Long War 04 - The Great King

by Cameron, Christian

  With adverse winds, winter storms and fog, we were almost thirty days sailing home – and our rowers were as thin entering Athens as we had been coming down out of the hills on horseback. No fishing boats in winter means no one from whom to buy fish – no shepherds on the hillsides, no mutton on the fire.

  We left Aristides on the coast of Euboea. I sent him to my house with Hector and Alexandros and a pair of marines.

  We landed in Piraeus, and while Sekla sold our cargo, I rushed to Themistocles.

  I think that what I remember best is that when I said Babylon was in revolt, he slammed his right fist into his left.

  ‘Now,’ he said. ‘Now we have a chance.’

  Corinth – 481 BCE

  In which of the local glories of the past, divinely blessed Thebe, did you most delight your spirit? Was it when you raised to eminence the one seated beside Demeter of the clashing bronze cymbals, flowing-haired Dionysus? Or when you received, as a snow-shower of gold in the middle of the night, the greatest of the gods, when he stood in the doorway of Amphitryon, and then went in to the wife to beget Heracles? Or did you delight most in the shrewd counsels of Teiresias? Or in the wise horseman Iolaus? Or in the Sown Men, untiring with the spear?

  Pindar, Seventh Isthmian Ode, 454 BCE

  After Athens, I returned to Plataea for the longest time I had spent there since my wife died.

  In my heart, I was preparing my home for a bride again. And my bride was to be Briseis.

  By now, some of you must wonder whether I am a complete fool, that I should seek this woman’s favour so often, and so often be turned away. But however brief our encounter in Artapherenes’ house in Sardis, I knew – I knew that the contract was signed.

  And my house in Plataea was beautiful. The frescoes were done, and the house was stocked with grain and oil and full of light and life, because my daughter was there with her nurse Phoebe, a charming local girl, a priestess at the temple of Hera. Phoebe had made the mistake any girl can make, and had a baby without a father – but her milk had saved Euphonia, and as my daughter grew, Phoebe had, in some ways, matured with her.

  I confess that, besides my daughter, her body slave and Phoebe, mine was a very masculine household. I had found a place to beach my ships in the Corinthian gulf – over by Thisbe – and with my brother-in-law I’d bought warehouses and barracks there. Because that put my oarsmen so close, and because they were – with Myron’s help – all Plataeans, I tended to have a dozen of them around at any given time – on errands, or simply seeing the city of which they were (miraculously, to many) now citizens.

  Sekla – who had collected quite a bit of money over the preceding few years – purchased a house in Plataea that spring.

  I unpacked my few treasures from Persia – some silk, which went into stores, and my lapis, and the cedarwood box from the Queen Mother. I had never opened it, and when I did, I convinced my new slave butler that I really was a man of consequence.

  It was a two-eared cup, as tall as a man’s hand to the wrist, big enough to serve to ten guests at a drinking party, made of solid gold. On one side, a mounted man – a king, from his high crown – killed a lion with his bow. One the other side, a pair of winged lions were engraved surrounding an enormous emerald, the largest I’d ever seen, and beryls and other stones were set all the way around the rim – just below it, so that a man could comfortably drink from it. It was slightly bent, from where I’d fallen on it in the fight in the mountains, and I shocked my major-domo by taking it directly to the shop and truing the circle of the rim. My silversmith saved me from cracking the mounts that held the jewels – what does a bronzesmith know of such work? – and then we all marvelled over the quality of the workmanship. It was worth . . . well, about as much as the whole town of Plataea.

  I exaggerate. Perhaps only half as much.

  It impressed Aristides. He looked at it for a long time, and even put it tentatively to his lips. And then he looked at me over the rim.

  ‘The hillside of Kitharon is more beautiful,’ he said.

  I had Aristides as a long-term guest – I had returned from Susa to find him in one of my rooms with a pile of scrolls under his elbow, reading Anaxamander as if he, not I, was the owner. But he was an excellent guest, and – having run a rich household for many years – he was an endless fund of information.

