Killer of Men - Christian Cameron [67]
I haven’t mentioned that Hipponax’s household ran on the profits from his ships, not his poetry. Indeed, everyone called him ‘The Poet’, and we still sing his songs in this house, but he was a captain and an investor, running cargoes all the way to Phoenicia and Africa when the mood was on him, and buying and selling other men’s cargoes, too. Archilogos and I went on short trips – once across the water to Mytilene, a pretty town on Lesbos, and once to Troy to walk the mound and camp where the Greeks had camped – a perfect trip in early autumn when the sea is the friend of every man and dolphins dance by the bow of your ship. It was odd, looking across the water at the Chersonese – where Miltiades held sway. If I swam the Hellespont, I’d have been able to get home. Later, we went on longer voyages – to Syracuse and the Spartan colony at Taras in southern Italy. But we went far south, along the coast of Africa – not along the Greek coast, where I would have been close to home.
I didn’t want to go home. Home had Mater and poverty and death. I was in Ephesus with lovely people, a friend, a teacher and a woman. How deaf I must have been to the wing-beats of the furies!
Later we made the run to Lesbos many times. Hipponax owned property in Eresus, where Sappho came from, and we would beach our ship there under the great rock, or inside the mole that the old people built before the siege of Troy, and Hipponax would climb to the citadel and pay his respects to Sappho’s daughter, who was very old, but still kept her school. Briseis had gone to that school for three years, and had all Sappho’s nine books by heart.
They had a warehouse in Methymna, too, another city of Lesbos and a rival to Eresus and Mytilene. Lesbos is the richest of the islands, honey. We have a house in Eresus, though you’ve never been there.
I fell in love with the sea. Archilogos did, too. He knew that someday he would be a captain – in war and peace – and he stood with the helmsman, learning the ropes, and so did I. We made these trips in the first year, and then there were others. It was part of our studies, and never the worst part, either. But I will return to the sea. Where horses merely annoyed me, the sea charmed, terrified, roused me – like a man’s first sight of a woman taking off her clothes for him. I never lost that arousal. Still have it.
Hah – I’ve made you blush.
In the evenings, when we were at home in Ephesus, I would finish my work, put Archi to bed – he was Archi to his friends and to his companion – grab a quick opson in the kitchens and go out into the night air to explore. I had adventures – such adventures, lass. Oh, it makes me smile. One night a pair of mercenaries sat and told me stories, because they knew me from the shrine at Plataea, and they promised to take news of my plight home. That night I dreamed of ravens, and after that I really began to think of leaving, and of home. Until they came – well, it wasn’t real.
Another time I was nearly kidnapped and sold, but I put my stick in the bastard’s groin and ran like hell.
Most nights, though, I went out of Master’s door and just down our cobbled street to the Fountain of Pollio, where I would meet my Penelope. I call her mine, but she was never quite mine, although we were as far around the rim of love’s cup as to kiss.
I remember the night that Hippias came to our house, because Penelope and I had been sent together to the market earlier in the day – she to buy coloured yarn for tapestry, and me to watch that she wasn’t molested. My name, Doru, had started to have some meaning in the slave quarters. I could make most men eat my fist if I had to, but I was no bloody tyrant. In any case, Penelope and I had a good afternoon. I was able to show off my knowledge of the agora, and she showed off her practicality in bargaining. Then we agreed to meet that night. Something in the touch of her fingers – oh, I couldn’t wait.