I looked over the notes I’d jotted down while Gilpatrick read me the letters. “Do you mind if I ask a few questions about your translation? Just to make sure I’m not misunderstanding something?”

He just smiled that lazy, self-satisfied smile at me and said, “no problem, ask away.”

I checked my notes again before asking, “the first letter sounds like a historian researching the battle at Thermopylae, is that correct?”

He shot me a crooked grin and said, “yep. Old Hero called himself ‘the preeminent historian of his time’. Bit arrogant, but when you’re rich and famous, I guess they let you get away with it.”

I shook my head. That I’d never heard of someone who called themselves a preeminent historian smacked of arrogance, and if it wasn’t arrogance, it definitely brought the old quote about Ozymandias to mind. I shook my head a little bit to focus back on my previous line of questioning. “The writer of the other letter, ‘Typhon’. The way he spoke sounds like he knew Xerxes and Leonidas both personally. Am I misreading that?”

Gilpatrick, who’d been looking over my shoulder as I spoke, shook his head. “No, you’re reading it right. From what I recall, Hero was born not long after Thermopylae. Might even have been the equivalent of a modern day ‘Boomer’. Y’know, the kids born within a year or two of the end of a big war? Nothing at all new about that, even if folks still sounded kind of surprised about it when it happened after World War Two.”

“Okay.” I thought for a second, juggling dates in my head. “So if ‘Hero’ was born within a few years of the battle of Thermopylae, and ‘Typhon’, based on his descriptions, likely fought in the battle of Thermopylae, wouldn’t that mean he was likely twenty years or more older than ‘Hero’?”

For whatever reason, that brought Gilpatrick’s gaze back to my own. “You say that like you’re against May December romances.”

I blinked, then said, “how can you call it a ‘romance’ when one person is so much older than the other? That’s like, grooming, isn’t it?”

He shook his head. “I think a lot of what you’re stumbling over here is culture shock.”

“How so?”

“Morality and assumptions shift. Back in the day, an older guy getting with a younger one was expected to mentor them. To look out for them, teach them the kinds of things that their own father might shy away from, whether that’s secrets of some trade they’re not familiar with or details of how to do right by your partner.” He paused, looking to make sure I’d kept up.

I nodded. “That’s not untrue, but by modern standards…”

“By modern standards, pretty much everybody was a complete asshole if you go far enough back. Hell, I remember when it wasn’t considered ‘racist’ to be prejudiced against somebody with a different skin color. It was just the way things were.”

I shook my head. “I keep forgetting that you’re as old as you are. Not to change the subject, but how old did you say you were?”

He got a mischievous look and, pitching his voice so the ladies at the table behind us couldn’t hear, said, “I didn’t. But my birth certificate says I’m sixty-five.”

I looked at him, then over my shoulder at the young women at the other table, who were still chatting and shooting surreptitious glances over at Gilpatrick and I. One of them waved to me, and I nodded in reply before turning my attention back to my interviewee. “So, I’m guessing you’re a fan of, how did you phrase it, ‘May December romances’?”

He shrugged, his smile never dulling, even as he quietly said, “when you’re my age, you don’t go looking for a long-term commitment. Wouldn’t be fair for one person to get wrinkled and gray and dead while the other is still young and fit and alive. So, I don’t. I’ve got a long list of friends in a long list of places who I can count on for a roof for the night and a warm place to sleep. Or not sleep, as the case may be.”

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I couldn’t help the sympathetic expression I gave him. “That sounds lonely.”

He barked out a laugh. “Lonely? I’ve never thought of it that way. I wasn’t euphemizing anything when I said ‘friends’. I’ve even been invited to quite a few weddings when my friends decided to tie the knot.” His smile returned, but this time instead of the high wattage grin directed at the other table, it was the look of a man remembering something fondly. “Been invited along on the honeymoon once. Had to burn all my accumulated leave time for that. Totally worth it.”

I tried not to show my surprise when I said, “her husband didn’t mind you coming along?”

He shot me a sly grin and said, “never said she was the friend who invited me along.”

