Poseidon's Spear

16

I dreamed of Dagon. They weren’t pleasant dreams, but on waking they reminded me of how much I hated him, and how deep he was in my soul. He had made me feel weak. He had hurt me.

I wasn’t going to forget. And all my vaunted philosophy wasn’t going to change that he needed to die. I’d like to pretend to you that I felt some greater urge — that I wanted him dead so he couldn’t kill any more preganant women. Something noble.

No. He hurt me. He hurt my image of what I am. I have spoken to women who have been raped. We share this. He hurt my soul. I wasn’t going to let him go.

He’d passed within two stades of me. But Tyche had decreed that his ship got away.

I rose, shivering, and got some warmed wine. I heard the sound of a woman shouting.

I knew there were women aboard the Greek ship; I’d seen them as we swept by. As the sun rose, I found out who they were. There were five of them: a free woman and four slave attendants. They were swathed in cloaks and shawls — like any woman who travels at sea with two hundred men — and in the lukewarm and rosy brilliance of a Sicilian morning, they looked like drab flowers.

Scared, angry flowers.

They had their own firepit in the sand, but no wood. The free woman barked orders, slapped a slave and carried firewood herself, boldly walking to the fire my archers had going and taking from theirs.

I watched all of this, a horn cup of wine in my hand, while Doola sold an ingot of tin to the local bronze-smith’s guild. There were, apparently, six smiths in Katania, and they banded together to raise the money for a full ingot.

Their spokesman was a big man with a heavy beard. He might have been a Plataean. He nodded to me, and we gripped hands and his eyes widened.

‘You work metal?’ he asked.

I nodded, and pointed at Lydia. ‘I cast the rams,’ I said.

He walked down the beach, and we examined the rams. He was interested in my design. I served him a cup of his own local wine — Sicilian wines are superb — and we walked back up the beach to Doola.

‘You are clearly sent by the smith god,’ he said. ‘We haven’t seen this much tin in two years.’

It is deeply pleasing to make another man happy, is it not? And this was a worthy man, the sort of tekne whose craft pleases the gods. It was a fine start to the day, as was the silver that Doola took.

All the while, I watched the women. I was curious, I suppose. The free woman sent a slave girl to borrow a copper mess kettle from the archers, which she did with a flirtatious twist visible from half a stade away, and smoke rose from their fire. They were a competent bunch.

Gaius came, and Doola, Seckla, Daud and Sittonax, sitting on stools or on their cloaks in the sand, and we ate sardines and olives and new bread. Despite, or because of, yesterday’s exertions, we were all in fine spirits, and we broke our bread with the gusto of the victorious.

Gaius saw me watching the women. ‘She was taking passage to Croton,’ he said. ‘No great beauty,’ he added dismissively. ‘Tall as an Amazon, though.’

Doola raised an eyebrow, and chewed on his bread in a way that rebuked Gaius quietly.

Gaius snorted. ‘Marriage didn’t make me an expert on women. Why did it make you one?’

Doola ate an olive. ‘I live with mine?’ he said. ‘You visit yours in the holidays?’

Gaius spat angrily, but anger never sat long on him. ‘Now what?’ he asked, after we had all chewed more food.

‘Syracusa, I think,’ I said. ‘We can be there by nightfall.’

Everyone nodded, and slaves appeared to fold our scrap of a tent and our stools, but I told the officers to assemble all the rowers, and I paid every man a silver tetradrachma of Syracusa from the store of silver — ten days’ pay. They filed past Gaius and Neoptolymos, one by one, as Doola read their names from his tablets and made a mark in the wax. Most men grinned. A few bit their coins, and one fellow immediately handed his to another. He looked at me sheepishly. ‘Dice,’ he said.

I spent two hours rearranging the crews. The Greek ship was a fast merchant out of Croton. The master was Achilles son of Dromos, a professional sailor. His ship was owned by one of Croton’s super-rich aristocrats. Achilles didn’t seem too concerned.

‘You saw me make a fight of it,’ he said. ‘If it comes to court, I have your testimony, and the lady’s. I’m not worried.’

His eyes were on our Carthaginian capture. ‘Going to fit her out?’ he asked.

I laughed. ‘I don’t know if we can afford a third ship,’ I said. ‘But at least today, we’ll sail her into Syracusa.’

He nodded. ‘I can command a ship like that,’ he said. ‘Not everyone can.’

I was entertained. My people called me trierarch, which in Athens was the commander of a ship, but in Magna Greca, the trierarch was a rich and often useless member of the crew, if he shipped at all. Achilles, a short, balding man with a bent back and a permanent sneer, took me for a rich aristocrat.

‘I can,’ I said. ‘And any of my friends can, as well. We’ve sailed the Outer Sea.’

He stepped back. ‘Meant no offence,’ he muttered. ‘I’d just like to have a job.’

Between his oarsmen and the freed captives from the Phoenician, we had a full set of rowers for the captured ship. We — the six of us — had a quick meeting and handed the command of the ship to Neoptolymos, with sixteen pigs of tin. We offered Achilles the post of helmsman.

He wasn’t exactly eager, but he took it, in the end.

By the time we’d shifted ingots of tin and made repairs to the former Phoenician, we’d wasted the day. Evening fell, wine appeared and men drank. Neoptolymos and Seckla had the duty, and they visited the watch posts on the headlands. Giannis had, in a somewhat circuitous manner, become the commander of the marines, and I took him aside and asked him to have men watch the women’s fire. Wine and women are a fine mix, as long as everyone is in agreement about the whole thing, but these women were… different.

Sure enough, before the moon rose, some of my recently freed slaves attempted to carry off one of the slave women. The archers pounced, and my evening was interrupted by an angry virago, a pair of archers and a struggling, very drunk Greek.

I was sitting on my stool, trying to tune my kithara. I think I’ve mentioned that I had become determined to learn to play it. This determination ebbed and flowed, and never seemed to result in my getting anywhere. If Gaius or Neoptolymos tuned it for me, I could play a few tunes — like a small boy, as Gaius liked to tell me. But I couldn’t seem to tune it.

The slave girl was black, and had lost most of her wrappings, and her body instantly put me in mind of just how long it had been since I’d felt such smooth skin under my hands. Hah: I really shouldn’t tell you girls such things. On the other hand, better you know what men really are like, eh?

Heh.

She was scared, her eyes everywhere, wild, her mouth slightly open. Her mistress had her arm around her.

‘Is this your version of a rescue?’ she shot at me. Her Greek was perfect — Attic Greek, the way a lady would speak it — Jocasta, for instance.

I rose, put my kithara on my stool and shook my head. ‘I’m sorry, Despoina. But no harm has come to the girl. And it is my version of a rescue.’

‘If these archers had not happened by-’

Demetrios the archer, a Cretan, grinned. ‘We didn’t exactly happen by, either,’ he said.

She turned and looked at him. It wasn’t a glare — just a carefully judged look.

He fell silent.

‘I demand better protection. And how many days are we going to stay on this beach?’ she asked.

There are situations it is very difficult to resist. ‘The food is good, and the company suitable,’ I said.

She surprised me by smiling. ‘I think perhaps our views on suitable company might differ,’ she said. Her voice was deep, almost masculine. Her face was veiled. She was tall — as tall as I am, and that’s saying something. Later, in fact, I noted that she was a hand shorter than me, but she always left the impression of great height. Something about her voice and posture suggested she was my age or older — not a young virgin, by any means, but a matron. Her figure was good; a man can become quite expert at judging women through enveloping robes, and I find that my skill in this regard is inversely proportional to the length of time since I last saw a woman unclothed — hah, a mathematical joke. You young people have no notion of humour.

‘Would you join me for a cup of wine? And Seckla, take a file of marines and remind the oarsmen that these women are off limits, yes?’

Seckla rolled his eyes and walked off with two of Giannis’s men, as well as the slave girl and the prisoner.

My guest watched them go. She turned to me. ‘It is a long time since I have been alone with men while drinking wine,’ she said.

‘I would like one of my women to attend me. Not Tessa. She’s in shock. Send a man for Antigone.’

Send a man for Antigone. She issued the order with a slight wave of her hand. The delightful thing was that she had every expectation of being obeyed. Complete assurance.

Doola laughed, and went. Gaius rose from his stool and inclined his head. ‘My lady,’ he said. ‘We thought you were some merchant’s wife.’

She was very tall. ‘I might well be some merchant’s wife,’ she said. ‘Wouldn’t that entitle me to your best treatment, anyway?’

‘You are too well born to be a merchant’s wife. Rather, the Queen of Croton.’ He bowed.

She laughed. ‘Croton does not have a queen. And you?’ she said back to him.

‘Gaius Julius Claudius,’ he said with a fine bow. In his own barbaric tongue he said, ‘ Civis Romanus sum.’ He grinned. ‘I’m from Rome.’

