Tyrant: King of the Bosporus

by Christian Cameron

  The next two days saw Satyrus recover and retch by turns, his muscles refusing their duty in the middle of the simplest actions. He spent the daylight hours lying in the pale winter sun on his balcony. Sometimes he imagined that he could see the incorporeal image of his god standing over him, and other times he shook his head at the curious effects of his illness on his mind. Nearchus had found him a boy-slave, Helios, a native of Amphipolis enslaved when his parents took him on a sea voyage, and the boy waited on him with a solicitousness seldom found in a slave.

  Satyrus sat in the sun, a scroll of Herodotus in his hands. He couldn’t get through the words, even the words that dealt with the stand of the Hellenes at Plataea, the climax of Herodotus’s great work.

  ‘How long have you been a slave?’ Satyrus asked.

  The boy considered. ‘Four years,’ he said. ‘I was taken in the spring of the year that Cassander killed the queen.’

  Satyrus smiled, because even in his current state, he knew that the boy meant Olympias, the witch-queen of Macedon. An enemy. One enemy fewer.

  ‘Were you – ill-used?’ he asked. ‘By the pirates?’ ‘Not by the pirates,’ Helios said in a matter-of-fact voice. ‘But they killed my parents.’

  Satyrus nodded. ‘Do you know the name of the pirate who took you?’ Satyrus asked.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ the boy said. ‘We were taken by Demostrate. His crew killed my parents because they fought. He apologized to me.’ The boy gave a steady smile.

  Nearchus and Sappho were sending him a message. His brain took this in through the fog of pain and wretchedness – this boy was their vote of disapproval of his alliance with the pirate king.

  ‘Would you care to come to sea with me, boy?’ he asked.

  Helios beamed like his namesake, the sun, and his Thracian-blond hair glowed in the sun. ‘Oh, yes!’ he said.

  Satyrus lay back, exhausted by the exchange. ‘If I take you to sea, and teach you to fight, will you serve me for four years?’

  Helios shrugged. ‘I’m a slave,’ he said. But then he smiled. ‘I’d love to go to sea,’ he said.

  Satyrus realized that he’d left the important part of the offer unsaid. He tried to formulate it in his mind, but it was slipping away. ‘Never mind,’ he said, and fell asleep.

  The next time he was awake, Nearchus sat by his bed and fed him soup – wonderful goat stew, with spices and dumplings.

  Then he threw it all up.

  Helios cleaned him.

  Then he threw up again.

  Helios cleaned him again, patiently getting every fleck of his disgusting vomit out of his long hair, his eyelashes, his pubic hair.

  Satyrus drank water and went to sleep.

  Later he awoke and it was dark. He moved on his couch, and he heard an answering movement and felt the boy’s body move against him. ‘I’m sorry,’ Helios said. ‘You were shivering.’

  Satyrus stretched – and was not hit by a muscle spasm. ‘Helios,’ he whispered, ‘do you think we could try a little soup?’

  Lamps were lit all over the house before ten minutes had elapsed on the water clock. Nearchus came in, wearing a Persian robe. He put a hand on Satyrus’s forehead, and then on his stomach. ‘By Hermes and all the gods,’ he said.

  Helios came in from the kitchen with a bowl of soup. He sat on the bed and spooned it into his master.

  Satyrus ate sparingly, although he wanted to drink the bowl and call for another, and he lay back on the bed consumed with hunger.

  Half an hour passed, and the food was still in his stomach. Nearchus shrugged. ‘I was off by a day,’ he said. ‘You’ll recover quickly now.’

  Helios brought a brazier and lit it to heat a copper pot with stew brought from the kitchen. Every half-hour he gave his master another twenty spoons of soup.

  ‘Free you,’ Satyrus said. ‘If I – free you? And take you to sea? Four years? Need a servant,’ he said.

  Helios grinned. ‘Of course,’ he said. And more quietly, ‘I knew what you meant,’ he said. ‘I just had to hear you say it.’ He burst into tears. ‘People make promises,’ he said.

  Satyrus found himself patting the boy’s head. I hated it when Philokles did this to me, he thought.

  Helios looked up. ‘A man came – an Aegyptian man in the robes of a priest. He brought you a bundle.’

  ‘Go and fetch it for me,’ Satyrus said.

  In moments it was unrolled, to reveal his father’s sword – perhaps just a touch shorter, Satyrus thought, but it was superb, and the metal was now a bright blue, almost purple at the point, so that the blade glittered with icy malevolence.

