and watched us.
His eyes narrowed. 'I sent you up the mountain to learn to read and write,' he said. 'What is this?'
I was proud of my martial skills, so I showed him. I showed him the guards that Calchas taught and the spear attacks. I could hit my brother at will, although when I had the weight of a real aspis on my shoulder, I could barely move.
Pater shook his head. 'Foolishness,' he said. 'All you should do is keep your place in the shield wall. The rest is madness. The moment you lunge, the enemy to your right plunges his spear in your thigh. Or your neck. Every attack you make leaves your shield side uncovered. ' He shook his head. 'Calchas must stop teaching you this nonsense.'
'He is a great warrior,' I said hotly.
Pater looked at me as if really noticing me for the first time. 'There are no great warriors,' Pater said. 'There are great craftsmen, great sculptors, great poets. Sometimes, they must put a spear on their shoulder. But nothing about war is great.' Pater looked across the valley, towards the shrine. 'Your teacher is a broken man who keeps a shrine about which no man cares a whit. He teaches boys to read and he nurses old hatreds. I think that it is time I brought you home.'
'Many men care about the shrine!' I said. There were tears in my eyes.
Pater dusted his hands. 'Come,' he said.
We walked to the shrine. I argued, and Pater was silent. When we arrived, Pater ordered me to collect my things. And he went and spoke to Calchas alone.
I still know nothing of what they said to each other, but I never saw a frown or a harsh word. I collected my javelins, my spear 'Deer Killer', my scrolls and my bedroll. I put them on the donkey and went to kiss Calchas goodbye. He embraced me.
'Time for you to go out into the world,' he said. 'Your father is right, and I have probably filled your head with nonsense.'
I knew that he would be drunk before we walked to the base of the mountain. But I smiled and kissed him on the lips – which I had never done.
On the way down the path, I stopped. 'He will die without me,' I said. I was eleven going on twelve, and the world was much less of a mystery to me than it had been. 'By leaving, I am killing him!'
Pater embraced me. I think it is the only embrace that I remember. He held me for a long time. Finally, he said, 'He is killing himself. You have your own life to lead.'
We walked home, Pater silent, me crying.
I went back to working the forge, although I now lagged far behind my brother. I read to my mother, who fussed over my hands and bellowed abuse at Pater about how his noble son was being forced to peasant work.
Pater ignored her. I lose track of time, here. I think it was the same summer as I left Calchas, but it might have been the next. They were golden summers, and the wealth of Plataea came in with the grain. We sold much of our grain in the markets of Attica, and now that we were the richest peasants in Boeotia, our fathers plotted how to spend our wealth on the greatest Daidala in history.
Men came to the yard of the smithy and leaned against the new sheds, or sat on the stools that now littered the yard, drank Pater's excellent wine served by a pair of pretty slaves and planned the Daidala. There was no other discussion that summer, for the next spring was the moment when we would watch the ravens on the hillside, choose our tree and set in motion all the traditions and customs and dances and rituals that would lead us to a successful festival – a festival that would cause other men across Boeotia to envy our wealth and curse us. Or rather, that was the plan.
For before the summer was old enough for the barley to lose its green, the word came to our valley that the men of Thebes were preparing the Great Daidala, and had ordained that Plataea was but a community of Thebes and not a free city. What's more, Thebes had voted a great tax to be placed on us to 'support the festival'.
I had missed two years of talk in the courtyard, but little had changed. The speakers wore a better quality of cloth, but they were the same men – solid men, who were a little richer but had no toleration for fools. Myron was not the richest, but he tended to speak for Pater's friends in the assembly, and there was talk of making him archon instead of the old basileus. The old basileus was now poorer than Pater. The world was turning on its head.
The word of the Theban tax goaded them even more than the word that we would not host the festival. Peasants hate it when other men take their money. I know that hate. Steal the money of a slave and look at his eyes. That is the look of a peasant who is taxed.
Simon had joined the men in the yard. I wasn't there when he moved back into our lives. It seems odd, after all that happened, but peasants quarrel as much as aristocrats and then settle their differences or simply move on. Simon came back, and I continued to hate him, but Pater treated him with courtesy and all was well.
It was Simon who said the words on everybody's mind.
'We should fight,' Simon said.
Every man in the yard sipped his wine and nodded.
'We should ask the Spartans for an alliance,' Draco said.
Epictetus the Younger spent more time in the yard than he should have, but he was rich enough already that slaves did all the farm work for him, and he wandered about with a body slave like a lord. It made his father frown, but his farm ran well enough and he was growing into a big man who spoke well and would fight in the front rank. He stood up. 'We should offer alliance to Athens,' he said. 'Miltiades is a friend of every man here.'
Draco shook his head. 'Miltiades is our friend, but he's almost an exile this year. They refused to let his ships land last autumn. Men say he'll make himself tyrant of Athens. He's no help to us. Besides,' and Draco looked around as if expecting enemies to leap from behind the forge, 'Sparta is ready to make war on Thebes.'
'Once we take it to the assembly, Thebes will know what we are about,' Myron said.
Pater stood forward. I remember him from that afternoon, how dignified he was and how proud I was that he was my father. He looked around the circle of men. 'What if we decide on a thing, here in this yard,' he said, 'and then Myron travels around and talks quietly to other men of substance?' He paused, and fell silent. He was never a man for big talk.
Myron nodded. 'We might call it something different. We might call it the 'salt tax'.'
It took a moment to explain to Draco, who could be slow, and to my brother, who had no notion of the duplicity an assembly could practise.
But that's what they did. They called the alliance with Sparta the 'salt tax' and Myron went from oikia to oikia around the whole polis, so that when they went to the assembly where the Thebans waited, and voted for a salt tax, the Thebans were suspicious but nothing could be proven.
Then the farmers sent Draco, Myron and Theron, son of Xenon, one of our richest men, and he sold his leather armor as far away as Peloponnese. His son began to wear Spartan shoes and Myron's son began to puff out his chest and speak of buying himself a horse. Epictetus came by and frowned.
'We owe Miltiades better than this,' he said. 'We should send him word.'
Pater shrugged. 'He is an exile in a barbarian land,' he said.
Epictetus looked around the yard. 'His money bought everything here.'
'Send word to your son, then,' Pater said. 'Miltiades has a factor at Corinth. I have a shipment of armour for him. I'll send word to him. But Draco has the right of it. Miltiades is our friend and our benefactor, but he has no power in Boeotia.'
'Uhh,' Epictetus grunted. Pater sent my brother with the armour to Corinth. He came back with some fine pottery and a new donkey and a small pile of silver coins. He was proud of himself – he'd been far from home, over the mountains, and returned without incident.
Pater nodded, and sent him back to the forge. I suppose it was a form of compliment that Pater always assumed that we would succeed at anything he assigned us. But an actual compliment would have gone a long way.
The message must have carried, though, because just after the feast of Demeter, the great man himself came up the lane, riding another magnificent horse. He wore a golden fillet in his hair and he looked even more like a god.
The thing that made him stand out to me this time was that I could see he'd been trained the same way I had. I could see it in how he stood and how he walked. I still did the exercises that Calchas had taught, and twice
