The Mammoth Book of Classical Whodunnits

by Mike Ashley

  I went at once and awakened the others, and when they all stood before the king he spake again.

  ‘Nearchus – Medius – you have known me long, have stood beside me in battle, abided by my decisions and rarely found me wanting in wisdom. Susa, you know me for a fair sovereign, and one who governs wisely. I tell you now. You must trust me. I have discovered my assassin, but I wish to reveal my knowledge in my own way. Jolas –’ he extended a hand in my direction. ‘Upon the table is a tray with three cups, filled with wine. Give one to each of them.’

  I handed a glazed cup, much like the one the Paphlagonian had recently shattered, to the two Macedonians and the Persian.

  ‘Now believe me when I say this: that the ones who are innocent of poisoning me need fear nothing. But the one who is my murderer will himself be poisoned tonight! Now then, I command you to drink, Susa!’

  Susa blinked at Alexander and I thought his lip trembled, but he seized the cup with both hands and drank the contents in three great draughts. Then he put down the cup, rubbling his beard with the back of his hand.

  ‘Drink, Nearchus,’ said Alexander.

  Nearchus did not hesitate, but drained the cup as quickly as Susa had done.

  ‘And now you, Medius,’ said Alexander.

  Medius raised the cup to his lips and then lowered it.

  ‘But suppose you are wrong, Alexander?’ he asked quietly.

  ‘I asked you to trust me. I am not wrong.’

  Thereupon Medius raised the cup and drank, having trouble halfway through, as if his throat had closed against the liquid; but finally he managed to drain the cup and looked at Alexander defiantly.

  Nearchus spake then. ‘We have all three drunk, trusting thee, Alexander, but you have raised Jolas of Philippi above us, as if he alone were free of thy suspicion. Why not have him drink as well?’

  ‘But I have not forgotten him,’ Alexander said. ‘Jolas, there stands a cup of water upon the table for you to drink. If you, too, participate in this test, perhaps the anger of the others against you will be diminished. I say to you as I said to the others; if you are innocent, you have nothing to fear. Drink the water.’

  I raised the glass to my lips and as I did Alexander spake again.

  ‘It is as pure as the water of my bath, Jolas.’

  At that I hesitated and looked at Alexander with staring eyes and beating heart – and put the cup down upon the table.

  ‘You are my murderer, Jolas,’ said Alexander, his eyes burning. ‘You were sitting beside the pool when I arrived there four nights ago. How did you poison it?’

  ‘With some of the poison, which I tossed into it,’ said I, almost crying now that my perfidy was so inevitably disclosed. ‘But I did not mean to kill you, Alexander,’ I pleaded. ‘Antipater assured me that he had tested the poison upon others and that taken through the pores the poison merely induces a fever that will pass away. But I saw you swallow some of the water!’

  ‘Antipater knew you for a fool! He meant Alexander should die!’ Nearchus cried, stepping toward me, but he stopped as Alexander raised his hand.

  ‘And what reason did Antipater give you?’ he asked.

  ‘He wished Medius dead and disgraced, so members of Medius’ family in Macedonia, who have been troublesome to Antipater, could be removed from authority. He knew Medius was your great drinking companion. I was to poison you harmlessly, plant the knowledge of Medius’ desire to assassinate you, then when the effects of the poison became manifest, to indicate their origin, and accuse Medius of administering it in your drink.’

  Alexander nodded with satisfaction.

  ‘And what was to be your reward, Jolas?’

  ‘Antipater would beg you to release me from duty here in Babylonia, and once in Macedonia he would give me the governorship of Sestos, a position, Alexander, you would never give me, since you would have me litigate in Babylonia until the end of my days.’

  ‘Not now, Jolas, not now!’ Alexander said. Then rising unsteadily he pointed at Medius.

  ‘You were to be the victim, Medius,’ he said. ‘Make Jolas drink the water!’

  With Medius’ all-too-ready sword at my throat, I had no alternative and I drained the water to the last drop.

  In the silence that followed I asked, ‘How did you know that it was I, Alexander?’

