The Philosopher Kings: A Novel

  “Oh Pytheas, you didn’t still think we might have done it?” Aristomache asked, putting her hand on his arm.

  “I wanted to be sure,” Father said.

  “He’s been a little crazed with grief ever since it happened,” Maia said, in that language she and Aristomache shared.

  “Death is a terrible thing without salvation,” Aristomache replied, in the same language.

  “What’s that?” Neleus asked, perplexed.

  Father and I exchanged glances, and I saw that he understood, as I did.

  “Sorry,” Aristomache said. “Come on. Most people will have gone to the agora. It’s Easter day, we celebrate Yayzu risen. Tonight we will eat lamb and bread.”

  Lucia was decorated for festival, with flower garlands set on pillars, just the way we did it at home. It seemed very familiar, laid out on the same pattern as our cities and as Marissa, with broad streets leading to a central agora. On the top of the hill was a colosseum. We passed another huge marble Madonna, also garlanded with flowers. “Auge?” I asked.

  “She’s our best sculptor,” Aristomache confirmed, clearly proud of her. “She lives and works here, but her work stands in all our cities. This is Our Lady of Peace.” It was lovely. I could hear choral singing as we came toward the agora. A man passing handed me a honey cake from his basket. Everything seemed peaceful and pleasant. Father took a honey cake but tucked it into his kiton. I wondered suddenly whether I’d seen him eating in Marissa, or just sitting at the table moving food around? He took hospitality very seriously. Well, I had bitten into my honey cake, so it was too late. These people were my friends. I took a colored egg from a smiling girl, and Aristomache gave her a coin. I’d never get used to paying for things.

  In the agora, outside a temple, there was a gruesome wooden statue of a man being tortured. He was fixed to a cross by nails through his palms and feet, he had scars of whipping, and his face was distorted by pain. It was painted in full color, just to make the blood and everything more obvious. It was hideous, and yet also beautiful. I couldn’t look away from it. There were a couple of paintings in the Botticelli book that I now realized were also depictions of this story—in one he’s flanked by an angel and a person dressed in long hair, with a sad old man and a dove hovering behind. In the other a person and an angel are flinging themselves around at the foot of the cross. I had always wondered what was going on in those pictures. But Botticelli’s man pinned to the cross seemed peaceful and happy, and also the least interesting thing in the pictures. Here he was clearly in agony.

  “Who is that?” I asked.

  “Yayzu,” Aristomache said.

  “They did that to him?” I said, appalled. I looked at Father. Clearly he had very good reasons for not letting people know he was really a god.

  He smiled down at me. “Not a nice way to die,” he said. “Suffocation is what actually killed them. It took days sometimes. It was a Roman method of extreme punishment.”

  “Why do they have that there?” I asked, as Maia opened her mouth to defend her beloved Romans.

  “Yayzu returned from the dead,” Aristomache said. “And through him, so will we all. He conquered death, not just for himself but for all of us through all of time. He went through that to save us all. Looking at the cross reminds us not that he died, but that he went beyond death, and so will we all.” Even Maia looked moved. Father smiled again, a smile that made me uneasy.

  Just then I spotted Ficino and Erinna on the other side of the agora, deep in conversation with a group of strangers. Ficino was always easy to pick out in a crowd because of his red hat. I waved, but they didn’t see me. I was looking at them, so I was surprised when I looked back and saw that a burly man in a floppy Phrygian cap had joined us. He was wearing leggings and a tunic, not a kiton. Since it was a festival, I assumed it was a costume for a play. He was about Father’s age, clearly one of the Children.

  “Aristomache, Maia, Pytheas, joy to you,” he said. “What a surprise to see you here.”

  “Kebes,” Father said, nodding. I took an involuntary step backward. This was Kebes? Apart from his fancy dress, he seemed so ordinary.

  “Joy to you, Matthias,” Aristomache said, seeming delighted to see him. “I’ve been doing my best to explain to everyone what we’ve been doing, but you’ll be able to do it so much better.”

