‘Oh, Philokles,’ Melitta said. ‘For the love of all the gods, be quiet. When have I had the chance to get a man in my bed? Really? I lied. How will that old priestess ever know, do you think? Will she put a finger between my legs? Eh?’
‘Don’t be gross,’ Philokles said. His relief was obvious.
‘I am not a Greek girl! I am a Sakje, even here in the desert, and I will lie with whoever I please, and neither you nor my brother will gainsay me!’ She was going to go on about what age her mother had first copulated, but she held her tongue. Philokles was dangerous when drunk.
‘How many priests will I have to pay off so that you can explore divinity, child?’ Philokles asked.
‘Wasn’t it you who proposed that I should explore all the religions of the Delta?’ she asked. Her cork-soled sandals were getting to be too small. Everything was too small – her chitons risked scandal and her legs were too long and she was so obviously a girl that it took a major conspiracy of her uncle Diodorus and her uncle Coenus and her brother to get her time to ride in private, which was unfair. She visited temples because it was a pastime allowed to women, and it let her be out on the street, walking, in the heat and the sun and the flies. Today they had walked twenty stades to reach the old temple of Hathor, and now they would walk twenty stades back to the new city.
‘Don’t be cross, Philokles,’ she said.
He walked along next to her, trailing fumes of wine and garlic.
‘It’s boring! I have a brain! I have a body! I’d give anything to be a boy and spend an afternoon at Cimon’s drinking wine, hearing the news and getting my precious dick sucked.’
‘Melitta!’ Philokles snapped.
‘It’s not fair! Satyrus gets everything.’ She walked along more quickly, snuffling away a tear.
She could hear the thump of his staff as it hit the road behind her.
‘You were given too much liberty when you were young,’ Philokles said.
‘Donkey piss! And to think that I tell other girls that you are the smartest man in Alexandria! Donkey piss, Philokles. Let me go back to the sea of grass! Sakje doesn’t even have a word for virgin. But they have twenty words for smoking hemp, which you have forbidden me.’ She had the bit in her teeth.
Philokles stared straight ahead. ‘Only slaves smoke hemp. It is unseemly. ’
‘Slaves drink lots of wine, too.’ She stood and faced him in the road, and a two-wheeled donkey cart laden with rice from the Delta side of the port bumped past her, just missing her outflung elbow. ‘Let me have your wineskin. I’ll drink as much as you – no more.’
Philokles shook his head. ‘We have had this discussion before. And you are drawing a great many stares.’
Melitta blew out a great breath. ‘Men,’ she said to the hundreds of passers-by. Then she turned and walked on.
‘Are you calm enough for some news?’ Philokles asked some time later.
‘Yes,’ she said, her good humour restored by the sight of a troop of Aegyptian acrobats performing by a beer-house.
‘Your uncle Leon will be back today,’ he said.
‘Kallista told me as much when I awoke,’ she said. ‘You’ll have to do better than that.’
Philokles smiled. ‘That girl has – sources of information.’
‘She can get blood from a stone, and no mistake,’ Melitta said with great satisfaction.
‘Your uncle ran up the coast to the Euxine to see how the ground lies,’ Philokles said. ‘We hear that Heron is losing his grip on Pantecapaeum – and Ataelus has made great strides in the east.’ He grinned at his charge. ‘Ataelus has spent years harrying the Sauromatae and raiding Heron. If there is any resistance to Heron’s usurpation, it’s because Ataelus keeps it alive. We all owe Ataelus.’ He was silent, and then he said, ‘And Leon will be bringing Amastris back from Heraklea.’
‘Oh!’ She clapped her hands together. ‘Will she still be in love with my brother?’
Philokles appeared stung. ‘Amastris of Heraklea is in love with your brother?’
Melitta looked stricken. ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘I shouldn’t have mentioned it. Wait! That means we’re going back!’ Melitta said, and clapped her hands together. ‘No more Alexandria? Back to Tanais?’
