Sacred Games (25 page)

“It’s incredible,” Socrates said, and for once I had to agree with him. This was one of the most amazing sights in all of Hellas: one hundred pure-white oxen, garlanded in flowers and with bright ribbons about their horns.

Each ox was led through the entrance into the Sanctuary, where the grand altar of Zeus was ready and waiting. The Hellenes were about to make their greatest sacrifice to Zeus, for these hundred white oxen, especially bred for their fate, were on their way to the god.

The first of the oxen was led by his keeper to the altar, where waited the Butcher of the Games with the tools of his trade.

The crowd walked along with the first of the sacrifices. Men called out good luck to the ox and wished it well and thanked the beast for consenting to be sacrificed. Those who could reached out to pat it gently.

The priest of Zeus spoke to the beast. I couldn’t hear what he said, but he seemed happy with the result because he stood back, and the Butcher stepped forward. He was a huge man with bulging triceps that would have compared favorably with Pythax’s or even Arakos’s.

The Butcher swung a large mallet and struck the ox direct on the forehead. The stunned animal stood stock-still, but lowered its head as if to nod in agreement.

The crowd sighed in happiness.

The Butcher dropped the mallet and picked up a large, very sharp knife. This he thrust into the beast’s neck and sliced to cut its throat. The blood spurted at a tremendous rate. Priests who stood waiting with large bowls hurried to catch the sacrifice’s lifeblood. As each bowl filled, another took its place, until slowly, but with tremendous grace, the animal’s legs gave way and it sank to the ground.

“It was a fine sacrifice,” Sophroniscus said.

Diotima pulled me aside. “Nico, did you see that? A mallet to the head would be just the thing to stun Arakos.”

“Before they beat him to death, you mean?”

“Yes. I’ve seen lots of sacrifices, I’ve performed plenty of them myself, but it’s never quite … er … struck me the same way.”

“What about your idea that he was disabled by hemlock?”

“This is the same, but with solids.”

The priests and attendants stood back, and what seemed like a hundred slaves stepped forward. The ox had been led up onto a wooden platform, the underside of which dripped with grease of pig fat to make it slippery. An aulos player put his V-shaped recorder to his lips and began to play sacred music. The slaves took up ropes and began to heave in time to the music. The remains of the sacrifice slowly but surely glided along the path—thanks to the slippery fat—to the waiting barbecue pits.

The Butcher of the Games and his attendants would spend the rest of the day dismembering the sacrifices to prepare them for the feast tonight. The Feast of the Oxen is one of the most popular for one simple reason: at no other time in the next four years would we have a chance to eat so much meat of such high quality. There were poor men present who might not even see such meat again until the next Olympics.

The Butcher was already spattered with blood, which made for an interesting effect on his formal chiton. Large drops of grease had fallen from the passing sled and formed small pools of slipperiness in the muddy ground. I wondered if anyone would step
in it. That put me in mind of Socrates and his clean tunic. I said, “Socrates, look out for the slippery patches, and for Father’s sake, try to keep your chiton clean, all right?”

No answer. I’d expected a sarcastic comment.

“Socrates?”

I looked about me. He wasn’t there.

I said, “Diotima, weren’t you keeping an eye on Socrates?”

“No,” she said shortly. “He’s my brother-in-law, not my child.”

I said, “Has anyone seen Socrates?”

No one had. Socrates had disappeared.

He was probably safe. Any normal boy would spend the day running between the grown-ups, playing in the crowd, stealing extra meat from the barbecue, and then make his way back to camp that night for his scolding. The only problem was, that was what any
normal
boy would do. Socrates, on the other hand, was fully capable of climbing into the barbecue pits to see how they worked.

Father remained admirably calm. He said only two words: “Find him.”

We spread out. I reasoned that he couldn’t have gotten far, not because Socrates couldn’t move fast but because the press of people made it impossible. The same press made it difficult for me to move, too. I became overly acquainted with the sweaty armpits and backs of the men and women I brushed past.

It was Markos who found my errant brother.

“He’s over here!” Jumping up onto the plinth of a statue, I saw Markos standing near the fire pits, which reignited my fear that Socrates had fallen into one. Markos waved and shouted. Somehow over the chaos I managed to hear him. Diotima heard, too, and she was closer. She pushed her way through to Markos before me.

