The Road to Sardis

by Stephanie Plowman

  ‘Lose your command?’ I whispered, my voice almost cracking with strain and exasperation. ‘If he can manage it, you’ll be on trial for your life! Don’t laugh; you’re mad if you think it a joke that you’re suspected. Can’t you see it’s insane to think all Athenians are as reasonable as—as Pericles, or take religion as lightly as you do? Can’t you see that clearly enough here, in the Acropolis of all places? Here’s the House of the Maiden, Pericles’ Parthenon, and people like you and myself think it the most marvellous thing ever made, and can’t think of it without a catch of the breath—but the holy place on the Acropolis, as far as most people are concerned, is the Erectheum, over there, and that stands for the ideas we think so damned ludicrous—serpent-tailed kings and all the rest of it. For God’s sake, remember this—even if you think such superstitions screamingly funny, the mass of the people don’t, they cling to them, they revere ugly great lumps of stone like the Hermae, and it’s hideously dangerous to ignore superstition!’

  I was stammering incoherently, almost choking as I finished my attempt to warn him. Next moment, if Nicias had appeared, I should gladly have given him a hand in pushing my cousin over the edge of the rock, if he had proposed so public an undertaking, since Alcibiades’ first reaction to my speech was to grin and say, ‘I wish you’d been a girl. Then I’d have married you, and your grandfather would have fallen down in a fit, but we should have had fun, and I mightn’t have felt so bored in this cramped little state!’

  I quoted Odysseus at him, Odysseus on his own home, Ithaca—‘A small place, but a good place for breeding men.’

  ‘There’s a well brought-up boy for you!’ said Alcibiades mockingly, but then he flung his arm about my shoulders and said, ‘The odd thing is that I like the old-fashioned courtesy, and the modesty and piety. I get a bit tired of all the talk about the Alcmaeonids being brilliant, perhaps, but nearly always wasters, and quite often mad.’

  Recalling the purpose of our meeting, I said earnestly, ‘Alcibiades, will you take care? At least, don’t give Nicias any weapon to use against you!’

  ‘What really intrigues me is Callistratus’ activity in all this.’

  ‘Oh, he wouldn’t mind breaking your neck tomorrow,’ I said cheerfully, ‘but he’d do it openly—’

  ‘Preferably before at least twelve thousand spectators, crying, “I do this that virtue may resume her sway!” ’

  ‘—and he hates Nicias’ mole-like activities. And, of course, he’s convinced you didn’t have a hand in the Hermae business.’

  ‘Well, there’s one thing at least in which we agree, you can tell him,’ said Alcibiades lightly. ‘I—that’s magnificent, isn’t it?’

  The clear amber light suffusing the sky had long since deepened into a fire-red in the far west. Below us the city lay wrapped in violet-grey shadow, and suddenly all the light that remained was a last mysterious greenish glimmer in the western sky.

  ‘That’s the way to make an ending!’ breathed Alcibiades beside me.

  * Ornaments worn by only members of the oldest Athenian families.

  21

  The Sailing of the Fleet

  Next day, blue eyes flashing magnificently, he denied in ringing tones the rumours that he was implicated in the Hermae affair. He demanded to be put on trial instantly; it was madness, he declared, to send out in charge of so great an expedition a man with a charge of sacrilege hanging over his head—all this with his contemptuous gaze resting on Nicias, and Nicias, eyes fixed on his feet, never returning the look. He said nothing, either, but his friends got up one by one and said smoothly that there was no need for Alcibiades to be so enraged, certainly there was no need for the trial he demanded; in any case it would be unwise to delay the sailing of the Expedition now that all preparations were complete.

  I whispered to Callistratus, ‘Why won’t they fight back? Because they’ve no solid proof against him?’

  ‘No,’ he said in a low voice, staring at Nicias. ‘Because they know they can’t get a conviction when his army’s still here. Get the army out of the way, then recall him.’

  ‘That’s a filthy way of doing things.’

  ‘No filthier, I suppose, than making your millions out of those poor wretches at Laurium.’

