by Marilyn Todd
‘I wrote in your record that you were both careful and crafty. It was a compliment,’ Lysander said. ‘The trouble was, you were too careful, too crafty, and in the end your very arrogance gave you away. This is how it was done,’ Lysander continued. ‘Right from the start, I’d made it clear that you were the man I wanted guarding that caravan. A soldier with brains, who could outfox any thieves. I sent you on a reconnaissance mission, in which you scouted the terrain but also put to good use by finding yourself a patsy.’
‘The groom wasn’t my first choice,’ Gregos said ruefully. ‘But a man has to do what a man has to do. She fell for my not inconsiderable charms almost at once.’
And so the scene was set. The first gold train comes in, it is ten per cent short. Lysander and Gregos discuss how and where the switch could have been made, but agree the plans to transport it were foolproof.
‘A good man died because of you,’ Lysander said levelly. ‘You shot him, purely to cast him in the role of the villain, with no thought to his family or honour.’
‘He died because of you,’ Gregos snapped back. ‘You’re the one who told me to spy on the men of Lynx Squad. You’re the one who planted the seed for pinning the blame on to one of our own. I’d have been happy letting clouds of suspicion hang over the posting station.’
‘There was nothing to stop you,’ Lysander snarled back. ‘God knows, there are enough people there for us to have spent weeks—months!—trying to sort through the mess.’ He spiked his hands through his long warrior hair. ‘But that’s what I meant about being too careful and too crafty, because once again, you were too clever by half.’
With a swirl of his wrist, Lysander tossed his dagger into the air and caught it in a nonchalant hand.
‘I admit you had me fooled with the hut. Very convincing, that blood-sodden mattress and the drag marks down to the river. What was it, by the way? A pig?’
‘Suckling sow. Very messy. I knew you’d examine the scene, asking yourself, was I really dead? So I made it look like the work of a woman. Please tell me you don’t think that’s too clever by half.’
‘No, you arrogant son-of-a-bitch, I do not. In fact, I followed every signpost you left for me. Your affair with the groom. How smitten you were with this girl. I believed everything you wanted me to, even that she was an accomplice. Which was easy enough, since it happened to be true. The difference was—’ he tossed the knife up again—‘the poor cow didn’t know she was a co-conspirator to murder and theft.’
Well, he could hardly tell her, could he? Instead, he pretended to be madly in love, and for her part she fell like a stone. He swore her to secrecy when he promised to desert the army and elope with her, and she, bless her stupid heart, wouldn’t risk betraying the love of her life. He sent her on errands to make it appear as though she’d followed him to Sparta and killed him, then quickly disposed of her when she became redundant. Meeting at a landmark that was easily recognized, not too close to the station, yet not too far away.
‘At least the bitch died happy.’
‘Hm.’ Lysander rested his foot on the log and leaned his arm on his knee. Minutes passed. ‘I went to the mines, took a long look around, then backtracked over the route, over the plans, over all the security measures we’d put in place, until I finally realized the more audacious the act, the less it is questioned. There is no such thing as impossible.’
‘You’re just guessing.’
‘All right, let’s say I’m you. I’m at the mines,’ Lysander said. ‘In charge of loading the gold. I’m counting the sacks at the top of my voice as they’re loaded on to the donkeys…29, 30, 31, 33, 34, 35, 37… Easy, isn’t it?’
Bloody master stroke, Gregos thought to himself. At the end, there’s a full complement, because no one pays attention to numbers. Their minds are on stacking saddlebags, getting home to their kids, what they’ll be eating for dinner tonight. While ten per cent of the gold gets set aside, where Gregos had already confided to the mine-owners that this was an extra security precaution. He bore the king’s seal, why wouldn’t they believe him? Consequently, another donkey slides into the caravan. When it slides out at the posting station, hey presto, there’s still a full head count.
‘You should have stuck to the first three caravans, Gregos. But no. You got greedy—’
‘Materialistic, if you don’t mind.’
