Salamis (45 page)

‘That’s a cowardly answer,’ Penelope spat at me. ‘You mean I should do what is right? I’m asking you
what
is right!’

In fact, she was asking my permission to find someone, or to leave off mourning eventually. I knew it. I bit my lip. She was my sister and I confess I saw no reason for her – or any man or woman – to spend what could be a long life, alone or with her sons.

A voice floated out of the darkness. ‘My husband told me to find a good man and make strong sons, if he should die.’

That was Gorgo’s voice, and she came up the smooth, ancient steps to our little portico. With her were two Thracian women and Bulis – but her being out in the darkness would still have been a scandal in Athens.

In Hermione, though, there were no rules. I won’t belabour the point, but we were a nation at war; we knew we were riding the fell beast in a pause between two deadly engagements. Girls and boys flirted and even kissed and their elders winked at it. It was not like the Athens or Plataea of my youth.

We all knew we were living on borrowed time, I think.

At any rate, the Queen of Sparta, widowed in the same hour as my sister, came up the steps, and she and Bulis sat with us. Eugenios came and placed lit oil lamps on small tables, and cakes appeared. And more wine.

But not before Gorgo said her piece.

‘I will always see Leonidas as a demigod,’ Gorgo said. She neither choked with emotion nor sounded happy. Her voice was neither flat nor full, but almost light in its delivery, like an oracle. ‘But I will never compare him to any man who follows him into my bed. What is, is.’ She smiled at Penelope, who came and embraced her.

She looked at me. ‘We have all missed the Mysteries, have we not?’ she asked, by which she meant the Eleusinian Mysteries, which should have been celebrated the week of Salamis. And her statement, ‘what is, is’ is contained in the Mysteries, although I was not, at that time, an initiate.

Bulis looked at me. I waved, and Eugenios put wine in his hand, and then another cup by the Queen.

My daughter returned, looking smug. Behind her came Jocasta, pink by torchlight with embarrassment and secret joy at being out of her house after dark. And Aristides. And Brasidas joined us and sat close by Gorgo.

‘We meet in the darkness like conspirators,’ Bulis said.

Gorgo spoke, again like an oracle. ‘In the darkness, we can all pretend we were never here,’ she said.

Euphonia laughed and almost got sent to bed.

I’d like to say that we then went on to solve the League’s problems, but mostly we sat and watched the stars and drank wine.

Jocasta laughed softly. ‘I’ve always wondered what men do at parties.’

Aristides laughed. ‘You have? Really, this is quite a bit better than most symposia. For one thing, Eugenios mixes wine better than any host I know, and for another, each of us thinks before we speak.’

Jocasta leaned back so that her head rested on her husband’s shoulder. Even then, in the near dark and in the afterglow of a famous victory, Aristides looked shocked that his wife would touch him in public. It’s who he was.

‘The wine is going to my head,’ Jocasta said. ‘Tell me, men. Will we defeat the Great King?’

I remember the silence. Far away, a cat yowled. Closer, there was the scent of the fig tree, like cinnamon and honey on the wind that rustled the branches to tell us that winter was coming.

‘You know that Mardonius has the army in Thessaly?’ I asked.

Gorgo nodded, her profile sharp against the light of one of the oil lamps. ‘I know more than that,’ she said quietly. ‘I know from … a friend … that Mardonius, who, according to my source, seeks to be Great King himself, will seek to invade Attica again.’

Jocasta moaned. We all sat up.

‘He believes that, even now, Athens can be destroyed so thoroughly that her citizens will disperse or leave the League.’ She looked at Aristides. ‘And even now there are many in Sparta who speak of holding the isthmian wall at Corinth and leaving Boeotia and Attica to their fate.’

Bulis nodded silently.

‘Most of the peers who wanted to save all Greece,’ he said, ‘died with the King.’

We all sat silently and digested that.

‘Tomorrow I will meet Themistocles and escort him to Sparta,’ Gorgo said. ‘I hope that he, at least, as one of the architects of the Temple of Nike at Salamis, will help me to convince the ephors to march an army in the spring.’

Brasidas laughed. ‘The architect of the Temple of Nike,’ he said. ‘Why do the Athenians think women cannot be orators? That’s a beautiful phrase.’

Jocasta laughed. ‘You, Gorgo, were the architect of that victory. Themistocles was merely a stonemason.’

