By Phineas Redux
Contact:—phineasredux003@gmail.com
—OOO—
Summary:— Xena and Gabrielle return to Athens after a long absence only to find their wish to relax hindered by a myriad of requests for assistance awaiting them from every quarter of the city.
Note:— This story is based, to some extent, on the layout of Gellius’ ‘Attic Nights’. Aulus Gellius c. 125AD – after 180 AD, Roman author and grammarian.
Disclaimer:— MCA/Universal/RenPics, or others, own all copyrights to everything related to ‘Xena: Warrior Princess’ and I have no rights to them.
—O—
Preface:— Aulus Gellius is credited with a work titled ‘Attic Nights’; this being composed of a group of wide-ranging essays whose subjects are not particularly connected with any basic overall theme. The present story attempts to reflect this style.
—O—
The warriors had made their entrance into the great city through the much frequented Dipylon Gate, from whence it was an easy walk along the Pan-Athenaic Way towards the Agora where they slipped into the multifarious side-streets and alleys of the less-planned district to find the Inn of their choice. Here, having a long-term lease on a room, they found a back-log of mail that would have throttled a whale, if said addressee hadn’t been the Queen of the Amazons, who’s appetite for reading gossip from friends was insatiable.
“Look, Xena, a whole bag-load of scrolls; it’ll take me all day an’ tomorrow t’read ‘em—I’m in the Elysian Fields.”
“Gods!”
While the Princess went about placing their luggage carefully in the airy light room—that is, dumping saddle-bags higgledy-piggedly anywhere the desire took her—the Queen sat on the large linen-covered bed, excitedly rummaging through the vast amount of mail awaiting her.
“Look, here’s a scroll from Anthea; she’s over in Boeotia, y’know.”
“I know—where’s that dam’ box?”
“—and here’s another from Friedegund, all the way from Northern Germania; you remember Friedegund?”
“Yeah,—Gods, this eatin’ knife’s bent, must’a sat on it or sumthin’.”
“—and one from Otrera, and the northern Amazons—great bunch, don’t you think, lover?”
“Yeah,—where’s my dam’ sword sharpener?”
“—and one from Philautia, what a woman.” Gabrielle by this time almost buried in half-unrolled scrolls, like a library after an earthquake. “Look, Vercinia Metella’s written from Rome; isn’t that nice of her?”
“Uum,—this bronze fol-de-rol’s fallin’ off my chest-plate, have t’get it fixed.”
“Here’s Calessa of Troy, spreading gossip again—how I love her.” Gabrielle entirely in her element. “She’s in Egypt at the moment, apparently; judging by the papyrus quality, the ink, and what she says in the scroll.”
“Did I tell the livery owner t’have Argo’s right off-side hoof reshod, Gabs?”
“Eudoxia tells me, here, she’s thinking of building a villa on Sicily, and asks if we’d both like to visit, next Spring?”
“Wonder if I’d find a new harness in a shop in Piraeus?” Xena wholly taken up with her own concerns, to the detriment of all around. “Maybe go down t’the quayside?”
Gabrielle, meanwhile, had discovered a scroll bearing the dreaded green wax seal of the Athenian Senate.
“Oh-oh, Xena? Trouble—”
“There’s always trouble, lover; y’should know that by now.” Xena still lost amongst her own concerns. “Trouble’s our middle cognomen, ain’t it? Yeah, might find one in Piraeus—”
“The Senate Clerk says we have t’attend an Election-hearing for a new Senator up on the Areopagus, in three weeks time. We being bodyguards for one of the Rhetors, seemingly.”
“Oh-ah, yeah, that old fool Dacius! Wonder if I really need a new pair o’boots?—”
“And then there’s the upcoming Festival Market, in the Agora next week—can’t miss that, no way lady.”
“Buttons, brooch-clasps, belts, waist-bands, clips,—wonder which’d be better?” Xena off on some esoteric by-way of her own imagining.
“And, of course, we need t’go over t’Corinth next month, for the yearly Pankration tournament.” Gabrielle remembering a pet, but almost certainly foolish, decision of hers. “I’ve been training like anything for it, as you well know, Princess. Bet I could beat you in a fight, right now?”
“Ha, dream on, babe.” Xena coming back to reality for a moment; but it didn’t last. “That food shop on the corner; wonder if it still sells those scrumptious dumplings with the little red bits in ‘em?—”
“I’m gon’na just relax, lay back on this highly comfortable bed, an’ spend the rest of the day reading these scrolls.” Gabrielle obviously lost to all around her.
“What about Piraeus, gal?”
“Piraeus?” Gabrielle coming out of her dream world of gossip long enough to address this question. “What about the dirty, smelly hole?”
“Didn’t ya say, jes’ last night, ya wanted t’hit every shop, stall, an’ market in the place? Lookin’ fer all sorts o’fol-de-rols ya couldn’t do without a single day longer?”
“Oh, yeah; thanks for reminding me, lover.” Gabrielle tossed a scroll aside and sat up, smoothing down what passed for her skirt as she contemplated one of her short red leather boots. “That’s right; new boots, skirt—the fashionable shorter style, y’know, you’ll love it—”
“I don’t think I will.”
“Wha’s that, darlin’?” But the Amazon was already lost in contemplation of a really good shopping spree. “Lem’me see, where’s my money pouch—ah, here. You got your money-pouch, lady?”
“Yeah, an’ my money’s stayin’ inside it, however much ya beg, young ‘un.”
“Hah, I got lots o’denarius’s, anyway; as well as umpteen hundred drachma—I’m easy. Come on, then, let’s go; you know how much of a stretch it is along the Long Walls t’Piraeus.
“Gods! Before that there’s something else the Amazon Queen’s let slip from her itinerary.”
“Oh, yeah? What?”
“The Athens Mint. One o’the reasons we’re here at all.” Xena here grinning triumphantly. “Ya know they’re apparently deep in bangin’ out most o’that honorary edition of a tetradrachm we thought the Stagira Mint were doing, featuring—Oh, I wonder who?—why, both of us, by Athena’s helmet.”
“Oh, Gods, I forgot.”
“I know.”
“Idiot.”
—O—
“You’re always saying how little you value yourself, Xena.” Gabrielle smiled impudently. “Well, now we know just how much you’re really worth—a tetradrachm.”
“Huh, very funny.” Xena tried to look down her nose at the person causing her so much woe. “And, as usual, your counting’s way out. There’s two heads on that coin, y’know. That means we’re both worth just two drachmas each.”
Gabrielle laughed at this, as she flicked the bright coin in the air—and was not put out at all when Xena shot a hand across to catch it in mid-flight.
“I knew you’d do that, Xena. You’re so predictable.”
Gabrielle tossed her hair and picked up another coin from the flat table, where the Mint workers were striking them as the two women watched. Each new coin a bright sparkling silver.
“Careful, ma’am, we can’t allow any of these outside the Mint.”
“An’ who’re you?” The Amazon Queen quick to rile these days.
“Brycaeus, Head of the Mint.” He standing on his dignity, even before a quick-tempered Amazon. “You do understand we are simply testing the dies at this point? These coins are just tests; we’ll melt them down before the end of the day.”
“Why so?” Xena interested in this state of affairs. “Ya melt ‘em down, who gets t’spend the dam’ things?”
“We made the dies here, ma’am.” Brycaeus happy to explain his modus operandi to these special guests. “The Mint at Stagira, who are the official Mint for this Honorary tetradrachm, are under some pressure at the moment, they having another, Legionary Honorary, drachm in production. We’ve made their dies for your tetradrachm here, with all proper Stagira marks. We’ll send them along to Stagira in a few days when we’ve tested them properly, then Stagira will make the full run: they should be ready to go Public in six months from now.”
“Anyway,” The Amazon Queen went on, pursuing another line of thought. “It’s all down to precedence, y’know.”
“Precedence? What’re ya talking about, Gabs?” Xena was still intent on the three men busy at the table with their little hammers and striking-dies.
“All I’m sayin’ is—it ain’t an even cut, Warrior Princess.” Gabrielle turned to look at Xena with that special look she reserved for when she had the upper hand in an argument. “I’m a Queen—you’re just a Princess. See, the coin says so. That means I have precedence over you. So it’s three drachmas to me, and one drachma to you. That’s fair.”
“Fair.” Xena swivelled to face the source of her discomfort. “3 to 1 ain’t fair. And you’re just an Amazon Queen—ya don’t have a country to yourself, d’ya? I’m a Warrior Princess of worldwide renown an’ fame. So that gives me three drachma’s to your one, dearie.”
“Oh yeah?” Gabrielle was beginning to get incensed, and foreboding sparkles of dangerous green light began to glimmer in the depths of her eyes. “Define worldwide, Lady. Go on, just how wide is your world, eh?”
“Hades, everywhere, Gabrielle.” Xena in her turn tossed her dark locks; with even more vigour and energy than her friend. “Britannia, Afric, the Steppes, Chin, Japa, Egypt. Gods, where else is there t’go? That world.”
“Humph, trudgin’ across the wastelands of the world ain’t any great achievement, dearest.” Gabrielle was focussed on her favourite pursuit now—winning the argument. “So you’ve fallen into bogs in Britannia—who hasn’t. You’ve trudged over sandy deserts—anyone who walks on a beach has done the same. You’ve tripped over elk on the Steppes—there are deer in any wood for parasangs around, or haven’t you noticed. You’ve bought silks and swords in Edo in Japa—anyone in Athens or Rome can do the same in any good shop. Ain’t you ever heard of the Silk Road, Xena?”
“What’s this nonsense got t’do with that tetradrachm, darling?” Xena sniffed officiously, holding the tips of two fingers together to show the size of her friends mistake. “Ain’t ya gettin’ off the topic a teensy little? Sounds like it’s too big for ya to handle. Oops, sorry.”
“Very funny, big girl.” Gabrielle was now dedicated to bringing the tall muscular woman by her side down a peg or three. “Personal disparagements are simply the sign of a small mind—an’ I am lookin’ at you, sister!”
“Still three to me.”
“What’ya mean, three to you?” Gabrielle hesitated, fearing a turn in the argument that might be injurious to her own concerns. “I know you’re capable of almost anything, Xena; but, come on, ain’t it clear I’ve got the high ground here? It can’t be an even split, that’s obvious. So it has to go in my favour. I shall be condescending in my triumph, don’t worry.”
“Ha, I bet’cha.” Xena snorted in disgust so loudly the nearest Mint worker glanced at her, then put his head back down quickly at the expression in her eyes. “Ain’t ya condescending all the time, Gabrielle? Often seems that way t’me, mostly.”
“Oh—Oh.” The Amazon turned so quickly to face her companion Xena took an inadvertent step back, out of danger. “It won’t be anything to the airs an’ graces I’ll put on when I win this argument, missy. I’m thinkin’ back rubs, an’ you makin’ all the meals in camp for the next month at least. Yeah, that should be appropriate for a mere Princess who’s just had to bow in obeisance to a Queen—a triumphant Queen!”
“Before ya wallow in your ill-gotten gains you’ve got to win the battle, girlie.” Xena sniggered unashamedly. “First rule of warfare.”
“B-gg-r warfare, this is more important.” Gabrielle sneered in her turn; but as this was an expression she had never fully mastered Xena merely thought she was smiling winningly at her. “Well, anyway, the die-cutters seem t’be doin’ a good job here—let’s leave ‘em to it, an’ hit Piraeus; the mornin’ not gettin’ any younger, y’know.”
“Oh, if madam insists.”
“Xena, you can be such a fool sometimes.”
“Oh!”
—O—
Interval One
London, England, 1911 — Max Carrados, a blind Edwardian man of means, also an amateur detective, [curtesy of the author Ernest Bramah] considers along with his friend Carlyle questions surrounding the provenance of a mysterious ancient Greek coin.
—O—
“It is a fine coin of its type; but are its bona fides acceptable; is it real?” Carrados held the small coin in his left hand and gently rotated it with his long fingers.
“Real; what do you mean?” Carlyle was curious. “Do you think it may be false; a forgery?”
