“What do you mean, you don’t know?”
“I have no idea,” he said cheerily. “We just dump all the paper in here.”
“There must be some sort of order to all this, mustn’t there?”
“No.”
“Then how does anybody ever find what they’re looking for?
“You weren’t listening, Nicolaos. Nobody ever reads these records. We just keep them.”
“The Polemarch said the records were consulted, whenever a metic committed a crime.”
Andros laughed. “That’s what every new Polemarch thinks. The elected officials only hold the office for a year. Either they don’t stay long enough to learn the truth, or they get disillusioned. The ones who learn the truth don’t admit in public that the system’s broken. If they did, they’d have to do something about it.”
“Then why keep the records?”
“In case someone needs to read one.”
“But you just said no one ever reads them.”
“Well, there’s you,” he said, reasonably enough.
I looked at the row upon row of scroll jars and the teeming piles of paper. I would have to read everything until I found the one page I wanted.
“This is going to take some time,” I said. I mentally added days to the time it would take me to solve this case. Many days, unless I was lucky.
“I’ll leave you to it then. Careful you don’t drop that torch. We don’t want a fire in here.” Andros turned to go, then stopped and said, “I’ll tell the slave out front to let you in whenever you want.”
Andros left.
I stood there a long time, wondering how I was going to trawl through this disaster area and at the same time conduct an investigation. Then, in a flash of inspiration, the solution came to me. It was a brilliant solution.
I found him still at the theater. He must have remained there the whole time. He seemed to be playing with sticks that he’d balanced over a stone. He looked up as I approached.
“Look at this, Nico. I think I’ve worked out how the machine lifts a man. It’s all to do with how long the lever is on each side. You see here? When one side’s longer than the other-”
“Socrates, I’ve got a job for you,” I interrupted.
“What job?” he asked suspiciously.
“You like to read, don’t you?”
“Sure.”
“Good. Then you’re going to love this.”
I left Socrates inside the records warehouse, volubly protesting, but with firm instructions not to come out until he had everything he could find on Romanos. I promised to send a slave with food and spare torches.
When I emerged from the records room for the second time, I blinked and stared at the sun. It was past time to see Pericles. Where I expected to have the skin torn off me.
SCENE 18
I lost track of time while Pericles flailed me with his words. He could be cutting even on a good day, but now he was at his brutal worst. I had no choice but to stand there and take it.
Pericles paced back and forth in angry strides across the ground of his private courtyard in his private home. His anger was such that even his own slaves quailed in the shadows. He waved his arms as he described my numerous defects.
He ended with, “You idiot, Nico. I send you to quell one simple ghost, a job anyone could do, and we end up with a crippled actor and a dead one.” He stopped his pacing to glare at me. “Are you the most incompetent private agent in Athens?”
“I’m the only private agent in Athens,” I pointed out.
“Yes, well. Point made.” Pericles resumed pacing.
I said, “I’ll add, Pericles, that you commissioned me because you said I was the best man for the job.”
“Apparently I was wrong,” Pericles said, still pacing. But that statement brought him up short. He considered his own words, then said, in a tone of surprise, “But wait, I’m almost never wrong.”
I stood silent while Pericles considered this paradox he had suddenly discovered.
A large group arrived while Pericles stood in agitated thought. The new arrivals were the senior men involved in the Great Dionysia that was due to start next day: the archons who ran the city, plus all the producers and the writers and the protagonists of each of the plays.
Pericles had called a council of war, and the highest citizens had obeyed. It spoke volumes about the influence that Pericles wielded in the city that he thought nothing of summoning fellow citizens, that even the archons who were senior to Pericles in rank came at his call. It was nothing to do with his official position, which was an elected strategos, a General of the Army. Strategos was a position of great power, but there were nine other men with exactly the same title and no one treated the other nine with such deference. The power of Pericles lay in his voice, which was an instrument of the Gods, and in the charisma he exuded as easily as he breathed. I often forgot how easily others fell under his spell. I seemed to be the only man in Athens who wasn’t impressed.
There were more than twenty men in the courtyard and not enough places to sit. Though he was a wealthy man, Pericles hated spending money on anything, even on his own comfort. Especially on his own comfort. Pericles liked the best of everything, but not much of it. His courtyard was barely larger than that of a normal man. As the least important man present I stood. So did the lead actors and several of the others. Pericles ensured that Aeschylus sat in a seat of honor, and beside him the archons. These were the three executives responsible for the running of the city: the Eponymous Archon, the Basileus, and the Polemarch. I’d had cause to deal with all three offices in the past, but there’d been a recent election and these men were all new to their jobs. The final man arrived at that moment: the High Priest of Dionysos, the man with whom Diotima had first expelled the ghost. He looked slightly out of breath.
Pericles brought the archons up to date with what had happened. The three nodded grimly.
Throughout this Pericles couldn’t hide his irritation with the situation.
These powerful visitors stared at Pericles with some astonishment. Pericles had a reputation for being the calmest, most dignified, and certainly the most decorous man in Athens. They had never before seen him so upset. I, on the other hand, was used to it. I usually saw Pericles in his private office, when a crisis was at hand and events had turned against us. At those times he could be the most demanding man in the world. He had no tolerance for anyone whose service to the city was less than perfect.
Pericles continued the meeting with a question.
“Who is the victim?” he asked.
“Romanos of Phrygia,” Sophocles said. “I’m the author of this tragedy. May the Gods forgive me. Romanos was deuteragonist of my play.”
“The dead man’s not a citizen then?”
“No, he’s a metic.”
“What do we know about him?”
“Very little,” I said. “The only man who knew him at all was Lakon.”
Lakon gestured in an elegant movement that reminded me of someone, but I couldn’t say whom.
“Hardly that,” Lakon said. “I knew Romanos. Of course I did. But there isn’t much I can tell you. One doesn’t like to move in such circles.” Lakon pronounced every word perfectly and yet oddly rounded. His voice was rich and flowed like honey, as full of pleasant timbre and as precisely controlled as Pericles’s own. I thought it quite remarkable.
“What circles?” someone at the back of the courtyard asked.
“Metics,” Lakon said. He gave the word just enough stress to show what he thought of metics. “Romanos was merely a professional colleague. Even then, I’m not quite sure what he was doing in a Dionysia play.” Lakon cast a sidelong glance at Sophocles, as if to say the playwright had been slumming when he invited Romanos onto the cast.