Mark of the Cyclops Page 8

  I tightened my grip on the water jug under my cloak. It was getting heavier as I walked. ‘Cylon and Adelpha? Is there really such a grave?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Thrax. ‘I found it earlier today while you were working. I also stopped at the agora and announced that my master, Polydeuces of Rhodes, was offering sacrifice at his brother’s grave tonight. You can be sure that the thief’s spies have told him the news by now. Then I paid a quick visit to the archon. He’s sending some of his men to help us. They’ll be lying in wait close to the tomb.’

  The sun had almost set as we neared the city gates. A guard was lighting a fire in a copper brazier and he waved us through without even looking up.

  ‘Draw your himation over your head,’ said Thrax. ‘We don’t want to be recognised.’

  We both covered our heads as the city gates swung shut behind us. Ahead lay a wide road with a long line of ancient cypress trees on either side. It made me shudder just to look at them. Cypress trees are symbols of death. Legend has it that if you sleep in their shade, their roots will sap your brain, turning you into one of the undead.

  Above us the darkening sky was full of twittering swallows and somewhere an early owl hooted. Huddled together between the tree trunks we could see dozens of tombstones. They stood in jagged lines, some of them leaning at odd angles like the waxy teeth of old men.

  Behind the cypress trees, the ground rose steeply, forming two grassy hills. They were both covered in more graves, some marked with just a funerary vase, others with elaborately carved tombstones.

  ‘We are walking in the valley of death,’ I whispered to Thrax.

  ‘And we are being followed already,’ he whispered back. ‘I just caught a glimpse of a shadow darting behind the tombstones to my right.’

  I started to turn but Thrax grabbed my arm. ‘Don’t look round. We mustn’t let them know we’re expecting anyone. Just walk at a normal pace.’

  We continued in silence and soon we came to a tall umbrella pine, its twisted branches reaching out across the road.

  ‘We turn right here,’ said Thrax and we left the paved road and started up the hill. The graves here were more widely spaced and a few had lamps burning on them. Some of the tombstones were ancient. The stone carvings on them had worn away or were covered in lichen.

  It was dark now. We passed a couple offering sacrifice at a small tomb. They had a fire burning, which lit up the gravestone. I noticed the carving on the headstone: a small boy holding a dog on a leash. He must have been their son.

  Thrax took an unlit torch from under his cloak and gestured at them, asking if he might light it at their fire.

  The man nodded. ‘Go ahead.’

  Now that we had a light, we could see more clearly. The shadow that had followed us on the road was still with us. I noticed it darting between two tombstones, its himation flapping like a bat. But was it a thief or one of the archon’s men, waiting to help us?

  ‘Look,’ said Thrax. ‘Here’s the tomb.’

  Cylon and Adelpha’s grave was very elaborate, a rectangular stone shaped like an altar. The carving showed two people seated at a table. The man was holding a dove and the woman a pomegranate, an offering to Persephone, queen of the underworld. They stared back at me with empty eyes. Below the carving, their names were written in stone, in the hope that people would remember them. A third name, Leonidas, showed that their son was buried here too.

  Thrax stood the burning torch in the soil so that it threw flickering shadows all around us. It made the graveyard look like the entrance to Hades itself.

  I guarded the water jug while Thrax cleared the tomb of debris. My heart was pounding in my chest. This was the closest I had come to physical danger since the ambush on the Isthmus.

  Thrax spread the contents of his bag on the tomb: fruit, vegetables and a small loaf of bread. Then he scooped up armfuls of dry weeds, piling them high to cover the offerings.

  Thrax held the torch to the weeds and the altar lit up with roaring flames. ‘Oh my father, Cylon,’ he called out, ‘my mother, Adelpha, and my brother, Leonidas, we come tonight to pronounce your name that it might live long in our memory. And to honour Leonidas with wine from a new lekythos.’

  He gestured at me and I unwrapped the bundle to reveal the water jug. Thrax took it, pulled out the stopper and poured wine on the altar.

  The fire hissed, the dying flames plunging the graveyard back into near-darkness. I heard a loud grunt behind me, then a hooded figure leaped towards us. Two more figures joined it, knocking me out of the way as they tried to wrestle the water jug from Thrax.

