Killer of Men (14 page)

A priest told me that my new owner’s name was Hipponax, and that I should call him Master and avert my eyes. Hipponax put his carnelian seal on a clay tablet, grabbed me by the neck and hustled me out of the slave barracks. At the portico of the great temple, he stopped and looked me over. Then he made a face. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘you were cheap.’ He laughed. ‘Aphrodite’s tits, boy, you stink. Let’s get you a doctor.’

We walked down from the acropolis, past the magnificent steps to the Temple of Artemis and into the lower temple precinct, where he took me to the Temple of Asclepius. We don’t even have Asclepius in Boeotia. He’s a healing god.

I was there for three days. They cleaned my leg and poured wine over it twice a day and wrapped it in bandages. I was bathed and fed well – coarse food, but there was barley bread, pork and lots of onions, and I ate like a horse.

Let me give you, in a sentence, the difference between Ephesus and Plataea. At the Temple of Asclepius, I was housed in the precinct of slaves. I thought I was living with aristocrats. My bed had linen sheets and a white wool blanket, and they gave me a linen chiton to wear as if it wasn’t worth more than my best spear. I was waited on by free men and women until I was healed. Imagine!

Most of the other men in my ward were victims of old age, and most of them were Thracians. In fact, the overwhelming number of slaves in Ephesus were Thracians, blond men and women with robust bodies and big heads. And I didn’t have a word in common with them.

On the third day, my new master came and fetched me. I was clean. All my hair had been cut away and my head shaved. I thought it was a condition of servitude, but it turned out that they did it to rid me of lice. They shaved my pubic hair, too. That worried me. Easterners were notorious for their sexual licence.

I wore my linen chiton when I followed my master on to the street. The sun, reflected from marble and pale grey stone, blinded me. I had a crutch and I hobbled along behind him as best I could.

We walked down just one level of the town. The acropolis was at the top, and then the temples, and then – the rich.

He took me into the main entrance of his house, and it was so magnificent that I stopped behind him and looked.

In the entranceway, under the gate that led from the street to the courtyard, there was a fresco of the gods sitting in state, painted in colour on the plaster. On either side, carved as if from life, there was a maenad on my right and a satyr on my left. Once I walked two more steps under the portico and into the courtyard, I saw that every column was a statue of a man or a woman, each standing like slaves awaiting service, holding the roof, and under the arches there were more painted scenes – scenes from the
Iliad
and scenes of the gods. Zeus ravished a very willing Europa, and the only cowlike thing about her was her eyes. Achilles held his arms high in triumphant revenge, and Hector lay at his feet.

‘Welcome,’ my master said. He smiled. ‘Let’s have a look at you.’

He pulled my chiton off. The beautiful woman came out into the courtyard, followed by two female slaves. All three of them were perfumed, and all three were wearing garments better than Plataea’s finest wedding dress. The lady had gold earrings and a necklace as broad as a soldier’s girdle that seemed to be tied with the knot of Heracles in gold, although I didn’t think that was possible. I caught her name from my master – she was Euthalia, and that name was right for her, for she was beautiful and well-formed, and child-bearing had not touched her, except to give her the strength of face that most matrons get when they have had the rearing of a child.

I took the knot of Heracles as a sign. Heracles was the family patron, and there was his sign in the home of my master. Heracles had been a slave. I took it as a sign and I still think it was.

They ran their hands over me and played games. The slave girls fetched a ball and threw it at me. I caught it. The man nodded. Then he swung a stick at me – slowly, but with some force. I moved. I ducked. I ducked a blow
and
caught a ball without dropping my crutch.

Finally, the man nodded. ‘What do you know of horses?’ he asked.

‘Nothing,’ I said.

Both Master and Mistress looked disappointed. ‘Nothing? Speak the truth, boy.’

I shook my head. ‘I have touched a horse,’ I said.

That made Mistress smile. ‘He could be taught,’ she said.

‘He will be too tall soon,’ Master said. ‘But it is worth a try.’ He put a finger under my chin and raised my face, the way a man does with a shy girl. ‘What’s your name, boy?’

‘Arimnestos,’ I said. ‘Of Plataea.’

‘You’re a Greek,’ he said.

‘Yes, master,’ I answered.

He shook his head. ‘Well, I’m glad to have a Greek slave, but the man who sold you is a fool. You were a free man, weren’t you? And you were trained to be an athlete.’ He glanced back – he
almost
treated me as a person and not a household object. ‘I am Hipponax. You’ve heard of me?’

‘No, master.’ I hung my head. He had expected me to know of him. He had expected me to know of horses, too.

I had never thought of Calchas’s training as training for sport. ‘I was trained to hunt and fight,’ I said. ‘Master.’

He pursed his lips and looked at Mistress.

