Killer of Men (22 page)

When I reached the courtyard, Hipponax was standing stony-faced, staring at a man dressed in the same green chlamys I’d worn a few days previously. Briseis was screaming, her face contorted, all her beauty gone. Penelope was trying to drag her away.

The herald backed out of the gate.

Penelope looked terrified. Briseis’s face was the face of a fury, deep lines carved across her smooth brows as she wailed with screams of pain. Her father glanced at her and turned away. Poor man. He had nothing to offer her. Gods send that I never be in his place.

Archi tried to hold her and she began to fight him, and she landed a blow – a foul blow. She was a good fighter, that girl. Down he went, and then she spat like a wild cat and raked her nails across Penelope’s chest – I thought they were her nails – and blood flowed.

She screamed again.

I thought she was having a fit. I took her down. I wasn’t her brother, and much as I thought I was in love with her, she was a danger to everyone in the yard. I swept her feet and held her arms and put her down on the ground hard enough to drive all the breath from her. She had the strength of a goddess but no
palaestra
skills, and on her way to the ground I rolled her in the end of her own peplos to pin her arms. She ripped her left arm free and her nails drew blood from my cheek and neck.

But when she wrenched her head back with superhuman strength, a hand shot out and smacked her across the face – once and then again.

‘Silence, girl!’ her mother said.

I had not seen Euthalia in days. She was neatly dressed in sombre colours, and she did not look as if her life had ended.

Briseis sat back on her haunches and the daimon left her. I saw it leave her eyes. It takes one to know one. But then the bitterness exploded.

‘It’s your fault, you faithless bitch!’ she said to her mother. ‘He called me a whore! Diomedes called me a whore! In public! Now I’ll die barren. He’s broken the marriage contract.’ She didn’t cry. Crying would have been better than her imperious self-pity. ‘If you hadn’t been so busy riding the Persian’s cock-bird, I might be a matron.’

Euthalia’s hand shot out and snapped her daughter’s head back again. ‘Be civil or take the consequences,’ she said.

‘I can’t even blame him!’ Briseis cried, and for the first time her voice cracked and she began to sob instead of scream. ‘My mother’s a whore! I’ll be a whore too! I should kill myself!’

Penelope was cowering. She had a bad scratch across her breast and her Doric chiton was filling with blood. She was sitting on a step crying. I saw now that Briseis had a pin in her hand. She had ripped Penelope with it, and me too, I realized.

Euthalia reached into her bosom and her right hand came out with a knife in it. ‘Here,’ she said. ‘Get on with it.’

This was the family that I had so envied when I joined them.

Briseis picked up the knife and ran her thumb across it like a man getting ready for sacrifice. Then she stepped towards her mother, and I felt that her intentions were plain.

I stepped in on her and raised my left hand as Cyrus had taught me. She tracked the hand with the knife and not the body, and I caught her wrist and disarmed her. She got the pin into my chest, but the gold bent and I only took a finger’s breadth. It was cold in my chest, and the pain made me want to kill her.

Just for a moment, the pain and the urge to kill balanced against the knowledge that this was
Briseis
. She saw the daimon come into my eyes and her own widened. As I have said, it takes one to know one. But those eyes saved her, and I took control of my body with my left hand closed around her throat.

Her mother was shaken. Close up, I could see that her hair was not dressed and she was not herself. But she would not relent. ‘Take the knife and finish it,’ she mocked. ‘You think your life is ruined, little princess? Perhaps it is time a dose of reality came into your life. You despised Diomedes when you had him. You are
acting
. There is a world bigger than that inside your head.
Wake up
.’

Archi stepped in between them. I still had Briseis, and she had dropped her gold pin of her own volition.

‘Take her to her room,’ he said. He nodded to me. Suddenly, we were allies. I obeyed, lifting Briseis and carrying her. Penelope came after us. She was holding her side. She got ahead of me and led the way, which was as well, as I had no idea where Briseis’s room was.

Briseis put her arms around my neck and let me carry her without struggle. She smelled of jasmine and mint. It was hard to imagine, while carrying her, that she had just intended to kill her mother with a knife.

