You bring more of these handsome boys into my hall every day, thugater. Is the tale so good? Or the opposite – so dull that you need supporters to get you through it? You are not the first young woman I have known, honey. Don't let the power of your sex go to your head, or you'll be one of those ambitious harridans who haunt our tragedies.
Don't give your love to every comer, either, or you'll be a priestess of Aphrodite and no wife. Hah! I'm a crude old man. Do as you will, thugater of my old age. It is the irony of my life that you grow up to look like Briseis. What fury, what fate, put those looks in your mother's womb? Will we have games to settle your suitors? Perhaps I can meet them in single combat, one at a time, until one of them bests me. Even at my age, I think you would be a maiden for some time.
You blush. Ah – honey, when you blush, you most resemble my Briseis. But when she blushed, she was dangerous. You might think otherwise, but my status in the house didn't change at all, that day. In the morning, Master called me to him. He embraced me and thanked me. He never asked me what I was doing in the women's quarters.
That was all, until the next blow fell.
That was all, but in every other way, our lives changed. Because Master barred the house to the satrap. And Artaphernes' peace conference collapsed in an evening, because every house in the city was closed against him.
Your eyes shine, honey. Do you understand, indeed? Let me explain. Artaphernes was a guest, and a guest-friend. Persians and Greeks are not so different, and when a man, or a woman, becomes a frequent visitor, he and the household he visits swear oaths to the gods to support oikia.
Adultery is the ultimate betrayal of the guest oath. Pshaw – happens all the time. Don't think I haven't seen it. Men are men and women are women. But Artaphernes was a fool to risk a war on getting his dick wet – hah, I am a crude old man. Pour me some wine.
Hipponax did a rare thing. He told the city what had happened. That was the only punishment he inflicted on his wife – he branded her faithless in the assembly. From then on, Artaphernes was a breaker of the guest oath. No citizen would receive him.
He tried for two days to make amends, and he offered various reparations. Hipponax ignored his messenger and finally sent me with a herald's wand to tell Artaphernes that the next messenger would be killed. Indeed, there were armed men in every square of the city. Archi was being fitted for his panoply – the full hoplite armour – even as I went on my errand.
Those were bad days in the household. Mistress didn't leave her rooms. Penelope wouldn't speak to me. I admit that I called her a whore. Perhaps not my best course of action. And Archi – I couldn't fathom whether he knew he had wronged me or not.
At that age – the age you are now, honey – it is often hard enough to know which way the wind blows. Eh? And any betrayal is magnified by the heat of your blood, tenfold. Yes – you know whereof I speak.
So my head was spinning when I went to the Persian camp. I was worried that Darius would spit me on sight – I had dared to cross blades with them. I was worried that my harsh message would result in my own execution. I was angry that my brave deed – and it was brave, honey, facing four of the Great King's men in a dark corridor – had received no reward but curt thanks, because I loved my master and wanted his approval with all the passion of the young who want to be loved. I was desolate that Penelope was Archi's, even though I knew inside my head that she had never really been mine.
I ran up to the Persian camp, wearing only the green chlamys of a herald and a pair of 'Boeotian' boots. I'd never seen anything like them in Boeotia, but in Ionia they were called Boeotian. They were magnificent. They made me feel taller. I thought that, if I was going to die, I should look good.
The gate guards sent me straight to the satrap's tent with an escort. The escort halted before the tent-palace and while their officer fetched the palace guards, one of the soldiers whispered, 'Cyrus wants to see you.'
'I am at his service as soon as I have seen the satrap,' I said. 'If I am alive,' I added. A keen sense of drama is essential to the young.
Artaphernes was writing. I couldn't read Persian then. I waited as his stylus scratched the wax. There was an army of scribes with him, some Persians, mostly Greek slaves.
Finally he looked up. He smiled grimly when he saw me.
'I had hoped Hipponax would send you,' he said.
I stood straighter.
'You saved my life.' Sweet words to hear from the satrap of Lydia.
'I did, lord. It is true.' I grinned in sudden relief.
He leaned forward. 'Name your reward.'
'Free me,' I said. 'Free me, and I will hold the deed well done.'
Abruptly he sat back and shook his head. 'I have tried to buy you for three days, and now Hipponax sends you to my camp. What am I to think? That you are a guest? A gift?'
The satrap had tried to buy me? That explained much that had passed in the last three days. But I was an honest young man, mostly. 'He tests you, lord.'
