Salamis

by Christian Cameron

  And when I tried to be insistent in my advances, she put a hand on my chest and pushed hard.

  ‘Marry me,’ she said. ‘Until then, no.’ She laughed at me, in the darkness. ‘Listen, Achilles. My head looks like the Gorgon and my courses are on me, and I have never desired a man more, or less, at the same time. Wait and be a groom so that I may, once more, be a bride. I swear, who has been Aphrodite’s tool, that I will never know another man. Indeed, long and long have I awaited this day.’

  I knelt. ‘Lady, I have a wedding prepared in far Hermione.’

  She laughed. ‘What barbarous place is that? Is it near Plataea?’

  ‘Oh, my love, Plataea is destroyed by the Great King. Hermione is a town in the Peloponnese that has taken in the survivors.’ I could hear my crew, drinking wine on the beach. I didn’t like the sound of the wind. The time of storms was upon us – it was late for anyone to sail the ocean.

  ‘And you? Are you now destitute?’ she asked.

  I sat on a rock and dragged her down beside me. ‘Perhaps,’ I said. ‘I won’t really know for weeks and perhaps longer. Until I see how many of my ships survived the autumn.’

  She nodded. The moon was high and I could see the signs of age on her face.

  Not that I cared.

  ‘I was a fool,’ she said. ‘I was a fool to aim at worldly power when I might have spent my youth with you.’ She looked me in the eye and shrugged. ‘But we are what we are. I never wanted home and hearth. I wanted to sail the earth and sea as my brother did.’ She shrugged.

  ‘Where are your sons?’ I asked her.

  She leaned closer to me. A chill wind blew across the sand. ‘They went as horsemen with the army, thanks to Artaphernes. My husband, not the viper his son.’

  I nodded. I had a hard time imagining that – if they were indeed of my blood – they loved horses.

  ‘I was a fool,’ I said. ‘To want the life of the spear and ship when I could have been a bronze-smith in a shop, and been happy. But only with you.’

  We sat in silence.

  ‘We are not so old,’ Briseis said. ‘I almost feel I might be beautiful, in the right lighting.’

  I laughed. ‘Lady of my heart, truly, I never fought better than I fought today. So I am young in the midst of being old, and I invite you to join me. Tomorrow, the aches and pains—’

  ‘Hands off, improvident suitor!’ she said, quoting Homer. She leapt up. ‘My mother warned me about boys like you,’ she said. ‘Don’t follow me.’

  And she walked off into the darkness.

  And I drank wine with my people and Archilogos, who I found drinking with Seckla, of all people.

  Early the next morning, Harpagos’s funeral pyre lit the dawn and we shared wine and poured more on the fire. And as if the fire was a beacon, Artemisia’s ships joined us on the beach of Chios one by one – the Red King, and her own swift ship. Archilogos we already had by us.

  We met them on the beach. I was crowned with laurel from the funeral, clad only in a himation, without arms, and Brasidas the same. But the rest of our marines – thirty of them, at least – were full armed.

  Artemisia was not in armour either. She was dressed like a slightly outlandish matron, in purple and saffron peplos and chlamys, and her clothing was beautifully embroidered, with her magnificent red hair as an ornament, so that one could easily see she was a queen. And she, despite being tall, floated over the sand and didn’t seem to stumble or wallow as many of the rest of us did.

  Briseis was by me. She was, of course, a priestess of Aphrodite, and Harpagos, like many men of Chios, was a devotee and an initiate, so that Briseis had said the rites and sung the hymns. She was very plainly dressed in a dark chiton, long and slim as a dark flame, with a single stripe of brightest white.

  We all came together from our opposite ends of the beach.

  I had an olive branch, as did the Red King, for all that he was in full armour and had a sword on.

  ‘I have your son,’ I said.

  ‘And I yours,’ Artemisia said.

  But she was looking at Briseis.

  It struck me – in a moment of wonder – that they must know each other, as they were of an age, from the same social class, and from cities not so very far apart.

  Briseis laughed. ‘Artemisia!’ she cried. ‘You!’

  She turned to me. ‘We were at Sappho’s school together as girls,’ she said.

