We were all sitting in their eating hall—they only had one. Most people, most of the time, cooked and ate in their own houses, which had little kitchens for that purpose, unlike ours. When they had a big feast, the important people ate in the eating hall, which also served as their Chamber. It was a big room with a pillared portico that held about a hundred. The rest were feasted outdoors in the agora, where they held their Assembly. The feast began at sundown. It consisted of a savory wheat and milk porridge, followed by fresh sardines, followed by roast ox, which had been roasting all afternoon, of course, and piles of absolutely marvelous honey cakes, also made with wheat. We didn’t have wheat cakes or porridge often at home, as most of the wheat we grew was made straight into pasta. Cakes made from wheat were quite different from cakes made from barley and nut flours, much lighter and more fluffy. Wine was served, about three-quarters water, the strength I usually drank, weaker than adults usually had it at home. It took us most of the meal to get Aristomache off religion and onto the subject of what the Goodness had done.

We were seated at tables of ten, all nibbling honey cakes. Father and Maecenas and Ficino were at the top table with Terentius and some of the kings of Marissa. Aristomache, Maia, Erinna and I were with some of the members of the Chamber. All of the tables were mixed that way. Klymene and Neleus and the rest of the Nyx watch were back aboard, but we were assured that food was being sent to them.

“When we left, we sailed north. We wanted to get away from Kallisti, and we didn’t know where we wanted to go exactly,” Aristomache said. “We went to the mainland of Ionia, near Troy, and found a war going on. Not a Persian invasion, or even a Trojan one, just a petty civil war. The ship was really full, so we ferried most of our people over to Lesbos and set them down, then went back to rescue refugees. It was a purely humanitarian mission, we weren’t thinking about anything else. They were mostly women and children who would have been enslaved. Of course we thought about Hekabe and Andromache, but we seem to be too early for them. The King of Troy is called Laomedon.” She took a sip of wine.