Shadows of Athens

by JM Alvey

Genres: Amateur Sleuth; Historical Mysteries

Synopsis

When Philocles the playwright discovers a murdered man outside his front door in Athens mere days before his play is performed at the Dionysia festival, he has no idea quite how far his investigations will take him...


The Persian War is over and an unaccustomed decade of peace has come to ancient Athens. Philocles, an aspiring comic playwright, is making his living as a writer for hire; but this year is the highlight of his career - he has a play in the drama competition at the prestigious Dionysia Festival. The last thing he wants to find on his doorstep the day before is a body with its throat cut.


Just who is this dead man? Is it just a robbery gone wrong? With the play that could make his name on the horizon, Philocles must find out who this man is, why he has been murdered - and why the corpse was in his doorway. He soon realises that he has been caught up in something far bigger than he could have imagined, and there are players in this game who don't want him looking any further...

(p) Orion Publishing Group Ltd 2019

Release date: March 7, 2019

Publisher: Orion Publishing Group

Print pages: 384

Sample

 

Praise for Shadows of Athens

 

‘There is a new star in the classical firmament. Philocles is engaging, inspiring and feels absolutely real. This is historical writing at its best and crime writing worthy of prizes. Riveting’

Manda Scott, author of the Boudica series

 

‘If you like C J Sansom’s Tudor sleuth Matthew Shardlake, you’ll love this – a gripping murder mystery set in a fantastically fully-realised ancient Athens, which will keep you guessing to the very end’

James Wilde, author of Pendragon

 

‘Intriguing . . . a refreshingly different setting portrayed with a convincing air of authenticity. I hope it’s the first of many’

Andrew Taylor, author of Ashes of London

 

‘It’s about time someone did for ancient Athens what Lindsey Davis’ Falco novels do for Ancient Rome. Alvey sets the scene perfectly, with easy brushstrokes and lightly worn learning. In Philocles we have an aspiring playwright, man of the people and reluctant detective. I look forward to his next case . . .’

Jack Grimwood, author of Moskva

 

‘Historical sleuthing finally gets its grown-up trousers. The book’s got wit and knowledge and the winning knack of immersing the reader in ancient Greece and the whole theatrical scene there. It shows a thorough understanding of time and place, and has a dark heart of thuggery and murder. Finally, someone has taken on Saylor and Davis and brought us out of Rome at last!’

Robert Low, author of the Oathsworn series

 

‘Alvey has combined the best features of a crime novel and a work of historical fiction. The result is a pacy, exciting and intelligent story set in a rich world. The plot is clever and solidly rooted in history, the characters vivid, sympathetic and lifelike and the world of Athens is gloriously recreated. Best of all, while Shadows of Athens is taut and historically detailed, it also displays a quirky sense of humour – [I] loved it’

Simon Turney, author of Caligula

 

‘Historical crime writing that virtually reinvents the genre. Ancient Athens is recreated with a masterly touch, while the beleaguered Philocles is the perfect protagonist to lead us through this vividly evoked menacing world’

Barry Forshaw, Financial Times crime critic

 

‘The historical detail is excellent, and the story and characters expertly spun out – a very entertaining and satisfying read’

Glyn Iliffe, author of The Adventures of Odysseus series

 

Chapter One

No one wants to find a corpse on the doorstep. Not on a fine spring evening after walking home with the woman you love. Not when your thoughts are wholly taken up with the unparalleled honour and bowel-knotting terror of seeing the play that you’ve written performed at the greatest drama festival in the civilised world. Not when you know that everyone who’s anyone of influence in Athens will see if the jokes you’ve spent days and months crafting will make fourteen thousand people laugh.

Everyone else in the city was cheerfully preparing for five days freed from work, ready to enjoy the spectacles of the Dionysia processions and the drama competitions at the theatre. There’d be feasting with family and friends who’d travelled into Athens for the holiday, catching up with all the news and gossip from every one-donkey village in Attica. The streets were full of people hurrying to and fro, with doors and gates opening and closing.

Today’s rehearsal had gone well enough, thanks be to Apollo. As we walked through the city’s central market place and took the road leading southwards, I drew Zosime close within the shelter of my cloak, my arm around her shoulders. Spring’s equinox means the days will soon be getting longer, but the evenings can still turn chilly.