We pushed though a curtain of glass beads into a room painted in scenes of gods and goddesses – fine work. Archi’s room was plain white, with a border of Hera’s eyes painted around the cornice. Briseis’s room had all the gods done as vignettes. Hera stood with mighty Zeus – a loving couple, painted as her mother and father. Her brother was Apollo with a lyre, and she was Artemis with a bow. Penelope was Aphrodite, and Darkar was a mighty Pluton. Diomedes was painted as a young and rather ambiguous Ares, and then I saw that I, too, was in the pantheon, as Heracles, a club on my shoulder and a lion skin draped over me. I didn’t know the rest of the figures, but it was good work. Excellent work. The figure of Aphrodite-Penelope was unfinished, and the paints were there along one wall. The room smelled of marble dust and ox-blood.

Despite everything – adultery, betrayal, drama – I stopped and looked at the paintings on the wall. I took in the paint pots and the smell.

‘Your work?’ I asked Penelope, amazed.

‘Hers,’ Penelope said. ‘I need a bandage,’ she said, and fled.

I laid Briseis on her bed. She was crying. I knew that sound. That was despair. The sound new slaves make when they are taken. The sound you make when your life is taken away from you.

I actually pitied her. So I put a hand on her back.

‘It will get better,’ I said.

She rolled over, and her eyes held anger, not sorrow. ‘Kill him for me!’ she said. ‘Kill Diomedes!’

You have no idea what it is like to be alone with Briseis. I didn’t slap her or run from the room.

But neither did I agree. ‘I cannot kill him for you, despoina,’ I said. I remember smiling. ‘But I could hurt him for you.’

She brightened immediately. ‘You could?’ she asked. ‘Really hurt him?’

She reached out and took my hand, and a flame licked me from my palm to my groin and up to my head.

‘If I hurt him, will you stop this foolishness of hating your mother?’ I asked. ‘Diomedes is a piece or horse shit. You lost nothing in losing him. Your mother did you a favour.’

Her eyes widened. ‘I had never thought of that,’ she said. Her hand was still stroking mine. ‘I know Archi hates him. And he tried to hurt you, didn’t he? He bragged of it to me. And Penelope said you were too tough to be hurt by a thug.’ She smiled at me.

Oh, the flattery of a beautiful woman. Let’s look at this as adults, thugater. She never wanted Diomedes, but she was dutiful enough – she certainly wanted to be an adult, and she liked the attention. But being jilted was turning out to be
better
. More drama.

Who wants to play the dutiful wife when you can be Medea? And I played into her hands – all reasonable, knowing and male. Zeus Soter, honey, she played me like a
kithara
.

I pulled my hand out of hers and left the room. Then I went to find Archi.

He was making love to Penelope.

I found Darkar instead. ‘See to Briseis,’ I said. And then I understood. ‘You knew Archi was doing Penelope!’ I said.

He nodded. And shrugged.

I shrugged back. ‘Thanks for trying to keep it from me, anyway,’ I said. ‘I suppose. But I know.’

Darkar looked at me for a moment. ‘Come into my office,’ he said. And when I was in, he closed the door. His office was a tiny room under the cellar stairs where he did the household accounts.

‘You seem to know everything.’ He paused. ‘Listen, boy. You have a level head. If we aren’t careful, this household will fall apart. And if it does – if Master kills Mistress, if Briseis kills herself – we will all be sold. Understand me? It is not just our duty to keep them all apart until things get better – it’s for our own skins, too.’

‘Ares!’ I said. ‘Is it that bad?’

‘I drugged Master’s wine the night – the night it happened. And every night since.’ Darkar had hollows under his eyes. ‘He’s going to kill her.’

‘We should give him something else to think about,’ I said. ‘Like war with Persia.’

Darkar shook his head. ‘I thought that would happen, but it’s worse, not better.’

I shrugged. I was seventeen, and I didn’t want to be responsible for the happiness of a household. ‘I have a task to do,’ I said.

Darkar nodded. ‘Can I count on you?’ he asked.

‘I swore an oath to Artemis to support them,’ I said.

He smiled. ‘Good man. Go on your errand. What did she tell you to do?’

‘She told me to kill Diomedes,’ I said.

He stroked his beard. ‘You can’t kill him.’

‘But I can hurt him,’ I said.

‘His father would have you killed,’ he said.

‘Not if Archi comes with me,’ I said. ‘I’m waiting for him to finish consoling Penelope.’

Darkar was a hard man. His eyes glinted in the lamplight. ‘That would help the household,’ he said. ‘People will know we are still standing. I approve.’ He looked at me. ‘You could still end up dead, though.’

