was a collective gasp from everyone present.
Someone muttered loudly, “Dear Gods!”
I said, “The ironic thing is that, if Geros had simply admitted to me that he had already ransacked the treasury to the tune of thirty talents, Pericles would not have cared one little bit. Geros made the mistake of thinking that Pericles has any ethics worth speaking of.”
“NICOLAOS!” Pericles shouted.
“Which of course he does,” I finished smoothly, and grinned broadly. I was enjoying every moment of this. “But not when it comes to the good of Athens. Pericles would have let Geros keep the money he’d stolen—after all, it was the same as the bribe we’d offered—and then Athens would have made off with the treasury and everyone would have been happy, more or less.” I cast an uneasy eye at the High Priest, who could not have been happy hearing about such underhanded dealings within his sacred sanctuary.
“Geros must have thought that the Gods had smiled upon him when Nico made his offer,” Diotima said. “He saw a chance to save himself. He had ten talents hidden on Delos, but he also had ten talents stored with a banker in Athens, and ten talents already spent on assets. Thus he couldn’t return the stolen money, but he could return the bribe money.”
“Geros mentioned none of this to me,” Karnon said. His brow furrowed. “Why would he not tell me?”
“Because Geros didn’t know of this offer until after you had left,” Diotima said.
“I see.”
“After Geros parted from Nico, he was seen walking toward the New Village. We wondered why he did this. Geros wasn’t seen anywhere else until his death. Where did he go?”
Diotima paused to let everyone think about that. Then she said, “The most obvious answer is that he went to see Karnon. They had only just parted, but now he had important news. He went to tell the accountant about the bribe.”
“I deny this!” Karnon shouted.
“Yet consider, Karnon, if you knew, and if the sums came out even, would you have raised a fuss? Especially since you have your own . . . ah . . . family issues to consider.”
“Perhaps not,” Karnon conceded.
“There you see it, then,” Diotima said. “The Athenian bribe offered Geros the lifeline he desperately needed.”
She paused, to let that sink in. I could see heads among the crowd nodding slightly. But most weren’t. The priests were not entirely convinced. As for the villagers, their expressions were stony.
“There is every chance Geros went somewhere else, or spoke to someone else,” Diotima said. “Now we must leave that thread and turn to the Hyperborean Gifts. The evidence from his house suggests Geros had taken the Hyperborean Gifts. Yet when we checked the treasury house, they were still there. How could this be?”
“Geros put them back, perhaps an outburst of honesty?” Anaxinos said.
“It does seem the obvious conclusion, doesn’t it?” Diotima said. “There are only two keys to the treasury house of the Delian Artemis, where the Hyperborean Gifts are kept. Geros held one, High Priest. The other was held by you.”
Diotima paused, and then she gasped a little. She clutched at her stomach and I knew the pain of childbirth was becoming too much for my wife. I moved to support her, but she waved me back. There was a murmur among the crowd. I think some—at least some of the women—had begun to guess she was in labor.
When the pain had passed, Diotima said, “Of course, by the time the gifts returned, Geros was dead himself. That suggests there is another thief, or another criminal of some sort.”
That caused another eruption from the priests. They stepped toward Diotima—it seemed to them that she had just accused Anaxinos of murder. I stepped in front of Diotima, and I was gratified to see that the combined captains of the Athenian Fleet also moved to defend an Athenian.
The meeting was on the verge of riot.
“Stop!” Pericles ordered. Then he looked to Anaxinos, who nodded.
“Pericles is correct,” said Anaxinos. “There must be calm here.” He turned to Diotima. “Proceed as you must, priestess,” he said. “I assume you realize that a war on this small island is not to your advantage?”
“I do, sir,” Diotima said. “There is almost nothing that can be said about these killings that doesn’t antagonize someone.”
“So I see,” said Anaxinos dryly. “I feel somewhat antagonized myself. Explain your words.”
“Yes, sir,” said Diotima politely. She continued loudly, over the hubbub. “The fact is, Delos relies on keys to protect its treasures. It’s not like how it’s done in many other places. On Delos, except for the Porinos Naos, there are no guards or slaves to watch who goes where. On Delos, it all comes down to who can hold a key.”
Diotima held up one of these keys, for everyone to see. “This is the key to the treasury of the Hyperborean Gifts. The only one. Geros kept it. We found it in his house. On the face of it, then, it was not the key used to open the door to return the gifts. But now we must note that most people on Delos leave their doors unguarded, and the slave of Geros is rather fond of wine, and maintenance men from the village tend to wander in and out of everyone’s homes.”
Diotima let them think about that. She finished with, “Almost any villager could have grabbed that key for a day.”
“But who would want to return the gifts in such secrecy?” one of the priests asked.
