And her foot rubbed up along the length of the inside of my leg. And she looked at me, an openly curious look. It said, I surprised myself, there, but now that I’ve done it, what do we think?
We drank wine. It wasn’t great wine – Nikephorus didn’t drink great wine. He bought good, dark-red local stuff and he liked it. But it was good wine, and we had two cups each, and then we shared a cup.
This is where I went over the edge.
When I went to the cupboard and took down the kantharos cup with two handles, I knew exactly what I was doing. But I had crossed over.
Her eyes were huge as she drank, and our hands touched a great deal.
We sat for a long time, just looking at each other, our now bare feet busy.
In my head, I was screaming at myself to get up and walk away.
I was going to sail to Alba.
Lydia was not coming.
I eventually got up to wash my hands – almonds in honey are sticky. As I rose, I saw that Lydia’s chiton had come a long way above her knee – the sight inflamed me.
I have so many excuses.
I walked to the kitchen. Cook was smiling as I washed my hands.
‘If I didn’t know you was pledged to each other,’ she said. She frowned, then grinned lasciviously. ‘But I do. Never a word will be spoken, eh?’
I gave her a silver drachma.
There was a knock at the slave door, and a willowy boy stuck his head in and was instantly abashed, since he had to assume I was the master.
‘What do you want, boy?’ I asked.
‘Just?’ he said witlessly.
Cook made a cooing noise. ‘He’s the Mater’s boy,’ she said. ‘What do you want, Petrio?’
He made a sort of sketchy bow. ‘Only, my mistress says . . . she is sick, and could you send fennel? And Mistress Julia says she’ll be another hour at least, and please do not tell the young people.’ He looked at me. ‘And that’s all she said.’
I smiled.
Cook frowned. ‘You ain’t supposed to have heard that,’ she said.
Petrio ran for it.
I shrugged. And went back to the andron.
Lydia was standing by the door to the portico. Her back was to the steps to the exedra, and I assumed she was about to go. I stepped up to her—
I have no idea. We kissed. Who started it? Who stopped? Why?
No idea.
We were in a patch of absolute shadow, and we were fools, and my hands roved her body and hers began, hesitantly, and then with increasing knowledge, to roam mine.
Cook walked right up behind us and dropped a plate.
The crack of the plate was like a dose of cold salt water.
Cook glared at me.
I had Lydia’s chiton around her hips, a hand deeply inside her himation and all the pins off her right shoulder.
She blushed, shook her clothes into place and bolted up into the exedra.
I had very little to repair. So I was left with Cook, who stood with her arms crossed, glaring at me.
‘Don’t tell the young people,’ Cook said. ‘That means she didn’t want you necking in the portico. That’s what I heard.’
I nodded and bowed.
‘You had better marry her,’ Cook said. She shook her head – the weary motion women make when men are involved.
You’ll understand me better if you know that while I was repentant, all I could think of as I walked home was the perfect smoothness of her skin, the hard tip of her nipple under my hand, the softness . . .
Well, girls, you can giggle all you like. I’m helping you understand the enemy. Because men need only the touch of a breast to turn from lovers to predators. Sometimes less than that. And what do you get? A man gets an hour’s pleasure, and a woman gets – if she’s unlucky – pregnancy and death. But your bodies are built to tell you otherwise, and when a man’s hand is on a woman’s thigh, does she think of childbirth, of Artemis coming for her spirit as the baby wails?
No.
Nor does the man, I can tell you.
Even with a porne, the smart ones are careful, gathering seed in a sponge or using . . . other ways. I’m making you all blush: I’ll stop. But listen, girls. The joy is the same for both. It’s the price that’s different.
The next day, I went to the shop and worked. At lunch, for the first time I can remember, Lydia came down into the shop with a chunk of bread and some excellent cheese and a cup of wine. When she put the wine into my hand, her whole hand wrapped around mine. She smiled up into my eyes. And then slipped away with grace.
I wanted her. All the time.
