The Road to Sardis

by Stephanie Plowman

  Just after that, Theron, who had stayed behind as long as he could to see that everything movable had been moved, came riding up, reached over the side of the cart and plucked me out to sit before him on his horse. This gave me the chance I’d been whining for—to have a really good look at the mass of refugees moving slowly over the plain to Athens; but now that the chance was mine, I didn’t want it. The day was so warm I dozed off to sleep against him, waking up from time to time to find him arguing politely with the old farmer—and, as the walls of Athens rose up to greet us, so the old man’s cracked voice rose in a last mournful prophecy. ‘Yes, you young ones, you’re all eager to fight, but it’s only because you are young and don’t know any better. When you do know better, you’ll sing another song, but there won’t be so many of you to join in the chorus then!’

  Theron smiled gaily, and said that three summers’ campaigning of the kind Pericles had in mind would not involve many casualties among our people, while three years sitting down in a barren countryside would be as much as the Spartans could stand.

  ‘Old ideas die hard in the Spartan mind,’ he said cheerfully. ‘They still can’t get into their thick skulls the fact that Athens is a city supplied by sea; they still believe our food comes from the country round about us—devastate that, they think, and we’ll starve. They should see a few of our grain fleets!’

  The old man took a deep breath, then replied slowly, ‘So, because our food’s brought in ships from abroad, you think we can’t be hit where it hurts? I don’t find any comfort in the fact that food comes from outside. That’s a pretty risky way of getting fed, as I see it, but then I’m old-fashioned and like eating what I’ve grown with my own hands—can’t see far beyond my olive grove, I can’t. Oh, young man, it’s pleasant to talk strategy, no doubt, but not so pleasant when the “barren countryside” being devastated is your only home and livelihood.’

  Theron, flushing, apologised immediately. More; he offered hospitality to the old couple during the period they had to be away from their farm, and after a few days the old farmer grumpily brought himself to thank Theron for giving them a roof over their heads. He could do little to repay the debt, he said, but at least he would keep an eye on me during Theron’s absence.

  For Theron was going away, sailing north to serve in the siege of Potidaea. I think towards the end he was very glad to get away, because Mother cried so. The house echoed with her sobs of ‘Potidaea, of all places!’ For a moment I felt a pang of fright, and sought out Theron as he looked over his equipment to ask in a subdued voice, ‘Is it a very dangerous place to go to?’ But he burst out laughing and said no, of course it wasn’t. Mother was afraid, not of what the enemy might do to him, but what our wicked cousin, already stationed there, might do to his moral character.

  ‘I’ve never seen him, have I?’ I queried.

  ‘No,’ said Theron, grinning. ‘They’ve kept him out of Athens ever since he came of age and began to—began to—’

  Earnestly I enquired what exactly our cousin did that made Mother hysterical and Grandfather speechless. Theron asked after a moment what I had heard. I said I’d heard Grandfather shouting, that the young villain took warm baths.

  ‘Well,’ said Theron, ‘that will do—for a start.’

  The old farmer took me down to the harbour to see him sail; I wish I could remember more about the sailing, but my only clear recollection is of the envy shown by Conon, Theron’s friend, because he was not sailing too, and then of the honey-cakes he bought for me when he caught sight of my woebegone face.

  I wish I could remember more of Theron. He was gay and charming, I know, patient with Mother, courteous to old people, gallant and of very great promise—this too I know, for I was told years later by my grandfather that Pericles, writing to him of Theron, was to quote in sadness the description he had given some years before of the Athenian youth lost at Samos—‘It was as if the spring had been taken from the year . . .’

  We—the old farmer and I—struck up an odd friendship. He would take me walking with him about the city, talking endlessly all the time, and rather, I think, enjoying himself, saying no good would come of this new-fangled way of fighting a war—all these thousands of refugees roaming the streets looking for shelter. Athens was, indeed, quite indescribable, with tents pitched in all open spaces, every house, every street crammed.

  Those first months of the war meant nothing more to me than smells and yells and falling over people and getting cursed for my pains; they meant far more to others, my old farmer, for example. One of the reasons he used to take me with him up on the Walls, was that his own eyesight was failing, and for all his stout assertions, he could not really see his beloved farm at Acharnae. So every morning he would climb with me to the top of the north Wall, go past the watchful archers into one of the towers flanking the Acharnian Gate, then, holding me up in one of the narrow embrasures, would ask me what I could see. For the first days after our dash into Athens, I gave childish reports that he could in his own mind translate into a description of normal conditions the distant purple and brown of the mountain slopes changing abruptly to that lovely shimmering colour when the leaves of far-off olives flashed from grey to silver-white in the sunny wind.

  Then one morning, there was a thrilling change in the landscape.

  ‘Helmets!’ I shouted ecstatically. ‘Shining helmets! And smoke! All the way down from the northern pass.’

  He was very patient with me, that old farmer. In a tired, faintly breathless voice, he asked me question after question, ending with, ‘And they’ve reached that great broad band of dark green, starting from the west side of Pentelicus?’

