‘So what if you escape?’ I asked. ‘Where would you go?’
‘Home,’ Silkes said.
‘How?’ I asked.
He shook his head. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘If I have to walk on water, I’ll walk home.’ He looked at me. ‘Perhaps I’ll hunt fish with my spear, and light a fire on floating weed.’
‘Now you’re just talking foolishness,’ I said. ‘If they catch you, you won’t be brought back here, learning to be a charioteer. You’ll end up breaking rocks, or cutting salt, or rowing. Something crappy.’
‘So?’ Silkes asked. ‘It’s all slavery. I’m not a slave. I’m a free man.’ He rolled towards me. ‘You’re just a Greek. Slavery is natural for you.’
I broke his nose before he got me in a hold and pounded my head against the barn’s wall. And yet, we were not really angry. But we both missed work because we had hurt each other, and because of it, and because Grigas reported us, we were brought before the chief overseer, Amyntas. Amyntas was a Macedonian, and he was a hard man, but fair, we all thought.
He looked us over. ‘Why did you fight?’ he asked.
I was ready for him. ‘Over a girl,’ I said. I looked sullenly at Silkes, who glared back.
‘Which girl?’ Amyntas asked.
‘Sandra, in the kitchen.’ She and I got along. I knew she wouldn’t talk.
He nodded. ‘I’ve heard that you two were discussing escape.’ He looked at me. I was a Greek. I didn’t flinch.
But Silkes blushed. Amyntas shrugged. ‘You are a stupid Thracian. Why did you fight him?’
Silkes looked at me. ‘He hit me,’ he said. ‘And the girl.’
He was the worst liar I’d ever met. No wonder they call Thracians ‘barbarians’.
Amyntas nodded again. He had a table in the farmhouse that he used as a desk, and it was piled with scrolls. He pointed at me. ‘Five blows with a riding whip,’ he said. He pointed at Silkes. ‘Ten blows – five for damage to your master’s property, and five for attempting to incite escape. You will be punished this evening. Go to work.’
The waiting was the worst – and the humiliation. Everyone came to watch, and Grigas stood at the front, openly gloating.
I took the five blows well enough. I probably cried out, but I didn’t scream or cry. Silkes took his ten in total silence.
We were whipped naked. After I took my five, Sandra handed me my chiton.
Grigas laughed. ‘I guess we know who has the power here,’ he said.
He was too smug. I half-turned, as if to talk to Sandra, and then I hit him with the full force of my fist.
I hurt him, too.
I received ten more blows from the whip.
As Grigas was still unconscious, I felt I had won.
The next morning, I stood before Amyntas, alone. He was behind the desk. I was in front of it. He had a bronze stylus in his hand and two sets of wax tablets open.
‘You have injured the slave Grigas,’ he said.
‘Good,’ I said.
He nodded. ‘I begin to feel that you are rebellious. Listen to me, young man. Do not choose this road. Master and Mistress have plans for you – plans that will help you all your life. If you choose to be rebellious, I will have to inform them. They will sell you. Is that what you want?’
I kept my eyes down. ‘No,’ I said.
‘You want to rebel. Please do not do it. You dislike Grigas. He is useful to me and I will protect him. You will treat him with respect and that is all. Am I clear?’ Amyntas got up.
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘Good. Go back to work,’ he said.
That was it. Grigas gloated, and I took it. Silkes was disgusted, and ceased to be my friend. A month later, he ran. I never heard what happened to him. Well, that’s not exactly true, but let’s save that bit, shall we?
Grigas was still there, though – gloating. He was beginning to have a belly – a fifteen-year-old slave with a belly. And he began to force the girls.
I was healed, and had gone back to riding and driving. I could pretend that I was no longer part of the daily rhythm of the kitchen. What was it to me? But it hurt me, each time I had to turn away from that little worm. Each time I saw him fondle a girl, each time he made a better slave knuckle under.
But I knew that I was not going to be a charioteer, and that put me in a bad position, as a slave. If I failed as a charioteer – and as I say, Scyles knew from the second week that I lacked the love of horses – then I could be resold for another task.
