The Great King (10 page)

I shook my head. We had had young Aristides with us in our brief foray into Illyria, and there wasn’t a man among us who hadn’t found him tiresome. But it was like belonging to a city or being part of a village – I felt at home, even on the plain beneath the shadow of mighty Olympus.

Giannis, my young friend from Massalia, was transported. In addition to helping Alexandros make a fortune, he was seeing all the great men of Greece, and he looked as if he was atop Mount Olympus, with the gods, not at the base, drinking wine.

Cimon drank his wine. I could tell he wanted to say something and all this small talk was merely his way – the Greek way – of working around to the main topic. Brasidas shot me a look, which I interpreted as his willingness to walk off and leave us to ourselves, but I just shrugged at him.

‘What are your plans from here?’ Cimon asked with that elaborate casualness that marks a man who has a favour to ask.

‘I’m for Plataea,’ I said. ‘But whether I go via Corinth or by way of Athens is dependent on many things.’

He nodded and looked away. His eyes followed a pair of eagles soaring high above us, well up the shoulder of the mountain. There is no better omen.

‘Those eagles say that you should ask your question,’ I said, in as light a voice as I could manage.

He bit his lip. ‘Themistocles is here,’ he said.

I nodded, the way men nod when they have no idea what other men are on about. ‘I remember him well,’ I said.

‘You have been gone a long time. Themistocles has summoned – has requested – that all the great men of Greece attend these games – to talk about the Great King.’

I laughed. ‘And I’m not invited? You could have told me straight out – I’ve outgrown the need to be the great man, Cimon. Your father always did it better than I ever will.’

But his face didn’t change. ‘No – I’m sure Themistocles will want you.’ His eyes were evasive. ‘Arimnestos – you are not an Athenian. And yet you are one of us – you led the way at Marathon.’

‘Spit it out!’ I said.

‘Themistocles is working on a sentence of exile for Aristides,’ he said. ‘Aristides was ever your friend.’

I made the gesture that Boeotian peasants – and bronzesmiths – use to avert witchcraft. ‘Aristides was ever my friend – but not yours or your father’s by any means.’ I tried to make my tone light. ‘Cimon – we’re at the
Olympics.
Could we suspend Athenian politics a while?’

Cimon turned and met my eyes. ‘I held my peace all the way up the Adriatic and on a dozen beaches,’ he said. ‘I hadn’t expected to find myself in the same camp as Themistocles while he bayed for Aristides’ blood.’

I remember that I shook my head in disgust. Athenians are fine men – brave, noble, inclined to high ethics and beautiful rhetoric. But most of them would sell their mothers into the degradation of slavery in order to achieve political power.

‘Cimon – Aristides hounded your father in the courts. The only thing the two of them did together was to win Marathon. That, and to fight the Alcmaeonidae. Eh?’ I spread my hands.

He didn’t laugh. ‘Aristides is one of us,’ he said. ‘A gentleman. Themistocles is dead set to overturn the democracy and give power to the lowest orders. We will end with nothing – mark my words.’

I bit my lip. Really – viewed from outside, from Plataea – they’d be comic, these Athenian politicians, with their self-centred political greed dressed up as righteous political ethics – they’d be comic, I say, except that little Plataea needs its alliance with Athens, and when Athens catches cold, Plataea coughs.

And they were all my friends – Themistocles a little less than Cimon or Aristides, but he and I shared Marathon. And the defeat of the Alcmaeonidae.

Thinking of those events – six long years ago – put a niggling suspicion in my head. ‘Aristides is the head of your party?’ I asked.

Cimon nodded silently.

‘Is your party the aristocratic party?’ I asked.

Cimon paused. ‘Yes,’ he said.

‘Does your party include Cleitus? And the Alcmaeonidae?’ I asked.

Cimon shrugged again. ‘Yes,’ he admitted. ‘Listen! Everything has changed!’

I surprised him, because I stepped forward through his protests and gave him a hug. ‘Cimon – I have always seen you as the brother of my youth. I will always be at your side in any adventure – and the same goes for Aristides. My sword and my purse are at your command.’ I grinned, and he grinned back.

‘Just don’t involve me in any of the shit you call politics. And don’t put me in the same sword-space as Cleitus.’ I delivered the sentence like a sword-blow. I meant it.

‘If you understood what’s at stake, you’d stand with us!’ he insisted.