  And the other woman shook her head. ‘The circle of the world seems vast,’ she said. ‘And yet, the compass sometimes seems very small.’

  I had her son and his military tutor brought down the beach. ‘I release your son and his ship as well,’ I said. ‘And I have done better than my part of the bargain. I include two sons of Xerxes I found on the beach at Ephesus.’

  To be fair, Seckla took them prisoner while Brasidas and I were racing up the hill.

  The Queen of Halicarnassus laughed like a man and kissed both my cheeks.

  ‘You are the most honest Greek I have ever met,’ she said.

  ‘Foolish, more like,’ the Red King said. He had my son Hipponax by the elbow and he gave him a gentle shove. ‘I hope, Plataean, when next we meet, that we do not have all these women and children between us.’

  I looked at him. His old-fashioned Corinthian helmet gave me little of his face. ‘Are we enemies?’ I asked. ‘Do you owe me some vengeance?’

  He laughed. ‘No,’ he said. ‘But men say you are the best warrior of the Greeks. You are too old to hold that title. I will strip it from your dead hand.’ He bowed. ‘Do not think I do not honour you, Arimnestos of Plataea. But I will be the best spear in the world.’

  He nodded, helmet still firmly on his head, turned, and stalked away with a dozen scarlet marines at his back.

  As we prepared to leave the beach at Chios, a fishing smack brought us word that Artaphernes, son of Artaphernes, had come into Ephesus with a regiment of Lydian cavalry and found us gone. The fisherman told us that Artaphernes rode his horse into the sea, looking towards Chios, and cursed my name.

  It’s good for men to know who you are. Powerful enemies show that you haven’t wasted your life, don’t they?

  The next evening found us on the beach at Tenos. Now, you may recall that the ships of Tenos came over to us just before the fight at Salamis and the island had declared for the League of Corinth. So we found Megakles safe and happy enough, with a mountain of food ready to serve out to my oarsmen.

  We half-emptied the hull and ate ourselves to repletion, and then weathered a nasty day of squall after squall to pass up the west coast of Andros where we could see much of the League fleet on the beach.

  I had no temptation to land and place myself at Themistocles’ service. Listen – he may have been the greatest of the Greeks, or a traitor. But I could not trust him, and it was clear to me that, having beaten the Great King, he would now go from hubris to hubris.

  I wanted no part in the loot of Andros. The island was poor sand anyway. But Moire and Harpagos’s nephew Ion felt differently, and I saluted them and sent them on their way to join the League fleet. Naiad surprised us by declaring that they would winter with the Greek fleet, if we could feed them, and we could.

  And Briseis had moved to her brother’s ship. To say I burned for her is not to do justice.

  My dreams were dark, though I had Briseis, and Archilogos warmed to me, day by day. Leukas was alive, and far from dead.

  I should have been with the gods – the victory, the pursuit, the accomplishment of the dream of a lifetime.

  Instead, for the whole of the voyage home, I was haunted by the dreams of the past, the deaths of those I’d loved and hated. I think I feared more on the voyage home than the voyage out. A day of dark skies and low squalls all but unmanned me, so sure was I that the gods would now take from me what they had briefly granted.

&nbs
p; That is, all too often, the way of the gods. Is it not?

  Megalos, again. The last time that autumn, and my squadron limped in after a long day skirmishing with Poseidon’s winds. No man sang or drank wine on the beach that day – we fell into dreamless sleep, too tired to do more than pour libations and fall on straw. And in the morning, sore from days of rowing, we pointed our bows straight into a strong wind – and pulled.

  But towards the hour when a man goes to the agora to see his friends, the winds relented of their torments and we got a light breeze from the north – cold as a woman’s refusal, but gentle enough that we chose to raise sail and run slantwise, south by west, across it. And gentle as that wind was, it lasted the day and saw us to Aegina – and the next dawn it waited for us, and wafted us, without another thought of ugly death, across the Aegean Sea to Hermione.

  And there, in that lovely town which rises over a promontory with beaches facing two ways, like a proper port, I saw Athena Nike beached, high above the water. And somehow, seeing Aristides’ ship there, I knew that now I could cease to worry, at least for a little while.

