‘I don’t imagine that a man can choose his customers,’ I said.
‘Not if he wishes to go on living. Will you come through into the house. Vasso will make you comfortable, and I will join you as soon as I can close the shop.’
In the inner room where he had fed me before, there was a woman’s veil lying on the end of the cushioned bench, and I thought I heard a woman singing somewhere in the back regions. His sister, I supposed.
Vasso took my cloak and helped me slack off the straps of my breastplate, and brought me warm water to wash my feet. She snatched up the veil and took it away with her; but when Timotheus came in, the soft singing still came and went in the inner part of the house.
‘That’s an unexpected sound to hear in this city now,’ I said.
‘It is my wife.’
So naturally I asked no more. But after a moment, he said, ‘We were married at the end of the siege. It is foolish, I suppose, to worry about one’s sons having the lawful citizenship of a city that has ceased to exist, but … Her brother was my friend and left her in my care since she had no other male kin. This seemed the best way, to both of us.’
‘She sounds happy,’ I said. ‘The brother, he was killed? Died in the siege?’
Timotheus was silent a while, and his face went tight. ‘He was a fleet rower. One of the few survivors of the wrecks at Arginussae. He died in the siege, but he would have died anyway.’
We looked at each other a long moment, in a suddenly brittle silence. Then I said, ‘I was at Arginussae, but my ship was not wrecked.’ And after the silence had dragged on a little longer, ‘I was her Trirarch. I expect now you would like me to leave your house.’
‘No,’ he said. ‘If a shopkeeper cannot choose his customers, I am not such a fool as to think that a Trirarch can disobey the orders of the fleet Commanders — or hold him accountable for not having done so. My wife and Vasso are preparing supper, and of course you will stay and eat it with me. Among all the bad things, it is good to be able to offer hospitality to a guest again.’
The old slave came in and set the food on the table. It was not a meal to grow fat on, even now. And neither of us said any more until she had departed and we had taken our places at the table.
Then I said, ‘I am only just up from Piraeus, where I landed my cargo of recalled traitors this noon.’
‘Ah, you are one of our twelve,’ he said. ‘I wondered.’
‘I had the doubtful honour of bringing Kritias home from Thessaly; but that time I did not come up to the city. This time I was fool enough to want to see how it was with Athens. There’s a Spartan garrison, and the streets smell of fear. In Zeus’ name, what has been happening, Timotheus?’
‘Athens has been defeated,’ he said.
‘It’s more than defeat.’
He broke off a bit of bread and crumbled it in his fingers, staring straight in front of him; then abruptly he began to talk. ‘When Lysander went, he left the government in the hands of thirty Senators. Theramenes is one of them, but he stands for the moderates. He was always very prone to moderation — the people call him buskin, now, after those high boots actors wear, that will fit either foot.’
I savoured the jest. It was good to know that the people of Athens could still make a jest, even if it was a bitter one.
‘Who are the rest?’
‘Your charming Kritias is the leading spirit among them. All the most rabid of the Oligarchs that we freed Athens from; five years ago. They are supposed to be only an interim government; but they’ve no intention of handing over, and they’ve taken steps to make sure that their fellow citizens are helpless to do a thing about it. You were quite right to say there’s a smell of fear in the streets; in less than two months, the Thirty have worked up a reign of terror that does them credit! They started mass trials and executions quite a while ago. First they made a clean sweep of all the informers and sycophants they could lay their hands on —that gained them a certain popularity, until the people realised that it was only a beginning. They have started on personal enemies now; no man is safe if one of the Thirty or a friend of one of the Thirty happens to dislike him, or if he stands between them and something they wish for. No one is safe anyway. Theramenes did bleat a few protests, but he is only one, and his own position none too secure. Sometimes now they don’t even bother with a trial — a man is arrested, and later one hears that conscious of his guilt, he took poison in prison. Not that that’s new; it’s an old trick of the Four Hundred, revived.’ An added bleakness came over his face … Even in his own house, I noticed how he kept his voice down. After a moment, he went on. ‘But you were speaking of the Spartans in the High City; that’s another benefit we owe to Kritias; he sent word to Lysander that a Spartan garrison was needed to make the city safe from “subversive elements”, so now a Spartan watch patrols the streets, and people are beginning to be fetched out of their houses again, as they were — as my father was — in the days of the Four Hundred. The city is dead and stinking.’
