Paul grinned. His face was pink with excitement. ‘I stowed away. I’ve had enough of being left behind like mouldy millet seed in a storeroom. I’m coming with you. Besides, you need me,’ he said proudly.
‘What do you mean by that?’ Alexander was stern.
‘I speak Keltoi,’ he said, saying the Greek word for Celt.
‘What?’ We both asked in unison. ‘Where and when did you learn that?’ asked Alexander.
‘They spoke Keltoi in the valley of Nysa. Didn’t you realize that?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘I always heard them speaking Greek.’
‘They spoke Greek to you because you wouldn’t understand anything else, but they were a Celtic tribe. When you left that’s all they spoke. So now I speak Celt. And when you go to the north, in Gaul, everyone speaks Celt.’
‘They speak Gallic,’ I said.
‘And Celt, mostly Celt.’ Paul’s face was serious. His eyes were dark blue, his cheekbones high, and he had a proud nose. It was hard to believe he was only ten. He looked much older. He had a stubborn set to his mouth and a determined chin. I knew where those came from. I stole a glance at Alexander.
‘Do you really speak Celt?’ he asked.
‘Of course,’ and he said something that sounded like a clay pot breaking.
‘What was that?’ I asked him.
‘I said, I’m coming with you.’
‘I suppose you are.’ Alexander looked half vexed, half proud. ‘But I’ll have to send a message to Plexis, he must be out of his mind with worry.’
‘Oh no, I left a message, and Chiron knew what I was up to.’
‘Chiron?’ I sighed. ‘He is such a little troublemaker. And it never occurred to him to tell on you?’
‘Oh no! He would never do that! He nearly wanted to go with me but preferred to stay with Papa and the horses. I think he likes horses as much as Papa does, and I told him he had to stay and guard Cleopatra.’
‘Well that’s a relief.’ I rubbed a cold hand over my face. ‘You have been hiding out on the boat for four days now, are you hungry?’
Paul looked guilty. ‘I was hiding in the storeroom. I’m afraid I ate most of the figs and the flat bread.’
Alexander frowned at him. ‘When we get to Massalia I will find a Celt, and if you can speak to him, you can come with us. But if you’ve been telling stories, I will put you on a boat with Axiom, and he’ll take you straight back to Alexandria. Fair enough?’
Paul smiled sweetly. ‘Very fair, Father.’ He came over and put his arms around me, kissing my cheek. The he kissed Alexander. ‘I won’t be any trouble at all, you’ll see.’
I winced. ‘Don’t say that, please. Every time I hear that, there’s trouble.’
Nearchus came up on deck and strolled over. He saw Paul and said, ‘Oh, greetings, Paul.’ Then he did a perfect double take, tripped over the railing, and fell head first into the water.
‘Man overboard!’ I screamed, leaping to my feet and waving my arms.
Alexander was more practical. He threw a rope into the water and Nearchus caught hold of it. Since we were sailing along at a fast clip, it took a few minutes to lower the sails and come about. The sailors hauled Nearchus onto the boat just in time; a large shark had started to circle around him. Nearchus was chalky white when he landed back on deck. He sat in a large puddle of saltwater, gaping first at Paul, then at the shark fin cutting through the water.
‘What are you doing here?’ he gasped when he had gotten his breath back.
‘He stowed away,’ said Alexander wryly. ‘Don’t worry. We’ve got Persephone the Terrible, and the Harbinger of Destruction. What could possibly go wrong?’
‘The Harbinger of Destruction? Is that what they call me?’ Paul looked pleased.
‘Oh great,’ said Nearchus. ‘We’d better batten down the hatches and put the storm sheets up. Paul’s with us.’ He looked at Paul and a smile tugged at his mouth. ‘The gods must think I was getting soft, or bored.’
Chapter Seven
The trip from Alexandria to Marseille took us little more than four weeks, and only one storm battered us, only one sailor broke his leg, and our boat didn't catch on fire when the clay cooking stove exploded. Nearchus said that Paul, as Harbinger of Destruction, might be losing his touch.
Marseille, or Massalia, as the people called it then, had been founded in the year 600 BC by Graeco-Phoenicians as a trading post. The Greeks were the first to build a port there. When we arrived, the large and prosperous city was already three hundred years old.