“The Hyperboreans, of course,” Diotima said. “The Hyperboreans have gone to enormous lengths to send these fine gifts to Delos. They would be absolutely furious if they knew the Gifts were stolen.”
There was general laughter at this. “The Hyperboreans are far, far away,” the priest said.
“Are they?”
Diotima walked over to Damon, standing to the side. She said quietly, “Damon, I promise on my honor and my life that your people will not suffer for this. Anaxinos has too many other problems than to worry about some friendly immigrants.”
Damon thought for a moment, looked to Moira for silent advice, she nodded, and then Damon nodded, slowly.
Diotima put her hand upon his high, broad shoulders and said, “Let me introduce you to Damon, Chief of the Hyperboreans.”
There was great clamor at this announcement.
“Is this true?” Anaxinos said in amazement.
“It is true,” Damon said. He explained the history of the Hyperboreans, as he ha
d to Diotima and me in the dead of night.
“All this time you thought you were running Delos, High Priest,” Diotima said to Anaxinos. “When in fact, all this time you have been running the Sacred Isle in partnership with the Chief of the Hyperboreans.”
“This is hard to believe,” Anaxinos said. I knew what he was thinking, and likewise everyone else. Damon seemed like the most simple of simpletons . . . most of the time.
I said, “Have you ever noticed, sir, how Damon always seems to be there with the right answer when there’s a problem to solve?”
Anaxinos thought for a moment, his hand on his chin, before he nodded.
Diotima shot me a happy smile, and I returned it. I knew what she was thinking. The way that had turned out, we both now knew exactly who had killed Geros.
Diotima made the announcement. “Ladies and gentlemen, priests and priestesses of Holy Delos, the murderer of Geros was—”
“Pirates! Pirates!” People on the eastern side of the crowd were screaming in fear. I looked and saw there were indeed armed strangers streaming in from that direction.
But no pirate would ever be so stupid as to attack Delos when there were fifty triremes guarding the island. This was something entirely more dangerous. Pericles and I, and every other man with combat experience knew instantly what we saw. There were men emerging from the dark, to the east and south east. They didn’t run, but walked steadily. At first they were mere figures, but as they approached the detail became apparent. Some wore the unmistakable leather and bronze scale armor of the Persians, with the unmistakable shafts of spears in hand. Others wore no armor, but looked like sailors in tunics with typical Phoenician caps.
Not an armed invasion, as Pericles had feared, not pirates as might be expected. This was a targeted raid, by the Persians, on Phoenician ships, and I had no doubt what the raiders were targeting.
“Not pirates,” Pericles shouted. “Persians . . . Phoenicians . . . Raiders.”
There was no doubting who led us now. Though he spent all his time on politics, Pericles was a strategos of Athens. There was no one to match him on Delos.
Villagers and priests were stumbling backwards, away from the advancing attackers.
Semnos drew his short sword. It was the sort that sea captains liked to wield, of no use on a battlefield, but handy for close quarters fighting. Like everything else about Semnos, his sword was the last word in elegance: decked out in silver filigree, with a handle of finest leather, brightly colored ribbons at the pommels, and a leaf-shaped blade of perfectly polished iron. It also looked very sharp.
Semnos jumped to the top of a high plinth upon which stood a statue of Apollo. He hooked his left arm around Apollo, and hung there at an angle, his right arm high and his sword pointed to the stars.
Semnos yelled in a sea captain’s voice, which is to say his words echoed across even the rapidly developing battle.
“Paralos! Paralos to me!”
This was a slashing raid, with swords and spears and a battering ram to take the treasure of the Delian League before anyone could react. The men of Paralos were the only common fighting sailors present; all the other Athenians were commanders of trierarch rank. The other sailors were all on the western beach, tending to their ships. They might as well have been in another country for all the good they could do here. This fight would be over one way or another before any body of men could arrive.
The men of Paralos pushed through to their commander.
Semnos shouted, “Paralos follow me!” He jumped from the statue.
Here on land, Semnos didn’t have to protect his ship. He was free to engage the enemy. Semnos led his men forward like a fighting sailor, with his weapon at the ready and a steady charge. The men followed their captain. It was only then that I realized none of them were armed, except for their personal knives. All their weaponry was back on their ship.
Pericles saw the problem too. He shouted in his command voice. “Trierarchs, form a battle line, single file.”
The trierarchs were the only men here with weapons, all short swords, all designed for use at sea, none of them even remotely long enough to suffice for a phalanx in the manner that Hellene soldiers liked to fight. But they would have to do something, because right now, the only thing standing between the Phoenician raiders and the entire fighting fund for our war against the Persians was the crew of Paralos.
Karnon ran over to me. “Nicolaos, those men will get into the treasure at any moment.”
