Poseidon's Spear lw-3

by Christian Cameron

  We walked out of the gymnasium. I paid my fee — a month there cost the same for a smith as a day at the City Gymnasium for a foreigner, but a drachma to the trainer was painful.

  Nonetheless, I took him out for a cup of wine. We came to an agreement — he was eager to teach a swordsman, I could tell, rather than pushing tradesmen to do a little exercise, which was his day-to-day fare.

  The craft gymnasium added to my social life, as I met other men of my own age, and received some invitations, which reminded me that men my age with incomes assured were married. I had been married. I forgot for days, even weeks, at a time. I forgot I was married, and forgot she was dead.

  I never forgot Briseis, though.

  After seven or eight weeks, this life became my life. Plataea was far away, and the pirate lord was dead and buried. I made my first helmet, and my master clapped his hands to see it done, and sold it for a handsome price. He gave me almost half of the profit — by the standards of the day, this was very generous. A journeyman like me could be kept on for wages and food.

  My share was twenty drachmas. That covered lessons at the gymnasium, where I had begun to question how I’d ever killed a single man in combat, so much of my posture and technique was being restructured by Polimarchos. I paid my teacher, and he was truly grateful.

  A week later I produced another helmet, this one with repousse work at the brow. It had been ordered, and I had fretted about the fit. Indeed, it was a fraction too small, and I was embarrassed to have to open the brow slightly in front of the client, alternately dishing and raising a few points to expand the metal, all the while hoping that I would not have to re-planish the whole shape.

  But my customer, an Etruscan trierarch on business, loved my work. I think he loved more than just my work — he smiled a lot, and seemed to hang on my every word — but this time I received twenty-five drachmas.

  A small thing happened at that time, one of many incidents. A boy came to our shop — really a young man, a gifted apprentice called Anaxsikles son of Dionysus. Dionysus was the master smith of the street. He himself was, I gather, a very gifted man, but I never saw anything he made. Rather, he managed a smithing empire — he had twenty-four sheds, with both slave and free smiths working iron and bronze. He was chief of the guild, and his voice was the voice that decided most things on the street, and yet, in as much as I knew him, he seemed fair and very intelligent. He was the sort of tekne every city values — prosperous, rich even, and yet not above his origins.

  At any rate, he sent us his son. This sort of temporary fosterage binds the guilds together, and is good for all. It is the chief reason why cities and not workshops develop a style — fosterage creates an equality of knowledge.

  But I digress. Don’t look at me like that, honey, I know you want the story. Teaching Anaxsikles was a joy. He had a kind of aptitude for the work that transcends jealousy and competition. He was a god-sent talent. He never needed to be shown anything more than once. If I have a skill in working bronze that is better than other men’s, it is in the construction of armour, and I think it is simply that I have used so much of it that I understand it from the inside in a way that other smiths don’t. But Anaxsikles would drink in my views — on how to fabricate a Corinthian helmet, for instance; where to move the metal to stiffen the brow ridge, or, the way I made them, to leave a heavy plate over the brow — he took it all in. He seemed to feel it in his bones.

  So Anaxsikles worked with me on the helmets. He was delighted with the result, and my work improved again.

  I only worked with him for two months, but he made me a better smith. He — my student.

  At any rate, Nikephorus had a small party in celebration of the final sale. The priest of Hephaestos came and gave me the seal of Syracusa, as a master smith. And Nikephorus’s daughter Lydia came and sang. She was a pretty girl, fourteen years old, all legs and hips and small breasts and shyness, and I liked her. I didn’t get to see many women, and she was lovely.

  But I was a fool, so after dinner, when I’d had too much wine and was enjoying the sight of Lydia dancing, Nikephorus leaned over. ‘She’ll make you fine babies,’ he said. ‘Julia never lost a one. How about it? None of us cares you were a slave. Marry Lydia, and you’ll have the shop when I’m a little older.’

  This struck me from a clear blue sky although in retrospect, I was, as I say, a fool not to have seen it coming. Lydia was beautiful in her transparent Ionian chiton of Aegyptian linen — probably her best garment — with a flowing light himation falling in folds from her shoulders; very fashionable, and most likely her own work. I’d proven my work; I’d made the master some serious money and he had no son. How had I failed to be prepared?

