I was woken early next morning by the house slave. I groaned, rolled over, and opened one bleary eye to peer through the window. It was still dark outside, not even dawn.
“What is it?” I mumbled. “Go away.”
“Messenger for you,” the slave said quietly to avoid waking my brother.
I groaned again, pulled on my tunic, and shuffled down the corridor, trying not to step on the planks that I knew creaked, through the courtyard and into the vestibule.
The messenger was a young slave boy. His hand was shaking when he handed over a piece of torn papyrus and he stuttered the words, “Fr-fr-from the new mistress.” On it were scribbled two words: Come quickly. The finger marks where Diotima had held the papyrus were marked out clearly in drying blood.
I grabbed the slave boy by both shoulders and shook him. “Is she alive? Is she hurt?” I demanded.
But he fainted, and even slaps to the face could not bring him around. I let the fool fall to the floor and snatched the sword Sophroniscus had presented to me when I’d commenced ephebe training. It’s illegal for a citizen to carry a sword through Athens except on military duty, but I wasn’t going to worry about that now.
I ran all the way and crashed through the door. Fortunately it was unbarred, because it never occurred to me to check. If it had been locked I would have broken my shoulder. The silence in the house was ominous. I saw bloodied footsteps leading both up and down the stairs to the women’s quarters. I bounded up and pushed through the upstairs door with my shield arm forward and my sword in ready thrust position.
But there was no one to attack me. Blood lay everywhere. The floorboards were awash with it. Blood spattered two walls and lay across the couches. One of the nurses was slumped back across a couch, the wide, red streak of a deep slash wound in her forehead. I saw it had been either a sword or something like a butcher’s cleaver wielded by someone who hadn’t hesitated to kill brutally. The other nurse lay along the opposite wall, curled into a ball. The pool of blood thickest about her middle told me I didn’t need to look any closer. Stratonike lay on her back in the middle of the room, her head thrown back and her throat slashed open. Most of the blood pooling on the floor came from her.
Diotima was in the middle of the room, like an island rising out of a sea of blood. She looked at me with tears in her eyes and forced a tiny smile. “I’ve had a lot of bad days recently. I wouldn’t mind having a good one for a change.”
I helped her downstairs and called for slaves, but the only one there was Achilles. He told me the others had run. I couldn’t blame them, but I was angry they’d left Diotima behind. I was torn by priorities. I had to get Diotima back home to her mother’s house, but I didn’t dare leave the scene upstairs. There was no telling what might happen while I was gone. I had to find out who had done this and how Diotima had managed to survive. That would have to wait, though. Diotima wasn’t yet fit to talk.
“Oh yes, I am,” she protested in gasps, when I said as much to Achilles. I had ordered him to escort Diotima home. The two of us had wiped her face, but fixing her soiled and bloodied dress was a problem we couldn’t solve without a female slave. “Anyway, this is my home now.”
I raised an eyebrow at that. “You’ve only just moved in, and that was supposed to be for the night only. I didn’t think you’d become proprietorial.”
“That was before someone dared to murder my household. I could have been in there!”
“Why weren’t you?” I asked.
“Remember the last thing I said to you last night? I resolved I was not going to spend a night in the same rooms as a mad-woman who had danced around her husband’s grave. So I walked about the house. I walked a lot. I looked into every nook and cranny. There was nothing else to do. I know this house as if I’ve lived in it. This place belongs to me now. Me, Nicolaos. I am mistress of this house.”
Aha. Diotima had finally found somewhere she could be free of Euterpe. Granted, it had a few disappointing features. It was recently vacated by a murdered man-her father-it housed a violent lunatic, and to possess it, she would have to marry a loathsome creature. But even with these domestic inconveniences it was a place away from her mother, and that counted for a lot with Diotima.
“I realized, I don’t know when, I couldn’t stay awake all night. I could barely stay on my feet. So I slipped into Father’s bedroom and slept in his bed. I barred the door so the slaves wouldn’t discover me in the morning. I thought I would slip back into the women’s quarters before dawn.”
“The door to the women, did you bar it behind you?”
“No. Stratonike was out cold. The nurses’ sleeping draft worked.”
“So anyone could have walked in.”
“The house was shut up tight.”
Achilles spoke up, “If I might say, sir, the young mistress is quite right. I checked the doors myself before retiring, front and back. All was barred as it should be, sir.”
“Windows?”
“Downstairs shutters locked, sir.”
Diotima said, “And besides, Nicolaos, remember I was walking the house for half the night. If someone had broken in I would have known for sure.”
“Who found the bodies?”
Diotima shuddered and went pale again. “I did, when I returned before dawn.”
“Wait here.”
I had left Diotima and Achilles as much to give myself a moment alone as to investigate. While I was out of sight I took the time to lean against a wall and feel sick. I was shaken by what had happened here. I stayed until my stomach had settled, then continued my work.
I went around the doors, front and back, and every window. Every bar but the front door’s was in place. None showed the least sign of cracking.
“When you sent the messenger to me, did you have to unbar the front door?” I asked on return.
“Yes sir, I noticed that particularly,” Achilles said.
I looked at him closely, unsure whether he understood the implication of what he said.
I said slowly, “I should think the person who did this was a man. It must have required strength.”
Diotima asked, “What do you think happened?”
“You heard no screams?”
“None. But then, by the time I fell asleep I was dead to the world, utterly exhausted.”
Achilles said, “It may help you to know, sir, the old master Ephialtes had special work done to the women’s quarters. The workmen made double walls and pushed cloth within the gap. I think they did the same to the floor. One couldn’t hear what happened within.”
“Why in Hades would they do that?” I asked, astounded.
“It was on account of the old mistress, sir. For when she was having one of her…turns. She could scream fit to wake the dead. The neighbors complained, sir, and the slaves couldn’t get a night’s rest.”
“I see.” That would explain why no one heard anything. And even if they did, everyone would assume Stratonike was having one of her screaming fits. What a beautiful opportunity to murder someone.
“Sir? May I ask a question? I haven’t seen the room. I thought the old mistress must have taken to the old nurses and then killed herself. Isn’t that what happened?”
I looked at Diotima meaningfully. She nodded. “Achilles was downstairs when I screamed and ran for help. He didn’t go up.”
I looked at his bare feet. The crippling scars were there to be seen, and not the slightest trace of blood. They were perfectly clean. Very well then. “Achilles, it is most unlikely that your old mistress killed herself.”
“Oh dear, sir.” I left them again and stepped outside into the street. The sun’s rays were strong now; the day had begun. There was a single set of bloody footprints going out the door and down the street. I squinted and studied in hope, but it was easy to see they’d been left by the boy who’d come to me. The back lane was even worse, the only obvious prints were my own from the night before. If an outsider had killed the women, he’d left without dripping blood, a feat I considered to be impossible.
Was Achilles capable of this? There were two other men slaves; they’d been among those who’d run. But the slaves had left no blood in their wake. Achilles was clean.
Hmm. He was clean. So was everyone else who’d left the house except the messenger boy. Diotima was the only one covered in blood, and I refused to believe she could have committed this crime. I returned once more to Diotima and Achilles.