‘Oh,’ she said, with instant dismissal. Croton and Sybaris were two of the richest cities in the world. We still call the lifestyle of the very rich ‘sybaritic’, and such people ‘sybarites’. Croton was just as rich, and full of scholars and poets, too. Rome was, by contrast, a town full of cows and chickens.

Gaius was abashed.

She turned to me. ‘Are you a pirate?’ she asked.

I nodded. ‘Yes. All my life.’

She had just drawn breath to launch into a speech — I could read her, and her reply was predicated on my denying the title of pirate. My acceptance of it caused her to step back and throw an arm across her body.

I smiled. ‘Nonetheless, we will land you unharmed at Syracusa tomorrow, if the gods will it so.’

It can be hard to talk to a human with no face, a woman swathed in veils. I couldn’t tell what she was thinking. She raised her cup and drank, and I saw a hint of a strong jaw and a long face.

‘You speak well enough, for a pirate,’ she said.

‘And you are brave enough, for an aristocrat and a woman.’ I smiled and held out my cup to my pais for more wine. ‘What brings you to Syracusa, Despoina?’

She shrugged. ‘That is my business, I fear,’ she said.

Few things kill conversation so effectively as telling someone to mind their own business. I bowed. ‘I hope we can make you comfortable, Despoina. Is there anything you need? You built and maintained your fire very well, I noted. Do you need food? A cooking pot? Some wine?’

She nodded. ‘Wine is never amiss. And I note that your sailors have straw for bedding. The sand is cold, and women have hips. We would appreciate some straw.’

The reference to women’s hips was clearly an attempt to warm over the conversation, but I was done. She hadn’t even bothered to thank me. I knew her kind; or thought I did.

‘Gaius will see you back to your fire, and ensure you have wine and straw,’ I said, in dismissal.

‘I will?’ Gaius asked. ‘Oh, right. Trierarch, and still functionary. Follow me, my lady.’

‘I have offended you,’ she said suddenly. ‘I didn’t mean to. I am not good at this. I do not… mix with others.’

‘Then you mustn’t be surprised that others do not seek to mix with you. Good night,’ I said. I walked off into the darkness; not that I had anywhere to go, but I didn’t need to talk to her any further, just then. Arrogant woman. Mix with others.

We are seldom so offensive as when we seek to make apology.

We put to sea with the dawn, three warships under easy rowing. It was a hundred stades to Syracusa, and the weather was turning bad — the wind from Africa was in our teeth, and the southern sky was dark, and the wind held a hint of sand.

The rowers had to earn their bonus.

By midday, they were pulling full strength to gain us a few dactyls at the stroke, into the teeth of an African gale. This was the one point of wind at which the new triemiola rig was inferior, and the Carthaginian capture, with her mainmast stowed between the benches, offered less resistance to the wind and kept pulling ahead, despite the relative inexperience of her crew. Our masts took the force of the blast and caused the bows to fall off course over and over, until I finally surrendered to the inevitable and began to make short boards, steering south-east and then south-west. That eased the ship’s motion and helped Gaius as well. I watched his bow to gauge the effect on my own, and saw the woman standing there, her shawls streaming behind her in the wind.

Yes, she had a fine figure. I had decided that I disliked her, and I was anxious to be rid of her.

To be honest, I must have been suffering from the reaction that always sets in after a fight, even such a one-sided fight as we had had the day before, because the storm seemed to me to be the last straw. I felt, just at that moment, as if we were never going to make Syracusa, and that the woman was the curse.

Oh, I can be a fool, too.

Sometime after noon, Doola came aft and Megakles stood in the helm oars and we shouted at each other. They wanted to turn back. I did not.

It’s not worth repeating the argument, which was probably rendered comic by the wind. None of us could understand each other, and we all wanted to be heard.

It was one of those times when men are reminded why only one man can be in command, at sea. Because divided councils result in compromises. In assembly, or when directing the affairs of a great merchant, such councils are essential. At sea I was determined that we would continue, even in the dark, if for no other reason than that I feared what would happen if we tried to turn. The seas were high, and our sleek warships had high bows but very shallow waists, and the rollers coming from Africa would wash clear over us, amidships. I feared to lose a ship in the turn — along with a third of our precious treasure and a third of my friends. Care and work would get us into Syracusa.

I’m making this too long. It is a curious facet of reminiscence, my friends: I exaggerate those things that were important to me, and I skip over events that might have had far more importance to others. If Seckla were telling this tale Bah. I’m an old man. That was a hard afternoon, and a hard night, and I was proceeding against the advice of my best helmsman into the teeth of a gale, sure I was right. I had become a far better captain in the Outer Sea, and now I was willing to hold my course against their advice. That’s why I remember.

It was close on midsummer, and the sun was out there, somewhere above the cloud. It was dark by mid-afternoon, and darker still at what should have been evening, and the dust coming off Africa was in our eyes. But after the wine had been served out to the oarsmen, Seckla caught sight of a glimmer to the south-west, and shortly afterwards, it was visible on every rise.

I relieved Megakles, and he went forward, looked for himself and reported that it was the outer lighthouse at Syracusa. Bless him.

The rowers were filled with confidence, and in an hour, we gained fifteen stades on the wind and the harbour entrance was clear enough. I cheated the helm to the west, so that we approached the entrance at a shallow angle from the north. The great breakwater wasn’t built in those days, and the lesser breakwater only protruded a stade from shore.

About a stade off the entrance, I noted that there was a current running inshore — from the sea west, into the harbour. Twice, I had the rowers row to hold us in place — bow into the storm — while I ran amidships to peer through the murk at the harbour lights. We had a lantern — three lanterns — over our stern, and another at the masthead, and despite all of that, Neoptolymos almost ran us aboard, his ram shaving past our port-side oars, and he was gone, heading fast into the harbour. His ship turned far too fast, the starboard rowers backing water, took a wave right over the counter and shot into the harbour.

It was ragged, but he was in. I had intended a somewhat overcareful approach, using the current to push our bow into the harbour which my rowers held steady, but Neoptolymos’s success emboldened me, and I waved to Megakles. I was less bold: I let the wind push our bow around, our rowers gave five rapid strokes, as if we were ramming an enemy, and we were in. The change in the sea was instantaneous — we went from a howling wind and steep waves to glassy calm water and no wind in five strokes.

A ship’s-length aft, Gaius made the turn. Later I understood that he left it late and his port-side oarsmen actually struck the rocks with their oars, but close enough is close enough — he weathered the headland and we were in the harbour.

It was moving, to sail along the beaches of the harbour front where I had spent so much time. I wondered if Anarchos still lorded it over the waterfront. I wondered what Gelon was like. I wondered where Lydia was.

Doola came and stood at my shoulder, as we slid down the calm water towards the waterfront. ‘We are coming back,’ he said.

I smiled. ‘We said the same at Massalia,’ I noted.

There was quite a crowd on the waterfront. It was nigh on full dark, but three warships passing the harbour mouth in a storm was something worthy of comment. Perhaps a thousand people watched us land our ships. Doola leaped over the side and went up the beach to find lodging and food for six hundred sailors and oarsmen. I was busy getting the crew off, guiding the stern of a heavy ship well up the beach and setting a night watch on our fortune. My oarsmen were all aware of what they’d been rowing in the bilges beneath their feet, and in an hour they’d have told every petty criminal in every brothel on the waterfront.

Gaius’s passenger disembarked. He provided her with four marines under Giannis, and she vanished into the darkness. I missed her going, but I wasn’t sorry. To be honest, now that we were ashore, I was foolishly eager to find out what had happened to all my friends — and foes — in the town. And at the same time, suddenly apprehensive all over again. I feared Lydia’s scorn.

I feared her father’s scorn.

I also feared thieves, and I slept aboard, my head pillowed on my cloak and my feet on the helmsman’s bench.

I rose in the morning, swam in the sea and then walked up into the city to find an open bathhouse. The Temple of Poseidon maintains one for travellers, and I emerged clean, massaged and feeling alive and virtuous.

On return to my ship, I found Doola surrounded by merchants, none of whom was familiar to me. I looked in vain for Anarchos. Instead, I saw a cloaked herald approaching, and I ran aft and changed hurriedly into my best clothes and jewels. As I expected, I was summoned by the Tyrant of Syracusa. He sent me a dozen gentleman hoplites and a polite messenger named Dionysus, son of Anchises. The messenger was a beautiful young man with hair so blond he might have been a Gaul.

The message was a polite command to attend the tyrant at my earliest convenience. ‘I am ready,’ I said. I sent a messenger for Gaius and asked him to accompany me. He was obviously a gentleman. Remember that I had heard that the tyrant was against commoners.

We walked up the twisting streets to the citadel through a city that was far quieter than the Syracusa I had known three years earlier. There were few men and no women in the streets, and those men I saw did not meet my eyes, but merely hurried by.

