King of the Bosphorus t-4 Read online

  Melitta had expected to be bitter – she was missing the great adventure, the reconquest of the Tanais. Even now, her brother was probably master of Pantecapaeum.

  She found that she was perfectly happy to be a mother with a healthy baby, and two days later, when Sappho, pale as death from blood loss, allowed her eyes to flutter open and was pronounced likely to live, Melitta was happier still.

  It took her several days – feeding her son all the time, watching the slave girls change him and being visited at regular intervals by an absurdly uncomfortable Coenus – before she got the whole story: the mad doctor who drew a knife and was stopped only by Sappho's reckless courage in putting her hand under the knife and then her body across Melitta's; the Jewish doctor who tackled the assassin, dying for his efforts but getting the man clear.

  'Sophokles,' she said, shaking her head.

  Coenus, sitting stiffly at the foot of her bed, nodded. 'So I assume. Which means he's still in Alexandria.'

  'And we let him in!' Melitta said. 'As a doctor?'

  Coenus shook his head. 'None of the other doctors knew him. He might have come in with slaves, with servants – we weren't taking any precautions.'

  'Well,' Melitta said, with all of her returning strength. 'Well, it'll be all right. You'll see.'

  Coenus shifted uncomfortably. 'Have you thought of a name, my dear?'

  Melitta shrugged. 'No,' she said. 'Among the Sakje, we name a child on the thirtieth day after its birth. When we know it will live.'

  Coenus nodded. 'This boy – he'll be my heir. He means a great deal to me, Melitta. When Xeno died-' Coenus didn't choke a tear, he was too strong and too much the aristocrat for that, but his pause was eloquent. 'This child – I mean to stand by him. Despite the fact that you were not formally wed, I – I hope that-'

  'Foolish uncle!' Melitta shook her head. 'You will be his father in many ways, Uncle Coenus. And of course I see your interest. Men! Heirs! A daughter would be your heir with twice the surety!' She gave him an impish grin and he returned a frown.

  'A daughter would not have carried my name,' he said.

  Melitta laughed. 'Oh, Uncle Coenus, Greeks are all fools. What would you like me to call this lovely boy?'

  Coenus leaned close, inhaling the fragrance of his grandson. 'Kineas,' he said.

  *

  The summer sailing season drew on, the wind from the north freshening every room in Leon's great oceanside house. In the courtyard, figs began to ripen. The yearly convoy from Massalia in far-off Gaul came in on time and heavily laden, and Leon's fortunes soared.

  Sappho healed slowly, rebuilding her blood with sweets and the small beer that the Aegyptians drank. She sat on a kline in the private courtyard – a colonnaded space between Leon's house and Diodorus's, where the women gathered unless it rained. Slaves brought wine and dates and other sweets while she held court, dispensing wisdom and even justice to her household.

  Nihmu, a Sakje woman from the sea of grass, had four quivers of arrows and she stood at one end of the courtyard shooting bronze-barbed shafts into a target hidden in the shadow of the colonnade. Unlike Sappho, who ran her husband's affairs, Nihmu had virtually no interest in the trade that drove her husband. But she never spoke of what she missed.

  Melitta sat in the grass, envying Nihmu her archery and yet fully engaged in talking nonsense to her son as she walked him around the grass, hands under his tiny armpits so that his feet just barely brushed the ground.

  'Who's going to be a great athlete, eh? With long, long legs?' she asked as he managed a grab at her breasts. 'And grabby, grabby arms?'

  He spat a little, and reached out for her. He was just a few days short of two months old, and she named him Kineas – in the Temple of Hathor and in the Temple of Poseidon. And now she spent her days playing with him in the garden.

  'You could let Kallista play with him,' Sappho said, raising her eyes from a scroll. 'He's not a toy, or a chore. Shoot your bow!'

  Melitta sighed. Motherhood – fatherless motherhood – had not changed her status in the household. She was the veteran of battle, a grown woman, a mother – and Sappho still spoke to her as if she needed a lesson in every aspect of life.

  'Kallista is not his mother,' Melitta said.

  Sappho shrugged, her eyes never leaving her scroll. 'She'll be a mother in a matter of days,' she said. 'But – as you wish, dear.'

  'What are you reading, Auntie?' Melitta asked.