“Quite possibly. Provenance is all in these matters, as you well know.” Carrados placed the coin carefully on the scratched red leather of his desk-top and sat down. “If I only knew where it had originally come from. Its last owner, or owners. Is there documentation for it, and so forth. If it is genuine it is a great rarity: if it is a forgery it is, of course, worthless.”
“How did you come by it, then?” Carlyle, at one time a lawyer, always aimed towards first principles in any discussion. “A dealer of note? In Regent Street, perhaps, or Bond Street? Oh, God. Don’t tell me it was one of those junk-shops in the lower end of Limehouse, again. Really, Carrados, I keep telling you that is a dangerous locality for a blind man to venture; even if you can, generally speaking, take care of yourself.”
“You are too kind, Carlyle.” Carrados took up the coin again. “I actually received it as part of a job-lot of books and paraphernalia that I took a fancy to on a market-stall in Brick Lane. The usual thing, you know. A few tattered books, some dirty medals of no value, several foreign coins, and other odds and ends; all in a wooden tray and going, finally, for a mere seven-and-six. A justifiable bargain, by anyone’s standards.”
“Not by mine.” Carlyle snorted in disgust as he took an armchair a few feet away from the hunched numismatist. “I’ve heard of fools and their money; but Good Heavens, Carrados.”
“Don’t put yourself out, my dear chap.” Carrados raised his head and smiled. “Believe me there was more method than madness in my purchase. I had riffled through the contents of the tray and, as you know, with my delicate blind man’s touch I discovered the curious texture of the old tetradrachm in an instant. The rest was just playing cat and mouse with the dealer till I had managed to beat his first demand of two guineas down to a realistic figure; seven shillings and sixpence, in fact; and then the field was mine in triumph.”
“Triumph.” The tall figure of Carrados’s friend jerked uncomfortably in his armchair. “Some triumph. A forged coin, and a collection of old pins and buttons. Ha.”
“Not at all.” Carrados remained unbowed before this criticism. “I have some faith in the outcome. It is certainly a tetradrachm; possibly Hellenistic; has approximately the correct texture for a silver coin of its assumed age; and is, I surmise, the right weight. Yes, it has many points in its favour.”
“Well then, what is there against it?” Carlyle cut to the heart of the matter. “You are clearly not convinced by any or all of the points you note.”
“There is its origin.” Carrados bent again over his desk and gently felt the surface of the item under consideration with the fingers of both hands. “The imprints and marks on the reverse show that it originates with the Mint at Stagira, in the Chalcidice peninsula. Not a Mint of any particular reputation or history. The impression of the figure on the reverse is obviously Victory, facing left and, I think, standing on an orb. A perfectly respectable situation. There are thousands of coins from other mints with just the same figure.”
“So that is no help, then.” Carlyle was determined to squeeze his friend’s difficulty to the last dregs; if only to show him the folly of such foolish purchases.
“But it does not play against it either, my friend.” Carrados continued his examination of the small silver coin. “The obverse really contains the information that both intrigues me as a collector, and yet apparently contradicts its authenticity. There are two heads, facing right, with an inscription in Classical Greek running round the edge of the coin. It is what this inscription says that is both engrossing, yet disturbing.”
“And what is that? Some Tyrant who couldn’t possibly be ascribed to the correct date?” Carlyle laughed sarcastically. “Or perhaps ‘John Jenkins—Not to be used outside the Factory Premises’. Followed by an exhortation, in horrible schoolboy Greek, that it is also not to be used for buying ginger-beer in Lincoln’s Inn Fields.”
“You wax critical, Carlyle; but not entirely off-target.” Carrados held the offending coin out to his companion. “Take a look. What do you make of the obverse? Portraits and inscription both.”
Carlyle took the coin and held it close to his eye, examining the disc with critical minuteness. The two portrait heads were clearly female—the principal in the foreground with heavy flowing locks while the secondary head, set back behind her companion, had short hair and a more pointed jaw. They both showed the stunningly realistic outline common to the period. Perhaps it was possible to say the woman with the short hair was somewhat younger than her companion. The coin was an example of a fine strike, well centred, with hardly any wear or rubbing. The inscription was of the normal type—a name followed by certain abbreviations signalling the person’s position or rank. Or, in this case, two such — XENA Prin. + GABRIELLE Regis Amaz.
The reverse showed a standing figure of Victory in flowing robes holding a flower or stalk of corn in her outstretched hands and standing on a round orb. In the blank field or space to her left was a small five-pointed star, while in the right field was a triangle with one corner open; the mark of the Stagira Mint. In exegesis, in the space beneath the line drawn under the figure’s feet and the curved edge of the coin, were several letters denominating the particular Senator who had authorised this minting— L. Patro. Altogether a fine coin, if it were real.
“Well, as you say, Carrados, the weight appears approximate to what it should be.” Carlyle mused on the coin as he looked from it to its owner. “Who are these women, Xena and Gabrielle? I don’t recollect their names from Greek history.”
“Neither, I am ashamed to say, do I.” Carrados admitted his own ignorance in the matter. “A visit to the Reading Room is necessarily indicated.”
“It cost you seven shillings and sixpence. And if it proves to be real?”
“Oh, perhaps as much as fifty pounds.” Carrados nodded in response to Carlyle’s gasp at this amount. “Numismatists, as you well know, can become rather excited by a real rarity. I don’t doubt fifty pounds would be seen as a reasonable valuation.”
“Well, I take it this ‘Xena’—judging solely from the coin—appears to be a Princess.” Carlyle studied the coin with renewed interest.
“And ‘Gabrielle’ is apparently a Queen—but of which country, region, state, or tribe—I do not know.” Carrados smiled with that keen curiosity which affected him when a particularly interesting subject was unfolding. “Perhaps, even, an Amazon? Yes—yes. A walk to the Museum is certainly indicated.”
“What of the Devanney case?” Carlyle spoke of the Society mystery which, at the moment, filled Carrados’s professional time.
“Oh, we are well advanced with that.” Carrados waved a hand in the air. “A few hours relaxation pursuing a minor point of interest will not detract from our investigations there. Come, Carlyle, your hat is about to fall off the table edge, anyway. I hear the slight tinkle as its rim touches that glass bowl beside it. Hurry, the Museum closes at five-thirty sharp.”
—O—
On reaching the Museum the two men quickly fell in with an acquaintance of Carrados’s, Professor Fallinghame, Head of Greek Coins, who immediately whisked them off to his private office for a chat. After quarter of an hour of idle gossip he left them in possession of his study, with all the appropriate books that could possibly be needed. Then Carrados settled down to some serious research; while Carlyle examined and read from the various tomes he named, and which were readily to hand on the packed shelves of the Professor’s book-cases.
Professor Fallinghame’s speciality, which had originally brought Carrados and he together several years before, was Greek coins from the Hellenistic and Roman periods. The learned gentleman’s tastes however, as was usual, extended somewhat beyond the bounds of his particular area of interest. In fact there were a variety of curio’s arranged about the comfortable room. In several glass-topped table display-case’s were such things as potsherds of various designs; small vases or cups dating from Classical Greek times, in both red-figure and black-figure styles; an obligatory number of fine specimens of Greek and Roman coins; a few fragments of papyri, showing faint text in Greek; and, surprisingly, several small but exquisite scarab seals from Ancient Egypt. Professor Fallinghame being a connoisseur of ancient art, whose tastes spread across the whole gamut of the period.
Eventually Carrados sat back, smiling across at his friend.
“That will do, Carlyle. I think we have everything at our finger-tips, now.” He ran his own sensitive fingers idly over a small potsherd which he had picked up from the desk-top, feeling its incised design as he spoke. “From what you have told me there does seem to be something of a pattern revealing itself.”
“Oh, yes?” Carlyle was frankly dubious. He had read a lot, but not seemed to have recognised any fact of importance. “Well, I just wish you’d let me know what I have helped to discover; for I’m damned if I see it.”
Carrados laughed at this choice of words; it often giving him mild pleasure when Carlyle failed, as it were, to detect some important fact that was nonetheless clearly visible to his own sharp intellect.
“The solving of a mystery is generally not due to the realisation of one single fact; but the slow and careful teasing out of several points of interest which, in their totality, make an unarguable and complete statement.” He carried on twirling the little potsherd as he continued his theme. “From the history of the region of Stagira, and of Chalcidice as a whole, we have gleaned much information of interest. Firstly, from Livy’s ‘Historys’ of all things, we learn of a mysterious Warrior Princess operating somewhere around the times of Julius Caesar—”
“Ah, but,” Carlyle interposed, finally remembering a pertinent fact. “she is also mentioned as being active during the early reign of Augustus and of Caligula. Rather an extensive life, don’t you think? How old must she have been, finally. At least one hundred, I calculate.”
This cold hard fact did not fluster Carrados in the slightest; he having a ready answer.
“Several women; separated by generations; but all of the same name.” He smiled softly. “And not even of the same family, necessarily. That would explain everything.”
“So, does one of these mythical, barely mentioned, dubiously-named ladies chime with the date of the tetradrachm?”
“Ah, an interesting question.” Carrados settled comfortably in his chair and appeared to stare right at Carlyle. “As you well know, most tetradrachms are more or less un-dated. We must go on the mint mark, if present, or governor’s name who authorised the minting; or the design of the obverse and reverse: which, as you also know, are generally easily datable. At least to within a decade or so.”
At this point he delved in his jacket pocket and produced a small item wrapped in a piece of crimson silk. Carlyle instantly knew what it was—the tetradrachm. Carrados unfolded it and extended his arm to hand it over the desk.
“There. Have you the book of photogravures to hand, dealing with the period we need?” He raised an eyebrow as he heard his companion flicking through the pages of several volumes open on a nearby table. “You will need to examine the mint-marks carefully; perhaps over several year’s coins, to find what we need. Are you ready?”
For the next twenty minutes Carlyle peered closely at a selection of coin photographs. What was wanted was an illustration of a coin which had the same mark on the obverse showing where it had been minted; and also of the other curious marks and titles, which would hopefully give the name of the Senator or local Governor responsible for the coin edition; thereby supplying an at least approximate date. The style and nature of the heads, and of the standing figure on the reverse, would also supply to within 5 years the date of the coin if necessary.
Finally, their task was successfully accomplished.
“There we are.” Carrados gave a short laugh, as he sat back in his chair. “I knew there would be no great difficulty, after using the learned Professor Fallinghame’s perfectly magnificent library. So, Carlyle, what do we find, as a result of our researches?”
“It’s definitely a Stagira Mint coin.” Carlyle brushed a stray hair from his brow; it having been hard work. “The mint mark on your coin matches a coin illustrated in the ‘Eastern Greek Silver Coins’. Another tetradrachm, but of a different minting and subject. The governor’s name, Lucius Patroclus, also matches. The figure on the reverse is Victory standing on a globe, holding a corn sheaf, and facing left. All these details, plus the style, put your coin firmly in the same date-area and minting-group. That is to say, somewhere around 8—12AD. It is, in effect, a real coin.”
Carrados rubbed his chin with his left hand and stared into infinity. Then he slapped the desk-top firmly.
“We have yet to identify the two heads, though.” He tapped the potsherd, which he retained, quietly on the desk. “I wonder if Livy will be of any further use, or should we consider delving into the early Annalists? Sallust, I think, will not be of any use. My mind wavers about Tacitus; there are some recently discovered fragments of his which may be useful. What are the chances of our being able to research the Oxyrhyncus Fragments, do you suppose, Carlyle?”
“Absolutely zero, Carrados.” Carlyle, thus consulted, feeling it necessary to face reality. “Those precious bits of papyrus are guarded, and gloated over, by the greatest Egyptologists of our times. You haven’t a hope of setting an eye—I mean, of touching them.”
“Ho-hum, it is ever thus.” Carrados did not seem much put out by this state of affairs. “Well, Carlyle, it just means that tomorrow you will have to take up residence in the Reading Room, and peruse every available Roman historian of the period. If you have to stay till closing time we can always go out to dine at ‘Gradiani’s’. Come, let’s go home. We can do nothing further here.”