  Aristides, Sekla, Megakles, Leukas, Sittonax – who had a dozen tales to tell of his adventures in Asia; Hector and Nikeas and Alexandros – and all my local friends, such as Ajax and Gelon and Lysieus and the three smiths, who had made more money in one year than they had imagined possible – Tiraeus and Styges and Hermogenes, much recovered in his old self thanks to prosperity—they were all present. Wealth may not buy happiness, but it certainly beats poverty.

  And I had truly begun to enjoy wealth.

  We went through a great deal of wine as that winter gave way to spring, and the bitter rains gave way to warm sun. The sun dried the stones, and my gardener – a freedman from Sicily, of all places – provided me with jasmine and roses and a hundred other flowers and shrubs, as well as making my olive tree shine like Athena’s gift to my house. Aristides – as anxious for his wife to arrive as I was – helped me with every detail, and when the guest house was finished, we watched the fresco painter – and annoyed him mightily, so that he muttered at us every day.

  My guest house was decorated with scenes from the Odyssey – the return of Odysseus, the loom of Penelope, and the moment at which Penelope takes her husband in her arms. My daughter loved them, and did her best to ‘help’ the artist, who might mock or curse me but was always bright and pleasant with her – even when her dirty handprints marred Penelope’s face.

  Storm Cutter returned very profitably from Aegypt with the onset of spring, and Paramanos told Moire where to find us and he took a cargo for Corcyra and came right round to Thisbe. My African navarch announced himself by riding into my courtyard on one of the handsomest horses I’d ever seen – he had Ka behind him on another – and Jocasta, wife of Aristides, mounted on a third.

  When I’d known him well, Moire hadn’t been much more fulsome than a man of Lacedeamon, but six more years among Greeks had broadened his vocabulary and his confidence. He sat easily on a kline with a cup of wine, and chatted with Aristides about Aegypt as if he were an Athenian gentleman of the bluest blood – but that was, in those days, how the explosion of sea trade was changing Athens. Navarchs and helmsmen were suddenly men of property and wealth, and merchants – Athenian, Metic or freedmen – were growing to be as wealthy as the old money – or wealthier.

  In some ways, it didn’t seem right. I had taken an embassy to Susa and brought back almost nothing – I’d preserved some fabrics from India and Kwin, and one packet of spices – but while I’d spent my fortune on a failed embassy, Harpagos, Moire and Megakles and Sekla had made me a fortune moving goods from Athens to Aegypt and Asia. Our piratical triremes made poor merchantmen, but the sudden demand for luxury goods could make even a trireme’s voyage profitable. And the pause in the endless naval war between Athens and Aegina – according to Moire, the rumour in Athens was that Sparta had ordered Aegina to cease operations – made shipping safe, or at least safer than it had been in twenty years.

  At any rate, I sat home that spring, and my captains made me more money. Moire purchased a pair of small round ships in Corinth, stowed them with Boeotian barley and shipped it up the coast of Illyria with Storm Cutter as a watchdog, while Harpagos and Sekla took Lydia and a larger round ship that could carry two thousand medimnoi of grain – a good size hull and the proceeds of two successful voyages – and laded her for Aegypt.

  Moire brought us reports of the failed revolt in Aegypt and the ongoing revolt in Babylon. When Sekla sailed, he had orders to pick up any information he could gather. It is not part of my tale to explain the workings of shipping – mine or anyone else’s; merchanting is a dull business, unless there’re pirates or a storm – but I will mention that Sekla, wh
o was from somewhere on the coast of Africa, had met Greeks and Phoenicians who traded up the Nile where he found merchants from the Erythra Thalassa and the Great Eastern Ocean, and he was afire to go. My reports from Susa and my discussions with Abha made for some fine spring conversations, a cup of wine on my knee, in my own garden.

  Sekla, eyes afire, leaned forward. ‘When all this war is done, I say we take two triremes and a store ship,’ he said. ‘Carry our goods up the Nile, and build ourselves ships on the Erythra Thalassa and try the Great East Sea.’

  ‘That is a mighty dream,’ I said.

  Sittonax laughed. ‘You sailed to Alba,’ he said. ‘Why not India?’ The Galle was becoming a geographer.

