‘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.
‘Ah,’ she said.
I let it go, and counted myself lucky.
I was still young, and I didn’t know much.
Tara’s seasickness went on and on. After a two-day blow that nearly killed us — it’s not much of a story, and I don’t wish to bore you — we found the coast again, sailed south for two days, and landed — at Oiasso. How Tertikles laughed!
We took on more water, more smoked pork, and sailed again. This time we sailed due east for a day with a perfect breeze, and made camp on an empty beach. Within an hour my marines were calling out, and a dozen locals approached carefully to sell us lobster and fish.
They weren’t Keltoi and they weren’t Greeks, and we didn’t have anyone who could speak to them. They had an odd language, with grunts and clicks, or so it sounded to me. The men had heavy heads and muscles, and the women seemed about the same, to be honest.
Tara eyed them warily. ‘Bask,’ she said. She spoke rapidly to Sittonax.
‘She says they are all witches, and we should be wary,’ he said.
We were wary. We kept a good guard, but we ate their fish and paid in copper, and sailed away uninjured.
The next day there was no wind to speak of, and we rowed. Tara seemed disappointed when I rowed, but then she stripped off her linen shirt and took the oar across from mine.
The oarsmen whooped.
Tara grinned.
I’ll tell you, short of having Heracles and Orpheus in your crew, a good-looking woman rowing with breasts bared does a great deal for morale. I’m not sure it wasn’t the fastest rowing I’ve ever seen. It tired the men, but then, none of them would admit he was tired, which was useful in itself.
I rowed for a long time. I wanted my people to see I was with them, not just commanding them. They’d put up with two weeks of my aping the manners of the Keltoi aristocracy. I felt they needed proof I could still row. And I wanted proof I was getting my body back. Damn Dagon — he had nearly broken me, and a year, more, of exercise, rowing, sword practice and boxing had still not restored me to the level I’d been at when I fought at Marathon.
Damn him indeed.
So I rowed. And the next day, I rowed again.