‘Your brothers travelled far and wide to look for you at different festivals, but you seem to have given up performing.’ I accepted a cup of warm, sweet wine from Kadous and thanked him with a nod.
Posideos raised his hands and spread his fingers wide before taking his own drink from the slave. I saw callouses and what looked like an old rope burn across one weathered forearm.
‘Now I fish to feed my family and to earn my silver. I’ve never been happier,’ he assured me. ‘I’ve no wish to go back to endlessly travelling and performing, any more than either of us want to live in Athens again.’
That was no great surprise, given the endless questions they’d face if they came back.
‘And your wife, she is well?’ I assumed they had exchanged some sort of vows before Aphrodite’s altar at very least.
‘She is, and our daughter thrives.’
He nodded and I thought he was going to say something more. I sipped my fragrant wine and waited. Posideos swallowed a mouthful of his own drink, looking thoughtful.
He spoke a moment later. ‘Have you had any dealings with Alkimos?’
‘Not as such. When the case against Damianos came to court, his accusers made it very clear his brother knew nothing of his crimes. They’d barely spoken for several years. Slaves carried messages back and forth to manage their business affairs.’
Since the bad feeling between the men was easily proved and widely known, it seemed little of Damianos’ disgrace was going to stain his brother’s reputation. Now I knew more of this story, I was glad. Alkimos was looking like the unsung hero of this particular epic. If he hadn’t known for certain that his sister had run away with Posideos, he must at very least had some suspicion. Evidently he had never breathed a word to the brother he hated, to safeguard the sister he must love.
‘He and his wife have taken Tryphosa and her children into their own household,’ I added.
‘That is good to know. Adrasteia hated the thought of leaving her alone when she left Damianos’ house to marry whoever he decided should have her.’
Posideos looked so relieved that I wondered if finding out how the widow was faring was a large part of the reason for his journey. Adrasteia must have known the torments she was leaving the poor woman to face. Pherenike couldn’t give evidence in court, but I’d heard her words in her father’s account of Tryphosa’s screams as she was punished for not telling her husband that his sister had left the house. The beaten woman must have said something to let her husband know he was hunting a poet. She could hardly be blamed for that.
‘How did you hear of Damianos’ trial and execution?’ I asked. If Posideos had left the performer’s life behind, he couldn’t have picked up the news from some other poet.
He looked a little embarrassed. ‘It seems Adrasteia heard a rumour from a friend of a friend of a friend who lives here in Athens. A woman who knows something of her family’s affairs. So I came to see if the rumour was true.’
‘Pherenike,’ I guessed.
‘Who?’ Posideos looked blank.
‘Never mind.’ It hardly mattered. ‘Is there anything you wish to ask me?’
‘I don’t believe so, but I will be in the city for a few days.’ He drained his cup. ‘If I think of something, may I call again?’
‘By all means,’ I assured him.
He rose to his feet. ‘Thank you, for your hospitality today, and for your part in lifting this shadow from our lives. Please, thank your friends who had a hand in this. We can never repay any of you.’
‘We were serving Athena and the Furies,’ I told him. ‘Offer them whatever grateful sacrifice you can afford.’
‘We will,’ he assured me. ‘Well, for the moment at least, I’ll bid you good day.’
‘Goodbye.’ I watched him cross the courtyard.
Kadous had barely closed the gate behind the poet turned fisherman when Zosime hurried out of the storeroom. ‘You didn’t ask where they’re living now.’
I offered her my wine. ‘I don’t think he would have told me. He had his chance, more than once, if he wanted me to know.’
‘You think there’s more to this story?’ She took the cup and sipped.
‘I think he doesn’t want me to be able to tell his father, because that’s going to be a very awkward meeting. He may well not want the old man to know where to find them, not just yet anyway.’
I guessed there were complex currents in that relationship, as well as between Posideos and his brothers. There are hidden tensions in every family. Something more than a love of Homer’s work had surely played a part in him taking to the road as a poet in the first place.
‘So you don’t think he’ll be welcomed home like Odysseus, with everything forgiven and forgotten after the initial uproar,’ Zosime observed.
‘At least he won’t be cut down like Agamemnon,’ I countered.
Real life and epic poems don’t have that much in common when you start thinking about it. I recalled Menekles talking about one of those gloomy Ionian philosophers called Herakleitos. Apparently he famously said no man can step into the same river twice. There would be no going back for anyone in those families.
Though in real life, as in the great epic poetry cycles, one story always leads on to another as people come and go. I was content to let Posideos and Adrasteia get on with their lives with Aphrodite’s blessing. We had enough answers to satisfy my curiosity. If Apollonides wanted to know more, he was welcome to try finding Posideos before he left the city to return to his new life.
I would go on with my own life here with Zosime, secure in the knowledge that I had done my duty to my city, to honour blessed Athena and to serve the fearsome Furies