I had mistaken the hoplites for local aristocrats, but after climbing a few streets, I realized that they were beautifully kitted-out mercenaries.

‘Anyone here from Plataea?’ I asked cheerfully.

None of them was, but there were men of Thebes and Megara and even little Thebai.

‘Are you from Plataea, then?’ asked the escort officer, a phylarch from Hermione in the Peloponnese.

‘I’m Arimnestos of Plataea,’ I said. He stopped dead. ‘You’re not.’

‘I am,’ I said.

He shook his head, and then gave his spear to another man, took my hand and shook it. ‘A pleasure to meet you. Why didn’t you say? The Tyrant would have sent a better escort.’

I laughed. It is good to be famous.

The other mercenaries pressed around me and shook my hand over and over.

One of them, a short man with short hair and an Attic drawl, laughed. ‘I was there too,’ he said. ‘At Marathon. With Miltiades.’ He shook his head. ‘Great days.’

‘I understand Miltiades is dead,’ I said.

He nodded. ‘Where have you been?’ he asked. ‘He’s been dead nearly five years.’

I shrugged. ‘It’s a long story.’

Gaius stood by and rolled his eyes. Well — no one is very famous to his friends, which is probably just as well.

The Palace of Syracusa is, to me, an exercise in hubris. It is built like a temple to the gods, and yet its only purpose is to house men. It towers over the town, on top of the acropolis, where there ought to be a temple and instead there is a citadel. As far as I’m concerned, that citadel is the reason that Syracusa succumbs so easily to tyrants — always has and always will. The man who holds the acropolis holds the city. By placing the gods on the acropolis, Athens makes it much harder for a mere man to take their houses — and any man who does such a thing is an obvious blasphemer. The Peisistratids had houses on the Acropolis, but no one but priests dwell there now.

I digress, again.

High above the town, we emerged on a path with a marble railing, lined by statues of women who were holding the railing. The view was breathtaking, and the storm off towards Africa was a pronounced darkness, like a bruise in the sky. My escort halted at the end of the path, where the statues gave way to a garden, open on one side to the city, and closed on the other three by deep colonnades.

All this for the pleasure of one man.

Gelon was standing among his roses; he had a small, sharp sickle in one hand and he was pruning, cutting dead flowers, slicing away buds past their promise.

Hah! It all appeared a trifle contrived, to me. Gelon, the great aristocrat, tamer of the commons, pruner of the high and the low. Something like that.

Nonetheless, I bowed.

My escort commander said, ‘Lord Arimnestos of Plataea,’ and saluted with his spear. To me, he said, ‘Lord Gelon of Syracusa.’ He caught my eye as he turned, and his escort marched away smartly.

Gelon, the Tyrant of Syracusa, was a tall, deep-chested man with deep, dark blue eyes, the kind of eyes usually painted on by amateur statue-painters who have access to too much lapis. His eyes were arresting.

His gold hair, almost metallic in its vitality, was arresting, too. He had a touch of silver-grey at the temples, well muscled arms and legs — he looked, in fact, like a big, handsome man in the very prime of life and condition. And I have always thought that his looks were part of his success. He looked like a statue of a god, like the best statues of Heracles or Zeus. He dressed simply, as had become the fashion since the teachings of Pythagoras began to sweep over the Greek world, and he wore no jewellery unless he wore a cloak.

At any rate, at the mention of my name, his eyes widened ever so slightly.

‘Are you really Arimnestos of Plataea?’ he asked.

I bowed. What do you say to such a foolish question?

‘Well,’ he said. ‘Welcome to Syracusa. I gather that your ships bring a cargo. And I gather that you have quite a story to tell.’

‘You have the better of me, then, my lord,’ I said. ‘I have a cargo of tin, which my factor is even now selling.’

‘Of course I have the better of you,’ Gelon said, a trifle petulantly. ‘It is my business to know such things. I gather that you had an encounter with ships of Carthage.’

‘We encountered them,’ I admitted.

‘Such encounters are my business. Tell me, please.’ He snapped his fingers and a pair of slaves appeared. One reached for my cloak. The other handed me wine.

I removed my cloak in a fine swirl of Tyrian red, and both slaves fell back a pace. Gelon paled — or rather, as I was to learn with him, his lips grew redder.

‘You are armed,’ he said.

‘At all times,’ I said cheerfully, and tossed my cloak to the nearer slave. ‘See to it the pin’s still there when I get it back,’ I said.

‘My slaves do not steal,’ he said.

‘Good,’ I said. ‘I found three ships of Carthage pursuing a Greek ship north of here — practically off your harbour mouth. I sank two and took the third.’

‘Under whose protection?’ the Tyrant asked. ‘Do you act for Athens? Is that why you feel you can take ships on the high seas with impunity?’

I laughed. ‘I doubt that anyone in Athens even knows that I am alive,’ I said. ‘I need no man’s permission to take ships on the seas but my own.’

‘Dano says that you told her you are a pirate,’ he said.

‘Dano?’ I asked.

‘The woman you might recall rescuing,’ he said with a slight smile.

I shrugged. ‘I served Miltiades too many years to call myself anything else,’ I said. ‘And I was bold enough to assume that I would be welcome here, for making war on Carthage.’

The Tyrant pulled his beard and nodded. ‘You are correct. And yet, it might have been better had you asked me, first. Carthage has a mighty armament off my coast, and I am not yet ready to contend with them.’ He shrugged. ‘Where did you acquire so much tin? Preying on Carthage?’

I shook my head. ‘No. And then, perhaps they would tell this story differently. We sailed into the Outer Sea and they hounded us unfairly. After a while, I attacked their shipping and their trade, yes.’

Gelon nodded. ‘There have been rumours of a Greek pirate in the Outer Sea,’ he said. ‘Well done. Now that I know you are the famous Arimnestos, it makes more sense to me, as the earliest rumours said you were some bronze-smith with a taste for war.’

I was feeling perverse. ‘I am a bronze-smith with a taste for war,’ I said. ‘I cast the rams on my ship’s prows, I can make a better helmet than any smith in this city and I have fought in a dozen pitched battles on land and sea, and in fifty skirmishes. Heracles is my ancestor. I led the Plataeans at Marathon.’ I smiled. ‘My ships carry more than forty full ingots of Alban tin, which Sicily needs.’

He nodded. His godlike face split in a smile. ‘You need to put me in my place because you have heard that I hate the tekne,’ he said. He shrugged. ‘Men — lesser men who cannot understand me — say such things. Indeed, I love fine things, and I honour the artisans who make them. Yet I know that they lack the skills and education to serve as citizens and voters. Their dedication is their craft, as women’s dedication is their children. They are too busy to direct the affairs of the city.’

‘You should meet my friend Aristides,’ I said. ‘You two would have much to discuss.’

Gelon shook his head again. ‘Debate with me, if you disagree.’

‘If cities were directed by craftsmen, perhaps there would be less war and more art. The exercise of craft — the excellence of making things well — is, I maintain, as sure a guide to arete as excellence in rhetoric or athletics. What excellence does a man have merely by birth?’ I nodded out to the south, towards Carthage. ‘I have seen more courage from Keltoi slaves, sometimes.’

Gelon was not angered, nor was he stung. He was no straw tyrant. ‘Well said, if full of possible holes. What if a man makes things all day and has no idea of what has gone on in the assembly?’

‘When did your assembly last meet?’ I asked.

The sound of a woman’s laughter pealed through the garden. I knew her laugh immediately — the laugh of a deep-voiced, deep-chested woman.

She came along a gravel path with the grace of a goddess. She was tall, as I have said. Her face was… magnificent, but not beautiful. The angles were too sharp, her nose almost like a beak, her eyebrows fierce, her mouth a long slash. And yet Dano of Croton was, and remains, as enigmatic as her father.

‘He argues like a sophist, changing his ground as fast as you change yours,’ she said.

‘I practised debate as a boy, when I was learning to be a swordsman,’ I said.

Gelon raised an eyebrow. ‘ Learning to be a swordsman,’ he said, with gentle contempt. ‘Any well-born boy is born knowing how to wield a sword. It is an innate skill. Like virtue.’

He truly believed what he said. It is important that you understand this to understand the complexity of our lives. He was a great man: a great mind, a deep thinker, a superb general. And yet he truly, utterly believed that the well born were superior in every way — far more like the gods than, say, one of his Sikel or African slaves.

But my growing respect for him couldn’t stop the sneer from touching my face. ‘Would you care to put one of your well-born young men against me?’ I asked.

He shook his head. ‘You claim descent from Heracles,’ he said. ‘Naturally, you are a better warrior than other men.’ He smiled. ‘Even if you waste your talents working bronze.’

It was like the feeling of a heavy Persian arrow hitting my aspis.

‘Would you care to put one of your well-born gentlemen against a slave of my choosing?’ I said.

