Long War 04 - The Great King

by Cameron, Christian

  I didn’t fight in the king’s gymnasium again. It took me two days to recover from the first time, and my nose took weeks to recover fully. But after that day, men greeted me in the agora and in the streets, usually calling out, ‘Khairete, Xenos!’

  And I received an offer to dine with Bulis and his mess.

  Sparta is not devoid of small talk, gossip, song or good fellowship. I lay on a couch in this, a more ‘average’ mess, and was served food that was merely bad and entertained by Sparthius, who was Bulis’s partner and a very funny man. Sparthius was irreverent and sometimes nasty, mocking Gorgo’s mismatched eyes and my limp, suggesting in some fairly obvious ways that as I was Hephaestus, all my women would cheat on me. He told a story about a drunk buying a fine wine to pour as a libation on the grave of a friend, and then offering to pass it through his body once first – he mocked Sparta and he mocked Athens.

  At the same time, he mocked the gods. And he knew songs – ribald songs, dirty songs, marching songs . . .

  Bulis just lay beside him and smiled from time to time and sipped his wine.

  We all drank a great deal, and I came to know the other men in his mess. They weren’t average, all being members of the elite Hippeis. All of them were handsome, and all of them were over thirty, and married. They struck me as being . . . young. Most were my age, and yet – the Spartan lifestyle allowed them a boyishness that I had probably lost while I was a slave, or perhaps at Sardis. They laughed at farting. They mocked a helot with a misformed penis, but it was not particularly cruel, especially when they offered to send him to Corinth to get it ‘treated’ at the temple of Aphrodite. They drank like boys, too – on and on, mixed only one to one with water. As the wine flowed, Sparthius became louder, and, I confess it, funnier, kneeling on the tiled floor and begging (in the character of a Macedonian) for Helios to stay away, stay away. ‘Oh, it burns!’ he shrieked, and everyone laughed.

  Macedonians, of course, come from a land of rain and clouds and their fair skin burns in the sun.

  Bulis turned to me. ‘My wife finds you very attractive,’ he said. ‘She enjoyed your flattery.’

  Gulp.

  I hope I smiled. ‘The lady I met in the agora is your wife?’

  He nodded. ‘We were married young. Our fathers arranged it – almost as soon as we were born. They were . . . you know. Erastes and Eromenos.’ He sipped more wine, his eyes elsewhere.

  That was all. At the door, when I was handed my cloak by a helot, he embraced me. ‘We should fight again,’ he said. ‘My wife was right about you.’

  Leonidas had a number of meetings with my passengers, and I assume he briefed them extensively on his views on a number of subjects. I was not invited, and in truth, I can’t imagine why I would have been included. I went riding with Gorgo – the closest I’ve ever come to loving horses – and I drilled with Bulis’s mess on three different days. Their Pyricche was different from ours – different music, and much more chorography. In fact, I learned that where Plataea has a single, fairly complicated dance, Sparta has seven. I learned one well enough to practise it with Bulis and Sparthius on board ship.

  I also began to practise their quick draw with the sword. On one of their practice fields, they use a row of polished shields so men can watch themselves as they train, and I did so, cutting a post, and several times men would stop and correct my posture or my footwork. It was one of the curious things about Sparta that training is seldom done by one man. In Athens, as you probably know, each taxeis hires a professional trainer to improve their spear fighting or their drill. But in Sparta, any man who has seen battle can correct any other man, especially if that man is younger. Virtually all of the older hoplites were very capable men, and they tended to wander around the drill field, like a hundred hoplomachia teachers instead of just one or two. As long as I was on their field, they trained me as willingly.

  And in the agora, I heard more – and better – philosophy than I heard in Athens. Well, in Athens before Anaxagoras came, but that’s another story. But with the helots to do all the work, men had little to do but exercise, and in Sparta they exercised their minds as well as their bodies.

  In truth, Briseis should have been born a Spartan.

  Late in the week, I was introduced to Leotychidas, the other king – the Eurypontid king. He was sober and very grave – almost sixty years old, and still as solid as an oak tree. He lacked Leonidas’ charm, but he had a great dignity, and I could tell that Polypeithes, who was kind enough to introduce me, fairly worshipped him.

