Kallista, also naked, rose from the balcony and clapped her hands. ‘Amastris! It must be! I heard that Master Leon brought her home.’
Melitta smiled. ‘Thanks, Dorcus! I’ll be ready.’
Dorcus turned to Kallista. ‘It wouldn’t be amiss to pack a wrap for morning,’ she said, laying a finger along her nose. ‘The palace messenger suggested that the Lady Amastris might wish to entertain our mistress overnight.’
‘Dorcus? Be a dear and tell the steward that I’ll be out for dinner. And does Uncle Leon know? Oh – it’s his homecoming. Perhaps-’ She paused. ‘Amastris is going to use me to see my brother, isn’t she?’ Melitta asked the older woman.
Dorcus shook her head slightly. She was a woman of consequence in the household, and Melitta knew that every rumour came to her ears. ‘Master Leon has an invitation of his own,’ she said. ‘As does your brother – from the king himself. If the princess wishes to see your brother, she will have to scheme very quickly indeed. Dress well, young mistress.’ She paused. ‘Given the – incident – this afternoon, all may not go as the princess imagines. Understand me, despoina?’
Kallista didn’t need a second admonition. She had Melitta’s best Greek gown laid out on the bed – wool so fine as to be transparent, carefully oiled to a fine finish, the colour a dark purple-blue with gold stripes. There were also the Artemis brooches that Kinon had given her three years ago, and a dagger, and a wicked bronze pin in her hair, the knobbed grip hidden by an enormous pearl that matched the strings that held her long black tresses.
Kallista slipped long, dangling gold earrings into her ears and clasped a necklace at her throat. Her hands rested on her mistress’s shoulders. ‘You are beautiful,’ she said. She held up a silver mirror so that Melitta could admire herself.
‘Not as beautiful as you,’ Melitta said. Her slave was like an avatar of Aphrodite – in fact, some men called her that very title. Melitta had been offered sums of up to twenty talents of silver for her slave’s favours.
‘Hmm,’ Kallista said. She put her head down next to Melitta’s, so that the two were side by side in the mirror. ‘Dark and fair. You are more the image of Hera or Artemis. A colder beauty – but no less beautiful.’
‘Flatterer,’ Melitta said. She poked Kallista in the side and made the other girl squeal.
‘Not with you,’ Kallista giggled. ‘Every man’s head will turn when we walk in the palace. Hah! I feel like a cat among mice when I go there.’
‘Freedom has not made you modest,’ Melitta said.
Kallista lowered her eyes in a parody of virginal modesty. ‘Has it not, my mistress?’
‘How was Amyntas?’ Melitta asked. Amyntas was one of Ptolemy’s Macedonian officers. He was supposed to command the phalanx, and he was a famous soldier, but he spent little time on his duties. He had offered Kallista ten talents of silver for a single night.
‘Adequate,’ Kallista said with a shrug. ‘For the money.’
‘No transports of joy?’ Melitta asked.
‘I can buy all the transports I wish for ten talents of silver, mistress.’ Kallista smiled.
‘You make love sound so – mercenary!’ Melitta complained.
‘Mistress, I’m a hetaira!’ The older woman shrugged. ‘Men started mounting me when I was eleven. There’s never been a great deal of romance involved.’ She stroked Melitta’s shoulders. ‘It will be different for you – I’ll see to that. A boy your own age – a beautiful boy.’
Melitta smiled. ‘Your lips to Aphrodite’s ear,’ she said. She rose to her feet, complete from her gilded sandals to the tiny touch of rouge on the tops of her ears and the long tendril of black hair that seemed to have artlessly escaped her diadem – one of Kallista’s best contrivances. ‘Mind you, dressed like this, I might as well be a hetaira!’
Obligingly, Kallista walked to her household altar – to Aphrodite of Cyprus, like most hetairai – and knelt. She fingered the ivory statue and spoke quietly to it as if the statue were the goddess herself, and then kissed it and put it back in its place.
