"Latro, you and me are going to get along."
"Am I to go with you, then, madame?"
"That's right. Hypereides hasn't signed a bill of sale yet, but we've hooked fingers on the deal, and he'll draw one up tonight. You see, Latro, in my business I need a man who can keep order. It's better if he doesn't have to fight, but he has to be able to. I used to have a freedman. Gello, his name was. But he had to go in the army, and I hear they got him in the winter skirmishing. Be polite, do your work, don't bother my girls unless they want to be bothered, and you'll never feel the whip. Get me mad, and… well, they always need a few good men in the silver mines."
"I'll write what you say here," I told her. "Then I won't forget." Yet even as I spoke, I was thinking that I am no one's slave, no matter how these people talk.
As soon as the masts were down, we had glided into the boathouse. Now sailors and sailors' families were crowding ashore. I started to go with them, but Kalleos stopped me. "Wait till they're gone. If you think I'm going to walk to the city with them, you don't know me as well as you're going to. I'll hire a sedan chair if I can. Otherwise I plan to take my time, and I don't want their brats climbing all over me."
I said, "If you'll tell me how much you want to promise the bearers, I'll hire a chair for you now and have them bring it to the ship."
She cocked her head at me. "You know, you may turn out to be a nicer buy than I thought. But I've a better idea yet. Turn left out of the boathouse and go down the narrowest street you see. Three doors on the left, and there's a man who used to rent them. He may still have his chairs, even if most of his bearers are in the navy. Tell him Kalleos sent you, and you'll pay a spit for a chair without bearers, to be returned by you in the morning. If he won't agree, throw down the spit and take a chair. Here's a spit, and a drachma too, in case he wants a deposit. Bring the chair here, and we'll hire one of these sailors to carry the other end."
"I think I can get someone who won't have to be paid, madame, if you'll feed him."
"Better and better! Go to it."
I waved to the black man, and together we had no difficulty in persuading the chair owner to let us have a light one with long poles and a painted canopy.
"I lost a little flesh on the island," Kalleos told us as she took her seat. "I can tell by the way my gowns fit. Lucky for you I did."
While I had been gone, she had hired a dozen sailors to carry the bags and clothes boxes; so there was quite a procession, the gaudily gowned women following us, and the sailors following them with the baggage. The women were in a cheerful mood, happy to return to the city even if the city was destroyed. When we reached the stones that marked its borders, Kalleos had them strike up a tune on their drums and flutes while a tall, handsome woman called Phye strummed a lyre and sang.
"She has a lovely voice, hasn't she?" Kalleos said.
She had, and I agreed. The black man was carrying the front of the chair, and I the back.
"Two drachmas a night I could get for her, if only she'd learn philosophy," Kalleos grumbled. "But she won't. You can't get it through that thick skull of hers. Last year I got one of the finest sophists in the city to lecture her. After three days, I asked her to tell me what she knew, and all she'd say was, 'But what's the use of it?' " Kalleos shook her head.
"What is the use, madame?"
"Why, to get two drachmas a night, you big ninny! A man won't pay that kind of money unless he thinks he's sleeping above himself, no matter how good-looking the girl is, or how accommodating, either. He doesn't want her to talk about Solon or whether the world's all fire or all water; but he wants to think she could if he felt like it.
"Solon!" Kalleos chuckled. "When I was younger, I used to know an old woman who'd known him. You know what he wanted? A girl who could drink with him cup for cup. That's what she said. They finally found one, a big blond Geta who cost them a fortune. She drank with him all night, slept with him, and thanked him-still in the bed-by signs when he paid her and tipped her and went home. Then the owner and the fancy man-that's you, Latro-told her to get out of bed, and she fell on her face and broke her nose."
I had been looking at the smoke over the city. I asked how it could still be burning, when it had been destroyed, as I understood it, last autumn.
"Oh, those aren't the fires the barbarians lit," Kalleos told me. "That's just dust raised by the builders, and people burning wreckage to be rid of it. A few went over as soon as the Great King's army left, then more when the weather turned good this year; and now all the rest after the victory at Clay. The best people are coming home from Argolis too, and all that means that the customers will be here, not on the island. So here we are, and the playing and singing is to let them know we're back."
She pointed. "They'll be building a new temple for the goddess up there on the sacred rock-that's what I hear-when the war's over and they can raise the money."
"It will be a beautiful site," I said.
"Always has been. There's a spring of salt water up there that was put there by the Earth Shaker himself in the Golden Age, when he tried to claim the city. And up till last year, the oldest olive tree in the whole world, the first olive tree, planted by the goddess in person. The barbarians cut it down and burned it; but the roots have put up a new shoot, that's what I hear."
I told her I would like to see it, and that I was surprised the citizens had not fought to the death to defend such things.
"A lot did. The temple treasurers, because there was so much they couldn't get it all away, and a lot of poor people who were left behind by the last ships. Before the Great King's army got here, the Assembly sent to the Navel to ask what to do. The god always gives good answers, but he usually puts them so you wish he hadn't. This time he said we'd be safe behind walls of wood. I guess you understand that."
She looked back to see whether I did, and I shook my head.
"Well, neither did we. Most people thought it meant the ships, but there was an old palisade around the hilltop, and some people thought it meant that. They strengthened it quite a bit, but the barbarians burned it with fire arrows and killed them all."
After that she did not seem to wish to talk, and I contented myself with listening to the women's music and looking about at the destruction of Thought, which had not-or so it seemed to me-been very large to begin with.
Soon Kalleos directed the black man to turn down a side street. There we halted at a house with two walls still standing, and she stepped out. Her head was proud as she walked through the broken doorway, and she turned it neither to the right nor the left; but I saw a tear roll down her cheek.
The women stopped their playing and singing, and scattered to search for possessions they had left behind, though I think none of them has yet found much. The sailors laid down their burdens and demanded their pay, an obol apiece. The black man and I explained (he by signs and I with words) that we had nothing and went inside too, to look for Kalleos.
We found her in the courtyard kicking at rubbish. "Here you are at last," she said. "Get busy! We'll have guests tonight, and I want all this cleared out, every stick of it."
I said, "You haven't paid the sailors, madame."
"Because I've got more work for them, you ninny. Tell them to come in here. No, get to work, and I'll talk to them myself."
We did what we could, saving those things that appeared repairable or still usable and burning the rest, as a thousand others were doing all over the city. Soon the sailors were at work too, patching the door and setting brick upon brick to rebuild the walls. Kalleos asked how many urns had been left whole. There were only three, and I told her.
"Not nearly enough. Latro, you can remember for a day or so-isn't that what Hypereides said?"