He detailed one of his attendants to take his horse down to the nearest public square and look after it, sent the rest back to the Ortygia, and came into the house accompanied merely by his son and by Dionysios, who had been invited to the afternoon gathering in lieu of a dinner party. Arata and Philyra, who were permitted to show their faces at an informal daytime occasion such as this, exchanged stilted greetings with the guests and offered them cakes and wine. There was a move to the dining room, and the slaves hurried anxiously about offering food and drink. Then Hieron said casually to Archimedes, "I've been hearing more from Alexandria about this water-snail of yours. Could you tell me how it works?"
"I have the prototype," Archimedes replied, delighted to escape the formalities. "Marcus put it somewhere. Mar-" He stopped in the middle of the summons and went crimson.
"I think it's in the storeroom," Philyra said quickly, though she too reddened.
The water-snail was fetched, and the laundry boards and buckets emerged with it to reclaim their rightful domain. Gelon, who'd been silently stuffing himself with sesame cakes, abandoned all thought of sweets and descended upon this new toy as soon as it was set up. He was invited to turn it, and after being corrected and advised to turn it slowly, he watched the water run out of the machine's head with unalloyed delight.
"By Apollo!" said Hieron softly. He crouched down beside his son and gazed at the machine. He had asked about the device to set Archimedes at ease, but now, at the sight of it, forgot that he'd ever needed any reason but his own delight in ingenious contrivances. "I think that's the cleverest thing I have ever seen in my life," he said, and looked up at the maker of it with his son's beaming childish pleasure.
Within minutes, all the remaining stiffness was gone. The king of Syracuse, his son, and soon the captain of the Ortygia garrison as well crouched in the courtyard and played with the water-snail. Gelon got wet- something he greatly enjoyed on a hot summer day. Dionysios also got wet, and had to be fetched rags to dry his armor quickly before it tarnished. Philyra giggled at the sight of the scarlet-cloaked captain polishing himself, and he looked up at her in embarrassment- then grinned at the look in her eyes. A plate of cakes was put down on the ground so that the guests could help themselves, and then, inevitably, stepped upon: Sosibia could be heard shortly afterward in the back of the house, scolding Chrestos, who was the culprit. "Oh, don't be hard on the boy!" Hieron called to her. "It's our own fault for sitting on the ground."
When the fascination of the water-snail began to thin, Philyra brought some of her brother's other machines out from the jumble in the storeroom: an astronomical instrument, a hoist, a set of gears that did nothing except turn each other. "That was supposed to be part of a lifting machine," Archimedes admitted shamefacedly, "but when you attach the weight to them, they jam."
"You built a machine that didn't work?" asked Dionysios, much amused. "I am shocked."
"He was only about fourteen!" protested Philyra. "I always loved them anyway." Fondly she rotated the top wheel. "See? They all turn at different speeds."
"Gelon loves them too," said Gelon's father dryly, observing the boy's expression of open-mouthed greed.
Archimedes cleared his throat. "Well," he said. "Umm- Gelon son of Hieron, would you like them?"
Gelon looked up at him with shining eyes, nodded, and grabbed the gears.
"Gelonion," said Hieron sharply. "What do you say?"
"Thank you!" said the boy, with all the requisite warmth.
Hieron smiled for a moment at his son's delight, then looked at Archimedes inquiringly. It was time, he felt, to hear Archimedes' own request.
Archimedes too felt that the ideal occasion had now presented itself. "Umm," he said, trying to quell the quaver in his gut. "Lord, may I speak with you a moment in private?"
They went back into the dining room. Through the window came the sound of Arata talking to little Gelon, and Dionysios asking Philyra about music. Hieron sat down comfortably on the couch; Archimedes perched on the edge of one of the chairs. Now that it had come to the point, all his new confidence was ebbing away. It had seemed better to ask his question in his own house, where he was master. But the house, even garlanded and at its best, remained the residence of a middle-class teacher, with walls of plaster and a floor of packed clay. When he compared it to the marble-floored mansion on the Ortygia, he was ashamed. He was not of a rank to ask for the sister of a king. But he cleared his throat and said, in a low voice so that the others in the courtyard would not overhear, "Lord, if my request is too bold, forgive me. You yourself encouraged me to ask above my expectation."
