as distinct, as above.
Those six — Doola, Seckla, Daud, Gaius, Demetrios and Neoptolymos — it was a different thing. And I find I’ve been a bad poet; I haven’t sung you what they were like.
Doola was big without being tall, and always at the edge of fat without being fat. He had no hair on top of his head, and once we were free he grew a thick beard. He had heavy slabs of muscle, but a sensitive, intelligent face. He was quick to anger and quick to forgive.
Seckla was tall and thin, almost feminine in his face and hands, anything but feminine in his temperament — eager to resent a slight, eager for revenge. He never forgave. His dark skin was stretched tight over fine features, and his hands were long and thin. Despite his combative nature, he was really a craftsman, and his hands were never still, making nets, wrapping rope ends, making thole pins fit their holes better — he never stopped moving about the boat, and on land, he never stopped fussing with food.
Daud was all Keltoi — tall, heavily built, a fearsome sight in armour. He drank too much, and was quick to anger and as quick to weep. He tried so hard to hide his emotions, and failed so badly — here’s to him, thugater. He had red-blond hair that was just starting to darken, eyes the colour of a new morning and skin so pale that it never tanned properly, and he often wore a chiton when the rest of us were naked, just to save himself from burning. I’m pale, and my paleness was nothing next to his. We used to mock him about it, and he would join in, agreeing that there was no sun where he came from. He could ride anything, and he was a trained warrior, where Seckla and Doola were really not very good when I met them.
Demetrios was a Sikel — small, swarthy, dour. He laughed easily but seldom showed his thoughts — unlike Daud, who sought to hide his thoughts but inevitably failed, at least back then. His skin was dark, his nose was prominent and he hated to fight, not from cowardice but from genuine aversion. He was slow to trust and quick to worry. He was, in many ways, a countryman among cosmopolitans. But he was a sure hand at sea and on land; he knew how to fish in any waters, and his boat-handling and seamanship were infinitely better than my own. Indeed, working with him quickly showed me how little a pirate chief actually knows about handling a boat. His navigation was weak; he preferred to coast everywhere, even in dangerous waters. He worried constantly, and he often reminded me of a pet rat I had as a boy — snout quivering, hands rubbing together. Yet he would have died for any one of us, if he’d had to.
Neoptolymos was, as I have said, Illyrian. He had muddy-blond hair and watery blue eyes and he drank — constantly. He was easily angered and, to be honest, never a very pleasant companion. He felt that he had forfeited his honour when his sister was raped to death. He seldom smiled. He was harsh with others and himself. Yet buried under the broken unhappiness of youth was a man who had the manners of a gentleman and the easy habits of a rich man. His purse was always open to his friends. His knife was always ready to defend us. His code was barbarous — but noble. He could also play any musical instrument he was given after a few hours of mucking about.
And finally, there was Gaius. He left us for a while, but he was one of us nonetheless. He was Etruscan; but that is like saying ‘he is Greek’, because every Etruscan city is at odds with every other, and they rarely unite. He, too, had red-blond hair and pale skin — when I first met the two of them, I thought he and Daud were brothers, when in fact they weren’t even from the same people, and both were a little annoyed at my assumption.
We had divisions. Four of us were warriors, and three were not; three of us were at least nominally aristocratic, and three were working men. Slavery can erase arrogance, but it cannot erase habits of mind and body; so Daud, Neoptolymos, Gaius and I would work on our bodies and practise with weapons, which the other three looked on as an affectation or a foolish waste of money. We tended to spend freely. Daud especially could empty his purse for a beggar, even if the gesture meant that he was instantly a beggar himself. I would buy the best wine, and the best cloak, I could afford, and the three men born to labour would roll their eyes and pray to Hermes for deliverance from the spendthrift. I remember this happening in the Agora of Syracusa, and I laughed and told them that they reminded me of my aristocratic wife — and then I suddenly burst into tears.
I tell this now because, truth to tell, what they looked like and how they acted was — well, to put it bluntly, it was muted, unimportant while we rowed for our lives as slaves. Slavery made the bond, but once we had survived, we had to know each other.
