No, you have to guess the rest for yourself.
I’m just an old man. Leave me alone.
At any rate, Vasileos came to join us, blushing like a virgin at a betrothal party. He sat beside me.
‘Could we build a ship here?’ I asked.
He shrugged. ‘I’d have to see the timber in the hills,’ he said. ‘But if the pines up there are as fine as the two outside the fort, I’d say yes. I have my tools.’
‘How long to build two more like Lydia?’ I asked.
He shrugged. ‘A month. I assume I will get all the help I need.’
Sittonax was shaking his head. ‘You can’t be meaning to stay here a month.’
‘I’d like to give Amphitrite time to catch us up,’ I said. ‘And if he’ll trade two ships for a month’s food, and then some — well, we can go raiding with him.’
Sittonax shook his head. ‘I want to get home,’ he said.
‘Want to get home rich?’ I asked.
He kept shaking his head. ‘You don’t know my people well enough to do this, Arimnestos,’ he said. ‘Next week, Tertikles could be in love with a neighbour’s daughter — or a horse — and your project will be forgotten.’ He looked at Tara. ‘And there are other complications. He’s offering you his sister, in marriage. But it’s not that simple. I need to tell you some things about the Keltoi. He’s not her lord. She’s more like his queen.’
‘Just like that?’ I asked.
‘We’re impulsive,’ he admitted.
‘Tell her yes.’ I looked at her and winked.
And that, as they say, was that.
Marriage — at least, handfast marriage between mature adults — was a fairly informal affair, among the southern Keltoi. About a week later, we put our hands together over a copper cauldron of water, and her brother stirred honey into a poultice with a dagger of bronze that looked ancient. We both agreed — rather like farmers haggling over a cow — to certain conditions about how to raise any children, and under what conditions we’d part.
It was not a permanent union. In fact, it was more like a trade bond, or an amphictyony, as we call it — a league and covenant between neighbours. An alliance. And by the time her brother had said the words, there was a stack of big spruce trees by the beach and Vasileos had the lower strakes split. Twenty slaves and a dozen Keltoi craftsmen worked with him, and Sittonax sat on a log, translating, bored out of his head and resentful.
Our wedding night was great fun. The Keltoi are great ones for feasting — their notion of a symposium would recommend itself to the very richest Athenians — and our wedding feast was far more heroic than the ceremony itself. We drank and drank, and then my bride placed a hand on my thigh — very high on my thigh — and said, in beautifully accented Greek, ‘Stop drinking.’
I almost spat out my wine.
She roared with laughter. ‘Men — when they drink too much…’ she said, and made a motion with her finger that I shan’t repeat.
Sittonax sat by me to translate. ‘I’ve tried to teach her some
Greek,’ he admitted.
‘You speak well,’ I said to her.
‘Not many things,’ she said.
‘She knew some Greek before,’ Sittonax added.
‘Ah!’ I said. ‘From traders?’
‘Slaves,’ she said, and shrugged.
Sittonax leaned forward. ‘You know she’s been married before,’ he said.
‘So?’ I said. ‘So have I.’
‘They’ve all died,’ he mentioned. ‘In battle. All of them.’
‘How many?’ I asked.
‘Six,’ he said.
She met my eyes and smiled. ‘You are a great warrior,’ she said.
‘She’s practised that phrase a lot,’ Sittonax said.
‘I’ve been married before,’ I said.
She smiled.
‘My wife died in childbirth,’ I said. Suddenly, I was crying.
She wrapped me in her arms. ‘Bad,’ she said. She was warm and kind.
I hadn’t cried in someone’s arms in a long time. And while some of my crewmen looked askance, none of the Keltoi so much as noticed. They’re a more hot-blooded race than Greeks, and they show their emotions.
Later, we were alone. I won’t bore you with details.
Hah! Maybe I will, later.
A week later, and Tara and I knew each other better.
I had never known a woman like her, and while I’m not sure I loved her, I liked her very well indeed. When she wanted to make love, she’d make love anywhere — in a field, in among the timbers of the new ships, on the mountainside where we cut the spruce logs, on our great bed in her brother’s hall. But I swiftly found that it was her decision, not mine.
And there are tremendous advantages when you don’t really share a language. We never argued — we didn’t have enough words. And lack of language focuses you. I paid strict attention to her, and she to me. So I knew when she was annoyed, when she was delighted, when she was frustrated.
She was a good companion — the more so, as she was just as good a companion when we went up in the hills to cut more spruce as she was when we were using axes to cut; when we gathered firewood; when we swam; when we cooked. It’s not that she was manly. It took me months in her company to put a name to it.
She was free.
But I’ll talk more about that later. I like to tell these stories in order, and so I’ll say that after we’d filled the beach with spruce trees stacked like kindling, hauled by heavy horses unlike anything I’d seen in Greece, we took council with Tertikles and his steward, with Doola who was besotted with a Kelt girl and scarcely able to think straight and with Sittonax, who wore a permanent scowl. It was a disjointed, spiritless meeting. Only Tertikles, Tara and I were interested.
In the end, I decided to take Lydia south and west, looking for the Phoenician port. Tara decided to come with me. I had a notion, too, that I might come across Demetrios and the rest of my friends. If they were alive, they were probably well to the south.
That seemed fine. Sittonax elected to come with us as well, and Doola stayed with Vasileos. Seckla came with me.
And off we went, into the Great Blue.
It’s funny what you don’t think of.
A day up the coast from Oiasso, and we hit a two-day storm. I had no Vasileos to rely on. It’s an interesting facet of command — the ways you take the load off. I knew that I wasn’t the best sea officer, and that I relied on Vasileos to take care of some of the routine ship-handling. But when I planned a four-day scout to the south, it didn’t seem that important that he wasn’t coming.
We didn’t have Lydia off the beach before I missed him.
And the ship’s name, Lydia. What had possessed me? Married to Tara, and a day at sea, and she asked me — between bouts of vicious seasickness — what the ship’s name meant.
‘Lie-dya,’ she said.
‘What is it?’ Sittonax grinned mirthlessly.
She’s a woman I abandoned without marrying in my last port of call, I thought.
‘It’s a woman’s name,’ I said.
Tara spat over the side. ‘What woman?’ she asked.
I made some noises. ‘A woman I knew,’ I said. It sounded weak even as the words left the fence of my teeth.
‘Wife?’ she asked, in a matter-of-fact voice.
‘No,’ I said.
