Zosime reappeared with some old brushes and her father soaked them with the pungent liquid. Heading out into the lane, I scrubbed that obscene picture so hard that my bruised arms ached. To help me ignore the terebinth’s vicious sting on my grazed knuckles, I imagined I was scouring the flesh off the face of whoever had painted it.
My anger faded along with the daylight and I was forced to consider who might be responsible. Someone had been stirring up Persian prejudice in the agora, after all. If they thought I was an ally of those Carians, they might well attempt to discredit me. How much further would they go?
‘Scrub any harder and you’ll be shifting bricks.’ Menkaure worked steadily beside me, obliterating the raggedly daubed letters. Kadous attacked the obscenities further along.
‘You had better take Zosime home with you tonight,’ I said through gritted teeth.
‘Why?’ The Egyptian stepped back to assess his progress.
‘No.’ She was standing in the gateway.
‘I have to know you’re safe.’ I looked at her father, expecting his agreement.
‘It’s better for me to stay here tonight,’ Menkaure countered. ‘If whoever did this comes back, there’ll be three of us to tackle them. You, me and Kadous. Not that I think they will,’ he assured Zosime.
‘Then I’ll be perfectly safe.’ She folded her arms. ‘And tomorrow, we’ll all be going to see your play. There’s nothing to fret about.’
True enough. What I’d said was as true for Zosime, Menkaure and Kadous as it was for the Pargasarenes. No one would attack them in the theatre.
She narrowed her eyes at me. ‘What’s going on?’
Menkaure saved me from having to answer. ‘I wonder when this happened.’ He turned to Kadous. ‘You said the paint was nearly dry? Was it tacky to the touch or still wet enough to coat a fingertip?’
The Phrygian gave it some thought. ‘Wet enough for me to draw a fine in it.’
‘Painted not long before we got here then.’ Menkaure shrugged. ‘For whatever that might be worth.’
So this had happened after the fracas in the agora.
Kadous stepped back from his labours. ‘I reckon we could try washing this down now.’
‘I’ll get some buckets.’ Zosime disappeared into the courtyard.
As she headed for the fountain, flanked by Kadous and Menkaure, I looked up and down the lane, wondering which of our neighbours had already seen the insult. At least we lived on an out-of-the-way street, well away from the city’s thoroughfares. But Sosistratos’s sons would think it was a fine joke if they’d wandered past before I got home. They’d share it with their loose-lipped drinking friends before the night was done. It could be all over the city before the end of the festival. It might even reach the ears of the judges who’d be giving their verdict on my play tomorrow. Once Rumour takes wing there’s no calling her back.
What about after the Dionysia? People wanting a speech or a eulogy have plenty of other scriveners and poets to choose from, all sitting hopefully in the Painted Colonnade. My livelihood would be hit hard if murmurs about my supposed Persian sympathies spread. There’s not a family in the city, or beyond the walls out in Attica, who doesn’t have good cause to fear and hate them. The same is true for all the islands overrun by the Medes in the past fifty or sixty years.
Even if we haven’t clashed in battle since my father carried his spear as a hoplite, Persian intrigue has stirred more recent strife between ourselves and Sparta. Even those born since Callias secured the peace are being raised like Nymenios’s children. His sons and little daughter hear their grandmother’s tales of being driven from her home by invaders. She warns them not to stray outside the gate in case some treacherous Mede steals them away.
Movement caught my eye even though the dusk was thickening fast. Turning, I saw a shadow quickly vanish from a barred window high in Mikos’s wall. Not quickly enough. I’d caught a glimpse of Onesime’s face as she cupped her hand around a lamp flame.
I didn’t know if she was waiting for Mikos or Pyrrias and I didn’t care. Either way, the faithless bitch was risking more than a painful fall, perching so precariously on a stool or a table to see what was happening outside their walls. If he saw her, Mikos would surely accuse her of waiting for some lover, however loudly she claimed to be standing vigil for him.
I wanted to know if she’d seen anything that might tell me who had defaced my wall. Finding out would be a challenge though. With Mikos so sure she was unfaithful, he’d be guarding her closer than the Hesperides’s golden apples.
Come to that, I didn’t imagine she’d have recognised who it was. An Alopeke housewife would hardly cross paths with lowlifes for hire around the theatre, or mysterious conspirators spreading lies in towns on the far side of the Aegean.
Menkaure, Kadous and Zosime returned, carrying dripping buckets. We sloshed water all over the wall. I took a few paces back to judge the success of our efforts. The brickwork now looked thoroughly unsightly, dappled with paint stains and streaked with damp, but that foul insult had been obliterated.
Maybe it would look better when it dried, though that made little enough difference to me. I’d be seeing those words every time I walked down the lane, even if no one else could see a trace remaining.
I washed my hands clean as best I could in the last of the water. ‘Let’s have some wine.’
Menkaure raised his eyebrows. ‘Don’t you want an early night before your big day?’
‘I won’t sleep till I’ve got the stink of that stuff you brought out of my nostrils.’ That was the simple truth, if not the whole
