We drank wine. It wasn’t great wine — Nikephorus didn’t drink great wine. He bought good, dark-red local stuff and he liked it. But it was good wine, and we had two cups each, and then we shared a cup.
This is where I went over the edge.
When I went to the cupboard and took down the kantharos cup with two handles, I knew exactly what I was doing. But I had crossed over.
Her eyes were huge as she drank, and our hands touched a great deal.
We sat for a long time, just looking at each other, our now bare feet busy.
In my head, I was screaming at myself to get up and walk away.
I was going to sail to Alba.
Lydia was not coming.
I eventually got up to wash my hands — almonds in honey are sticky. As I rose, I saw that Lydia’s chiton had come a long way above her knee — the sight inflamed me.
I have so many excuses.
I walked to the kitchen. Cook was smiling as I washed my hands.
‘If I didn’t know you was pledged to each other,’ she said. She frowned, then grinned lasciviously. ‘But I do. Never a word will be spoken, eh?’
I gave her a silver drachma.
There was a knock at the slave door, and a willowy boy stuck his head in and was instantly abashed, since he had to assume I was the master.
‘What do you want, boy?’ I asked.
‘Just?’ he said witlessly.
Cook made a cooing noise. ‘He’s the Mater’s boy,’ she said. ‘What do you want, Petrio?’
He made a sort of sketchy bow. ‘Only, my mistress says… she is sick, and could you send fennel? And Mistress Julia says she’ll be another hour at least, and please do not tell the young people.’ He looked at me. ‘And that’s all she said.’
I smiled.
Cook frowned. ‘You ain’t supposed to have heard that,’ she said.
Petrio ran for it.
I shrugged. And went back to the andron.
Lydia was standing by the door to the portico. Her back was to the steps to the exedra, and I assumed she was about to go. I stepped up to her I have no idea. We kissed. Who started it? Who stopped? Why?
No idea.
We were in a patch of absolute shadow, and we were fools, and my hands roved her body and hers began, hesitantly, and then with increasing knowledge, to roam mine.
Cook walked right up behind us and dropped a plate.
The crack of the plate was like a dose of cold salt water.
Cook glared at me.
I had Lydia’s chiton around her hips, a hand deeply inside her himation and all the pins off her right shoulder.
She blushed, shook her clothes into place and bolted up into the exedra.
I had very little to repair. So I was left with Cook, who stood with her arms crossed, glaring at me.
‘Don’t tell the young people,’ Cook said. ‘That means she didn’t want you necking in the portico. That’s what I heard.’
I nodded and bowed.
‘You had better marry her,’ Cook said. She shook her head — the weary motion women make when men are involved.
You’ll understand me better if you know that while I was repentant, all I could think of as I walked home was the perfect smoothness of her skin, the hard tip of her nipple under my hand, the softness…
Well, girls, you can giggle all you like. I’m helping you understand the enemy. Because men need only the touch of a breast to turn from lovers to predators. Sometimes less than that. And what do you get? A man gets an hour’s pleasure, and a woman gets — if she’s unlucky — pregnancy and death. But your bodies are built to tell you otherwise, and when a man’s hand is on a woman’s thigh, does she think of childbirth, of Artemis coming for her spirit as the baby wails?
No.
Nor does the man, I can tell you.
Even with a porne, the smart ones are careful, gathering seed in a sponge or using… other ways. I’m making you all blush: I’ll stop. But listen, girls. The joy is the same for both. It’s the price that’s different.
The next day, I went to the shop and worked. At lunch, for the first time I can remember, Lydia came down into the shop with a chunk of bread and some excellent cheese and a cup of wine. When she put the wine into my hand, her whole hand wrapped around mine. She smiled up into my eyes. And then slipped away with grace.
I wanted her. All the time.
That afternoon, without any connivance, the two of us came together in the corridor behind the kitchen, and there wasn’t another person in sight, slave or free. Before we could breathe, we were in each other’s arms, drinking deep. Her hand was under my chiton, on my hip, and mine We had perhaps ten heartbeats, and we almost managed to make love. Luckily we heard movement, and we broke.
It was all just a matter of time.
And in between these trysts I cursed myself for a fool and a coward and a liar, leading her on, and I swore not to have her.
The problem is, you see, that it no longer mattered. Men make much of the act of sex, but it is the act of possession and love that makes the bond. I didn’t need to ride her — she had given herself. We hadn’t made a baby, but we had made a pact, and I knew I wasn’t going to keep it.
Liar. Betrayer.
I thought that I could play her along until I was ready to leave. And ‘let her down easily’.
But I never even tried.
I wanted her, body and soul. But not enough, you’ll note, to change my plans, or take her with me.
The next day was the same. But I had begun to hedge my bets. I kissed her when I knew that Cook was close by and would end it.
See? There’s no way to tell this to make myself good.
And I still wanted her, every minute. When I saw her, all my friends vanished, the boat was a chimera and I was willing to be a smith in Syracusa. For life.
And then, at the whim of the gods, our boat came back.
They had a better boat. As soon as she was pulled up on the shingle, I could see she had almost double the cargo space, and she was better built — the tongues of wood that held the planks together were tightly placed and beautifully pegged. The steering oars, rather than grey with age, were shining golden wood — new, and very handsome.
They had perfumes and some Etruscan tin. The Etruscan mines are small and stingy, and the Etruscans don’t let much out of the country. But Gaius had arranged the sale, and the tin gave us an entry into the trade.
It was a step. Two steps.
As we drank that night in a wine shop, Doola pointed proudly at our new boat. ‘We call her Amphitrite,’ he said. ‘She rides the waves like a girl riding a man. With passion.’ He lifted his cup and we all drank, and Seckla put wine on the floor for luck.
‘So-’ Doola was hesitant, and they all looked at me.
‘We want to change the plan a little,’ Seckla said, all in a rush. His hands moved as he spoke. ‘We want to get into the tin trade, first by selling the load we have down the coast, in the Sikel communities where Demetrios has friends. And then-’
Demetrios couldn’t take it any more. ‘ Amphitrite can take a longer voyage,’ he said. ‘We take her to Massalia, in Gaul. We load tin there, and we see if we can get someone to tell us about the north. Then, when we’ve sold some cargoes-’
‘How long?’ I asked.
