If you imagine that I was going to take this moment to protest about her faithlessness while her naked skin was under my hand, you don't know what it is to be young. I put my mouth on hers before she could speak, and she laughed into my mouth – not something she had done before. Perhaps I should have cared that she was unfaithful to my master – and now, I think, my friend – Archi.
Instead, I half stood and half sat with her astride me, and we kissed and kissed, her breasts against my chest and the hot water up to our hair. Her kisses were clumsy at first, and then warmer and deeper. My hands roved her and then she planted herself on me – her choice, and perhaps I had a qualm, or a suspicion that this was wrong, because I remember that I hadn't pushed into her.
It makes me smile, though. Hah! The gods are often kind, and Aphrodite chose to send me to Tartarus with a glimpse of heaven. When we were finished, we kissed, and kissed, and kissed.
Darkar called my name from the back door. Penelope slipped out of the tub, picked up her robe and vanished – not a difficult trick in the dark. I was sore and happy and suddenly clear-headed, and I had the taste of cloves in my mouth. I got over the side of the tub and thought that on a normal night there'd be trouble from Cook for making such a mess of the bathhouse. Then I grabbed the olive oil, doused myself and strigiled as fast as I could.
I went through the kitchen as clean as a newborn. Darkar tried to slow me down, but I passed him and went into the hall.
Penelope was crying in Archi's arms. Archi was still covered in blood and crap, and so was Penelope.
And her hair wasn't wet.
A chill went through me like a rainy wind in winter blowing across my soul. In my nose, I discovered the scent of mint and jasmine. The hair began to stand up on the back of my neck.
Archi let go of Penelope. 'You look worse, not better.'
Penelope looked at me. 'You'll both be killed,' she said.
Oh, Aphrodite. Oh, Mistress of Animals. Who had I just been with in the bath?
'I am afraid,' I admitted to Archi. I just didn't tell him why. 'You must go and bathe.'
'Stay where you are,' Hipponax said from behind me. I assume that Darkar told him. We were young and stupid. We had not thought through the consequences. And the game of revenge has no rules.
Hipponax looked at his son. Archilogos met his eyes. They were the same height, by then. 'What have you done?' he asked.
Archi shrugged – I've mentioned what I think of this as a gesture from child to parent, eh?
'What have you done?' he shouted.
Archi smiled. 'What needed doing,' he said. 'Diomedes called my sister a whore and we made him one.'
Well, not precisely, but it made a good line.
And then Hipponax surprised me. I should have known – he was always a good man and a poet. He understood rage and lust and the human and the divine. He stood back from the doorway, so that Darkar could enter.
'You must go away,' he said. 'Tonight. Now. I will have a ship manned.'
Then there was a flurry of packing and crying. Archi took his panoply and his sea bag, and I took mine. He went for a bath, and Hipponax took me aside.
'Heraclitus tells me you swore an oath to protect my son,' he said.
I nodded. I raised my eyes to his.
'Here is your freedom. I expect you to keep that oath. As does Heraclitus. Until the end of the war. You stand by him. But as a free man, Diomedes will have to try you, at least. I wrote out your manumission for yesterday. A friend will witness it in the morning – as if it had been done yesterday.' He shook his head. 'I should have freed you for what you did with the Persian,' he said. 'Is all my family cursed?'
I stood silent, awed by his generosity, and conscious of what I had just done in the bath. The furies were laughing. And sharpening their nails.
But I was free. It was worse when Archi went to say goodbye to his sister. Worse because she wept, real tears without anger. She loved her brother better than the rest of us, I think.
And worse because her hair was wet.
She looked at me several times, and her look was one of calm triumph. She was beautiful.
Thugater, I have never doubted the presence of the gods. In that moment – in that look from that damp-haired girl – the long, dark shaft and the barbed point of the arrow that comes from Aphrodite's bow went through me, and the pain was never sweeter. Even when Hipponax announced to the whole oikia that I had been freed – even when all the slaves crowded around me, and Penelope took my hand and gave it a tentative squeeze, all I could see were her eyes, that glance. I see it still.
I'm an old fool. Forget me. Imagine what it was like for poor Penelope, honey. Her free lover was leaving her. Her chance of freedom was walking away. And Archi said nothing. I think Hipponax might have freed her, had Archi asked. But he didn't. He wasn't bad, my master. Just a self-centred ephebe who thought he'd just made himself a hero.
The Pole Star was high, and the oarsmen, grumpy and drunken, had been roused from their brothels to their oars, but by luck, the trade trireme Thetis was supposed to leave the north beach with the sun anyway, bound for Lesbos with a cargo of Cyprian copper and some finished armour for the gentlemen of Methymna. We walked down through the town in the first light and boarded, Kylix carrying our gear. For all we knew, Diomedes was still tied to his pillar. I wondered if by putting him there, I had made sacrifice to Aphrodite, so that she granted me – Briseis.
As the sea wind blew my hair, I let myself think that I had kissed Briseis in the bath, and – what word suffices? Did I 'possess' her? Never. If anyone was the owner, it was she. Did I 'take' her? No. Men's words for sex are often foolish, you'll find, honey. Briseis was more like a goddess than a woman.
And then, as the good salt wind blew over me and the rain squalls danced to the north, towards where Miltiades might be rising from his bed, it suddenly struck me.
I was free.
Archi was next to me at the bow-rail, over the box where marines might ride in a fight. Today it was full of bull hides for aspides. Every item between our benches had to do with war. The world was going to war, and I was free.
'I'm free!' I said.
Archi punched me in the back. 'You are,' he said. 'Will you – leave me at Methymna?'
It is odd, looking back across the years at that boy – oh, aye, I'd have put my fist in a man's face for calling me a boy then, but I was, and my actions shout it. But in that moment, I knew that I was free – and I had no idea who I was or what I wanted.
No, that's not right, either. What I wanted was Briseis. Hah. More wine. That's all I wanted, and all I could keep in front of my eyes. And then there was the little matter of my oath to Artemis. To defend Hipponax and Archilogos. For all that home – Plataea – had begun to seem sweeter, the sudden, heady unwatered wine of freedom washed that dream away.
I shook my head. I couldn't tell Archi that I loved his sister. 'No,' I said. 'I promised your father I'd watch you for a while.'
Archi smiled. 'Well, that's not so bad, I guess,' he said, but his smile said it was anything but bad.
I bent and started to look at the armour we were carrying. The breastplates were bronze and they were unfinished, but they had fancy decoration worked in, the waist and closure left undone so that the final fitting could be made by a local smith. I shook my head.
'Mediocre work,' I said. 'I want better. I want a panoply. I assume we're going to fight the Persians!'
Archi grinned. We embraced.
It sounded like fun. We were young.
11
I've already said that I think Lesbos is the prettiest island in Ionia, and I still think Methymna is the handsomest town in Hellas. I always swore that if Plataea sent me into exile, I'd go and be a citizen in Methymna.