Killer of Men (21 page)

I didn’t have the daimon in me yet – I hadn’t been injured.

‘Our lord is safe,’ Darius said. ‘Let’s get out of here!’

Pharnakes shook his head. ‘We should kill the husband.’

‘This isn’t Persia, you fool!’ Cyrus said. ‘Greeks don’t care! And murder is not what our lord needs right now.’

‘Come and try,’ I said in Persian. Aye, I’m a fool.

Pharnakes shot me a look – such a look. Even in torchlight, I knew that look. But Cyrus laughed. ‘Quite the bark, for a pup,’ he said.

All that was in Persian.

And then they were gone.

Pharnakes was right, though. They should have killed the husband. Because that night, Ephesus changed sides, and the Ionian Revolt began, in a corridor in the women’s quarters. The Long War. And like the Trojan War, it started over a woman.

10

You bring more of these handsome boys into my hall every day, thugater. Is the tale so good? Or the opposite – so dull that you need supporters to get you through it? You are not the first young woman I have known, honey. Don’t let the power of your sex go to your head, or you’ll be one of those ambitious harridans who haunt our tragedies.

Don’t give your love to every comer, either, or you’ll be a priestess of Aphrodite and no wife. Hah! I’m a crude old man. Do as you will, thugater of my old age. It is the irony of my life that you grow up to look like Briseis. What fury, what fate, put those looks in your mother’s womb? Will we have games to settle your suitors? Perhaps I can meet them in single combat, one at a time, until one of them bests me. Even at my age, I think you would be a maiden for some time.

You blush. Ah – honey, when you blush, you most resemble my Briseis. But when she blushed, she was dangerous.

You might think otherwise, but my status in the house didn’t change at all, that day. In the morning, Master called me to him. He embraced me and thanked me. He never asked me what I was doing in the women’s quarters.

That was all, until the next blow fell.

That was all, but in every other way, our lives changed. Because Master barred the house to the satrap. And Artaphernes’ peace conference collapsed in an evening, because every house in the city was closed against him.

Your eyes shine, honey. Do you understand, indeed? Let me explain. Artaphernes was a guest, and a guest-friend. Persians and Greeks are not so different, and when a man, or a woman, becomes a frequent visitor, he and the household he visits swear oaths to the gods to support oikia.

Adultery is the ultimate betrayal of the guest oath. Pshaw – happens all the time. Don’t think I haven’t seen it. Men are men and women are women. But Artaphernes was a fool to risk a war on getting his dick wet – hah, I
am
a crude old man. Pour me some wine.

Hipponax did a rare thing. He told the city what had happened. That was the only punishment he inflicted on his wife – he branded her faithless in the assembly. From then on, Artaphernes was a breaker of the guest oath. No citizen would receive him.

He tried for two days to make amends, and he offered various reparations. Hipponax ignored his messenger and finally sent me with a herald’s wand to tell Artaphernes that the next messenger would be killed. Indeed, there were armed men in every square of the city. Archi was being fitted for his panoply – the full hoplite armour – even as I went on my errand.

Those were bad days in the household. Mistress didn’t leave her rooms. Penelope wouldn’t speak to me. I admit that I called her a whore. Perhaps not my best course of action. And Archi – I couldn’t fathom whether he knew he had wronged me or not.

At that age – the age you are now, honey – it is often hard enough to know which way the wind blows. Eh? And any betrayal is magnified by the heat of your blood, tenfold. Yes – you know whereof I speak.

So my head was spinning when I went to the Persian camp. I was worried that Darius would spit me on sight – I had dared to cross blades with them. I was worried that my harsh message would result in my own execution. I was angry that my brave deed – and it was brave, honey, facing four of the Great King’s men in a dark corridor – had received no reward but curt thanks, because I loved my master and wanted his approval with all the passion of the young who want to be loved. I was desolate that Penelope was Archi’s, even though I knew inside my head that she had never really been mine.

I ran up to the Persian camp, wearing only the green chlamys of a herald and a pair of ‘Boeotian’ boots. I’d never seen anything like them in Boeotia, but in Ionia they were called Boeotian. They were magnificent. They made me feel taller. I thought that, if I was going to die, I should look good.

The gate guards sent me straight to the satrap’s tent with an escort. The escort halted before the tent-palace and while their officer fetched the palace guards, one of the soldiers whispered, ‘Cyrus wants to see you.’

‘I am at his service as soon as I have seen the satrap,’ I said. ‘If I am alive,’ I added. A keen sense of drama is essential to the young.

