Killer of Men by Christian Cameron Page B

nose straight, her face thin, her cheekbones high and hollow – I often wonder how many Mother Heras in the temple were carved to look like Mater. She would come down in a dress of Tyrian-dyed wool with embroidery – not her own, Athena knows – and she was trim and lithe and above all, to me, sober.
    The next day, Pater freed Bion. He offered him a wage to stay, and sent for the priest from Thebes to raise Bion to the level of a free smith. Bion and Pater dickered over the price of his family and Pater settled on two years’ work at the forge. Bion accepted and they spat on their hands and shook.
    The following day, Pater came to me where I was sweeping. ‘Time to go to school,’ he said. He didn’t smile. In fact, he looked nervous. ‘I’m – sorry, boy. Sorry I beat you so hard for a drachma knife.’ He handed it back to me – he’d confiscated it and the bronze one he’d made for me. ‘I made you a scabbard,’ he said.
    Indeed he had. A bronze scabbard with a silver rivet decoration. It was a wonderful thing – finer than anything I owned. ‘Thank you, Pater,’ I mumbled.
    ‘I swore an oath that if we made it through the summer . . .’ He paused and looked out of the forge. ‘If we made it through the summer, I’d take you up to the hero’s shrine and pay the priest to teach you.’
    I nodded.
    ‘I mean to keep my word, but I want you to know that – you’re a good – worker.’ He nodded. ‘So – put your knife round your neck. Let’s see it. Now go and put on a white chiton as if you were going to a festival, and kiss your mother.’
    Mater looked at me as if I’d been dragged in by the dogs, but then she smiled. Today she looked to me like a queen. ‘You have it in you to look like a lord,’ she said. ‘Remember this.’ She held up her mirror, a fine silver one that hadn’t been sold while we were poor, with Aphrodite combing her hair on the back. I saw myself. It wasn’t the first time, but I still remember being surprised at how tall I was, and how much I really did look like my idea of a lord – fine wool chiton, hair in ringlets and the knife under my arm. Then she offered me her cheek to kiss – never her lips and never a hug – and I was away.
    I walked with Pater. It was thirty stades to the shrine of our hero of the Trojan War, and I wasn’t used to sandals.
    Pater was silent. I was amazed that he hadn’t sent Bion or someone else, but he took me himself, and when we had climbed high enough up the flank of the mountain to be amidst the trees – beautiful straight cypress and some scrubby pine – he stopped.
    ‘Listen, boy,’ he said. ‘Old Calchas is a worthy man, for a drunk. But he – that is, if you want no part of him, run home. And if he hurts you, I’ll kill him.’
    He held my shoulders and kissed me, and then we walked the rest of the way.
    Calchas was not so old. He was Pater’s age, and had a fuller beard, with plenty of white in it, but he had the body of an athlete. He didn’t look like a drunk. I fancied myself an expert – after all, I knew every stage of Mater’s drinking, from red-rimmed eyes and foul breath to modest bleariness. Calchas didn’t show any of that. And he was still . I saw that at once. He didn’t fidget and he didn’t show anxiety.
    But it was his eyes that held me. He had green eyes – as I do myself – and I’d never seen another pair. They also had a particular quality – they seemed to look through you to a place far beyond.
    I know, dear. My eyes do the same. But they didn’t then.
    I don’t think most of the farmers of the valley of the Asopus knew what Calchas was. They thought him a harmless priest, a drunk, a useful old man who would teach their sons to read.
    It is almost funny, given what Plataea was to become, that in all the valley, there wasn’t a man hard enough to look the priest in the eye and see him for what he was.
    A killer.

    I lived with Calchas for years, but I never thought of his hut beside