Slaves were already at work on the pits; they’d kindled a hundred fires. Wood chips had been added and the smoke smelled sweet. When the fires burned strong, the slaves would add stones
to glow red hot and be the base on which the oxen would roast. Other slaves prepared the wooden frames to hold the carcasses. Tonight the Hellenes would enjoy the largest barbecue in the world.

Then I saw what had attracted the attention of my over-inquisitive little brother. Socrates sat on a stone, in earnest conversation with a man who wore a large flowing robe of the deepest purple, tall and thin, with a nose long enough to double as a spear. Upon the man’s feet were sandals that were quite obviously made of bronze. How he walked in them I don’t know, but they glared in the sun so that you couldn’t miss the odd footwear.

Beside the strangely dressed man was a fire pit, much smaller than the hundred official pits. The small pit looked quite forlorn. A shovel and heaped dirt lay discarded beside it. The stranger leaned over a pile, almost as tall as me, of gray, squishy bread dough. He kneaded the dough, handful by handful, as he conversed with Socrates. In fact I saw he’d handed some dough to Socrates, who was also kneading. Already the two of them had attracted a small crowd.

Socrates looked up and said without apology for wandering off, “Oh, hello, Nico. This man is making an ox!”

“You mean he’s cooking an ox,” I corrected.

“No, he’s making one. Out of bread.”

I said to the man, “Can I ask a question?”

He nodded as he kneaded the dough on his lap. “That’s why I’m here. I was once a fish, you know.”

It wasn’t entirely the answer I’d expected. “You don’t say?”

“And a bird.”

Light dawned. Yes, this was exactly the sort of person Socrates would take up with.

I said, “You’re not a philosopher, by any chance, are you?”

“My name is Empedocles, son of Meton, and I am indeed a lover of knowledge. How did you guess?”

“Just a feeling I had. Why are you making an ox out of bread?”

He clapped his hands in happiness, and bits of dough splattered over us. “That’s the question I hope many will ask. The answer is because it’s immoral and unethical to consume meat. My plan is simple yet brilliant,” he elucidated. “Tonight I will hand out pieces of my bread ox. Then everyone will see we can all eat bread instead of meat, and there’s no need to kill our fellow creatures.”

Socrates asked, “But why did you say you’d been a fish and a bird? Did the Gods transform you, sir?”

“What happens when you die?” Empedocles asked Socrates in return.

Socrates looked confused. Everyone knew the answer to that. “Er … my psyche goes down to Hades?”

“Not so!” Empedocles said. “The psyches of the dead are reborn in other living creatures. We’ve all lived past lives.”

If we had, this was the first I’d heard of it. I could tell from the expressions of Diotima, Markos, and Socrates that they, too, had never heard of such a thing.

Empedocles continued, “In my own past lives, for example, I’ve been both a fish and a bird. When we hold a beast in our hands, it could be our own son, our mother, our daughter from a previous life. When we consume the flesh of the sacrifice, young boy, it’s nothing less than cannibalism.”

“Yech!” Socrates said.

Empedocles said this not only to us but to the rapidly growing crowd that had come to watch. Empedocles worked as he talked, trying to mold the bread dough and failing miserably.

After a while of watching him struggle with the dough, Socrates remarked, rather rudely, “It doesn’t look much like an ox.”

“Anyone can be a critic,” Empedocles said to him. “Can you do better?”

“Sure I can,” Socrates said. “Nico and I are the sons of a sculptor.”

Empedocles blinked. “You are? Good, then you can both help
me,” and before I could object he handed us trowels and a set of sculpting tools so new they shone in the sun.

I couldn’t see any harm in it. Socrates was interested in talking to Empedocles, and I was simply relieved that we hadn’t found my brother grilled with the oxen. Together we wrestled the dough into something that approximated a bovine body. Everything sagged.

Diotima and Markos laughed at our efforts. That made me determined to do the job right. After a time I stood, tossed the tools on the ground, and announced, “There!”

Empedocles looked thoughtfully at my creation, rubbed his chin, and said, “It looks more like a cow, doesn’t it?”

“It’s definitely an ox.” I turned to Diotima and Markos. “It looks like an ox, doesn’t it?” I said. They both nodded gravely.

“Definitely an ox,” Markos said. “I see it clearly.”

