nonetheless. Bronze-smiths were a close-knit clan with their own rules and laws and status, and men like Anarchos, however powerful, didn’t cross the smiths.
‘I’ll check on that,’ he said. ‘The bronze-smiths wouldn’t like an ex-slave making a claim that wasn’t true.’
I reached into the boat and took out my leather satchel — made by Seckla. From it, holding it up so that the hired muscle could see me, I took a bronze eating-knife with a pretty bone handle, the bone dyed green with verdigris; there were fine silver tacks in the handle for decoration. It was in a sheath of Seckla’s make with a long bronze pick.
‘My work,’ I said, handing it to the moneylender.
He nodded.
‘Keep it,’ I said. ‘A token of my esteem.’
His head shot up. ‘Fuck you, slave,’ he said. ‘No one talks to me like that.’
I crossed my arms. ‘You’re off your mark here. I’m a craftsman. These men are my friends. I have other friends. We don’t want trouble.’
He got up. Rubbed his chin, and then his face changed. ‘I’ll keep this,’ he said, holding my eating-knife. ‘And I’ll make some enquiries. And I’ll be back.’ He looked around. ‘I expect you’ll need my money. And I’ll expect you to be civil. Understand?’
By civil, he meant subservient.
Again, you might expect that I’d just kill him and be a local hero.
But it doesn’t really work like that.
Some time much later, Daud told me that we could have saved a year of our lives by killing him then and there. And maybe we could have.
But Heraclitus was reaching me across the years. I had to learn other ways of solving my problems.
So I bowed my head. ‘Of course, Patron. ’
He nodded seriously. And strode off, full of self-importance, his sell-sword by his side.
Daud turned on me. ‘Are you a coward?’ he asked, and stomped off. I didn’t see him for a day.
I must have turned red, because Doola came and put his arm around my shoulders. ‘Well done,’ he said.
‘I don’t feel that it was well done,’ I admitted. Now that the man had walked away, I felt craven.
‘We didn’t fight, and we didn’t take his money,’ Demetrios said. ‘Nice job. My brother was good with these vultures, but I–I fear them.’
So we went back to scraping the boat clean, and afterwards we returned to our two rooms under the thatch, where we counted our money. The taverna on our corner had taken all the wine that wasn’t tinged with seawater at a good price, and all the tinged wine at one half that price. After Demetrios paid off our debts — mostly food, rope and wood — we had about sixty drachma. I had made another twenty-four drachma profit, after my own food, wine and clothes.
Eighty-four drachma, for six men.
Daud shook his head. ‘We’ll never get a twenty-oared ship at this rate.’
We had decided that if we were going to try the tin run to Alba, we needed at least a twenty-oared galley with a good mast. It was a common enough type of boat in the trade. And we needed a dozen slaves. We couldn’t afford to pay rowers and sailors and build the boat.
We estimated that building the boat would cost us three hundred drachmas.
But Demetrios was altogether more sanguine. He put the money in a sack, and put the sack into the thatch. ‘Not bad,’ he said. He shrugged. ‘Not bad. Ari is pulling more than his fair share. And without him, we’ll never get it done.’
I didn’t really want to hear that, because while I liked working in the shop, I wanted to be at sea. And my status — if you could call it that — as leader was suffering. All of them looked to Demetrios, not to me. He had become the skipper. I wasn’t there, at sea. They told me stories of the storm that hit them in the straits off Sybarus, and how Demetrios stayed at the helm all day and all night You get the idea.
I might have been bitter. But I wasn’t. Sometimes a dream was bigger than any reality. Sailing to Alba was a big dream — an heroic deed, a worthy thing. I was willing to sacrifice. We all were.
We were brothers.
‘What about Illyria?’ I asked. Neoptolymos raised his head and smiled. And then frowned and drank more wine.
‘I will never go back until my sister is avenged,’ he said.
I looked at them. ‘There’s still tin coming through Illyria,’ I pointed out. ‘And Neoptolymos knows where to get it.’
He shook his head. ‘My cousins will have the keep now, and the river. I would be killed. I will return with a hundred warriors — with my friends.’ He smiled at me, and for a moment we were brothers. He knew I would back him. I knew that, if we lived, someday we would go there. After we put Dagon down. We never talked about it, but Neoptolymos and I knew.
Many debts.
The money went into the thatch, and the boat went back to sea. They tried fishing for a few weeks, and made about six drachma over expenses. They accepted a cargo of artworks for the Etruscan coast and sailed off, leaving me to worry about the consequences of failure.
But I didn’t worry much. I’m not much of a worrier, in that way. I went to work each morning as the sun rose. At the height of the sun in the sky, I would walk out of my master, Nikephorus’s shop, and go two streets to a waterfront wine shop where I’d buy a skewer of somewhat questionable meat. After that meal, I’d walk back to Nikephorus’s shop and work until late afternoon, when I’d go to the gymnasium, pay my foreigner’s fee and exercise with much richer men. I’d lift weights, throw the discus and run on the track.
After some weeks, other men spoke to me. I was clearly a foreigner: despite its size, Syracusa had only about six thousand citizen males, and they all knew each other. They were like any Greek gentlemen — well spoken, talkative, friendly — but only with each other.
But hospitality overcame diffidence after some time, and eventually one of the richer men — I knew who he was, even if he had no idea who I was — came and asked me if I liked to box. His name was Theodorus, and his family owned stone quarries.
We exchanged blows for some time. He wasn’t very good, and it wasn’t my best sport, but a few minutes of contest taught each of us that the other was a solid opponent.
He laughed. ‘So, you are a gentleman. The gatekeeper has… hmm
… questioned your right to exercise here.’
I nodded. ‘I’m a bronze-smith,’ I said. ‘From Plataea, in Boeotia.’ His face hardened. ‘I fought in the front rank at Marathon,’ I added. I didn’t like the way it sounded — a plain brag.
‘Ahh!’ he said, and took my hand. ‘Things are a little different here. I doubt there’s another bronze-smith in our gymnasium.’ He led me over to a group of men just emerging from the dressing rooms. They were in their thirties and forties, and they all wore the chlamys the way much younger men would wear them, in Athens. But their bodies were hard, and they all seemed to smile at the same time.
‘Ari fought at Marathon,’ he said, by way of introduction.
‘By Nike!’ said one man, with greying black hair and a thick beard. ‘That’s something!’
They all gathered around me, and one slapped my back.
‘Tell us what it was like,’ said Theodorus.
I started to tell the story — just as I have told you — and the tall bearded man grinned and plucked my arm. ‘Let the poor man get dressed, and we’ll buy him some wine. Talking is thirsty work.’
They were clearly surprised to see my plain chlamys and short linen chitoniskos. I looked like a servant with them, and I resolved to buy a better chlamys to wear to the gymnasium.
We sat in a wine shop, where a cup of wine cost an afternoon’s wage for a skilled bronze-smith, and where women, not men, waited at the tables. Lovely women. Slaves, I assumed.
I told my story, and the men with me responded well.
Theodorus nodded at the end. ‘I’ve been in a ship fight, and some cattle raids,’ he admitted, ‘but nothing like that.’
‘If Carthage keeps preying on our shipping, we’ll see it here,’ another added. ‘What do you think, Ari?’
