Funeral Games

by Christian Cameron

‘The new Athenian ambassador to the court of Ptolemy is your former nemesis, Stratokles,’ Leon said, having taken in the whole sweep of the problem with his usual acuity. ‘Why didn’t anyone tell me?’ he asked, looking at his factor, Pasion.

  Pasion bowed. ‘It was in the morning’s reports,’ he said sheepishly. ‘I missed the importance of the fact.’

  ‘Too late to unspill the wine,’ Philokles said. ‘Demetrios of Athens let that cur be his ambassador?’

  ‘Put a suit against him,’ Leon said. ‘I’m sure we can make a deal with him. He’s a man of business.’

  Philokles pulled his himation closer. ‘I’ll do it this instant.’

  ‘Exactly.’ Leon nodded. ‘Go!’

  Philokles, despite three years of heavy drinking and endless agora debates, could still move quickly when required. He was out of the gate before Leon was done thinking out the next step.

  ‘Tell us what happened,’ Leon said.

  Satyrus related the incident, with some hesitant description of Phiale’s role.

  ‘You put two grown men down,’ Theron asked. ‘Then you let them live.’

  ‘Thank the gods he did!’ Leon said. He rubbed his chin and his shoulders slumped. ‘Killing an ambassador would make any political career here impossible.’

  Theron stood his ground. ‘Being dead is worse. Listen, Satyrus. The next time you have an enemy under the edge of your kopis, push the blade home. Then he’s dead and your story is the only one in the law courts.’

  Leon shook his head. ‘That’s evil advice to give a boy, Theron. Always leave your opponents dead.’

  Melitta came and put her arms around her brother. ‘You have all the luck,’ she said. ‘I was just wishing for assassins.’

  ‘Careful what you wish for,’ Theron said.

  ‘This alliance with Cassander means a lot to our Ptolemy,’ Leon said. He tugged his short beard. ‘I think you are best out of the city, lad. Pasion, summon Peleus the helmsman to keep his crew in hand - one night on the waterfront, and on duty by sunrise in the morning. Move!’ He turned to look at Theron. ‘I have a hundred pieces of news for all our friends,’ he said. ‘I’ll try and get through it all at dinner.’

  One of the many ways in which Satyrus’s ‘uncles’ differed from other men was the manner in which they lived. Leon and Diodorus were both rich men, yet they had built their houses together - so close together that they shared doors and gardens. Nihmu, Leon’s Sakje wife, and Sappho shared women’s quarters. Theron, Philokles and Coenus all lived in the same houses, and the establishment, four times the size of most houses, was run on military lines, with common meals and a certain regular discipline.

  The other thing that set them apart from other men of property was that Leon, Philokles, Coenus, Satyrus, Diodorus, Theron and the women, Sappho, Melitta and Nihmu, all took dinner together with Leon’s upper servants in a manner not unlike the Spartan mess system, except that the food was superb and women ate with men. These communal dinners had been a feature of life in Tanais before its fall, and Leon had transferred the system to Alexandria. Diodorus added some of his officers - Eumenes was almost always with them for dinner, and Crax - and Leon added his senior helmsmen and his business friends and the tribal leaders he used to keep his caravans moving, when they came. Philokles brought philosophers and divines from the agora and the temples, and Coenus added an occasional barracks-mate, and once the king himself, who knew Coenus of old. Dinners were sprawling affairs of twenty or thirty klines, food, wine and debate.

  Dinner was where they all came together - especially now that Leon was back.

  ‘Don’t leave the house,’ Leon said to Satyrus. ‘You boys were there?’ he said to Xenophon.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ Xenophon said.

  ‘You had best stay, then. Until I know more.’ Leon nodded to Abraham and called to a slave. ‘Run and tell Ben Zion that I have his son at my house for dinner as a guest, and that I will send a message home with him.’

  The slave nodded. ‘Ben Zion. Son for dinner. Message later.’

  ‘Good,’ Leon said. ‘Go.’

  Pasion came back from his last errand. ‘Both men are alive,’ he said.

  Leon nodded. ‘Close the gates. No admittance without my express permission. Ask Crax for Hama’s file as guards on the gates.’

  ‘We aren’t overreacting, are we?’ Theron asked.

  ‘I wasn’t there, Theron. I’ve tangled with Stratokles - and done deals with him - and I find he has a tendency to focus very hard on success. If memory serves, he tried to kill both of Kineas’s children.’ Leon raised an eyebrow. ‘He stormed a private house in Heraklea. Yes?’

