Killer Of Men Part 14

Hipponax loomed over me and his cool hands, which smelled of beeswax, touched my cheek. 'G.o.ds get him a doctor.' Darkar was silent. 'What is it, Darkar?'

'He killed them,' Darkar said. 'Both of them. Free men, I think. Their bodies are in the fountain house.'

Hipponax knelt beside me. 'They attacked you, boy?'

I nodded. I could barely breathe. I had a broken nose and at least two broken ribs, too.

Hipponax rose. 'Take him to the Temple of Asclepius, then. And dispose of the dead men. Pay the other slaves for their silence. I take it these are not men of property?'

Darkar spat. 'Sc.u.m, lord. Thugs.'

Archi came at a run. He looked at me and he took my hand. 'Artemis! Doru what happened?'

I was silent, but Archi figured it out. 'Diomedes!' he said.

Hipponax ignored his son and turned to his steward. 'The fountain is now off-limits to our people. Dispose of the bodies. You may use a cart and a mule.'

'Thank you, lord,' I said.

Hipponax ignored me. To his son, he said, 'Diomedes will soon be a son of this house. Are you accusing him of attacking your slave slave?'

Archi shrugged which, as I have mentioned, is not the way to placate a parent. You might take note of that yourself, thugater. My mind whirled. Son of this house? Son of this house? That meant that Diomedes was to marry Briseis. That meant that Diomedes was to marry Briseis.

I vomited on the flagstones.

After that, I was in debt to every slave in the house. It took a conspiracy of the whole neighbourhood to keep me safe. Yes slaves are never friends. Or perhaps I should say that desperate slaves are never friends. Happy, prosperous slaves in a good house have the time and safety to be friends selfish, backbiting friends, but friends nonetheless. But they hate the masters in their own way. Someone might have blabbed, if anyone had made it worth their while, but those two men slave or free they were sc.u.m. No one came looking for them.

I began to live with fear. In fact, I began to think like a slave really think like a slave. I began to be very careful about what I said. I began to swallow insults. Those two killings taught me another lesson and I was lucky to get off so cheaply. A week in the temple, and a year of carrying water and emptying chamber pots and fetching yarn and running errands and minding my words. And a twinge in my chest when the rain is coming, every time those broken ribs are still with me, honey.

A month later I was back at my lessons. Diomedes caught me on the steps. 'Your nose looks bad,' he said. 'How could could that have happened? ' that have happened? '

I didn't even meet his eye. I consoled myself that I had killed his thugs. I told myself that I would have my revenge.

But I crawled like a slave and didn't meet his eyes.

And that hurt more than the beating.

Herac.l.i.tus understood something of what had pa.s.sed. He became more careful of his praise for me and at the same time more acerbic in his dealings with Diomedes. I kept my head down until one day, as we rose to leave the steps, I found his bronze-shot staff resting against my sternum.

'Stay,' he said. He nodded to Archi. 'You, too.'

When the other boys were gone, he looked around. 'What's going on?' he asked.

We were both silent, as young men ever are in the face of authority.

His staff pointed at my nose. 'Who did that?'

I shrugged.

Herac.l.i.tus nodded. 'Strife makes change, and change is the way of the logos,' he said. A statement I'd heard a hundred times, actually, except there and then, I think that I understood.

'Change is not always good,' I said, rubbing my nose.

'Change merely is is,' the philosopher said. 'Why are you so good at geometry, boy?'

I bowed my head at his praise. 'My father was a bronze-smith,' I said. 'We use a compa.s.s, a straight edge and a scribe to lay out our work. I knew how to make a right-angled triangle before I came here.' I shrugged. 'Any potter or leather-worker could do as well, I expect.'

He shook his head. 'Somehow I doubt it. So you know how to work bronze?'

I nodded. 'I'm no master,' I said. 'But I could make a cup.'

He shrugged. 'Hmm,' he said. 'I am more interested in the properties of fire than in having a cup made.'

I have to say that at some point I had learned that, far from being the penniless beggar he seemed, Herac.l.i.tus had been offered the tyranny of the city and his father and brother were lords. He was a very rich man.

He went on, 'Fire hardens and softens, isn't that true, bronze-smith? '

I nodded. 'Fire and water to anneal make bronze soft,' I said, 'but iron hard.'

He nodded. 'So with all strife and all change,' he said. 'Strife is the fire, the very heart of the logos. Some men are made free, and others are made slaves.'

'I am a slave,' I said bitterly.

Archi turned and looked at me. 'I never treat you as a slave,' he said.

What could I say? He treated me as an object every day, but I knew that he treated me better than other slaves and a hundred times better than men like Hippias treated their slaves.

