‘You are the great Greek pirate,’ he said. He grinned. It wasn’t a real expression — more like a dog showing its teeth. He sent a boy for spiced wine, and we sat on bales of his linens from Aegypt and he told me without preamble that Darius, the Great King for all of my life, was rumoured to have died at Persepolis, which was about as far from Syracusa as I could imagine in distance. His successor was Xerxes, or so my Phoenician helmsman informed me.
He talked about Persia’s determination to conquer Athens, and after a while we moved up the beach to a taverna. Men came and went, asking his leave to buy one thing or sell another. After some small talk about his family, he got to the point. He leaned back, stuck two fingers in the top of his linen kilt and smiled.
‘Now I have told you something, yes? So you tell me. You make war — sea war — on Carthago, yes?’ He smiled, but the smile didn’t reach his eyes.
‘Carthago enslaved me,’ I said mildly.
He nodded. ‘You have killed many of my people. Many. Yet I sit here and make the talk with you, and you do not seem like a monster. Why so much war, eh?’
I spread my hands. ‘It seems to follow me,’ I said.
He nodded. ‘So tell me this. Is it true you went to the Tin Islands? All the way into the Outer Sea?’
I was watching him carefully. I didn’t think it impossible that the Phoenicians would murder me in cold blood, for all sorts of reasons — but first and foremost because I knew the route to the tin. ‘Yes. All the way to Alba. And back.’
He smiled, leaned forward and extended his hand. ‘I’m Thato Abn Ba’al. I, too, have crossed the northern seas.’ He grinned. ‘I tell them, at home, that we could publish the route in every city in the world and do ourselves no harm, because only a great sailor can make the trip. That the squadron at Gades is wasted.’ He nodded. ‘You have prisoners, I believe.’
I am a man of the world, and I like most people. I have come to an age where I can say that in truth, there is no one truth — that no man is much better than any other, and that Greeks are not handsomer or smarter than Persians. No race has an edge in courage, or discipline, or ship-handling.
But I cannot abide Phoenicians. Maybe it is bred to the bone after years of war, or perhaps they really are rotten to the core of their child-killing society. Eh?
So all this, this whole pleasant morning of conversation, was a preamble to asking me if he could ransom my prisoners.
‘I have a few,’ I said. My annoyance was already rising.
‘Give them to me, and I’ll see what I can do to get you trading privileges in Sidon and Carthago,’ he said with a smile.
‘Why would I want to trade there?’ I asked. I was already getting to my feet.
‘The richest trade in the world? The finest entrepot, the best warehouses, the most imposing array of products, the best craftsmanship?’
‘Athens, you mean?’ I said.
He laughed, but his laugh was more false than an old whore’s smile.
‘Athens is a nice little town,’ he said. ‘Sidon, Tyre, Carthago — these are the finest cities in the world, and you should beg to trade in them.’
‘Why?’ I asked. I leaned forward. ‘I can take whatever they have to offer whenever it suits me.’ I nodded. ‘Like that ship right there.’
‘It would mean war between Carthago and Syracusa. A war that Syracusa would lose. Carthago can put a hundred thousand men in the field.’ He stood up. ‘Slavery has eroded your manners as well as your sense of right and wrong. I sought to do you no harm, Greek. I want to buy your prisoners.’
I nodded. ‘I’ll send you my factor,’ I said haughtily. In fact, I wanted rid of them, and money is always nice. The problem with anger is that it can get in the way of common sense. I didn’t need him or his ship, or the international complications that would arise. Even as it was, my possession of the hull of a captured Carthaginian warship and the freed Greek slaves roaming the streets spending their pay was making trouble for my host, who in turn was increasingly distant to me.
Piracy. Always a complicated matter.
I turned to leave Thato Abn Ba’al, and had another thought.
‘Do you know a Greek in Carthago’s service called Dagon?’ I asked.
The Phoenician rolled his eyes. ‘Yes.’
‘Insane?’ I asked.
The Phoenician shipmaster shrugged. ‘A bad man. And not one of us, whatever you say.’ He spat.
‘Will you see him? In Carthago?’ I asked.
Thato narrowed his eyes.
I shrugged. ‘I am not after your ship. I spoke in heat.’
He splashed some wine on the floor. ‘Make me your guest friend, and I’ll talk to you about it.’
A guest friend is a sort of sacred trust, like brotherhood. If you make a man your guest friend, you accept responsibility for him in your house and your city — but you also, in effect, swear to support him and not to harm him, ever. Sometimes guest friendships are passed down from generation to generation.
‘If you wanted my prisoners, why not just say so?’ I asked.
‘It is rude to start a conversation with a demand,’ he said. ‘I am a gentleman. I heard that you are, too, despite your violence.’
I sat again. Poured a little more wine. ‘Guest friendship is a door that swings both ways,’ I said.
He spat thoughtfully. ‘I am not a barbarian,’ he said. ‘Make me your guest friend, and we will share the rewards in the eyes of our gods. And men.’
Despite all, I liked him. So I got up and swore the oath to Zeus, and he swore by Ba’al and Apollo, and we clasped hands. Some bystanders in the taverna witnessed — a big Athenian helmsman I didn’t know came and slapped me on the back.
‘Then take the prisoners,’ I said to my new brother. ‘No ransom.’
He was genuinely surprised. Unaffectedly surprised. ‘You mean that?’ he asked.
I led him to where Neoptolymos sat under an awning, drinking wine. He had six Carthaginian officers, and a pair of our marines watching them — and making sure our former slaves didn’t gut them for old times’ sake.
‘Neoptolymos?’ I said. ‘Let them go. This man will take them home.’
Neoptolymos nodded. He was an aristocrat, too; he rose to his feet and bowed to our Phoenician guest.
Thato started to lead them towards his ship, they clutching his knees and patting his hands and weeping. As well they might. But he pushed the youngest one away and turned to me.
‘I may see Dagon in Carthago,’ he said. ‘I can’t stand him, but I see him all too often.’
‘Tell him you met Arimnestos of Plataea.’ I smiled. ‘Tell him that when I find him, I will break him on an oar and crucify him on my mainmast.’
Thato nodded and pursed his lips. ‘I will,’ he said seriously.
I was busy in other ways, as well. The Athenian helmsman — a former slave named Simon, like my hateful cousin — was almost fully loaded with Sicilian wine and copper ore and three ingots of my tin, and he was headed east to Athens. Since I had already begun to form my plans to return to my own life, so to speak, I asked him to see if he could find Mauros, or any of my other friends in Athens or Piraeus. I wrote a letter to Aristides, sometimes known as The Just who had led one of the Athenian taxeis at Marathon, and another to Themistocles, the leader of the Athenian demos, asking them to see to it that if my ship still sailed the seas, it came to me at Massalia.
I wrote another letter to my sister Penelope.
I had decided that it was time to return to my home.
But first, I had a military operation to plan.
And I had to know about Lydia.
I completed my letter-writing, visited Doola’s mercantile exchange and sat down to listen to him dicker with a pair of Sybarite merchants.
It took me a moment to realize that he was buying their tin.
This made no sense to me, but I smiled at Doola, who was clearly having a fine time, and walked outside, where, to my confusion, Seckla was leading a pair of donkeys loaded with tin out of the inn’s yard.
He smiled at me and walked on, attended by a pair of slaves.