The small city gate behind our street was locked by the time we were finally ready to leave.
‘Come on,’ said Thrax. ‘We’ll have to use the main gate.’
We crossed the city, which was still busy despite the late hour. The main gate was shut but not locked. Thrax pulled it open and we let ourselves through. We soon reached Onatas’s farm and crouched behind the old carob tree to get our bearings.
Omega heard us and started barking madly. The door to Timon’s hut opened. We saw the old slave outlined in the doorway. He stood there for what seemed like an eternity, peering through the darkness. Omega growled softly at his feet. But at last he dragged the dog back inside and we heard a bolt being drawn.
‘Wait for me up in the tree, Nico,’ whispered Thrax. ‘And pray I don’t alarm Omega again. I need to get really close to Timon’s hut.’
He slipped out from behind the tree and I watched him running through the weeds. He stopped at the wooden figure of Hephaestus in the vegetable patch and removed something from it. I strained to see what it was, but there was not enough moonlight.
Thrax crossed over to the farmhouse, silent as a shadow. He must have found the door locked because he stepped back from the house and looked up at the slanting roof.
I looked on in awe as he scrambled up the wall, using the wide gaps between the mud bricks as footholds. Up on the roof he hesitated for a moment, then moved swiftly across and stopped. A faint glow illuminated his face and I knew that he was looking down a hole at a dying fire. He was standing directly above Telephassa’s kitchen.
A moment later Thrax disappeared. He had leaped down into the house. I don’t know how long I waited up there in the tree, my heart beating loudly, but at last I saw the farmhouse door open and close again. A shadow stole across the grass, heading straight for me.
‘Nico!’
I gave him a hand up the tree. ‘I take it everything went according to plan?’
He chuckled in the darkness. ‘It did.’
‘So what did you do in there, and in the vegetable patch? What did you remove from the bird scarer?’
‘If I told you, it would spoil the surprise.’
I frowned. ‘A surprise?’
‘You don’t have wait too long for it, I promise.’
We waited. The sky grew cobalt, then purple and finally red as dawn approached. Signs of life appeared in the farmhouse. Telephassa stomped out for firewood. Smilis hopped out to have a pee. Timon came out to milk the goats.
‘Good morning, master,’ he called to Onatas, who stepped out of the house yawning widely.
The sculptor crossed over to the workshop and fumbled at the keyring on his belt.
‘What in the name of the gods…?’
Thrax dropped neatly out of the tree and ran over to the workshop. ‘Can’t you open the door, sir?’
‘The stupid key won’t turn in the lock.’
‘Try this one,’ said Thrax, producing a second key from his chiton. ‘I think you’ll find it fits.’
Onatas slipped Thrax’s key in the lock. ‘By Apollo’s beard, it does. What does this mean, boy?’
‘It means that I have solved the mystery, sir. I know who stole the ring.’
CHAPTER 15
Thrax Explains It All
Thrax and I were sat in Onatas’s andron. After a long night in the tree, we were cold and starving. I welcomed the mound of tiganites Telephassa put before me.
While we ate, Onatas sent for Inacus, Gorgias and Master Ariston. They arrived almost together and joined us in the andron.
‘Have you solved the mystery, boys?’ asked Master Ariston, helping himself to tiganites. ‘Tell us all about it.’
Gorgias leaned forward on the couch. ‘Have you found the ring?
‘Yes, sir,’ said Thrax. ‘I hope to have it for you in a moment.’
‘Let him tell the story first, gentlemen,’ said Onatas.
‘As you all know, the ring of the harpies was stolen from Onatas’s workshop five nights ago,’ began Thrax. ‘The thief managed to get into the workshop without breaking the door, unlocked the tool chest without a key, switched the ring for a child’s marble and got out again, seemingly leaving no clues behind. I checked the workshop thoroughly and there really is no way in except through the door, and Onatas had the keys with him all the time. To the untrained eye, it seemed to be an impossible riddle.
‘But even as we stood there, gawping in horror at the marble, I noticed that the thief had left a clue. A very big one.’
