‘Do you?’ the beautiful girl asked, and Melitta caught the derision.
‘Well,’ Melitta admitted, ‘probably not.’
Kallista squeezed her hand.
Melitta felt a flutter of something, like a flush that spread from her chest to her groin. She let go of Kallista’s hand and fled for her room, leaving Kallista laughing, or crying, behind her.
But she didn’t get to sleep quickly.
Kallista was on her mind when she awoke, and as soon as she bathed she walked around to her brother’s room, where he was stretching as if for the palaestra.
‘You look better,’ she said.
He shrugged. ‘Comes and goes,’ he said. ‘You?’
‘The same.’ She sat on his sleeping couch. ‘You have a thing for Kallista,’ she said accusingly.
That got her brother to grin. ‘I do,’ he said. ‘Just like our Lady Mother promised – all the feeling in the world, as if she was the only woman who had ever lived, Aphrodite incarnate.’ He spoke with self-mockery, because their mother had lectured them so often on the perils of young love and the intrigues of sex.
Then he sat down next to her and they embraced, both thinking of their mother.
‘Maybe Mama is all right,’ Melitta said.
Satyrus held her more tightly, and she hugged him back.
‘Kallista made a pass at me last night,’ Melitta said.
Satyrus stiffened and then sat back. ‘Oh,’ he said.
‘She asked me about you,’ Melitta said. ‘I rather like her. It’s nice having a girl to talk to. But there’s another face to her – something else. When she asked about you, she sounded – greedy.’
Satyrus got up and went back to doing his pankration guard positions. ‘Oh, I understand,’ he said. ‘With my well-known riches, she thinks I’ll make a good client? I think I’ve seen the play.’
‘Yes,’ Melitta said. ‘I think that’s just how she sees you.’ She was sorry to inflict pain on her brother, but she saw her shaft sink into him. She promised her mother, alive or dead, that she’d fill that role whenever she had to – somebody in the family had to be tough. And she wasn’t letting her brother get taken by a hetaira, no matter how lovely. It made her feel better.
‘Ouch,’ Satyrus said. He faked a kick with his left leg and then struck with his left hand, but in a flare of anger he misjudged his distance and his hand hit the plastered wall. Dust flew, and he cursed, holding his hand under his right armpit. ‘Fuck,’ he said.
‘Satyr!’ his sister admonished.
‘I feel like an idiot,’ he said.
‘I’ll withhold the obvious comment,’ she said. ‘Let’s go and eat.’
‘I need to get out of this house,’ Satyrus said. ‘Wine one night and slave girls the next. Save my virtue, Lita.’
‘I’m doing my best,’ she said.
‘Weren’t you tempted by her, though?’ he asked. He put his hand in the water pitcher.
‘No,’ she lied.
They walked out together to breakfast, pancakes and honey with sesame seeds. They both ate all they were offered, and then had to bathe again because they were so sticky. Philokles laughed at them, and Melitta laughed at herself, because for all her wisdom (and she offered prayer and libation to Athena for her help the night before), she was still a little girl who ate too many pancakes.
By mid-morning, they were in the business courtyard again, cleaning helmets under Theron’s exacting direction. Philokles had a pile of horsehair.
While they worked, Philokles went over his plan. ‘Tomorrow or the next day, we’ll go south,’ he said. ‘Theron will go as the captain of the escort and I will go with him. You are just two noble children travelling under our charge. We’ll be travelling through a war. I hope that we don’t have to do it for long.’
Theron shook his head. ‘Why don’t we just take a ship for Athens?’
Philokles spoke quietly. ‘Tenedos says that the marines from the trireme are watching the waterfront. I think they want us to take ship so that they can catch us out on the sea.’ He looked at Satyrus. ‘That’s a firm “no” on the subject of going to Isokles.’
Satyrus ground away at the green-brown patina on the helmet he was cleaning for the time it took to think his way through the whole hymn to Athena. Then he said, ‘How long will they hunt us?’
Philokles grunted. ‘For ever,’ he said. ‘Until you go back and kill them and make yourself king. That’s the way of it.’ His eyes met Satyrus’s, and Satyrus felt as if he was being asked a particularly hard philosophical question.
Satyrus looked away. Philokles seemed to be accusing him of something. Of being afraid – afraid to stand up for his rights. Or something. ‘I’m tired of worrying,’ he said.
Theron shook his head. ‘Satyrus, the worrying has just begun.’ He looked as if he meant to say more, but Zosimos came through the gate. He made his way through the armour and stood between the twins. He gave them a showy bow.
‘Master Eutropios sends you these,’ he said. He held out a small bundle wrapped in linen. ‘He apologizes that they do not have scabbards.’
Inside the bundle were the two heavy knives, or very small swords, that they had seen the whitesmiths polishing the day before. Now they gleamed like water, and had hilts of steel and bone.
Philokles reached out. ‘May I?’ he asked.
Melitta handed him hers. ‘Please,’ she said, although she loved hers from the first touch.
‘Very nice,’ he said. ‘Somewhere between an eating knife and a short sword.’ He handed it back. ‘Zosimos, would you be kind enough to take them around to the leather-working fellow?’
Satyrus stood. ‘Can you carry my deep thanks and those of my sister to the smith?’
Zosimos smiled. ‘Sure.’ He grinned again.
There were now two armed slaves on the courtyard gate all the time. They opened the gate for Zosimos to go out, and Tenedos came in. He glared at them and went off towards the slave quarters.
‘I thought he was buying us remounts?’ Theron asked, after the man was gone.
‘I think he disapproves of us,’ Philokles said.
By late afternoon, the twins were barely able to keep polishing for sheer fatigue. Theron had given both of them a workout in the garden, and Philokles had given them a lesson in swordplay on the hard earth of the yard – basic stuff, and so much like pankration that all the footwork was the same, and most of the attacks – and then they’d been put back to work. But Satyrus raised his head to see Zosimos come into the yard past the armed slaves.
‘The smith is delighted that you are so pleased,’ he said. ‘But you can give your compliments in person. The caravan will form up at the factory. We will leave in two days. So you should come out tomorrow evening and spend the night.’
‘Thanks for your help, Zosimos,’ Philokles said.
Zosimos nodded. ‘I’ll be coming with you. I’m to accompany the caravan out and back, and then I’m free.’ He grinned. ‘Except for all the legal parts.’
‘Then what?’ Theron asked.
‘I think I’ll try being a smith,’ the young man said. ‘Master Eutropios has been offering to train me for years. Well, since my shoulders got big, anyway.’ He went away smiling.
The equipment in the courtyard was finished to Philokles’ exacting requirements – the edged weapons polished and sharp, the wood shafts of the spears oiled, the heads ground and the butt-spikes gleaming like gold. He packed the helmets in leather bags, put covers on the shields and pulled the cross belt of his sword over his head. Theron did the same. They fitted, and the scabbards were careful work, leather over wood with bronze fittings. The twins’ knives had the same mounts, and they put them on proudly.
‘I suspect you’re the only Greek woman in Heraklea with her own xiphos,’ Theron said. ‘Hail to you, grey-eyed goddess!’ He put a helmet on her head.
‘Stop clowning around,’ Philokles said. ‘I wish we could ride out to the factory right now.’
‘And miss another dinner with Kinon?’ Theron said, somewhat waspishly, Satyrus thought.
Philokles gave him a long look. ‘You are a man of virtue, Theron.’