  I laughed, but Sekla looked off into the darkness. ‘Doola would sail to India,’ he said.

  And I thought it might be true. That’s when that dream began. It is another story, but I’ll tell it to you some day.

  Jocasta’s arrival changed the house in every way. First, a great Athenian lady does not travel alone, and she had six women with her – joined within hours by my sister Penelope and my sister-in-law Leda and their servants.

  I remember standing under my portico, looking at my garden, and poor Euphonia caught my hand. ‘I don’t want to go and weave with the ladies,’ she said. For almost two months, she had stayed up too late every night and listened to tales of sailing the world with a dozen men who catered to her every whim, and the arrival of a houseful of gentlewomen had catapulted her back to her life as one of them. ‘I want to sail to Aegypt with Sekla. A pox on all this weaving.’

  But I won’t make a mockery of femininity. The air of the house changed for the better, and Jocasta and Penelope got more work out of my servants and my slaves than I ever had. Pen fired my cook and bought me a Thracian – imagine having a tattooed killer as your cook, but I did, and he was very good.

  We laid in more wine.

  I did enjoy the moment when Jocasta entered the andron to set up her loom, and there was the Persian cup. She started.

  She looked at me as a nine-year-old girl looks when she wants one more piece of honeycomb and doesn’t dare ask.

  I took it down and handed it to her.

  She held it for a moment, and handed it back. ‘A remarkable piece of vulgarity,’ she said.

  ‘A gift,’ I said.

  ‘Oh, well.’ She smiled. ‘People do give the oddest things.’

  The oarsmen were sent to find their own lodgings.

  Hangings went on the walls for the first time – I hadn’t missed them – and one day, Jocasta and Leda and Penelope went to the agora with a dozen servants and four slaves and spent – I can’t remember how much, but it seemed a great deal – on a wine service in silver and a complete set of the sort of overly ornate Athenian ceramics that I carried in my ships and avoided owning – all scenes of the gods and everyday life in lurid red and black. I liked plain black ware and I liked my good Boeotian pottery – thick, heavy and solid as Old Draco or Empedocles himself.

  By next morning, I couldn’t find a scrap of it in my house.

  You see – like all men, I’ve turned to mockery of women, when what I really want to convey is that my sister and Jocasta and their friends made my house beautiful and civilised enough to receive the Queen of Sparta. I had to admit that the Athenian ware was pretty enough, and the cups were light in the hand, well crafted. My rooms were full of light and air – but decorated in the latest taste – and the women set up looms and prepared for me a set of matching drapes for my couches with a sort of ruthless efficiency that reminded me of a well-run ship. Really – watching Jocasta direct a dozen women weaving on four looms was much like watching Paramenos direct a ship in a storm – no hesitation, no anger, just a single-minded concentration on the task. They wove wool, and then they wove all our spare flax into towels, and then . . .

  And then Gorgo came.

  She came to Plataea with a dozen Spartan women and two men – Sparthius and Bulis. She arrived quite late in the evening, having celebrated the Epikledeia in Corinth. The queen was tired, but we stood with her people in my small courtyard and gave her Plataean kykeon, wine with barley meal and grated goat’s cheese, and she laughed that laugh and was visibly delighted by everything – including a suddenly shy Jocasta and my daughter, who kept grabbing the great queen’s hand and dragging her to see the most ordinary things – which she accepted with a good grace.

  When she was gone into the guest quarters, led by Pen and Leda, I put the two Spartiates on kline and we sat and drank most of an amphora of wine. I told them what I knew of the revolt in Babylon.

  Finally, I turned away another bowl – Hector nodded, as if to tell me in his fifteen-year-old wisdom that I had chosen well – and cocked an eyebrow at Sparthius. ‘And Brasidas?’ I asked.

  He looked away. Bulis looked at his feet. These were men who could defy the Great King and fight anyone to the death.

  I let it go.

  Eugenios, my new slave domesticos, purchased over my bewildered objections by Penelope for roughly the price of all of my other slaves combined, came in and escorted the Spartans to their room. They had to share – even my house, which seemed as vast as a cavern when it was just me and my daughter and her nurse, was now as full of people as a hive is with bees. It was not too late at night.