Exeunt Interval One
—O—
Both women had been invited to an evening symposium at the villa, sitting on a quiet estate on the outskirts of Athens, of the Senator Lucius Patroclus, a great friend of theirs personally and in political debate in the Athenian Senate as well as its Roman counterpart, where they needed every patron they could muster in each.
The entertainment had begun with idle chat, commenced to watching a short exhibition of acrobats followed by a couple of singers and ending with a young female dancer of the Dorian mode, assisted by a flute accompaniment. After which the guests, seven in all apart from Xena and Gabrielle, reclined on their low couches to drink wine and discuss topics of interest of the day.
“Fine dancer.”
“Nothing special.” Gabrielle perhaps suffering a slight level of jealousy. “Seen better; now I could—”
“What’s Lucius sayin’?” Xena cutting-off her lover with well-honed firm efficiency.
“Friends,” Lucius smiling round on the roomful of guests. “thank you all for coming to my poor evening’s party. It is a happy chance to talk with assembled friends, when such is possible. So, what should we discuss this evening of all evenings? What is going forward in Athens that is important to the World at large; perhaps our friends Xena and Gabrielle, Queen of the Amazons, can clarify this matter—Xena?”
“The Scythians are acting up on the Northern border, for one.”
“The Scythians,” Kritias, a wealthy commoner, sneering openly. “couldn’t defeat a group of schoolboys on their way home from class! If I was there myself I’d give them a bloody nose they’d remember for decades.”
This was just the sort of ill-judged remark that got right up Xena’s left nostril, as Gabrielle well knew—she sighing softly at the destruction that was bound to fall on the idiot’s ears.
“Oh?” The Princess firing-up in her cold focused way. “You a military expert? You can plan and operate, as well as take part in, a military campaign covering hundreds of individuals as well as at least one Legion? I envy you.”
Kritias wilted like a flower in Autumn.
“As to other things,” Xena getting into her stride now she had been poked with a metaphorical stick. “What about the Senate’s recent decision to raise the tax on woolen clothes? I know you, Lucius, are opposed but the Senate has had the last word. It’s going to mean much hardship for the poorer classes, obviously.”
“The polis must find its tax drachmas somewhere, Xena.” Dicaeus, a leather goods magnate, shuffling as if shrugging his shoulders. “It can’t operate if it does not have the monetary wherewithal to back its plans.”
“Why not tax those who can actually pay?” Gabrielle coming in with a pointed rejoinder that hit most of the assembled guests where it hurt most—their money pouches.
Lucius, perceiving the tone of the evening’s discussion rapidly going downhill, quietly changed the subject.
“What does one think of the latest poem from Persius? A rich and descriptive writer, all in all?”
“Haven’t read his latest yet,” Gabrielle smiling at a subject close to her heart. “I find the Modern poets a trifle, er, uneven in their coverage of the usual subjects. Mind, their satires are brutal sometimes. Anyone read Juvenal lately? He goes for the jugular, in my opinion. Curious he hasn’t been criticised by the Roman Senate yet.”
“I am very much afraid such will eventually arrive,” Lucius apparently speaking from inside knowledge. “Read him while you can, is my opinion.”
Here Xena, never much of a reader at the best of times, spoke up for her favourites.
“I enjoyed one of Catullus’s works a while ago—”
“Catullus!” Permiander of Chalcis snorting in disgust, nearly spilling his kylix of wine in his passion. “A dirty mind! Wouldn’t let a young child read him for anything. Ought to be banned, exiled even—Britannia for preference. Ha, like to see him make his way home from there! Make Odysseus’s journey home look like a stroll along the Pan-Athenaic Way—Ha—Ha!”
Lucius, seeing his impartial attempts at keeping a calm tone in the discussion failing across the board, tried one last time.
“Horace is always good for a relaxing clepsydra, is he not. I love several of his works.”
“Horace is all very well in his way; but his way fell out of style several decades ago, did it not? Or am I misinformed?” Eudoxius, a businessman of note, curling a supercilious lip.
“Anyone who purports to love the Poets must, by natural consequence, love Horace.” Glaucus, an elderly and honorable ex-Senator, shaking his head in disdain at such a naïve outlook on literature. “Clearly, sir, you do not know Horace in the least. I would instruct you, if I had any belief in your actually doing so, to read his works from start to finish—give you an entirely fresh understanding of the meaning of Poetry, sadly needed in your case, sir!”
Gabrielle, seeing the way things were going too, tried her own method of reducing tension.
“What about Propertius? Surely there are no quibbles to be found in his works; such an interesting poet, don’t you think?”
“Propertius,” Timon of Corinth, something big in the linen trade, frowning over the question. “interesting certainly, if by such is meant not someone whom one finds particularly enthralling—one declines, of course, to call a major poet boring—but!”
Lucius, defeated, leaned back and refilled his kylix, sadly refraining from adding as much water as was his usual habit.
“What of Flaccus?” Someone in the background piping up anonymously.
“Flaccus!” Flavius, a man of means, almost snarling his contempt. “Not a poet at all! Whatever gave you the idea he was? Couldn’t string two couplets together without filching from some other, better, poet. Man’s a mere transcriber of other men’s works—a forger, indeed!”
“Certainly seems to retain the capacity to engage people’s animosity!” Xena speaking up loud and clear, not attempting to keep the note of sarcasm from her voice. “Anyway, I’ve found Manilius of interest, in all the good senses of the term. A lot of interesting things to say on various subjects.”
“Certainly—certainly. But rather a particular taste, in my opinion.” Flavius frowning over the standing of the poet mentioned. “If you’re not interested in the more astronomical features of the Heavens—well, I ask you?”
“Everyone to their own tastes, of course.” Gabrielle striking up once more. “What of the Lady Julia Balbilla? She has a ready wit, judging from the epigrams she recently published. I like her style.”
“She is well if one wants to idle away a quiet afternoon doing nothing much, I agree.” Gnaeus, a man of property, showing his wholesale lack of the poetic sense. “Idle thoughts of an idle lady—ho-hum!”
Gabrielle looked daggers across the room at the man reclining nearly opposite; looking, indeed, as if she had just realised at least two actions where her sai, strapped to her boots, would come into their own with excellent effect.
“I agree, idle minds can hardly be expected to soar to the heights of intellectual understanding necessary to the appreciation of great poetry.”
While Gnaeus was clearly engaged in the difficult attempt, for him, to define whether the Amazon Queen was speaking of people in general or him in particular, Gabrielle went on to greater heights herself.
“Anyway, all bets are off—the greatest Poet who ever lived is, of course, Sappho! Anybody against my judgment? If so I warn you all I shall take swift, terrible, and condign revenge! No? Didn’t think so! Hey, Lucius, this is good wine, can you get a servant to bring me another krater of it, and don’t bother with the accompanying amphora of water, thanks!”
—O—
Back at their Inn room the following day Gabrielle, still feeling the after effects of the previous evening’s over-indulgence, made short work of Xena’s proposition they should both hit the armorers stalls in the market down the street.
“I got scrolls of scrolls t’write to—to—everybody! You go an’ enjoy yourself, Princess.”
Xena only needed to watch her other half sticking a long reed in a terracotta bottle of ink, stirring furiously, with a heap of new previously sharpened styli ready to hand to realise the utter futility of arguing the point.
“Oh—OK, but ya don’t know what you’re missin’.”
“Har!” Gabrielle too busy to take much notice. “Bring some sweet honey-cakes back with you, will you, thanks. Gods, this dam’ ink takes an eternity t’thin.”
“Rrrh!”
Gabrielle of Potidaea to Flavia in Alexandria, Egypt. Letter 01.
Dearest Flavia, Thanks so much for the gift of the honeycombs you sent by cargo ship from your latest port of call, in Egypt. Though, I have to admit, they were somewhat less than solid when I opened the package—but still delicious, dearest heart. Though I speak from the slightest acquaintance with them, however, as my better half—Har—corralled the greater amount and guzzled them like a starving hyena—‘Very tasty’, she had the decency to admit, licking her lips like a satisfied tiger after a particularly delicious lunch. Hummph, Warrior Princesses! Oh, Flavia, that reminds me Lupercalia has just started here—the usual confused Festival, not quite knowing what it’s supposed to really be about; but everyone enjoying themselves, all the same.
One must have leisure to speak with Goddesses, Flavia; as I found out yesterday. It was like this—I was having a relaxed morning, cleaning my stock of styli, the Mighty One being out about her private purposes; you know her, dear heart. [Oh, dam’. Flavia, someone’s knockin’ at my room door—gim’me a moment]—and who should show up at our Inn door but the noted judicial official Aulus Gellius, an old friend of mine. And he came with a message, essentially that the Emperor had given Xena and I free passage for the term of three months to come to Rome from this delightful coastal town, to engage in political discussions about the Amazons—so, of course I must go; and in doing so I have every suspicion the Warrior Princess will shadow my tracks like a, er, like a, umm, well, like a shadow. (oh dear, note to self—I must be more imaginative).
At least it will stop Her Highness from wasting the greater part of every day in fishing; she having found, several days ago, what she describes in awed tones as the best trout stream in Greece—what an imbecilic woman, Flavia. Anyway I shall write again soon to keep you up to date with the various activities my lover and I get up to; best wishes, Flavia. From Gabrielle of Potidaea.
[There are eleven further letters from Gabrielle to Flavia, amounting to 34 printed pages, but my Publisher,—standing steadfastly on his principals, citing the need for available space for other author’s efforts, has roundly demanded their unequivocal excision from this present work—Editor.]
—O—
Interval Two
Professor Henry MacDonald, on Orkney Mainland in 1943, discusses with a female student a curious ancient scroll he had come across in a junk-shop in Edinburgh a few weeks previously.
—O—
“Yes, I’m afraid it is somewhat of a grey day.” Professor MacDonald stood at the front door of his Victorian house gazing at the overcast sky. “However we don’t intend going exploring till tomorrow and, as I believe I once heard someone say—I can’t for the life of me remember who or where—tomorrow is—”
“—another day; yes Professor MacDonald; somebody did say that once.” Margery Sampson tried valiantly not to roll her eyes, and almost succeeded. “So, today’s work?”
“Ah yes, of course.” MacDonald stood aside to let the young lady enter his rather dusty domain. “Just go right along; it’s the third on the left.”
Margery Sampson was all of twenty-one; a second-year student at Edinburgh; and heavily into archaeology. She was one of Prof MacDonald’s students, and he had invited her to Orkney on purely professional purposes; knowing her for a bright and quick learner. Margery herself was able to take on this short, four week, working holiday as she was released from war work because of asthma; which she fervently hoped wouldn’t trouble her in the dank wet wastes of the Orkneys.
Prof MacDonald’s study exhibited all the signs of being the lair of a male with solitary habits. Dust covered everything, including the seats of the chairs; those not already holding bundles of books or curious geological specimens. The two desks were filled from one corner to the other with books, documents, maps, exhibits, and general objects of no known or recognisable purpose. The floor did have a carpet, but this was nearly invisible under the piles of books, wooden crates, and unhung framed pictures lying everywhere. To cross the twelve feet from the door to the nearest window-desk was an expedition in itself that Livingstone himself might have been proud to accomplish.
“Here, Miss Sampson, this chair’ll do service, I fancy.” MacDonald waved his hand at the sole occupiable member of its species available. “I’ll just, er, sit on the other side of the desk, here. So, Miss Sampson, how did you find travelling to Orkney? And are you comfortably ensconced at the hotel?”
Margery was some five feet seven inches tall; with brown eyes of a light chestnut tone; and an athletic frame, but rather a pale complexion. Her nature was generally open and light-hearted; and her capability for making friends was almost legendary at the University. She had a no-nonsense but outgoing personality; whose only constraint was in the fact she could not do war work in this year of nineteen forty-three. To this end she had thrown herself, with perhaps too much enthusiasm, into her course-work; culminating in the present invitation from Prof MacDonald to visit him, to help with various on-going projects of his.