But Herac.l.i.tus was looking out to sea, or into the heart of the logos, or nowhere. 'Most men are slaves,' he said. 'Slaves to fear, slaves to greed, slaves to the walls of their cities or the possession of a lover. Most men seek to ignore the truth, and the truth is that everything is in flux and there is no constant except change.' He looked at me. 'It is ironic, is it not, that you understand my words, and you are free inside your head, while standing here as a chattel, property of this other boy who cannot fathom what we are talking about?'

Archilogos frowned. 'I'm not as stupid as you claim,' he said hotly.

Herac.l.i.tus shrugged. 'What is the logos?' he asked, and Archi shook his head.

'Change?' he asked. He looked at me.

Herac.l.i.tus swatted him. 'Best be going home.'

I thought that I understood his message. 'You think that I should not give up hope,' I said.

Now the master looked mystified. 'What have I to do with hope?' he asked, but he had a twinkle in his eye.

Another winter pa.s.sed. I could calculate inside my head without using my fingers and I could draw a man with charcoal. I could put my spear into a target ten horse-lengths distant, no more than a finger's width from the instructor's cane pointing where he wanted to see the throw. And I was growing to be the swordsman I wanted to be. I was strong. After all, I was getting the exercise of a rich man, and for nothing. Every day I could lift a larger weight stone. I could raise it behind my head and over my chest, I could lift my body off the floor of the temple with my hands alone. I was tall, and taller every day, and my chest began to grow broad. I was strong strong.

Archi grew, too. He grew as quickly as I did, or perhaps faster. Suddenly he was as tall and as wide, and when we wrestled, we could hurt each other, and we no longer dared to use oak swords to fight, because we could break bones. Instead, we fought as the ephebes fought, a spear's length apart, as if dancing, so that each blow was parried without sword and shield ever coming together.

Archilogos loved compet.i.tion and he never liked to lose, so he began to apply himself to his studies, and he could suddenly do the geometry I could do and he could solve sums in his head, too.

I hated being a slave but, all the same, it was a good time. Adolescents are good at these divisions, and indeed, Herac.l.i.tus was full of such pairs of strife-riven opposites. So at Ephesus, I was a slave, but in many ways, I was freer than I ever was again. I was poor and had nothing but my coins in the jar in the garden although they were beginning to pile up. And yet, in just the way Herac.l.i.tus described, I was rich beyond imagining, with a young, strong body and an agile mind and the company of others like me. What young man or woman wants more?

Yes. So it was. And so another year pa.s.sed, and we worked and played. I thought less and less of Briseis, although every time I saw her and that was seldom my heart beat as if I was in a fight. Diomedes came to our house to woo her. Hipponax took care that I should be on errands when this happened, not because he knew or would have tolerated my hidden pa.s.sion, but because he suspected who had sent the thugs.

Although I still pursued Penelope, I understood that she had chosen to put s.p.a.ce between us. I had other lovers girls who were easier, freer, and never as much fun.

And then came the events that broke the pot that held us, and smashed the futures we had imagined in our ignorance. Strife came, and with it, change.

9.

It was spring. I remember that well, because the end of the world began with a day of roses and jasmine and sun and beauty.

I was seventeen by my reckoning, and when I walked through the agora, women watched me. Don't laugh, thugater. I was once one of those.

And men watched me as well. What cared I? If I had been free, men would have put my name on pots. Even as a slave, I was kalos kagathos kalos kagathos. I was beautiful and smart and strong.

Oh, the arrogance of youth.

Archi and I were boxing in the garden, Euthalia watching us from her couch, and Hipponax lay next to her, stroking her as she watched us fight.

We'd been at it for enough time for the water-clock to run out and be refilled. We were covered in sweat and euphoric with the daimon of it. And then Briseis came.

She seldom entered the centre of the house. As an unmarried virgin, she kept very much to the women's quarters. But that was the week that Hipponax had put his seal to her wedding contract with Diomedes, and she was gathering her trousseau and acting like an adult. So she was allowed out.

She looked like a G.o.ddess. I say that too often but she was flawless. I know now that she must have done it on purpose, but she was arrayed in linen and wool worth the value of my father's farm and the smithy, too. The smell of mint and jasmine came off her, as light as a feather on the air.

I caught all of this in the same glance that showed me Penelope at her heels and earned me a blow to my upper chest. Archi wasn't distracted by his sister far from it. He bore down. His blows came thick and fast.

But he had not had Calchas. And he had never killed. Later, he became a great warrior, a name that was spoken throughout h.e.l.las, but when I was seventeen, he was never my match.

So I took a few blows and then my right shot out, a stop-attack into his flurry, straight through his guard on to the point of his chin, and he staggered.

Briseis clapped mockingly. 'Oh, Archi, show me that again!' she called.

He held up a hand to me and I bowed. Then he picked up a pitcher of cold water, drank half and tossed the rest over his sister and all her finery.

She screamed and her right fist shot out, as fast as mine, and she clipped his head with her blow.