He shrugged. ‘There are always exceptions. But in general… Come, you won’t deny that the well born are handsomer, with better bodies and more aptitude for anything. It doesn’t surprise me that you are a fine bronze-smith. Any gentleman will excel at any of the lesser trades. But this is like an adult stooping to enter the boy’s events in the Olympics. Let the lesser men work bronze. A gentleman should work with men.’

‘If this is true,’ I said, trying once more, ‘why are so few gentlemen any use at the helm of a ship in a storm?’

Dano of Croton laughed. ‘He doesn’t know, and you should stop trying to beat him. And Gelon, be a good host. This is the man who saved me from the Phoenicians. Even now my great height would be fetching a stunning price at some brothel in Carthage.’ She smiled at me. ‘I failed to thank you at the time, Arimnestos. I was… disconsolate. It is difficult to explain. I do not live in a world of ship battles and pirates. I read about such things.’ She shrugged.

Well. It is rather difficult to harbour resentment against someone thanking you in front of the ruler of a tenth of the known world. She offered her cheek to be kissed, and I kissed it.

The Tyrant laughed. ‘Do you know who she is, son of Heracles? She’s Dano of Croton. Pythagoras’s daughter. One of my best friends. I owe you immeasurably for her rescue — but we had no notion of what kind of man you might be. I had imagined a much blacker pirate.’

I shrugged. ‘I have been a black pirate. I imagine that the darkness of one’s acts is often judged differently, depending on which end of the sword faces you.’

Dano shook her head. ‘I confess that you rescued me, and I am grateful. But despite that, I believe that all violence makes men lesser — more like animals.’

‘War is the king and father of all; some men it makes kings, and others, slaves,’ I said. ‘Peace begets nothing but dull care. Strength comes through change. The wise adapt.’

‘Heraclitus!’ she said. ‘That charlatan.’

‘He was my master and teacher,’ I said. ‘And he honoured your father.’

‘My father did not honour him,’ she said. She paused. Her voice had begun to grow coloured, heated, and she took several breaths. More than any Pythagorean I ever knew, Dano controlled herself at all times.

Now the Tyrant laughed. ‘Brilliant!’ he said. ‘I have a follower of Heraclitus to debate with my daughter of Pythagoras; we can form a three-sided triangle of discussion. Arimnestos, be free in my city. I may have a matter of… hmm… policy to discuss with you, now that I have met you. I’m sure many people here will want to meet you. Do you wish me to give you a guide?’

‘I know the city well,’ I said.

Gelon gave me an odd look, and said, ‘Very well. I will have rooms assigned to you in the palace.’

‘I would be too afraid of being murdered by fanatic Pythagoreans,’ I said.

She started to bite back, and realized she was being mocked. Instead of glaring at each other, we found ourselves smiling. It was an odd interaction. I was quite sure that I didn’t find her attractive, so I wondered at the readiness of my unintended smile.

The pretty young Dionysus, son of Anchises, reappeared to lead me out of the palace. We didn’t leave the way we’d come, but went up into the main apartments so that he could show me, I suppose, the sheer magnificence of the palace, and then we headed down a grand outside marble stair that wrapped around a small temple platform to Nike. A priestess was just emerging from the temple; her sheer gracefulness caught my eye. She wasn’t tall, but willowy and her neck rose from her sheer white chiton It was Lydia.

I stopped on the steps and almost fell.

She looked at me, put a hand to her chest and then turned and went back into the temple of Nike. Without intending it — indeed, without any conscious thought — I ran back up the steps to the temple, but Dionysus caught my hand.

‘You cannot go in there,’ he said. ‘Gelon would have you killed.’

I saw that the temple doors — well-worked bronze, the height of a man, with deeply inset panels that showed scenes from the triumph of the goddess — were slightly ajar. She was watching me. Or watching for me to go.

‘I know her,’ I said. It was, all things considered, a foolish thing to say.

Dionysus looked at me. ‘I must suggest that you are mistaken,’ he said primly.

The next few days passed in a pleasant, but confusing, whirl. Doola was busy selling our tin, and through him, our inn became a hive of mercantile activity. Gelon might disdain merchants, but his factor made it clear that Syracusa needed tin.

I received invitations to the palace, which I accepted. I dined with Gelon and the nobility of Syracusa. Lydia — if it was Lydia I had seen — was nowhere in evidence. I shared a couch with Gaius, and we were bored. I didn’t see Dano. Of course, I was back in civilization and women didn’t, in general, dine with men, especially in conservative, aristocratic Syracusa.

Dull.

After two days of it, I couldn’t stand the inaction. At first I wandered the waterfront. I met men from Athens and Croton, from Rome, from all the cities of the Etrusca, from as far away as Tyre. The Tyrian, a senior officer of a merchant on the beach, looked me over carefully from the deck of his ship and then beckoned to me.

‘You are the great Greek pirate,’ he said. He grinned. It wasn’t a real expression — more like a dog showing its teeth. He sent a boy for spiced wine, and we sat on bales of his linens from Aegypt and he told me without preamble that Darius, the Great King for all of my life, was rumoured to have died at Persepolis, which was about as far from Syracusa as I could imagine in distance. His successor was Xerxes, or so my Phoenician helmsman informed me.

He talked about Persia’s determination to conquer Athens, and after a while we moved up the beach to a taverna. Men came and went, asking his leave to buy one thing or sell another. After some small talk about his family, he got to the point. He leaned back, stuck two fingers in the top of his linen kilt and smiled.

‘Now I have told you something, yes? So you tell me. You make war — sea war — on Carthago, yes?’ He smiled, but the smile didn’t reach his eyes.

‘Carthago enslaved me,’ I said mildly.

He nodded. ‘You have killed many of my people. Many. Yet I sit here and make the talk with you, and you do not seem like a monster. Why so much war, eh?’

I spread my hands. ‘It seems to follow me,’ I said.

He nodded. ‘So tell me this. Is it true you went to the Tin Islands? All the way into the Outer Sea?’

I was watching him carefully. I didn’t think it impossible that the Phoenicians would murder me in cold blood, for all sorts of reasons — but first and foremost because I knew the route to the tin. ‘Yes. All the way to Alba. And back.’

He smiled, leaned forward and extended his hand. ‘I’m Thato Abn Ba’al. I, too, have crossed the northern seas.’ He grinned. ‘I tell them, at home, that we could publish the route in every city in the world and do ourselves no harm, because only a great sailor can make the trip. That the squadron at Gades is wasted.’ He nodded. ‘You have prisoners, I believe.’

I am a man of the world, and I like most people. I have come to an age where I can say that in truth, there is no one truth — that no man is much better than any other, and that Greeks are not handsomer or smarter than Persians. No race has an edge in courage, or discipline, or ship-handling.

But I cannot abide Phoenicians. Maybe it is bred to the bone after years of war, or perhaps they really are rotten to the core of their child-killing society. Eh?

So all this, this whole pleasant morning of conversation, was a preamble to asking me if he could ransom my prisoners.

‘I have a few,’ I said. My annoyance was already rising.

‘Give them to me, and I’ll see what I can do to get you trading privileges in Sidon and Carthago,’ he said with a smile.

‘Why would I want to trade there?’ I asked. I was already getting to my feet.

‘The richest trade in the world? The finest entrepot, the best warehouses, the most imposing array of products, the best craftsmanship?’

‘Athens, you mean?’ I said.

He laughed, but his laugh was more false than an old whore’s smile.

‘Athens is a nice little town,’ he said. ‘Sidon, Tyre, Carthago — these are the finest cities in the world, and you should beg to trade in them.’

‘Why?’ I asked. I leaned forward. ‘I can take whatever they have to offer whenever it suits me.’ I nodded. ‘Like that ship right there.’

‘It would mean war between Carthago and Syracusa. A war that Syracusa would lose. Carthago can put a hundred thousand men in the field.’ He stood up. ‘Slavery has eroded your manners as well as your sense of right and wrong. I sought to do you no harm, Greek. I want to buy your prisoners.’

I nodded. ‘I’ll send you my factor,’ I said haughtily. In fact, I wanted rid of them, and money is always nice. The problem with anger is that it can get in the way of common sense. I didn’t need him or his ship, or the international complications that would arise. Even as it was, my possession of the hull of a captured Carthaginian warship and the freed Greek slaves roaming the streets spending their pay was making trouble for my host, who in turn was increasingly distant to me.

Piracy. Always a complicated matter.

I turned to leave Thato Abn Ba’al, and had another thought.

‘Do you know a Greek in Carthago’s service called Dagon?’ I asked.

The Phoenician rolled his eyes. ‘Yes.’

‘Insane?’ I asked.

The Phoenician shipmaster shrugged. ‘A bad man. And not one of us, whatever you say.’ He spat.

‘Will you see him? In Carthago?’ I asked.

Thato narrowed his eyes.

