‘What are you doing here? Are you spying on me?’
‘Not at all. I was enjoying the stars. Why should I spy on you?’
Derae pushed back the hood, the moonlight turning her hair to silver. ‘It is a long time since we spoke, young Fast.’
‘Indeed it is,’ he replied. ‘And what brings you to the Bronze House at midnight?’
‘My own business,’ she answered, smiling to rob the words of sharpness. ‘Perhaps I too like to look at the stars.’
A movement at the edge of his vision caused Parmenion to swing his head and he saw a young man dart away behind the Sanctuary to the Muses. He said nothing.
‘Good night to you,’ said Derae, and Parmenion bowed and watched as the girl moved away to the path. It was a dangerous game she was playing. Unmarried Spartans were
not allowed to mix freely with members of the opposite sex, and any liaison could end in execution or banishment. That was one reason why the young men were encouraged to take lovers among their male comrades. He found himself envying the young man who had fled, and realized that he too would risk a great deal for the chance to spend time alone with Derae. He still remembered the lithe young body, the small, firm breasts, the narrow waist . . .
Enough! he chided himself.
Returning home, he sat in the tiny courtyard and ate a late supper of dried fish and wine; it had cost two obols. The thought of his dwindling finances depressed him. The sale of the last share in the landholding had realized 170 drachms, but eighty of these had gone to pay his mess bill. Thirty more had been set aside to buy the armour he would need when he reached Manhood next spring. The rest must keep him in food and clothing. He shook his head. The price of a new cloak was twenty drachms, new shoes just under ten. It would be a long hard winter, he realized.
Entering the house, he shut the windows and lit a small lantern. By its light he took the Sword of Leonidas from the cupboard by the far wall and drew it from its bronze scabbard. It was an iron blade no longer than a man’s forearm, the hilt decorated with gold wire which encircled a pommel globe of purest silver.
Xenophon had urged him many tunes to sell it. There were families in Sparta who would pay as much as 1,000 drachms for a blade with such an illustrious history. Parmenion slid the sword back into its scabbard; he would sooner starve than part with the only trophy of his life.
He had a dream and the sword was part of it. He would march away to war as a mercenary, gather a great fortune and an army and return to Sparta, humbling the city and visiting his vengeance on all the enemies of his youth. It was a foolish dream, and he knew it, but it sustained him.
More likely, he realized, he would be forced to sign as a koplite in a mercenary company, and spend his days marching across the endless wastes of Persia at the whim of whatever prince had the money to hire them. And what
would he earn? Seven obols a day – just over a drachm. Which could mean that, if he survived twenty years with such a company, he might – just might – be able to buy a part share in a farm or landholding. And even then it would not be as large as the property his mother — and now he — had been forced to sell.
Parmenion pushed thoughts of his poverty from his mind. For at least the next eight weeks he could enjoy the comforts of Xenophon’s estate at Olympia. Soft beds and good food, fine riding and hunting and, with luck, a tilt at one of the Arcadian girls who tended the sheep in the low hills. He had found such a one last year; she was plump and willing, and an expert teacher for an inept city youth. He removed his chiton and climbed into bed, picturing her body. But he could no longer recall her face. … In his mind’s eye the woman moaning beneath him was Derae.