“Oh, the train from Glasgow was packed to the brim with service-men, but I found a corner in one of the compartments.” Margery grinned at the memory, brushing a hand through her thick short curly hair. “The ferry to Kirkwall was something of an experience, though. A corvette escort; then bouncing in an ancient taxi on the roads over to Stromness, that was an experience, too. And I was amazed at the ships in Scapa Flow; never thought I’d actually ever see the place for myself, with my own eyes. It’s staggering; so big, and so many warships everywhere. I even saw a flying-boat—a Walrus, I think—coming in to land on the water as my taxi passed along the shore. And the army road-blocks everywhere! We had to stop to have our papers checked about half a dozen times.”
“Yes, well, that’s wartime for you.” MacDonald gave the young woman a searching glance, then spoke out. “About the, er, military presence round these parts. You’re quite right, the Flow is the centre of a truly huge military operation; but you must also realise it’s all shockingly top-secret. You know all those Public Service notices you see stuck up on walls everywhere? Well, they really do mean what they say. ‘Careless Talk’ really does cost lives; so if I tell you to be absolutely definite about one aspect only of life on Orkney, it’d be to keep your mouth shut at all times. By that I mean don’t discuss the presence of the military; their army equipment; the Navy or its ships; or the aircraft flying around all over the place. It’s all top-secret, and if anyone even suspects you’re talking idly, about even the most unimportant detail, you’ll find yourself under interrogation in a flash. So be careful, is my advice.”
“Thanks, I will.” Margery was impressed by the seriousness of her teacher’s tone while he spoke. “Seems I’ll have to learn manners on the hoof, eh?”
“Pretty much; but be sensible and you’ll be fine. How’s the hotel?”
“The ‘Allington’? It’s much posher than I thought it’d be.” Margery had been impressed with the plush and exotic nature of this building on first entering it the evening before. “It’s a fine example of ‘Moderne’, isn’t it? Glad the prices are pretty fair. I love the way it sits on the ridge just behind Stromness, so I can look out over the rooftops to the Flow and Hoy beyond. Goodness, Professor MacDonald, Hoy’s wonderful, isn’t it?”
“Yes, it tends to make its presence felt, I’ll give you that.” MacDonald laughed at his young student’s enthusiasm. “A pretty good view of it from here, in fact; and it’s not without its historical and geological points of interest, either.”
Margery had dumped her small handbag on the floor at her feet; now she bent to retrieve a notebook and pencil. Having had experience of Professor MacDonald’s ways while at the University she had come prepared.
“So, what’s your main project at the moment, Professor?”
“Oh, ah, I’m working on an article about the pre-Viking remains on the Northern Mainland.” MacDonald scratched his chin in thought. “It’s for the ‘British Archaeological Review’; seems they’re putting out a quarterly number this Summer, instead of the usual monthly printing. War restrictions, so I’m told. Humph, soon won’t be able t’send as much as a letter t’my tailor, for lack of paper.”
“Ha, I’m sure it won’t come to that, Professor.” Margery had a well-honed propensity for looking on the bright side of affairs, “It must be very interesting; at least, it seems that way to me.”
“That’s because you have a professional trained outlook, my dear. Er, sorry, I tend to sound rather patronising sometimes.” The Professor looked uncomfortable for a moment. “I have some, er, female acquaintances, servicewomen, whom I have come to know over the last few months here on Orkney. They have somewhat opened my eyes to my, umm, more visible transgressions against the female sex.”
Margery thought about this for a few seconds; then thought she ought to stop thinking about it.
“Ah, well, yes.” She looked down at her still pristine notebook. “What’s your period, Professor? Are you covering the entire pre-Viking situation; or just some particular aspect of it?”
“Oh, covering the whole thing would be impossible.” MacDonald laughed easily. “That’d take a seven or eight volume series; turn out like a set of the Encyclopedia Britannica, what! No, no, all I intend is to sketch the later examples of Late Pictish occupancy; and only for the Northern Mainland. Gives me a nice tight area t’summarise.”
“I suppose that’ll mean Skara Brae, in the main?”
“Yes, certainly.” MacDonald nodded happily. “No reason too slight for going over the Brae once more; always points of technical and historical interest to be found there. But there’s surprisingly more, over and above the major sites. Remains scattered almost everywhere, y’know. An endless field of investigation, in fact.”
Margery had been busy taking notes of these possible future places of interest. She glanced up to smile at the tall rather dusty form of the elderly Professor.
“Pity there isn’t more documentary evidence, Professor.” She was returning to a favourite point she had often discussed with him at lectures and tutorials in Edinburgh. “I mean, if only we had the Saga’s and Tales that the Icelandics and Norwegians do; wouldn’t that be spiffing?”
“Spiffing.” MacDonald laughed. “That’s one way of looking at it. But, of course, we don’t, so we must just get along hugger-mugger as we may, I’m afraid. Though, talking about that I’ve, er,—”
“What, Professor?”
“Well, a few weeks ago while I happened to be in Edinburgh for a conference—it was the same week I called on you to invite you up here—I happened to visit an old second-hand bookshop. In Cockburn Street, it was, and I found a very interesting ancient scroll there.” MacDonald sat up and gazed at his student in a rapt trance. “It was actually a medieval manuscript; vellum, y’know; but I saw at a glance it was a palimpsest—”
“Something already written on it previously?”
“Just so, so I was able to haggle the shop-owner down to a reasonable price; he having no professional idea of its worth, y’know.” MacDonald looked furtive and slightly ashamed for a second, but then brightened again. “All’s fair in love an’ war, y’know. And, as I told myself at the time, as there is indeed a war goin’ on at the moment, why, the omens couldn’t be clearer. So, I managed to buy it for £7 10s., no less. Quite a bargain, you’ll agree.”
“Have you begun to decipher the original text yet, Professor?”
“No, I thought we might spend a profitable afternoon doing it together.” MacDonald smiled encouragingly on his student. “Be of some worth to you in your course studies, I should think.”
“If you have it handy we could have a go at it right away, Professor.”
“I don’t see why not.” MacDonald rose happily and headed for the door. “Be right back, it’s in my other study at the moment. There’s a piece of remarkably interesting fluorite feldspar on the desk by your left elbow; might be of some worth examining it, if you like. Picked it up on the Brough of Birsay a couple of months ago. Has some interesting intrusions. Back in a minute.”
—O—
When he returned it was to find Margery standing by the tall sash window staring out at the view; which was well-worth staring at. His villa, dating from somewhere around 1860, sat on a high slope looking westwards out over the ground falling gently away to the shore of Scapa Flow about a mile and a half distant. The busy water was thronged with as comprehensive a mixture of His Majesty’s Navy as could be wished; and there were many army representatives milling about the roads in their huge tank-like trucks; while the Royal Air Force made its presence felt with numerous planes roaring overhead every few minutes, at the same time as a variety of flying-boats made use of the wide Flow to dart in and out of the rows of ships. The whole island being a hive of activity; while, in almost every direction, you simply needed to glance into the sky to see various numbers of grey whale-like bulbous shapes floating high in the air—Barrage Balloons.
“Takes a bit of getting used to, I know.” MacDonald placing an old leather briefcase on the cluttered desk. “Once you come to grips with the notion that the old quiet island is now a centre of military activity, it’s surprising how quickly you just sort of begin to ignore the noise and general busy-ness. So, here’s my little treasure; rather dirty and battered, I’m afraid. But then, if that bookseller had been able to make anything of it his price would have tripled for sure.”
He threw the flap of the briefcase open and extracted a short circular roll, at first glance looking not unlike a cook’s rolling-pin. Closer observation showed it to be, however, a piece of vellum or goats-skin. When unrolled it would be about four feet long, rather dirty and tattered at the edges. Its surface was covered from start to finish by two parallel rows of close writing, giving the whole object a dark appearance; not least because the whole surface was itself filthy with literally the accumulated dirt of the ages.
“Hmm, Latin.” Margery needing only a cursory glance in order to make this observation, being well-used to the language in her studies. “A palimpsest, you say? I can’t really see—”
“Oh, it’s very faint, I agree.” MacDonald nodded, leaning over the unrolled material on the desk-top. “But, see here? And here? Definite traces of another text. Faint, but discernible.”
Margery, so entreated, took a closer look and nodded in her turn.
“You’re right; I see it now.” She traced the nearly invisible lines with her forefinger. “Yes, under the top text and slightly out of alignment with it; I can see the underlying text now. If it covers the whole parchment you may have a long work on your hands, Prof.”
“I’ve studied it in detail over the last few days, and I think it pretty much does take up the whole surface of the vellum.” The Professor nodded happily. “And it’s Latin as well; which makes things a dam’ sight easier, at least for me. I can read Latin, as you know; but Greek, especially the archaic dialect, is beyond me.”
Margery sat back in her chair and raised her eyes to the elderly man standing over her.
“Any idea of the content yet, Prof.?”
MacDonald, on his part, straightened and ran a hand through his still luxuriant hair, a curious expression flickering over his features.
“Well, arh, umm.” He seemed hesitant to take up this question. “I bought it just over five weeks ago; and since then I’ve been putting in quite a bit of work on it. Perhaps to the detriment of my other interests, but there y’go. What I’m tryin’ t’say is, I’ve already translated the first section of the under-text, and a very strange story it tells. That’s why I’ll be glad of your assistance, to complete the task as quickly as possible.”
He delved back into the dark interior of the battered briefcase; this time extracting a sheaf of notes of his own.
“Here it is, the translation of the first fifty lines or so of the text.”
“So it’s not just accounts or lists, or boring ancient legal odds and ends?”
“No, no, quite something else altogether.” MacDonald still exuding an air of acute discomfiture. “ er, er—”
Margery put two and two together, and came up with a logical answer—she having read both D H Lawrence and Radclyffe Hall in her time, and been shocked by neither.
“Prof, it’s not—it’s not, ah, sexual, is it? Y’know how some of these old writers could be, umm, unhampered by modern constraints?”
The Professor jumped on this query with relish, obviously glad of something solid to dispose of.
“No, no, not at all, thank Goodness.” He waved an arm around, at nothing in particular. “No, it’s just that the content,—while not, er, partaking of the theme which you mention,—is still certainly of an unusual nature. Perhaps the best thing would be if you read it now. If you care to do so out loud, it will help me to clarify my thoughts on the matter as you go?”
Faced with this request Margery inwardly shrugged, sat forward, took the Professor’s notes in hand, and began to recite.
“—where the trees came down to the river’s edge.—I see it starts in media res, Prof?” She glanced over at the old man, who sat with his chin in his hand, a look of intense concentration on his face. “Part of it missing?”
“Yes, umm, yes. Probably an earlier scroll before this one; we may have lost perhaps a third of the total text, unfortunately.”
“Oh well, can’t have everything.” Margery nodded, then continued. “—Argo was happy, and we soon had the camp in hand. Who’s this Argo?”
“No idea.” MacDonald shook his head. “Haven’t come across more than one other name-check in the part of the text I’ve translated. Some companion, along with the main characters, I expect.”
“Main characters?”
“Oh, you’ll soon see the lie of the land as you carry on, Miss Sampson.”
Margery took the hint, and returned to her recital.
“—as usual. Seem to be hiatus’s in the text, Prof. That won’t help the translation.” Margery frowned over the Professor’s bad typewriting. “So Xena soon did her usual, wandering off pretending to scout out the perimeter, while I was left to do the hard work of sorting out the camp; what a woman, she never changes. Prof, what’s this all about? It doesn’t read like any ancient Latin text I’ve ever seen in the University Library?”
MacDonald perked up at this question, sitting forward in his seat and fixing his student with a piercing eye.
“Ah, exactly, my dear.” He nodded happily. “It is, as you so pertinently say, not like anything ever seen before. I think it may be a mediaeval translation into Latin from an earlier Greek text—possibly Classical.”
Margery opened her eyes wide at this supposition; the likely results being clear to her at once.
“Prof, are you saying you may have a copy of some ancient text in your hands, one as yet unknown to modern scholars?” Margery raised an eyebrow. “Which ancient author? And which of his works? It’s not a work of one of the Greats, is it? Aristotle, Plato, Seneca, or somebody?”