Every household’s high outer windows were bright with lamps. Excited voices floated through open shutters along with savoury scents that made my stomach rumble. I could picture the scenes within. Children would be scampering about and wheedling to stay up just a little longer, to greet Grandma and Grandpa from Prasiai or wherever. Slaves would be setting up bed frames and mattresses while wives put the final touches to some tempting meal. Newly arrived travellers would be eager to wash off their journey’s dust, easing weary feet and backs. Here and there, torches on doorposts defied the twilight to welcome overdue guests.

Reaching the city walls, we waited our turn to leave through the Itonian Gate and take the road to Alopeke. Zosime and I walked more quickly now, both of us alert. It wouldn’t just be honoured visitors from allied cities and country bumpkins from Attica’s farms coming into the city for the festival. Cutpurses, cloak-snatchers and housebreakers would be idling in every alley and street corner within sight of the Acropolis for the next five or six days.

Hopefully that’s where they would stay. Still, there was always the chance of one such scoundrel roaming further afield to prey on incautious citizens who thought these outlying districts on the edge of the countryside would be safe enough. More fool them. Three hundred Spartans may have held Thermopylae against the Persians but the best the Archons’ three hundred Scythian slaves can hope for is keeping some measure of order within the city walls. Outside, we’re on our own.

The further we got from the city proper, the more deserted the road became. It was full dark now. A few lamps glowed but it seemed that pretty much everyone had gone to bed early.

We reached the turn from the main road into our side street without incident. I breathed a prayer of thanks as we passed the pillar sacred to Hermes on the corner. Brushing a hand over his carved head, I felt the familiar stone worn smooth by years of others doing the same.

We passed our neighbours’ homes, each one safe behind a high wall and the sturdy gate that protected the house and yard within. Some were two-storey dwellings though most were not in this district of modest households.

The lane was dark and silent but I wasn’t overly concerned. The pattern of ruts and hollows was so familiar we barely had to think where to set our feet.

That made the shock of stumbling over a body a hundred times worse. A man was slumped against our gate, where the timber post met the solid brick wall. I fell headlong across his outstretched legs, sprawling on the trodden earth. Zosime yelped as I dragged her down with me.

‘Shit!’ I swore as she landed on top of me, her elbow digging deep into my gut.

‘What—?’ She scrambled to her feet.

I would have done the same but my shoes were tangled in cloth. Kicking out, my foot hit solid, senseless flesh. I was outraged. How dare some drunk sleep off his skinful here? But as I kicked again, whoever it was didn’t stir. There was no wine-sodden grunt of protest.

‘Get Kadous, and a lamp.’ On hands and knees, I groped through the darkness. I touched an ominously cool, clammy hand. Hoping against hope, I squeezed limp fingers, brutally hard. There was no response. As I was forced to admit that this man truly was dead, the body slid away from me, slumping to lie awkwardly twisted, face down on the ground.

Zosime was knocking on our gate, more puzzled than concerned and keeping her voice low out of consideration for the neighbours. ‘Kadous? Hurry up! There’s someone hurt—’

‘Bring a light out here now!’ I yelled.

‘What’s going on?’ Kadous hauled the gate open as I got to my feet. The lamp my slave held cast a flickering golden glow. He didn’t bother asking if the man was dead. Anyone who’s been on a battlefield recognises that awful stillness when life has fled.

‘Oh!’ Zosime clapped a hand to her mouth, horrified.

Kadous took a step closer. The lamplight fell on the dead man’s feet. He wore Persian shoes, so new that the nails in the soles were hardly scuffed, and with no more than a day’s dust dulling expensive red leather.

‘Who is he?’ Kadous raised the lamp higher to reveal the rest of the corpse. ‘How did he die?’

‘Let’s see his face,’ I ordered.

Kadous stooped and pulled the man’s shoulder, rolling him onto his back.

‘Hades!’ We both recoiled.

