The Walled Orchard

by Tom Holt

  That year I couldn’t recognise any of the judges — in those days they really were chosen by lot from the electoral roll — which I considered on balance to be the best thing. A friend among the judges can be a blessing, but it can also be a disadvantage, while an enemy is always disastrous. I remember staring long and hard at them, trying to prise open their ribs with my eyes so that I could see the shape of their souls, but the more I stared, the less I could see. There was a very old man who kept whispering to his neighbour; I could almost hear him saying, ‘When I was a boy, of course, we had Aeschylus and Phrynichus — that’s Phrynichus the Tragic poet, of course, not this young man who writes the Comedies.’ And the man next to him would nod absently, but he never took his eyes off the stage, and instead of wriggling about in his seat he sat absolutely still, with his hands neatly folded in his lap. He would probably vote for the play with the fewest metrical errors, and I squirmed as I thought of the three fluffed caesuras in The General. Another one had his eyes closed, and I was filled with fury; if he dared fall asleep when my Chorus was on stage I would get a sling and knock his eyes out for him. But when the strophe ended, he moved his head and nodded, and I realised that he was paying strict attention. That’s the judge for you, my soul said smugly within me; he won’t be swayed by smart costumes or clever masks. It’s the words he’s interested in. Then his head fell on one side, and I could see that he really was asleep after all.

  By the time the herald called out ‘Phrynichus, bring out your Chorus!’ I was drenched in sweat and my heart was pounding like the drum on a trireme when the drummer is setting the pace for the attack. I clamped my teeth together, for I was determined not to laugh, and sat up straight in my seat, praying that Philonides had bribed the Chorus or put sand in the leading actor’s mask. Yet when the first big joke came, I felt this strange feeling in my chest and something seemed to well up inside me, as if I had eaten beans and drunk new wine, and I heard myself laughing. A feeling of terror came over me, as I realised that the play actually was funny, and when the audience laughed it was like the sound of hooves making the earth shake, when the enemy cavalry is coming towards you and there is nowhere to run.

  Then my soul spoke quietly within me, telling me that there was nothing more that I could do, at least until the play was over and I could go straight over to Philonides’ house and fix those fluffed caesuras and the joke about the sprats. I pressed my feet hard on the stone and pushed myself back in my seat, and soon I was enjoying the play. It was a good play, too, all about a man who wins the war by drawing the sun down into a jar so that the Spartan army loses its way in the dark and marches off a cliff, and there was a hilarious scene with Apollo trying to charm the lid off the jar by reciting passages from Sophocles.

  I enjoyed it so much, in fact, that I forgot all about everything else, and clapped as loudly as anyone when the Chorus lined up for the anapaests. Phrynichus’ addresses to the audience were always the best part of his plays, and he had an uncanny knack of guessing, at the tune he wrote the play, what would be most topical when the Festival came round.

  He started off by praising the army and the fleet, and comparing them to the men of Marathon and Salamis; then there was a rather witty invocation to Lady Garlic; then he went into one of his favourite themes, the poets.

  First, inevitably, Cratinus, who by now had entered into his final illness; Phrynichus had great fun with that, saying how while Dionysus and Aphrodite were quarrelling like two wild dogs over his miserable carcase, Hermes, as God of Thieves, was sneaking up behind them to secure for himself the greatest stealer of other men’s jokes the world had ever seen. Then we were given some marvellous stuff about Ameipsias throwing away his shield at the battle of Delium and having to be rescued by Socrates, who he had made mincemeat of in one of his plays. I was grinning like an idiot by this stage, in eager anticipation of what the poet would have to say about Aristophanes. What I and several thousand others heard was this.

  As if it wasn’t bad enough (Phrynichus’ Chorus-leader said) having these stray polecats jumping up on Dionysus’ altar to gobble down the offerings left there by Thespis, there was now a new poet in Athens; a cripple with a perpetual grin and nothing between his legs but a nasty rash. (It’s true I sometimes have a rash there in hot weather; God knows how Phrynichus found out about it.) We hear that his play, which you will soon be able to judge for yourselves, has some pretty bits in it. They aren’t his own, of course; Aristophanes gave them to him in exchange for his life, when he caught that bald-headed son of a goat up to the hilts in that pretty young wife of his.

