Killer of Men (15 page)

That evening, Master came. He arrived in a four-horse chariot. I was able to drive four horses by this time, and I was impressed at his skill, considering that he was an aristocrat.

He called for Scyles and the two of them had a long talk. They kept looking at me. It made me sad – I really was a slave – to think that I was going to be sold away. I liked the farm, apart from Grigas. And I could tolerate him, now that I held his life in my hand.

Master chatted for some time with Scyles, and then the two came to where I was cleaning tack. Master had some beautiful halters – worked in bronze and silver, fine Lydian work.

‘Doru,’ he called, and I ran to them.

He nodded to me. ‘Scyles says that you will never make a charioteer, ’ he said. ‘He says that you can drive and handle horses. That you are safe and unexceptional. And that you don’t love horses.’

I stared at the ground. It was all true.

Master raised my chin. ‘Mistress and I have another plan for you. My son needs a companion. He is a little younger than you, I think. But you will make a good right arm. So – would you like to come back to the city with me? And try working for my son?’

I had learned a great deal about being a slave on the farm. So instead of sullen silence, I pretended to be delighted. ‘Yes, master,’ I said, and clapped my hands.

He looked at me a long time, and I wondered if he was fooled. ‘Let me see your thigh,’ he said. I raised my chiton, and he looked at the wound. It looked then much as it does now – a red fish hook.

After a few moments, he frowned. ‘Is there pain?’ he asked.

‘Just before the weather changes,’ I said. ‘Otherwise, none.’

He nodded. ‘Tomorrow we will go to the city. Say your goodbyes and finish your tasks.’

‘Yes, master,’ I said. I thought I would never settle Grigas, and the thought made me feel like a failure, but the gods had other ideas.

Sometimes chance – Tyche – is better than any plan of men. I was ordered by the head cook to run to the village market for some rue. I had good legs by then – I think I was a foot taller than I had been at the battles – and I could run. So I set off into the late afternoon with a few obols clutched in my fist.

I got the rue from a peasant woman in a stall covered in hide. Then I turned and ran back to the farm, my legs eating the stades.

I doubt that I was even winded as I passed the barn. And then I heard the sound of a woman crying.

I ran into the barn. I was moving fast. Tyche sat at my shoulder, and there were furies at my back.

Grigas was up in the loft with a girl. He was making the smallest kitchen slut blow his flute. He had her hair—Anyway, that’s not a thing to tell you, honey. I ran straight to the ladder and climbed, and I suspect he never heard me. She was doing what she had been made to do, and was crying.

I pushed her aside, broke his neck and threw him from the loft. His head made the sound a wooden mallet makes as it hits the cow’s head when the butcher is slaughtering – he hit the stone floor of the barn, but he was dead before he left my hands.

I was eating dinner when they found his body. I laughed. ‘Good riddance, ’ I said, and Amyntas looked at me. I met his eye.

The next day, I drove Master’s chariot from the farm up the mountain to Ephesus, proud as a king. I had learned three lessons from the murder – lessons I’ve kept with me all my life. First, that older people are wise, and you should listen to them. Second, that dead men tell no tales. And third, that killing is easy.

8

Hipponax’s son was Archilogos. I see you smile, honey. It’s true. He was my master and I was his slave. The gods move in mysterious ways.

Archilogos was a boy of twelve years when I was fourteen. He was handsome, in the Ionian way, with dark curly hair and a slim build. He could vault anything, and he had had lessons in many things – sword-fighting, chariot-driving and writing among them.

He was the most Medified Greek I had ever met. He worshipped the Persians. He admired their art, their clothes, their horses and their weapons. He practised archery all the time, and he had a religious regard for the truth, because his father’s friend, the satrap, had told him that the only two requirements for being a Persian were that a boy should shoot straight and tell the truth.

I should speak of the satrap. In the sixty-seventh Olympiad, when I was young, Persia had conquered all of Lydia, although they’d effectively had the place many years before – almost fifty. So Ephesus, like Sardis, was part of their empire. They ruled their Greeks with a light hand, despite all the cant you hear these days about ‘slavery’ and ‘oppression’.

