'Oh no,' said Onesimus quickly. 'Not in the least. You see that hill over there, the round one with the three tall pines on the top? That's all mine, from here up to just beyond the hill. And if you look over there' - he turned a right angle and pointed - 'that wood there, on the horizon, that's my western boundary. And I've got three more patches on the other side of the city, too.'
Cratus did a marvellous study in bored deity. 'A bit awkward to get to, nevertheless,' he said. 'Pity you don't have a couple of long meadows or orchards beside the house, really.'
Onesimus' face lit up. 'Actually,' he said, 'that big meadow down there to the right is mine, and so's that elbow-shaped piece there, and the hog-back ridge that comes round the back-'
Cratus gave him an indulgent smile. 'It's wonderful what you can fit in with a bit of ingenuity,' he said. 'Of course, it'll be easy for us, since our place is so flat; just grazing land and black-earth, you see, so we don't have to worry about hills and dips getting in the way.'
At the back of my mind, a little god was asking me to consider what was going to happen when this clown did come to Elis, and decided to stay with us while he was there. Even if I turned out of my house completely and gave him the run of it he'd still be mortally offended, imagining we'd put him in one of the shepherds' huts. But we'd deal with that as and when it happened, I told him; we could always pretend we'd been caught conspiring against the king and had all our land taken away from us. Something along those lines, anyway.
'Come into the house,' said Onesimus. 'Maybe you'd like something to eat.'
We followed him. Just as I was about to duck in through the door, Dusa pulled me back by the elbow.
'I know about how important the mission is,' she whispered, 'not to mention the sacred laws of hospitality. But if that fool doesn't stop staring at me, I shall say something I won't regret but you might.'
'Don't you dare,' I replied.
'But he's such a-'
'I know. But think, if there were only decent, sensible, intelligent people in the world, how lonely it would be. Keep it to yourself, Dusa. That's an order.'
She looked at me and made a suggestion about where my orders could be stored when not in use, but I didn't feel inclined to follow it; it'd have been undignified and very bad for my health.
The house of Onesimus, Prince of Bassae, was somewhat magnificent; the sort of place you'd imagine a god building for himself if he suddenly came into a substantial inheritance. Let's start with the hall itself. Needless to say it was enormous; places for fifty at the tables, and each seat had its own individual purple coverlet and matching purple-upholstered footstool - you'd never believe there were enough oysters in the sea to produce enough shells to make that much purple. The staircase to the upper room rose out of the hall like the mast of a ship. At the back of the hall, as far as I could see - I've never been much good at seeing things over extremely long distances - was an enormous door, leading to the inner room; it had two massive locks on it, which explained the two winnowing fan-sized bronze keys (with ivory handles) that hung from the belt Onesimus was carrying in his hand. The thresholds and doorposts were polished oak, like the hall-pillars (each one made out of a single giant growing tree that hadn't been an acorn since Zeus was weaned). There were no fewer than five braziers, all solid bronze, not to mention the bronze wall-sconces; my guess is that they needed all that light just so Onesimus could revel in the purpleness of his soft furnishings even in the middle of the night.
And oh, the things - tripods and cauldrons standing in a row like sentries all down one wall; tapestries and hangings above them, enough to make sails for the thousand ships that went to Troy; naturally, when we presented him with his gift, Onesimus had to make that an excuse to show us round his treasury out the back, under guise of putting it away safely and choosing us something fitting in return. Armour - if he'd lived to be eighty he'd have been able to wear a different suit every week. Swords - well, Sarpedon was either in hell or heaven, I can't say which. Tableware - stacked in mountains, it was; easily a hundred and fifty plates, as many cups, sixty-odd jugs (he told us the exact figure, but I wasn't listening), yet more tripods and cauldrons and mixing-bowls, iron spits and fire-dogs; also big jars full of bronze nails; two dozen ploughshares (unused, still in their grease); saws, hammers, axes, shovels (wooden and bronze), scythes, hooks, pruning-knives, wheel-rims, two dismantled chariots, half a dozen enormous great blooms of pig-iron; twenty tunics, as many cloaks, twenty or more belt buckles, half a wall of boots and sandals, a whole jar of spare hobnails; three ship's masts, an anchor, a hundredweight of blankets, enough rope to tie Elis to Corinth, jars - you just couldn't imagine that many jars, and the gods only knew what was in them, could've been flour or wine or oil or gold dust for all I know. The thought that one man could own so many things was enough to make your head spin. I tell you, it was enough to put you off the whole idea of wealth. Yes, I know: wealth is the gods' way of showing your worth, of marking out the better sort from the rest. But I ask you, in all conscience, what in the world could one man want with six small circular tables?
