Tides of War

  Naught but echo met my halloo. It was the hour of the man’s supper, I realized; he would be across the way at the refectory. I could hear our client behind me, chuckling. “It seems you have become a prisoner as well, my friend.”

  “You are a cur, Polemides.”

  “I never pretended otherwise, mate.”

  I turned back, already recognizing beneath wrath’s receding flush how profoundly I had come to care for this villain. The veteran’s features declined into a smile. He acknowledged the aptness of the verdict I had pronounced upon him, remarking that its single shortcoming was its failure to go far enough.

  He continued not with words, but by withdrawing from his chest two articles of correspondence which, one could not but infer from the way he handled them, he had re-perused recently and whose contents had affected him profoundly. He passed them to me.

  “Sit down, my friend. You’re going nowhere for a while anyway.”

  The first item was a letter from him to his great-aunt Daphne, dated some months subsequent to the final destruction of the Athenian fleet at Aegospotami, that calamity which made inevitable the city’s capitulation and, after twenty-seven years, her defeat at the hands of the Spartans and their Persian and Peloponnesian allies.

  At that time Polemides, he told me now, stood in the service of Lysander, with convictions for treason and murder imposed from his homeland. He writes to his aunt at Athens, instructing her to prepare for the siege and surrender to come:

  …factions among our countrymen will nominate themselves to procure what they will call the Peace. The nation’s sovereignty will be given over; her fleet destroyed; Long Walls torn down. A puppet government of collaborators will be imposed. Acts of reprisal will follow. Perhaps by my return I may mitigate, at least for you and our family, the effects of the lawlessness which is certain to ensue.

  You must get out of the city, Aunt, to the land. Take Lion’s children. Can you locate my own? Please, get them to safety. The seal on this letter is that of Lysander’s staff. It will protect you, but don’t use it unless the issue is life-and-death, for others, our countrymen, will make you pay later.

  Lastly, my dear, do not be present when Lysander’s squadrons enter the Piraeus or you will see that which no patriot as yourself may bear without heartbreak: the child you raised, in the scarlet of the foe. I am beyond love of country and long past shame. I act only as others will and have, to preserve my own.

  His aunt replies:

  Thou shameless soul! How dare you apply care for my person as pretext for your perfidy? I wish you had perished in the quarries, or in some nameless scrape where you could still be called your father’s son and not the agent of infamy you have so wickedly shown yourself to be. God grant I never look upon your face again. You no longer exist for me. I have no nephew.

  I passed the correspondence back to Polemides. His aspect conveyed clearly that he shared this condemnation articulated by his aunt, and to such a depth as to preclude contravention, at least now, at this hour. I felt him slip from me as a corpse upon dark water, when the boat hook fails of purchase and one’s vessel, driven by its way, passes on, to put about no more.

  The jailer returned; I was released. I crossed the Iron Court to Socrates’ cell and passed, in that company, the remainder of the evening. Our master’s days were now down to three. The sacred ship returning from Delos had been sighted off Sounium that morn; her arrival at Athens would put a period to the reprieve which had thus far postponed his execution. One anticipated the vessel this night. She did not turn up, however. A dream of Socrates had predicted this. A fair woman in white robes had appeared to him, he recounted to us gathered that evening, and addressing him by name, declared,

  To the pleasant land of Phthia

  On the third day shalt thou come.

  A terrible despair gripped my heart, communicated in part from Polemides, whose recollection of the hours of our country’s fall coincided with the pending execution of my master, which to me stood as a second and more calamitous overthrow, for it forecast, I felt, not alone the passing of our sovereignty but the ideal of democracy herself.

  I passed out of the prison last of all that night. I had made up my mind to speak in person with Polemides no more, nor even convey his wishes to the authorities. He had made his choice; let him enact it. The passageway out stood silent save a carpenter framing a door in the prison shop. I glanced in. The iron bands I took at first for some sort of hinge or brace. At once I recognized the instrument.