“No.” MacDonald shook his head. “From what I’ve been able to gather it seems to have been written by a woman—or at least an author masquerading as such, and very successfully too, I may say. But carry on, please.”
“Let me see? — ‘One must have leisure to speak with Goddesses, Flavia; as I found out yesterday. It was like this—I was having a relaxed morning, cleaning my stock of styli, the Mighty One being out about her private purposes; you know her, dear heart. [Oh, dam’. Flavia, someone’s knockin’ at my room door—gim’me a moment]—Good heavens, Professor! What does this mean? It sounds like a modern forgery! Are you sure about this palimpsest?”
“Perfectly sure, Miss Sampson; delightful, isn’t it! To give you the gist of the affair it appears to recount the ongoing adventures of two women—one, Xena, and the other, Gabrielle. They appear to be close friends and to have the most original adventures. The whole palimpsest, when translated, ought to clarify and extend our interpretation of women in Ancient Greece and Rome to an as yet unheard of degree. I can’t wait!”
Margery whistled through her teeth.
“Well, forget the dam’ Vikings, Professor, let me sharpen my pen and we’ll delve into these two ladies sharpish—OK?”
“Oh, very much OK, Miss Sampson!”
Exeunt Interval Two
—O—
“Why is this street called the Via Collonus, when we’re in Piraeus?”
“You know how many Romans’ live here these days?” The Warrior Princess shook her head in that way she had. “They’ve taken over the whole dam’ place in the last hundred years or so, even t’unofficially calling the streets by Roman names, is all.”
“Ah.” Satisfied, the Amazon carried on strolling in the morning sunshine; her light skirt, and she was wearing a shorter skirt than usual this morning against Xena’s wishes, billowed in the light breeze affording the passing crowd a wider view of alabaster thigh than normal, many taking advantage of the opportunity offered to do so.
“Hey, ya bum, quit with the bulgin’ eyes, if’n ya don’t want ter lose same.” Xena making her position clear to a more daring member of the passing hoi-polloi.
She herself, however, stopped at the busy roadside to lift the hem of her short leather skirt, scratching a little red spot high on her thigh. A passing citizen, more curious than most about his natural surroundings, paused to admire the view; then, suddenly catching the reflection of a deep blue icy glare from the upper slopes of the object of his wholly scientific interest, thought better of his love of nature, passing on at speed.
“What’s up, lover? Scratching yourself? Fleas?”
“Hey, I ain’t got fleas—”
“Bedbugs, then.” The blonde dynamo that was the Amazon Queen snorted happily, a query she had made public earlier that morning having clearly born its just fruit. “Told you the sheets in that dump of an Inn you insisted on our patronising were infested. Ain’t I always right? Don’t know why you don’t listen to me oftener.”
“That’d be a disaster.”
“What?”
“Nuthin’.” The Warrior Princess back-tracking like a professional. “It wasn’t a bedbug, either. Nothin’ wrong with our Inn; nah, some crittur, some fly, just bit me a-ways back along the road. Gods, Piraeus is a filthy place, don’t know why ya dragged me here.”
“It’s the beating heart of Athens, that’s why, gal.”
Gabrielle strolled on along the narrow raised paved line, especially made for pedestrians, running alongside the road; the crowds of local workers, and others, moving determinedly in both directions, however, making the journey something of a push and shove contest—with little quarter given on either side.
“Hades, Xena, I’ve had less trouble moving in some battles, than this chaos.” Gabrielle using her elbows in her trademark ruthless Amazonian manner, taking no prisoners; the blonde warrior becoming incensed as a passing sturdy short man, walking at full speed, barged into her. “Hey, ya clown, what’re ya doin? Ain’t y’re eyes operatin’ this mornin’? How’d you like a sai in y’re butt, just t’liven’ ya up, eh?”
“Sorry, ma’am, sorry.” The man hardly pausing, merely glancing back as he went on his way. “Things t’do, places t’be, people t’meet—some o’us havin’ a livin’ t’make, y’know.”
With this friendly apology he disappeared in the crowd, leaving the Amazon bending down with a hand going to the outside of one of her short red leather boots, where her long-bladed weapons reposed, in a manner her companion recognised immediately.
“Easy, gal.” Xena, towering over the majority of those around her, was a little less uptight. “He’s only passing-by; right, dearest, what’re y’r plans, then?”
“As if you didn’t know.” The blonde Amazon sniffed derisively, taking the chance meanwhile to grasp her companion’s left wrist in a vice-like grip, for safety’s sake. “Just five days past since you totaled our last frying-pan. What is it with you an’ frying-pans? Whenever a casual weapon’s needed in a fight round our camp-fire your first thought always turns t’the dam’ frying-pan. Is there somethin’ in your youth you want t’share with me, Lady?”
“No, there ain’t, so give me peace, fer Athena’s sake. Which way’r the dam’ frying-pans, then?”
“OK, Xena, this is how it works.” Gabrielle consulting the list she had scrawled on a segment torn from one of her scrolls, nodding happily the while—a bad sign. “We go to the main square, where the big merchants have their stalls, and we choose carefully who’s giving the best bargains—”
“But shouldn’t we be aiming for quality? I mean cheap is good; but there’s a difference between a good sword, and one who’s blade falls off three days after you buy it.” The Warrior Princess knew what she was talking about. “Ya got’ta be careful you know.”
Gabrielle gave the tall woman a pitying glance.
By this time the brave duo had penetrated to the heart of the extensive market; a wide avenue, lined on both sides by stalls and tents doing a roaring trade, while the roadway itself was packed with a throng trying to head in three directions at once. The level of noise and vituperation was phenomenal; though because of the international make-up of part of the crowd, the yelled curses and oaths had an exotic colourful nature which whetted the listening connoisseur’s taste-buds—Gabrielle was certainly all agog, listening intently to all around her.
“Ah, what was that, dearest?”
“Open yer ears, fer all the Gods’ sakes, won’t ya.” The Princess shook her head despairingly—Gods, blonde Amazons, what a strain they sometimes were. “Frying-pans; y’know, pans fer fr—”
“Idiot,—no, I don’t know where they are.” Gabrielle, not one whit put out of countenance, shook her silver locks engagingly. “You said y’wanted a new cosy warm blanket, anyway. Maybe we should split-up; you go that-a-way, an’ I’ll push these bums apart, an’ go this-a-way. Well, it’s a plan.”
“Technically, yeah, I suppose.” The Princess’s tone reflecting a strong sense of disapproval, but with nothing better to offer in its place. “Oh, alright; but if ya get lost an’ the City Guard have t’be sent out t’find ya just don’t blame me, right?”
“Fool. OK, see you later. Hey, buster! Are you gon’na move out’ta my way, or do I move you myself? Great, thanks. See you, sister.”
“Gods, Amazon Queens; what a Tartarus lot’ta trouble they are. Nothin’, lover; just sayin’ g’bye, that’s all—Cheerio, see ya later. Auurph.”
—O—
The busy coastal town of Piraeus, port to the nearby city of Athens, was both a busy civil seaport and Greek naval station; harbouring a remarkable number of biremes, triremes, ordinary penteconters and other assorted sea-going craft. It held its local Market on every seventh day, and today was that day.
The fact that the town saw so much sea-activity meant that its shops and markets were always full of the most interesting and exotic materials and sundries imaginable. Everything from the northern shores of Afric; or the far wastes beyond the back of the north wind where that wet boggy island Britannia lay; the cold icy mountains of the Vikings; and even the distant realms of Chin and Japa, all sent implements, cloth, and assorted metal and pottery objects of either useful or artistic merit.
The weather was fine and cloudless; the Market set-up to its fullest extent; the local citizenry, and those naval soldiers who could spare the time, were already milling about among the stalls and tents and tables, with all that sharp-eyed determination to hunt a bargain to its lair if it killed them which so personifies the Greek in pursuit of a cut-price offer. Amongst this pushing, heaving, noisy pack Xena and Gabrielle did their best to keep within a hand’s reach of each other, whilst striving not to be trampled by the wilder elements afoot all round them.
“Ho, now, no rough stuff, gal.” Greatly daring, the Princess put a gentle restraining hand on the crouching demon’s shoulder, though emerald sparks still flashed from the Amazon’s still glowering eyes as she looked up at her lover. “No point in skewering the local hoi poloi fer no particular reason. There’s laws an’ such about that sort’a thing, y’know.”
“Huh. Dam’ Athenian laws; mostly about as much use as a horse’s bridle made out’ta seaweed. Oh, OK, so I won’t cut his ears off, after all. Doesn’t mean I don’t want to at some future date, though.”
“Easy, gal, here’s the harbour, at last.” Xena gave a silent sigh of relief as they approached their destination. “So, where’d ya wan’na go first?”
The women had strolled along the southern side of the long destroyed Northern Long Wall, connecting Athens proper with its seaport. Both the Northern and Southern Long Walls had been thrown down in the Peloponnesian Wars, now being nothing more than overgrown mounds of earth and broken stone, used as useful quarries for nearby contemporary buildings. The distance between the great city and the thriving port was only about a single parasang, so the warriors had enjoyed the morning walk; especially as the narrow overcrowded roads and streets of the port were notoriously impossible for all but foot-traffic.
The port itself had been designed on a then new grid-plan; whereby straight roads intersected each other, giving squares of buildings with roads and streets on each side. But over the centuries the town had become more and more crowded and decrepit, till now it was a byword for filth, broken-down buildings, poor citizens, and a wealth of back-street crime. The presence of the Athenian naval fleet, with its hundreds of triremes and biremes with their crews and support staff, only adding to the general frenzied mess which made up each working day. And so it was this roaring, smelly, noisy hive of industry Gabrielle had decided she had to visit before she grew old.
“Well, there they are.”
They had come out on the southern quayside, itself swarming with activity and crowds intent on their own mysterious purposes, with its wide view across the teeming harbour to the northern shore with its own quays.
“What? What’re where?” Gabrielle’s focus being wholly on a small scruffy shop with lots of bright wool, satin, cotton and silk rugs and other appurtenances.
“The trireme sheds.” Xena’s own attention, of course, being on the military significance of the harbour. “See ‘em, over on the other quay?”
Thus importuned Gabrielle, but only out of pure charity, deigned to shift her green eyes from one subject of interest to that of a much lesser interest.
“Oh-ah, yeah. Ships, an’ whatever.” She paused to take a sharper glance over the crowded water into the far distance. “What? You mean those shed things, with the sloped roofs an’ the open sides? Look like fishing-net drying sheds. Oh, wait a mo’, yeah, I see some boats under cover, under the roofs.”
“Eyes like a hawk, an old one.” Xena being unwary enough to let this inner thought reach fruition in the open air, far too close to Gabrielle’s ears for comfort.
“What was that last remark?” The Amazon Queen always up for a fight.
“Oh, did I say somethin’?” The Warrior Princess prevaricating like a sophist in full retreat. “Can’t imagine what it was, now. Y’see the triremes over there, then? Good; they haul ‘em out’ta the water to stop the wood rottin’, y’know.”
Gabrielle, walking on by her lover’s side, nonetheless gave her a glowering scowl.
“I’m sure.” She shook her head, short blonde locks whirling angrily in the air. “Humph, so where’re we going, now we’re here?”
This blatant attempt to thrust the blame for their present expedition onto her shoulders alone was too much for the Warrior Princess; she coming out fighting.
“If’n ya recall, lady, it was your idea, an’ only yours, to scramble out along the Long Walls t’our present location.” Xena, from her superior height, looking askance down on the person who was causing her so much anxiety so early in the day. “And now you’ve dragged me here I don’t intend ya goes back t’our Inn before ye’ve learnt all there is t’learn about this shambles of a metropolis, so there.”
“Learn? What’s t’learn, lady?” Gabrielle wholly in command of her present needs and schedule. “This place’s a dead-beat drop-out more or less criminal rookery, is what it is; don’t think for a moment I don’t realise that.”
