“Do I look like a hero?” he asked Membricus, ready finally to make the journey to Mesopotama through the afternoon heat.
“No,” Membricus replied, with a half smile to take away any sting that might be construed in his words. “You look like a forest brigand. I hope this Assaracus has the nerve to admit you to his house.”
Brutus approached Mesopotama just before dusk. The two-hour walk through forest and rocky slopes from his ships’ anchorage point had been hot, but not as tiring as Brutus had feared it might be.
But perhaps Brutus’ own sense of excitement and purpose had rid his body of any tiredness it might have felt. For fifteen empty years, ever since his exile from Alba on the Tiber, Brutus had been wandering the central Mediterranean, seeking some sense of “home”. He’d met up with small groups of homeless Trojans, many of whom had joined his band of warriors, and he and his band had fought in the constant inter-city struggles and feuds that gripped the disintegrating Mediterranean world.
But he’d never found a home. Never found a place where he felt any sense of belonging. Never found a true sense of purpose.
Now, since Artemis’ visit, all had changed. Now he had purpose, a home to aspire to, and power beyond anything he’d dared hope for if the goddess was to be believed.
And it was he, not his father, nor his grandfather, nor even his noble but ultimately luckless great-grandfather Aeneas, but he who was given the task of rebuilding Troy.
For fifteen years Brutus had wandered; fifteen years since that terrible (wonderful) day when he had taken the kingship bands from his dead father’s limbs. He’d taken a great risk that day—and had been exiled for it—but now that risk had been justified and rewarded.
He looked at Mesopotama as it rose before him. Membricus might mutter about shadows, but all Brutus saw was the opportunity to prove conclusively to Artemis that he was fit for her trust and belief.
Fit to rule over Troy.
Mesopotama sat on a high hill some one hundred paces south of the River Acheron and some eight hundred paces north of where the river emptied into the bay. The walled city encompassed the entire hill, although a scattering of hovels, workshops and tanneries sprawled unprotected beyond the walls. Brutus looked closely at the hovels, and saw that the women wandering in and out of doorways, and the children who played in the dust, were Dorians rather than Trojans, confirming his earlier belief that the Trojan slaves lived inside the city.
The Trojan slaves likely lived in the houses of their masters (most probably crowded into windowless, cramped rooms in basements) or in hovels set against the interior of the city’s walls where space and light were at a premium.
He adjusted the sack over his shoulder as he paused to rest, leaning from one foot to the other so that any observer would think him merely tired, and studied the city as best he could. Most of the houses inside the walls, leading up to the civic buildings and the king’s palace at the very top of the hill, were well constructed of pale dressed stone, with guttered roofs of red tile. The city walls themselves were solid stone, the height of five men and, from what Brutus could see, almost as thick.
His eyes watchful now, Brutus resumed his walk towards the city gates, marking their construction and defences as he neared.
The gates, still open, were of reinforced thick planks of cypress, barred with bronze and hung so that when closed they would give little purchase to attackers.
The outer gates opened into a narrow, dark roadway that broached the thick walls: anyone who managed to penetrate the outer gates would suffer heavily from the missiles of defenders positioned high above.
Beyond this, on the inner face of the wall, were another pair of gates, almost as solidly built as the outer pair.
Once at the outer gates, Brutus was stopped by a guard who seemed more than half asleep with boredom: Brutus smiled to himself—if his ships had been noticed and reported, the guard would have been far more alert. The guard spoke to him, asking his business, and Brutus, hanging his head so that his features remained largely hidden in the shadow of the wall, replied in his best rustic Greek, saying that he had some dried figs and wild onions to trade for some town-made pots for his wife.
The guard, uncaring of either figs or pots or any other doings of peasants, nodded Brutus through, observing as he passed that at this late hour he’d need to find himself a bed for the night until the gates reopened in the morning.
Brutus acknowledged him with a wave as he trudged through the initial defensive alley, then glanced to either side as he passed through the inner gates.
As he’d theorised, the narrow spaces between the wall and the lower blocks of Dorian houses and tenement buildings were packed with poorly built and thinly thatched hovels. And even in that brief glance, Brutus could see several women and children moving in the shadows between wall and tenement buildings…women and children with the distinctive features of Troy.
His people.
Damping down his excitement—time enough for that once he’d managed to secure their freedom—Brutus walked further into the city, moving higher through the streets to where he supposed Assaracus’ house stood.
The city was clearly wealthy, and this pleased Brutus; the pickings would be good. The streets were paved and guttered in stone—a rare luxury. The city’s Dorian citizens, now engaged in their final few tasks for the day before the evening set in, were well-garbed in clothes that made use of fine materials; Brutus even saw two women wearing robes made of rare wild silks. The houses were indeed well built and maintained, and the glimpses that Brutus gained through several open doors showed fine interiors, decorated with vivid paints and tiles and even, in one instance, gilding.
“A rich city indeed,” Brutus murmured to himself, pausing at a street corner to stare about with what he hoped would be taken for the wide-eyed wonder of a countryman.
All well for his purpose.