More slaves arrived – a new cook, a pair of horse-breakers and some field slaves. I saw that Grigas was going to own them – that they accepted his vicious authority. And I saw his effect on the place. When I’d arrived, people were, for the most part, happy. No one was happy any more.
I thought it over quite a bit. Scyles caught me at it. One day – late spring, almost a year since I’d become a slave – he watched me for a moment and then shook his head. ‘You think too much,’ he said.
I nodded, acknowledging that he was right.
‘What’s the problem? A girl? A boy?’ Scyles was all right. He either wasn’t a slave or he wasn’t part of the hierarchy of the place. Amyntas never tangled with him.
‘Grigas is evil,’ I said.
Scyles nodded, and looked away. ‘So?’
‘So,’ I said. ‘So nothing.’ I had learned not to discuss important things, you see.
Scyles was watching a filly. He didn’t take his eyes off her. ‘Good and evil are words philosophers and priests use,’ he said. ‘What do you want to do?’
I shook my head in mute negation. I wasn’t going to tell him. ‘Can I tell you something, lad?’ he said, and his voice was kind.
‘You won’t be a good charioteer.’
‘I know,’ I said, although hearing it from him had the force of an axe blow.
He nodded. ‘Don’t be stupid,’ he said.
‘But he makes things worse for everyone,’ I said. ‘Not just me. Everyone.’
Scyles scratched his chin and continued to watch the filly. ‘Interesting. I barely know him.’
‘He’s an informer. He forces the girls. He humiliates the men just for fun. The other night he made a farmhand – Lykon, the big one – made him give up the girl he liked. Then he took her. Just like that. That sort of stuff never used to happen.’
Scyles nodded. ‘It only takes one,’ he said. Then he looked me in the eye. ‘Planning to beat him senseless?’ he asked.
I sat silently and stared over his head.
Scyles nodded. ‘Because if you do that, he’ll just report you. He’s probably too stupid to understand that you were born free and might choose to accept punishment to hurt him. Born slaves are always mystified by the actions of free men.’
Somehow that speech moved me deeply, perhaps because Scyles identified me as a free man.
‘If I do nothing, then I truly am a slave,’ I said.
Scyles twitched his lips. ‘You are a slave,’ he said. ‘But—’ He looked around. ‘Listen, lad. Use your head. That’s all I can say.’
I nodded.
And I thought about it some more.
As it turned out, the action was absurdly easy. I over-planned, and then the gods handed me my enemy. A lesson there.
I decided to kill Grigas. Plain, simple murder. Not a fair fight. He had to go, and I decided that I didn’t need to be caught to prove to myself that I was a free man.
I decided to drown him in the baths. I made some preparations and I changed my routine so that we would be in the baths at the same time. I was bigger and stronger. I imagined that I would hold him under water. No screams.
Not a bad plan.
We bathed together twice. The second time, he spent the whole bath telling me things that turned my stomach. He had decided that I liked him.
He was a fool.
I stole a small wooden mallet from the wood-shop so that I could knock him unconscious and hid it in the towels and rags by the big wooden tub
.
That evening, Master came. He arrived in a four-horse chariot. I was able to drive four horses by this time, and I was impressed at his skill, considering that he was an aristocrat.
He called for Scyles and the two of them had a long talk. They kept looking at me. It made me sad – I really was a slave – to think that I was going to be sold away. I liked the farm, apart from Grigas. And I could tolerate him, now that I held his life in my hand.
Master chatted for some time with Scyles, and then the two came to where I was cleaning tack. Master had some beautiful halters – worked in bronze and silver, fine Lydian work.
‘Doru,’ he called, and I ran to them.
He nodded to me. ‘Scyles says that you will never make a charioteer, ’ he said. ‘He says that you can drive and handle horses. That you are safe and unexceptional. And that you don’t love horses.’
I stared at the ground. It was all true.
Master raised my chin. ‘Mistress and I have another plan for you. My son needs a companion. He is a little younger than you, I think. But you will make a good right arm. So – would you like to come back to the city with me? And try working for my son?’