‘And what was that clue?’ asked Onatas.
‘You told us, sir, that only us five here and your three slaves had been in the workshop that day. Three slaves, you, Master Ariston, Gorgias, Thrax and Nico. That meant there should have been eight sets of footprints in the marble dust but I detected a ninth set.
‘Now my first reaction was that the thief had left them without knowing. But then I realised, surely someone who can get in and out of a locked door and steal a ring from a sealed chest, wouldn’t be so stupid as to leave a set of footprints behind him?
‘No, the prints had been left there on purpose, to mislead anyone who tried to investigate the crime. When I examined them carefully, I discovered they had been left by sandal boots. Cothurni. And there was something funny about them which raised my suspicions even further.’
‘Something funny, you say?’ exclaimed Master Ariston.
Thrax ignored him and went on. ‘Now, Nico and I worked out that there were only three people who could have found out the ring was in the chest. Onatas had had no visitors to his workshop since the day he’d locked the ring in the box. So only the slaves could have known about it. Timon, Telephassa and Smilis. The thief had to be one of them, but they each had a witness to prove they were out of the house at the time the crime took place. Smilis and Timon were at a symposium with Onatas. Telephassa was at the sanctuary of Hekate till well after Onatas had come home. It seemed they were all in the clear. But, as in the case of most crimes, nothing is ever what it seems.
‘Now back to the boots, the cothurni. Four days ago, we met Smilis on his way to deliver a basket of fish to Inacus. His feet were wet and there were tiny specks of pond weed stuck to his ankles. He claimed that he had been playing in the fountain in the agora. But fountains in market places never have weeds in them. They are cleaned regularly. And when we met Smilis, he wasn’t coming from the direction of the market. He had just come out of an alleyway that led straight out of the city. There is a shrine to Demeter outside the city walls. People leave offerings of pomegranates on its altar. Smilis had pomegranate juice all over his face when Nico and I met him. He’d stolen one of the fruits from the shrine. The little boy was lying. His feet had got wet somewhere other than the agora, somewhere outside the city. But why would he lie about such a trivial matter?
‘I knew it had to be something to do with the crime, and it was. Nico and I discovered a large pond outside the city, past Demeter’s shrine. It’s well known for its freshwater fish and there was pond weed in it. Timon had sometimes taken Smilis there fishing, so the boy defintely knew about it. I found a pair of sandal boots drowned in the pond. There was a sliver of marble in the soles of one of them. Could it have come from Onatas’s workshop, and could those sandals be the ones that were used to make the false footprints? Could the pond weed on Smilis’s legs have come from here? If so, Smilis was definitely involved in the theft of the ring. But how? Was he working with someone else?
‘Then I started thinking, what if one of the three slaves had actually left the place they were meant to be when the crime happened? Could Timon have sneaked out of the stables while making everyone believe he was still there? Did Telephassa leave the temple unnoticed only to creep back in after the crime had been committed? Could Smilis have left the symposium without Onatas knowing it? If so, how could they have done it?
‘I racked my brains but could see no hint of a solution until Nico and I went to visit our friends Fotini and Gaia at t
he temple of Aphaia. We talked about poison, and suddenly I had it. I knew how the crime had been done, and by whom. I just needed proof to link the thief to the theft.’
‘But what has poison got to do with it?’ said Onatas. ‘No one was poisoned.’
‘Oh, but they were,’ replied Thrax. ‘Not enough to be killed, but enough to feel nauseous.’
Onatas looked at Thrax in horror. ‘Do you mean me?’
‘That mysterious nausea you suffered from at the symposium was caused by poison. Adder poison! It’s not strong enough to kill you but it makes you terribly sick for a while.’
‘But who poisoned me?’ asked Onatas.
‘At first I thought it might be Telephassa,’ said Thrax. ‘She makes poisons and herbal remedies. But then I realised it was someone else.’
Thrax looked at Onatas. ‘Sir, I am a slave myself and I know that despair can make a person act irrationally. If I tell you how the crime was committed and who did it, will you promise to forgive? I do not yet know exactly what motive the thief had for stealing the ring but I think he was put under extreme pressure to do it. He might not have had a choice.’
