Sarkuk said something quelling in Carian. Tur replied with spirited defiance, refusing to back down when his father grew volubly annoyed.
I was beginning to wish I knew something of these incomprehensible eastern languages. Not that there’s a school in this city that teaches them, when the whole civilised world speaks Greek.
When they had finished quarrelling, I tried again. ‘What do your townsmen buy from Archilochos?’
Sarkuk’s answer surprised me. ‘Scrolls, mostly. Poems and plays. Odes and epics.’ He offered me a strained smile. ‘When we find him, you should discuss what terms he might offer for selling copies of your plays in Ionia.’
Tur muttered something under his breath and I didn’t need to understand Carian to know it was insulting. Thankfully his father refused to rise to the bait.
‘Just poetry and lyrics?’ I asked. ‘Not histories or rhetoric?’
Sarkuk took a moment to consider this. ‘No, just poetry.’
‘Does he only bring work from Athens?’ If so, it might be worthwhile Aristarchos sending a slave to ask around the copyists to see if they knew anyone who specialised in that trade in Caria. Not that I believed for a moment this man was truly called Archilochos. If his business was trading in verse, I guessed he’d adopted the name of Paros’s most famous poet to garner reflected glory.
Sarkuk’s answer dashed my hopes. ‘No, he offers us scrolls from Thebes and Corinth as well as from Lesbos and Ceos and other islands.’
‘He trades his wares all through Caria.’ Tur scowled. ‘There’s nothing special to bring him to Pargasa.’
Did that stone in his shoe explain his bad temper? Had coming to Athens shown this boy just how insignificant his parched little town really was? I had more serious concerns. By now I suspected Xandyberis had been killed to stop him identifying the source of any rumours about the Delian League tribute being reassessed. If this Archilochos saw me out and about with the dead man’s colleagues, he’d guess that particular piglet was out of its sack and running away down the street. I’d better watch my back. Though I still had no idea what this poetry pedlar hoped to gain by spreading such a pointless lie.
We joined the Panathenaic Way and soon reached the south-eastern corner of the agora. There weren’t many stalls set up today. Vegetable sellers, fishmongers and olive merchants enjoy their festivals as much as anyone else.
‘The city prison is down that road.’ I pointed to the far side. ‘We’ll call there, to find out where the Scythians have taken Xandyberis’s body. He may have already been buried,’ I warned, ‘just as a temporary measure.’
Even this early in the year, the days were sunny and warm. Still, the last few nights had been chilly and the Carian had barely been dead for two days, so corruption shouldn’t have set in too fast. Hopefully the Scythians had him somewhere under cover on a cold stone slab.
Movement caught my eye. A man stood by the monument dedicated to the ten heroes of Athens. As he spoke, he gestured with the flourishes favoured by the more old-fashioned rhetoric teachers. He was gathering quite an audience.
That was odd at the start of the festival. Neither the People’s Assembly nor the courts were sitting, so there was no official business for a speaker to influence. Half the city would be sitting in the theatre for the next five days, eating nuts and drinking wine, laughing at my jokes tomorrow and then watching three days of tragedies full of bloodshed and betrayal. No one would remember speeches made here today by the time Athens’ normal routine resumed.
Since our path took us over that way, I paused on the edge of the crowd to listen. The speaker was stirring himself into quite a fury.
‘Are we to stomach this outrage? Not just an affront to the city’s populace but so gravely dishonouring our goddess who is denied her rightful share of the tribute! Haven’t you heard? Those ungrateful Ionians wish to short-change divine Athena. Not content with that, they offer unforgivable insult to Dionysos at his very own festival! They will have the impudence to parade their contemptible offerings in the god’s own theatre, before his most ancient and sacred icon! Showing no shame, they offer no apology. What do they expect us to do? Meekly accept the pittance they deign to give us while they hoard their silver back home?’
‘That’s not right.’ Tur was scowling.
‘He’ doesn’t know what he’s talking about.’ Sarkuk was glowering as darkly as his son, strengthening their family resemblance.
I was grateful they were at least speaking Greek. ‘What’s going on?’
Sarkuk bit back his indignation to answer me. ‘This past year, some of our neighbours have been even more hard-pressed than Pargasa. They’re simply unable to raise the coin for the levy. They have sent all that they can,’ he assured me, ‘and their delegates have brought their town councils’ proposals for paying the balance over the course of the year, if Tarhunzas sends us rain and good harvests.’
I guessed that must be some Carian god. I held back from suggesting they’d do better to entreat Demeter and Zeus.
‘We are the ones who are insulted.’ Tur clenched his fists as he glared at the speaker.
‘But how does this man know?’ Sarkuk looked at me, concerned. ‘We are to present our tributes tomorrow. That’s when all these details will be entered into the city’s records.’
‘That’s a very good question.’ I turned my attention back to the orator. I also noted uneasily that the crowd listening to him was growing bigger.
‘What are they doing with their silver, these Ionians, while they deny it to Athena? Spending it on luxuries for themselves, no doubt,’ he sneered. ‘But they’ll still expect the sweat of your brow and the toil that bends your backs day after day to pay for the triremes that they will assuredly beg for when the Persians threaten to