  ‘Ah,’ he said. ‘You are the foreigner that Gorgo fancies.’ He frowned. ‘That woman always gets her way.’

  There really wasn’t an answer to that, so I bowed.

  ‘You speak Persian?’ he asked.

  I admitted that I did.

  He nodded, lips pursed. ‘I suppose someone must. Do you think Xerxes will march an army into Greece?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  He nodded. ‘As do I. Nor do I think that sending a pair of my best men to die will help in any way.’ He shrugged. ‘Can you keep them alive? Are you a friend of the Great King’s?’

  I had to shake my head. ‘No, my lord,’ I said. ‘I knew his father’s brother. And a few of his soldiers.’

  He rocked his head from side to side, as if considering me from different angles.

  ‘Hmm,’ he said. ‘Well, if you knew a few of my Spartiates and my father’s brother, I’d give you a hearing. That’s the best news I’ve heard all day. What will you say on our behalf?’

  I almost choked on my tongue. ‘I’m sorry, lord?’

  He was watching me as if I were a not-very-bright boy. ‘If you gain the ear of the Great King before my two Spartiates wander in, what will you say? I tell you, I’d rather they weren’t killed.’

  I thought it through for a number of heartbeats. I could hear Polypeithes breathe by my side. Finally I shook my head. ‘I’m sorry, lord. I can’t say anything on the part of Sparta. I am not a Spartan.’

  The Eurypontid king’s eyes were fixed on mine. ‘Would you be shocked if I gave you my permission to say anything? Be my guest, Xenos. Say what you like, and claim it comes from me. If you think that it will buy us peace, or keep these two young men alive. Anything but my submission.’

  He said more, but that was the gist, and when I had a last dinner with Polypeithes, Leonidas and my two passengers, the Agiad king said much the same, and after dinner, when the mess was drinking toasts, I was summoned to the king’s house and found Gorgo sitting in the courtyard under the stars.

  Nearly invisible helots brought wine and nuts.

  I have no doubt belaboured this point, but if an Athenian matron had invited me to her house and met me in the garden with a chiton open down the sides, drinking wine neat and eating honeyed almonds, I would assume I was welcome to more than the nuts.

  Gorgo did not seem that way. So I sat on a bench and repeated some of Sparthius’s jokes, and eventually she came to the point.

  ‘What have the kings told you? About the Great King?’ she asked.

  I shrugged. ‘I’m not a Spartan, lady. I am not your ambassador.’

  Gorgo wouldn’t be swayed. ‘You speak Persian.’ She raised an eyebrow – an impossibly attractive look, given the very slight unevenness of her eyes. Impossible to explain why, if you haven’t seen her. ‘Do you know that there is a Spartan king living in the Great King’s court?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Demaratus.’

  She looked away – not as if evading me, but as if seeing events unfold. ‘He was deprived of his kingship – illegally,’ she said. ‘Bah. It had to be done. But he is not such an evil man. I wonder if you would carry a message to him from me.’

  How in the name of all the gods had I got mixed up in this?

  ‘Of course!’ I said.

  She gave me a wax tablet. It was blank. She smiled.

  I didn’t want to know. I handed the tablet to Hector after summoning him.

  We
sat up for some time, and eventually she sat on her bench with her knees drawn up to her chest and listened as I spoke of Sicily. Somehow we got on to Athens.

  ‘How they hate us,’ she said.

  I shrugged. ‘Athens and Sparta are similar enough that, like angry brothers, when they look at each other, they see only their own flaws.’

  She grinned. ‘Did you make that up yourself?’

  If Spartan men were boyish, Gorgo was very ‘girlish’. She was spontaneous and mercurial, and often hard to follow. But I smiled back. ‘In fact, just this once, I did.’

  She nodded. ‘I like it. I should like to go to all the places you have been. Sicily. Athens. Perhaps Athens most of all.’

  I laughed. ‘My friend Aristides – do you recall him?’

  ‘A fine man,’ she said. ‘My husband admires him.’

  ‘As do I,’ I answered. When he’s not an insufferable prig. ‘His wife longs to meet you.’

  ‘Really!’ she said. She giggled. But I think she was flattered. ‘You should ask her to meet me at Plataea. I go in the spring, to the temple of Hera. If Plataea is to be the saviour of Greece, I wish to know why.’ And she shrugged. ‘I have a son, but I should like another child.’ Her eyes met mine.

