Killer of Men (7 page)

All conversation stopped.

Listen, thugater. In the Boeotia of my youth, we bitched quite a lot about aristocrats. Men knew that there were aristocrats – we had our own basileus, after all, although he didn’t have a gold-mounted sword, I can tell you. And local men knew that Mater was the daughter of a basileus. But this was the genuine article. Frankly, he looked more like a god than most statues I’d seen. He was the tallest man there by more than a finger’s breadth. And I knew nothing of horses, but his big bay looked like a creature out of story.

I still think of that man. I can see him in my mind’s eye. I’ll tell you a truth – I worshipped him. I still do. Even now, I try to be him when I’m ‘lording it’ over some court case or petty tyrant.

Even his servant looked better than we did – in a fine chlamys of dark blue wool with a stripe of red and a white chiton. He didn’t have a sword, but he had a leather satchel under his arm and his horse was as noble as his master’s.

And yet, this god among men slipped from his horse’s back and bowed. ‘I seek the house of the bronze-smith of Plataea,’ he said politely. ‘Can any of you gentlemen help me?’

Myron bowed deeply. ‘Lord,’ he said, ‘Chalkeotechnes the smith is working. We are merely his friends.’

The red-haired god smiled. ‘Is that wine I see?’ he asked. ‘I’d be happy to pay for a cup.’

None of my family was there. I stepped forward. ‘No guest of this house should pay for his wine,’ I said in the voice of a boy. ‘Pardon, lord. Skira, a cup and good wine for our guest.’

Skira scampered off, and the red-haired man followed her with his eyes. Then he looked at me. ‘You are a courteous lad,’ he said.

Boys don’t talk back to lords. I blushed and was silent until Skira came back with a fine bronze cup and wine. I poured for the man, and he cast much the same look over the cup as he did over Skira.

He drank in silence, sharing with his man. Some of the loafers began to talk again, but they were subdued in his presence, until he slapped the wagon. ‘Nice,’ he said. ‘Nice and big. Well made.’

‘Thanks,’ Draco said. ‘I made him.’

‘How much for the wagon?’ the man said.

‘Already sold,’ Draco answered in the voice of a peasant who knows that he’s just lost the chance of a lifetime.

‘So build me another,’ the man said. ‘What did you charge for this one?’

‘Thirty drachmas,’ Draco said.

‘Meaning you charged fifteen, doubled it for my gold-hilt sword, and you’ll be happy to make me two wagons like this for forty.’ The man smiled like a fox, and I suddenly knew who he must be. He was Odysseus. He was like Odysseus come to life.

Draco wanted to splutter, but the man was so smooth – and so pleasant – that it was hard to gainsay him. ‘As you say, lord,’ Draco said.

And then Pater came.

He still had his leather apron on. He came out into the yard, saw the wine in the man’s hand and flashed me a rare smile of reward.

‘You wanted me, lord?’ he asked.

‘Do you know Epictetus?’

‘I count him a friend,’ Pater said.

‘He showed me a helmet in Athens. I rode over the mountain to have you make me one.’ The man was half a head taller than Pater. ‘And greaves.’

Pater’s brow furrowed. ‘There are better smiths in Athens,’ he said.

The man shook his head. ‘I don’t think so. But I’m here, so unless you don’t like the look of me, I’d thank you to start work tomorrow. I have a ship to catch at Corinth.’

‘Won’t the captain wait for you, lord?’ Pater asked.

‘I am the captain,’ the man said. He grinned. He had the happiest smile I’d seen on a grown man. ‘I sent them round from Athens.’

I don’t think any of us had ever seen a man rich enough to
own
a ship before. The man held out his hand to Pater.

‘Technes of Plataea,’ Pater said.

‘Men call me Miltiades,’ the lord said.

It was a name we all recognized, even then. The warlord of the Chersonese, his exploits were well known. For us, it was like having Achilles ride through our gate.

‘Oh, fame is a fine thing,’ he said, and his servant laughed with him while we stood around like the bumpkins we were.

Pater made him a helmet and greaves, right enough. And Miltiades stayed for three days while Pater did the work and chased and repoussed stags and lions on to his order. I saw the helmet often enough in later years, but I didn’t get to stay to see it made. I was shipped back to dull old Calchas with the wine.

I did carry with me one gem. That night, my brother and I lay on the floor in the room over the andron and listened to the men talk – Miltiades and Epictetus and Myron and Pater. Miltiades taught them how to have symposia without offending – taught them some poetry, showed them how to mix their wine, and never, ever let on that he was slumming with peasants. It’s a fine talent if you have it. Men call it the common touch when they are jealous. There was nothing common with Miltiades. He was, as I said, like a god on earth for the pleasure of his company and the power of his glance. He gave unstintingly of himself and men loved to follow him.