  'Aristotle. This is Philokles' copy – I'm going to see that it goes to the library. I'm cataloguing all his scrolls. He had hundreds.' Sappho looked up.

  'What's it about?' Melitta asked.

  'Well,' Sappho said. She sat back on her couch. 'It says that it is a study of nature, but so far, it seems more like a survey of other men's ideas.'

  'Philokles didn't think much of Aristotle,' Melitta said.

  Sappho raised a beautifully manicured eyebrow. 'You have read Aristotle?'

  Melitta shrugged. 'Some. His work on gods – on religion. Philokles copied it all out for me to read.'

  Sappho leaned forward as if noticing her niece for the first time. 'Really?' she asked.

  Melitta was stung by her surprise. 'I studied every day with Philokles from the time I was six!' she said. 'I've read Aristotle, Plato, all the speeches of Isocrates, all the sayings of Heraklitus, all the books of Pythagoras. All! Even that useless twit Pericles.'

  Sappho smiled. 'I know, dear.'

  'You act as if I'm too stupid for conversation!' Melitta said.

  'You act as if you never plan to read a scroll again,' Sappho said.

  'I have a baby!' Melitta shot back.

  'Often the result of ill-considered sex.' Sappho smiled. 'Needn't determine the rest of your life.'

  'Ill-considered?' Melitta stood up, gathering Kineas in her arms. She took a breath for a tirade.

  'The hetaira Phiale,' announced Kallias, the steward. He bowed, and Phiale – not, strictly speaking, a beauty, and yet the most attrac tive woman in Alexandria – entered, flinging off a dust-coloured shawl into the arms of her attendant slave, a hard-faced woman named Alcaea.

  'Oh, despoina!' Phiale said. She came and knelt by Sappho.

  Sappho's face closed up. Her eyebrows seemed to harden in place, and her mouth became a hard line. 'Oh, Phiale! Is it so bad? Or are you just being dramatic?'

  Phiale shook her head. The tears in her eyes suggested that her abject posture was unfeigned. 'No, despoina. No drama. There is a report in the palace – a report from Rhodos.'

  Sappho took both of the hetaira's hands between her own. 'Tell me quickly. Is it Diodorus?'

  Phiale shook her head. 'No – no. Diodorus is well. It is the expedition to the Euxine.'

  Melitta felt as if her blood had stopped flowing. 'What?' she asked, her anger forgotten.

  Nihmu's arrow flew through the air with a sound like a bird – thwit!

  'It was a trap,' Phiale said. 'That's what they are saying at the palace. A trap.'

  'You are not the person I would choose to deliver bad news,' Sappho said through her mask of a face. 'Say it, Phiale!'

  Phiale buried her head in Sappho's lap, and Sappho began to stroke her hair. 'Satyrus?' she asked.

  Phiale bobbed her head up and down. 'They say his ship sank – from damage. That no one – could save him. He – had Theron and Abraham aboard.'

  Melitta sobbed. She almost fell. Suddenly, Nihmu's calloused hands were under her elbows, and Kallista appeared, heavily pregnant, and took Kineas, who burst into tears and squalls.

  'And my husband?' Nihmu asked.

  'Eumeles has captured him,' Phiale said. 'But he lives, and will be ransomed.'

  'Only when he is humiliated and broken,' Nihmu said.

  The sound of weeping filled the garden. Phiale was weeping, and Kallista, and Melitta – Kallias wept, and both of their slave women. Alcaea watched with her usual indifference to the sufferings of others. Her demeanour suggested that suffering was the norm and the rest
of them had best get used to it, as she had.

  Nihmu was also dry-eyed, and Sappho pinched her lips and shook her head. 'We are not beaten yet,' Sappho said.

  Melitta watched as Sappho and Nihmu locked eyes. Something passed between them, and both of them turned, as if they were one being, to look, not at her, but at her child.

  3

  The west coast of the Euxine consisted of mudflats, deep bays, endless estuaries and sea marshes stretching away to the sea of grass.

  They were still ten stades from the coast. They had fled out into the deep water, the 'great green' where coastal sailors never went, bailing the Falcon and fothering his bow to prevent the inrush of water from the damage left by the loss of the ram – three great holes under the waterline, each the size of a fist, where the heavy bronze retaining bolts had ripped through the planking.