‘We thought that once before,’ I said.
‘And we were not so far wrong. Something at the heart went then, that did not return even in the years of Alkibiades’ victories.’
I remember we were both silent a short while, and Alkibiades’ name seemed to hang in the silence when the other words were gone into the past.
‘How that man’s name crops up,’ I said.
Timotheus nodded. ‘The last thing that Theron said before he died was, “Alkibiades would have turned back for us”.’
And we were silent again.
Later, he pressed me to spend the night, but I had no wish to sleep in Athens. Piraeus seemed clean and decent by comparison, with its seamen and the nearness of the ships. I thought of the girl I used to go to in the street behind the Great Harbour, who might still be there and free that night. So I excused myself, and we parted, without any pretence that I would ever come back.
Once I had to draw aside as the Spartan watch came tramping up the street. And when I looked up to the High City and saw the temple roof of the Maiden outlined against the stars, I saw also the Spartan watch fires. From a house near the Piraeus Gate came the desolate weeping of a woman; and I wondered whether the dreaded night-time beating had come on her door, and son or husband had gone away to drink hemlock untried in prison.
I went out through the Gate with no more trouble than telling the guard who I was and the name of my ship. But once clear of the shadowed tombstones and the oleanders, I turned aside into open country. I knew suddenly that I was not going back to Piraeus, nor to my ship. Whatever plans the Oligarchs had for the Pegasus, they could carry them out with a new Trirarch.
I was thankful I had not wasted any of my small stock of money on horse hire earlier in the day. I should have a better use for it now, with a long journey ahead of me. I had gathered from Timotheus while we ate our neglected supper, that Thrasybulus had escaped to Thebes, and I knew that tough cold-eyed little fighting man well enough to be reasonably sure he was not just sitting on his arse there. But magnificently though he had saved the situation when the Samos fleet was on the edge of revolt, I remembered too many other things about him. He was not the leader for my money. And when I left my helmet and breastplate in a ditch, and struck out across country from the back of the Long Walls, my nose was towards Thrace, and I was going back to the one leader left who seemed to me worth following.
25
The Whore
When the Athenians were gone I thought that he would leave the forts at last, and take to the hills, but he said, ‘Why should I go now, when Lysander has gone south and will soon have all the interest in life he needs in beating Athens to her knees? Besides — have you noticed something? We don’t have as many dealing with the tribesmen as we used to do. I doubt if my welcome in the hills would be very warm. You can’t blame them; I’m no great prize as an ally now — not worth a stallion or a trained hawk any more.’
I had noticed, and had been telling myself
that I was starting at shadows.
‘It is better to hole up within my own walls, at least for the winter.’
‘And when the winter is over?’ I said.
‘How should I know? Perhaps I shall go and offer my sword to the Great King,’ said My Lord, and I thought that he was jesting.
A few days later he called in to Bisanthe what was left of the garrisons at Pactye and Chryopolis ordering that both should burn their forts behind them.
Then truly I thought that the madness of the Gods, of the Lord Dionysus himself, had come upon him, that he should beacon it forth to the world that he was in Bisanthe. But he said, ‘Alkibiades never yet made a secret of where men could find him, and it is overlate to begin now.’ And his mouth was smiling-insolent, but his eyes were bleak as the winter skies that drove overhead.
So he sat close in Bisanthe through the winter storms. No more men from Goats’ Creek came. They had got away, or they were dead. No news came, with the seaways closed by winter. And My Lord sat by the fire in the keep chamber, wrapped in his wolfskin robe, and sometimes read in the few books that he had brought with him from the South in the old days, but for the most part just sat, and played with the ears of the hound bitch, and stared into the fire, and bade me bring up more wine. He was as he had been before, but deeper sunk now in his grey fog, like a man without hope.