  I didn’t get it. I still do not. Was that a proposition? I could not tell. But I began to think . . .

  ‘You do not speak of Brasidas,’ she said.

  It was the second time she’d brought him up.

  I shrugged. ‘He’s my friend, but it does not seem to be in good taste to mention him.’

  Gorgo nodded. She sat back. It was very dark, and the air itself was perfumed with summer.

  My hands shook a little. I was preparing myself to kiss the Queen of Sparta.

  ‘I’m arranging to lift the ban of his exile,’ she said.

  I sighed. ‘He will no doubt be delighted,’ I said. Somewhat annoyed.

  ‘He will no doubt throw my husband’s offer in his face like the stiff-necked bastard of a dog that he is,’ she said pleasantly. ‘But we owe you a great deal already.’

  We were almost nose to nose. I could feel her breath on my face.

  A hand came to rest on my shoulder.

  ‘Sir?’ Hector said. ‘Alexandros is very drunk.’

  I got up and clasped her hand. In a flash, I had decided that . . . that Hector’s arrival was from the gods.

  She laughed. ‘You are a good man, Arimnestos.’

  In the morning, we rode south. We were on the beach before darkness fell, and we ate lobster and fresh fish with the oarsmen, who had eaten and drunk their fill for a week and were, all taken together, penniless and hung over.

  And we took another five days returning to Athens, because we had to land for food and water every night, and the wind was resolutely against us. I had a good load of Phoenician goods purchased by Sekla in the markets, and there were not many Athenian ships that called at Sparta. I hoped to be first into the Athenian agora with my goods.

  Nor was I disappointed. Indeed, I never made it to the Athenian agora – a pair of middlemen, friends of Paramanos, bought my whole cargo, but my profit was enough to suggest that piracy was not the best way to make money at sea.

  My Spartans were good passengers. They took turns at the oars when they saw that the rest of us did, and they were better than polite to Brasidas. He was the one who seemed rude – he was aloof with them in a way he never was with young Apollodorus or the others. And Sparthius continued to be a comic, while Busis was mostly silent. When he did open his mouth, it was to ask questions. He’d never been to sea before, and he wanted to know everything.

  After we sold our cargo, I arranged that the Spartan heralds should be housed by Cimon, and I purchased a small, tubby merchantman. In our expeditions in the western Mediterranean and the Outer Sea, we’d learned how handy it was to have a store ship to carry water and food – even running to Sparta and back across the Gulf of Corinth had brought that lesson home, with wasted days crawling around the periphery. I gave the command to Megakles, and gave him Giorgios and Nicolas from the oarsmen and a couple of my Syracusan deck crewmen. We fitted the merchantman out with a cargo of Athenian luxury goods – mostly pottery – and a deep tier of water amphorae. I bought dried meat and dried fish and grain, and stored them in layers, mostly in pottery with waxed tops.

  Moire and Harpagos came in with their ships, and I got them cargoes, although by now I was dealing in credit – Cimon’s credit. I was out of money.

  I rode over the mountains to Brauron, and paid my daughter a final visit. She was tanned and hard muscled as only a young girl can be, and while she was happy to see me, she was anxious to go back to her friends.

  I didn’t know enough about children then not to be hurt, but I let her go. I stayed the night with Peisander and on the way back I stayed with Jocasta and Aristides, who was ten days from starting his exile. He seemed quite light hearted. She did not.

  Whenever I visited Aristides, there always came a moment when, by common consent, I would go off to the women’s area and sit in the late afternoon sun with Jocasta and help with her wool. It was when we talked – when she gave me her marching orders for her husband, usually.

  ‘The Queen of Sparta would like to meet you,’ I said.

  Whatever she was going to say, it went right out of her head. She laughed. ‘That’s lovely!’ she said.

  ‘Queen Gorgo asked me to say that your husband is a fine man, whom her husband admires, and she’d be delighted to meet you at the temple of Hera at Plataea in the spring, after the feast of Demeter.’

  She clapped her hands together. ‘I’m sure . . . oh!’ she said. ‘I could see Aristides then, as well!’

