"I suppose she walked into a cella door?'
"Yes, and how appropriate. "Walking into a door. is a very traditional lie!'
"I get the impression, Helena, that the Council of Sixteen is called in to be the fixers when this sanctuary has some scandal. I'm none too
certain that Milo of Dodona killed Valeria – Valeria was covered with yellow athletics dust; I noticed that Milo used the grey. Not proof, perhaps, but indicative.'
"So, Valeria was not killed by Milo?'
"And Milo was not killed by Young Glaucus. But it may be convenient for some people if it looks as if he was.'
Helena Justina said softly, "Imagine Milo of Dodona, half pacified with a sleeping draught. It would be tricky to get the dosage correct for a man of his enormous size. Then he would be difficult to handle if he thrashed about – as he would do, if the dose was too low and he revived enough to realise he was being smothered with a pillow, say. Anybody holding down the pillow might well end up with bruises.'
"This is hypothetical.'
"It's right, Marcus!' Helena was rarely so prejudiced. She must have really loathed Megiste.
"So why would Milo need to be silenced?' I mused. "Well, if he really had been involved with Valeria, then after she died, he must have become a frightened man. To anyone who found out that he had known her, he would look guilty. So he had a spectacular body but a small brain, a brain that had taken a few batterings in his career…'
Helena helped me work it out. The Council of Sixteen may originally have promised him protection. He was Greek; he was possibly innocent; and even if Valeria had behaved badly with him, respectable women with traditional values may have felt that a man is always in the right. To the Council, Valeria deserved her fate.'
"Cobnuts. "Respectable women with traditional values. are deadly!' I had made Helena smile. "Then along comes Didius Falco. Even the Council of Sixteen had failed to make the scandal go away. The women, with or without the priests of Zeus, were forced to come up with new tactics. Someone persuaded Milo to attack me.'
"When that failed, thanks to Glaucus, maybe they feared it would rebound. I expect the priests set him on you,' Helena suggested, "while the women thought that was a stupid idea. It meant you knew that Milo existed. You were about to discover his link with Valeria. Following the discus incident, you might have gone to talk to him.
"Yes, when a gigantic bastard attacks me, I always have a few kind words with him afterwards!'
Helena had her own dark anger. It is possible that the priests or the Council of Sixteen or both decided Milo needed to be punished now, either for his stupid involvement with the girl, or for actually killing her, if he did so. Anyway, Marcus, Milo may have genuinely liked
Valeria. If you had probed, perhaps he would have told you something he knew about her death.'
Utter frustration gripped me. "And what was it? What could Milo have told me? Was he the real killer? If not, did he know who was?'
Helena and I were now certain of one thing. Milo of Dodona had been silenced. He had been put out of contention by the redoubtable dame from the Elian Council of Sixteen.
As for my trip up the Hill of Cronus, as I expected, that had been a waste of time. My turn for confiding. I described it to Helena. I had walked up, looked around at the scenery, found nothing, and walked back down again feeling very tired. Now we had to sail away from Olympia with no real new evidence, either in the murder of Valeria Ventidia or the mystery of Marcella Caesia three years before.
I warned my party to be packed and ready as soon as the tireless Olympia cockerel sounded his first note next day. They were all subdued, especially Young Glaucus. As if he wanted to atone for his part in the death of Milo, he came to me with an object that we would carry away with us, our one piece of tangible evidence. it was a jumping weight.
"I persuaded Myron, the flute-player, to steal this from the superintendent's office. It was kept in a cupboard, after Valeria was killed.'
As weights go, it was striking. Unlike the much plainer styles that Glaucus had shown me, this was made of bronze, in the form of a charging wild boar, full of character. A plain bar formed the handgrip. In use, the boar's curved body would extend over the knuckles. His sharp spinal crest would make the weight doubly dangerous if used to bludgeon someone.
"Is this the one they found covered with blood?'
"We think so, though it's been cleaned up. There were two on the wall. The other one has not been seen since the attack.'
"I wonder if the killer took that. Some of them want a trophy…' Running my finger along the wild boar's crest, I did not go on.
Glaucus shuddered. I wrapped the boar weight in a spare cloak and put it away with the rest of my luggage.
I refused to be hijacked. I would not meekly accept the ship Megiste had arranged and then go where she sent me – probably straight back to Rome. Instead, we would saddle up our own donkeys, and head for Pyrgos, thence overland to Patrae on the southern shore of the
Gulf of Corinth, where we would take a ship of my choice up to see the provincial governor.
Stuff the respectable ladies. This was nly brief from Claudius Laeta at the palace. Normally I ignored official instructions. For once I would stick to them.
Our independence presumably annoyed the sanctuary authorities. I hope so. It certainly upset almighty Zeus. That evening, we noticed flashes of light intermittently, as if there was a storm far out on the Ionian Sea. These gradually increased. As darkness fell, all the hills around us were lit by ever more intense bursts of sheet and forked lightning. The pine-scented air grew heavy. We ate a frugal evening meal, sweating and argumentative, amidst wild and eerie flickers of light. It became all too clear why this remote place had inspired the ancients to say Zeus ruled the area. Closer and closer came the storm, until a slight skirl of rain preceded sudden huge drops. A long, heavy rainfall then lasted all night while Olympia resounded with thunder for hours, until any among us who believed in divinities must have believed that our presence had angered the all-knowing gods.
PART THREE CORINTH
Up on top of Acrocorinth is a shrine of Aphrodite. They say the spring behind the Temple is the bribe Asopos gave to Sisyphos. I have heard this was Peirene and the water in the city runs down from it…
Pausanius, Guide to Greece
XX
Corinthus. Rome had governed Greece, our province of Achaea, for over two hundred years now, so we had stamped our own style on the capital. First, the Consul Mummius robustly subdued ancient Corinth after it failed to support him. Standing no nonsense, he burned it down, levelled the walls, and buried the foundations. Architects like to start a rebuild on a cleared site. For added cleansing, Mummius had killed all the men, sold the women and children into slavery, and auctioned the city's art treasure in the marketplace in Rome. To call him thorough was rhetorical understatement. Still, those were the bad old days. We, for our part, hoped the Greeks understood that point.
For a hundred years the once rich and famous city of Corinth remained a wasteland. Then Julius Caesar rebuilt it with heavy grandeur. Corinth, full of shops, temples, and administrative buildings, was settled anew with freedmen and foreigners. Nowadays it was a haunt of traders, sailors, and good time girls, its houses and markets peopled by Italians, Judaeans, Syrians, and immigrant Greeks from other locations.
The famous Isthmus was only about eight Roman miles across. There were two harbours, Lechaion looking west down the Gulf (where we landed) and Kenchreai facing east. Many people landed at one, then crossed on foot and took a new ship from the other harbour. Alternatively, a paved tow-road, the diolkos, allowed empty ships to be transported on wheeled carriers right across the land bridge, to save them having to sail all the way around the Peloponnese. At the narrowest point of the Isthmus we saw two partly dug immensely deep channels for a canal – one of Nero's spectacular ideas, ended by his death. I reckoned it would never happen now.