Death Ex Machina (26 page)

“We would say Dionysos is Sabazios,” Maia pointed out. “But it all comes to the same thing.”

“Yes, of course,” said Diotima politely. “I myself am a priestess of Artemis. Artemis of the Hunt is our goddess in Athens; yet Artemis as she is worshipped at Brauron is a goddess of young womanhood; and the Artemis at Ephesus where I once served is a goddess of fertility. Different aspects, but
they’re all the one goddess. Of course your Sabazios and our Dionysos can be the one god.”

“You served at the Artemision at Ephesus?” Maia said, amazed. Ephesus wasn’t all that far from Phrygia.

“Briefly, but yes,” Diotima said.

Maia and Petros glanced at each other. There was communication in that look, the communication between a couple that no one else can read. But I knew they had reached some conclusion because Petros said, “You have been very good to us, Nicolaos and Diotima.”

“You’re welcome.”

“We would like to invite you to one of our services,” Petros said.

I didn’t have to ask what Diotima thought of that idea. She was always ready to learn something new.

“Thank you, we’d love to come,” I said.

As we spoke there was an odd smell wafting in from the backyard.

“Are you making bread out back?” I asked. Because the smell reminded me of bread, but was somehow different.

“Not bread,” said Petros. “Come see.”

Like most large houses, beyond the courtyard was an open space surrounded by back wall. On one side was the kitchen, on the other was the midden, and in between was a space to park your cart, with a back gate that opened onto a narrow lane.

In that middle space, where I expected the cart, was an enormous wooden vat filled with liquid. Standing over it was a man with dark ringleted hair and a black, bushy beard. He stirred the contents with a stick so large that he had to hold it in both hands. The smell out here was strong. I hoped the neighbors didn’t complain.

“It’s a drink we make,” Maia said. “It’s called beer. Try some.”

Petros handed me a piece of straw. It was dry and quite stiff, as old straw is.

I looked at it blankly. What was I supposed to do with a straw?

“Dip the other end of the straw in the vat,” Petros said. “Put your lips on the top end and suck through it.”

“Suck through a piece of old straw?” I said.

“Like this.” He took a straw of his own and demonstrated. With one end in the liquid and his lips on the other. He sucked and his cheeks made a funny shape. Petros seemed to enjoy this.

I had worried that these Phrygians could be violent. It had never occurred to me that they might be insane.

I put the straw in the vat and stuck my mouth on the other end. I was sure that nothing much could come through that tiny hole, so I sucked hard.

Liquid spurted into my mouth, lots of it. I tried to swallow by reflex. I couldn’t, there was too much in my mouth. I clamped my mouth tight shut to spare myself the indignity of the beer coming back out my mouth.

The beer squirted out of my nostrils.

“Perhaps a bit more gently?” Petros suggested, as I coughed and snorted.

I sucked again, this time determined to get it right.

A trickle of the drink flowed into my mouth. I sucked cautiously harder. The beer shot into my mouth and I had to swallow. The taste was like nothing I’d ever experienced. It wasn’t wine, but it wasn’t water. One thing was immediately obvious: this beer was alcoholic. It was stronger than the watered wine that Hellenes drink. I knew that Egyptians drank beer, but I’d never put any thought to what it might be like.

I asked, “What sort of grapes do you use to make this?”

“Not grapes,” said the man stirring the vat.

To my blank look Maia added, “Beer is made from barley.”

I couldn’t imagine how anyone crushed barley to get enough
juice to make anything. But obviously someone had managed, because here was the beer to prove it.

Maia handed a straw to Diotima. She managed to drink from it more elegantly than I had.

I dipped the straw back in and drank more of the strange liquid, then offered my considered opinion: “It’s awful. Don’t you have any wine?”

Maia laughed. “Beer is the sacred drink of Sabazios, just as wine is sacred to Dionysos. In the land we come from, the men prefer beer.”

“Weird.”

The man with the stick smiled but said nothing. He was young and quite good looking. I wondered what had made him move to Athens.

AS WE LEFT the house, Diotima and I were approached by a man. He’d been waiting in the street.

“Nicolaos! Nicolaos, I must speak to you.” His expression was grave.