  “And what have you been doing?” Kebes said, mostly to Father.

  “Walking in the steps of Sokrates,” Father said, calmly and evenly, and, typically, speaking perfect truth even if it wasn’t very helpful information.

  I took a step forward again, so I was next to Maia, who hadn’t said anything at all. She glanced down at me, looking worried, and that drew Kebes’s attention to me for the first time. He looked at me, and then quickly at Father, and then he laughed. “Not so much with the agape, then, Pytheas?”

  I didn’t see Father move, but suddenly Kebes was on his back on the ground with his cap in the dust. He had a shaved circle on the top of his head.

  Maia grabbed Father, and the crowd that had been moving to and fro across the agora crystallized around us, and other people also grabbed Father. Aristomache bent over Kebes as he was starting to get up. “Simmea was killed by pirates recently,” she said to Kebes, directly into his face. She was about half his size and more than twice his age, but she clearly wasn’t afraid of him.

  Kebes froze as he was, up on one elbow, clearly shocked. “Killed?”

  “Also,” Father said, calmly, as if continuing a debate, standing quite still and ignoring the people holding onto him, “What did you imagine you were doing calling your city after my wife?”

  Kebes face immediately closed up again.

  “What?” Maia asked, puzzled.

  “Lucia was Mother’s childhood name,” I said. Maia looked down at Kebes and let go of her grip on Father.

  “I had no idea she was dead,” Kebes said, getting up. He was a head taller than Father, but I hadn’t noticed it until now. He dusted himself off, then picked up his hat. He looked at me again, and didn’t laugh this time. His expression mingled grief and anger.

  “So why did you call the city after my mother?” I asked, while I had his attention.

  “We all wanted light,” Kebes said, looking truculent. “It’s a coincidence.”

  Aristomache and most of the strangers in the little crowd around us looked satisfied. Father looked as if his face was carved from marble and couldn’t change expression. I didn’t believe Kebes. Moreover, even though I didn’t know him and couldn’t possibly tell, I knew he was lying. It was certain knowledge—another divine power unfolding itself in me.

  “Look, no hard—” Kebes stopped, looking at Father. “I suppose there are hard feelings on both sides. But she’s dead. Let’s agree to leave each other alone.”

  “I don’t suppose you’d care to wrestle a bout in the palaestra?” Father asked, the essence of politeness. People were still holding on to his arms, but he wasn’t struggling at all.

  “No, I really wouldn’t,” Kebes said. “But I’ll tell you what. The music competitions are over. But we could have another, just the two of us, tomorrow. Extend the festival a little. Compete in a different sphere. That way there will be no damage done.”

  Father was smiling one of his most terrifying smiles now. “But what if I want to do damage?”

  “Do it with your lyre,” Kebes said.

  Father had won every musical competition he had entered in my lifetime, and probably before it as well. If Kebes knew how good he was in the palaestra, Kebes must also have also known how good he was at music. I didn’t understand why he would even make such a suggestion, unless he was hoping to deflect Father’s anger by giving him a victory that wouldn’t hurt.

  “I know what you did to her,” Father said, intent on Kebes, ignoring the people still holding his arms and the large circle of people gathered around us listening.

  “I didn’t do anything to her you didn’t do too,” Kebes said, delibe
rately glancing at me. “Did I give her a child?”

  I stepped between them before Father could throttle Kebes in broad daylight in the agora before half of Lucia and half the crew of Excellence. “You are talking about my mother,” I said. “And she’s dead.”

  “Nothing against you, little one. And I’m very sorry she’s dead,” Kebes said, looking down at me. “I loved her. And she loved me.” He meant what he was saying. But that didn’t mean it was true, only that he believed it.

  Father put a hand on my shoulder, and I realized they must have let him go and that he was ready to thrust me aside to get to Kebes. “This music contest,” I said, quickly. “What’s the prize?”

  “A heifer,” somebody in the crowd said. I hadn’t asked because I wanted to know. I didn’t take my eyes off Kebes. Now that he was looking at me, I could see by his eyes that he hadn’t offered it thinking it was an easy way to lose. He was sincerely confident of winning. But I was just as confident that nobody could beat Father at music. (He is the god Apollo. He invented music.)