  Theron bowed his head. ‘Point taken.’ He looked at Satyrus. ‘See? You should have killed him, Satyrus.’

  Satyrus felt himself growing angry. ‘I—’

  ‘We took an oath!’ Melitta said.

  This criticism was the last straw. ‘That’s not fair!’ he said. ‘Stratokles is the ambassador of Athens! That makes his person sacred! And when exactly did Stratokles get included? Are we killing every flunky, or just the people who ordered Mama’s death?’

  Melitta bit her lip. ‘I—’ she began.

  ‘Don’t turn into Medea,’ Satyrus said. He squeezed her hand.

  ‘Sorry, Satyr.’ She knelt and touched the blood on his leg. ‘You’re wounded.’

  Theron raised an eyebrow.

  ‘He’s good,’ Satyrus said. ‘You know, I’m pretty sure that putting down two trained fighters would be cause for praise in most households. ’

  Leon stared off into space, rubbing his short beard. ‘Perhaps,’ he said.

  Satyrus looked around, chewed back an angry response and crossed his arms.

  He stood silent and angry as Leon dispatched messengers to various quarters and sat in his garden, saying little, and his silence was more ominous than his orders.

  Nihmu and Sappho came from the women’s quarters and sent everyone off to the baths before dinner. By the time that Satyrus, feeling disoriented in his own home, had towelled off, he could see Hama setting a pair of armoured cavalrymen at the front gate - men of Olbia or Tanais, absolutely loyal. That settled him.

  Nonetheless, he hung his sword over his chiton.

  A servant came in through the curtain at his door and bowed. ‘Leon asks that you dress in your best, lord,’ the man intoned. ‘I am to help you.’

  Off came the sword and the chiton. Satyrus opened the chest under the window and poked through the folded wool there, looking for his favourite - a plain white wool chiton with a minute stripe of Tyrian Purple. He found it as much by feel as by sight - the wool was superb.

  ‘How about this?’ he asked the servant.

  ‘Certainly, sir,’ the servant replied. This time he was oiled, his hair carefully arranged and the chiton adjusted so that every fold fell as if it had been sculpted by Praxiteles, closed by a girdle made of gold cord.

  Satyrus added a knife that hung around his neck from a cord, vanishing into the folds of the chiton. The servant made a face. ‘Hardly required, sir,’ he said.

  Satyrus was always annoyed by talkative servants. ‘I’ll be the judge of that,’ he said, and sat to have his best sandals put on his feet. When he was shod, he nodded. ‘Thanks,’ he said to the servant.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ the servant replied, and retreated through the door.

  Not for the first time, Satyrus wished he had a servant or a slave of his own - a comrade. Someone who would understand his own needs. All of Leon’s freedmen treated him like a child.

  Caught up in all that was the thought that he had treated Phiale badly. He sat at a table in the courtyard and scribbled a note, searching for a nice bit of poetry to use to express himself, but finding none. So he wrote:

  That man is my enemy, and has been for years. I am sorry that you were injured in our squabble. If I can be of any assistance, please send to me.

  He sealed it with his Herakles ring and sent it with a slave.

  It
occurred to him as he walked down the cool marble halls towards the garden that he hadn’t asked why he was dressed like a prince.

  Melitta was still lying naked on her day-bed, trying to will herself to calm and coolness in the evening breeze, when a senior woman servant came to her chamber. ‘I am to ask you to dress your best,’ the old woman said, with a smile. ‘You have an invitation from the palace.’

  Kallista, also naked, rose from the balcony and clapped her hands. ‘Amastris! It must be! I heard that Master Leon brought her home.’

  Melitta smiled. ‘Thanks, Dorcus! I’ll be ready.’

  Dorcus turned to Kallista. ‘It wouldn’t be amiss to pack a wrap for morning,’ she said, laying a finger along her nose. ‘The palace messenger suggested that the Lady Amastris might wish to entertain our mistress overnight.’

  ‘Dorcus? Be a dear and tell the steward that I’ll be out for dinner. And does Uncle Leon know? Oh - it’s his homecoming. Perhaps—’ She paused. ‘Amastris is going to use me to see my brother, isn’t she?’ Melitta asked the older woman.