He went the rounds of the fort, and looked to his men as a leader should; there were fewer and fewer of them, for almost every day the mercenaries slipped away. He seemed not to care, but drank to them and let them go. Even when they took the horses he only said, ‘That will be fewer to find corn for.’ — And indeed, with the stores sinking lower and the tribes turning unfriendly and the cities with their markets in Spartan hands, that was worth thinking of.
Spring came, and the alders where the stream came down to the marshes were red with rising sap, and the wind blew from the north-west again. And still he would not leave Bisanthe.
‘Why, why, why?’ I screamed at him one day; and he said, ‘Because before I make any move, I must know the fate of Athens; and it is here and only here that news knows where to find me.’
‘And when you know that Athens has fallen, what will you do then?’
‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I don’t know,’ and poured more of the rough Thracian wine into his cup.
I said, ‘You told me, on the night they burned the Athenian camp, that I need not be afraid of Athens any more, for Athens was dead.’
He said, ‘Be a little careful, Timandra,’ and his voice warned me that I had gone to the farthest limit that I might go.
And yet I think it was not only because he waited for news of Athens; there was a kind of sickness upon him, not of his body, but of his mind and spirit, and he could no more shake himself free of it and move out to meet the time to come, than a man sick to death can shake off his sickness and rise from his bed and ride to war.
No news came all that spring and into the edge of summer. And then one evening he had gone up to the roof where the gourds growing in pots made a shade and a dancing of leaves when the air stirred. I and the old hound bitch were with him — I do not think he noticed one of us more than the other. And I saw a trading vessel standing in towards the anchorage.
‘Maybe here’s your news,’ I said.
My Lord looked up from watching his own hands, then returned to them again.
‘Are you not going down to the landing beach?’
He said, ‘The news will come soon enough. Why should I run wide-armed to meet it?’
I could have battered at him with my fists, screamed at him, clawed his face, anything to rouse him from the grey quagmire that held him captive. But instead I got up, suddenly mad with impatience to have the news and drag it to him, once and for all; and ran down the stair and across the fort and out by the shore gate. Some of our few remaining men were there already.
The ship came in to the little timber jetty that ran out into deeper water; and there was the usual shouting of orders and making fast of ropes. And in the midst of it a man who was not one of the seamen, scrambled ashore.
It was Polytion.
I said, ‘What news do you bring this time?’ not remembering to greet him. But I do not think he noticed. His dark face seemed darker than I remembered it, and the plump lines had fallen slack where the rounded flesh had gone from over his bones.
He said, ‘News that I’ve no wish to tell more than once. Where is Alkibiades?’
‘On the roof,’ I said. ‘Come.’
He glanced at the empty slipway. ‘I thought he might be elsewhere, when I saw the Icarus gone.’
‘They burned her when the crew and most of the garrison left for Athens,’ I said.
When we reached the roof-top, Alkibiades was sitting as though he had not moved since I left him, the old bitch sprawled at his feet. He looked up past me, and saw Polytion, and said, ‘Athens has fallen? She must have fallen by now.’
‘Athens fell almost two months ago,’ Polytion said.
‘Then why in the name of the Dog has no word of it reached me until now?’
‘I would have come a good while before this; but I was forced to put in at Samos; we had sickness on board and had to land some men; and the Spartan Governor held me for some time, before I could get leave to go up to Byzantium on the old trading run.’
‘So you trade with the Spartans now, do you?’ said My Lord.
‘I trade with whoever has money to buy or goods to trade with, just as I always have done. The amber road still runs to Byzantium, and the rugs of Daskylon are still worth their price.’
‘I don’t doubt it. Tell me of Athens.’ My Lord pushed the wine cup over to Polytion.
I went to see why I could find for them to eat, and did not hurry too much.
When I got back with some bread and dried olives and goat’s cheese, it seemed that Polytion had told all that there was to tell of the fall of Athens, for they were speaking of other matters; other news that he brought with him. The Great King was dead, and Artaxerxes was Son of the Sun in his place. And looking at My Lord as I set out the food before them, I saw for the first time in many months, the life stirring behind his eyes. And I knew that while I was below in the store-room, Polytion and his news had done what I could not.