The dead man’s throat was cut from ear to ear. A blade had ripped through his neck so deeply that pale bone glinted in the ferocious wound. His tunic was sodden with blood as far down as his belt. I forced myself to look at his face instead. No, I didn’t know him. That wasn’t much of a relief.

I looked up at Kadous. ‘Did anyone come knocking earlier?’

‘I didn’t hear a thing.’ The Phrygian shook his head, baffled. ‘I’ve been reading in my room. But I wouldn’t have opened up to a stranger, not after dark.’

I stared at the corpse. ‘We must notify the Polemarch.’ He was the magistrate responsible for visitors to the city.

‘At this hour?’ Kadous wasn’t challenging me but he wanted to be sure that he understood my instruction. I took his point. We wouldn’t find anyone manning the magistrate’s office this late in the day.

‘We can’t leave the poor man in the lane like some stray dog crushed by a cart!’ Zosime’s shock veered into anger.

‘I’m not bringing him inside our yard.’ I was just as adamant. I wasn’t having our little household tainted by this poor bastard’s death, whoever he might be.

I looked at the corpse again. If the Fates insisted on cutting his life short, why couldn’t some punch in a tavern brawl have killed him? I cleared my throat and forced myself to speak more calmly. ‘Someone at the city prison will know what to do.’

That’s where the Scythians would be taking anyone they arrested during the festival, and I’d wager they would already be busy tonight.

Kadous handed the lamp to Zosime. ‘I’ll get my cloak and boots.’

‘No.’ I shook my head. ‘It’ll be better for everyone if a citizen reports this.’ Unexpected corpses prompt serious questions. ‘Go inside. Bolt the gate.’

Zosime looked at me, shaken. ‘And make believe nothing has happened?’

Careful of the lamp she was holding, I drew her close and gave her a quick kiss. ‘This has nothing to do with us.’

I looked up and down the lane again. I couldn’t be certain that all our neighbours were home. If Sosistratos from four doors down stumbled across a dead man on his way back from his favourite drinking den, no one would have to notify the Polemarch. Citizens on the far side of the Acropolis would hear the uproar.

‘Kadous, you keep watch out here until I bring the Scythians. We don’t want anyone else tripping over him.’

The Phrygian nodded and I offered him a reassuring smile as Zosime closed the gate behind her. ‘I’ll be as quick as I can.’

Heading back to the city, I did my best not to curse the murdered man. He hardly deserved any more misfortune, but why did he have to die on my doorstep, tonight of all nights? I shivered in the night breeze and wrapped my cloak more tightly around myself. Had I offended some god or goddess? I honestly couldn’t imagine how or who.

Perhaps these villains, whoever they were, had come creeping down the lane intending to attack someone else. Only they had unexpectedly encountered this stranger in the darkness and all but cut off his head in their panic. Then the killers had fled into the night.

But who might have such murderous enemies? Mikos who lives opposite is a bore and a bully, beating his wife and her slave girl both, but bead selling’s hardly a cut-throat business. Sosistratos and his sons can be noisy neighbours, but only at festival time and no one’s going to spill blood over that. Besides, none of that would explain who the stranger was and what he was doing so far off the beaten track.

As I was waved back through the Itonian Gate, I got a grip on myself. It had been a long day with too little food and my imagination was running riot. I forbade myself any more pointless speculation and made my way as quickly as possible to the heart of the city.

There were still a fair few people in the agora, mostly gathered around the altar of the twelve gods. Honouring the deities with sloshed libations, they passed around quart jugs of wine and drank deep. I cut across the southern edge of the market place before turning down the road leading to the city’s prison. To my inexpressible relief, a lamp burned beside the door. As I rapped my knuckles on the bronze-studded wood, a wave of exhaustion swept over me. I leaned my forehead against the cold stone wall and closed my eyes.

The door opened a crack. ‘Yes?’ a voice prompted.

I forced myself upright. ‘I’ve come to report a dead body outside my house.’

‘Do you know who it is?’ The door opened a little more to show me a sharp-faced Hellene with an Athenian accent.

‘No idea.’

‘Is he really dead?’ The public slave cocked his head, impatient. ‘Or just dead drunk?’

