‘Still the hero, I see,’ he said, after a pause.
I remember grinning. The fight at Hippo had restored something to me. Something I’m not sure I ever knew was missing. But the word ‘hero’ was not, I think, misplaced. I had tried to be a man. I hankered for the warmth of human contact — for a wife and a shop to work bronze.
But what paltry things they were — love, friendship — next to the feeling in the moment when the lead enemy warship turned away from me. Any of you understand?
‘Lydia is ready to leave,’ he said. ‘Gelon is about to discard her.’ He shrugged. ‘She is not a natural courtesan. Do you ever know regret, hero?’
I writhed at his tone. ‘Yes,’ I said.
He nodded heavily. ‘Me too.’ He sat up on his couch. ‘Let us try and give her another life, eh?’
‘The crime lord and the pirate?’ I asked.
He laughed bitterly.
‘You love her,’ I said.
‘Oh, yes,’ he said.
Men are complex, are they not? But this is my tale, not his.
I walked up the town, a little drunk and very maudlin. I walked into the street of armourers, and stopped at Anaxsikles’ shop.
He was standing in the back, staring at a helmet, shaking his head.
He showed it to me.
‘Beautiful, as usual,’ I said.
He shook his head. ‘Look more closely,’ he said.
It was true. Under careful inspection, the left eyehole was slightly lower than the right.
‘Apprentice?’ I asked.
He shook his head. And sat. ‘I think my eyes are going,’ he confessed. And burst into tears.
It was that kind of day.
‘Would you marry Lydia, if she was available?’ I said.
He looked up. ‘What?’ he asked.
‘Lydia. If she was available — if I could carry the two of you to another city, where you could be a citizen — a full citizen, with voting rights. Would you go, and marry her?’
He looked at me. ‘Why?’ he asked.
I shrugged. ‘I helped ruin her. So did… another man. We are willing to make good our error.’
He looked around. ‘Leaving home… my mother, my father.’ He looked at me. ‘But, yes. I’d walk across my lit forge to have her.’
Just for a moment, I had a flare of pure, brutal jealousy.
‘Let me try to make this happen,’ I said. ‘If it will work, I will send you word. We will leave very suddenly — I don’t think that Gelon will be happy to lose you. Or me, for that matter.’ I smiled. ‘Or even Lydia. It might be tomorrow. It might be the end of summer.’
He nodded. ‘You’ve made my day.’
That made me happier.
‘How was the armour?’ he asked.
‘Like Hephaestos himself made it,’ I said.
He made a gesture of aversion. ‘Don’t say that!’ he groaned. ‘That’s the kind of talk that makes the gods angry.’
Gelon wanted to hear about our fight. And demanded a tenth of the profits. In many ways, Gelon and Anarchos resembled one another. In the end, I got him to settle for a lump sum in silver — forty silver talents. A fortune.
I went back to Anarchos and informed him. Of everything — the payment to Gelon, the bronze-smith’s wedding plans.
Anarchos sat sullenly and drank. ‘I am old,’ he said bitterly. ‘ I would marry her and take her to another city. But she would never have me — who would?’
What could I say?
I left him to his bitterness.
The next day, we paid off our debts in the city and filled our merchant ships with food and mercenaries — almost a hundred men hired off the docks. I picked up a dozen Nubian archers being sold as labourers — fool of a slave-master. I got them at labour prices. I bought back their weapons from another dealer and put them in armour. Their leader was Ka, and he was taller than some houses, as thin as a sword blade and he could draw a Scythian bow to his mouth as if it were a child’s bow. Ka’s lads were very pleased to be bought, in that I promised them their freedom and wages in the immediate future.
Doola had turned our tin into gold. But if we paid off our oarsmen, they’d never be seen again. So we made a single payment that night, about one-twentieth what every man had coming. Doola gave them a fine speech — more than a thousand men standing by torchlight on the beach between the quays on the Syracusan waterfront — and he told them how much money they had coming at the end of the Illyrian expedition, and exactly why we weren’t paying in full until that trip was over.
I suppose they might have rioted. But money — lots of money — has a magical quality. It is often better in the offing than in reality, and no one knows that as well as a sailor.
Gaius and Neoptolymos, Daud and Sittonax, Vasileos and Megakles and Doola and Seckla and I all lay on couches that night, with twenty more men — Anchises, red-faced and too loud, and Ka, shining black and deeply versed, it appeared, in Aegyptian lore, debating with Doola.
Gaius rolled over to me, probably to avoid having to watch Geaeta and Seckla on the next couch. But he met my eye and we laughed like boys. He held out a silver wine cup and tapped it against mine.
‘I guess this is the last time,’ he said. ‘It is time I grew up and became a rich fuck on a farm.’
I shrugged. ‘You were doing well enough this spring when we found you,’ I said.
Gaius rolled his eyes. ‘That is what worries me. Rome is such a backwater. When we put Neoptolymos on his throne, you’ll go back to Athens.’
‘Plataea,’ I corrected, automatically.
‘And we’ll never see you again,’ he said.
‘Oh, the sea’s not that wide,’ I joked.
He nodded. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘here’s to the last of youth.’
I drank to that, because I shared the sentiment. I was thirty-one years old. Not bad, you think. But that’s quite old for a warrior.
Hah! Little did I know what the gods had in store.
We were pretty drunk when the pais came. He was ten or eleven — pretty enough, if that sort of thing is to your taste. He bowed deeply and held out a scroll tube to me.
Lydia is at my house. She awaits her transport. It should not be you. She expressed the deepest gratitude to me that I had found her a husband.
I regret that I will not be here to attend you. I will not see you again, I fear, so I offer you this boy as a token of my regard — you mentioned yours had died.
Through the fumes of wine, I had to read the note three times.
Then I sent the boy to fetch Anaxsikles. I was half sober by the time he came, and sent him to fetch his bride from Anarchos.
I begged Doola to carry them to Croton for me. He accepted gravely, and embraced me.
I confess that I stood in a doorway near the ship, and watched Anaxsikles bring her down to the shore. The only skiff was loading the archers. He picked her up, and she snuggled her head into his shoulder. He carried her out into the water and handed her up to the sailors on the deck, and then leaped up into the round ship’s waist, and she put her arms around his neck.
Bah. Why do I tell this?
More wine.
Doola sailed long before dawn. I suspected that Gelon would be none too happy when he found out that his smith and his mistress were gone, so I ordered my drunken, orgiastic crews rounded up. We were a surly, vicious
