The Flowers of Adonis

by Rosemary Sutcliff

  And I was weak, I wanted to keep him quiet. ‘The situation may change — even by the spring,’ I said.

  ‘And meanwhile?’

  ‘I offered you hospitality just now, and the offer still stands. However, it may seem to you, I have not forgotten our old bond.’

  I saw refusal in his face, but I pressed on. (Blackness of Ahrimon! I still cared what happened to him!) ‘Stay here — not in Daskylon but out in one of the villages, where no one will know you, and in the spring, it may be that there will be something we can do. Only keep quiet if it is in you — for your own sake and in fairness to me. You will not be without enemies, and I cannot risk falling foul of the Spartans or of the Great King for your sake.’

  ‘In other words, if I accept your hospitality and bide here, I must look out for myself and take my chance.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. It was better to have that clear between us. Alkibiades smiled, breaking off a piece of curd from the dish. ‘Nobody can say you haven’t warned me, friend of mine.’

  The Whore

  The Satrap gave to My Lord a house on the outskirts of Melissa, and the revenues of the little fortified town in the lower valley.

  It was a galleried timber hall with its stables and barns behind it, much like my grandfather’s hall when I had been a child. A terrace had been built on to it, shaded with old vines, and the spears of next spring’s irises showing through the deepening drifts of leaves. Almond trees grew about it, and there was a garden that was almost a paradise in the Persian style. I could have been happy there, if My Lord could have been happy; but from the first day he was fretting to be off up the Royal Road, like a hound on too short a chain. And the Arkadian was not much better.

  We had set out on a desperate venture, and they were wild to carry it through. But for me, my womanhood had returned upon me. Perhaps the Great Mother was kind, knowing how little time was left …

  I put away my man’s riding dress for a straight tunic, and bound my hair in a crimson and violet net, reddened my lips and painted malachite on my eyelids; and wanted nothing but to be My Lord’s woman, and feed him and be there for him, and lie quiet beside him in the autumn nights when he was satisfied with my body and fell asleep, with Arkadius lying as he did every night, on cushions across the doorway of the chamber; and hear the rain beating against the shutters or watch the white bars of the moonlight searching through, and know him safe within my arms. I felt as though I could hold him safe for ever, within my arms.

  But there can never be safety for his kind, because they do not want it. To be safe is to be penned, and at any moment they may break out, because of the fire within them. From the first he would not make any secret of who he was — or of where he was. A lion roaring defiance to the hunters to come and slay him. And one day they would come.

  One day a merchant in precious things came, and unfolded his bale cloths on the terrace, and brought out silver and amber and lapis and raw turquoise veined like an iris petal.

  My Lord called me to come and look, and choose. I chose a forehead ornament of turquoise, but he brushed my choice aside, and picked out a pair of bracelets, silver hung with great smoky golden teardrops of amber. ‘These for you,’ he said. ‘Honey-in-the-comb. You should always have the warm colours, Timandra,’ and himself opened the soft silver and sprang them on to my wrists.

  And then he asked the trader if there was any news from Athens. ‘Not that I’ve heard lately, Lord,’ the man said. ‘I’m heading back that way now, if I can get a ship before the year closes in. I’m not one for a winter crossing.’

  My Lord said, ‘So — then in lieu of bringing me news, will you take a letter from me to someone in the city?’

  ‘I couldn’t do it for nothing,’ said the trader. ‘I’m a busy man.’

  ‘Two golden darics,’ My Lord said. ‘Take it to the house of Socrates; anyone will tell you where it is if you do not already know. The slaves shall give you something to eat, while I write the letter.’

  ‘Socrates?’ the man seemed doubtful. ‘Well now, that makes a difference. Anyone that gets mixed up in his affairs is liable to end in trouble.’

  ‘They always were,’ My Lord said.

  ‘And I don’t like running into the risk of trouble blindfold. Who’s letter will I be carrying?’

  ‘Alkibiades.’

  The man’s mouth and eyes flew open. ‘Alkibiades! That could be dangerous. I’d say it was worth at least another daric.’

