Stratonike cowered before the nurse, who now was shouting, “Be quiet! Be quiet, you horrible woman!” And she struck Stratonike until the older woman sobbed and held her arms above her head.
The crowd was fearful, glancing at one another in doubt. Ephialtes’ shade was sure to return with a disaster like this in the making. There was no way the shade could be placated with his own wife joyous as his body burned.
A man sidled up beside me and said, “There must be plenty of wives think it, but I do believe that’s the first honest woman I’ve ever seen.” Archestratus smirked. He was the only man present enjoying the spectacle. “So, how goes your investigation, young man?”
I didn’t answer but looked around the crowd. Pericles and Xanthippus were both here, standing on opposite sides of the pyre, and I could see they were both making an effort not to notice the other. Pythax and the whole squad of Scythians had accompanied the crowd. Pythax ignored the spectacle and kept his eyes roaming across the faces of the younger men. If there was going to be trouble that’s where it would start.
The nurses grappled Stratonike under control, each holding an arm. The flames were well above Ephialtes now; what was left of the bier was hidden by the flames and smoke. The men watched silently. Diotima stood at the head, silent and respectful. She had ignored the ranting of her stepmother. Now as the flames died she took a ceremonial amphora, filled with wine. She walked around the mound and poured the wine, which hissed as it touched the hot remains and leavened the smoky air with the sweet aroma.
Diotima put down the amphora, picked up a fine cloth bag, and with a small ceremonial trowel scooped up the ashes of her father and poured them carefully into the bag.
From behind us rose a paean, a victory song of the sort raised when the enemy has been vanquished. It rose and lilted and the woman who sang it danced a small dance of victory in place as her nurses tried desperately to hold her down. She raised her face to the sky and called upon Zeus to witness the defeat of her enemy, and she screamed over and over, “I killed him! I killed him! I killed him!”
Rizon, who technically was now master of Stratonike, shrank back from dealing with it. It was too much for one of the nurses. She covered her eyes to blot out the evil and cried. The other became desperate. She punched Stratonike, once, twice, hard in the head. Stratonike was knocked to the ground.
Funerals are held at night so that the body won’t defile the sun, but that meant any shade unhappy with its sending-off would be free to register its displeasure, and if Ephialtes’ shade was still with us then it would not be happy at this spectacle. The murmurs began in the ring of spectators; a few men decided they were more fearful of staying than the disrespect of leaving early. I suspect more were scared to leave and scared to stay. Those ones were looking around, trying to judge what everyone else was going to do, looking at the fleeing men and back to the stalwart ones.
Someone hissed, “She’s saying she did it. She killed him!”
This was taken up and passed around the crowd in wonder.
“She killed him!”
“She says she did it!”
Everyone could believe anything of a madwoman, cursed by the Gods. I could feel the waves of relief wash across the crowd. Of course she was acting strangely, the spear had promised vengeance, and now the Gods were exacting justice even as Ephialtes departed for Hades.
All thoughts of the Areopagus being responsible fled their minds. Somebody called out, “Kill her!” But no one was brave enough to take the first step. There was something about Stratonike that was positively evil.
Diotima was doing her best to ignore the terrible sacrilege. She didn’t raise her eyes, nor did she hurry her gruesome task to get it over with. She would make a fine high priestess one day.
When she was finished, she placed the cloth bag with the ashes into the funerary urn, which was Ephialtes’ final resting place. Then she picked up a cup and poured honey upon the urn. She followed this with a cup of milk, then water, wine, and oil in succession. When she had poured this final libation she placed her fingers to her lips, kissed them, and slowly touched the urn. Her final kiss was not part of the ceremony, it was the only act that had been truly Diotima’s.
Diotima turned and began the slow march back to the house. She passed me, but took no notice. Her face was blackened by the soot of the fire. Her hands were filthy and clenched. I saw that there were tears in her eyes.
There should have been a banquet for the relatives, but with only Rizon qualified to attend, such a thing would have been a farce. Diotima was now required to purify Ephialtes’ home, room by room, with seawater. She would be doing that at dawn tomorrow.
“That was an outstanding performance,” Archestratus said to me approvingly. “So many of these young women feel the need to make an emotional ordeal of the whole thing. That young lady knows how to carry off a funeral with dignity.”
Stratonike was dragged past us by the grim-faced nurses, not caring if she stumbled. Two of the Scythians had held her down while a third looped rope around her. Stratonike cursed them with every step, shouting vile obscenities interspersed with hysterical laughter. Blood was dribbling from her mouth where the nurse had struck her.
Archestratus stared at this spectacle. “She, on the other hand, is entertaining for a short period, and then becomes merely grotesque. When I see that, I wonder if poor Ephialtes might not be better off dead. He had to live with that every day? Still it’s a huge relief.”
“It is?”
“We’ve saved the constitutional crisis, my boy. The wife confessed. The constitutional crisis is averted. She isn’t a judge, she isn’t a conservative or a democrat, or a member of the Areopagus. No one cares if it was her that killed him.”
“Do you think she was telling the truth?”
“I know she confessed!”
“But it might not be true.”
Archestratus sighed. “Truth is not a major component of most court cases, young man. Public opinion-what the jury thinks-is much more important. And here we have a truth far too convenient to be lightly disposed of. At last we have someone we can try, judge, and chain to the pole to be stoned to death without offending anyone. And Athens will breathe a sigh of relief when she’s gone. Democrats will stop blaming the conservatives, and the conservatives can stop looking over their shoulders in fear.”
I thought back to what Pericles had said, should the man beside me be the murderer, and had a horrible feeling Pericles would agree with Archestratus. And I had to be honest, Archestratus might be right. Stratonike had confessed after all, and she might have known Aristodicus of Tanagra.
“So you think the city will calm?”
“I hope so. All we politicians can get back to business as usual, and openly backstab each other in the Ecclesia, rather than secretly on the Areopagus. I’m looking forward to it.”
“Archestratus, will the people make you the new democratic leader?”
“It’s my right. I had a right to the position after Themistocles left, he favored me, you know, I should have been leader after him. But Ephialtes was popular, more so than I who had always worked quietly in the background for the good of the people. I didn’t make that mistake again after Ephialtes took power, I can tell you.”
“Then Pericles came along,” I said, not as a question but as a fact.
“Ah yes, Pericles, son of Xanthippus. Xanthippus was a democrat in his youth, did you know that? The power corrupted him.”
“But Pericles?”
“Should the people trust a man whose father has already gone over to the oppressors of the poor? Xanthippus leads where Pericles will follow given half a chance, once the power corrupts him too.”
I thought back to what I’d overheard Xanthippus say to Pericles. After removing the political bias in each case, both men were actually much in agreement on Pericles’ future.
“But Ephialtes favored Pericles, didn’t he?” It was a stab in the dark.
Archestratus scowled. “You’re his agent, I forget that. Yes, of course you’d say such a thing. Have you thought upon what I said to you before, young Nicolaos, when I rescued you from that beating?”
“Yes, I have, Archestratus, several times.”
“And?”