Artaphernes nodded. 'Yes. I must be getting to know the Greeks. I, too, see it as a test. I must send you back, or break my master's law and help cause the war I came to prevent. Name something else.'
I shrugged. The only thing I wanted was my freedom. I had rich clothes and money. But some god whispered to me. Perhaps, like Heracles my ancestor, Athena came and whispered in my ear. 'You owe me a life, then, lord,' I said.
Artaphernes sat on his stool, playing with his personal signet ring. He looked me over carefully, as if he was indeed going to purchase me. 'If you are ever free, you will be quite the young man,' he said. He took his ring from his finger. 'Here. A life for a life. If you are ever free, come and return this to me, and I will make you great, or at least start you on that road.'
See it? I still wear it. It is a beautiful ring, the very best of its kind, carved by the old people from carnelian and set in that red, red gold from the highlands. See the image of Heracles? The oldest I have ever seen.
I fell to my knees and accepted his ring. 'I have a message,' I said.
'Speak, herald.' This was official business, and now I was a herald before a king.
'The assembly of Ephesus decrees that your next messenger will be executed in the agora.' I held my bronze wand over my head in the official pose of a herald.
I waited.
A look of pain passed over his features. He looked older. He looked like a man who had taken a wound.
'Very well,' he said. 'Go with the gods, Doru.'
'Thank you, lord,' I said, and walked out of his tent. Slaves do not offer blessings to masters.
The four Persians were waiting for me – Cyrus, Darius, Pharnakes and silent, dour Arynam, who was always, I thought, a little drunk.
I was hesitant about approaching them, but Pharnakes came and embraced me – me, a foreign slave. And even Arynam, who had never been my friend like Darius or Cyrus, came and clasped hands as if I was a peer.
'Cyrus was right about you,' he said. 'You saved our lord's life. You are a man.'
Well – that was good to hear.
They all embraced me, and pressed me with gifts.
'Come with us,' Cyrus said. 'You'll be free as soon as we cross the river. You can ride – I'll see to it that the Lydians take you as a trooper.'
I was tempted. Honey, I'd like to say that I was a Greek, and they were Medes, and I wasn't going anywhere with their army – but when you are a slave, freedom is the prize for which you will trade anything. To be free, and a soldier?
But I knew that Artaphernes wouldn't allow it. He wanted any scrap of credit with Hipponax, and sending me back offered him the hope of reconciliation, or so he thought.
And so I found myself running back down the road to Ephesus. I had no message except my own return, which marked the subtlety of the satrap very well, I thought. I did have a leather bag full of gifts from the Persians.
I came home to a silent house. I stopped in the courtyard, amazed by the silence, and my first thought was that Hipponax had murdered his family. Men do that, when they catch their wives in adultery.
But they had merely gone – all of them, slaves and free – to the Temple of Artemis. The priestess had asked that all the people gather. I ran up the steps with a dozen other latecomers to find the whole of the people crammed like ants inside the temple precinct. Teams of priests and priestesses were going through the crowd, with purifying smoke and water, cleansing us.
No one said, right out, that Euthalia had made us all unclean by having a Persian between her legs. But she was there, standing with Hipponax in a dark mantle, and she was surrounded by the smoke of a dozen braziers. When the ceremony was over, she smiled.
I still wonder at that smile. What did she mean by it? Had she meant all along to be caught?
At any rate, I saw Heraclitus and he motioned to me. It was odd to see him in public, without my young master nearby, but I approached, still in my herald's cloak.
'The satrap received you?' he asked.
'Yes, teacher,' I said.
He nodded. 'You have seen war, I think?'
I inclined my head. 'I have served as a hoplite,' I said.
Heraclitus looked around. 'Your master is about to go to a different school from mine, lad. A harsher school, where the punishment for failure is death. Will you take an oath to protect him?'
Heraclitus had no idea what my young master had done to me – no idea, I suspect, what had transpired on that night, except that he would have known that Mistress had been with the Persian. Or perhaps he knew everything. Young men told him all their secrets. In any case, he didn't order me to swear.
'I want to be free!' I said. I was suddenly bitter. I had done great things for these people, and I was still a slave. Perhaps I'm a slow learner, but for the first time I began to consider that the greater my services were, the more valuable I made myself.
Heraclitus looked into the purification smoke. 'Do you believe that I can read the logos?' he asked me.
I nodded. I would have nodded if he had asked me if I thought he was Zeus come to earth.
He smiled. 'Doru, if you swear this oath and abide by it, you will be free.'
I frowned. 'Death is a form of freedom,' I said.