The Spartan queen shook her head. ‘Too much praise is like too much wine. I must go to bed. But I will keep Themistocles waiting one more day – if it means I can attend a certain wedding.’

She looked at my daughter – remember, we were guest friends, and my daughter had known her now for some years. ‘Sing us something, my child,’ she said. ‘We are old and silent.’

Jocasta laughed again, she was becoming immodest, by her own lights. ‘Yes, what shall we sing?’ she asked. ‘I thought men sang at these parties.’

Euphonia stood up and sang. But like most very young people, she sang to shock. And her voice was as beautiful as her mother’s had been.

θέλουσα δ᾽ αὖ θέλουσαν ἁγνά μ᾽

145
ἐπιδέτω Διὸς κόρα,

ἔχουσα σέμν᾽ ἐνώπι᾽ ἀσφαλῶς,

παντὶ δὲ σθένει

διωγμοῖς
ἀσχαλῶσ᾽

ἀδμήτας ἀδμήτα

0ῥύσιος γενέσθω,

σπέρμα σεμνᾶς μέγα ματρὸς

εὐνὰς ἀνδρῶν, ἒ ἔ,

ἄγαμον ἀδάματον ἐκφυγεῖν
.

And may Zeus’s pure daughter, she who holds securely the sacred wall, willingly, meeting my will, look upon me; and, grieved at our pursuit, come with all her might, a virgin to a virgin’s aid, to deliver me— That the mighty race of our honourable mother may escape the embrace of man (ah me), unwedded, unvanquished.

Brasidas, who loved my daughter, laughed aloud.

I sat up. ‘That is a song
against
marriage,’ I said.

My daughter tossed her head. ‘It is a song we sing at Brauron, when we are little bears,’ she said. ‘Some of the priestesses say men have no purpose but to break us and marriage is to women what taming is to horses.’

Gorgo forsook her mourning long enough to laugh her hearty, man’s laugh. ‘A fine song,’ she said. ‘I can see she is truly your daughter. But Euphonia, never let any child born of woman tell you that marriage breaks man or woman. Is all Greece stronger, or weaker, for the League we have made against the Persians?’

‘Stronger, of course,’ shot back my daughter.

‘So it is with marriage. Despite a thousand kinds of compromise, the result is stronger than either one was alone.’ She rose. Bulis rose with her like a shadow. She leaned over and kissed Jocasta. ‘I swear by Aphrodite I will not come as the Queen of Sparta,’ she whispered.

‘Thanks all the gods,’ Jocasta murmured. ‘I have enough troubles as it is.’

Anyway, that’s all I remember of that evening. I think Gorgo had another meeting with Jocasta, but that’s for another story and another night.

And then it was my wedding day.

It was bright and sunny, not quite warm – almost perfect for wearing a heavy himation in public. I had a magnificent one, a length of fabric I’d taken – to be honest, Hector had done the taking – two days after the battle. It had probably been Artemisia’s and she had the best taste I knew of, except Briseis. It was Tyrian red, with tasselled ends and gold-tablet woven borders. I didn’t have a zone rich enough to wear with it, but Cimon did. It is amazing how, no matter how much you prepare, something is forgotten, and Cimon sent back to ‘his’ house, first for a zone of gold, and then for sandals – how on earth had I expected to be wed in my military ‘Spartan shoes’?

His spare sandals were a rich white, so white I didn’t really know that leather could be so white. They had gold tassels and gold laces and, frankly, they looked ridiculous on my feet. Almost every toe I have has been broken, some four or five times. There are parts of me that are handsome still, and back then, at the height of my powers, I was accounted handsome, I think, but never for my feet.

In truth, I think part of getting wed is proving to your soon-to-be wife that you will wear whatever it takes. I wore the sandals and the zone. And as I stepped up into my chariot – alone, symbolically – I ran a fond hand over the bronze tyre of the wheel that I had helped forge.

And all my friends – I mean all of them, all that were living and, I think, a few of my dead – followed my chariot through the steep streets of Hermione, to the house where Archilogos waited. It was by then the edge of evening and the sun was setting red and mighty in the west behind the hills. I have no idea how I spent that day: looking for sandals, apparently. But I remember the light on the ships and the roof of the temple of Poseidon. I remember Aeschylus and Phrynicus becoming shrews as they matched wits against each other; I thought of telling them to be quiet, but I was old enough to realise that they were, in fact, enjoying themselves. And Styges was there, and Tiraesias and Hermogenes and Brasidas and Bulis, and Moire, and Ion who was too young to be one of my friends and was clearly more comfortable with the younger men, my sons.