Philokles looked around. ‘This is not to be shouted on a public thoroughfare, girl – but I won’t have you make a mistake that can warp your life because you don’t know what’s in the wind. Leon and Diodorus and I – we see a time coming when it would be worth trying.’
Melitta clapped her hands together again, stepped in and kissed the Spartan. ‘I knew you were the best. I must have armour!’ She pointed at her breasts. ‘My old corslet won’t even cover my chest.’
‘I can’t imagine how hard it must be to fight with those things,’ Philokles said, waving vaguely at her chest. ‘But you do it well enough.’ Philokles still gave her lessons in private, as did her brother. Theron had reverted to the Greek code – that no girl needed to know pankration.
‘I wish that someone would attack us,’ Melitta said, looking around. ‘A beautiful girl like me, and an old man like you – why don’t these people see us as easy meat?’
Philokles rolled his eyes.
Melitta continued, ‘A pity about Olympias and her assassins?’ She grinned. ‘They would have attacked us!’
Philokles shook his head. ‘She lost us in the desert. And now she’s dead.’
‘Good riddance,’ Melitta said with a shake of her head. ‘She’s one we didn’t need to use the oath against. Or perhaps I should say that Artemis got her before I could.’
‘Olympias had so many enemies that the gods needed no tool to bring her down.’ Philokles shrugged. ‘Already nostalgic for the brave old days of age twelve and a half?’ he asked.
‘I used to do things,’ she said, in reply. ‘Now I just lie around watching my breasts grow.’
Philokles relented. ‘Listen, honey bee. When your uncle Leon is home, you’ll hear. But if Antigonus makes his summer campaign in Macedon, we’ll hire two thousand infantry and sail for Tanais.’
Melitta stepped up close to him, and her eyes bored into his although he was a head taller. ‘Promise me by all the gods that I’m going,’ she said.
Philokles met her gaze without flinching. ‘You are going,’ he said.
She threw her arms around him in the middle of the road. Heads turned. Philokles blushed.
‘May I tell Satyrus?’ she asked.
‘Best to wait. Leon will be home tonight.’ Philokles started to walk again. ‘I don’t like all the company your brother keeps.’
Melitta was quick to spring to her brother’s defence. ‘Who? You can’t object to Xenophon?’
‘Never in life, my dear. No, nor Abraham, for all that his father is a zealot. But Theodorus’s father would sell his mother for gain or social prestige, and that Dionysius-’ Philokles bit off his words.
Melitta had a different use for Dionysius, who, for all of his effete airs, had a beautiful body that he seldom hid and a wicked sense of humour. ‘Dionysius wrote a poem about my breasts,’ Melitta said.
Philokles quickened his pace. ‘I know. So does every man in the city.’
Melitta stuck her tongue out. ‘So? They’re right here. Everyone can see them. Why not read a poem about them?’ She bounced along, almost skipping, despite forty stades of walking. ‘What about that beautiful boy – Herakles?’ Just saying the name gave her a little tingle. ‘If my brother can have Amastris, perhaps I can have Herakles.’
‘Honey bee, Banugul is the last woman on earth that you want as a mother-in-law. All she wants is to make her son King of Kings.’ Philokles stopped to get a pebble out of his sandal. ‘Need I remind you that they are with Antigonus? Banugul is no doubt busy scheming.’
‘And yet you saved her, Master Philokles.’ Suddenly the bouncing gait was gone, and she eyed him appraisingly.
‘We saved her, my dear. And I did it, as did you, because the gods told us. Yes?’ Philokles raised an eyebrow.
‘I remember,’ she said.
When Philokles was in the mood to teach Satyrus lessons, he liked to say that the Greeks were used to colonization and cleruchy, rapid settlement and rapid building. Athens had dropped forts everywhere when she was queen of the seas, and Miletus had spread colonies the way a profligate spreads bastards. Greeks could move to a