He turned left at the street corner, walking up the centre of an emptying street that led towards the northern quarter of the city. As he climbed, the houses became larger and grander, clearly the abodes of wealthy and important citizens. Many of them were gated and walled, mini-fortresses within the larger city fortress.
Palaces, almost, rather than houses.
Brutus’ curiosity about Assaracus grew even stronger. Who was this man, clearly wealthy and influential, and even more clearly Greek, to be so allied with the Trojan slaves?
CHAPTER EIGHT
Mesopotama, western Greece
Brutus climbed the street for a few more minutes, the way becoming ever steeper and the houses on either side more palatial, until he came to what was clearly the northernmost point of the walls. Here the street ended in a wide, semi-circular court. High walls surrounded the court, behind which rose grand houses.
All gates but one were tightly bolted against the coming night.
To this gate Brutus turned, noting without surprise that it belonged to the house at the highest point. He approached, wondering what awaited him behind the darkened angle of the partly-open solid wood gate.
As he stepped up to the gate, there was movement inside, and a servant emerged, his head bowed. “Have you figs for the master?” he asked, his voice low. He spoke in Dorian Greek, a rough but easily understandable dialect of the sweeter southern language of the Peloponnese.
“Aye,” replied Brutus, using the code that had been passed to him, “but they are of unusual taste, having come from far away.”
The servant bowed, accepting his answer, then opened the door fully.
Behind it waited a short man of solid build. He was in early old age, his face lined, and his nose prominent between his sunken cheeks. He was dressed plainly—his tunic of poor quality linen but of a good cut—yet stood with the bearing of a man in authority. His grey hair was still thick but was cut in an unusual fashion—the left side hung free but only to his cheek whereas the right side was braided and hung almost to his shoulder.
Brutus, frowning over the hair
, nevertheless knew immediately who he must be…and, knowing that, knew what the hairstyle signified.
“Deimas,” he said, and inclined his head.
“You are Brutus,” Deimas said, inclining his own head, although with noticeably less respect than Brutus had given him. “A Trojan…apparently. I welcome you to Mesopotama, and to the house of Assaracus who waits inside to greet you. You have intrigued us greatly, with your arrival and the,” he paused, a small derisive smile playing about his mouth, “tone of the greeting you sent to me. It is a long time since I have heard such arrogance.”
“Then perhaps my arrival is most timely, Deimas, if you so forget your heritage. Now, I have walked far, and my feet and face are dusty. May I take advantage of the hospitality of this house?”
In answer Deimas stepped aside, indicating that Brutus should enter before him.
The atrium of the house was welcoming, cool and well lit with oil lamps against the encroaching dusk. Rush mats, woven into intricate designs, had been spread across the stone floor, and the walls were painted with scenes of rustic idylls in vivid blues, reds and golds. Just inside the entrance and to one side there was a small but finely built altar, and Brutus paused to make brief obeisance to the gods before he walked into the atrium proper.
Deimas, having made his own respects to the deities, waved Brutus to a chair, where a young woman wearing a similar haircut to Deimas waited with two bowls of scented water, several vials of oils and some thick towels. Brutus sat, and allowed the woman to take off his sandals and place his feet into the first bowl of pleasantly warmed water.
“This is a Dorian house,” Brutus said to Deimas as the woman carefully dried his feet before using her gentle hands to rub them with scented oils. “Why have you brought me here?”
Deimas looked at him oddly, then looked pointedly at the woman, now washing Brutus’ face and hands with water from the second bowl.
Brutus looked at her, then back to Deimas. “I would trust a fellow Trojan with my life, even though she be a stranger to me.”
The woman paused, staring at Brutus in surprise.
He smiled at her. “I know my fellow brothers and sisters by their blood,” he said, “by the arc of their brows and the planes of their face and the sweet curl of their hair. I am glad to see you in good health, sister, although saddened by the cut,” he touched the line of her short, brown hair where it swung against her left cheek, “of slavery.”
“Then perchance you will recognise me as a brother and not as a stranger of whom to be wary,” said a new voice, and Brutus turned his eyes to the man who had emerged from one of the interior doorways. He was much younger than Deimas, but carried himself with even more authority—and why not? thought Brutus, for unlike Deimas and the young woman he carried no mark of slavery.
The female slave, her cheeks now prettily stained with a little colour, hurriedly finished drying Brutus’ hands and face, before backing away and exiting the room.
“You are Assaracus,” Brutus said.
Assaracus inclined his head. “Aye,” he said, “I am he. Will you attend me, and the dinner I have caused to be made, in the andron of my house?”
“Gladly,” said Brutus, rising from his chair.
The andron, or dining chamber, of Assaracus’ house was truly magnificent. Its roofline rose fully the height of three men, supported by well-spaced and-proportioned columns, and covered a large chamber whose walls had been painted with exquisite scenes of the gods’ frolics and, Brutus was somewhat aggrieved to see, of some of the Greeks’ most devastating victories.
“A poor view,” Assaracus said, waving nonchalantly at the eastern wall which held an unmistakable depiction of Greeks ravaging the streets of Troy, “but I hold as my excuse only that this was my father’s house before mine, and he enjoyed that view, while I do not. Please,” now he waved at one of the several couches about the laden low table, “take your ease.