That afternoon, without any connivance, the two of us came together in the corridor behind the kitchen, and there wasn’t another person in sight, slave or free. Before we could breathe, we were in each other’s arms, drinking deep. Her hand was under my chiton, on my hip, and mine—
We had perhaps ten heartbeats, and we almost managed to make love. Luckily we heard movement, and we broke.
It was all just a matter of time.
And in between these trysts I cursed myself for a fool and a coward and a liar, leading her on, and I swore not to have her.
The problem is, you see, that it no longer mattered. Men make much of the act of sex, but it is the act of possession and love that makes the bond. I didn’t need to ride her – she had given herself. We hadn’t made a baby, but we had made a pact, and I knew I wasn’t going to keep it.
Liar. Betrayer.
I thought that I could play her along until I was ready to leave. And ‘let her down easily’.
But I never even tried.
I wanted her, body and soul. But not enough, you’ll note, to change my plans, or take her with me.
The next day was the same. But I had begun to hedge my bets. I kissed her when I knew that Cook was close by and would end it.
See? There’s no way to tell this to make myself good.
And I still wanted her, every minute. When I saw her, all my friends vanished, the boat was a chimera and I was willing to be a smith in Syracusa. For life.
And then, at the whim of the gods, our boat came back.
They had a better boat. As soon as she was pulled up on the shingle, I could see she had almost double the cargo space, and she was better built – the tongues of wood that held the planks together were tightly placed and beautifully pegged. The steering oars, rather than grey with age, were shining golden wood – new, and very handsome.
They had perfumes and some Etruscan tin. The Etruscan mines are small and stingy, and the Etruscans don’t let much out of the country. But Gaius had arranged the sale, and the tin gave us an entry into the trade.
It was a step. Two steps.
As we drank that night in a wine shop, Doola pointed proudly at our new boat. ‘We call her Amphitrite,’ he said. ‘She rides the waves like a girl riding a man. With passion.’ He lifted his cup and we all drank, and Seckla put wine on the floor for luck.
‘So—’ Doola was hesitant, and they all looked at me.
‘We want to change the plan a little,’ Seckla said, all in a rush. His hands moved as he spoke. ‘We want to get into the tin trade, first by selling the load we have down the coast, in the Sikel communities where Demetrios has friends. And then—’
Demetrios couldn’t take it any more. ‘Amphitrite can take a longer voyage,’ he said. ‘We take her to Massalia, in Gaul. We load tin there, and we see if we can get someone to tell us about the north. Then, when we’ve sold some cargoes—’
‘How long?’ I asked.
Doola was the only one to meet my eyes. ‘Two years,’ he said. ‘Maybe three, until we’ve got secure trade connections in Massalia and Etrusca and Latinium. Etrusca is rich, brother. There’s no reason for us to be here. Sicily is not the hub. Etrusca is.’
I laughed. Shook my head. ‘How’s Gaius?’ I asked.
‘He’s going to come back to us – with a small ship of his own,’ Neoptolymos said. ‘We visited his city.’
I shook my head. ‘I’ve got myself into trouble,’ I admitted. ‘If I stay here two years, I’ll be a married shop-owner with a pot belly and four kids. And no mistake.’
Their faces fell.
For the very first time, it occurred to me that we might part ways. Somewhere in another world, off to the east, I had a ship, a family, some wealth and the burned-out remains of a prosperous farm. I could always make a go of it there.
I could marry Lydia and take her to Plataea.
I could go and find Briseis. By Aphrodite, friends, I never, ever, forgot Briseis for more than ten heartbeats. Even then.
Heh.
‘If we do as you suggest,’ I said to Doola, ‘we work our way up to the Alba run gradually. I see the value in it. But it is my observation – I hear the gossip here – that the Carthaginians have all but closed the Gates of Heracles. I don’t know of any ship, Greek or Etruscan, that trades with Iberia or Alba. They carry it all, and they sink anyone who tries to run the gauntlet. Am I right?’
Neoptolymos took a swig of wine while keeping me in the corner of his eye, and he gave a hard grin. ‘That sounds like a fight.’