'Yes…' he said. 'Listen, lad. War is not the only thing that faces you and Archi. This will be a testing time. Stay and help him pass the test. It will help you, too. Will you swear?'
I sighed. I had been toying with running – to the docks. It must have shown. I thought that perhaps I could work an oar to Athens, or find Miltiades in Thrace. But it was a dream, and besides – besides, just at that moment, I caught sight of Briseis. An eddy of smoke revealed her, talking to her betrothed, my enemy Diomedes.
'Yes,' I said, 'I will swear.'
'Good man.'
We swore together. He was a priest of Artemis, holding one of the hereditary roles. He led me into the inner sanctum and showed me the statues and gave me a branch from the sacred tree – just a pair of leaves, but a sign to show my master where I had been.
Then I went home.
Home was not normal. Days had passed and all our rhythms had changed. Mistress never left her room. Master drank. Archi took no exercise and that night he pulled me close and burst into tears.
'Why has Mater done this to us?' he asked me through his tears. 'No one will speak to me!'
It was true. I had seen it in action. Archi was effectively in exile in his own city. None of his classmates would meet his eye, and no one invited him to a symposium or a ramble or even a troll through the stews.
'It will pass,' I said. I thought of Heraclitus. 'Listen, master. Our teacher made me swear an oath to support you. These will be tough times. I'm here.'
Archi was holding me tight, and suddenly he sobbed. 'I betrayed you as surely as Mater betrayed Pater!' he said. 'I knew she was yours. I wanted her. Oh, Doru, forgive me!'
I sat on his couch and held him. I did not want to forgive him. In fact, now that he'd confessed that he knew what he was doing, I wanted to knock his head off. But Penelope's face had not been the face of a slave being taken against her will. I had some experience with women by then. Women can pretend many things, but few of them pretend when they think no one can see them. All this went through my mind.
'Penelope is a slave, but she is her own woman. She wanted you, not me. Why not?' I said bitterly. 'I am just a slave.'
Pitying ourselves, we wept. Foolish boys! We were about to learn what tears are really for. But when our eyes were dry, we were better friends. And the next day, Archi called Penelope to him while I was in his room. He did it without warning. And when she came, he shrugged and left the room.
She looked like a trapped animal – like a doe run down by dogs on the flanks of Cithaeron. Her eyes followed Archi as he walked out of the door, and that gave her away. She really liked him. Perhaps she loved him, or just saw him as a chance for liberty.
'I'm sorry I almost got you killed,' I said. I was stiff and formal. 'I understand that you prefer my master. I won't bother you again.'
She turned her head away. Then she looked back. 'You aren't even really a slave,' she said. 'You're like a man who plays at being a slave. You will die for it, and I will weep for you, but I won't be your lover. Archi is kind, and I think he'll free me when I'm pregnant.'
None of that made much sense to me – although it does now. I said she was smart. She saw things I didn't see, for all my reading and training. So I shrugged, and she bowed her head and left the room without speaking. We should have embraced, but we were too young to forgive and forget.
I was still standing there when I heard a scream from the courtyard. I ran. I thought we were being attacked. Remember that apart from my life as a house slave and companion, I was already a man of violence, and that Diomedes seemed to have a bottomless purse when it came to sending men after me.
When I reached the courtyard, Hipponax was standing stony-faced, staring at a man dressed in the same green chlamys I'd worn a few days previously. Briseis was screaming, her face contorted, all her beauty gone. Penelope was trying to drag her away.
The herald backed out of the gate.
Penelope looked terrified. Briseis's face was the face of a fury, deep lines carved across her smooth brows as she wailed with screams of pain. Her father glanced at her and turned away. Poor man. He had nothing to offer her. Gods send that I never be in his place.
Archi tried to hold her and she began to fight him, and she landed a blow – a foul blow. She was a good fighter, that girl. Down he went, and then she spat like a wild cat and raked her nails across Penelope's chest – I thought they were her nails – and blood flowed.
She screamed again.
I thought she was having a fit. I took her down. I wasn't her brother, and much as I thought I was in love with her, she was a danger to everyone in the yard. I swept her feet and held her arms and put her down on the ground hard enough to drive all the breath from her. She had the strength of a goddess but no palaestra skills, and on her way to the ground I rolled her in the end of her own peplos to pin her arms. She ripped her left arm free and her nails drew blood from my cheek and neck.
But when she wrenched her head back with superhuman strength, a hand shot out and smacked her across the face – once and then again.
'Silence, girl!' her mother said.
