said 'Omicron.'
'Good boy,' he said.
My ear still hurt, all thirty stades home. My brother was working in the forge, and he didn't like it. It's odd, being brothers. We were alike in so many ways – and we were always friends, even when we were angry – but we wanted different things. He wanted to be a warrior, a nobleman with a retinue and deer hounds. He wanted the life Mater wanted for him. And all I wanted to be was a master smith. Irony is the lord of all, honey. I got what he wanted, and he got a few feet of dirt. But he was a good boy, and he was in the forge doing the job that I would have sold my soul to do. That's the way of it when you are young.
I showed Mater my letters and sang her the first hundred lines of the Iliad, which Calchas had also taught me, and she nodded and kissed my cheek and gave me a silver pin.
'At least one of my sons will grow up a gentleman,' she said. 'Tell me of this Calchas.'
So I did. I told her all I knew about him, which proved, under her Medusa-like glare, to be little enough. But she smiled when I said he ate black bread and bean soup.
'An aristocrat, then,' she said happily. Not my idea of an aristocrat, but Mater knew some things better than her eight-year-old child.
I stayed at home for two days while Pater gathered some wine. I helped in the forge and saw that my brother had already learned a few things. He'd made a bowl from copper and he was scribing it with a stylus – just simple lines, but to me it looked wonderful.
He pulled it from my hand, threw it across the forge and burst into tears. And we embraced, and swore to swap when Pater and Calchas wouldn't know. It wasn't an oath either of us meant – we knew we'd never fool an adult – and yet it seemed to comfort us, and I've long wondered about which god listened to that oath.
There were changes. Mater was better – that was obvious. The house was clean, the maids were singing and my sister smiled all the time. We had a new slave family – a young man, a Thracian, and his slave wife and their new baby. He didn't speak much Greek, and Bion didn't like him, and the man had a big bruise on his face where someone had knocked him down hard. His wife was pretty, and men in the forge yard watched her when she served them wine. Not that Pater allowed anything to happen. That's where you really betray your slaves, thugater. But I get ahead of myself.
The talk in the forge yard was louder than when I'd left, even two months before, and it was cold outside, so there was a fire in the pit. Skira – the Thracian's wife – served wine with good grace, and her husband worked the bellows while Bion made a pot. The men in the yard talked about Thebes and plans for the coming Daidala. It was just three years away. Pater was suddenly an important man.
We had a donkey. We'd never had a donkey before, and Pater said he'd send Hermogenes with the donkey to carry the wine for me. That sounded good.
But the donkey and the wine and Hermogenes took time to prepare, and it became clear that I wasn't going back to Calchas on the second day, either. Which was fine by me. The 'loafers' were all gathered. Draco had built Epictetus a new wagon, and had it standing by the gate ready for delivery. It was even taller, broader and heavier, the wheels just narrow enough to fit in the ruts of the road. We were all admiring it when a stranger turned into our lane from the main road. He was riding a horse, as was his companion.
I think, honey, because you know a world where every man of substance has a horse, that I have to stop here and say that though I'd seen horses by the age of eight, I'd never touched one. No one I knew had a horse. Horses were for aristocrats. Farmers used oxen. A rich farmer might have a donkey. Horses did nothing but carry men, and farmers had legs. I don't think ten families in Plataea owned a horse, and there were two of them coming up our lane.
They had cloaks and boots, both of them. They were clearly master and man – the master had a chlamys of Tyrian red with a white stripe, and a chiton to match, milk white with a red stripe at the hem. He had red hair like my brother but even brighter, and a big beard like a priest. He wore a sword that you could see, even at the distance of a horse's length, was mounted in gold.
All conversation stopped.
Listen, thugater. In the Boeotia of my youth, we bitched quite a lot about aristocrats. Men knew that there were aristocrats – we had our own basileus, after all, although he didn't have a gold-mounted sword, I can tell you. And local men knew that Mater was the daughter of a basileus. But this was the genuine article. Frankly, he looked more like a god than most statues I'd seen. He was the tallest man there by more than a finger's breadth. And I knew nothing of horses, but his big bay looked like a creature out of story.
I still think of that man. I can see him in my mind's eye. I'll tell you a truth – I worshipped him. I still do. Even now, I try to be him when I'm 'lording it' over some court case or petty tyrant.
Even his servant looked better than we did – in a fine chlamys of dark blue wool with a stripe of red and a white chiton. He didn't have a sword, but he had a leather satchel under his arm and his horse was as noble as his master's.
And yet, this god among men slipped from his horse's back and bowed. 'I seek the house of the bronze-smith of Plataea,' he said politely. 'Can any of you gentlemen help me?'
Myron bowed deeply. 'Lord,' he said, 'Chalkeotechnes the smith is working. We are merely his friends.'
The red-haired god smiled. 'Is that wine I see?' he asked. 'I'd be happy to pay for a cup.'
None of my family was there. I stepped forward. 'No guest of this house should pay for his wine,' I said in the voice of a boy. 'Pardon, lord. Skira, a cup and good wine for our guest.'
Skira scampered off, and the red-haired man followed her with his eyes. Then he looked at me. 'You are a courteous lad,' he said.
Boys don't talk back to lords. I blushed and was silent until Skira came back with a fine bronze cup and wine. I poured for the man, and he cast much the same look over the cup as he did over Skira.
He drank in silence, sharing with his man. Some of the loafers began to talk again, but they were subdued in his presence, until he slapped the wagon. 'Nice,' he said. 'Nice and big. Well made.'
'Thanks,' Draco said. 'I made him.'
'How much for the wagon?' the man said.
'Already sold,' Draco answered in the voice of a peasant who knows that he's just lost the chance of a lifetime.
'So build me another,' the man said. 'What did you charge for this one?'
'Thirty drachmas,' Draco said.
'Meaning you charged fifteen, doubled it for my gold-hilt sword, and you'll be happy to make me two wagons like this for forty.' The man smiled like a fox, and I suddenly knew who he must be. He was Odysseus. He was like Odysseus come to life.
Draco wanted to splutter, but the man was so smooth – and so pleasant – that it was hard to gainsay him. 'As you say, lord,' Draco said.
And then Pater came.
He still had his leather apron on. He came out into the yard, saw the wine in the man's hand and flashed me a rare smile of reward.
'You wanted me, lord?' he asked.
'Do you know Epictetus?'
'I count him a friend,' Pater said.
'He showed me a helmet in Athens. I rode over the mountain to have you make me one.' The man was half a head taller than Pater. 'And greaves.'
Pater's brow furrowed. 'There are better smiths in Athens,' he said.
The man shook his head. 'I don't think so. But I'm here, so unless you don't like the look of me, I'd thank you to start work tomorrow. I have a ship to catch at Corinth.'
'Won't the captain wait for you, lord?' Pater asked.
'I am the captain,' the man said. He grinned. He had the happiest smile I'd seen on a grown man. 'I sent them round from Athens.'
I don't think any of us had ever seen a man rich enough to own a ship before. The man held out his hand to Pater.
'Technes of Plataea,' Pater said.
'Men call me Miltiades,' the lord said.