‘He really is dead,’ I said curtly. ‘His throat’s been slashed open. Someone needs to come and take him away. I don’t want to spend the festival stepping over a corpse to get in and out of my house. You’ll need to notify the Polemarch in the morning.’

‘All right,’ the sharp-faced man said mildly. ‘Kallinos!’

As he turned to call out to a colleague, I got a clearer view inside. Lamps in high niches lit an anteroom where a handful of men in plain, undyed tunics were playing dice around a table. Scythians in linen and leather body armour lounged on benches that lined the corridor flanked by the prison’s cells. There were nowhere near three hundred of them, but still more than enough to give anyone fighting in the streets pause for thought.

Four were rising to their feet and reaching for their bows. They already had short swords sheathed at their sides. A fifth man was stretched out on the floor, his head pillowed on a rolled-up cloak, snoring softly. I didn’t hold that against him. I’d learned to snatch sleep whenever I could during my own military training.

The tallest Scythian rolled his head from side to side to ease some stiffness in his neck. He kicked the sleeper’s booted foot. ‘Come on, Dados. Let’s see what’s what.’

‘He must be a visitor to the city, the dead man,’ I explained as the sleeping Scythian got up and joined the rest of us at the door. He was still yawning and knuckling his eyes as one of his colleagues passed him a freshly lit torch.

‘Never mind that now.’ The tall man was already scanning the agora for potential trouble as the prison door closed behind us. At his shoulder, the man who’d been sleeping was more alert than I’d have expected. The other three were equally vigilant. I knew the Scythians weren’t overly popular. I only hoped that no one tried settling some grudge tonight.

Kallinos, the tall one in command, shot me a sideways look. ‘Where to?’

‘Alopeke.’ I could play laconic just as well as he could.

He nodded and lengthened his stride. Dados fell into step a few paces behind, carrying the torch. The others followed, matching their leader’s rhythm. Out of habit, I did the same. Once trained to defend the city, an Athenian’s a hoplite for life. And that was the sum total of our conversation until we turned in to the lane where I lived.

‘Your house?’ Kallinos gestured to the gateway where Kadous stood vigil with his lamp.

‘That’s it,’ I confirmed.

‘Your household?’

‘Myself, my companion and one slave.’ I hurried past the Scythians. ‘Any trouble while I’ve been gone?’

Kadous shook his head. The Scythian gave my slave a searching look.

‘You’re sure this isn’t your handiwork?’

‘On my oath to any god you want.’ Kadous spread his hands, raising the lamp. We could all see there wasn’t a drop of blood on him.

‘Step back and let’s see what we’ve got then.’ Kallinos squatted down next to the body as Kadous retreated. Dados and another Scythian held their torches high to offer as much light as possible.

Kallinos said something to his men in their own tongue before looking at me with callous good humour. ‘You’re right. This unlucky fucker really is dead. Now, are you absolutely sure you don’t know him?’

I studied the stranger’s face once again. I guessed he was at least a handful of years older than my eldest brother though not as old as my father would have been had he lived, for all the silver frosting his beard. Whoever he was, he was used to hard work. His face was tanned dark from years in the fields and even in the slackness of death a lifetime of squinting in bright sun had scored deep lines between his bushy brows, and between his beak of a nose and his mouth.

‘Quite certain.’ I shook my head slowly. ‘He must be a visitor—’

Kallinos silenced me with an upraised hand. ‘Save it for the Polemarch, citizen. He’ll send word when he wants to speak to you. After the festival, I’d say. Meantime, don’t worry too much. This was a robbery, most likely.’

The Scythians like quick and easy answers.

‘Then why didn’t they steal his shoes? Persian shoes, and expensive ones at that.’ I’d got a better look at his footwear in the bright torchlight. That was some truly fancy workmanship; deep-dyed red leather laced high up his shins and tooled in swirling patterns.

‘See his tunic?’ Zosime stepped out from the shadows, opening our gate just wide enough to slip through. ‘That brocaded panel down the front?’

We all looked at the stylised pattern of leaves below the disfiguring bloodstain.

‘That’s an Ionian style,’ Zosime said firmly.

Her Cretan accent presumably convinced Kallinos that she would know, as well as explaining her readiness to speak to a stranger, unlike an Athenian girl.

