“Who’s a bonny boy, then?”
Iliona cradled the infant in her arms, while Lydia sat in the corner, grey-faced and shaking with fear. Her son was not deformed, but, arriving eighteen days before his due date, he was certainly a weak little baby. Now, five days after the birth and in accordance with the law, the elders had gathered at the family shrine in the courtyard to pass judgment on the strength of his bawl.
“They’re going to take him.” Lydia had no doubts. “My baby, my only child, and they’re going to reject him.” Tears trickled down her face. “Suppose I’m unable to bear more children? Suppose—”
“Dry your tears,” Iliona said softly. “I have cast the runes, read the portents, and heard the voice of the river god dancing over the pebbles. Eurotas does not lie, Lydia. You will watch your son grow into a man.”
Runes and pebbles be damned. What didn’t lie was the vial of willow-bark infusion secreted in the folds of her robes.
“Gentlemen.”
Making ritualistic gestures to disguise the bitter liquid that she dripped on his tongue, Iliona handed the baby over for inspection.
“By Hera,” gasped the astonished elders. “They will hear this little man in Athens!”
Consequently, the celebrations were especially fierce, with flutes and trumpets, singing and laughter, and wine flowing freer than midwinter rain.
Which made the herald’s announcement all the more shocking.
“On the road to Messenia, just beyond the fork,” he said, “the bodies of three women have been found, hanging from the beams of their farmhouse.”
Daughter, mother, grandmother. Exactly as before.
Surrounded by olive groves on one side and paddocks on the other, the farm’s main output was barley, where field after field of feathered stalks rippled in the warm, sticky breeze. Another week, two at the most, thought Iliona, spurring her stallion up the dusty track, and the crop would be ready for harvesting. Making it all the more poignant that the women would not see it.
Reining her horse as she approached the buildings, she glanced along this green and fertile valley. Enjoying a better climate than most of Greece, and with a constant flow of water, Sparta was not only self-sufficient, but in a position to export large quantities of grain and livestock. Add on a lively trade in iron, porphyry, racehorses, and timber, and it was easy to see why the state had grown so rich. Of course, like everywhere else, land ownership was only available to citizens, and tax was deemed too degrading for men who put their lives on the line every day. Instead, the state taxed the artisans who made their armour and weaponry. And did so without ever seeing the irony of that decision.
“I’m surprised the temple can spare you,” Lysander drawled, coming out of the house to meet her.
Iliona tethered her stallion beside the water trough, shook the red dust off her robes, and thought that if he expected her to apologize, he was in for a long wait. “May I see the murder scene?”
She expected him to make another sarcastic comment, possibly along the lines of surely she, who could see through the eyes of the blind, had seen it in the sacred bowl? Instead, he ushered her past the porter’s lodge and through the atrium in silence. Country villas were all pretty much the same in design, being built around a central courtyard with a colonnade running round the sides. What differentiated them was the lavishness of the frescoes, the quality of the stone, the lushness of the couches, and the richness of the tapestries on the walls. There was little of that here. A hoplite’s family, not a lofty general’s. A family who were scraping to get by.
“Are you sure you want to go in?” Lysander paused at the entrance to the storeroom to light an oil lamp. “We haven’t cut them down yet.”
We? As far as Iliona could tell, there was no one else here. In the hush, she could smell vinegar, honey, and olive oil, and when he lifted the lamp to light the way through the archway, she noticed that the air was hazy with flour.
“Yes.” She nodded. “I’m sure.”
She wasn’t. Far from it. But if she’d gone with Lysander one month before, maybe these women would still be alive. Facing them was the least she could do.
“Your frown tells me something strikes you,” he said, setting the lamp on the shelf.
“The distance between them.” It was the first thing she’d noticed. After the obvious. “The spacing between each noose is almost identical.”
“Not almost.” He held up both hands so that his thumb-tips met, then splayed his fingers. “Exactly three spans between each rope, just like last time.”
“You didn’t tell me that at the temple.”
“I believe you were busy.”
Chip, chip, chip. He wasn’t going to let her forget her refusal to help, and frankly, she didn’t blame him. “Still no witnesses?”
“The farm doesn’t employ many labourers, and those they do live in huts in the hills.”
“But three women,” Iliona said. “I mean, look at them. They’re hardly pale, puny creatures.”
The grandmother had arms like a blacksmith’s, the mother’s legs were like tree trunks, and even the girl, not yet fourteen, was a strapping young thing.
“They wouldn’t be mistaken for Athenians, that’s for sure.” He almost smiled. “However, one thing is certain.” The smile hardened into a grimace. “I won’t bore you with detail, but if there’s one thing I know, Iliona, it’s death. These poor bitches were alive when they were hanged.”
Yet there were no scratched fingers, from where they’d clawed at the rope. No dishevelled clothing. Just dolls hanging, three in a row. All evenly spaced. “He drugged them,” she said.
“That would be my guess.” Lysander rubbed at his jaw. “After which he either dragged or carried them here to the storeroom, but if you look around, the herbs on the floor to deter vermin are intact.”
“More likely they’ve been brushed back into place.”
The killer was as she’d suspected. Tidy to the point of obsession. Worse, he was cunning, careful, and intelligent with it. She cast her eyes over the various sacks and amphorae lined up round the storeroom. That was what Lysander had been doing when she arrived. Untying, unstoppering, sniffing, and testing. Hence the fusion of smells in the air. He obviously hadn’t found anything pertinent, though. More a question of thoroughness than anything else.
“Aah.” Her mouth pursed in compassion as she picked up a small wooden daisy among the dried stalks of rosemary, tansy, and lemon balm beneath the daughter’s feet. “This was probably her lucky charm, which fell out of her clothing when—”
“Let me see that!” Lysander snatched at the lantern for a closer look, and then swore. A short, sharp, vicious expletive.
“What is it?” she asked, because suddenly he was scrabbling around beneath the other two bodies, swearing harder than ever.
“I found a carved rose on the floor of the first house,” he said. “Right below the mother, but—” more expletives “—didn’t give it a thought.”
He held out two more carved flowers, one from under each of the other bodies in the storeroom. A daisy, a rose, and a lily. “How could I have been so stupid?”
His anger pulsed through the windowless room as if it had substance and form.
“How could you have imagined it was anything other than trivial?” she replied. “I also dismissed it.”
But Iliona was not the Krypteia. The Krypteia don’t make mistakes...