  Dorcus shook her head slightly. She was a woman of consequence in the household, and Melitta knew that every rumour came to her ears. ‘Master Leon has an invitation of his own,’ she said. ‘As does your brother - from the king himself. If the princess wishes to see your brother, she will have to scheme very quickly indeed. Dress well, young mistress.’ She paused. ‘Given the - incident - this afternoon, all may not go as the princess imagines. Understand me, despoina?’

  Kallista didn’t need a second admonition. She had Melitta’s best Greek gown laid out on the bed - wool so fine as to be transparent, carefully oiled to a fine finish, the colour a dark purple-blue with gold stripes. There were also the Artemis brooches that Kinon had given her three years ago, and a dagger, and a wicked bronze pin in her hair, the knobbed grip hidden by an enormous pearl that matched the strings that held her long black tresses.

  Kallista slipped long, dangling gold earrings into her ears and clasped a necklace at her throat. Her hands rested on her mistress’s shoulders. ‘You are beautiful,’ she said. She held up a silver mirror so that Melitta could admire herself.

  ‘Not as beautiful as you,’ Melitta said. Her slave was like an avatar of Aphrodite - in fact, some men called her that very title. Melitta had been offered sums of up to twenty talents of silver for her slave’s favours.

  ‘Hmm,’ Kallista said. She put her head down next to Melitta’s, so that the two were side by side in the mirror. ‘Dark and fair. You are more the image of Hera or Artemis. A colder beauty - but no less beautiful.’

  ‘Flatterer,’ Melitta said. She poked Kallista in the side and made the other girl squeal.

  ‘Not with you,’ Kallista giggled. ‘Every man’s head will turn when we walk in the palace. Hah! I feel like a cat among mice when I go there.’

  ‘Freedom has not made you modest,’ Melitta said.

  Kallista lowered her eyes in a parody of virginal modesty. ‘Has it not, my mistress?’

  ‘How was Amyntas?’ Melitta asked. Amyntas was one of Ptolemy’s Macedonian officers. He was supposed to command the phalanx, and he was a famous soldier, but he spent little time on his duties. He had offered Kallista ten talents of silver for a single night.

  ‘Adequate,’ Kallista said with a shrug. ‘For the money.’

  ‘No transports of joy?’ Melitta asked.

  ‘I can buy all the transports I wish for ten talents of silver, mistress.’ Kallista smiled.

  ‘You make love sound so - mercenary!’ Melitta complained.

  ‘Mistress, I’m a hetaira!’ The older woman shrugged. ‘Men started mounting me when I was eleven. There’s never been a great deal of romance involved.’ She stroked Melitta’s shoulders. ‘It will be different for you - I’ll see to that. A boy your own age - a beautiful boy.’

  Melitta smiled. ‘Your lips to Aphrodite’s ear,’ she said. She rose to her feet, complete from her gilded sandals to the tiny touch of rouge on the tops of her ears and the long tendril of black hair that seemed to have artlessly escaped her diadem - one of Kallista’s best contrivances. ‘Mind you, dressed like this, I might as well be a hetaira!’

  Obligingly, Kallista walked to her household altar - to Aphrodite of Cyprus, like most hetairai - and knelt. She fingered the ivory statue and spoke quietly to it as if the statue were the goddess herself, and then kissed it and put it back in its place.

  ‘Shall we?’ she said.

  Melitta walked to the door.

  Leon was waiting in the foyer. ‘We are expected at the palace,’ he said. Even as he spoke, Philokles came from the garden with Coenus, talking about hunting, at his side. Diodorus came in the main gate. He was in armour, and Philokles was wearing a plain white chiton and the long himation of a scholar. Coenus and Leon were dressed well, although their clothes were more befitting merchants than leading aristocrats.

  Leon addressed them all together.

  ‘Satyrus and I have been ordered to attend the king. Melitta has been invited to visit the princess of Heraklea.’ He looked around at them. ‘After today’s events, we can’t be too careful.’

  ‘Surely you don’t expect that Ptolemy will do anything foolish,’ Philokles said.

  Leon raised an eyebrow. ‘I wish to ensure that he does not,’ he said. ‘So I would like you gentlemen to accompany us.’

  Philokles rubbed his jaw. ‘Do I need a sword?’ he asked.

  ‘If it comes to that, there’ll be no saving us,’ Leon said.

