‘You are in luck,’ Kinon said, as they looked at his garden. ‘The roses will bloom tomorrow or the next day. How long will you stay?’
Having sworn the guest oath, Satyrus was now the centre of their host’s attention. He looked at Philokles, who made a small sign with his hands.
‘Just long enough to see the roses,’ Satyrus said with a smile.
Kinon smiled back, a little too warmly, and Satyrus wondered if he had sent the wrong message to the man.
‘I think we could all do with a bath,’ Philokles said.
‘Goddess!’ Kinon was genuinely shocked. ‘I’ve been remiss. Did you ride all the way here?’
Theron spoke up. ‘We came on a merchantman from up the coast,’ he said.
Kinon exchanged a glance with his steward, and Satyrus wondered what it meant. ‘Is that Draco Short-Legs? From Sinope?’
Philokles nodded. ‘The very one. May I bore you with another question? I crave news.’
‘Speak to me, sir. May I call you Philokles?’
‘You may. If all your wine is as good as what you just served us, we’ll be great friends. Have you heard of our friend Diodorus?’
‘The captain of mercenaries? Who on the Euxine does not know the man? Indeed, I just sent him fifty new Boeotian helmets made to his order in our shops.’ Kinon nodded. ‘He’s more than just a soldier. He’s a good man of business. And his wife is a delight.’
Philokles laughed for the first time in days. ‘Sappho?’ He shook his head. ‘She is superb.’
Diodorus had defied convention and married a hetaira. The situation was more complicated than that – Sappho had started her life as a respectable woman of Thebes, and only when the city was sacked had she been sold into harlotry. Diodorus loved her, and made her his wife. In fact, he’d gone farther, taking her into society with the same boldness with which he led a cavalry charge. And Sappho herself was intelligent, direct and plain-spoken in a way that most women were not. Younger, she had been a beauty. Now she was a mother of two daughters and she could still turn heads at a symposium.
‘I think we’ll be good friends,’ Philokles said. ‘If only we might have a bath.’
An hour later, they were back in the rose garden. Satyrus was as clean as he’d been since the Temple of Herakles, and Melitta wore an Ionic chiton, long and flowing and pinned with a set of mother-of-pearl brooches cut like Nereids.
Kinon eyed her critically. ‘I purchased it for Kallista,’ he said. ‘But when I heard your brother speak of your ancestry, I though that you had to wear it.’
Melitta looked at him gravely. ‘Has anyone ever told you that you are very like Odysseus for wisdom?’ she said.
Kinon laughed. ‘Ah, flattery. How I love it. That was well said, mistress. ’ He waved at the couches. ‘Will you recline, mistress?’
Melitta shook her head. ‘A chair, I fear, host. I lack the experience to control my garments at a feast, and I would not stain Kallista’s dress for anything.’ She smiled at the slave girl.
‘Yours, now, mistress,’ Kinon said. ‘I would not lend a guest a garment. ’
Melitta blushed. The linen and the pins were worth more than everything she currently owned. ‘Thanks,’ she stammered.
Kinon arranged her chair himself and pulled Kallista by the hand. ‘Will you wait on the young mistress, my beauty?’ he asked, as if she were a member of the family. Raising his eyes to his guests, he said, ‘I do not treat her as a slave in the privacy of my garden.’
Theron shrugged. ‘I could rest my eyes on her for ever,’ he said.
Satyrus would have liked to have said that. He settled for a nod.
Philokles laughed. ‘This is the effect of Leon!’ he said, a little too loudly. He had been drinking for an hour.
Kinon settled on to the couch opposite the Spartan. ‘You understand? ’
Philokles smiled. ‘I am a Spartan bastard,’ he said. ‘I understand all too well.’
Theron took wine from a slave and leaned on his elbow. ‘I would like to understand,’ he said.
Kinon nodded. ‘Leon began as a free man and was made a slave. When he became free, he determined to free more men. And women. We call them our “families”.’ He grinned self-consciously. ‘I am not likely to have any other kind of family,’ he said. ‘I was a slave.’
‘Theban?’ Philokles asked.
‘Ahh. The Boeotian accent.’
Philokles nodded. ‘And your respect for Sappho.’
‘Yes, I knew her – before.’ Kinon shrugged. ‘Slavery is neither the beginning nor the end of life. But Leon made me free, and put me in a position to become as rich as I am.’ He shrugged. ‘I will give the same gift to Kallista, when she is old enough to find a husband and not a brothel.’
Philokles spilled a libation on the gravel. ‘To freedom!’ he said, and slipped the krater on to the back of his hand. He drank the bowl dry and flipped the leavings across the garden with a practised flick of the wrist, so that the drops of wine rang as they struck the bronze slops urn.
‘To freedom,’ echoed all the other diners. More drops of wine crossed the roses, but no one else hit the urn.
‘You’re good,’ Kinon said.
‘I spend a lot of time practising,’ Philokles said, his voice light.
Melitta leaned across her brother and whispered in his ear. ‘Kinon is flirting with Philokles,’ she said.
‘Hush,’ Satyrus said, shocked. He saw the slight smile on Kallista’s face, and he blushed – and she blushed. Their eyes were locked, and he had to make himself look away.
His sister glanced back and forth between her brother and the slave girl. She shook her head. ‘Brother,’ she hissed.
He hung his head. Their mother had strict rules about servant girls – and boys.
Theron and Philokles talked with Kinon long into the night. At some point, between wine and shared anecdotes, Philokles stopped hiding their situation, and Kinon expressed immediate sympathy. They began to map out how the twins could travel, either to Athens, where Satyrus owned property that was untouchable by Eumeles of Pantecapaeum, or to Diodorus, who was, it appeared, in the field with the army of Eumenes the Cardian.
Philokles was sober enough when it came to politics, but Theron, who had drunk less, finally shook his head.
‘I think I need to hear all that again,’ he said, pleasantly enough.
Kinon looked at Theron as if he was a fool. Satyrus sat forward. ‘Please,’ he said. ‘I, too, would like to understand.’
‘It’s all been the same since the Conqueror died,’ Kinon said bitterly. ‘Alexander conquered, well, damn near everything!’ He took a drink, tried to hit the bronze urn with his dregs and failed. Theron took the bowl.
Kinon shrugged at his own failure. ‘When Alexander died, he left chaos. In Macedon, Antipater was regent – for Alexander, yes? And throughout the old Persian empire – Darius’s empire – Alexander had left satraps. Petty kings who ruled over wide areas. Some were the old Persian satraps. Some were Greeks, or Macedonians. The system depended on a strong hand on the reins, and Alexander’s hand was very strong.’
Theron took the bowl and drank the whole of it, rolled it on his wrist and his flick caught Kallista on the top of her hair. She leaped from her couch and tossed water back at him, and they all laughed. It took time to settle down again. Satyrus couldn’t help but notice how transparent her linen was when wet.
‘Shall I go on?’ Kinon asked.
‘Please,’ Satyrus said. It was his turn with the bowl. He sipped carefully.
‘So the army met in council – all the spearmen, and all the cavalry, and all the officers – and none of the Persians or auxiliaries. Trust me, that will make trouble in time. At any rate, Alexander left no heir – no one who could run his empire. He has two children – one by Roxane, and another by-blow by a Persian noblewoman – some say she’s a common harlot, others that she is a princess.’ Kinon looked around, because Philokles was smiling. ‘You know her?’