Shadow of the Centaurs

by Saviour Pirotta

  ‘Good thinking. Someone wanted Argos out of the way for the night, so they could break in without alerting Zeno and his family. They returned him in the morning after the crime had been successfully carried out.’

  ‘But Zeno insists nothing in the house has gone missing.’

  ‘Nothing that he’s noticed,’ said Thrax.

  ‘Are you saying a thief broke into the house and stole something that Zeno didn’t know was there?’

  ‘That’s my theory at the moment,’ said Thrax. ‘I guess there’s only one way to find out.’ He placed the lid on the fruit jar to stop me from eating any more. ‘Let’s sneak out later. In the first hour of the night. We’re going on a very special mission, Nico. Bring a lamp and make sure you wear your darkest himation.’

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The Golden Helmet

  It was quite dark when Thrax and I slipped out of Master Lykos’s house. It had been a busy evening for both of us. Master Ariston had ordered me to copy four especially long poems on to papyrus, which he wanted to gift to his father’s guests at the symposium.

  After that, both Thrax and I were required to attend to Master Ariston while he entertained with his songs and also joined in the merrymaking. Sometimes Master Lykos’s symposiums can be tedious affairs, with rich merchants sitting around drinking and discussing business. The wine is heavily mixed with water so that no one gets drunk. Not so tonight. With the Anthesteria just over a week away, Master Lykos had banned any mention of work.

  Strictly speaking my job is to write down any poems or songs Master Ariston makes up during a performance. But tonight, he twice ran out of fried eel and sent me to fetch more from the kitchen. Master Ariston often forgets that I am a free man, a trained scribe, and that it’s not my duty to run errands.

  For a while it seemed like we would never be able to start our investigations, but then some athletes arrived late. They had already been to another gathering and were red in the face as they tumbled into the andron. They suggested a game of kottabos, which is particularly popular with the rich and famous in Athens. But it’s a sport I truly dislike. The players fling the dregs from their wine cups at a statue on a pole, trying to knock a discus out of its hand.

  Master Ariston flapped his hands at Thrax and me. ‘Take the rest of the night off, boys. I have a feeling it’s going to get very messy in here with all this wine flying around. I would leave too, but my father insists on me staying till the bitter end. It’ll be dawn by the time I get to bed.’

  ‘Where are we going, Thrax?’ I asked, as we changed out of our party chitons and put on our himations.

  Thrax wasn’t very forthcoming. ‘You’ll see.’

  We heard loud cheering as we passed through the agora, and saw lights dancing on the columns of the southern stoa, which also served as a market place. I would have liked to stay and watch some of the entertainment but Thrax urged me on. He waved to a short boy who was sitting near a fountain, tucking into an enormous loaf of bread.

  ‘Hello, Akademus! That bread any good?’

  ‘Hard as an altar stone,’ replied Akademus, standing up and falling in step beside us. ‘Still it’s free, I suppose. The bread seller is dead on his feet. I could have carried away his entire stall and he wouldn’t have noticed. Long live the Anthesteria.’

  ‘Well, you take care,’ warned Thrax. ‘There are lots of policemen about.’

  Akademus treated us to a toothless grin. ‘They’re too slow to catch me.’ And a moment later he had melted into the crowd.

  ‘I suppose that’s one of your new friends,’ I said to Thrax as we approached the potters’ district. Thrax had been making friends with a lot of street urchins since we had got back to Athens. They weren’t the kind of boys I would have chosen to be friends with. Indeed, I kept well away from them whenever I came across them, assuming they would taunt me or bully me right there in the street. Thrax insisted he was just keeping an eye on them. No one in the city seemed interested in their welfare. And their friendship might come in useful one day, he pointed out. They knew every hidden corner of Athens and they were teaching Thrax a lot of new skills.

  ‘What kind of skills?’ I asked.

  ‘Not the kind you’d learn from a well-paid tutor.’ He laughed. ‘Learning how to spot a cheat at games. Sending secret messages by imitating the call of birds. That sort of thing.’

  The Kerameikos was completely deserted. Everyone seemed to be down at the agora, enjoying the performance. The Anthesteria is especially popular with the working people of Athens and they jump at the chance to extend the celebrations beyond its three days.

