Killer of Men - Christian Cameron [76]
Archi grew, too. He grew as quickly as I did, or perhaps faster. Suddenly he was as tall and as wide, and when we wrestled, we could hurt each other, and we no longer dared to use oak swords to fight, because we could break bones. Instead, we fought as the ephebes fought, a spear’s length apart, as if dancing, so that each blow was parried without sword and shield ever coming together.
Archilogos loved competition and he never liked to lose, so he began to apply himself to his studies, and he could suddenly do the geometry I could do and he could solve sums in his head, too.
I hated being a slave but, all the same, it was a good time. Adolescents are good at these divisions, and indeed, Heraclitus was full of such pairs of strife-riven opposites. So – at Ephesus, I was a slave, but in many ways, I was freer than I ever was again. I was poor and had nothing but my coins in the jar in the garden – although they were beginning to pile up. And yet, in just the way Heraclitus described, I was rich beyond imagining, with a young, strong body and an agile mind and the company of others like me. What young man – or woman – wants more?
Yes. So it was. And so another year passed, and we worked and played. I thought less and less of Briseis, although every time I saw her – and that was seldom – my heart beat as if I was in a fight. Diomedes came to our house to woo her. Hipponax took care that I should be on errands when this happened, not because he knew – or would have tolerated – my hidden passion, but because he suspected who had sent the thugs.
Although I still pursued Penelope, I understood that she had chosen to put space between us. I had other lovers – girls who were easier, freer, and never as much fun.
And then came the events that broke the pot that held us, and smashed the futures we had imagined in our ignorance. Strife came, and with it, change.
9
It was spring. I remember that well, because the end of the world began with a day of roses and jasmine and sun and beauty.
I was seventeen by my reckoning, and when I walked through the agora, women watched me. Don’t laugh, thugater. I was once one of those.
And men watched me as well. What cared I? If I had been free, men would have put my name on pots. Even as a slave, I was kalos kagathos. I was beautiful and smart and strong.
Oh, the arrogance of youth.
Archi and I were boxing in the garden, Euthalia watching us from her couch, and Hipponax lay next to her, stroking her as she watched us fight.
We’d been at it for enough time for the water-clock to run out and be refilled. We were covered in sweat and euphoric with the daimon of it. And then Briseis came.
She seldom entered the centre of the house. As an unmarried virgin, she kept very much to the women’s quarters. But that was the week that Hipponax had put his seal to her wedding contract with Diomedes, and she was gathering her trousseau and acting like an adult. So she was allowed out.
She looked like a goddess. I say that too often – but she was flawless. I know now that she must have done it on purpose, but she was arrayed in linen and wool worth the value of my father’s farm and the smithy, too. The smell of mint and jasmine came off her, as light as a feather on the air.
I caught all of this in the same glance that showed me Penelope at her heels and earned me a blow to my upper chest. Archi wasn’t distracted by his sister – far from it. He bore down. His blows came thick and fast.
But he had not had Calchas. And he had never killed. Later, he became a great warrior, a name that was spoken throughout Hellas, but when I was seventeen, he was never my match.
So I took a few blows and then my right shot out, a stop-attack into his flurry, straight through his guard on to the point of his chin, and he staggered.
Briseis clapped mockingly. ‘Oh, Archi, show me that again!’ she called.
He held up a hand to me and I bowed.