by Jo Walton
“Pytheas never thought you did it,” I said. “He argued persuasively that you wouldn’t.”
Kebes stopped with his mouth open. “Really?” he asked, after a moment.
“Yes, really,” I said. “Ask Klio if you don’t believe me.”
“I believe you. I’m just surprised.” He nodded at Pytheas, the closest he was likely to come to an apology.
“Pytheas avoids injustice,” Sokrates said.
Pytheas looked uncomfortable, though it was entirely true. Pytheas could sometimes be ignorant, but the only time I could think of he’d been unjust was that time with Klymene. Of course, he had been unjust to half the human race that time … “Lysias will have to believe you didn’t do it,” he said to Kebes.
“I wonder what would happen if we gave them orders to write on the ground in the plaza of the garlands,” Aristomache said.
“Why there?” I asked. It was where the diagonal street of Athene intersected the straight streets of Dionysos and Hephaestus.
“It’s big, and it isn’t especially important, and it’s near my house and Olympia,” she said. “It was just the first place I thought of.”
“Who can give them orders?” Sokrates asked.
Aristomache hesitated. “All the masters, but usually it’s the ones who deal with them. If I wanted one to do something I wouldn’t just tell it to, I’d check with somebody who knows. Someone on the Tech Committee. They might need to use a key.”
“Interesting,” Sokrates said.
“They’re always saying we should only use them for important things. I don’t need them often myself, except in the kitchens of course, and sometimes clearing the ground for mosaics. I usually just say in Chamber if I’m going to want one for that and somebody sorts it out so that I get the work done in a few days.” Aristomache was still staring up at the writing. “They are slaves, aren’t they?”
“And they don’t like it. Look how many times it says no,” I said.
“Of course, there was always slavery in antiquity,” Aristomache said, as if trying to convince herself of something.
“In most circumstances in Athens, the slaves could earn money and eventually buy themselves free,” Sokrates said. “Even from the mines sometimes. The status of freedman was as common, even more common, than slavery.”
“We fought a war to free the slaves,” Aristomache said. “It was the most—it was the defining act of my country in my century.”
“And which side did you take?” Kebes asked.
“Against slavery,” she said, taken aback. “Of course. But—”
“Then why did you agree to buy us?”
“You? What? We were rescuing you!” She put her hand to her head, sounding truly distressed.
“You must admit that you have not been used as slaves,” Sokrates said to Kebes. “The workers, on the other hand, have.”
“We will have to debate this in Chamber,” Aristomache said. “This is new evidence. I shall bring it up in the next meeting.”
“Meanwhile, can I give orders to the workers? Can the children?”
“You, I’m not sure. The children, definitely not. We decided that a long time ago. They were so young, and the workers are so powerful. Eventually, of course, they will be able to.”
“I thought we were considered adults now,” I said, patting my belly with one hand and putting my other on my gold pin.
“Yes, of course, but still in training for a while yet. You don’t know everything you need to know.”
“And you do?” Sokrates asked. It was one of his deceptively gentle questions. I saw when it hit Aristomache. She turned to him.
“You’re making it seem as if I took all these decisions on my own and approve of all of them, when you know I didn’t. It was the consensus of the Chamber. You’ve been in Chamber, you know what it’s like.”
“You have to take responsibility for decisions they made if you’re remaining part of the Chamber,” Sokrates said.
“I do take responsibility. I just don’t always agree with everything, and I did argue for devolving actual power to the children sooner.” She turned to me. “It will happen. We do know that we don’t know everything either, and that you will understand the truth better than we do. Most of us know that, anyway. But you’re eighteen years old. Give it time.”
“You make all the decisions and don’t allow us any voice,” I said. “We respect you, but you underestimate us.”
“Some of us respect you,” Kebes amended.
“It seems neither the children nor the workers are as docile as you imagined,” Sokrates said.
“I’ll bring the issue of the workers up in the next Chamber meeting,” Aristomache repeated.