  I nodded. ‘I thought of that at sea. Come and stay with us – my daughter and me. Or with my sister Penelope and her husband Antigonus.’

  ‘Aristides has spoken of them. Is it really possible?’ she asked.

  I grinned. ‘I’ll come and get you myself,’ I said.

  She nodded. ‘I like having some hope of seeing him again. He’s very “stiff upper lip”. I’m not so cold.’ And then she leaned closer. ‘You know he’s coming to Susa with you,’ she said.

  Piraeus, at dawn.

  My ships had taken on stores at Zea and then been rowed around the night before to wait on the beach. My oarsmen were rowing heavily laden ships – they didn’t need the additional weight of a hull soaked all night in water.

  Bulis and Sparthius were as curious as cats, prowling among the last hemp nets of cargo, unfolding a linen boat sail, and inspecting the equipment of my marines. I had eight men in each ship and a pair of professional archers, and then I had Ka and his six men – all good archers, and also willing deck crewmen.

  Aristides owned his own ships – not just one, but two, big, long, narrow sharks. The very height of Athenian shipbuilding, which, back then, six years after Marathon, was just developing into the very best in the world. He had his own oarsmen and his own followers who turned out as marines. The splendour of their equipment utterly eclipsed that of my men, who looked merely practical – although through the influence of Brasidas, my men had matching rust-red cloaks and matching red, black and white horsehair crests. The Spartans are great ones for uniformity of equipment.

  But if Aristides wanted to tell the voters of the assembly what they were doing when they exiled him, the display of his two warships – only the very richest men could own warships – fully manned with citizen oarsmen whose wages he paid, and protected by marines who were his ‘gentlemen’ . . .

  Let me pause in my story for a moment. I, in fact, owned three warships and a round ship. Those of you who have been listening know that I didn’t pay for any of them except the merchanter. I took them from other men. When I took slaves, I often used them as oarsmen for six months or a year in lieu of the price of their freedom. I have been a pirate for most of my life – a pirate whose actions were often sanctioned by Athens or one of the other states. But Aristides was a true aristocrat,
who spent his fortune on the good of his city, sponsoring athletic contests, contributing to temples, paying for the chorus in the Dionysian plays, and buying warships.

  Themistocles didn’t come to gloat. But Phrynicus did, and he was one of the orator’s closest friends. He came down to the beach and hugged me, and he gave Aristides a letter. They talked for some time, and in the end embraced.

  I tried not to stare, but what I saw confirmed my notion that Aristides’ exile was, at some level, contrived.

  I had Harpagos and Moire under me as trierarchs, and Megakles as the captain of the Swan. Aristides had Heraclides, one of my oldest mentors, as his second trierarch.

  With five triremes and a stores ship, we were probably the most powerful squadron in the Aegean that summer, and the pity of it was that we were bound on nothing more profitable than an embassy to the Great King – and even I suspected that pillaging some Egyptian ships and a few Carthaginian or Tyrian freighters would not enhance our reception at Susa.

  But as we ran along the coast of Euboea and east to Skyros, on the balmy summer zephyrs, the sea was full of potential prizes, and my oarsmen looked at me as I stood amidships – watching a pair of Carthaginian biremes bound for the Hellespont, watching a Tyrian merchantman wallow in the soft breeze, downwind and easy prey.

  When they grumbled, I’d catch someone’s eye and point to the wreath of olive at the bow.

  I had in mind a little scouting on my way to Tarsus. In fact, all the men who could navigate were scratching their heads. Tarsus is south of Rhodos and around the corner from Cyprus and beyond.

  On the beach below the temple on the rock – I never caught its name – Aristides and I laid out our plans for our officers.

  ‘Our first intention is to see if Xerxes is really building a canal behind Mount Athos,’ Aristides said bluntly. ‘Second, to see if he is bridging the Hellespont.’

  Bulis’s face gave nothing away, but Sparthius laughed. ‘So – we’re suddenly hoplites in an Athenian naval expedition?’ he asked.

  Aristides got along well with both of my Spartans – of course he did. He admired their way of life. So he shook his head. ‘Nothing of the sort. On the one hand, we all learn about how advanced the Great King’s plans are; on the other hand, we look at his defences. The sailing season is young. We have more than a month to reach Tarsus and start inland.’