  ‘Yes, the one going right down to Piraeus—you said it was the valley of the Cephisus, sir.’

  ‘Then they fired my farm and burned my crops hours ago,’ he said slowly. ‘Shall we go home now, lad?’

  Then came the day, at the turn of the year, when returning home, I heard an odd sound coming from our house. It made the hairs prickle on my scalp. I raised my head to look at the old man, but he was too intent on complaining about the way town-dwellers despised country-folk.

  ‘Yes, figures of fun, that’s what we are,’ he said. ‘I’ll tell you something, boy, that you’ll think daft, I’ll be bound. You’d think me not one for the theatre much, eh, especially this new modern stuff they’re putting on these days—realistic, they call it—everybody in rags and no better than they should be, and the gods no better than they should be half their time, either. But there’s one fellow’s plays I always make a point of seeing, though he’s the most modern of the lot, and the way he carries on about the gods and brags up the women makes your hair stand on end, but I always go to his plays though I don’t like ’em—rather, I can’t understand ’em, but don’t like the bit I can understand—because these comic writers they’re always out to poke fun at him because his mother, poor soul, was a country woman and came into town on market days to sell vegetables at a stall—’

  ‘There’s an awfully funny noise coming from our house,’ I said.

  ‘—a decent body enough, from all accounts; God knows how her son turned out the way he has. And it’s because his mother’s a country woman, and he gets all manner of fun poked at him because of it, I go and see all his plays, though as I said I don’t think much of ’em, and don’t think he’ll ever get very far with them. He didn’t do too badly this last festival, got third prize with that play about that foreign piece of goods murdering her children and laughing at her husband, and all the Chorus could say at the end of it was that what you expect never happens, and what you don’t expect does . . .’

  I tugged at his hand more urgently. ‘There’s a horrible noise coming from our house!’ I said in a scared voice.

  He heard me then, and he heard the noise. He stood stock-still. ‘Good God!’ he said in a whisper. ‘Someone’s dead.’

  I tugged at his hand in frenzy. ‘Let’s go away,’ I said, crying. ‘Let’s go back down to the ha
rbour; let’s not know yet, let’s be happy a little longer.’

  He picked me up in his arms. ‘No, you poor little devil,’ he said gently. ‘We have to face it, we can’t run away.’

  The women wailed, clothes torn, ashes on their heads, because my brother was dead, dead outside Potidaea; dead at twenty. Mother clasped me desperately to her all the afternoon, would not let Tecmessa take me off to bed even when it was dark and lamps had been brought in, and I myself had long since cried myself to sleep in her arms. And so I saw and heard the visitor who came that night.

  It was, actually, his voice that roused me. It was a deep voice, a golden voice; waking, I thought sleepily, ‘This is how a god talks.’ Then I realised the tall helmeted shape was Pericles himself, talking gravely to my mother, his cousin, watching her closely all the while. Years later Tecmessa told me that he had been sent for because my mother’s desperate refusal to let me go had scared the slaves; it was well known that there was a wild strain in her family that led to outbursts of violence. Pericles himself had escaped it, so had Theron, but others were not so lucky.

  Now Pericles said, ‘Little Lycius looks pale, Constantia. Why don’t you let him get outside the City for a time—send him to your house in Salamis, say? Isn’t the son of Astymachus the Plataean staying there?’

  Sudden memory flickered in me. ‘Please let me go to the house in Salamis, Mother!’ I said. ‘I didn’t know Astymachus’s son was there! Is his mother there too?’

  No, Pericles said, she had chosen to stay in Plataea with her husband and elder son and new-born baby daughter—until the town was relieved. As it would be soon.

  3

  A Cave on Salamis

  So when I first met Astymachus’s son, as darkness fell two days later, those were the words with which I greeted him.

  ‘It’s all right!’ I said excitedly, running to the thin-faced, sad-eyed boy who rose hesitantly at the entrance of Tecmessa and myself. ‘It’s all right, Plataea will be relieved. Pericles told me so himself.’

  As it happened, I could not have said anything better calculated to rouse Timotheus. His straight brows came together.

  ‘That’s very kind of Pericles,’ he said scowling, ‘but Plataea will be saved because of the Plataeans defending her walls.’

  I glared back. ‘There are Athenians, too!’ I said. ‘My father’s there, like yours.’

  He looked at me for a moment, then turned away. ‘Your mother’s not there,’ he said.

  When we went out next morning the sea was like a calm inland lake, for the island is so close to the coast that the sea seems more like a lake lying between hills than a stretch of salt water.

  ‘It’s so peaceful,’ said Timotheus, ‘it’s hard to think of all those Persian ships getting crowded in on each other.’

  I nodded. I was to think that for many years; time after time I would stand just where the water, touching the steep, rocky shore, is the deepest, darkest blue; I would stand there gazing across the water, growing lighter as it shimmered in the sun towards the Bay of Eleusis, looking to the north where Aegaleos reared its crown of dark green pines, and staring south across the pale shining water to the spot on the skyline where the grey bulk of the hated Corinth Isthmus heaved itself up on the skyline, but never could I imagine the battle there, though I had had it described to me by the greatest of poets: how the scarlet ships had charged, with bronze prows glittering, and great banks of oars rising and falling like wings. I could not visualise the battle because the strait between Salamis and the mainland is usually so calm.

