Tyrant

by Valerio Massimo Manfredi

  Dionysius had nearly fought his way out of the square when he turned back to see what was happening and a sword’s blade sank into his right shoulder. He dropped the weapon he was carrying with a howl of pain and found the strength to fell the man who had wounded him with a great swing of his shield. Iolaus seized him before he could fall and dragged him off, leaving a stream of blood in their wake.

  They stopped, panting, under the shadow of an archivolt which opened between two narrow side streets. From there they could hear the screams echoing between the city walls like the bellowing of cattle being slaughtered.

  Iolaus propped him up and grabbed him under an arm, urging him to walk. ‘They’ll be out here searching for survivors in no time! We have to get away while we can.’

  Dionysius leaned against a wall and was suddenly overcome by a terrible thought. ‘Oh gods, Arete!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I have to reach my wife. She’s at home alone and they all know by now that I’ve taken part in this assault. This ambush was the work of a traitor.’

  ‘You need a doctor, now, or you’ll never make it.’

  ‘No, my wife first. Help me, please.’

  ‘All right,’ panted Iolaus. ‘But I have to take care of this wound or you’ll bleed to death.’ He ripped a strip of fabric off his cloak, wrapped it tightly over the gash and secured it with one of the straps from his shield. Then they set off.

  People had begun pouring into the city streets, running every which way, with absolutely no idea of what was happening. Government heralds appeared at the street corners, publicly proclaiming Hermocrates’s and Dionysius’s attempted coup a failure, and promising generous rewards for anyone who captured the survivors or reported their whereabouts.

  ‘I told you,’ hissed Iolaus.

  ‘I know, I know, but you have to help me . . . I’m afraid . . .’

  Iolaus looked over at him: his face was ashen, and he was icy cold. He groaned with every step he took and was sweating copiously. Iolaus made him stop again and again so he could catch his breath. At the bottom of the little hill that led up to his house, Dionysius stopped, leaning heavily against the shrine to Hecate that always stood at the meeting of three roads. When he pushed off, he left a wide swathe of blood on the wall.

  They had to stop again, to avoid a group of Syracusan soldiers on patrol, searching for fugitives. Any who were found were immediately executed. Bands of ruffians were already roaming the city, hunting out the houses of the conspirators to plunder and devastate them.

  The house with the trellis was close now and Dionysius was seized by unbearable anguish. Iolaus propped him against the enclosure wall. ‘You wait here,’ he said, ‘I’ll go ahead; there may be someone waiting inside to kill you.’ He approached the gate of the garden at the back of the house, entered from the rear door and made his way towards the atrium, checking all around. As soon as his eyes had become accustomed to the dim light, his face twisted into a grimace of horror. He wheeled around to rush back outside, but he found Dionysius close behind him, pale as death, unsteady on his feet. ‘There’s no one left inside,’ said Iolaus, trying to appear normal. ‘Let’s go now, we have to find you a doctor. You can’t even stand up.’ But his eyes were still full of the horror he had seen.

  Dionysius understood and pushed aside his arm. ‘Let me through.’

  ‘Please . . .’ begged his friend, no longer able to hold back his tears. ‘Please, Dionysius, don’t go in there.’

  But Dionysius had pushed past the threshold, and was already in the house. Iolaus soon heard his voice, rent by horror, howling meaningless words. He could hear his sobs echoing from the bloodied, befouled walls. Iolaus came close but did not dare touch him or say a word. Dionysius was on his knees in front of the naked body of his wife and was weeping disconsolately.

  Arete was nearly unrecognizable; she had been raped to death. She lay in a repugnant pool of semen, blood and spit. Her face was swollen, her lips cracked, her body full of cuts and bruises. They had even cut her hair off, like a prostitute’s.

  Dionysius took her into his arms and held her close, swaying back and forth as if to rock her gently to sleep. He abandoned himself to a mournful, heartbroken keening, like the whimpering of a wounded animal.