  Thrax stopped outside Zeno’s house.

  ‘We’re going inside here?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes, we’re going to search Zeno’s andron for clues.’

  ‘But why do we have to come secretly at night? Zeno gave us permission to search the house whenever we want.’

  ‘We don’t want to alert anyone who might tamper with the evidence.’

  I had no idea who that ‘anyone’ might be and I knew that this was not the time to ask Thrax. We huddled behind an altar to Zeus across the street and examined Zeno’s house, looking for a way in. Despite its fame and importance, Athens is not a large city. There is not much space for private orchards and gardens. Most houses, even those of the rich and powerful, tend to be squashed together in long rows. They are plain on the outside, possibly with an altar dedicated to Hermes outside the front door. Zeno’s was no different. It had two tiny windows above the front door (some houses have none), which was daubed with a huge patch of tar to scare away the ghosts of the Anthesteria.

  ‘Those windows are too high to reach even if we could clamber up the wall,’ I said.

  A rosy light shone through the slats on the wooden shutters, warning us that the rooms were occupied.

  ‘That must be the women’s quarters,’ said Thrax. ‘Anyone going up there would have to get past Penelope or her slave Deborah, if she’s back.’

  ‘Perhaps the thief got in through the smoke-hole in the kitchen roof,’ I suggested.

  Nico shook his head. ‘There’s no smoke, look. Zeno must have an old-fashioned kitchen with a window to let the cooking smoke out into the yard.’

  ‘Maybe the intruders climbed up the walls and jumped down into the yard, then.’

  ‘The walls are too high for that,’ said Thrax. ‘And too smooth to scale.’

  ‘Perhaps they managed to open the front door.’

  ‘It’s locked as securely as a city gate at night. The slaves put a wooden beam across it. I checked this morning. Let’s try the back.’

  We walked to the end of the street and turned into a narrow lane. To our right the walls of the city rose high and mighty, casting a shadow on the houses. To our left, chicken coops and rabbit hutches stood outside the back doors. It was eerily silent.

  ‘This reminds me of my parents’ back yard,’ I said. ‘They share it with their neighbours and I used to spend a lot of time there playing with my friends. Pity this lane hasn’t got the same happy feeling. Perhaps it’s because I know there’s a vast graveyard on the other side of the wall. It makes the place feel, well, a bit haunted and spooky, especially now that the Anthesteria is so near. I can just imagine ghosts floating through the walls in search of their relatives in Athens.’

  At first glance, Zeno’s house seemed just as impenetrable at the back as at the front. There was a narrow door, also daubed with tar. Zeno and his wife were taking no chances with the ghosts of the Anthesteria. A round mosaic of a snake-haired Medusa grinned down at us from above the lintel. A tiny bird slept in a reed cage hung next to it. Thrax looked for a door handle but there was none. There was not even a lock with a keyhole. The door could only be opened from inside.

  ‘I’m flummoxed,’ I whispered. ‘How did the intruder get in?’

  Thrax stepped back from the door and looked around. Even in the shadows, I could see his eyes were narrowed. He was concentrating.

  ‘O
f course,’ he said after a while. ‘The way in is staring us straight in the face. Look around you again, Nico. What do you see?’

  ‘A door with no handle,’ I whispered back. ‘And a cage with a sleeping bird in it. It might be a tame swallow.’

  ‘And what else?’

  ‘A chicken coop by the back door,’ I said. ‘It’s made of wood and reeds. The chickens in it are fast asleep. They’re a bit on the small side.’

  ‘That’s because they’re not chickens,’ Thrax corrected me. ‘They’re quails. Men like Zeno eat a lot of quails’ eggs to make their muscles bigger. Look at the coop again. Now what do you see?’

  I peered closely. ‘There are six quails in all, huddled together for warmth.’

  ‘Look past the birds, Nico.’

  ‘There’s a square hole in the wall,’ I said.

  ‘It lets the birds go indoors when it’s raining,’ said Thrax. ‘I bet you that’s how the intruder got in. Shall we see if I’m right?’

  ‘I don’t think I could fit through that hole,’ I said uneasily.

