Killer of Men - Christian Cameron [80]
As the number of incidents between the Persian soldiers and the townspeople – and the sailors – mounted, Artaphernes was forced to confront the reality that there were people in Ephesus – many people – who viewed any Persian as a foe. And his soldiers didn’t help. Darius and Cyrus thought nothing more comical than to separate a pretty Greek girl from her Ionian boyfriend – by a mixture of force and persuasion that, let’s be honest, young women enjoy. Some young women. At any rate, multiply their efforts by a hundred, and there wasn’t a Greek virgin left in the lower town to marry her behorned and already cuckolded man, and that is the fastest way to violence.
The Persians were fastidious. They didn’t rape and they didn’t pick on slaves, the way Greek soldiers will. So the slaves didn’t mind them. But the Greeks – the smallholders of the lower town – killed a few in ambushes, and then the swords were out all over town, and Artaphernes’ troubles began in earnest.
It wore him out. I saw him every day and ran messages for Mistress to him, offering him a remedy for headache or sometimes just carrying a verse or a flower. I liked running errands for my mistress, because she was kind to me, gave me money and it was an excuse to be in the women’s wing. She favoured me, and she must have said something, because suddenly, after a year of forced parting, Penelope warmed to me again, and we were allowed to go out together on errands to the agora and to be together in private.
This is what I mean, my honey, when I say that masters have effects on their slaves that they never intend. I don’t think Hipponax ever intended that I never see Penelope again, nor, I think, did Mistress understand how far Penelope and I might go – or perhaps she knew exactly what was happening. In fact, even as I tell this, I wonder if she sought to end another liaison – one whose discovery hurt me more than anything.
Anyway, it was on one of our errands together that I contributed unwittingly to the problems of the town. I was in the agora with Penelope – hand in hand – when a man clouted me in the head and sent me tumbling into the muck beneath the tanners’ stalls. Penelope screamed. Once again, there were two attackers, but this time I was badly hurt. If my attackers hadn’t been fools, I’d have died. One started kicking me and the other grabbed Penelope. In a crowded agora, that was a foolish move. She had a healthy scream and she bit him hard. Unlike a free-born girl, slave girls know just how to deal with attack. But I didn’t see any of it, because my initial attacker had put his foot into my guts and I puked. He grabbed my hair – and then I was covered in blood.
Cyrus killed both my attackers. It was the will of the gods that Cyrus and Pharnakes, his particular friend, were in the market, looking for trouble, and I provided it. They killed my assailants with the joy with which men do such things.
But because there was a Greek lying on the ground and a screaming woman, many others in the agora jumped to the wrong conclusions. As I began to return to my senses, an ugly crowd was forming and Penelope was still screaming. She’d never seen a man’s intestines before. Not her fault.
I got to my feet and had the sense to offer my hand to Cyrus, and he had the sense to take it, mud and blood and all. Then I embraced Penelope, and she let me lead her away.
‘Best come with me, lord,’ I said to Cyrus, and he and Pharnakes did as I suggested, like good soldiers. I led them up the hill and the crowd followed us for a few streets, but soon enough we got free.
After that I was much more careful when I was out of the house. Diomedes wanted me dead. I had forgotten him. The very best revenge. His betrothal had been put off all summer, and I suppose he thought to take it out on me. I told Hipponax before he went off to Byzantium on a short cruise, and he told me that he would see to it.
Cyrus told me that it was I who had saved his life, by leading them out of the agora, and not the other