“It wasn’t built by Workers,” Kallikles protested. “But you’re right, this was a different style entirely. No pillars. Primitive. Odd. I was really uncomfortable looking at the place. Chickens pecking around their feet, a toothless old woman bent over grinding wheat by hand in a quern, and everyone frightened, the men with their weapons, half cringing and half defiant. I’ve never seen poverty like that.”

“It sounds like a village in India or Africa in my time,” Maia said, thoughtfully. “I’d never imagined Greece like that, full of savages. But I suppose it must have been once.”

“Don’t build too much on one primitive fishing village,” Ficino said. “There were places not too far from Florentia in my own day that the boy would have described the same way—toothless peasants with sores, and animals running in and out.”

“I can’t even imagine it,” Erinna said. I couldn’t either. When I’d thought about the difficulties of Mycenaean Greece it was in terms of women not being equal, and lack of books, not sores and poverty. Homer talks about cities, and I had imagined cities like our cities.

“Did they give any useful information about the date?” Ficino asked.

“They’d heard of King Minos, but not of Kebes, nor Mycenae nor Troy, at least as far as we were able to make ourselves understood.”

“Minos,” Ficino said thoughtfully, turning back to the west. The sun was on the horizon now, gilding the rippling sea and lighting the clouds purple and gold. “Crete. Maybe we should go there.”

“Pytheas wants to go north,” Maia said. “He’s sure Kebes went that way, though whether from something Kebes said years ago or just out of his obsession I don’t know.”

“Father isn’t a fool,” I protested.

“You have to admit he hasn’t been entirely rational since Simmea died,” Maia said.

“This crushing grief is strange in a man with so much excellence, a man who we’ve all been accustomed to look to as one of the very best among the golds,” Ficino said.

I nodded. Erinna, who was behind me, put her hand on my shoulder and squeezed in a comforting way. It did comfort me, but it also sent an unsettling jolt of energy through me. My breath caught in my throat. I liked it too much. Everything I’d ever read about bodily love came back to me, and I moved away as she dropped her hand. I could feel my face was burning hot and there was heat too between my legs. I stared out over the sea. The first star appeared in the east, silver against violet. “Let me not be unworthy,” I prayed to it. Kallikles was still talking, and I tried to concentrate on what he was saying.