  But we did not talk much about old battles on this occasion; I was saving my breath as best I could, for Salamis, though small, is a difficult place to cross, being composed of lofty mountains with very bare and craggy sides. I puffed along, stumbling with my short legs over the rocks, which were sometimes black, sometimes brown, sometimes red, always exhausting, until I collapsed. Timotheus bit his knuckles and eyed me with dismay; he should have known we were going too far, he kept saying. I replied in gasps that I was perfectly all right—just (sudden inspiration) thirsty! If I could have a drink . . .’

  His worried face cleared a little. ‘I know someone who lives not far from here,’ he exclaimed. ‘He’ll have water.’

  He ran off, but I was so tired I scarcely noticed his going before I fell asleep. However, I know I had sense enough to think, ‘There can’t be anyone who lives not far from here—it’s all rocks and not a house in sight.’

  When I awoke, my first idea was that I must have slept for hours, because it had grown dark. Then I realised that I was not lying in the open air; had Tecmessa or one of the men found me and carried me home? But this was not home—I’d never been in this place before—there was a strange smell, there were strange sounds—I should know the smells and sounds, but could not place them within four walls. But there were not four walls, there were only three. Turning my head slightly I could see sunlight pouring in through an opening, and through the opening I could see the source of the smells and sounds so familiar and yet so strange when I had thought I was in a house.

  ‘It’s the sea,’ I said drowsily, ‘and I’m in a cave.’

  Timotheus’ voice called gladly, ‘He’s awake!’ Timotheus himself, carefully carrying a cup of water, came slowly into my line of vision. ‘Euripides came out and brought you here,’ he said. And then the owner of the cave came across and bent over me. I thought then, as I think now, that it was the most beautiful face I have ever seen. I do not mean the most splendid—that was Pericles’—and many others were more handsome; I still don’t know how so young a child as I was could watch that worn face, with the sunken cheeks and tired eyes, and think, ‘This is a beautiful face,’ but think it I did, and went on thinking it through the long years that followed, bitter years, through which he grew more solitary, more austere, more friendless, when age bowed his shoulders, and loneliness and grief for all humanity made him a little strange in his manner.

  ‘Do you really live in a cave, sir?’ I asked respectfully.

  He laughed and said, ‘No, but I come here—military service permitting, of course—if I feel I need quiet, quiet to think and write, you see.’

  I said, ‘It’s not really quiet, though, is it? I mean, there aren’t many people about, but the seabirds are crying all the time, and there’s always the noise of the sea. If I sat here and thought and tried to write, I think the noise of the sea and the birds would get right into my head and thinking and out in my writing.’

  He smiled at me suddenly. ‘That’s never occurred to me before,’ he said, ‘but you’re right, of course. I’m sure that’s happened to me. Now, I think the best thing I can do is to send Timotheus back to your home to tell them where you are, for fear they worry, and then, in an hour or two, when you’ve rested, I’ll take you back.’

  He went to speed Timotheus on his way; I had drowsed off before he came back.

  When I re-opened my eyes to the sound of the booming of the waves and the strange high cry of the seabirds, my host was sitting a few feet away from me, looking out to sea. ‘Thinking,’ I told myself, but as the minutes passed I couldn’t help being puzzled. At six you are a squirming mass of activity; this rapt immobility was a very odd thing to me. I was glad when finally he started, sighed, then seized his writing tablets and began to scribble like one possessed. And then he was looking at me with his slow smile.

  ‘Please, sir, what do you write?’ I asked.

  ‘Plays, Lycius.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said, ‘I don’t know much about them, except what the old farmer said.’ Since the grave face here looked completely bewildered, I burst into a torrent of words explaining who the old farmer was, but he still looked puzzled and said tentatively that he would not have thought that the old farmer was very much interested in the theatre.

  ‘Oh, he’s not really,’ I assured him, ‘and he hates all the modern stuff, he says, with everybody dirty and no better than they should be, and the gods worse than any
body—though I suppose they have to be clean—but he always goes to any play written by a man he doesn’t understand a bit, although his people are a dreadful lot—’

  ‘Then why does he go?’

  ‘Well, he—the farmer—doesn’t like the City dwellers, he thinks they’re always poking fun at country folk, and they make fun of this poet’s mother because she was a country woman. They keep saying she was a greengrocer, so the old farmer goes and cheers at the end, even if he thinks it dreadful.’

  My host’s hand was up at his mouth, and for a moment he made no reply. Then he commented with extreme solemnity that he was sure the poet concerned would always be grateful to the old farmer for his goodwill. My thoughts, however, were racing on like an unbroken colt.

  ‘Sir,’ I said, ‘it’s awful being ev-evacuated, isn’t it?’ My voice wavered a little. ‘I was up on the walls with the old farmer and we saw the Spartans burning everything.’