“Yes, Theophrastus, what is it?” I asked. For Theophrastus was a neighbor; he owned the house beside Diotima’s. I thought he was about to complain about the mice in the roof.

“It’s these new tenants of yours.”

“What’s wrong, Theophrastus? Are they making too much noise?”

“No, they are very quiet, except when they make repairs, and they have apologized for that. They are much quieter than your previous tenants.”

I was not surprised. The diplomats and wealthy merchants who had previously rented our house had held loud and frequent parties.

“Do they cause trouble in the street?” I asked. “Do they steal things?”

“By no means. They keep to themselves.”

“Then I don’t understand the problem, Theophrastus.”

“They’re
metics
,” he said. He glanced left and right, to make sure no one was listening.

“Yes, I know,” I said. “But you just agreed they’re not causing trouble.”

“They bring down the tone of the street,” Theophrastus said. “All the neighbors agree. Everyone says your other tenants were much better.”

I blinked. “Let me see if I understand,” I said. “You would rather have neighbors who hold constant, loud parties, who urinate on your walls when they’re drunk, and who let their house fall into disrepair, but who are wealthy and from good families?”

“Yes! Precisely! I knew you’d understand, Nicolaos,” he said in relief. “They’re not even Hellenes. They’re from Phrygia. I asked and they told me so. If you could tell them to leave—”

“I’m afraid I can’t do that.”

It was his turn to blink. “You can’t?”

“I made an agreement with them.”

“Agreements can be changed.”

“There’s a contract,” I said. I made a mental note to make a contract with Petros as soon as possible. “The actors have kept their end of the bargain. More than kept it. You see, Theophrastus, it’s out of my hands.” I held up my hands so he could see they were empty.

Theophrastus was taken aback. “This is very inconvenient, Nicolaos.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Does the contract allow you to evict them for bad behavior?”

“Did we not just agree that they are well behaved?”

Theophrastus rubbed his chin. “I’m sure I and a few of the other men in the street could testify to antisocial goings-on. If it came to court, that is. A jury would believe anything of non-Hellenes.”

“I’m sorry, Theophrastus,” I repeated.

“Think of the street’s reputation, Nicolaos.”

“I shall give it every consideration, Theophrastus.”

THE MOMENT WE were out of the street and out of earshot, I said, “Diotima, I have an idea.”

“What?” she asked.

I told her my thought. When I finished explaining she bit her lip and said, “Well, it’s easy enough to check.”

“Yes, let’s go.”

We found Euboulides and Pheidestratos, the guards who had failed their duty at the theater, outside the barracks of the Scythian Guard. They stood at attention in the middle of the combat training square, in the heat of day.

Diotima and I walked up to them.

“Good morning, sir, and you too, Lady Diotima,” they said in unison.

“How long have you two been standing here?” I asked.

“What day is it, sir?” Euboulides asked.

“The ninth,” I said automatically. Then I realized it had been the ninth for three days in a row. I corrected myself.

“Then we’ve been here three days, master.”

“What, without moving?” I asked, incredulous.

“Chief Pythax mentioned something about tearing the skin off of us while we were still alive if we moved, sir. On account of us failing our duty. He said it would learn us not to doze. We gotta stand here till he says we can go. The other guards brung us water.”

“What if you have to piss?” I asked.

“Look down, master,” Euboulides said.

I did. I was standing in a wet spot. I took one step to the right.

Now that they mentioned it, I could smell a certain aroma wafting from their presence. The two Scythians hadn’t washed
in a couple of days. Their skin must have been unbearable in itchy sweat.

To confirm it, Pheidestratos lifted his arm to scratch his armpit, and the smell increased.

“I’ll speak to my father about this,” Diotima promised.

Euboulides and Pheidestratos looked horrified. “Don’t do that, mistress. This is our just punishment for failing you.”

I said, “I think you can earn forgiveness if you can answer a question.”

“Sir?”

“That drink the woman gave you … was it wine?”

“No, master,” Euboulides said. “It was beer.”

As I thought. I shot a triumphant look at Diotima. But that left another question.

“How would two men of the lowest possible class know about an exotic drink like beer?”