  ‘Let’s leave,’ pleaded Iolaus. ‘They’ll be back looking for you, you can be sure of it. You have to save yourself, Dionysius. You have to save yourself to avenge this horror.’

  Dionysius started at the sound of his friend’s voice. ‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘She will be revenged. I will find them, one by one. I will hunt them down and kill them all. But I can’t leave her here . . . I can’t let her body suffer any more insults . . .’

  ‘She suffers no longer, Dionysius, and if she could she would tell you to save yourself.’

  He brushed her forehead with his fingertips. ‘Help me to bring her downstairs, I beg of you. There’s a hiding place in the cellar. I’ll wait there with her and I’ll keep her company – she always was afraid of the dark.’

  Iolaus helped him, bearing almost all of the weight of the girl’s lifeless body, because Dionysius looked as if he would pass out at any moment. They lifted a trapdoor, went down a few steps and found themselves underground.

  Dionysius pointed at a passageway that led to a room dug into the tufa, hidden behind shelves which held wine amphoras. ‘Now,’ he said, ‘go up to the attic. You’ll find a chest with clean clothes. Take off your armour and change; wash your face. You’ll manage to get by unobserved. Go to Philistus: he lives in Ortygia, in the house with the portico behind the Arethusa spring. Tell him I’m waiting for him here.’

  Iolaus nodded. ‘I know where his house is. Promise me you won’t move or do anything rash. Keep as still as you can. I’m going to get you some water – you must be burning up with thirst.’

  Dionysius said nothing. He was crouched near the wall, cradling Arete’s body close as if he could warm her. Iolaus brought him water, changed and left.

  He returned a couple of hours later, just fifty steps in front of Philistus and the doctor, so as not to attract attention. They found Dionysius unconscious, still embracing Arete. Philistus could not hold back his tears and stood there stock-still, in silence, overcome by emotion. The doctor came in, and they moved Dionysius to the bedroom and stretched him out on the bed. He was still breathing but his heartbeat was very weak; his body was cold and his lips livid. They stripped off his clothing and uncovered the gash that the sword had opened between his shoulder and pectoral muscle.

  ‘It’s a miracle it didn’t shear through the tendons of his arm, or the big vein right here,’ said the doctor, pointing his surgical instrument at a point under his collar bone. ‘Hold him still.’

  Philistus and Iolaus immobilized his arms while the doctor washed out the wound with wine and vinegar. He then heated the iron until it was red hot, on the fire he’d built using the flame from his lantern. He cauterized the inner part of the wound which was still bleeding and started to stitch up the cut. Dionysius was so exhausted that he didn’t move a whit. He only let out a long groan when the doctor scorched his flesh.

  ‘He must rest now. I’ve done everything I can; the rest is in the hands of the gods. I only hope the wound does not become gangrenous.’

  Philistus took him aside. ‘You must speak with no one of what you’ve done here. If you keep quiet, you won’t regret it; we’ll find a way to recompense you well.’

  The doctor nodded and reached out to take the money Philistus was holding out for him: five silver coins with the image of Arethusa circled by dolphins.

  ‘What shall we do with the girl’s body?’ whispered Iolaus.

  Philistus sighed. ‘For the time being we’ll bury her here underground, until it becomes possible to celebrate funeral rites for her and bury her in a tomb worthy of her rank and of Dionysius’s love for her.’

  They laid her in a grave dug in the tufa and Philistus tried to keep back his tears as he murmured: ‘Welcome h
er, O Demeter and Persephone, into the Asphodel fields, let her drink the waters of Lethe so that she may forget the horrors of this ferocious world and may find peace, awaiting the day in which she will be rejoined with the only man she loved in her life.’

  They went back up to Dionysius’s room and waited until it became dark. Philistus had already organized everything. One of his servants drove up on a hay-laden cart pulled by a couple of mules; he entered from the garden, shielded by the enclosure wall. They laid Dionysius on the cart, covering him with a sheet and then with the hay.

  The cart headed towards the western gate, guarded at that moment by two members of the Company, ready to kill the other two sentries who were on duty with them if they should become too diligent in checking the people and goods seeking passage.