  ‘Run me an errand?’ Satyrus said to Helios. ‘Go to Sappho and get a mina of gold. Take Hama and two soldiers as an escort, and go to the Temple of Poseidon. Deliver the gold to Namastis, the priest. If he wants you to come, escort him wherever he leads you.’

  Helios was staring at the sword. ‘One day, I want a sword like that,’ he said.

  ‘One day, I’ll get you one,’ Satyrus allowed. ‘Now run along.’

  The next day, Nearchus sat on an iron stool in his room, grinding powders at his window. ‘I use this room to make drugs when you are away,’ he said. ‘I hope you don’t mind. You have the best light.’

  Satyrus grinned. ‘I’m not really in a position to resent anything you do, doctor.’

  Nearchus nodded and kept grinding. ‘So I assumed. Do you still want Phiale?’

  Satyrus’s grin fled. ‘Yes,’ he said grimly. ‘Has anyone ever been convicted on the evidence of a dream, do you think?’ he asked.

  Nearchus shrugged. ‘I would assume it happens,’ he said. ‘Dreams have power.’

  Satyrus’s eyes grew hard. ‘I wish to investigate the course of a dream,’ he said. ‘Does Phiale still keep the same maidservant at her house?’

  Nearchus looked up from his pestle and mortar. ‘Yes,’ he said.

  ‘Same woman she had when I was – that is, when I was a client?’ Satyrus asked.

  Nearchus was back at his work. ‘I wasn’t in this household then,’ he said. ‘A small woman, dark hair, would be pretty if she did not look so hard?’

  ‘Fair enough description of Alcaea,’ Satyrus said. ‘She’s got a tattoo on her left wrist.’

  Nearchus shrugged while working. ‘I’ve never examined her wrists.’

  Satyrus waved to Helios, who was sitting against the wall. ‘Can you read and write, boy?’ he asked.

  Helios nodded. ‘Well enough,’ he said. ‘Greek and a little of the temple script, as well.’

  ‘Really?’ Satyrus asked. ‘How nice. You are full of surprises. I need you to run me an errand.’

  Helios nodded. He stood.

  ‘Go and find Alcaea. She works for the hetaira Phiale. See if you can get to know her a little. Then see if you can find out where she was, hmm, perhaps two nights ago.’

  Nearchus raised an eyebrow. ‘That’s a tall order for a slave.’

  Satyrus lay back. ‘I’ve promised him his freedom,’ he said. ‘Let him earn it.’

  He ate more soup, and Nearchus changed him – yet another humili ating small service the man performed for him. Satyrus thought that he himself would make a poor doctor. He hated touching people, hated the foulness of his own excrement, the bile from his stomach, the thousand details of illness. ‘How do you stand it?’ Satyrus asked, when he was clean.

  ‘Hmm?’ Nearchus asked. ‘I’m sorry, what did you say?’ He was looking out of the window.

  Satyrus shook his head. ‘Nothing,’ he said.

  In the morning, he awoke with the sun and tried to get off his bed. He walked a few steps and discovered that he lacked the strength, and he tottered back to bed without hurting anything. He ate an egg for breakfast, and then another.

  ‘You’re done,’ Nearchus said at noon, when the egg hadn’t come up. ‘I want you to be very, very hesitant to take poppy again. Even for a bad wound. The next time will be worse. In fact, you’ll always have a craving for the stuff. Understand?�
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  ‘Yes,’ Satyrus said.

  ‘Good,’ Nearchus answered. ‘Sappho has wanted to see you for days, but you don’t like to appear weak – I know your kind. And she’s busy with the baby.’

  ‘Where’s Helios?’ Satyrus asked.

  ‘Haven’t seen him. You have only yourself to blame – you gave him a task like the labours of Herakles.’ Nearchus shrugged.

  Satyrus read Herodotus while the doctor ground bone for pigment and then burned some ivory on a brazier outside.

  ‘Phew!’ he said, coming back. ‘Sorry for the smell.’

  Satyrus made a face. ‘I’ve made a few smells myself, the last week,’ he said.

  Nearchus nodded, fanning himself. ‘Let’s get you dressed,’ he said with a glance at the water clock. He refilled it, restarting its two-hour mechanism, and then found Satyrus a plain white chiton and got him into it and back on his couch.

  ‘I’m sorry I sent Helios away,’ Satyrus said. ‘I hadn’t realized you’d be stuck with his work.’

