Still Waters

by Marilyn Todd

  At the mines, slaves toiled in squalid conditions, surrounded by dirt and debris, with inadequate shelter and disgusting food. For hours they were forced to crawl on their hands and knees through dark tunnels to hack out the silver, and those on the surface fared little better. Wheezing over the smelting pots, the whip cracking on their backs, Iliona sensed the disease and depression. Knew then, young as she was, that their life expectancy was low.

  That visit to Laurion laid the cornerstone for her policies at Eurotas many years later.

  ‘Call me stupid,’ she said, ‘but wouldn’t it have been easier to bring the gold to Sparta by sea?’

  If she remembered correctly, the only thing that separated the mountains, where the gold mines were located, from the Aegean was ten miles of marshy delta. Don’t tell me there wasn’t some kind of track running through that!

  ‘Much easier,’ Lysander rumbled. ‘But that would have alerted Athens to what we were up to, given their navy patrols the region for pirates.’

  Politics again. Everything came down to bloody politics. ‘What happened to a unified Greece, where everyone’s on the same side?’

  ‘The only side Athens is on is her own.’

  He was right, of course. The hangover meant Iliona wasn’t thinking too clearly, but with Athens hell bent on establishing an empire of her own, she wouldn’t hesitate to exploit any weakness in her power-sharing partner’s defences. No doubt maintaining a navy of that magnitude was causing her financial headaches, too, but the cost of keeping peace across the interior was crippling Sparta. Iliona polished off the last remnants of the soured milk. On the one hand, hoplites were wealthy enough to buy their own armour and weapons, as indeed were the cavalry, and aristocrats were expected to contribute heavily to the war chest. On the other hand, supply trains ran expensive, as did full-time education and training, and the sheer diversity and dispersion of the various campaigns was proving an imbalance on the Treasury’s resources. With the north Aegean a close ally of Athens, there was no chance of sneaking the gold out by sea. Better to risk theft than reveal state secrets.

  ‘So having satisfied yourself that the switch wasn’t made at the source, what’s your next move?’

  ‘This.’ He swung a bronzed leg out of the window.

  Two floors up, yet she didn’t even hear the thud when he landed.

  *

  The obvious place to prepare tinctures, ointments, poultices and salves was the posting station’s kitchens, with its raft of facilities. Jocasta moved a small table into the corner, laid out her balances and scoops, her pestles and mortars, and if the staff thought it was odd, her boiling and brewing, toiling and stewing, no one said so much as a word. Even the chief steward didn’t challenge her movements, but then again, she’d always found that if you act with authority, people accept it without question. She simply told the overseer what she was doing and got on with preparing her infusions and mixing her pastilles. Confidence gave it conviction.

  ‘Gargle with this,’ she told an Athenian student whose throat was sore from too much singing last night. ‘Do it once every half-hour and you’ll be crowing like a rooster by nightfall.’

  In no time, word had spread round the yard. She could hardly roll pills without interruption.

  ‘Give this to your wife.’ It was a standard infusion of fennel, dill and borage seeds, to which she’d added goat’s rue. ‘If that doesn’t stimulate the flow of breast milk, tell her to come and see me herself.’

  In between mixing lubricants, astringents, caustics and desiccants, she prescribed calendula compresses for a linen merchant’s inflamed varicose veins, artemisia to expel a courier’s tapeworms, and oils to eliminate head lice for the Illyrian envoy’s chief scribe. Mostly, though, the patients were locals, queuing to have their stomach pains eased and their headaches relieved. Overindulgence came with a price tag, but Jocasta had neither sympathy nor contempt for their condition. As a physician, she remained apart and objective. Her concern as always was treatment, not cause.

  Though as she decanted her drugs into silver, horn or copper flasks, depending on which was the most suitable, she couldn’t help wondering how swollen the priest’s testicles were when he woke up this morning.

  Bigger than footballs, with luck.

  *

  It wasn’t Sparta, of course. None of the libraries and galleries or wide, sweeping gateways that Iliona was used to, and in place of towering marble statues these were life-sized and, let’s be honest, not particularly well sculpted, either. Equally, however, there were no pickpockets on the prowl, no hawkers or vendors constantly tugging your sleeve and, most blissfully of all, none of the beggars that normally swarmed around the edges, trying to separate bathers from their change with their pitiful whines. She looked at the sign nailed to the door, proudly proclaiming Water changed every day, and realized why it was ladies first.