  ‘I think perhaps you’re right,’ My Lord said. ‘Three darics, then. But you will not ask for so much as an obol from Socrates.’

  ‘He wouldn’t have it; everybody knows that. No, three darics it is, My Lord.’ But he stared as though his eyes would never come back into his head.

  When he had eaten, and gone, bearing the letter with him, and the three of us had gathered to the evening meal, Arkadius said, ‘Sir, was it needful to write to Socrates just now?’

  ‘Yes,’ My Lord said. ‘It may very well be that this is the last chance that ever I shall have of writing. And a letter from me is somewhat overdue.’

  There was silence between him and Arkadius that I did not know the meaning of. I know nothing of this friend of My Lord’s called Socrates; but I thought it an ill thing that he should write to anyone in Athens now.

  Then Arkadius said, ‘That man will talk.’

  ‘I expect so. Being talked about is an old habit of mine.’

  ‘But now!’ Arkadius was suddenly exasperated. ‘In Typhon’s name, man — sir — do you want all Athens and probably all Sparta to know where you are?’

  Alkibiades sprang to his feet and strode up and down the room; then he turned on Arkadius, who had risen and was standing stubbornly four-square by the table. ‘Yes!’ he roared, ‘Yes and yes and yes! Do you dare to think that I will lair up here in hiding like some sick and outworn beast, swallowing my name and starting at shadows, for fear of a knife between my shoulders?’

  Arkadius looked very white, and a muscle flickered in his cheek. ‘There is no shame in the use of a little common caution.’

  ‘Caution is for little men,’ My Lord said. ‘I doubt if the Gods have much use for it.’ He sat down again, quiet now, and looked at Arkadius across the table, his chin in his cupped hands. ‘If you are afraid to stand too near me, lest I draw the lightning flash, take back your sword and go. No hard feelings, Arkadius.’

  Arkadius sat down also, stretching out his legs with a sigh as though he were very tired. And after a little, My Lord said, ‘Well, if you’re not leaving, let us begin supper.’

  The Citizen

  Early in Gammalial, the Thirty got Theramenes. He had stuck to the moderate course, and even dared to argue against some of the Thirty’s rulings; that was common knowledge, and I suppose his fellows could not be sure of him. They got him on a charge of evading military service, just as the people had got Cleontius, hustled him through a travesty of a trial, and executed him the same day. We had called him ‘The Buskin’ and had, truth to say, little respect for him. But we had, I think, forgiven him his meals of black broth in Sparta while we starved, and we knew that he had tried to hold his fellows of the Thirty back from some of their most foul injustices. He was the last shred of moderation left in the government; and on the day that began with the rumour of his arrest and ended with the news that he had drunk the hemlock, we felt dazed. This was the first time the Thirty had turned on one of themselves — a new sickening dread woke in us for what might be waiting in the coming days.

  In those dark winter days, people began still more helplessly to regret the second time that we had driven Alkibiades into the wilderness. We began to whisper to each other. ‘He never lost a battle for us when he was in command. He won us back our Empire, and where is it now?’ And when we heard the mailed step of the Spartan Watch go by, or heard of someone we knew having been sent for to the Painted Porch, from which those who walked in by daylight were carried out feet first in the dark, ‘If only those fools had listen
ed to him at Goats’ Creek, all this would never have come about.’

  We had never needed him more than we needed him now; and we did not even know where he was.

  And then suddenly there was word in the city that Alkibiades was in Phrygia with Pharnobazus — or as some said, biding his time in some hill village of those parts. Men were even putting a name to the village — Melissa.

  And a little breath of something that was almost hope ran through the city. The mere fact that we knew where he was seemed to bring him nearer. I for one felt that because he was alive, and I knew where he was, everything was not lost. He might yet come back to us and drive out our Spartan overlords and the Oligarchs who were their jackals. All Athens felt it, like a wind stirring in long grass — and not only the Democrats, not only the poor and many-mouthed and unwashed, whose darling he had generally been; the Oligarchs must have felt it too. But what to us was a faint and forlorn ‘whisper of hope, to them was the stirring of the dust before the feet of the Furies. They must have seen uncomfortable visions in the night, of Alkibiades returning to set himself at the head of the Athenian people.

