was one. Heraclitus once told us that the value of a man could be measured in the worth of his enemies. Well, if that's true, I was doing well.
One day in late summer, I brought Artaphernes an invitation from my mistress for dinner. We walked back together – he usually rode, but this time he left his escort in camp, and all he had was my four friends in a loose knot about him. Twice he stopped to speak to common people with petitions. He was that kind of man.
I waited on him at table, and Archi, who was suddenly tall and handsome, shared his couch and they talked together like old friends while Euthalia plied them both with fine food and too much wine. Kylix was mixing the wine as thin as he dared, but still all three were drunk in fairly short order. My four friends were in the kitchen with Cook and Darkar waiting on them. They were lords, but they were simple soldiers, and they weren't offended. We were having a fine evening. I went back and forth from kitchen to andron, and sometimes I'd carry a joke from the high to the low, or even back.
Late in the meal, Hipponax came in. He'd taken a new ship to sea that morning to try her, and he was back early and none too happy with what he'd just seen.
'There was a riot in the lower town,' he said.
This was old news to me, and shows how little they knew, really.
'Two of your men dead and five lower-class people – but citizens, damn it!' Hipponax shook his head. 'Artaphernes, you must send those soldiers away before you create the very climate you seek to avoid.'
Artaphernes sat up on his couch. 'No man tells me what I must do,' he said quietly, 'except the Great King whose servant I am.'
Hipponax smiled. 'It's like that, is it? Very well, be the satrap, lord. But those soldiers are doing more harm than good.' He wasn't drunk, thank the gods, or we might have had trouble.
Artaphernes shook himself. 'Bah, I'm drunk,' he admitted. 'I need to get out of this cesspool. Before I do something I'll regret.' His frustration showed. And something about Hipponax's arrival set him off. He frowned. 'This stinking cesspool.'
Hipponax refused to take offence. 'I've never heard sacred Ephesus described as a stinking cesspool before,' he said. 'I must say that it won't make it as a poetical contribution.'
His wife laughed. She brought wine to the satrap with her own hands. I could smell her perfume from my station – heady, musky stuff. 'Perhaps I will smell less like a cesspool, lord,' she purred.
'You are the only thing worth having in this town,' Artaphernes said.
Hipponax's eyes met mine. I bowed and fetched two slaves to help me move a kline for him, and we set him up with a wine cup and some food. Darkar came up from the kitchen and caught my eye. I slipped out.
'You have this under control?' he asked.
I shook my head. 'There's something here I don't get,' I admitted. 'The satrap is angry and he's taking it out on Master.'
Darkar looked at me with something very like pity. 'I will take your place. You go and wait on your young master only, and get him to bed as quickly as you can convince him – or just feed him wine.'
'What of Cyrus and the others in the kitchen?' I asked.
He shook his head. 'They're no trouble. Off to your duty, now.'
So I tried to put wine into Archi. I needn't have bothered. He had a head for wine by then, and he could probably have gone bowl for bowl with his father, but suddenly he smiled at me and shook his head, pushing away his bowl. 'I'm for bed,' he said.
Darkar shot me a glance, but it was none of my doing. I escorted my master to bed, but he was impatient with me, and after a few attempts at conversation I was dismissed.
I went back to the kitchen to visit my friends. I was off duty, unless Cook or Darkar, the two senior slaves, chose to order me about. In fact, as I waited on the Persians while I chatted to them, we were all at our ease. I served them wine and they laughed and joked and flirted with Penelope when she came through – I assumed on an errand for Briseis, bored in the women's wing and not invited to the party. I'd seldom seen Penelope in the kitchen. She didn't linger.
After an hour, Darkar leaned in and shot me a look. I drank off the wine I'd poured and followed him into the hall. He looked flustered and somehow apologetic. 'Master is going back to his ship,' he said. 'I need you to be a porter.'
Well, that's the life of a slave. It wasn't my job, but by this time all our porters were asleep or drunk. It was a feast day, I think – I can't even remember where they all were. So I went to the portico and hoisted Master's bags and followed him through the dark town.
He didn't say a word.
The Pole Star was high by the time we made his ship. He exchanged a few terse words with his boatkeeper and walked along the waterside. Then he whirled on me.
'I'll be damned if I'm to be thrown out of my own house,' he said, as if I had ordained this strange fate.
I fell back a step.
'Oh – sorry, lad. Not your fault. Come on!' He started back up the hill.
It was a hard walk, but we were healthy men, and anything I had on him in youth was balanced by the weight of his sea bags. At the portico, he put a hand on my shoulder. 'Here's a daric,' he said – a fortune. A gold daric? Then, suddenly, I knew that something was wrong. Masters don't give slaves a daric for carrying their bags. Not on purpose, anyway. 'Go somewhere, Doru. Go – go and check on Archilogos.'
Whatever was happening, he wanted me gone.
I bowed, took the coin and walked into the house, heading into the men's quarters. I walked across the hallway that separated the servants and slaves from the family, and something – automatic obedience, I suppose – caused me to walk into Archi's room instead of going straight to my bed.
He had lamps lit, and he was riding Penelope. She saw me instantly, over his back, his buttocks pinned between her thighs, her mouth slightly open. She wasn't unwilling, to say the least.
He didn't see me.
I flattened against the wall, my heart beating as if a horse race was crossing my chest. Let me say it – I had never ridden the girl myself. She had been very careful with me, and I got a blow to the ear if my fingers strayed.
But I didn't see red, either. I've said it before – when you are a slave, you know that you don't have control of some things. Such as your body. If Archi had ever had a mind to have me, I'd have had no choice. He took Penelope, instead. And I'm no hypocrite – I'd been with a girl or two that summer. Penelope owed me nothing.
I walked around the corner, then stopped and took some deep breaths.
I don't know how long I stood there. Longer than I realized, because suddenly she was there, a shawl over her, slipping along the wall of the portico towards the women's side. I knew her movements. I followed her and called her name. She looked back and ran.
I ran after her. I ran right into the women's quarters.
Then everything began to happen in slow motion. I was running like a fool and suddenly she stopped. In the light of a single hall lamp, I saw that there was a man in the hall, and that Penelope had run into him full tilt. He had a sword.
Penelope screamed.
But I knew him immediately. It was Master. With a sword. In my state, I took it in without understanding – somehow I thought he was there to punish me for entering the women's quarters.
Penelope must have recognized him, because she was silent after that first scream.
And then Artaphernes stepped out of the room behind me – Mistress's room – and I understood.
'You've always told me that you never lie,' Master said to Artaphernes.
He had the sword loosely in his hand. He was no swordsman. And he was calm – murderously calm, I think. He had already dismissed Penelope and me as superfluous to the scene. Penelope backed away from him and into my arms. I put a hand over her mouth.
Artaphernes was naked, and it was no secret what he'd been doing. 'I do not lie,' he said. He was afraid, but covering it well.
'Why did you have to fuck my wife?' Hipponax asked.
Artaphernes met Hipponax's eyes. He shrugged. 'I love her,' he said. 'And if you kill me, Ionia will burn.'
Hipponax laughed grimly, and I knew what he intended. 'Let her burn, then,' he said.
