‘Tomis,’ Satyrus said, and regretted his terse answer immediately. Diokles was trying to apologize. Satyrus had the ready wit to know that this flow of conversation wasn’t really about their course. Was and wasn’t. He tried the same in return. ‘Tomis is in Lysimachos’s satrapy. Should be friendly. Besides, we have friends there – my father’s guest-friends and others. At this rate, we’ll be there before nightfall. We’ll weather the strait in daylight, day after tomorrow.’
‘Tomis?’ Diokles said. ‘I could get a new ship there.’
‘Don’t be an ass, Diokles,’ Satyrus said. He braced himself. ‘I need you,’ he said, with the same effort he’d use in a fight.
‘Huh,’ Diokles said, with the air of a man with more to say.
They’d coasted all day, never losing sight of the Ister delta and her thousands of islands and broad fan of silt, and then followed the coast as it turned due south, the land visibly civilized, with Greek farms as far as the eye could see and the loom of the Celaletae Hills in the west.
‘Tomis breakwater!’ the lookout called.
‘High time,’ Neiron said. He’d had an easy day, with the wind just right for sailing.
‘Ships on the beach,’ the lookout called.
Satyrus nodded to his officers. ‘I’ll go.’
None of them seemed inclined to argue. He pulled his chiton over his head and dropped it on the deck and raced aloft up the boatsail mast. The lookout was Thron, the youngest and lightest of the ship’s boys.
‘Look at that, sir!’ he said, pointing at the sweep of the beach beyond the breakwater. Tomis boasted two galley beaches, one each side of a rocky headland. They could only see the northern beach.
There were three triremes on the beach and a fourth warship floated at a mooring in the broad curve of the bay. He was the Golden Lotus.
‘Kalos! Get the sails off him! Now!’ Satyrus called from the lookout.
‘Aye, sir!’ Kalos called back, and bare feet slapped the decks as the deck crew ran to their stations.
‘Good eye, boy,’ Satyrus said. He pointed at the deck. ‘A silver owl for you when your watch is over.’
‘For me?’ Thron beamed.
Satyrus ignored his hero-worship and dropped to the deck.
Diokles was already turning them out to sea. ‘What’s up?’ he asked.
‘Golden Lotus is in the roadstead,’ Satyrus said. He looked around. ‘All officers!’ he called.
Neiron was getting the rowers to their benches. He waved.
Kalos had the telltale sails down. An observer on the beach would have only bare poles to look for against the sunset now. He came aft, pausing to curse a deckhand who was sloppy in his folding of the precious sail.
Apollodorus, another survivor of Gaza, came forward from the bow. Unarmoured, he was magnificently muscled, though short. A very tough man, indeed. With Abraham gone, he was the phylarch of their marines.
Satyrus pointed at the harbour. ‘Leon might have come here,’ he said.
‘Can’t be Leon,’ Theron said. ‘He had ten ships around him when we escaped. He was taken.’
‘We escaped,’ Satyrus said.
‘He didn’t,’ Theron insisted.
‘No chance at all?’ Satyrus asked, which quieted them. ‘Tomis is a friendly port. If those are Eumeles’ ships, he’s an idiot, or his navarch is. And we have a hull packed with oarsmen trained to fight. But – if that’s Leon, we’ll look like fools and possibly kill some of our friends. We need to know.’
Kalos shrugged. ‘Sail in, lay alongside and put our knives to their throats. If it’s friends, we say we’re sorry and let them buy us some wine.’
‘That’s why you’re not a navarch,’ Neiron said, rubbing the back of his head. ‘I agree with the master. We need to know.’
Theron nodded slowly. ‘I agree.’
Satyrus nodded. ‘Good. I’ll go.’
Theron shook his head. ‘Don’t be foolish, lad.’
Satyrus turned and looked at his former athletics coach. ‘I am not a lad, and I am not foolish, Theron. We’ll talk of this another time.’ He spoke carefully, without anger as best he could manage. Time to stake out some new ground with all of them, he decided. ‘I have guest-friendships here. I am young, and I can swim, and I’m mostly unwounded.’
‘Let Diokles go, or one of the boys,’ Theron said. He was clearly stung by his former student’s rebuke. ‘Your arm is bad.’
‘I’ve had worse,’ Satyrus said.
‘Bullshit, boy.’ Theron stepped forward.