  ‘You don’t have to. I’ll go. You just wait here for me.’

  Thrax opened the door to the coop without making a sound and crept in on all fours. The quails clucked softly in their sleep as he wormed his way through the straw and the square hole. But none of them so much as stirred. I had to give it to Thrax, he was more slippery than a snake in the grass. I waited in the shadows for what seemed like a year, praying to the gods that no one would come out of a nearby house and see me. Then I heard a creak and the back door opened.

  ‘Come on in, Nico.’

  I followed Thrax inside and he closed the door gently behind us. I felt straw under my feet and smelled the rank stench of bird droppings. As my eyes got used to the dark, I could see amphorae stacked against one wall. Dried sausages and bunches of onions hung from hooks in the ceiling. A few hens sat asleep on the amphorae. This was a storeroom.

  Thrax opened a second door in the far wall and I slipped behind him into a kitchen. A round figure – Eirene, I guessed – lay under a himation close to a smouldering bread oven. Her snoring shook the room and her enormous bosom rose and fell to the rhythm of it.

  I tiptoed after Thrax through yet another door, my heart beating embarrassingly loudly in my chest. This one led out into the yard.

  ‘Light your lamp at the altar, Nico,’ said Thrax.

  I did as he asked and hurried after him into the andron. In the faint light of my little lamp, the mosaic on the floor looked even more gruesome. The red tesserae glowed like freshly spilled blood. The centaurs grinned with lethal, pointed teeth.

  Thrax closed the door behind us. ‘I reckon we have almost an hour before the performance at the agora ends and Zeno brings Argos back home.’

  ‘What kind of clue are we looking for?’ I whispered.

  Thrax stood by the closed door and surveyed the room. ‘I don’t know, but I have a feeling this awful mosaic holds the key to the mystery. Help me move the couches.’

  We moved the couch closest to the door and I winced as its legs scraped loudly against the mosaic. Thrax went down on his knees to examine the floor. There wasn’t much to see, just the bottom part of the mosaic, a swirl of dark rocks and moss picked out in muddy green. We dragged the couch back into place.

  Above us, we heard footsteps thumping across the floor, followed by a crash and the sound of a child howling. I imagined Zeno’s son must have blundered into a piece of furniture, or tripped over his amis, his chamber pot. The soothing voice of an adult woman calmed him down.

  ‘We’re right under the gynaikon,’ muttered Thrax. ‘We need to be really quiet. Come on, Nico, help me shift the other couch.’

  We pushed the second couch aside, this time to reveal the top end of the mosaic. I brought the lamp closer and we both saw the head of a furious-looking centaur. He had bright yellow eyes with narrowed pupils. His shiny hair was swept back from his wide forehead in a swirl of dark tesserae. His beard was long and curled. In his hands a lethal-looking club – the centaurs’ weapon of choice – bristled all over with glistening spikes. It made my skin crawl just looking at him.

  Unlike the other four-legged beasts in the mosaic, who were bare-chested, this centaur had a wine-coloured chlamys swirling around his shoulders. Perhaps he was a leader of some kind, or even a king. I thought of the ancient legend.

  ‘Nico!’ Thrax interrupted my thoughts. ‘Look at the centaur’s fibula.’

  I hovered my lamp over the beast’s chlamys. The pin holding it to his hairy shoulder was shaped like a lambda, the eleventh letter of our alphabet. It was formed out of golden tesserae.

  ‘It sort of looks like a helmet, with a pointy top,’ I said.

  ‘It does,’ agreed Thrax. The golden fibula flashed in the lamplight and I stared at it mesmerised as Thrax ran his fingers over it.

  ‘The golden tesserae are slightly raised,’ he said, pressing on them. He spread his fingertips, like a shepherd putting his fingers on the holes of a reed pipe, and pressed harder. There was a grating sound and a square section of the mosaic moved sideways, revealing a dark hole.

  ‘Eureka!’ Thrax took the lamp from me and held it down into the hole. We made out a flight of steps, leading down into the darkness. ‘Follow me, Nico,’ he whispered.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  A Marble Sarcophagus

  We picked our way down the steps, which were slippery with mould. They led to a vault no bigger than a child’s bedroom. Our heads almost scraped against the low ceiling as we stood looking around. There was an overpowering smell of rot and I could see the walls were glistening with condensation. They were hewn out of solid rock, the marks of the mason’s pickaxe still visible through the stained, peeling whitewash.

