‘We sacrificed for him,’ Theo said.
Satyrus winced a little at his friend’s adolescent self-importance. ‘We saw his ships from the temple, and we saw him standing with the helmsman on the Golden Lotus.’ It was the first time that Phiale had ever asked him a direct question, and her manner seemed – odd.
‘I will send him a basket of flowers with a note to Nihmu,’ Phiale said. Many wives would resent a basket of flowers from a hetaira, but Nihmu was different.
She stretched her long legs, flexing the toes, and then shot to her feet like an acrobat. ‘I really can’t stay.’
Satyrus was bold enough to place a hand lightly on her side – not possessively, not holding on, but not hesitant either. ‘Might you come back and sing for us?’
Phiale made an actor’s bow. ‘I might,’ she said, ‘if I don’t find a dozen flute girls already playing your instruments,’ and she winked at Theodorus, who blushed.
She walked off, drawing every eye in the garden, and was replaced by a pair of laughing wine attendants. ‘We’ll be invisible now,’ said the elder, a dark-haired Aegyptian with full breasts and a face that was nearly round. ‘Nobody wants to flirt with a wine girl after Phiale saunters by.’
‘Much less give us a tip,’ said the younger, a Cypriot who was as sylphlike as a Nereid. ‘How is a girl to buy her freedom?’ she asked rhetorically, sucking a fingertip. ‘Wine, anyone?’
The boys laughed, patted, drank wine and ogled as a troop of acrobats pirouetted, a pair of Africans did a war dance that impressed Satyrus, and a single olive-coloured girl danced alone with a spear in a way that caused all the young men to consider the green arbours at the back of the garden.
Theodorus winked at his companions. ‘I don’t want to offend Phiale’s delicate sensibility,’ he said, ‘so I’m going to oil my lamp-wick in private.’
Xeno blushed. Abraham laughed.
‘Was that good?’ Theo said, pausing. ‘Really? I got it off one of my father’s slaves.’
‘It’s not as dumb as some of the phrases I hear,’ Abraham said. ‘Go and find a sausage-eater!’
Theo nearly choked with laughter and hurried away.
A group of middle-aged men came in, stopped by Satyrus’s couch and paid their compliments. They were all men Satyrus knew – officers who served with Diodorus. Panion, a taxeis commander and a rising star, let his eyes wander over Satyrus’s body until the young man was uncomfortable.
‘Come and see the drill of the Foot Companions,’ Panion said. ‘I hear that Lord Ptolemy made much of you.’
Satyrus felt the heat rising on his face. Panion was the leader of the ‘Macedon’ faction – the men who felt that mere Greeks and Jews must be kept in their place. But he had never hidden his admiration for Satyrus.
Satyrus thanked all the men politely. As a younger man, he rose and attended them to their own couches before returning to his own, flushed with praise and the embarrassment of Panion’s obvious advances. Macedonians didn’t flirt – that was a flute-girl saying, but one with a great deal of truth to it.
Slaves appeared and dusted his kline, scraping away breadcrumbs and cheese.
‘I should go home,’ Satyrus said.
‘Not until I sing for you,’ Phiale said, appearing suddenly and dropping on his couch.
Satyrus immediately brightened. ‘I thought that you were – busy.’
‘Silly boy.’ She touched his face again. ‘You’re not really a boy, are you, Satyrus?’ Her hand stroked down his arm, her thumb following the line of his muscle, and his groin stirred.
‘Half and half,’ he admitted. Her eyes were as big as cups. Her lips had minute ridges and were so rich in colour that they were almost brown. Her nipples were the same – he could remember them.
Vividly.
‘May I sing something of my own?’ she asked.
The three young men all nodded.
She stood up and faced them, and then sang – no build-up with Phiale. Her arms spread as she sang, a simple, unaccompanied song of a girl whose love had gone off to Troy and who wanted to follow him or die.
When she was done, they were quiet a minute. The whole garden was quiet, and then all the circles of couches began to applaud, sometimes with men standing up by them.
‘You didn’t sing for us,’ a young man said. He didn’t sound angry, just bored. ‘Should I have paid more?’