There was a long silence while Onatas ruminated. ‘Very well,’ he said at last. ‘I will not take any steps against the person who stole the ring, as long as it is returned. Who did it, then?’
‘It was Smilis,’ said Thrax.
Smilis? Everyone looked dumbfounded.
‘The boy might act dumb but he is actually very clever,’ said Thrax. ‘Very few people would know so much about poison. Perhaps he has learnt a lot from Telephassa. It’s a pity he’s not a free man. He would make a great politician when he grows up. This is what happened.
‘Someone approached Smilis and told him that Onatas had bought the ring of the harpies. Somehow they convinced him to steal it.’
‘But who?’ asked Master Ariston.
‘And how did he know where I’d hidden the ring?’ Onatas wanted to know.
‘Smilis models for you, sir. He is very good at standing still. He has learned to spy on you by pretending to be a statue. It’s a secret game he likes playing. There is a plinth in your workshop marked Eros. I found footprints on it. They were too faint for me to see properly but the feet that made them had been caked in flour. You sometimes get Smilis to dust himself in flour when he is modelling for you, don’t you?’
‘Yes,’ answered Onatas. ‘It makes him look like a marble statue and it gives me a better idea of what I am aiming for.’
‘The day you put the ring in the tool chest, Smilis was pretending to be a statue. You didn’t see him, but he saw everything you did.
‘On the day of the theft, he put enough poison in your wine cup to make you nauseous. He stole the poison from Telephassa. Yesterday, Nico and I witnessed him returning the alabastron to her cave. Here it is. You’ll find traces of poison in it. You’ll find his finger marks on it too, from the honey cakes you two were eating outside the workshop.’
‘But if that alabastron could incriminate the fellow, why wait so long to get rid of it?’ asked Onatas.
‘As I said, he took the jar from Telephassa, sir. She would eventually have noticed the theft if Smilis had not returned it. Perhaps the boy helps her with her potion-making and she knows he has access to the alabastrons. I’m sure he wanted to return it sooner but he had to wait for Telephassa to be out, making her weekly trip to the agora, before he could sneak into her cave unnoticed.
‘And I think Smilis followed us when we retrieved the cothurni from the pond. He knew we might start to suspect him. He must have been desperate to get rid of the jar.’
‘I can’t believe the little rascal poisoned me,’ said Onatas.
‘You became nauseous and felt sick all through the symposium, sir,’ continued Thrax. ‘That is what Smilis wanted. While your mind was wandering, he switched the keys to the workshop and the tool chest on your ring with two other ones, old discarded ones that your bird scarer wears as earrings.’
Onatas stared. ‘So when I couldn’t open the workshop door this morning…’
‘I had done the same as him, to prove to myself that it could be done. I removed the keys from the bird scarer’s ears and sneaked into your house while you were sleeping. You never even felt me switching the keys.’
‘But I swear by the gods that he never left my side at the symposium. He was fanning me all night long.’
‘He switched places with your brother-in-law’s slave, Lampus. I think he gave him a hobby horse as payment. You were in so much agony, sir, you never noticed it was Lampus fanning you and not Smilis.’
Onatas slapped his thigh. ‘Smilis does have a hobby horse.’
‘I think you’ll find it in Lampus’s possession now, sir. He is also the owner of the marble we found in your tool chest, which you passed on to me. It was taken from him at the symposium. I returned it to the boy myself.’
‘So what you’re saying is,’ said Inacus, ‘that Smilis switched places with Lampus, who kept fanning Onatas while Smilis ran all the way back to the workshop, opened the door with a key he’d stolen from his master, opened the tool chest, stole the ring, closed the chest and the door behind him and returned to the symposium, where he switched the keys again.’
‘Unbelievable,’ said Master Ariston. ‘The boy is very clever indeed.’
‘But how can you be sure it was him?’ asked Inacus.