  The Expedition sailed at daybreak on a mid-summer morning. The time had been appointed days before by Alcibiades himself; I think he must have regretted in that particular dawn that he had not let Nicias have a hand in fixing the date, Nicias, who knew every religious festival in the calendar as well as he knew the months in the year, Nicias who would not have forgotten for an instant that this was the day when the women mourned Adonis.

  So the Expedition sailed to the sound of lamentations that re-echoed from house to house. My cousin’s enemies instantly said, ‘He chose the day deliberately to flout the gods once again. Doesn’t this prove his guilt?’ But I knew he felt nothing but consternation when he knew—too late—what day he had appointed as the sailing date; I knew because I was with him when he first heard the wailing begin.

  It was before dawn on the sailing day; I had slept little, if at all. The evening meal had been wretched; Grandfather, for once, had mixed little water with his wine, and had suddenly begun to tell us of the disastrous Egyptian expedition nearly forty years before. He had been one of the very few survivors; after six years’ fighting, in which most of his friends had perished, he, with a handful of comrades, had eventually struggled across the desert to safety in Greek Cyrene.

  ‘We told ourselves that at least our people hadn’t died for nothing,’ he said, sounding very old and tired. ‘We thought there’d be no more foreign expeditions after that, and with Pericles taking over, we were safe, of course.’

  Callistratus said gently, ‘Don’t think of it, sir.’

  ‘I don’t want to think of it,’ said Grandfather, ‘but how in God’s name can I help it tonight? For years I’ve kept myself from remembering it, except once in a while—know when I couldn’t help thinking of it, Callistratus? When Pheidias did something particularly good in the sculpture line, or Sophocles wrote another masterpiece. Everybody would start buzzing then with the great men Athens produced—what other state has produced so many men of genius? And I’d think, “Men equally good, perhaps better, died in Egypt.” Just as they’ll be dying in Sicily.’

  So when we eventually went to bed I had nightmare after nightmare, and was struggling out of one when I realised that the slight sound I in my fevered dreams took to be rain falling to save wretches dying of thirst, was in reality the patter of small stones flung by a deft hand through the open window and falling on the floor by my bed. I knew at once it was my cousin; it was with a sense of inevitability that, peering out I saw the tall helmeted figure standing below, heard that inimitable voice whisper, ‘Come down, Lycius.’

  Of course I went, even though I dreaded a flippant greeting. But he was surprisingly serious. He said in a low voice, ‘One must prepare for the worst. Lycius, remember that if anything happens to me, you are the last of the Alcmaeonids—’

  ‘ “And thank God for that,” nine tenths of Athens will say,’ I remarked. ‘Look, if we must discuss the family tree at dawn—let’s go out of earshot of the house—to the theatre, say.’

  We sat down soberly enough, and then he began again in a low, urgent voice, to remind me that I was the last survivor of the Alcmaeonids—his own wretched son he did not count, the boy was puny, degenerate. ‘He doesn’t like me!’ said Alcibiades, in outraged surprise. No, Alcibiades and I were the last two left, and in his will, made a few hours earlier, he’d bequeathed all his possessions to me, so, should he be killed—

  ‘I’d inherit a pile of debts,’ was my ungrateful inward comment. But aloud I asked only, ‘What about your son?’

  ‘Oh, his mother’s father and brother are the richest men in Athens—that’s why I married her,’ said Alcibiades cheerfully. ‘His uncle’ll look after him all right. Now, about the horses—’

  And then the waili
ng started. That noise, coming through the greyness of very early morning, was one of the most eerie sounds it has ever been my ill-luck to hear.

  ‘Good God!’ said Alcibiades, starting up. ‘What’s that?’

  I said, ‘I’d clean forgotten; it’s the women mourning Adonis. What an omen for today! Had you forgotten, then?’

  ‘Of course I’d forgotten,’ he said, the shock still in his voice. ‘I don’t keep track of women’s festivals; if I’d known, surely you know I’d have had the sense to avoid—’ And then his voice quickened. ‘But he didn’t forget!’ he said. ‘Of course he’d know every religious festival, the canting, superstitious rat! So that explains why he sat grinning behind his scrawny hand—he knew the date, if I didn’t, but he just sat back and grinned when I suggested it.’