I had learned a great deal about being a slave on the farm. So instead of sullen silence, I pretended to be delighted. ‘Yes, master,’ I said, and clapped my hands.
He looked at me a long time, and I wondered if he was fooled. ‘Let me see your thigh,’ he said. I raised my chiton, and he looked at the wound. It looked then much as it does now – a red fish hook.
After a few moments, he frowned. ‘Is there pain?’ he asked.
‘Just before the weather changes,’ I said. ‘Otherwise, none.’
He nodded. ‘Tomorrow we will go to the city. Say your goodbyes and finish your tasks.’
‘Yes, master,’ I said. I thought I would never settle Grigas, and the thought made me feel like a failure, but the gods had other ideas.
Sometimes chance – Tyche – is better than any plan of men. I was ordered by the head cook to run to the village market for some rue. I had good legs by then – I think I was a foot taller than I had been at the battles – and I could run. So I set off into the late afternoon with a few obols clutched in my fist.
I got the rue from a peasant woman in a stall covered in hide. Then I turned and ran back to the farm, my legs eating the stades.
I doubt that I was even winded as I passed the barn. And then I heard the sound of a woman crying.
I ran into the barn. I was moving fast. Tyche sat at my shoulder, and there were furies at my back.
Grigas was up in the loft with a girl. He was making the smallest kitchen slut blow his flute. He had her hair—Anyway, that’s not a thing to tell you, honey. I ran straight to the ladder and climbed, and I suspect he never heard me. She was doing what she had been made to do, and was crying.
I pushed her aside, broke his neck and threw him from the loft. His head made the sound a wooden mallet makes as it hits the cow’s head when the butcher is slaughtering – he hit the stone floor of the barn, but he was dead before he left my hands.
I was eating dinner when they found his body. I laughed. ‘Good riddance, ’ I said, and Amyntas looked at me. I met his eye.
The next day, I drove Master’s chariot from the farm up the mountain to Ephesus, proud as a king. I had learned three lessons from the murder – lessons I’ve kept with me all my life. First, that older people are wise, and you should listen to them. Second, that dead men tell no tales. And third, that killing is easy.
8
Hipponax’s son was Archilogos. I see you smile, honey. It’s true. He was my master and I was his slave. The gods move in mysterious ways.
Archilogos was a boy of twelve years when I was fourteen. He was handsome, in the Ionian way, with dark curly hair and a slim build. He could vault anything, and he had had lessons in many things – sword-fighting, chariot-driving and writing among them.
He was the most Medified Greek I had ever met. He worshipped the Persians. He admired their art, their clothes, their horses and their weapons. He practised archery all the time, and he had a religious regard for the truth, because his father’s friend, the satrap, had told him that the only two requirements for being a Persian were that a boy should shoot straight and tell the truth.
I should speak of the satrap. In the sixty-seventh Olympiad, when I was young, Persia had conquered all of Lydia, although they’d effectively had the place many years before – almost fifty. So Ephesus, like Sardis, was part of their empire. They ruled their Greeks with a light hand, despite all the cant you hear these days about ‘slavery’ and ‘oppression’.
Their satrap was Artaphernes. He is so much a part of this story that he will vie with Archilogos for the number of times I mention him. He was a handsome man, tall and black-haired, with a perfectly trimmed beard and bronze skin. His carriage was wonderful – he was the most dignified man I’ve ever known, and even men who hated him would listen respectfully when he spoke. He had the ear of the King of Kings. Great Darius. He never lied, as far as I know. He loved Greeks, and we loved him.
He was a fearsome enemy, too. Oh, honey, I know.
He was a good friend to Hipponax. Whenever he came to Ephesus – and that was at least once a year – he would stay with us. And he was a ‘real Persian’, not a mixed-blood. A noble of the highest sort.
My new master wanted to grow up to be that man.