I had not seen Euthalia in days. She was neatly dressed in sombre colours, and she did not look as if her life had ended.
Briseis sat back on her haunches and the daimon left her. I saw it leave her eyes. It takes one to know one. But then the bitterness exploded.
'It's your fault, you faithless bitch!' she said to her mother. 'He called me a whore! Diomedes called me a whore! In public! Now I'll die barren. He's broken the marriage contract.' She didn't cry. Crying would have been better than her imperious self-pity. 'If you hadn't been so busy riding the Persian's cock-bird, I might be a matron.'
Euthalia's hand shot out and snapped her daughter's head back again. 'Be civil or take the consequences,' she said.
'I can't even blame him!' Briseis cried, and for the first time her voice cracked and she began to sob instead of scream. 'My mother's a whore! I'll be a whore too! I should kill myself!'
Penelope was cowering. She had a bad scratch across her breast and her Doric chiton was filling with blood. She was sitting on a step crying. I saw now that Briseis had a pin in her hand. She had ripped Penelope with it, and me too, I realized.
Euthalia reached into her bosom and her right hand came out with a knife in it. 'Here,' she said. 'Get on with it.'
This was the family that I had so envied when I joined them.
Briseis picked up the knife and ran her thumb across it like a man getting ready for sacrifice. Then she stepped towards her mother, and I felt that her intentions were plain.
I stepped in on her and raised my left hand as Cyrus had taught me. She tracked the hand with the knife and not the body, and I caught her wrist and disarmed her. She got the pin into my chest, but the gold bent and I only took a finger's breadth. It was cold in my chest, and the pain made me want to kill her.
Just for a moment, the pain and the urge to kill balanced against the knowledge that this was Briseis. She saw the daimon come into my eyes and her own widened. As I have said, it takes one to know one. But those eyes saved her, and I took control of my body with my left hand closed around her throat.
Her mother was shaken. Close up, I could see that her hair was not dressed and she was not herself. But she would not relent. 'Take the knife and finish it,' she mocked. 'You think your life is ruined, little princess? Perhaps it is time a dose of reality came into your life. You despised Diomedes when you had him. You are acting. There is a world bigger than that inside your head. Wake up.'
Archi stepped in between them. I still had Briseis, and she had dropped her gold pin of her own volition.
'Take her to her room,' he said. He nodded to me. Suddenly, we were allies. I obeyed, lifting Briseis and carrying her. Penelope came after us. She was holding her side. She got ahead of me and led the way, which was as well, as I had no idea where Briseis's room was.
Briseis put her arms around my neck and let me carry her without struggle. She smelled of jasmine and mint. It was hard to imagine, while carrying her, that she had just intended to kill her mother with a knife.
We pushed though a curtain of glass beads into a room painted in scenes of gods and goddesses – fine work. Archi's room was plain white, with a border of Hera's eyes painted around the cornice. Briseis's room had all the gods done as vignettes. Hera stood with mighty Zeus – a loving couple, painted as her mother and father. Her brother was Apollo with a lyre, and she was Artemis with a bow. Penelope was Aphrodite, and Darkar was a mighty Pluton. Diomedes was painted as a young and rather ambiguous Ares, and then I saw that I, too, was in the pantheon, as Heracles, a club on my shoulder and a lion skin draped over me. I didn't know the rest of the figures, but it was good work. Excellent work. The figure of Aphrodite-Penelope was unfinished, and the paints were there along one wall. The room smelled of marble dust and ox-blood.
Despite everything – adultery, betrayal, drama – I stopped and looked at the paintings on the wall. I took in the paint pots and the smell.
'Your work?' I asked Penelope, amazed.
'Hers,' Penelope said. 'I need a bandage,' she said, and fled.
I laid Briseis on her bed. She was crying. I knew that sound. That was despair. The sound new slaves make when they are taken. The sound you make when your life is taken away from you.
I actually pitied her. So I put a hand on her back.
'It will get better,' I said.
She rolled over, and her eyes held anger, not sorrow. 'Kill him for me!' she said. 'Kill Diomedes!'
You have no idea what it is like to be alone with Briseis. I didn't slap her or run from the room.
But neither did I agree. 'I cannot kill him for you, despoina,' I said. I remember smiling. 'But I could hurt him for you.'
She brightened immediately. 'You could?' she asked. 'Really hurt him?'
She reached out and took my hand, and a flame licked me from my palm to my groin and up to my head.
'If I hurt him, will you stop this foolishness of hating your mother?' I asked. 'Diomedes is a piece or horse shit. You lost nothing in losing him. Your mother did you a favour.'