I shrugged. ‘I am not after your ship. I spoke in heat.’

He splashed some wine on the floor. ‘Make me your guest friend, and I’ll talk to you about it.’

A guest friend is a sort of sacred trust, like brotherhood. If you make a man your guest friend, you accept responsibility for him in your house and your city — but you also, in effect, swear to support him and not to harm him, ever. Sometimes guest friendships are passed down from generation to generation.

‘If you wanted my prisoners, why not just say so?’ I asked.

‘It is rude to start a conversation with a demand,’ he said. ‘I am a gentleman. I heard that you are, too, despite your violence.’

I sat again. Poured a little more wine. ‘Guest friendship is a door that swings both ways,’ I said.

He spat thoughtfully. ‘I am not a barbarian,’ he said. ‘Make me your guest friend, and we will share the rewards in the eyes of our gods. And men.’

Despite all, I liked him. So I got up and swore the oath to Zeus, and he swore by Ba’al and Apollo, and we clasped hands. Some bystanders in the taverna witnessed — a big Athenian helmsman I didn’t know came and slapped me on the back.

‘Then take the prisoners,’ I said to my new brother. ‘No ransom.’

He was genuinely surprised. Unaffectedly surprised. ‘You mean that?’ he asked.

I led him to where Neoptolymos sat under an awning, drinking wine. He had six Carthaginian officers, and a pair of our marines watching them — and making sure our former slaves didn’t gut them for old times’ sake.

‘Neoptolymos?’ I said. ‘Let them go. This man will take them home.’

Neoptolymos nodded. He was an aristocrat, too; he rose to his feet and bowed to our Phoenician guest.

Thato started to lead them towards his ship, they clutching his knees and patting his hands and weeping. As well they might. But he pushed the youngest one away and turned to me.

‘I may see Dagon in Carthago,’ he said. ‘I can’t stand him, but I see him all too often.’

‘Tell him you met Arimnestos of Plataea.’ I smiled. ‘Tell him that when I find him, I will break him on an oar and crucify him on my mainmast.’

Thato nodded and pursed his lips. ‘I will,’ he said seriously.

I was busy in other ways, as well. The Athenian helmsman — a former slave named Simon, like my hateful cousin — was almost fully loaded with Sicilian wine and copper ore and three ingots of my tin, and he was headed east to Athens. Since I had already begun to form my plans to return to my own life, so to speak, I asked him to see if he could find Mauros, or any of my other friends in Athens or Piraeus. I wrote a letter to Aristides, sometimes known as The Just who had led one of the Athenian taxeis at Marathon, and another to Themistocles, the leader of the Athenian demos, asking them to see to it that if my ship still sailed the seas, it came to me at Massalia.

I wrote another letter to my sister Penelope.

I had decided that it was time to return to my home.

But first, I had a military operation to plan.

And I had to know about Lydia.

I completed my letter-writing, visited Doola’s mercantile exchange and sat down to listen to him dicker with a pair of Sybarite merchants.

It took me a moment to realize that he was buying their tin.

This made no sense to me, but I smiled at Doola, who was clearly having a fine time, and walked outside, where, to my confusion, Seckla was leading a pair of donkeys loaded with tin out of the inn’s yard.

He smiled at me and walked on, attended by a pair of slaves.

Perhaps we delivered.

I fortified myself with one more cup of wine and walked up the town, to the shop where I had worked for a year. I sent a slave in for Nikephorus. But I already knew that the forge was silent, and when the mistress of the house emerged, she looked at me, face carefully blank.

‘Where is Master Nikephorus?’ I asked.

She looked away. ‘He died.’

‘And his wife?’ I asked.

The woman looked at the ground. ‘She died first.’ She finally met my eye, and hers held rage. ‘You have nerve, coming here. After what you did. You don’t think I know you? I know you.’

This was what I had imagined, when I imagined the worst possible outcome of my visit. And I didn’t know her.

‘You ruined her. Turned her head — made her a whore.’ The woman spat at my feet. ‘My curse on you. I pray for your destruction, every day. May the sea god suck you down. May the Carthaginians take you.’

I confess that I stepped back before her rage.

‘I wanted to marry her,’ I said weakly, knowing that this was not precisely true.

‘Did you?’ she asked. ‘I’m sure you still can. She might make a good wife, between pleasuring gentlemen at parties.’ She stepped forward. ‘My sister died, of a broken heart. Her husband died when the fucking Tyrant took his citizen rights. They took you in, you fuck. Gave you work. You ruined them.’ She was screaming now. I was backing away as if she were three swordsmen. Or perhaps five.

Five swordsmen would not have made me feel like this one middle-aged woman.

What do you say? To the screaming harridan in the street? I meant no harm? We were just playing? I play with girls all the time? I’m a warrior, and it is my right to take women as chattel?

One of the effects of age is to realize that most of society’s rules — even the most foolish — exist for reasons, and are broken only at someone’s peril. From the comfort of this kline and across the distance of years, I doubt that I wrecked Lydia alone, or that her mother died entirely of my actions. Nikephorus could have been less intransigent. As I discovered, he threw her from the house. She was a prostitute by the next morning. That’s the way of it. And she came to the attention of the man who became Tyrant, and he took her for his own. As you will hear.

Well.

How much of that is my responsibility? Eh?

When the night is dark, and the wine is sour, it looks to me as if it is all my responsibility. All of it. I played with her life, and I broke it. That’s hubris, my daughter. Treating a free person as if they are a slave.

I never promised you a happy story.

I left the street and walked down the hill, and sat on the beach over the headland from the citadel, and I wept. And then I went back to town along the waterfront, looking for a fight, and didn’t find one. You never do, when you really want one. So I drank, and I walked, and I wandered.

It grew dark. And there was Doola standing in front of me, and he walked with me a way, and then it was morning, and I awoke with a hard head and a general sense of hopelessness.

I went downstairs and sat with my friends. Because they were true friends, I told them the whole story. Doola knew some, and Neoptolymos most of it, but when they heard the whole story, they gathered around me and Seckla hugged me, and Doola just stood with a hand on my shoulder.

‘You owe the girl,’ he said.

‘She must hate me,’ I said.

Doola nodded. ‘I don’t think that will change. You must help her, anyway. Take her away from here, to where she can start again.’

‘Perhaps she likes it here,’ I said; a fairly weak thing to say, really.

Doola just looked at me.

Neoptolymos said, ‘Let’s just take her.’

I didn’t see any solution. But Doola insisted I had to see her, and I determined to try.

I began by asking any staff I met when I went up to the palace. Rumours of the Tyrant’s hetaera were everywhere in the town, but there was no one at the palace who would even mention her. At my third invitation to dine, I went and sat on young Dionysus’ couch — it was crowded, I can tell you — to see what he would tell me, but the party was growing wilder by the moment and I couldn’t even get his attention.

I have seldom felt such an utter depression of spirit as I felt that evening. I sat in the Tyrant’s beautiful garden — he’d had the couches arranged outside — and the sun stained the sky and distant clouds a magnificent orange pink even as his roses scented the air. It was an intimate dinner — perhaps thirty guests, with superb music and very good food. I remember none of the dishes, because I didn’t want food.

I sat alone on a couch, ignored by the other guests, a mere oddity, a foreigner who had sailed a long way and nothing more. I was thirty years old and more. I was a famous man — in a way. But that way was not the kind of fame any man seeks. I had the reputation of a killer. A pirate. A thug. I had abused a girl half my age, and because of it, her family was disgraced or dead and she herself dishonoured. And nothing could make that right. There was no one to kill.

I am not a fool. I was trained by one of the greatest minds in the history of Greece, and I have a brain of my own. I could, and did, see the difference between what my emotions said I had done and the actual responsibility I bore. But that didn’t matter, any more than the various excuses I make myself for the oceans of blood I have shed with the edge of my sword.

I was more than thirty years old, and I had neither wife nor children; no permanence, no hope of continuity. If an enemy spear took me, I would be gone like a bad smell in a powerful wind.

I still think these thoughts, thugater. Nothing makes it better. It is dark, and it can go on for days. There is nothing joyous about murder. The thrill — the contest — of war is only half the story, and the other half is remembering all the men whose lives you reaped so that you could have their gold.

I decided to go. If I had been feeling better, I might have been bold enough to walk off and search the palace, but dark spirits do not raise your courage.

Gelon came and sat on my kline just as I was about to leave. ‘You are like the spectre at the feast,’ he said. ‘Is my food bad? Do the musicians displease you?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘I am not in the mood for food. I should have declined to come, my lord. I am poor company.’

He furrowed his brow. ‘I expect better of my guests. Come: tell us of sailing the Outer Sea.’

Another man — one of the horse-breeders who seemed to be Gelon’s favourites — clapped his hands together. ‘Tell us!’

Another one of them, a taller man with ringlets, looked at me curiously. I suddenly knew him — he was one of the wealthy men who had evicted me from the city gymnasium some years before.

