The Hittite - Ben Bova [119]
Helen stared at me, her face white with apprehension.
“An earth tremor,” I said, trying to make my voice light, unafraid. “Natural enough in these parts.”
“Poseidon makes the earth shake,” she said in a near-whisper. But the color returned to her cheeks.
The marketplace quickly returned to normal. The crowd resumed its chatter. People bargained with merchants. My boys ran off to watch a puppet show. I could see Poletes across the great square of the market, standing at the edge of the crowd gathered around the squatting storyteller. His gnarled legs were almost as skinny as the stick he leaned upon.
“Lukka.”
I turned toward Helen. She was half-frowning at me the way a mother shows displeasure with a naughty son. “You haven’t heard a word I’ve said,” she scolded.
“I’m sorry. My mind was elsewhere.”
“Watching over your boys.”
Nodding, I added, “And Poletes.”
Very patiently, Helen repeated, “I said that we could live here in Ephesus very nicely. This is a civilized city, Lukka. With the wealth we’ve brought we could buy a comfortable villa and live splendidly.”
“What about Egypt?”
She sighed. “It’s so far away. And traveling has been much more difficult than I thought it would be.”
“Perhaps we could get a boat and sail to Egypt,” I suggested. “That would be much swifter than travel overland.”
Her eyes brightened. “Of course! There are hundreds of boats in the harbor.”
I pulled Poletes away from the storyteller and we made our way to the harbor. Heavily laden boats lined the piers while bare-chested gangs of slaves unloaded their cargoes. The breeze off the sea carried the tang of salt air, although Poletes complained of the smell of fish. The boys ran up and down the piers, goggling at the boats, with their high masts and furled sails.
I saw that these merchant ships were different from the black-hulled boats the Achaians had used to cross the Aegean and reach Troy. They were broader in the beam and deeper of draft, built to carry cargo, not warriors; designed for commerce, not for war.
I began to ask about boats that carried passengers and talked with two different captains. Neither of them wanted to travel to Egypt.
“Too far,” said one of the grizzled seamasters. “And those Egyptian dogs make you pay a prince’s ransom just for the privilege of tying up at one of their stone docks.”
Disappointed, I was walking with Helen along one of the piers, searching for a willing captain, when suddenly Helen clutched at my arm.
“Look!” she cried, her eyes staring fearfully out to the water.
Gliding into the harbor were six war galleys, their paddles stroking the water in perfect rhythm. Each of them bore a red eagle’s silhouette on their sails.
“Menalaos!” Helen gasped.
“Or his men,” I said. “Either way, we can’t stay here. They’re searching for you.”
15
We fled Ephesus that night, sneaking away like thieves, leaving a very disappointed innkeeper who had looked forward to having us stay much longer.
As we rode into the hills and took the southward trail, I wondered if we could have appealed to the city’s council for protection. But fear of the armed might of the Achaians who had just destroyed Troy would have paralyzed the Ephesians, I realized. Their city had no protective walls and no real army, merely a city guard for keeping order in the bawdier districts. Ephesus depended on the goodwill of all for its safety. They would not allow Helen to stay in their city when Menalaos threatened to bring down the wrath of the Achaian host upon them.
So we pushed on, through the growing heat of summer, bearing our booty from Troy. A strange group we were: the fugitive Queen of Sparta, a blind storyteller, a half-dozen professional soldiers from an empire that no longer existed, and two buzzing, chattering, endlessly energetic little boys.
We came to the city of Miletus. Here there were walls, strong ones, and a lively commercial city. I remembered my father telling me that he’d been to Miletus once, when the great emperor Hattusilis was angry with the city and brought his