'I'll drink last,' I said.
I saw a spark in Bion's eye, and knew I'd hit that correctly.
I remember that, and the beauty of the day, but most of all I remember that Pater came for us. He didn't have to, you see – he was down at the wood, and he'd have seen Epictetus's wagons turn off the road. He might even have seen them three stades away, or farther. And as the master, and the man with so much to lose, it would have been natural for him to take his axe and go down to the yard and leave us to work on the hilltop. But he didn't. He came up the hill, hobbling quickly.
'Come with me,' he said. He was terse, and all of us – even Bion – thought that there might be trouble.
We put our tools down and followed him through the vineyard to the house.
Pater said nothing, so we didn't either. We came into the yard and only then could we see the hillside and hear the wagons in the lane.
I couldn't see my face, but I could see Hermogenes. He flashed his father a smile of utter joy. He said, 'You'll be free!', which meant nothing to me at the time.
Epictetus was driving his own oxen on the wagon. His son was beside him, and he had two of his hired men in the box, but the second wagon was gone – and the smiles must have been wiped from every face in the oikia. Even the women were leaning over the rail of the exhedra.
Epictetus the Younger leaped down and ran to the heads of the oxen, and he flashed Pater a smile – and then we knew.
As old Epictetus got down, he couldn't keep the smile off his own face.
Then the hired men got down, and they threw heavy wool sacks on to the ground. They made a noise – like rock, but thinner – copper, I knew from the sound. And then tin wrapped in leather from far, far to the north.
Epictetus came forward with his thumbs in his girdle. 'It was cheaper to buy copper and tin than to buy ingots of bronze,' he said. 'And I've watched you do it. If you don't like it,' he raised an eyebrow, 'I'll lend you the wagon to get it back.'
'Cyprian ingots,' Pater said. He had the heavy wool bags open. 'By Aphrodite, friend, you must drive a fair bargain if all this copper and tin is mine for twenty drachmas less an eighth for cartage.'
Epictetus shrugged, but he was a happy man – a man who'd done another man an unanswerable favour. 'Fifty drachmas of silver less an eighth cartage,' he said. 'I spent thirty of your profits on new material. It seemed like sense.'
Pater was kneeling in the copper like a boy playing in mud. 'I owe you,' he said.
Epictetus shrugged. 'Time you made some money. You're too good a man to starve. You know how to work, but not how to be rich.' He held out a bag. 'Three hundred and seventy-two silver drachmas after my cartage and all that copper.' He nodded. 'And there's a man coming to see you about a helmet.'
'From Athens?' Pater didn't seem to know what was being said, so he fixed on the idea that the man from Athens was coming. 'Three hundred and seventy drachmas?' he said.
He and Epictetus embraced.
That night, Mater and Pater sang together.
They were a remarkable couple, when sober and friends to each other. You'll never credit this, Thugater, but you'll find it hard enough when you are my age to look back and see your father and mother clearly, and if Apollo withholds his hand and Pluton grants fortune enough that I live to see you with children at your knee – why, then you'll remember me only as an old man with a stick. Eh? But I love to remember them, that day. In later years – when I was far away, a slave – I would think of Pater dressed in his best, a chiton of oiled wool so fine that every muscle in his chest showed, and his neck, like a bull's, and his head – he had a noble head – like a statue of Zeus, his hair all dark and curled. He always wore it long, in braids wrapped around the crown of his head when he was working. Later I understood – it was a warrior's hairstyle, braids to pad his helmet. He was never just a smith.
And Mater, when sober – it is hard for a child to see his mother as beautiful, but she was. Men told me so all my childhood, and what is more embarrassing than other men finding your mother attractive? Her eyes were blue and grey, her nose straight, her face thin, her cheekbones high and hollow – I often wonder how many Mother Heras in the temple were carved to look like Mater. She would come down in a dress of Tyrian-dyed wool with embroidery – not her own, Athena knows – and she was trim and lithe and above all, to me, sober.
The next day, Pater freed Bion. He offered him a wage to stay, and sent for the priest from Thebes to raise Bion to the level of a free smith. Bion and Pater dickered over the price of his family and Pater settled on two years' work at the forge. Bion accepted and they spat on their hands and shook.
The following day, Pater came to me where I was sweeping. 'Time to go to school,' he said. He didn't smile. In fact, he looked nervous. 'I'm – sorry, boy. Sorry I beat you so hard for a drachma knife.' He handed it back to me – he'd confiscated it and the bronze one he'd made for me. 'I made you a scabbard,' he said.
Indeed he had. A bronze scabbard with a silver rivet decoration. It was a wonderful thing – finer than anything I owned. 'Thank you, Pater,' I mumbled.
'I swore an oath that if we made it through the summer…' He paused and looked out of the forge. 'If we made it through the summer, I'd take you up to the hero's shrine and pay the priest to teach you.'
I nodded.
'I mean to keep my word, but I want you to know that – you're a good – worker.' He nodded. 'So – put your knife round your neck. Let's see it. Now go and put on a white chiton as if you were going to a festival, and kiss your mother.'
Mater looked at me as if I'd been dragged in by the dogs, but then she smiled. Today she looked to me like a queen. 'You have it in you to look like a lord,' she said. 'Remember this.' She held up her mirror, a fine silver one that hadn't been sold while we were poor, with Aphrodite combing her hair on the back. I saw myself. It wasn't the first time, but I still remember being surprised at how tall I was, and how much I really did look like my idea of a lord – fine wool chiton, hair in ringlets and the knife under my arm. Then she offered me her cheek to kiss – never her lips and never a hug – and I was away.
I walked with Pater. It was thirty stades to the shrine of our hero of the Trojan War, and I wasn't used to sandals.
Pater was silent. I was amazed that he hadn't sent Bion or someone else, but he took me himself, and when we had climbed high enough up the flank of the mountain to be amidst the trees – beautiful straight cypress and some scrubby pine – he stopped.
'Listen, boy,' he said. 'Old Calchas is a worthy man, for a drunk. But he – that is, if you want no part of him, run home. And if he hurts you, I'll kill him.'
He held my shoulders and kissed me, and then we walked the rest of the way.
Calchas was not so old. He was Pater's age, and had a fuller beard, with plenty of white in it, but he had the body of an athlete. He didn't look like a drunk. I fancied myself an expert – after all, I knew every stage of Mater's drinking, from red-rimmed eyes and foul breath to modest bleariness. Calchas didn't show any of that. And he was still. I saw that at once. He didn't fidget and he didn't show anxiety.
But it was his eyes that held me. He had green eyes – as I do myself – and I'd never seen another pair. They also had a particular quality – they seemed to look through you to a place far beyond.
I know, dear. My eyes do the same. But they didn't then.
I don't think most of the farmers of the valley of the Asopus knew what Calchas was. They thought him a harmless priest, a drunk, a useful old man who would teach their sons to read.
It is almost funny, given what Plataea was to become, that in all the valley, there wasn't a man hard enough to look the priest in the eye and see him for what he was.