Had I been in a different mood, that might have roused me, but in my present mood, it only served to make me tired.

‘Another time,’ I said wearily.

‘I insist,’ said the Tyrant.

Well, he was the absolute lord of Syracusa, and my ships were in his harbour. ‘Very well,’ I said.

He held up a hand. ‘Let me send for Dano,’ he said. ‘She loves any physical science. She will want to hear this herself. In fact, she insisted.’

I lay back, while slaves rearranged the couches so that I could tell my story to the party.

Theodorus — his name came to me — came and stood by my kline. ‘I think I know you,’ he said hesitantly.

‘I was a slave,’ I said. ‘And you didn’t want to know me.’

He frowned. ‘You probably shouldn’t be in the palace.’

I nodded. I found that I was growing angry easily, that I wanted to quarrel with this relative nonentity. Which was foolish. Anger is always foolish.

‘Why don’t you tell him, and we’ll see how he reacts?’ I said.

Theodorus looked at me. ‘How does a former slave own three warships?’ he asked me.

‘Good question,’ I said. I smiled.

He went and said something to one of his cronies, and then the Tyrant was back with Dano. She wore a veil and sat in a chair.

Theodorus cleared his throat even as Dano raised the edge of her veil and gave me the sweetest smile. It wasn’t the smile of a flirtatious woman, but merely a smile. In that moment, it was as if she read my mind — my anger, my hurt.

She was a good woman. A good woman.

I tore my eyes away from her to find Theodorus standing by Gelon. The Tyrant was listening to him speaking, low and urgently.

Despite Dano’s presence, I was content to be thrown out. I didn’t like Gelon, and his cronies seemed to me to be the opposite of proper aristocrats. Instead of tough, educated men who could lead war parties or talk about the affairs of their city, these seemed to me to be soft-handed sycophants.

But Gelon laughed. ‘Theodorus, do you actually think that men like us are bound by petty notions like slavery?’ His laugh was real, and it rang, loud and full, and again, the Tyrant gave me the impression that he was like the Lord Zeus. It was the laugh of the king of the gods. ‘If the Lord Apollo fell to earth and was enslaved, would he be any less a god?’

Some of the others looked at Theodorus, and some looked at me. I’m not sure that the Tyrant convinced them, but after a moment, it was obvious that I wasn’t going to be conveniently thrown out of the palace, and would have to sing for my supper, so I began to tell the story.

I thought I’d tell it fairly, so I started from Syracusa, with our first boat. They were true nobles — they were fascinated by the way that small men make money. The tale of the purchase of our second boat fascinated most of them in a way that the tale of my trip beyond Gades did not.

When I mentioned Anarchos, the tyrant slapped his thigh and laughed. ‘I know him,’ he said. ‘He is precious to me.’

Well, well.

By the time I had the ships off the beach at Massalia and off the Inner Sea coast of Iberia, two-thirds of my listeners had lost interest. The Tyrant and the Lady Dano, on the other hand, were rapt with attention, and young Dionysus gazed at me with genuine hero-worship. When I told the story of running the mill race at the Pillars of Heracles, he clapped his hands together and said, ‘Odysseus, come to life,’ and Dano’s eyes shone.

Let me tell you a secret. No matter how far down you are, the admiration of a handsome woman will almost always bring you up in your own estimation, and some male hero-worship doesn’t hurt, either.

Not at all.

I took them up the coast, out to sea in storms, in raids on the Carthaginians, up to Alba and all the way home. The sun was gone, the lamps were lit and half the guests had left when I was done.

I took a long drink of wine.

Dano threw back her veil and drank some wine. She looked, not at me, but at Gelon, who nodded.

‘Indeed, for an hour, I was the King of the Phaekeans, listening to the Man of Sorrows tell his tale. If you ask me for a ship to take you home, I will have to give you my treasure. That was a great tale.’

Dano raised the communal cup. ‘How my father would have loved you,’ she said.

I smiled. ‘I eat meat,’ I admitted. ‘I don’t think I could give it up.’ Sorry — that quip was aimed at her, because the secretive Pythagoreans didn’t let outsiders know anything of their practice, but everyone knew they didn’t eat meat.

She shrugged. ‘He loved men who do things, and men who learn things. It seems to me you are both. And that was a marvellous story. What will you do with the rest of your life?’

I shrugged. ‘You overwhelm me with so much unmerited praise.’ I slid off my couch and stretched.

Gelon rose and crushed my hand in the two of his. ‘Stay here with us, then. Be one of my captains. Persia and Carthage are combining to extinguish the Greek world: a single great war to dominate the earth, or so my spies tell me. Come and help me stop them. This is the richest city in the Greek world; we can have a grand fleet.’

Dano made a motion with her hand. ‘Athens has built more than a hundred triremes in the last three years,’ she said.

I whistled.

‘I can buy and sell Athens,’ Gelon said. ‘A commercial city ruled by a squabbling assembly of proles. They will never rise to greatness. Men require to be led, and well led, by those who are better. Syracusa will be a greater city, because those who rule her are themselves greater.’

I shrugged again. ‘Men on ships require to be led,’ I said. ‘Men on farms require only to be left alone.’

Dano laughed. ‘May I quote that? It’s brilliant. And you say you studied with that fool Heraclitus?’

‘He was not a fool, but a great thinker and a brilliant man, humble before the gods, capable of solving almost any problem. And yet he studied other men’s thoughts and learned from them, too — in Aegypt, in Persia. Even your father, who he viewed as the greatest mathematician of the age.’ I had a thought, then, of sitting in the garden of Hipponax’s house, teaching Briseis from a book of Pythagoras, watching her beautiful fingers work the geometric figures with the compass I had made her.

Gelon smiled. ‘Can you work any of Pythagoras’s solutions?’ he asked me.

‘Several,’ I said. ‘I can find the value of the hypotenuse given the lengths of the two other sides.’ Seeing his surprise, I said, ‘I use it every day to figure my dead reckoning at sea. If I am rowing twenty stades an hour to the south, and wind and current are moving me six stades an hour to the west, what is my true course and speed?’ I asked.

‘A little less then twenty-one stades an hour, south by east,’ Dano said, clapping her hands together.

‘What do you do when your course and the current aren’t at perfect right angles?’ Gelon asked.

‘Guess,’ I said, and he laughed.

‘And how do you measure the speed of your cross-current? Or the wind? Or even your own speed through the water?’ Dano asked.

‘We cast the log for speed — it is guesswork, but accurate guesswork. My young friend Seckla can cast the log for a ship’s speed and he’ll be accurate within… well, within my tolerance, anyway. Currents: more guesswork.’ I waved my hands.

Gelon nodded. ‘It is experience, is it not? That gives a mariner the ability to make these guesses?’

I sensed I was entering into another argument.

‘But you could teach another person to do it, could you not, Lord Arimnestos?’ she demanded. ‘I am reckoned intelligent — could you teach me to command your ship?’

‘Or could she teach herself?’ asked the Tyrant. ‘Could she work it all out from first principles and then put to sea?’

‘My lord, my lady, I have the feeling that I am caught between Scylla and Charybdis here. But I would say that yes, I could teach Lady Dano to command or to pilot; and yes, she might even teach herself, although she might also die in the attempt. But I would insist that while she might learn to be a brilliant navigator by practising mathematics, seamanship is a great deal more, and requires years at sea. I started late, and my helmsman Megakles, for example, a fisherman born, has a deep understanding of waves and weather — and I do not. So I ask him, often. Nor have I learned his knack. Yet I can pilot a ship from here to Gades with a few landfalls, and the sun, moon and stars, and he would have to coast the whole way. There are many skills at sea, just as on land, and not every skill is acquired the same way.’

The Tyrant’s laugh boomed out again.

‘You don’t lose an argument often, do you?’ he asked. He rose from his couch and went to be gracious to other guests, and I gathered I had annoyed him.

Dano sat on the edge of my couch. ‘I wonder if you could come and speak about navigation for our school in Croton?’

I was flattered. ‘I would be delighted,’ I said. ‘But I understood that your father was exiled from Croton, and no longer had a school there?’

‘Oh,’ she said. ‘That was many years ago. Members of our… group-’ She looked up and met my eye. ‘Men can be fools, no matter how well born and well educated. Indeed, it sometimes seems to me that well-born, well-educated Greek men are the greatest fools in the world.’

I laughed. ‘Such speech must endear you to all such men.’

She shrugged impatiently. ‘It is foolish to speak in generalities,’ she said. ‘Indeed, you make me garrulous, when I would prefer to be silent.’

‘Because women should be seen and not heard?’ I asked.

She glared, and then saw that I was smiling. ‘Because a philosopher learns more from listening than from talking,’ she said.

‘You are a philosopher?’ I asked.