He talked to the men about alliance with Athens. I was eight years old, and I understood immediately that he didn’t need a new helmet. He probably had ten helmets hanging from the rafters of his hall in the Chersonese. Mind you, as it turned out, he wore that helmet for the rest of his life – so he liked it. And it always put me in mind of my father, later, and what my father might have been.

Aye, those are tears, little lady. We’re coming to the bad part.

But not yet. Aye. Not yet. So we listened as they talked – almost plotted, but not quite. The talk was pretty general and never got down to cases. Miltiades told them how valuable an alliance with Plataea could be to the democrats in Athens, and how much more they had in common. And they listened, spellbound.

And so did I.

Then, late in the evening – I think I’d been asleep – Miltiades was making a point about trade when he stopped and raised his
kylix
. ‘I drink to your son Arimnestos,’ Miltiades said. ‘A handsome boy with the spirit of a lord. He guested me and sent a slave for wine as if he’d hosted a dozen like me. I doubt that I’d have done half as well at his age.’

Pater laughed and the moment passed, but I would have died for Miltiades then. Of course, I almost did. Later.

And the next day I went back to my priest on the mountain, and it seemed as if all hope of glory was lost.

3

I spent the winter with Calchas. He made me a bow. It wasn’t a very good bow, but with it I learned to shoot squirrels and threaten songbirds. And he took me hunting when the winter was far enough along.

I still love to hunt, and I owe it to that man. In fact, he taught me more than Miltiades ever did about how to be a lord. We went up the mountain, rising before the sun and running along the trails through the woods after rabbit or deer. He killed a wolf with his bow, and made me carry the carcass home.

The thing I remember best from that winter is the sight of blood on the snow. I had no idea how much blood an animal has in it. Oh, honey, I’d seen goats and sheep slaughtered, I’d seen the spray of blood at sacrifice. But to do it myself . . .

I remember killing a deer – a small buck. My first. I hit it with a javelin, more by luck than anything. How Calchas laughed at my surprise. And suddenly, from being
big
, at least to me, it seemed so small as it lay panting in the snow with my javelin in its guts. It had eyes – it was alive.

At Calchas’s prompting, I took the iron knife that I’d earned with a beating, and I grabbed the buck’s head and slashed at its throat. It must have taken me eight or ten passes – the poor animal. May Artemis send that I never torment a creature like that again. Its eyes never left me as it died, and there was blood
everywhere
. It flowed and flowed over me – warm and sticky and then cold and cloying, like guilt. When you get blood under your nails, you can only scrape it out with a knife, did you know that? There’s a moral there, I suspect.

And I was kneeling in snow – cold on bare knees. The snow filled with the blood like a brilliant red flower. It transported me. It seemed to me to carry a message. There’s a philosopher teaching at Miletus these days who says that a man’s soul is in his blood. I have no trouble seeing it.

Yes – the story.

I learned letters, day by day and week by week. When I could make out words on papyrus, the rhythm of our days changed. We would hunt until the sun was high in the sky – or just walk the woods – climbing up and up on Cithaeron until my legs burned as if the fire of the forge was flowing in my ankles, and then back down to the hut to read by the good light of day. And every day we did the dance – the
Pyrrhiche
. First naked, and then in armour when I was older.

It was a good life.

By spring, I was bigger and much stronger, and I could go out in snow wearing a chiton and come back with a rabbit. I understood the tracks animals made in the snow and what they meant, and I understood the tracks men made on paper and what
they
meant. Once I got it, I got it – I may have been the slowest starter in the history of reading, but after the first winter, I had Hesiod down pat and was off on the
Odyssey
. Of course it is easier to read a thing when you’ve listened to the story all your life – of course it is, honey. But I loved to read.

When the snow had gone from the hills and the sun grew warm, Calchas stopped hunting. We’d eaten more meat than I’d ever had in my life, but he said that spring was sacred to Artemis, when animals came down from the high places to mate. ‘I won’t kill again till the feast of Demeter,’ he said. And his lip curled. ‘Unless it’s a man.’

Oh, yes.

The man he killed came to rob us. It was six months since I’d been home and Calchas had me running every morning before the sun was up, running and running on the trails behind the shrine. So I was running when the thief came, and the first I knew was when I came back into the clearing, naked and warm, and found Calchas with a sword in his hand. The thief had a
machaira
, a big knife or a short sword, depending on how you saw it. From where I stood, it was huge.

‘Stay well clear, boy,’ Calchas called out to me.

So I ran around the man. He sounded desperate. ‘Just give me the
money
,’ he said.

‘No,’ Calchas said. He laughed.