  Nearchus shook his head. ‘I made that decision. We have rules in this house – since the attacks when young Kineas was born. Slaves are taken on only after we check their histories. We do most work ourselves and we don’t encourage visitors. There’s a rumour in town that you are here – but we still haven’t confirmed it. It may be you, or it may be Leon who brought the Lotus in to port. See?’

  Satyrus nodded. ‘I do see.’

  ‘And Hama has contacts in the – how shall I say it? – the underworld. Among the criminals of the night market. We hear things. There are men in this town who offer money for your death.’

  Satyrus smiled. ‘Stratokles is dead, and his plots continue to roll along.’

  Nearchus scratched his nose. ‘Sophokles the Athenian is more to the point.’

  Satyrus nodded. ‘I know,’ he said.

  Even as he nodded, Sappho swept into the room with Kallista at her heels, cradling a baby.

  Satyrus smiled at both of them. Sappho bent and kissed him, and so did Kallista.

  ‘I never figured you for a nanny,’ Satyrus said to Kallista. She was also an active hetaira, formerly his sister’s slave and now a freedwoman and her own mistress.

  ‘Hmm,’ Kallista said, archly. ‘I’m sure you are an expert on women, young master. I’m a mother now, thank you.’

  ‘What do you think of young Helios?’ Sappho asked. A maidservant placed a stool behind her and she settled into it.

  Satyrus reached up and took his nephew, and cradled him to his chest. The boy was just old enough to sit up under his own power, and he blinked around at the world. ‘He’s excellent. I’ve promised him his freedom already.’

  Sappho arched her eyebrows. ‘Really? I thought perhaps you needed a servant.’

  ‘I do. I’ll get four years out of him – but apparently he’s been promised freedom before. I thought I’d give him the bone first.’ He smiled at Sappho, who nodded slowly – a nod of agreeable disagreement.

  ‘And you know that he was taken by pirates,’ she said. ‘His parents killed, sold to a brothel, used like a whore for two years until an Aegyptian priest – a customer, of course – bought him to use as a scribe – and a bed-warmer.’ Her voice grew harder and lower as she spoke. Like Uncle Leon, Sappho had been sold as a slave and used brutally before she was freed. It was the fate that every free Hellene dreaded – and the inevitable cost of a world that ran on slavery. But Leon and Sappho acted on their hatred. Both bought parcels of slaves, especially those who had been born free, and found them situations that would free them.

  ‘By my ally, Demostrate,’ Satyrus said.

  ‘Your “ally” is a very titan of Tartarus,’ she spat.

  Satyrus shrugged. ‘Auntie,’ he said, ‘I have learned in the last year that if I intend to be king, sometimes I will have to do things that are, in and of themselves, despicable.’

  Sappho remained stone-faced, but behind her, Kallista nodded.

  Satyrus held out his finger and young Kineas latched on to it, pulled it, tried to swallow it. ‘I can’t win you over,’ he said. ‘So I have to ask you to trust me. I know what I’m doing.’

  ‘Your mother made a pact with Alexander,’ Sappho said. ‘I never forgave her. I never could. It is one of the reasons we settled in Alexandria. And now you – you who are virtually my child – will sell yourself the same way.’

  ‘My mother dealt with anyone who would deal with her, for peace. For security. Even Alexander.’ Satyrus had no idea that there was bad blood between his mother and Sappho, but he kissed his nephew and then shook his head. ‘I’m sorry. Really sorry. I feel dirty whenever I spend time with him. But he was my father’s admiral. My father used him, and I’ll do the same.’

  ‘He wasn’t covered in the blood of his victims then,’ Sappho said.

  Satyrus lay back. ‘Hello, little man,’ he said. ‘Don’t be in a hurry to grow up.’

  Kineas made some gurgling sounds and stretched out his arms for Kallista. Kallista came and took him with the air of a woman who distrusts that any man can entertain a baby.

  ‘Does he have a wet-nurse?’ Satyrus asked.

  ‘Me,’ Kallista answered.

  ‘You?’ Satyrus asked.

  She laughed, a low laugh, the seductive laugh that brought customers to her at five and ten minae a night, and sometimes twenty times as much. ‘I think you know how babies are made,’ she said.

  Satyrus decided it would be indelicate to ask who the father might be. But the question must have shown on his face, for Kallista laughed aloud, not an iota of seduction to it.

  ‘Not a client,’ she said. ‘A friend.’ She put the child to her breast. ‘They can grow up together,’ she said.