Her eyes widened. 'I had never thought of that,' she said. Her hand was still stroking mine. 'I know Archi hates him. And he tried to hurt you, didn't he? He bragged of it to me. And Penelope said you were too tough to be hurt by a thug.' She smiled at me.
Oh, the flattery of a beautiful woman. Let's look at this as adults, thugater. She never wanted Diomedes, but she was dutiful enough – she certainly wanted to be an adult, and she liked the attention. But being jilted was turning out to be better. More drama.
Who wants to play the dutiful wife when you can be Medea? And I played into her hands – all reasonable, knowing and male. Zeus Soter, honey, she played me like a kithara.
I pulled my hand out of hers and left the room. Then I went to find Archi.
He was making love to Penelope.
I found Darkar instead. 'See to Briseis,' I said. And then I understood. 'You knew Archi was doing Penelope!' I said.
He nodded. And shrugged.
I shrugged back. 'Thanks for trying to keep it from me, anyway,' I said. 'I suppose. But I know.'
Darkar looked at me for a moment. 'Come into my office,' he said. And when I was in, he closed the door. His office was a tiny room under the cellar stairs where he did the household accounts.
'You seem to know everything.' He paused. 'Listen, boy. You have a level head. If we aren't careful, this household will fall apart. And if it does – if Master kills Mistress, if Briseis kills herself – we will all be sold. Understand me? It is not just our duty to keep them all apart until things get better – it's for our own skins, too.'
'Ares!' I said. 'Is it that bad?'
'I drugged Master's wine the night – the night it happened. And every night since.' Darkar had hollows under his eyes. 'He's going to kill her.'
'We should give him something else to think about,' I said. 'Like war with Persia.'
Darkar shook his head. 'I thought that would happen, but it's worse, not better.'
I shrugged. I was seventeen, and I didn't want to be responsible for the happiness of a household. 'I have a task to do,' I said.
Darkar nodded. 'Can I count on you?' he asked.
'I swore an oath to Artemis to support them,' I said.
He smiled. 'Good man. Go on your errand. What did she tell you to do?'
'She told me to kill Diomedes,' I said.
He stroked his beard. 'You can't kill him.'
'But I can hurt him,' I said.
'His father would have you killed,' he said.
'Not if Archi comes with me,' I said. 'I'm waiting for him to finish consoling Penelope.'
Darkar was a hard man. His eyes glinted in the lamplight. 'That would help the household,' he said. 'People will know we are still standing. I approve.' He looked at me. 'You could still end up dead, though.'
I laughed. Even then, I had begun to feel the power. I was not going to die in some night squabble in Ephesus. An hour later, Archi was done with Penelope, and I walked in on them with a clean chiton for her and clothes for him.
It may have been the most courageous moment of my life. It was hard to meet her eyes – she was naked, entwined breast to breast with him, and all but purring. She had wept and been comforted. And they smelled of sex.
'Master, I need you now.' I tossed clothes and a towel at Penelope. 'I am sorry to intrude.' I raised a hand – something a slave never does – and silenced my master. 'I have consulted with Darkar. We need to strike Diomedes. We need to show the city that we are not dead as a household. He insulted your sister. He might have broken the match in a dignified manner, but he called her a whore. Let's punish him.'
Archi met my eye and smiled. Bless him, he understood immediately. 'This is for my sister?' he said.
'For all of us,' I said. 'For your mother, too.'
Penelope looked at us. 'You are a slave!' she said. 'You cannot punish a free man!'
I ignored her.
Archi nodded. 'Let's get him. How do you propose we do it?'
'He'll be in the agora or the gymnasium bragging – shaming her and excusing himself. You know him – you know what he'll do. On and on, to everyone he meets. We take Kylix as a spy. He'll watch the fucker. We follow him when he leaves for his dinner, catch him in a street and beat the shit out of him.' Pardon my language, honey – that's how men speak when they are ready for violence.
Archi pulled a chiton over his head and I pinned it for him. Penelope was wiping herself with the towel. I watched her. She turned her back and blushed.
Archi took his new sword from a peg on the wall. I shook my head. In those days, I assumed that every man had the same daimon I had. 'We aren't going to kill him, master,' I said.
'He has thugs,' Archi said. Of course, I'd been going back and forth to the Persian camp for weeks. I'd missed a change. Diomedes' father, Agasides, had hired him a pair of Thracians as guards. In fact, like most of the gentlemen of the city, he was hiring bodyguards to increase his fighting strength if Persia came, but Diomedes flaunted his pair of Thracians everywhere.