As we worked, Socrates questioned Empedocles closely on the doctrine of reincarnation, as he called it. Empedocles was puzzled that a mere child should show an interest, so I explained proudly that Socrates had once met the philosopher Anaxagoras, who told us everything was made of infinitesimal particles, and—

Empedocles almost exploded. “That mountebank!” he shouted. “I know this fellow you talk of, and let me assure you, he’s no more a philosopher than this boy here.” He gestured at Socrates. “Tell me, have you ever seen these supposed particles?”

“Well, no,” I admitted.

“Have you touched one?”

“No.”

“Heard one?”

“No.”

“And nor will you, because they don’t exist.” Empedocles snorted. “The whole idea is simply bad philosophy. I’ve solved the riddle of matter, and it has nothing to do with these ridiculous particles.”

“Then what is it, sir?” Socrates asked eagerly, because he was always desperate to learn from philosophers.

“All matter is composed from earth, air, fire, and water. They combine in different portions to form everything around us.”

Socrates thought about it, his head cocked on one side, then he asked, “But sir, what moves the earth, fire, air, and water to combine in different portions?”

“That’s simple. Love and strife. Love and strife, young boy, are what move everything in the universe.”

Love and strife move everything. Empedocles might be crazy, but he’d given me an idea.

“Nicolaos!” It was an old woman’s voice. I turned to see Gorgo with two men at her back, both twice her height. She, too, had come to see the spectacle of the oxen.

“Where’s your woman?” Gorgo asked.

I pointed to where Diotima and Markos stood together. Gorgo motioned, and we all stepped away from Empedocles, who had begun to harangue the amused crowd.

“Why were you making a bread cow?” Gorgo asked, obviously intrigued.

“It’s an ox.”

“Looks more like a cow to me, but that’s not important now. I have information for you.” She looked about, realized we were in the middle of a crowd that had come to watch Empedocles’s strange protest against meat, and signaled for us to follow. Gorgo’s two Spartan guards cleared a path for their queen. Gorgo led us, at her slow walk, to a place behind some statues of former Olympic victors. Here there were only a handful of men, quietly taking turns to drink from a wineskin. The guards made these drunks feel unwelcome, and they departed with rude gestures and empty threats.

When they were gone, Gorgo said, “I’ve done some checking of my own, as I told you I would. You’re still interested in the krypteia?”

“Yes.”

“Then you’ll wish to know there are definitely krypteia at Olympia.”

“Who?” I asked, excited.

“I have no names. I begged a favor of a member of the Gerousia—that’s our council of elders—from a fine man who once served with my husband. He’s of a conservative disposition himself and in with the current ephors. He tells me that Xenares said to him, when they were both well in wine, that he—Xenares, that is—wants to promote a war against Athens while he’s here at Olympia, and that a member of the krypteia is assisting him. I’m told Xenares appeared quite confident of success.”

That didn’t bode well for Athens.

“The difficulty is, I don’t know what this plan is, or in what capacity the krypteia might play a part. Olympia, as the location suggests, involves other city-states. The agent may simply be a go-between among allies.”

“Thank you, Gorgo,” Diotima said.

“I’ve also looked closely into the life of Arakos. I searched for any motive someone who knew him might have had to kill him. I find that Arakos was an exemplary Spartan.”

I said, “Tell me, how many krypteia are there in total, Gorgo?”

“The exact number is unknown, of course, but it’s possible to deduce. There are eight thousand serving Spartans—”

“So few!” I’d always thought of the Spartans as being a large army, but this was less than half what Athens could put into the field.

“You forget that any one Spartan is worth ten men from any other city. The test of the krypteia is reserved for those who might one day become leaders in combat. Perhaps one young man in ten is selected for the test. Of those, perhaps only one in a hundred shows such resourcefulness and expertise at silent killing that he’s selected by the ephors. From this we may guess the entire membership of the krypteia is probably not more than ten.”

“Do you mean to say we’re worried about only ten men?”

“We’re probably only concerned with
one
of those ten, and we’re right to be worried. It would require a man of extraordinary talent to face down one of these hidden killers and survive. My Leonidas could have done it; I know of no other man who would stand a chance.” Her eyes glistened as she spoke of her husband, and I realized with a shock that Gorgo was close to crying.