“What? What?” Xena completely stupefied at the brass neck of the blonde by her side. “Why’d ya insist on comin’ here, then, draggin’ me along too?”
“The shops, lady, the shops.” The Amazon here casting aside all further attempts to appear insouciant about her presence in the busy port. “All these boats, y’see floatin’ around in the bay an’ the wharves everywhere, have come from all the corners of the known world—an’ some not known, either.”
“So what?”
“So they’re loaded with all the riches of said corners, ain’t they?” Gabrielle shaking her head, as before a simpleton. “And the local shops, here, get first dibs, obviously. They may all look like dirty filthy rat-holes, I don’t deny, but they’re stocked with items of high quality, made from the richest materials—and going at rock bottom prices. Well, y’see how such’d pique my attention, don’t’cha?”
Sadly, Xena could indeed easily follow the trail of ascending interest-need-greed-desire to have at all costs, which must have earlier passed through her partner’s inner mental processes—if, indeed, she could be credited with the possession of anything remotely resembling ordinary mental acumen; personally, the Princess was beginning to have serious doubts regarding such.
“Great Aphrodite’s—, ya mean t’say ya dragged me all the way along the dam’ Northern Wall t’this cesspit simply on the trail of a bargain? I’ve a good mind ter put ya out’ta ya, an’ my, misery, lady.”
“Ha.” Gabrielle wholly unperturbed at the rising blood pressure of her companion. “Hey, look, a Chiton shop—with silk garments on the viewing tables. Well, come on; the crowds’ll soon be as thick as beetles on a dung-heap round here. Let’s get in quick, while there’s still space inside t’swing a cat—or an arm looking for a nice new silk chiton t’cover it. Me first.”
—O—
“This top, this skirt, this whole look—I’m bored with it; been wearin’ these things for ages, absolute ages—must be all of, what, six months since my last upgrade. I want a really new outfit.”
“Lem’me get this straight, lady, you want to modernise your wardrobe?”
“Yeah, simple.”
“Not so simple as that, gal.” The Warrior Princess oozed dubiousness. “I got some questions.”
“Like—?”
“Y’want t’up your physical capability, in fights an’ battles, an’ that sort’a thing, maybe?”
“—er, yes, that’s exactly why I want t’change my style o’clothing.” Gabrielle, walking by her partner’s side, nodded enthusiastically. “Y’got it.”
“No, I ain’t got it, not by a long way, ducks.” Xena’s brow lowered as she frowned darkly at her shorter blonder companion—a lost cause from the start, as she well knew. “And this new style encompasses you walking about in Public an’ everywhere else, if I take yer meanin’, in even shorter skirts than what you’re sashayin’ round in presently, or some near cousin of it?”
“That’s it, babe.” Gabrielle smiled broadly, glad her paramour had grasped the essentials. “That’s my plan.”
“Holy Artemis.”
“Don’t get so heated, dear.” Gabrielle shook her golden locks, sunlight reflecting in sparkling daggers of light, enthralling her companion. “I won’t go overboard—just a little shorter, is all; make it easier to fight, y’know.”
“Oh, I am glad, makes all the difference, lover.”
But Xena’s attempt at scathing sarcasm fell, as it always did, on deaf ears— very pretty ears, like scallop shells on the seashore, just begging to be gently caressed all over their beautiful entwined curves—but still! ‘See,’ the Princess thought sadly, ‘this is what always happens when I try to influence her sense of fashion,—hi-ho!’
They were strolling along one of those winding narrow side-streets somewhere south-east of Piraeus’ harbour; the morning was bright with sunshine from an unbroken blue sky, and the citizens crowding the streets were going about their business with joy and happiness, if not actual abandon: the Amazon Queen and lowly but proud Warrior Princess on the look-out for a particular shop.
“Sure you’ve been given the right directions?” Xena curled her upper lip, but listlessly. “Otherwise we could be navigating this warren fer the rest o’ the day, y’know. What was wrong with that first chiton shop we went in, anyway?”
“No class, baby; their stock was months old an’ so passé, as the Gauls say. I’m sure our Inn-keeper told me the right way for a much better salon.” Gabrielle hoisted her chin into the air, her usual reaction to any sense of a negative attitude on her partner’s side. “I think it might be just round this next corner.”
“Hope bloody so.”
Xena moved with something like her usual long stride, meant to cover many stadia in short order. Though, because of the constrained circumstances of the moment—the crowded narrow street, and more importantly Gabrielle’s long-held injunction that the Warrior Princess should adjust her stride to that of shorter legged Amazons, or there’d be bloody trouble, lady—holding her back from actually striding confidently away into the far distance, leaving everyone else shattered wrecks in her wake.
The Princess was dressed in more or less her usual attire; her long-established uniform, as it were; but with some subtle new variations in detail. Gabrielle, Herald of all that mattered in modern Athenian, wider Greek, and indeed, any other country’s dress style, had lately insisted on changes. There were now far less of those dammed fiddly bronze thing-gummy-jigs on the Princess’s tight corset; the waist had been enhanced with extra-strong leather panels to give a firmer waistline and her skirt of loose separate leather strips had also been taken in hand, being held together by small metal studs so they ceased to flap about when the Princess was doing her Warrior thing; the short underskirt, also of leather, now of sturdier make also. Gabrielle announcing this was easier for laundry purposes and more comfortable for the wearer, as well as affording more ease of movement during fights—though Xena couldn’t see this latter, though far too sharp to complain, of course.
It had taken Xena some time to come to terms with this new form of dress but, faced with Gabrielle’s decisive stance in the matter, her carping criticisms had finally fizzled out, the Princess now being almost reconciled to her new attire. The Amazon, too, had not contented herself with merely upgrading others’ dress sense, but was presently in the process of giving herself—as Xena was so noisily criticising—a complete makeover even more drastic than her confrère’s.
Gabrielle’s dress in recent years, as she had become more confident in herself as an efficient and capable Amazon Queen, had undergone several sets of changes and modernisations; but now, in the last few months, she had decided to take things a step further towards a modern Amazonian stylishness—along with its being comfortable and easy wearing both socially and in battle.
To this end she had reduced the length of her short skirt, revealing nearly the full length of her powerfully muscled pillar-like bare legs; the skirt’s waistbelt hanging low on the hips, curving down in front just enough to show her belly-button pierced with a small emerald in a bright silver setting that glistened charmingly in the sunlight as she walked. Her short red leather boots had been replaced by heavier black leather boots now reaching just under her knees, something akin to Xena’s old ones, with thin straps wound round her calves; these acting as necessary holding-points for her triple-bladed sai, one still held on the outside of each boot.
The Amazon Queens’ top had also been reduced to something more free, easy, and, in her eyes, comfortable and enchantingly feminine; the firm leather cups allowing a great deal of the upper reaches and slopes of their robust but smoothly curved ivory-tinted contents to see the light of day; while thin barely visible leather cords holding the front in place ran up from each side to be tied-off round the back of her neck, a supporting cord running round the wearer’s back tied-off between her shoulder blades; thus leaving her back almost completely bare from waist to neck, giving the first impression to anyone casually looking from behind that she was actually topless.
And now the Princess, faced with the direction this kind of re-styling had taken, was even more aware of citizens exhibiting a more than passing interest in her lover; this doing nothing at all for the Warrior Princess’s blood pressure.
—O—
“Here we are; knew it was round here somewhere.” Gabrielle stopping before a shop with a wide frontage allowing a view through several open shutters into a wide interior apparently filled with racks of clothes of all descriptions. “Look, there’s the owner banner above the lintel—‘Melissia’s Salon’. We’re here, babe. Got your money-pouch handy?”
With which heart-stopping remark the Amazon disappeared inside the shop with the lithe spring of a young antelope.
“My money-pouch!” Xena shocked beyond compare. “My—!”
The long room was surprisingly light, a factor attributable to the wide street frontage with its long series of windows; doors to other private rooms in the wall at the far end. Several tables showed the more ordinary wares, for the common populace; while, for the discerning, long wooden racks held the more classy clothes—amongst which the Amazon Queen was already rummaging, like an anteater beside a hill of extraordinary proportions.
“Gabs, take it easy, fer Athena’s sake, we got all day.”
“There’s never enough time to shop really thoroughly, lady; you should know that by now.”
This from the dark recesses of a couple of racks of chitons placed so close together the happy shopper disappeared from sight in moving along them.
“Where the Hades are ya, gal?”
“Here! This way; follow the Macedonian chitons, I’m just past them.”
“Great Hera’s Eyes!”
—O—
[The following short manuscript has survived in two separate texts—one a Classical Greek text on papyrus, now in the British Museum, first printed in 1486 in the original Greek by William Caxton, of which I give a modern translation of the original papyrus text; the other, longer, a Latin text, the original Greek text since lost, first printed in 1521 by Wynkyn de Worde, which is re-printed here again in modern translation.—Editor.]
The Caxton text—
The rocky hill of the Areopagus was quiet this morning, with no swirling crowds of citizens listening to the oratory of renowned senators, rhetors, or lawyers. On the contrary there were only a few groups of people idly stopping for a moment or two by the handful of speechmakers and rhetors who usually took position there on days when no civic trials were underway. In the near distance towered the mighty spectacle of the Acropolis, while further distant lay the Agora and the long Stoa of Attalos. The morning was pristine, with hardly a breeze and a sky of the richest azure. Altogether a day on which both Xena and Gabrielle thought they had better things to do than trail around in the footsteps of an old orator; but promises are promises.
“Tell me again why we’re doin’ this. Xena?”
They were following close behind the elderly portly form of Dacius of Ephesus, renowned orator and rhetor; at least in his day which was now, unfortunately, long in the past; something the old man steadfastly refused to acknowledge.
“Met him four month ago, as ya know, during our last visit; felt sorry for him when he explained about nearly bein’ stoned t’death at one of his public speeches; took pity on the old reprobate, an’ promised we’d act as his bodyguards for the next seven days; so here we are. So, you tell me what’s wrong with any part of this statement, darlin’.”
“Absolutely all of it, dear.” Gabrielle not holding back, growling in distaste. “Meeting the idiot at all was our first mistake; why couldn’t we have picked another Inn? Then, as you’ll agree now knowing him as we do, those who wanted t’stone him were probably acting for the good of the nation. Promising t’be his bodyguards was just foolish; we both must’a taken a flagon or so too much mead. How’s that?”
“Pretty fair.” The warrior grunted mirthlessly as they walked on up the steep slope approaching the top of the low outcrop. “Wonder what he’s goin’ t’astound the crowds with this mornin’?”
“There ain’t any crowds, lover.” Gabrielle was always one for the realities. “Hardly a soul about; which is probably all t’the good. Less people t’throw things at him, when he gets into his stride an’ starts t’annoy ‘em.”
The Wynkyn de Worde text—
“This’s gon’na be a mess.”
“Why’d ya say so, gal?”
Gabrielle, standing by her heartmate’s side amongst the crowd, raised her beautiful eyebrows.
“Look around, we’re surrounded by most of the dregs of Athens, who’ve shown up here the Gods only now why—citizens yeah, but not good ones! Figure the District of Lycabettus must be almost depopulated today—they’re all here, on the Areopagus instead.”
Xena gave her loved partner an all-encompassing glance as they moved forward with the heaving crowd’s movement towards the main standing area around the small bare hill proper.
“Sharp t’day, ain’t ya? Thought I’d better watch out fer all these sharp stones on the ground round here cuttin’ through my boots, but I see there’re sharper things still.”
“Har-Har, lady.”
Having finally reached the immediate environs of the bare limestone of the low hill the two women were met by an official, who had obviously been awaiting their appearance; the majority of the rest of the crowd carrying on to the main public area.
“Ha, Princess Xena and Queen Gabrielle, most welcome greetings.” The man was short, rotund, sported a greyish toga with a thin blue border and held a rolled-up scroll in his left hand. “I’m Brigaeus, Clerk to the Court; follow me.”