I shook my head and tried to get my interviewer face back on. I wasn’t here to flirt with a guy almost three times my age, I was here to get invaluable information for my thesis.

He looked at me with a twinkle in his eye and said, “multitasking. It’s a hell of a drug.”

I leaned away. “You can read minds?”

That got him laughing again. “Oh, hell no. I’ve known a couple telepaths, what with the superhero thing. All I can tell you about them, since they’re still alive, is that I wouldn’t want to be one. It’s bad enough having to deal with my own mental issues, dealing with everyone else’s? No thank you.”

I nodded, sighing in relief. Superheroes with mind powers freaked me out a little, not least because I had some idea how many of them had gone villain. Even a good chunk of the ones who started out as heroes wound up turning eventually. That actually gave me an idea for another line of questioning.

“So, you’ve worked with telepathic heroes before?”

He nodded. “More than a few. Worked with some villains, too, or at least ones who wound up that way. Even worked with some who weren’t really one or the other, but just wanted to live their life without being in the public spotlight.”

“Would you say that what you described, having to deal with the unresolved trauma of everyone within their telepathic range, is what drives so many telepaths to villainy?” While that info wasn’t really useful for my thesis, I understood that ‘publish or perish’ meant I’d need to keep pumping out papers after I got my degree.

The smile on Gilpatrick’s face slowly dimmed, until he really wasn’t smiling any more, just sitting there with a neutral look. On him, it almost seemed melancholy after his continuous good cheer since I’d arrived. “You know, I’d never thought of that before. Might well be. I’m really not much the head shrinker type, but it makes sense to me.”

I nodded, then checked my notes again, remembered I’d been derailed earlier. “So, you don’t think the twenty-year age gap would have precluded a relationship?”

“First of all, wouldn’t have to be a twenty-year gap. Back in the day, you were a man at thirteen, and there were plenty of thirteen-year-olds standing on either side of Thermopylae. But even if he were fifty to Hero’s thirteen, back then it still wouldn’t be considered taboo. So no, it doesn’t.” He smiled a little, but still had a bit of an authoritative edge in his tone of voice.

I nodded, accepting his points. “Okay, next question; you mentioned that ‘Typhon’ corrected ‘Hero’, saying that only one thousand of the Companions were mounted. Wouldn’t a thousand mounted men count as a cavalry unit in and of itself?”

His smile went back to its customary friendly, inviting expression. “Not a military historian, are you?”

I shrugged, “not really, no.”

He chuckled a little when he said, “I remember when historians focused pretty exclusively on battles and ‘great men’.”

“I personally prefer to study trends and changes, the flow of events. ‘Great men’ are often just in the right place at the right time, and individual battles rarely change the overall course of history.”

“Hell, you’re not wrong about any of that. Kind of yet another change I’m glad to have witnessed. Anyway, that thousand-man mounted bodyguard weren’t cavalry. Cavalry are trained to fight from horseback. While I’m sure some of them could, for the most part the unit consisted of what might be called ‘dragoons’ or ‘mounted infantry’. Their horses were transportation, not fighting gear, if you catch the difference?”

“Okay, fair point. That makes sense.” I scribbled that down on my notepad next to the question. I knew I could just listen to the recording, but I found having both helped me clarify things. Before I could ask anything else, the table behind us got loud. When I turned to look, all but one of the women were grabbing jackets, picking up purses, and standing up to go. When I turned back to Gilpatrick, he was rifling through his wallet.

He dropped a short stack of twenties on the table, following it with a business card. Before I could say anything, he said, “to cover for your food and gas. Call me tomorrow if you’re good to continue then. I, ah, have to see about a place to stay for the night.”

With that he walked past me, straight toward the one remaining woman, who watched him walk toward her with a welcoming smile. She looked up at him and said, “hello.”

I could envision his thousand-Watt smile even with the back of his head toward me. “Hey there. Gilpatrick Matos, Agent of Karma. I feel a need to stretch my legs a little after lunch. Care to join me?”

Her grin got a little bit mischievous and, as she stood, she asked, “for a walk?”

He replied, after he took her hand and kissed her knuckles like something out of a bad period piece, “well, walking is definitely one way to do it.”