  ‘The other day I asked you if you knew this poison, and you denied any knowledge of it. Yet when the Paphlagonian was killed I was stricken with a sudden seizure and you helped me to my couch. ‘Warmth for your feet,’ you said, ‘and a pillow for the great pain in your back!’ But how could you know my back hurt, feeling as if someone thrust a sword between my shoulder blades, if you did not already know the effects of the poison? I had not told it to anyone. That began a train of thought, and when I saw the poisoned wine spreading within the pool and wondered how soon the fishes would die, I remembered the bathing water, and realized why Medius had not been poisoned by the third of the bitter cup, and why all my investigation had been fruitless. There was no poison in the cup! I had been poisoned before the drinking bout, not during it! . . .’

  Alexander was too weak to go on, so Nearchus had me sent under guard to my house at the edge of the palace gardens and confined there. Medius wished to kill me at once, which was but natural, since it was he who had sent the archer after me, but Alexander and Nearchus were against it. It would be better for the ruling officers if it were thought Alexander died of disease, and so it will be told that I, too, died of the same, from my contact in the service of the king.

  It is two days now since the great Alexander died. There is the sound of weeping and mourning in the streets of Babylon, and a hush in the palace gardens. The fever that burns me makes my pen cold to the touch, but I must finish this so the world will know that I did not mean that my dearest friend Alexander should die.

  I have no use for men who would kill merely to satisfy their ambition.

  THE FAVOUR OF A TYRANT

  Keith Taylor

  Keith Taylor is an Australian writer who has an avid interest in early British history. He has written a series of historical fantasy novels set at the time of the downfall of the Roman Empire in Britain which began with Bard (1981). Here, though, he travels back further in time to explore scientific intrigue and treachery at the time of the Greek mathematician and inventor, Archimedes, who lived from around 287 to 212 BC.

  The master had been at court the night before. He entered the workshop with such careful steadiness, it was clear he had done his share of drinking. Not that I’m one to raise an eyebrow if a man punishes the wine bowl. Still, this one was moderate as a rule, so I guessed there had been something out of the ordinary in last night’s feast.

  He held up a hand. The saws and mallets stopped at once. I swept shavings off his favourite chair and offered him a hair of the dog, some watered Chian wine. He accepted it, taking three measured swallows.

  ‘Chaire, my good Phanes,’ says he. ‘How my head aches!’

  And still he was here, a scant hour past dawn. Something was up besides the sun, no question.

  ‘I drank like a fool of a boy last night,’ he confessed. ‘The excitement of proving at last, by pure mathematics, my laws of leverage and mechanical advantage. I fear I claimed that if I had a place to stand and a lever long enough, I could move the world!’

  I reckoned he could. He was the greatest man I ever knew. Mind, I’d been using his principles to make levers and windlasses for over a year. He’d also devised a compound pulley block that I’d worked with until I understood it better than he. I didn’t care if they lacked rigorous proof on paper, so long as they were useful. I’m not a mathematician.

  ‘Was that bad, sir?’ I asked.

  ‘Several men laughed, and the Roman ambassador tapped his head, I believe. The licence of wine. My royal cousin’s pride was offended. He challenged me to prove my words by launching the Syrakosia single-handed.’ He sighed. ‘Well, I agreed, to shorten the tale. Else the king had lo
oked foolish before dignitaries from Athens, Rome and Carthage.’

  No, that wouldn’t do. Archimedes wasn’t rich, you see. He depended on his cousin’s favour.

  The Syrakosia? She was the hugest ship ever built, a whim of King Heiron’s. I’d seen her take shape; light of the Sun, I’d worked on her! If Archimedes was worried about launching that marine monster single-handed and losing Heiron’s favour, it seemed to me he was worried for nothing.

  ‘Sir, I’ve been working with your ideas for months. We can contrive a tackle that’ll launch the Syrakosia at the touch of a lever. Simple.’

  It was simple, too. Once you knew how. Believe me, friends, except that it was a morning after for him, he would not have worried for a minute. We’re talking about the man who discovered how much silver a cheating goldsmith had mixed into a golden crown – without melting it down or cutting off the smallest bit, it’s true. He could have done anything.

  ‘It must be begun now,’ Archimedes said.