'Remind me to call here again,' Sarpedon muttered, 'some time when I have a spare army.' I could tell he was a bit upset; Onesimus' treasury made his own collection of useless junk look positively meagre.
'Now then,' Onesimus was saying (he'd become a lot more talkative once he was surrounded by his things). 'What can we find that'd make worthy presents for such distinguished guests?' Blather, I don't need to tell you. He hadn't a clue how distinguished we were, apart from Cratus' parcel of lies. He just wanted an excuse to make us feel small by giving us excessively generous presents.
It was almost comical to watch him, wading about knee-deep in his jam-packed store of objects, picking something up off one pile or heap, shaking his head and putting it back. It was all done on purpose, just in case we'd missed this or that exquisite artefact. Eventually, after he'd fingered pretty well every single thing in the storeroom (this took a very long time, as you can imagine), he handed us our allotted pieces of clutter: for me, a bronze and amber brooch, with one of the three amber studs missing; for Sarpedon, a slightly bent silver cup, easily big enough to contain one small mouthful; for Tachys, an ancient and slightly bald ferret skin arming-cap, with distinct traces of the original owner's sweat inside the brim; for Dusa a rather fine ivory-handled mirror, lacking the mirror; and for Cratus, a solid gold bracelet as big as your closed fist. Somehow, I got the feeling that it was my brother who'd made the best impression.
Well, after we'd all looked thrilled and made the required just-what-I-always-wanted noises, we were herded back into the hall, where the men were lugging about enough meat to last the whole of Elis through a hard winter.
'Got to keep our strength up, after all,' our host said to Cratus.
'Oh, quite,' my brother replied, as three men set about the carcass of a huge ox with big curved blades.
'That's what people don't realise,' Onesimus went on, flopping down into a robust-looking ivory and sandalwood chair. 'If you want to do well in the games, you've got to plan your whole life round it. Eat the right food, sleep the right amount every night, do the right exercises. There really isn't time for anything else.'
I must have started grinning, because Dusa kicked me on the ankle and gave me a poisonous look. But what did she expect, when this character was so obviously already knee-deep in the lime before we'd even said a word?
'You're right,' Cratus replied smoothly. 'And when you think how rarely an opportunity comes along to make use of the talents the gods have given us-
'And which we've worked so hard at cultivating-'
'Of course, that as well. Anyway, it's enough to make you weep. After all, you could spend years getting into peak condition, be at the very pinnacle of your readiness and abilities, and then find yourself waiting for years before you get a chance to compete in an actual event. What a waste, that's how I see it.'
Onesimus sighed so deeply I was afraid the
doors were going to blow open. 'That's so true,' he said. 'Take my own father, for example. Wonderful boxer. Wasn't anybody to touch him in the whole Peloponnese - well, nobody to touch him twice, if you get my meaning. But who's going to remember him? Nobody. And why? Because he never got the chance to fight in a proper games, that's why.'
'Nobody died,' Cratus murmured.
'That's right. That's it, exactly, nobody died. No uncles, see -any gods' amount of aunts, but no uncles. And his father; well, we make old bones in our family, the old boy was nearly eighty when he finally went on, and by then my father was in his sixties, well past his prime.'
Dusa clicked her tongue. 'Some people can be so thoughtless,' she muttered under her breath. Fortunately Onesimus didn't hear, though I think he may have noticed the little squeak of pain she made after I stamped on her toe.