  ‘Would you prefer the sweat room and plunge, or the strigil and soak?’ the attendant enquired, helping her out of her clothes.

  Yesterday she’d have given her right arm for the steam bath. Relaxing in that circular, vaulted, windowless chamber she’d seen from the top of the hill, while two hundred miles of dust sweated quietly out of her system. But yesterday she hadn’t drunk several goblets of beer and her head wasn’t being crushed by a millstone.

  ‘Think of me as a dried lentil,’ she said. ‘Let me steep.’

  Nothing was ever simple, of course. Before she could numb herself to oblivion, the attendant insisted on wetting her skin then rubbing her from head to foot with a mitt of coarse linen. Jocasta would approve.

  It will aid circulation and help the wound to heal quicker.

  Quite possibly, but it also made Iliona’s skin soft to the touch, and you can’t complain about that. Like a child, she let the attendant lead her to the next room, where her body was smeared with a mixture of olive oil and ash, then gently scraped off with light strokes of the strigil, lifting any dirt and grime with it. To Oizys, daughter of Darkness and Night, I will give you anything you desire—anything—to stop my head pounding. The goddess who brings pain can surely take it away, but it seemed Oizys had been exceptionally busy last night and was probably dead to the world from her exertions. She certainly wasn’t answering Iliona’s prayers.

  ‘There you go, my lady. Now for the pool!’

  No doubt the Krypteia would consider hot water effeminate, preferring to roll naked in ice than have himself grouped among cissies. Even Aristophanes condemned bath houses as ‘wicked and dissolute’, blasting those who frequented them as ‘lazy and idle’. Well, to each his own was Iliona’s attitude. The lentil set about steeping until it started to wrinkle.

  ‘Ooh, I say, you’re up early,’ a little-girl voice trilled.

  For once, the clacking wasn’t inside her head. It was the sound of Calypso’s wooden soled sandals trip-trip-tripping across the hot tiles to prevent her feet from burning. Emerging from the swirling steam like Aphrodite from the foam, she tossed her towel on the floor, settled Pookie on top of it, then swung her long legs into the pool.

  ‘Everyone else seems to have terrible hangovers this morning.’ She smiled brightly. ‘Looks like it’s just you and me who took it easy last night.’

  ‘Mmm.’

  ‘Well, you have to, don’t you? Axe God yesterday, Eagles’ feast tonight, the equinox tomorrow. No end this time of year.’

  Eagles’ feast…Equinox…

  ‘Tonight?’ Iliona whimpered.

  ‘Up in the hills. Everyone’s invited—except the lowlanders, of course. So silly, this partisan divide. Why can’t people live and make do?’

  Her sentiments exactly, because one hangover was quite enough thank you, and she quietly cursed Dionysus for inventing the vine, then Demeter for allowing mortals to let barley ferment.

  ‘Anyway, the Feast starts after sundown. Something to do with the first crescent of the new Hunter’s moon, I’m no good when it comes to remembering details.’

  Or mu
ch else, Iliona thought, and hard as she tried, she still detected no signs of grief in this gorgeous young widow. Maybe Calypso knew Nobilor had drawn up a will in her favour? Indeed, maybe that was why she’d married him in the first place? Knowing that, sooner or later, her rich, famous husband would come a cropper racing his chariot?

  ‘Where was he headed?’ she asked.

  ‘Delphi.’ Her strawberry blonde hair barely changed colour in the water. ‘Another title-fight challenge, with the King of Somewhere or Other putting up his champion for Nobi to wrestle and hoping he’d come out covered in glory.’

  ‘Delphi? Sounds like there was a lot riding on this fight.’

  ‘Gosh, no. He was always called out in the most prestigious locations… Oh, Pookie, don’t chew the towel, darling, or Mummy will be vewy, vewy cross.’

  Pookie didn’t give a wat’s arse. He continued to destroy the linen with a series of soft, throaty growls. For a second, Iliona was tempted to jerk the towel while Calypso wasn’t looking and see whether Pookie could swim.

  ‘Was he nervous, or worried, at all?’

