The Great King (15 page)

Ka’s stumbling attempts at sentences longer than five words would not have made him welcome anywhere – well, except perhaps a Spartan mess.

That night, Themistocles gathered almost a hundred men at his own fire. Cimon was there, and Aristides. I embraced the man that most Athenians, even those who hated him, called ‘the Just’. He sometimes looked at Themistocles with undisguised loathing – but he was there.

So was Leonidas of Sparta. There were a dozen Corinthians, there were Megarans, there were two aristocrats of Aegina and a few Thebans. While I was controlling my urge to spit, the eldest among them came forward from the stool on which he’d been sitting. He was a bent old man with no hair on top of his head, and it took me a moment to recognise him, and then I crushed him in an embrace, despite his Theban ways.

‘Empedocles!’ I shouted – so loud that the King of Sparta turned his head. I’m sure the Spartans thought me a buffoon.

Empedocles laughed noiselessly. ‘You are here? You live?’ He shook his head. ‘There will be some very disappointed men in Plataea, my son.’

His words gave me a chill in the warm summer air. ‘Disappointed?’ I asked.

‘Your cousin’s younger son has your farm,’ Empedocles said. ‘But there are men here who can tell you more than I. It is enough for me to clasp your hand – I feel ten years younger – nay, twenty!’

And behind the old priest in the firelight were a dozen Boeotians that I knew well. Perhaps best of all, I knew my own brother-in-law, Antigonus. He was standing a little aloof, looking at me.

I walked straight up to him and threw my arms around him. There was little he could do but respond.

At my shoulder, Cimon said, ‘I told you!’

Antigonus just shook his head and crushed me to him. ‘We all thought you . . . were dead,’ he said. ‘By all the gods, Arimnestos – where in Hades have you been! Your sister mourned you for a year.’

He was still balanced between anger and love – like a mother whose child has vanished on a summer day, and comes back hours later.

‘The Carthaginians made me a slave,’ I said.

‘And then he sailed around the world on his way to hurry back to Plataea,’ said Cimon, always one to throw oil on a fire.

Antigonus looked away, and then turned back, and he had tears in his eyes. ‘You
bastard
,’ he said, but then he crushed me to him again.

Then I had to repeat the whole performance with Lykon of Corinth. He’d been in my wedding party – indeed, I’d expected my wife to prefer him. He had been the handsomest youth of his generation, tall, blond and beautiful, as well as good at sports and war and gentle, too. Easy to hate, except that he was so decent.

Now he was six years older, solid and dependable in the way no beautiful young man ever will be. I’m pretty sure he used the word ‘bastard’ too.

And finally, there was Old Draco – who must have been the oldest man at the Olympics, or close to it, but the wagon builder was still strong, and he walked without a stoop.

‘If you weren’t such a famous killer of men,’ he said, ‘I’d give you a punch on the nose, young man. Gone all the time – farm in ruins – no one exercising our phalanx – not a
fucking
decent bronzesmith between Thespiae and Thebes!’ He glared at me.

Now, at that campfire, I was the great Arimnestos – hero of Marathon, veteran pirate, probably as well known as most of the warriors of my generation. Draco was a wheelwright who built wagons in an obscure town of which half of Greece had never heard.

But I quailed like a nine-year-old boy caught stealing apples.

Draco stepped forward, pushing me back by sheer moral authority. ‘When are you going to stop playing boys’ games and come home and do some work?’ he growled.

I’d like to say I laughed, but I didn’t. I all but cowered.

For some men, you are always a child. ‘As soon as the Olympics are over, I will come home,’ I heard myself say.

‘Hmmf,’ Draco grunted. ‘None too soon,’ he said.

The only other Plataean was Styges, of all people, and his greeting was far warmer. He hugged me, and shook his head.

‘We knew you were alive,’ he said. ‘But seeing is believing.’

So much to my own embarrassment, I had to spend time telling the story of my enslavement and my eventual escape and the trip to Alba and back through Gaul. I love to tell a story, but not under the eye of the King of Sparta and half of the elite assembly of Athens.

Despite which, it’s a good story, and when I was done, Draco shook his head – frank disbelief on his face. The old man thought I’d made it all up.

Empedocles put a hand on my shoulder. ‘You are touched by the gods,’ the old priest said.