‘Watch yourself, sir. I am not your pupil here. I am your commander. And I am not boy to you. Understand?’ He turned.
‘Very well, sir.’ Theron was angry. ‘Send Diokles!’
‘Diokles is my first officer, but he lacks the social distinctions that will protect me,’ Satyrus said.
‘Which is a nice way of saying that they could just pick me up and make me row, if they was hostile,’ Diokles said.
‘If they capture you, you won’t live an hour,’ Theron said.
‘The price of glory,’ Satyrus said. ‘I’m going. Diokles, lay me ashore just north of the headland. Go up the coast, get a meal in the oarsmen and come back for me tomorrow night. Off and on until the moon rises. If you see three fires on the beach, come in and fetch me off. If there are just two fires, I’m taken and it’s a trap. No fires – well, I’m not there. Clear?’
Theron shook his head. ‘I’m against it.’
Theron was a gentleman and a famous athlete, and the rest of them were plain sailormen. None of them spoke up, either way. Satyrus looked at his former coach. ‘Your reservations are noted,’ Satyrus said, a phrase of Leon’s that leaped to his mind and sounded much more adult than fuck off.
Theron’s face darkened, but over his shoulder, Diokles grinned and then turned away to hide it.
The water was cold – winter was less than two feasts away and the Euxine was already more like the Styx than seemed quite right. Satyrus went over the side less than a stade from the shore, his leather bag and sword belt and all his clothing inside a pig’s bladder, which he tried to keep over his head as he swam with a spear in his left hand. The distance was short, but the first shock took the breath from his lungs, and he was labouring by the time his feet brushed the gravel of the beach, his arm burning like fire from the salt and the exertion. He lay on the shingle, panting, for a minute before he got up, brushed the sea-wrack off his body and got dressed. Water had penetrated the bladder and his wool chiton was wet, and so was his chlamys – but they were good wool, and he was warmer by the time he pulled the sword belt over his head, set his bag on his shoulder, picked up his hunting spear and loped over the dune and on to the road.
There were farms on either hand, their vines along the road and their barley fields stretching away in autumnal desolation, interspersed with scraggly olive trees and heavy apple trees. Even as Satyrus watched the fields, he saw a slave propping a branch that was heavy with fruit.
Satyrus jogged along the road behind the dune until he came even with the slave. The man was quite old.
‘Good evening!’ Satyrus called out.
The slave turned, looked at him and went back to cutting a prop.
‘How far to Tomis?’ Satyrus asked.
The old man looked up, clearly annoyed. He pointed down the road. ‘Not far enough,’ he said.
Satyrus had to laugh at that. He set off again, running a couple of stades to where the road turned as it rounded a low headland and the farms fell away because the soil was so poor. Olive trees on terraces climbed beside the road, and just past the turn, a big rabbit perused a selection of wild fennel in the sunset. Satyrus put his spear through the animal and gutted it on the spot, and he ran on with a prayer to Artemis on his lips and the rabbit dangling from his lonche.
A few stades further on, he found an apple orchard full of men and women picking in the last light. Satyrus smiled at two women who were sharing a water bottle by the road, and th
ey lowered their eyes and retreated towards the trees.
‘How far into Tomis?’ he called.
The younger maiden shook her head and kept backing up. The elder stopped well out of his reach and shrugged. ‘Around the headland, you see her,’ she said in Bastarnae-accented Greek.
A man came up from the apple trees, holding a spear. ‘Greetings, stranger,’ he called from a good distance.
Satyrus bowed. ‘I am Satyrus,’ he said.
‘Talkes,’ the man said. He was wary, but he eyed the rabbit greedily. ‘You were hunting, sir?’
‘I was lucky,’ Satyrus said. ‘I’m looking for friends. Where can I find Calchus the Athenian? Or Isokles, son of Isocrates?’
‘You are in luck,’ the man said. ‘My pardon, sir. My mistress is Penelope, daughter of Isokles.’
‘Does she reside on this farm?’ Satyrus asked. He vaguely remembered that Isokles had a daughter. She’d be twice his age. Married – to Calchus’s son Leander. Or so he seemed to recall.
‘Not safe in town just now,’ the man said quietly. ‘If you hadn’t come up so quiet, we’d have been gone ourselves – we’re supposed to flee armed men. She’ll be at the farmhouse. If you tell me your errand, I’ll approach her.’