Doola nodded, biting his lip. ‘It’s true.’
‘Gaius is a trader, and he’s filled your heads with trade. I’m a bronze-smith, but I’m also a warrior. If we go to Alba – even if we only go to the north coast of Iberia! – we will have to fight and sail and sneak, and fight again, if we must. And if we spend two or three years learning the trade, the bastards will see us coming. We need to take them by surprise – a crew of nobodies, a ship they don’t know.’
‘Two ships,’ Demetrios said with a shrug. ‘Amphitrite goes too. We can fill her full of stores, and take a rowed ship for speed when we need it. Two ships double the profit, and make it more likely one gets home.’
I shrugged right back at him. ‘Ten ships? A couple of triremes?’
Seckla punched me in the arm.
‘When I touch our patron for money, he’s not going to want to let us sail away,’ I said. ‘Not without security.’ I shrugged again. ‘If we do it, we can’t ever come back here.’ In fact, I knew I wasn’t coming back anyway.
Oh, the gods must have laughed.
Well, I had their attention.
‘Listen,’ I said. ‘We can build our second ship right now. We must have five hundred drachmas. I have more due to me at the shop. You have more in the tin. Let’s get the hull under way. When it’s finished, we hire rowers to get us to wherever slaves are cheap. And we buy them and train them ourselves.’
‘Now?’ Doola said.
I gave another shrug. ‘Or we give up the whole enterprise. Look, it is insane. We’re six former slaves, and we’re going to take on the Carthaginian trade empire and sail across the Outer Sea to Alba? I agree. We can stay home, make money, take wives and be fat.’
Doola smiled bitterly. ‘I knew my plan would founder on the rock of your desire for heroism.’
I shook my head. ‘No. It doesn’t have to be like that. If we all say so, we’re absolved of our oaths and we can walk away.’
But they all shook their heads. That’s how fate works. We knew we wanted something impossible, but we weren’t willing to give it up.
The next day, Doola, Demetrios and I hired horses and rode along the coast to Marissilia, a little port full of fishing boats around the corner from Syracusa. It was sixty stades from the taverna where Anarchos sat and ruled the waterfront. I knew it wasn’t far enough, but I had a master to serve and work to do, and my time and funds were limited.
We walked from boatbuilder to boatbuilder. The two largest were scarcely interested in our triakonter, and the smaller didn’t have the labour to build her. The triakonter, or thirty-oared ship, was the backbone of most small military expeditions, and was also the most useful size for a rowed merchant ship.
The day was lost.
Lydia vanished into the women’s quarters with her courses, and I was able to work without interruption, to meet my master’s eye and to ask for another day off and receive it, as well as a purse with sixty drachma – my share of five helmets, all completed. The greaves and breastplates were now on my part of the shop floor.
I went and trained, boxed, sparred with the wooden swords and Polimarchos put bruises into my side. ‘That’s for standing me up, you ingrate whoreson,’ he growled. ‘I hope she was worth it.’
Your trainer always knows.
I was having trouble with my life. I kept different parts in different jars – I was a smith, I was an athlete, I was a sailor. I was looking for a shipbuilder, but I couldn’t ask Nikephorus to help me, because that would lead very quickly to some shocking admissions. That meant I couldn’t ask Polymarchos anything, either, or it would be known throughout the guild in a matter of days.
On one of those evenings, as the cold winter rain fell and the masseur worked my muscles, I remember two middle-aged men, both smiths, coming and sitting on my bench. They were good-natured, but firm.
‘You’re cutting into our business, you scamp,’ one said. He was Diodorus, a master armourer who worked in a different street. I knew him well. The other I didn’t know as well.
‘Charge more for your damned helmets!’ the younger man said. ‘Or make them worse.’
They both laughed. But I took their point immediately, and when I went back to Nikephorus, he nodded.
‘I’ve heard the same. We’ll raise our price. And refuse a few commissions. I’m sorry, lad, but I don’t want Diodorus to decide to go back to casting brooches. He used to, and he gave it up so that I could have that part of the business.’ He tugged his beard and looked at me under his bushy eyebrows. ‘Don’t take it personally. But you have to work with people.’
