I gave the sign to the priest, of course, and he passed me the sign for Attica, so that other smiths would treat me as a guest. Then I worked my way down the hill, looking at their shops, admiring their bellows or their tools — or their hordes of apprentices. I finally stopped where an iron-smith was roughing out spear-points — beautiful things, long as my forearm with light sockets and heavy ribs for punching straight through armour.
‘You look like a lad who can use one of these,’ the smith said. ‘For a dirt-eating Theban, I mean,’ he added.
I spat. ‘I’m a dirt-eating Plataean,’ I said. ‘Fuck Thebes.’
‘Fuck your mother!’ he said with pleasure. ‘No offence meant, stranger. Any Plataean is welcome here. Were you in the three battles?’
‘Every one,’ I answered.
‘Pais!’ the master called, and when one of his boys came, he said, ‘Get this hero a cup of Chian.’
‘You?’ I asked politely.
‘Oh, I stood my ground once or twice that week,’ he said. He extended his hand and we shook, and I passed the sign.
‘You’re a smith!’ he said. ‘Need a place to stay?’
That’s how it was, back then. Sad, to see those old ways go. Hospitality was like a god to us — to all Greeks.
I had started to explain that I was on my way to see Aristides when a well-dressed man leading a horse leaned into the stall.
‘Did I just hear you say you were a Plataean?’ he asked.
I didn’t know him from Oedipus, but I was courteous. ‘I have that honour. I am Arimnestos of the Corvaxae of Plataea.’
The man bowed. ‘You’ve just saved me quite a journey, then,’ he said. ‘I’m Cleitus of the Alcmaeonids of Attica. And you are under arrest, for murder.’
2
The law of Athens is a complex, dangerous monster, and no foreigner like myself could possibly master it. I stood there with my mouth agape, like a fool, and the smith came to my rescue.
‘Says who?’ he asked. ‘I haven’t missed an assembly since the feast of Dionysus, and no one has voted a capital charge.’
The Alcmaeonid shrugged. ‘You don’t look like the kind of fellow to vote on the hill,’ he said casually. What he meant was that iron-smiths didn’t get invited to join the Areopagitica, the council of elders, mostly old aristocrats, who ran the murder trials. I think my smith might have let it go, except that this Cleitus was such an arrogant sod that he gave offence by breathing.
‘I don’t have to be a sodding aristo to know the law,’ the smith said. ‘Where’d the charge come from?’
‘None of your business,’ Cleitus said. He reached for my chlamys. ‘Best come along, boy.’
Some men claim that the gods play no role in human affairs. Such statements always make me laugh. Cleitus and I have crossed wits — and swords — often enough. He’s as wily as Odysseus and as strong as Heracles, but on that day he couldn’t spare the time to calm the ruffled plumage of an iron-smith. What might have happened if he had?
The smith stepped around the counter of his shop with a speed that belied his bulk. ‘Where’s your wand, then?’ he asked.
Cleitus shrugged. ‘With my men, in the Agora.’
‘Better go and get it, rich boy,’ the smith said. ‘Hey, sons of Hephaestus!’ he called. ‘Down your tools and come!’
Cleitus rallied his wits instantly. ‘Now — master smith, no need for that. I’ll get my wand. But this man is a killer!’
‘A killer of Athens’s enemies,’ I said. A good shot — and it went right into the bullseye. ‘Not an unlawful killer.’
By then, there were fifty apprentices looking for a fight, and a dozen smiths, and every hand held a hammer. Cleitus looked around. ‘I’ll be back with my men,’ he said.
‘Bring your staff of warrant, or don’t bother,’ my new friend the smith called. Then he turned to me. ‘Tell me your tale, and make it swift. Men are missing work.’
So I told him. I left nothing out — not even the dimple I’d left in my helmet.
He sent an apprentice for Aristides.
I sat on a folding stool that was provided for me — fine ironwork, and very elegant — and began to breathe more easily.
And then I heard the screams. There were a fair number of screams in Athens — high-pitched, often in fun, sometimes in earnest. But by the third scream, I realized that this was my slave girl. I rose to my feet.
My smith looked at me. ‘Where are you going?’ he asked.
‘That’s my slave,’ I said.
He shook his head. ‘I’ve pledged my people to this,’ he said. ‘You aren’t going anywhere.’
‘I’ve made her an oath to free her,’ I said. ‘Send a boy — send a pair of men with hammers. Please. I ask you.’
He spat orders at a couple of shop boys — big ones — and they hurried out of the door.
‘Arimnestos, eh?’ he asked. ‘I’ve heard of you. Killer of men, right enough. Thought you’d be bigger.’
I tried to sit still. The screams had stopped. Time passed.
More time passed.
Finally, the boys came back.
‘Cleitus has left the market,’ the bigger of the two said. ‘He’s got your horse and your girl. He talked a lot of crap about what you took from his brother. Did you kill his brother, mister?’
I shook my head. ‘No,’ I said, and I felt tired. Did I say I loved Athens? Athens makes me tired. They have a great many rules. ‘Can he really take these things from me?’ I asked the smith.
He shrugged. ‘Alcmaeonids do what they like,’ he said. ‘Most commoners won’t even try to stand against them.’ He grinned. ‘Lucky you’re a smith.’
‘He’s no smith,’ said a voice behind my chair, and there was Athens’s leading pillar of justice, the greatest prig ever to lead warriors in the field. A man so driven by fairness that he had no space left for ambition.
I embraced him anyway, because I loved him, despite the fact we had nothing in common. It was Aristides. He was still tall, lanky, graceful like a man who’s had the best training the drachma can buy all his life.
‘I gather you’ve turned to crime,’ he said. I like to think it was a rare show of humour, and not a statement of fact.
‘Not true, my lord. This scion of the Alcmaeonids was killed by a man in my service — at a shrine, for impiety. I’ve given orders for his body and his armour to be brought here, and all his possessions that weren’t looted by his own servants. They will be here in a matter of days.’ I shrugged. ‘I am a man of property, not a freebooter, my lord.’
Aristides nodded solemnly. ‘I’m pleased to hear it.’
‘He’s a smith, right enough,’ the iron-smith said. ‘He knows the signs.’
Aristides looked at me under his bushy eyebrows. ‘Always more to you than meets the eye, young man. So you are a smith?’ Young man, he called me. He was less than ten years my senior. But he had the dignity of an old man.
‘A bronze-smith,’ I said. ‘And a farmer now. My property brought me three hundred medimnoi this autumn.’
Aristides laughed. ‘I never expected you to rise to the hippeis class,’ he said.
‘I’m not sure that I still qualify,’ I returned. ‘The Alcmaeonids just stole my best horse and my slave girl.’
Aristides’ smile was wiped off his face. ‘Really?’
Smiths and apprentices pressed around him, each telling his own version of the story.
‘Come to my house,’ Aristides said. ‘I’ll send to the council and announce that I have you in my custody and that I’ll represent you at the trial. Then everything will be legal.’
‘What about my horse?’ I asked. ‘And my girl?’
He didn’t answer.
I shook hands with every smith who had aided me, thanked them all and walked off into the evening with Aristides and a dozen young men he had about him — all armed with heavy staves, I noticed. When we were clear of the industrial quarter, Aristides wrinkled his nose.