“Now,” he continued as all three men each reclined upon a couch, “you say that you are Brutus. Of Aeneas’ lineage?”
“Aye,” said Brutus, accepting the cup of watered wine that Assaracus handed him, but declining to sip from it. “He is my father twice removed. I am his heir.” He paused. “The heir to all that Aeneas could claim.”
Now Brutus did sip from his cup of wine. “And now you know of my lineage, might I ask yours? Your features bear the unmistakable stamp of Troy, you associate with Deimas, who I understand to speak for all Trojan slaves here in Mesopotama, and yet you live in a Greek house painted with gaudy representations of Troy’s ill fate, and you wear your hair in the Greek style…not in the style of slavery. I am curious.”
“As you should be. Deimas, perhaps you might answer for me?”
“Assaracus is the son of my sister,” Deimas said, his eyes cast down. “Lavinia was most beautiful, and was thus taken as concubine to Assaracus’ father, Thymbraeceus. He so honoured her that when she bore him a son,” Deimas nodded at Assaracus, “Thymbraeceus caused the boy to be named as his heir, above the sons of his Dorian wife.”
“And thus my allegiance to Deimas, and my mother’s people,” Assaracus said. “I am hated within Mesopotama for my Trojan blood, and only my inherited wealth and the swords I can buy keep my person and home safe from harm.”
Assaracus saw the interest on Brutus’ face at the mention of swords and, though he smiled, preferred to ignore it for the moment. “My true friends remain among my mother’s people, Brutus. Not with the Dorian Greeks of my father’s lineage.”
“Assaracus is our friend and our ally,” said Deimas, now helping himself to several spoonfuls of maza and some of the raw vegetables, “in a world where we have few friends or allies.”
He paused, crunched on some celery, then said: “As you must well know.”
“Does any Trojan have a friend or ally save among his own people?” Brutus replied.
“I have heard,” Deimas said slowly and very deliberately, “that even your own people, your own family, turned against you after your father’s untimely death.”
“I—” Brutus began.
“For which you were undoubtedly responsible,” Deimas finished.
“My father’s death was an accident,” Brutus said. His voice remained even, but there was no doubt in either Deimas’ or Assaracus’ mind that he was angry at the mention of his father’s death.
“With your arrow through his eye?” Assaracus said. He drained his wine cup, and refilled it.
“But then you did think he was a…what was it? Ah yes, a stag,” Deimas said.
Brutus said nothing, gazing back at the two men with a calm regard. The manner of his father’s death was, in the end, nothing to do with them.
“And now,” Assaracus interrupted the silence, placing his wine cup down on the table so hard that red wine spilled across its surface, “having killed your father, accidentally or otherwise, then having been exiled from your home community for the act, and then having wandered only the gods know where for the next fifteen years, you arrive off the coast of Epirus and say to your fellow Trojans, ‘I am your saviour, I will lead you from bondage into Troy.’ You are lucky, Brutus, that you even received the courtesy of an invitation to meet with Deimas and myself.”
“I am my father’s heir, and through him my great-grandfather’s heir,” Brutus said, his demeanour remaining cool. “I am the heir to all that was lost at Troy. If you had not recognised that then you would not have responded to my message.”
“We could just have been curious,” Deimas murmured, staring at the wine as he swirled it about in his cup.
“Troy is dead and gone,” Assaracus said, ignoring Deimas’ remark. “It is nothing but a rubble of drifting ash and broken dreams. There is nothing to be heir to. Claim what you want, Brutus, it means nothing to us.”
“And do you say the same to these?” Brutus said, and, reaching for a ewer of water that stood to one side, wet a piece of linen and rubbed away the oil and ash that obscured the golden ban
d on his left biceps.
“Very pretty,” Assaracus muttered, but Deimas’ eyes widened at the sight, and Brutus did not miss it.
“I say to you,” Brutus said to the two men, “that while there are still men who call themselves Trojans, then there is a Troy to be heir to! Not the old Troy,” now he included both men in his gaze, “but a new Troy. When I said that I would lead you into Troy I meant not the ancient Troy, but a new one, alive with the hopes and dreams and the heritage of all those who still call themselves Trojans.”
“And where might this new Troy be?” Deimas said. His tone was aggressive, his manner confrontational, but Brutus thought he saw a gleam of desperate hope in the man’s eye.
Deimas wanted to believe, but could not yet find the means to do so.
“Not in this world,” Brutus said. “All the great cities of the Minoans, the Mycenaeans and the Trojans—and the Egyptians as well for all I know—are now rubble. Troy, Atlantis, Knossos, Tarsus, Pylos, Iolkos, Thebes, Midea and a score more that I could name. They have been destroyed by invasion, by upheavals of the earth and by fiery mountainous eruptions. What further can the gods do to voice their displeasure? It is time for a new beginning, and a new Troy, but one very, very far from here.”
“Where?” said Deimas softly. “Where?”
“The gods will show me.”
Deimas threw up his hands, disbelief winning out, and Assaracus grunted derisively. “I say to you again, Brutus,” Assaracus said, “what do you here, saying you wish to lead your brethren to a new beginning? Why should anyone follow you?”