Killer of Men Read Online Free PDF Page B

Iliad , but back then, every farm girl in Boeotia knew it. And they sang together. I don’t think I’d ever heard them sing together. Perhaps he was happy. Perhaps she was sober.
    Pater came out into the yard with a cup in his hand. He must have burnished it himself, instead of having the slave boys do it, because it glowed like gold in the last light of the sun.
    He limped across the yard, and he was smiling. ‘My gift to you and the god,’ he said. He handed the cup to the priest.
    It had a flat base – a hard thing to keep when you round a cup, let me tell you – with sloping sides and a neatly rolled rim. He’d riveted a handle on, simple work, but done cleanly and precisely. He’d made the rivets out of silver and the handle itself of copper. And he’d raised a scene into the cup itself, so that you could see Hephaestus being led to Olympus by Dionysus and Heracles, when his father Zeus takes him back. Dionysus was tall and strong in a linen chiton, and every fold was hammered in the bronze. Heracles had a lion skin that Pater had engraved so that it looked like fur, and the smith god was a little drunk on the happiness of his father’s taking him back.
    The priest turned it this way and that, and then he shook his head. ‘This is king’s work,’ he said. ‘Thieves would kill me in the road for a cup like this.’
    ‘Yours,’ Pater said.
    The priest nodded. ‘Your gifts are unimpaired, it seems,’ he said. The cup was its own testimony. I remember the awe I felt, looking at it.
    ‘Untouched by the rage of Ares,’ Pater said, ‘I owe more than that cup, priest. But that’s what I can tithe now.’
    The priest was visibly awed. I was a boy, and I could see his awe, just as surely as I had seen Simon’s fear and rage. It made me wonder, in a whole new way, who my father was.
    Pater summoned Bion, and Bion poured wine – cheap wine, for that’s all we had – into the new cup. First the priest prayed to the smith god and poured a libation, and then he drank, and then Pater drank, and then Bion drank. Then they gave me the cup, and I drank.
    ‘Your boy here has a gift too,’ the priest said, while the wine warmed our bellies.
    ‘He’s quick,’ Pater said, and ruffled my hair.
    First I’d heard of it.
    ‘More than quick,’ the priest said. He drank, looked at the cup and held it out to Bion, who filled it. He started to pass it back and Pater waved at him.
    ‘All servants of the smith here, Bion,’ he said.
    So Bion drank again. And let me tell you, when the hard times came and Bion stayed loyal, it was for that reason – Pater was fair. Fair and straight, and slaves know. Something for you to remember when you’re tempted to a little temper tantrum, eh, little lady? Hair in your food and piss in your wine when you mistreat them. Right?
    Anyway, we drank a while longer. It went to my head. The priest asked Pater to think about moving to Thebes – said Pater would make a fortune doing work like this in a real city. Pater just shrugged. The joy of making was washing away in the wine.
    ‘If I wanted to be a Theban,’ he said, ‘I’d have gone there when I was young.’ He made the word Theban sound dirty, but the priest took no offence.
    And then the priest turned back to me.
    ‘That boy needs to learn his letters,’ he said.
    Pater nodded. ‘Good thing for a smith to know,’ he agreed.
    My heart soared. I wanted nothing – nothing – more than to be a smith.
    ‘I could take him to school,’ the priest said.
    Pater shook his head. ‘You’re a good priest,’ Pater said, ‘but my boy won’t be a pais in Thebes.’
    Again the priest took no offence. ‘You won’t teach the boy yourself, ’ he said. No question to it.
    Pater looked at me, nodded, agreeing. ‘No,’ he said. ‘It’s my curse – I’ve no time for them. Teaching takes too long and I grow angry.’ He shrugged.
    The priest nodded. ‘There’s a hero’s tomb with a priest up the mountain,’ he