degree because my sacrifices were found worthy.
I was happy. Too bad it doesn't take long to tell. I am honest – too honest, and look at her blush when I say Gaiana and I made love every night – every night – ten times, if we wanted. Oh, youth is wasted on the young, honey. But you might ask – what of home? Didn't I want to go home?
Didn't I want to avenge my father, live on my farm? Or kill Aristagoras and take Briseis for my own? See? You do want to know. Well, children, this isn't the Iliad. If I had a fate, I didn't know it. And when you are eighteen, or perhaps nineteen, and men treat you like a hero, when your hands make beautiful things, when every night has a soft mouth and your couch is warm with love…
No one who is that happy gives a crap about fate, or furies. I was happy. I didn't give my father, my farm or Briseis any more than a passing thought. And of the three, Briseis would have won out.
For two months, I was happy. Two months of making love while the rain fell on the roof of the shed, and making beautiful things all day with the power of my arms and shoulders – dancing the military dances, drilling with weapons, wearing armour. A week before we were due to sail, Lord Achilles paraded us in the agora, and we made a fine sight. There were men lacking swords and men lacking greaves, but every man had a thorax of bronze or leather, a good helmet, spears and a knife. Every man – even the rowers. Six hundred men. Sixty of us – the lord's retainers and relatives – had full panoply. On land, we would be the front rank, and at sea we would fight as marines.
Nearchos had the new ship, of course. He was the lord's son. And I, of course, was to be his helmsman.
We celebrated with a night of drinking, and we poured wine over the ram of the new ship and I called her Thetis. Then we spent a week practising at sea. Our fisherfolk could row, and our officers were decent enough, but I needed that week, and more. I was not really a helmsman and I made mistakes every day, getting the Thetis off the beach and back on, stern-first. But I was smart enough to go for help, and I found it with Troas, who was rowing in our upper bank and wearing one of my helmets. I brought him aft as 'assistant' helmsman. He had his own fishing boat, and he knew the sea far, far better than I.
Never be too proud to get help, honey bee. And he did help. After all, I'd paid him double his price, and I'd given Gaiana good gifts – I'd made her a mirror, and I'd made her two pairs of bronze oar-pins, guessing that her eventual husband would want them.
The last day was hard for Nearchos and the other local men. Me, I was anxious to get away. I could feel the draw of the world. It was as if I had been asleep and now I was waking up again.
Gaiana came to me one last time at the shed. I had presents laid out for her on the bed – a length of good Aegyptian linen and a necklace of silver with black beads. She cried a little.
'I'm pregnant,' she said.
I smiled, because I was a man of the world and I had expected this. 'How do you know?' I asked.
She smiled – no wild talk. 'Girls know,' she said. 'I could just be late,' she admitted.
'Best marry your fisher-boy, then,' I said.
She looked confused.
'Don't you have a boy to marry?' I asked.
'How do you know?' she blurted out. And then she met my eyes. 'I like him.' Defiantly. And then, hesitantly, 'I like you, too.'
'I won't be coming back,' I said, more harshly than I meant. 'I offered to marry you and your father turned me down. He knows I won't come back.' I shrugged. I was growing to like the purity of telling the truth. Sometimes it was very hard – sometimes I still lied just to make things easier – but simple truths seemed to make things, well, simple. 'Is your boy on my ship?'
She shook her head. 'He wants to go, but Pater won't let him.'
Pater – Troas – sounded smarter and smarter.
I gave her my gifts and we made love. It should have been gentle and tragic, but it wasn't. Gaiana never had tragedy in her. She laughed in my mouth, and she laughed when our fingers last touched.
'What shall I call your boy?' she asked. 'If he's yours?'
'Hipponax,' I said.
16
The Battle of Amathus was my first sea-fight.
We sailed and rowed the long way around Crete, because Lord Achilles, who hadn't been to war in ten years, was still a canny old bird and he had a head on his shoulders. So we rowed away towards Italy, and the rowers cursed.
Lord Achilles knew what he was about. We spent two weeks going around the island, and by the time we put our bows to the deep blue east of Crete, our muscles were hard as rock and our rowing was excellent. Our helmsmen – even me – could handle our ships. We could sprint and we could cruise and we could back-water.
I have said that Nearchos commanded the Thetis. In fact, I commanded it, while teaching him to command, while Troas taught me to be a seaman. Laugh if you like.
Lord Achilles commanded the Poseidon and his brother Ajax, a long-limbed nobleman I had only met twice, commanded Triton. We didn't practise formations much, although we did take turns rowing in the middle of a three-ship line, so that we could get used to the length of another ship's oars.
We made the rendezvous off Cyprus just a week late, and found the Council of Ionia in full assembly on the beach of Amathus.
I stayed at Nearchos's shoulder. We spent a week listening to Aristagoras talk. Other men talked, too. The leader of the Cyprian rebels was Onesilus, king of Salamis. That's Salamis on Cyprus, honey – your friend from Halicarnassus knows it, don't you, lad? Technically, Onesilus had summoned all of us, and he was the leader of the fight on Cyprus. He and his men were laying siege to Amathus, a Cyprian city that had remained fiercely loyal to the Great King while the rest of the island had thrown off the yoke a year earlier.
Here, boy – fill this with wine. I need to talk about the Ionian rebellion, and that is thirsty talk!
It was the curse of the gods on the Ionians that they were doomed to listen to Aristagoras and his promises. From one end of Ionia to the other, the army of Artaphernes and the navy of his Phoenician allies, the greatest seamen in the world, defeated the Ionians every time they stood to fight. At Byzantium and in the Troad, at Ephesus, in a dozen ship duels, the Ionians had been worsted every time.
And yet the rebellion spread.
It was against all sense, and against all reason, but despite Artaphernes' fairness and Aristagoras's arrogance and failure, the rebellion grew with every defeat. The Carians, who had stood against us at Sardis and at Ephesus, were with us now. Cyprus was in revolt and all the Greek cities of Asia were in the Ionian Council, as they called themselves. Aristagoras was their leader and strategos.
We needed a victory. There really were no more cities to join in, unless Athens or Sparta chose to join. And neither seemed disposed to fight.
Aristagoras argued that we needed just one victory to convince both Athens and Sparta to join us. I doubted him. I had seen Aristides' face when he boarded his ship, and I suspected that nothing short of a Persian fleet in the Piraeus would get him to fight again alongside the Ionians. But I was a mere helmsman and no one asked my opinion.
I had a week to get to know that fleet, and I counted two hundred and twelve ships on the beach. There were ships from Lesbos and ships from Chios, Miletus and Samos, and even exiled ships from the cities already retaken.
Such as Archilogos of Ephesus. There he was, ablaze in magnificent panoply of blue and gold, looking like a god. I felt the tug of our friendship and my oath. But I stayed away from him.
I also heard that Briseis was on Lesbos, and that she had borne no children to her husband. I learned this from Epaphroditos, after many an embrace. He had his own ship now. And he and Nearchos became friends in an hour.
It flattered my vanity that so many men remembered me. We had games on the beach and I won the hoplitodromos, although I didn't win any of the other events until the duels on the last day, and that was too easy.