  Did I say he was a fine man? When I looked stunned, he laughed. ‘Well, every man thinks his own daughter the most beautiful since Helen. Perhaps the idea sticks in your craw. Will you think on it?’ he asked.

  I nodded.

  He leaned over. ‘I’m going to leave the two of you alone a little,’ he said. ‘If you… touch her-’ he shrugged.

  I nodded. It is a funny thing, a human thing — I could have killed him any time, he was no fighter — but I feared him far more than he feared me. He was the master smith. He was a master, too; for all I’d just been raised to his ‘level’, he seemed, every day, to know a thousand things I didn’t know.

  Within an hour, Lydia was seated on the kline beside mine — to sit on mine would have led to other pastimes — with her arms around her knees. She asked me questions, slow questions, about my past.

  So I answered them.

  After an hour, Julia came in and sat on Lydia’s couch. ‘Time for bed, sweet,’ she said. She smiled easily at me. ‘Have you bragged and bragged, young man?’

  I nodded sheepishly. I didn’t want to marry Lydia and be a bronze-smith. I wanted to go to Alba, kill Dagon and then go back and And what?

  In that heartbeat, it occurred to me that marrying Lydia and being the best smith in mighty Syracusa might be a golden future. The shop offered me a challenge — every day. I could see a life where I made things with Anaxsikles, or competed against him to be the best. There is as much arete in craft as in war. Standing in the haze of Ares was

  … like another life. Making marvellous things under Nikephorus’s guiding hand Sleeping with Lydia, who even now gave me a look that made both of us blush I blushed and stammered, Julia laughed and I found myself in the darkness with my cheap chlamys around my shoulders and the first kiss of autumn weather in the air, so that the city smell of cat piss and coriander was mixed with burning pine. The night seemed a marvellous place.

  I went and had a cup of wine at my new favourite wine shop and went back to my two rooms.

  And there they all were, faces beaming. Even Neoptolymos was beaming.

  They’d made almost two hundred drachmas. They’d taken their cargo swiftly and safely, earned a bonus and come home laden to the gunwales with Etruscan olive oil and a small cargo of perfumes that had sold at a stiff profit before they’d even unloaded.

  I added in forty-five drachmas on my own account.

  We all looked at each other, and then we whooped like men giving the war cry, so that our upstairs neighbours thumped their floor and our downstairs neighbour, a prosperous whore, thumped her ceiling.

  ‘Now we need three hundred and fifty more,’ said Demetrios, who could calculate on an abacus and write slowly with a stylus on a wax tablet. I wrote better, so I took over the scribe’s job.

  ‘Slaves?’ I asked.

  ‘Cargo,’ Demetrios said. ‘And slaves, and ropes, and pitch for the hull — even at that, we really need five hundred more.’

  ‘And we don’t actually have three hundred drachmas,’ Daud said morosely.

  I glared at him. ‘Count it again, then.’

  ‘It’s about to be winter,’ he said. ‘No sailing. We have to eat.’

  ‘Even if we live off your smithing,’ Doola said, ‘we will only stay even. And we’ll all feel
like kept men.’ He laughed.

  Demetrios nodded. ‘It’s worse than that,’ he said. ‘Anarchos will know tomorrow what we made, and he’ll be here for a cut.’

  ‘I’ll cut him,’ said Daud.

  ‘I’m with you,’ said Neoptolymos. ‘We’re not bending over for him this time.’

  I fingered my beard. It was odd for me to side with Demetrios. But I could see he was prepared to hand over something, some face-saving amount of our profits.

  And I agreed. By the gods, I agreed.

  ‘Twenty drachma,’ I said. ‘And another twenty to the Temple of Poseidon, as first fruits.’

  ‘We saw Gaius,’ Daud said, out of nowhere. He grinned. ‘He wants to come to Alba with us. He’s as poor as we are, and he has to pretend to be rich.’

  ‘His family weren’t altogether pleased when he came back,’ Doola said. ‘We’re sending him a letter to come down with another load of perfumes.’

  I nodded. ‘Can we get one more load in before winter?’