  I looked around for the archon’s men but there was no movement in the darkness. ‘Help,’ I cried. ‘We’re under attack!’

  But we seemed to be alone with the thieves. We had been forgotten or the gang had bribed the archon’s men to stay away.

  One of our assailants kicked Thrax in the stomach, sending him reeling to the ground. He snatched the water jug from his arms. ‘Got it, men. Let’s go.’

  ‘Wait!’ Thrax got to his knees, gasping for air. ‘That’s not the lekythos you’re looking for. It’s just an old water jug.’

  The men stopped dead in their tracks and turned in unison towards us. The one holding the water jug was standing very close to Thrax’s torch and the flames lit his face under the hood.

  His eyes were bright with fury.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Prisoners

  One of the other men yanked the torch out of the ground and held it over the water jug.

  ‘It’s true. This is a worthless piece of rubbish.’

  His accomplice hurled the jug across the graveyard and it shattered against a headstone. The third man hissed, ‘Where’s our lekythos?’

  ‘We don’t have it.’

  The men looked at each other under their hoods and one of them nodded an agreement. ‘Take them to the captain.’

  The other two dived at us and I was dragged to the ground by strong muscular hands. There was the sound of tearing cloth as one of the men tore strips off his himation to make blindfolds. I was bound and gagged, the strips of cloth biting so deep into my wrists that my hands went instantly numb.

  One of our captors pulled me back to my feet and I was dragged roughly down the hill, my boots slipping on the wet grass. Thrax was close behind me, grunting angrily through his gag.

  After a while the grass was replaced by hard ground. We had come to the ancient umbrella pine by the road. The thieves bundled me on to a cart and Thrax was thrust in after me. The wooden boards creaked as one of the men clambered on board with us, pushing me roughly aside to make room for his bulk. I could smell damp clay on his tunic.

  The Cyclops.

  He leaned towards me and I felt the tip of a knife prick my chest. ‘One false move from either of you and you’ll be back in the graveyard for good.’

  The cart started moving, the donkey’s hooves clip-clopping on the paving stones. I wondered which direction we were going. Back towards Corinth, or the other way, to the harbour in Cenchreae?

  Before long we stopped and the driver spoke to someone in hushed, urgent tones. There was the clink of money exchanging hands. I heard the rasp of a wooden bolt being drawn across wood, followed by the light creak of well-oiled metal hinges. The thieves had bribed a guard to open the city gate. We were back in Corinth.

  We trundled through and I heard the gate close again. I hoped the noise would bring someone to a window, but if it did no one spoke or called. Soon the cart turned a corner and a metal door crashed shut behind it.

  The Cyclops pulled me roughly off the cart. Another door opened and I stumbled over a doorstep. My feet were kicked from under me, making me fall backwards into a seat. The gag was removed from my mouth.

  I heard water burbling faintly, and birds tweeting, then the clink of a beaded curtain being parted.

  ‘Captain,’ said one of our captors, ‘we went to the graveyard as instructed but we did not get the lekythos. Master Polydeuces
here tricked us.’

  ‘I am not Polydeuces of Rhodes,’ said Thrax in a seat next to me. ‘I am an impostor. My friend and I played a trick on your henchmen, Captain.’ The seat creaked as he leaned forward. ‘You might have bought off the archon’s men but I took the precaution of having a backup plan. There was an unseen witness to your men’s attack on us tonight. And that witness has summoned the law. It should be at the door any moment.’

  This was the first time I’d heard of a backup plan. Had Thrax really hired a witness to shadow us? Who would that be? There was only one person that I knew Thrax would trust. Mistress Fotini. She must have been the hooded figure I saw following us.

  A loud banging made me jump in my seat. ‘Open this door in the name of the law.’

  It was a voice I recognised at once. Odius the archon himself had come to our rescue.

  CHAPTER TWENTY ONE

  Thrax Explains the Mystery

  I heard the archon’s laboured breathing as he stomped into the room. ‘Remove their blindfolds immediately. And untie their hands. These boys are personal friends of mine.’