  It was not necessary. The cart was allowed to pass the gate untouched, and the driver directed it to the shores of the Anapus, where a boat was waiting for them. It travelled up-current, amidst dense cane thickets.

  Late that night, in a city fallen silent after a day of bloodshed and wailing, a song was heard rising up near the house with the trellis, a hymn to love; an ancient wedding melody, sweet and heart-rending in that desolate and profaned place; the last homage of a fugitive near death, a serenade for his lost love.

  None of those who participated in the unhappy endeavour were spared. All of the prisoners who belonged to the hated caste of the landowners and who had been exiled from Syracuse were executed. Those who had followed Hermocrates in the hopes of seeing the cities of Selinus and Himera liberated and rebuilt were not put to death immediately, but condemned to long years of prison.

  Dionysius was sentenced to death in his absence, since no trace of him had ever been found. Philistus artfully spread the word that he had died of his wounds and that his body had been secretly cremated at night by his friends along the marshy shores of the Cyanes.

  A new popular leader rose up in the Assembly: his name was Daphnaeus and he boasted of killing more than twenty enemies during the terrible morning of the battle in the agora. He proclaimed that their victory had forever sanctioned the triumph of democracy and that no one would ever again dare aspire to tyranny in the future.

  Daphnaeus’s boasting encouraged others to brag in the port taverns of how they had got their thrills between the thighs of that little whore, the daughter of the traitor Hermocrates. No one would have ever been so bold as to say such a thing about a woman who still had a husband or father or brother, but Arete’s memory was undefended and so anyone could get away with saying anything about her. But Philistus had eyes and ears everywhere, and plenty of money to spend: he was a wealthy man, and the Company had put their treasury in his hands as well. On the basis of the information he was getting, he diligently made a list of first and last names, addresses, professions, friends and associates, along with anything else he was able to gather.

  Despite the losses it had suffered, the Company was in fact still strong and numerous, and when the news came out in great secret that Dionysius was alive and hiding in an inaccessible spot in the mountains, many offered to put themselves at his service.

  At the same time, Philistus sent a trusted messenger named Demetrius to Asia to inform Dionysius’s younger brother Leptines, who lived in Ephesus, about what had happened.

  A slave opened the door to his house, saying that his master was not in.

  ‘Well, where is he?’ demanded the envoy.

  ‘I don’t know; when he goes out at night, he never says where he’s going.’

  Demetrius sighed. ‘I suppose that means I’ll wait for him here until he gets back. It’s a matter of the greatest urgency! You may as well bring me something to eat in the meantime, seeing as I haven’t had supper.’

  The slave was reluctant to let the stranger in, but he didn’t have the courage to keep him out either. So he served him a plate of olives and a chunk of bread.

  Demetrius began to eat, accompanying the food with a few sips of wine from his own flask. ‘Does he usually get back late?’ he asked.

  ‘Usually not before morning,’ admitted the slave.

  But Leptines arrived shortly thereafter, panting, and bolted the door behind him. ‘Who are you, friend?’ he asked, without showing any surprise.

  ‘My name is Demetrius and Philistus has sent me to tell you that . . .’

  But as he was speaking, Leptines had already opened a chest and was stuffing some clothes into a sack. ‘You’ll tell me about it on our way out of here. This city has become impossible! Have you got a boat?’

  ‘Yes, the one that brought me here . . .’

  ‘Good. Let’s get moving then. Husbands around here can get very touchy when they find you in bed with their wives. Even violent sometimes!’

  They rushed out as the slave was shouting: ‘Master, what am I to do?’

  ‘Nothing!’ shouted back Leptines. ‘If anyone shows up, tell them I’ve gone. Keep anything you want from the house, and may the gods assist you!’

  They had just rounded the street corner when a group of men armed with clubs reached the building and burst inside.

  The two fugitives ran at breakneck speed down the dark streets of the city until they reached Demetrius’s boat, secured to the wharf with a couple of ropes.