Their satrap was Artaphernes. He is so much a part of this story that he will vie with Archilogos for the number of times I mention him. He was a handsome man, tall and black-haired, with a perfectly trimmed beard and bronze skin. His carriage was wonderful – he was the most dignified man I’ve ever known, and even men who hated him would listen respectfully when he spoke. He had the ear of the King of Kings. Great Darius. He never lied, as far as I know. He loved Greeks, and we loved him.

He was a fearsome enemy, too. Oh, honey, I know.

He was a good friend to Hipponax. Whenever he came to Ephesus – and that was at least once a year – he would stay with us. And he was a ‘real Persian’, not a mixed-blood. A noble of the highest sort.

My new master wanted to grow up to be that man.

Artaphernes was in the house when I was brought from the farm. I had driven the chariot and I was flushed with Master’s praise – he said Scyles was surely wrong, as I’d scarcely bumped him once in driving up the mountain. Now, this was certainly a bit of foolishness, but flattery was like water to a drowning man when I was a slave. When did you last praise a slave, honey?

Exactly.

The Persian was in the courtyard when I came in. I was dressed in a short wool kilt – like a charioteer. He was wearing trousers and a coat made of embroidered wool and he was reading from a scroll. Master was behind me, giving instructions to another slave, and I was alone, so I bowed and remained silent. I had never seen a Persian before.

The Persian returned my bow. And my silence. After a pause where our eyes met, he went back to reading his scroll.

Master came, and the two embraced.

‘Sorry to be absent for your arrival, my lord.’ Hipponax grinned. ‘You are reading my latest!’

‘Why do you do yourself so little justice?’ the Persian asked. He had very little accent – just enough to add a tinge of the exotic to his voice. ‘You are the greatest living poet, in Greek or Persian. Why do you seek praise in this manner?’

Hipponax shrugged. ‘I am never sure,’ he said.

The Persian shook his head. ‘It is this unsureness that makes you Greeks so different. And perhaps makes your poetry so strong.’ He nodded at me. ‘This young gentleman has perfect manners.’

Hipponax flashed me a smile. ‘He is to be my son’s companion. Your praise pleases me. He is a slave.’

The Persian looked at me. ‘We are all slaves, under the king. But this one has dignity. He will be good for your son.’ He shrugged. ‘I had no idea he was a slave.’

As far as I was concerned, Artaphernes could do no wrong.

Then Master took me into the house and brought me to his son. Archilogos was in the back garden, shooting arrows at a target. He had a Persian bow, and the lawn was decorated with arrows.

‘You’ll have to do better than that if you want to be a Persian,’ his father said. I thought that he was not particularly happy to find his son shooting.

Archilogos threw the bow on the ground in anger. Then he looked at me. ‘What’s he for?’ the boy asked. He was a boy to me. I was a grown man, as far as I was concerned.

‘Your mother and I have chosen him to be your companion.’ Master nodded. ‘I give him to you. We call him Doru, but you may ask him his name. He is Greek. He can read and write.’

Archilogos looked at me for a long time. Finally he shrugged. ‘I can read and write,’ he said. ‘Can you shoot a bow?’

‘Yes,’ I said. Ignoring both of them, I picked up his bow. It was heavier than any I’d shot, but I had all kinds of new muscles. I raised the bow, drew and shot, all in one motion as Calchas had taught me, and my arrow flew true and struck the target – not in the centre, but squarely enough.

Archilogos went and hugged his father.

Who winked at me.

I thought that they were the happiest family I had ever seen. Their happiness helped to keep me a slave when I could have run. They seemed so happy that most of their slaves were happy too. It was a good house, until the disaster came and the fates ordained that they be brought low. I loved them.

That first night, we watched the Persian shoot. He had his own bow, lacquered red and stringed in something beautiful, and he shot arrow after arrow into the target without apparent effort. I had never seen an archer so deadly.

