THE TRAINING OF ERASMUS
THE MORNING THAT he woke to feel the sheets sticky beneath him, Erasmus did not understand at first what had happened. The dream faded slowly, leaving an impression of warmth; he stirred, sleepily, his limbs heavy with pleasure that lingered. The cosy bedding felt good against his skin.
It was Pylaeus who drew back the bedding and knew the signs, and sent Delos to ring the bell, and a boy runner to the palace, the bottoms of his feet flashing over the marble.
Erasmus scrambled up, dropped, knelt, his forehead pressed against the stone. He didn’t dare to believe, yet his chest filled with hope. With every mote of his body he was aware that the sheets were being taken from the bed, wrapped with great care, and tied with a ribbon of gold thread to signify what—at last, oh please at long last—had happened.
The body won’t be rushed, old Pylaeus had said to him once, kindly. Erasmus had flushed at the thought that he might have shown his yearning on his face; yet every night he had wished for it, wished that it would come before the sun rose, and he was another day older. The yearning had in those later days taken on a new quality, a physical note that hummed through his body like the quivering of a plucked string.
The bell started to clang through the gardens of Nereus as Delo
s heaved on the rope, and Erasmus rose, his chest filled with heartbeats, to follow Pylaeus to the baths. He felt gangly and over-tall. He was old for it. He was older by three years than the oldest to take training silks before him, despite all his fervent wishes that his body would offer up what was needed to show him ready.
In the baths, the steam jets were turned on, and the air in the room grew heavy. He soaked first, then he was laid out on the white marble and his skin was steamed until it seemed to throb with the perfumes of the air. He lay in the submissive posture with his wrists crossed above his head, which, some nights, he had practiced alone in his own room, as if in practicing he could conjure this very moment into being. His limbs grew pliant against the smooth stone beneath him.
He had imagined it. At first excitedly, and then tenderly, and then, as years passed, achingly. How he would lie still for the ministrations, how he would lie perfectly still. How, at the end of the day’s rituals, the gold ribbon from the sheets would be tied around his wrists, and he would be arranged just so on the cushioned litter, the ribbon’s ties so very fine, so that a single breath might cause the knot to slither open, and he must lie so still as the litter was carried out of the gates to begin his training in the palace. He had practiced that too, wrists and ankles pressed together.
He emerged from the baths heat-dazed and yielding, so that when he knelt in the ritual pose, it felt natural, his limbs pliant and willing. Nereus the owner of the gardens flung out the sheets, and everyone admired the stains, and the younger boys clustered around, and while he knelt gave him touches and happy tributes, kisses on the cheek, a garland of white morning glory dropped around his neck, chamomile flowers tucked behind his ear.
When he had imagined it, Erasmus had not imagined that he would feel so affectionately towards each moment, the shy little proffering of flowers from Delos, the shaking voice of old Pylaeus as he said the ritual words, the fact of parting making everything suddenly very dear. He felt, with a sudden swell, that he didn’t want to stay where he knelt; he wanted to rise, to give Delos a fierce goodbye hug. To rush out to the narrow bedroom he would leave behind forever, the bare bed, his little relics that he must leave also, the spray of magnolia blossom in the vase on the sill.
He thought of the day the bell had rung for Kallias, the long embrace as they clung to one another at parting. The bell will ring for you soon, I know it, Kallias had said. I know it, Erasmus. That had been three summers ago.
It had taken so long, but suddenly it was too soon that boys were sent out, and the bolts on the doors were being thrown open.
And that was when the man came into the hallway.
Erasmus did not realise that he had fallen to his knees until he felt the cool marble against his forehead. The obliterating image of the man silhouetted in the doorway had struck him down. It beat inside Erasmus, dark hair framing a commanding face, features indomitable as the eagle. The power of him, the hard curve of a bicep where a leather strap gripped it, the muscles of a bronzed thigh between knee sandal and leather skirt. He wanted to look again, and did not dare lift his gaze from the stone.
Pylaeus addressed the man with the grace of his long-ago palace career, but Erasmus was barely aware of him, his skin hot. He didn’t take in the words that Pylaeus and the man spoke to one another. He didn’t know how much time passed after the man left before Pylaeus was coaxing him to look up.
Pylaeus said, ‘You’re trembling.’
He heard the soft, stunned quality of his voice. ‘That . . . was a master from the palace?’
‘A master?’ Pylaeus’s voice was not unkind. ‘That was a soldier of your retinue, sent to protect your litter. He is to your master as a single droplet to the great storm that comes from the ocean and splits open the sky.’
It was hot in summer.
Under the relentless blue sky, the walls, the steps and the paths heated steadily, so that by the time night fell the marble gave off heat, like a warming brick taken straight from the fire. The ocean, which could be seen from the eastern courtyard, seemed to withdraw from dry rocks each time it rolled back from the cliffs.
Palace slaves-in-training did what they could to keep cool: they kept to the shade; they practiced the art of the fan; they slipped in and out of the refreshing waters of the baths; they lay, sprawled like starfish beside the outdoor pools, the smooth stone hot beneath them, a friend propped up beside them, perhaps, drizzling cool water over their skin.
Erasmus liked it. He liked the extra strain that heat brought to his training, the extra effort of concentration that was required. It was right that training here in the palace should be more arduous than in the gardens of Nereus. It was befitting of the golden ribbon around his neck, a symbol of the golden collar he would earn when his three years as a palace slave-in-training were done. It was befitting of the golden pin he wore, a little weight at his shoulder that made his heart pound every time he thought of it, carved as it was with a tiny lion’s head, the device of his future master.
He took his morning lessons with Tarchon in one of the small marble training rooms filled with accoutrements that he did not use, because from dawn until the sun reached the middle of the sky, it was the three forms, over and over and over again. Tarchon gave impassive corrections that Erasmus struggled to perform. At the end of each sequence, ‘Again.’ Then, when his muscles were aching, when his hair was drenched in the heat and his limbs slippery with sweat from holding a pose, Tarchon would tell him curtly, ‘Again.’
‘So Nereus’s prize flower has finally blossomed,’ Tarchon had said on the day of his arrival. His inspection had been systematic and thorough. Tarchon was First Trainer. He had spoken inflectionlessly.
‘Your looks are exceptional. This is an accident of birth for which you are not entitled to praise. You are training now for the royal household, and looks are not enough to earn you a place there. And you are old. You are older than the oldest I have worked with. Nereus hopes to have one of his slaves chosen to train for a First Night, but in twenty seven years he has produced only one hopeful, the rest bath boys, table attendants.’
He had not known what to do, or say. Arriving in the stifled dark of the litter, Erasmus had tried with each painful heartbeat to hold himself still. A fine sheen of sweat had broken out over him at the terror of being outside. Outside the gardens of Nereus, the calming, comforting gardens that contained all that he knew of life. He had been glad of the litter’s coverings, the thick fabric that was dropped down to snuff out the light. There to protect him from the debasing stares of outside eyes, it had been all that had stood between him and vast, unknown space, the muffled unfamiliar sounds, clatters and shouts, the blinding light as the litter’s coverings were thrown back.
But now the palace paths were as familiar as the palace routines, and when the noon-time bell rang, he touched his forehead to the marble and said the ritual words of thanks, his limbs trembling with exhaustion, then stumbled out to his afternoon lessons: languages, etiquette, ceremonies, massage, recitation, singing and the kithara—
Shock stopped him when he stepped out into the courtyard, and he stood, numb.
A spray of hair, a body limp. Blood on Iphegin’s face where he lay on the shallow marble steps, a trainer supporting his head, two others kneeling in concern. Coloured silk bent over him like exotic feeding birds.