afternoon, a long line of dancing women came up the hill from the town, heading for the mountain. Troas's daughter was at the head of one of the files of dancers, and she led her laughing girls in a full rehearsal around the yard of the smithy.
I had a pair of roses that Idomeneus had plucked, at my direction, from the garden behind the hall, and I'd woven them with bronze wire so that they would sit with the laurel in her hair.
Hephaestion had a mirror, and I showed her what she looked like in the golden light of the bronze surface.
'Oooh!' she said, patting the flowers gently. 'I wish I was prettier, though.'
'You are beautiful, Gaiana!' I said. Or words to that effect.
She laughed. I kissed her, and she did not kiss like a virgin. She laughed into my mouth like Briseis.
And then I knew why the smith had given me the shed. I grabbed her hand, but she pulled away and straightened her chiton. She grinned. 'Too fast for me, lord,' she said.
I had a horn comb, and I combed her hair a little. She leaned back against me and we kissed again, then she stood up. 'No one expects the girls down from the mountain until dawn,' she said. Outside the shop, the other girls were calling for her.
'I will be in the shed,' I said, and ran a finger around one of her nipples, and she smacked me – playfully, but hard.
'Don't go to sleep,' she said, before darting out of my arms and out of the door.
And I didn't. Nor did Gaiana. That's another happy time in my memory. She came to me every night and I worked all day in the smithy. Her father came on the third day and Hephaestion introduced me.
'He's smitten with your daughter,' Hephaestion said.
'You don't look like the kind of man who marries a fisherman's daughter,' Troas said. He had a scraggly beard and the hands of a man who dragged nets all day, with enormous shoulders.
'Marries?' I asked, and I suspect, thugater, that my voice cracked.
Troas laughed. 'If I tell the priests you took her maidenhead, you'll owe me her bride price.'
I felt foolish. We were bartering. Before you think ill of the man, remember that the lords of the town might take his daughter for nothing, and he would have the care of any resulting children. That's Crete. Democracy has a great deal to recommend it, honey.
Mind you, daughters were usually safe from lords on Crete. Hah!
'What is her bride price?' I asked. In truth, he scared me more than a Persian battle line.
'Ten silver owls,' he said.
I almost laughed my relief. Hephaestion interrupted me.
'Ten? For a girl who has lain with any man who will have her?' He spat.
Troas flushed. I think he was hurt. 'I thought we were friends?'
Hephaestion glared at him. 'When you come to buy a bronze knife, what do you tell me? That it is a beautiful item, that the blade is as sharp as obsidian, that it feels perfect in your hand? No! You tell me that it is too small, dull, ugly – anything to lower the price. Why is your daughter different from my knife?'
I served them both wine, and Hephaestion, pretending to be my father, arranged the bride price at six owls.
It was odd, but I knew I would be sailing away with the fleet, and I knew in my heart that I wouldn't come back. So out of something – it was hardly love – I said that I would marry her.
Troas looked as if he had been axed. 'No, lord,' he said.
Well, there you go. He had a son-in-law lined up. Not some useless sword-swinger who would vanish in the summer, but a strong young man with a broad back for hauling nets.
Beware, when you think too much of yourself. I realized in an ugly moment that Troas didn't think much of me. He wanted six silver owls so that his daughter and her boy could have a good start – his own boat, probably.
I was born a peasant, lass – never let yourself believe that peasants have a simpler life.
I went up to the hall, still wearing my leather apron. I opened the cedar box where I kept my goods – my embroidered cloak, my good linen chiton, the gold and lapis necklace from Sardis, and my pay.
I took twelve silver owls from the hoard – a little under a third of my coins, and turned away to find Nearchos gazing at me from the other side of the hall.
I smiled at him. I couldn't help it.
He came across to me, dressed in a scarlet chiton with matching sandals. His pimples were gone and his chest had filled out and his hair was long and oiled.
'You are an odd man, Arimnestos,' he said, and we embraced.
'Walk with me,' I said.
He looked around and his face was red. I sighed and prayed to Aphrodite.
I caught the eye of Idomeneus, and he winked.
So we walked out into the garden, and then up the mountain, and the gossip of the older warriors followed us like a living thing.
'I'm not taking you for an afternoon of love,' I said, as soon as we were out of earshot of the other men.
He flushed. 'I didn't expect as much,' he said – but he had hoped it.
'I want you to look at yourself,' I said. Like many a teacher and father before me, I dare say.
But he looked away, expecting censure.
'Do you listen to me when I tell you what Heraclitus said? Do you understand anything of the logos, and of change?' I asked.
He shrugged, the angry young man I'd met more than a year before.
'I am not a Cretan lord, Nearchos. I am a peasant from Boeotia, and I have made my name with my spear.' I took his shoulders and he looked at me then, because this was not the speech he expected.
'You are a lord's son,' I said. 'And now you are a man, not a boy. You are waiting – all of you are waiting – for me to take you as a lover.' I shrugged. 'That would be wrong. I admire you – but you are a man, now. A man chooses his own lovers.'
He stood, suddenly. 'But I want you!'
Suddenly I realized that this boy deserved the truth and not some story, some manipulation from Idomeneus. He was an honourable boy, with his whole life before him.
'I am not available,' I said primly. There – the truth.
'I am not worthy yet,' he said.
'Don't be foolish,' I said. 'Customs are different. I am from Plataea. In Plataea, we frown on relations between men.' Well, not exactly. But close enough.
That made him smile. 'My sisters said the same to me,' he said, smiling because it was so silly – to him.
'I am taking a girl in the town as a lover,' I said. 'I will not bring her to the hall. I do not seek to embarrass you. And if you require it, I will leave.'
He shook his head. 'A girl?' he asked. 'You are the oddest man. You spend your spare time pounding bronze and reading scrolls, and now you make love to women. It is – unmanly!' He spat the last word.
'I will leave, then,' I said. There – I'd told the truth. I felt better for it. Idomeneus's way might have worked, but the deception would have required too much effort. And I think that Heraclitus would not have approved.
He took my hand. 'No,' he said. 'No, I am being stupid. I love you.'
I embraced him. 'We will fight side by side,' I said. 'Better than sex. Now – go and take a lover. And be kind to him. Or her.'
'A girl?' he asked. He laughed. 'We might set a fashion. I was with a girl once – they're soft.' He laughed again.
'You can get used to it,' I said.
On the way down the hill, I considered that Idomeneus and Nearchos both loved me, and said so, while neither Penelope nor Briseis nor Gaiana ever said they loved me. Perhaps it is because none of my three women ever stood with me in the battle line. Hah – that would be a phalanx. And not a coward among them.
At any rate, after that day, Nearchos and I were friends, and a little more. I lived in the smith's shed until the festival, and afterwards, too. We made fine helmets, and good armour, that turned Persian arrows and kept men alive. At the Chalkeia I made myself known to the priest with signs, and was raised from the first to the second