  It’s a strange feeling being insulted in a play, and hearing the people hooting with laughter. The man on one side of me was stuffing his cloak into his mouth and snorting, while my neighbour on the other side had a smile which would have stretched right round the coast from Piraeus to Anaphlystos. I would gladly have castrated Phrynichus just then; but I felt a strange sort of glow, almost like pride, and I wanted to turn to my neighbours and say, ‘That’s me he’s talking about.’ And when I’ve spoken to men I’ve made jokes about, they say roughly the same thing, and attribute the feeling to the power of the God Dionysus himself. Later, of course, I became hardened to remarks about me in plays, until I only noticed them when they weren’t there.

  I met Phaedra outside the gate and we walked home together.

  ‘If you really were a man,’ she said, ‘you’d kill that Phrynichus for me.’

  I shrugged. ‘Why?’ I asked. ‘Because he agrees with you?’

  ‘I don’t care a damn what he says about you.’

  ‘He said you were pretty.’

  ‘I didn’t say he wasn’t telling the truth,’ she replied quickly. ‘But how I’m going to hold my head up in public again after that, I just don’t know.’

  I put my arm around her waist. ‘Never mind,’ I said. ‘He didn’t steal my speech, that’s the main thing.’

  ‘How did he know about that rash of yours?’ she went on.

  ‘You must have talked about it in your sleep.’

  ‘Now all the women will refuse to sit next to me,’ she went on, as if I hadn’t spoken, ‘in case they catch it from me. It’s not catching, is it?’

  ‘I expect so. I hope I don’t get called on tomorrow. They may not tell me until the morning, of course, and then I’ll have to go round the wine shops flushing out the actors. I’ll enjoy that,’ I pre-empted her.

  ‘Eupolis.’ She had stopped in her tracks and was biting her lower lip.

  ‘There’s something I’ve got to tell you.’

  ‘Who’s the father, do you know?’

  Suddenly she got very angry. ‘Why must you always be making jokes?’ she shouted. ‘I’m really sick of it, do you hear? All the time. I just don’t think it’s funny any more.’ She pulled her hand out of mine and turned away. I suddenly felt very foolish, although God only knows why, and I stood there on one leg waiting for her to say something.

  ‘I mean,’ she went on, with her back still to me, ‘if you hadn’t been such a complete waste of time ever since our wedding—day I wouldn’t have done it in the first place.’

  ‘Done what?’

  ‘So if anyone’s to blame,’ she said, rounding on me and scowling, ‘you are, you utterly stupid man.’ She spat neatly between her feet. ‘You pushed me just too far, that’s all.’

  ‘What have you done?’

  ‘Go to hell,’ she snapped, and started to walk quickly away. I ran after her and grabbed her by the wrists. ‘Let go of me,’ she said, and pulled her hands free. ‘You see,’ she sneered, ‘you can’t even bully me properly.’

  ‘I asked you a question,’ I said. ‘What have you done?’

  ‘It was all Aristophanes’ idea,’ she said, ‘while I was still seeing him. Do you know,’ she went on, ‘he’s almost as big a washout as you are? Anyway, he wanted me to find some way of wrecking this play of yours. I told him not to bother, it was bound to fail of its own accord; but he’s stupid,
just like you, and he wanted to make sure. And that’s why I started being so nice to you—’

  ‘When? I must have missed it.’

  ‘For God’s sake, Eupolis.’ She was tight-lipped with fury, and I decided to leave well alone. ‘I let you take me to your stupid rehearsals, and you kept on about your stupid costumes for your stupid Chorus. So I listened carefully to what they said about where they stored them.’

  ‘They’re over at Philonides’ house,’ I said. ‘He keeps them in his inner room in a locked chest.’

  ‘I know,’ she replied. ‘I heard him saying so. So I told Aristophanes, and tomorrow morning, before dawn, he’s going round there with his actors and he’s going to dig through the wall of the house and steal them.’