  ‘No, no, he just likes chewing… Oh, you mean Nobi.’ Even looking sheepish, she was lovely. ‘You’re thinking he might have been worked up at another big fight and got careless, but my Nobi was well used to that sort of thing. He’d have won hands down, he always did. Mind, the backbiting that went on behind the scenes was nobody’s business. Talk about jealous.’

  ‘Other competitors resenting his success?’

  ‘Put it this way, Nobi said there’s no such thing as a good loser. They’d spike his drinks, spread vicious rumours, you name it, they tried it—and they say women are bitchy!’ Calypso slipped elegantly under the water. ‘I’m just glad he went out a winner,’ she said, when she surfaced. ‘We’re so proud of our baby, aren’t we, Pookiekins?’

  Interesting that not everyone liked a winner, and as slaves dipped leather buckets in the pool and took them away, full, while others ferried in brass cauldrons of hot water to keep the temperature constant, a nasty little thought began to germinate. One that said, sometimes accidents aren’t necessarily accidents. They’re just made to look like one—

  ‘Who knew your husband raced to unwind?’

  ‘Who didn’t, you mean. Nobi was well known for… Oh, not you again!’

  ‘I have the right to a soak, same as everyone else.’

  Hermione displaced so much water that Calypso’s dog jumped off the towel, yapping and drenched to the skin.

  ‘Your trouble, is that you always think your needs take preference—’

  ‘You have no idea what my needs are, Hermione, but if you think I’m staying here while you pee in the water, you’re wrong. You’d be wise to get out while you can, Iliona. I’d rather take my chance with a crocodile than wallow in here with a hippo.’ With prettily pursed lips, she grabbed her sneezing lump of dripping fur and stomped off.

  ‘Don’t worry, love.’ Hermione winked. ‘I only tell her that so she’ll bugger off and leave me in peace. I’m fully house-trained, really.’

  ‘You followed her on purpose and bullied her out of the way.’

  ‘No fooling you, is there?’ Hermione chuckled. ‘Mind, they said you could hear through the ears of the deaf and see through the eyes of the blind.’

  They also said she could count the grains of sand on the seashore and measure the drops in the ocean. Iliona saw it more as a case of sound judgement.

  ‘How’s Daphne?’

  ‘She’s fifteen, who knows? They bottle everything up at that age.’

  One would hesitate to call Nobilor a mummy’s boy, but he was rumoured to bow to Hermione’s wisdom on domestic matters, and it was common knowledge that he’d relied on her totally after his first marriage broke down.

  ‘It couldn’t have been easy for any of you, when Nobilor married Calypso.’

  Who must have had a huge impact on him, for the champion to marry a woman his mother hated.

  ‘Tch.’ She washed off the ashes sprinkled over her head for mourning. ‘Let me tell you, I had her measure right from the outset.’ Hermione sniffed. ‘Money-grubbing little cow wasn’t going to oust me from my own hearth, now then.’

  That would have made for an interesting atmosphere. The mother openly hostile to the new bride, while Calypso worked towards easing a domineering old bag out of the picture. Once again, Iliona wondered where Daphne’s loyalties lay.

  ‘Me money-grubbing?’ Calypso came back for her towel, which Iliona now saw had been elaborately embroidered. The widow’s own handiwork? Somehow she didn’t see those dainty, manicured hands twirling a needle. ‘I’ve never seen anyone throw gold around like you!’

  ‘Listen, I’m doing the economy a kindness by not hoarding, and if you don’t believe me, you just ask the high priestess.’ Hermione turned to Iliona. ‘Spartans aren’t allowed to stockpile their money. The state turns it into lead bars, am I right?’

  ‘Bloody heavy they are, too.’

  Not strictly true. In practice, the nobility accrued massive amounts of silver and gold, but they stockpiled their wealth in the form of statues and other fine artefacts. It was to prevent the middle and lower classes, the perioikoi and helots, from getting rich, that gold as a currency had been abolished. With wealth comes power, with power comes change and the government didn’t like change. By introducing an exchange system based on cubit-long iron spits, the lower orders were kept in their place.

  That way, the state only had oppression to fear…

  ‘See?’ Hermione looked smug. ‘And anyway, it’s not all about me. Someone has to take care of Daphne, now she’s a young woman with marriageable prospects.’