Mistress lay on a kline at the edge of the garden, watching. She shared the kline with Master, and we heard their conversation and their commentary as we shot. The Persian watched them from time to time, and I could see that, whatever his friendship for Hipponax, he found her very much to his taste.

I shot adequately. Artaphernes coached my new master and he shot well enough, and then the Persian ordered one of his troopers, one of the Persian cavalrymen in his escort, to come up and shoot. The man had been down in the lower city, probably up to no good, but he shot with gusto and he shot well, although not quite as well as his lord. And then the soldier gave us pointers. He spoke to me at length about the weight of the bow. I understood from this that my new master needed a lighter bow.

Here’s the difference between a slave and a companion. Slaves avoid work. To be a successful companion, you have to work hard. You have to anticipate your master’s needs and fulfil them. No one had to tell me this. I saw it in the way they all behaved.

The truth is that I liked him the moment I met him. And so I wanted to please him. That night, while the Persian lord flirted with Mistress, I went to Master and asked him for the money to buy the boy a lighter bow. He nodded.

‘Come with me,’ he said, and took me to Darkar, the steward, another Lydian.

‘Darkar is the man who controls this house,’ Master said. ‘I’m lucky he allows me to live here. Darkar, this young man is to be my son’s companion.’

I bowed to the steward. He nodded. He was a slave.

‘He will need money,’ Master said.

Darkar nodded, went into a storeroom and emerged with a purse. He handed it to me. ‘Fifty gold darics and some change,’ he said. ‘You will only be told once. If you steal, you’ll be sold. If you don’t steal, you’ll receive a bonus to put away towards your freedom. Understand?’

I nodded. Fifty darics was the price of a hundred slaves. Or a ship. And he said
eleutheria
, freedom, as if it was a certain thing. ‘Master, why do I need so much money?’ I asked the steward.

‘Never call me master, boy. This is your companion’s money. You but carry it for him, and watch it, and count it – treat it carefully, for they never will. Give me a good accounting, and I’ll speak well of you. My word caries weight, when it comes time for freedom.’

Freedom!

Of course, in my head, I wasn’t really a slave, so I looked at the purse and considered running for a ship.

Ionians. Too much money.

At any rate, the moment I had the purse in my hand, I ran off to the market and bought a good, lightweight bow. I paid well, almost half a daric, and I pocketed the change. What do you think? I knew that they couldn’t catch me. I put the change in a jar in the garden. And I had the bow on Archilogos’s bed when he awoke in the morning, and forty-nine golden darics left to show on my accounts.

The whole time that Artaphernes was with us, we shot until my fingers bled. That’s an expression you hear, but in our case, it was true. First you shoot until your fingertips swell, and after a while they hurt as if stung by ants and they turn bright red. But a pair of boys, each eager for praise and fearing the catcalls of the other, will go right on, until the fingers turn a darker colour, and then the abrasion of the bowstring will break the swollen flesh, and they bleed. And later, if you go back to shooting before the calluses grow, the scabs break and they bleed again. The bowstring of our bow had a brown spot at the draw point from our blood.

Archilogos never tired and never gave up. His whipcord body was proof against fatigue, and he would run and shoot, do lessons and shoot, go to the theatre and shoot. Anything to impress his hero. He’d learned a few lines of Persian poetry and he’d declaim them, hoping that the Persian would overhear.

The Persian had troubles enough without the adoration of the boy. First, it was obvious to me, after the sexual politics of the farm, that the Persian was deeply in love with Mistress, and that she toyed with him. But even that was of little moment next to the greater matters that surrounded us.

It was the years of the seventieth Olympiad. In Greece, the last of the great tyrants had gone and peace began to emerge from her nest. But in Ionia, the tyrants still held sway. Not law-givers, men who make good laws and then relinquish control. I speak here of strong warlords and aristocrats who aped Persian manners and ruled Ionia for their own benefit, not that of their cities.

