With Diotima I certainly did. She absorbed knowledge like a sponge.
She went on, “But this can’t be the answer, Nico. Arakos didn’t lose in a contest; he died in a forest.”
In fact, if Timo had cursed Arakos, then he wouldn’t have needed to kill him. I said, “Strange as it may sound, if we can prove Timo cheated, then it might just save his life. Let’s say Timodemus cursed Arakos. Where would he put the tablet here in Olympia?”
“There’s no well. Everyone gets their water from the river.”
“In the river, then?”
“Too shallow and too easy to see.”
“Dig a hole?”
“Wouldn’t that be obvious?”
“Dig a hole in the woods?”
“If he did, we’ll never find it.”
I nodded glumly. “If we can’t find the tablet, it means nothing; merely that we couldn’t find it.”
“Of course, you don’t have to find the tablet,” said Socrates. He’d been uncharacteristically quiet.
“What do you mean?” I demanded. “Of course we do.”
“But Nico, if Timodemus planned to curse his opponents, doesn’t he need a lead strip for each one?” Socrates said. “Diotima said so. All you have to do is search his tent for the other lead strips.”
Diotima and I looked at each other in despair.
“I hate it when he’s right,” she said.
We burgled the tent of my best friend at once while the Games were in full swing and there were few around to see us. If Timodemus had belonged to any other city, it would have been a problem-strangers walk into an empty tent, questions are asked-but Timo was Athenian, and the men of the neighboring tents had seen me before. We didn’t even have to sneak in Diotima. It was forbidden for women to view the contests, but the tent camp was fair game.
We left Socrates on guard outside-I ignored his bitter protests-and went in.
There was a camp table in the middle, the kind an officer might take with him on campaign. A camp bed lay along the far side. I tested it. Quality stuff, well strapped, and made of solid wood. This thing was heavy. How did they transport it? Ah yes, that explained the long line of donkeys tethered outside.
The tent seemed extraordinarily well appointed. Because he traveled to so many contests, he lived under canvas more often than any man but a military officer. He needed the comforts to keep his body in condition. Though I’d known him all my life, I’d never thought of this before, and Timodemus didn’t like to talk about himself.
Diotima had unrolled a bundle of papyrus sheets on the small table, using her palms to prevent the sheets from curling. She frowned as she read.
“What do you have there?” I asked.
“Love poetry,” Diotima said.
“Timo reads love poetry?” I said, aghast.
“I don’t know about reading, but he certainly writes it.” She looked up at me. “And it’s very, very bad.”
“Give it to me,” I said, intensely curious to see what my best friend had written. I grabbed the pages.
“No!” Diotima snatched them back before I could see a word. “I can’t let you do that, Nico. It’s personal.”
“Then how come you’re reading it?”
“That’s different; I’m a woman.”
There were no curse tablets, nor strips of lead, nor an engraving tool to inscribe into the lead we didn’t find. There wasn’t even anything to write with.
“This is awful,” Diotima said. “I was so sure we were on the right track.”
“I’m relieved,” I admitted. If Timodemus had been practicing witchcraft, what would I have done?
Diotima understood. She hugged me. “Timodemus might have hidden his curse equipment somewhere else,” she said.
“In this crowded place?”
“Buried it in the woods, maybe? What do we do now?”
I said, “I want to look into the tent next door.” Where One-Eye and Festianos slept.
“Why?” Diotima was puzzled.
“There’s a demon on my shoulder, whispering in my ear.”
The tent of Timo’s father and uncle was barely furnished. Two camp stools. Two camp beds. Two traveling chests, pushed together in the center of the space to make a table.
“Where are the books?” Diotima asked at once, perplexed. The tent was far too utilitarian for her taste.
“I don’t think they’re the reading sort.”
Diotima looked at me as if such a thing was beyond her comprehension. Which it was. For her, the marks that men made were a gift of the Gods, and only the sacrilegious ignored them. Diotima was one of the few women who could read; she read so often she could even do it without having to say the words out loud or move her lips, a level of expertise few men ever achieved.
I opened one of the chests, Diotima the other. Within mine were jars of ointments, leather gloves like the ones used in boxing and for practice, spare clothing, expensive and well used.
“I’ll bet this belongs to One-Eye,” I said.
Diotima rummaged through hers. “Nico, I’ve found a wooden case.” She pulled out a box, wide, deep, and flat. The sort of thing in which you might carry paper-writing tools. It was the right size. She hefted it. “It’s too heavy to hold papyrus,” she said, following the same thoughts. “In fact,” she said, and gave me a meaningful look, “it’s heavy enough to contain lead.” She jiggled the box. Something inside rattled.
“Open it!”
Diotima pressed on the lid, but it wouldn’t open. “There’s a catch.”
I tried to take it from her, but she pulled it close to her chest. “Oh no, you don’t. Finders keepers.” She ran her fingers around the edge, probing. “Ah.” She pushed a tiny lever. I heard a click within. Diotima slowly lifted the lid while I crowded close to see over her shoulder.
Lying within, in neat rows, were vials. They were ceramic, in a nondescript red with no decoration, and each stoppered tightly.
“What are they?” I asked.
Diotima picked one up and-keeping her thumb over the stopper-she shook it.
Something sloshed. She removed the stopper.
“Careful,” I warned her.
Diotima took a gentle sniff, then a longer one. She screwed up her face in distaste.
“What is it?” I asked.
“I’m not sure,” she said, “but I think this is hemlock.”
We hurried back to the closest private place-my own tent-with the evidence in hand and pulled the flap closed behind us so we could inspect the booty. Diotima had developed a new theory: that Arakos had been fed hemlock.
“All right,” I said. “Tell me how Uncle Festianos persuaded Arakos to drink it. You think Festianos went up to Arakos the Spartan and said, ‘Here, old chap, there’s hemlock in this cup. Quaff it off like a good chap, would you now?’ I don’t think so. We don’t even know for sure this is truly hemlock.”
“I’m sure it is, Nico,” said Diotima. “Everyone knows hemlock tastes like a dead mouse.”
“Do they? How could anyone know such a thing?” I demanded.
“Well, it doesn’t kill at once,” Diotima said. “Anyone who’s been executed with it could tell you before he expired.”
“Have you ever spoken to a man dying of hemlock?” I asked.
“No.”
“I could try it and see,” offered Socrates. He picked up the poison.
“Don’t be stupid, Socrates,” I said. I snatched the vial from his hand. “You’re not to go anywhere near hemlock, you hear me?”
“Yes, Nico.”
Diotima said, “There are doctors who use hemlock to treat patients with aching joints.”
“Don’t the patients die?”
“I didn’t say they were good doctors.”
“So these vials might be-”
“Medicine.”
“Then the whole thing could be totally innocent. How do we know if the dose in the vials is fatal or therapeutic?” I asked.
“A doctor could tell us if this is medicine,” Diotima said. “But where will we find a doctor?”
I smiled. “Leave that to me,” I said. “I know just the man.”
“Yes, I remember you,” said Heraclides of Kos. “You were in the tent when I operated on the chariot driver.”