“Everybody knows about beer, sir,” Euboulides said. “There’s people who sell it for a small coin.”

Pheidestratos added, “I heard tell that in Egypt, even the slaves get to drink beer.” He looked wistful.

WE HEADED BACK toward home, but took a detour past the records warehouse, to see if Socrates had made any progress. The slave-guard out front nodded his acquaintance. I slipped him a drachma, purely because I thought he had the most boring job in Athens.

I tapped on the door but didn’t open it. It was smelly in there. I called out, “Socrates? How are you doing?”

A small voice replied through the door. “I’m doing all right, Nico. I haven’t found anything about Romanos yet. Nico? When can I come out—”

“I’ll send more food,” I said firmly.

Then as an afterthought, I opened the door a crack and poked my head in.

Socrates had cleared a space around the door. He sat in the clear space with a scroll jar beside him, its contents spilled out onto the floor.

Diotima followed me in. She wrinkled her nose and said, “Phew.”

“What are you doing?” I asked Socrates, because he seemed to have spent all his time making space.

“First I’m rearranging all the scroll jars by age,” Socrates said. “I pick up one at random, then bring it to this place near the door. I empty out the scrolls, clear away the dead mouse bodies … Nico, have you ever wondered why bodies mummify? While I was sitting here scraping away the dead mice I wondered about it. I was thinking—”

“Try not to think so much, Socrates,” I said. “Go on about the records.”

“Oh,” he said, crestfallen. “Well, it seems all the scrolls in the same jar are from the same year.”

“That makes sense.”

“So I only have to read one scroll to know which year it’s for.”

“Good.”

“It saves a lot of time,” Socrates said. “The only problem is, I don’t know the order of the years.”

“Why wouldn’t you?” I asked, confused, then realized the answer to my own question. In Athens, every year is given the name of the Eponymous Archon who served at the time. This year was the Year of Habron. When I had begun my first case, three years ago, it had been the Year of Conon. Everyone knew who had served in what order, but of course a child wouldn’t.

“How did you know which order the archons go?” I asked.

“Oh, I go out on the street and ask passersby,” Socrates said.

“Don’t they ask why you want to know?” Diotima said.

“Sure,” Socrates said. “I tell them.”

Terrific. The way rumors spread in this city, that meant all of Athens knew I was searching for information about metics. So much for a discreet investigation.

Socrates went on, “When I know what year a jar belongs to, I put it on the floor. The oldest on the left.” He stood up and pointed to a dismal pile against the left wall. “The newest on the right.” Socrates indicated a much larger collection against the right hand wall. “And all the other years in between, in order.”

Socrates was only a fraction of the way into his task, but already from the number of jars in each pile left to right I could see how the influx of migrants had grown. It was more than a steady rise. If the size of the records was anything to go by, then each year there were almost twice as many migrants as the year before. No wonder the metics were becoming noticeable.

I wondered if anyone else had worked this out. But of course they had. The Polemarch must know, for one.

“It’s a funny thing though,” Socrates said. “None of the records are older than twenty-one years ago.”

“That’s because the Persians sacked Athens during the wars,” I said. “They destroyed everything.”

“Oh yeah,” he said. “Why didn’t I think of that?”

Socrates hadn’t thought of it because he hadn’t lived through it. He’d always known Athens as a wealthy city. I was born a few months after the Persians were defeated—my childhood had been spent in streets where the entire city was being rebuilt, bit by bit.

“Listen, Socrates,” I said, “I also want you to find everything you can about Petros and Maia. They arrived after Romanos, so their records will be in a different jar.”

“Oh, I can tell you about them,” Socrates said.

“You can?” I said amazed.

“I saw their papers in passing,” Socrates said. “They’re
somewhere over there …” He gestured vaguely to the right side. “I can’t remember which pile though.”

“You didn’t keep hold of their records?” I said, annoyed.

“You didn’t ask me until now, did you?” Socrates pointed out, not unreasonably.

“Can you remember what it said?” I asked.

“Of course,” he said confidently.

“Good. Who is their citizen sponsor?”

“He’s from the deme of Bate,” Socrates said. “Someone named Theokritos.”

SCENE 32