communal dinners had been a feature of life in Tanais before its fall, and Leon had transferred the system to Alexandria. Diodorus added some of his officers – Eumenes was almost always with them for dinner, and Crax – and Leon added his senior helmsmen and his business friends and the tribal leaders he used to keep his caravans moving, when they came. Philokles brought philosophers and divines from the agora and the temples, and Coenus added an occasional barracks-mate, and once the king himself, who knew Coenus of old. Dinners were sprawling affairs of twenty or thirty klines, food, wine and debate.
Dinner was where they all came together – especially now that Leon was back.
‘Don’t leave the house,’ Leon said to Satyrus. ‘You boys were there?’ he said to Xenophon.
‘Yes, sir,’ Xenophon said.
‘You had best stay, then. Until I know more.’ Leon nodded to Abraham and called to a slave. ‘Run and tell Ben Zion that I have his son at my house for dinner as a guest, and that I will send a message home with him.’
The slave nodded. ‘Ben Zion. Son for dinner. Message later.’
‘Good,’ Leon said. ‘Go.’
Pasion came back from his last errand. ‘Both men are alive,’ he said.
Leon nodded. ‘Close the gates. No admittance without my express permission. Ask Crax for Hama’s file as guards on the gates.’
‘We aren’t overreacting, are we?’ Theron asked.
‘I wasn’t there, Theron. I’ve tangled with Stratokles – and done deals with him – and I find he has a tendency to focus very hard on success. If memory serves, he tried to kill both of Kineas’s children.’ Leon raised an eyebrow. ‘He stormed a private house in Heraklea. Yes?’
Theron bowed his head. ‘Point taken.’ He looked at Satyrus. ‘See? You should have killed him, Satyrus.’
Satyrus felt himself growing angry. ‘I-’
‘We took an oath!’ Melitta said.
This criticism was the last straw. ‘That’s not fair!’ he said. ‘Stratokles is the ambassador of Athens! That makes his person sacred! And when exactly did Stratokles get included? Are we killing every flunky, or just the people who ordered Mama’s death?’
Melitta bit her lip. ‘I-’ she began.
‘Don’t turn into Medea,’ Satyrus said. He squeezed her hand.
‘Sorry, Satyr.’ She knelt and touched the blood on his leg. ‘You’re wounded.’
Theron raised an eyebrow.
‘He’s good,’ Satyrus said. ‘You know, I’m pretty sure that putting down two trained fighters would be cause for praise in most households. ’
Leon stared off into space, rubbing his short beard. ‘Perhaps,’ he said.
Satyrus looked around, chewed back an angry response and crossed his arms.
He stood silent and angry as Leon dispatched messengers to various quarters and sat in his garden, saying little, and his silence was more ominous than his orders.
Nihmu and Sappho came from the women’s quarters and sent everyone off to the baths before dinner. By the time that Satyrus, feeling disoriented in his own home, had towelled off, he could see Hama setting a pair of armoured cavalrymen at the front gate – men of Olbia or Tanais, absolutely loyal. That settled him.
Nonetheless, he hung his sword over his chiton.
A servant came in through the curtain at his door and bowed. ‘Leon asks that you dress in your best, lord,’ the man intoned. ‘I am to help you.’
Off came the sword and the chiton. Satyrus opened the chest under the window and poked through the folded wool there, looking for his favourite – a plain white wool chiton with a minute stripe of Tyrian Purple. He found it as much by feel as by sight – the wool was superb.
‘How about this?’ he asked the servant.
‘Certainly, sir,’ the servant replied. This time he was oiled, his hair carefully arranged and the chiton adjusted so that every fold fell as if it had been sculpted by Praxiteles, closed by a girdle made of gold cord.
Satyrus added a knife that hung around his neck from a cord, vanishing into the folds of the chiton. The servant made a face. ‘Hardly required, sir,’ he said.