  It was probably better that way. We didn’t sit up late, as the Spartans were tired – so we had a fresh day in which to renew acquaintance. But as soon as Eugenios escorted them out, Leda and Pen joined me and sipped my wine, sitting on a kline and swinging their feet.

  ‘A symposiast at last,’ Leda said, stretching. ‘I declare I shall wear ivy on my brow and sing a lewd song.’ She looked at me from under her brows and made me laugh.

  Pen poked her. And turned to me. ‘Fancy, having the Queen of Sparta in our house.’

  Our house. Well, it made me smile.

  Leda got up and stretched again. She and Pen were just thirty – matrons. Both were priestesses of Hera and busybodies, so they were fit from walking. Each had borne just one child – both sons. Pen’s son Euaristos was new to me, just five years old. Leda’s son was six, born to a man she never mentioned. I noticed that they were fit – and lovely – but neither was as fit as any woman among the Spartans.

  All this was by the way. Leda was, I thought, stretching to catch my attention. And that was a kind of trouble I didn’t need. But I liked her smile and her wit, and I probably grinned at her like an old satyr.

  They went off to bed chattering.

  Morning came early.

  I met Gorgo playing with my daughter in the garden, less than an hour after dawn. Euphonia could barely sleep for the excitement of having the Queen of Sparta in the house, and her doting nurse helped her dress and loosed her on the world.

  The queen rose early.

  ‘I hope you are not planning on going riding,’ I said.

  Gorgo laughed, long and hard. ‘I was hunting,’ she said. ‘I had a beast in view.’ She shrugged. ‘You took my boys to Susa and you brought them home. And helped with the chariot. All in all, I owe you.’ She smiled down at Euphonia. ‘She is charming. She was telling me about Brauron. You should send her to Sparta for a summer.’ She nodded. ‘She’s athletic enough. Some girls can’t take the pace of the races and the dance, but she could.’

  ‘Can you tell me anything of Brasidas?’ I asked.

  Gorgo looked away. ‘He is still in Babylon,’ she said. ‘I doubt Demaratus can save him now.’

  ‘What did he do?’ I asked.

  Gorgo shook her head. ‘It is not my place to speak of it. And I regret that. We are deeply in your debt, Arimnestos of Plataea.’

  We talked for some time about the situation, and Euphonia, bored, slipped away into the garden and vanished to the stables.

  At some point, I thought of Demaratus, and the tablets, and I sent Eugenios to fetch them. He brought them to me – somewhat hacked about. The string that held them together had been cut, so that they
were simply three individual wax tablets, one double sided, and one with a carved cover. I held them out to the queen with a bow.

  ‘I’m sorry, my queen. These are from the former King of Sparta, Demaratus, and I was to deliver them to you immediately – and I have failed. I forgot them. And indeed, I can’t imagine that they have much of import – I confess I’ve read his note on the wax – it used to be clearer – and all it contains is directions for the factor of one of his farms.’

  The queen took them. She sat suddenly, as if overcome by emotion – she, a Spartan – and she held them in the skirts of her chiton. Then she took the cover, and flexed it between her powerful hands, so that the frame splintered.

  She took a sharp knife from her zone, and slipped it between the wax and the board beneath, and peeled the wax away in one neat rectangle – and the board beneath was covered in dense black writing.

  She laughed aloud.

  ‘I should not have let you see that,’ she said. She raised her eyes. ‘Swear you will not tell.’

  Well, I’m telling you now, but I think everyone involved is dead, now.

  She peeled all three boards clear of their wax, and Eugenios carried the wreckage away. I have no idea what the former King of Sparta said to Gorgo in a three-page letter, but I’ll guess that he sent her a list of messengers and codes. Because from that day forward, she always seemed to know more than anyone about the Medes – and especially about their fleet.

  Just as we tidied up the last splinters, Aristides joined us – shocked, I think, to find the Queen of Sparta alone in the garden with a man, much less with me. His wife joined us soon after.