‘I was lucky,’ Satyrus said. ‘I’m looking for friends. Where can I find Calchus the Athenian? Or Isokles, son of Isocrates?’
‘You are in luck,’ the man said. ‘My pardon, sir. My mistress is Penelope, daughter of Isokles.’
‘Does she reside on this farm?’ Satyrus asked. He vaguely remembered that Isokles had a daughter. She’d be twice his age. Married – to Calchus’s son Leander. Or so he seemed to recall.
‘Not safe in town just now,’ the man said quietly. ‘If you hadn’t come up so quiet, we’d have been gone ourselves – we’re supposed to flee armed men. She’ll be at the farmhouse. If you tell me your errand, I’ll approach her.’
‘I’d rather tell her myself,’ Satyrus said.
Talkes shook his head. ‘No, sir. These are hard times round here. No one is getting near my mistress ’less she says.’ Talkes held a spear like a man who regarded the weapon as an old friend, the partner of many a day in the field. A dangerous man.
Satyrus nodded. ‘Very well. Tell your mistress that I am Satyrus, and my father was Kineas, and I am a guest-friend of her father’s, and I crave her hospitality.’ Satyrus sighed for the foolishness of it – if any of these slaves talked, he could be taken very easily. ‘Do you know who has those boats on the beach in town?’
‘They’re the king’s. Not our satrap – not old Lysimachos. They belong to the new king. Eumeles.’ Talkes shook his head. ‘Killed
some men from the militia yesterday morning in a fight on the beach. Killed mistress’s father, too. Burned some farms. Thought you might be one of them. Still not sure, mind. Teax, get back to the house, now. Tell mistress about the stranger. I’ll wait here.’ The man looked at him, tilting his head. ‘You are Satyrus, then? The one the soldiers are looking for?’ Talkes turned. ‘Run, girl!’
The woman so addressed – the younger one – vanished like a foal from a spring hunt, pulling her heavy wool chiton up her legs and running as fast as an athlete.
‘I have some wine I could share,’ Satyrus offered.
‘Keep it,’ Talkes said. ‘The rest of you, back to work.’ Talkes backed away and lowered his spear, and he stood in the shadow of an old apple tree, watching his labourers and Satyrus by turns.
Satyrus thought that he probably knew everything he needed to know. But curiosity held him. He drank a mouthful of his own wine and hunkered down on his haunches to wait.
‘I’d have a swallow of that now, if you was to offer again, stranger.’ Talkes took a hesitant step closer.
Satyrus nodded. He put the stopper back in his flask and set it on the ground. Then he picked up his spear, rabbit and all, and stepped well clear. ‘Be my guest.’
Talkes sidled up to the canteen carefully, as if afraid it might be a dangerous animal. But he took a swallow and smiled.
‘You’re a gent, and no mistake,’ he said. ‘Mind you, you could still be one of the tyrant’s men,’ he added, and took another swallow. He grinned, and went back to watching his workers.
Satyrus had another swallow of his wine. ‘How long have they been here?’ he asked.
‘Four days,’ Talkes responded.
Three weeks and more since the sea battle. Plenty of time for Eumeles to refit a captured ship and sail it here – especially as fine a ship as
Golden Lotus
.
‘Mistress says bring him to t’house,’ Teax said from the near darkness. ‘Say he guest-friend.’
The walk to the house was tense, at best, and Satyrus felt as if Talkes’ spear was never far from his throat. They climbed the rest of the hill and went down the other side. The house was dark, but up close, Satyrus could see that the shutters were tight on every window.
‘Spear and sword, young master,’ Talkes said at the door.
Satyrus considered refusing, but it seemed pointless. He handed over his weapons and was ushered inside. ‘My rabbit is a guest gift,’ he said.
‘I’ll send her to cook, then,’ the Bastarnae man said. ‘Mistress is this way.’
The house wasn’t big enough to be lost in, but Satyrus followed Talkes as if he was in Ptolemy’s palace in Alexandria, and soon he was standing before a heavily draped woman in a chair, sitting with a drop spindle in her hand and three oil lamps. She smelled a little of roses, and a little of stale wine. Satyrus couldn’t help but notice how bare the house was – all the furnishings he could see were home-made.