I was getting a chill. It wasn’t summer, and I was naked. And the man with the sword had the same desperation in his voice I had heard from Simon.

Calchas backed away to the tomb and the thief followed him. ‘Just give me the money!’ he shouted.

Calchas sidestepped the thief’s clumsy advance. Suddenly the thief had his back to the tomb. ‘Just give me—’ he asked, and he sounded as if he was begging.

Calchas raised his sword. ‘I dedicate your shade to the hero Leitos,’ he said. And then the thief’s head fell from his shoulders, and blood sprayed.

I had seen Calchas kill animals, and I knew how deadly he was. So I didn’t flinch. I watched him arrange the corpse so that the rest of the blood poured out on to the beehive of the tomb. A man has even more blood than a deer.

I went in and put some clothes on and my hands shook.

Later we buried the corpse. Calchas didn’t pray over it. ‘I sent him to serve the hero,’ Calchas said. ‘He needs no prayers. Poor bastard.’ He and I buried the thief by digging with a pick and a wooden shovel, and in the process of burying him I realized that there was a circle of graves around the tomb.

Calchas shrugged. ‘The gods send one every year,’ he said.

That night he got very drunk.

Next day I ran and played all day, because he didn’t get up except to warm some beans.

But the third day, when I came back from running, I asked him if he’d teach me to use the sword.

‘Spear first,’ he said. ‘Sword later.’

I’m telling this out of order, but I have to say that the only problem I had with Calchas and lessons was that, once I had my nine-year-old growth spurt, he wanted me. As soon as he put his hands on me, that first day, teaching me the spear, I knew what he wanted.

I didn’t want it. There are boys who do, and boys who don’t. Right? Girls the same, I imagine. So I kept away from his hands. He could have forced himself on me, but he wasn’t that way. He just waited, and hoped, and whenever he touched my hips or my flanks, I’d either flinch or go still. He got the message and nothing had to be said.

It was a shame, in a way. He was a good man and an unhappy one. He needed friends, drinking companions and a life. Instead, he taught a boy who didn’t love him and listened to the sins of wandering mercenaries. I have no idea what he had done or where, but he had condemned himself to death.

Sometimes good people do sad things, honey. And when a person decides to die, they die. I believe that Calchas lived a little longer to teach me. Or maybe I just like to think that.

Summer came, and I went home to help bring in the barley. I could read, and Calchas sent me home with a scroll to follow while I was away from him – the ship list from the
Iliad
. And I told him that Mater had scrolls of Theognis, and he asked me to borrow them for him.

My house was different.

Pater was rich. No other way to put it. We had three slave families tilling. I was almost superfluous to reaping, although I put in one hard day setting the sheaves. Mostly I read aloud to Mater, who was the friendliest I can ever remember her. She was drunk when I arrived, and ashamed of her state. But she sobered up by the next morning and bustled about the place. The irony of it was that she could, by then, have acted like a lady. There were six or seven slave women – I didn’t even know their names. There was a new building in the yard – a slave house.

My sister had changed. She was seven, and sharp-tongued, busy teaching her elders their business. She had a fine pottery-and-cloth doll from the east that she treasured. She sat in the sun and told me stories of her precious doll Cassandra, and I listened gravely.

My brother worked the forge and resented it, but his body was filling out. He already looked like a man – or at least, he looked like a man to me. He wasn’t interested in anything I could tell him, so I left him alone. But on my second evening, he gave me a cup he’d made – a simple thing with no adornment, but the lip was well turned and the handle well set.

‘Pater put in the rivets,’ he admitted. Then, with a shrug, ‘I can probably do better now.’ He frowned, and looked away.

I loved it. I imagined drinking with my own bronze cup by a stream, up on the mountain. ‘Hephaestus bless you, brother!’ I said.

‘So you like it?’ he asked. Suddenly he was my brother again. The next day was like the old days and the resentment was gone, so that I was able to show him a better way to fling a javelin and he loved it, and he took me into the shop and showed me how he raised a simple bowl. We’d come a long way as a family, when my brother could work a sheet of carefully pounded-out copper without permission from Pater. In fact, Pater came in, looked at his work and ruffled his hair. Then he turned to me.

‘How are your letters, boy?’ he asked. ‘Your mother claims you can read.’

Odd how fast the mind works when fear comes in. For one moment, I thought that I would impress him – and then I thought that perhaps that would be an error, because my days on Mount Cithaeron would end, and there would be no more rabbit hunts in the dawn. And in that one burst of thought, I understood how much I had become separated from the world of the forge.

But, of course, the desire to please Pater won out.

‘I can read the
Iliad
, Pater,’ I said. ‘And write all my letters.’