I shrugged, embarrassed. ‘I made some good things in Sicily,’ I said. Empedocles had given me my first steps as a smith for the god, and I showed him the sign for a master – in Sicily. He all but glowed. ‘So you have not spurned Hephaestus for Ares?’ he asked.

‘Never!’ I said. ‘I am no scion of the bloody-handed god.’

Empedocles nodded again. ‘Will you really return to Plataea?’ he asked. Men were crowding around in the firelit darkness, and the King of Sparta was at my elbow.

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘May I come and sanctify your forge?’ he asked. And then, teasingly – ‘And see if your mastery is good enough for Boeotia?’

I bowed. Greeks don’t bow often – mostly to gods. Sometimes to great athletes, or great beauty in men or women. Never to army commanders and seldom to kings.

But he was a great priest. An suddenly, out of nowhere, the craft-longing was on me – to make something.

‘I would be honoured,’ I said.

The King of Sparta was on my right and Antigonus of Thespiae on my left. I grinned. It is not every day that you can out-aristocrat your brother-in-law.

‘Antigonus of Thespiae, may I introduce Leonidas of the Agiad Dynasty of Sparta? Leonidas, may I introduce my brother-in-law, Antigonus Melachites.’ It is not every day you can introduce the King of Sparta to your friends.

They clasped arms. It was an informal night – the air was full of mosquitoes and the fire was too hot and the wine was terrible, despite which we were all very conscious of
why
we were at Themistocles’ fire.

Antigonus had the King of Sparta engaged – about horses – in moments. Leonidas
could
be made to talk, but I didn’t know enough about any of the subjects that interested him.

Well – except one, as it proved.

At any rate, I was just turning to Styges to get an account of my cousin’s usurpation of my farm when Themistocles stepped into the firelight and we all fell silent.

‘Gentlemen,’ he said, ‘I have called you all together tonight to save Greece.’

We talked for four hours, and decided nothing.

I suppose all the thinking men in Greece could, by then, have been divided into four factions. A few were openly in favour of the Persians. Those were mostly old aristocrats who – publicly – accepted the Great King as a sort of ‘first among equals’ of the whole human race.

The second faction would be those who didn’t see a crisis. Who refused to see that the Medes and Persians were on their way – that the war had begun. Because men are men, this group was by far the largest – at the fire, on the plains of the Alpheos, and throughout Greece.

The third group disliked the Great King and all his works, and believed that he would invade. But felt that it was hubris to attempt to resist, and intended to offer submission as soon as it was politically expedient. And wished Athens and Sparta, which could not submit, well.

And finally, there was the fourth group, who believed that the Great King was on his way, and intended to resist. The men who represented that faction were at the fire. Leonidas of Sparta was the chief – he continued to represent his mad half-brother’s policy of aggression against the Medes. As the leader of the conservatives in the most conservative state in all of Greece, Leonidas was an odd ally for Themistocles.

But Themistocles – the leader of the popular party in Athens, the most persuasive orator of our day and the bitter enemy of aristocrats everywhere – was the other pillar of the idea of resistance to Persia. And truly, I think it unlikely that either would have succeeded without the other.

The men at the fire were, for the most part, committed to resistance. We couldn’t agree on when, or how, we should resist. As an example – I will not bore you with a full relation – Cimon and I held the rostrum for half an hour, outlining the advantages of a forward naval strategy that would burn the Great King’s fleet in its bases on the Syrian coast.

Back then, we thought the Persians would only come by sea, as they did in Marathon year.

I think we spoke well, but our views were ridiculed.

‘The Great King has a thousand ships – by your own admission!’ said a Corinthian. ‘And yet you think that with a hundred ships you can reduce his fleet.’

Cimon scowled. ‘Yes,’ he said.

‘And get rich into the bargain,’ I added, which may not have been the wisest course.

More men were for forming a great league, and marching into Thessaly to fight the Persians.

‘If they ever come, they will come by land,’ insisted a Corinthian aristocrat. ‘An army the size of the Great King’s cannot be transported by sea.’

‘Or fed by land,’ muttered Cimon.

Leonidas watched it all, looking back and forth like a man watching an athletic contest, offering nothing.

At length, the same Corinthian rose – Adeimantus, son of Ocytus. ‘I agree that we should resist,’ he said. ‘But these are Athenian tactics – the tactics of lesser men. In Corinth, we will not enfranchise the little men who are no better than slaves, just to have more rowers for our ships. We will not let
ships
decide the destiny of Greece.’