'Oh, of course they said to him, Don't worry, there's plenty of wars, you can show off your prowess in battle. Well, they always say that. But it's not the same; you don't necessarily use the same muscles, the same routines, the same footwork in fighting that you do in boxing, let alone other games. Like, take jumping, my speciality -when the hell do you ever need to jump your own length in a battle? You could spend your whole life in the field, fighting every day of the year, and never have to jump over anything wider than an irrigation ditch.'
Cratus was beginning to worry me; any moment, I thought, and the strain of keeping a straight face is going to make him crack his jawbones. 'They just don't think, do they?' he said. 'But then, how can you expect them to understand? They aren't games-players.'
'True.' Onesimus craned his neck slightly so as to be able to see over the enormous boulder-sized cut of prime steak that had landed in front of him on the table. 'But so what? The vast majority of people don't fight in battles, either; I'm talking about your small-time peasants, your seven-acre men who spend their lives dragging a bit of stick through a thin layer of dirt. They don't fight and they don't play games. But you ask them about Hercules or Achilles or Diomedes, they'll tell you all about them; and Castor and Polydeuces and Hippolyta, too. What I'm saying is, you and I understand, yes, because we're games-players ourselves; but there's only so many of us, a small handful compared to all the hundreds -thousands, even - living in the Peloponnese. And the fact is, my friend - sorry, I didn't quite catch...
Cratus frowned a little but replied, 'Cratus. I'm from Elis.'
'Cratus, right. I'm sure I've heard of you. The fact is, it's not a few games-players who're going to keep your memory alive when you're dead and ashes. It's not even the better sort, sat round the fire in a hall somewhere. Oh, we've got our house poets and our genealogies, we know more or less who our great-great-great-great-grandfathers were; but what's the good of that if the family dies out, they all get killed in a war or die of the plague or the line simply dwindles away? They go, and all the memories go with them; and suddenly your ghost is shivering on the wrong bank of the River, completely forgotten and alone. You know what they told me when I went to the Oracle once? They said that so long as enough people remember your name, you'll live in the Elysian Fields, never know want or pain or fear, never grow old or waste away. But when they forget you, then Hades' guards come and take you away and throw you out of the gates back into the darkness, out there with all the hundreds of thousands of dead men who nobody remembers, in the dark and the cold; and once you've been there a while, it gets so that nobody can even see you any more, you can't hear, you can't even talk. You're awake, but you're nothing, for ever. I tell you, Cratus, I don't think I'm that much of a coward - I'm not brave, but I'm not feeble either - but that thought really frightens me.'
We were all quiet for a bit after that; and in my heart I felt sorry for this Onesimus, as I pictured him pounding away day after day in his palaestra, endlessly jumping and running round and throwing the discus, as if every scrap of effort he put into it was somehow a blow struck in the battle against that darkness and that cold. It wasn't, of course, and he knew it; but the fear would take him every time he stopped, and he'd drive himself on to more jumps and more sit-ups and knee-bends, like a field-hand whipped on by the overseer.
'I know,' Onesimus continued, 'what do you expect if you choose to be a games-player and not a fighter? You ask me that, and I can't really give you a good answer. But I'll tell you this, friend, and you'll have to make your mind up as your heart sees fit. I never could see the point in starting a war and killing other people and seeing your people die and maybe even getting killed yourself, just so you'll get to have peace and light after you're dead. I don't follow the argument. I don't see how the one follows on from the other. Now, you'll say I'm contradicting myself, saying one thing and something completely different the next moment. But here's the truth: I'm not a good fighter, I haven't got the reflexes or the upper-body strength. More than that, I haven't got the heart. But I'm a good games-player; not because I was born the son of a king, or even because I've spent my life training and eating red meat and drinking milk. It's because the gods gave me the skill as well as the strength and the endurance. I think I ought to be allowed to earn my memories doing what I'm good at. Otherwise, what's the point of them giving me all this to begin with?'