  Satyrus was utterly exhausted – past the point of careful decision-making, past the point of hope and fear. He merely acted. He was in the bow, naked except for his boots, strapping a tow-stuffed aspis to the outside of the hull over the holes. The stress on the bow had ripped every patch free and started the water again, and the oarsmen were rowing with the lowest rowing deck half full of water and worse to come.

  Satyrus pinned the shield over the holes – it covered all three – while two Urartian deck-crewmen drew the ropes over and through it tight. Satyrus was fighting the sea and his own fatigue, and even as he pushed, a wave caught something on the shield and all the ropes slipped. His arm hurt – the salt water licked at the deep cut there and the pain was intense.

  Water began to rush in once more.

  'Fuck it,' Satyrus said. He didn't think he had the energy to start again, so instead, he pushed the shield back into the ropes by the simple expedient of falling on the upper rim – and then past it into the water. He grabbed hold of the naked bow timbers as the water hit him, wrenching his shoulder, and got his head above water. Now the force of the ship's passage pinned him against the shield, and the shield was held in place.

  'Pull, you bastards!' Satyrus managed.

  Ba'alaz, the bigger of the two, hauled his rope back until it sang.

  Kariaz, the smaller, belayed it against a cross-member that had supported the weight of the ram and then hauled on the other line until Ba'alaz got to him and added his weight.

  'She's home, master!' Ba'alaz said.

  Satyrus was already sinking under the bow. 'Stand up and fight, boy!'

  Theron stood over him on the sand of the palaestra, his hands still in the fighting stance of the pankration.

  'Are you down? If you are one of mine, get up! Get up and fight!'

  Theron was even larger here – and the sands stretched to an infinite horizon. Theron towered over him, his lion-skin chlamys whipping in the winds – the smell of wet cat.

  'Get up and fight!'

  Satyrus struggled to get a foot under his own weight – to rise on an arm. All the weight of the world seemed to press him down. He got an arm out from under his body and he pushed against the sand. The force pinning him to the ground was like the hand of the gods. He pushed.

  Suddenly, the weight on his back released…

  Only the will of the gods kept Satyrus alive – his foot caught in the mess of old rope and canvas that marked their first attempts to fother the bow, and he was held there, drowning, until Theron reached into the water and pulled him up by sheer strength. It took Diokles hundreds of heartbeats to revive him – or so they told him after his choking breaths had turned to steady breathing.

  'You were there,' Satyrus said to Theron, catching his hand.

  'So I was,' Theron agreed. He wiped his nose. One of the wounds on his thigh had opened, and watery blood ran down his leg, deeply marked where he had stripped off his greaves.

  'No – I saw it. Was I dead?' Satyrus asked.

  He could see on their faces that they thought his wits were wandering, so he didn't say more. 'Any sign of the other ships?' he asked.

  Diokles shook his head. He'd been at the steering oar for ten hours.

  'None,' he said. 'We ran west. They ran east.' He shrugged.

  Theron slumped heavily. 'Zeus Soter, lad. If you'd left me, you'd be halfway to Rhodos now.'

  Satyrus managed a smile. 'Sounds bleak, doesn't it? We're much better off as we are.'

  Diokles stared ahead woodenly.

  Satyrus made his shoulders rise off the deck. To one of the boys, he said, 'Get my satchel.' To Diokles, he said, 'We're not dead yet.'

  'Close,' Diokles said.

  Satyrus put raw wool on Theron's thigh, twisting the ends as Philokles had taught him, washing the wound as Sophokles – a traitor, a poisoner, an assassin, but an excellent doctor – had instructed him years before in Heraklea.

  Heraklea, where Amastris would be tonight. Would she see the sunset? He looked out to the west, where the sun was setting as they edged into the low-lying swamps. There was nothing on this coast – nothing but the channels of a hundred forgotten watercourses and the swamps their passage left.

  He could just see the land under the setting sun, and just north of the brightest part of the sun's red disc, he saw the notch of a sail. He pointed.

  'Poseidon's watery dick,' Diokles said. 'Zeus Casios who conquers all the waters. Thetis of the glistening breasts.'

  Satyrus could just about manage to stand erect. 'Could be Dionysius,' he said hopefully.

