built a cairn as fast as you can tell the story. I put coins on his eyes and another man poured wine over the grave. More and more men came up – they must have been cursing my wagon all the way up the pass – and every one joined in.
There was a small man, a pot-mender, and he had a pair of donkeys and a young slave of his own. He came up when the cairn was half-finished. He looked more angry than sad. I caught his eye, and he looked away.
'You know him?' I asked. A pair of korai from Thebes who were travelling to the Temple of Artemis at Athens were washing his face under their mother's direction. They were good girls, conscious of so many men around them and yet aware of their duties as women.
He shrugged. 'He looks like the pais of Empedocles, the chief priest of the smith god.' He made the sign automatically – even a pot-mender is at least an initiate.
I gave him my sign – it was the Cretan version, and probably a little different, but he knew that I was an initiate and more, and he stepped closer. 'I know Empedocles,' I said. It was like remembering another life. Empedocles the priest, and his magic lens. I looked at the pot-mender. 'You sure?' I asked.
He nodded and swallowed. But he wasn't afraid of me or much else – no travelling man can afford to be scared on the road, and he called out to the other men. 'Anyone heard of thieves in this pass?'
Other men nodded – a farmer, and a wool merchant, and a man with a load of fine wine, still in cheap amphorae used at sea, loaded carefully on a big wagon. He wasn't the owner but a trusted slave, and his manner suggested that he used this route often.
'There's a gang of them,' he said, 'off towards the east.'
'Took the priest for ransom?' I asked.
The slave spat. 'Who knows what they want? They're killers. They're like animals.'
An old peddler with a leather sack full of goods put his sack down and rubbed his chin. 'I heard they were west of Eleutherai,' he said. 'Always best to just give them the money,' he said, to no one in particular.
We finished the cairn, covered the boy's face and sang a hymn to Demeter, the girls' voices carrying sweet and high. I wept again, although I wasn't sure why. And then we let the other men pass, and we waited while another caravan coming up out of Boeotia climbed past the turn-around. The tinker and the peddler waited with us. The tinker's name was Tiraeus, and he was shifty and unwashed but not, I think, a bad man. The peddler was Laertes.
He looked wistfully at my entourage. 'You are a rich man,' he said.
'Hmmm,' I said, sounding too much like Pater for my own peace of mind. But I had the lapis and gold necklace from Sardis at my throat and a belt of heavy gold links around my waist under my chiton – in my experience, that's the safest way to carry a fortune. 'I have money,' I said.
He shrugged. 'It never sticks to me,' he said. 'Thanks for the wine.'
Tiraeus, the tinker, was emboldened by the peddler. 'You a smith?' he asked suddenly. 'You don't – look like a smith,' he said. 'Apologies, master. Too often, I say what comes into my head.'
I shrugged. 'I can bang out a good flat sheet,' I said. 'I can repair a helmet. I make a nice simple cup.' I grinned, thinking of my latest attempt at a helmet in Hephaestion's shop on Crete – my first grin in a day, I think.
'Looking for an apprentice?' he asked eagerly, mistaking my statement of fact for false modesty.
'No,' I said. 'But if you help get the wagon down the pass, I'll stand you both a good dinner.'
He shrugged. Laertes grinned wolfishly. I gathered that he lived life a day at a time. 'Deal!' he said.
And we turned the wagon, yoked the pair of oxen backwards and started down, the six of us braking the wagon, leaving the new grave under the afternoon sun.
Sweaty, back-breaking work, but many hands made it lighter, and my mood had changed. So I made jokes, praised the two Thracians when they worked, and we were a different crew entering Eleutherai than we had been at Pedeis. We were faster, too, and there was still plenty of light in the sky. Eleutherai is in Boeotia, honey. Men speak the right way there, and women look right and the barley is sweeter. What can I say? I'm a Boeotian, honey. Eleutherai felt like home, and my mood rose again. Men told us that Eleutherai was so named because runaway slaves from Boeotia were free when they got there – and I felt like a freer man, drinking the wine. If I'd been a slave close to home, instead of across the ocean in Asia, I like to think I'd have run the first night I wasn't watched.
I took the seven of us into the biggest taverna, summoned the owner and put a gold daric on the table. Then I used my sword to split it in two and gave him half. 'I want a dinner,' I said. 'A really good dinner, and wine that's not like cow piss, and sweet almonds with honey. I want clean straw, food for my beasts and no crap.'
Half a gold daric should have bought his whole village, but it did get us a passable meal, a pretty girl to wait on us and some seriously obsequious service. And the wine was the wine of home – not the wonders of Chian wine, but good, strong stuff. The tinker was thankful and pleasant, but the peddler was sullen. I didn't like him.
My gold half-daric brought the basileus in the morning. He was an old man, and not really the power of the town – the Athenians owned Eleutherai to all intents and purposes by then, and he was a puppet.
He was an old aristocrat, and he was waiting for us in the courtyard of the wine shop. He looked me over, saw the blood stains on my chiton and drew the wrong conclusions. 'Where do you come from?' he demanded. He had two men with him, and they had spears.
I shrugged. 'Here and there, sir,' I said.
'Answer,' he demanded.
He made me angry and I liked that, because the blackness had been so heavy. 'I serve Miltiades,' I said. 'Does that mean anything to you?'
It certainly did. His whole demeanour changed. He stepped forward and offered his hand, and we clasped. 'My apologies, sir,' he said. 'I have a plague of bandits to deal with.' He pointed to the blood stains on my chiton. 'I thought-'
I nodded. 'A boy was killed by bandits in the pass yesterday,' I said, and told him what I knew. Tiraeus added what he knew and the basileus shook his head. 'They are bad men,' he said. 'Old soldiers, or so I hear.' He looked at my men, then at the two fellow travellers, and then at my necklace – I could see him taking it all in. 'Are you a local man, sir?' he asked politely.
Suddenly, I thought that I knew just where the bandits would be. But I held my tongue, only glancing at the two travellers with sudden interest. And the old basileus disconcerted me. I'd been away for ten years and my first day in Boeotia, an aristocrat mistook me for one of his own.
'Plataea,' I said.
'Ah!' he said, as if a mystery was solved. 'And these bandits are operating from south of Plataea. You are going to deal with them? Miltiades sent you?' His relief was palpable. A problem passed on is a problem solved, and all that.
Idomeneus brightened. The prospect of violence restored his faith in the logos, or whatever passed for the logos in the Cretan's world.
You know, thugater, sometimes the fates speak loudly, and sometimes we have to be the men that other men expect us to be. And Old Empedocles – if indeed it was he – deserved something from me.
Frankly, it was good to have a simple mission. It allowed me to put off going home for another day or two.
Even Hermogenes nodded. Bandits were bandits.
'Yes,' I said. 'That is, it is not what I'm here for, but I'll deal with the bandits.'
Everyone smiled, except the tinker, who looked confused, and the peddler, but sullen was pretty much his only mood.
We got our oxen hitched and started up the long road to Plataea. There's a short road, down the valley of Asopus, and a long road up along the skirts of the mountain. The long road would pass the hero's shrine and come down past my father's farm. The short road was faster. I wasn't surprised when both of the other travellers stuck with us at the fork towards the mountain, however. Not surprised at all.
'You said that you were a smith!' the tinker said when we were clear of Eleutherai.
'Yes,' I said.
'But he thinks you're some sort of aristocrat,' the peddler said, as if I was intentionally deceiving him.
'Hmm,' I said. We crossed the Asopus in silence, and started up the long ridge towards the hero's shrine. When we reached the first copse of big oaks, I pulled the wagon off to the side.
