The Philosopher Kings (17 page)

Faced with Aristomache's pious mouthings here, I felt shaken for the first time. I knew time couldn't be changed. But if it could … if it could and if Christianity could have taken root here, at the very beginning, then the world I cared about most deeply might never exist. Christianity was a religion with a good story and an appealing simplicity—forgive and be forgiven, be washed in the blood of the sacrifice and be saved. If it could catch on in the Aegean before the Trojan War then everything would be different. I knew time was fixed and unchangeable. I had lived outside it. But even so, I felt a chill.

Our ship was warping in toward the wharf. “Do you want to trade?” the old man asked me.

“Certainly we do, though that will be for our captain to negotiate,” I said, smoothly, still thinking about Christianity and Kebes.

“Tonight we will feast the
Excellence
!” the old man announced. The crowd cheered.

“Where are your other colonies?” I asked Terentius, as casually as I could. “Where's your main city?”

“What are your intentions toward us?” Aristomache asked.

“Exploration, a little trade,” I said, spreading my hands peacefully. “Unless you raided us last autumn. Somebody raided us and killed Simmea.”

Aristomache looked shocked and put her hand on my arm. “Oh, that's terrible. I'm so sorry. I remember you two were inseparable. I remember when she gave birth, you didn't want to stop holding on to her hands. She told me how you were both practicing agape. What an awful thing to happen! It must have been pirates. There's so much turmoil on the mainland, and some of them have ships. But we'd never do such a thing. It's true we have been avoiding Kallisti to keep away from Athene, and philosophical trouble. But we'd never do anything like that.”

Terentius was nodding, looking appalled. They both seemed utterly sincere. I exchanged a quick glance with Dion. I didn't like to think that Kebes was doing better at civilization than we were.

 

14

ARETE

I seemed to spend half my time at the top of the mast looking far out at the sea and thinking, and the other half at the rail looking at close-up islands. Usually my time at the masthead was peaceful. I suppose I should have been contemplating philosophy, but my mind had a tendency to wander.

The day we left Ikaria I wanted to think about our powers, and what they meant, and what father had said about the gods, but there was no time for contemplation. We had our first squall on my watch. I stayed at the masthead looking for rocks, and calling them out when I did see them. The others were worn out adjusting sails and changing tack—all our practice had been in smooth weather. When your sails are wet and the wind backs as you're trying to adjust them, canvas feels alive, as if it's trying to get away from you. Erinna nearly fell into the sea helping Nemea wrestle with a sail. She saved herself by swinging on a rope. My heart nearly stopped when I saw it. There was no time to do anything, but my impulse in the moment before she caught the rope was to fly down from the mast and snatch her up. I had risen to my feet and was about to leap. On sober reflection I had no idea whether I could fly, let alone carry another person as I did it. I resolved to ask Father. But it felt like the right thing to do, the thing my instincts prompted, and in another instant I would have tried it.

In the excitement I nearly missed seeing a fishing boat scudding before the wind. Fortunately, it saw us and veered off. I kept watching for rocks and calling them out. By the time the clouds lifted our watch was almost over, and Samos was close at hand.

When Thano, my replacement lookout, came up I went down to the deck and hugged Erinna, intensely aware of the feeling of her body and fighting down the sensations in my own. “I'm so glad you're safe!” I said.

“My own clumsiness that I slipped in the first place,” she said, but she did hug me back for a moment before letting go. “It shows how important all those drills are. My body knew what to do when there was no time to think.”

I felt nothing but relief that I hadn't yielded to my own instincts. Whether I could have flown and caught her or not, I'd have revealed what I was to everyone. That wouldn't have mattered if I could have saved her life, but what would she have thought? “I'd never been aloft in a storm before,” I said.

“That was no more than a little squall. If there's any sign of a real storm we'll find somewhere sheltered to anchor, I should think. Real storms can be bad for sailing ships. Like the one at the beginning of the
Aeneid
.”

“Or when they open the bag of winds in the
Odyssey
,” I said.

She grinned. “Isn't it fun to think we're sailing their very seas, before they sailed them?”

