Book details:
Book Title: The Immigrant Queen
Author: Peter Taylor-Gooby
Publication Date: 28th October 2024
Publisher: Troubador
Pages: 312
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Hated as a foreigner, despised as a woman, she became First Lady of Athens.
Aspasia falls passionately in love with Pericles, the leading statesman of Fifth Century Athens. Artists, writers and thinkers flock to her salon. She hides her past as a sex-worker, trafficked to the city, and becomes Pericles’ lover.
Her writings attract the attention of Socrates, and she becomes the only woman to join his circle. She is known throughout the city for her beauty and wit and strives to become recognised as an intellectual alongside men.
Pericles’ enemies attack him through Aspasia and charge her with blasphemy. As a foreigner she faces execution, but her impassioned address to the jury shames the city and saves her. Pericles is spellbound, they marry, and she becomes First Lady of Athens.
Sparta besieges the city; plague breaks out and Pericles is once again in danger.
THE IMMIGRANT QUEEN tells the true story of how Aspasia rose to become the First Lady of Athens and triumphed against all the odds.
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Limander, a slave and bard to Aspasia, meets a young nobleman and falls for him. Love between slave and noble carries the death penalty.
The young scribe was last to leave and I waited, head bowed, for him to go so that I could carry out the screens. A gold band circled the neck of his tunic – he was of high standing in Athens, from one of the five noble families of the city. He dropped the stylus into his satchel but the tablet slipped from his fingers and fell face down on the floor and I heard the crack as the wax split across. He stared at it as if terrified, dropped to all fours and put out a hand to touch it. A leader of the people does not behave like this. After a moment I went over and stood beside him.
‘Sir. May I help you?’
He looked up at me, his eyes moist with tears. He seemed so young.
‘The musician! None of them appreciated you, you sang so beautifully of love and all they want to do is talk about politics and speech-making.’
‘Thank you. But, if I may ask, sir, is there anything I can do for you?’
‘It’s Lord Pericles, no-one will understand. He wants to publish these conversations for the glory of Athens and he insists on checking everything. I am late already and now I’ve broken the tablet and he will be angry.’
Why are you telling me so much? But I knew I could help him and suddenly I wanted to.There was a quality of eagerness in his face and of wanting, as if he was – I know not what. Someone who has suffered disappointment so often that he expects it but does not stop trying. And he was so young, anyone would want to make things better for him.
I took the tablet from him and set it on the tiles.
‘Put your hand on it to soften the wax where the crack is, just enough. Here, let me help.’
I took his wrist and pressed his palm on the tablet. His hand was warm in mine. When I judged the wax was ready I lifted it. I took the stylus and smoothed over the crack where it ran between the letters. Delia taught me how to do that.
‘There. Now I will make good the damaged words and it is healed.’
I handed it to him. He looked up at me again, his eyes wide.
‘A magician! I did not know that was possible. Thank you for your kindness.’
I bowed.
‘Limander. Happy to help.’
He laughed.
‘I am Alcis, and you are so much like a butler – I’m sorry, I should not say that.’
He paused as if he did not know how to put his feelings into words.
‘You are blessed by the muse, a fortunate man. I always wanted to sing. I am an actor – but only in my dreams. Pericles would never let any of his clan stoop so low.’
He paused again.
‘It must be a fine thing to stand on a stage before everyone and have them rapt, silent, intent on you, your gestures, your singing, as if you are the only person out of all Athens who matters to them. But they didn’t listen to you, as if they were deaf to your music. But you are glorious.’
He glanced down, and when he looked up at me, his eyes shone.
‘Am I a fool?’
I smiled as if I understood. How could I not?
‘An actor. Many times I have played for actors.’
I strummed a few notes and sang softly the opening chorus of Antigone:
“Now the long blade of the sun flames forth…”
His face lit up and he joined me, his voice strong for one so slender:
“Lying level, east to west,
It touches with glory seven-gated Thebes!
The eye of golden day strikes the white shield of the enemy,
Lord Polynices, like an eagle, screams insult at our land.”
He laughed and I couldn’t help laughing with him. Then, just as suddenly as the joy had come a shadow fell on his face.
‘No, I’d love to sing with you, but I must go. Pericles does not wait happily. But you and I, we will meet again won’t we, at the Assembly, or the gymnasium, or the theatre or a party? We will sing again, together? You’re new, let me show you the city.’
Another friend for me in this city, but we will meet in none of those places because they are for citizens and nobles. I am a slave and no comrade for you, but how can I tell you that now?
‘I’d like that,’ I replied and kept the sadness from my face.
He stood, touched my arm, blushed, and was gone.
‘Or perhaps in this house?’ I whispered.
I lingered a moment and prayed to Necessity, pitiless deity of all without choice, the goddess who rules slaves and heeds no man. I had glimpsed the life I might have had in Athens, if I were a visitor, perhaps in the train of an envoy from Sicily, not a slave from a subject nation.
I heard someone moving in the hall and looked up. Pelion came towards me, carrying one of the screens.
‘Take care, brother. You know that lad is Lord Pericles’ cousin? Slave and noble, that never ends well.’
His voice was steady, but there was a hesitancy in it.
‘I wanted to help him. I just did.’
He avoided my gaze.
‘We need to change your bandage. Clean hands and a lyre, they don’t guess you’re a slave right away, but someone will see through you. You can’t wear that bandage for ever.’
He led me back to the shed, not speaking, and dressed my arm, as deftly as a nurse. I touched the dressing.
‘You rest,’ I said. ‘I’ll do the firewood.’
He patted my arm, careful of the mark.
‘My job.’
He took the axe and set about the logs in the yard. I hauled water and went back to the hall to scrub the spilled wine from the mosaic. Much later I returned across the courtyard under a chariot moon. I threw myself down on the straw and lay in darkness, a slave who dreamed he might live as he did in Mytilene, when he was honoured as a Bard and free. Pelion speaks the truth, I told myself. Besides, the young noble has probably forgotten you already, and you still think of him, like a fool.
Peter Taylor-Gooby is an academic who believes that you can only truly understand the issues that matter through your feelings, your imagination and your compassion. That’s why he writes novels as well as research monographs. He worked in India as a teacher, in a Newcastle social security office and as an antique dealer.
Now he’s professor of social policy at the University of Kent, a Fellow of the British Academy, loves playing with his grandchildren and writes novels in what time is spare.
Author Links:
Troubadour Author Page: https://troubador.co.uk/author/glndwnle
Amazon Author Page: https://www.amazon.co.uk/stores/author/B001HD2YWQ
Tour hosted by: The Coffee Pot Book Club
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