  ‘Nobi always said you spoiled her.’

  ‘He never did! My Billi said I was a brick, rallying round when her mother walked out when she was a toddler.’

  ‘He said there were hundreds of times when he’d come home and could hardly see you for a mountain of tunics, sandals and jewels. And when he mentioned it, you’d just laugh and tell him to stop nagging and pour your old mum a glass of wine, you were knackered.’

  ‘Well, I was.’ Hermione wagged a fat finger. ‘I don’t find it as easy to spend money as you. You’ve obviously been practising a lot longer.’

  ‘Bitch.’ Calypso’s sandals clip-clopped back across the tiles in a pique.

  Those legs, Iliona thought wistfully. Went up to Olympus and beyond.

  ‘I was a good influence on my son,’ Hermione insisted. ‘I told him, the first thing you do, now you’ve won that laurel crown, is buy a villa in the posh end of Thebes. I was thinking more of a place in the country, Ma, he said, but I mean, really. The sticks?’ She made the prospect of a rural idyll sound dirty. ‘Trust me, Billi, I told him, in this business people have precious short memories. ’

  That summer, she’d pointed out, he was dining with aristocrats, city elders, anyone who was anybody, in fact. And well-heeled though they were, and no matter how much power these men held, it was Nobilor they envied.

  ‘Yes, you, son, I told him, when his jaw dropped. You’re popular in a way those rich folk can never dream of, and I was right. I appreciate you’re one of them, my lady, but you tell me, what politician was ever carried shoulder-high through the streets? Exactly. And name one single banker who was cheered to the rafters whenever his name cropped up. Out of sight is out of mind, Billi. Unless you stay in the thick of it, I warned him, you’ll be forgotten by this time next year. ’

  ‘Wise words,’ Iliona said.

  ‘I’m not so sure.’ The bluster went out of her with astonishing speed. ‘Maybe if he’d had his place in the country…’ Hermione beckoned the attendants forward to give her a hand out of the pool. ‘Excuse me, love. Not…not feeling too well.’

  Grief is a terrible thing. Iliona watched her waddle away. Everyone travels the journey differently, but the destination is the same.

  It’s the ordeal of endurance that takes us all by surprise.

  Eleven
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br />   Lisyl pushed Morin away, she wasn’t in the mood, she really, really wasn’t. Late up to begin with, there was tons of catching up to do and, as with all these celebrations, folk get careless when the drink is flowing freely. There was always masses of extra washing the next morning.

  ‘Come on, Lis. I’m only talking about a kiss and a cuddle.’

  ‘I can’t. Look at all these cloaks and mantles, Morin. I’m way behind, we’re a laundress short, with Phyllis off sick three days running, and you can’t pound quality garments on the rocks like ordinary work clothes.’ She fingered the gold thread round the edge of Iliona’s gown. ‘Stuff like this takes time.’

  ‘We’d best hurry, then.’ With a lunge, he threw her backwards into a pile of soft hay and dived on top of her. ‘Cor, you smell good.’

  ‘Morin!’ Lisyl was furious. A minute ago, her workload had been huge. Now she’d have to pick blades of grass and seed heads out of the laundry as well. ‘Look what you’ve done!’

  ‘I’m looking at what I’m about to do,’ he said, showering her with kisses. ‘Oh, Lisyl. My big, plump—’

  ‘For goodness’ sake, give it a rest.’ She pushed his hand off her breast. ‘I only came down to the stables to—’

  ‘Drive me wild with desire.’ The hand shot up her skirt.

  ‘—tell you I might be delayed tonight.’ What was he, an octopus? As soon as she shoved him away from one part of her body, he was all over another bit. ‘Are you listening to me?’

  ‘You’re going to be late, of course I’m bloody listening. Now stop yakking and let me… Oh, for gods’ sake, what the fuck’s up with you today?’ He pinned down the arm that was pushing him off. ‘I’m warning you, when we’re wed, I’m not putting up with this nonsense. A man has his needs, and it’s about time you and me—’

  ‘Don’t start that again. You know how I feel—’

  ‘You feel damn good right now, I know that.’

  ‘Stop it!’ She struggled to break free, feeling stupid that tears were stinging her eyes. ‘I’m late, I’ve got loads of work on—’