Ptolemy looked at both of them for some beats of Satyrus’s heart. ‘Draw!’ bellowed the lord of Aegypt, and the crowd roared again.
Ptolemy came and clasped hands with the contestants before they went off to the baths. He and Theron exchanged a smile – Theron occasionally trained him. Then Ptolemy turned to Satyrus. ‘You are a very promising young man,’ he said.
That set tongues wagging throughout the court. Satyrus’s ‘family’, his ‘uncles’ Diodorus and Leon and Philokles, were important men.
Ptolemy’s words suggested to Satyrus that his turn was coming, and his heart soared. He clasped the lord’s arm and beamed. ‘At your service, lord,’ he said.
Afterwards, after the hot bath and the cold bath and the massage, they went out together with a crowd of Satyrus’s friends, down the steps of the public gymnasium in a tide of adulation.
‘You may yet defeat me,’ Theron said with a grin. ‘I doubt it, but I begin to think it is possible.’
Satyrus shook his head. ‘I had a moment today…’ He shrugged. His neck hurt, and his left eye would have a bruise like badly applied henna in an hour or so. ‘I still have a lot to learn.’
‘Music to my ears, boy!’ Theron said.
‘A cup of wine with you, master?’ Satyrus asked.
‘No. Go and drink with your cronies, boy.’ Theron put a giant arm around him and gave him a squeeze. ‘Your uncle Leon is home tonight. His ship is already in with the lighthouse. And when he’s home you’ll be worked like a dog, and no more playing with flute girls.’
Leon had taken Satyrus on a dozen voyages. Satyrus had rowed, he had served as a marine and he had served as a super-cargo, counting amphorae. Leon believed that boys needed to work. This summer, he had sailed twice as helmsman – under instruction, of course. Satyrus loved girls and wine, but so far, the greatest love of his life was the sea.
Satyrus grinned, already being tugged away by his friends. ‘I’ll be there. And I’ll sacrifice to Poseidon for his safe return.’
‘See that you have a safe return, boy!’ Theron called over the crowd, and then they were away, crossing the great agora where the four districts met.
‘You don’t believe all that shit, do you, Satyrus?’ Dionysius asked. Dionysius was a year older, the son of a Macedonian in Ptolemy’s service. He was handsome, well bred and intelligent, and he could quote most of the plays of Aristophanes and every new work by Menander. ‘Propitiating the gods? That’s for peasants.’
Satyrus wasn’t in the mood for a philosophical quarrel – the more so as Dionysius, for all his airs, wasn’t nearly as well educated as Philokles. ‘My tutor says that respect for the gods cannot ever be wrong,’ he said.
‘You’re such a prude,’ Dionysius said. ‘If you didn’t have a beautiful body, no one would speak to you.’
Satyrus had learned enough from his sister to sense that Dionysius was unhappy at having Satyrus at centre stage because of his near-triumph in the gymnasium.
‘Well fought, youngster!’ called Timarchus, one of the Macedonian cavalry officers. And Eumenes, far above him on the steps, waved. Satyrus waved back.
‘So much attention from a lot of washed-up old soldiers!’ Dionysius said.
‘They were my father’s friends. And mine,’ Satyrus said.
‘You look a lot less like a prig with a flute girl’s lips locked around your cock,’ Dionysius said. Some of the young men laughed – Satyrus’s somewhat Spartan ethics made some of the young men uncomfortable, and they loved to be reminded that he was as human as they – but Abraham, a smaller boy with rich, dark curls and a wrestler’s build, leaped to his defence.
‘You’re a godless lot,’ Abraham said. ‘You’ll pay, mark my words!’ He laughed as he said it, because it was one of his father’s favourite remarks.
Satyrus blushed and pulled his chlamys – a very light garment indeed, in Alexandria – over his shoulder. ‘Nonetheless,’ he said to all his friends, ‘I’m going to the Temple of Poseidon.’
‘Bah! No temple girls to ogle, no wine shops to trash, no actors. What’s the point? I’ll go to Cimon’s and wait.’ Cimon’s was their current addiction, a house that stood on the edge of a number of districts, both physical and legal. It was a private house that served wine all day. The wine was served in the form of an ongoing symposium – where a great many women, and not a few men, disported with the patrons. The house stood on the long spit of land where Ptolemy was building the lighthouse, and it had a remarkable view out over the sea. The inscription over the lintel said that it was ‘A house of a thousand breezes’, which Dionysius translated as ‘The house of a thousand blow jobs’ at every opportunity, to Cimon’s apparent delight.