“What would have happened if you'd gone overboard?”

“I can swim. The water was rough, but I'd probably have been fine. Maecenas would have put the ship to, which would have wasted time, but we're not in a life or death race.”

I was even more glad I hadn't flown down off the mast and perhaps killed myself when she wasn't in real danger.

“But my head might have hit the deck, or a rock,” she went on. “You can't help thinking about that kind of thing. I'm glad the rope was there and I caught it.”

“Oh yes,” I said, wholeheartedly. Just then I caught sight of something over her shoulder, on the shore. “What's that?”

It was a city, a proper city. We sailed closer and anchored near it, and a small shore group was sent in. It was a real city, which seemed homelike after the places we had seen. It had columns and broad streets and it was clean. There was even a colosseum, which we didn't have at home, though of course I recognized it from paintings. There was an unpainted marble statue on the wharf, a goddess with a baby on her knee. The style was familiar, although of course I hadn't seen that particular statue before. It made me feel welcome after the strange decorated heads on Paros and Mykonos. There hadn't been any statues that I'd seen on Delos, only immense columns and future ghosts.

“Auge,” Maia said, coming up to us at the rail. I turned to her questioningly.

“Auge must have carved that,” she said. “I recognize her style.”

“I suppose that means that this is definitely the Goodness Group.” We were quite close to the statue, which was bigger than life-size so I could see it well. The goddess was looking down at the baby, who was looking out at us, with his hand stretched toward us.

Maia nodded. Erinna was also looking at the statue. “Who is she?” she asked.

“Auge was one of the Children,” Maia said. “She left with Kebes.”

“I meant, which goddess,” Erinna said.

“Hera—” Maia said, with much less certainty. “No, Demeter, or perhaps—”

I looked questioningly at Maia. Her voice sounded strange.

“Aphrodite with baby Eros?” Erinna suggested. “But he doesn't have any wings.”

“Surely Kebes wouldn't…? Where's Ficino?” Maia turned to me. “Can you see if you can find him?”

Erinna and I went to look for him. He was asleep in a hammock, looking so old and tired that I hesitated to wake him. Erinna clapped her hands softly, and he woke at once, instantly alert. “What is it?” he asked.

“We're at a city that might be the Goodness Group city, and Maia wanted you to look at a mysterious statue,” Erinna said.

“That's worth waking up for,” he said. I remembered him saying he didn't sleep much these days, and was sorry to have disturbed him. He swung out of the hammock and pulled his kiton on. I looked away from his old-man's wrinkled skin, like a plucked chicken. I drew Erinna away, hardly noticing until afterward that I had touched her arm. Ficino had earned his dignity.

He came over to us as soon as he came out on the deck. Neleus had joined Maia by the rail and we all crowded together. “Holy Mother!” Ficino said.

“Literally and specifically, I think,” Maia said. She sounded furious about it.

“This can't have anything to do with Ikaros,” Ficino said. Erinna raised her eyebrows at me. I shook my head. I had no idea why he would say that.

“It could just be a goddess we don't know,” Neleus said.

“That's exactly what it is,” Erinna said. “I don't know her. It seems as if you two do?”

“It's the pose,” Ficino said. “It seems Christian.”

“Like Botticelli,” I said, seeing it at once now that he had pointed it out. The statue resembled Botticelli's Madonnas, the ones in the book we had at home, the book Maia had brought with her. The child on her lap, her head bent over him.

Ficino looked at me sharply. “Not like any of the Botticellis we have in Florentia,” he said.

Maia blushed. “Remember, I had a book,” she said. “Ikaros brought it from one of his art expeditions with Athene. It has the Madonnas.”

“Did you show it to Auge?” Ficino asked.

“Yes,” Maia admitted. “When she was just starting to sculpt seriously. That's probably all this is. Influence. It probably is Hera.” She sounded as if she were trying to convince herself.

“Where is that book now?” Ficino asked.

“In Thessaly,” I said. “My mother loved it.”

“Simmea always loved Botticelli,” Ficino said, sounding sad. “In the dining hall at Florentia she'd always sit so that she could stare at one or another of his paintings.”