  ‘The gangplank!’ ordered Demetrius, who had taken stock of the urgency of the situation.

  The sailor on guard recognized him and lowered the gangplank to the ground so that they were able to scramble on board to safety.

  Leptines drew a long breath, sat on a bench and, as if nothing had happened, turned to Demetrius. ‘Well then? How are things going in Syracuse?’

  Demetrius turned to him with a serious expression. ‘Badly,’ he replied. ‘It couldn’t be worse. Your brother needs your help.’

  Leptines frowned. ‘We won’t be able to set sail for a couple of hours. Tell me everything.’

  Demetrius’s boat dropped anchor at the Laccius harbour ten days later, and Leptines hurried to Philistus’s house.

  ‘Where is Dionysius?’ he asked even before he had entered.

  Philistus gestured for him to lower his voice and accompanied him into his study. ‘He’s safe.’

  ‘I asked you where he is,’ insisted Leptines with a peremptory tone.

  ‘I can’t tell you,’ replied Philistus. ‘It’s too dangerous. How long do you think your arrival in the city will remain a secret? If you wanted to find out where he was, who would you keep your eye on, knowing that his wife is dead?’

  Leptines understood what Philistus was trying to tell him and gave up.

  The night after the battle at the agora, Dionysius was handed over to friends from the Company who transported him by boat along the Anapus river for as long as possible, rowing against the current at first and then hitching it up to an ass, which ploddingly towed the boat along the shore. When the terrain along the river bed became too rough, his friends bought another ass from a farmer, fashioned a litter and laid the wounded man upon it, securing the frame to the two animals, one in front and the other behind. They continued slowly, avoiding violent jolts, all the way to the source of the river.

  The place was enchanting: a spring of crystalline water in the middle of a meadow full of multihued oleander blossoms and intensely scented broom. It was surrounded by towering rock walls perforated by a great number of niches dug by the most ancient inhabitants of those lands to bury their dead close to the sky.

  Someone had been told to expect their arrival. A rough-hewn frame was lowered to the ground with a creaky pulley by the light of the moon. His friends laid Dionysius gently upon it and tied him on to it with leather straps, then shouted up to have him hoisted. They watched as the fragile bed of intertwining sticks swayed in the void over their heads. It reached a dizzying height and was pulled into a recess in the rock, as dark and gloomy as the eye socket in a skull.

  The men had managed to bring the task assigned them to completion with skill and shrewdness, and they headed b
ack now to report to Philistus on the outcome. Dionysius was in good hands, in a shelter as hard to reach as an eagle’s nest, in the middle of the mountains. The man whose care he had been entrusted to was a native Sicel from the interior, a medicine man venerated and respected by his people. Philistus trusted him more than he did the doctors of Syracuse; although they were expert surgeons, accustomed as they were to cleaning, cauterizing and stitching up the wounds of the warriors returning from the battlefield, they were not as good at curing the insidious infections that could burgeon from a wound.

  Dionysius lay between life and death in that isolated place for days and days, often sunk in a deep slumber provoked by his severe loss of blood, helped along by the sleeping potions that the old Sicel mixed up for him with wild honey. When he finally regained consciousness, the first sensations that struck him were a circle of light crossed by clouds and by birds in flight, the twittering of skylarks, the fragrance of broom and the song of a woman that seemed to come from inside the solid rock that surrounded him.

  Then she appeared to him: her skin was golden from the sun, her eyes and hair were pitch-black and she had the curious, fleeting glance of a wild creature.

  9

  THE STRANGE APPARITION vanished instantly. Perhaps she had been a figment of a dream. Or perhaps one of the many likenesses that Arete took on to visit him when his soul was stabbed by the thought of her.

  He fell back with a groan on to his bed and probed his wound with his left hand. The scar was still sore to the touch, but almost dry. He touched his face as well and realized that his beard had grown long and thick. He was so weak that any movement made him break out in a sweat and strained the beating of his heart. He found a bowl of water and drank it down in big gulps, then dragged himself to the opening of his strange refuge and looked outside.