She smiled back at him. It was good to see them together, they were so much of one mind. ‘Don’t be offended because a slave does not know your poetry, dear. He can’t read, after all.’

I wondered if I was foolish to brag about my skills – but I did not want to go back to the priests. And they seemed like good people.

‘I can read and write,’ I said.

‘You can read and write Doric?’ master asked. ‘Or Ionic? Or both?’

‘I can read the
Iliad
and the
Odyssey
and Alcaeus and Theognis,’ I said.

Mistress smiled broadly. ‘I think you owe me a new robe of my own choosing, dear. Oh, that Daxes will be so
angry
.’ She clapped her hands. Then she came and ran a hand down my flank, and I shivered, and she laughed. ‘You can fight, catch a ball and read. Fine accomplishments for a young man. But your name is barbarous. I think we shall call you Doru. A spear – a Dorian. An intrusion to our family.’ She smiled at me and turned back to Master. ‘I am going to try and spend a few useful hours accomplishing something at my loom.’

Master kissed her shoulder. It was a shock – everything was a shock, but his casual, open affection wasn’t something I had ever seen Greek people do. ‘I can think of another role for him, if he can hunt and fight,’ he said, ‘and read.’

‘As can I. But let’s have him put to the farm with some reins in his hand first,’ she said. ‘And he can always drive for Archilogos if he can’t last a race.’

‘So he can, my dear. Your usual splendid eye for good muscles.’ He turned back to me. ‘Arimnestos, we are sending you to learn to be a charioteer. Do you think you will like that?’

I might have said many things. Instead, I shrugged. Really – I was ten thousand stades from home and my world was dead. What was I to do? Escape? It never crossed my mind. It sounded better than being pissed on, or hauling mud bricks for priests.

So I went to the farm with an old slave and slept well enough, and in the morning, I started to learn to be a charioteer.

7

I was never a great charioteer. I stood at the reins in some races on the farm, and I never won. The truth was that Hipponax had me pegged. As soon as they gave me good food, I grew so fast that I was too heavy for even a four-horse team – in a race. As a military charioteer I would have been like a god, but chariots were hardly ever used in combat any more.

Scyles was my teacher. He was an old man from Mytilene, on Lesbos, and had been a charioteer all his life. I was unsure whether he was a family retainer or a slave – he seemed part of the horse farm, as much a part of it as the old stallions and the young mares.

I will disappoint you again by saying that my slavery was so soft that I enjoyed it, and my door was never locked. Not even the first night! I could have picked up my crutch and hobbled away at any time, and a week later, when I was almost fully healed and the growth began, I could have run.

But run where, my honey? Back to Plataea across the sea? I was in mighty Ephesus in Asia, the slave of a wealthy man. No one seemed to know anything about my home, or even about the war that I’d been in. I asked – I asked Scyles from the first day. He shrugged and said that no one in the real world cared a damn what the barbarians of Athens and Sparta did. He called them bumpkins – clods.

And to be honest, honey, I wasn’t really so anxious to get back to Green Plataea.

Sounds shocking, doesn’t it? I was a
slave
and I didn’t want to return to my homeland and be
free
. But freedom is a word we use too easily. I think now – older and wiser – I can say that I was free for the first time. I was free of my father, who was, in many ways, a cold, unfeeling bastard who seldom had any time for me. There, I’ve said it. I never mourned him – not really. I was proud of him. But I couldn’t muster much regret that he was dead. And Mater? I wouldn’t have crossed Ephesus, wouldn’t have walked
down
the steps to the temple, to see her. So – be shocked if you like. I can remember the first night sitting on the cool marble floor of the slave quarters – the
slave quarters had a marble floor
, – and thinking that I must be a poor son because I didn’t want to go home. I cried a little. I began to wonder if I was going to be a cold, unfeeling bastard like my father.

And I’ll say it again – in Ephesus, no one had ever heard of Plataea. Among a thousand shocks I received that autumn, this had to be the greatest – that to the Greeks of Asia, mighty Athens and military Sparta were clods of no importance. Interesting, too, that this was soon to change. And that I would play my part in making it change. I dare say every man in Ephesus knows where Plataea is now.

Nonsense, I can drink wine at this hour. Wine is always good for a man. Pour it full, there’s a dear.

Now – where was I? Ah, yes. Life as a slave. Not a bad life. They called me Doru – all of them, so that for a while I simply forgot my name. As soon as my thigh was healed, I had a training schedule and I was massaged and exercised by professionals. I learned to ride, and to feed horses and to keep them happy.

I never loved horses. I’ve known a few that were smarter than a rock, but not many. They’re stubborn and stupid and not unlike cats, except that cats don’t injure themselves the moment you turn your back. At any rate, after two weeks, Scyles said I would never be a charioteer, and he was right, but we kept trying.