‘Maybe he’d stand with
us
, instead,’ Themistocles said. He was standing about ten feet away, and he had one of my horn wine cups in his hand. ‘Considering that he’s a friend to the thetis and he’s been a slave. And he’s no friend to the Persians and the Medes.’

Cimon glared. ‘You can’t pretend in a year of your fancy rhetoric that anyone in my family is a friend to the Medes,’ he said.

Themistocles didn’t give a dactyl. ‘You come from a line of heroes back to Ajax,’ he said. ‘Your party serves the Great King and takes his bribes.’

‘You lie,’ Cimon said. ‘And no amount of lying will change the reality – Athens cannot stand alone against the might of the Great King.’

I made a sign to my hypaspist. He understood at once, and slipped away.

‘We can if we have allies,’ Themistocles said.

‘Allies like Aegina and Corinth? Our mortal foes?’ Cimon asked.

‘They are Greeks, like us. Cimon, you have fought the Medes all your adult life. Now you propose to make an “arrangement” with them.’ Themistocles had a superb speaking voice – he sounded like the soul of reason. Cimon, by contrast, sounded arrogant.

‘The Great King lives in Persopolis, half the world away, and he need never trouble me in my bed. You intend to overthrow the entire world so that you can have a fleet big enough to rival the Great King, and in the end, you will make Athens the centre of a maritime empire, where the rowers are the equals of the hoplites, and the hoplites are nothing but marines. A tyranny of the lowest orders, simply to row your fleet.’ He all but spat the words.

Men locked in argument often ignore the world around them. In this case, Cimon was speaking, not just to Themistocles, or me, but to an audience mostly composed of my oarsmen, who were serving as tavern workers.

They began to grumble.

Hector returned with a fine Lesbian amphora charged with wine.

I stepped forward. ‘Gentlemen,’ I said, ‘I am the host here, and I declare that both of you need another cup of wine.’

It says something about – well, about men – that I could agree with almost every word Themistocles said, and still find him a greasy politician; I could, as a non-aristocrat, feel insulted by almost every word that Cimon uttered, and still find him the better man. But if life were simple, we wouldn’t spend so much time arguing, would we?

My hypaspist filled their cups, and Themistocles bowed. ‘Arimnestos, you are the prince of hosts. I hope you will agree to come and sit at our council fire while we discuss the Great King’s demands.’

I raised an eyebrow. ‘Who have you invited from Thebes?’ I asked.

He shrugged. ‘One of their chief priests, and a dozen of their best men.’ He looked at Cimon. ‘At the Olympic games, one is seldom able to find any members of the thetis class on whom we all depend; but there is always a reliable number of conservative aristocrats.’

‘As it should be,’ Cimon said. ‘The best is for the best men.’

‘Really?’ Themistocles asked. ‘Wouldn’t you like excellence to be for every man? Isn’t that what Cleisthenes wanted?’

‘Cleisthenes sought to allow the best men of the middle sort to be counted with the sons of the gods,’ Cimon said carefully, but he was thinking through his words, and I think that shot from Themistocles went home.

‘Don’t you think that excellence breeds excellence? And that watching the best men in the Greek world compete could only make better men of every man?’ Themistocles said. He said something like that. I’ve lost the elegance of his words, but I agreed.

And I said so.

‘Cimon – you can’t condemn men based on their birth. I ask you – look at our helmsmen. Birth does not make you a good helmsman. Only time and training and years at sea make you capable of commanding between the oars – eh?’ I smiled.

He shook his head. ‘Arimnestos – allegories always go the same way. The leadership of a city is not like the piloting of a ship. But even if it was – are you as good at piloting as Harpagos? Or that Alban of yours with the milk-white skin? They were
born
to the sea.’

I scratched my beard. ‘You have the better of me there,’ I admitted. ‘But even though I was not – I can make a competent effort at taking my ship across the sea, or so men say.’

‘You are merely an aristocrat pretending to be a bronzesmith,’ Cimon said.

Themistocles frowned with real anger, I think. ‘You bastards say that of every man who defies your narrow ideas of excellence. You just promote him in your minds to being one of you.’

The sun was setting. Cimon’s face was red, but I thought it might just be the setting sun. Still, I didn’t think that the two of them were headed in a useful direction. I waved for their cups to be refilled. The line into my canvas taverna now ran all the way to the temple precinct wall.

‘I had Artapherenes aboard my ship a week ago,’ I said.

That got their attention.

Themistocles glared at me. ‘The Satrap of Phrygia?’ he asked.