  “No,” Kebes said, looking at Father over my head. “Not a heifer. How about if, instead, the winner gets to do what they want to the loser? That’s what this is about, isn’t it? We’ve always hated each other. This way we both have a fair chance.”

  Father’s hand on my shoulder seemed to become heavier. There was a hiss of drawn breath from the crowd. Maia was frowning. Saying do what they want seemed better to me at that moment than saying kill. But why would Kebes suggest it? He was lying when he said they both had a fair chance. He believed he would win. How could he?

  “I can agree to that,” Father said. “What should it be? Original lyre composition?”

  “Any instrument,” Kebes said. “Original composition. I have an instrument you may not have seen.”

  I could almost hear Father’s sneer. “Who judges this competition?” he asked.

  “Four of yours and four of ours,” Kebes said, then he glanced down at me again. “None of our children.”

  “Nine judges,” Father countered. “Four of yours, four of ours, and one chosen by lot.”

  “Very well,” Kebes said. “And the winner does what they want to the loser, and the loser doesn’t stop them?”

  “Without a judgment? That’s barbaric,” Aristomache put in. There was a muttering of agreement in the crowd. “It’s one thing when somebody has been condemned, but we’ve never done it without that.”

  “We’re all civilized people,” Kebes said, lying again, and still staring over my head at Father.

  “Pytheas has been unhinged since Simmea’s death,” Klymene said. I hadn’t noticed her there in the crowd. “This is madness. We know the Goodness Group didn’t kill her. The ship was in Troy last autumn, nowhere near Kallisti.” She was speaking the truth as she knew it, even about Father being mad.

  “I believe that,” Father said. “This isn’t about that. It’s about what he did to Simmea before he left.” Father didn’t ever lie, I realized. He sometimes deliberately said things that could be misinterpreted, but as far as I could see he always told the truth.

  “What did you do to Simmea?” Maia asked. She had a soft voice but it sounded hard now.

  “Nothing you didn’t personally sanction,” Kebes said, looking at her for the first time since he had greeted her. “You chose the partners for the Florentines for the Festival of Hera. You yourself matched me with her.”

  Maia made an inarticulate choking sound.

  “He raped her,” I said, into the silence, to make it clear, since it seemed nobody else was going to. “She wrote about it.”

  Klymene looked shocked. “Is this true?”

  Kebes looked at me, then at her. “No. She wanted it. She loved me.” He wanted to believe what he was saying, but he couldn’t quite manage it. There was guilt behind his words. I wished everyone could hear it as clearly as I could.

  “But there’s a written record?” Klymene asked, glancing back at me.

  “Whatever she may have said later, she didn’t report it as rape at the time,” Kebes said, speaking the whole truth now. “There were procedures, if she had wanted to complain about me. You know that. Did she tell you about this, or are we taking Pytheas’s word, and his daughter’s? This was all twenty years ago.”

  “But Kebes—” Klymene began.

  “Matthias,” he interrupted. “That’s always been my name.”

  She waved this off. “Matthias, then. This contest is insane. Pytheas—”

  “We’ve agreed,” Father said. His hand was still on my shoulder. “He suggested it himself. A musical contest. What could be more civilized?”

  “But the consequences—one of you is going to kill the other one!” Klymene sounded appalled.

  “That’s going to happen anyway,” Father said, gently.

  “I could tie you up until we’re back on Kallisti,” Klymene said, and she meant it. “You always take too much on yourself, you always put yourself forward, you think you’re the best and that gives you the right to do whatever you want, but it doesn’t. You’re not sane, Pytheas, and I can’t let you go ahead with this. It’s unjust!”

  “It doesn’t involve anyone but the two of us,” Father said.

  “He has always hated me, it’s not the madness of grief,” Kebes said, to the crowd. “But I have proposed this fair contest. It’s the best way. The winner to do what they want.” He seemed so sure that he could win. There was a kind of gloating in his voice.

