I glanced across at the front door, opposite the gate and sheltered by the wide porch where my mother’s tall loom had been set up for as long as I can remember. A new striped blanket was wound around the uppermost beam, waiting for my mother or Nymenios’s wife to return to it after the festival. There’s always weaving to be done for a growing household.
As a small boy, I’d spent long afternoons in that porch with my brothers and sisters, playing with scraps of wool and leather while Mother deftly worked her patterns with warp and weft. As the family business prospered, more slaves arrived for Father to teach and then to supervise rather than work alongside. All too soon, Kleio and Ianthine had to learn the intricacies of running a household as well as the proper behaviour for an Athenian citizen maiden. Around the same time, Father decided Chairephanes and I were old enough to try our hand with some tools alongside Lysanias and Nymenios. Our sisters soon had their first lessons in tending our cuts and accidental gouges to our fingers.
Today the door to the house was firmly closed, and only the upper-storey window shutters were ajar to let in daylight and fresh air. I could hear the voices of Nymenios’s children, indistinct above the purposeful murmur of conversation. The household’s women were busy with their morning routines, completing whatever tasks needed doing before the festival.
‘Syros never got the hides he was expecting yesterday.’ Nymenios gestured to the newest of the slaves we’d set up with his own workshop, currently deep in conversation with Chairephanes.
‘He’s not the only one left empty-handed.’ I explained Epikrates’s problem.
Chairephanes came to join us. ‘We’ve had late deliveries before.’
Nymenios snorted, sceptical. ‘Never by more than a day, and Dexios always turns up in person to play the wide-eyed innocent, claiming some simple error.’
Though I hated to admit it, Nymenios was right. Five days of broken promises wasn’t just the glib-tongued tanner mistaking one day for the next in his calendar.
‘If he can’t supply the hides he’s promised, he’s in breach of contract and he owes us reparations.’ Nymenios thrust his jaw at me. ‘You need to go to his yard and ask what he thinks he’s playing at.’
I understood my brother’s concern. Nymenios shoulders all the head of the family’s responsibilities for this household and our workforce elsewhere in the city. We needed those raw materials.
‘Dexios needs to know he’s dealing directly with us. No more fobbing off slaves who daren’t argue back.’ Chairephanes looked at me, apologetic. ‘And we need to know we’ll be getting that leather as soon as the festival’s over.’
‘If we’ll be getting any leather.’ Nymenios clearly doubted it. ‘Otherwise we need to make other arrangements, and fast.’
‘I’m in the middle of final rehearsals for the most important play I’ve ever written,’ I protested. ‘I don’t have time to traipse all the way out to a stinking tannery—’
‘Dexios needs a boot up his arse today,’ Nymenios insisted, ‘and you need to remember where the money to feed and clothe you will come from when this festival’s over.’
Nymenios could go kiss a piglet. I wouldn’t starve in a gutter without my share of our family’s earnings. ‘I pay my own way with my pen.’ I scowled at him.
‘True enough,’ Chairephanes said quickly, ‘which is why you’ll be the one arguing our case in court, so you need to be asking the questions.’
‘Not today.’ I was adamant. ‘Chances are Dexios won’t even be in his yard. If I go to his house, his slaves will tell me he’s out somewhere in the city. Oh, they’ll be so sorry, but they won’t know where he might be. It’s the festival, after all. Even if I do manage to corner him, you know what he’s like. He’ll spin a yarn blaming somebody else. Someone I won’t be able to find, or who won’t have time to talk to me because they’ve got a house full of guests. I could waste the whole Dionysia trying to catch the slippery bastard in a lie.’
I raised a hand to forestall Nymenios’s argument. ‘If we wait until after the festival though, once the magistrates are sitting again, Dexios will know we can drag him straight into court if he doesn’t explain himself.’
‘Then he’ll give us the leather he owes us,’ Chairephanes said, ever optimistic, ‘or we’ll get supplies from somewhere else and everything will be fine. Don’t fret so,’ he urged Nymenios. ‘Athens is never short of animal hides.’
He wasn’t wrong. One or more festivals every month see herds of cows, sheep and goats led to the city’s sacrificial altars. The gods take their sustenance from the smoke and steam of the burnt offerings while the free meat feeds the grateful populace. The sale of everything else, from the innards collected by sausage makers to the hides sent to the tanneries, puts silver into the priests’ personal strongboxes.
Nymenios glowered at us both for a long moment. ‘All right.’ He capitulated with ill grace before jabbing a finger at me. ‘But I want you knocking on Dexios’s gate first thing in the morning, the very first day after the festival.’
‘Of course.’ I nodded.
A thought struck Chairephanes. ‘Did that man find you yesterday? I sent him to the agora to see if anyone knew where you were.’
I opened my mouth to say I hadn’t seen anyone and to ask for more details, but Nymenios was already explaining. He does that a lot.
‘He came here looking for you. He wanted to commission you to write him a speech.’
So far, so unremarkable. If I
