Killer of Men - Christian Cameron [8]
Pater’s face grew red, but he bowed his head. ‘Are you offering me aid, cousin?’
Simon shook his head. ‘You need no charity. I’ll offer you a loan against the farm.’
Pater shook his head. ‘No,’ he said. If Pater thought that he was hiding his anger, he was wrong.
‘Still too proud, smith?’ Simon said, and his lip curled.
‘Proud enough to stand my ground,’ Pater said, and Simon’s face changed colour. He got up.
‘Is this the famous hospitality of the Corvaxae?’ Simon said. ‘Or has your whore of a wife debased you, too?’ He looked at me. ‘Neither of these boys has your look, cousin.’
‘Leave my house,’ Pater said.
‘I came to tender help,’ Simon said, ‘but I’m met by accusations and insults.’
‘Leave my house,’ Pater said.
Simon hooked his fingers in his belt and planted his feet. He looked around. ‘Is it your house, cousin?’ He smiled grimly. ‘Our grandfather built this house. Why is it yours?’ Simon sneered – he was always good at sneering – and snapped his fingers. ‘Perhaps you’ll marry again and get an heir.’
‘My sons are my heirs,’ Pater said carefully, as if speaking a foreign language.
‘Your sons are the children of some strangers on the hillside,’ our cousin said.
Pater looked as angry as I’d ever known him, and I’d never seen two grown men take this tone – the tone of hate. I’d heard it from Mater in the women’s quarters, but I’d never heard it rise to conflict. I was afraid. And what was I hearing? It was as if cousin Simon was saying that I was not my father’s son.
‘Bion!’ Pater shouted, and his biggest slave came running. Bion was a strong man, a trustworthy man with a wife and children who knew he’d be freed as soon as the money came back, and he was loyal. That’s right, thugater. Melissa is Bion’s granddaughter, and now she’s your handmaiden. She’s never been a slave, but Bion was once. As was I, lass, so don’t you wrinkle your nose.
‘You’ll be even poorer if I have to kill your slave,’ Simon said.
Pater thumped one crutch-step closer and his heavy staff shot out and caught Simon in the shin. Simon went down and then Pater hit him in the groin, so that he screamed like a woman in childbirth – I knew that sound well enough, because Bion’s wife provided him with a child every year.
Pater wasn’t done. He stood over Simon with his staff raised. ‘You think I’m afraid of you, you coward!’ he said. ‘You think I don’t know why I’m lame? You ran. You left me in the bronze storm. And now you come here and your mouth pours out filth.’ He was panting and I was more afraid, because Simon was wheezing, down on the floor, and Pater had hurt him. It was not like two boys behind the barn. It was real.
Simon got himself up and he pushed against Bion. ‘Let go, slave!’ he croaked. ‘Or I’ll come back for you.’ He leaned against the doorway, but Bion ignored him, linked an arm under his chin despite his size and dragged him from the room.
All the oikia – the household, slaves and free – followed the action into the courtyard. Simon wouldn’t stop – he cursed us, and he cursed the whole oikia, and he promised that when he came into his own he’d sell all the slaves and burn their houses. Now I know it for what it was – the blusterings of an impotent but angry man. But at the time it sounded like the death curse of some fallen hero, and I feared him. I feared that everything he said would come to pass.
He said that he’d lain with our mother in the hills, and he said that Pater was a fool who had risked all their lives in the battle and who sought death rather than face his wife’s infidelity. He shouted that we were all bastards, and he shouted that the basileus, the local aristocrat, would come for the farm because he was jealous of Pater.
And all the time Bion dragged him from the yard.
It was ugly.
And when he was gone, Pater wept. And that made me even more afraid.
It seemed as if the roof had fallen in on our lives, but it was not many weeks later when Pater brought the priest to the forge, all the way from Thebes. He rebuilt the fire and the priest of