  It was like being hit by that footpad all over again. I felt my legs go weak, and I couldn’t think. ‘For God’s sake, woman,’ I groaned, ‘why didn’t you just kill me instead? That’s a horrible thing to do.’

  Then I felt her head under my chin and her arms around me. ‘But you deserved it,’ she sobbed. ‘You deserved it so much. I knew it would hurt you more than anything in the whole world, because you’re so stupid.’

  The feel of her so close to me was like fire, and my soul filled my arms and my legs with strength.

  ‘How do you know it’ll be tomorrow?’ I asked her. ‘For all he knew, I could have been called on first.’

  She shook her head. ‘He fixed the ballot,’ she said. ‘He bribed someone, he didn’t tell me who. He wanted you on tomorrow and himself last, to be sure of beating Phrynichus. Eupolis, I—’

  ‘We’ll discuss that later,’ I said. ‘Go home and mix plenty of strong wine. I’ve got to find Philonides.’

  So, when rosy-fingered dawn was spreading across the eastern sky, I was hiding behind a large jar in Philonides’ inner room, feeling that mixture of fear and righteous anger that Theseus must have felt when he strode through the Labyrinth in search of the Minotaur.

  Philonides himself was crouched uncomfortably behind the costume chest, and positioned at strategic points all round the room were our four actors, Little Zeus, three large slaves from Philonides’ household, and a man who had been passing in the street when we arrived, who we pressed into service as an independent witness. Apart from the witness, we were all wearing our helmets and breastplates, and we had heavy olive clubs hastily cut from vine-props.

  ‘Of course,’ said Little Zeus (one of whose ancestors had been a famous general), ‘the whole thing could be a clever trick.’

  ‘I don’t know about clever,’ Philonides said. ‘Dirty, maybe.’

  ‘No, you don’t understand,’ said Little Zeus earnestly. ‘It could be a false message, a diversion, like Themistocles at Salamis. Aristophanes might want us to be here, while he does something else on the other side of the City. He could be poisoning our Chorus-leader at this very moment.’

  Philonides told him to be quiet, but I started to worry, and I picked all the bark off the handle of my club with my fingernails without realising it. The effects of the strong wine we had all drunk at my house were beginning to evaporate, as was the righteous anger. The residue was mostly fear, combined with a feeling that I shouldn’t really be there. I had wanted to send someone for Callicrates and Philodemus, but there hadn’t been time. And I was sure someone had followed Philonides and me back to my house after I found him.

  ‘Perhaps he isn’t coming,’ said one of the actors. ‘We’ve been here for hours now, and I’m dying for a pee. Are we getting paid for this?’

  ‘You’ll get the back of my hand if you don’t shut up,’ said Philonides.

  ‘And will you all stop jabbering like a lot of birds? This is supposed to be an ambush.’

  At least worrying about the attack kept me from worrying too much about my play, though I had suddenly remembered that we had never got around to fixing the fluffed caesuras. Still, I felt, this would probably not be a good time for a major rewrite, even though we had all the actors with us.

  Then I saw Philonides lift his head suddenly, and I heard the sound of a crowbar clinking on the bricks of the wall. Philonides put up his hand and placed a pot carefully over the lamp. In the total darkness, the sound of the crowbar seemed to fill the room, and I started to think of all the battles in tight places that I could remember; Thermopylae, and Pylos, of course. The more I thought, the more uneasy I felt, for in every such engagement that I could call to mind, the attackers had eventually prevailed. We had no idea how many men Aristophanes had brought; he might have his whole Chorus out there, with swords and damp leaves to make smoke. We were well off for heavy infantry, but where were our slingers and archers? And we had forgotten to bar the door; Aristophanes could not expect the house to be empty — what if he were to send a detachment of his forces round to the front of the house, to take us from both sides, as Xerxes had done at Thermopylae? And although we were armed with clubs, they had heavy iron crowbars, and none of us had thought to bring our shields. If only Callicrates was here! If only Callicrates was here, and I was somewhere else.