  Demetrios fingered his chin. ‘Chancy.’

  But we knew we had to try.

  The next morning, I took ten drachma of my own money and went and bought myself a fine chlamys. It wasn’t as fine as some men wore, but it was a beautiful red-brown, with a fine black-purple stripe and a field of embroidered stars. I had admired it for two weeks, and it gave me real pleasure to buy it from the maker for her full price. I didn’t haggle. She grinned at me.

  ‘You’re the new smith,’ she said, as she took my money. ‘Going to marry our Lydia, are you, boy?’

  News travels fast.

  Then I went to the silversmith’s ghetto, and traded six of my good bronze pins for one heavy silver cloak pin. The smith came out and dealt with me in person. I knew him from the gymnasium. He fingered the chlamys. ‘I know that work,’ he said. ‘It’s good to see a young man do well. See that you stay among us.’

  Dressed in my finery, I went to the great Temple of Poseidon by the harbour, and there I counted twenty drachma into the bronze urn by the entrance, watched at a distance by one of Anarchos’s runners. I knew most of them by now, as I was in the city all the time. A day-priest — one of the citizens — came and clasped my hand.

  ‘First fruits of a trading voyage,’ I said.

  He nodded. ‘But you are surely the new smith — the one who fought at Marathon?’ he asked.

  I shrugged. ‘I am also sometimes a trader — a sailor.’

  He laughed. ‘Any Hellene serves the sea. The god thanks you. We do too. We need a new roof.’

  From the temple, with my cloak on, pinned with fine silver, I walked down to the waterfront where Anarchos sat with his ‘friends’. He had two big ‘friends’ who stood behind him. I stood at the edge of the terrace until a slave deigned to notice me, and then one of the big men came and led me to the great man’s presence.

  He looked me up and down slowly, and then gestured with his stick at the stool closest to him. ‘Sit!’ he said.

  Wine was brought.

  ‘You have something for me? And you have brought it with a proper humility?’ he said, loudly, because this being a patron of the lower orders was a performance art.

  I nodded. Took a purse from a fold of my cloak and put it in his hands.

  ‘We put our first fruits in the temple,’ I said. ‘So you have our second fruits.’

  He glanced in the bag, and if he was disappointed, he hid it well. ‘Very proper,’ he said with a firm nod. He leaned forward. ‘Nice cloak,’ he said.

  ‘I may be courting,’ I said.

  He nodded. ‘So I hear. Although other things come to my ears. You tried to mix with the citizens. That was foolish.’

  I shrugged. And smiled.

  Just for a moment, I threw back my cloak and looked him in the eye. Lydia, in a similar flash of the eye, could convey I am a virgin, and yet I burn with a fire so hot that you would flinch from it.

  I could learn from a fourteen-year-old girl.

  In one flash of the eye, I said I fought in the front rank at Marathon, and I’ve buried more enemies than you’ll ever have. You may have the upper hand here, but you do not want a fight.

  Then I dropped my eyes, smiled and went back to my wine, which was good wine.

  He nodded, leaned forward, and put a hand on my shoulder. He was not afraid of me. That, by itself, was interesting.

  ‘I wish you luck, smith. Your friends — they are lucky to have you. I think we understand each other.’

  ‘I will continue to value your… friendship, when I own a shop,’ I said.

  He took a breath.

  I let one go.

  We both smiled.

  I rose, shook his hand as lesser man to greater, and walked away.

  A few paces on, he called out: ‘Are you really Arimnestos of Plataea?’

  I turned back. ‘Yes,’ I called.

  He nodded.

  When I got home, Doola was sitting by the door with a cudgel, and Neoptolymos and Daud were in their leather armour. I shook my head.

  ‘I told you so,’ Daud said to Doola. He fingered my cloak. ‘There goes all our profits.’

  Demetrios raised an eyebrow.

  ‘It is done,’ I said.

  Daud looked at me. ‘You are the brains here, but I swear, Ari, you’ll wish we’d killed the bastard.’

  Neoptolymos agreed. ‘We can take his whole gang.’

  ‘And the citizens of the city? And the courts?’ Demetrios nodded to me. ‘How much?’

