Killer of Men - Christian Cameron [205]
I was already low, and the sight of the dead boy almost moved me to tears again. I knelt by him and cursed because his sticky blood got on my chiton. But I determined to bury him – no idea why, either. In general, I leave corpses for the ravens.
I got him on my sea cloak, which had seen worse than blood, and men from the rest of the caravan behind our slow wagon came up and joined me, quite spontaneously. In fact, my opinion of men went up, right there. I was reminded of why Greeks are good men. We cleared a space, and every man, slave and free, gathered rocks, and we built a cairn as fast as you can tell the story. I put coins on his eyes and another man poured wine over the grave. More and more men came up – they must have been cursing my wagon all the way up the pass – and every one joined in.
There was a small man, a pot-mender, and he had a pair of donkeys and a young slave of his own. He came up when the cairn was half-finished. He looked more angry than sad. I caught his eye, and he looked away.
‘You know him?’ I asked. A pair of korai from Thebes who were travelling to the Temple of Artemis at Athens were washing his face under their mother’s direction. They were good girls, conscious of so many men around them and yet aware of their duties as women.
He shrugged. ‘He looks like the pais of Empedocles, the chief priest of the smith god.’ He made the sign automatically – even a pot-mender is at least an initiate.
I gave him my sign – it was the Cretan version, and probably a little different, but he knew that I was an initiate and more, and he stepped closer. ‘I know Empedocles,’ I said. It was like remembering another life. Empedocles the priest, and his magic lens. I looked at the pot-mender. ‘You sure?’ I asked.
He nodded and swallowed. But he wasn’t afraid of me or much else – no travelling man can afford to be scared on the road, and he called out to the other men. ‘Anyone heard of thieves in this pass?’
Other men nodded – a farmer, and a wool merchant, and a man with a load of fine wine, still in cheap amphorae used at sea, loaded carefully on a big wagon. He wasn’t the owner but a trusted slave, and his manner suggested that he used this route often.
‘There’s a gang of them,’ he said, ‘off towards the east.’
‘Took the priest for ransom?’ I asked.
The slave spat. ‘Who knows what they want? They’re killers. They’re like animals.’
An old peddler with a leather sack full of goods put his sack down and rubbed his chin. ‘I heard they were west of Eleutherai,’ he said. ‘Always best to just give them the money,’ he said, to no one in particular.
We finished the cairn, covered the boy’s face and sang a hymn to Demeter, the girls’ voices carrying sweet and high. I wept again, although I wasn’t sure why. And then we let the other men pass, and we waited while another caravan coming up out of Boeotia climbed past the turn-around. The tinker and the peddler waited with us. The tinker’s name was Tiraeus, and he was shifty and unwashed but not, I think, a bad man. The peddler was Laertes.
He looked wistfully at my entourage. ‘You are a rich man,’ he said.
‘Hmmm,’ I said, sounding too much like Pater for my own peace of mind. But I had the lapis and gold necklace from Sardis at my throat and a belt of heavy gold links around my waist under my chiton – in my experience, that’s the safest way to carry a fortune. ‘I have money,’ I said.
He shrugged. ‘It never sticks to me,’ he said. ‘Thanks for the wine.’
Tiraeus, the tinker, was emboldened by the peddler. ‘You a smith?’ he asked suddenly. ‘You don’t – look like a smith,’ he said. ‘Apologies, master. Too often, I say what comes into my head.’
I shrugged. ‘I can bang out a good flat sheet,’ I said. ‘I can repair a helmet. I make a nice simple cup.’ I grinned, thinking of my latest attempt at a helmet in Hephaestion’s shop on Crete – my first grin in a day, I think.
‘Looking for an apprentice?’ he asked eagerly, mistaking my statement of fact for false modesty.
‘No,’ I said. ‘But if you help get the wagon down the pass, I’ll stand you both a good dinner.