I laughed. Even then, I had begun to feel the power. I was not going to die in some night squabble in Ephesus.

An hour later, Archi was done with Penelope, and I walked in on them with a clean chiton for her and clothes for him.

It may have been the most courageous moment of my life. It was hard to meet her eyes – she was naked, entwined breast to breast with him, and all but purring. She had wept and been comforted. And they smelled of sex.

‘Master, I need you now.’ I tossed clothes and a towel at Penelope. ‘I am sorry to intrude.’ I raised a hand – something a slave never does – and silenced my master. ‘I have consulted with Darkar. We need to strike Diomedes. We need to show the city that we are not dead as a household. He insulted your sister. He might have broken the match in a dignified manner, but he
called her a whore
. Let’s punish him.’

Archi met my eye and smiled. Bless him, he understood immediately. ‘This is for my sister?’ he said.

‘For all of us,’ I said. ‘For your mother, too.’

Penelope looked at us. ‘You are a
slave
!’ she said. ‘You cannot punish a free man!’

I ignored her.

Archi nodded. ‘Let’s get him. How do you propose we do it?’

‘He’ll be in the agora or the gymnasium bragging – shaming her and excusing himself. You know him – you know what he’ll do. On and on, to everyone he meets. We take Kylix as a spy. He’ll watch the fucker. We follow him when he leaves for his dinner, catch him in a street and beat the shit out of him.’ Pardon my language, honey – that’s how men speak when they are ready for violence.

Archi pulled a chiton over his head and I pinned it for him. Penelope was wiping herself with the towel. I watched her. She turned her back and blushed.

Archi took his new sword from a peg on the wall. I shook my head. In those days, I assumed that every man had the same daimon I had. ‘We aren’t going to kill him, master,’ I said.

‘He has thugs,’ Archi said. Of course, I’d been going back and forth to the Persian camp for weeks. I’d missed a change. Diomedes’ father, Agasides, had hired him a pair of Thracians as guards. In fact, like most of the gentlemen of the city, he was hiring bodyguards to increase his fighting strength if Persia came, but Diomedes flaunted his pair of Thracians everywhere.

I rubbed my chin. ‘We can’t just kill his thugs?’ I asked. ‘Your father—’

Archi shook this off. ‘You have the right of it, Doru. We need to strike back. Just killing his thugs might be enough. But we have to get them, or they’ll keep us off him. Right?’

Youth has its own logic. It isn’t like the logic of the assembly or even the phalanx. Archi was angry, and Penelope had made him brave – and she was right there, bolstering his desire to be strong. In youth logic, we had to put those men down.

Poor bastards. A pair of Thracian slaves with clubs. It was three hours later, and Diomedes was heading home. He’d bragged so long and so loud about the insult he’d given us that we’d heard him in the agora, ranting like an orator. Kylix tracked him for us, and we were waiting when he turned off the broad Avenue of the Artemision and cut up the hill through an alley that ran between the looming walls of rich men’s yards.

Diomedes saw me first. I was lounging against a wall, cleaning my nails with a knife that Cyrus had given me in my bag of gifts.

‘Look who it is,’ he said. ‘The cock-licker! Get him, boys!’

Sometimes, the gods are kind. And hubris is the worst of sins. Diomedes had, in a single day, spurned a guest-friendship, broken a solemn vow and bragged of it in the public places.

The two Thracians were big men, and tattooed like warriors, although slavers often tattoo a peasant to get a better price.

They split up and came at me quickly, no nonsense, one on either side. I backed past the gatehouse of the next house and then turned and attacked, going for the Thracian on the left. The thug on the right tried to take me in the flank and Archi emerged from the shadow of the gatehouse and gutted him.

It was Archi’s first kill, and it took him out of the fight. He just stood there, blood dripping from his blade, as the man writhed and screamed from the thrust into his kidneys.

The other man swung his club, and I backed away a step as they taught in Persia and Greece both, and then I swayed in and cut his wrist with the knife, and he dropped the club, but I was still moving – right foot past left foot, down cut – and suddenly he was sitting in the street with his guts around him.

I don’t think they had earned their tattoos. I fought Thracians later – real Thracians – and they were, and are, scary bastards who will swing at you when their lungs are full of blood.