“Here you are,” Pytheas said, getting up.

I walked over to them, forcing myself to do it, though all I wanted was to go back to Hyssop and lie down and stare unthinkingly at the wall.

“What’s the matter?” Septima asked.

“Lethargy,” I said. “Exhaustion. A tendency to weep and a tendency to faint. Charmides says it’s a thing that happens and it will go away in time.”

“He’s right,” she said, not to me but to Pytheas. “It’s not a curse. It’s a medical thing. She’ll get over it eventually.”

“I think now would be a good time for her to get over it,” he said, sharply.

Septima rolled her eyes. “I don’t know why you’re asking me, it’s not my department at all.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, and tears started to roll down my cheeks again. “I didn’t ask him to bother you about it. I know I’ll get over it. Axiothea also says so. She says some women have this after childbirth, and I need iron and rest.”

“You’ve been resting, and it’s doing no good,” Pytheas said. “I need you. Sokrates needs you.”

Septima put her hand on my arm. “You should go to the temple of Asklepius and pray for healing,” she suggested.

“Come on,” Pytheas said.

“I’m so tired,” I whined. “Can’t I lie down now? I’ll go later. Tomorrow.”

The temple of Asklepius was close to Thessaly, halfway across the city. I couldn’t face the thought of walking that far. “You’re going now,” Pytheas said. He put his arm around me, supporting me. Again I could both feel it and not feel it. It was as if there was something in the way of sensation, as if my sense of touch had eyelids and they were closed across it. The purely physical warmth of his arm came through my kiton, but the touch itself was muffled, and I certainly felt none of the accompanying happiness that his touch usually brought. “Come on.”

“All right,” I said. It was easier to walk than resist, so I walked. I fainted once on the way. It was hard to tell when I was going to faint, because I felt strange and dizzy all the time, as if I was holding on to consciousness by a thread. Sometimes the thread parted. Pytheas held me up, or at least, when I opened my eyes I saw his, blue above me in his perfect chiseled face. There had been times when I would have given anything to have been in his arms. Now it was merely comforting in a mild animal way. I did not feel desire—I felt no desire at all for anything, except sleep.

We walked on towards the temple. There was nobody there in the late afternoon. It was small and simple, just a circle of plain marble Ionic pillars with a canted roof. Inside there was nothing but a statue of the god with an archaic smile, and a little burner for offerings. Pytheas helped me up the steps.

“Pray to Asklepius,” Septima said. “Aloud. Ask for healing.”

I didn’t ask if I could rest first, it was clear from her tone that she wasn’t going to let me. I obeyed. I raised my arms, palm up and then palm down. In the city we didn’t kneel groveling before the gods as I remembered doing in church as a child, but prayed standing before them. I didn’t know what to say. I had celebrated Asklepius on his feast days, naturally, but I had never sought him out before. I had never been ill.

Out loud, Septima had said. I tried my best. “Asklepius, wisest son of shining Apollo, help me now. Restore me to health.”

“Asklepius, hear her,” they both said in chorus, from behind me. Their words echoed in the empty temple.

I hadn’t thought what divine healing would be like, or even really considered whether it might work. I was doing this only because they wouldn’t let me rest until I did, and out of a faint memory of my agape for Pytheas. I stood there with my arms outstretched towards the statue of the god, and between one instant and the next my sickness was removed from me.

It was like waking up, or perhaps more like diving into the sea from a cliff and hitting the cold water all at once. I was alert and vibrating. All the lethargy was gone. I had my mind back. My soul was my own. My body was strong again. I no longer wanted to sleep. I didn’t feel faint, and the queasiness that had been with me for so long that I no longer consciously noticed it had also gone. I was ravenous. I could have run up the mountain, or danced all night, or debated a really chewy subject with Sokrates. I wanted to. I laughed.

“Thank you, Lord Asklepius, divine healer,” I said, and my words were heartfelt and willed, the first truly willed words I had said since I had slipped into sleep the night the baby was born.

I turned around. Pytheas and Septima were still standing there, of course, and I saw them in my newfound clarity. I knew. I recognized them. I gasped.

It all made sense, in that instant, where Athene had gone, and why Pytheas was the way he was, why he had the excellences he did and the flaws he did, why he laughed when Sokrates swore by Apollo, why Sokrates had been surprised when he said his parents lived above Delphi, why my prayer to Athene had sent me to Septima in the library. I just stood gaping at the two of them, and for a long moment they both stared back at me in silence. The grey eyes and the blue, the chiseled features, so similar, the truly Olympian calm. But Pytheas—Pytheas, even the name, Pythian Apollo, his Delphic title. They were gods, gods in mortal form and standing there. Septima was Pallas Athene and Pytheas, my Pytheas, was the god Apollo! I almost wished I still felt like fainting, because it would have been one of the very few appropriate responses.

29

MAIA

During the month before the debate on slavery, evidence for the intelligence of the workers piled up. Sokrates was openly and visibly engaging them in dialogue, and their halves of the dialogue remained written in stone for anyone to read later. It was no longer possible for anyone to believe it was a hoax, unless they accused Sokrates of being in on it, which was unthinkable.

I was on my way home from the palaestra one day when I saw Sokrates squatting beside a worker in the middle of the street. I hesitated, curious. We had all agreed when Sokrates first arrived that we would not treat him like a celebrity but allow him to select his own friends. I had never been one of those chosen, nor had I expected to be. He concentrated on teaching the children, those who could really hope to become philosopher kings, and those among the masters who were the most brilliant and who had something to teach him. I had seen him in Chamber, and around the city. We’d exchanged a few words from time to time, naturally. But I didn’t know him well. Now, as I walked around him, he looked up from what the worker was engraving and grinned at me. His face had always reminded me of a Toby jug, and from above, with him grinning like that, the resemblance was unavoidable. But amid all that ugliness, his eyes were very keen.

He straightened up. “Joy to you. I’m trying to get him to understand the concept of names. Are you busy, or can I use you as an example? It might take a few minutes.”

“Of course,” I said, slightly flustered. “And joy to you. I have a little while before I’m due to teach my weaving class.”

“Good. Thank you.” He turned back to the worker. “You see this human?” he asked.

The worker wrote something. I craned to see what. Sokrates moved slightly so that I could read it. “Master.” It wrote the Greek word in Latin letters, as we had all been told they did.

“Yes. Good. She’s a master,” Sokrates said. “And her name is Maia.”

“Master Maia,” it wrote.

“How does it know I’m a master?” I asked.

“They’ve been told to take orders from masters and not children, so they recognize you as being part of the class of people called masters,” Sokrates explained.

“But I practically never give them orders,” I protested.