Long wharves reached out into the bay, and a small rowboat escorted us to our slip. Customs officials welcomed us.
‘I can’t believe it,’ I complained to Alexander after we’d stood in line for an hour. ‘The Gauls and their officials! They aren’t happy unless they’re doing paperwork of some sort. They haven’t changed in thirty centuries!’
We had filled out what seemed like hundreds of parchments, papyrus, or wax tablets by the time evening came and were finally cleared to enter the city. There were documents for everything: for us; for the sailors; for the boat; and for the cargo. The customs building was large and we got lost twice trying to find an exit. Finally, we found ourselves on a busy street full of merchants pulling wooden carts and carrying sacks of grain.
Massalia seemed a nice city. The buildings were made of stone and the streets clean. We followed the main street toward the marketplace and then searched for an hotel. Alexander wanted to get us settled, then needed to go the courier office to send a message to Plexis telling him we’d arrived and Paul was safe.
We stayed in Massalia just long enough for Alexander to sell his cargo of dates, and make sure Paul really knew how to speak Celtic.
Then we headed for the Rhône to catch a boat upriver. We stopped in a town called Glanum, which nowadays is called Saint-Rémy-de-Provence. It was our introduction to Gaul, although the town was a mixture of Gallic and Greek architecture. It was built around a sacred spring as were many towns at that time. The spring had two temples near it, one for Glanis, a local divinity, and one to Athena, the Greek goddess of wisdom. We found a guide, Camimilulix, who told us everything as we walked through the town.
He was a Gaul, which meant he rarely answered a question directly.
‘What’s that building near the stream?’ Paul asked, pointing to a line of women standing in front of a long shed.
‘Perhaps the river goddess will help you guess,’ Camimilulix replied.
‘How do I ask her?’ Paul was all for it, leaning over the little stone bridge.
‘How does one ask anything?’ Camimilulix usually answered a question with a question.
‘Well, they ask, that’s all.’ Paul rubbed his nose, then leaned further out over the bridge. ‘I only wanted to know what that building was,’ he yelled at the stream in Greek.
A fisherman, sitting on a mossy bank, shouted back at Paul, ‘It’s a washing house, my boy, the local women wash their clothes there.’
Camimilulix looked smug as Paul gaped.
‘I didn’t realize the river goddess was a Greek fisherman,’ I said ironically.
Camimilulix shrugged. ‘The goddess has many forms and speaks in many tongues.’
‘I’ll say!’ Paul stared at the fisherman until we were well down the road. Even then, he kept turning around.
‘What are you doing?’ I asked him.
He grinned sheepishly. ‘I want to see the river goddess change forms.’
‘Paul!’ I looked at him sternly. ‘There is no such thing as a river goddess.’
He looked abashed but cast one last glance over his shoulder. ‘Mother!’ he cried, pointing.
I turned. Where the fisherman had been sitting, there was a sleek brown otter holding a fat perch in its whiskered mouth. With what looked suspiciously like a wink, the creature slid into the water and disappeared without a ripple.
‘Did you see that?’ asked Paul.
‘I saw an otter,’ I sighed, tak
ing his hand and walking after the others.
‘But do you think it could have been the river goddess?’
‘Don’t you think you saw an otter?’ I said.
‘You’re beginning to sound like Camimilulix,’ he complained.
I smiled at my son. ‘Well, if it was the river goddess, I’ll say this much for her, she’s got a superb moustache.’
We were in the heart of Provence. Three thousand years later tourists would flock here in droves and jam the streets, but right now it was pleasantly provincial, and there were no hover camper-vans lining the dusty roads or tourists on rider-drones soaring about with their 3-D cameras whirring.
Nothing whirred here, but we did see traffic jams. Horse-drawn chariots would often get stuck behind plodding en ox-drawn carts, and there would be hearty shouting and swearing from the charioteers until the ox drivers decided to let them pass.
The Gauls invented the first iron-bound wheels. Alexander was always marvelling over the chariots, very much like a man from my time would exclaim about new hover cars.
