Free The Praise Singer by Mary Renault Page B

it might even be one of mine.
    Anakreon looked in sometimes, and was always charming. He and Ibykos seemed to have patched things up. Ibykos, having sung his way into royal favor, had sense enough not to make an enemy of a poet whom fame and charm alike had made secure. As for Anakreon, he liked to please and be pleased; the bile Hipponax lived on would have poisoned him. Indeed, he resented Ibykos less than I. In Anakreon I knew a master. I suppose, in my heart, I thought I could better Ibykos myself.
    About eight days after I’d sent my letter, Theodores gave a supper for his apprentices; they had just set a new marble up. He asked me for my Bellerophon, a favorite of his (though I’ve improved it since then) and I was singing to his table, when I was half aware of someone with presence, standing in the doorway till the song was done. I took my applause, and turned. A tall splendid man, gold-bearded like a young Zeus, shouted out, “Sim!” and grasped me in his arms.
    After a while, aware of everyone staring, I said, “Gentlemen, this is Theasides, son of Leoprepes of Keos, my brother.” It was my proudest moment in that house.
    The house enjoyed it. Ionians are curious and love news. We put off private talk, while Theas told how he’d heard of the fall of Ephesos, feared for my life, and so on. You’d have thought, to hear him, that I was Keos’ most honored citizen, the ornament of my family. Time fell away, as I felt the cloak of his kindness once more drawn over me.
    Theodoros had been eating him with his eyes; soon he pulled a chalk out of his pouch and made sketches on the table. He had lately been employed to sculpt Polykrates’ favorite, Bathyllos, the green-eyed flute-player. Like a fish he was all head, and boneless beneath the neck; you could have wound him round a flagpole.
    Everyone cried that I must sing something for my brother. I gave them some old favorite with a clapping chorus; then everyone danced. When the party broke up, and we walked into the street, we poured out our news as if we had been meeting every day, except that there was more to tell. Outside my lodging, he said, “I won’t trouble your bard to find a bed for me. I’ve put up at that inn the pilot’s brother keeps, the Vinestock.”
    “What?” I cried. “Theas, that’s the dearest place in town. The rich merchants stay there. They’ll seize your baggage if you can’t pay. Come, settle for what you’ve had, and come back here.”
    He laughed, and slapped a jingling purse at his belt. “All found. I’m here to do credit to the family.” I looked at him. He grew serious. “Laertes slipped me your letter in the fields. But he had to tell them you were alive; and he never thought to hide what you were doing. He knows Ionia, thought nothing of it, and said you were one of the lucky ones. But you know the father.”
    Yes indeed. I should have been singing for the Land-sharers, men of decent birth; that would have pleased him, even more than the Tyrant’s patronage. Before disgracing us all at a common winesho?p, I should have come home, asked for his favor, and lived decently on the farm. My choice must have spoken for itself; there seemed nothing I could do that did not wound him.
    Theas clapped me on the shoulder. “Next time, write a letter we can show off to our friends. No one knows you’ve become a scholar. But what got into you, not to know what to do? Have you been so long away, you’ve forgotten the Apollo festival?”
    It was true; I had. The moon was waxing now, and it came at the next new moon.
    “Only stand up at the contest,” he said, “and sing as you did tonight, and the rest will be wondering why they troubled to try.”
    It had long been out of my thoughts, to sing in Keos. Time and change had touched the boy who had flinched before; the roads of the earth and the ways of men, learning and skill, pride and anger. A man thought now, Yes, I could sing before my father.
    I knew it should be now, while