  ‘Of course,’ I said, and suddenly I was holding my head. ‘You’ve played into his hands again,’ I said despairingly. ‘You did it with those parodies of the Mysteries—and now he’ll be able to say, “The fellow swears he knows nothing of the Hermae affair, but he deliberately chose this sailing date to show what he thinks of these superstitions, as he calls them.” ’

  ‘But I didn’t know!’

  ‘I believe you. I’d believe it even if I hadn’t been with you to see your reaction when the wailing started. But who else is going to believe it?’

  He laughed briefly. ‘Precious few,’ he said, ‘and this confounded row’s going on for hours, throughout all the departure, and he’ll be sniggering in his rotten little soul, damn him!’

  I found myself describing in impossible detail what exactly I would like to do to the pious Nicias. Alcibiades burst out laughing, and as he embraced me and said goodbye, some of the strain had left his voice.

  ‘I must go,’ he said. ‘Are you going to wish me luck?’

  I said, ‘Please God you’ll return safely home! Alcibiades—’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘You said you made this new will only last night. Had something special happened to make you do it?’

  He hesitated for a moment, then said, ‘Socrates.’

  ‘Socrates made you write your will?’

  ‘Oh no, he sees very little of me these days. But, well, you know how he has those premonitions?’

  ‘He’s had one about this expedition?’ I said, and caught my breath. Socrates’ daemon, as he called it, was never at fault.

  Alcibiades nodded. ‘But don’t think I’m worried,’ he said lightly. ‘You know how it’s always been my ambition to prove Socrates wrong!’

  He embraced me again. ‘I wish you were coming!’ he said. ‘Still time to change your mind, and think what a good enobling influence you would be! Ever pointing out the path of duty—’ I shook my head.

  ‘Well, it’s your fault if I don’t behave,’ said Alcibiades. He laughed suddenly. ‘If you only knew how excessively virtuous I was, not playing about with the muster rolls so that your name would be drawn!’ he said. ‘It just shows that being good never pays! Ah, well, I’d better go and foregather with my colleagues. Nicias will be looking sick and solemn, but inwardly he’ll be rubbing his hands and he’ll say, “A bad omen, this, Alcibiades!” and I will look at him loftily and quote Homer at him: “Fight for your country—that is the best and only omen.” Don’t you think that will settle him?’

  Privately I thought he might have chosen a speech made by someone luckier than Hector, leader of a doomed cause. Aloud I merely said that Hector was defending a city, not out to attack it. Alcibiades said airily I paid too much attention to what my schoolmasters had taught me; he’d never paid the slightest heed—

  ‘Yes, I know,’ I said. ‘That’s one of the things I remember Pericles saying—that your schoolmasters earned their holidays.’

  Such a reminder rather disconcerted the self-and-oft-proclaimed heir to Pericles, but he only asked, ‘Are you coming down to see us set sail?’

  ‘I might as well,’ I said; ‘otherwise you’d say I was sulking.’

  ‘Good,’ said Alcibiades. ‘You won’t forget it.’

  As I was eating in haste, first my uncle, then Callistratus, and finally Grandfather joined us. They said they too would come to see the sailing, so together we made our way down to Piraeus, past the images of Adonis laid out as if for burial in street after street, past women wailing, chanting dirges as they held mock rites of funeral over them. If I had been one of the force marching down to embark, that high crying sound would have torn intolerably at my brain; useless in those circumstances, I thought, to tell yourself that this happened every year; quivering nerves would only reply that before long outside each home and at every street corner the women of Athens might be mourning no effigy of a god, but their own sons and husbands.

  From the way people talk nowadays of the sailing of the first Expedition, you would think it took place in the gayest of circumstances; it did not—at the beginning of the march, at any rate. The faces of the first troops, those going down to board their ships at dawn, were strained and grey, the watching crowds were largely silent, but as the sun sprang up over the eastern horizon, and the day brightened, and the men tramping before us became transformed from wan ghosts to rank after rank of young warriors in the full splendour of their youth and strength, the mood of the watchers changed. As it happened, the allied troops were the first contingents to move off; light and colour swept back to the world as our own people began to march past, and then indeed it seemed as if all Athens were taking to the ships, for as sons and fathers tramped down the road to Piraeus so their families walked or ran alongside them, talking excitedly, proudly, and over the sea the mist dissolved, all was brilliant. You were scarcely conscious of the women wailing then far off in the City; you only knew there were the ships. Never had any Greek state sent out such an equipment.

