Killer of Men

by Christian Cameron

  They were soldiers, of course. Soldiers came to the shrine from all over Boeotia, because the word was that the shrine and the spring provided healing to men of war. I think it was Calchas who healed them. He talked and they listened, and they went away lighter by a few darics and some care. Sometimes he’d get drunk afterwards, but mostly he’d go and say some prayers at the shrine of the hero, and then he’d make us some barley gruel.

  His food was terrible, and always the same – black bread, bean broth without meat, water. I’ve lived in a Spartan mess group and eaten better. At the time I cared little. Food was fuel.

  Calchas had fascinating things in his hut. He had an aspis as fine as Pater’s – a great bowl of bronze and wood, with a snake painted in red and a hundred dents in the surface. He had a sword – a long sword with a narrow blade, nothing like Pater’s long knife. He had a dull helmet – a simple one, not a fancy Corinthian like Pater’s – and his cuirass consisted of layers of white leather scarred and scuffed and patched a hundred times without a scrap of bronze to brighten it. He had a fine hunting spear, beautifully made by a master, with a long tapering point of steel, chased and carefully inlaid in the Median style, and a bow of foreign work with a quiver of arrows.

  He was content to let me touch it all, which I was never allowed with Pater’s kit. All except the bow.

  So naturally, I had to steal the bow.

  It wasn’t hard. His hut had one piece of ornamentation – a window made from panes of horn pressed thin and flat. It let light in, in the winter, and it was beautifully crafted, the gift of some rich patron. It was made to pivot on a pair of bronze pintles cunningly fashioned. Calchas used to laugh about it. He called it the ‘Gate of Horn’ and said all his dreams came through it – and he also called it the ‘Lord’s Window’. ‘A foolish thing to have in a peasant’s hut,’ he said, although that window alone allowed me to read in the winter.

  I had soon learned that I could get in and out of that window. I whittled a stick with my sharp iron knife so that I could prise the window open from outside. I waited till he was drunk, then got in and took the bow and quiver and ran off up one of the hundreds of paths that led from the clearing by the spring. I found my way to a small meadow with an old stump, spotted on an earlier ramble, and my adventure came to an end when I tried to string the bow. I spent the afternoon striving against the power of a man’s weapon and I failed.

  So I carried the bow and quiver back down the mountain and sneaked them into his hut, returning the bow to the peg where it hung.

  After lessons the next day, I said, ‘Master, I took your bow.’

  He was putting away the stylus and the wax sheets he made. He turned so fast that I flinched.

  ‘Where is it?’ he asked.

  ‘On its peg,’ I said. I hung my head. ‘I couldn’t string it.’

  I never saw his hand move, but suddenly my ear hurt – hurt like fire. ‘That’s for disobedience,’ he said calmly. ‘You want to shoot the bow?’

  ‘Yes!’ I said. I think I was crying.

  He nodded. ‘I’m sending you for more wine,’ he said. ‘When you come back, perhaps we’ll make a bow you can shoot.’ He paused. ‘And we’ll do the dances. The military dances. Now, what letter is this?’ he drew one, and I said ‘Omicron.’

  ‘Good boy,’ he said.

  My ear still hurt, all thirty stades home.

  My brother was working in the forge, and he didn’t like it. It’s odd, being brothers. We were alike in so many ways – and we were always friends, even when we were angry – but we wanted different things. He wanted to be a warrior, a nobleman with a retinue and deer hounds. He wanted the life Mater wanted for him. And all I wanted to be was a master smith. Irony is the lord of all, honey. I got what he wanted, and he got a few feet of dirt. But he was a good boy, and he was in the forge doing the job that I would have sold my soul to do. That’s the way of it when you are young.

  I showed Mater my letters and sang her the first hundred lines of the Iliad, which Calchas had also taught me, and she nodded and kissed my cheek and gave me a silver pin.

  ‘At least one of my sons will grow up a gentleman,’ she said. ‘Tell me of this Calchas.’

  So I did. I told her all I knew about him, which proved, under her Medusa-like glare, to be little enough. But she smiled when I said he ate black bread and bean soup.