‘I’d rather tell her myself,’ Satyrus said.
Talkes shook his head. ‘No, sir. These are hard times round here. No one is getting near my mistress ’less she says.’ Talkes held a spear like a man who regarded the weapon as an old friend, the partner of many a day in the field. A dangerous man.
Satyrus nodded. ‘Very well. Tell your mistress that I am Satyrus, and my father was Kineas, and I am a guest-friend of her father’s, and I crave her hospitality.’ Satyrus sighed for the foolishness of it – if any of these slaves talked, he could be taken very easily. ‘Do you know who has those boats on the beach in town?’
‘They’re the king’s. Not our satrap – not old Lysimachos. They belong to the new king. Eumeles.’ Talkes shook his head. ‘Killed some men from the militia yesterday morning in a fight on the beach. Killed mistress’s father, too. Burned some farms. Thought you might be one of them. Still not sure, mind. Teax, get back to the house, now. Tell mistress about the stranger. I’ll wait here.’ The man looked at him, tilting his head. ‘You are Satyrus, then? The one the soldiers are looking for?’ Talkes turned. ‘Run, girl!’
The woman so addressed – the younger one – vanished like a foal from a spring hunt, pulling her heavy wool chiton up her legs and running as fast as an athlete.
‘I have some wine I could share,’ Satyrus offered.
‘Keep it,’ Talkes said. ‘The rest of you, back to work.’ Talkes backed away and lowered his spear, and he stood in the shadow of an old apple tree, watching his labourers and Satyrus by turns.
Satyrus thought that he probably knew everything he needed to know. But curiosity held him. He drank a mouthful of his own wine and hunkered down on his haunches to wait.
‘I’d have a swallow of that now, if you was to offer again, stranger.’ Talkes took a hesitant step closer.
Satyrus nodded. He put the stopper back in his flask and set it on the ground. Then he picked up his spear, rabbit and all, and stepped well clear. ‘Be my guest.’
Talkes sidled up to the canteen carefully, as if afraid it might be a dangerous animal. But he took a swallow and smiled.
‘You’re a gent, and no mistake,’ he said. ‘Mind you, you could still be one of the tyrant’s men,’ he added, and took another swallow. He grinned, and went back to watching his workers.
Satyrus had another swallow of his wine. ‘How long have they been here?’ he asked.
‘Four days,’ Talkes responded.
Three weeks and more since the sea battle. Plenty of time for Eumeles to refit a captured ship and sail it here – especially as fine a ship as Golden Lotus.
‘Mistress says bring him to t’house,’ Teax said from the near darkness. ‘Say he guest-friend.’
The walk to the house was tense, at best, and Satyrus felt as if Talkes’ spear was never far from his throat. They climbed the rest of the hill and went down the other side. The house was dark, but up close, Satyrus could see that the shutters were tight on every window.
‘Spear and sword, young master,’ Talkes said at the door.
Satyrus considered refusing, but it seemed pointless. He handed over his weapons and was ushered inside. ‘My rabbit is a guest gift,’ he said.
‘I’ll send her to cook, then,’ the Bastarnae man said. ‘Mistress is this way.’
The house wasn’t big enough to be lost in, but Satyrus followed Talkes as if he was in Ptolemy’s palace in Alexandria, and soon he was standing before a heavily draped woman in a chair, sitting with a drop spindle in her hand and three oil lamps. She smelled a little of roses, and a little of stale wine. Satyrus couldn’t help but notice how bare the house was – all the furnishings he could see were home-made.
‘You are really Kineas’s son?’ she asked without raising her head.
Satyrus nodded. ‘I am,’ he said.
The lady choked a sob. ‘They killed my father two days ago,’ she said. ‘He would have loved to have seen you.’ She raised her head and mastered herself. ‘How may I serve you?’ she asked.
‘I would like to claim guest-friendship of your house,’ Satyrus said.
‘My house has fallen on hard times,’ she answered. ‘Rumour says you are a great captain in the army of the lord of Aegypt? How do you come to my door with a rabbit on your spear? Eumeles’ captains are searching for you.’
Satyrus decided he would not lie to this gentle, grey-eyed woman, despite her faint smell of old wine. ‘I tried to take my father’s kingdom back from Eumeles of Pantecapaeum. I failed and nearly lost my life and my ship.’
