They were social men – sailors are social by nature – and if the conversation was loud and nautical, it was also well-bred. Sappho was still smiling at Anaxilaus’s gallantry as she escorted the last of the guests to the door. ‘Sicilians have the very best manners,’ she said, as her steward closed the garden door.
‘I think Philokles would have argued that Spartans have the very best manners,’ Satyrus said. They walked back to the main room together and lay on adjacent couches.
‘Are you still angry with me?’ she asked.
‘No,’ Satyrus said. ‘No. You were right, of course. I miss Philokles. He used to say that it is sometimes easy to mistake the hard thing for the easy thing.’ Satyrus could feel the wine in his brain. His aunt was really quite beautiful – not the first time he’d noticed. He banished the thought as unworthy. ‘It is easy to kill, and difficult to find another way – but it is difficult to make myself kill, and that clouds the issue.’ Satyrus took a long drink of wine. ‘I think I killed two men in the Euxine to show myself that I could.’
Sappho rolled on to her stomach – not the posture of a well-bred
woman of Thebes, but of a hetaira. ‘Dear nephew, we all do things we regret – often merely to prove things to ourselves. May I say that I think you are lucky in your captains?’
Satyrus smiled and tried to dispel the heaviness in his brain – and his heart. ‘I agree. Fine men – and a good party, too.’
Sappho smiled into her cup. ‘As the veteran of a few parties, my dear, I can tell you that good men are what make a good party – not the quality of the lobsters or the antics of the flute girls.’
Satyrus smiled at her. ‘Philokles might have said the same.’
Sappho nodded. Her laugh was self-mocking, and Satyrus didn’t know what to make of it, so he tried to change the subject. ‘You are satisfied that you can restrain Phiale?’ he asked.
She nodded. ‘Gabines sent me a note,’ she said. ‘We will watch Phiale. And Sophokles has gone to Sicily. He won’t return unless you do.
I
am not a worthy target.’
Satyrus snorted. ‘That just shows what a fool he is. You command me and my sister. You direct the finances of the Exiles and as far as I can discern, it was you, not Coenus, who dispatched my sister to take the leadership of the Sakje.’
Sappho raised her wine. ‘Flatterer!’ she said.
‘Men are strange,’ Satyrus said. ‘Greek men pretend that women are inferior, when it seems to me that you, who are the daughter and former wife of boeotarchs, wife now of a strategos, are the match for any man in a contest of wits.’
‘I have had a triumph or two,’ Sappho said. She drank again. ‘All flattery gratefully accepted. I’ve passed the age when men will be stopped in the street by my looks.’
He got up unsteadily, having had too much wine for a man so close to his recovery. ‘You are wrong, Aunt! Men still praise your beauty.’ He walked towards her unsteadily. She had seldom been so beautiful.
Sappho rose from her couch and straightened her chiton. ‘You are the image of your father, Satyrus. Right down to his clumsy, but welcome, flattery. Your feelings for Phiale have left you vulnerable. Be wary.’ She embraced him, and he felt her warmth, the press of her breasts against his chest – and then she stepped away.
He flushed, because as usual, his aunt was dead on the mark. ‘Will I ever grow up?’ he asked.
Sappho laughed, her eyes sparkling, until he laughed, too. ‘A good
party brings out the lechery in all of us,’ she said. ‘Go and conquer the Euxine,’ she added. ‘And get your sister to come back for her son, before I decide to keep him.’
‘You said you wanted no more children,’ Satyrus said. ‘I remember you saying it to us.’
She shook her head and turned away. ‘I have seen men who have a will of iron where women are concerned – until one takes them by the hand, and at the first touch, they become clay in her hand.’ She shrugged. ‘Women can be that way about children.’
‘But—’ he began.
‘Shush, nephew,’ she said. ‘Go and conquer the Euxine. I’ll see to the child.’
In the morning, his squadron came off the beach all together. Leon’s officers – Satyrus’s officers now – were all professionals, better officers, man for man, than Ptolemy’s navy had available to them. Satyrus lounged against the rail of the
Lotus
and listened to their orders, watched the rowers and the deck crews race to get the ships down the beach and into the water. The two light triremes were easy, but the heavy quadriremes with their bow catapults and their heavy crews were slower to launch, and Diomedes, the new helmsman of the
Plataea
, could be heard from a stade away.
