It was entirely in Polonikos’s interests for Ophelia never to be found. Or at least, not until he’d won his court case.
I left Polonikos, the father of the missing Ophelia, to his fields, and walked back through the house gate. A woman of middle age watched me from the second-story window of the farmhouse. She waved, and I understood she wished me to wait.
The woman soon ran out the front door of the farmhouse, holding up her chiton to keep it out of the farm mud. As well she might, since the dress was clearly of superior make, in hues of red and black and patterned with a conservative border. She was well groomed and bore no calluses on her hands, and her face was smooth skinned. I had no trouble guessing who she was.
“I heard you speaking to my husband,” she said. “I am Malixa, the wife of Polonikos and the mother of Ophelia.”
Her eyes were red, and she clasped her hands in anxiety.
“My husband’s not a bad man,” she said. “But he is one with many problems.”
“Like your daughter, then,” I said. I couldn’t hide my distaste for Polonikos from my speech. Whatever problems the father had, the daughter’s were infinitely greater.
“When my husband has resolved these problems with his money, then he’ll go to find our daughter. I’m sure of it.”
“It might be too late then,” I said. To emphasize the urgency, I added, “It will almost certainly be too late.”
“I know.” The stress was painted across her face. “I beg you to find Ophelia before then. Please. I’ll pay you.”
“How?” I asked.
“Any way I can.”
I said, “Malixa, I will find your daughter because the sanctuary at Brauron has hired me to do so. But I can’t do it without information, and so far, what I have to work with is hopeless. If you want to pay me, you can do it with information.”
“But I know nothing.”
I thought she was about to cry.
I said, “I’ll tell you the truth, Malixa. I don’t even know if Ophelia left the sanctuary of her own will or if she was taken. It could be one or the other, with equal odds. If she was taken, then she’s in enormous trouble. If she went on her own, then perhaps she can be saved. Your husband tells me nothing about your daughter, because he doesn’t want her found. See what you can find out. Does she have friends there? Bring me anything, anything, that might tell us where she went.”
“I’ll try,” she said. And now her tears began to flow.
My plan was to see the Basileus to discover what had happened to the fifth scroll. If possible, of course. The archons were the busiest men in Athens. It occurred to me as I trudged the roads home that a letter of introduction from Pericles would get me in to see the Basileus faster. So I tethered the donkey at our house-both my feet and my bottom hurt, and I stared longingly at the couches in the courtyard as I passed it by-and dragged my feet to the agora.
I found Pericles on the steps of the Painted Stoa, where he was talking with other men, all dressed in formal chitons, all with their himation stoles of fine wool draped over their shoulders. Their clothing declared them to be men who had no need to work to earn their bread. No doubt they discussed affairs of state. No doubt they were all wealthy landowners with many slaves. I looked at them with envy.
They in turn stared at me with mild disgust as I moved to join them. I was coated in the dust of the road, my feet ached, and I couldn’t remember the last time I’d washed. The men’s hut I’d shared with the slaves at Brauron was every bit as foul and smelly as Sabina had promised. No doubt I carried its aroma of goat and sweaty armpits.
Unlike every other man in Athens, Pericles never seemed to pass the time of day with his fellow citizens: to sit in the shade of the stoas and talk about the meaning of life, which is to say, women and sport. Pericles never wasted his time in such idle pursuits. If he’d ever speculated about what was under a woman’s dress, or who’d win at the athletics, no one had ever heard him do it. If he was in the agora, it meant he had business there. In anyone else such standoffishness would have been considered arrogance, but in his case men admired him for his dedication, even if it did give him the air of a highly intellectual, elegant automaton.
As I watched, Pericles turned and saw me. He waved as if to say, “Stay there.” He said something final to the people he was with, then joined me.
“How goes it?” he asked.
I brought him up to date on the state of the investigation. He summarized my perhaps slightly convoluted explanation with the words, “So you’ve come here to tell me that you’ve made no progress?”
“That’s not fair, Pericles. There are lines of investigation, and we’ve made progress down every one of them. The problem isn’t lack of leads to follow. The problem is there are too many of them. The High Priestess, the treasurer, a young priestess, and the mysterious maintenance man all look suspicious.”
“None of these people have a reason to murder,” Pericles said.
“None that we know of,” I agreed. “The lovelorn Melo might be perfect for the abduction of Ophelia, but he had no reason to harm Allike.”
“What about this story of a wild bear?”
“Maybe a bear did kill Allike. But Melo says Ophelia told him she was certain it was a human murderer.”
That was second-hand hearsay. Even to my ears, it sounded weak.
“There hasn’t been a bear in Attica for generations,” Pericles said. “Men used to hunt them, but they’re gone now.”
“I know.”
“What else?” Pericles asked.
“The fifth scroll. It has to be important. Where is it?”
“Brauron or Athens. Obviously.”
“Everyone in Athens denies having seen it,” I said. “Everyone in Brauron says they saw it. Maybe Ophelia could tell us the real truth. Pericles, what do you think of this Melo?”
“Highly untrustworthy,” Pericles said at once. “I don’t know his father.”
“We have to find Ophelia, and we have to discover what became of the missing scroll, and we have to check the histories of everyone involved in this case who might have been around thirty years ago.”
“Why?”
“Because whatever caused this began thirty years ago. I must warn you, Pericles, this might take longer than we originally thought.”
Pericles thought about that before he nodded. “I see your reasoning,” he said. “Yes, your approach seems satisfactory.”
I stood in the dusty agora, open-mouthed, astonished that Pericles was being reasonable. It was so unlike him.
Pericles continued, “Nicolaos, I’ve looked into the issue of your payment for the first commission you carried out for me. I was astonished when I looked it up to see that sorry affair happened a full year ago. How time flies. You’re correct that I never did settle my account. Clearly I owe you, and the agreed sum is sufficient to provide a small, steady income.”
“That’s right.”
“I’ve given this some thought, and I think the best way to acquit the debt is to give you a farm.”
“What!”
“Only a small one,” said Pericles, almost apologetically. “But a farm’s good for a small, steady income.”
“I thought you’d give me money,” I said.
“So did I at first, but consider, Nicolaos, if I were to give you coins, how could you make a steady income from that? You’d have to invest it, wouldn’t you? To take shares in a trading boat, or perhaps lend it to someone at a rate of interest. These are all risky ventures, and you specifically said a steady income. There’s nothing steady about trade. But land, Nicolaos, land is always a solid investment.”
I thought back to the words of Polonikos, who had advised me to avoid borrowing and lending and to stick with the one true source of wealth, stretching back to King Theseus: ownership of the land.
Me, a land owner. What would my father say when he learned that I’d brought a farm into the family? He thought I was doomed to poverty because no one could make investigation pay! I smiled to myself.