‘You are really Kineas’s son?’ she asked without raising her head.
Satyrus nodded. ‘I am,’ he said.
The lady choked a sob. ‘They killed my father two days ago,’ she said. ‘He would have loved to have seen you.’ She raised her head and mastered herself. ‘How may I serve you?’ she asked.
‘I would like to claim guest-friendship of your house,’ Satyrus said.
‘My house has fallen on hard times,’ she answered. ‘Rumour says you are a great captain in the army of the lord of Aegypt? How do you come to my door with a rabbit on your spear? Eumeles’ captains are searching for you.’
Satyrus decided he would not lie to this gentle, grey-eyed woman, despite her faint smell of old wine. ‘I tried to take my father’s kingdom back from Eumeles of Pantecapaeum. I failed and nearly lost my life and my ship.’
She rose, placing her spindles – carved ivory, better than most of the other objects in the room – in an ash basket full of wool. ‘They know all about you, Satyrus. You will not survive staying here. They killed my father for being your friend, and Calchus is next, if they catch him. If I keep you, they’ll come here and kill us.’ She shrugged. ‘But I am an obedient daughter and I will not refuse you. Perhaps it would be better for me to end that way.’
‘Hide me overnight, and I will avenge your father at nightfall,’ Satyrus said. ‘I will not be your death.’
She came out of an unlit corner with a cup in her hand. ‘I am Penelope,’ she said. ‘Here is the cup of welcome. No one here will
betray you. I welcome you for the sake of your father, the first man I ever looked on with a woman’s eyes. He might have wed me.’
‘He wed my mother, the queen of the Sakje,’ Satyrus said. He drank from the cup. There was cheese in it, and barley, and it went down well. He could smell the rabbit cooking.
‘It is better to have a queen as a rival than another woman, I suppose,’ Penelope said. ‘At any rate, your father never promised, and he never returned.’
‘And did you marry?’ Satyrus asked, after a pause.
‘Do I look like a maiden?’ she laughed, and her laugh was angry. ‘I married Calchus’s youngest son.’ Her bitterness was obvious. ‘No queen for a rival there!’ she said, and snorted.
Satyrus lacked the experience to know how to pass the subject over. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said.
She raised her head and glared at him. ‘Spare me your pity, boy.’ Then she shook her head. ‘How do you plan to avenge us? And what makes you think that more killing will make this better?’
Satyrus drank his wine to cover his confusion. Finally, he shrugged. ‘I have a ship,’ he said. ‘I will clear them out of the town.’
She nodded. ‘The satrap will be here any day, and then Eumeles will find himself in a war. Best stay clear of it, Satyrus son of Kineas.’
Satyrus shook his head. ‘Who commands them?’
Penelope shook her head. ‘I could find out, I suppose.’ She smiled, then raised her eyes and gave an odd smile that seemed to catch only half her face. ‘When you let yourself die, it is often hard to bring yourself back to life,’ she said. And then, ‘Never mind. Pay me no heed. I’m a bitter old woman, and might have been your mother.’
‘You aren’t old,’ Satyrus said, gallantly. Indeed, under the heavy folds of her drapery, she was no less attractive than Auntie Sappho – and that was saying something.
‘Hmm,’ she said softly. ‘I had forgotten the taste of flattery.’
‘Dinner, mistress,’ Talkes said from the doorway.
Dinner was simple. His rabbit vanished into a stew made of barley and some late-season tubers, with good, plain bread and a harsh local wine. The slaves – or servants, he couldn’t tell – ate at the same table as their mistress, a big, dark table worn to a finish like the black glaze of the Athens potters.
He ate and ate. The stew grew on him; he’d been eating whatever his mess cooked up on various beaches for weeks. The wine was acidic, but hardy. The bread was excellent.
‘My compliments to your cook,’ Satyrus said.
The four Bastarnae girls all tittered among themselves.
‘You will stay the night?’ Penelope asked.
‘Yes, despoina,’ Satyrus answered.
‘Do not, on any account, try to have sex with my girls. Teax is young enough, and silly enough, to warm your bed – but I can’t afford to lose her or feed her baby. Understand, young sir?’ Penelope’s hard voice was a far cry from her apparent weakness earlier. Satyrus concluded she was a different woman in front of her staff. A commander.