"I promised you anything you might get in Egypt, except the Museum," replied Hieron seriously. "If you have something to ask of me, I am delighted."
"What I want I could not get in Egypt," said Archimedes. He curled his big bony hands together and took a deep breath. "Lord King, you have a sister, who…"
Hieron looked at him in utter amazement, and all his prepared speeches went out of his head. "That is," he stumbled on, "she… I…" He again remembered kissing her, and felt his face heat. "I know I have neither wealth nor noble birth nor any other quality that makes me worthy of her. I have nothing to offer, apart from what my mind can conceive and my hands can shape. If that is enough, good. If it is not, well, I have asked you for what I wanted, and you have said no."
Hieron said nothing for a long time; he was stunned. He realized immediately that this request was something he should have foreseen, and he was shocked because he had not foreseen it. He was accustomed to thinking of Delia as a bright, adventurous child he had rescued from her grim uncle, a girl whose sharp observant mind he had delighted in for the kinship it showed with his own. He had been aware that she had reached marriageable age, but that knowledge had seemed a thing apart from Delia herself- something for the future, something beyond the war. He had been aware, too, that she was interested in Archimedes, but he had considered it a shallow interest, casual and soon forgotten. He contemplated his own failure to understand her, saddened and ashamed.
"You know," said the king at last, "that Delia is the heiress to all our father's estate."
Archimedes' face turned a deeper shade of red. "No," he croaked. "I didn't."
"In law, I am not her brother at all," said Hieron flatly. "In law, she is our father's child, and I am not. Our father was a rich man, and I have looked after his estate carefully on her behalf. The total income from it last year was forty-four thousand drachmae."
"It's not the estate that I want," said Archimedes, turning from red to white. "You can keep the estate."
"I could, if I broke the law and stole it from her," said Hieron coldly. "I have always assumed that I held it in trust for her future husband. I've never used the money from it, I've always reinvested it, to build it up for her." He paused. "You've already spoken to Delia about this, haven't you?"
"I…" whispered Archimedes. "That is- she would never go against your wishes."
"In other words, she's been lying awake at night wondering how I would reply. I thought she looked tired and miserable. Zeus!" He found himself a wine cup, ladled in a drink from the mixing bowl, and gulped down half of it. "And if I say no, I suppose you'll take yourself off to Alexandria?"
"I haven't made up my mind about that," Archimedes said slowly. "I will do all I can for the defense of the city in any case. But. Well." He paused, then said, with quiet fervor, "I am not a hired worker."
"Well, I'm not going to say yes if you plan to take her to Egypt!" said Hieron. "If you marry my sister, you're going to stay right here and make certain that you do provide me with what your mind can conceive and your hands can shape."
"You mean… you might say yes?" asked Archimedes breathlessly. Then, appalled, "You don't mean give up mathematics? I told you…"
"Yes, yes, you swore to your father on his deathbed and so forth! No, I didn't mean give up divine mathematics." He looked at the anxious young man opposite him, then set down his cup
of wine. "Look," he said, "I'll tell you what sort of considerations are in my mind when I think about a husband for my sister. First, money doesn't come into it. I don't need her money. I've got plenty of my own, from various sources. And she has plenty of her own, and doesn't need to marry it. Second, politics." He flipped one hand dismissively. "It's true that there are situations where it's useful to cement some alliance with a marriage. If I hadn't married Philistis, I would probably have died in the year I became tyrant: it was Leptines who secured me the city. But on the whole, if an alliance won't hold without a wedding, it's unlikely to hold with one. And, to be honest, promising someone a half sister who isn't even related to me in law is never going to be the same as marrying somebody's daughter myself. So, politics matters, but it isn't of the first importance. What is of the first importance…" He stopped. Outside in the courtyard, Philyra was tuning her lute. "Dionysios has asked you for your own sister," said Hieron more quietly. "When you make up your mind about that, what will matter most to you?"