  The ties and blindfold were taken off at once and I saw that we were in a large comfortable room. It was decorated in an exotic style with coloured-glass lamps, caged birds and an indoor fountain. The captain was sitting behind a large table. He had a narrow face, with prominent cheekbones and long black hair swept back from his forehead. His eyes were very dark, the colour of mature olives. I turned to see who else was in the room but the hooded thieves had slipped out, leaving Thrax and me with only the archon and the captain.

  Mikon’s hydria stood on the table in front of him.

  ‘I see your thugs have not smashed it yet,’ said Thrax.

  ‘We are not in the habit of destroying works of art if we can help it,’ replied the captain. ‘But sometimes we have no choice.’

  ‘Thrax,’ said the archon. ‘Would you like to tell me why I am here?’

  ‘We have unmasked a gang of smugglers and thieves, your honour,’ said Thrax.

  The archon’s extraordinary eyebrows quivered like rainclouds about to release a heavy downpour. ‘Have you indeed? Tell me everything you know.’

  He settled on a pillowed couch and Thrax started his explanation of the case. ‘As you might have heard, your honour, just a few days ago the loutrophoros that Master Sosicles bought Mistress Pandora for their wedding was smashed. A young slave was blamed for the accident and Master Zenon now wants to sell her. His daughter, Mistress Fotini, hired me to find the real culprit, a thief wearing a Cyclops mask.

  ‘Four days later there was a similar theft, this time an oinoche from the temple of Aphrodite. It too was smashed on the scene of the crime, leading me to think that the thefts were connected.

  ‘I inspected the remains of both the wedding vase and the pouring jug and in both I found a detail that not had been drawn by the original vase painter. It was the face of a Cyclops, a mark that was for only someone who knew it existed.

  ‘I also found traces of gold dust inside the hollow base of the wedding vase, and from this I concluded that gold was being smuggled from Athens to Corinth in the bases of the pots, which were marked for identification.

  ‘All this was done by a gang of smugglers without the knowledge of the honest vase makers and their agents. Someone working for the gang travelled with the pots from Athens to make sure they didn’t get lost among piles of similar wares, and to tell the gang members in Corinth what the secret mark was.

  ‘Only on a recent journey, where you yourself were present, something went wrong with the plan. Tanoutamon was not only one of Peleas’s slaves, he was also a member of the gang. So when he was killed in a bandit raid on the Diolkos, he could no longer identify the mark to the gang members in Corinth. By the time they got word of the sign from Athens, the marked pots had been delivered to the people who’d ordered them, and the gang had to try and steal them back, or at least the gold hidden inside them.

  ‘Nico and I worked out there were two more marked pots beside the loutrophoros and the oinoche. We thought we could use one of them to lead us to the thief. But when the third one slipped through our fingers, and with the fourth already out of the city, we had to use a fake.’

  The archon looked at him with wide, soulful eyes. ‘A fantastic story, my boy, and one that should be written for young people to read, but do you have any proof of all this?’

  Thrax nodded at the hydria on the captain’s table. ‘If I’m right, there should be gold in the base of that pot.’ He turned to me. ‘Nico, can I borrow your sharpening knife, please?’

  I gave him the knife from my bag. Thrax turned the hydria over and stood it on its head. Slowly, he ran the tip of my knife along the groove between the thick base and the belly of the jug. Then he thrust the knife into it and wiggled it. The base and the belly of the hydria parted with a loud pop and something tumbled out on to the table.

  But it wasn’t the gold we were expecting.

  It was just a rolled-up piece of cheap papyrus!

  CHAPTER TWENTY TWO

  The Gang Revealed

  The archon picked it up and slowly unrolled it, his eyebrows rising higher up his brow as he realised what the contents were. ‘Why, this is better than gold, Captain. We have been donated a treasure map.’

  The captain threw the archon a worried look. ‘Your honour...’

  ‘Oh hush, Captain,’ said the archon. ‘These young men have discovered our secret. I shall not go on pretending they have been imagining things. I know them to be just and intelligent. We could do with brains like theirs in our organisation. I think they should know who we really are.’

  The captain looked from Thrax to me. ‘If you listen to this, you will be bound to keep it a secret forever. On pain of death!’

