“Impossible. I only just finished explaining that to him.”
“Then I suggest you be very persuasive when you talk to the people who can.”
Pericles was quiet for a long moment, during which I held my breath. Eventually I could stand the suspense no longer and asked, “Well, is it yes or no?”
Pericles said, “Be quiet, I’m working out how to save your life.”
He thought some more. Then he said to Diotima, “It’s a condition of any agreement between us that you will not reveal the contents to anyone. To anyone, you understand?”
Diotima nodded. “Agreed. But if Nicolaos is executed, if they touch so much as a hair on his head, then this will be sent to the people who would most enjoy reading it.”
Pericles nodded reluctantly. “I will receive the original.”
“When the danger has passed.”
“I see. I was speaking the truth when I said I cannot prevent a trial. Conon has committed himself too far to back out without loss of face.”
“But you can have him freed until the trial starts.”
Pericles paused. “Possibly.”
“And you can get him off. You have to, unless…” She dangled the papyrus.
Pericles turned to me. “Congratulations. It seems I will be speaking in your defense.”
The moment Pericles left, Diotima asked, “Nicolaos, will you run if Pericles has you freed?”
“Into exile? I don’t know. Father talked of it, but I hadn’t any hope of being let out until now so I haven’t thought about it. He said I might go to a sculptor friend of his in Corinth, but I think instead I might take that fast boat to Syracuse. Telemenes offered me the passage.”
“Syracuse? It’s better than being dead. I hear it’s a beautiful city. I’d miss you.”
“You could come with me,” I said without thought.
She was startled. “Go with you?”
I’d taken the plunge, I might as well try swimming. “You don’t want to marry Rizon. Blackmailing Conon certainly didn’t work. Come with me.” I paused. “I’d like you to come.” I could feel my face burning bright red.
“But that would be terrible, Nico. Mother would never send me money so you’d have to earn for both of us. I’ve told you I would never be a whore like my mother, and that’s what I would be, unless I married you.”
“That was the idea.” I was in such agony; I understood for the first time why they leave it to fathers to arrange marriages. Doing it for yourself is worse than a trip to Hades.
“Oh,” she said in a small voice. “Are you sure?”
I said quickly, “It’s all right, I understand if you don’t want to. I wouldn’t have anything, not even a place for you to live. Father would disown me of course. I don’t even know if I could feed us. At least if you stay here you’ll have security and enough to eat.”
“Okay.”
“The sensible thing is for you to stay and-What was that?”
“I said okay. I’ll come with you.”
My jaw dropped. “Are you sure?”
She smiled nervously. “No, but I just said yes and my heart feels good about it, so I guess the answer is yes.”
If it’s possible for a man to be locked in a condemned cell and ecstatically happy, then I was that man.
A message boy appeared. He handed me a scrap of papyrus. On it Pericles had scrawled, Conon refuses to free you. The only way out is to win the trial. It’s set for tomorrow.
I silently handed the parchment to Diotima. She read, then crumpled the message in her fist. “Oh well, so much for that plan.”
18
I spent the rest of the day reviewing the case with Pericles. He refused to have Diotima present, so she departed for the Temple of Artemis. He dismissed the entire edifice of our discoveries as too convoluted to convince a jury.
“To prove your theory, you would have to take the jury through the inner machinations of the Council of the Areopagus; expose divisions within the democratic movement; denounce Themistocles, whom many still believe was the savior of Hellas, and explain our banking system to men who’ve probably never had enough money to save a drachma. To top it off, you need to rely on the testimony of a low innkeeper, a drunken shortsighted sailor, and three men who are dead, two of whom are slaves and whose testimony would have been invalid except under torture.”
This matched my own gloomy view so closely that I could only nod and ask, “So what do you propose?”
“That we take the opposite course, and demonstrate merely that the murderer could not have been you. Above all else, everything must be simple. Take care to remember, Nicolaos, men rarely make decisions with their thoughts. It is their emotions that guide their actions. And in a criminal trial, it is how they feel about the accused that matters far more than the facts. You must ensure you come to trial as a presentable young man and a fine upstanding citizen. Make sure you are washed and properly dressed. Be modest in your manners. You must speak on the second day, but then you are permitted to hand over your defense to a friend.” Pericles winced. “That will be me.”
The first day consisted of witness depositions, and would have been boring had my life not hinged on the outcome. The presiding archon was one of the lesser of the nine archons. He looked at me as if I were a curious object. “Ah, so you are the infamous Nicolaos. Both the Eponymous Archon and the Polemarch have spoken of you, frequently. I must say, you don’t look like an evil spirit sent to harass Athens. I’m rather disappointed, really. Well, let’s hear what the witnesses have to say. Thank the Gods I won’t have to hear the full case. I leave that to the Council of the Areopagus.”
Conon called the son of Brasidas as his first witness. I discovered the boy’s name was Phomion. He looked at me in anger and spat at me. He recounted the end of the conversation he had overheard, my words, “…or you could find yourself dead.” The father was found the next day with his throat slit, the only evidence a shard of pottery clutched in his hand with my name scratched upon it. He asserted only I could have murdered his father. He was now required to support his mother and sister. To that end he had taken over his father’s business, but the takings were poor because the customers of his father had fled to more experienced bowyers and the family was starving. He ended with a demand for compensation of ten talents.
The next witness for the prosecution was Rizon. He testified to my proclivity to senseless violence. I had struck him down without the slightest provocation within his own home and later had manhandled him at Piraeus. Rizon offered up his slaves for torture to confirm the account.
The stallholders of the Agora came forward to testify to the damage I had done while chasing a poor defenseless boy, whom I had suddenly turned upon. He had sprinted off in fear of his own life. The boy hadn’t been seen again, no doubt his corpse was rotting in a secret grave.
The innkeeper who’d been pushed into his laundry tub testified I had tried to drown him, holding his head underwater. Only his valiant struggles had saved him from the demented lunatic. He demanded compensation of five talents.
Piece by piece, Conon built the picture of a man given to sudden murderous attacks against anyone unlucky enough to be nearby when the madness took him.
“The evidence of the son of Brasidas is damaging,” Pericles whispered to me. “The rest can be dismissed one way or another. Fortunately the key is Ephialtes. If you did not kill him, then you had no reason to harm Brasidas or the slaves. We will concentrate on showing you could not have murdered him.”
I nodded my understanding. I hadn’t truly believed this was happening to me. Now that the trial had begun I was struck down by the seriousness of it all. Pericles knew more about the workings of Athens than I ever would, and I was more than happy to leave the strategy to him.
“You will claim you went to see Brasidas about a bow. You have no idea why he was killed but it was certainly nothing to do with your investigation. The son misheard your words.”