‘Yes, despoina,’ Satyrus said.
Penelope raised an eyebrow. ‘You are a most courteous guest, to obey the whims of an old woman.’
Satyrus went back to eating his soup. Talkes, the overseer, watched every move he made.
Satyrus was just reaching for a third helping of stew when there was a rattle at the gate of the yard.
‘Open up in there.’ The voice was sing-song, as if a clown or a mime was demanding entry.
Talkes looked at his mistress.
Penelope stood up and looked at Satyrus. ‘I’ll hide you,’ she said. It was a simple statement of fact. She took his hand and led him up into the exedra. She opened a heavy wooden chest and pulled out a quilted wool mattress, which she shook out and placed on her bed. She had his sword, and she handed it to him.
‘Get in,’ she said.
‘I could—’ he began.
‘You could get us all killed. Now get in.’ She held the lid and he climbed in, clutching his sword between his hands. He just fitted, with his ankles pulled almost under his head. The position hurt, and it hurt even more a few minutes later, when the screams in the courtyard began.
The next hour was the longest, and worst, of Satyrus’s life. His curse was that he could hear everything. He heard the men in the courtyard, the mime’s voice mocking Penelope, the soldiers spreading out to
search, the sounds of breaking crockery. He heard himself betrayed by the old slave up the road, and by the blood and offal he’d left cleaning the rabbit.
He heard the clown voice threaten Talkes, and he heard the same voice threaten to sell Penelope into slavery.
‘Or I could give you what your father got, stupid woman. Where is he?
Where is he?
’ The man sounded honestly angry.
‘Do as you will,’ Penelope said. ‘When Lysimachos comes, you are a dead man.’
‘All you dirt farmers sound the same sad song. Look, slut, your precious satrap is
not
coming. I’m lord here now. Eumeles is king of the Euxine and I’ll be archon here. Want me to burn the house? Tell me where this man is.’ The sing-song voice sounded unnatural, like a priest or an oracle.
‘Nothing in the barns!’ shouted another man, deeper voiced.
‘Search the upstairs – the exedra. Slash every mattress and dump the loom. Everything!’ clown-voice said.
‘Two slave girls in the cellar. No men.’ Another deep voice, this with the accent of the Getae.
‘Let’s see ’em!’ came a shout, and then there were hoots, catcalls. More broken crockery and the sound of screams, and two men were in the exedra with him, searching. He could hear them poking around, he could
smell
the results as they broke a perfume jar. And below, he could hear Teax being raped – catcalls, sobs.
‘May all of you rot from inside! May pigs eat your eyes!’ Penelope screamed.
‘Shut up, bitch, or you’ll be next.’ A laugh, and more laughing.
‘I want a piece of that,’ said a voice near his box.
His knees burned like fire and his sense of his own cowardice rose like the fumes of wine to fill his head.
If I were worth a shit, I would rise from this box and kill my way through these men or die trying
, he thought. He clutched his borrowed sword, prepared to kill the man who opened the chest.
‘Athena’s curse on you, man with the voice of a woman!’ Penelope’s voice, strained with rage and terror, carried clearly. ‘May your innards rot. May you never know the love of a woman. May jackals root in your innards while you still have eyes to see. May worms eat your eyes. May all your children die before you.’
Teax screamed again.
‘Why are we up here? The fucker’s long gone – if he was ever here.’ The deeper voice kicked the box where Satyrus lay.
Penelope screamed.
‘Burn it,’ clown-voice said in the courtyard. ‘Kill them all. Stupid fucking peasants.’
They lit the roof, but the beams never caught, and Satyrus crept from his box and dragged himself, his legs unusable, down the stairs to the courtyard, heedless of the danger. But poor as they were at arson, they were skilled at killing. Penelope lay in a black pool of blood, so fresh that it glittered in the fitful light of the burning roof, and Teax lay naked. The look on her face – the horror, the terror, the loss of hope – burned itself into his brain. He closed her eyes, fouling his legs with her blood, and he threw his good wool chlamys over her.
Talkes was still alive. Someone had rammed a spear right through his guts, but he was alive when Satyrus found him.