  It was no door.

  It was the tympanon, upon which Polemides would be executed. He would be affixed to the plank, naked, the instrument itself then elevated upright with the man bound upon it. No one would be permitted to approach, or bring aid of any kind; only the executioner would remain, to apply the torment prescribed by the court and to certify the condemned’s demise. The carpenter haled me in, yarning amiably as he worked. He must, he imparted, fabricate a fresh device for each execution. “You’d not believe what runs out of a man’s guts, sir. The dead comes off light as a doll.”

  He showed me how the instrument worked. Four cramp irons imprisoned the victim’s limbs, a fifth yoke of chain cinched his throat. Turning pegs tightened this, choking the breath. No blood, that was the apparatus’s strong point.

  I asked if this particular device was for Polemides. The joiner didn’t know; it was not his practice to inquire. One convicted of treason, though, he observed, may not be buried in Attica or “any land of which the Athenians are masters.” The corpse would be cast out, unburied, for the dogs and crows.

  The carpenter considered this appliance the latest in humane treatment. “Better than chucking ’em into the Dead Man’s Pit, like the generals after Arginousai. That was bloody frightful. My father made the traps for that. No one had never done six at once, so three had to wait. That was horrible, ’cause you could hear the sound as the first three hit. The younger Pericles and Diomedon went off without no shroud. None of ’em spoke a word, just Diomedon. ‘Let’s get it over with.’”

  Best of all things, Theognis says, is never to be born

  …but being born, best then to speed

  straightaway to hell and there sleep

  under the weighty shield of earth.

  Some days previous, succeeding my second interview with Eunice, I had summoned my bloodhounds Myron and Lado and, proffering a premium, spurred them to redouble their efforts to discover the particulars of the homicide with which our client was charged. Nor did my sleuths tarry, but presented themselves two mornings later. They had found a man, a sailor at the time. An eyewitness. He would not testify in person as he owed money and did not wish to advertise his presence in the city. For a consideration, however, he would dictate an affidavit and swear an oath to its truth.

  Here is that document. The man identifies himself as a citizen of the district of Amphitrope and former petty officer of the fleet:

  …this was at Samos, in that kind of dive they call a “soda.” The Pennyroyal. Mates off certain ships congregated there; it was their place. Polemides’ tart Eunice was aboard that night, and about a dozen others from the lanes; kids too, it was that kind of joint. A rain had got up, the roof had sprung gushers; there was pots on tabletops, that sort of thing…

  Polemides stalks in. He don’t look right or left, just makes straight for the woman Eunice and lays violent hands on her, to snap her neck. Two or three leaps on him and hauls him off, they go to brawling. Polemides kicks free. He snatches up an iron kettle, set out to catch the rain, and goes after the woman again. This fellow Philemon tries to block him. Polemides swings the kettle, the man goes down—dead before he hits the deck.

  Polemides stares at him, and at the woman Eunice, and his own brats, gaping up like he’s gone raving. The sight of the whelps snaps him out of it. He wheels and stalks out. The whole stunt didn’t take half the time it needs to tell it. No one had spoke a word, start to finish.

  The dirt comes out later from the
girlfriends. This Eunice, it turns out, is a gale-force hellcat. She had got belladonna into the gentlewoman Polemides had married. Poisoned her. Knocked-up she was, the bride, so the kid in her belly croaked too. That was the scuttlebutt anyway.

  That’s what happened, Cap’n. Polemides planted this luckless bastard Philemon, not from malice, just ’cause he got in his way as he was going after his woman to settle her. That’s the truth. I was there and I saw it.

  XLV

  AN ADVOCATE AT THE GATE

  Two dawns remained before Socrates must drink the hemlock. One could not sleep but thrashed nightlong, only to doze as in a nightmare at dawn’s pallor.

  It was at this hour my attendant knocked, reporting a young man at the gate. The lad refused to give his name, but importuned my attendance most earnestly. The youth had a sum of money, my servant accounted, which he wished to deliver into my keeping.