  Later that afternoon, Helios came in with a clean blanket and wrapped Satyrus up.

  ‘Any luck on your mission?’ Satyrus asked.

  ‘I found her.’ Helios nodded. ‘I’m meeting her again tonight. She goes out at night – often. She’s very trusted in that house – almost the steward. She’s the sort of slave that scares other slaves. Hard to tell which side she’s on, if you take my meaning.’

  ‘I do,’ Satyrus said. ‘Need money?’

  Helios nodded. ‘I’d like a few darics,’ he said. ‘I’d like to appear a trusted slave myself.’

  ‘You are no longer a trusted slave,’ Satyrus said. He picked up a scroll that Nearchus had brought him. ‘There you are,’ he said. ‘A free man. Not a citizen – although I’ll see to that when the four years are up.’

  Helios flung himself on the scroll. He unrolled it, and Satyrus saw him mouth the words of the scroll as he read. He read it twice.

  ‘I still have to present myself to the chief priest,’ he said.

  ‘Better hurry.’ Satyrus nodded. ‘About an hour before . . .’ He laughed aloud, because he was speaking to an empty room. ‘You need Nearchus as a witness!’ he called after the boy.

  Nearchus came in after half an hour, looking flustered. ‘I’ve been kissed by that beautiful boy in public,’ he said. ‘Believe me, it’s quite an experience.’ Nearchus raised an eyebrow. ‘You’ve made him very happy. But – won’t he wander off? He’s free.’

  ‘I can tell you’ve never been a slave,’ Satyrus said. ‘I’ll spend four years teaching him to be free. If he wanders off, he’ll be a slave again in a week. And he knows it. Where will he work? At a brothel? As a free man?’

  Nearchus nodded. ‘I see.’ He scratched his beard. ‘He could go to the temples and sign as an apprentice. Perhaps as a doctor.’

  ‘He’ll be the handsomest oar master in Leon’s fleet in four years,’ Satyrus said. ‘Or dead.’ He gave Nearchus half a smile. ‘I think he fancies revenge, and I don’t mind handing him the means and the opportunity.’

  Nearchus stopped grinding his powders. He turned his head. ‘You would betray your ally?’

  ‘Betray?’ Satyrus asked. He laughed. ‘Really, Nearchus, what a sheltered life you’ve lived.’ Then he changed hi
s tone. He picked up a barley roll – one of the cook’s best – and ate it, staring at his scroll. ‘Can you take a letter for me, Nearchus?’

  ‘I’m a doctor, not a scribe. And Helios has a nice clear hand.’ Nearchus’s pestle continued to scrape.

  ‘I’m already fond of the boy, but I can’t trust him with a letter for Diodorus,’ Satyrus said.

  Nearchus nodded sharply. ‘I understand,’ he said. ‘You’re a lot of work, you know that?’ he asked with a mock frown.

  The letter took most of the afternoon. At some point, Sappho became involved, adding her own instructions and best wishes for her husband, and adding news that he might use, far away in Babylon with Seleucus – news that Satyrus wanted as well. Kallista sat with the two babies, a slave-nurse taking them in turn, and Satyrus was quick enough to realize that Sappho was passing him news as she wrote, without having to speak it aloud. They were writing in black ink on the boards of a wax tablet, where all the wax had been stripped away. She wrote in her firm, square hand:

  Ptolemy is preparing for a naval campaign against Cyprus. Antigonus is in Syria, firming up his support with the coastal cities, while his son Demetrios rebuilds his power base in Palestine after last year’s defeat. Cassander is trying to gain control of young Herakles, the last son of Alexander – whether to make him king of Macedonia or to murder him, no one can say. And Lysimachos works to build his own city, to rival Alexandria and Antioch. Every one of the Diadochoi seems to need to have his own city.

  And Satyrus wrote:

  I hope you have had my first letter by now. I will have need of the Exiles and our phalanx in the spring. If Seleucus can spare you, I will await you at Heraklea on the Euxine by the spring feast of Athena. Please send my regards to Crax and Sitalkes, and also to Amyntas and Draco, and tell them that Melitta has gone east to raise the Sakje.

  She read what he wrote. ‘You are that sure,’ she said.

  He nodded. ‘No,’ he said. ‘My sister may already be dead. Or my naval alliance may fail. Or Dionysius of Heraklea may refuse to let me use his town to base my army – or we may just lose.’ He shrugged. ‘So many things can go wrong – the word “sure” never enters my mind.’