My daughter is smiling. I have digressed too long. But those were good times.
The boat returned from its first voyage, and we had just about broken even. A small boat carries a limited cargo, and even if the skipper picks his cargo well, he has to sell all of it at a good price, over and over, to cover the cost of four men eating, drinking wine, their clothes ruined at sea, their oars broken on rocks. The overheads of a sea voyage are, to be blunt, enormous for poor men. Our little tub had four oars, a big central mast that could be unshipped and room for about two tons of cargo — which is nothing, in wine or grain. Less than nothing for metal.
On the positive side, we were not in debt to the vicious moneylenders of Sicily. They were notorious, and for good reason, and they had amazing networks of informants. So that by the second afternoon after our little boat was pulled up on the back, a pair of men came down to her. One sat on her gunwale and the other stood with his arms crossed. They were quite large men.
‘You need more money to make a profit off a boat this size,’ said the man sitting on our gunwale. We were all there, scrubbing black slime out of the bilge and weed and crap off the hull. Demetrios had brought in a cargo of Italian wine, and made what should have been a handsome profit, but about a third of the amphorae had either broken or slipped some seawater, so that his profits just about covered losses with a little left over.
Before this gets monotonous, let me add that had we not been ambitious to buy bigger ships and go farther, this would have been a good life. The boat covered expenses and then some, and I was starting, even after six weeks, to make a steady wage. It was only the scope of our ambition that rendered the pace slow.
I’m digressing again.
‘I don’t feel that I have your attention, gents,’ said the man on the gunwale. His partner picked up a large piece of wood and came over to the boat. He struck the hull, hard, just where the strake met the bow.
None of the oak pins came loose, but no one likes to see a stranger hit his boat.
‘I see I have your attention now,’ said the man on our gunwale.
Daud and I walked down either side of the boat, and we must have looked like trouble. The man on the bow stood up, dusting his hands.
‘I don’t think you know me, gents. But if you touch me, you are all dead men.’ He laughed. ‘I’m a little surprised you don’t know me. Hurt, even. But you’re all strangers — foreigners. So I will let it go this time. Especially as I’ve come to offer you money.’
Demetrios shrugged. ‘We don’t need money,’ he said.
‘Really?’ said the man by the bow. ‘Let me introduce myself. I’m Anarchos, and if I wish to loan you money, then you need to take it. Please understand this, gents — I own you as surely as your former owner owned you. Your slavery is written in the sky. Don’t pretend you are free men — I know escaped slaves when I see them. And I can sell you into slavery, or kill you — and no one in this city will even shrug. You aren’t citizens. You aren’t even registered metics. You are poor men, and you have no friends.’ He smiled, and the hardness left his voice. ‘But I am a reasonable man, and an easy master. You split your profits with me, and I loan you money when you fail. I am your patron, and you are my workers, and all is well. I will help you in the courts, and in the assembly, if it comes to that.’ He looked around. ‘No one in Syracusa will say Anarchos is a bad patron.’
Daud was ready to fight. I could see it in his posture.
I was calculating.
This was new to me, even though I prided myself in being more like Odysseus than Achilles.
If the man spoke the truth — even a wicked, cocked-up version of the truth — attacking him would serve little purpose. Nor did we plan to stay in Syracusa. No local crime lord could possibly imagine what we had in mind.
I put a hand on Daud’s shoulder. ‘My friend is a Gaul,’ I said. ‘And prone to violence.’ I smiled at the hired muscle — the man was big. ‘I know a little about violence myself,’ I added. ‘But we don’t want any trouble.’
Anarchos nodded. ‘You’re the smart boy, then.’
I resented his tone and his use of the word boy. But I was not a great lord with fifty hoplites at my back. I was an ex-slave with six friends. I think my hands trembled.
But I smiled. ‘We had a good voyage.’ I had another knucklebone to roll, and I cast it slyly. ‘And of course, I make a fair wage as a bronze-smith.’
He nodded, pursed his lips. I had scored a hit. Not a hit that would win the fight, but a real score,