  The Queen

  Agis the King came back from Attica last year. He watches me still like a hound with a bone that he does not want, but will let no other hound come near. He watches the child, too. Every time I see his little red eyes on the boy, I read in them that he is thinking of the man who fathered him; and then he lifts his eyes and looks at me. He hates me; but not much more, I think, then I hate him.

  And now they will take the child from me because he is seven years old, and set him in the Boys’ House to train him into a soldier of Sparta; and I shall have nothing left. It is more than seven years since I was with a man; and my breasts ache with emptiness and my flanks grow lean, though my hair is still bright when I bind it up under the Queen’s diadem. I am empty. Great Mother, your pity upon women! Spring will not come again, nor the golden flash of the oriole into the shadows of the olive trees …

  Sparta has conquered Athens and hammered her to her knees. But what is Athens to me?

  Yesterday Agis came to my chamber in the women’s court. His eyes were not even cruel, only curious. He said, ‘I have news that may interest you. Alkibiades is in Phrygia, sheltering from his own people under the Satrap’s cloak.’

  ‘I do not see him sheltering under any man’s cloak,’ I said. ‘But what is it to me if he labours in the deepest and reddest pit of Tartarus?’

  ‘You know the answer to that, not I,’ he said. ‘This news we have received in a letter from Athens, from Kritias, one of the most extreme leaders of our Thirty — a thoroughly reliable man.’ He sat down on the stool beside my loom, his hands on his spread knees. ‘He does not feel that our regime in Athens can ever be completely secure while the people know that this traitor still lives.’

  ‘How can he threaten it, from Phrygia?’ I asked. I could not speak his name.

  ‘Quite simply. He could come back from Phrygia, and the mob would follow him. And even if he does not, it seems that the hope of him is still in men’s hearts.’

  ‘And you cannot bring all together under the yoke, a people who still have something — someone — to hope for.’

  ‘You should have been a man; you have a good understanding of the situation,’ he said. ‘Therefore, since Sparta’s interests and the Oligarch’s are one in this, the matter has been brought before the Council of Ephors — I am come from them now — and the decision has been reached that this false hope must be destroyed.’

  I felt a great stillness come over me; and out of it my own voice sounded, much as usual. ‘So you will have him killed.’

  ‘The order goes tomorrow, to Lysander to attend to the matter.’

  ‘How you must have enjoyed signing it,’ I said.

  ‘I have seldom enjoyed anything more.’ My Lord looked up at me out of his little angry eyes, and gently rubbed his knees, round and round.

  ‘Are you not afraid that now you have told me this, I shall find means to get a warning to him, so that he may escape you again?’

  He shook his head. ‘The first time the order for his death went out, and he escaped us, there was a time when I thought it might be you who warned him. I wonder if you have any idea, My Queen, how near you were to death at that time? But later, you will remember, we found that the crime lay at Endius’ door. Exit Endius. If you hated him too well to seek to warn him then, I do not think you will have come to hate him less in the years since.’

  ‘Why have you taken such pains to come and tell me all this?’

  ‘Idle curiosity,’ he said. ‘Mere idle curiosity, My Queen — the wish to probe a little and see if there was any quick left to flinch.’

  I said, ‘I hate him almost as much as I hate you, Agis, My Lord. Are you well answered?’

  ‘Well enough,’ he said. ‘You bitch on heat.’

  And he got up and tramped off, with that rigid soldier’s walk of his.

  So they will kill him. A dagger in the dark, maybe; an arrow flying by day. I wish I could be there to see it done; to see the blade strike home and the light go out of those hateful, mocking, cruel bright eyes.

  To run to shield him with my own body, and die too …

  The Satrap

  Lysander sent me word to meet him in secret at Mitylene; and I went down under guise of inspecting a ship-building project. When Lysander summons, one does not delay — not, at least, so long as he and the Prince Cyrus remain lovers.

