As they hurried off, I stood there trembling with anger, unable to string five coherent words together.
Lysicrates patted my arm. ‘We all need a lunch break. You and Zosime go and eat somewhere nice in peace and quiet. The masks and costumes will be here by the time you get back.’
I drew a deep, shuddering breath. ‘All right.’
I’ll never say so to Apollonides or Menekles, but Lysicrates was the first actor I spoke to after winning the right to stage a play at this Dionysia. Not just because he’s the best at playing women’s roles that Athens has seen for over a decade. When my first play at the Lenaia festival had been such a dismal failure, Lysicrates had come to find me afterwards, sitting with me while I tried to drown my humiliation in cheap wine. He’d encouraged me not to give up, but to learn from my mistakes. I will always be grateful for that.
Zosime appeared. ‘Why don’t we go home for lunch? Then Kadous will know he needn’t come to fetch me later.’
I wanted to argue. I wanted to strangle half the chorus. So it was probably best for everyone if I walked those urges off.
We bought olives and cheese in the agora and walked through the cheerfully noisy crowds to the Itonian Gate. Outside the city, the road was less busy and the tensions that had racked me like some traveller on Procrustes’ infamous bed began to ease.
Unfortunately, when we got home the last thing we found was peace and quiet. Mikos, who owns the house opposite, was squaring up to Kadous in the middle of the lane. He brandished a vicious-looking vine stave. ‘I’ll thrash you like a dog, you Black Sea bastard!’
‘You lay a hand on my property and you’ll answer to me!’ I advanced on the pair.
‘I caught him sniffing around my doorstep.’ Mikos gestured menacingly at Kadous. ‘You weren’t expecting me back till tomorrow. Thought you’d set my wife squealing!’
‘Put that stick down,’ I said sharply, ‘before I take it off you.’
Doing that would be easy enough. At least twenty years older than me, Mikos had grown fat and lazy now that Athens was at peace. In theory he was still young enough to be called up for military service but any district official in charge of a muster would be a fool to think any general would take him on.
Mikos dropped the stave but only so he could stride over and poke a pudgy finger into my chest. ‘I’ll see your slave executed for screwing my wife!’
‘What?’ I stared at him, incredulous. For one thing, the woman grizzling in the gateway opposite wasn’t Onesime, Mikos’s wretched wife. It was her sad little handmaid Alke.
He shook a fist at Kadous. ‘He sneaks in to spread my wife’s thighs when I travel to Corinth to buy beads. This was my first trip of the year, so I hurried back to catch them—’
‘Did you? No,’ I retorted, ‘he’s no such fool!’
I knew Kadous wouldn’t risk the hazards for any slave dragged into a citizen’s adultery. Though it was possible the Phrygian had been tickling little Alke’s fancy. As soon as we got a moment alone, I’d get the truth from him. For the moment I could only gesture for Kadous to get behind me.
‘Where’s your proof?’ I demanded.
I couldn’t let Mikos’s accusation go unchallenged. Not with gates opening up and down the lane. I didn’t want spiteful rumours taking wing around the neighbourhood. Once a slave gets a bad reputation, he gets blamed for everything and anything that goes awry.
It’s not as if slaves can defend themselves. In any mire of claim and counterclaim in court, slave evidence must be tested by the public torturer. Most admit guilt or simply flee before risking such agonies.
‘I caught that slut letting him in,’ Mikos snarled.
Alke, the thin-faced slave girl, buried her face in her hands. I noticed vicious marks from that vine stave on her bare arms, freshly red and starting to bruise.
I stood toe to toe with the fat jeweller, raising my voice to make sure that all those flapping ears along the lane could hear me. ‘She gave Kadous some charcoal yesterday when we had run short. He was carrying water from the fountain for her by way of thanks.’
Mikos sneered. ‘A likely story.’
With a silent breath of thanks to Poseidon, I pointed to a bucket I recognised sitting in a puddle of slopped water. ‘Why else was my man carrying that? If that’s your case, I’ll happily see you in court.’
Mikos wasn’t about to back down. ‘If he sets foot in my house again, I’ll gut him like a fish!’
‘You won’t get the chance,’ I assured the bead seller.
Not that I imagined he’d try. Kadous was big and strong enough to beat the fool to a bloody pulp with his bare hands. I was thankful he’d had the sense not to respond to this provocation.
‘Send your own slaves to fetch water in future, or your wife, if you dare. Meantime, if you lay a finger on my property outside your own walls, I’ll see you answer to the magistrates.’
‘Backed by your new noble friends?’
Before I could ask what he meant by that, Mikos stormed into his own house, dragging Alke with him. As the gate slammed, I winced. We all heard her rising wail cut short by a brutal slap.
I picked up the vine stave and handed it to Kadous, who was standing in our gateway, scowling. ‘Let’s get some lunch.’
He nodded, his expression thunderous, turning away and muttering something in his mother tongue.
I looked at Zosime as I closed our own gate behind us. ‘Do you think he could have killed that Carian?’
She grimaced. ‘A stranger knocking on the wrong gate during a festival? Surely Mikos would have asked his business before butchering him?’
I wasn’t so sure. ‘He must have had some reason to think he’d find Onesime with a lover. Are there rumours around the fountains?’
Zosime nodded. ‘She’s as false
