Christian Cameron: Killer of Men

And the truth is that my story starts in that fight. It is from that day that the other Corvaxae turned against Pater, and then against me. And from that day that the men of Plataea decided to find a new way of keeping their little town free of Thebes. It took Pater almost a year to get to his feet. Before that year, I reckon we were rich, as peasants in Boeotia measured riches. We had a yoke of oxen and two ploughs, a house built of stone with a tower, a barn that stood all weather and the smithy. Pater wore the full panoply when the muster was called, like a lord. We ate meat on feast days and we had wine all year.

But I was old enough to understand that at the end of that year we were not rich. Mater's gold pin went, and all our metal cups. And my first bad memory – my first memory of fear – is from that year.

Simonalkes – the eldest of the other branch of the Corvaxae, a big, strong man with a dark face – came to our house. Pater had to walk with a crutch, but he rose as fast as he could, cursing the slaves who helped him. My brother was in the andron – the men's room – pouring wine for Simon like a proper boy. Simon put his feet up on a bench.

'You'll be needing money,' Simon said to Pater. Not even a greeting.

Pater's face grew red, but he bowed his head. 'Are you offering me aid, cousin?'

Simon shook his head. 'You need no charity. I'll offer you a loan against the farm.'

Pater shook his head. 'No,' he said. If Pater thought that he was hiding his anger, he was wrong.

'Still too proud, smith?' Simon said, and his lip curled.

'Proud enough to stand my ground,' Pater said, and Simon's face changed colour. He got up.

'Is this the famous hospitality of the Corvaxae?' Simon said. 'Or has your whore of a wife debased you, too?' He looked at me. 'Neither of these boys has your look, cousin.'

'Leave my house,' Pater said.

'I came to tender help,' Simon said, 'but I'm met by accusations and insults.'

'Leave my house,' Pater said.

Simon hooked his fingers in his belt and planted his feet. He looked around. 'Is it your house, cousin?' He smiled grimly. 'Our grandfather built this house. Why is it yours?' Simon sneered – he was always good at sneering – and snapped his fingers. 'Perhaps you'll marry again and get an heir.'

'My sons are my heirs,' Pater said carefully, as if speaking a foreign language.

'Your sons are the children of some strangers on the hillside,' our cousin said.

Pater looked as angry as I'd ever known him, and I'd never seen two grown men take this tone – the tone of hate. I'd heard it from Mater in the women's quarters, but I'd never heard it rise to conflict. I was afraid. And what was I hearing? It was as if cousin Simon was saying that I was not my father's son.

'Bion!' Pater shouted, and his biggest slave came running. Bion was a strong man, a trustworthy man with a wife and children who knew he'd be freed as soon as the money came back, and he was loyal. That's right, thugater. Melissa is Bion's granddaughter, and now she's your handmaiden. She's never been a slave, but Bion was once. As was I, lass, so don't you wrinkle your nose.

'You'll be even poorer if I have to kill your slave,' Simon said.

Pater thumped one crutch-step closer and his heavy staff shot out and caught Simon in the shin. Simon went down and then Pater hit him in the groin, so that he screamed like a woman in childbirth – I knew that sound well enough, because Bion's wife provided him with a child every year.

Pater wasn't done. He stood over Simon with his staff raised. 'You think I'm afraid of you, you coward!' he said. 'You think I don't know why I'm lame? You ran. You left me in the bronze storm. And now you come here and your mouth pours out filth.' He was panting and I was more afraid, because Simon was wheezing, down on the floor, and Pater had hurt him. It was not like two boys behind the barn. It was real.

Simon got himself up and he pushed against Bion. 'Let go, slave!' he croaked. 'Or I'll come back for you.' He leaned against the doorway, but Bion ignored him, linked an arm under his chin despite his size and dragged him from the room.

All the oikia – the household, slaves and free – followed the action into the courtyard. Simon wouldn't stop – he cursed us, and he cursed the whole oikia, and he promised that when he came into his own he'd sell all the slaves and burn their houses. Now I know it for what it was – the blusterings of an impotent but angry man. But at the time it sounded like the death curse of some fallen hero, and I feared him. I feared that everything he said would come to pass.

He said that he'd lain with our mother in the hills, and he said that Pater was a fool who had risked all their lives in the battle and who sought death rather than face his wife's infidelity. He shouted that we were all bastards, and he shouted that the basileus, the local aristocrat, would come for the farm because he was jealous of Pater.

And all the time Bion dragged him from the yard.

It was ugly.

And when he was gone, Pater wept. And that made me even more afraid. It seemed as if the roof had fallen in on our lives, but it was not many weeks later when Pater brought the priest to the forge, all the way from Thebes. He rebuilt the fire and the priest of Hephaestus took his silver drachma and made a thorough job of it; he used good incense from the east and he poured a libation from a proper cup, although made of clay and not metal as we expected. Because Chalkidis and I were old enough to help in the forge, he made us initiates. Bion was already an initiate – Hephaestus cares nothing for slave and free, but only that a craftsman gives unstintingly to his craft – and he advanced a degree. It was very holy and it helped to make me feel that my world was going to be restored. We swept the forge from top to bottom and Pater made a joke – the only one I can remember.

'I must have the only clean forge in all Hellas,' he said to the priest.

The priest laughed. 'You took that wound fighting us last year,' he said. He pointed at Pater's leg.

'Aye,' Pater allowed. He was not a man given to long speeches.

'Front rank?' the priest asked.

Pater pulled his beard. 'You were there?'

The priest nodded. 'I close the first file for my tribe,' he said. It was a position of real honour – the priest was a man who knew his battles.

'I'm the centre man in the front rank,' Pater said. He shrugged. 'Or I was.'

'You held us a good long time,' the Theban said. 'And to be honest, I knew your device – the raven. Apollo's raven for a smith?'

My father grinned. He liked the priest – a small miracle in itself – and that smile made my life better. 'We're sons of Heracles here. I serve Hephaestus and we've had the raven on our house since my grandfather's grandfather came here.' He kept grinning, and just for a moment he was a much younger man. 'My father always said that the gods were sufficiently capricious that we needed to serve a couple at a time.'

That was Pater's longest sentence in a year.

The priest laughed. 'I should be getting back,' he said. 'It'll be dark by the time I see the gates of Thebes.'

Pater shook his head. 'Let me relight the fire,' he said. 'I'll make you a gift and that will please the god. Then you can eat in my house and sleep on a good couch, and go back to Thebes rested.'

The priest bowed. 'Who can refuse a gift?' he said.

But Pater's face darkened. 'Wait,' he said, 'and see what it is. The lame god may not return my skill to me. It has been too long.'

The fire was laid. The priest went out into the sunshine and took from his girdle a piece of crystal – a beautiful thing, as clear as a maiden's eye, and he held it in the sun. He called my brother and I followed him, as younger brothers follow older brothers, and he laughed. 'Two for the price of one, eh?' he said.