Admonished in this somewhat severe manner the ladies shrugged at each other and followed in the man’s footsteps. He took them round the side of the hill, which was really more of a low limestone mound, and darted up a narrow flight of steps cut in the rock to bring his charges out on the cold bare peak, towards the rear of the area where the major jurists and lawyers usually presented their cases to the enthralled audience below; each of the listening citizens being themselves, by tradition, members of the vast jury, each allowed to vote using either a small black stone for nay or a white one for yes inserted into a necessarily complex mechanical sorting and counting machine—though this present appearance was slightly different in that the two persons hoping to influence the crowd today had sent their representatives there to present their differing attitudes to Athens, the Law, and the Good of the Citizens in general, in hopes of influencing the citizens, as a form of jury, to give one of the Rhetors the vote of confidence needed to allow the one or other of their clients to become a Senator, with all the power this position traditionally held.
To this end each Rhetor would attempt to engage the interest and approval of the massed ranks of male citizens to record acceptance of their individual clients. At the end of the speeches there would be a vote—the winning client, depending which Rhetor was victorious, going on to present their case to the Senate proper, who would themselves vote on the approved applicants’ capability and proficiency to hold the rank of Senator. Xena and Gabrielle being present as security for their new acquaintance the Rhetor Dacius of Ephesus, he appearing on behalf of his client Learchos of Megara, a wealthy merchant who felt he could work competently for the citizens of Athens, if voted in. The opposing candidate being another matter altogether; one Iphicrates of Cleonae, who had an entirely different policy for being elected; one which did not inspire confidence in either the warrior women, nor Learchos, nor Dacius.
The rocky hill of the Areopagus was quiet this morning, with no swirling crowds of citizens listening to the oratory of renowned senators or sophists. On the contrary there were only a few groups of people idly stopping for a moment or two by the handful of speechmakers and rhetors who usually took position there on days when no civic trials were underway. In the near distance towered the mighty spectacle of the Acropolis, beyond which lay the Agora and the long Stoa of Attalos, with the towering pinnacle of Lycabettus in the distant background. The morning was pristine, with hardly a breeze and a sky of the richest azure. Altogether a day on which both Xena and Gabrielle thought they had better things to do than trail around in the footsteps of a broken down old Rhetor pushing the dubious at best favours of an aspiring candidate for the Senate; but promises are promises.
“Tell me again why we’re doin’ this. Xena.”
They were now following close behind the elderly portly form of the Clerk of the Court as he shepherded them across the flat peak of the rocky mound known as the Areopagus.
“We met Dacius three weeks ago, as ya very well remember, lady; felt sorry for him when he explained about his feelings on the state of Athens at the moment; took pity on the old reprobate when he dam’ nearly pleaded for our services as security when he delivered his public speech here, anyway; an’ so we promised t’act as his bodyguards for the next seven days; so here we are. So, you tell me what’s wrong with any part of this statement, darlin’.”
“Absolutely all of it, dear.” Gabrielle didn’t hold back, growling in distaste. “Meeting the idiot at all was our first mistake; why couldn’t we have picked another Inn? Then, as you’ll agree now knowing him as we do, those who want to keep him as far away as possible from the Areopagus in future, no matter how, are probably acting for the good of the nation. Promising t’be his bodyguards was just foolish; we both must’a taken a tankard or so too much mead. How’s that?”
“Pretty fair.” The warrior grunting mirthlessly as they walked on across the sloping top of the low outcrop. “Wonder what he’s goin’ t’astound the crowds with this mornin’?”
“There ain’t any crowds, lover; only throngs of hooligans waitin’ their chance t’throw rotten vegetables at Dacius, and probably us, too.” Gabrielle always being one for the realities. “Hardly a true citizen about; which is probably all t’the good. Less innocent people t’get caught in the chaos when the others start t’throw things at him, when he gets into his stride an’ starts t’annoy ‘em.”
“Depends, I suppose, on whether his opponent’s any better, or worse.”
“Har!”
End of Wynkyn de Worde Text.
—O—
Gabrielle brought her horse to a skidding halt in a cloud of yellow dust in the middle of the Pan-Athenaic Way, a little south of the Northern Di-Pylon Gate. She had just exited a narrow alley on the western side at a rate of knots that would have done a bireme proud, though the crowds of pedestrians using the wide avenue on this Festival day didn’t think much of her maneuvering.
“What in Hades d’ya think ye’re doin’ lady?”
“—‘ere, ye’re ‘orse dam’ near trampled on my foot; can’t yer ride, or what?”
“What the f-ck?”
“Bloody women riders, ough’ta be banned.”
“Ger’out o’ it, dam’ yer.”
The Amazon Queen would normally have stopped to offer excuses and condolences, or perhaps something more in keeping with her warrior outlook but was otherwise occupied. Happily she saw something nearby which struck the right chord in the present circumstances; a mounted hoplite of the Athens Security Regiment now bearing down on her with an air of authority and determination to find out what the game was, or there’d be trouble, madam. Then the young soldier recognised his victim and pulled up himself, not without turning a shade paler.
“Ahh, Your Highness, wha—”
“Never mind that, I’m Gabrielle; leave it there.” She was still gasping for breath after her previous exertions. “Get this, a robber on horseback’s fleeing from a merchant’s house backaways, where he’s managed to half-inch a saddlebag full’a silver tetradrachms; maybe two thousand drachms worth and some dies for making the coins; we got’ta get ‘em all back before they reach the Public’s sticky fingers, OK?”
“Sh-t.”
“Yeah, that covers it.” Gabrielle pulled her horse’s head round to face south down the Way. “I’ve been following the fool for the past short while. He’s makin’ south; you head to the Agora, Xena’s there—it’s her turn of duty today—tell her, and then alert the Lieutenant in charge of the Regiment at the office-building nearby. Got that?”
“Yes, Highn—er, Gabrielle.”
“Right, I’m off; make way. Make bloody way, I say. Bloody hoi polloi, brains of a dead marmoset between ‘em all.” An Amazon Queen in a hurry. “Well, don’t just sit there warmin’ your saddle. Get movin’.”
Instantly two further clouds of dry throat-catching dust billowed up from the bare earth of the Avenue, and crowds of passers-by once more broke apart to indeed make way for the duo of horses—they all having not much choice in the matter, actually; the riders thereby being followed by a barrage of curses that would have made Hades himself proud if he had heard.
A short while later Gabrielle emerged from the winding Lycabettus District streets into the wide area of the Agora, crowded with jostling citizens at this time of day. Thankfully the hoplite had already reached and spoken to Xena before going on his way to the main Security building.
“Hi, Xena! You heard?”
“Yeah, some idiot stole our tetradrachm test coins, an’ the dam’ dies. Where is he?”
Riding up close to Argo Gabrielle paused to get her breath back.
“Somewhere not far off. He stole ‘em from the guards about to take them to Piraeus to be shipped to Stagira.”
“OK, follow me, we may catch up to him yet.”
With this the Princess kicked Argo into a gallop and the chase began for real.
The trouble with the Agora was that it is so popular a meeting-place; crowds milling around within its perimeter all day from sun-up to sundown, making wheeled traffic and horse movements very difficult. So it was not till the women had made it past this constriction into the wide thoroughfare that was the Pan-Athenaic Way leading south that they were able to pick up a reasonable speed in their pursuit.
Riding alongside each other in a manner dictated by years of experience the two women carried on a mobile conversation as they darted through the light traffic.
“What’s he riding, and how’s he dressed?” Xena looking for those details that would make her quarry stand out in a crowd.
“Red top, light green leggings, dark chin-length black beard, riding a Macedonian pony.”
“Ha! We should catch up with that in short order.”
Just ahead a large wagon loaded with wooden boxes was moving along at a slow pace, the women steering their steeds expertly round this obstruction to find some thirty yards further on the very target they so wished to find.
“There he is! Come on, Xena, the brigand’s got our dam’ money! Let’s get the hound before he spends it!”
The difference between militarily trained horses like Argo and the steed Gabrielle was riding and a small civilian pony was manifold in various ways; these coming to a climax in the fact that the women did indeed catch-up with the fleeing robber in short order. Riding up to his right side Xena dove sideways, taking the man off his saddle with her widespread arms, both falling to the ground in a cloud of dust, Xena on top of the spread-eagled thug.
Three heartbeats later Gabrielle had arrived amongst the melee to lend a hand; which in her case consisted of grabbing the brute by the throat and doing her best to choke the life out of him as best she could in the circumstances.
“Alright, gal, give him air, will ya?” Xena coming to his rescue. “Let him be, he only stole our money not someone’s life, far’s I know, anyway.”
“If ya say so, lover, but I wouldn’t put such past this dirty creep. I’ll have t’have a bath now, after touching his itchy, gangrenous hide—yee-uagh!”
The pony meanwhile, without its rider feeling somewhat lost, had come to a hat on the other side of the Way where a kindly citizen had it by the reins.
“Better go an’ retrieve our money.” Gabrielle, standing tall and taking a deep satisfied breath. “Hope both the Athens and the Stagira Mint realise the good turn we’ve done ‘em both?
“Reckon they’ve already paid us back that way, my beauty!”
“Oh? How so, lover?”
“They’ve minted this Honorary tetradrachm for us, haven’t they? Can’t do much more for us, can they?”
“Oh-ah!” Gabrielle caught short in her argument. “Yeah, see what ya mean, Princess! No real reward in the offing, then? Gods! Being part of the City Security Regiment has it downs as well as its ups, don’t it!”
—O—
Interval Three
‘Regarding Xena of Amphipolis, Letters from Pliny to Tacitus’
Gaius Plinius Caecilius Secundus. 61AD - c. 112AD.
Publius (or Gaius) Cornelius Tacitus. 56AD - after 117AD
Origin & Provenance—The Delatiere Palimpsest, Museum of Ravenna, Italy.
Discoverer—Sir Flinders Petrie, who examined the original scroll on vellum and deduced it was a palimpsest. Careful examination revealed the underlying text of a series of letters from Pliny to Tacitus.
Value—They are the only known actual proof of the existence of ‘Xena’, a person hitherto regarded as merely mythical.
The original vellum text is a work on Regal Supremacy, written by the 6th century AD scholar Progenos. It covers five vellum scrolls, each of some four feet in length when fully unrolled. In 1934 Flinders Petrie examined the scrolls and found them to be a palimpsest, with one layer of underwriting. This turned out to be a partial copy of a hitherto unknown work by Pliny the Younger—a series of letters, of which only an out of sequence handful and partial fragments survive on the palimpsest—from Pliny to Tacitus, on the subject of the warrior Princess Xena. In 1947 two Scholars, Dr Thomas Baines and Dr Frederick Templeton, discuss the scrolls with the intention of future publication.
—O—
My dear Tacitus, Letter One.
I write to you from my villa in the Appenines, where I derive great enjoyment in the mountain air and consequent peacefulness, so invigorating after the tribulations of Rome. The forests here, which I believe I have written of before, are full of wild boar, bears, deer, and other animals worthy of hunting, though I admit to the lazy hunter’s way of getting my slaves to hunt the beasts into nets where I can safely and easily dispatch them with long spears—still an invigorating experience, I assure you.
Anyway, to business, while on holiday here I still have to look after the duties imposed on me as a Magistrate in Rome. The problem facing me at the moment hinging around the activities of a rebel woman calling herself Xena, Warrior Princess; though what this curious appelation actually means escapes me, her Royal blood being, to my belief, thin to the point of non-existence.
So, what has she done, what might she do, and what might she instigate others to do, my friend? The answer, to all, being almost anything deleterious to the well-being of the city and its citizens! The reports I have read and heard of her doings while in Greece are of themelves enough to make a Roman turn pale, but to have her here on Roman soil, engaged in what can only be called rebellious actions is unacceptable. Something must be done about her, and at once. Tacitus, my friend, you have contacts in the most out of the way corners of the civilzed world, and nearer home too. What can you do in the way of either meeting or engaging in discussion with this unhappy harlot or hetaira so bringing her to a clearer understanding of what she can do and most particularly what she cannot do while within the boundaries of the Roman empire?