Most men growled or openly cheered. So much for a forward naval strategy.

‘But,’ he went on, ‘how do we know the Medes are coming?’ He raised a hand. ‘The Persian empire is vast – yes. But it has its own rebellions and its own problems. Are we so sure? And if we are sure – I think every man here would like to know how much time we have?’

Themistocles glanced at me. He was standing quite near me – I think in support of my forward naval strategy.

‘Arimnestos of Plataea can tell you more than I,’ he said. ‘As he had Artapherenes on his ship as a guest not a month ago.’

That was like kicking a hornets’ nest.

But it was true. And I happened to look at the King of Sparta before I began – and in a glance I realised why he had asked me whether I spoke Persian. It was because he had already heard this tale.

So I began. I told the story simply – that my ship had been caught in a storm, and emerged to find the wreck of Artapherenes’ ship close at hand and in the throes of a mutiny. I spoke of taking the satrap into Carthage and sailing out again, and I left out the difficulties.

Men frowned.

‘Surely Artapherenes would have made a mighty hostage,’ Adeimantus said. ‘Or are you some sort of secret Persian lover?’

There are insults that must be avenged in blood – although as I get older there are fewer and fewer of those – and then there are insults so ludicrous they deserve no more than a laugh. I laughed.

‘I love Persian gold,’ I said. ‘But I find it easier to take it from them than to ask for it on bended knee.’

Cimon snarled.

‘So you say!’ Adeimantus shot back.

‘If you had been at Marathon . . .’ I said, and let it go.

The king smiled at me. ‘I saw the bodies,’ he offered. ‘At Marathon.’ As usual, a short speech, but one that conveyed all the meaning he needed. He raised an eyebrow – just as his wife had. ‘But – why?’

I shrugged. ‘He was an ambassador, and his life was sacred. And – I owed him my life.’

Leonidas nodded. ‘Good,’ he said.

‘And he
told you
that the invasion was imminent?’ the Corinthian asked. I could see Lykon looking at the older man with distaste.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘He told me, his wife told me, and the captain of his guard – an old friend of mine, a guest-friend – warned me.’

The men around the fire spoke for some time.

I raised my voice. ‘The Great King intends to build a canal across the isthmus under Mount Athos,’ I said. ‘And bridge the Hellespont.’ I shrugged. ‘So says his Satrap of Phrygia.’

Adeimantus was openly derisive. ‘Bridge the Hellespont!’ He laughed. ‘I think you are trying to shock us with marvels, Boeotian.’

Even Cimon paused. ‘That’s laying it on a bit thick,’ he murmured. ‘A bridge over the Hellespont!’

Leonidas, on the other hand, looked at me with real interest. ‘That would be . . . glorious,’ he said. His gaze was distant. Then his eyes snapped to me. He seemed an inch taller. ‘You believe this to be true?’ he asked slowly. ‘I mean no offence. Different men will use words to sway other men.’

I nodded. ‘A man I trust told me, and I believe him,’ I said.

The King of Sparta nodded sharply. ‘Then he is bringing a land army, and he means to have a real contest.’ His eyes went to Themistocles. He implied that a sea battle was
not
a real contest.

Of course, to the Spartans, it was not – because it depended on the rowers and the helmsmen, not the hoplites.

Later, when the drinking was done and most of the men had gone to their beds – or their piles of flea-infested straw – I sat in the pleasant fireside air, blessedly free from the flies and mosquitoes which had descended like some curse of the Olympians at sunset and eaten us alive for three hours. Aristides sat by me – and Styges, and Lykon of Corinth and Cimon, Empedocles of Thebes, Calliteles the Spartan and a dozen other men. Brasidas was with me, too – ignoring Calliteles, who was studiously ignoring him.

The king had made me angry. I didn’t realise it until he left in a swirl of red as his cloak settled about him. The arrogance of his cloak – was that it? I admired him as a man – and yet, the way he entered and left, as if he were king not just of the Spartans but of all Greeks . . .

I was stung by the words
a real contest.

I lay on my cloak, allowing resentment to penetrate my maturity.

Finally I turned, ignoring what Styges had just asked. ‘Why does your king call a land battle “a real contest”?’ I asked. The king, of course, used the same words that we use for a race at Olympia. ‘You are a Spartan, and you have seen a sea fight.’