‘I’ve got to get one of these!’ cried Alexander, running his hands over a gorgeous biga with two large iron-bound wheels. ‘Imagine how fast it would go. I bet Plexis would love this.’ He decided to send two of the chariots back to
Egypt, so he spent an entire day at the customs house filling out export forms.
Chapter Eight
We arrived in Arles – or Arelate, as the Romans called it – and found a trading boat willing to take passengers upriver. The boat stopped overnight in different villages along the way, and I noted the differences between the Graeco-Gallic villages, the Gallo-Roman villages, and the purely Gallic villages. However different they were, one thing was the same: they all had dogs.
Paul was captivated and started to pester us to get him one. I suppose every boy wants a dog, although Alexander said he’d never had a pet.
‘My mother had a parrot, not a dog, and my father was bitten by a dog as a child and never wanted one. We had no dogs in our palace, although there were hunting hounds in the kennels. I wouldn’t know how to care for one,’ admitted Alexander.
‘But, Father, I’ll take care of him. Please? The captain says he’ll give me a baby dog.’
‘They’re called puppies,’ I said, ‘and they have the habit of growing quickly.’
‘And the habit of peeing everywhere.’ Axiom spoke with assurance. ‘I had a dog once. It was not easy to train. It peed on everything I owned. I think it was marking its territory.’
Paul shrugged. ‘I don’t own anything but a linen skirt, a tunic, and a bow. I don’t even have any arrows yet. Please, Father, I would really like a dog.’
‘We’ll see.’
Three thousand years later this would still be a parent’s last resort. ‘We’ll see’. What a wonderful saying. It could mean anything and Paul knew this. His face darkened, and I could practically see sparks in his eyes.
‘Paul,’ I said in my best ‘watch out’ voice. ‘Your father said he’d see about it. Now is not the time to ask. We’re travelling on a small boat up a deep river.’
‘But the captain of the boat said …’
‘I don’t care what he said. You listen to your father.’ Paul stomped away. I sighed and went back to my mending; there was always something to mend. Paul was forever catching his cloak on something sharp, and Alexander wasn’t much better.
I was also cross with the boat captain. After all, it was none of his business. It didn’t matter to me if his bitch had given birth to a litter of hopelessly mongrel mongrels. I had never seen a dog like her before. She was huge, with matted grey fur and wary, yellow eyes. She looked like a cross between a bear and a wolf. The captain was fond of his dog, but he should know better than to get a boy’s hopes up like that.
We stayed on the river for ten days, long enough to get as far as the present-day city of Chalon-sur-Saône – or Cabillonum as the ancients called it. Soon, I knew, it would become an important trading post and city, but it was just a small settlement when we were there. Our ship’s captain waved farewell, a huge smile on his face, and it was not until we’d walked for nearly five hours through the countryside, that we found out why he’d looked so cheerful.
Paul trailed behind us. He carried his luggage over his shoulder. His luggage consisted of a rough sack containing an extra pair of sandals and a tunic. He was wearing his skirt, low boots and his warm, woollen cloak; it was winter and the wind was chilly. He also had his new bow slung over one shoulder. I wondered why he was puffing. He looked tired and I kept turning and calling back, asking if he were all right.
‘I’m fine, Mother,’ he cried. He was far behind, and I grew nervous.
‘Maybe you had better go to help him carry his bag,’ I said to Alexander.
‘That’s ridiculous! All he has in it are his sandals and an extra tunic.’
And a large puppy. The boat captain had managed to give Paul his biggest puppy.
We stopped to eat lunch. Paul set his sack down near his feet and took the bread Axiom handed him. Immediately there came a sharp howling from inside his bag. A shaggy grey head popped out, and two hungry yellow eyes surveyed us.
‘Yap!’ it said sharply.
Alexander jumped. ‘What in Hades is that?’ he cried.
‘I named him Cerberus. Please let me keep him!’ cried Paul.
I opened my mouth, then shut it. This was between Paul and Alexander; I was staying out of it. However, the name brooked no good. Cerberus was the three-headed monster that guarded the Underworld.
‘The Harbinger of Destruction and his hound from Hades.’ It was Nearchus, looking at Paul over his lunch. To me, he said, ‘It should make you feel right at home, O Queen of the Underworld.’ Then he started to laugh and nearly choked.