Satyrus knew him. Everyone did. Gorgias was the youngest rich man with his own fortune in the city – the death of his father and uncle had left him a massive amount of wealth and no adult supervision. Philokles used him as an example of dissolution because he ran to fat and disdained philosophy. His friends were always older men who he used and was used by.
He had a soldier with him, a bigger man with a red line all down one side of his body from his jaw to his right knee, and another man that Satyrus couldn’t quite see though the crowd, a shorter man of perhaps forty years.
‘I might have paid for more than a song,’ said a barbarian voice, with an Athenian accent. The big man gave Phiale a wry smile. ‘I don’t pinch every obol, either.’ He laughed. ‘When a man is as old as I am, he prizes a song. And a singer.’
Satyrus couldn’t really see past Phiale’s hips from his couch, but he could see by the set of her back that she was unhappy.
‘In Alexandria,’ Phiale said, ‘we don’t discuss the prices a hetaira might charge. If you have to discuss them, you can’t afford her.’ She gave the men a hard smile. ‘But I owed my friend a song for his exploits, and I always pay my debts. Being, as you must understand, a free woman and capable of choosing my clients.’ She laughed lightly, but Satyrus thought that she was nervous. He’d never seen her like this. She also clapped her hands – a girl’s signal that she needed the house to intervene.
The big foreigner frowned, obviously offended. ‘All prostitutes like to be called hetairai,’ he said. ‘But the only difference is the price.’ He said the last in a tone of contempt, a man who was used to getting his way and didn’t like being mocked in public by a mere woman. ‘They both look the same when their lips are around my dick,’ he said, and several men nearby laughed.
Satyrus swung his legs over the far side of his couch and stood up. In the same motion he reclaimed his sword from the peg where it hung from its cord. Now he could see the shorter man. He had only seen him two or three times, but he knew him in a glance. The Athenian. Stratokles.
‘This isn’t your fight, boy,’ the big foreigner said. He put a hand on Satyrus’s chest. ‘Just an uppity girl who needs-’
‘Watch it!’ Stratokles called. His attention had been divided between Xenophon and Phiale, and he hadn’t seen Satyrus past Phiale’s hips. He saw him now.
Satyrus put one hand on the mercenary’s shoulder, gently, as if ready to remonstrate, One of Theron’s lessons about fighting was that when your life was on the line, there were no rules, no manners and no requirement for announcing your intentions, and Satyrus’s adventures at the age of twelve had convinced him of the truth of the Corinthian’s assertions. So he didn’t posture or shout or work himself up like a young man. He reversed his hold and turned the scarred man under him, rotating his arm in the socket and making him scream with pain.
Even as he struck, body running on trained responses from the palaestra, Satyrus’s mind ran on like a philosopher’s automaton. Stratokles, he thought. What in Hades is he doing in Alexandria? Satyrus’s head was flooded by the daimon of combat, and he had to concentrate on the strength of the foreigner. He went down clutching Satyrus’s arm and growling, and Satyrus reckoned him tough enough that he paused to spend a full-weight kick to his head. That took him out of the fight. Then Satyrus drew his sword.
Stratokles was, for once in his life, caught unprepared. He leaped back, trying to get his chlamys off his shoulder and into his hand and producing a sword from under his arm. ‘Grown up quite a bit, haven’t you?’ he said. And then, ‘I didn’t recognize you. You planning to kill me in cold blood?’ he asked, backing away.
Satyrus stepped across the fallen soldier, undeterred. ‘Call the watch!’ he shouted at the patrons. ‘He’s a murderer!’ In the distance, Thrassylus was approaching with two big slaves, but he would be too late to save Stratokles. He started into a simple combination, a feint to the head, and suddenly Phiale caught at his arm. ‘Satyrus, stop!’ she said.
The Athenian used the pause as his opponent was pinned by the hetaira to cut at Satyrus’s legs. Satyrus, with nowhere to retreat, managed a clumsy parry that allowed the Athenian’s sword to clip his shin – and Phiale’s.
