Killer of Men - Christian Cameron [151]
‘Does Nearchos know?’ Hephaestion asked.
‘No,’ I said. And then, ‘I don’t lie with Nearchos.’
Hephaestion reacted as if I’d slapped him. ‘You don’t?’ he asked. ‘He must be bitter.’
I shook my head. ‘He thinks he is unworthy.’ I shrugged.
Hephaestion laughed. ‘You are a failure as a Cretan,’ he said. ‘But you’re a good smith and you serve Hephaestus like a dutiful son.’ We polished for a while, our rags full of powdered pumice and oil. The slaves and apprentices were silent, terrified to have their master working such menial duties.
‘I think perhaps while we make the helmets, you should stay here at the forge,’ Hephaestion said. ‘You, pais, go and get me wine. And wine for Lord Arimnestos.’ He only called me lord to mock me.
While we drank watered wine – wonderful stuff, the wine of Crete, red as the blood of a bull – he nodded at me. ‘You sleep here. Until the Chalkeia. We’ll dedicate all the helmets as our sacrifice – as our sacrifice of labour. And then you can go back to the hall. Lord Achilles will understand why I need you.’
We’ve never had a Chalkeia here, thugater. We should. I’m a sworn devotee of the smith god, and I can say the prayers. Why have we never had one? In any case, it is a smith’s holiday, and the smith has to dedicate work and pay the value of his labour as a tithe – and the smith god judges the quality of the work. In Athens – even in little Plataea – there’s a procession of all the smiths, iron and bronze and even the finer metals, all together, with images of the god and of Dionysus bringing him back to Olympia after Zeus cast him out. There’s a lot of drinking. We should institute it. Send for my secretary.
I’m not dead, yet, eh?
I had no idea why old Hephaestion suddenly wanted me staying in his house – the walk to the hall was only a matter of half a stade. But he was my master, as much as the lord was. Everything in that town was dedicated to preparing the lord and his men for the expedition to Cyprus, and we were two months from the date of launch. Women wove new sails of heavy linen from Aegypt. The tanner made leather armour as fast as he butchered oxen. The two sandal-makers worked by lamplight and, down by the slips, twenty fishermen and their boys worked all day to build a third trireme in the Phoenician style.
Young men are all fools.
I sent Lekthes up to the hall for my bedding, and he came back with Idomeneus. They made me a bed where the smith directed – not even in his house, but in his summer work shed, a pleasant enough building, but only closed on three sides. The two of them swept it clean and brought a big couch from the house and made it up.
Idomeneus took a cup of wine with me. Lekthes had a girl up at the hall – he was a warrior now, not really a servant, and he was considering marriage. But Idomeneus’s tastes ran in other directions, and he was in no hurry to leave the forge.
‘Nearchos asked after you,’ he said. His eyes sparkled and he wore half a smile. ‘He burns for you, master.’
I shrugged. ‘I’m not your master.’
Idomeneus stretched out on a bench. ‘You call Hephaestion master, ’ he said.
I shrugged. ‘He is a master smith.’
‘You are a master warrior. And you made me a free man.’ Idomeneus nodded. ‘I have a way out of your tangle, lord.’
I ran my fingers through my beard. ‘Tangle?’ I asked.
He laughed. ‘You’ve run off down here to avoid Nearchos. And lord, he thinks – you must know – that when the ships sail, you and he will be lovers. Why shouldn’t he think this? Even his father says it.’
I shook my head. Cretans. What can I say? And all of you tittering. Laugh all you like – this was my youth.
‘So – I have found a thread that you can follow out of our labyrinth. ’ He poured more wine straight from the amphora.
‘Am I Theseus or the Minotaur?’ I laughed. ‘And who does that make you?’ We both laughed together.
‘I am prettier than any of Nearchos’s sisters,’ he said, and we both guffawed until Hephaestion came and put his head under the eaves.
‘Is this the Dionysia?’ he asked. ‘By the smith god, I didn’t expect a symposium your first night