‘Everyone is,’ she said simply. ‘Only a few mortals have the leisure to devote the time to it that it deserves, but everyone who travels the face of the world is a philosopher — unless they sink to become animals.’ She smiled, at her own vehemence, I think. Pythagoreans eschewed displays of emotion.

‘I think I must agree to that, or be characterized as an animal,’ I said.

She looked at Gelon, with the last of his guests, and said, ‘I love it here, but I am merely a curiosity. I came for the friendship my father bore Gelon. I have been well received, but Gelon imagines that I am a woman, and sends me yarn. Will you take me back to Croton? I can pay.’

I nodded. ‘With pleasure.’ I wanted out of Sicily.

And I had remembered Anarchos.

The next morning, sober and of sounder mind, I wandered the inner harbour — not where the big foreign ships beached, but where the local trade came. It took me about two hours to find one of Anarchos’s enforcers, and an hour later, I was with the man himself.

He looked at me over the rim of his wine cup, and toasted me.

‘Here’s to success,’ he said. ‘The greatest mariner of the age, or so I hear it.’

‘Here’s to your friendship with the Tyrant,’ I said. ‘He told me that he loves you. In just so many words.’

Anarchos looked around. ‘He said that? Out loud?’ He snorted. ‘I’ll be lynched.’

‘I gather he’s none too popular with the lower classes,’ I said.

Anarchos leaned back. ‘He stripped everyone but the richest six hundred families of their voting rights. Set against that, he’s lowered taxes, and he has kept the Carthaginians at bay.’ He motioned over my shoulder. ‘Nice ships. You have become an important man.’

‘Again,’ I said.

I smiled.

‘So what do you want?’ he asked. ‘Of me? You don’t need me any more.’ He shrugged. ‘I try to be realistic about these things.’ He nodded. ‘Or do you need me after all?’

‘Where’s Lydia?’ I said.

‘Ah,’ he said. In fact, he knew what I was there for from the moment I walked in. Anarchos was a man who bought and sold weakness. And he knew mine.

Our eyes locked. ‘You walked off and left her,’ he said.

‘I offered to marry her,’ I said in instant defence. Foolish, wasted words.

‘But her father turned you down. I remember. When you left, her father threw her into the street.’ He licked his lips. ‘I took her up.’

His statement cut me like a sharp sword.

He spread his hands. ‘Don’t pretend you cared! We are men of the world. You had your turn, and I had mine.’ He laughed at my face. ‘But I lay with her, which you hadn’t the balls to do. And she liked it.’ He smiled. ‘I didn’t rape her. Hah! You are a fool. And my men are all around you. If you draw, you’ll be dead in a moment.’

I couldn’t help myself. Rage, jealousy, self-hate — what a stew of low emotions I was. I got to my feet and men crowded in close, and I felt the prick of a knife through my cloak.

‘When I was tired of her — just as you tired of her, no doubt — I arranged for Gelon to meet her. Beautiful, well spoken, hot on the couch and cool in debate — the perfect mistress for the Tyrant. He couldn’t have some low-born porne, could he?’ Anarchos laughed. ‘You still think that you are better than me, lad.’

It is chilling that, in the moments that most matter, we don’t think of our great and noble teachers and their fine thoughts, but instead we think like animals. I wanted to kill him.

Because, of course, he was completely correct. His contempt was merited. And he had probably dealt fairly with her, by his own lights.

But as a man, I didn’t see any of that. I burned — oh, Zeus! — I burned with rage.

Anarchos laughed again. ‘Will killing me make you a better man, hero?’ he asked. ‘Get you gone.’

He stood up.

I stood too.

It may not strike you as one of my boldest, bravest, strongest moments — but it was. I stood up, and I mastered myself. I clamped down on the rage. I told myself that I was not responsible for his actions, but only my own.

‘Tell me how to reach her,’ I said. I kept my voice low.

He looked at me as if I had slapped him.

‘I want to talk to her,’ I said. ‘That is all.’

He narrowed his eyes. ‘Why? I mean, why should I help you?’

I took a deep breath. ‘You and I have a great many things in common.’ I met his eyes. ‘So I’m going to assume that some of the things you do are difficult to live with. And that once in a while, you have to do something to help someone, or become a monster.’

Anarchos paled, but he made himself laugh. ‘I can’t remember when someone last appealed to my beneficent nature.’

I shrugged. ‘I intend to offer her a path away from here, and a great deal of money to start again somewhere.’

‘She hates you. And she won’t hate you less.’

It’s odd. I knew that, but hearing Anarchos say it — in a matter-of-fact voice devoid of sarcasm or deliberate malice — brought home to me that it was true. It made me feel a little sick, the way a man feels when he first discovers that he has a fever.

‘I accept that,’ I said quietly.

He nodded. ‘If I can arrange something, it will be on my grounds and you will be in my hands,’ he said.

‘You’d be a fool to have me killed,’ I said. ‘But I expect you’d weather it.’ I nodded. ‘You know where to find me.’

He nodded. ‘I think you owe me money,’ he said. He actually smiled. ‘The amount might not even be noticeable to you-’ he laughed.

I had to laugh, too. He was right.

He extended an arm. And I clasped it. Somewhere, he and I had taken each other’s measure. I couldn’t manage to hate him.

On the way back to our inn, I saw Seckla with a dozen of our oarsmen, loading mules with ingots of tin — our tin — at a warehouse well above the water. I looked at him, and he shook his head.

‘Don’t ask,’ he said.

I waited for Doola to be done with his latest transaction. Then I sat down and told him everything I’d learned from Anarchos.

He nodded. ‘You behaved well,’ he said.

Gaius shook his head. ‘Well?’ he asked. ‘Let’s go and gut the crime lord. I’ve always wanted to do him, the bastard. Kill him, grab the girl and go.’

Neoptolymos nodded. ‘I, too, have always wanted him dead.’

Gaius grinned. ‘Think of all the other little people who’d bless our names. He’s a complete bastard. And he raped your woman? Kill him.’

I sighed, because part of me wanted the same thing. I looked at Gaius. ‘Someday, I hope you get to meet my friend Idomeneus.’ I motioned to my pais for a cup of wine. ‘You can’t kill everyone you disagree with.’

‘Says who?’ Gaius asked. ‘If Doola ever finishes dicking around with these merchants, I aim to be the richest magnate in Rome, and if men annoy me, I may well kill them.’

‘I hope you will all come with me one more time, first,’ I said.

Gaius smiled. ‘Where?’

I looked at Neoptolymos. ‘Illyria. I promised to put Neoptolymos back on his throne, and I will. And I intend to kill Dagon.’

Gaius shook his head. ‘But not Anarchos.’

I shook my head. ‘No. It is different.’

Gaius narrowed his eyes. ‘You think too much, brother.’

I have neglected, I think, to mention that all Syracusa was a field of Ares; that men were drilling in the squares, dancing the various forms of the Pyrrhiche, running in armour to harden their bodies. The shops on the Street of Hephaestos were thriving, and helmets, thoraxes, greaves, ankle armour, even armour for men’s feet and elbows poured forth. A lot of it was crap — I walked down the street, and was surprised at how poor some of the work was — but some was magnificent.

And the best work was that of Anaxsikles, who had more than fulfilled his promise. I had known him as a young man, and now he was a man, and a master. I think I mentioned that he was the second son of Dionysus, the master smith at the top of the street, and his work was

… god sent. He had his own shop.

His work struck me like the shock of a nearby lightning strike; like full immersion in icy water. There were three things that distinguished his work: his absolutely perfect planishing, so that even the most complex curve of a helmet or a greave was as smooth as a mirror; his elegance of form, so that I could pick his work out when I paused to lean on my staff and watch the youths drill, because his armour made a man look like a god, whereas other men’s work could make a man’s legs look shorter, or their torsos broader. Anaxsikles’ work had the opposite effect; and finally, the almost total lack of decoration. He was, in his way, a genius, and he had perfected his forms to the point where embellishment was unnecessary. His greaves were completely smooth; his torso cuirasses followed the musculature of the body without the complex hip extensions or the acanthus whorls that were standard on most breastplates.

I stood in the street, watching him work under an awning, and my heart was torn in many different directions. I wanted to be working. I wanted to be as gifted as he. He was younger than I, and already a better smith.

Age brings its own humility as well as its own relaxation. When one is young, one strives to be best against all comers. The best in war, the best on the kithara, the best at reciting poetry, the best at smithing.

Time passes, and some men are revealed as swordsmen, and some as kithara players, and some as smiths — greater and lesser, according to their merits. Heraclitus taught us that no man need do any more than to strive to be the best he can; that arete lies not in triumphing over others, but mostly in triumph over yourself. So he told us, but which of us believed it? Not I. I wanted to be best of all men. I still do. Humility is not yet my portion.