  ‘An aristocrat, then,’ she said happily. Not my idea of an aristocrat, but Mater knew some things better than her eight-year-old child.

  I stayed at home for two days while Pater gathered some wine. I helped in the forge and saw that my brother had already learned a few things. He’d made a bowl from copper and he was scribing it with a stylus – just simple lines, but to me it looked wonderful.

  He pulled it from my hand, threw it across the forge and burst into tears. And we embraced, and swore to swap when Pater and Calchas wouldn’t know. It wasn’t an oath either of us meant – we knew we’d never fool an adult – and yet it seemed to comfort us, and I’ve long wondered about which god listened to that oath.

  There were changes. Mater was better – that was obvious. The house was clean, the maids were singing and my sister smiled all the time. We had a new slave family – a young man, a Thracian, and his slave wife and their new baby. He didn’t speak much Greek, and Bion didn’t like him, and the man had a big bruise on his face where someone had knocked him down hard. His wife was pretty, and men in the forge yard watched her when she served them wine. Not that Pater allowed anything to happen. That’s where you really betray your slaves, thugater. But I get ahead of myself.

  The talk in the forge yard was louder than when I’d left, even two months before, and it was cold outside, so there was a fire in the pit. Skira – the Thracian’s wife – served wine with good grace, and her husband worked the bellows while Bion made a pot. The men in the yard talked about Thebes and plans for the coming Daidala. It was just three years away. Pater was suddenly an important man.

  We had a donkey. We’d never had a donkey before, and Pater said he’d send Hermogenes with the donkey to carry the wine for me. That sounded good.

  But the donkey and the wine and Hermogenes took time to prepare, and it became clear that I wasn’t going back to Calchas on the second day, either. Which was fine by me. The ‘loafers’ were all gathered. Draco had built Epictetus a new wagon, and had it standing by the gate ready for delivery. It was even taller, broader and heavier, the wheels just narrow enough to fit in the ruts of the road. We were all admiring it when a stranger turned into our lane from the main road. He was riding a horse, as was his companion.

  I think, honey, because you know a world where every man of substance has a horse, that I have to stop here and say that though I’d seen horses by the age of eight, I’d never touched one. No one I knew had a horse. Horses were for aristocrats. Farmers used oxen. A rich farmer might have a donkey. Horses did nothing but carry men, and farmers had legs. I don’t think ten families in Plataea owned a horse, and there were two of them coming up our lane.

  They had cloaks and boots, both of them. They were clearly master and man – the master had a chlamys of Tyrian red with a white stripe, and a chiton to match, milk white with a red stripe at the hem. He had red hair like my brother but even brighter, and a big beard like a priest. He wore a sword that you could see, even at the distance of a horse’s length, was mounted in gold.

  All conversation stopped.

  Listen, thugater. In the Boeotia of my youth, we bitched quite a lot about aristocrats. Men knew that there were aristocrats – we had our own basileus, after all, although he didn’t have a gold-mounted sword, I can tell you. And local men knew that Mater was the daughter of a basileus. But this was the genuine article. Frankly, he looked more like a god than most statues I’d seen. He was the tallest man there by more than a finger’s breadth. And I knew nothing of horses, but his big bay looked like a creature out of story.

  I still think of that man. I can see him in my m
ind’s eye. I’ll tell you a truth – I worshipped him. I still do. Even now, I try to be him when I’m ‘lording it’ over some court case or petty tyrant.

  Even his servant looked better than we did – in a fine chlamys of dark blue wool with a stripe of red and a white chiton. He didn’t have a sword, but he had a leather satchel under his arm and his horse was as noble as his master’s.

  And yet, this god among men slipped from his horse’s back and bowed. ‘I seek the house of the bronze-smith of Plataea,’ he said politely. ‘Can any of you gentlemen help me?’

  Myron bowed deeply. ‘Lord,’ he said, ‘Chalkeotechnes the smith is working. We are merely his friends.’

  The red-haired god smiled. ‘Is that wine I see?’ he asked. ‘I’d be happy to pay for a cup.’

  None of my family was there. I stepped forward. ‘No guest of this house should pay for his wine,’ I said in the voice of a boy. ‘Pardon, lord. Skira, a cup and good wine for our guest.’