Yet, for all that, they loved each other, and suddenly they were laughing he naked, and she with the purple dye leaking off a garment that had cost more than I imagined my father made in his best year. Now ruined.

How rich they were.

She stripped the two garments over her head Ionians don't worry about the nudity of women the way westerners do and took a simple linen shift from Penelope, who blushed when she took it off and gave it to her mistress and ran for something to wear herself.

No one in the garden was looking at me, so I drank in the beauty of Briseis's body her high, pointed b.r.e.a.s.t.s and the lush growth of black hair between her legs. I tore my eyes away and glanced around Hipponax was spluttering wine at his daughter's behaviour, and Archi was staring after Penelope with the same l.u.s.t with which I was watching his sister.

And Euthalia was watching me, her face set in cool appraisal. I flinched and dropped my eyes. There were rumours in the slave quarters that Euthalia was anything but a loyal wife and that Hipponax cared little. But no one had suggested that her games extended to slaves. I was old enough, however, to know what that cool appraisal meant in an older woman Cook looked at me just the same way, whether she meant to slap my hand for stealing bread or to get me in her bed.

My theory is that women who have borne a child learn the same lesson men learn when they face the enemy on the battlefield, and that after that, they look at you with the same look. That's my theory.

Learn what, you ask?

I'm old, and my cup is empty. Don't read into that, honey just pour some wine. Learn the lesson yourself.

Penelope came back, decently covered, and Briseis stayed, enjoying the trouble she had caused. 'When is Diomedes coming?' she asked for the fourth time. Their betrothal having been signed, they would shortly have a ceremony at her hearth and then a party. She was an old woman of fifteen and wanted to get on with life.

Hipponax made a face. 'Girl, we have enough on our plates without you going womb-mad to your betrothal party!'

Euthalia slapped her husband lightly. 'We have a small problem, Briseis,' she said. 'Artaphernes has chosen to honour us with a visit. In fact, he has summoned many of the leaders of Ionia great men, and famous names to meet here in our city and have a synod.'

She didn't mention that Diomedes' father was a member of the other faction the independence faction. And thus not a man to be delighted to find Artaphernes at his son's betrothal party. Only their mercantile links kept them friends. The betrothal had been planned since Briseis was born.

All this went by in the beat of a heart. Briseis shrugged. 'My betrothal is more important than the bickering of old men,' she said with a toss of her head.

Her mother shook her head. 'No, my dear. Your betrothal can happen whenever we ordain it. These men gather to prevent a war. You have no idea what war is, dear. None of you do.'

She seldom spoke seriously, but when she did, we listened. But inside, I thought, I have seen war I have seen war.

'I am from Lesbos, and throughout my youth, the men of Mytilene made war on my city. Farms burned and women raped and families sold as slaves good families. If Athens storms this city, Briseis, you will be sold in the market to a soldier. Do you understand?'

Briseis couldn't have been more shocked if her mother had hit her. 'Athens is a town of barbarians,' she spat. 'You and Pater both say so!'

'Barbarians with a fleet and an army,' Hipponax said. 'Listen, dear. Let us have the conference and then we'll have the party. You will only have to wait a month.'

Briseis flicked her eyes around the garden and she found me, and blushed. Then she sat in the chair that Dorcus, one of the house slaves, brought for her, and she leaned out over the table to take her father's wine cup, exposing her bare side and causing my whole body to twitch. All quite intentional.

'Very well, Pater,' she said calmly. This was so far from her parent's expected reaction that her father was literally open-mouthed with astonishment.

'The good of Ionia is more important than my wedding,' she said sweetly.

If we had been on a stage, the audience would have seen the furies gathering.

Artaphernes came with a whole regiment of cavalry, Lydians and Persians in separate squadrons, the Lydians armed with lances and the Persians with bows and spears. In the agora, men complained that he had brought all the soldiers to overawe them, and the soldiers were arrogant, thrusting out their chests, pushing men and flirting with women in every square in the town.

I watched them curiously. They were very different from the hoplites of Boeotia. For one thing, they were the most aggressive woman-hunters I'd ever seen, especially the Persians, and if there was a boy-lover among them, I never met him. Second, they were lazy. Not at their soldier-work when I visited their camps, I saw swordplay and archery of a high calibre. But if they were not drilling or shooting, they did nothing but swear, fight and f.u.c.k sorry, dear.

In my day, in the west, we had no 'professional' soldiers, except the Spartan n.o.bles, and even the Spartans occupied themselves with ceaseless athletics and hunting. I'd never seen full-time soldiers who sat in wine shops, drinking, spitting and grabbing girls.

They were tough. They were rich, too. The average Persian cavalryman had a groom for his horse and a slave for his kit. He had his own tent and perhaps another felt shelter for his slaves and his gear. Every one of them had bronze and silver cups, water pitchers, plates I'd never seen a soldier with so much stuff stuff.