She rose, placing her spindles – carved ivory, better than most of the other objects in the room – in an ash basket full of wool. ‘They know all about you, Satyrus. You will not survive staying here. They killed my father for being your friend, and Calchus is next, if they catch him. If I keep you, they’ll come here and kill us.’ She shrugged. ‘But I am an obedient daughter and I will not refuse you. Perhaps it would be better for me to end that way.’
‘Hide me overnight, and I will avenge your father at nightfall,’ Satyrus said. ‘I will not be your death.’
She came out of an unlit corner with a cup in her hand. ‘I am Penelope,’ she said. ‘Here is the cup of welcome. No one here will betray you. I welcome you for the sake of your father, the first man I ever looked on with a woman’s eyes. He might have wed me.’
‘He wed my mother, the queen of the Sakje,’ Satyrus said. He drank from the cup. There was cheese in it, and barley, and it went down well. He could smell the rabbit cooking.
‘It is better to have a queen as a rival than another woman, I suppose,’ Penelope said. ‘At any rate, your father never promised, and he never returned.’
‘And did you marry?’ Satyrus asked, after a pause.
‘Do I look like a maiden?’ she laughed, and her laugh was angry. ‘I married Calchus’s youngest son.’ Her bitterness was obvious. ‘No queen for a rival there!’ she said, and snorted.
Satyrus lacked the experience to know how to pass the subject over. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said.
She raised her head and glared at him. ‘Spare me your pity, boy.’ Then she shook her head. ‘How do you plan to avenge us? And what makes you think that more killing will make this better?’
Satyrus drank his wine to cover his confusion. Finally, he shrugged. ‘I have a ship,’ he said. ‘I will clear them out of the town.’
She nodded. ‘The satrap will be here any day, and then Eumeles will find himself in a war. Best stay clear of it, Satyrus son of Kineas.’
Satyrus shook his head. ‘Who commands them?’
Penelope shook her head. ‘I could find out, I suppose.’ She smiled, then raised her eyes and gave an odd smile that seemed to catch only half her face. ‘When you let yourself d
ie, it is often hard to bring yourself back to life,’ she said. And then, ‘Never mind. Pay me no heed. I’m a bitter old woman, and might have been your mother.’
‘You aren’t old,’ Satyrus said, gallantly. Indeed, under the heavy folds of her drapery, she was no less attractive than Auntie Sappho – and that was saying something.
‘Hmm,’ she said softly. ‘I had forgotten the taste of flattery.’
‘Dinner, mistress,’ Talkes said from the doorway.
Dinner was simple. His rabbit vanished into a stew made of barley and some late-season tubers, with good, plain bread and a harsh local wine. The slaves – or servants, he couldn’t tell – ate at the same table as their mistress, a big, dark table worn to a finish like the black glaze of the Athens potters.
He ate and ate. The stew grew on him; he’d been eating whatever his mess cooked up on various beaches for weeks. The wine was acidic, but hardy. The bread was excellent.
‘My compliments to your cook,’ Satyrus said.
The four Bastarnae girls all tittered among themselves.
‘You will stay the night?’ Penelope asked.
‘Yes, despoina,’ Satyrus answered.
‘Do not, on any account, try to have sex with my girls. Teax is young enough, and silly enough, to warm your bed – but I can’t afford to lose her or feed her baby. Understand, young sir?’ Penelope’s hard voice was a far cry from her apparent weakness earlier. Satyrus concluded she was a different woman in front of her staff. A commander.
‘Yes, despoina,’ Satyrus said.
Penelope raised an eyebrow. ‘You are a most courteous guest, to obey the whims of an old woman.’
Satyrus went back to eating his soup. Talkes, the overseer, watched every move he made.
Satyrus was just reaching for a third helping of stew when there was a rattle at the gate of the yard.
‘Open up in there.’ The voice was sing-song, as if a clown or a mime was demanding entry.
Talkes looked at his mistress.
Penelope stood up and looked at Satyrus. ‘I’ll hide you,’ she said. It was a simple statement of fact. She took his hand and led him up into the exedra. She opened a heavy wooden chest and pulled out a quilted wool mattress, which she shook out and placed on her bed. She had his sword, and she handed it to him.
Tyrant: King of the Bosporus Page 8