  ‘This was probably a shelter from pirates and marauders,’ I said. ‘It would have been used hundreds of years ago when Athens was still vulnerable to pirate attacks. Whole families would have hidden in here to evade being kidnapped. Look!’

  I held up my lamp to illuminate graffiti scratched on the wall. They showed a pirate ship approaching a harbour. On the shore was a house with stick figures of people inside it. Their hands were held together in prayer to Hera, the mother goddess, who hovered protectively on a cloud above the house.

  ‘People must have carved these as a form of sacrifice while they were locked up in here,’ I said to Thrax.

  ‘This place might have started out as a shelter,’ said Thrax. ‘But someone more recently used it as a treasure vault.’

  I lowered the lamp and we spotted a row of three wooden chests. Their planks were rotten, the lids crawling with slugs.

  ‘Do you think the intruder broke into Zeno’s house to come down here, looking for treasure?’ I asked.

  ‘I’m pretty sure there’s none here now, but we’ll soon find out.’ Thrax tried lifting one of the broken lids but it fell to bits in his hands. The chests were empty.

  I turned to examine the rest of the vault but there was nothing that gave me a clue as to what the intruder could have taken.

  ‘Hey, Nico, look at this.’ Thrax had picked his way across the slimy floor to where a small shrine was carved into the wall. There had been the statue of a god in it once but someone had smashed it, leaving just a pair of marble feet on the base. In front of the broken statue lay a miniature sarcophagus, shaped like a tortoise with its head inside its shell. The body of it was made of marble but the lid was a real tortoise shell, no bigger than my hand. Thrax tried to pick it up but the feet were glued firmly to the stone.

  ‘I’ve seen sarcophagi like these for sale at the agora,’ I said, ‘though none of them were as fine as this one. I believe they are imported from Egypt, where rich people are buried with their mummified pets. It must have cost a lot of money. Do you think there are the remains of a tortoise still inside it?’

  Thrax discovered the shell opened like the lid on a perfume pot. The sarcophagus was empty.

  ‘Whatever the intruder took fro
m the vault, I think it must have been in here,’ he said. ‘Nico, bring the lamp closer.’

  He bent his head over the sarcophagus as I held the lamp over it.

  ‘There, look.’ I peered at the marble. In the lamplight, I could make out a faint handprint.

  ‘You’re right,’ I said.

  ‘The thief must have looked in the chests before opening this. He transferred mould from them to the tortoise. Very clumsy of him and very lucky for us. Not that he expected anyone to find their way down here, let alone examine this creepy shrine.’

  Just then the lamp guttered, throwing wild shadows across the shrine. The oil was running out.

  ‘Zeno and Hilarion are going to be back at any moment,’ said Thrax. ‘Let’s get out of here while we still have some light.’

  The lamp decided to go out just as the secret panel slid shut, hiding the entrance to the vault. We replaced the couch back against the wall and were stealing across the yard when a dog started barking ferociously outside the front door. It was Argos. Master Zeno and Hilarion were home.

  ‘Run for it, Nico,’ hissed Thrax, pulling his himation over his head. ‘We may still be able to get out unnoticed.’ I charged after him into the kitchen where a confused-looking Eirene was hastily rubbing the sleep out of her eyes. She let out a blood-curdling scream when she spotted us.

  ‘Ghosts! Help! Ghosts!’

  We made a dash for the back door, waking up the roosting hens, which squawked in alarm. We stumbled out into the lane just as Argos burst into the storeroom, barking loud enough to wake the dead on the other side of the city wall. How such a small animal can make such a loud noise, I’ll never know.

  Thrax slammed the door shut and neither of us stopped running until we reached the safety of the agora. It was still full of people, talking excitedly about the magician’s hand-shadow performance.

  ‘Do you think Eirene would recognise us if she saw us again?’ I asked Thrax, leaning against a column to catch my breath. I am not used to running and I had a terrible stitch in my side. My ankles were on fire.