She nodded. ‘Will you, gentlemen? Soon forget? Because, I must tell you, I can be a mean-spirited old woman when I must, and tonight, on this holy night when all the gods are watching, I’m trying to raise funds to rebuild our temple when you have moved the Persians out.’
Of course. In the moment of victory, I had all but forgotten what any true Athenian or Attic farmer knew in his bones — the sea was won, but Attica was still in the hands of the Medes.
Aristides nodded. ‘I will find a talent of silver for you, Lady.’
She put a hand to her breast. ‘A talent! By my goddess, sir, you are generous.’
‘You may have to wait until I have a functioning farm or two to raise it,’ Aristides said.
‘At least your house is intact,’ I joked.
She looked at me.
Hector, who was still a good boy despite his infatuation, appeared by my couch with a pitcher of very good wine and three cups — not a bowl. Upper-class women did not drink from a kalyx, at least, not in Greece when lying with men. He brought little egg-shaped cups such as we use in Boeotia to have a dram when the work is done. Iris appeared as if my magic and held the cups while he poured.
The High Priestess accepted the wine and smiled at Iris.
‘Yes,’ Iris said.
Some message passed between their eyes.
I put a hand on her arm. ‘I too will give a talent of silver, if my ships have survived the last month,’ I said. ‘If Poseidon, and Artemis and all the gods are kind. It will take me a year.’
She smiled — a smile which lit her face.
I noted that Iris was still standing there, and Hector.
The High Priestess nodded. ‘I am acting as mother to Iris,’ she said. ‘Her father is a famous man — I cannot say his name aloud. Her mother is a Thracian slave.’
‘Freed woman,’ Iris said. Those two words carried so much content. Iris was tall, beautiful and handsome at the same time, the most athletic of the girls and you could see her Thracian mother in her strength and her oddly light eyes with black rings around the iris. She was one of those people whose intelligence shone forth from her eyes, and the two words she said told me that she accepted her mother’s status, and her mother, without bitterness.
The more I looked at her, the more likely it seemed to me that Xanthippus was her father.
‘Am I acting as father to Hector?’ I asked.
Aristides laughed. It was not like him to laugh at such a time. He rose to his feet. ‘My friend,’ he said, ‘you are in fact acting as his mother — a position we will all be in if we do not re-conquer Attica and get our wives back in our houses. I miss Jocasta.’
‘I miss her too,’ I admitted. It is hard to talk to a woman who is so close she can smell your breath. But I turned to her. ‘My lady, I view Hector as my son.’
She nodded. ‘If you had a wife …’ she said.
‘I may have one by the end of winter,’ I said.
She nodded, and gave a slight smile. ‘Very well. May I ask — what age will this wife be?’
I frowned, calculating. ‘I believe she is but one year younger than me, my lady.’ In that moment my mind had a flash of Briseis, naked in a chlamys, pinned under my body in a garbage-strewn alley in Ephesus when I thought she was my rival and a man.
‘Ah,’ the High Priestess said, obviously surprised. ‘A woman your own age?’
‘My first love,’ I said.
‘The things one learns at feasts,’ Aristides said.
I motioned to my friend for peace. I looked at Hector. His face said everything it needed to say.
‘My Hector is eligible, free of entanglement, clean of mind and body, and will have a small fortune from me when I die,’ I said, ‘unless the Medes have it all, of course. And he also has money of his own — shares in our last captures, for example. He is a citizen of Green Plataea.’
‘My Iris is not a citizen woman of Athens,’ the priestess said. ‘But I can promise a fine dowry, and I suspect Athenian citizenship for her husband could be arranged.’ She looked at Aristides.
He was still standing, trying hard to pretend he was not there. I knew the look — I had shared it.
But he nodded. ‘I suspect that Themistocles will offer citizenship to many of the metics and allies who served in Athenian ships. That would be a just action,’ he said primly, ‘and young Hector of Syracusa has risked as much as any man here.’
The High Priestess rose as gracefully as she had lain down and kissed Iris on the brow. ‘Do you consent to wed her, young man?’ she said to Hector.
‘Oh — yes!’ he said, for once at a loss for words.
She nodded, satisfied. ‘Iris, you are one I might have kept to be a priestess. But I think the life of the world is for you.’
Iris smiled, but she was crying. ‘My daughters will come to you, Mother.’
Well, by the gods, I cried too.
As soon as the young people went off into the dark to celebrate their engagement, and the High Priestess went away lightly over the sand, Aristides lay full length at my side. ‘You are going for Briseis,’ he said.
I nodded.
‘I can’t be party to it,’ he said. ‘I am needed here.’
I nodded and gave him a small hug, to show that I understood. ‘I don’t need men,’ I said. ‘In fact, I have a different role for you — and Jocasta — if you will accept it.’
He nodded.
‘Will you winter here or in Hermione?’ I asked. Hermione was where many Athenians and almost all of the Plataeans had gone, you’ll recall.
‘I will go back to Hermione to fetch Jocasta as soon as I understand what our military plans might be,’ he said.
‘Will you and Jocasta arrange — things — for me in Hermione?’ I asked. ‘I’ll guess that both my sons will wed. And I will wed Briseis. Or, alternatively, I will be dead, and you will see to it that my estate is divided, and that the boys marry.’
Aristides nodded, his eyes on mine. ‘Yes,’ he said.
‘I will be back in a month,’ I said.
Later that night, and I was sober and alert and busy choosing crew and talking to men I wanted. I was sitting on a camp stool beside Brasidas. Euphonia was asleep in her bed and Cleitus had sent me a slave asking me to come to his tent for wine. I knew what that conversation would be about, but I put him off with a message of my own.
Ka appeared. He made a sign, which I understood.
I nodded to Brasidas and Polymarchos, who was close by, sober enough, and the three of us hung swords over our shoulders and walked across the sand, through the milling crowds, to where Cleitus was camped, well up the ridge and nearer to Xanthippus. I was welcomed into his temporary home.
I introduced Brasidas and Polymarchos. Cleitus was not just polite, but welcoming, as was his wife. She was small and quick, like a bird — very pretty, and sharp as the kopis under my arm.
She put a hand under my arm. ‘I do not think you need to wear a sword to visit my husband ever again,’ she said. ‘Although when I heard you let my daughter aboard a warship-’
She was not really joking. She was both pleasant and furious at once.
People are not simple, and had I been in her place I believe I might have been the same.
‘I did not know,’ I said. ‘In fact, I should have known — I heard them begin to plan it, and I thought it was all … childish stuff.’
She shook her head. ‘Heliodora has never been childish,’ she said. ‘And what keeps me from grabbing for your sword like Medea is that I know her well enough to know that it must have been her notion and her hand at the tiller.’
Considering that I had previously only known her as the matron pulling her daughter out of my tent — as I say, that could have been a scene in a nasty comedy — I thought that she was both wise and very well-spoken.
I bowed to both of them. ‘We are wearing swords for a purpose,’ I said. ‘Because Cleitus and I are well known to be foes, I would ask him to come with us — armed.’ I nodded to Aspasia, Cleitus’s wife. ‘I am more than willing to discuss wedding terms,’ I said. ‘But this is a question of the future of Athens and perhaps Greece.’