He was making me feel uncomfortable, at that. I could see now the reasons for all his wealth and show, his mountains of food and his purple cushion-covers. If he couldn't be remembered for his jumping and his prowess at throwing a flat bit of polished wood across a disused threshing-floor, then he'd try his best to be remembered for his wealth, his tasteless and vulgar display of appearances, his things. He was like a squirrel, burying nuts for the winter; every item of superfluous, unused junk was a stone in the cairn he was trying to raise for himself, to cover his still-unburned body. My heart was confused, then and there; was this man so afraid of the dark that every damned thing he did was just an attempt to wriggle his way into the light, to stay there an extra month or so?
Eventually, Cratus found some words. 'Well now,' he said, 'I think I might be able to suggest a better way. Would you like me to tell you about it?'
Onesimus blinked. 'By all means,' he said.
'All right. Better still, why don't you listen to my brother Cleander here? He's the one who's organising it all. What do you reckon, Cleander?'
So I said my piece; and honestly, it was like when a man's about to be hanged or beheaded, and at the last moment one of the king's squires comes down from the palace into the yard and tells him it's all right, the king has decided that he doesn't have to die that day.
'Think of it,' Cratus picked up, when I'd ground to a halt. 'There'll come a time when Elis and Bassae and Corone and Lampsacus and all the places we know are deserted and fallen down, just like the places that are ruined and forgotten in our time -we see the stones, sure, we can just about trace where their great houses and storerooms and treasuries were by the patterns in the grass, but we haven't the faintest idea who they were beyond the names of a few kings; all we know is, they lived here long ago and they don't live here any more. This very hail, now - oh, I know, I don't suppose you'll find its like anywhere this side of Athens or Eretria - but I'll wager you there'll come a time when people will walk over a grassy meadow and wonder whether it was here or in the next valley that the mighty Onesimus lived, the one who could jump and throw the discus further than any man before or since. The palace won't be there any more, not even the city; there'll be nothing left except a name, an idea, the flavour of great things done by great men, standing up through time like those patterns we see in the grass. That's what you and I are after, aren't we, that shape in memory, the pattern that'll put them in mind of what they could do themselves, if they had the strength and the determination, and the gods putting the will in their hearts.'
I was embarrassed half to death, I'm telling you, sitting there with my mouth open, like a gate left unlatched by a careless goatherd. Bless my heart, I was thinking, since when was my miserable brother so eloquent about something he'd have had
me believe was nothing but foolishness? He knew and I knew why we were there: because the King of Elis had a dead fish for a son, and something had to be done about it before it was too late. And yet here he was - there you were, Cratus, damn you - reaching out and pushing back the darkness, like the light from these very braziers. Quite the poet, my brother, don't you think? I hated you right then, I'll tell you straight, because you could lie so easily about something that mattered so much, to that poor fool Onesimus and every living man.
Cratus smiled (but of course his brother couldn't see it). 'You reckon I was lying?' he said.
'Of course,' Cleander said impatiently. 'Of course you were. You never believed in the mission, even for the purpose we were doing it for. Of course you didn't believe a word you were saying, about memory and living for ever in the Elysian Fields. How could you? Everything you were saying was a lie, you were pretending you were a mighty games-player too. We games-players, you were saying to him, but you were manipulating an idiot, like a child with a puppet made out of pomegranate-rind.'
'Is that so?' Cratus said. 'Well, then.' He shrugged his shoulders. 'Let's ask the Phoenician. After all, he's a stranger here, he doesn't know us from a piece of old cheese and probably doesn't care one way or the-'
Someone sniggered. The Phoenician was fast asleep.
CHAPTER SIX
'It only goes to show,' said Gratus sadly, as the baskets of bread were handed round next morning, 'how pointless the whole thing is, when you get right down to it. No offence, my friend, but when you dozed off last night, you proved my point. Thank you for that, anyway.'
'Mmm?' The Phoenician's head felt rather fuzzy, and both light and sound bothered him. 'Sorry, did I miss something important?'
Olympiad Tom Holt Page 13
