‘Where are we?’ Laying his shield down, Thersites squared up to Meriones, hands on hips.
Meriones looked from side to side. Now his gestures were nervous. ‘We’re—’
‘You don’t know, do you?’ Thersites challenged him before turning to the audience. Or at least, where the audience would be sitting when we were performing this comedy in the theatre. ‘Well, isn’t that just lovely? We’re lost!’
‘An Achaean is never lost,’ Meriones objected hotly. ‘He’s just… on his way from one place to another.’
‘So this isn’t our new home? We’re only stopping off here? Oh my aching arse!’ Thersites squatted and groaned, heart-rending, as he kneaded his well-padded buttocks.
A slight smile tugged at the corner of my mouth.
‘No,’ protested Meriones. ‘We’re staying here, truly. We’ve anchored the ship—’
‘Aha!’ Thersites sprang acrobatically into the air. ‘Gotcha. So where are we?’
That was Chrysion’s cue to lead the chorus into the first of their song and dance routines. Twenty-four well-drilled men should have celebrated the virtues of this unknown land.
At least six started singing several words behind the rest. Four went right when they should have gone left and one tripped up the man beside him. He fell over and took down the next in line. The song dissolved into protests and recrimination. In the colonnade opposite me, Hyanthidas lowered his reed-tipped pipes. At his side Lysicrates, who’d been poised to make his own entrance, shook his head, exasperated.
‘Oh, come on!’ Menekles dragged off his helmet to glare at Chrysion.
Apollonides was using an old mask until Thersites’s costume arrived. He shoved the painted and plastered linen up onto his forehead and rounded on the chorus. ‘What do you think you’re playing at? We get one chance to get this right on the day!’
I clapped my hands so hard that they stung. I didn’t care. I was furious.
‘Listen to me! This is no laughing matter! You’ve been hand-picked to present this play at the greatest drama festival in the civilised world. The great and the good of Athens will be sitting on those marble seats of honour. Leading citizens among our allies will be honoured for their loyalty, to reaffirm the ties that bind Hellenes together; our common blood and language, our shared gods and customs—’
‘Tell us something we don’t know!’
I don’t know who shouted from the back of the chorus as they all stood shuffling their feet. I couldn’t see anyone’s expression behind the motley collection of battered masks they were wearing to rehearse. I don’t know what I’d have done next if someone hadn’t hammered on the house’s outer gate.
I turned and stalked towards the entrance. Mus had just opened the grille in the door to see who had knocked.
‘It’s Sosimenes.’ He opened the door to reveal the mask maker along with his skinny slave pushing a handcart.
‘We were expecting you earlier.’ As soon as the curt words were out of my mouth, I regretted them. Sosimenes is one of the best mask makers in the city and I was lucky to have his personal attention. I wouldn’t have got through the door of his workshop without Aristarchos’s fortune backing me.
‘You don’t think I’m busy today?’ he snapped. ‘You don’t think everyone wants their masks delivered?’
I raised apologetic hands. ‘Of course.’
There’d never been a realistic chance that Sosimenes would only make the masks for my play. The Dionysia’s five comedies alone demand one hundred and twenty masks and that’s just for the choruses, never mind the individual character roles. Add three tragedians each writing a trilogy and a satyr play besides, and it’s no wonder that the finest mask makers have the heaviest strongboxes in whichever temple banks their silver.
Sosimenes glared at me as he pulled back the cloth covering the handcart to reveal a stack of gurning faces.
I looked at him, aghast. All thoughts of apology vanished. ‘Where are my masks?’
These weren’t the hilarious, exaggerated caricatures that we’d so painstakingly devised. These masks had scarlet wigs. Mine had black hair.
The slave clapped horrified hands to his face. ‘I brought the wrong cart!’
‘Where are mine? Are they under cover? If it rains…’ The briefest shower could reduce those carefully shaped and painted layers of linen and gypsum to a useless, soggy mess.
‘You see clouds?’ Sosimenes flung a hand to the unsullied spring sky. Any actor would be proud to convey such incredulity.
‘I don’t see the masks Aristarchos has paid for,’ I retorted.
‘What’s the problem?’ Lysicrates appeared at my elbow and looked into the handcart. ‘Oh.’ He reached for one of the red-haired wigs. ‘Who’s got a chorus of Thracians?’
Sosimenes slapped the actor’s hand away. ‘Leave off!’
Were these for Euxenos? But his comedy was called The Butterflies. None of the competing titles announced yesterday had anything to do with Thrace. How could Euxenos get laughs out of barbarians and butterflies? I couldn’t think of a way, but he’d been an actor for a decade before he became a playwright. He never failed to tell me that he knew more than I could ever hope to about what made people laugh.
‘Where are my masks?’ My voice rose to a shout.
‘They’ll be back in the yard.’ Sosimenes scowled at his slave. ‘Won’t they?’
Before I could decide which one to grab first and shake until his teeth rattled, Lysicrates laid a firm hand on my forearm. ‘How soon can you get our masks to us?’
‘We’ll get these to—’ Sosimenes caught himself just in time ‘—to their destination and go straight back to fetch yours.’
‘That’s all we ask.’ Lysicrates’s grip tightened to make sure I stayed silent. ‘Now, let’s all get on. None of us have time to waste today.’
Sosimenes cuffed his slave around the head, so hard that he sent the skinny old man sprawling. ‘Get a move
