The Hittite - Ben Bova [114]
I frowned with worry over that. A stranger with an entourage that includes a blind old man and a golden-haired beauty. How long will it take that news to spread throughout the city? How long before it reaches the ears of Menalaos or one his men, even if they are half a world away from here?
But there were more immediate problems to deal with. A bony, sallow-faced girl presented herself and offered to watch my sons. I told her not to let them go beyond the inn’s courtyard. After endless days on the road, Lukkawi and Uhri were eager to explore this new and fascinating set of buildings and their yard. They ran off happily with the girl.
The city had whore houses, of course, and my men were eager to sample their wares. Once we got all our baggage stacked in my room I gave Magro permission to go.
“They’ll be back in the morning,” he told me.
“You go with them,” I said. “Try to keep them together.”
His heavy brows rose. “You’ll need someone to guard our goods.”
“I’ll stand guard. You go with the men and try to keep them out of trouble.”
Magro couldn’t hide the grin that broke across his face. “I’ll bring them back in the morning.”
I clapped him on the shoulder. “Enjoy the city. You’ve earned a night’s entertainment.”
“And you?”
Gesturing to the boxes stacked against the wall, I said, “I’ll guard our treasure.”
“Alone?”
“I have the innkeeper’s ferocious sons.” Two of the grown sons were big and burly, the other two slight and wiry, as if they had been born of a different mother. They hardly seemed dangerous to us, not after the fighting we had seen, but they were probably adequate to ward off sneak thieves.
“And I am here also,” said Poletes, from the bed where he was sitting. “Even without ears I can hear better than a bat. In the dark of night I will be a better guard than you with your two eyes.”
If you don’t snore, I thought.
Helen, in the next room, had commandeered two of the innkeeper’s young daughters to serve her. I heard them chattering and giggling as they hauled buckets of steaming water up the creaking stairs and poured them into the wooden tub for her bath. None of them knew who we were, of course. Or at least, I hoped that none of them had pieced together the significance of a golden-haired beauty traveling with a gaggle of Hatti soldiers and a blind man. As long as no one from Troy has reached Ephesus before us, I reasoned, we were safe.
Still, I was fretful. I paced my room as I munched on the dried figs and tough strips of dried goat meat that the innkeeper had sent for our early dinner.
I stepped out onto the balcony and saw Lukkawi and Uhri playing tag together while the innkeeper’s daughter sat on the ground by the stables, elbows on her knees, watching them. Their laughter lifted my heart. I realized that there is little in the world as happy as the laughter of children.
“Can you see the city?” Poletes asked, still sitting on our bed.
I nodded, then realized he couldn’t see it. “Yes. Right outside our balcony, beyond the window.”
“Tell me, what is it like?” He got to his feet, his arms stretched out before him, and stepped uncertainly toward the sound of my voice.
I took his arm and led him out to the balcony. The street on which the inn fronted ran downhill toward the wharves at the water’s edge. Poletes could hear the sounds from the street, but he begged me to describe what I saw. I told him of the temples, the inns, the busy streets thronged with people in colorful robes, the chariots and wagons rolling by, the bustling port, the billowing sails out in the harbor, the splendid houses up on the hills. Ephesus was a prosperous city, peaceful and seemingly secure.
“There must be an agora in the heart of the city, a marketplace,” Poletes said, cackling with anticipation. “Tomorrow one of the men can take me there and I will tell the story of the fall of Troy, of Achilles’ pride and Agamemnon’s cruelty, of the burning of the great city and the slaughter of its heroes. The people will love it!”
“No,” I said as I came in off the balcony. “We can’t let these people know who we are.