‘Adequate,’ Kallista said with a shrug. ‘For the money.’
‘No transports of joy?’ Melitta asked.
‘I can buy all the transports I wish for ten talents of silver, mistress.’ Kallista smiled.
‘You make love sound so – mercenary!’ Melitta complained.
‘Mistress, I’m a hetaira!’ The older woman shrugged. ‘Men started mounting me when I was eleven. There’s never been a great deal of romance involved.’ She stroked Melitta’s shoulders. ‘It will be different for you – I’ll see to that. A boy your own age – a beautiful boy.’
Melitta smiled. ‘Your lips to Aphrodite’s ear,’ she said. She rose to her feet, complete from her gilded sandals to the tiny touch of rouge on the tops of her ears and the long tendril of black hair that seemed to have artlessly escaped her diadem – one of Kallista’s best contrivances. ‘Mind you, dressed like this, I might as well be a hetaira!’
Obligingly, Kallista walked to her household altar – to Aphrodite of Cyprus, like most hetairai – and knelt. She fingered the ivory statue and spoke quietly to it as if the statue were the goddess herself, and then kissed it and put it back in its place.
‘Shall we?’ she said.
Melitta walked to the door.
Leon was waiting in the foyer. ‘We are expected at the palace,’ he said. Even as he spoke, Philokles came from the garden with Coenus, talking about hunting, at his side. Diodorus came in the main gate. He was in armour, and Philokles was wearing a plain white chiton and the long himation of a scholar. Coenus and Leon were dressed well, although their clothes were more befitting merchants than leading aristocrats.
Leon addressed them all together.
‘Satyrus and I have been ordered to attend the king. Melitta has been invited to visit the princess of Heraklea.’ He looked around at them. ‘After today’s events, we can’t be too careful.’
‘Surely you don’t expect that Ptolemy will do anything foolish,’ Philokles said.
Leon raised an eyebrow. ‘I wish to ensure that he does not,’ he said. ‘So I would like you gentlemen to accompany us.’
Philokles rubbed his jaw. ‘Do I need a sword?’ he asked.
‘If it comes to that, there’ll be no saving us,’ Leon said.
Diodorus nodded. ‘Let’s get this over with then,’ he said. ‘I’d like to see Sappho before the day is over. Hello there, Satyr. Lita, you look like – like a particularly seductive nymph. And to think that I watched you being born!’
Coenus rolled his eyes. ‘In my day, young lady, you would never have been allowed out like that. Aren’t you even going to cover your hair?’
Kallista muffled a squeak of outrage. Melitta put a hand on her companion’s wrist. ‘Troy has fallen, Uncle,’ she said with a smile. ‘Penelope is cold in her grave. In the modern era, young women of good family are allowed out of their houses.’
Coenus made a noise between a grunt and a laugh.
Leon waved them all out through the garden and on to the street like a dog herding sheep.
‘Goodness,’ Kallista murmured. ‘Are we going to walk?’
If Leon heard her, he gave no sign. He strode off and eight torch holders arranged themselves around the party. Satyrus knew them immediately – although masquerading as house slaves in simple chitons, they were all soldiers, troopers from Eumenes’ squadron.
They walked along the streets, only one such group among dozens, although Melitta and Kallista drew attention like a new vendor in the agora. Satyrus watched the crowds as they walked, annoyed that his best sandals might be stained by the rubbish in the street while simultaneously fascinated by the scenes around him, as he always was in the city. Women waited at public fountains with jars for water on their heads or hips. Men stood in the cool evening air and grumbled, heckled and bartered, or discussed the new city’s politics. Criminal factions eyed each other from opposing street corners. Couples mooned in dark corners or fought in tenements, and a late caravan of camels from the Red Sea stood in a long row on the central avenue, liberally decorating the clean sand of the street with droppings as they waited for slaves to unload the incense of the southern Arabian kingdoms.
Their torch-bearers watched everything and their eyes went everywhere. The man closest to Satyrus was the giant, Carlus, and Satyrus wondered how anyone could take him for a slave. His eyes were moving, appraising, watching. He looked up at the rooftops and down in the doorways.
‘See anything, Carlus?’ Satyrus asked by way of conversation.
The big Keltoi shrugged. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Lots of bad men, but they don’t want us.’ He glared at a beardless Aegyptian on a street corner, who stood with his arms crossed over his chest. He was small, and light, and young, but he met Carlus’s stare with cool indifference. ‘I’d love to come down here with some of the boys and clean up,’ he said. ‘Forced loans, prostitution, extortion, arson – these scum do it all.’
Satyrus looked at the Aegyptian as he passed him. The young man didn’t even raise an eyebrow. ‘Are you sure?’ he asked.
Carlus grunted.
Leon’s villa was comparatively close to the new library and the palace precincts, and it dawned on Satyrus that Leon was parading his group through the most public thoroughfares for a reason. After half an hour’s walk they climbed the low hill that led to the palace gates, still under construction. As far as Satyrus could see, the palace was in a permanent state of construction.
Bored Macedonians greeted Leon, gave perfunctory salutes to Diodorus and ogled Melitta and Kallista, their comments loud enough that Satyrus became offended on his sister’s behalf.
‘Soldiers,’ Leon said, putting a hand on Satyrus’s shoulder. ‘Calm yourself.’
Slaves led them from the gate to the main hall, and female slaves came and took Melitta and Kallista away. Greek women might walk the streets and even sometimes attend a party, but at the palace many of the old ways were preserved, and women were received in women’s rooms. Satyrus kissed his sister on the cheek while Amastris’s personal attendant waited patiently, her shawl over her head. He had a sudden premonition – as if an icy hand had rubbed his back.
‘Watch yourself, sister,’ he whispered.
She looked back at him and squeezed his hand. ‘And you, brother.’
Then the women were gone and they were walking up the steps of the central megaron. Ptolemy’s Greek steward was waiting for them, and he bowed. ‘Lord Ptolemy wishes to greet you in private,’ he said. ‘Please follow me. Your torch-bearers can wait.’ He snapped his fingers and a pair of slaves emerged from the portico and gestured to the torch-bearers.
‘I understood that we were to have an audience,’ Leon said.
‘Lord Ptolemy wishes to speak to you in private,’ the steward insisted.
Leon looked around and then nodded. ‘Very well,’ he said. He turned to follow the steward. The Greek shook his head. ‘Just you and Master Satyrus,’ he said. ‘My regrets to these gentlemen.’
Philokles snorted. ‘Gabines, take us to Ptolemy, and stop pontificating. ’
The Greek steward looked more closely at Philokles. He gave a short and rather discontented bow. ‘Master Philokles. I didn’t see you. Philosophers are always welcome in our lord’s presence.’
Diodorus and Coenus pressed closer in the gathering gloom. ‘Perhaps you shouldn’t have been so quick to send the torches away, Gabines. Now, take us to the king,’ Diodorus said.
Gabines looked around, as if expecting help.
Satyrus checked to make sure that he had his knife. It was absurd to feel physically threatened in the palace, but he was on edge, walking as if he expected ambush, and he noted that Diodorus and Coenus were the same, starting at shadows. Philokles, on the other hand, pulled his chlamys back over his head and walked with the calm of a priest.
They walked down the back of the megaron and across the central courtyard to the royal residence. Reliefs of Alexander’s victories decorated every surface on the exterior, meticulously painted so that the horses seemed to ride out from the walls, and on the peristyle were ships under oars. Satyrus stared and stared – even Leon’s villa had nothing like this for sheer display.
Leon wasn’t looking at art, but at the guards. He motioned with his chin where more Macedonian guards waited on the portico, and yet more inside.
