He stared at me, bleary-eyed. ‘What?’
‘Tunics and a cloak with a hood for the boy.’ Lydis gestured at the bundle the lad had put down on an empty stool. He bowed politely to Sarkuk. ‘Once you’ve had something to eat and drink, and your father has arrived, my master has a house nearby where you can stay. He will escort you.’ He nodded to the burly slave by the gate.
I assumed Mus and Lydis had sent someone equally brawny to fetch the old man. I hoped Azamis would get here soon. I wanted to get to my family’s house as quickly as possible and not just in hopes of honey cakes. It wasn’t only the cool in the shadowy courtyard raising gooseflesh on my arms.
Xandyberis had been asking around the agora where he might find me, and Elpis had sent him to my brothers’ house. I was worried that whoever lurked behind all this would send brutes to my family home, to harass my brothers into telling them where I was. They would surely want to beat me into telling them what I’d learned from the Carians. Then they’d want to discover where these three had gone.
Sarkuk and I stripped and dressed in fresh clothes. It was strange to see the Carian in an Athenian tunic. Between us, we managed to get Tur out of his filthy garb and into something clean.
‘Please offer my sincerest thanks to your master,’ Sarkuk said stiffly to Lydis.
‘The gods bless those who help strangers in need.’ The slave gathered up our discards.
The motherly slave woman returned with a box of medical equipment. She clucked with disapproval when she saw what we’d done with Tur. ‘You couldn’t wait till I’d stitched him up? Oh well, just hold his hands down.’
She tucked more clean rags into the neck of the boy’s tunic and got to work. There wasn’t much blood, and he bore the pain like a hero, though, to be fair, he was in no condition to fight back. He couldn’t have fended off a garland girl from the market.
By the time she was done, he was shaking like a bay tree in a winter gale. There was an old hoplite cloak in the bundle of clothes and I wrapped that around his shoulders. Sarkuk poured a cup of honeyed wine from the jug on the brazier. He held it to his son’s lips, coaxing the boy to drink.
The slave guarding the gate peered through the grille to see who was knocking. As he opened up I was relieved to see the old Carian, Azamis, flanked by two muscular escorts.
‘Did anyone come looking for us?’ Sarkuk demanded. ‘Has anyone sent word of the riot in the agora?’
‘No.’ The old man was mystified. Then he saw Tur and gasped. ‘Oh, my poor boy!’
The young Carian’s bruises were starting to colour, and his cut and swollen face looked truly frightful. At the same time, he was unhealthily pale beneath those gruesome injuries and his uninjured eyelid was drooping ominously.
Sarkuk ushered his father to a stool, forcing him to sit. He said something in their own tongue.
‘Here, drink this.’ I reached for the jug of warm wine and poured a generous cupful. We should have thought to warn the old man how shocking his grandson looked. The last thing we needed was Azamis keeling over from some spasm of the head or heart.
Thankfully a couple of swallows brought a flush of colour to Azamis’s sunken cheeks. I took a cup of wine for myself and offered the first taste to Apollo and his healer son, Asclepios.
The gate opened yet again and Aristarchos appeared in the archway. He took the scene that greeted him in his stride, though even he raised his eyebrows when he saw the extent of Tur’s injuries.
‘Good day to you all.’ He turned to his slave. ‘Lydis, send word to the Academy. I’d be grateful if Spintharos could call here as soon as he finds it convenient.’
How nice, I reflected, to be able to summon your chosen doctor when you needed him, instead of carrying or cajoling a patient to one of Apollo’s shrines, where you could only hope that whoever you found on duty was a halfway competent physician.
‘If you please,’ Sarkuk said, strained, ‘we cannot afford—’
‘If your son has been injured in Athens, it is Athens’ duty to see him cared for.’ Aristarchos’s courteous manner nevertheless made it clear that particular discussion was closed. ‘Philocles, what do you have to tell me?’
I’d been organising my thoughts while we waited, and gave him a succinct summary of everything that had happened in the agora. While I was speaking, two slaves appeared with refreshments, two more carrying trestles and a tabletop. They set out wine, olives and pine nuts, together with fresh sliced cheese and wheat breads.
Aristarchos poured a polite libation to Hermes, for the sake of all messengers and travellers. ‘And your conclusions?’
Before I could answer, Azamis raised his hand like a student at a lecture. ‘If you please, honoured sir, do not believe what that other Ionian in the agora claimed. I swear that Pargasarenes have no wish to be ruled by Artaxerxes. We know how harsh any satrap’s rule would be. The Medes still remember how Ionia rebelled against them in my grandfather’s day. They bear us a mortal grudge.’
He shook his head, his grey beard flowing. ‘We wish to stay in the Delian League and not just for fear of the Persians. As long as we look to Athens, this city’s authority helps to uphold our own small council, our people’s assembly and our town’s law court. Cleisthenes’s reforms, which guarantee your own freedoms, are what inspired so many of our towns to throw off Darius’s rule, so we might govern ourselves in the Athenian way.’
That wasn’t how my father told that story. According to him, Ionia’s revolt was the bright idea of a couple of