  Curiosity drew both my sons with me to the threshold. The lad, when we opened to him, appeared just a stripling, sixteen at most, and slight as a stalk. I invited him within.

  “No thank you, sir. I come only as a representative of certain concerned citizens. Quite a body, if I don’t say.”

  The child was so earnest that one almost laughed, his oration offered with the stilted solemnity of one composed in advance and committed to memory.

  “I wish,” he declared, “only to place these funds in your hand, Captain, on behalf of Polemides the son of Nicolaus of Acharnae, for you to employ in his defense as you see fit. I am young, sir, and have no experience of the courts. One cannot but imagine, however, that certain expenses may arise….”

  That which he proffered was no mean sum, but above a hundred drachmas. A run of silver tetras, newly minted, struck me at once, and my sons, as stolen in a lump.

  “How does a twig like you come up with a load like this?” my elder inquired.

  “It rings, don’t it?”

  His accent was a double for Eunice’s, his brow and eyes hers as well.

  So this was the runaway.

  “Indeed it does, young man.” I hefted the loot. “And what shall I use it for—to bribe the jurors?”

  “Those I represent, sir, accede to your wisdom.”

  “And these concerned citizens…what precisely is their interest in this case?”

  “Partisans of justice, sir.”

  One began to assimilate details of the youth’s lineaments. His cloak was that overlong type called a “street-sweeper,” and though it had been brushed perhaps as recently as last evening, the dusty stain of its hem gave it away. Beneath its folds no doubt the boy’s feet were unshod.

  “Have you had dinner today, young man?”

  “Indeed, sir. A gut-buster!”

  Both my sons laughed. “Mind a stiff puff doesn’t strike you broadside!”

  Again I invited the boy in. Again he declined. I held out the money. “Why not take this to Polemides yourself?”

  At once the child began to stammer and withdraw. Clearly we had strayed from the turf of his prepared presentation.

  “I think you should,” I insisted. “A prisoner in distress will be much heartened to learn of friends who uphold him in his cause.”

  “Just take the jack, Cap’n.”

  “I’ll tell you what I’ll take, young man.” At a gesture, my sons seized the lad. “I’ll take you and this sum to the magistrate and let him decide where you got it.”

  “Let off, fuckers!”

  The youth fought like a wild beast; it took both my boys, outstanding wrestlers, to pin him. “Now, my young friend. Will you come with me to Polemides, or shall we knock at the archon’s gate?”

  Approaching the prison, the boy became agitated. “Will they search me, sir?” And he stripped a dagger from beneath his arm and a Spartan xyele from a sheath on his thigh.

  In the corridor approaching the cell I halted. The boy’s face went to chalk. “Ain’t you coming in, Cap’n?”

  “You’ve played your part manfully thus far,” I reassured him, and, setting a bolstering hand upon his shoulder, prompted him forward.

  From where I stood I could not see Polemides within the cell, but only the boy at the threshold as the turnkey opened and the lad hesitated, peering in as if at a caged brute he feared might rush upon him. I confess that, when the child found courage and vanished within, I discovered my eyes burning and a thickness about my throat.

  Father and son remained all morning, or at least beyond the hour I waited, across the way at the refectory of my ancient comrade, the marine archer Bruise. My sons had gifted the boy Nicolaus with a packet of kit articles, including shoes and a new tunic, ostensibly to be passed on to his father but, we hoped, one that his pride would permit him, out of our sight, to retain for himself.

  Instead by noon the kit was returned to our gate, intact, with a note thanking us, and no more.

  XLVI

  ACROSS THE IRON COUR

  Leaving Socrates’ cell that night, the party of his companions crossed the Iron Court to the chambers of Lysimachus of Oa, Secretary of the Eleven. The master’s execution would be tomorrow. The hemlock, at his request, would be administered at sunset. The secretary showed us the bowl, plain wooden with a cover; apparently the juice altered composition, exposed to the air. It must be consumed at once, in a single draught if possible.