  Klymene shook her head. “We want peace and trade with your cities,” she said.

  “That can happen without Pytheas or myself being involved,” Kebes said. “We can give assurances. This is a personal matter.” Then he turned to me. “You may not believe me, but your mother and I loved each other. Nobody answered my question, and I have a right to know. Do you have older brothers?”

  I didn’t believe him. He wasn’t lying, he believed what he said, but it was something he had convinced himself of, not the truth. I knew my mother. “I have lots of older brothers, but none of them are your sons,” I said.

  “You wouldn’t necessarily know. She said she’d give it up to philosophy,” he said, half to himself.

  “Simmea didn’t have a child after that last festival,” Maia said, forcing her voice out.

  Kebes nodded, looking disappointed. He looked at me again. “And what’s your name, little girl?”

  “Arete,” I said, putting my chin up. I have been embarrassed and teased about my name all my life, but never have I been prouder to declare it than that day. It was like declaring my mother’s true allegiance, proclaiming the name she gave me. It encapsulated the choices she had made in her life, her allegiance to philosophy, to Father, to the City, to her own excellence, and mine, and the excellence of the world.

  Kebes looked at Father, and back at me. “Arete,” he said, as if he hated the word. It seemed to me that he should have known then and by that alone that he had lost.

  19

  APOLLO

  Mortals can be wonderful and maddening and fascinating, and sometimes all three at the same time.

  Every single member of the company of the Excellence, except my children, came to try to persuade me not to kill Kebes after I won the competition, even dear Ficino and lark-voiced Erinna. None of them doubted that I’d win. I’d been winning musical competitions since the first years of the Republic, after all. They took it utterly for granted. They just didn’t want me to kill Kebes afterward. They had different reasons.

  Klymene didn’t want me to kill Kebes because he had been her friend, and Simmea’s friend. She also didn’t believe me about the rape. “Even before this you always misjudged him. Exactly what did Simmea write? She never said anything to me about it, and I saw her that night. Can I see it? Do you have it here?”

  Maecenas didn’t want me to kill Kebes because he wanted to trade with Lucia and Marissa, and he was afraid it would mess up diplomatic relations. “It might just be that we’ve been confla
ting Kebes and the Goodness Group all this time, but he really is important to these people, and if you take him out then it’ll make everything harder. I appreciate that you want to hurt him for what he did to Simmea. But you can do what you like—it’s your choice, eh? You could just beat him up. Break his nose! That would be satisfying. Break a couple of bones if you have to. Or how about if you rape him, if you could bring yourself to? Humiliate him. But leave him alive, eh?”

  Ficino didn’t want me to kill Kebes because he thought it would be bad for my soul. “You don’t want to have that stain on your soul when you go on to your next life. Killing somebody in battle is one thing, but deliberately setting out to kill them for revenge is different. I’m not thinking about Kebes here, Pytheas, I’m thinking about you. Killing him doesn’t avenge what he did to Simmea. It won’t bring her back, or change what he did. Vengeance isn’t justice. You understand that.”

  I thought I understood it. I’d taken vengeance before. It certainly isn’t justice, or restitution, let alone changing what had happened. I agree that those things would be better, if they were possible. Not even Father can wind back time, though he can wipe it out as if it had never been. But vengeance, inadequate as it may be, is sometimes better than having people get away with what they’ve done. Kebes was going to go on to a new life, and I sincerely hoped he’d learned something in this one so that he’d do better next time. It was the thought of leaving him alive to enjoy the memory of what he had done to Simmea that was intolerable.

  To carry through Ficino’s argument, killing Kebes was the best thing I could possibly do for him, for the only part of him that was important, his soul. Kebes had demonstrated over and over again that in this life he would turn away from chances to become his best self. He held tight through everything to his narrow Christianity, his supposed love for Simmea, and most of all his hate for the Masters and the City. He refused reason and justice and excellence. He had turned away from all his opportunities. A new life might give him new chances, with less ingrained intransigence.