And there they were, each more beautiful than the last, if I may say it of them. Hector’s hair was like a blond flame, long like a Spartan’s, and Hipponax, heavier, but strong and calm, with his ringlets oiled and a superb woollen himation that just possibly his bride had made for him. And there with me were most of my marines – Sitalkes was gone to find his wife at Corinth and missed it all – and many oarsmen, too. Kineas strode by one of my chariot wheels like a god and he made me think somehow of Neoptolymos, the friend of my youth, the Cretan.

There were so many men we filled the streets, and three chariots – I tried to take it all in, but Aristides has told me since that he and some of the more formally dressed men were only just leaving their houses because of the press when I was arriving in the courtyard of Archilogos.

We had arranged that each of us would go to our bride’s house, pick her up in our chariot and lead a procession of her dowry through the streets to the temple of Poseidon, where we would all make offering and sacrifice, and where, by the courtesy of the town’s elders, we were allowed to make a marriage feast inside the precinct, as it was the only area in the town large enough for so many.

And it seemed unreal to me that I was going to wed Briseis in this pretty little town that was not my own, or hers, amid the same men who I led onto enemy decks and through enemy formations, all wreathed, all laughing. There was Leukas, who had been born almost in Hyperborea, and there was Seckla, in a magnificent robe of shining white and gold (loot, I suspect, from one of the Carthaginians), and he was from so far south of Thebes (Thebes of Egypt, that is) that he said it was as far from his home to Thebes as it was from Thebes to Athens. And there was Ka, who wore, instead of a himation or a chiton, the skin of a leopard, a fabulous spotted cat, or perhaps it was two, but it made him look even more exotic and even less Greek.

Of course, he was almost a foot taller than all the other men, as well. It made him easy to find, in a fight. Ka was a contrast to Moire. Ka never tried to be Greek; Moire was as Greek as he sought to be.

Anyway, I couldn’t quite get my mind around the reality of it. The chariot rolled along well enough, and the horses, for horses, behaved themselves. Cimon was beside himself with what a fine team they were and how magnificent they’d be if he could only replace the offside horse with a bigger one. They were all grey, unmatched and yet somehow matched, and it’s true that the offside horse was smaller. But they filled the street, they obeyed me like slaves, and they didn’t upset my magnificent himation. Listen, when I was a slave boy on Hipponax’s farm, learning to drive a chariot, little did I imagine that the next chance I would have would be in the streets of a tiny town in the Peloponnese, on the road to wedding my master’s daughter!

Cimon was striding along by the horses. He didn’t seem to think I could be trusted with them. Did you know that when Themistocles proposed that the men of Athens put to sea and defend Attica in ships – that ‘wooden walls’ was the oracle of Delphi’s way of telling them to fight at sea – Cimon went to the temple of Athena and sacrificed his bits and bridles and went from the altar straight to a ship? A magnificent act, and one that helped weld the richest men in Athens to the poorest.

Despite which, he didn’t really think I was any good with horses. And he was right.

Then we were there.

At the last moment a little of my boyhood flowed into my hands, and despite my himation and my gilded sandals, I napped the reins. My four greys leapt forward – like most horses, they wanted to run. The street in front of me was empty; well, mostly empty, and I enjoyed making Cimon leap for a sausage stall, and we moved down the last hundred paces at a fast trot and I left my crowd behind.

The entrance to the yard of the house that Archilogos had rented was not very wide, and at right angles to the street. I had, naturally enough, never been in the yard, but I knew I was to take the chariot in. And I do like to make an entrance.

One of the tricks you learn when you learn to race a chariot, or to be a charioteer in combat – you paying attention, ladies? I trained for this as a slave – is to stop one wheel and pivot the whole chariot on the other. It takes great horses and good timing, and some terrible daimon of youth invaded me and made me try to do it entering the courtyard of the house of my bride.

I checked the horses with my voice, threw all my weight to the right, and reined in the lead horse, and he all but pivoted on his back feet.

By Poseidon, Lord of Horses, the gate seemed narrower than the wheels of my chariot. It was a foolish chance to have taken with a vehicle my friends and I had rebuilt from worm-eaten wood and rotted rawhide.