I await your reply with baited breath, always assured of your expertise in this area of political discussion. Yours, Pliny.
My dear Tacitus, Letter Three.
Yes, I received your latest update on the revels and destructions of the criminal Xena, and her blonde companion the Amazon, and have wept tears over her devastations. What can we do to put a halt to her apparently unstoppable activities?
Your last, though full of interest on several levels, failed to address the main point of interest to me—that being, how can we restrain the more outrageous activities of the woman Xena? She goes, as can only be clear to the least perceptive individual, too far in both her actions and intellectual stance. One might almost presuppose she is an outright Republican!
What she is doing is whipping up defiance and animosity towards the Emperor in person, an activity which must be crushed in the bud before it can be allowed to flower further. You say you can only converse with the rebel through others? Look where that has gotten us so far—nowhere. No, what is necessary, and I do not use the term lightly my friend, is personal contact. You must see her in the same room, tent, hovel, or Palace—I do not care which as long as you see and speak with her, that is imperative. Do so, for your old and loyal friend if for no-one else, at your earliest convenience, my friend. Yours, Pliny.
My dear Tacitus, Letter Five.
No—no—no, my friend, what you suggest would be useful if breaking-up a quarrel between rival groups of schoolboys was our aim, but Xena as you very well understand by now, is an entirely different kettle of fish. By the way, after that last evening feast with her where she served a fish stew of her own apparent making, are you in any way fully recovered as yet? I sympathise with the symptoms you were so kind as to describe in your last scroll; I for one will be waving away the course if offered at any meeting I may have with the rebel in the coming months. Pre-warned is prepared, is it not, my dear friend.
Anyway, to business, we seem to have reached a position which can fairly, if not too keenly appraised, be described as a mutual stand-off. Not a win for either, certainly, but at least a subsidence in military activity. I still can hardly believe that the 7th Legion fared so badly in the meeting they had with her forces in the distant reaches of the Campagna just less than a month ago!
Talking of which—the Campagna itself! Xena is far too close to the heart of the Empire, and the Emperor, as he somewhat heatedly told me yesterday, for comfort. Why, given any luck on her part at all and she will be gallivanting through the Forum itself in weeks. This whole catastrophe must be put a stop to at once, if not sooner. I wish wholeheartedly, my friend, that I could wake up one of these mornings, the sooner the better, to find the whole thing a nightmare, a bad dream dispersing in the morning airs.
What you infer about your next meeting with the rebel and her followers gives us some hope, at least. I offer my very best wishes, my friend. Yours, Pliny.
My dear Tacitus, Letter Nine.
My dear friend, Yes, our mutual meeting with Xena and her companion Gabrielle, was of a most interesting nature. She seems a most intelligent person, somewhat opposed to the Roman outlook towards Life and Living, but, whatever! Many thanks for your advice just before I met her, my friend, most useful! I think there is a basis for mutual agreement concerning the most important of the issues to hand. What is of the most import is, of course, that we—[textual loss here]
—and therefore the only outcome can be to our advantage, if she takes us up on our proposed plan. The Emperor has graciously given permission for her and her companion Gabrielle to enter the City while she meets with several Senate members, He staying safely under guard in the Palace meanwhile. You say you will be able to attend yourself, for this I give many thanks to the Gods, my friend, it being far too long a time since we last met, I only sad that we should so meet again in such unhappy times. But, at least, let us continue along this path which we have chosen. If it leads few to the full light of fame, it may at least bring many out of the shades of obscurity—which is a solution most strongly to be wished for in these most unfortunate of times. Yours, Pliny.
My dear Tacitus, Letter Fourteen.
I am so glad you are enjoying your holiday at Baiae, such a refreshing place! Yes, Xena is setttling in as if a proper visitant from Greece! She makes friends wholesale wherever she goes and is the perfect host at her evening parties, which are too few for all who wish to meet her. I must admit, old friend, she has caught me in her talons! Of course, she has a rather forthright manner of speech and, indeed, action, but one must make allowances for the Barbarian nations, mustn’t one?
[textual loss]—where we agree, which is in most aspects of our talks, curiously enough. Yes, my friend, I think we can reach an agreement whereby all is sweetness and light for a change, it really looking, for the first time, as if the black clouds of rebellion are fading away into the brighter light of unshadowed Summer! But I must restrain my more literary flourishes, not wishing you to think I attempt to rival you, my friend!
[textual loss]
I find the Amazon Queen, Gabrielle, of great interest. The more I see of her, the more I speak to her, the more we engage in conversation, the more I feel drawn to her in a most unfamiliar way. I wonder if I speak to Xena about this burgeoning friendship what her reply will be? Yours, Pliny.
[Three more letters have survived, but in such fragmentary form as to make understanding difficult, thereby offering little of note for the ordinary reader.—Editor.]
—O—
The smoking room of Tomkinson University, Parkerstown, Illinois was half-paneled in dark oak giving the room a rather shadowy atmosphere even in direct sunlight; a detail that had no significance this evening at 10.30pm. In two comfortable easy chairs upholstered in green chintz the two Professors were deep in a discussion on a highly esoteric not to say dubious topic.
“So, are we both of the opinion the scrolls do verify the existence of the warrior Princess and the Amazon Queen!” Professor Baines peering over his teacup at his companion.
“I fear you are rather more certain than I, Professor Baines.” Professor Templeton regarding his opponent with all the experience of his seventy-two years. “I, on the other hand have certain reservations.”
“Let me hear them, please.” Baines nodding happily at the chance of a good argument, the energy-giving heart of his intellectual life.
“I am willing to acknowledge the existence of the terms of the Pliny scrolls, yes.” Templeton setting-off on his own argument, like an expert chess player making his first preliminary move. “That is that the women Xena and Gabrielle exist as cognomens within the text of the scrolls; but whether they are other than mere fictions from the imagination of the author Pliny the Younger or otherwise is up for discussion.”
Baines nodded, as accepting this as a good basis for argument.
“Yes, I see your position. On my part I find Pliny wholly convincing; it is all down to detail, you will agree? The scrolls, which Ravenna has been so kind as to ship over for our personal scrutiny, are quite clear on this. They go into the most minute detail of the lives of both women; giving us their backgrounds, manner of living, various actions and, for want of a better word, adventures! They are described in alignment with the actions of Athens at various times in its written history, to various persons of note and fame who are certainly actual persons, and so much more. They certainly lived, in my opinion.”
Templeton pursed his lips, he being some thirty years younger than his partner editor and so much more distrustful of even the most clear and certain documents.
“Let us look at the Letters themselves,” he settling down in his chair for the long haul. “First, the scrolls are palimpsests—a later document text written over an earlier which has been for the most part erased or scrubbed into almost complete extinction: the earlier text existing as virtually only a faint echo of its original self. Then the text, the original text from Pliny, is in Latin of a very early Classical kind, while having as its subject that of two Greek female warriors. The supposition that Pliny, in what he was attempting to do in these Letters to Tacitus, was to bend or re-interpret the lives and actions of these two women, supposing them to have actually lived, is quite apparent.”
“You make an interesting argument, Professor.” Baines nodding half-heartedly as if acknowledging something sticky under his boot on the sidewalk. “But still, I find the entire scope of the text convincing. So, it seems we shall have to edit the scrolls for publication from two varying viewpoints? My certainty, and your slight skepticism? Perhaps that will be all for the good in the long run. Give our remarks a certain gravitas that can only add to the interest of the whole subject?”
“Uu-uumph!” Templeton hardly agreeing to this prospect of disagreeing dual editorship. “Another cup of tea, Professor? These rock cakes are most agreeable, don’t you find?”
Exeunt Interval Three
—O—
The campsite some six parasangs north of Athens sat on the edge of a large clump of ash trees in fairly wooded rolling hills, a little stream close by providing a source of fresh water. Experts as Xena and Gabrielle were in the process of making camps in the wilderness this one had taken them all of half a small clepsydra to create to their dual satisfaction; Xena doing the heavy lifting and Gabrielle the more intricate shifting of bits and pieces. Tonight, as the stars came out in the clear sky, it was the Amazon’s turn to cook supper, this all to the good as, simply out of decency and the wish to help, Xena had earlier offered to take on this task and make her famous fish stew.
“What?”
“Fish stew—ya know, darlin’, what I’m famous for—you’ll love it.”
“More like die of it, dear.” Gabrielle taking no prisoners on this topic. “Last time you made your fish stew for a large party most of the village came down with the runs for two days—almost a dam’ national emergency!”
“Hey, that ain’t fair!
“Maybe not—but true, all the same.” Gabrielle telling it like it was. “We’ll stick with my roast rabbit, OK?”
Later, after the delicious supper had passed safely, they reclined on each side of the low fire listening to the crackle of the small sticks and logs and peering into the glowing red embers.
“Isn’t it strange how you can see all sorts of images in the flames and red core of the fire, almost like dreaming while you’re wide awake!”
“Yeah, if ya have that weak, listless type of imagination.” Xena trying to sound hard as nails for no good reason; perhaps the fish stew incident was still rankling. “We warriors, on the other hand—”
“Are often as not wrong!” Gabrielle halting her companion’s self pity before it got out of hand. “Say, don’t you think it strange, what we do every day, every month?”
“How’d ya mean? We do what we do, sort’a regular, certainly, but where’s the bad in that?”
“No, I mean, oh, everything!”
“Everything?” Xena now mystified. “Every what?”
Gabrielle paused to collect her thoughts into something a warrior Princess might, if pushed, be brought to understand.
“I mean it’s not as if we were ordinary women doing ordinary things each day. We go here, there, the other place; get involved in this, that, the other thing, then something else, hurried off our feet from one thing and place to another, in all sorts of danger all the time; hardly with enough time to breathe or figure out who’s doin’ what to whom, where, or why. Then we’re expected to make sense of the whole thing, bring the bad guys to Justice, then, before we can draw breath something else crops up. I mean, Life’s a humongous muddle most of the time, don’t ya think?”
Xena shrugged, still nibbling the last of a roast rabbit leg, her appetite always difficult to fully assuage.
“Yeah, things do get a trifle messy now an’ then, give ya that. But that’s what we do—make sense of a dam’ mess, then ride on t’the next one. Does get t’drag on the nerves now an’ then, I admit. But think of the Greater Good! Ain’t that what we’re aimin’ for, all the time? Bustin’ these dam’ interminable bandits on their heads all over Greece an’ beyond, an’ whatnot else in between?”
Gabrielle considered this hardly viable explanation, reflecting the calm logical thought of a great Philosopher as it didn’t.
“Well,” She shaking her head then returning to staring into the embers of the glowing fire. “what I think is, complicated as it often is; curiously mixed-up from one day to another as our adventures often turn out; often hardly explainable to ordinary folk much as we try; well, it all tends to make Life very, er, entertaining, don’t you think, lover?”
Xena curled a sarcastic lip, hardly visible in the low light, however.
“One way of puttin’ it, I suppose. Are ya sayin’ you’re gettin’ bored with the whole thing, then? Our way o’Life?”
“Hades, no!” Gabrielle laughing at this misreading of her position. “Trust you to take the wrong meaning! Nah, I’m only sayin’ Life’s so dam’ tiring now an’ again; can’t keep track, in any logical sense, of what often fills our day; would seem to an outsider just like an uncontrolled mish-mash we were strugglin’ with from clepsydra to clepsydra, an’ not winnin’ overmuch in the long run, either!”
Xena half closed her weary eyes, stars now bright overhead.
“Know one thing, dearie.”
“Oh, yeah?” Gabrielle suddenly suspicious as a Piraeus fishwife. “What?”
“I’d never get through one day of the whole bedraggled tragedy we call Life if you weren’t by my side all the time—just sayin’.”
Gabrielle stared over the low flames of the campfire at her companion reclining on the other side, then rose grabbing her blanket as she moved round to join her lover.
“Here, move over, I wan’na lie beside you. That’s better, can you wrap that blanket over me too? Thanks, think it’s gon’na be a cold night later?”
“With you by my side,” Xena laying her arm gently over the chest of her now snug companion. “No!”
The End