Artaphernes was in the house when I was brought from the farm. I had driven the chariot and I was flushed with Master’s praise – he said Scyles was surely wrong, as I’d scarcely bumped him once in driving up the mountain. Now, this was certainly a bit of foolishness, but flattery was like water to a drowning man when I was a slave. When did you last praise a slave, honey?
Exactly.
The Persian was in the courtyard when I came in. I was dressed in a short wool kilt – like a charioteer. He was wearing trousers and a coat made of embroidered wool and he was reading from a scroll. Master was behind me, giving instructions to another slave, and I was alone, so I bowed and remained silent. I had never seen a Persian before.
The Persian returned my bow. And my silence. After a pause where our eyes met, he went back to reading his scroll.
Master came, and the two embraced.
‘Sorry to be absent for your arrival, my lord.’ Hipponax grinned. ‘You are reading my latest!’
‘Why do you do yourself so little justice?’ the Persian asked. He had very little accent – just enough to add a tinge of the exotic to his voice. ‘You are the greatest living poet, in Greek or Persian. Why do you seek praise in this manner?’
Hipponax shrugged. ‘I am never sure,’ he said.
The Persian shook his head. ‘It is this unsureness that makes you Greeks so different. And perhaps makes your poetry so strong.’ He nodded at me. ‘This young gentleman has perfect manners.’
Hipponax flashed me a smile. ‘He is to be my son’s companion. Your praise pleases me. He is a slave.’
The Persian looked at me. ‘We are all slaves, under the king. But this one has dignity. He will be good for your son.’ He shrugged. ‘I had no idea he was a slave.’
As far as I was concerned, Artaphernes could do no wrong.
Then Master took me into the house and brought me to his son. Archilogos was in the back garden, shooting arrows at a target. He had a Persian bow, and the lawn was decorated with arrows.
‘You’ll have to do better than that if you want to be a Persian,’ his father said. I thought that he was not particularly happy to find his son shooting.
Archilogos threw the bow on the ground in anger. Then he looked at me. ‘What’s he for?’ the boy asked. He was a boy to me. I was a grown man, as far as I was concerned.
‘Your mother and I have chosen him to be your companion.’ Master nodded. ‘I give him to you. We call him Doru, but you may ask him his name. He is Greek. He can read and write.’
Archilogos looked at me for a long ti
me. Finally he shrugged. ‘I can read and write,’ he said. ‘Can you shoot a bow?’
‘Yes,’ I said. Ignoring both of them, I picked up his bow. It was heavier than any I’d shot, but I had all kinds of new muscles. I raised the bow, drew and shot, all in one motion as Calchas had taught me, and my arrow flew true and struck the target – not in the centre, but squarely enough.
Archilogos went and hugged his father.
Who winked at me.
I thought that they were the happiest family I had ever seen. Their happiness helped to keep me a slave when I could have run. They seemed so happy that most of their slaves were happy too. It was a good house, until the disaster came and the fates ordained that they be brought low. I loved them.
That first night, we watched the Persian shoot. He had his own bow, lacquered red and stringed in something beautiful, and he shot arrow after arrow into the target without apparent effort. I had never seen an archer so deadly.
Mistress lay on a kline at the edge of the garden, watching. She shared the kline with Master, and we heard their conversation and their commentary as we shot. The Persian watched them from time to time, and I could see that, whatever his friendship for Hipponax, he found her very much to his taste.
I shot adequately. Artaphernes coached my new master and he shot well enough, and then the Persian ordered one of his troopers, one of the Persian cavalrymen in his escort, to come up and shoot. The man had been down in the lower city, probably up to no good, but he shot with gusto and he shot well, although not quite as well as his lord. And then the soldier gave us pointers. He spoke to me at length about the weight of the bow. I understood from this that my new master needed a lighter bow.
Here’s the difference between a slave and a companion. Slaves avoid work. To be a successful companion, you have to work hard. You have to anticipate your master’s needs and fulfil them. No one had to tell me this. I saw it in the way they all behaved.
The truth is that I liked him the moment I met him. And so I wanted to please him. That night, while the Persian lord flirted with Mistress, I went to Master and asked him for the money to buy the boy a lighter bow. He nodded.
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