He said thoughtfully, spitting olive-stones into the palm of his hand, ‘I have heard it said — when I last wore Persian trousers — that there was not much love lost between Artaxerxes and his golden lily of a brother. That could mean that because Cyrus is so devoted to all things Spartan — especially Lysander — Artaxerxes is the more disposed to be friendly towards Athens.’
‘So?’ said Polytion.
‘I was wondering,’ said My Lord, ‘just wondering, as to the chances of getting through to Susa.’
I remember the silence in the shadow of the gourd leaves, and a swallow hawking across the roof-top after the dancing flies.
‘Were you indeed,’ said Polytion. ‘No one could say you lacked enterprise, my friend.’
‘Nobody ever could. Themistocles did it, when Athens booted him out for the crime of having won Salamis for her — and was received with honour and made Governor of Magnesia.’
‘You have ambitions that way?’ said Polytion, arching his brows.
‘Certainly the Governorship of Magnesia or some other equally fat province is as good a way as any other, to pass the time in exile. You have no notion, Polytion, how much of a problem it is for an exile to find some way of filling the time. That’s why most of us drink ourselves to death; not despair or anything decent and suitable of that sort — just boredom, my dear. No, in going to Susa, I should, in the first place anyway, be seeking nothing more than a little serious conversation with the Great King. There are certain aspects that I could suggest to him. Little points that may not come to his mind unaided.’
‘Such as?’ said Polytion.
‘Such as: that now Athens is crushed, Sparta becomes dangerously strong, and may
even, given time, grow to be a menace to the Empire of the Sun. All Greece will be combined under Sparta’s rule, and the Great King might be very tactfully reminded that when the Greeks combine, it is a bad day for Persia, as it was in his grandfather’s time. I think he might be brought to realise that to break with Sparta and give a certain amount of aid to Athens would neatly divide the powers again.’
‘Large ideas, you have, as well as enterprise,’ said Polytion. ‘How do you propose to get to Susa?’
‘By way of Daskylon. There’s an old bond of friendship between Pharnobazus and myself. With luck, he’ll give me the necessary letters, and safe conduct for the Royal Road.’
‘To say nothing of journey gold.’
‘How well you know me. But I’ve something left from the gold that the cities hereabouts paid me for my protection these past few years.’ He got up and stretched. ‘Gold for the Royal Road, and to appear before the Great King as befits Alkibiades.’
Polytion slept on board that night and sailed in the morning.
I lay against My Lord’s hard body on piled rugs on the roof, the stars circling overhead beyond the gourd leaves. His hands were strong behind my back and his hair tickled my face. I said, ‘This time you will not leave me.’
And he said, ‘Last time I knew that I should come back. Not this time — not back down the Royal Road.’
‘And so you will not leave me,’ I insisted.
His mouth fumbled for mine in the darkness. Then he rolled away from me and lay on his back, lazy and laughing. ‘What should I do without my flute girl against the nights when I cannot sleep?’
*
I have wondered since if any seeds of the sickness still lingered aboard Polytion’s ship, for two days later My Lord came in at evening from seeing to the sale of the remaining horses, with a dark flush on his cheeks, and eyes that looked hot enough to burn out their sockets. And by midnight he was tossing and half off his head with fever.
He lay ill for many days, raging through all of them at the sickness that had dared to strike him down and hold him from his plans. I gathered such herbs as I could from the marsh and the edges of the barley land and the woods along the stream, without getting too far from the fort, and made something like the fever medicine that the women of Bithynia brew at such times. And the fever never mounted high enough to send his wits clean away. Only he complained that I was forever playing my flute and the sound of it made bright patterns in his head that he grew tired of watching. I brewed the sleep drink also, so that at least his nights were quiet and dark; and the brewing and everything else, once I had gathered the herbs, I did in the keep chamber, so that I need never leave him alone and defenceless.