  We were a tired crew of Argonauts when, ship-by-ship, we landed on that beach. It seemed a third of the fleet was there: Cimon’s Ajax and a dozen others I knew, and even Xanthippus’s Horse Tamer. But we landed, and from pride I landed last, allowing each of my captains to pick his place and run his stern up the beach. It was smartly done and quite a crowd gathered. They cheered, by the gods – cheer on cheer carrying out over the water, especially when they saw Archilogos’s ship, which of course they assumed was a capture.

  And there was Aristides – and there Jocasta. There Penelope. There was Hermogenes, smiling as if he’d just won the laurel in a contest, and Styges and Teucer and a dozen other Plataeans. There was Hector, and, further along the beach, Cleitus, with his wife and daughter, and my own steward, Eugenios, and my ­daughter Euphonia.

  Many times in my life, coming home has had its own perils. Or I have brought the perils home with me.

  But in Hermione, which was temporarily Plataea too, and Athens as well, I landed to the cheers of my kin and friends. I leaped over the stern to the beach, and Simonides my cousin embraced Achilles his brother – and then embraced me.

  I pulled away to lift my arms. Above me, Briseis looked over my head at a thousand people or more.

  She smiled and looked down at me. And jumped into my arms with the trust of many years, and I put her on the sand without, I hope, a grunt.

  By my shoulder, Jocasta said, ‘And this is Briseis, I make little doubt.’

  I had long wondered how she might greet the woman of my dreams, who was so much her opposite – so much more like Gorgo of Sparta.

  She folded her in an embrace. ‘Are you marrying him?’ she asked.

  Briseis’s eyes were too bright for a mortal woman, and her look at me held too much meaning for words. ‘I cannot resist him,’ she said.

  Jocasta took her hand. ‘Then we have a great deal to do,’ she said.

  And my daughter came. She looked at Briseis – and took her hand and kissed it.

  And my Briseis, hard as steel, burst into tears.

  A few paces away Hipponax leapt from the stern of Moire’s ship. He reached for Heliodora, but she swayed like a reed and ran.

  Despite his armour, he gave chase.

  They were both laughing.

  Hector’s Iris stood at the back of the crowd shyly. I think she wondered if he really wanted her – if, indeed, he meant the promise he’d made. I can read men, and sometimes women, and I saw her there, and the look in her eyes.

  But Hector was a much greater man than his father Anarchos, and he stood on the stern of his ship, his armour burning in the sun, until he saw her. And then he leaped into the shallows and ran at her as if he was charging a line of Median spearmen.

  And then she laughed from joy, and we were home.

  Leukas was the last man off the ship. He didn’t leap, and a dozen of us competed to help him onto the sand.

  He knelt and kissed the beach. ‘I never expected to reach here alive,’ he admitted.

  Brasidas nodded. ‘Me neither,’ he said. ‘This is not the ending I had imagined for any of us.’

  Styges had to hear of Idomeneus’s end – and had to weep. Many other wives came down to that beach, hoping against hope, and were disappointed. No homecoming of warriors is unmarred by this reality, but our losses might have been so much the worse – I had to content myself with that. Because amidst my happiness I was aware that I had achieved fame, victory, and the woman I loved by the shields and spears of my friends, and I had left many of them face down in the sands of time. They did not haunt me every day, but they certainly had, the last week before landing. Briseis may have brought her own dowry of silver and gold, but her bride price was paid in spears, bronze, iron and blood.

  And Brasidas. I think that night he was very close to the edge.

  We had a house – Eugenios had it prepared, and it was small, but so was Hermione. It had a bridal chamber, and I slept on a mat on the floor so as not to ruin the beauty of the place before the big day. But it had a beautiful garden, and that night – a few days before my wedding – I sat with Brasidas, a cup of wine, and the stars of autumn. I confess, men are difficult beasts. I wanted to be celebrating victory with Aristides, and bathing in Jocasta’s good cheer, and dandling my daughter on my knee – and watching Briseis.

  But I was drinking in the darkness with Brasidas, because he was my friend, and he was in pain.

  ‘I thought I’d be dead,’ he said suddenly. It was such an uncharacteristic thing for him to say.

  I shook my head.