  ‘I bought the cloak from my own money,’ I said, a little defensively. ‘Twenty for Anarchos, and twenty for Poseidon.’

  Daud shrugged and Neoptolymos stared at the floor, but Doola clapped me on the back.

  ‘And now, brothers, I have a plan.’ I looked around. ‘Are we still going to Alba?’

  A chorus of cheers erupted. Damn, it makes me want to weep, even now. We had the dream — the best dream men ever dreamed. We were going to be heroes. That dream bound us as thoroughly as iron manacles, but better by far.

  ‘Listen, then,’ I said. ‘Anarchos wants to own us. He wants to loan us money. When we can’t pay it, he’ll own our boat and our lives and get his claws into a smith.’ I shrugged. ‘I’ve been offered the bronze-smith’s daughter, friends.’

  You can imagine what response met this. I’ll leave you to picture it, friends, because many of you are too young to hear the expressions that men use to each other.

  Heh, heh.

  ‘Listen, you sex-starved oarsmen! Anarchos has every reason to want a piece of us.’ I smiled. ‘So we risk it all — we make another voyage to Italy for perfume. If we make it, we make a good profit, and then we go to Anarchos to borrow money for a larger ship. ’ I looked around at them. ‘He won’t loan us enough for us to succeed. But he won’t know how much we already have.’

  Demetrios got it immediately. ‘We could never come back here again,’ he said. Just thinking about it made him breathe heavily.

  Doola got it, too. ‘So we take the great man’s money, and we just sail away. Apparently to Etrusca, for perfumes.’ He laughed his great laugh.

  Daud joined the laughter, and Seckla, and finally, so did Neoptolymos.

  One of my better plans.

  The next morning I realized that my plan had two painful flaws.

  One was that I had to pretend that I was going to marry Lydia, or at least, that I hadn’t decided.

  Herein lies the complexity of the human heart, my young friends. When I was in Nikephorus’s shop, I wanted to marry her. I wanted that life.

  When I was in my two rooms, staring at the place amid the thatch where the money rested, all I wanted was Alba. I was both men. Both men lied, both told the truth.

  And so, though I had intended to make the dangerous winter crossing to Italy with the boat, I couldn’t go. If I had, Anarchos would have seen in a moment that I wasn’t staying.

  So I had to sit at home, while they took the risks.

  Or sit in the andron
of Nikephorus’s house, with Lydia playing the lyre, or singing. We were left together more and more.

  Lydia was quite sure we were to wed. And she was quite prepared to move on. Quite aggressively prepared, really. She was perfectly modest. She didn’t grab my shoulders and push her tongue down my throat — pardon me, ladies, but I’ve known it done. But autumn turned to winter, it grew colder and wetter outside, and Lydia wore less and less to our chaperoned evenings. Her mother either took no notice or cooperated actively. Things were said.

  I remember one evening she finished a song and said, in a matter of fact voice: ‘My best friend kissed her husband for months before they were wed.’ She smiled, and went back to playing the lyre.

  When she danced, her hips took on a life of their own. When she handed me wine, her fingers brushed mine.

  Listen, my young friends. A woman has natural defences against the assault of a man. A woman is like a citadel — I’m hardly the first to draw this analogy. Women are trained from birth to walk a fine line between desirability and availability. Whether a woman is a queen or a whore, she knows how to draw that line.

  Men know nothing. We only want. It is not our place to refuse. When a man is hunted by a woman, he has no weapons, no city wall, no place of refuge. Refusal appears very like cowardice.

  Oh, I’m just saying.

  I taught Anaxsikles in the shop, and then we worked together. I was learning from my master, and teaching my apprentice. I had very little to teach him, but I recall we were making a pair of greaves, and like all Sicilian smiths, he put a pair of intertwined snakes onto the front — fancy, and very beautiful. His repousse was better than mine already.

  Perhaps his superiority made me petulant, but his snakes had come to dominate the whole front of the greave, and when he brought them to me for my approval, I looked at them for a long time, formulating my criticism.

  It is hard to be an honest critic. I was a little jealous of his skill. The snakes themselves were beautiful. Yet, in my heart, I knew that I wouldn’t have worn them. Why? And was I just jealous?

  So many grown-up thoughts.