I rubbed my chin. 'We can't just kill his thugs?' I asked. 'Your father-'
Archi shook this off. 'You have the right of it, Doru. We need to strike back. Just killing his thugs might be enough. But we have to get them, or they'll keep us off him. Right?'
Youth has its own logic. It isn't like the logic of the assembly or even the phalanx. Archi was angry, and Penelope had made him brave – and she was right there, bolstering his desire to be strong. In youth logic, we had to put those men down.
Poor bastards. A pair of Thracian slaves with clubs. It was three hours later, and Diomedes was heading home. He'd bragged so long and so loud about the insult he'd given us that we'd heard him in the agora, ranting like an orator. Kylix tracked him for us, and we were waiting when he turned off the broad Avenue of the Artemision and cut up the hill through an alley that ran between the looming walls of rich men's yards.
Diomedes saw me first. I was lounging against a wall, cleaning my nails with a knife that Cyrus had given me in my bag of gifts.
'Look who it is,' he said. 'The cock-licker! Get him, boys!'
Sometimes, the gods are kind. And hubris is the worst of sins. Diomedes had, in a single day, spurned a guest-friendship, broken a solemn vow and bragged of it in the public places.
The two Thracians were big men, and tattooed like warriors, although slavers often tattoo a peasant to get a better price.
They split up and came at me quickly, no nonsense, one on either side. I backed past the gatehouse of the next house and then turned and attacked, going for the Thracian on the left. The thug on the right tried to take me in the flank and Archi emerged from the shadow of the gatehouse and gutted him.
It was Archi's first kill, and it took him out of the fight. He just stood there, blood dripping from his blade, as the man writhed and screamed from the thrust into his kidneys.
The other man swung his club, and I backed away a step as they taught in Persia and Greece both, and then I swayed in and cut his wrist with the knife, and he dropped the club, but I was still moving – right foot past left foot, down cut – and suddenly he was sitting in the street with his guts around him.
I don't think they had earned their tattoos. I fought Thracians later – real Thracians – and they were, and are, scary bastards who will swing at you when their lungs are full of blood.
Diomedes turned to run, but Kylix tripped him. Before he could get to his feet, I was on him.
Archi was recovering, although he was white as Athenian leather. 'I killed him!' he said. And then, 'I killed him!'
'If you so much as touch me, my father will have you ripped apart by dogs!' Diomedes said. 'Don't touch me – I might be polluted by a family of prostitutes!'
He was a fool. We really should have killed him.
I grabbed his nose between my thumb and forefinger and broke it with a vicious twist. I'd seen a slave do it to another slave in the pits. 'Bring your dogs,' I said.
Archi kicked him in the groin while he writhed in the muck, his nose pouring blood. He kicked him quite a few times. In fact, it was then I discovered that my master wasn't any nicer than I was.
We beat him pretty badly. I'll save you the details. Except that when we were finished, we took a jar of Briseis's paint and tied him to a pillar in the portico of Aphrodite and painted 'I suck dicks for free' on his back while he wept. Why the portico of Aphrodite? That's where men sold their bodies in Ephesus. The boys cleared out while we did our work. They knew a revenge beating when they saw one.
We sneaked back into the house by the slaves' entrance. We thought, I think, that if we weren't caught coming in, Hipponax would swear to our innocence. Or some such adolescent foolishness.
The whole house was dark – it was late. Dinner had been served, and we'd no doubt been missed – so much for our so-called plan. And we were both covered in mud and blood and worse.
I got Archi past the kitchen, where Darkar was talking in a low voice, and to his room. 'I'll get you water,' I said.
'Bathhouse,' he said. 'I need to wash my soul.' But then he smiled. It wasn't a boy's smile, or a nice smile. But it was a brother's smile, not a master's. 'You need to be clean. If you're caught, they'll kill you. Me? I can take the weight.'
Frankly, I agreed. 'I'll bathe first, then,' I said. I slipped out of the door and down the hall into the kitchen. Cook was leaning on the counter, talking to Darkar.
Darkar understood everything as soon as he saw me. 'Burn it,' he said, pointing at my chlamys. I dropped it in the kitchen fire and Cook piled wood on top, squandering shavings and bark prepared for fire-starting to make the blood-sodden thing burn. All my extra work and helpfulness and popularity had come to this – Darkar and Cook conspiring to keep me alive.
'I need a bath, and then Archi needs one,' I said.