I nodded. ‘The same. The storm wrecked his ship, and panicked the oarsmen.’

Cimon grinned. ‘You
took
the Satrap of Phrygia?’ he asked.

I shook my head. ‘No – we’re guest friends.’

Cimon nodded. ‘Of course – I knew that. My father has spoken of it – and he is married to your – ahem – friend. Briseis of Ephesus.’ He coughed.

Themistocles sputtered. ‘Poseidon’s rage! Are you all friends of the Medes? You – the famous warrior, the hero of Marathon?’

I laughed – Themistocles was easy to dislike. Cimon, like a gentleman, immediately appreciated that guest friendship overran any thoughts of ransom. Themistocles couldn’t see beyond the advantage it would have brought to have Artapherenes.

I shrugged. ‘You know I was a slave in Ephesus. Yes? Arta-pherenes . . .’ I smiled ‘. . . was instrumental in my freedom,’ I said carefully. No lie there – just a carefully nuanced truth. I shrugged. ‘Later, he saved my life. And the life of many people close to me.’

Themistocles shook his head. ‘You have fought the Medes on many fields,’ he said.

I smiled. ‘And I count many of them among my friends, Themistocles. Almost as many as I have friends in Athens. Of the two, I feel the Persians are the more honest.’

‘So despite all your fine words, you will support the aristocrats,’ he said.

I looked at both of them. Talking about politics to Athenians is exactly like managing the helm of a trireme in heavy seas. ‘No,’ I said, right at him. ‘I don’t think that I will. But neither am I interested in a war for the emerging empire of Athens, Themistocles. This much I’ll tell you both. The Great King is determined on war. He is building his fleets and his armies and his targets are Athens and Sparta.’

Cimon shook his head vehemently. ‘No! If we send him tokens of submission – if we offer a small tribute—’

I had to take a step back to get his attention. ‘No, Cimon. Don’t delude yourself. The Great King is coming. It will not be next year – but it will be soon. Two years at the earliest, is what my friends say. Do you know that he’s building a canal through the isthmus of Athos? Do you know that he’s raising a fleet from the Ionian cities? Do you know that he has promised two great satrapies in Europe? And one of those to Mardonias, or that’s what I heard.’ I shook my head. ‘Cimon – you know what it is to decide on a voyage. You know how long it takes to gather your oarsmen, to get enough amphorae to ballast your ship in clay and fresh water, to lay in the sand, to gather salt pork, to find the right braziers and replace the broken oars—’

He held up a hand to indicate that he did, and my rhetorical device could be brought to an end.

‘Think about a fleet of a thousand galleys and a quarter of a million oarsmen and marines. Think of an army of half a million soldiers. How long would it take to gather the supplies and scout the roads? And once you have started – once you have
spent the money and told your friends you are going
. . .’ I paused and took a breath. ‘Do you imagine that he’ll just stop because you offer a tribute?’

Cimon took a breath. ‘And you spoke to him in person?’ he said.

I nodded.

‘And Briseis, of course,’ he said, admitting to himself that I knew what I was saying.

‘She said so, too. She would know.’ I shrugged.

Themistocles looked at me suspiciously. ‘You can’t have convinced the eupatridae in one sentence,’ he said. ‘You are mocking me.’

Cimon was frowning. ‘Themistocles – do you think it is possible for honest men to disagree?’

Themistocles thought for a long time, looking for a trap. ‘Yes,’ he admitted.

‘I’m not pleased by what the Plataean has to say – but I have to believe it. I do not love your . . . your democracy, Themistocles. But if Athens must fight for her life . . .’ He shrugged. ‘If there is no hope of reconciliation with Persia . . .’

‘Your father helped create this war,’ Themistocles said.

Cimon nodded. ‘That’s true. And because I know it to be true, I know it can be mended.’

Themistocles looked at me. ‘What side will you choose, Plataean?’ he asked.

I confess that I laughed. ‘I’ll be on the Plataean side, of course,’ I said.

Themistocles stalked off soon after. Even though I could see that Cimon’s mind was changing, Themistocles was such a domineering bastard that he wanted Cimon’s absolute agreement – his slavish obedience.

In my observation, demagogues are the harshest tyrants. And you’ll see how this comes out, if you stick with me.

I never liked Themistocles. He was too keen on his own power, and he made it a little too obvious to the rest of us that he was smarter than we and felt that we should leave him in peace to decide our futures – for our own good. I really, truly believe that’s what he thought, in his heart.