I was speechless. Nearchus, usually the most serious person in the world, never joked about anything. However, perhaps that had just been the effect of being at war. Now that he was a tourist he seemed different.
Alexander was at a loss for words. It was one of the few times I saw him caught off guard. When I’d told him I was from the future, he’d been more composed. He stared at the huge hound busily gobbling up Paul’s food. Finally he said, doubtfully, ‘That is a dog?’
‘He’s my dog,’ said Paul firmly. ‘I love him and he loves me.’ He seemed to be right about that. The dog paused long enough to lick Paul’s face thoroughly. Then he went back to eating.
‘But, but … but I know nothing about dogs.’ Alexander searched for an argument.
‘That’s all right. The captain told me all about what to feed him and what to do when he’s sick.’
‘They get sick?’ Alexander leaned over to get a better look.
‘They get fleas and ticks, and they pee all over,’ said Axiom, with a large grin.
Alexander glared at Paul. ‘Didn’t I tell you to wait and see?’
‘Yes, but I knew that I could wait until I was old and grey. Admit it, Father, you were never going to ask the captain.’
‘Well, actually, I do admit it.’ Alexander scratched his head and then muttered an oath. ‘I feel like I’ve already got fleas.’
‘You probably do,’ I told him. ‘The boat was hopping with them.’
We finished our lunch and set off for the nearest village. Since it was winter, I hoped we’d make it before nightfall. I wanted to take a hot bath and sleep in a comfortable bed; the boat had neither of these things.
There is nothing so reassuring as the sight of lights in the distance when night is falling. The sun had set, and I was cold and weary by the time we reached the village and found an inn. To our delight, a whole wild boar roasted on a spit in an immense fireplace in the dining room. There were other travellers too. A group of merchants from Rome had a load of wine to trade. When they found out we were heading north, they invited us to journey with them.
After dinner, I was glad to take a hot bath in the bathhouse. I made Paul take one too. Like most boys
his age, he hated bathing. Then he and Cerberus curled up together in a bed of warm straw. Since there was only one bedroom free, Nearchus, Axiom, and Paul slept in the large, well-built stables, while Alexander and I were privileged to sleep in a bed.
After his bath, Alexander came to our room. The bed was narrow, lumpy, and hard, but there was a cheerful fire in the fireplace to keep the chill out. Alexander gazed out of the window for a moment then closed the wooden shutters. Millis, wrapped snugly in his cloak, was already asleep on his pallet at the foot of our bed.
Alexander sighed and took me in his arms. His lips tickled my cheek as he spoke. ‘Well, it’s not the palace of Nebuchadnezzar, but it’s clean.’
‘Do you miss living in luxury?’ I asked.
‘I spent twelve years living in a tent, remember? This is luxury compared to that.’
I shook my head, remembering the opulent tent with the Persian rug, the ebony table, and the delicate glass lamp. ‘We were spoiled,’ I said.
He chuckled. ‘I remember the first time I saw the palace in Babylon. It was the night I married Stateira. I wasn’t allowed in the palace before my purifying ceremony. After the ceremony, they took me up on the roof and tied ropes around my chest. I had no idea what they were doing. Do you know what they did next? They lowered me into the bridal chamber from the roof.’
‘How funny!’ I was amused. ‘Why?’
‘As king of Persia I was supposed to be divine, remember?’
I snorted. ‘How could I forget?’
He ignored my sarcasm. ‘There were mirrors in the ceiling, and when the trapdoors opened in the roof, they reflected the light in such a way it seemed I was riding a golden cloud. I was lowered into the room where Stateira was waiting on the bed for me to …’
‘That’s enough,’ I said hastily, ‘you don’t have to tell me any more.’
‘Why? Aren’t you curious about the nuptials of the god and his queen?’
‘No, I am not,’ I said firmly. ‘I’m jealous about you and anyone else. I don’t want to hear about it ever.’
‘Sorry.’ He kissed me gently, making a warm glow in my tummy. I arched my back, pressing close to him. I could feel his ardour against my thighs. With a deep sigh I opened my legs.
Chants to Persephone: The Future of the World Hangs on a Knife's Edge - and Only a Human Sacrifice Can Save It Page 5