‘It all goes back to the footprints,’ said Thrax. ‘Do you remember I told you the mysterious footprints didn’t look right, Nico? The heels were far apart from each other and the toes close together. They are the kind of footprints a child wearing an adult’s shoes would make.’ He opened his bag and took out the cothurni we had recovered from the pond. ‘Nico and I dried these very carefully. As you know sir, marble dust is more like grit. The particles have very sharp edges that embed themselves in soft material, especially if pressed down hard. Not even a long soaking in water can displace them. You’ll find marble dust footprints inside the boots. They were made by Smilis when he stole the ring.’
‘Where did Smilis get these boots from?’ wondered Onatas.
‘I expect he stole them, sir. Or he might have found them somewhere.’
‘But where is the ring now?’ asked Gorgias. ‘Where did the rascal hide it?’
‘In the most famous hiding place in history,’ answered Thrax. ‘Smilis also stole a wooden horse from Lampus at the symposium. A model of the wooden horse of Troy. The ring is inside it.’
CHAPTER 16
Melinoe
Just then we heard a crash outside the door. Thrax leaped off the couch and bolted out to the yard. I followed, only to find my eyes dazzled by the fierce sun. But even then I could see that the back door at the other end of the yard was wide open.
‘It’s Smilis,’ said Thrax. ‘He’s running away.’
We both charged through the open door. Outside we could see the slave boy tearing down the hill, clutching the wooden horse under one arm. We charged after him, shouting ‘good day’ to the guard as we raced though the city gate.
Ahead of us, Smilis reached the end of the alley and turned left. We followed to see him disappear in the rubble of the ruined house in our street. By the time we got there ourselves, there was no sign of him. He seemed to have vanished.
‘He’s hiding somewhere,’ I said. ‘Perhaps he’s discovered our secret meeting place.’
Thrax started towards the hut but I grabbed his arm. ‘Look.’
I pointed to the statue of Melinoe. An adder was slithering around its feet and, just as in my nightmare, there was a head on the broken neck. The statue glared at me with large, malevolent eyes. I felt my skin crawl.
Thrax nudged me in the ribs. ‘Come on, Nico. Can’t you guess where Smilis went? He’s getting away.’
He ran up to the statue and, ignoring the hissing snake, plunged two fingers in the statue’s eyes. The eyeballs disappeared and the whole shrine swung sideways, revealing a doorway in the wall.
<
br /> A secret tunnel.
Thrax plunged in, and I followed, steeling myself to get past the adder, which was now baring its fangs. I wished I still had Fotini’s antidote, just in case. The shrine swung back into place behind me. Now we were in total darkness. The smell of damp was overpowering and the walls so close, my shoulders scraped against them. The ground was slippery underfoot. It was impossible to run.
‘I wasn’t having a nightmare the other night after all,’ I said to Thrax. ‘The statue of Melinoe did have a head.’
‘It’s a lever. You slot the head on the broken neck and poke the goddess in the eyes to open the door. Ingenious.’
‘That ghostly figure I saw hovering near the shrine must have been real then too.’
‘But not an actual shade,’ said Thrax. ‘A flesh and bones person coming out of the secret tunnel.’
I could feel rancid water dripping from the roof and running down my back as I followed Thrax. Bats shrieked in the darkness ahead. After a while the tunnel widened and the stench of damp was replaced by a briny smell. I felt a cool breeze on my face. The tunnel was leading us to the sea.
Up ahead we saw sunlight twinkling through a curtain of vivid green. For a moment Smilis was silhouetted against it but then it parted and he disappeared outside.
We stumbled after him through a layer of hanging weeds, out into rosy afternoon sunlight. An ancient sea wall stretched out in front of us, carved out of jagged black rocks. Sheer cliffs towered above us. It was a desolate place, the only sound the shrill cry of seagulls nesting in the rocks.
There was a ship docked at the sea wall. It was a hulking trireme, painted all black, its one sail furled up tight against the mast. It seemed to be completely deserted except for a lookout who was asleep at the prow.
There was no sign of Smilis.
‘That ship is waiting for Smilis to deliver the ring,’ said Thrax.
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