The army bored him, all that training and discipline, and stifling rules. His wife didn’t need him, he didn’t like her —or the dullness of family life. What was wrong with wanting an endless supply of wine, women and song, far away from trudging and fighting? Zeus, the relief when he hacked off his long warrior hair! The freedom he’d felt, as it fell.
‘I had in mind Phoenicia, or maybe Carthage, if that didn’t work out.’
Some exotic destination, where he could flout the tedium of convention in comfort. He already thought of himself as Prince Gregos.
‘Materialism, greed, it’s still thieving, you bastard. How much were you planning to steal this time?’
‘More than ten per cent,’ Gregos laughed.
That’s why he staged his own murder. To throw the investigators off the track, then changing his modus operandi.
‘You knew the fourth caravan would have to stop to change animals. You even knew we were on the alert. Yet you honestly believed that if you played this with enough balls, you could just walk up and steal it from under my nose.’
Lysander’s sword hooked a different set of clothes from the branches. The Germanic leggings and hood that was to be the next disguise, having shrugged off the Babylonian merchant.
‘Over-careful, over-crafty, that’s what gave you away. That shot through the warrior’s neck, for example. Too clean. As was the execution of the female groom. Those kinds of actions betrayed you, Gregos, but do you know what really let you down? The reason I found you, in fact?’
‘You’re obviously going to tell me.’
‘It was the stupidity of believing you were smarter than me.’
‘I still am.’
Lysander’s eyebrows shot up. ‘How would that be, when you’re bound and trussed like a hog for the spit?’
‘I know where the gold is.’ He’d been planning his escape route from the moment he realized who’d tied these knots. ‘I also know how desperately you want it back, because in your book, to lose ten per cent of three caravans is to fail. And you do not, and I mean really do not, want to fail.’
‘Damn right.’ Lysander’s grin was colder than ice. ‘I have no intention of returning without the full quota, so why don’t we save ourselves a lot of time and, truly, my friend, an awful lot of pain by making this easy.’
The offer was simple. A quick, painless death in return for Gregos telling him where he’d hidden the gold dust.
‘I’ll be honest, that wasn’t the plan I had in mind here.’ Gregos saw himself walking away with his life. ‘Torture won’t get you far, anyway. I’ve been trained to withstand extremes of pain, and you’re the one who taught me, remember?’
‘You want to cut a deal?’
‘I swear by the River Styx to give you the exact location of the gold in return for walking away.’
A few hours’ start was all Gregos needed.
‘I make it my policy not to make deals with traitors, and as for persuasion—’ he twirled a red slipper on the end of his finger—‘once again, this is why I command the Krypteia. I never reveal all my secrets.’
Gregos swallowed. Overhead, geese honked in noisy migration. A leaf fluttered down from an oak.
‘Well?’ Lysander asked. ‘What’s it to be?’
‘Fuck you,’ Gregos said.
Twenty-Eight
With hindsight, it was obvious Nobilor would be camped out close to where his chariot went over the edge. That way, whenever Calypso or Hermione went up to stare into the ravine, scatter petals, reflect, meditate, or whatever grieving women were supposed to do in such circumstances, he would be able to meet them.
Right from the beginning, at the Festival of the Axe God, it had been bothering Iliona why two women who hated each other’s guts spent so much time in each other’s company. If you don’t like someone, you avoid them, it’s that simple. You don’t engage in insults…unless, of course, it’s to draw attention to them.
Diversion tactics again. People see what they are expected to see, and the foundations had been laid from the very beginning. Hermione playing up the old bag of a mother-in-law, such a favourite of comic playwrights. Openly calling Calypso a money-grubbing bitch and pretending to bully her, while the new bride played the foil to perfection.
Not quite so empty-headed after all.
Iliona tied her stallion close to some lush mountain grass and tiptoed along the path Hermione had described. Five minutes later, she heard giggling, mock groans, and the unmistakable clack-clack-clack of a game of knucklebones.
‘That’s five hundred thousand drachmas you owe me.’ Daphne’s voice filtered through the late summer undergrowth. For the first time, she sounded happy.