  ‘Xerxes is beaten and I am alive,’ Brasidas said. He drank again, and I realised that, for the first time since I had known him, he was drunk.

  I sat back – we were sitting, not reclining. The house had but one kline, and that had a special purpose.

  ‘Xerxes is not beaten,’ I said. ‘If I understand Aristides, Mardonius has withdrawn to Thessaly, but he’ll be back.’

  ‘Xerxes has run away,’ Brasidas said thickly. ‘Leonidas is dead. Demaratus will never return.’ His dark eyes were like spears in the starlight. ‘I will never be avenged.’

  I didn’t know what he was avenging, and it didn’t seem the time to ask.

  ‘Revenge is for fools,’ I said. ‘Take a wife and be happy.’

  Brasidas laughed. It was not hollow, or bitter, but real mirth. ‘Arimnestos,’ he said. ‘Of all men, can you see me with a farm and wife?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said with perfect honesty. ‘We are Greeks, not Medes. We have more music than the song of the spear and the hymn of woeful Ares. There is another loom beside the beat of spear on spear, or oar on oar.’

  Brasidas’s head snapped round. ‘You know,’ he said after a sip of wine, ‘only you could say that. Killer of Men. Spear of the West. You have the world fame, and yet you are a bronze-smith and a farmer.’

  I raised my cup and poured a libation to my own dead – those I’d slain, and those who’d followed me and died.

  ‘Listen, Brasidas,’ I said. ‘Every oarsman at Salamis carried a spear. No man is the “Spear of the West”, and every man, every thetes with his cushion, is a Killer of Men. This is not Sparta. And in time – I’m sorry – but Sparta’s dream of war will have to change.’

  Brasidas stared long into the darkness. So much darkness. I knew it was there.

  Then he raised his head. ‘Perhaps I must truly become a Plataean,’ he said.

  And several amphorae later, he said, ‘Do you think the Queen of Halicarnassus is single?’

  We laughed, and I knew he would live. He had been to the edge and walked away.

  That’s how it is. I hope none of the rest of you ever see that darkness. But if you do – find a friend. It is a like a fight: and fights are better fought
in the phalanx than alone.

  I spent the next day trying to find a chariot.

  Hah! It’s the turn of all the kore – the maidens – to know what I’m talking about. After nights of sailing tackle, ship design, aspides and swords, finally, I’ve reached something that interests my own ­thugater.

  Ouch!

  You will give your husband-to-be quite an image of yourself, my dear, if you show so much temper in public.

  In good families, at least in Attica and in Plataea, you need a chariot for a wedding.

  Hermione is a small town – a very pretty one, but small – and not much given to display. But eventually a chariot was found and Hermogenes and Styges and Tiraesias and I scandalised the whole town by stripping naked, taking over a forge and a wood shop, and rebuilding the ruin of a chariot from the wheels to the pole. I don’t think the little vehicle had been used in fifty years. The tyres were leather and the wheels had broken spokes, and the body had long since fallen to tatters.

  We worked while a rhapsode from Thespiae told us the Iliad, and it wasn’t work, it was holiday. Our Plataean silversmith melted down some old jewellery of mine to make decorations and a pair of leather workers made headstalls and reins while Cimon, perhaps the best cavalryman in Athens, went across the ridge to buy me a pair of colts that men said were the prettiest in Attica. Jocasta came in with Penelope and Euphonia several times an hour to ask my opinion on some things about which I knew nothing, like flowers. I don’t think, in a thousand questions, that I gave a satisfactory answer to more than ten.

  But they were planning my wedding, and they needed my permission.

  Archilogos had a house, arranged by Eugenios, who, like the genius he was, had assumed my raid would be successful, and had further assumed that my bride would wish a traditional wedding. May all the gods bless you, Eugenios!

  Now the manner of a wedding among the aristocratic classes is this: first, there is a proclamation of engagement. For many people, and this is true throughout Attica and even Boeotia, the engagement is the wedding, and many a baby born in the best families can count back its nine months to the night of the parents’ engagement. But it is a familial ceremony, and often done in the bride’s home, although sometimes the groom’s. The wedding itself, on the other hand, marks the day that the woman goes to live in the man’s house, and is a much more public, riotous, and wine-soaked affair.