I loved to drive. We started with a little pony cart, and I fell off a dozen times trying to make tight corners, but I was healed up by then. And we had exercises – wonderful exercises, like balancing on a board placed across the hollow of a shield, so that the face of the shield was in the dust and you could tilt and fall so easily – we’d fight that way, to practise balance. And the pony cart – I’d ride on the pole, or ride the pony, until I was comfortable anywhere in the cart or out of it. That was Scyles’ way. Then we tried a two-horse chariot with real horses, and I broke my arm the first day. That took months to heal, and I spent that time doing exercises and working like a normal slave in the kitchens. Scyles ran a tight farm, and he knew his business. If I wasn’t learning my new trade, I could at least run the treadmill that lifted water from the well.

It was while I was healing my arm that I discovered what stallions and mares were born knowing, if you take my meaning. One of the kitchen girls asked me how strong my spear was – all the girls laughed, even the oldsters. And that night she had me. There wasn’t a great deal of foreplay, and she laughed at how quick I was – this from a girl no more than my own age. Girls can be cruel.

But we played quite a bit, and I played with other girls, too. Slave girls like to be pregnant – it makes for less work. And it makes the owner a profit, unless he’s a fool. We had a rich owner and no one was threatened with being ‘sold away’, so the girls played. It was as much of an education as the athletic training, in its way.

The truth is, honey, it was a happy time.

There was hardship, and I was aware that I was not free. But I was young, and I had food, sex, challenge – all in all, life was simple and easy. We worked long hours. When we built a structure over the privy, we worked six straight days from dawn until dusk, but when we were finished we had
done
something. Other slaves ploughed, sowed and reaped, and I did some of all of that work once I was healed. We had most of the religious feasts, too. Really, in some ways I did less work than I did later as a free man.

On a farm where everyone is a slave, slavery does not seem so bad.

We did have some troubles. There was a boy I hated. He whined, he was weak, he went out of his way to avoid work and he refused to change. He also peddled tales to the overseers – who was having sex with whom, who had eaten too much, who drank the master’s wine. His name was Grigas, and he was Phrygian.

And there was a Thracian boy that I liked, although slaves find it hard to be friends – real friends – because so much of that has been taken from you. But Silkes was a handsome youth, and he was a great wrestler. He’d been taken in a war, and insisted that some day he would escape. He was the first man I heard discuss escape as if it could be done.

One afternoon, we were lying in the horse barn. We’d curried all the hunters and all the chargers and chariot horses and ponies. and now we were flopped on the spare feed straw that lay heaped where Grigas had failed to make neat haystacks.

‘So what if you escape?’ I asked. ‘Where would you go?’

‘Home,’ Silkes said.

‘How?’ I asked.

He shook his head. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘If I have to walk on water, I’ll walk home.’ He looked at me. ‘Perhaps I’ll hunt fish with my spear, and light a fire on floating weed.’

‘Now you’re just talking foolishness,’ I said. ‘If they catch you, you won’t be brought back here, learning to be a charioteer. You’ll end up breaking rocks, or cutting salt, or rowing. Something crappy.’

‘So?’ Silkes asked. ‘It’s all slavery. I’m not a slave. I’m a free man.’ He rolled towards me. ‘You’re just a Greek. Slavery is natural for you.’

I broke his nose before he got me in a hold and pounded my head against the barn’s wall. And yet, we were not really angry. But we both missed work because we had hurt each other, and because of it, and because Grigas reported us, we were brought before the chief overseer, Amyntas. Amyntas was a Macedonian, and he was a hard man, but fair, we all thought.

He looked us over. ‘Why did you fight?’ he asked.

I was ready for him. ‘Over a girl,’ I said. I looked sullenly at Silkes, who glared back.

‘Which girl?’ Amyntas asked.

‘Sandra, in the kitchen.’ She and I got along. I knew she wouldn’t talk.

He nodded. ‘I’ve heard that you two were discussing escape.’ He looked at me. I was a Greek. I didn’t flinch.

But Silkes blushed. Amyntas shrugged. ‘You are a stupid Thracian. Why did you fight him?’

Silkes looked at me. ‘He hit me,’ he said. ‘And the girl.’

He was the worst liar I’d ever met. No wonder they call Thracians ‘barbarians’.

Amyntas nodded again. He had a table in the farmhouse that he used as a desk, and it was piled with scrolls. He pointed at me. ‘Five blows with a riding whip,’ he said. He pointed at Silkes. ‘Ten blows – five for damage to your master’s property, and five for attempting to incite escape. You will be punished this evening. Go to work.’

The waiting was the worst – and the humiliation. Everyone came to watch, and Grigas stood at the front, openly gloating.

I took the five blows well enough. I probably cried out, but I didn’t scream or cry. Silkes took his ten in total silence.

We were whipped naked. After I took my five, Sandra handed me my chiton.

Grigas laughed. ‘I guess we know who has the power here,’ he said.