“What about—” Sokrates began, and then I missed the rest of what he said because a pain the size of a library rammed into my belly, doubling me over. When I could hear again, Pytheas was holding both my hands and Sokrates was supporting me from behind.
“Ilythia be with you,” Sokrates said. “This is the baby’s time.”
“Klymene said it hurt, but I hadn’t imagined anything like that. Did I scream?”
“Anyone would,” Kebes said. He looked as if he felt sick. Pytheas too looked pale. He was clenching my hands tightly.
“You should get to the nursery before the next pain comes,” Aristomache said.
“There are more?” I asked. My teeth were chattering, even though it was a hot day.
“Oh you poor thing,” Aristomache said. She pushed Sokrates away and put her arm around me. “Let go,” she said to Pytheas. “We’re going to the nursery. The rest of you should leave us. Birth is a women’s mystery.”
“It is,” Pytheas said, as if he wanted to argue about that. He did not let go of my hands.
“Walk,” Aristomache said, and I began to walk. Pytheas came along, walking backwards, still holding my hands, Sokrates and Kebes stayed where they were. Aristomache’s arm felt comforting and solid. Pytheas’s hands felt as if strength was flowing from him into me.
“Have you done this?” I asked Aristomache.
“Never. But I have seen lots of women do it,” she said. “In my time it was a choice between a life of the mind, or love and babies. My mother chose the second. Most women did. Most women didn’t even know they had the choice. I wanted—well, I couldn’t have imagined shooing Sokrates away like that, or even having him dressing me down for sloppy argument, but that’s what I wanted anyway. I wanted to have conversations with Sokrates more than I wanted anything. And I have that.”
“I want that too,” I said.
“And you have it,” Pytheas said.
Aristomache was steering me in the direction of the Florentine nursery. I wished it wasn’t so far. “Are you two—no, I don’t want to know.”
“We’re friends in the finest Platonic tradition,” Pytheas said.
“Truly,” I confirmed. The strength that had seemed to come to me from Pytheas’s hands finally reached my legs and I began to walk more steadily.
“Well that is the other thing I always wanted, and unlike you I never found it with anyone, man or woman,” Aristomache said.
The next pain came then, with no warning, catching me between steps. I managed to stay upright, holding onto Pytheas’s hands and panting hard to avoid screaming again. It felt as if my lower belly were being wrung by a giant. “Ilithyia be with her, protect and defend her, aid her now,” Pytheas said, “Ilythia who brings the first light to new eyes, Ilythia who long ago Iris brought to floating Delos, Ilythia of the cavern, Ilythia the bringer forth, if ever I did anything for you, if ever I could do anything for you, hear me now, your suppliant. Hasten here and help Simmea.”
He sounded so sincere it was awe-inspiring. He didn’t sound like somebody praying so much as somebody really having a conversation with a god. And the pain did seem to recede a little as he spoke. I could still feel it ripping through me but it didn’t hurt as much. When it had gone and I could walk again I started forward.
“Not far,” Aristomache said. “And it’s good that they’re this close together already. It means it’ll be quicker.” We came to the nursery then. There were two steps up. “You can’t come in,” she said to Pytheas. “You have to let go.”
“Yes,” he said, but he didn’t let go. “You’ll be all right. And the baby will be all right.”
“Yes,” I said. “Thank you. Let go now. I have to go in.”
“You’ll have to let go first,” he said. I let go, and then he did and took a step back. I hadn’t realised how tightly I’d been clutching his hands. He had white marks across all his fingers.
I turned then and went inside before the next pain came.
Klymene prided herself on only screaming once. I lost count of how many times I screamed during childbirth. Aristomache stayed with me for an endless while. She stopped saying that it would be over quickly. She helped me try to find positions that were more bearable—standing holding on to the bed was best, and lying flat was worst. She rubbed my back and talked to me rationally in between pains when I was able to talk. She was very concerned about the workers.