Pater handed me a piece of charcoal and a flat board he whitewashed and used for designs. ‘Write for me. Write, “This cup is of Miltiades and Technes made him”.’

I thought for a moment, and then, somewhat daring, I changed the words so that I needed only two.

I wrote in a clear hand, like a good craftsman. I knew that Pater would engrave the words if mine were good enough. Two words – Greek is a splendid language for ownership. ‘OF-MILTIADES BY-TECHNES’, I wrote.

Pater examined it. He could read, albeit slowly. Then he smiled.

My brother winked at me, because we could count those smiles on our fingers, they were so few and so valuable.

‘Mmm,’ he said. He nodded, then scribed it on copper – twice, to be sure. Then he put it on a cup he had, around the base. He used a very small chisel – a new tool, and clearly expensive, with a fine handle – to work the letters deeply. Chalkidis and I watched together until he was done.

‘Chalkidis pounded the bronze to sheet,’ Pater said. ‘I made the cup. You provided the letters.’ He nodded, obviously satisfied. ‘He will like this.’

Pater had a standing commission, making armour and fancy tableware for Miltiades. Pater wasn’t alone – Miltiades bought Draco’s wagons almost as fast as he could build them. They might have asked themselves why an Athenian aristocrat didn’t buy these things closer to home, but they didn’t.

Mater did. She mentioned it at least twice a day.

‘Your father is rushing to his doom,’ she said. ‘Miltiades is as far beyond your father as he is beyond – me.’

Sober, Mater’s intelligence was piercing and cruel. Sadly, the gods made her so that she was only happy when she was lightly drunk – witty, flirtatious, clever and social. But sober she was Medea, and dead drunk she was Medusa.

I read to her, and she lent me her book of poems and said that she would come and visit. ‘I like what I hear of your Calchas,’ she said. ‘Has he made love to you yet?’

She was born of aristocrats, you see. And that was the way, even in Boeotia – men with boys, and women with girls. At least, in the aristocracy.

I blushed and stammered.

‘So he hasn’t. That’s good. You wouldn’t like it, would you?’ She said this stroking my cheek – scary itself, in a way. She never touched us.

‘No,’ I said.

‘No.’ She was sitting on her
kline
, a low bench like a bed. She reclined, pulling her shawl about her. ‘When that urge comes on you, tell me, and I’ll buy you a slave for it.’

I had no notion what she was talking about, any more than I understood what Calchas wanted, except as a vague fear. And in many ways, I liked Calchas better than I liked Mater.

I found that I was eager to get back to the shrine. I said my goodbyes with more relief than longing. Hermogenes came back with me. We had a good walk.

‘I’ll be free next year,’ he said wistfully.

‘Let’s pretend you’re free now,’ I said. ‘You can use the practice.’

He looked at me. ‘How do I pretend to be free?’ he asked.

I laughed. ‘Calchas tells me that we all pretend to be free,’ I said, a typical boy trying to sound as adult as his teacher. ‘But you can meet my eyes when you talk, and tell me to fuck off when I make you angry. Come on – pretend!’

Hermogenes shook his head. ‘You’ve never been a slave, Arimnestos,’ he said. ‘No one
pretends
to be free. And I guarantee you that no free man
pretends
to be a slave.’

We arrived at the shrine near nightfall. Hermogenes stayed the night and we took him hunting in the morning. He was an excellent rabbit killer, trained by hunger, and he quickly won Calchas’s praises. I was jealous. Names flew, and some nine-year-old punches. In the midst of a flurry of blows, I called him a slave and he stopped moving.

I never saw the blow from Calchas. It caught me in the ear and knocked me flat.

‘Are you a gentleman?’ he asked me, from the advantage of six feet of height. ‘You invited him to be a free man. You asked him to trust you. Then – you called him a slave. Can you keep your word?’

I was resentful, but I wasn’t a fool. Pain has a remarkable effect on boys. I sat up. ‘I apologize, Hermogenes,’ I said formally. ‘I meant it – only as a hateful word, like “bastard”.’ I tried to grin it off.

Calchas shook his head. ‘That’s a worthless apology, young man. You must never call a bastard “
bastard
” or a slave “
slave
” unless you want to fight to the death. Trust me – I’m a bastard. I know.’

We ended up apologizing to each other, very formally. There was some silence and some walking apart.

Calchas laughed, called us girls and led us up the mountain after a deer. It was late, but the Lady of Animals sent us a good buck, and Hermogenes and I ran him down with javelins, Calchas working carefully through the trees to push the deer back on our weapons, and we killed when the sun was almost in the treetops. Then Calchas made Hermogenes cut the buck’s throat and anointed him with blood on his face, as he had with me.