On the quay Father and the others were talking intently with a group of locals. They were wearing kitons that were each dyed in one solid color, mostly blues and pinks.

“So what goddess do you think it might be?” Erinna asked, patiently.

“Maria,” Ficino said. “The mother of God in Christianity.”

“That thing the Amazons are into?” Erinna asked. “How would the Goodness Group know about it?”

“Where did you get Kebes?” Maia asked Ficino abruptly.

“The slave market at Smyrna,” he said. “The same place I found Simmea. They were chained together.” I shuddered. I knew that all the Children had been enslaved, but knowing it was different from hearing a detail like that dropped casually. That was my mother he was talking about. Thank Athene he had been there to rescue her!

“What year was it?”

“Oh Maia, honestly! You can't expect me to remember that! So long ago, and so many children.”

“But was it after Christianity?” she asked.

“Oh yes. They both had saints' names, I remember.” He stared at the statue. “But they were only ten.”

“Simmea used to say that we should have started with the abandoned babies of antiquity,” Maia said. I had heard her say so myself.

“Ten-year-olds are not wax tablets that can be wiped clean and written afresh,” Ficino agreed.

“I can't understand how Plato could have thought they were,” Neleus said.

Just then the shore party sent a signal that it was safe for us to come in. “Are you sure?” Maia muttered, but Caerellia began to give orders for the Hesperides watch to take the ship in to the wharf, where there were poles for us to tie up to as we did at home. Proper docking facilities, no doubt intended for the
Goodness
.

“There were some masters among the Goodness Group,” Ficino said. “It isn't necessarily a case of what ten-year-olds remembered.” There was a cheer from the shore.

“Somebody, some Jesuit or Dominican I think, said that if you gave him a boy until he was seven he'd be theirs for life,” Maia said.

Ficino barked a laugh.

“So Christianity was a big thing?” Erinna asked. “In the bit of history we don't hear about?”

“It was the dominant religion of Europe for fifteen hundred years,” Maia said. “We just try not to mention it much.”

“Even Rome became Christian,” Ficino said.

Erinna and I looked at each other, astonished. “Rome!” It seemed entirely implausible.

“They even counted their years from the birth of Christ,” Neleus said. He was scanning the crowd on shore intently as we came in closer. “Father mentioned that once.”

“And where did you get Pytheas?” Maia asked.

Ficino laughed. “Pytheas is something else. He came from the slave market in Euboia. One of the earliest expeditions. Athene named him herself, the only one she ever would.”

“But what year?” Maia asked.

“Four or five hundred years after the founding of Rome?” Ficino said, uncertain.

“So how would he know that?”

“Somebody must have told him,” Neleus said. “Maybe one of you let it slip. Or one of the other Masters.”

We were tying up. I realized I'd be able to step ashore, no need for swimming this time. Father was still talking to the locals, but Klymene and Phaenarete strode over toward the ship.

“Interesting that Athene named him,” Maia said. “Did she know what she was doing, and did she have the right to do it?”

“That neatly sums up the Last Debate,” Neleus said.

“It seems so strange to think that you've actually met a goddess,” Erinna said. Neleus's eyes met mine. It didn't seem strange to us at all.

“She rescued me from a life where I was stifled, and gave me a life I wanted to lead,” Maia said. “And we did all have the very best intentions for building the Good Life.”

Klymene swung herself onto the
Excellence
. Caerellia and Maecenas were there to greet her. “This is Marissa, a colony founded by the Goodness Group but mostly consisting of refugees from the wars of the mainland,” she said concisely, to them but loudly enough that the rest of us pressing around could hear. “They are friendly and want to talk about trade. They have other cities, we don't yet know where.”

“Marissa,” muttered Ficino. Maia nodded, as if it meant something. Too close to Maria? She seemed a benevolent goddess from what I knew of her, which was entirely pictorial. Of course I had not read the words of the Botticelli book, which were in the Latin alphabet but some language I did not know. I hadn't heard much about the religion she was part of.
Even Rome,
I thought, still amazed.