  Then my soul within me told me to be quiet and fight well when the moment came, and I gripped the handle of my club so tight that I pinched the skin inside my signet-ring, which seemed to hurt as much as a sabre-cut. The sound of crowbars was growing louder with every heartbeat, and I was sure I could hear voices, many voices. Not only his Chorus, I said to my soul, but all his household slaves as well, and probably some cooks or other ruffians hired in the Market Square. I felt trapped, like a grasshopper in a jar. Demosthenes himself would have trouble getting out of this mess.

  There was a sound of rubble falling on our side of the wall, and a shaft of early morning light came into the room, very faint but enough to dazzle me for a moment. My mouth was dry, and every muscle in my body seemed to ache. More hammering; whole bricks were coming through into the room, and I remember thinking that whoever had built Philonides’ house had made a pretty poor job of it. The hammering stopped, and with it my heart.

  ‘Boss,’ whispered a voice from the wall, ‘I can get my head through the hole now.’

  ‘Get on with it, you idiot.’ Unmistakably Aristophanes. ‘We haven’t got all night.’

  ‘Boss,’ whispered the voice again, ‘what if there’s somebody in there? I mean—’

  ‘Philonides is at Eupolis’ house,’ Aristophanes said, ‘my man saw him go in, they’re probably making last minute changes. And he always sends his wife to the country for the Festival. Can we get on now, please?’

  That seemed to satisfy the voice, for the hammering started up again, and more bricks came tumbling in, until I could see a man-sized patch of blue light where there had been only darkness before. I promised a firstling lamb each to Dionysus and Ares the Driver of the Spoil, and waited. There was silence, then a rustling noise, and the blue light was blotted out by moving shapes.

  Then Philonides lifted the pot off the lamp and shouted Io Paian! at the top of his voice, and there was Aristophanes, frozen like a statue in the lamplight. In his hands were a crowbar and a lump-hammer, and his tunic was gathered over his shoulder like a stone-mason. With him were four men, similarly dressed and equipped. The head of a sixth man, which was poking through the hole in the wall, was hurriedly withdrawn and not seen again.

  I aimed a terrific blow at the man nearest to me, but I missed and decimated a terracotta figure of Europa riding the bull, which, Philonides told me later, had belonged to his grandfather. But Little Zeus made straight for Aristophanes and grabbed him round the waist like a wrestler, lifting him up so high that his head banged noisily against the rafters. Meanwhile, Philonides and his men were laying about them with their clubs, shouting ferociously and occasionally making contact. The actual fighting was over disappointingly quickly, and by the time I had picked my club up off the floor, there was no one left for me to hit with it.

  Philonides and his men had dumped their four captives on the floor and were tying them securely with scarves and rushes,
while Little Zeus manhandled Aristophanes round to face me. Now during our interminable vigil I had prepared a little speech, in case such an opportunity arose. ‘Aristophanes son of Philip,’ I intended to say, ‘what you have done here tonight is a crime not only against the laws of Athens but against our Patron God Dionysus himself. To sabotage one of His plays is no better an act for a free man and a citizen than burning His temple or robbing His priests. But Dionysus is a merciful God, and so I shall leave your punishment in His hands. You may go free, son of Philip, on the following conditions. First, that you make good all the damage you have done here, and lodge a bronze statue of Dionysus the Bringer of Joy in the shrine of Philonides’ choice. Second, that you cease to trouble the God with your ill-made plays and henceforth live quietly on your Aeginetan estates without causing annoyance to anyone. What do you have to say?’

  It was probably just as well that I did not deliver this address, or my name would have become a byword for pomposity, wherever two Athenians met together. As it was, I had got as far as ‘Arist—’ when Aristophanes, slipping out of Little Zeus’ clutches, made a dash for the hole in the wall and escaped, bumping into me as he went. I tried to catch hold of his tunic but lost my footing in a puddle of lamp-oil, slipped, and sat down painfully on a pair of sandals.

  ‘Pathetic,’ grunted Philonides. ‘Couldn’t catch a fever in the marshes. Right, let’s have a look at them.’

  He grabbed each of the captives by the beard and stared fiercely at them for a moment. ‘Now listen to me,’ he said. ‘Fun is fun but I can’t be doing with nonsense, so when you next work with me, you’d better be very careful. All right, Aristobulus, untie them. I said untie them, you idiot; those scarves cost money.’