When I realized this would go on forever, I said, “What do we do now?”
“I was hoping you’d have an idea,” Diotima said.
“You’re the one who always has the bright ideas.”
“Not this time. There’s nothing we can deduce from a musty pile of bones. We can’t even tell if it’s a man or a woman.”
“Obviously not,” I agreed. “The priestesses said they moved everything exactly as they found it?”
“He was on this board when they found him. They moved the entire board.”
“Does this fellow look to you like he was buried properly?”
“Not even slightly,” Diotima said. “I wonder if the killer gave him a coin?”
The most basic ritual anyone will give to the dead is to place a coin underneath the tongue of the deceased, so that the dead can pay Charon the ferryman to carry their psyche across the river of woe. The observance is so fundamental to common decency that a man will pay this service to his worst enemy.
“We know he didn’t. We have the skull.”
“But a coin would have fallen through and remained in the dust beneath,” Diotima said. “It’d be easy to miss in all this accumulated muck.”
Diotima scraped her hand along the space above the vertebrae, where the skull had been. The lower jaw had fallen to the ground, no doubt when the sinews and flesh had decayed to dust. The upper jaw was still attached to the skull. With the skull returned to its proper place, it gave the skeleton the appearance of screaming for eternity. The muck Diotima referred to was thirty years’ worth of blown dirt and rat droppings. Her fingers scrabbled in the bones and dirt and raised a cloud of dust that filled my nostrils and made us both cough. It put me in mind of what Gaïs had said before-that in Hades the dead drink dust.
Diotima sat back and said two disconsolate words: “No coin.”
Now that was interesting. Whether the victim on the floor was Hippias or someone else, the killer had really, really hated him. Hated him enough to deny his psyche access to peace in Hades.
Diotima asked, “Nico, do you think this man’s psyche might still be around?”
I was sure of it. Without a coin to pay Charon, the psyche of the man was trapped in the living world, and everyone knew a psyche stayed close to the body it used to inhabit.
Diotima looked about us.
“There’s nothing to worry about,” I said, trying to sound more confident than I felt. “We’re here to help. If nothing else, we can swear to observe the rituals for this man.” But I, too, looked about nervously.
“You’re right,” Diotima said, and in a louder voice, as if to someone farther away, she continued, “Hear me, Artemis, my Goddess of Brauron and Athens, as I am your priestess, so I swear to observe the rites for this man. I will place the coin, and build the pyre, and carry the remains in a fine urn, and with my own hands I will carry him to the cemetery at Ceramicus, where dwell the Athenians for eternity.”
We waited. Nothing happened. Which was exactly the response we both wanted.
Then an idea occurred to me. I lay down on the ground.
“You’re feeling tired already?” Diotima asked.
“Would you say this skeleton is longer than me?” I asked.
Diotima stood back for a better look. She glanced from me to the skeleton and back again. “Yes,” she said. “By a hand’s length.”
“That’s what I thought. This is the skeleton of a man. Men are taller than women.”
“Either that, or it’s the skeleton of an unusually tall woman.”
“You only said that to be difficult.”
“Tall women do exist, you know. But you’re right, I was only being difficult. It probably is a man.”
“Where does that get us?”
“Nowhere. Did you know that half of all dead people are male? Besides, I thought we’d already agreed this was Hippias.”
“All we know for sure is that scrolls that were probably written by Hippias were found beside this skeleton. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could confirm it?”
“Bones don’t come with names engraved, Nico.”
I sat up. “There must be something we can discover. What about damage to the bones?”
“Like what?”
“Like … if someone killed him with a club, there’d be broken bones.”
We both looked down. What we could see of the bones showed they were unbroken.
“What about nicks and cuts?” Diotima suggested.
“If he was killed by a sword? Good idea.”
With enormous distaste, we peeled back the rags that had once been a fine chiton. We picked up the pieces between thumb and forefinger and dropped them on the floor, to reveal what was left of the body beneath. The ribs lay where they had fallen, flat on the bottom of the board. They formed an odd travesty of a human being.
We both got down on hands and knees to inspect the bones.
“There are cuts and nicks on most of them,” Diotima said.
“Rats and mice,” I said. “They ate him.”
“What about these?” Diotima pointed to several cuts, deeper than the others, in the ribs, about where the heart would have been.
I squinted. “Maybe. Not a sword, though.”
“A knife?”
“Or a really big rat.”
“What’s this?” Diotima pointed. There was something amongst the bones and muck at the bottom of the board. It had been covered by the tattered clothing, and even with the rags removed, it was almost identical in color to the dust and, like the bones, was long and thin. Easy to miss.
“I’ve done my bit, it’s your turn,” Diotima said.
I apologized to the psyche that surely was watching, then put my hand between the ribs to hold what looked remarkably like a very tarnished knife.
I removed it from the jumble of bones. It was a knife-not one for cutting food, but the long, thin type for killing people.
Diotima and I shared a triumphant look. This was progress. I rubbed at the dirt with the edge of my chiton, and though most of it came away, the deep, dark tarnish remained. My futile attempt at cleaning did, however, reveal something important.
“There’s something scratched into the blade,” I said. “I can feel it when I rub.”
We both peered at the blade. The scratches appeared to be letters, but neither of us could see enough to read it. Diotima tried to trace the indents with her more sensitive fingers, but that didn’t work either. Then, by dint of holding the blade up to the light at the window so that the sun reflected off the debased metal, we managed to make out these words:
‘APMO∆IOΣ KAI ’APIΣTOΓEITΩN
Harmodius and Aristogeiton.
“The names of the killers?” Diotima suggested.
It was a good theory. There was only one problem. “Unlikely,” I told her. “Harmodius and Aristogeiton died twenty years before the Battle of Marathon.”
Harmodius and Aristogeiton were famous. They had attempted to assassinate Hippias and had been executed for their pains. Though they’d failed miserably, they were credited with starting the movement that eventually succeeded. Their statues stood in the agora.
“Turn the blade over,” Diotima said.
I did. On the other side, using the same method, we read:
ΛEAINA
“Leana?” The word meant “lioness.”
“It’s also a girl’s name,” Diotima said.
“Who’s Leana?”
“I’ve no idea.”
What was important was that the men named Harmodius and Aristogeiton had died on the orders of Hippias. It made the death of Hippias look like a revenge killing.
“Did you find what you’re looking for?” a voice said from the doorway.
We both looked up, startled. Neither Diotima nor I had paid the slightest attention to who might be listening in. There, standing in the doorway, was Sabina, the treasurer of the temple, the woman who had taken the skull from the skeleton and sent it to the Basileus.
I hid the knife behind my back.
“I’m glad you’re here, Sabina,” I lied. “I wanted to ask: What made you tell the Basileus about this skeleton?”