A thousand flamingos bathed in the early afternoon sunlight as it shimmered on the green of the lagoon. Thersander was astounded at the greenness of the water. It was only with great difficulty that he could persuade himself that its colour was probably brought about by algae and could have nothing to do with the copper in the mountains.
He was on the island of Alashiya, the island at the 'End of the Sea'. Much later it will become known as the Island of Cyprus. The home of Aphrodite. Thersander turned around to the sound of the tread of footsteps immediately behind him.
'Mabon,' he greeted.
'My friend,' replied Mabon, 'are your fingers supple?' Thersander flexed them in demonstration of both their pliancy and their strength.
'Then come with me, please. My lot have gone to the temple to pay their devotions, and I fear they will be some time.' He flexed his own fingers and raised his eyebrows. 'I was going to ask you to be a witness, anyway,' he said, as they climbed the grassy slope.
Mabon led Thersander towards the sheep enclosures. He was a large man, finely dressed in many more wrappings than Thersander was used to seeing, and smelt very strangely.
'It is Egyptian oil,' explained Mabon. 'The olive and almond oils you brought from Crete are boiled with a marsh plant, laced cold with henna flowers and given to the traders of Upper Egypt in return for the wealth of Africa. It is very pleasant to bathe in.'
They rounded the top of the incline and before them spread the low, white hills of Amathus. Beyond lay distant mountains. Directly in front of them were a swarm of sheep pens. They approached one of the pens in which six ewes were standing patiently, dropping dung. As they approached, a shepherd opened the gate of the pen and unceremoniously pulled one of them out by the wool of its back and pinned its head to the ground, forcing it to kneel. Such wool as Thersander had now become used to seeing. Mabon stood back a little and allowed Thersander to go ahead of him. The ewe's fleece hung in shaggy staples. There were no kemps of coarse hair as such and its coat was light in colour, except for a drape of brown over its back. The shepherd rolled the sheep over onto its side and pinned it down by its neck and its backside. As Thersander pinched and pulled at the wool with his fingers, he was surprised at the work required to pull it away.
'Keep going,' said the shepherd who held the animal. Thersander kept at his task and in the space of a short while had a reasonable quantity of wool in the basket at his side.
'I thought that most of it was supposed to come away by itself!' said Thersander, breathlessly. 'Not so easily on these animals,' said the shepherd. Nice fleece, though, in' it.'
Thersander had to agree.
Mabon stood over the basket, with a thoughtful expression. 'Is this a normal moult for this flock?' he asked the shepherd.
'Nothing poor 'bout that; probably a bit on the light side, but the ewes from this flock vary, see. Wethers would give a better yield on the whole, but we didn't want to bring a whole lot of them over - no point in that!' he chuckled.
'Maaaire' the ewe agreed.
Mabon handled the wool, twisting it in his fingers, and looked into the basket that Thersander was filling.
About twice as much already as the usual plucking from a sheep that you are used to seeing, just from this one side,' he directed his voice at Thersander but remained looking at the wool. 'And the quality is exceptionally good.'
The shepherd smiled and wrestled with a struggling backside.
As Mabon continued to twist the wool into a tighter and finer thread, his mind weighed the deal that he could offer in the evening. As a Phoenician, a merchant of Sidon, he had no interest in keeping flocks; there was barely enough room on his rocky shoreline for people, let alone sheep. But he was a good middleman.
This whole enterprise had been organised by the Phoenicians. The market was at Hala, a small village at the western end of a salt lake on the southern coast of the island of Alashiya. The market had attracted just the kind of response that Mabon's clients had hoped for, a hope that had encouraged the shepherds to make such a risky journey from Colchis across the mountains of Anatolia with their illicit rams.
Standing up, Thersander wiped the lanolin from his hands onto a linen rag. Taking his leave of Mabon, who remained to continue his conversation with the shepherd, he headed back to the shore.
The beach was relatively quiet. Above this isolated strip of sand, low cliffs rose shear for a dozen feet or so before climbing further as a grassy slope. Beyond the green lagoon hung a grey haze over the town of Kition. A few people stood around guarding stacks of merchandise on the sand, goods mostly encased in wooden boxes or in clay vessels bound around with rope and cord. But a lot of the exchange was now inland, where the Phoenicians had set up safe houses in the countryside.
Thersander walked onto the sand. It was early afternoon and the sun shone on a scene whose energy would pick up again later on. Most activity came from the sheep pens, beyond the brow of the slope behind him. An increasing number of young rams were coming from the hinterland to the proximity of the boats. This year's lambs, barely four months old, and last year's, a good deal larger. He had no idea how the shepherds and their paymasters had organised things, but the impression he had was that quite a long time had been spent smuggling the animals over to the island.
Neileus was in Kition and his consulting fee to the bronzesmiths of Alashiya was, Thersander was sure, about the order of a ram a day. The recent discoveries of copper in the mountains of Alashiya had made advanced knowledge of metallurgy almost as valuable to the people of this island as the tin that was required to transform the soft copper into tough bronze. Worth the risk of providing a venue for this market.
The ships were beginning to be readied for the return journey; many were at anchor or moored to posts in a makeshift harbour. Thersander counted sixty vessels. Some had elaborate superstructure for the transportation of this priceless fleece. Men squatted on decks, mending and plaiting ropes, attaching cords, attending to sails, repairing leather work; others lay on their backs on the beach, recaulking timbers. But the sun was well past her zenith and the afternoon siesta was audible in the comparative absence of human sound.
The journey from the Aegean Sea to the island of Alashiya had been broken in order to attend a spring Games; to watch one breeding programme before embarking to gather the fruits of another. Two prominent members of the crew of a mainland ship had been called to attend these Games and everybody had been given the day to themselves, to see how they fared.