‘Double or quits,’ a rough voice chuckled.
‘Make it a million, Daddy, or I’m going home.’
‘My daughter, the hustler! All right, a million it is. One, two—oh, no! Not three kings. How do you do it?’
‘Cadur showed me. It’s all in the wrist, see?’ She cheered her own luck as she threw yet another winning set. ‘Let’s play horse in the stable with the bones.’
‘What’s wrong with eggs in the basket? I usually win that.’
‘Yes, but there’s no fun if you can’t hear them click. How about a game of Thread the Needle— Iliona?’
If Nobilor, the most famous wrestler that ever lived, was surprised to see a high priestess walk into his secret glade in the mountains, he was too schooled to show it. He jumped to his feet. Placed his fist against his breast in salute. Then clipped his fifteen-year-old daughter round the ear.
‘You call her my lady, now then, young woman!’
‘Sorry.’ The sulky face Iliona knew and loved was back in a flash. ‘But it’s not fair. How did you find us?’
‘When you count the grains of sand on the seashore and measure the drops in the ocean for a living, this was pretty straightforward,’ she said.
Nobilor swallowed his grin. ‘Go and water the lady’s horse, love. There’s a stream just over the ridge.’
‘But—’
‘Run along.’
He was big. Much bigger than Iliona expected. Broken nose, battered eye sockets, nothing left of his ears, it was easy to see how Daphne won every bout throwing jacks. His huge paws were gnarled and misshapen after twenty years of being broken and crushed. Any delicacy of movement was long past.
‘I killed them for nothing, then.’
The good humour that underpinned the big man was replaced by a terrible sadness, and suddenly she saw there was no paradox in a man who fought for a living wanting to avoid confrontation in his private life. Nobilor was as soft as bread dough inside.
‘My two beautiful, spirited girls, and I killed them. Murdered them.’ He sat down, burying his head in his hands. ‘It was horrible. The screams… The suffering…’
He was talking about the horses, of course. The dark bay, and the gold palomino.
‘I really loved them, but I hoped that by sacrificing them, we would be able to start a new life.’
‘What’s stopping you?’
‘Huh?’
‘Let me tell you a tale of impossible feats.’ Iliona settled herself on the rock opposite him, making herself comfortable by crossing her legs. ‘In a world where only aristocrats have the luxury of time and money to compete at Olympia, it’s a miracle when a penniless youth from the slums finds a backer who nurtures his talent. The youth is a natural at Wrestling School. He wins hands-down at the Games, a dream come true, but the fairy-tale doesn’t end there. The youth remains the best wrestler ever to have lived, and after two decades of unrelenting success, his stature has become almost godlike.’
For most champions, fame was ambrosia and nectar rolled into one. A drug they couldn’t give up, and why should they? Free meals in every city state. Best seats at the theatre. Their face painted on wine mugs. The joys of being mobbed, fêted, adored wherever they went.
‘With every passing year, though, the pressure grew. It mightn’t be this year, it mightn’t even be next, but before long one of those eager young bucks lapping at his heels would end up taking his title.’
Nobilor sighed. ‘I wanted to retire even before I met Calypso,’ he said. ‘But twenty years ago, I signed a contract with my sponsor, saying I’d fight whoever he wanted, whenever he wanted, for as long as I retained my crown. So when the King of Thebes invites me to fight and Athens puts up their best wrestler, there’s no refusing. He has me by the balls.’ He scratched the back of his neck. ‘I emerge victorious from the contest, but every time I seem to be more of an animal, less of a man. I had to call a halt, one way or another.’
A woodpecker drummed the side of a holm oak. Lizards basked on the stones.
‘You could have thrown the competition.’
‘I thought about that,’ he said slowly. ‘But I don’t hold with cheating, it’s not right, and look at me. Is this a face you forget? Exactly. I’d be no more anonymous for losing, which means the crowd would be sneering where they used to cheer. Worse, I’d have to live with the fact that I let someone I don’t respect take my title.’
‘A man has his pride, eh?’