  ‘It’s as good as done, sir. The ambassador from Rome will not be tapping his head when we’ve finished.’

  I watched him leave the harbour-side warehouse we had fitted out as our marine workshop. You know, most great men I’ve seen, kings and lords and such, don’t look great. Archimedes did. He was only a finger’s length shorter than I, strong and straight at fifty, with a bearded face that made me think of statues of Zeus. Being a gentleman, he had to pretend he thought all useful, down-to-earth knowledge sordid and vile, fit only for slaves, and it’s true he had an endless passion for things like the movement of stars or the exact proportions of a circle, but I can tell you he loved engineering, too. He was delighted when the king ordered him to devise war machines to defend the city. It gave him a perfect excuse to spend time in the workshop.

  I handed over to my foremen, and went to walk along the ramparts of the harbour-wall. Soldiers let me pass freely; I was known to them all as Archimedes’ master-carpenter, and easy to recognize, a towhead six-and-a-quarter feet tall, muscled like a bull, with moustaches down to my collar-bones.

  There on the ramparts, I looked over a couple of the war engines Archimedes had designed. These were massive timber cranes meant to sink attacking ships. The long arms were made to swing out over the water, holding huge lead weights that could then be released, to drop through the enemy hulls and smash them. I’d tested the idea, using worthless old tubs with reinforced decks. It had worked. The cranes were certainly strong enough for what I had in mind now.

  I stood there rubbing my chin and thinking for a while. Then I visited the construction docks, down by the Great Harbour. Complete now, the Syrakosia lay there, ready for launching. Splendid she appeared, indeed, with her immense size, lead-sheathed hull and three masts, each tall as a tree – if you weren’t a sailor or craftsman.

  For one thing, she was just too huge. A ‘twentier’ galley has so many oars that their best arrangement will still be clumsy. Worse, it had been Heiron’s whim to make her a grain transport, war galley and royal pleasure ship all in one. I ask you! If you want a grain bottom, you build a grain bottom. If you want a warship, you build a warship. Try to combine both in the same hull, and the result won’t be much good for either function. Then she had other useless adjuncts, like a suite of sybaritic cabins and an immense fish-tank.

  Still, you don’t say to a king that his pet project cannot work, even if you are Archimedes, much less if you are a slave. Our concern was to launch her. I felt certain those two cranes would serve the purpose. Control them together from a single windlass, through a couple of Archimedes’ compound pulley-blocks, and they could lift and pull her forward so that she glided down the slipway at the movement of one man’s hand. Let’s see the Roman ambassador smirk then!

  You know the cold feeling that goes over your skin when you’re being ill-wished, or a ghost is walking nearby? I suddenly felt it. Glancing around, I saw nothing out of the way, just a dark Punic sailor who’d also stopped to gawk at the Syrakosia, scratching his head. Thanking his gods he would never have to row in her, I supposed. But the chill on my skin remained.

  I forgot the misgiving with the hour. I’d work to do. After discussing things with the master, I had the cranes unclamped, mounted on wheels, and dragged down to the quayside. My workmen braced and blocked the wheels under my direction, so that an earthquake would hardly move them, and left the machines there until next morning.

  With the dawn I was down by the construction dock. The cranes needed placing in exact positions. I’ll ask you, friends, what could go wrong? I am not careless, and my workmen were picked experts in siege work and leverage.

  Well, something went wrong. We had barely touched the first crane when its whole ponderous height lurched to one side. One of the big wooden wheels came off and rolled into the sea. I grabbed a lever and sprang to jam it under the carriage. It made cracking noises; so did my muscles. Sweat popped out of my skin.

  ‘Help me, you Persian-sired bastards!’ I yelled. ‘Take the strain on those dexter ropes or she’ll fall! Right. Now pull for your rascal lives! Charicles – uh! – chocks under the wheels, now!’

  If the men hadn’t hauled strongly on those ropes at once, I’d have been a red smear on the quayside. Charicles was quick with the wedges, and other men slid baulks under the axle until the wobbling crane held steady. I stared at its top-heavy, ungainly height with relief. Had it fallen, it would have smashed like kindling, and probably killed men.