That meant I was going to make a great deal less money.
On the other hand, I was lucky my master had shared the money with me from the start.
‘I’m making some pieces for trade . . . and the panoplies for Lydia’s suitors,’ I said with a smile that was false. ‘After that, I’ll stick to stock for a while.’
He ruffled my hair. I felt the traitor I was.
‘Lydia misses you,’ he said. And grinned. ‘When’s the wedding?’
I shook my head, put my eyes down and tried to hide. ‘Not discussed. Yet.’
He nodded.
‘Best discuss it,’ he said, and rose to his feet. ‘Soon.’
I left work and walked down to the port, where Neoptolymos and I watched a dancer while drinking decent wine. She was good. But I remember thinking at her every gyration that Lydia’s hips were more expressive when she rose from her seat than this golden girl was as she moved.
Ah, lust. Eros.
We gave her the tips she expected from a couple of men and finished our amphora of wine, and then we wandered the waterfront, peering into boats.
‘I’ll need a trireme to get my place back,’ Neoptolymos said, out of the darkness.
‘I’ll find us one, when it’s time,’ I said. ‘This will sound foolish, but I own a trireme. If she still swims above the waves, I’ll put her at your service.’
He was sitting on the dog’s head that held the mooring lines for a pair of smugglers owned by Anarchos. Pretty little twenty-oared boats with lines like racehorses.
He laughed. ‘You’re an odd one. You own a trireme. You fought at Marathon. Yet you are living in a tenement in Syracusa with a pack of former slaves, trying to sail around the world.’ He punched me. ‘Why in Hades don’t we take your Poseidon-forsaken trireme to Gades and Alba? Eh?’
I shook my head. It was hard to explain, and I didn’t really want to, but—
‘If I go back, I have to go back,’ I said lamely. ‘Political power, my
farm, my family, war, Athens—’ I realized that I sounded angry. I was angry.
What was I angry at?
‘What happened?’ Neoptolymos asked. He leaned forward and put a hand on my arm. ‘It’s none of my business. We all trust you. But you have things none of us has – none of us but bloody Gaius. It’s funny that you’re the one pressing us to move faster, as you are the one who has somewhere else to go. I’ll never take back my little kingdom. Even if I do, I’ll never . . . make it right. My sister told me to be careful of pirates, and I left her to her death. A horrible death.’ He stared at the stars, and wept.
I hugged him. ‘Don’t be an arse, brother. You did not rape your sister. You did not kill her. You are not responsible. Or rather—’ I thought of Heraclitus. ‘Rather, yes, you made an error, and you can atone for it by finding Dagon and putting a spear up his arse.’
At my crudity, he raised his face.
‘You are a good hater,’ he said.
‘I have imagined killing him twenty thousand times,’ I said.
‘Killing who?’ asked a gruff voice. Anarchos came out of the darkness with a half-dozen of his minions. He owned the boats. He wasn’t the one out of place.
‘A Phoenician named Dagon,’ I said, with perfect honesty.
Anarchos frowned, whether in real interest or simulated, I could not tell. But then he shrugged. ‘I hear you are looking to build a boat?’ he asked. His flunkeys stood around him, trying to look tough, which is difficult in the dark. One of them had a torch, and it didn’t throw enough light for anyone.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘A triakonter, big enough for the tin trade.’ A little truth goes a long way.
‘You have a regular source with the Etruscans?’ Anarchos asked. He was really interested. We all knew this could lead to big money.
I shrugged.
Anarchos stepped up close to me, so I could smell the onion on his breath. ‘You have a problem, my young friend. Everyone I know is waiting for you to marry the bronze-smith’s daughter. Some say she‘s already baking your bread in her oven, eh? And yet, other people tell me you are looking to get a ship built.’ He eyed me, his head a little to one side like a curious dog. ‘And I say – to myself I say it – what if he’s playing her for a fool?’
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