  ‘Sit, sit,’ said the archon, flapping his chubby hands till Thrax and I returned to our seats. He bowed at Thrax. ‘I have to congratulate you, young man. You have solved a mystery I thought no one would. You have a brilliant and enquiring mind. That is why I am going to reveal a deep secret about myself. I am a respected archon but I am also a member of a secret society, a gang if you like. Just like the captain here, who is a high-ranking official in the Corinthian navy. But we do not break the law. At least we didn’t until this unfortunate episode with the missing pots forced us to carry out a few break-ins. And, the gods willing, we will never have to again.

  ‘But what is this gang, I hear you ask? Why does it smuggle gold from one city-state to another?’

  The captain took over from the archon. ‘Have you ever heard of the Eranoi?’

  ‘It’s a financial institution,’ said Thrax. ‘It lends money to people who need to pay off their debts.’

  ‘It also lends money to slaves who want to buy their freedom,’ explained the captain. ‘But if they don’t repay the loan on time, the Eranoi sells them back into slavery to recoup its money. And that’s where we come in. Our secret society lends money to freed slaves in danger of being sold back. We’re often their last hope. We do not charge our clients interest. Instead we rely on rich gifts donated by wealthy citizens sympathetic to the cause. Many of them, like the archon and myself, are freed slaves themselves who have made good. Others are just kind people who detest slavery.’

  He held up the map. ‘When we find this treasure, it will help free many others.’

  ‘But why go to the trouble of smuggling gold from one city-state to another?’ asked Thrax. ‘It’s not a crime to help others less fortunate than yourself.’

  ‘We live in a world built on slavery,’ said the captain. ‘If all slaves were free, our civilization would collapse. Or so the rich believe. It’s the reason why our donors insist on keeping their charitable work a secret. They can’t be seen to oppose slavery or they would make powerful enemies.’

  ‘Our society has no name,’ said the archon. ‘It makes it easier to keep its existence a secret. You are both exceptional young men and we hope that one day when you are neede
d, you will join us... Do we hope in vain?’

  Thrax was silent for a brief moment. ‘You do not, sir.’

  ‘You do not,’ I echoed.

  ‘Excellent,’ said the archon. ‘We shall drink to seal the agreement.’

  ‘There is one piece of the puzzle that I have not yet worked out,’ said Thrax as the captain filled the wine cups. ‘How did your people in Athens send information about the mark to their friends in Corinth so quickly?’

  ‘They used doves as message carriers. The man in charge of them in Corinth is Ahmose, Zenon the Younger’s chief-of-staff. He too is a member of our secret society.’

  ‘And why was the secret mark a Cyclops?’

  The archon shrugged. ‘There’s no real meaning behind it. Our men in Athens use a different mark every time they send gold to Corinth. It makes it more difficult to spot should anyone infiltrate our organisation. This time it was a Cyclops.’

  ‘So it was just a coincidence that the thief chose to wear a Cyclops mask?’

  In answer, the archon called out. ‘Bek!’

  The bead curtain parted and the now familiar hooded figure of the thief strode into the room. ‘Bek,’ said the archon. ‘Show them your face.’

  The thief threw back his hood and I had to stop myself from gasping. The man had a livid scar running down one side of his face. And he only had one eye. He really was a Cyclops!

  ‘That was the only mistake you made, Thrax,’ chuckled the archon. ‘Bek was not wearing a mask when he climbed into Pandora’s room. His previous master plucked out his eye as punishment for staring at him while he ate. The slave girl saw his real face.

  ‘Bek used to be a talented vase painter himself before the horrific punishment robbed him of one eye and his livelihood. You see, the poor man never got over the shock and his hands tremble all the time. You wouldn’t notice unless you knew it but it means he can’t handle a brush any more. He works as a potter’s assistant in a small establishment that makes chamber pots now. When he’s not helping out with the cause, of course. That always comes first. Poor Bek. He was devastated when he accidentally dropped the vase – twice! He can’t bear destroying beautiful works of art. Usually the pots are opened in front of witnesses who take note of the valuables inside. The captain was waiting for me to open the hydria.’