Most families have some such ties with the villages out in Attica. Back in my great-grandfather’s day, Cleisthenes wisely decreed that each voting tribe in our new democracy should be a triad of city, country and coastal districts, to make sure that everyone’s interests were represented. As a result, the men of Alopeke, including my father, were honour-bound to help Kolonai’s refugees when Mother and her family fled the Persian advance. Their parents became good friends, and Father was of an age to want a wife, while Mother was of an age to be married. The match was made and they were happy together, until our family’s worst sorrows a decade ago.
Going inside, I could hear voices in the upper end room, where Mother and my sisters used to sit and spin with their distaffs and spindles, or weave finer lengths of cloth on smaller looms. I followed the corridor to the corner and went up the stairs.
No one was spinning or weaving today. Mother was clearing out her storage chests while Melina was relaxing on a couch, watching her children as they played amiably on the floor.
‘Uncle Philocles!’ Nymenios’s two little boys came running to the door, their wooden animals abandoned.
Hestaios might only be five but he’s as tall as boys a full year older. Kalliphon is catching up fast, for all the two years between them. Without thinking, I stooped low to sweep them up in my arms, one onto each hip. Staggering, I nearly dropped to my knees as I lowered them hastily back down to the floorboards.
‘You need to spend more time at the gymnasium,’ Melina observed drily.
Mother rushed to embrace me. ‘They said you were beaten senseless and left for dead!’
‘Careful! I may have a cracked rib.’ Though I wouldn’t have admitted that much if I’d had any other way of stopping her hugging me painfully hard.
‘What happened?’ Anxious, she stroked my bruised face with her hard-worn hands.
I glanced at the children. They were staring at me, open-mouthed. Even Amynta’s beloved ragdoll was forgotten.
Melina clapped her hands and one of the household’s girls appeared. ‘Please take the children to their room.’
As I stepped aside to let the slave pass, Hestaios and Kalliphon protested loudly.
‘We want to—’
‘But Uncle Philocles—’
My niece was already on her way to the door, dolly in hand. Melina smiled. ‘Amynta may have a honey cake.’
That goaded the boys into gathering up their toys and begging for the same treat.
‘That depends,’ Melina interrupted their pleading. ‘If you’ve been good, you may all have a cake this evening. But Amynta still gets one now because she did as she was asked without arguing.’
I tried and failed to hide a smile as the disgruntled boys trailed out after their sister. I recalled my own childhood, with both parents teaching me and my brothers and sisters that it was in our best interests to co-operate.
Mother examined the bruises on my arms. ‘I’ll find some salve. Sit down.’
I obediently took a stool and shared a grin with Melina. ‘Where’s Chairephanes?’
Her smile broadened. ‘Gone to the theatre with Pamphilos and his family.’
‘Do you think he and Glykera will make a match of it?’
She nodded. ‘I hope so. She is a very nice girl.’
I looked at her ruefully. ‘I’m so sorry you’re missing the plays. It’s my fault Nymenios had to go to Alopeke.’
Melina shook her head. ‘I wasn’t going to the theatre today.’
An unplanned day at home with her feet up? I wondered if she was pregnant again. It wasn’t easy to tell if her waist was thickening under her pleated gown’s swathes. It wouldn’t be much of a surprise though, Amynta was well past her second birthday. But it wasn’t my place to ask.
Mother returned with a tray of cups and a jug of well-watered wine as well as several pots of pungent paste.
‘Now,’ she commanded. ‘What’s this all about?’
I related a carefully crafted summary of the past few days. I told no lies, though I did hold back too much distressing detail, and I definitely didn’t share this morning’s speculations. I didn’t want a breath of this floating around the local fountains. I also didn’t want Mother knowing how close she’d come to burying another one of her children.
Melina sipped from her cup while Mother pulled up a stool and anointed my bruises and grazes with various concoctions. I tucked up my tunic to allow her to salve the boot print on my thigh. I could tell she wanted me to strip off completely to see what damage had been done to my ribs, but thankfully she wouldn’t ask me to do that with my brother’s wife there.
The glint in Melina’s eye told me she knew it too, so she wasn’t going anywhere. I slipped her a grateful wink as Mother tugged my tunic back down to my knees and swapped the pot of ointment for her own cup of wine.
She sat clutching the black-glazed ceramic, thin-lipped with anxiety. Even though she’s lived in this city for thirty-five years, Mother has never forgotten the tales her own mother and aunts told her, warning of all the dangers lying in wait for innocents in Athens. Still, her countrified ways are no bad thing. She’s as vigilant as a hawk watching over her grandchildren. If Mother lives to see little Amynta married, no one will ever be able to cast doubt on my niece’s citizen-born rights by claiming she’d been seen behaving like some foreigner, ignorant of Athenian decorum.
‘Can Aristarchos Phytalid put an end to this trouble?’ she demanded.
‘I believe so,’ I said firmly, ‘and all the sooner, if we can help.’
‘What can we do?’ Melina sat up straighter.
Like our father before him, Nymenios had looked for a wife who could manage the family business’s accounts and records. Well-born girls
