Killer of Men - Christian Cameron [152]
Idomeneus was fond of the smith – more than fond, I think. ‘I am solving my lord’s dilemma,’ he said.
Hephaestion winked. ‘Bed the boy yourself and pretend to be Arimnestos?’ he said.
Idomeneus blushed. Then we started listing things that Nearchos might notice, and we drank a great deal more, and Hephaestion went to bed drunk.
‘I never heard your idea,’ I said.
Idomeneus was drunk, and he put his arms around me. ‘I love you,’ he said.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Go to bed!’
‘Ish – is that an invitation?’ he asked with heavy innuendo, and then he grinned. ‘Lisshen, master. Tell the boy that he’sh a warrior now – too noble to be your lover. Tell him you free him to have a lover of his own.’ Idomeneus burped, which rather spoiled his performance.
‘Hmm,’ I said, or something equally useless. I was drunk myself.
But the next morning, pounding metal with a heavy head – not something I recommend to any of you – the idea seemed better and better.
I drank water and worked, trying to sweat the wine out of my head. Which was for the best, because in early afternoon, a long line of dancing women came up the hill from the town, heading for the mountain. Troas’s daughter was at the head of one of the files of dancers, and she led her laughing girls in a full rehearsal around the yard of the smithy.
I had a pair of roses that Idomeneus had plucked, at my direction, from the garden behind the hall, and I’d woven them with bronze wire so that they would sit with the laurel in her hair.
Hephaestion had a mirror, and I showed her what she looked like in the golden light of the bronze surface.
‘Oooh!’ she said, patting the flowers gently. ‘I wish I was prettier, though.’
‘You are beautiful, Gaiana!’ I said. Or words to that effect.
She laughed. I kissed her, and she did not kiss like a virgin. She laughed into my mouth like Briseis.
And then I knew why the smith had given me the shed. I grabbed her hand, but she pulled away and straightened her chiton. She grinned. ‘Too fast for me, lord,’ she said.
I had a horn comb, and I combed her hair a little. She leaned back against me and we kissed again, then she stood up. ‘No one expects the girls down from the mountain until dawn,’ she said. Outside the shop, the other girls were calling for her.
‘I will be in the shed,’ I said, and ran a finger around one of her nipples, and she smacked me – playfully, but hard.
‘Don’t go to sleep,’ she said, before darting out of my arms and out of the door.
And I didn’t. Nor did Gaiana.
That’s another happy time in my memory. She came to me every night and I worked all day in the smithy. Her father came on the third day and Hephaestion introduced me.
‘He’s smitten with your daughter,’ Hephaestion said.
‘You don’t look like the kind of man who marries a fisherman’s daughter,’ Troas said. He had a scraggly beard and the hands of a man who dragged nets all day, with enormous shoulders.
‘Marries?’ I asked, and I suspect, thugater, that my voice cracked.
Troas laughed. ‘If I tell the priests you took her maidenhead, you’ll owe me her bride price.’
I felt foolish. We were bartering. Before you think ill of the man, remember that the lords of the town might take his daughter for nothing, and he would have the care of any resulting children. That’s Crete. Democracy has a great deal to recommend it, honey.
Mind you, daughters were usually safe from lords on Crete. Hah!
‘What is her bride price?’ I asked. In truth, he scared me more than a Persian battle line.
‘Ten silver owls,’ he said.
I almost laughed my relief. Hephaestion interrupted me.
‘Ten? For a girl who has lain with any man who will have her?’ He spat.
Troas flushed. I think he was hurt. ‘I thought we were friends?’
Hephaestion glared at him. ‘When you come to buy a bronze knife, what do you tell me? That it is a beautiful item, that the blade is as sharp as obsidian, that it feels perfect in your hand? No! You tell me that it is too small, dull, ugly – anything to lower the price.