him.
The other warriors thought it odd that I played with bronze, but they feared me, so there was no talk that I heard – and they needed armour. Swinging the hammers made me stronger too, and kept me from trouble. I practised arms until I was exhausted, and then I swung a hammer until I was exhausted all over again. That was life.
And then, as I said, the second spring came, and all my careful reserves began to melt away as the sap rose in the trees and the first flowers bloomed. Persephone was returning to the earth.
I wanted a girl. All girls were beginning to look equally beautiful to me, young or old, fat or thin, and yet I knew that to tumble a slave in the lord's hall would have instant consequences.
Women know things, too. Well might you toss your head, you hussy – I'm sure that women know what men want as soon as their hips get broad. All the women in the hall knew me for what I was – a man who liked women. And that fascinated them, because their men made a fashion of disdaining women at every turn. The lord had three daughters and all of them made Nearchos look handsome, but they all tossed their heads at me just like that – blush as much as you like, young gentlewoman, I love your blushes. My thugater should bring you every day!
But there were other girls. Down by the beach there was a town – not big enough to be a city, even such a city as Plataea, but Gortyn had two or three thousand free people, and a substantial number of pretty girls.
Hephaestion's shop was at the top of the town, in the no-man's-land between the lord's hall and the merchants. I would work at his forge and girls would come to watch me, stripped to my waist, the famous warrior getting his hands dirty.
It was the day before the Thesmophoria, which has a different name in Crete. All the girls were getting ready – on Crete, it is a woman's holiday, and all the unmarried girls dress like priestesses in their best linen chitons, so that when the sun is behind them, no man need doubt a line of their bodies. They put sashes around their waists and flowers in their hair, and the girls who came to the forge were waiting for disc brooches that the smith and I had spent the morning making. Now we were polishing with the slaves – just to get the job done.
One girl was bolder than the others, fifteen and pretty with the flush of maidenhood and spring, and she brushed her fingers against mine when I gave her a brooch. Next to Briseis she was probably as plain as a daisy next to a rose, but she had a slim waist and high breasts and I wanted to have her on the dusty floor of the forge. Our eyes spent a great deal of time together.
Hephaestion laughed when she was gone. 'Troas's daughter, and no better than she ought to be. They're fisherfolk. You want her?'
I blushed – I do blush, lass – and hung my head.
Hephaestion laughed. 'Are you hag-ridden, boy?'
I shrugged. Up in the hall, I was a young lord, a warrior. Down in the forge, I was a boy. And I acted like one.
'Does Nearchos know?' Hephaestion asked.
'No,' I said. And then, 'I don't lie with Nearchos.'
Hephaestion reacted as if I'd slapped him. 'You don't?' he asked. 'He must be bitter.'
I shook my head. 'He thinks he is unworthy.' I shrugged.
Hephaestion laughed. 'You are a failure as a Cretan,' he said. 'But you're a good smith and you serve Hephaestus like a dutiful son.' We polished for a while, our rags full of powdered pumice and oil. The slaves and apprentices were silent, terrified to have their master working such menial duties.
'I think perhaps while we make the helmets, you should stay here at the forge,' Hephaestion said. 'You, pais, go and get me wine. And wine for Lord Arimnestos.' He only called me lord to mock me.
While we drank watered wine – wonderful stuff, the wine of Crete, red as the blood of a bull – he nodded at me. 'You sleep here. Until the Chalkeia. We'll dedicate all the helmets as our sacrifice – as our sacrifice of labour. And then you can go back to the hall. Lord Achilles will understand why I need you.'
We've never had a Chalkeia here, thugater. We should. I'm a sworn devotee of the smith god, and I can say the prayers. Why have we never had one? In any case, it is a smith's holiday, and the smith has to dedicate work and pay the value of his labour as a tithe – and the smith god judges the quality of the work. In Athens – even in little Plataea – there's a procession of all the smiths, iron and bronze and even the finer metals, all together, with images of the god and of Dionysus bringing him back to Olympia after Zeus cast him out. There's a lot of drinking. We should institute it. Send for my secretary.
I'm not dead, yet, eh?
I had no idea why old Hephaestion suddenly wanted me staying in his house – the walk to the hall was only a matter of half a stade. But he was my master, as much as the lord was. Everything in that town was dedicated to preparing the lord and his men for the expedition to Cyprus, and we were two months from the date of launch. Women wove new sails of heavy linen from Aegypt. The tanner made leather armour as fast as he butchered oxen. The two sandal-makers worked by lamplight and, down by the slips, twenty fishermen and their boys worked all day to build a third trireme in the Phoenician style.
Young men are all fools.
I sent Lekthes up to the hall for my bedding, and he came back with Idomeneus. They made me a bed where the smith directed – not even in his house, but in his summer work shed, a pleasant enough building, but only closed on three sides. The two of them swept it clean and brought a big couch from the house and made it up.
Idomeneus took a cup of wine with me. Lekthes had a girl up at the hall – he was a warrior now, not really a servant, and he was considering marriage. But Idomeneus's tastes ran in other directions, and he was in no hurry to leave the forge.
'Nearchos asked after you,' he said. His eyes sparkled and he wore half a smile. 'He burns for you, master.'
I shrugged. 'I'm not your master.'
Idomeneus stretched out on a bench. 'You call Hephaestion master, ' he said.
I shrugged. 'He is a master smith.'
'You are a master warrior. And you made me a free man.' Idomeneus nodded. 'I have a way out of your tangle, lord.'
I ran my fingers through my beard. 'Tangle?' I asked.
He laughed. 'You've run off down here to avoid Nearchos. And lord, he thinks – you must know – that when the ships sail, you and he will be lovers. Why shouldn't he think this? Even his father says it.'
I shook my head. Cretans. What can I say? And all of you tittering. Laugh all you like – this was my youth.
'So – I have found a thread that you can follow out of our labyrinth. ' He poured more wine straight from the amphora.
'Am I Theseus or the Minotaur?' I laughed. 'And who does that make you?' We both laughed together.
'I am prettier than any of Nearchos's sisters,' he said, and we both guffawed until Hephaestion came and put his head under the eaves.
'Is this the Dionysia?' he asked. 'By the smith god, I didn't expect a symposium your first night under my roof!' But seeing my wine, he sat, poured himself a cup unmixed and leaned in. 'Tell me the joke?'
Idomeneus was fond of the smith – more than fond, I think. 'I am solving my lord's dilemma,' he said.
Hephaestion winked. 'Bed the boy yourself and pretend to be Arimnestos?' he said.
Idomeneus blushed. Then we started listing things that Nearchos might notice, and we drank a great deal more, and Hephaestion went to bed drunk.
'I never heard your idea,' I said.
Idomeneus was drunk, and he put his arms around me. 'I love you,' he said.
'Yes,' I said. 'Go to bed!'
'Ish – is that an invitation?' he asked with heavy innuendo, and then he grinned. 'Lisshen, master. Tell the boy that he'sh a warrior now – too noble to be your lover. Tell him you free him to have a lover of his own.' Idomeneus burped, which rather spoiled his performance.
'Hmm,' I said, or something equally useless. I was drunk myself.
But the next morning, pounding metal with a heavy head – not something I recommend to any of you – the idea seemed better and better.
I drank water and worked, trying to sweat the wine out of my head. Which was for the best, because in early