“It’s going to be difficult to explain to the Chamber. Too many of the masters come from times when slavery was acceptable.”
“Sokrates said that slavery in Athens wasn’t so bad.” I took a sip of water from the cup Aristomache had brought me. “That’s not what it was like where I came from.”
“It’s not what it was like where I came from either,” she said. “People barely thought of slaves as being human, and they had no realistic prospect of freedom. They’d sell a husband and wife apart, or a mother and her children. Their masters could kill them and not have to account to anybody. The whole system was rotten. And they couldn’t even run away without being caught and brought back.”
“Even if they went to another city?” I asked.
“They were all dark-skinned, and the masters were all pale-skinned, so even if they went to another city they would be caught. They had to go to the places that let them be free, and that was a long hard journey. Some of us helped them escape. But the law could make them go back. It was the most unjust thing imaginable.”
“So just because of what I looked like I’d have been a slave?” I asked. “Because my grandmother was Libyan?”
“As a dark-skinned woman you’d have been—when I imagine it as you it’s unbearable. But there were probably girls just as smart and talented as you in that terrible unjust situation.”
A pain came then and I held on to the bed while Aristomache supported me with her arm. I screamed. Afterwards I panted for a little while as the memory of the pain leaked away. “Were you a slave for long?” she asked, when I was capable of answering again.
“I’m supposed to have forgotten,” I reminded her.
“Never mind that. Were you?” Her brow was furrowed, but I could not tell whether it was distress or worry or anxiety.
“Not very long. They captured me in a raid on my village. I was on the ship, and then in the market. It was half a month, perhaps a little more. Long enough to see some terrible things.” I drank again and sat down on the bed. “My parents were farmers. We only had one slave, an old woman who helped my mother. She’d been born a slave. She’d been there my whole life. We loved her and she loved us, or I think she did, especially my older brothers. Her life wasn’t all that different from ours. She was more like an old aunt than a servant. She used to tell us what to do, even my mother. But once when the harvest was short I heard my father talking about selling her. It didn’t happen. But it could have.”
I don’t know what she would have replied. I had to rush to the latrine-fountain, where both my bladder and my guts let go of the entirety of their contents in an imperative rush. Another pain took me when I was there. Afterwards I felt so unsteady I had to lean my head on the tiles of the wall for a moment. When I came back, Axiothea had joined Aristomache in the birthing room. They helped me up onto the bed, where I leaned back against the wall as they looked up my vagina. “Opening up slowly,” Axiothea said. “You’ll get there, Simmea, don’t worry.”
“She’s being very brave,” Aristomache said, giving me some water.
“I’m not. I’ve been screaming.” I sipped the water. It felt good in my mouth but was difficult to swallow.
“That’s normal,” Axiothea said, briskly. “I’ll stay with you now for a while.”
“I’ll see you in a day or two,” Aristomache said. She kissed me on the forehead. “I’ll tell Sokrates and your friend that everything is going well.”
Axiothea stayed for some time, but in the end it was Maia who delivered my baby, late in the darkest part of the night, just before the dawn. I suppose it’s true that birth is a Mystery, a Mystery of Ilythia and Hera. It was the thing in my life that made me feel most like an animal. I was so caught up in it, in the pain, in the urgency of it, that there was no getting away from it. Against pain like that, against the body’s mystery, there is no philosophy. But I was in the hands of the goddesses, and while I can remember that there was pain and that it racked me, I can’t remember what it felt like. I can remember finding positions to stand, and later squat. I gave birth squatting up on the bed. I remember talking to Aristomache, I remember Axiothea and Maia being kind and explaining to me what was happening. I remember the waters breaking in a great gush. I remember the urge to push, and holding Maia’s hand as I did push, until she had to prise my fingers off to check on the progress of the baby’s head.
