Read Online The Wooden Walls of Thermopylae by Nick Brown - Free Book Online Page B

ill-meant but it hurt. My confidence was already shot through, would she still want me? I didn’t have long to wonder: Aeschylus slipped him a coin, the gate opened and we walked through. It was just as it always was, a neatly swept courtyard with a line of doors like stables at the far end where sitting on a shaded veranda a group of girls were playing dice.
    “Go on, Mandrocles; she’s not going to bite.”
    I wasn’t so sure and was about to ask him to wait with the cart when I saw him walking back out through the door which Demetrius slammed shut behind him. Lyra left the dice players and floated off the veranda towards me, her smile made me want to break down and blurt out all the things that had torn me apart since I last saw her. I reminded myself that she was a flute girl and the smile went with the trade.
    She kissed me gently on the lips then took my hand and wordlessly led me through the door and into her quarters. Pushing the door closed with a practised back flick of her heel the noise from the dice players receded and we were on our own. It was then that I discovered the real reason for my visit. She pointed to a small table by the window.
    “There, recognise that?”
    I did: it was the drinking cup that Metiochus had given me back in the Chersonese before we had to make a run for Athens. The one he had given me in his attempt at seduction. Fitting that it had turned up again after he’d tried and failed a second time, this time to kill me.
    “Where did you get that?”
    For a moment I hoped that Elpinice had sent it and that she and Cimon were somewhere I could join them.
    “It was sent by a great man.”
    She was being playful, seeing this as a joke.
    “Who? Which great man?”
    “You should have asked your friend before he left; he delivered it a couple of days ago.”
    Then I understood what all this was about, all this pretence at friendship, it was to show me who owned me: whose man I was whether I liked it or not. Themistocles was reminding me through the people I loved that I was his dog. Aeschylus was a false friend, a panderer and she – well, she was the whore the world took her for.
    I told her that and a lot more, struggling to get the words out through the pain in my ribs and anger in my heart. I looked round at the room: the whore’s workplace. Saw she’d had a bath filled with scented and oiled water, saw the jug of wine with the two lovers’ cups by the bed. The Gods do this to drive us from our wits. Offer you something you crave then turn it to shit before your eyes. That’s how they make us mad.
    Everything that I could see in that room I wanted so much, yet all of it was false and tainted. I don’t know how long I raged at her. Let her have all the spleen and hatred I felt for the world. It wasn’t all aimed at her, but she was there and they weren’t so she got it. Stood and took it, said nothing. Said nothing, stood there arms by her sides, tearsslipping down her cheeks. Stood there with a look of surprise on her face. Not anger, just surprise, hurt surprise.
    For a moment I thought maybe I’d got it wrong. I wanted to have got it wrong but I’d gone too far: poured it all out, said things that couldn’t be unsaid. Hurt surprise: but then whores are the best actresses there are: every minute of their lives is an act. So I carried on – couldn’t stop – and she stood and listened, arms by her sides. Stood and listened with the hair that she’d let down as we entered that room falling almost to her waist. Stood and said nothing with tears on her cheeks. Hurt surprise.
    “You pornoi bitch.”
    I stumbled out of the room across the yard to the gate. The dice players had been listening; they backed off as I came out. Demetrius opened the gate; there was no jibe or leer this time. Just a look of surprise and something that resembled pity. The door slammed behind me and I knew I’d cut myself off from everyone who mattered to me. It had all happened so quickly – I’d