Klymene had tears in her eyes. They rolled down her cheeks, and she had to wipe. Diotima offered a small cloth, but Klymene waved it away. She said, “Suddenly nothing was too good for my mother, no food too expensive. Father had every doctor in Elis come to give advice. Not that any of them looked at her. The doctors cast their divinations, or they sacrificed a ewe and inspected its liver. Either way they pronounced everything would be fine, took their coins, and departed. Father forbade Mother to work, for fear she might fall and harm the baby. He bought more slaves to work for her.” Klymene paused. “The lying-in was awful.”
“You were there,” I said, a statement, not a question.
“They said I was old enough. All through the labor she swore and writhed and cried in awful pain. And while that baby slowly killed her, she said it was all my father’s fault because he had to have his son. When the pain was worst, she asked to hold my hand. She held so tight I thought my bones would break. She looked in my eyes and said she loved me. She said it over and over. And she said it was all my father’s fault,” she said again. “Those were the last words I ever heard her speak. The midwife couldn’t stop the bleeding.”
“What happened to the child?”
“It was a boy. A dead one. The cord wrapped around the neck. I was glad.”
I wondered for the briefest moment if perhaps the baby had been strangled with its own cord after birth by a frightened and upset little girl whose mother lay dying. But I put the thought away at once. The midwife would certainly have attended to a son first before seeing to the mother.
“I’m sorry, Klymene,” Diotima said.
“So am I. So am I.”
I was struck all at once with a dreadful fear. The danger of childbirth. It was something my Diotima would face one day.
Diotima was saying, “What were you going to do if you fell pregnant?”
“Oh, there are herbs to fix that,” she said. “I know a witch-woman. I’ve already had to use them once.”
I wanted to put my hands over my ears to blot out the horror. Klymene saw my reaction and turned on me. “What would you know about this? You’re a man.”
“My mother’s a midwife. I don’t know everything that happens in the birthing bed, but I hear enough. You know no father will accept you for his son if word gets out.” Even as I spoke, in a blinding flash like a revelation from the Gods, suddenly I understood my father’s attitude to Diotima. I might not like it, but I understood.
Klymene snorted. “I’m the daughter of a wealthy man. I’ll only be married to another wealthy man, one twice my age. He’ll probably stink. He’ll certainly use me for breeding and take whatever hetaera he frequents for his pleasure while I go old and gray looking after his brats. It’s for certain he’ll be no good in bed; old men can’t keep it up any longer than it takes to spit. And that’s it for the rest of my life. Sometimes I wonder if a quick death would be the better fate.”
I thought Diotima would be disgusted. She surprised me by nodding in sympathy. “I know what you mean. I was very lucky to escape exactly that fate. What do you want from life, Klymene?” she asked.
“A proper man,” Klymene said promptly. “One who’ll treat me like a woman. A young man who can keep up with me.”
“It’ll never happen,” I said at once. Because Klymene’s estimate was right. Even Timo would have agreed. He’d talked of having his father find him a young virgin when he was thirty. “You’ve made a mistake.”
“Who are you to complain about sex before marriage?” Klymene looked pointedly at Diotima and me.
“This is my fiancée,” Diotima said through gritted teeth.
“Got caught out, did you?”
“As it happens, yes, but in a good way. I was caught by my heart. How many other women get to marry for love?”
“Well, I won’t be one, that’s for sure. But the way I heard it, you two aren’t properly betrothed.”
“We will be,” I said confidently. At least, I hoped I sounded confident. “Our fathers are arranging the details even as we speak.”
Klymene laughed. “Point proven, then. You two have been at each other before it’s official, so don’t whine at me.”
Klymene was so right that it was embarrassing. To change the subject, I said, “What happened after your mother died?”
“Father married again. It was part of a commercial deal, alliance of families, you know how it works. She hated me, I hated her. Then she died.”
“Of anything in particular?” I asked, wondering if there’d been a murder.
“A wasting disease. I made sure I didn’t catch it by going nowhere near her.”
“You can’t catch wasting diseases,” Diotima pointed out.
“Oh? I wasn’t aware. Anyway, that was the last time Father tried marriage. I begged to join the priestesses; at least it gets me out of the house.”
I said, “This is all irrelevant to the important point. We’ll take you at once to see the judges, Klymene. Your testimony will clear Timodemus of the murder.” I smiled to myself. This was mission accomplished. Between us, Diotima and I had proven Timodemus innocent. Pericles was going to be impressed how quickly we’d solved this one.
Klymene looked at me as if I were mad. She said, “No.”
“What?”
“I said no. No chance. Have you thought this through? I can’t give Timodemus his alibi without admitting what we were doing. Do you know the penalty for polluting the Priestess of the Games?”
Death. I didn’t know what the law said, but it was obvious. Timo’s alibi would result in his execution in any case.
Klymene said, “I’m sorry. Really I am. I like Timo. I like him a lot. But he gets executed either way, and if I can’t save him, I see no reason to join him in disgrace.”
For the first time in the conversation Klymene sounded genuine and sincere. She had a point. We would have to do this without her.
“If your father finds out about your fun, he’s going to kill Timodemus,” I mused.
“He already is,” Klymene said.
“What did you say?”
“Are you hard of hearing? My father’s already ordered the death of Timodemus.”
“B … b … but …” I stammered. “The judges …”
“Oh, didn’t I mention that? My father is Exelon, the Chief Judge of the Games.”
What a motive to kill Arakos. And Timodemus, too, for that matter. Fathers regularly killed young men who despoiled their daughters; every year there were one or two cases in Athens. Usually the fathers got off, because jurors have daughters too.
With that thought, I realized how lucky I was that Pythax had not murdered me. I’d despoiled his stepdaughter. When you got down to it, Pythax had shown remarkable restraint. He must really like me. And I liked him. The thought made me more determined than ever to make everything right between us.
Diotima and I talked it over. Exelon, the Chief Judge of the Games, had just gone straight to the top of our suspects list. He could have murdered Arakos to make it look like Timodemus had done it. Then as Chief Judge he could simply find him guilty and execute him, not only with perfect legality but with an apparent fairness that men would admire, and in so doing he would eliminate both men who’d been with his daughter. The thought amazed me. It was almost the perfect crime.
There was only one problem: I tried to imagine Exelon murdering anyone, but the image eluded me. The man was so rigid in his uprightness they could have used him for a temple column.
“There’s another possibility, Nico,” Diotima said. “Something else we can try. If Exelon learns that we’ve found a motive for him to have killed Arakos, if he knows that to convict Timodemus means exposing his own reputation and that of his household, he might drop the charges.”