  And then came the generals—Lamachus elderly, past his best now, riding with Nicias, who had striven against this expedition of which he shared the command And, all alone—inevitably—my cousin, astride a Corinthian grey thoroughbred, wearing armour inlaid with gold, helmetless, smiling, waving. It was very much his expedition—a stranger from the ends of the earth setting foot in Athens for the first time that day would have realised as much. He was flushed with excitement and triumph, exulting in the sudden tumultuous burst of cheering that greeted him. His vivid blue eyes searching the crowd, found mine, his brilliant smile deepened, he waved gaily to me, and the crowd moaned with envy at my luck.

  ‘That’s right,’ muttered Grandfather, ‘grin, damn you! Quite like the Olympics, isn’t it—but now it’s not just your own fool neck you’re risking. There rides the most dangerous blackguard the city ever spawned.’

  My uncle said suddenly, ‘He might be more dangerous. Do you remember him as a child—if he couldn’t have a toy he’d break it?’

  ‘Meaning that if the City ever rejected him, he’d turn really vicious? I tell you,’ said Grandfather, in a low, furious voice, ‘if he worked against the City he couldn’t do her more harm than he’s done her now as her favourite! He’s made the people think as he does in these last few months—what could he do worse?’

  The actual sailing is known well enough—how, when all were embarked, trumpets sounded for silence, and in that silence the men on ship and we on shore were one for the last time, following the voices of the herald praying for success, chanting the responses. Then from the ships rose the great shout of the battle-cry, on every deck captains poured libations from vessels of silver and gold, and then, one by one, the ships put to sea.

  Once out of harbour, the fleet rang to a great outburst of laughter; on my cousin’s orders, so we learned later, sails were spread and with wind and oar they raced for Aegina. His own flagship, with its splendid purple ensign, naturally took the lead; its deck was still strewn with the flowers flung at its commander, who with a garland of roses on his red-gold hair seemed more of a reveller than a general.

  One of the ships did not take part in the race south; on her deck we could see Nicias
’ stooping figure, staring back to the City; we could actually see his frequent headshakes, we could guess his expression and comments.

  ‘Well,’ said Grandfather, ‘there’s the last man in the world I’d choose to go campaigning with.’

  Most of that immense crowd thronging the quays stayed there as long as their straining eyes could follow the racing ships, but we returned to the City. It was deserted—I had never seen it so utterly, so uncannily empty. The only other folk we saw were little groups of wailing women, dressed in mourning. It might indeed have been a City of the Dead.

  22

  Sentence of Death

  Now all we had to do was wait for news, day after crawling day. To do this in Athens would have been intolerable; Callistratus went over to Salamis, and we went out to the farm at Marathon.

  When news eventually came, it came just before noon; the sun was blazing down so that I, standing in the garden with Grandfather, felt half-asleep.

  But then I was jerked awake.

  In that still hot air, sound travelled far. We heard the horseman before we could see him, because dust rose in clouds. No need to see him, though; only one man would dare come down the mountainside at such a furious rate.

  “Callistratus!” said Grandfather. ‘What’s up, in God’s name?’ His voice was suddenly very quiet. ‘Go and get your uncle,’ he went on.

  Callistratus’ face was grimed with dust, streaked with sweat. He said, coughing, ‘They’ve done it! They’ve sent an order to Sicily for his recall.’

  No need to ask whose recall. ‘Arrest, surely?’ said Grandfather, but Callistratus, grimacing and so furrowing his mask of dust, said, ‘It all depends on the position when the order reaches him—my idea is that if he’s taken Syracuse, the officers will merely congratulate him.’

  ‘He won’t have taken Syracuse,’ said my uncle, coming up. ‘Not with Nicias as colleague. What’s he been sent, then? A polite invitation to return home to assist the authorities in their enquiries?’