“Do you know a man named Romanos?” Diotima asked them.
The children said nothing, but their eyes never left the coins.
“They don’t, but I do,” their mother spoke up. She was dressed in a chiton of some heavy material and had a weary air.
When the woman said nothing more, Diotima said, “We’d like to find his home.”
The mother thought about it. Then she asked, “How do I know you’ll pay the children when you’re done?”
Diotima handed over the coins on the spot, one to each child. Each clutched the coin to their bosom as if it were their most prized possession.
Their mother said, “I suppose it can’t hurt.” She bent to the children and gave them instructions on where to take us. Having heard her words I could have gone straight there myself, but I wasn’t going to deprive the children of their work.
The children led us deftly down the paths. I guessed the two older for seven and eight, a boy and a girl. The youngest was perhaps five and had to be stopped by his older siblings from playing with the muck in the drains.
They led us left, right, left to the center of the deme, where there was a square, a tiny one from which someone had swept the rubbish. Old women hawked their wares from faded wooden boxes: wilted vegetables, cheap pottery, and good luck amulets. No doubt the sellers weren’t paying the vendor fees with which the city hit the stallholders in the official agora. This was some sort of unofficial agora that had sprung up, discreet enough that the archons probably didn’t even know it existed.
On the opposite corner of the agora was a house, and it was before this that the children stopped. They looked up at us expectantly.
“This is the place?” Diotima asked.
They nodded.
“Thank you.”
They turned to run home.
“Hey, kids!” I called.
They stopped.
“Here,” I said. I handed each of them a full drachma piece. I used my body to block the transaction from idle sight.
“Now I want you to take these to your mother. You’re to give them to her, and nobody but her. And you hide them, right now, you understand?”
I worried that in these parts, there were people who would beat a child for a drachma.
They nodded and three drachmae disappeared beneath three rag-thin tunics. The children might not say much, but they lived on these streets and they weren’t stupid.
“All right. Run.”
They ran.
“Melite’s a lot poorer than it used to be,” I said to Diotima when they were gone. “It wasn’t like this when I was a child.”
“I wouldn’t know,” Diotima said. “I wasn’t allowed out of the house.”
“I probably ran down every street in Athens,” I said. “I remember when they were building most of these places.”
We knocked on the door.
It was opened by a slim young woman.
“Yes?” She peered around the edge of the door, ready to slam it shut.
Her hair was ragged and shorn. The classic signs of bereavement.
I was taken aback.
“I’m sorry,” Diotima said, equally nonplussed. “I see you’re already in mourning.”
“I am?” the young woman blinked at Diotima. The two women looked much the same age. But whereas Diotima was dark, this woman was light skinned with light brown hair.
She realized we were both staring at the top of her head.
“Oh, you mean my hair. It doesn’t mean anything. I’m a professional mourner.”
It was my turn to be surprised. Of course I’d seen professional mourners in the street, but I’d never thought I’d meet one. In every case I’d seen them walking behind a cart upon which a dead person had been laid, on their way to the cemetery at Ceramicus. Mourners were hired by the family, to express their grief, which they did with loud wails, graphic tearing at their hair, and the rending of their clothes.
Until that moment it had never occurred to me that professional mourners must have normal lives, when they weren’t walking behind dead people.
“Then you haven’t heard,” I said, relieved to have solved at least one tiny puzzle.
“Heard what?” she asked.
“That Romanos is dead,” I told her.
The young woman raised her arms to the sky and screamed.
SCENE 15
“Well how was I supposed to know she was his sister?” I protested.
Diotima had spent considerable time listing my various defects: mental, moral, and social. She paid particular attention to my lack of tact.
“Nico, they’re living in the same house. Of course she was a relative of some sort. I thought at first she must be his wife.”
Diotima had had plenty of time to berate me. The woman-her name was Maia-had installed us in the visitor’s room at the front while she went off to inform the rest of the house of the disaster. As she spread the word the wailing rose throughout, until it sounded like a house of madmen. But it wasn’t; it was a house in genuine mourning.
A man entered the room. His hair was freshly cut and ragged.
He greeted us and said, “My name is Petros.” Beneath the sadness his voice was pleasant. “I would offer you refreshments,” he said politely, “but …” His voice trailed away.
“But a house in mourning doesn’t serve refreshments,” I finished for him.
“No. My wife didn’t ask you for details.”
“Your wife?”
“Maia. Romanos is my brother-in-law.”
“I’m sorry.”
“So are we all. I must ask you what happened, and even more urgent, where is my brother-in-law’s body?”
“At the theater.”
I told him, as succinctly as I could, what had happened.
At the word murder, Petros turned gray and staggered back until he leant against the wall. “Dear Gods, no,” he whispered.
I said, “I’m sorry to have delivered such harsh news to your wife. But we had no idea Romanos had so much family in Athens. The people at the theater could tell us nothing, except for Lakon-”
“Lakon?”
“Another actor. He told us Romanos lived in Melite, but beyond that he too had no information.”
“I see.”
“Do you know Lakon? I suppose you must know other actors, your brother-in-law having been one.”
“Everyone in this house is an actor. Even the children.”
“Oh?”
“I must ask you to excuse me. My brother-in-law’s body must be brought back here.”
I nodded. Petros was right. Already the psyche of the murdered man would be loose from its body. Romanos’s psyche needed to descend to Hades, but the psyche couldn’t begin its journey until the rites had been performed. Until then it should stay close to its mortal remains. But in the theater, alone, a psyche could become lost. The last thing Athens needed was a real psyche haunting the Great Dionysia.
No, the sooner Petros got the body back here the better. They would place the body in the inner courtyard, with its feet facing the door. That would prevent the psyche from straying.
“Do you need help?” I asked. I wouldn’t normally offer to help strangers move their dead, but I felt sympathy for these people.
“Thank you, but there are plenty of men in this house. Far too many men, in fact.”
“Many men?” I said, surprised.
“And their families too,” Petros said.
“Did you all come to Athens together?” Diotima asked.
“No. Romanos was here long before the rest of us. He is … was … an Athenian in all but name. He moved to Hellas as a young man, to make his fortune. Maia and I didn’t leave Phrygia until after we married. The others drifted in over time. It’s easier for folk from the same place to get along.”
“One last question then. Do you know of anyone who might have wanted your brother-in-law dead?”
“No.”
“Had he any enemies?”
“None that would murder,” he said shortly. “And now I must go.”
“Well that was a waste of time,” I said as we walked away.