‘Shall we?’ she said.
Melitta walked to the door.
Leon was waiting in the foyer. ‘We are expected at the palace,’ he said. Even as he spoke, Philokles came from the garden with Coenus, talking about hunting, at his side. Diodorus came in the main gate. He was in armour, and Philokles was wearing a plain white chiton and the long himation of a scholar. Coenus and Leon were dressed well, although their clothes were more befitting merchants than leading aristocrats.
Leon addressed them all together.
‘Satyrus and I have been ordered to attend the king. Melitta has been invited to visit the princess of Heraklea.’ He looked around at them. ‘After today’s events, we can’t be too careful.’
‘Surely you don’t expect that Ptolemy will do anything foolish,’ Philokles said.
Leon raised an eyebrow. ‘I wish to ensure that he does not,’ he said. ‘So I would like you gentlemen to accompany us.’
Philokles rubbed his jaw. ‘Do I need a sword?’ he asked.
‘If it comes to that, there’ll be no saving us,’ Leon said.
Diodorus nodded. ‘Let’s get this over with then,’ he said. ‘I’d like to see Sappho before the day is over. Hello there, Satyr. Lita, you look like – like a particularly seductive nymph. And to think that I watched you being born!’
Coenus rolled his eyes. ‘In my day, young lady, you would never have been allowed out like that. Aren’t you even going to cover your hair?’
Kallista muffled a squeak of outrage. Melitta put a hand on her companion’s wrist. ‘Troy has fallen, Uncle,’ she said with a smile. ‘Penelope is cold in her grave. In the modern era, young women of good family are allowed out of their houses.’
Coenus made a noise between a grunt and a laugh.
Leon waved them all out through the garden and on to the street like a dog herding sheep.
‘Goodness,’ Kallista murmured. ‘Are we going to walk?’
If Leon heard her, he gave no sign. He strode off and eight torch holders arranged themselves around the party. Satyrus knew them immediately – although masquerading as house slaves in simple chitons, they were all soldiers, troopers from Eumenes’ squadron.
They walked along the streets, only one such group among dozens, although Melitta and Kallista drew attention like a new vendor in the agora. Satyrus watched the crowds as they walked, annoyed that his best sandals might be stained by the rubbish in the street while simultaneously fascinated by the scenes around him, as he always was in the city. Women waited at public fountains with jars for water on their heads or hips. Men stood in the cool evening air and grumbled, heckled and bartered, or discussed the new city’s politics. Criminal factions eyed each other from opposing street corners. Couples mooned in dark corners or fought in tenements, and a late caravan of camels from the Red Sea stood in a long row on the central avenue, liberally decorating the clean sand of the street with droppings as they waited for slaves to unload the incense of the southern Arabian kingdoms.
Their torch-bearers watched everything and their eyes went everywhere. The man closest to Satyrus was the giant, Carlus, and Satyrus wondered how anyone could take him for a slave. His eyes were moving, appraising, watching. He looked up at the rooftops and down in the doorways.
‘See anything, Carlus?’ Satyrus asked by way of conversation.
The big Keltoi shrugged. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Lots of bad men, but they don’t want us.’ He glared at a beardless Aegyptian on a street corner, who stood with his arms crossed over his chest. He was small, and light, and young, but he met Carlus’s stare with cool indifference. ‘I’d love to come down here with some of the boys and clean up,’ he said. ‘Forced loans, prostitution, extortion, arson – these scum do it all.’
Satyrus looked at the Aegyptian as he passed him. The young man didn’t even raise an eyebrow. ‘Are you sure?’ he asked.
Carlus grunted.
Leon’s villa was comparatively close to the new library and the palace precincts, and it dawned on Satyrus that Leon was parading his group through the most public thoroughfares for a reason. After half an hour’s walk they climbed the low hill that led to the palace gates, still under construction. As far as Satyrus could see, the palace was in a permanent state of construction.