Artaphernes was writing. I couldn’t read Persian then. I waited as his stylus scratched the wax. There was an army of scribes with him, some Persians, mostly Greek slaves.

Finally he looked up. He smiled grimly when he saw me.

‘I had hoped Hipponax would send you,’ he said.

I stood straighter.

‘You saved my life.’ Sweet words to hear from the satrap of Lydia.

‘I did, lord. It is true.’ I grinned in sudden relief.

He leaned forward. ‘Name your reward.’

‘Free me,’ I said. ‘Free me, and I will hold the deed well done.’

Abruptly he sat back and shook his head. ‘I have tried to buy you for three days, and now Hipponax sends you to my camp. What am I to think? That you are a guest? A gift?’

The satrap had tried to buy me? That explained much that had passed in the last three days. But I was an honest young man, mostly. ‘He tests you, lord.’

Artaphernes nodded. ‘Yes. I must be getting to know the Greeks. I, too, see it as a test. I must send you back, or break my master’s law and help cause the war I came to prevent. Name something else.’

I shrugged. The only thing I wanted was my freedom. I had rich clothes and money. But some god whispered to me. Perhaps, like Heracles my ancestor, Athena came and whispered in my ear. ‘You owe me a life, then, lord,’ I said.

Artaphernes sat on his stool, playing with his personal signet ring. He looked me over carefully, as if he was indeed going to purchase me. ‘If you are ever free, you will be quite the young man,’ he said. He took his ring from his finger. ‘Here. A life for a life. If you are ever free, come and return this to me, and I will make you great, or at least start you on that road.’

See it? I still wear it. It is a beautiful ring, the very best of its kind, carved by the old people from carnelian and set in that red, red gold from the highlands. See the image of Heracles? The oldest I have ever seen.

I fell to my knees and accepted his ring. ‘I have a message,’ I said.

‘Speak, herald.’ This was official business, and now I was a herald before a king.

‘The assembly of Ephesus decrees that your next messenger will be executed in the agora.’ I held my bronze wand over my head in the official pose of a herald.

I waited.

A look of pain passed over his features. He looked older. He looked like a man who had taken a wound.

‘Very well,’ he said. ‘Go with the gods, Doru.’

‘Thank you, lord,’ I said, and walked out of his tent. Slaves do not offer blessings to masters.

The four Persians were waiting for me – Cyrus, Darius, Pharnakes and silent, dour Arynam, who was always, I thought, a little drunk.

I was hesitant about approaching them, but Pharnakes came and embraced me – me, a foreign slave. And even Arynam, who had never been my friend like Darius or Cyrus, came and clasped hands as if I was a peer.

‘Cyrus was right about you,’ he said. ‘You saved our lord’s life. You are a
man
.’

Well – that was good to hear.

They all embraced me, and pressed me with gifts.

‘Come with us,’ Cyrus said. ‘You’ll be free as soon as we cross the river. You can ride – I’ll see to it that the Lydians take you as a trooper.’

I was tempted. Honey, I’d like to say that I was a Greek, and they were Medes, and I wasn’t going anywhere with their army – but when you are a slave, freedom is the prize for which you will trade anything. To be free, and a soldier?

But I knew that Artaphernes wouldn’t allow it. He wanted any scrap of credit with Hipponax, and sending me back offered him the hope of reconciliation, or so he thought.

And so I found myself running back down the road to Ephesus. I had no message except my own return, which marked the subtlety of the satrap very well, I thought. I did have a leather bag full of gifts from the Persians.

I came home to a silent house. I stopped in the courtyard, amazed by the silence, and my first thought was that Hipponax had murdered his family. Men do that, when they catch their wives in adultery.

But they had merely gone – all of them, slaves and free – to the Temple of Artemis. The priestess had asked that all the people gather. I ran up the steps with a dozen other latecomers to find the whole of the people crammed like ants inside the temple precinct. Teams of priests and priestesses were going through the crowd, with purifying smoke and water, cleansing us.

No one said, right out, that Euthalia had made us all unclean by having a Persian between her legs. But she was there, standing with Hipponax in a dark mantle, and she was surrounded by the smoke of a dozen braziers. When the ceremony was over, she smiled.

I still wonder at that smile. What did she mean by it? Had she meant all along to be caught?

At any rate, I saw Heraclitus and he motioned to me. It was odd to see him in public, without my young master nearby, but I approached, still in my herald’s cloak.

