Killer of Men - Christian Cameron [72]
Even as her father spoke, she realized, I think, that her prank was going to cost me. And that her dare – she was daring me to tell her father where the incident had happened – was foolish. No slave would accept punishment under such circumstances. And who knows what she had thought inside that goddess-like head. That I would protect her because I was a foolish boy?
All this in one heartbeat. With a plea not to betray her, now that she had lied and put me in danger.
‘I am disappointed in you, boy. You have a good life here. This sort of behaviour is emblematic of arrogance. I must punish it harshly, so that you will understand. Do you have anything to say for yourself?’
I let it hang here for ten heartbeats. I was calm, and I already knew what I would do. So I flicked my eyes over her – and she flinched.
Archi spoke up. ‘If he was half as drunk as I, Pater, it is scarcely his fault. He had to spend the evening avoiding the unsubtle grasping of Hippias of Athens.’ Bless Archi, he stood up for me like a man.
Hipponax glanced at his son and then at me. ‘Is this true?’ he asked.
‘Yes, lord,’ I said. ‘I did it. I meant no arrogance, lord. I broke nothing and only one hip of mine ever touched a couch. I was drunk, and I will take my punishment.’
Hipponax raised an eyebrow, and there was humour in it for a moment. ‘Well said, boy. Ten lashes instead of twenty. Let it be done now, before your mistress is up. Darkar!’ he called, and the steward came forward with a pair of porters.
They took me into the courtyard. They already knew what had passed, and what had really happened. Darkar tied my wrists to the flogging pole hard and poked me in the side. ‘You are a fool, and you deserve all twenty blows,’ he said. ‘You are playing a dangerous game, slave. She will do this to you again, now that she knows she has the power.’
I took the ten blows with gritted teeth. They weren’t kisses. The whole weight of the javelin haft on my buttocks, ten times. By the tenth, it took all my strength not to call out. It hurts that much.
Better your arse than your feet, though.
I cried a little afterwards, but in the amphora cellar where no one could see me. Darkar took me there. He wasn’t a bad man. He left me until I was done sobbing, and then gave me a bowl of cold water and my chiton. ‘You are a fool,’ he told me.
Oh, aye. I was a fool.
Those ten blows had a profound effect, because they reminded me that I was a slave. It is one thing to offer to accept punishment to protect a beautiful woman – and that was my intention, very heroic – but it is another thing to take the blows. Humiliating and painful, and the humiliation had only just begun, because it was two weeks before I was healed, and because Archi told every one of his friends and Heraclitus exactly what I had done and how I had been punished. He began by being indignant on my behalf and ended being pleased to have such an adult story to tell of his slave, and that had an effect on our relationship. I was a slave.
Penelope avoided me. One evening I found her in the water stores and we kissed. I thought that all was well, but she never came to the fountain. I couldn’t figure her out – kissing me like a hetaira, and then pretending she didn’t know me when she passed me in the market.
And neither Master nor Mistress allowed us out together any more.
There were other girls. There was a red-haired Thracian girl who was happy to play at the fountain, and I never even knew what house she came from. Sometimes she would come wrapped in a peplos like a matron, but with nothing underneath, and that was fascinating, too. But when I played with her, I thought of Briseis. Briseis’s face made other women ugly. Her colours made other women dull. Her figure—
This is a disease that I still have, honey. Hah! The little archer put his shaft deep in me. I doubt that I’d even want the shaft to be drawn, that’s how bad I am!
But time passed, and there were other pursuits. Archi began to practise at the gymnasium. He was fast and strong