"I don't think I'm a very good judge," replied Archimedes, blinking. "I'm leaving that to Philyra and my mother. All I want is that Philyra should be happy- and that her husband should be a man I don't mind having as a kinsman."
Hieron smiled. "Precisely," he said softly. He picked up the cup again and rolled it between his palms. "You know that I am a bastard," he went on, looking down intently into the shallow bowl- the arch-manipulator fearfully exposing a fragment of his own heart. "I think that because of that I probably prize my kin more than those who can take them for granted. I like having a sister. I was always perfectly clear in my own mind that I wouldn't marry her to any foreigner, however important he was. I want to gain family by her, not lose it. And I want to see her happy." He took another sip of the wine, then looked back at Archimedes. "Now, it's perfectly true that you're not at all the sort of man I thought I would get as a brother-in-law. But- by all the gods! — do you really think I can raise objections about wealth and birth? You know I owe nothing to either! You would certainly be a more natural kinsman to me than someone who was merely born important. And on top of that, I like you. I want to go back and talk to Delia, and be sure that she knows her mind about this, but if she's happy about it, and if you promise to stay in Syracuse with her, then the answer is yes."
Archimedes looked at him for a long moment, disbelief slowly cracking into amazed delight, and then into an immense grin of pure joy.
Hieron grinned back. "You don't seem to have any doubt what she'll say," he observed, and was amused to see his prospective kinsman blush. "Humility is generally reckoned a becoming quality in a young man," he added teasingly.
Archimedes laughed. "And were you a very humble young man, O King of Syracuse?"
Hieron's grin became wicked. "When I was a young man, I was arrogant. I was quite certain that I knew how to run the city far, far better than the people who actually were running it." He paused, contemplating that time with satisfaction, then added softly, "And I was right, too."
14
Delia was waiting for her brother when he came home.
All afternoon she sat in the first courtyard, where she could hear it when people entered the house. She tried to read, and then tried to play the flute, but she could not concentrate, and in the end she simply sat, watching the movement of the leaves in the garden and listening to the small sounds of the house. A kind of despairing rage built in her as the slow hours wore away. Two men she cared for were elsewhere, deciding her fate and perhaps quarreling about it, and she merely sat helpless, a dead weight upon the earth.
At last, toward evening, the door opened on the sound of Gelon's shrill and excited voice. Delia jumped to her feet and ran across the garden- then forced herself to walk into the entrance hall.
Gelon was showing Agathon his new toy; when his aunt appeared, he at once called her to look at it as well. "Look what Archimedes gave me!" he crowed. "See, you turn this wheel and all the wheels in the box go around, only some of them go that way and some of them go that way, and look, this little one goes faster! Look!"
Delia glanced at it, then looked at her brother. She could tell from Hieron's face that Archimedes had indeed asked his question, but whatever answer Hieron might have given was masked under the usual bright pleasantness. Hieron smiled at her, as impenetrably as ever, then said to his son, "Why don't you go show that to your mother, Gelonion? I need to speak to Aunt Delia a moment."
Gelon ran off to show the gears to his mother, and Hieron gestured toward his library.
In the small quiet room, the king lit the lamps, then sat down on the couch and asked Delia to do the same. She obeyed stiffly, still rigid with angry despair at her own impotence. "Archimedes asked you if he could marry me?" she demanded, before Hieron had a chance to speak.
He nodded, taken aback by her urgency.
"He said he would," said Delia. She glanced down at her hands, which were pressed against one another tightly, and then looked up and met her brother's eyes. "I didn't ask him to," she declared proudly. "I'll marry whoever you want me to, Hieron. I'll be glad if it's useful to you. I swear it by Hera and all the immortal gods, I'd rather stay a virgin all my life than marry against your will."