  Well, the sweating and swearing was over now, with no broken backs. I went looking for the cause. It wasn’t far to seek, and it hadn’t been mischance. Some dirty maggot had cut through the linch-pin, sticking it back together with wax to make it look sound! The other wheel on that side had been treated the same way. Luckily, it hadn’t come adrift with the other, as it had surely been meant to. I tested them all before we went further, and examined both cranes from base to tip, climbing them myself.

  Nothing else was wrong.

  It seemed too purposeful for idle mischief. Did someone want Archimedes to fall from his cousin’s favour? That could be anybody from Rome, Carthage, or – closer to home – Zancle. Yes, and there were plenty of possible culprits in Syracuse itself, and they needn’t be acting for political reasons. Some courtier might want Archimedes removed so that he could advance himself. It occurred to me, too, when I thought a bit further, that this might not be meant to discredit Archimedes, blazing sun to my mechanical planet though he was. Hades. Someone might dislike me.

  I wondered if he was persistent or a quitter.

  When I told the master what had happened, and what I suspected, he turned out to be having one of his high-flown moods; poring in ecstasy over a letter from some astronomer in Egypt. He barely listened to me. After warning me absently to have an eye to my safety at work, he was lost again in this Alexandrian’s notions of the harmonic movements of the planets, or some such.

  I took care, right enough! From that moment, the machinery we worked on was guarded night and day. I looked it over for effects of sabotage each morning and afternoon. Then I heard a piece of gossip from Calluella, a servant in Archimedes’ house who sometimes shared my bed. Fine girl, Calluella. Freed and married long ago, I believe.

  She told me the master had nearly been killed at the theatre.

  Once she ran out of excited chatter, it turned out to have been less fearful by far. The master had been watching a tragedy by Lysander, a local talent, in company with Heiron’s court. The huge awning that was supposed to unfurl, neatly and obediently, to shade them all from the sun, had come away from its fastenings all together in a massive roll. It crashed down less than an arm’s length from Archimedes. It also broke someone’s shoulder and knocked five or six folk flat. Even though it hadn’t come near the king, he’d been highly displeased. The slaves whose duty it was to roll and release the shade-cloth were still screaming.

  ‘That’ll be me,’ I said, ‘if anything bad happens at the launching. I wonder . . . Calluella, if yo
u hear of any other accidents like that happening near the master, be sure to tell me – quickly.’

  ‘If you desire me to take all that trouble,’ she said, ‘you had better love me again – slowly.’

  Tarnus the All-Competent, but she drove a hard bargain.

  The next morning, Archimedes sent for me again. There was nothing of the dreamy savant about him this time, and the movement of planets was far from his mind. He told me about the falling shade-cloth, and I listened like a schoolboy, pretending it was news to me. You don’t let your master guess how much slaves hear, or how much we talk among ourselves. Funny that masters rarely think of it; perhaps they don’t want to. For certain, we don’t want them to. Not even a master as good as Archimedes.

  ‘You recall the event of the wheels on the siege crane, good Phanes?’ he asked, looking more like Zeus in the dignity of judgement than ever. ‘The linch-pins were deliberately broken, you said.’

  ‘They were, sir.’

  ‘Interesting.’ He stroked his beard. ‘Something very like it was done to the sun-awning at the theatre. The lacings that held it to the base had been cut, and on the inner side, so that it looked in perfect working order. Until it was untied to roll down over the framework. It almost struck me down. It may have been intended to do so.’

  Noises of astounded horror from the awed Phanes. I felt glad the master had become aware he might be in danger, mind you.

  ‘I should like you to attend the king’s banquet with me tonight,’ he said. ‘My royal cousin demands it. He’s greatly preoccupied with the launching of the Syrakosia. Our good names are at stake, to be sure. We had a part in building her.’

  Right. Archimedes had devised, according to the king’s enthusiastic whims, and I had built. The king had foisted a Corinthian named Archias upon us, in the belief that he was a shipwright, but I’d found him about as much use as the giant fish-tank I’d had to instal amidships. Naturally he took all the credit and complained about the idle mischief of his subordinates.