‘I don’t want my daughter teased. I want her to be proud of me, and proud of my achievements. My fame and my name is her heritage too, and the men seeking the hand of a champion’s daughter aren’t the same as those seeking the hand of a has-been’s.’
Valid point.
‘We’d have got away with this, had that banker not been delayed. But we needed confirmation that word’s filtered through that Nobilor’s dead, and that his estate and his affairs have been wound up.’
Out of sight is out of mind, Billi. Unless you stay in the thick of it, you’ll be forgotten by this time next year.
Wise words from a wise woman.
‘I don’t know what’s keeping him,’ Nobilor said. ‘But for every day we’ve been kept hanging on, Daphne’s crush on that hunk of a groom grows stronger and stronger. She’s asking if she can marry him, now.’
Iliona remembered him leaning against the tree at the funeral, just one point of his shoulder blade touching.
‘Not a good idea,’ she said slowly.
‘I agree, but my daughter’s logic is inescapable. Look at you and Calypso, she says. Love comes in all sorts of packets. ’
Nobi always called us Pinkie and Pookie. Don’t you think that’s absolutely darling?
‘Calypso must love you an awful lot, to give up friends, family, everything for a life of anonymity.’
His big, ugly face twisted. It took a moment before Iliona realized it was happiness. ‘I never knew I was alone until I met her.’ His eyes filled. ‘Even when I went off on my chariot, I kept looking round, hoping she’d wave me off. Giving me the strength to go on.’
She couldn’t, of course. Partly to keep up the act of the not-so-bereaved widow. Partly because she’d probably have broken down when she saw him trotting out of the yard. Calypso was as straight as a die, Nobilor told her. Honest and faithful. Not domesticated, of course, but that’s where his Ma came in. Doing what she’d always done, running the household with ferocious efficiency. Despite the act they put on, all three hit it off at once.
‘This whole fake-death thing was Calypso’s idea,’ he said proudly. ‘She chose the Lake of Light, the posting station, planned it from beginning to end. Even found us an island where people won’t recognize me, where we can settle down in a country villa.’
I told him, the first thing you do, now you’
ve won that laurel crown, is buy a villa in the posh end of Thebes.
I was thinking more of a place in the country, Ma.
He swallowed. ‘I’m so lucky to have them. My three girls, and little Pookie.’
Oh dear. Now Iliona was welling up, too. This big man with a face like a battlefield, going daft over a fluffy rat and his childlike wife.
‘I don’t want Daphne to think it’s her fault that I’ve been exposed as a fraud.’ He blew his nose. ‘She’s young, and they get impatient at that age, or so my mother tells me. She couldn’t wait for the banker. Kept itching to see me, make sure her old dad was all right, and bring him supplies.’ He chuckled as he showed her what Daphne had brought. ‘What does she think I am, an ox?’
‘That note, telling your mother and Calypso she’d gone, certainly set a cat among the pigeons,’ Iliona said. ‘But, like I said, I haven’t come here to scupper your plans. As far as I’m concerned, the dead can stay dead, and I wish all three of you nothing but luck.’
She was going to say all four, but she still had the marks in her finger from that bloody dog’s teeth. She hoped it pooked every inch of the sea crossing.
‘Then begging your pardon, ma’am, why did you come all the way up here?’ He dribbled the knucklebones through his knobbly paws. ‘I’m guessing it wasn’t to admire my good looks.’
‘I’ll save that treat for next time,’ she said. ‘Right now, I need your help, and Daphne’s.’
There were still loose ends to tie up.
Twenty-Nine
Darkness settled over the lake and the mountains, enveloping them in a cloak of warm velvet. The Hunter’s Moon, swelling visibly, rose in the sky, casting silver light on the rocky coves and white beaches that the Commander of the Krypteia had so eloquently tried to promote. In a few weeks, a thick coating of ice would cover the lakeshore and wolves would howl in the night. But for now, the silence was broken only by the rustle of dry autumn leaves, the sporadic bark of a fox, and the soft chirr of a nightjar in the bushes.