The owner, Cimon, was a former slave who had risen to prominence running a brothel. Satyrus knew that he was one of Leon’s men, and that Leon owned the tavern at several removes. He went to Cimon’s because he knew it was safe. Whereas Dionysius went there because he thought it was dangerous. Satyrus wondered how Dionysius would deal with a storm at sea or a fight. Despite the young man’s pretty-boy airs, Satyrus suspected that he had a serious backbone.
‘I’ll meet you at Cimon’s, then,’ Satyrus said.
‘I’ll save you a flute girl,’ Dionysius said. ‘Her cunny will taste of salt, like the sea – perhaps you could make your sacrifice to Poseidon inside it?’
Satyrus blushed again and smiled. Abraham swatted the Macedonian. ‘You jest too much about pious things,’ he said, and this time he was almost serious.
The other young men were divided evenly between the two favourites and their differing errands.
Theodorus laughed. ‘No contest,’ he said. ‘If I go to the Temple of Poseidon with Satyrus, my father will shit himself with happiness. If I’m caught at Cimon’s again, I’ll get the opson and dissipation lecture and you won’t see me for a week. Poppy?’ he said, and a small boy-slave came up to him. ‘Poppy, run and tell Pater that I’m on my way to the temple of Poseidon to sacrifice. Get him to provide some cash.’
The other young men laughed. Xenophon, Coenus’s son and Satyrus’s best friend, shook his head. ‘None of you will live for ever in Elysium,’ he said.
‘You’ll lose interest in religion when your pimples clear,’ Dionysius said. He mimed picking at one. ‘Perhaps they are a gift from the gods?’
Xenophon stepped up close to the Macedonian. ‘Fuck you, boy-lover. Ass-cunt.’
‘Ooh,’ Dionysius said. ‘Very religious.’ He waved, slipping languorously out of Xenophon’s grasp. ‘Another time, darling. And I only love boys with beautiful skin – Satyrus, for instance.’
Satyrus felt the flush even as the Macedonian went off into the crowd with a dozen howling youths.
‘I want to kill him,’ Xenophon said. His face was splotched red and white with fury.
‘Stop acting like a child,’ Abraham said. ‘You let him get at you far too easily. You have pimples. Big deal! I’m a Jew, Satyrus’s father is dead – it’s all grist for Dionysius’s mill.’ The dark-haired young man gave a practised shrug. ‘To be honest, Xenophon, he doesn’t even mean harm, and he is always surprised at the strength of your reactions.’
‘My father says that when a man offends you, you fight,’ Xenophon said.
‘My father says that when a man blasphemes, I should kill him,’ Abraham said. He raised an eyebrow.
Xenophon allowed his rage to evaporate under the other boy’s humour. He shook his head ruefully.
‘Can we go to the temple now?’ Satyrus asked. ‘Abraham’s right, Xeno. Dionysius is like that to everyone. You just need to roll with it, like a blow on the palaestra.’
‘Easy for you to say,’ Xeno spat. ‘You have beautiful skin.’
‘Temple of Poseidon,’ Satyrus said, like a battlefield command, and he started walking.
From the steps of the temple, he could see Leon’s dark-hulled ship with its deep-gored golden sail. The ship was hard to miss, with vermilion paint on the rails and vermilion oars flashing in the sun, so close to the temple as he weathered the point that Satyrus could hear the chant of the oar master and see Leon himself standing by the rail. Satyrus had often imagined commanding the Golden Lotus – he’d made two voyages in her, one just to Cyprus, the other the length of the sea to the coast of Gaul, serving under the helmsman, Peleus – one of the heroes of Satyrus’s adolescent pantheon.
‘Uncle Leon!’ he shouted across half a stade of water.
Leon, closer to the call of the timoneer and the creak of the oars, didn’t hear him as the beautiful ship swept on. Even as she passed the temple, her deckhands were getting the sail down and the whole rowing crew was settling on to their benches for the last pull into the harbour.