“Don’t worry, Karnon,” I told him. “I know it looks bad, but they’d need a battering ram to get through that door. I’m sure they’ve got one, but by the time they can bring it up the other men from the ships will be here.”
Karnon said, “Uh, Nicolaos, do you remember when you opened the treasury, just a moment ago?”
“Yes, of course I do.”
“Do you remember how you slammed the door shut and then hurried back to your wife?”
“Of course I do.”
“Are you holding the key of the treasury door right now?”
“Of course I . . . uh oh . . .”
I stopped speaking, realized the key wasn’t in my hands, and desperately looked about the ground around me. There was no key.
Dear Gods, I had left the key in the door.
All the raiders had to do was push that door open.
Karnon turned to Pericles, who was shouting orders to the trierarchs with sword drawn. Karnon snatched Pericles’s sword from him.
Pericles jumped backwards, thinking that Karnon intended to attack him. I had thought so too, until Karnon shook his head.
“Give back that sword,” Pericles commanded.
“You don’t need it,” Karnon said. “You’re the General.”
“So? What in Hades do you think you’re doing?” Pericles barked.
“I haven’t spent my whole life tending the treasure of the League to see it go like this.”
Karnon didn’t wait for more small talk. He turned and ran into the mêlée, waving the sword. The struggling sailors closed in around him and that was the last I saw of Karnon.
Pericles didn’t stop to swear. Instead he commanded.
I had to get back that key.
But first, there was something else that was even more urgent.
I went over to where Diotima and Damon stood. I said, “Damon, I need you to take Diotima and my mother, and all the women and children and the old people away from here. Can you do that?”
Damon nodded. “Yes, of course.”
“Before you go, there’s something we need to settle . . .”
“Yes?” he asked.
“Diotima didn’t finish her explanation. I’ll finish it for her. It was you who killed Geros, wasn’t it Damon?”
He paused for a moment, and then he nodded.
“Yes, we did it,” he admitted. “It was Meren, actually. She stabbed him while I held him still.”
“Because of the Gifts, of course,” I said.
Damon nodded. “Meren kept an eye on the treasury and the Gifts—in her role as our priestess of the Hyperboreans, you understand. Geros never knew. Then, one day, the Gifts were gone. It didn’t take long to work out that Geros had taken them. He was the only one with an official key. A few days later we watched while he visited the Hyperborean Treasury, ostensibly on business, and didn’t raise an alarm though the place was ransacked. Then we knew.” Damon scowled and spoke angrily. “Our people had worked for decades to fill that treasury with the gifts of our devotion to the Goddess, and this evil man was about to sell them.”
“You didn’t raise the alarm yourselves,” I said.
“That would have given us away,” Damon said. “While we were thinking about what to do, you Athenians turned up. It gave us the perfect opportunity to punish Geros and make it look like you Athenians did it.�
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“Thanks very much for that.”
“You’re welcome,” Damon said with a straight face. “We got the location of where Geros had hidden the Gifts before we let him die. Turned out we were only just in time to stop a sale.”
“Then Meren wrote NEMESIS above his body,” I said. I had thought at the time Diotima had explained it that whoever had written that word must have been a priestess.
“That’s right,” Damon said. “After that we crept into Geros’s secret office, grabbed the Gifts, and put them back in the treasury. It was a good morning’s work. Then all was right with the world!”
“Can we trust you?” I asked, because I was planning to put Diotima into the care of two murderers.
“Are you planning on robbing the Goddess?” he asked.
“No, of course not.”
“Then you can trust me.”
But did I trust him? It was in Damon’s interest to eliminate Diotima and me before we told the world that he and Meren were guilty. It would be so easy for Damon to eliminate Diotima, and then hope the Persians killed me in the battle, and then he and the Hyperboreans would be safe.
I weighed the option of trying to kill Damon, right now, on the spot, as the course of least risk. But it wouldn’t work. There was a battle right in front of us, and if Diotima wasn’t moved at once, then my wife in labor would be caught in the middle of it.
“You’re not worried about the loss of the Delian League funds?” I asked him, still searching for some reassurance that I could believe.
“The League money was never part of Delos,” he said.
Why was the most reasonable man on this island the murderer? I wondered if Damon had sounded this reasonable when he approached Geros, prepared to kill him.
Damon must have understood my indecision because he said, “Nico, we killed Geros because he stole the Hyperborean Gifts. He stole our gifts to the Gods.”
I would have to believe that this murderer was an honest man.
“Go then. Take Diotima . . .” I thought about it. “Go north.”
It was the only safe path. The Sacred Way to the New Village would take the women and the older priests too close to where the raiders had landed. The path to the east was blocked by buildings. They could get around, but it would be slow. West was the direction the enemy had come from. But to the north, all they had to do was climb over the low stone wall.
