At any rate, I sat home that spring, and my captains made me more money. Moire purchased a pair of small round ships in Corinth, stowed them with Boeotian barley and shipped it up the coast of Illyria with Storm Cutter as a watchdog, while Harpagos and Sekla took Lydia and a larger round ship that could carry two thousand medimnoi of grain — a good size hull and the proceeds of two successful voyages — and laded her for Aegypt.
Moire brought us reports of the failed revolt in Aegypt and the ongoing revolt in Babylon. When Sekla sailed, he had orders to pick up any information he could gather. It is not part of my tale to explain the workings of shipping — mine or anyone else’s; merchanting is a dull business, unless there’re pirates or a storm — but I will mention that Sekla, who was from somewhere on the coast of Africa, had met Greeks and Phoenicians who traded up the Nile where he found merchants from the Erythra Thalassa and the Great Eastern Ocean, and he was afire to go. My reports from Susa and my discussions with Abha made for some fine spring conversations, a cup of wine on my knee, in my own garden.
Sekla, eyes afire, leaned forward. ‘When all this war is done, I say we take two triremes and a store ship,’ he said. ‘Carry our goods up the Nile, and build ourselves ships on the Erythra Thalassa and try the Great East Sea.’
‘That is a mighty dream,’ I said.
Sittonax laughed. ‘You sailed to Alba,’ he said. ‘Why not India?’ The Galle was becoming a geographer.
I laughed, but Sekla looked off into the darkness. ‘Doola would sail to India,’ he said.
And I thought it might be true. That’s when that dream began. It is another story, but I’ll tell it to you some day.
Jocasta’s arrival changed the house in every way. First, a great Athenian lady does not travel alone, and she had six women with her — joined within hours by my sister Penelope and my sister-in-law Leda and their servants.
I remember standing under my portico, looking at my garden, and poor Euphonia caught my hand. ‘I don’t want to go and weave with the ladies,’ she said. For almost two months, she had stayed up too late every night and listened to tales of sailing the world with a dozen men who catered to her every whim, and the arrival of a houseful of gentlewomen had catapulted her back to her life as one of them. ‘I want to sail to Aegypt with Sekla. A pox on all this weaving.’
But I won’t make a mockery of femininity. The air of the house changed for the better, and Jocasta and Penelope got more work out of my servants and my slaves than I ever had. Pen fired my cook and bought me a Thracian — imagine having a tattooed killer as your cook, but I did, and he was very good.
We laid in more wine.
I did enjoy the moment when Jocasta entered the andron to set up her loom, and there was the Persian cup. She started.
She looked at me as a nine-year-old girl looks when she wants one more piece of honeycomb and doesn’t dare ask.
I took it down and handed it to her.
She held it for a moment, and handed it back. ‘A remarkable piece of vulgarity,’ she said.
‘A gift,’ I said.
‘Oh, well.’ She smiled. ‘People do give the oddest things.’
The oarsmen were sent to find their own lodgings.
Hangings went on the walls for the first time — I hadn’t missed them — and one day, Jocasta and Leda and Penelope went to the agora with a dozen servants and four slaves and spent — I can’t remember how much, but it seemed a great deal — on a wine service in silver and a complete set of the sort of overly ornate Athenian ceramics that I carried in my ships and avoided owning — all scenes of the gods and everyday life in lurid red and black. I liked plain black ware and I liked my good Boeotian pottery — thick, heavy and solid as Old Draco or Empedocles himself.
By next morning, I couldn’t find a scrap of it in my house.
You see — like all men, I’ve turned to mockery of women, when what I really want to convey is that my sister and Jocasta and their friends made my house beautiful and civilised enough to receive the Queen of Sparta. I had to admit that the Athenian ware was pretty enough, and the cups were light in the hand, well crafted. My rooms were full of light and air — but decorated in the latest taste — and the women set up looms and prepared for me a set of matching drapes for my couches with a sort of ruthless efficiency that reminded me of a well-run ship. Really — watching Jocasta direct a dozen women weaving on four looms was much like watching Paramenos direct a ship in a storm — no hesitation, no anger, just a single-minded concentration on the task. They wove wool, and then they wove all our spare flax into towels, and then. .
And then Gorgo came.
She came to Plataea with a dozen Spartan women and two men — Sparthius and Bulis. She arrived quite late in the evening, having celebrated the Epikledeia in Corinth. The queen was tired, but we stood with her people in my small courtyard and gave her Plataean kykeon, wine with barley meal and grated goat’s cheese, and she laughed that laugh and was visibly delighted by everything — including a suddenly shy Jocasta and my daughter, who kept grabbing the great queen’s hand and dragging her to see the most ordinary things — which she accepted with a good grace.
When she was gone into the guest quarters, led by Pen and Leda, I put the two Spartiates on kline and we sat and drank most of an amphora of wine. I told them what I knew of the revolt in Babylon.
Finally, I turned away another bowl — Hector nodded, as if to tell me in his fifteen-year-old wisdom that I had chosen well — and cocked an eyebrow at Sparthius. ‘And Brasidas?’ I asked.
He looked away. Bulis looked at his feet. These were men who could defy the Great King and fight anyone to the death.
I let it go.
Eugenios, my new slave domesticos, purchased over my bewildered objections by Penelope for roughly the price of all of my other slaves combined, came in and escorted the Spartans to their room. They had to share — even my house, which seemed as vast as a cavern when it was just me and my daughter and her nurse, was now as full of people as a hive is with bees. It was not too late at night.
It was probably better that way. We didn’t sit up late, as the Spartans were tired — so we had a fresh day in which to renew acquaintance. But as soon as Eugenios escorted them out, Leda and Pen joined me and sipped my wine, sitting on a kline and swinging their feet.
‘A symposiast at last,’ Leda said, stretching. ‘I declare I shall wear ivy on my brow and sing a lewd song.’ She looked at me from under her brows and made me laugh.
Pen poked her. And turned to me. ‘Fancy, having the Queen of Sparta in our house.’
Our house. Well, it made me smile.
Leda got up and stretched again. She and Pen were just thirty — matrons. Both were priestesses of Hera and busybodies, so they were fit from walking. Each had borne just one child — both sons. Pen’s son Euaristos was new to me, just five years old. Leda’s son was six, born to a man she never mentioned. I noticed that they were fit — and lovely — but neither was as fit as any woman among the Spartans.
All this was by the way. Leda was, I thought, stretching to catch my attention. And that was a kind of trouble I didn’t need. But I liked her smile and her wit, and I probably grinned at her like an old satyr.