Hieron smiled for a moment at his son's delight, then looked at Archimedes inquiringly. It was time, he felt, to hear Archimedes' own request.
Archimedes too felt that the ideal occasion had now presented itself. 'Umm,' he said, trying to quell the quaver in his gut. 'Lord, may I speak with you a moment in private?'
They went back into the dining room. Through the window came the sound of Arata talking to little Gelon, and Dionysios asking Philyra about music. Hieron sat down comfortably on the couch; Archimedes perched on the edge of one of the chairs. Now that it had come to the point, all his new confidence was ebbing away. It had seemed better to ask his question in his own house, where he was master. But the house, even garlanded and at its best, remained the residence of a middle-class teacher, with walls of plaster and a floor of packed clay. When he compared it to the marble-floored mansion on the Ortygia, he was ashamed. He was not of a rank to ask for the sister of a king. But he cleared his throat and said, in a low voice so that the others in the courtyard would not overhear, 'Lord, if my request is too bold, forgive me. You yourself encouraged me to ask above my expectation.'
'I promised you anything you might get in Egypt, except the Museum,' replied Hieron seriously. 'If you have something to ask of me, I am delighted.'
'What I want I could not get in Egypt,' said Archimedes. He curled his big bony hands together and took a deep breath. 'Lord King, you have a sister, who…'
Hieron looked at him in utter amazement, and all his prepared speeches went out of his head. 'That is,' he stumbled on, 'she… I…' He again remembered kissing her, and felt his face heat. 'I know I have neither wealth nor noble birth nor any other quality that makes me worthy of her. I have nothing to offer, apart from what my mind can conceive and my hands can shape. If that is enough, good. If it is not, well, I have asked you for what I wanted, and you have said no.'
Hieron said nothing for a long time; he was stunned. He realized immediately that this request was something he should have foreseen, and he was shocked because he had not foreseen it. He was accustomed to thinking of Delia as a bright, adventurous child he had rescued from her grim uncle, a girl whose sharp observant mind he had delighted in for the kinship it showed with his own. He had been aware that she had reached marriageable age, but that knowledge had seemed a thing apart from Delia herself- something for the future, something beyond the war. He had been aware, too, that she was interested in Archimedes, but he had considered it a shallow interest, casual and soon forgotten. He contemplated his own failure to understand her, saddened and ashamed.
'You know,' said the king at last, 'that Delia is the heiress to all our father's estate.'
Archimedes' face turned a deeper shade of red. 'No,' he croaked. 'I didn't.'
'In law, I am not her brother at all,' said Hieron flatly. 'In law, she is our father's child, and I am not. Our father was a rich man, and I have looked after his estate carefully on her behalf. The total income from it last year was forty-four thousand drachmae.'
'It's not the estate that I want,' said Archimedes, turning from red to white. 'You can keep the estate.'
'I could, if I broke the law and stole it from her,' said Hieron coldly. 'I have always assumed that I held it in trust for her future husband. I've never used the money from it, I've always reinvested it, to build it up for her.' He paused. 'You've already spoken to Delia about this, haven't you?'
'I…' whispered Archimedes. 'That is- she would never go against your wishes.'
'In other words, she's been lying awake at night wondering how I would reply. I thought she looked tired and miserable. Zeus!' He found himself a wine cup, ladled in a drink from the mixing bowl, and gulped down half of it. 'And if I say no, I suppose you'll take yourself off to Alexandria?'
'I haven't made up my mind about that,' Archimedes said slowly. 'I will do all I can for the defense of the city in any case. But. Well.' He paused, then said, with quiet fervor, 'I am not a hired worker.'
'Well, I'm not going to say yes if you plan to take her to Egypt!' said Hieron. 'If you marry my sister, you're going to stay right here and make certain that you do provide me with what your mind can conceive and your hands can shape.'
'You mean… you might say yes?' asked Archimedes breathlessly. Then, appalled, 'You don't mean give up mathematics? I told you…'
'Yes, yes, you swore to your father on his deathbed and so forth! No, I didn't mean give up divine mathematics.' He looked at the anxious young man opposite him, then set down his cup of wine. 'Look,' he said, 'I'll tell you what sort of considerations are in my mind when I think about a husband for my sister. First, money doesn't come into it. I don't need her money. I've got plenty of my own, from various sources. And she has plenty of her own, and doesn't need to marry it. Second, politics.' He flipped one hand dismissively. 'It's true that there are situations where it's useful to cement some alliance with a marriage. If I hadn't married Philistis, I would probably have died in the year I became tyrant: it was Leptines who secured me the city. But on the whole, if an alliance won't hold without a wedding, it's unlikely to hold with one. And, to be honest, promising someone a half sister who isn't even related to me in law is never going to be the same as marrying somebody's daughter myself. So, politics matters, but it isn't of the first importance. What is of the first importance…' He stopped. Outside in the courtyard, Philyra was tuning her lute. 'Dionysios has asked you for your own sister,' said Hieron more quietly. 'When you make up your mind about that, what will matter most to you?'
'I don't think I'm a very good judge,' replied Archimedes, blinking. 'I'm leaving that to Philyra and my mother. All I want is that Philyra should be happy- and that her husband should be a man I don't mind having as a kinsman.'
Hieron smiled. 'Precisely,' he said softly. He picked up the cup again and rolled it between his palms. 'You know that I am a bastard,' he went on, looking down intently into the shallow bowl- the arch-manipulator fearfully exposing a fragment of his own heart. 'I think that because of that I probably prize my kin more than those who can take them for granted. I like having a sister. I was always perfectly clear in my own mind that I wouldn't marry her to any foreigner, however important he was. I want to gain family by her, not lose it. And I want to see her happy.' He took another sip of the wine, then looked back at Archimedes. 'Now, it's perfectly true that you're not at all the sort of man I thought I would get as a brother-in-law. But- by all the gods! — do you really think I can raise objections about wealth and birth? You know I owe nothing to either! You would certainly be a more natural kinsman to me than someone who was merely born important. And on top of that, I like you. I want to go back and talk to Delia, and be sure that she knows her mind about this, but if she's happy about it, and if you promise to stay in Syracuse with her, then the answer is yes.'
Archimedes looked at him for a long moment, disbelief slowly cracking into amazed delight, and then into an immense grin of pure joy.
Hieron grinned back. 'You don't seem to have any doubt what she'll say,' he observed, and was amused to see his prospective kinsman blush. 'Humility is generally reckoned a becoming quality in a young man,' he added teasingly.
Archimedes laughed. 'And were you a very humble young man, O King of Syracuse?'
Hieron's grin became wicked. 'When I was a young man, I was arrogant. I was quite certain that I knew how to run the city far, far better than the people who actually were running it.' He paused, contemplating that time with satisfaction, then added softly, 'And I was right, too.'
14
Delia was waiting for her brother when he came home.
All afternoon she sat in the first courtyard, where she could hear it when people entered the house. She tried to read, and then tried to play the flute, but she could not concentrate, and in the end she simply sat, watching the movement of the leaves in the garden and listening to the small sounds of the house. A kind of despairing rage built in her as the slow hours wore away. Two men she cared for were elsewhere, deciding her fate and perhaps quarreling about it, and she merely sat helpless, a dead weight upon the earth.
At last, toward evening, the door opened on the sound of Gelon's shrill and excited voice. Delia jumped to her feet and ran across the garden- then forced herself to walk into the entrance hall.
Gelon was showing Agathon his new toy; when his aunt appeared, he at once called her to look at it as well.