Darkar squinted at my use of the young master's name.
'He says it's death if I'm caught, but mere annoyance for him. So I bathe first.' I pulled my chiton over my head – a work chiton of raw wool, and no loss to anyone. Kylix was in the kitchen by then, and I handed it to him. 'Go and give this to the ragman,' I said. 'Better yet, just throw it on his pile.'
Darkar nodded.
'Bath is hot,' Cook put in. 'You got the bastard?' This is the ultimate sign of a good house – the slaves are loyal to the master's revenge. Like the Odyssey.
I told them where he was. 'They won't find him until morning,' I said. 'Maybe some Spartan visitor will come and bugger him!' That got a nervous laugh.
The kitchen was filling up with slaves. I hadn't told Kylix not to spill to his friends – he was already spreading the whole tale. He told it to the slaves at the fountain when he took the cloak to the ragman's pile, too. That's the world of slaves. Word gets around.
We hadn't considered that.
Darkar shut them up and pushed me out of the door. 'You what?' he asked as he pushed me towards the bathhouse. 'You what?'
'I told you,' I said.
Darkar was alone with me in total darkness. The bath was like that – no windows. He smacked me, hard, in the head. 'I thought you'd have the master beat him. Not you, boy.'
'Ouch!' Lo, the mighty warrior. The steward hurt me more than the Thracians had.
'You will be killed. Do I have to remind you that you are a slave? You scout for him, you take a blow for him, but you do not strike a free man!' Darkar slapped me again, this time at random, because he couldn't see any better than I could. Then, after a pause in the dark, 'I think you'll have to run or die.'
With that, he left me to the bath.
It was a big oak tub, the kind where men crush the grapes at harvest time when they don't have stone basins. It leaked slowly, but it held enough water for two to bathe together. Archi and I had shared it many times but, covered in blood, a man doesn't really want to touch anything much. Different from a feast-day bath.
There was pumice and oil, and I worked hard. I knew I had blood under my nails and in my hair. Even then – even as a slave – I had long hair.
I was washing my hair when the door opened. The bath was in a low shed and that door let a little light in from the kitchen windows, so I saw Penelope's robe fall to the floor. Then she was in the bath with me and water sloshed over the sides and on to the floor.
If you imagine that I was going to take this moment to protest about her faithlessness while her naked skin was under my hand, you don't know what it is to be young. I put my mouth on hers before she could speak, and she laughed into my mouth – not something she had done before. Perhaps I should have cared that she was unfaithful to my master – and now, I think, my friend – Archi.
Instead, I half stood and half sat with her astride me, and we kissed and kissed, her breasts against my chest and the hot water up to our hair. Her kisses were clumsy at first, and then warmer and deeper. My hands roved her and then she planted herself on me – her choice, and perhaps I had a qualm, or a suspicion that this was wrong, because I remember that I hadn't pushed into her.
It makes me smile, though. Hah! The gods are often kind, and Aphrodite chose to send me to Tartarus with a glimpse of heaven. When we were finished, we kissed, and kissed, and kissed.
Darkar called my name from the back door. Penelope slipped out of the tub, picked up her robe and vanished – not a difficult trick in the dark. I was sore and happy and suddenly clear-headed, and I had the taste of cloves in my mouth. I got over the side of the tub and thought that on a normal night there'd be trouble from Cook for making such a mess of the bathhouse. Then I grabbed the olive oil, doused myself and strigiled as fast as I could.
I went through the kitchen as clean as a newborn. Darkar tried to slow me down, but I passed him and went into the hall.
Penelope was crying in Archi's arms. Archi was still covered in blood and crap, and so was Penelope.
And her hair wasn't wet.
A chill went through me like a rainy wind in winter blowing across my soul. In my nose, I discovered the scent of mint and jasmine. The hair began to stand up on the back of my neck.
Archi let go of Penelope. 'You look worse, not better.'
Penelope looked at me. 'You'll both be killed,' she said.
Oh, Aphrodite. Oh, Mistress of Animals. Who had I just been with in the bath?
'I am afraid,' I admitted to Archi. I just didn't tell him why. 'You must go and bathe.'
'Stay where you are,' Hipponax said from behind me. I assume that Darkar told him. We were young and stupid. We had not thought through the consequences. And the game of revenge has no rules.
Hipponax looked at his son. Archilogos met his eyes. They were the same height, by then. 'What have you done?' he asked.
Archi shrugged – I've mentioned what I think of this as a gesture from child to parent, eh?
