‘What?’ Now Megakles was thoroughly confused.
Aristarchos raised his voice in a shout. ‘Mus!’
The massive slave reappeared. He was carrying a basket so big and so heavy that it was a burden even for him. He tipped the contents onto the paving in the middle of the courtyard. Broken pottery cascaded in all directions. Red dust rose from the slithering, cracking commotion and black chips skittered away from the growing heap.
Mus stooped to pick up one of the shards and handed it to the gaping man. Nikandros’s name was scratched through the black glaze, leaving the letters as vividly red as the pottery beneath. All the other pieces said the same.
Megakles looked at Aristarchos, appalled. ‘You wouldn’t.’
‘Oh, I would,’ he promised with absolute certainty.
Megakles hurled the potsherd onto the heap. ‘It’ll be months before someone can call for an ostracism. Not until next year. It’ll be two months after that before there can be a vote to nominate anyone.’
‘Quite so,’ Aristarchos agreed. ‘Which gives me plenty of time to secure all the votes I could possibly need to condemn your son. All those tradesmen and craftsmen I mentioned? Athens has what, thirty thousand citizens? Let’s say so, for the sake of argument. I’m sure we can persuade six thousand of them to turn out to make sure that he’s exiled. They’ll have no time for you either, after they’ve heard about your family’s plot to monopolise the leather trade. Then there are your son’s cronies’ promises to help Metrobios get the same stranglehold on carpenters and joiners.’
Kalliphon and Pamphilos had confirmed that.
‘You’re putting your trust in artisans?’ Megakles sneered. ‘The well-born—’
‘Let’s say a thousand men in Athens are wealthy enough to be called upon to finance festivals and triremes. Maybe fifteen hundred?’ Aristarchos leaned forward. ‘You think that you can convince them to vote to exile someone else in hopes of saving Nikandros? They’re more likely to vote against him, and to make sure their sons and brothers and nephews do the same, once they learn how you and he have hoarded your family silver abroad in order to shirk your share of such obligations to our city.’
Because that’s the thing about ostracism, as we’d explained to the Pargasarenes. They’d heard of the custom, obviously, but it turned out they were vague on the detail.
A case for ostracism doesn’t have to be argued before a jury. There is no burden of proof. There simply have to be enough votes cast by the People’s Assembly, declaring that it’s in the city’s best interests to send a known troublemaker into exile. Since there are generally a few candidates who’ve made themselves sufficiently unpopular, a second vote is held to choose which particular man to condemn.
‘Athens’ citizens, from highest to lowest, won’t even have to bring their own potsherds. We’ll supply everyone who wants one a token with Nikandros’s name on it.’ Aristarchos gestured at the heap. ‘Though of course they might choose to condemn you instead. No father can truly be innocent of his son’s crimes.’
Megakles was sweating now, sickly pale. He couldn’t drag his eyes away from the broken pottery. I silently acknowledged that Aristarchos had been right. He’d insisted that uttering this threat wouldn’t be enough. We needed to make his son’s peril too real for Megakles to ignore.
So Menkaure and Kadous had loaded a handcart with discards and breakages from the alley behind the workshop. We’d been up since dawn sitting alongside Aristarchos’s slaves, all laboriously scratching Nikandros’s name onto shard after shard after shard. Not that there were six thousand pieces to condemn him here, but we didn’t imagine Megakles would count them.
‘Of course, someone else may decide to level charges of treason at one or both of you,’ Aristarchos mused, ‘once they have heard the case for your son’s exile. Especially once they’ve heard these Ionians’ evidence.’
That was the Pargasarenes’ cue. Tur was the first to appear through the archway, as quick as a hound after a hare. Sarkuk and Azamis followed while Lydis and Mus fetched their stools. Aristarchos welcomed them with a courteous nod.
‘Our friends here will investigate Gorgias’s rabble-rousing in every town and village he visited calling himself Archilochos. He was there at your son’s instigation. If our fellow citizens choose to condemn such treachery before the courts, Nikandros won’t be choosing some comfortable city to wait out ten years of exile.’
Aristarchos remorselessly outlined the worse fate that threatened Nikandros.
‘He’ll be sent to the city’s executioner and I don’t imagine you’ll be permitted to buy him a kindly cup of hemlock. Not when everyone learns that you can afford it because you’ve conspired to avoid paying what you owe to this city. How do you suppose it will feel, to lie shackled hand and foot to a wooden board, while the strangling collar is tightened? Do you think he’ll still be conscious when he’s cast out beyond the city walls with the executioner watching over him until he finally dies?’
Megakles looked as if he was about to pass out. He collapsed onto his stool, barely managing not to slide off it and onto the floor. ‘He barely clings to life as it is. You accuse him when he lies so grievously injured? When he cannot defend himself?’
‘Then what will you do to save him? What will you do for your wife and daughters? If your son is exiled or executed, your death will leave them at the mercy of whichever relatives claim your property is forfeit by Nikandros’s disgrace.’
Megakles stared at Aristarchos. He tried to speak, only to cough and try again. ‘What can I—?’
‘Lydis?’
Aristarchos’s slave promptly handed Megakles a list of the plotters we’d identified so far.
The desperate man waved the papyrus, whey-faced. ‘I can’t put a stop to all this! Exiling me or my son won’t end it! Even if you called for an ostracism
