‘Some time around the fourth hour,’ Telesilla said firmly. ‘We’ve no need to make an early start.’
Zosime looked at me. ‘That will give you time to call on Aristarchos, and tell Lydis what we’ve discussed.’
I nodded. I knew my beloved was always determined once she’d made up her mind about something. So I wasn’t surprised, when she stopped walking, not long after we’d left the tavern and once we’d said goodbye to our friends.
‘Dad can walk me home. You can go and call on your mother. It’s still early. You can ask her to do what she can, to help us find this woman.’
I glanced at Menkaure and saw his resignation. He’d known his daughter far longer than I had after all. He saw me looking, and smiled briefly. I was reassured by that. Now that Zosime had forgiven me, he would do the same.
I kissed Zosime’s cheek. ‘I’ll catch up with you as soon as I can.’
As they took the road that would lead them to the Itonian Gate, I headed towards the Hill of the Nymphs, to the district where my family have lived since my grandfather sold up and moved into the city from Alopeke. The Fates had blessed his decision. That property had been devastated by the Persian invasion, and many of my father’s childhood friends still living outside the city walls had been killed.
Then peace had come, and Athens grew crowded, and I had decided to buy my little house, and live in our family’s ancestral district where our voting allegiance had been recorded in Cleisthenes’ day. A playwright can work anywhere, pretty much. Selling belts, sandals, purses and other leather goods is most profitable when you’re closer to your customers.
The gate to the workshop yard was closed, as I expected. A lamp was burning though, up high on the post. So someone was out and about, expected back late after the dusk faded to darkness. I hoped it was Nymenios. I really wasn’t in the mood for dealing with my elder brother.
I knocked gently. Sekis, my family’s oldest slave, opened up. He beckoned me in. ‘Quick, we’re getting the hens settled for the night.’
I slipped through the gate so he could close it behind me, and saw my mother ushering the last recalcitrant chicken inside the coop. She looked up, saw me, and smiled.
‘How did your Corinthian friend get on in the contest?’
‘Well enough, I think. He played magnificently, so we can only leave the decision to the gods and the judges.’
Mother snapped her fingers at Sekis, who’d started sweeping up the barley husks and other remnants of the hens’ evening feed. ‘Leave that, and fetch us some wine, please.’
She turned to me. ‘Shall we sit out here? Melina and the baby are asleep, and I don’t want to disturb them.’
‘Of course.’ I followed her to the broad porch where her loom was set up, with a length of expertly patterned cloth hanging down from the raised beam half-woven, with the weighted warp threads dangling below. As soon as that was done, she would begin another. Like Penelope, her loom is never empty, but my mother finishes her work instead of unpicking it every night. That has been the way of it, for as long as I can remember.
As soon as we sat down, two of the household’s ferrets dropped down from the rafters of the open-fronted workshop and came scampering across to join us. Between them and the eagle-eyed chickens, mice have no chance of feasting on the valuable hides stored across the courtyard.
One of the ferrets climbed into my mother’s lap and wound itself around her wrist as she tickled its belly. The other one looked at me, decided the chickens’ leavings were probably more interesting and lolloped off to see.
‘Is she well?’ I didn’t need to explain that I meant the baby. Hera and Demeter be thanked, Melina had recovered swiftly from the trials of childbirth. My newest niece had been thriving when I last saw her, but infants are always vulnerable, especially in the high summer’s heat. The fact that our children would be bastards without any legal rights isn’t the only reason Zosime and I take care not to let my seed take root in her furrow. We all still mourned the baby Nymenios and Melina had lost.
Thankfully my mother was smiling. ‘She is strong and healthy.’
Sekis came out of the house with a jug and two cups. I heard the sound of children’s muted protests filtering through the wooden shutters overhead.
Mother glanced up, and then looked at the slave. ‘See if Nymenios needs anything as he puts the little ones to bed.’
So it was Chairephanes and Glykera who were out enjoying life as newly-weds without children. As Mother took the jug and poured me a cup of what was going to be very well-watered wine, I shifted on my stool. I wanted to be out of here before Nymenios came downstairs. There was no reason for him to have heard about the murdered poets. He wouldn’t be visiting the barber to get the latest gossip along with a trim for his hair and beard until the festival was over. There wouldn’t be customers bringing such agora news to the yard either. That wouldn’t stop him interrogating me about whatever he thought he needed to know about my life. I’d be here till midnight and that wouldn’t please Zosime in the least.
Sekis handed my mother the second cup and headed into the house. Mother poured herself a drink, set the jug down by her feet, and looked at me with a knowing eye. ‘So what brings you here this evening? I didn’t think we’d see you until the last day of the festival.’
‘I wondered—’ I hesitated, scuffing my
