“Thank you,” I said.
Kordax shrugged. “That was too simple. Give us a harder problem.”
Behind him, three rows of exhausted men were slumped over their oars. The lips of the aulos player were puffed up red and the singer clutched a sore throat.
“Try this then.” I handed him a small bag of coins. “See if the men can drink their way through these coins tonight.”
I was pleased with the trip and feeling generous, as I could afford to be since the coins belonged to Pericles.
Kordax hefted the bag. The men at his back grinned.
“We wait for you?” Kordax asked.
“Yes. Our business here will be done by tomorrow.” Either we would find the family of Lakon or we wouldn’t. Either way it would be quick, but the second option worried me. I’d hate to have to go back to Pericles to report that after all this trouble, we hadn’t found a thing.
SCENE 28
Diotima and I walked uphill to the agora. Our mission was to find someone who might know something about the family of Lakon.
Rhamnus was an interesting place. It was larger than a town, smaller than a city. The buildings were rustic, yet there was a city wall. The voices about us spoke in an accent closer to that of Thebes than Athens. Not like Lakon at all, who spoke with one of the most cultured Athenian voices I had ever heard.
“I wonder how often people from here travel to Athens?” Diotima said.
“Not often, is my guess.”
“Yet when he was a boy, Lakon was in the chorus,” she said.
“Probably his parents took him to see the Dionysia. We can ask them, if we can find them.”
The agora was quiet, for the time of day. There were two taverns along its border. At one of these, a group of eight old men sat under the shade of an awning.
“Good afternoon,” I said to them, and smiled. They smiled back. They barely had thirty teeth between them.
“Sirs, I would like to buy you a drink.” I waved to the innkeeper, who had been watching me warily from within. I held up eight fingers.
He nodded. A moment later, a scowling slave appeared with eight clay cups which he set upon the table in front of the old men. The slave sloshed in wine from a small amphora. Almost as much hit the tabletop as went in the cups.
I paid the slave the going rate for tavern wine in Athens. He didn’t move, nor did he say anything. In the lengthening silence I realized what had happened; the innkeeper had taken the opportunity to sell me his most expensive wine.
I added coins until he had twice what I’d originally paid him. That was enough to make the slave go away.
The old men raised their glasses to me. “May Zeus honor you, young man,” one of them said in a croaky voice. Then they drank deep.
I said, as they drank, “Sirs, my wife and I are looking for a family. I don’t know if you’ve heard of them. I can’t even tell you much about them.”
They looked at each other warily, then down at the drinks I’d just bought them. One of the old men said, “Well young man, I wouldn’t normally go telling a stranger about a local family-you can’t be too careful, what with the trouble that drifts into town these days. But seeing as you got your young woman with you”-he leered at Diotima-“I can tell you’re right enough.”
“Thanks.”
“So who you looking for?”
I said, “There used to be a boy who lived here, perhaps thirty years ago. A boy by the name of Lakon. We’re looking for his people.”
They nodded knowingly. One of the men sighed. The man who had thanked me smacked his lips and said, “Ah yes.”
Diotima and I shared a triumphant look. This was progress.
“You know him?”
“Everyone in Rhamnus knows of him! Talk of the town, he was. First lad from these parts ever to get in the Dionysia. In the chorus, he was.”
“Yes! That’s him!” I cried, excited.
“Then the tragedy struck.”
“What tragedy?”
“People were still talking about it years later. You’ll be wanting the mother, I suppose?”
“Is she still alive?” I said, startled.
“Certain sure she is, unless Hades took her since yester morn. Delivered her vegetables like I always do, every third day. I used to grow ’em. Now my son does that. Back ain’t what it used to be, you know.”
“Please, where do we find her?” Diotima asked.
“It’s Agne you want. Fine lady she is. In course, she has to mush up her vegetables, on account she don’t have many teeth,” explained a man with five. He pointed. “Go up that road and turn left at the place where Davo’s farm used to be.”
“Where did Davo’s farm used to be?” I asked, reasonably enough.
“Just up there.” He pointed along the road once more.
“That place burnt down, Patro,” another of the men said. “Thirty, forty years ago.”
“Did it?” Patro looked confused. “I could have sworn I was there yesterday.”
We walked west into rough farmland. It had taken another round of drinks, but in the end we received perfect instructions.
Our way took us to an old, small farmhouse that was run down, but neat. At least, it was neat on the outside on the ground floor. The ground outside the door was swept. The bare walls were clean until about halfway up. The top half of everything was filthy and covered in cobwebs. The small barn beside the house was the same: beautifully neat on the bottom, a mess on the top. It was as if someone had taken two different buildings and stuck them together.
There was none of the activity you always see about a farm. There wasn’t a single animal we could see except for a few scrawny chickens. The fields about the farm were overgrown with weeds.
Diotima and I looked at each other. I wondered if we were about to find a house full of corpses.
I knocked on the door.
We heard soft footsteps on the dirt floor within. The door opened just a crack and the pretty eyes of a girl peeped out.
“Yes?”
This couldn’t be the mother of Lakon. The girl was barely older than twenty, if that.
I said, “We’re looking for a lady named Agne. Does she live here?”
“What do you want?” Her voice dripped suspicion.
“To ask some questions. That’s all. The men in the agora told us where to come.”
The girl looked to Diotima, then back to me.
“What men?” she said.
“Old men. At the tavern.”
“Describe them,” she ordered.
She was doing her best to defend her house. She didn’t realize I could easily push my way in. I hoped no serious enemy ever came here.
I described the old men, down to the number of teeth each had.
The girl nodded. “That’s Patro and his friends. He wouldn’t have sent you here if he thought you were trouble.”
She stepped back. The door opened.
She was holding a pot with a long handle in her right hand. She’d been prepared to hit me with it.
“I’ll see if my owner is in.” The girl went up the stairs.
This girl was a slave? She spoke primly, like a daughter in a fine mansion, but everything in this house spoke of poverty. The light that shone through the windows served only to expose a room with nothing in it. Not even dust. Just two old chairs and a table.
“My mistress will see you,” the girl said. “You’ll have to come up the stairs. Agne’s not been well of late.”
Agne hadn’t been well for the last twenty years, if the sight of her was anything to go by. She was old, with but a few gray hairs left on a head that was otherwise bald. She was thin as a stick, and she was propped up in a bed that was more termites than wood. Two blankets covered her, but weren’t long enough to reach her feet, which were swollen.
“Agne?” I said. “My name is Nicolaos. This is my wife, Diotima.”
Agne looked at me with uncomprehending eyes.
Diotima greeted Agne as she might a senior priestess. She took over the conversation. “Lady Agne, we would like to ask you about your son.”