The flickering light showed me glimpses of the faces on the far side of the roadway, clustered around the altar to the twelve gods. I caught sight of Menekles, usefully taller than the rest. That helped me pick out Apollonides close by him, though Lysicrates was nowhere to be seen. I saw Eupraxis with the actors, still wearing his red performer’s cloak. Then the final runner of the ten pounded past.
As the light of the athlete’s torch lingered, I saw someone else. Damianos was in the crowd on the other side of the road. He wasn’t watching the race. His attention was fixed on my friends and I saw murder in his eyes. Then the torches were too far away to shed any more light and shadows cloaked the killer.
I stood, chilled with fear amid jostling and sweating Athenians and visitors. Everyone was eager to get to the foot of the Acropolis to see who had won the race. I stayed where I was, as best I could anyway. People knocked me with elbows and shoulders in their haste to follow the rest of the runners who were now crowding the roadway as they hurried after their teammates. I closed my eyes against the afterglow of the bright flames. I needed to recover my night sight as soon as I possibly could, if I was to find Damianos again in the summer starlight.
Thoughts raced through my mind, as fleeting as the torch flames. I pictured the scene I had glimpsed. Was I imagining things or had Damianos’ attention been fixed on Eupraxis? What could that mean?
One explanation presented itself. Damianos’ neighbours said he was as quick-witted as he was vengeful. We knew he’d been finding out where the epic performers lived, to catch them alone and unawares, and attack. He had seen Eupraxis with Apollonides earlier and it was presumably no secret that the poet was lodging at the bronze foundry. Had Damianos been lurking in those side streets, keeping watch on the foundry gate before following Eupraxis here?
I had no way to know, but my gut told me that was so, because another realisation made me suddenly nauseous. Damianos had followed Eupraxis in order to find Apollonides again. I was sure of it. He still thought the actor was the man he was hunting. He thought he was Posideos. There was no way he could have learned different. We hadn’t captured the killer and revealed our stratagem as we had intended. No one else could have told him about our subterfuge.
Damianos still believed he’d found the man he wanted to kill. So here he was to kill the poet who had outraged him by offering Adrasteia a refuge. His neighbours had said Damianos would do whatever he must to ruin anyone who bested him, however long it took. He had been brooding over his humiliation for the past four years. I’d been an utter fool to imagine he would flee Athens before he secured his revenge.
I had to warn Apollonides. I let the surge of the crowd carry me along the Panathenaic Way and past the Areopagus. Cheers ahead told me someone had won the race, but with all due respect to Athens’ ancient and honoured heroes, I really didn’t give a toss which voting tribe had just won next year’s bragging rights. I had to catch up with the actors.
‘Philocles!’
I recognised that voice. That was a man well used to being heard above a laughing audience and reaching the highest seats of a theatre with the next joke. I looked around wildly and yelled back. ‘Lysicrates?’
‘Over here! Over here!’
As he continued shouting, I got a bearing on his words. The crowd was still streaming past me, but the first urgent rush had slowed. People were more spread out, and it was easier to see individual figures in the gloom. As I approached, I saw Ikesios was with Lysicrates.
I didn’t waste time. ‘I saw Damianos.’
‘You’re sure?’ Ikesios was startled.
Was I? I revisited that brief glimpse in the torchlight. Yes, I was. ‘Certain.’
Lysicrates didn’t doubt me. ‘Where?’
‘Following Apollonides and Eupraxis. He still thinks he’s Posideos.’
Lysicrates’ face told me I didn’t have to explain. ‘They’re heading up to the Acropolis.’
‘With Menekles.’ I nodded. ‘I saw him too.’
Ikesios looked unsure what to do. ‘Will Damianos follow them?’
‘Yes.’ Lysicrates had no doubt about that.
I began walking with the rest of the throng. ‘Keep a look out at the edges of the crowd. If he does head off somewhere else, we should see him go.’
But I was as convinced as the actor that this killer wouldn’t give up his hunt now.
We walked at the same pace as everyone else. I didn’t want to force a path through the crowd and somehow overtake Damianos or cause a scuffle that might alert him. What I was desperate to do was warn the others. For the moment, I had no idea how. I racked my brains as we went on towards the altars that stand in the rock-cut shrines at the foot of the Acropolis.
The Panathenaic Way kinks like a dog’s hind leg as it reaches the fountain house at the base of the towering rock’s north face. That’s where the spring sacred to the nymph Empedo flows into a broad basin. Men and women were stopping to cup a handful of sweet water to quench their thirst. The sun had gone down, but the summer night was still warm and humid.
Torches had been lit now the race to Eros’ altar had been won. Flames dappled the crowd’s faces with shifting light and shadow. I saw several things in the blink of an eye. The first was Damianos, clearly recognisable from his height and heft. He had paused by the fountain basin, either to take a drink or to pretend to do so. He was staring past the shoulder of rock on the far side of the spring.
I followed his