‘The satrap received you?’ he asked.

‘Yes, teacher,’ I said.

He nodded. ‘You have seen war, I think?’

I inclined my head. ‘I have served as a hoplite,’ I said.

Heraclitus looked around. ‘Your master is about to go to a different school from mine, lad. A harsher school, where the punishment for failure is death. Will you take an oath to protect him?’

Heraclitus had no idea what my young master had done to me – no idea, I suspect, what had transpired on that night, except that he would have known that Mistress had been with the Persian. Or perhaps he knew everything. Young men told him all their secrets. In any case, he didn’t order me to swear.

‘I want to be
free
!’ I said. I was suddenly bitter. I had done great things for these people, and I was still a slave. Perhaps I’m a slow learner, but for the first time I began to consider that the greater my services were, the more valuable I made myself.

Heraclitus looked into the purification smoke. ‘Do you believe that I can read the logos?’ he asked me.

I nodded. I would have nodded if he had asked me if I thought he was Zeus come to earth.

He smiled. ‘Doru, if you swear this oath and abide by it, you will be free.’

I frowned. ‘Death is a form of freedom,’ I said.

‘Yes . . .’ he said. ‘Listen, lad. War is not the only thing that faces you and Archi. This will be a testing time. Stay and help him pass the test. It will help you, too. Will you swear?’

I sighed. I had been toying with running – to the docks. It must have shown. I thought that perhaps I could work an oar to Athens, or find Miltiades in Thrace. But it was a dream, and besides – besides, just at that moment, I caught sight of Briseis. An eddy of smoke revealed her, talking to her betrothed, my enemy Diomedes.

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I will swear.’

‘Good man.’

We swore together. He was a priest of Artemis, holding one of the hereditary roles. He led me into the inner sanctum and showed me the statues and gave me a branch from the sacred tree – just a pair of leaves, but a sign to show my master where I had been.

Then I went home.

Home was not normal. Days had passed and all our rhythms had changed. Mistress never left her room. Master drank. Archi took no exercise and that night he pulled me close and burst into tears.

‘Why has Mater done this to us?’ he asked me through his tears. ‘No one will speak to me!’

It was true. I had seen it in action. Archi was effectively in exile in his own city. None of his classmates would meet his eye, and no one invited him to a symposium or a ramble or even a troll through the stews.

‘It will pass,’ I said. I thought of Heraclitus. ‘Listen, master. Our teacher made me swear an oath to support you. These will be tough times. I’m here.’

Archi was holding me tight, and suddenly he sobbed. ‘I betrayed you as surely as Mater betrayed Pater!’ he said. ‘I knew she was yours. I wanted her. Oh, Doru, forgive me!’

I sat on his couch and held him. I did
not
want to forgive him. In fact, now that he’d confessed that he knew what he was doing, I wanted to knock his head off. But Penelope’s face had not been the face of a slave being taken against her will. I had some experience with women by then. Women can pretend many things, but few of them pretend when they think no one can see them. All this went through my mind.

‘Penelope is a slave, but she is her own woman. She wanted you, not me. Why not?’ I said bitterly. ‘I am just a slave.’

Pitying ourselves, we wept. Foolish boys! We were about to learn what tears are really for. But when our eyes were dry, we were better friends. And the next day, Archi called Penelope to him while I was in his room. He did it without warning. And when she came, he shrugged and left the room.

She looked like a trapped animal – like a doe run down by dogs on the flanks of Cithaeron. Her eyes followed Archi as he walked out of the door, and that gave her away. She really liked him. Perhaps she loved him, or just saw him as a chance for liberty.

‘I’m sorry I almost got you killed,’ I said. I was stiff and formal. ‘I understand that you prefer my master. I won’t bother you again.’

She turned her head away. Then she looked back. ‘You aren’t even really a slave,’ she said. ‘You’re like a man who plays at being a slave. You will die for it, and I will weep for you, but I won’t be your lover. Archi is kind, and I think he’ll free me when I’m pregnant.’

None of that made much sense to me – although it does now. I said she was smart. She saw things I didn’t see, for all my reading and training. So I shrugged, and she bowed her head and left the room without speaking. We should have embraced, but we were too young to forgive and forget.

I was still standing there when I heard a scream from the courtyard. I ran. I thought we were being attacked. Remember that apart from my life as a house slave and companion, I was already a man of violence, and that Diomedes seemed to have a bottomless purse when it came to sending men after me.