  Skira scampered off, and the red-haired man followed her with his eyes. Then he looked at me. ‘You are a courteous lad,’ he said.

  Boys don’t talk back to lords. I blushed and was silent until Skira came back with a fine bronze cup and wine. I poured for the man, and he cast much the same look over the cup as he did over Skira.

  He drank in silence, sharing with his man. Some of the loafers began to talk again, but they were subdued in his presence, until he slapped the wagon. ‘Nice,’ he said. ‘Nice and big. Well made.’

  ‘Thanks,’ Draco said. ‘I made him.’

  ‘How much for the wagon?’ the man said.

  ‘Already sold,’ Draco answered in the voice of a peasant who knows that he’s just lost the chance of a lifetime.

  ‘So build me another,’ the man said. ‘What did you charge for this one?’

  ‘Thirty drachmas,’ Draco said.

  ‘Meaning you charged fifteen, doubled it for my gold-hilt sword, and you’ll be happy to make me two wagons like this for forty.’ The man smiled like a fox, and I suddenly knew who he must be. He was Odysseus. He was like Odysseus come to life.

  Draco wanted to splutter, but the man was so smooth – and so pleasant – that it was hard to gainsay him. ‘As you say, lord,’ Draco said.

  And then Pater came.

  He still had his leather apron on. He came out into the yard, saw the wine in the man’s hand and flashed me a rare smile of reward.

  ‘You wanted me, lord?’ he asked.

  ‘Do you know Epictetus?’

  ‘I count him a friend,’ Pater said.

  ‘He showed me a helmet in Athens. I rode over the mountain to have you make me one.’ The man was half a head taller than Pater. ‘And greaves.’

  Pater’s brow furrowed. ‘There are better smiths in Athens,’ he said.

  The man shook his head. ‘I don’t think so. But I’m here, so unless you don’t like the look of me, I’d thank you to start work tomorrow. I have a ship to catch at Corinth.’

  ‘Won’t the captain wait for you, lord?’ Pater asked.

  ‘I am the captain,’ the man said. He grinned. He had the happiest smile I’d seen on a grown man. ‘I sent them round from Athens.’

  I don’t think any of us had ever seen a man rich enough to own a ship before. The man held out his hand to Pater.

  ‘Technes of Plataea,’ Pater said.

  ‘Men call me Miltiades,’ the lord said.

  It was a name we all recognized, even then. The warlord of the Chersonese, his exploits were well known. For us, it was like having Achilles ride through our gate.

  ‘Oh, fame is a fine thing,’ he said, and his servant laughed with him while we stood around like the bumpkins we were.

  Pater made him a helmet and greaves, right enough. And Miltiades stayed for three days while Pater did the work and chased and repoussed stags and lions on to his order. I saw the helmet often enough in later years, but I didn’t get to stay to see it made. I was shipped back to dull old Calchas with the wine.

  I did carry with me one gem. That night, my brother and I lay on the floor in the room over the andron and listened to the men talk – Miltiades and Epictetus and Myron and Pater. Miltiades taught them how to have symposia without offending – taught them some poetry, showed them how to mix their wine, and never, ever let on that he was slumming with peasants. It’s a fine talent if you have it. Men call it the common touch when they are jealous. There was nothing common with Miltiades. He was, as I said, like a god on earth for the pleasure of his company and the power of his glance. He gave unstintingly of himself and men loved to follow him.

  He talked to the men about alliance with Athens. I was eight years old, and I understood immediately that he didn’t need a new helmet. He probably had ten helmets hanging from the rafters of his hall in the Chersonese. Mind you, as it turned out, he wore that helmet for the rest of his life – so he liked it. And it always put me in mind of my father, later, and what my father might have been.

  Aye, those are tears, little lady. We’re coming to the bad part.

  But not yet. Aye. Not yet. So we listened as they talked – almost plotted, but not quite. The talk was pretty general and never got down to cases. Miltiades told them how valuable an alliance with Plataea could be to the democrats in Athens, and how much more they had in common. And they listened, spellbound.

  And so did I.

