Christian Cameron: Killer of Men

My brother worked the forge and resented it, but his body was filling out. He already looked like a man – or at least, he looked like a man to me. He wasn't interested in anything I could tell him, so I left him alone. But on my second evening, he gave me a cup he'd made – a simple thing with no adornment, but the lip was well turned and the handle well set.

'Pater put in the rivets,' he admitted. Then, with a shrug, 'I can probably do better now.' He frowned, and looked away.

I loved it. I imagined drinking with my own bronze cup by a stream, up on the mountain. 'Hephaestus bless you, brother!' I said.

'So you like it?' he asked. Suddenly he was my brother again. The next day was like the old days and the resentment was gone, so that I was able to show him a better way to fling a javelin and he loved it, and he took me into the shop and showed me how he raised a simple bowl. We'd come a long way as a family, when my brother could work a sheet of carefully pounded-out copper without permission from Pater. In fact, Pater came in, looked at his work and ruffled his hair. Then he turned to me.

'How are your letters, boy?' he asked. 'Your mother claims you can read.'

Odd how fast the mind works when fear comes in. For one moment, I thought that I would impress him – and then I thought that perhaps that would be an error, because my days on Mount Cithaeron would end, and there would be no more rabbit hunts in the dawn. And in that one burst of thought, I understood how much I had become separated from the world of the forge.

But, of course, the desire to please Pater won out.

'I can read the Iliad, Pater,' I said. 'And write all my letters.'

Pater handed me a piece of charcoal and a flat board he whitewashed and used for designs. 'Write for me. Write, "This cup is of Miltiades and Technes made him".'

I thought for a moment, and then, somewhat daring, I changed the words so that I needed only two.

I wrote in a clear hand, like a good craftsman. I knew that Pater would engrave the words if mine were good enough. Two words – Greek is a splendid language for ownership. 'OF-MILTIADES BY-TECHNES', I wrote.

Pater examined it. He could read, albeit slowly. Then he smiled.

My brother winked at me, because we could count those smiles on our fingers, they were so few and so valuable.

'Mmm,' he said. He nodded, then scribed it on copper – twice, to be sure. Then he put it on a cup he had, around the base. He used a very small chisel – a new tool, and clearly expensive, with a fine handle – to work the letters deeply. Chalkidis and I watched together until he was done.

'Chalkidis pounded the bronze to sheet,' Pater said. 'I made the cup. You provided the letters.' He nodded, obviously satisfied. 'He will like this.'

Pater had a standing commission, making armour and fancy tableware for Miltiades. Pater wasn't alone – Miltiades bought Draco's wagons almost as fast as he could build them. They might have asked themselves why an Athenian aristocrat didn't buy these things closer to home, but they didn't.

Mater did. She mentioned it at least twice a day.

'Your father is rushing to his doom,' she said. 'Miltiades is as far beyond your father as he is beyond – me.'

Sober, Mater's intelligence was piercing and cruel. Sadly, the gods made her so that she was only happy when she was lightly drunk – witty, flirtatious, clever and social. But sober she was Medea, and dead drunk she was Medusa.

I read to her, and she lent me her book of poems and said that she would come and visit. 'I like what I hear of your Calchas,' she said. 'Has he made love to you yet?'

She was born of aristocrats, you see. And that was the way, even in Boeotia – men with boys, and women with girls. At least, in the aristocracy.

I blushed and stammered.

'So he hasn't. That's good. You wouldn't like it, would you?' She said this stroking my cheek – scary itself, in a way. She never touched us.

'No,' I said.

'No.' She was sitting on her kline, a low bench like a bed. She reclined, pulling her shawl about her. 'When that urge comes on you, tell me, and I'll buy you a slave for it.'

I had no notion what she was talking about, any more than I understood what Calchas wanted, except as a vague fear. And in many ways, I liked Calchas better than I liked Mater.

I found that I was eager to get back to the shrine. I said my goodbyes with more relief than longing. Hermogenes came back with me. We had a good walk.

'I'll be free next year,' he said wistfully.

'Let's pretend you're free now,' I said. 'You can use the practice.'

He looked at me. 'How do I pretend to be free?' he asked.

I laughed. 'Calchas tells me that we all pretend to be free,' I said, a typical boy trying to sound as adult as his teacher. 'But you can meet my eyes when you talk, and tell me to fuck off when I make you angry. Come on – pretend!'

Hermogenes shook his head. 'You've never been a slave, Arimnestos,' he said. 'No one pretends to be free. And I guarantee you that no free man pretends to be a slave.'

We arrived at the shrine near nightfall. Hermogenes stayed the night and we took him hunting in the morning. He was an excellent rabbit killer, trained by hunger, and he quickly won Calchas's praises. I was jealous. Names flew, and some nine-year-old punches. In the midst of a flurry of blows, I called him a slave and he stopped moving.

I never saw the blow from Calchas. It caught me in the ear and knocked me flat.

'Are you a gentleman?' he asked me, from the advantage of six feet of height. 'You invited him to be a free man. You asked him to trust you. Then – you called him a slave. Can you keep your word?'

I was resentful, but I wasn't a fool. Pain has a remarkable effect on boys. I sat up. 'I apologize, Hermogenes,' I said formally. 'I meant it – only as a hateful word, like "bastard".' I tried to grin it off.

Calchas shook his head. 'That's a worthless apology, young man. You must never call a bastard "bastard" or a slave "slave" unless you want to fight to the death. Trust me – I'm a bastard. I know.'

We ended up apologizing to each other, very formally. There was some silence and some walking apart.

Calchas laughed, called us girls and led us up the mountain after a deer. It was late, but the Lady of Animals sent us a good buck, and Hermogenes and I ran him down with javelins, Calchas working carefully through the trees to push the deer back on our weapons, and we killed when the sun was almost in the treetops. Then Calchas made Hermogenes cut the buck's throat and anointed him with blood on his face, as he had with me.

'Arimnestos says you are to be a free man,' Calchas said. 'You must learn to look other men in the eye. And to think of them like this,' and he pointed at the corpse of the deer. 'Slave or free, a man is nothing but a pile of bones and flesh with blood in the middle.'

Hermogenes didn't say anything, but he embraced me and when he went to leave, we clasped hands as if we were men. We sent Hermogenes home with a haunch of venison and a couple of rabbits, which no doubt made him a hero to his family. Hermogenes and I date our friendship from that morning. But I had to be a slave before I learned how true Calchas's words were. In the Boeotia of my youth, we were poor men, and though we thought we knew the world, we knew little of what passed beyond our town and our mountain and our river. These were the borders of our lives.

Festivals came and passed, and sowing, and reaping, and I was getting older. Hard men came to the shrine and Calchas sat up the night with them. The second year, one tried to rape me, and Calchas killed him. I was well-nigh paralysed with fear, although I managed to bite his hand so hard he screamed. After that, I was more wary of the hard men.