  Diodorus nodded. ‘Let’s get this over with then,’ he said. ‘I’d like to see Sappho before the day is over. Hello there, Satyr. Lita, you look like - like a particularly seductive nymph. And to think that I watched you being born!’

  Coenus rolled his eyes. ‘In my day, young lady, you would never have been allowed out like that. Aren’t you even going to cover your hair?’

  Kallista muffled a squeak of outrage. Melitta put a hand on her companion’s wrist. ‘Troy has fallen, Uncle,’ she said with a smile. ‘Penelope is cold in her grave. In the modern era, young women of good family are allowed out of their houses.’

  Coenus made a noise between a grunt and a laugh.

  Leon waved them all out through the garden and on to the street like a dog herding sheep.

  ‘Goodness,’ Kallista murmured. ‘Are we going to walk?’

  If Leon heard her, he gave no sign. He strode off and eight torch holders arranged themselves around the party. Satyrus knew them immediately - although masquerading as house slaves in simple chitons, they were all soldiers, troopers from Eumenes’ squadron.

  They walked along the streets, only one such group among dozens, although Melitta and Kallista drew attention like a new vendor in the agora. Satyrus watched the crowds as they walked, annoyed that his best sandals might be stained by the rubbish in the street while simultaneously fascinated by the scenes around him, as he always was in the city. Women waited at public fountains with jars for water on their heads or hips. Men stood in the cool evening air and grumbled, heckled and bartered, or discussed the new city’s politics. Criminal factions eyed each other from opposing street corners. Couples mooned in dark corners or fought in tenements, and a late caravan of camels from the Red Sea stood in a long row on the central avenue, liberally decorating the clean sand of the street with droppings as they waited for slaves to unload the incense of the southern Arabian kingdoms.

  Their torch-bearers watched everything and their eyes went everywhere. The man closest to Satyrus was the giant, Carlus, and Satyrus wondered how anyone could take him for a slave. His eyes were moving, appraising, watching. He looked up at the rooftops and down in the doorways.

  ‘See anything, Carlus?’ Satyrus asked by way of conversation.

  The big Keltoi shrugged. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Lots of bad men, but they don’t want us.’ He glared at a beardless Aegyptian on a street corner, who stood with his arms crossed over his chest. He was small, and light, and young, but he met Carlus’
s stare with cool indifference. ‘I’d love to come down here with some of the boys and clean up,’ he said. ‘Forced loans, prostitution, extortion, arson - these scum do it all.’

  Satyrus looked at the Aegyptian as he passed him. The young man didn’t even raise an eyebrow. ‘Are you sure?’ he asked.

  Carlus grunted.

  Leon’s villa was comparatively close to the new library and the palace precincts, and it dawned on Satyrus that Leon was parading his group through the most public thoroughfares for a reason. After half an hour’s walk they climbed the low hill that led to the palace gates, still under construction. As far as Satyrus could see, the palace was in a permanent state of construction.

  Bored Macedonians greeted Leon, gave perfunctory salutes to Diodorus and ogled Melitta and Kallista, their comments loud enough that Satyrus became offended on his sister’s behalf.

  ‘Soldiers,’ Leon said, putting a hand on Satyrus’s shoulder. ‘Calm yourself.’

  Slaves led them from the gate to the main hall, and female slaves came and took Melitta and Kallista away. Greek women might walk the streets and even sometimes attend a party, but at the palace many of the old ways were preserved, and women were received in women’s rooms. Satyrus kissed his sister on the cheek while Amastris’s personal attendant waited patiently, her shawl over her head. He had a sudden premonition - as if an icy hand had rubbed his back.

  ‘Watch yourself, sister,’ he whispered.

  She looked back at him and squeezed his hand. ‘And you, brother.’

  Then the women were gone and they were walking up the steps of the central megaron. Ptolemy’s Greek steward was waiting for them, and he bowed. ‘Lord Ptolemy wishes to greet you in private,’ he said. ‘Please follow me. Your torch-bearers can wait.’ He snapped his fingers and a pair of slaves emerged from the portico and gestured to the torch-bearers.

  ‘I understood that we were to have an audience,’ Leon said.

  ‘Lord Ptolemy wishes to speak to you in private,’ the steward insisted.

  Leon looked around and then nodded. ‘Very well,’ he said. He turned to follow the steward. The Greek shook his head. ‘Just you and Master Satyrus,’ he said. ‘My regrets to these gentlemen.’