voluntary exile to have a freer hand in arranging his revenge and my downfall. He’s hiring mercenaries from all over Greece — masterless men and wandering warriors.’
I laughed. I could deal with Cleitus much more easily than I could deal with Euphoria. The firelight played on her golden hair and turned it orange, and now she and Pen and Leda were dancing together, a woman’s dance that moved the hips and shoulders. Euphoria swayed her hips in a way that suggested there was fire in her, and I had to look away. My eyes met Miltiades’.
He shook his head in mock disbelief. ‘You’ve got it bad, Doru.’
I shrugged. I didn’t see any point in denying it, as my eyes had already gone back to her.
Lykon was watching her, too.
‘Cleitus means to kill you,’ Miltiades said.
I shrugged again. ‘He’s welcome to try.’
‘Your arrogance borders on hubris, lad.’ Miltiades put an arm around my shoulder. ‘I think one of the reasons I’ve always loved you is that you remind me so much of me,’ he said, with a little self-mockery. He held out a skin of resinated wine, and I took a healthy pull. ‘He won’t come at you for single combat. He’ll come with a hundred men.’
Just then, watching Lykon devour Euphoria with his eyes, and watching her shy return of his attentions, I would happily have fought all hundred as a demonstration sport, as men sometimes fought duels at the Olympics. ‘Into Plataea?’ I asked, thinking about it. ‘What, from Thebes?’
‘Or from the sea,’ Miltiades answered. ‘It’s only forty stades.’
I nodded, sobered. And as I considered how to defend myself from that whoreson Cleitus, Euphoria linked arms with the other girls and, hands high, they began to sway — all their hips shot out together, like married women in the Dionysian dances, and they dissolved into giggles — and then across the fire, her eyes locked with mine.
She didn’t look away, and I could have stared at her for ever just then. One lock of her bright gold hair was loose, and it trailed away on the wind of the fire, and her face was the face of a goddess. A golden-haired goddess.
Aristides and Sophanes pushed forward through the throng to stand with Miltiades and me.
‘Now, this is a party!’ Sophanes shouted. He was just twenty, I think, and he’d fought well on the Lade campaign, of course. He was newly married and in love with all the world. ‘I wish my wife was here,’ he added. ‘I’d carry her off into the dark like a satyr.’
‘And she’d tell you that she was too cold for love,’ Miltiades said.
‘Not my wife,’ Sophanes said. ‘I keep her warm.’
Aristides put his hand on my arm and looked at Miltiades. ‘You warned him?’ he said.
‘I did,’ the big man answered. ‘And he laughed it off. Love has obscured his fine sense of danger.’
Aristides shook his head. ‘If the Medes come in the spring,’ he said, ‘you and your Plataeans will matter very much to us. This is more than friendship. Watch yourself.’
Euphoria had disappeared into the darkness.
‘If Cleitus comes at me in Plataea, I’ll make a drinking cup of his skull,’ I said.
Aristides choked on his wine.
‘That’s my boy,’ Miltiasay that a spirit of cooperation sweptdes said.
Euphoria never burned my heart like Briseis — but suddenly she was in it. So on the last day, I went to her father, bowed and asked for her hand.
Behind me stood Miltiades and Aristides, Alcaeus, Antigonus, Philip and Themistocles and a dozen other gentlemen.
He looked around at them before he met my eye. ‘I suspect it would be political death for me to refuse you,’ he said. And he smiled, and I thought that, despite our first brushes, we might grow to be friends. ‘But I swore to Artemis when her mother was dying that I would allow her a choice in the matter of her husband. Shall I send for her?’
Suddenly, I found myself nervous — I who had cleared the deck of a Phoenician trireme by myself. My heart beat the way it does just before I enter a fight, and I wanted to get away.
Euphoria came down to the courtyard surrounded by the other girls. Pen led her down the steps and Leda was hard at her heels. But they weren’t giggling or playing. They were solemn, and Pen wouldn’t meet my eye.
It was the dirty hands that did it, I realized. She didn’t want a low-born smith who would soil her weaving. She wanted someone like Aristides, who could stand in the front rank when required, but otherwise kept his hands clean.
It was rather like a lost battle. Once I saw how doomed my case was, my calm returned and I determined — because I liked her very well — to bear her refusal with a good grace.
She walked up to me, eyes downcast, her blonde hair piled artlessly on her head and neck. Her simple wool chiton was woven from wool that probably came from their own sheep, and it showed off her figure — her slim, slightly rounded waist and her wide hips and straight back. Few women have dignity at fourteen. Euphoria had it. She came up close to me, and only then did I realize how much shorter than me she was — by a head or more. She gave the impression of height with her dignity and carriage.
I expected her eyes to flick to Lykon, but they did not. They stayed firmly fixed on the ground in front of her.
‘Lovely maiden,’ I said. I managed a smile. ‘You would make me the happiest of men if you would consent to be my bride. Yet,’ I added, to soften the blow, ‘I live in far-off Boeotia, on a farm, and I hammer bronze for my bread, and no one will understand better than me if you choose to stay closer to hearth and home.’
Then she raised her eyes — a pale blue, like good steel. And she smiled, a sort of half-smile as if she was about to laugh — at herself. ‘My loom will be as comfortable by your forge as it would be in any house in Attica, I expect,’ she said.
Pen was grinning.
I didn’t understand, and in my confusion, I tried to think of something noble or witty to say, to turn aside my disappointment. I’ve been told twenty times by friends that I had never looked like such a fool in all my life, and that what I said was ‘Huh?’
She laughed aloud, a real laugh, such as maidens usually hide, so that her belly moved and her breasts rose and fell under the bindings of her chiton.
‘Yes!’ Pen said to me, poking me in the side. ‘She said yes!’
She said yes?
It took me a long time to understand. Not until I had digested her agreement did I understand how important it had become to me that she had said yes. In the time it takes Zeus to throw a bolt to earth, at the whim of a maiden, my life changed.
14
We set the wedding for late winter, and I rode back over the mountains with my companions. We celebrated the feast of Artemis at Plataea, and they rode away to their homes.
It is one of the saddest comments on men, honey, that war and death make for a long story, but a winter of contentment and happiness can pass in a single breath. Our barns were full, our byres were full and all that winter we hunted on Cithaeron, we danced the Pyrrhiche and we discussed strategies against Persia. Women sat at their looms and wove and put in their own comments. We stored food, we worked on our leather. My forge roared every day as I made helmets — a few good ones, and more of the new-style open-faced bowls, which men now call ‘Boeotians’. We called them dog-caps. If not for Cleon, the winter would have been perfect — and forgettable.
I spent my spare time learning to engrave. Tiraeus knew something of it, and had a set of gravers among the tools he’d brought with him from when he was a tinker. I bought more tools, fine steel from Corinth.
But a few weeks before I was due to return to Attica, I found Cleon lying out in the freezing rain, drunk and asleep. At first I thought he was dead. I took him home, cleaned him and sobered him, and then he wept.
The next day, he was drunk again. I waited him out and sobered him up.
