Gary Corby - Sacred Games

Klymene studied herself in the bronze mirror with much complacency. Then she stood. “I must go.”

Diotima said, “But for most of the time, you have to sit alone in a box upon an altar. What do you do all day? It must be mind-numbing.”

Klymene laughed. “With all those superfit naked young men running back and forth in front of me? Oh, I have a way to amuse myself!”

Klymene brushed past Diotima’s stunned silence, and a slave raised the tent flap. “If you’ll excuse me, I have some naked men to watch.” She waggled her fingers at us. “Ta ta.”

“Wow,” was all Diotima could say. “What do you think, Nico?”

“I think I want to be in the box with her when she amuses her-oof!” My wife delivered a swift elbow to the stomach.

“What did you think of her story?”

“Unfortunately, it all makes sense,” I said, rubbing my stomach. “I can imagine how the Spartan Markos will reconstruct it. Timo waylays Arakos in the forest and beats him close to death. He hears men approach. Timo takes off down the narrow track that runs through the woods to the women’s camp. Meanwhile the men discover Arakos and raise the alarm while trying to save the victim. Timo looks for a place to hide. There are plenty of tents, but he doesn’t know which ones are safe; many of the tents house pornoi, and they’re probably entertaining men. In the middle of the ground is a tent larger than all the others; he doesn’t know what it is, but it looks official, maybe no one’s in there at night. In he goes and stumbles right into Klymene. She sees him and screams.”

“What about him being naked?”

“Perfectly normal. The athletes are required to compete naked, and many don’t bother with clothes for the duration of the Games. Everyone knows that.”

Diotima looked dubious. “There’s a lot of supposition in what you said.”

“It’s almost all guess, but it fits exactly with what we know, and it sounds convincing.”

“What was Timodemus doing, if not escaping the crime scene?”

“Good question.”

“For that matter, what was Arakos doing in the woods?”

“Another fine question.”

“We need to trace his movement on this side of the river.”

“No, you need to trace his movements.”

Diotima looked at me quizzically.

“I need to take the Olympic Oath.”

Apollo’s light shone cold and distant over the horizon. I stood, shivering, in a place I’d never expected to be: on the steps of the Bouleterion of Olympia, before the statue of Zeus Herkios, about to take the Olympic Oath.

Markos the Spartan stood beside me. His blond hair hung to shoulder length, in the manner of the Spartans, and like the Spartans he wore a scarlet cloak of fine wool, which kept him warm in the chilly dawn. He looked relaxed but serious, the very picture of a responsible young man about to assume an important burden. I on the other hand nervously sprang from one foot to the other, my arms wrapped about to stop me from shivering too visibly. I knew I made a poor impression compared with the Spartan.

A crowd milled about before us. The men of Sparta and Athens were up in force to watch the unprecedented oath. News of the murder and the investigation had spread faster than plague.

The men of Sparta clustered together in the center of the crowd, easy to spot because, like Markos, they’d assumed their vermilion cloaks. The Spartans normally forswore their famous cloak at the Games, to blend into the crowd and be less divisive, but now they wore them as a badge of honor.

The Athenians, too, were easy to recognize. They were the nervous ones. They stood in clusters with their backs to one another. A few seemed angry.

Pericles stood at the fore of the crowd. He looked tired. He hadn’t slept any more than had I.

One belligerent fool among the Athenians waved a wineskin and declared loudly that no one cared about a dead Spartan; in fact, those were the best kind. Pericles turned quick as lightning to push his way through the crowd. I saw him speak to the drunk fool, not with harsh words, but soft ones, and I saw him gently remove the wineskin from the man’s grasp. That was a riot averted.

I could see King Pleistarchus, and beside him Xenares, hanging about like a bad case of the gripes. A knot of younger men surrounded these two; there was no doubt what they were: Spartan bodyguards.

At the back I saw the weedy fake Heracles who’d attacked Diotima and me. He still wore his ill-fitting lion skin, but at least he wasn’t carrying his club. He stared at Markos and me, his jaw hanging. He probably hadn’t expected to see me again, let alone standing where I was.

My father, Sophroniscus, pushed his way to the front of the crowd. I’d had no chance to speak to him since the murder; I hoped Socrates had brought him up to date. What he thought of this I couldn’t tell. Father had permitted me against his better judgment to pursue my career as agent for Pericles for a period of two years, a period that now was more than half gone, under the condition that if at the end I could not make it pay, then I was to return to the family trade of sculpting. Now he saw his son standing at the Olympic altar. It occurred to me I’d come a long way in a very short time from that first, perilous mission, which had almost ended in my death and his ruin. Our eyes met for a moment and he nodded. Socrates stood beside him and for once he didn’t fidget. My little brother looked up at me in wonder.

Pythax, the huge barbarian from the north, chief of the Scythian Guard of Athens, former slave and now a new-made citizen, stood in the throng. As a barbarian he was forbidden to compete-not that he wanted to, he was too old-but as a citizen of Athens he had every right to be here. I stood to attention at the sight of him, desperate to make a good impression.

Timo’s uncle Festianos looked up at me from the crowd with a quizzical expression; beside him, One-Eye scowled.

The old man with the bright face was there, too, the man whom I’d noticed yesterday at the first swearing in. He held a long walking staff, and I saw him look from me to Markos and back to me again. I wondered who he was. Other men seemed to know him, for they made way for the old man wherever he chose to go. Or perhaps they were merely being polite to an elder.

The giant brazier had been rekindled. I took a step closer to it to try to catch some of its warmth. No one else seemed to be cold, but I shivered.

Exelon, the Chief Judge of the Games, emerged from the Bouleterion behind me. As he walked past the Spartan Markos and me, he muttered, “Look confident and put on a decent show, you two.”

We both nodded that we understood.

Exelon stood with his back to Markos and me. He banged his Y-forked staff on the steps until he had the attention of the crowd. “Hellenes! I know you’ve heard what passed during the night. A competitor has been murdered. I know that feelings will run high because of this, it’s only natural, and I remind you all, here and now, that the Sacred Truce remains in force. Anyone who transgresses will be punished.”

The Chief Judge was tense. I saw it in the set of his shoulder muscles and the knuckles that stood out on the hand that gripped his staff.

“That’s all very well, but what of the killer Timodemus?” a faceless voice in the crowd shouted. “Will you punish him?”

“Timodemus is innocent!” another man yelled. “You just have it in for us Athenians.”

“Hold!” Exelon shouted into the argument and banged his staff once more. “If Timodemus is guilty, he will pay the debt of blood as custom demands, under the laws of Elis in whose domain we stand. To that end, two men will investigate the crime: one an Athenian, the other a Spartan. The Judges of the Games will make the final decision based on their reports.”