Hippias, the tyrant of Athens, had been overthrown in my childhood. He had retreated to Sigeum in Asia, a city that his family, the Pisistratidae, ruled in much the same way as Miltiades ruled the Chersonese. Hippias was in Ephesus with his own train of soldiers and courtiers, making noise in the lower city and spending money.

My second night in the household, I heard the satrap at dinner. He was complaining to Hipponax about the Greek lords on their islands, and how their bad rulership reflected poorly on the Great King and would, if left unchecked, lead to revolt.

‘And men blame me!’ he complained. ‘I don’t have enough soldiers to punish Mytilene! Or Miletus! And what good would it do me to take them – I would only punish the very men of the city who are treated so ruthlessly by the tyrants I wish to be rid of!’ He looked at his host. ‘Why are you Greeks so rapacious?’

Hipponax laughed. ‘I suspect that the tyrants merely do as they think a Persian would do, lord.’

The satrap frowned. ‘I hope that this is humour, my friend. No Persian lord would behave this way. This is weakness. These are rulers who do not trust themselves, nor do they tell the truth to their people or their king.’

Hipponax shrugged and looked at his wife. ‘Is it really so bad?’ he asked.

The satrap raised a cup of wine. ‘It is. And Hippias – this former tyrant – has been at me again and again to take Athens back for him. What does the Great King want with these yokels?’ His eyes crossed mine. I lowered my eyes as slaves do, but I couldn’t help bridling at the term ‘yokel’ from a barbarian, even if he was handsome as a god.

Hipponax nodded at me. ‘That young man has been a warrior in the west, haven’t you, lad? That’s a spear scar on your thigh. Go ahead – you may speak.’

I was behind Archilogos’s couch, and I was caught with a pitcher of water in my hands – hardly the most warlike pose. ‘Yes, master,’ I said.

Artaphernes smiled at me. ‘You fought for Athens?’ he asked.

‘I am a Plataean,’ I answered. ‘We are allies of Athens.’

Hipponax laughed. He meant no harm, I think, but his laugh hurt me. ‘See how the westerners are? That’s a town smaller than our temple-complex claiming to be the “ally” of Athens, a town so small we could fit five of them inside Ephesus.’

Artaphernes dismissed me with a flick of his fingers. ‘I have never heard of your Plataea,’ he said. I don’t think he meant it unkindly, but the gods were listening. I wish I could say I replied with something witty, or strong. Ha! Instead, I stood like a statue as he went on. ‘However provincial Athens is, men here in the islands and on the coast look at the tyrants and talk of rebellion. They have never seen the wrath of the Great King, or how he disciplines rebellion. They are like children.’ He drank. ‘You know Aristagoras as well as I do. He has taken an embassy to Sparta and Athens asking for fleets and soldiers to raise rebellion against us. And farther from home, men like Miltiades of Athens foment war.’

I leaned forward at the mention of my hero. I hadn’t heard his name in a year. It was as if I had been asleep.

‘That warlord! What do we care for him? He’s just a petty brigand.’ Mistress was amused. ‘A handsome brigand, I’ll allow. A far better man than Aristagoras the windbag.’

‘Miltiades has most of the Chersonese in his hand,’ the Persian said.

‘The Lydian Chersonese?’ Mistress asked, alarmed.

Master laughed at her – not mocking, but honest laughter. ‘Nothing to be worried about, my sweet. Miltiades has his lair in the Chersonese of the Bosporus – over by Byzantium, north of Troy.’

‘He has more men and more ships each year,’ the satrap continued, nodding. ‘And he preys on us. Soon, I will need to mount an expedition to evict him from the Chersonese, I have so many complaints. But when I go against him, he will counter by pushing Samos or some other island into revolt. He spends silver like water. And these fool tyrants play into his hands!’ He drank again. ‘And yet – bah – why do I bore you with these matters of governance?’

All of that sounded like my Miltiades. A thumb in every wine bowl. And lots of silver.

Mistress smiled. ‘Because we are your friends. And because friends ease each other’s burdens. Surely, lord, you can just buy Miltiades? He worships money, or so I understand.’