  The executioner, a physician of Brauron, chanced to be within the prison on another errand; he was kind enough to donate an interval with us, myself and Critobulus, Crito, Simmias of Thebes, Cebes, Epigenes, Phaedo of Samos, and the others. The practitioner, whose name was not revealed and who was unknown to us by sight, wore a plain white chiton as we all. He apprised us that tomorrow he would appear in the robe of his office; he wished to forewarn us that the sight might not, by its unexpectedness, evoke dismay.

  We would be permitted to remain in the cell with Socrates until the end and to claim his body as soon as death had been pronounced and the certificate recorded. There would be no “final repast,” as the subject’s belly must be empty; nor may wine be taken later than noon, as its effect acted in contravention to the poison.

  Crito asked what we may do to render our friend’s passage more endurable. Hemlock was painless, the doctor declared. Its effect was a progressive loss of sensation, commencing from the feet, the subject remaining alert and lucid up to the final stages. Nausea might be experienced as the drug reached the midsection; thereafter accelerated numbness, followed by loss of consciousness and, ultimately, cessation of heartbeat. The drug’s deficiency was that it took time, often as long as two hours. It was best if the subject remained quiet. Stimulation could impede the poison’s effect, necessitating a second dose and even a third. “He will feel cold, gentlemen. You may wish to bring a fleece or woolen mantle for his shoulders.”

  Our party exited in silence. I had forgotten entirely about Polemides (who by now had no doubt filed his attestation of guilt) and would have departed without another thought had not the porter hailed me as we crossed the court, asking after the designated claimant for his, the assassin’s, body. For a moment I feared sentence had already been carried out; I was seized with grief and anguish. But no, the official informed me, Polemides’ execution would be tomorrow, at sunset, as Socrates’.

  Death would be on the tympanon. He could not say how long they would drag it out. The assassin—so clever was he, the porter observed—had confessed not to treason, but to “wrongdoing.” By this technicality (as that was indeed the specific charge against him) he had ducked the disgrace of having his body dumped unburied beyond the borders of Attica; the corpse would be transported to the Funerary Depot beside the Northern Wall, where it may be recovered by his kinsmen. “A boy has been round, sir, claiming to be the prisoner’s son. Absent another, may the officers release the body to him?”

  “What does the prisoner say?”

  “He says to ask you.”

  It was now well after dark; I had been up for a day and a night and could look forwa
rd to the same tomorrow. Yet clearly I could not go home. I hailed a “skylark” and, pressing a coin into the lad’s hand, dispatched him with a message for my wife that I would be delayed.

  When I entered Polemides’ cell, he was writing. He rose at once, in hale spirits, clasping my hand in welcome. Had I been with Socrates? Of course. The prison could speak of nothing else.

  I had thought I would chafe at this chore and discover myself in anger at him, for the labor he had put me through for nothing. To my surprise the opposite obtained. Immediately within the cell, I felt the weight of distress lift from my bones. It was bracing, the assassin’s acceptance of his fate. It shamed me.

  “What are you writing?”

  “Letters.”

  To whom?

  “One to my son. One to you.”

  At once tears sprang; a sob wrenched from my throat. I must hide my face.

  “Sit,” the prisoner bade. “There’s wine brought by my boy, take some.”

  I obeyed.

  “Just let me finish this. I won’t be long.”

  He inquired, as he wrote, of Socrates. Would the philosopher exit on shank’s highway? Would he “mount the midnight mare”? Polemides laughed. No secret endured long within these walls, he observed; he had overheard all the getaway schemes, of Simmias and Cebes hiring horses and armed escorts; he knew which officials had accepted bribes, and even how much. Sundry informers had already put their blackmail to Crito and Menexeus and been paid off to come down with lockjaw.

  “He won’t run,” I said. “He’s as stubborn as you.”

  “Well, you see, we’re both philosophers.”