Thersander had gone along with Neileus and had been rather appalled at what he saw. Of the five suitors for the Ladies of the Goddess at a mainland Temple, a son of Poseidon named Amycus had excited the crowd with a particularly good display of boxing, before the brass studs were removed from his gloves and he was slain in front of Thersander and the other onlookers. The remaining suitors had next entertained the crowd by cavorting over red bulls, of which at least twenty had been subdued by the end of the afternoon and sacrificed to the proceedings.
Everybody had then trooped down to the sea, where some boats lay ready and waiting for the race. The course had been long. The four rowers: Jason the Iolcan, who had reputedly been brought up by a Centaur, Castor, Polydeuces and the incumbent Heracles.
In the final stages of the race, which had been exciting and close, Thersander had to admit, Jason and Heracles had led bow to bow when, a few strokes from the finishing line and in front of the crowd, Jason appeared to collapse over his oars and the race had seemed lost. But an instant later, Heracles had pulled hard and out of rhythm, snapped an oar and the two boats had drifted side by side towards the finishing line; and by virtue of a final stroke that he was able to muster, Jason had won.
As he gazed over the lagoon, Thersander noticed that some boats which stood off, near the entrance to the 'vast green' (he smiled at the Egyptian phrase for the sea) appeared to be transferring cargo and cooking at the same time. Presumably they had business in Kition and had anchored for the afternoon. It was odd, though, to do so in the entrance channel.
He walked back along the beach and up the slope towards the sheep pens. Mabon had gone, and a flock of sheep was careering across the pasture, seemingly outrunning its shepherds.
Heracles had evaded the keepers and joined the expedition for the Golden Fleece by outrunning them and leaping into one of the boats with a cry of, 'No fame will come if I stay! Nor will some god seize and give at your prayer a fleece that moves of itself!'
At that moment a fleece moved of itself straight into the fleshy part of Thersander's thigh and almost knocked him over. A sharp whistle pierced from behind and a dog slunk away nearby to the reinterpreted command of his master. The shepherd approached.
'Hello,' Thersander called jovially.
'Dog is a bit young and excited, I hope you're not hurt.' Thersander assured the shepherd that he was not and the shepherd whistled skilfully again to the sheepdog, who crouched low on his haunches and moved his eyes about intelligently and attentively.
'Fine animals,' Thersander observed.
'Ay, we've had a good crop from the new rams.' The shepherd cast a shout over towards where the dogs were guiding the sheep towards another man, waiting at a huddle of pens.
'What's your line of occupation, then?'
'Metalsmith,' said Thersander.
'An where are you from, then?'
'An island in the west.'
'Aa,' acknowledged the shepherd, as the breeze gusted and ruffled his collar. 'I'ex pect you've not seen animals quite like this.'
'No, I haven't,' Thersander was delighted to admit. 'They are wonderful dogs.'
'Ay,' agreed the shepherd, and looked puzzled for an instant. There was a silence, punctuated by the tinkling of sheep bells and the 'maaaring' of sheep. A smell of smoke began to carry on the breeze.
Thersander found his ensuing conversation with the shepherd very informative. It touched upon the technicalities of artificial selection for the trait of woolliness in a sheep, and the enormous benefits to be gained from a ram that was heavy on the wool side and much lighter on the less beneficial things that often accompanied this wonderful fleece.
'Insects can be a worry,' explained the shepherd, 'flies, scab, ticks, especially around the hind quarters,' he showed Thersander a ewe with this problem. 'See, the dung gets caught, 'round here,' he explained, graphically. 'And the heat of summer will drive'm mad if the fleece isn't plucked properly.'
'How long have you had the sheep here?' Thersander inquired.
'Here on the island? About a year in the case o'some. Those over there are last year's lambs,' he pointed to a pen of sheep with his stick. 'An away over there s'aflock o'my own ewes, in late lamb, heavy with a first crop from a brand new ram, that come over a few months ago.
'What we done was to match each ram to a flock of about forty of our own ewes - fifty in the case of a strong fellow - once we had him built up, that is, and see what the results were. No way of knowing which of them was one of siblings, of course, passed through too many hands for that information to come by, so we...'
'How did they get here?' interrupted Thersander.
'Har, that's for me to guess and you to keep guessing at!' the shepherd laughed. 'But they come a long way across the mountains I can tell you. Some were in a dreadful condition when they arrived! They do say that the King of Colchia wants to keep this Golden Fleece to himself and has armies abroad and that is why this whole operation has been so clouded in secrecy - but I don't know about the truth of that.
'These crosses have been very successful!' he continued, enthusiastically. 'More than most have a much better fleece than their mother's,' he pointed, 'and some are as good as their fathers!' He leaned over the edge of a hurdle and gripped the back of a handy young ram.
'This is where the best wool is,' he demonstrated. 'And here on the shoulder,' he plunged his fingers in again and the animal struggled backwards. 'See how deep it is!'
'Got to check for a good set on the jaw, though.' There seemed to be no stopping his enthusiasm. 'And the milk yield of the ewes is no worse. Get a good three pitchersful a week if you wean the lambs early. And of course, the ewes after a mating will hold the ram's impression thereafter.
Thersander nodded.
It is a mistake to suppose that a ram will leave his impression on all the subsequent lambs of an individual ewe. But selective breeding can improve a characteristic of the flock as a whole, more slowly with each successive generation, until a point is reached where no further improvement can be made. Then the only way forward is to introduce new blood and begin the process of selection all over again. This is the great value of the Fleece, and it is the reason why a black Nubian princess resides in the Temple Mansion and why seven 'youths' and seven 'maidens' of the Goddess have been demanded from the Achaean mainland by the Temple Mansion at Knossos every nine years.
'How long do sheep live?' asked Thersander.
The shepherd had to think about this one.
'As long as you let them,' he replied.