Murder in Megara

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“Exiled or not, the emperor’s Lord Chamberlain camped at Megara’s gates means trouble!”

“Former Lord Chamberlain, remember. The way you speak you’d think he’d brought an army with him instead of those two servants.” The speaker nodded at an elderly man and a woman-half her companion’s age-who were inspecting the tuna, mullet, and eels displayed on a marble slab on the opposite side of the marketplace. A cloth awning over the fish merchant’s stall cast a reddish shadow. The woman had tawny skin and black hair. The man maintained a military bearing, but his step was hesitant.

The group of townspeople, partly concealed by stacked cages full of live chickens, had watched the pair as they moved around the square, filling the woman’s wicker basket with figs, a pot of honey, three fist-sized melons. The chickens clucked despondently, already half-boiled by the late August sun of southern Greece.

“Black as a Nubian, isn’t she?” remarked a middle-aged woman, dressed too well for a dusty market in an insignificant city. “And you notice they speak with different accents. The senator’s estate has turned into a regular Tower of Babel.”

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