He nodded. ‘So he’s a visitor who won’t be going home.’

He said something else in Scythian to the others who’d still not spoken a word. One handed Kallinos his torch. He stooped and slid his hands beneath the dead man’s shoulders to get a firm hold. Another took his feet.

As they lifted him up, the dead man’s head lolled forward, hiding the ghastly wound. He might have been asleep, or senseless through drink. Those dark stains on his festival clothing could be spilled wine instead of blood.

‘Do you collect so many dead bodies that this is all in a night’s work?’ I asked Kallinos bleakly.

‘They’re not so common, thank Hades.’ He spared me an unreadable glance. ‘Answers are rarer. Leave this sorry bastard to the gods of the dead, and thank Zeus that you and yours are all safe.’

He nodded to Dados and the sad little procession went on its way. I stood watching until the torches rounded the Hermes pillar and they disappeared into the night. Darkness rushed back with a vengeance, scarcely held at bay by the little lamp Kadous had left by the gatepost. I hadn’t even noticed the Phrygian withdraw.

‘Are you hungry?’ Zosime bent down to retrieve the lamp. ‘Kadous is cooking supper.’

In one breath I realised I was famished, and in the next that my throat was drier than a sun-baked hillside. Then I smelled herbs hitting hot oil and saliva flooded my mouth. I followed Zosime inside and bolted the gate. I wanted to shut everyone and everything out of our small courtyard tonight.

Kadous was frying sardines in a skillet over the cooking brazier, in the light of a lamp on the high windowsill behind him. ‘Nearly ready.’

‘Where did you get some charcoal?’ I remembered him saying we had run out, only that morning. It seemed like half a year ago.

‘Mikos’s Alke gave me some. I fetched her water from the fountain by way of a trade.’

That prompted me to fetch a jug of water from our own big storage jar, along with a basin and a sponge. Stripping, I washed my arms and hands as thoroughly as I could before searching my tunic for stains. Once I was satisfied there was no trace of the dead man’s blood soiling me or my clothing, I pulled my tunic back on.

Zosime was pouring watered wine from a mixing jug into three cups. Her hand was shaking. ‘Who do we pray to tonight?’

‘Erectheus.’ Turning towards the distant Acropolis, I raised the wine to the earth-born god who shares that sanctuary with holy Athena. I silently commended the murdered Ionian to the mysteries that await the dead. Anger kindled beneath my breastbone. This was hardly the open-handed welcome that visiting Hellenes should expect from our city. Whoever had done this had insulted every Athenian, as well as Dionysos’s sacred festival.

Zosime and Kadous echoed my prayer to the gods and we ate our belated dinner. The sardines were tasty, the barley bread was soft and the spring salad leaves were crisp and refreshing. Zosime had chosen a fragrant amber wine from my small stock of amphorae in our unused dining room. On any other night, it would have been a wonderful meal.

We ate sitting on stools around the brazier, glad of its warmth. As Kadous rose and cleared away our plates and cups, I stretched out a hand to Zosime. She laced her fingers through mine, looking mournful. ‘That poor man. His poor family.’

I shook my head. ‘Don’t dwell on it. Didn’t you hear the Scythians? They said it was most likely a robbery. Nothing to do with us.’

Zosime pulled her hand away. ‘You don’t believe that any more than I do.’

I sighed. ‘No, but I don’t know what else to think.’

Dumping our scraps into a bucket, Kadous paused. ‘We never thought to check if he still had a purse.’

‘I’d wager we’d have found one,’ I said grimly. ‘That wasn’t a robbery. Any thief worth the name would have taken those shoes, even if his clothes were too bloody to steal.’

Not so long ago, my brother had mentioned a neighbour’s son who’d been robbed and left naked in some local alley. Such victims are rarely killed outright, because their families are far more inclined to track down a murderer than a mere thief.

‘Cloak-snatchers don’t often use knives,’ I said thoughtfully. ‘A club to the head does the job just as well and doesn’t damage the plunder.’

‘He wasn’t rich. His cloak was homespun and his tunic was a cheap one.’

So Zosime had taken a good look at the dead man while I was fetching the Scythians. I suppose I should have expected that.