'What have you done?' he shouted.
Archi smiled. 'What needed doing,' he said. 'Diomedes called my sister a whore and we made him one.'
Well, not precisely, but it made a good line.
And then Hipponax surprised me. I should have known – he was always a good man and a poet. He understood rage and lust and the human and the divine. He stood back from the doorway, so that Darkar could enter.
'You must go away,' he said. 'Tonight. Now. I will have a ship manned.'
Then there was a flurry of packing and crying. Archi took his panoply and his sea bag, and I took mine. He went for a bath, and Hipponax took me aside.
'Heraclitus tells me you swore an oath to protect my son,' he said.
I nodded. I raised my eyes to his.
'Here is your freedom. I expect you to keep that oath. As does Heraclitus. Until the end of the war. You stand by him. But as a free man, Diomedes will have to try you, at least. I wrote out your manumission for yesterday. A friend will witness it in the morning – as if it had been done yesterday.' He shook his head. 'I should have freed you for what you did with the Persian,' he said. 'Is all my family cursed?'
I stood silent, awed by his generosity, and conscious of what I had just done in the bath. The furies were laughing. And sharpening their nails.
But I was free. It was worse when Archi went to say goodbye to his sister. Worse because she wept, real tears without anger. She loved her brother better than the rest of us, I think.
And worse because her hair was wet.
She looked at me several times, and her look was one of calm triumph. She was beautiful.
Thugater, I have never doubted the presence of the gods. In that moment – in that look from that damp-haired girl – the long, dark shaft and the barbed point of the arrow that comes from Aphrodite's bow went through me, and the pain was never sweeter. Even when Hipponax announced to the whole oikia that I had been freed – even when all the slaves crowded around me, and Penelope took my hand and gave it a tentative squeeze, all I could see were her eyes, that glance. I see it still.
I'm an old fool. Forget me. Imagine what it was like for poor Penelope, honey. Her free lover was leaving her. Her chance of freedom was walking away. And Archi said nothing. I think Hipponax might have freed her, had Archi asked. But he didn't. He wasn't bad, my master. Just a self-centred ephebe who thought he'd just made himself a hero.
The Pole Star was high, and the oarsmen, grumpy and drunken, had been roused from their brothels to their oars, but by luck, the trade trireme Thetis was supposed to leave the north beach with the sun anyway, bound for Lesbos with a cargo of Cyprian copper and some finished armour for the gentlemen of Methymna. We walked down through the town in the first light and boarded, Kylix carrying our gear. For all we knew, Diomedes was still tied to his pillar. I wondered if by putting him there, I had made sacrifice to Aphrodite, so that she granted me – Briseis.
As the sea wind blew my hair, I let myself think that I had kissed Briseis in the bath, and – what word suffices? Did I 'possess' her? Never. If anyone was the owner, it was she. Did I 'take' her? No. Men's words for sex are often foolish, you'll find, honey. Briseis was more like a goddess than a woman.
And then, as the good salt wind blew over me and the rain squalls danced to the north, towards where Miltiades might be rising from his bed, it suddenly struck me.
I was free.
Archi was next to me at the bow-rail, over the box where marines might ride in a fight. Today it was full of bull hides for aspides. Every item between our benches had to do with war. The world was going to war, and I was free.
'I'm free!' I said.
Archi punched me in the back. 'You are,' he said. 'Will you – leave me at Methymna?'
It is odd, looking back across the years at that boy – oh, aye, I'd have put my fist in a man's face for calling me a boy then, but I was, and my actions shout it. But in that moment, I knew that I was free – and I had no idea who I was or what I wanted.
No, that's not right, either. What I wanted was Briseis. Hah. More wine. That's all I wanted, and all I could keep in front of my eyes. And then there was the little matter of my oath to Artemis. To defend Hipponax and Archilogos. For all that home – Plataea – had begun to seem sweeter, the sudden, heady unwatered wine of freedom washed that dream away.
I shook my head. I couldn't tell Archi that I loved his sister. 'No,' I said. 'I promised your father I'd watch you for a while.'
Archi smiled. 'Well, that's not so bad, I guess,' he said, but his smile said it was anything but bad.
I bent and started to look at the armour we were carrying. The breastplates were bronze and they were unfinished, but they had fancy decoration worked in, the waist and closure left undone so that the final fitting could be made by a local smith. I shook my head.
'Mediocre work,' I said. 'I want better. I want a panoply. I assume we're going to fight the Persians!'
Archi grinned. We embraced.
It sounded like fun. We were young.