Killer of Men by Christian Cameron Page A

have seen them three stades away, or farther. And as the master, and the man with so much to lose, it would have been natural for him to take his axe and go down to the yard and leave us to work on the hilltop. But he didn’t. He came up the hill, hobbling quickly.
    ‘Come with me,’ he said. He was terse, and all of us – even Bion – thought that there might be trouble.
    We put our tools down and followed him through the vineyard to the house.
    Pater said nothing, so we didn’t either. We came into the yard and only then could we see the hillside and hear the wagons in the lane.
    I couldn’t see my face, but I could see Hermogenes. He flashed his father a smile of utter joy. He said, ‘You’ll be free!’, which meant nothing to me at the time.
    Epictetus was driving his own oxen on the wagon. His son was beside him, and he had two of his hired men in the box, but the second wagon was gone – and the smiles must have been wiped from every face in the oikia. Even the women were leaning over the rail of the exhedra.
    Epictetus the Younger leaped down and ran to the heads of the oxen, and he flashed Pater a smile – and then we knew.
    As old Epictetus got down, he couldn’t keep the smile off his own face.
    Then the hired men got down, and they threw heavy wool sacks on to the ground. They made a noise – like rock, but thinner – copper, I knew from the sound. And then tin wrapped in leather from far, far to the north.
    Epictetus came forward with his thumbs in his girdle. ‘It was cheaper to buy copper and tin than to buy ingots of bronze,’ he said. ‘And I’ve watched you do it. If you don’t like it,’ he raised an eyebrow, ‘I’ll lend you the wagon to get it back.’
    ‘Cyprian ingots,’ Pater said. He had the heavy wool bags open. ‘By Aphrodite, friend, you must drive a fair bargain if all this copper and tin is mine for twenty drachmas less an eighth for cartage.’
    Epictetus shrugged, but he was a happy man – a man who’d done another man an unanswerable favour. ‘Fifty drachmas of silver less an eighth cartage,’ he said. ‘I spent thirty of your profits on new material. It seemed like sense.’
    Pater was kneeling in the copper like a boy playing in mud. ‘I owe you,’ he said.
    Epictetus shrugged. ‘Time you made some money. You’re too good a man to starve. You know how to work, but not how to be rich.’ He held out a bag. ‘Three hundred and seventy-two silver drachmas after my cartage and all that copper.’ He nodded. ‘And there’s a man coming to see you about a helmet.’
    ‘From Athens?’ Pater didn’t seem to know what was being said, so he fixed on the idea that the man from Athens was coming. ‘Three hundred and seventy drachmas ?’ he said.
    He and Epictetus embraced.
    That night, Mater and Pater sang together.
    They were a remarkable couple, when sober and friends to each other. You’ll never credit this, Thugater, but you’ll find it hard enough when you are my age to look back and see your father and mother clearly, and if Apollo withholds his hand and Pluton grants fortune enough that I live to see you with children at your knee – why, then you’ll remember me only as an old man with a stick. Eh? But I love to remember them, that day. In later years – when I was far away, a slave – I would think of Pater dressed in his best, a chiton of oiled wool so fine that every muscle in his chest showed, and his neck, like a bull’s, and his head – he had a noble head – like a statue of Zeus, his hair all dark and curled. He always wore it long, in braids wrapped around the crown of his head when he was working. Later I understood – it was a warrior’s hairstyle, braids to pad his helmet. He was never just a smith.
    And Mater, when sober – it is hard for a child to see his mother as beautiful, but she was. Men told me so all my childhood, and what is more embarrassing than other men finding your mother attractive? Her eyes were blue and grey, her