Satyrus was always annoyed by talkative servants. ‘I’ll be the judge of that,’ he said, and sat to have his best sandals put on his feet. When he was shod, he nodded. ‘Thanks,’ he said to the servant.
‘Yes, sir,’ the servant replied, and retreated through the door.
Not for the first time, Satyrus wished he had a servant or a slave of his own – a comrade. Someone who would understand his own needs. All of Leon’s freedmen treated him like a child.
Caught up in all that was the thought that he had treated Phiale badly. He sat at a table in the courtyard and scribbled a note, searching for a nice bit of poetry to use to express himself, but finding none. So he wrote:
That man is my enemy, and has been for years. I am sorry that you were injured in our squabble. If I can be of any assistance, please send to me.
He sealed it with his Herakles ring and sent it with a slave.
It occurred to him as he walked down the cool marble halls towards the garden that he hadn’t asked why he was dressed like a prince.
Melitta was still lying naked on her day-bed, trying to will herself to calm and coolness in the evening breeze, when a senior woman servant came to her chamber. ‘I am to ask you to dress your best,’ the old woman said, with a smile. ‘You have an invitation from the palace.’
Kallista, also naked, rose from the balcony and clapped her hands. ‘Amastris! It must be! I heard that Master Leon brought her home.’
Melitta smiled. ‘Thanks, Dorcus! I’ll be ready.’
Dorcus turned to Kallista. ‘It wouldn’t be amiss to pack a wrap for morning,’ she said, laying a finger along her nose. ‘The palace messenger suggested that the Lady Amastris might wish to entertain our mistress overnight.’
‘Dorcus? Be a dear and tell the steward that I’ll be out for dinner. And does Uncle Leon know? Oh – it’s his homecoming. Perhaps-’ She paused. ‘Amastris is going to use me to see my brother, isn’t she?’ Melitta asked the older woman.
Dorcus shook her head slightly. She was a woman of consequence in the household, and Melitta knew that every rumour came to her ears. ‘Master Leon has an invitation of his own,’ she said. ‘As does your brother – from the king himself. If the princess wishes to see your brother, she will have to scheme very quickly indeed. Dress well, young mistress.’ She paused. ‘Given the – incident – this afternoon, all may not go as the princess imagines. Understand me, despoina?’
Kallista didn’t need a second admonition. She had Melitta’s best Greek gown laid out on the bed – wool so fine as to be transparent, carefully oiled to a fine finish, the colour a dark purple-blue with gold stripes. There were also the Artemis brooches that Kinon had given her three years ago, and a dagger, and a wicked bronze pin in her hair, the knobbed grip hidden by an enormous pearl that matched the strings that held her long black tresses.
Kallista slipped long, dangling gold earrings into her ears and clasped a necklace at her throat. Her hands rested on her mistress’s shoulders. ‘You are beautiful,’ she said. She held up a silver mirror so that Melitta could admire herself.
‘Not as beautiful as you,’ Melitta said. Her slave was like an avatar of Aphrodite – in fact, some men called her that very title. Melitta had been offered sums of up to twenty talents of silver for her slave’s favours.
‘Hmm,’ Kallista said. She put her head down next to Melitta’s, so that the two were side by side in the mirror. ‘Dark and fair. You are more the image of Hera or Artemis. A colder beauty – but no less beautiful.’
‘Flatterer,’ Melitta said. She poked Kallista in the side and made the other girl squeal.
‘Not with you,’ Kallista giggled. ‘Every man’s head will turn when we walk in the palace. Hah! I feel like a cat among mice when I go there.’
‘Freedom has not made you modest,’ Melitta said.
Kallista lowered her eyes in a parody of virginal modesty. ‘Has it not, my mistress?’
‘How was Amyntas?’ Melitta asked. Amyntas was one of Ptolemy’s Macedonian officers. He was supposed to command the phalanx, and he was a famous soldier, but he spent little time on his duties. He had offered Kallista ten talents of silver for a single night.
