I turned to the guards. “How was it set last night?” I asked. Maybe the arm had been left this way by the actors.
The guards looked at each other, both waiting for the other to speak.
“The arm was level?” Euboulides guessed.
I sighed. “We’ll check the stage.”
We walked around the skene onto the stage and looked up. The arm of the god machine poked thoroughly over the skene and high above us.
Hanging from the arm was a man. Or rather, a god. Because whoever was up there was dressed as Thanatos, the god of death, slumped over exactly as he appeared when he made his entrance during the play.
Romanos, I thought, must be practicing his part. He had worked like a slave over the last two days to get everything right. I’d come to appreciate what a stickler Romanos was for getting things right.
I called up, “Are you practicing early, Romanos?”
Then I realized what a stupid question that was. There’d been no one working the machine when we walked in. It was impossible for Romanos to be up there.
At that moment the first of the actors and crew arrived to begin their day. They walked in from the audience end. Aeschylus and Sophocles walked in, and a gaggle of men followed. One of the men pointed and screamed. The body slowly rotated in the air.
“Get him down!”
A voice roared across the theater. It was Aeschylus.
“Get him down now!” Aeschylus shouted again.
Aeschylus had seen what I already knew: that Thanatos, the god of death, was dead.
Some fool shouted, “Is he still alive?”
Whoever was up there obviously wasn’t, but there was the slimmest chance and we had to act on it.
I turned to Euboulides and Pheidestratos. “You two,” I said. “Get back there, pull the chock and let him down. Socrates, show them how.”
Both guards sprinted backstage as if their lives depended on it. Which they might well. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been so angry at anyone. Their lax work had led to this death. Worse, the safety of the theater had been my responsibility. Pericles was going to blame me for this disaster.
A brief moment passed. From behind the wall I heard Socrates issuing instructions-a daunting prospect at any time-followed by swearing that was the guards. Then the arm above me made rapid up and down movements. The body jerked in the air like a dying fish as they tried to control the machine. I guessed one of them was pulling on the arm while the other tried to dislodge the chock. I spread my arms, ready to collect the body as it descended.
I heard a yell of triumph, followed by some anxious swearing and then a voice yelled, “Look out!”
The distraught call made me look their way. But nothing was happening there.
When I looked up again it was to see the underside of Romanos’s feet, approaching rapidly.
The dead man fell on me.
SCENE 13
“Are you all right, Nico?” Diotima asked.
“Never been better,” I said. I’d fallen backward onto the hard stage. Now I found myself staring into the dead eyes of Romanos. He stared back. His eyes bulged slightly. His tongue poked between his teeth, disturbingly close to my face. His lips were blue. There was a stream of dried saliva coated on his chin.
“It’s a good thing you broke his fall,” Diotima said. “He might have been hurt.”
I decided not to point out the illogic of that. Instead I rolled the corpse off me, then knelt. I wanted to apologize to Romanos, but it was too late for that.
I turned over the body. I looked at the noose tight about his neck. Romanos had been hanged, and now he was dead. There was no doubt about it.
I was struck-as I always was in these circumstances-by how still were the dead. The slight movements of the living were entirely absent, the chest as it breathes, the small involuntary twitches, things that go unnoticed until they’re gone. Romanos was as flaccid and unremarkable as any corpse.
“I don’t suppose it could be suicide?” Aeschylus said hopefully. “Men have hanged themselves before now.”
“Not unless you know of a way to raise the lever at one end, chock the hinge in the middle, and get the noose around your neck at the other end.”
“It does seem unlikely.” Aeschylus rubbed his chin.
Diotima, Sophocles, Aeschylus and I stared down at the body.
“If it wasn’t suicide, what happened here?” Sophocles demanded angrily. “Nicolaos, I thought you had guards posted. You said nothing could happen while they watched.”
He was right. I had indeed said that. I had promised him the theater would be safe. I had said there would be no more “accidents.” I had failed.
“Sophocles, I will see this put right,” I said.
“Young man, my actor is dead. The play is in ruins. The Great Dionysia is probably at a halt. We are shamed before the whole world who have come to watch this debacle. Which of those things do you think you can put right?”
“We’ll start with finding out how this happened,” I said. I grabbed Euboulides and Pheidestratos by the arms and dragged them away from the others. Diotima joined us.
“All right, now tell me how you both managed to be sleeping on the job while one of the men we’re supposed to be protecting was murdered.”
They looked at each other. Already I could see the lies forming.
I said to them, “If you lie to me and I find out you lied, Pythax will be the least of your problems.”
“We were drinking, master,” Euboulides said at once.
I’d already guessed that.
“How?” I demanded. “Do you mean to tell me you left your post to get a drink?”
“No sir,” said Pheidestratos. “We never left the theater. Honest. There was a woman with us.”
I groaned. “This is getting worse.”
“No sir, he means the woman came to us,” Euboulides corrected. “She wanted to sell us a drink-”
“But we didn’t have no money,” Pheidestratos broke in. “On account of us being slaves. So she said, seeing as how we were only slaves, that she’d give us a cup for free.”
“A strange woman offers you a drink, and you just take it, no questions asked?”
“Yes sir!” They said in unison.
“We’re slaves, sir,” Euboulides added helpfully.
If I’d been them, I would have drunk alcohol at someone else’s expense too.
“It was cold in the middle of the night, master,” Pheidestratos said. “We didn’t think it would do any harm. One little drink to keep us warm.”
Pheidestratos was begging for forgiveness. I could ignore that, but not the information that came with it.
“One drink?” I repeated.
“Yes, master.”
“She didn’t leave an amphora or a wineskin?”
“No, master.”
“Do you both swear by Zeus and Athena that you each drank one normal cup?”
They both swore.
“Then we got tired, master.”
“After just one cup?” I repeated.
“Yes, master.” Euboulides frowned. He was the smart one. “It don’t normally take only a cup to knock me down, master. Normally it’s more like … uh … ten.”
There was no way that a normal healthy man could be felled by one cup. Nor were these ordinary men. They were the Scythian Guard of Athens, under the care of Pythax, whose idea of light exercise was an all-day march in full armor. It was impossible that these men could have been knocked out by a single drink.
Diotima looked at me and I looked at her.
“A pharmacis,” she said. “A witch woman.”
I nodded. A pharmacis was a woman expert in herbs and medicines … and in poisons. How many pharmacai were there in Athens? A hundred? My mother would know. Pregnant women were among the biggest buyers of pharmacis medicines. There must be a pharmacis in every deme, two in the poorer demes where people couldn’t afford a doctor, and would turn to their local pharmacis for help.