His expression suddenly softened into one of profound affection. "Oh, Delion!" he exclaimed, and caught both those angry hands in his own. "Sweetest life, you've always wanted to make yourself precious to me, and never believed that you already are."
The tenderness when she had been braced for anger completely overthrew her. She began to cry, and drew her hands away to use in a vain attempt to press back the tears.
He made no attempt to retrieve them: he knew her, and knew that she was furious with herself for crying, and didn't want more sympathy. Instead he went on quietly, "What I told Archimedes was that I would talk to you and make certain that you knew your own mind on this. He seemed to think it was something you wanted too."
The tears came faster. "Not if you don't want it."
"Sister," he said with a touch of impatience, "I don't want to marry the man. What I am trying to find out is whether you want to marry him."
She gulped several times, then got out, "Yes, but not against your wishes!"
"Leave my wishes out of it for the moment! I want to be sure you understand what it is you could expect from such a husband. You like his flute-playing, but there's more to marriage than music. You know that the man's whole soul is devoted to pure mathematics, don't you? If you marry him, he will regularly get drunk on inspiration and forget everything else, including you. He will never be home on time, or remember to buy you a gift on a feast day, or pick up whatever it may be in the market that you particularly asked him to collect. He will take no interest in your everyday life at all. Asking him to manage your estate would be like expecting a dolphin to pull a cart: you would have to take charge of everything yourself. He will also never notice when you're upset about something, unless you tell him so, and then he'll be baffled by it. He will disappoint and infuriate you, many, many times, in many, many things."
She stared at him, shocked out of her tears. She could see at once that it was all quite true- indeed, Archimedes had warned her about it himself. And yet, she had seen and heard enough of him to know that it was not the whole truth- that for all his love for the honey-voiced siren, he had a warm nature and an uncomplicated devotion to his family. And the prospect of a thousand petty frustrations in no way clouded that great prospect of living in continual dance upon infinity's edge. She lifted her head and said determinedly, "He might disappoint me in small things, but never in great ones. As for the Muses, they are great and wonderful divinities, and I worship them myself. And"- her voice rose- "and I don't need him to manage my estate. I'd like to learn how to do that; I'd like to take charge of things myself. I'd like"- she grasped helplessly at the air- "not to have to sit and wait all the time!"
"Ah," said Hieron. "So you know what he's like and you still want to marry him? Listen, then. Say I wa
s looking to buy Philistis a present. I could buy her an olive press for one of her farms, or a vat for making fish sauce, or perhaps a new vineyard- all useful, desirable things, and no doubt she'd thank me for them. But you know as well as I that if I gave her a silk cloak with tapestry borders, her eyes would light up and she'd kiss me. Now, you could have brought me a kinsman with influence, or one with connections or money, and I would have thanked you. But when Archimedes asked for you, he offered me what his mind could conceive and his hands could shape- and Philistis was never as pleased with a silk cloak as I am with that. Sister, you could not have chosen a man who would please me better."
She looked at him as Archimedes had, with disbelief that gave way to amazement, and then to joy. Then she flung her arms about him and kissed him.
The announcement of the betrothal, which was made the following day, for a time eclipsed even the Romans as a topic of conversation in the city. It was generally agreed that the king had exchanged his sister for the world's biggest catapults, which the citizens of Syracuse considered very public-spirited of him- though some of the women felt that it was a bit hard on the sister. Queen Philistis was shocked, but rallied quickly, and at once set to work trying to cast a gloss of respectability over the match, and managed to win over the wives of the aristocracy and even her horrified father. Little Gelon was entirely delighted. Agathon disapproved strongly.
In the house in the Achradina, the reaction was one of stupefaction verging on panic. "But Medion!" wailed Philyra. "What are we going to do about the house? You can't bring the king's sister to live here!"
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