“Yes, about two hundred and fifty years after I was born. But a hundred years before Maia and Adeimantus were born, and three hundred years before Klio and Lysias.” Pico looked energized by the thought. “There’s so much history, so many places and times!”
Sokrates smoothed the burgundy velvet of his sleeve. “What a strange place.”
“I’m looking for Florent-Claude,” I said to Pico. “Do you know him? Athene describes him as Emilie’s widower.”
“Emilie’s dead?” Pico looked sad. “She was so wonderful, a scientist and a philosopher in an age where it was so hard for women to be anything but hostesses at best. She should have been in the Republic.”
“Do you know Florent-Claude?” I repeated.
“Yes. I met him. She was with Voltaire when we visited, but Florent-Claude was happy with the situation. It was almost like being in the City of Amazons.”
I knocked loudly on the door. “Why didn’t Athene leave it with Voltaire?” I grumbled. “He’s the one who’s her votary. It would have been interesting to meet him.”
A servant opened the door, a flunkey in a wig. “We wish to see Florent-Claude,” I said.
“The Marquis du Chastellet,” Pico added.
“And your names?” the flunkey asked, superciliously.
“The Comte de Mirandola, the Marquis de Delos and the Duc d’Athen,” Pico replied immediately, in Italianate French.
The flunkey bowed and went back inside. “Marquis? Duke?” I asked. He really was the Count of Mirandola, or course, or he had been two hundred or so years before.
“Did you want me to say god and philosopher on the doorstep?” Pico asked. “I’m sure there was a Duke of Athens.”
“Not in 1750,” I said. “He told the servant you were a member of the high Athenian nobility,” I explained to Sokrates.
“You’re mixing me up with Plato again,” Sokrates said. “He was descended from Solon on his mother’s side, and on his father’s side from the ancient kings of Attica. I was a simple stonemason before I became a philosopher, and my only illustrious ancestor was the artificer Daedalus.”
The flunkey came back. “The marquis will see you.”
He showed us into one of those uncomfortable eighteenth-century rooms, all spindly little chairs matching the gilt frames on all the paintings. Sokrates looked at all of it in wonder.
“I’m afraid you’re not going to understand any of the conversation,” I said.
“I’ve always been terrible at learning barbarian languages,” Sokrates said, almost as if this were a point of pride. “Do they have Workers here?”
“No, we’re more than two centuries before the first Workers,” I said.
“Then who wove this carpet so finely, and then put it on the floor?” he asked.
Before I could respond, the flunkey opened the door again and announced his master. We all bowed, Sokrates very badly as he wasn’t familiar with the custom.
“I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure,” Florent-Claude said.
“We met once, when I was here staying with Emilie,” Pico said. “Such a loss.” They bowed to each other.
“Ah yes. The Comte de Mirandola. I recognize you now. The years haven’t touched you at all.”
Pico looked uncomfortable at this compliment. He looked about thirty, but he had been over sixty and almost blind at the Relocation, before Father had restored his youth on Olympos so that he could work with Athene. He didn’t seem to have aged at all since then. He introduced us, Apollonaire de Delos and Socrate d’Athen, who unhappily knew no French. We sat down in the little uncomfortable chairs. “We’re passing by, we can’t stay,” he said, in response to Florent-Claude’s offer of hospitality for the night. The flunkey returned and gave us all sherry, in little glasses, and offered around a plate of petits fours. I neither ate nor drank, but it was almost worth the delay for the expression on Sokrates’s face when after turning the highly colored confection in his fingers he bit into the cloying marzipan.
I wished Athene had given me more to go on. I didn’t know what she’d said when she asked Florent-Claude to keep the paper for him, or what name she’d been using or who he thought she was. Fortunately, Pico did. “You remember my friend Athenais de Minerve?”
“Of course,” Florent-Claude said. “So beautiful, so wise.”
“Did she by chance give you an incomprehensible paper to look after?” Pico asked.
Sokrates was ignoring us all and pleating the lace of his undersleeve intently.
“So, you are on her treasure hunt?” Florent-Claude smiled.
I could not understand why Athene had gone through this elaborate charade and divided up her message. It was dangerous as well as unnecessary. Ordinary mortals involved this way could easily have lost the paper. Pico’s could have been stolen, and what Kebes might have done with it didn’t bear thinking about. He could have burned it for pure spite.
“We are,” Pico said.
“Then can you answer her riddle?”
“We’ll have to see when you ask it,” Pico said, confidently.
“Let me fetch it,” he said. “But first I should tell you that it’s in English, and if none of you speak that language you have leave to find another who does.”
“English,” Pico said, dismayed. “I know many languages, but not that barbarous tongue.”
“Barbarous? I think not, since I speak it,” I said. (You’re reading this. You already know I speak English.)
Florent-Claude chortled, and went off to fetch the paper. I hoped he hadn’t lost it among his bibelots.
“Who did she think would come who would need to find an English speaker?” Pico asked, in Greek.
“Porphyry?” I suggested.
“Old Porphyry’s still alive?” Sokrates asked, looking up from his sleeve, surprised.
“No, he died. But Euridike named one of my sons after him, and that’s who we’re talking about. Ikaros was one of his teachers.”
Sokrates seemed to accept that calmly. “Where did Florent-Claude go?”
“He’s fetching Athene’s message,” I explained.
“What is this made of?” he asked, picking up the drape of lace at his cuff again.
“Silk, I think, though they sometimes make it from linen,” I said. “It’s called lace.”
“And what is silk?” Sokrates asked, patiently.
“It’s a thread spun by worms who eat mulberry leaves,” Pico explained. He twirled his wrists, making his own lace flare gorgeously. “It makes a cloth that’s cool to wear in hot weather and that’s gentle next to the skin, not scratchy. It originates in China, but in my time we make it in Italy. But lace came later.”
“And this lace is made by humans?”
“By women, mostly, using bobbins, which are things like little distaffs,” I said.
“This is an incredibly unnecessary waste of human labor and human souls,” Sokrates pronounced. “Those women should be freed from their bobbins and taught reason. It would be a useless frivolity even if Workers made it as fast and unthinkingly as any cloth. Nobody needs dangling frills like this. Look at this incredible detail. It’s beautiful, in itself, but nonsensical as clothing.”
“I agree,” I said. “Though it looks elegant on Ikaros.”
“Don’t you think it’s unjust?”
“What if it’s somebody’s vocation, to make lace?” Ikaros asked. “Their art?”
“It is a normal part of these people’s clothing,” Sokrates said. “Far too much for it to be made as somebody’s art. Look at these paintings, everyone has it. If somebody wanted to make it as their art, it might be a harmless decoration, like the borders some people embroider on their kitons. It’s this volume of it that’s wrong. Close work like that? Women must be compelled to make it from economic necessity.”
“Yes, that’s wrong,” Ikaros said, soberly. “When there’s so much injustice it becomes invisible.”
“Is this silk also?” Sokrates asked, stroking his velvet sleeve.
“I think so,” I said, not at all sure what velvet was made of. “You should ask Athene when we have her back, fabrics are one of her specialities.”