But their hulls were newly cleaned. The
Lotus
had been scraped and dried while Satyrus lay in his bed shouting at visions in his head, and the rowers pulled him north along the coast of Palestine at a fair clip.
Satyrus watched the coast go by, his eyes always flicking to the empty horizons to the west, where Cyprus lurked out of sight. But winter – high winter – was not the time to risk a heavy blow on the open sea south of Cyprus.
They beached at Ake, the northernmost outpost of Ptolemy’s power, and rested a day and a night before racing north with a rare favourable breeze. They passed Tyre in the full light of day, and saw the inner harbour crammed with military shipping, but all their masts were down and most of the hulls were stacked out of the water. And three hours later, they blew past Sidon, their sails still full of their good north wind. The helmsmen and the trierarchs all offered libations to Poseidon, and they stood on. If a pursuit was launched, they never saw it.
‘I thought Ptolemy had a squadron moving up this coast as a feint,’ Neiron said. ‘We should have seen it.’
‘I have a growing suspicion that
we
are Ptolemy’s feint,’ Satyrus answered. He looked at the land in the ruddy light of a winter evening. ‘We might not get weather this good again for ten days. It is too good to stop for the night.’ He looked at Neiron. ‘I’m of a mind to try to get north of Laodikea before we look for a beach.’
Neiron nodded. ‘Ask me to solve your land quarrels and I’m all at sea,’ Neiron said. He nodded and scratched under his beard. ‘Here, I’m happy to give advice. We’ll have this wind until at least the rising of the morning star. The sky is clear and the men are still fresh – no one’s touched an oar all day.’ He frowned. ‘Besides – you want them ready for anything by the time we enter the Euxine. Some small risks now will give us better crews.’
They passed Laodikea in the dark, its position marked only by the dull glow of a town at night – and even then, most of the light came from the Temple of Poseidon’s eternal fire on the height behind the town.
The morning star was rising when they passed the headland at Gigarta and Neiron indicated the darkness of the open ocean. ‘There’s a set of islands north and west of Tripolis,’ he said. ‘If I line up the Kalamus headland with the North Star, we should be on a beach in an hour.’
The wind was dropping, and the sails flapped every few minutes as the wind backed and spat.
Satyrus nodded. ‘Weather change?’ he asked.
‘Like enough,’ Neiron answered.
‘Do it,’ Satyrus ordered, and an hour later he was eating hot stew on a beach just big enough for seven warships and their crews. And he noticed a certain regard among the helmsmen and trierarchs. Night sailing was not for the weak of heart.
In the morning, they rowed away north, with the wind blowing from off the land. The triemiolia could sail on a broad reach, but the triremes and quadriremes couldn’t, and their rowers got plenty of practice.
Noon saw them north of the old pirate haven at Arados, and they ate their evening meal on the beach at Gabala on the coast of Syria.
In fact, they spent three days on the beach at Gabala, lashed by
winds and heavy rain that made launching the light triremes impossible, and Satyrus was forced to use his manpower to pull the ships clear of the water, high up on the beaches. And he had a thousand rowers to feed, so that his men were roaming the countryside for food before the winter storm ended, every scrap of provision consumed.
On the fourth day, he got them under way with empty bellies and some empty benches where men didn’t return. The
Plataea
made heavy going of the launch, and laboured in the waves, because his upper-tier rowers had eaten something bad and dysentery was rife.
They’d been at sea less than an hour before Satyrus saw the squadron astern. He pointed, and Neiron swore. ‘Poseidon’s stade-long member,’ he said. ‘Where’d they come from?’
Satyrus shook his head. ‘Tyre? Sidon? I always knew there was a risk, coming up this coast. We’re sailing right through Demetrios’s fleet.’ He shook his head. ‘Ptolemy has a lot to answer for.’
