Killer of Men - Christian Cameron [19]
Pater beat me so badly that I thought I might die. I see it now – I had pledged money he didn’t have. And we were at the bottom. All our harvest and all our work was off at Athens, or lost on the road. I see it now, but at the time, it hurt me far more than just a beating. I decided that night, tears burning down my face, that he wasn’t really my father. No man could treat his son that way.
That was a deeper pain than any blow. I still bear it.
The next day he apologized. In fact, he all but crawled to me, making false jokes and wincing when he touched my bruises, alternating with making light of my injuries. It was a strange performance, and in some way it was as confusing as the heavy beating.
And then he recovered. Whatever daimon was eating his soul, he rose above it. It was three weeks or more after Epictetus had left, and he was a week overdue. Pater came out into the vineyard with us and started building trellises – work he never did – as if it was the most natural thing in the world. He didn’t complain, and he didn’t hit anyone, and we worked steadily all day under the high, blue skies of autumn. The grapes were almost ripe and the trellises creaked. Bion and I were both physically wary of him – we had bruises to prove that we had the right – but he passed no reproof harder than a look. My brother fell on a vine and wrecked an hour’s work, but Pater merely shook his head and took up his light bronze axe. He went off to the wood to cut more supports, and sent my brother to the river to cut reeds.
It was an autumn day, but hot. Beautiful – you could see the stream glinting, and the line of the Oeroe river down the valley. I sweated through my chiton and stripped it off to work naked, which meant a slap from Mater if she caught me, but she wasn’t likely to come out to the vineyard.
Bion had brought a bucket of water from the well. He offered me the first dipper – I was the only free man on the hilltop. But I’d learned some things, even at that age.
‘I’ll drink last,’ I said.
I saw a spark in Bion’s eye, and knew I’d hit that correctly.
I remember that, and the beauty of the day, but most of all I remember that Pater came for us. He didn’t have to, you see – he was down at the wood, and he’d have seen Epictetus’s wagons turn off the road. He might even have seen them three stades away, or farther. And as the master, and the man with so much to lose, it would have been natural for him to take his axe and go down to the yard and leave us to work on the hilltop. But he didn’t. He came up the hill, hobbling quickly.
‘Come with me,’ he said. He was terse, and all of us – even Bion – thought that there might be trouble.
We put our tools down and followed him through the vineyard to the house.
Pater said nothing, so we didn’t either. We came into the yard and only then could we see the hillside and hear the wagons in the lane.
I couldn’t see my face, but I could see Hermogenes. He flashed his father a smile of utter joy. He said, ‘You’ll be free!’, which meant nothing to me at the time.
Epictetus was driving his own oxen on the wagon. His son was beside him, and he had two of his hired men in the box, but the second wagon was gone – and the smiles must have been wiped from every face in the oikia. Even the women were leaning over the rail of the exhedra.
Epictetus the Younger leaped down and ran to the heads of the oxen, and he flashed Pater a smile – and then we knew.
As old Epictetus got down, he couldn’t keep the smile off his own face.
Then the hired men got down, and they threw heavy wool sacks on to the ground. They made a noise – like rock, but thinner – copper, I knew from the sound. And then tin wrapped in leather from far, far to the north.
Epictetus came forward with his thumbs in his girdle. ‘It was cheaper to buy copper and tin than to buy ingots of bronze,’ he said. ‘And I’ve watched you do it. If you don’t like it,’ he raised an eyebrow, ‘I’ll lend you the wagon to get it back.’
‘Cyprian ingots,’ Pater said. He had the heavy wool bags open. ‘By