  Then, late in the evening – I think I’d been asleep – Miltiades was making a point about trade when he stopped and raised his kylix. ‘I drink to your son Arimnestos,’ Miltiades said. ‘A handsome boy with the spirit of a lord. He guested me and sent a slave for wine as if he’d hosted a dozen like me. I doubt that I’d have done half as well at his age.’

  Pater laughed and the moment passed, but I would have died for Miltiades then. Of course, I almost did. Later.

  And the next day I went back to my priest on the mountain, and it seemed as if all hope of glory was lost.

  3

  I spent the winter with Calchas. He made me a bow. It wasn’t a very good bow, but with it I learned to shoot squirrels and threaten songbirds. And he took me hunting when the winter was far enough along.

  I still love to hunt, and I owe it to that man. In fact, he taught me more than Miltiades ever did about how to be a lord. We went up the mountain, rising before the sun and running along the trails through the woods after rabbit or deer. He killed a wolf with his bow, and made me carry the carcass home.

  The thing I remember best from that winter is the sight of blood on the snow. I had no idea how much blood an animal has in it. Oh, honey, I’d seen goats and sheep slaughtered, I’d seen the spray of blood at sacrifice. But to do it myself . . .

  I remember killing a deer – a small buck. My first. I hit it with a javelin, more by luck than anything. How Calchas laughed at my surprise. And suddenly, from being big, at least to me, it seemed so small as it lay panting in the snow with my javelin in its guts. It had eyes – it was alive.

  At Calchas’s prompting, I took the iron knife that I’d earned with a beating, and I grabbed the buck’s head and slashed at its throat. It must have taken me eight or ten passes – the poor animal. May Artemis send that I never torment a creature like that again. Its eyes never left me as it died, and there was blood everywhere. It flowed and flowed over me – warm and sticky and then cold and cloying, like guilt. When you get blood under your nails, you can only scrape it out with a knife, did you know that? There’s a moral there, I suspect.

  And I was kneeling in snow – cold on bare knees. The snow filled with the blood like a brilliant red flower. It transported me. It seemed to me to carry a message. There’s a philosopher teaching at Miletus these days who says that a man’s soul is in his blood. I have no trouble seeing it.

  Yes – the story.

  I learned letters, day by day and week by week. When I could make out words on papyrus, the rhythm of our days changed. We would hunt until the sun was high in the sky – or just walk the woods –
climbing up and up on Cithaeron until my legs burned as if the fire of the forge was flowing in my ankles, and then back down to the hut to read by the good light of day. And every day we did the dance – the Pyrrhiche. First naked, and then in armour when I was older.

  It was a good life.

  By spring, I was bigger and much stronger, and I could go out in snow wearing a chiton and come back with a rabbit. I understood the tracks animals made in the snow and what they meant, and I understood the tracks men made on paper and what they meant. Once I got it, I got it – I may have been the slowest starter in the history of reading, but after the first winter, I had Hesiod down pat and was off on the Odyssey. Of course it is easier to read a thing when you’ve listened to the story all your life – of course it is, honey. But I loved to read.

  When the snow had gone from the hills and the sun grew warm, Calchas stopped hunting. We’d eaten more meat than I’d ever had in my life, but he said that spring was sacred to Artemis, when animals came down from the high places to mate. ‘I won’t kill again till the feast of Demeter,’ he said. And his lip curled. ‘Unless it’s a man.’

  Oh, yes.

  The man he killed came to rob us. It was six months since I’d been home and Calchas had me running every morning before the sun was up, running and running on the trails behind the shrine. So I was running when the thief came, and the first I knew was when I came back into the clearing, naked and warm, and found Calchas with a sword in his hand. The thief had a machaira, a big knife or a short sword, depending on how you saw it. From where I stood, it was huge.

  ‘Stay well clear, boy,’ Calchas called out to me.

  So I ran around the man. He sounded desperate. ‘Just give me the money,’ he said.

  ‘No,’ Calchas said. He laughed.

  I was getting a chill. It wasn’t summer, and I was naked. And the man with the sword had the same desperation in his voice I had heard from Simon.

  Calchas backed away to the tomb and the thief followed him. ‘Just give me the money!’ he shouted.