‘That brocade panel of leaves though,’ she persisted. ‘That was old work, stitched onto newer cloth to make a good showing for the festival.’

I nodded. My mother had heirloom pieces of weaving laid aside in layers of linen with plenty of herbs to deter moths. Such fabrics were carefully resewn for each new head of the family and only ever worn on special occasions. But whoever the dead man’s heir might be, he wouldn’t be inheriting that finery.

I was more concerned with whatever legacy the murder might have left for this household. I glanced in the direction of the Areopagus where Orestes stood trial for murdering Clytaemnestra. That’s when Athena persuaded the Furies to forgo their pursuit of bloody vengeance by promising them justice for the unjustly killed. I wondered uneasily what those divine goddesses of retribution were expecting me to do for this murdered man. I didn’t relish facing their displeasure if I failed them.

‘So he came from Ionia and had dealings with the Persians, or at least, with someone trading in Persian leather. What does that tell us?’

After six years without those wolves coming down from the hills, thanks to the peace Callias won for us with the Emperor Artaxerxes and his satraps, there’s plenty of day-to-day trade between Ionia’s coastal Greeks and the Imperial hinterland. Medes, Persians, call them what you like, they’re one and the same. Every Athenian knows they’re only waiting for some new excuse to march to the sea. Every ruler they’ve had since Cyrus the Great has been intent on seizing those Ionian cities, which Hellenes have held since before the fall of Troy. ‘If he wasn’t killed for his money or his fancy shoes, why slit his throat?’ I looked at them both.

None of us had any answers.

I shook my head. ‘We’ll have to wait and see what the Polemarch finds out. Now we really must go to bed.’

Zosime nodded, though I could tell she was still unhappy. ‘You’ve a busy day tomorrow.’

I couldn’t think of anything to say to make this awful business any better, so we headed for our room in silence. Stripping off and falling into bed, I snuffed the lamp.

 

Chapter Two

Rosy-fingered dawn was barely plucking at the bedroom shutters when I woke up to lie staring at the ceiling. Zosime slept peacefully, curled up at my side with the blankets drawn up to her chin.

I let her sleep. She’d earned that over these past nine seemingly interminable months. Celebrating with me when I won my commission to write a play for the Dionysia. Enduring my initial, endless debates over which of my ideas to use. Tolerating my agonising as I shaped and re-shaped the plot. Listening to me read snatches of dialogue as I shuffled the words around before mostly returning to where I’d started. Endlessly patient when I prompted her to tell me which were her favourite scenes, or to reassure me that my characters sounded like real people, that their schemes and concerns would truly engage an audience.

Today was our final rehearsal. Tomorrow, we’d show off our masks and costumes to the city’s eager theatre-goers. The day after that, they’d see our play. The culmination of all my work, of all our work, would be a single performance for the Dionysia, judged against this year’s other comedies. The drama competition was all or nothing, win or lose.

Yesterday I’d been fretting that I’d be remembered for a comedy that failed so spectacularly it was greeted with silence or groans or booing, fearful that the joke on me would spread from Lycia to Sicily as visitors travelled home. Every Hellene in the civilised world would learn my name. Philocles Hestaiou Alopekethen. The fool whose hubris in challenging the greatest comic playwrights of Athens had ended in greater tragedy than any blood-soaked tale of heroes felled by divine wrath.

This morning I remembered Zosime bringing me gently back down to earth whenever my fears reached such exaggerated heights. Life would go on, she pointed out with loving ruthlessness, however my play fared at the festival.

Meantime we’d stumbled across a real-life tragedy the night before. I wondered who the dead man was, and how he had come to die outside my door. What would the gods of the city and the dead expect me to do, to see his killers brought to justice?

A noise caught my ear. I rose onto one elbow and the rope-strung bed frame creaked. Was that someone knocking at our gate, turning up with answers just as I’d wished for them? That coincidence of timing would have theatre audiences throwing derisive nuts.

But no, I wasn’t mistaken. There was definitely someone in the lane. I slid out of the bed, careful not to drag the blanket off Zosime. Shivering, I found my tunic on the stool, pulled it over my head. . .