But standing there, I had to acknowledge that this young man made armour on a plane that I would never reach, not if I put down my spear and did nothing but work at an anvil until the end of my days. It was a curiously painful discovery, and yet liberating.

All this in as little time as it takes one man to greet another on the street, and then Anaxsikles raised his head. And smiled.

That smile was worth a great deal to me. I was afraid — well, that my behaviour with Lydia had poisoned everything.

He put his hammer carefully into a rack at his side, handed his mittens to a slave and came out of his shop to embrace me. That was pleasant.

Spontaneously — mostly to show him how highly I regarded his work — I asked him how much he would charge for a full panoply.

He grinned. ‘You can make your own!’ he said.

‘I want yours. Yours is better.’ I nodded at a pair of greaves on the display bench — the pure form of a man’s lower legs, without any decoration beyond the beauty of the body. ‘I can’t make those,’ I said.

He laughed. ‘Flatterer,’ he said. ‘I learned to make armour from you. You were the one who taught me that there should be nothing on which the point can catch. I have thought about our duel a hundred times.’

‘You’ve created a style,’ I said. ‘I see men in your armour every day. You are the best armourer I’ve ever seen.’

He beamed. ‘And you?’

I laughed. ‘I’ve made some simple helmets. I spent a winter learning to cast larger pieces.’

He nodded. ‘Yes, that’s an important skill. I haven’t tackled it yet. What did you learn?’

I won’t bore you. I talked about casting ship’s rams, and he came down to Lydia and looked at the ram and smiled when he saw the name. ‘So you still love her, too.’

I shrugged. ‘Most of what happened is my own fault,’ I said, with an honesty that surprised me. ‘I loved her. I think of her often.’

He nodded. ‘I always loved her,’ he said. ‘I would have married her — after you left.’ He paused, looked at me. ‘Many hold you responsible. I don’t,’ he said.

‘I am, though,’ I said.

He shrugged. ‘I would have married her,’ he said quietly. ‘Even after her father cast her out.’

‘Really?’ I asked.

He shrugged. ‘Men are fools. Is a hammer the worse when another’s hand has touched it, so long as I wield it well?’ He shook his head. ‘Even now, I would marry her.’

‘You wouldn’t be able to live here.’ I said it with flat certainty.

He nodded. ‘I never expected to be talking to you about this. I, too, failed her. When her father cast her forth, I allowed my father to convince me that she was worthless.’ He shook his head. Gone was the master smith, and in his place was a very unhappy young man.

I thought for a few heartbeats. ‘I’m trying to contact her,’ I said. ‘I thought to offer her a dowry and a trip to somewhere else. Athens, perhaps.’

‘She would never take anything from you,’ Anaxsikles said. ‘I’m sorry. But-’

It is hard, to hear that someone you have loved hates you utterly. And yet — how could I have expected anything else?

‘If I arranged a meeting,’ I said, ‘would you go?’

He nodded. ‘Of course.’

I took a deep breath. ‘I never expected this as an outcome. I went to your shop to tell you what a fine smith you’ve become.’

He nodded. ‘The gods walk the earth,’ he said.

‘Indeed,’ I agreed.

I didn’t tell Anarchos what I had planned. But my heart was lightened. I told only Doola, because of all my friends, only he seemed to understand me. My plan was simple; I intended to reunite Lydia and Anaxsikles and then get them transport to Athens — Lydia’s dowry would set Anaxsikles up in a shop under the Temple of Hephaestos. It was a good plan, and it deserved to succeed.

But Anarchos dragged his feet, explaining that he only had one clandestine method of contacting Lydia and it was complicated, depending on a Saka slave in the nursery, where Lydia seldom went, as she had no children of her own.

I tried to see her on my next visit to the palace. I wandered as if lost, looking for her, but the slaves were too afraid of their master and too helpful, and I was quickly escorted to the Tyrant, who laughed and made quips all through dinner about the navigator of the seas who got lost in his palace.

That night, he invited Dano to join us. She shared my couch in the Italian way for a while, and when it was time for her to move — and I can’t pretend I didn’t enjoy her warm femininity next to me — she smiled. ‘I’m ready to leave,’ she said. ‘When can you depart?’

I thought about it. It was a four-day run to Croton, unless the weather turned nasty; a week and a half round trip. Doola was all but done with his sales; we accused him every day of playing with the Syracusan merchants the way a cat plays with mice. The Syracusan armament required bronze for everything, from armour to ship’s rams, and bronze needs tin.

‘Day after tomorrow,’ I said.

She grinned. It was a lovely grin, and made her beautiful. ‘Wonderful,’ she said.

An hour later, Gelon sat on my couch. ‘You are taking my Dano home,’ he said. ‘I had thought to keep her longer.’

I shrugged. ‘She asked me,’ I said.

He nodded. ‘But you will return?’ he asked.

‘Of course,’ I said.

‘People tell me you are having armour made by Anaxsikles,’ he said.

I smiled. ‘He is perhaps the finest armourer in the Greek world,’ I said.

Gelon frowned. ‘He is, after all, just a smith. I understand you have spent time with him. Why? Does his conversation fascinate you?’

Dangerous ground. We’re plotting to steal your mistress.

‘He was once my apprentice,’ I said.

Gelon recoiled as if he had been struck.

‘I am not only a merchant and former slave, but I am a master bronze-smith,’ I said.

‘You are a man of many faces,’ he said. He was clearly displeased.

His displeasure meant little to me. And it occurred to me that if he discussed me with Lydia, he might learn a little too much.

‘I have had complaints about your black man,’ he said.

My black man? That wouldn’t go over well, even as a joke, in our inn. ‘My friend Doola?’ I said carefully.

‘If you must. The African merchant.’ His contempt was so deep-rooted as to be offensive. ‘He charges outrageous amounts for tin. I have been asked to seize your cargo and sell it at a fair price.’

‘Would that be the Carthaginian price?’ I asked.

He laughed. ‘You know full well that they are boycotting us — ahh, I see. You make game of me.’

I shrugged. ‘Yes and no, my lord. I wonder if the merchants who want our tin understand the risks we took to get it. Or would be willing to take those risks themselves.’

‘Yet my understanding is that your Doola now holds all the tin in the city, and demands almost twice the Carthaginian price.’ He shrugged. ‘The mechanics of trade bore me.’

‘But the adventure of it would not, my lord. We sailed the Outer Ocean and made war on Carthage every day to take that tin.’ I knew what he admired and what he would accept, too.

He smiled — just a little. ‘This is why I will allow no merchant to vote in the assembly. They are men without a single noble thought.’

Whatever I might have felt inside, I merely nodded.

It was the only role I played in the sale of the tin, yet I suspect it was important enough.

While I worried about Lydia, and spent money on armour, Doola had not merely sold tin. He had followed a strategy like a military campaign, selling tin only to traders who were leaving the city with their cargoes, like the Athenians, and using the profits to buy all the other tin. There wasn’t much, but he bought the Illyrian tin and the Etruscan tin that trickled into the city. He bought most of it on credit, because when you have fifty ingots of tin in your warehouses, everyone is willing to give you credit.

While I lay on a kline with the Tyrant, talking of politics, Doola owned all the tin in Syracusa — almost all the tin on Sicily. And then, in the decisive battle of the campaign, he sold it — to six buyers, as he had up the coast at Katania, selling simultaneously to each of them at the same price.

The next morning, I was up late. I walked up into the town, and found the craftsmen’s gymnasium. It had been closed by order of the Tyrant, it turned out. Allowing little men to exercise was apparently as wrong as allowing them a voice in government.

I asked around for Polimarchos. Eventually I gave up and asked Anarchos, who shook his head. ‘The fighter?’ he asked. ‘No idea. I had forgotten him.’

So when I stood on Anaxsikles’ shop floor with his apprentices measuring me with calipers, I asked him.

He thought a while. ‘I wonder if he didn’t go off to Sybaris,’ he said. ‘I think I remember him getting an offer from a rich man to train him in arms.’

‘Oh,’ I said, or something equally foolish. When you are young, you expect everything to remain as it was while you change. As you grow older, you realize that nothing stays the same.

‘Ten days,’ Anaxsikles said. ‘I’ll work on it myself.’

‘Ten days?’ I said. ‘A helmet alone will take that much time.’

He grinned. ‘Ahh, now who is the master? What colour do you want your horsehair?’

‘Red, black and white, you ungrateful pup.’ Truly, Anaxsikles made me feel better, and I can’t explain precisely why.

I made the rounds of the town. I bought myself a new sword and a pair of spears, and I bought arms for Giannis — better and finer than what I’d made. I armed Megakles as a hoplite, I put Seckla in a fine corselet. I met Neoptolymos going into Anaxsikles’ shop as I was coming out, and we both laughed.

‘You said we were taking me home,’ Neoptolymos said. ‘I thought it was time to look the part. We’re all rich, or so I understand.’

It was great fun to spend money like water on beautiful things.