her. ‘Sorry, despoina.’ When Aristides shrugged, I clarified why the two young men were upset. ‘One I killed in cold blood.’
Aristides shuddered in revulsion. ‘How can you do such things?’ he asked.
‘It’s much like killing a man in a fight, only quicker,’ I retorted. His squeamishness — did I mention that he was a prig? — offended me.
‘I cannot have you under my roof while you are tainted with such a crime,’ Aristides said.
I all but fell over in shock.
‘They
I’m no fool. I got to my feet. ‘I understand, my lord. But the man — what was before him but death in the mines? And he might have been used against us in law.’
Aristides kept his head turned away, as if breathing the same air as me would hurt him. ‘A thug — a metic? He could never have been used in a trial. And you should know better. Are you a god, that you may choose who lives and who dies? You killed him because it was
Alas, he was right.
‘A god, or one of the fates, might well say that this man had no future but a straight trip to the mines and a few months of wretchedness.’ Aristides pulled his chlamys over his head in disgust. ‘You have no such knowledge. You killed him for convenience. Your own convenience. Now I am beginning to doubt my wisdom in defending you.’
Jocasta was standing as far from me as possible. They were a very religious household, and my bloody pragmatism now looked to me, as it did to them, like selfish crime.
I had two choices — the amoral outrage of the pragmatist, or admission that I had acted wrongly. Rage rose within me, but Heraclitus was there, too.
‘You are right,’ I said. I clamped down on my anger. It was wrong — ugly, unworthy.
Aristides raised his head. ‘You mean that?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘You have convicted me in the court of my own mind. I should not have killed him, though he was of no use, even to himself.’ I shuddered. It was so easy to fall back into the habits of the pirate.
‘Cleanse yourself,’ he said.
‘I need my horse and my woman,’ I said. ‘I swore an oath.’
Aristides shook his head. ‘Cleanse yourself, and perhaps the gods will provide.’
There were, in those days, a number of temples that offered cleansing from the stain of death and impiety. Even the shrine to Leitos, in Plataea, although that was open only to soldiers.
But the principal places of cleansing for crime were Olympia, Delphi and Delos. And of the three, Delos was easiest to reach, though most distant in stades, I suppose. And the Apollo there was the most ready to listen to a common man.
‘I will go to Delos,’ I said.
‘You can be in Sounion by morning,’ Aristides said. ‘Have you money?’
I didn’t tell him I still had twenty drachmas from the dead men. ‘Yes,’ I said.
‘Gods speed you there,’ Aristides said. He stood by me while I rolled my blankets and an old bearskin, then followed me out of his gate. ‘Listen, Arimnestos. You may take me for a pious fool, or a hypocrite.’
‘Neither, my lord.’ We were alone in the dark.
‘You need to be gone — before your wagon arrives with the corpse and the goods, and they find an excuse to take you again. I will try to find your girl. But this murder is a stain, and you must be clean before you come back here. It may be that some god led you to it — because you do need to be gone, and tonight is better than tomorrow.’ He shrugged. ‘They will kill you if they cannot convict you.’
‘I don’t fear them,’ I said, but I wasn’t telling the truth.
‘In a year, the balance will change. Right now, you cannot be here. Even Plataea might prove dangerous for you. Go to Delos, and do as the god bids you.’ He held out his hand. ‘I do not fear pollution so much that I would not clasp your hand.’
And then I was walking in the dark, down the rocky road to Sounion.
3
I managed to find a ship at Sounion, practically on the steps of the Temple of Poseidon. He was a Phoenician bound for Delos with a cargo of slaves from Italy and Iberia. I didn’t think very highly of slavers and I dislike Phoenicians on principle, even though they are great sailors, but I took it as a test from the gods and I kept my eyes open and my mouth shut.
All the slaves were Iberians, big men with heavy moustaches, tattoos and the deep anger of the recently enslaved. They eyed my weapons and I kept my distance. They all looked like fighting men.
The navarch, a man with a beard trimmed the Aegyptian way, curling like a talon from his chin, made them row in shifts between his professional rowers. He was training them so that he’d get a better price. He planned to sell the best of them at Delos and the rest at Tyre or Ephesus.
‘Ephesus?’ I asked. Ephesus always interested me.
‘The satrap of Phrygia has an army laying siege to Miletus,’ he said. ‘His fleet is based at Ephesus.’
That was news to me. ‘Already?’ I asked. The fall of Miletus — the most powerful city in the Greek world, or so we thought — would be the end of the Ionian Revolt.
Once again, I have to leave my tale to explain. In those days, most of the cities of Ionia — and there were dozens, from beautiful Heraklea on the Euxine, down along the coast of Asia to mighty Miletus, then to Ephesus, the city of my youth, richer than Athens by a factor of five times — across the Cyprian Sea to Cyprus and Crete — more Greeks lived in Ionia than lived in Greece. Except that most of those Greeks lived under the rule of the King of Kings — the Great King of the Persians.
While I was growing to manhood in the house of Hipponax, I lived under Persian rule. The Persians ruled well, thugater. Never believe the crap men say today about how they were a nation of slaves. They were warriors, and men of honour — in most cases, more honour than we Greeks. Artaphernes — the satrap of Phrygia — was the friend and foe of my youth. He was a great man.
In those days — in my youth — the Greeks of Ionia rose up to throw off the shackles of Persian slavery. Hah! Now, there’s a load of cow shit. Selfish men seeking power for themselves cozened the citizens of many Ionian cities to trade the safety and stability of the world’s greatest empire for ‘freedom’. To most Ionians, that freedom was the freedom to be killed by a Persian. None of the Ionians trusted each other, and every one of them wanted power over the others. The Persians had a unified command, brilliant generals and excellent supplies. And money.
The Ionian Revolt had lasted for ten years, but it was never much of a success. And when this story starts, as I was sailing as a passenger on a slave ship, it was entering its final phase, although we didn’t know it. The Persians had seemed at the edge of triumph before, and each time, the revolt had been rescued — usually by Athens, or by Athenians acting as surrogates for their mother city, like Miltiades.
But Athens had its own problems — the near civil war I described. Persian gold was pouring into the city, inflating the power of the aristocratic party and the Alcmaeonids, and the Pisistratids were backed by Persia to restore the tyranny — not that I knew that then. Persian gold was paralysing Athens, and the Persian axe was poised over Miletus.
To the navarch of this slave ship, all this meant that he could make a handsome profit selling half-trained rowers to the Persian fleet anchored on the beaches around Ephesus, supporting the siege of Miletus.
I listened and managed not to speak.
We were fifteen days making a three-day voyage, and I hated that ship by the time we landed. His long, black hull was swift and clean, and for a light trireme he was the very acme of perfection — yet this Phoenician cur sailed him like a pig. The Phoenician was afraid of every cup of wind, and he stayed on a coast to the very end of a headland and crossed open water with visible reluctance. I’ve never loved the Phoenicians, but most of them were
