The slave blinked. “Because you’re in charge?” he suggested.
Phaenarete sighed. “We may as well get used to the new way of things around here,” she told him. “Very soon now we’ll have another mistress in the house. Two of us! When she tells you to do something, it’s as if I told you myself. Do you understand?”
“Yes, mistress.”
“Then perhaps you might like to address your new mistress directly.”
I don’t think I’ve ever admired my mother more. She was making things as easy as possible for the woman I loved.
The slave looked at Diotima uneasily. A new mistress can upset even the most balanced of homes, and when Diotima and I wed, she would be second only to my mother in the running of the house. So many things can go wrong when a new mistress arrives. The mother and the bride might not get on, and if that happens it’s a disaster for everyone, particularly the bride. Or the new mistress might prove a martinet, or worse, slack with the slaves in the hope they’ll like her. Our slaves didn’t know it yet, but they were in for a treat. Diotima had been running her mother’s household for years, due in large part to Euterpe’s indifference to everything but men. If there was anything that characterized Diotima’s management style, it was ruthless efficiency.
The slave said, “Two women are here to see you, mistress. They asked for you by name. They’re both gyne, matrons.”
“Are they friends of the household? Do we know them?” Diotima asked.
“No, mistress. They have attendants, and they carry baskets.”
Diotima and I shared a look. For a woman to visit a strange house without her husband was unheard of. Unless she was a working girl, and matrons with slaves didn’t do that sort of work.
“Show them in.”
As the slave departed, Diotima said to my mother, “Thank you, Phaenarete.”
Phaenarete shrugged. “It’s the way of things, dear. Just be good to the slaves.”
“Of course.”
“Your arrival makes me all too conscious of the passing of my years. A young mistress in the house … I remember when that was me, in this very courtyard. I was terrified.”
Two women entered, almost the same age as my mother, followed by more attendants than I could quickly count. I was struck by the attendants-every one of them wore quality clothes that had been ripped to pieces-and even more so by the hair of one of the women: it had been cut roughly, almost to the scalp, and what remained stuck out in all directions. Her eyes were very, very red.
“My name is Aposila,” said the lady with the shredded hair. “I am the mother of Allike.” She paused. “I was the mother of Allike.” She sobbed. Her friend put an arm around her to comfort her.
Diotima said, “We’re very sorry.”
“Aren’t you supposed to be at home?” I asked. Diotima threw me a nasty look, but I meant the question well. Women in mourning are not supposed to be out and about.
“This is the ninth day since the … since the funeral. I carried flowers and fruit and cakes and libations to Allike’s tomb, as the custom decrees. She always liked fruit cake. I made it with my own hands and left it by the urn.”
That meant Allike had been cremated, and her ashes lay in a pelike-a richly decorated jar-in the cemetery at Ceramicus.
I knew who the second woman was, because I had already met her. This was Malixa, the wife of Polonikos and the mother of Ophelia. I introduced her to Diotima and my mother.
Malixa said, “I pray to every god that will listen that I will not soon wear my hair like Aposila.”
Phaenarete made sympathetic noises and looked like she was about to cry.
“Our husbands think we’re going to the cemetery and then straight back home,” Malixa said. “We’d appreciate it if you didn’t tell them we were here.”
“Of course not,” Diotima said. “We knew Allike and Ophelia were friends, but we didn’t realize the families knew each other.”
“We don’t. Or we didn’t,” Malixa said, and shared a look with Aposila. Aposila said, “Malixa came to see me, to offer her sympathies. It was against the laws of proper mourning, but, well, it seemed very appropriate.”
“We discovered we have a lot in common,” Malixa said simply.
“Malixa told me-please tell me if it’s true-that you’re investigating my daughter’s death.”
“It’s true.” I didn’t tell her that as far as the powerful of Athens were concerned, Allike’s death was a side issue to the mystery of Hippias.
“She also told me that you said anything you can learn might help her lost daughter.”
“It’s true.”
“When I told Malixa what I’d seen, she convinced me to come see you.”
“Oh?” I said, suddenly interested.
Aposila said, “We’ve come to you because our husbands-both of them-seem absolutely determined to do nothing about their daughters.”
Polonikos, the father of Ophelia, had his financial problems with a dowry, but I couldn’t imagine the coincidence of two fathers with the same problem. I said as much to Aposila, and she shook her head.
“At first my husband, Antobius, was furious. He demanded that the killer be caught. I’m not sure he had any idea how to catch a killer, but he said the sanctuary must know who’d done it. He said he would sue the sanctuary, take them to court, and expose them for negligence. That was on the day we heard the news.” Aposila paused to wipe her face of tears. “Then, overnight, he changed his mind. He decided not to pursue the killer. It happened,” she said bitterly, “after the stranger called.”
Phaenarete called for refreshments. Slaves brought small bowls of figs, olives, grapes, goat’s cheese and flat bread, and cups of heavily watered wine.
We wanted to know everything about strange visitors.
“It was late at night,” Aposila went on. “Antobius and I were settling down for the night, when the house slave came to say there was a caller at the door. We never have visitors that late. Antobius would have told the slave to shut the door on him, but the stranger said it was urgent. Antobius went out to see him.”
“Did you see him?” Diotima asked.
“They stood outside, in the dark.”
“What did you do?”
“I watched out of the window. They talked for a long time. They were too far away for me to hear what they were saying; I heard voices but no words, and it was dark. But I could swear I saw the stranger hand my husband a bag. From the look of it, the bag was full and heavy. From the way Antobius hefted it, I think there were coins in it. Then the stranger walked away.”
“When was this?”
“The day after we heard Allike had died.”
Malixa spoke up. “The moment Aposila told me this, I knew you needed to know.”
“You were right,” I said with feeling. “Did the stranger return?”
“Not that I saw. But my husband acted differently.”
“How so?”
Aposila shifted in her seat. “Antobius had been angry before, but next morning he was mollified. When I asked him about the strange visitor, he said it was business. I told him I’d seen the bag and asked him what was in it. He became angry and ordered me never to mention the incident again.”
“Did you?”
“No.”
“What did your husband do?”
“Nothing. After that night, he never again said anything against the sanctuary, nor blamed them for Allike’s death.” Now Aposila clenched her hands in anguish. “When I pressed him, he said he’d decided to let the matter rest.”
“I’m confused,” I said. “How does he explain the death of his daughter?”
In Athens, by law, a man was required to investigate the murder of any close relative. It was the only investigation that was guaranteed. Polonikos, the father of Ophelia, could argue that so far his daughter was only missing, but if Antobius, the father of Allike, refused to look into his own daughter’s death, he’d be in flagrant breach of the law.
“My husband said that our daughter had been unlucky, that a wild bear had killed her. He said the stranger told him there’d been reports.”