The baby didn’t look as I had imagined him. He was darker-skinned and chubbier, and smeared with blood. He howled indignantly as if the world was an affront. His eyes were screwed tightly closed, and at once I imagined how the light must hurt him, after living so long in the watery dark inside me. It was a revelation—light itself was new to him! Everything was. Absolutely everything. He had thrust himself out of me knowing nothing at all. He had everything to learn, light and darkness, eating, speaking. Even breathing was new to him. Everything was for the first time. And here he was, not in my time or Aristomache’s, he was safe in the Just City, where he could become the best self he could be.
Maia put him down on the top of my belly, under my breasts. He was warm, which I hadn’t expected. “Hold him there,” she said. “You’re bleeding, and you have to push down hard again to get the placenta out.”
I put my hands on the baby, who quieted a little at my touch but continued yelling. The inside of his mouth was surprisingly pink, and he had no teeth. His hands were tiny but perfectly formed. He formed a fist and then opened his tiny fingers out. The palm of his hand was paler than the rest of his skin. Maia pushed down on my stomach and I pushed obediently again and expelled a huge disgusting mass which looked like a big piece of uncooked liver, complete with tubes. Maia looked at this horrid thing in a pleased way. “That’s all of it. Good.” She went away with it and came back with a clean damp cloth. “Try to put him to the breast now and see if he’ll take it, while I clean you up.”
The baby didn’t seem interested in my nipple when I tried to coax it between his lips, but he stopped howling. I kept trying as Maia wiped between my legs. The cloth looked alarmingly bloody when she was done.
“Am I all right?” I asked.
“Do you feel bad?”
“I feel terribly sore down there, and I’m about as exhausted as I have ever been.”
“That’s normal,” she said, smiling. “You’ve been here all evening and most of the night. You’re bleeding, but not too much, and I don’t think you need stitching. You’ll bleed for a while, probably half a month. Today and tomorrow you should use these paper pads bound between your legs. After that you can probably use your normal sponges.”
I kept trying, but I couldn’t persuade the baby to suck. “Don’t worry, you’ll get the hang of it with babies who already know what to do, while this little scrap gets his nourishment from a mother who knows,” Maia said, lifting him off me and starting to wipe him clean. He b
egan to wail again, and I ached to soothe him. He looked so small in her competent hands. Through the window the first red fingers of dawn were brightening the sky.
“Who chooses his name?” I asked.
Maia grimaced and put the baby against her shoulder, where he calmed to quiet whimpers. “Oh Simmea, you know perfectly well you should think of all the babies being born now as yours, and not this one in particular.”
“I know,” I said, surprised. “I do. I will. I didn’t mean anything like that. But … who does decide his name? You?”
“Ficino, generally, for the Florentine babies. He has a knack for naming and he likes doing it. He’ll come around after breakfast and name him.”
I liked the thought of Ficino choosing the name, if I couldn’t. “Ficino named me,” I said, comforted.
“You can’t name him. It would make too much of the connection.” She wrapped him in a white cloth, twisting it expertly.
“Choosing names for them would? Not carrying them in our bodies for all these months and then going through all that?”
She shook her head. “Choosing his name, knowing his name, would mean you’d single him out among the others as yours.”
“But I want to,” I said.
Maia was cradling my baby against her now, and he lay peacefully in her arms. “You need to think of all of them as yours. You’re a guardian. That doesn’t just mean you wear a gold pin and talk to Sokrates; that means you’ll eventually be one of those guiding the city. You want to do what’s best for everyone, not just for your own family. We don’t want you to favor this little boy because he’s yours when he might not be the best. We want you to choose the ones who are the best to be made gold when their time comes.”
“That makes sense,” I acknowledged. But even as I said so I could feel tears rolling down my cheeks.
“We do know there’s an instinctive bond,” she said. “But it’s better for everyone, for you, for him, for the city, to break it now. Love all your brothers and sisters, not one husband or wife. Love all the children, not just the ones of your body.”