He was too smug. I half-turned, as if to talk to Sandra, and then I hit him with the full force of my fist.

I hurt him, too.

I received ten more blows from the whip.

As Grigas was still unconscious, I felt I had won.

The next morning, I stood before Amyntas, alone. He was behind the desk. I was in front of it. He had a bronze stylus in his hand and two sets of wax tablets open.

‘You have injured the slave Grigas,’ he said.

‘Good,’ I said.

He nodded. ‘I begin to feel that you are rebellious. Listen to me, young man. Do not choose this road. Master and Mistress have plans for you – plans that will help you all your life. If you choose to be rebellious, I will have to inform them. They will sell you. Is that what you want?’

I kept my eyes down. ‘No,’ I said.

‘You want to rebel. Please do not do it. You dislike Grigas. He is useful to me and I will protect him. You will treat him with respect and that is all. Am I clear?’ Amyntas got up.

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘Good. Go back to work,’ he said.

That was it. Grigas gloated, and I took it. Silkes was disgusted, and ceased to be my friend. A month later, he ran. I never heard what happened to him. Well, that’s not exactly true, but let’s save that bit, shall we?

Grigas was still there, though – gloating. He was beginning to have a belly – a fifteen-year-old slave with a belly. And he began to force the girls.

I was healed, and had gone back to riding and driving. I could pretend that I was no longer part of the daily rhythm of the kitchen. What was it to me? But it hurt me, each time I had to turn away from that little worm. Each time I saw him fondle a girl, each time he made a better slave knuckle under.

But I knew that I was not going to be a charioteer, and that put me in a bad position, as a slave. If I failed as a charioteer – and as I say, Scyles knew from the second week that I lacked the love of horses – then I could be resold for another task.

More slaves arrived – a new cook, a pair of horse-breakers and some field slaves. I saw that Grigas was going to own them – that they accepted his vicious authority. And I saw his effect on the place. When I’d arrived, people were, for the most part, happy. No one was happy any more.

I thought it over quite a bit. Scyles caught me at it. One day – late spring, almost a year since I’d become a slave – he watched me for a moment and then shook his head. ‘You think too much,’ he said.

I nodded, acknowledging that he was right.

‘What’s the problem? A girl? A boy?’ Scyles was all right. He either wasn’t a slave or he wasn’t part of the hierarchy of the place. Amyntas never tangled with him.

‘Grigas is evil,’ I said.

Scyles nodded, and looked away. ‘So?’

‘So,’ I said. ‘So nothing.’ I had learned not to discuss important things, you see.

Scyles was watching a filly. He didn’t take his eyes off her. ‘Good and evil are words philosophers and priests use,’ he said. ‘What do you want to do?’

I shook my head in mute negation. I wasn’t going to tell him. ‘Can I tell you something, lad?’ he said, and his voice was kind.

‘You won’t be a good charioteer.’

‘I know,’ I said, although hearing it from him had the force of an axe blow.

He nodded. ‘Don’t be stupid,’ he said.

‘But he makes things worse for everyone,’ I said. ‘Not just me. Everyone.’

Scyles scratched his chin and continued to watch the filly. ‘Interesting. I barely know him.’

‘He’s an informer. He forces the girls. He humiliates the men just for fun. The other night he made a farmhand – Lykon, the big one – made him give up the girl he liked. Then he took her. Just like that. That sort of stuff never used to happen.’

Scyles nodded. ‘It only takes one,’ he said. Then he looked me in the eye. ‘Planning to beat him senseless?’ he asked.

I sat silently and stared over his head.

Scyles nodded. ‘Because if you do that, he’ll just report you. He’s probably too stupid to understand that you were born free and might choose to accept punishment to hurt him. Born slaves are always mystified by the actions of free men.’

Somehow that speech moved me deeply, perhaps because Scyles identified me as a free man.

‘If I do nothing, then I truly am a slave,’ I said.

Scyles twitched his lips. ‘You are a slave,’ he said. ‘But—’ He looked around. ‘Listen, lad. Use your head. That’s all I can say.’

I nodded.

And I thought about it some more.

As it turned out, the action was absurdly easy. I over-planned, and then the gods handed me my enemy. A lesson there.

I decided to kill Grigas. Plain, simple murder. Not a fair fight. He had to go, and I decided that I didn’t need to be caught to prove to myself that I was a free man.

I decided to drown him in the baths. I made some preparations and I changed my routine so that we would be in the baths at the same time. I was bigger and stronger. I imagined that I would hold him under water. No screams.

Not a bad plan.

We bathed together twice. The second time, he spent the whole bath telling me things that turned my stomach. He had decided that I liked him.

He was a fool.

I stole a small wooden mallet from the wood-shop so that I could knock him unconscious and hid it in the towels and rags by the big wooden tub.