Noon, and they passed the headland at Posideion, and every man threw a handful of barley into the sea if he had any grain. The squadron behind them was just a series of nicks on the horizon, and even those sightings were occasional. No one had a mast raised on a day like this, with the wind blowing more north than anything else, and all the rowers cursed their lot at every stroke of the oars.
In early afternoon, the wind shifted back to the east, blowing off the land, and the pursuing squadron began to gain ground, their fresher rowers and more recent food beginning to tell.
Satyrus watched as they drew closer. He stood in the stern and watched the pennants of the mast as they fluttered back and forth, showing every wind-change. ‘Neiron?’ he called.
‘Sir?’ Neiron woke up fully alert. He had the oar master at the helm and he himself was asleep on the helmsman’s bench.
‘I intend to turn west, put the wind at our sterns and sail for Cyprus,’ he said. ‘What do you think?’
Neiron licked his fingers and raised them, and then looked at the clouds. ‘Risky,’ he said.
Satyrus pointed astern, and Neiron’s eyes followed until he saw the pursuit. ‘They may not be after us,’ he said, stroking his beard.
Satyrus nodded. ‘They are persistent, though. There’s another blow coming up, and these gentlemen are still at sea.’
‘And they
do
look like warships.’ Neiron looked under his hand.
‘Six hours to the first sighting of the Temple of Aphrodite Kleides.’ He shook his head. ‘If the wind changes, we’re in the open sea at night with a storm rising behind us.’
Satyrus nodded.
Neiron shook his head. ‘Do it,’ he said.
Satyrus took the helm himself. Neiron went forward and ordered the deck crew and the sailors to raise the mainsail, and as soon as it was laid to the mast, Satyrus gave the orders and the
Lotus
, still under oars, turned from north to west in his own length. Satyrus was pleased to see that the next ship in line, the
Oinoe
, was prepared, and although he took longer to get his mast up, he made the turn in good order. Behind him,
Plataea
redeemed himself from an earlier poor performance and made the run with alacrity, and the two light triremes turned like acrobats and raised their masts even as they turned.
Hyacinth
was late in his turn, and lost ground as he rowed slowly north, his helmsman apparently asleep at his oars.
But however slow the
Hyacinth
was, the pursuers were slower. They continued north so long that Satyrus began to wonder if he was fleeing from shadows. Only when they had cut Satyrus off completely from the coast did they turn their bows out to sea – but they didn’t raise their sails.
‘I count ten,’ Neiron said. ‘Heavy bastards. Everyone’s building bigger and bigger – is that a
hepteres
? A seven?’
The largest pursuer towered over the others, with three decks of oars and a wide, heavy hull that nonetheless seemed to sail with speed.
‘That’s Demetrios, or his admiral,’ Satyrus said. He shook his head. ‘He must think we’re the long-awaited raid out of Aegypt.’
‘So he’s kept us off his coast,’ Neiron said. ‘And now he leaves us to Poseidon’s mercy.’
‘I wish you hadn’t said that,’ Satyrus said.
They drove on, into rising seas, with the wind howling behind them.
But they had good ships and good officers, and before the last pink rays of the winter sun set behind the mountains of Cyprus, the
Lotus
had his stern on the black sand west of Ourannia, with a promontory between them and the east wind’s might. Cypriot peasants came down to the beach with baskets of dried fish and fresh crabs, and Satyrus paid cash for a feast even as the wind rose and the rain began to fall.
For three days they crawled along the coast of Cyprus, with their bow pushing straight into a fresh westerly that followed the storm, and they continued along the coast all the way to the beach at Likkia – a beach Satyrus had used before. He provisioned his ships there, paying on credit with his uncle’s name, which was good for anything here. He waited for two days for an east wind, and when it rose, he made sacrifice on the beach and launched his ships.
‘Straight west for Rhodos,’ he said.
Neiron shook his head. ‘Why risk it?’ he asked.
‘I can feel the time slipping away from me,’ Satyrus said. ‘Any day, word of our departure will get out of Alexandria.’
‘Anyone going north has to go the way we’ve gone,’ Neiron said.
‘And I’ve done it before,’ he said.