  Diokles shook his head, spat over the side. 'That golden bastard who shaved our stern.' He looked forward. 'That rig of yours strong enough that we could rig the boatsail after dark?'

  Satyrus was watching. The oarsmen were tired – so tired that the ship had little more than steerage way despite all banks rowing. 'He doesn't see us,' he said.

  'We're on the dark horizon and all our masts are struck down,' Diokles said. 'But it means that we can't get in with the land. We could sink in the night, and you know it. We need to get this hulk ashore.'

  'There's nothing on this shore but mud and bugs,' Satyrus said.

  'A man can wade through mud, and bugs don't usually kill you,' Diokles said. 'With the ram gone, there's nothing holding that bow together but four copper bolts – hear me, sir? We will not make Tomis, or wherever you think we can get. If the wind comes up and there are cross-waves, we're gone.'

  Satyrus wanted to rant that this wasn't his fault and Diokles was being unfair, but he lacked the energy. 'So?'

  'So we need to land,' Diokles said. He looked at Theron.

  Theron shrugged. 'You put me in command of a ship,' he said. 'I won't take one again! I grew up with the sea and still I know nothing of him. But Diokles seems to have the right of it, lad. When the wind rises towards morning, we'll open like a flower. Philokles would ask you to think of the oarsmen.'

  Satyrus nodded. Despite everything, his eyelids sank, as if he was going to fall asleep, cold and wet, huddled by the rail of a sinking ship.

  'As soon as dark falls,' he said, 'we raise the boatsail mast. If that holds, we raise the mainmast. We turn north and put his bow into the mud. Get every oarsmen up on deck with his sea bag and every weapon we have aboard. Serve out the dead marines' gear and all the stuff we got off the enemy. If we can run him far enough ashore, we save the drinking water.'

  Diokles nodded. His lip curled in a fraction of a smile. 'I was afraid you'd decide to try and board the bastard and take him.'

  Satyrus stretched warily. The idea of getting back into his armour made his body hurt all over again. 'I thought about it,' he said, by way of humour.

  'That's what I'm afraid of,' Diokles said. Full dark, and half a moon – a clear, cool night with enough starlight to read a scroll. As soon as the Falcon got his boatsail up, his motion changed. Diokles got the deckhands to bring their bags on deck and then sent all of them aft except the work party for the mainmast. Satyrus stood in the bows, his hands on the lines fothering the shield. His shield.

  Not that he could do much if the patch gave way, except curse, and dr
own.

  He turned and watched the mainmast rise. A spar that big could sink them if it fell from its cradle of lines and hit the deck, but he lacked the energy to worry about such a thing. Instead, he watched the pink western horizon. The enemy vessel – if it was an enemy – was invisible, hull down and sail down. He might even have landed for the night, although few sailors would risk the mudflats on this stretch of coast.

  The thought made him give a tired smile, because he was about to beach his precious Falcon on those very mudflats. And he'd never get Falcon back. His grip on the cross-brace tightened.

  Before the last line on the mainmast was pulled taut, the pink was gone from the sky, and the great path of stars rolled overhead from horizon to horizon. Only a few oarsmen had the energy to look up, but those that did exclaimed – a comet, bright as the moon, was rising above the eastern sky.

  She'll see that in Heraklea, Satyrus thought.

  By the second watch of the night, all the oarsmen were packed in the stern, lifting the bow almost clear of the water. As long as the wind held, they'd be in with the land before dawn.

  'Do I see a glow to the west?' Theron croaked. He wasn't moving much, the wounds having stiffened and his muscles strained.

  Diokles nodded. 'He put ashore. You know what that tells me?'

  Satyrus grunted.

  'Tells me they know you're aboard this ship and there's money in it. No one would be on this coast unless there was some reward.' The man shrugged. 'With the bow out of the water like this, we're safe. I'll keep heading west until I feel the wind start to change.'

  Satyrus grunted his assent.

  The next thing he knew, he was waking up. The sky was lighter – the false dawn – and he was damp from the morning mist. 'Diokles?' he asked.

  Diokles grunted.

  'Let me have the helm,' Satyrus said, forcing himself to stand. His knee joints burned like fire.

  'Breeze is dying. We passed their fire two hours ago. We can't be more than a stade offshore, but this cursed fog-' Diokles kept his voice low.

  'What's our heading?' Satyrus couldn't see a thing.