  I suppose he thought if he merely sent me the orders he had received from Athens, I might not push myself too hard in carrying them out. And I think he’s right in that.

  He came to my own house in the city, by night, and by way of a side door left open. I gave him wine, and he drank, and came quickly to the point, in the Spartan way. ‘We know that Alkibiades is in Phrygia.’

  ‘I think most of the world knows it by this time,’ I said.

  ‘Most of it. He blazes like a signal fire.’ And then after a silence, he said matter-of-factly, ‘It is time the fire was put out.’

  ‘So?’ I said. ‘And what is that to me?’

  ‘It is this to you — that I bring you the orders of the Spartan Ephorate to handle the — putting out.’

  ‘If Sparta wants him killed, let Sparta hunt him down and do the killing.’

  ‘Sparta has other things to do.’

  I said, ‘The man has eaten my bread and salt, and slept beneath my roof. Why should I betray guest-right?’

  Lysander looked me straight and cold in the eye. ‘Because he has eaten your bread and salt and slept beneath your roof. Sparta considers that the harbouring of her enemies is a hostile act.’

  The city seemed to have fallen very quiet. My fingers itched for the little dagger in my waist cloth; but I was afraid. Mithras knows it — I was afraid; and I hated his square bland face until my guts crawled with it.

  I said, ‘And Athens?’

  ‘The Thirty will sit more securely in their places, when men cease to look to Phrygia for a saviour,’ he said. ‘But we are chiefly concerned with Sparta, you and I; and with Persia, and we both know how dear to the Prince Cyrus is the Spartan alliance. There are those who believe that in a year or so Cyrus and not Artaxerxes, the golden brother and not the black one, will be the Great King.’ He did not speak it as a threat, but there was iron in his voice that made a threat of all he said.

  We stood looking at each other across the brazier — the nights were still cold — and neither of us lowered our gaze before the other; but nevertheless, I was beaten, and we both knew it. May Ahrimon the Black One eat his soul!

  At last he said quite pleasantly (he is the only Spartan I have ever met who can behave, when he chooses, like a gentleman), ‘Well, there’s no need to talk further on this rather distasteful subject. We understand each other, I see. I leave all the details to you, my dear fellow. And rest assured that when the thing is finished, I will take every step to see that Prince Cyrus knows the service that
you have done him.’

  And he took his leave most courteously, and went out into the early spring night. And he’ll never know how near he came to taking my dagger under his ribs as he went through the door.

  I took ship for Propontis again next day, then rode for Daskylon, my soft-bred officials grumbling at the speed I set, all the way. And all the way, drumming back to Daskylon with the dust-cloud rising white behind me, I thought the same thoughts over and over again, holding to them fast so they could not get away; that if the matter lay with my own Prince, he would give me the same order as Lysander and the Spartan government. That the man was a danger to Persia’s ally, and a danger to an ally must also be an enemy to us. And in between, I thought, ‘I warned him! I gave him fair warning! But I never warned him it was myself he must be on his guard against!’

  When I got back to Daskylon I did not even wait to change out of my dusty riding dress. What I had to do must be done at once. I went straight through my private apartments to the garden court. The early irises and flame-pointed tulips were coming into flower; and I picked one of them and began pulling it to pieces while I sent for my young brother Megaeus, and for Sousamitras, our uncle; both of them court officials. I have not known either of them very well of late years; it is never wise, in court and official circles, to let one’s own kin be too near. But I had done my best in getting them rich posts, my uncle as one of the chamberlains, and my brother as an officer of the guard, and I felt that it must be my own kin that I call on now.

  They were a long time coming, or they seemed so. And by the time they came, the ground about me was feathered yellow and crimson with torn tulip petals.

  Megaeus eyed them, even while he made me the formal salute, and cocked an eyebrow.

  I said, ‘You have been slow in answering my summons.’

  ‘I came as soon as it reached me, leaving my supper half eaten on the table,’ my uncle said. ‘And met Megaeus hurrying most dutifully on the way.’