The Wooden Walls of Thermopylae (8 page)

Some time later I was roused by the barking of dogs. I must have slept; there was no sign of Elpinice. Perhaps it was all a dream. I heard voices outside, one that I recognised although the timbre was now much deeper. I left the chamber rapidly and hurried down the darkening corridor to the andron. Inside, spinning goat’s wool and wearing the most traditional peplos with shawl and veil, was a young Athenian matron. Elpinice. She gestured for me to sit. Down the corridor there was the sound of knocking at the door.

A short while later we heard it open and the sound of voices moving towards us. Two men only, from the sound of it. Then the door frame was filled by a well-muscled youth of about the age I’d been when his father rescued me from the life of a farmer on Samos. He was streaked with sweat and dirt from the hunt; long shaggy hair framed his face
which, despite the covering of wispy hair, was instantly recognisable. Cimon!

I hadn’t managed to fully get up from the chair before he was on me, embracing me, re-breaking my bones. I can’t remember what either of us said; it doesn’t matter. But what I do remember is the lightening jolt at what I saw standing in the doorway when I lifted my head and looked beyond his shoulder.

Pugnacious, bull necked and grinning: Themistocles.

My father used to teach me that the stars turn and spin; he picked this up from some cracked philosopher at the court of Polycrates. Well for a moment everything stopped, stars included.

“Brother, Lord Themistocles, now you are returned I can abandon my obligation of guest host and return to a modest occupation more fitting to my station.”

She said it straight-faced and it flummoxed all three of us; none of us believed it was a genuine expression of her thoughts but it was said with such icy rectitude that we couldn’t smirk either. She rose and left with her distaff, head bowed in an attitude of meek respect. Looking back now, I recognise it for the stroke of tactical genius it was. In one simple sentence she had thrown me and Themistocles into the same boat. I wished she’d  been there when I’d spewed out my rage at Lyra.

Themistocles understood and he wasn’t going to waste an opening.

“You see Cimon and I have been companions in the hunt. Do you think your young master would have behaved so with a man he believed had brought down his father, the hero Miltiades?”

So I was back in the fold: betrayed, bitter and bewildered,
but back all the same. I said nothing, just stood with my head bowed, after all I had spent the afternoon with a highborn Athenian lady so the sooner the conversation moved on to other matters the better. Anyway I did not wish anything that would detract from Cimon’s high spirits. From what I’d heard they’d been in short supply recently. He clapped his hands and shouted for wine. It duly arrived; a draft of poor provenance. Cimon mixed and poured the libation then looked to Themistocles.

He tasted and looked satisfied with the vintage and for a moment I saw clear as day Miltiades in Themistocles’s house before Marathon asking him if he always drank such piss. I think maybe Themistocles was thinking the same; he nodded to me over the rim of the cup before saying,

“I’ve heard how you received the cup I’d saved for you, Mandrocles. Unlike the Spartans and the Great King, I think it an ill thing to spear the messenger.”

He paused, holding my gaze a moment before concluding,

“Particularly an innocent who feels nothing but affection for you.”

I think he’d been going to say love but, of course, a flute girl doesn’t feel love.

“She didn’t deserve it.”

He’d played his cards skilfully as usual: all I felt now was remorse, all thoughts of anger and betrayal evaporated.

“So think next time, boy, now drink. Cimon son of Miltiades, what shall the pledge be?”

Cimon, with a political grasp I’d never suspected and without hesitating, replied,

“First Aegina, then the Great King.”

We drank and Themistocles breathed out, almost too quiet to hear,

“If he still lives.”

Strange, but back then – however parlous your own life
– even the slightest mention of the Great Persian empire dried out your mouth with fear. Particularly coming from Themistocles, whose ability to predict their intentions must have come from the Gods themselves.

So we drank and as I watched Cimon down his first cup in one I saw how experience and age had transformed him. He wasn’t a boy anymore and I would become his man like I’d been Miltiades’s. Now he’d order and I’d obey even were it to cost my life. Not that it stopped me noticing that he drank too quickly and enjoyed it too much. Then the thread of life changed stitch again.

“The arrangement with Callias concerning your sister progresses well?”

“Very well, to my surprise she accepts without complaint.”

He spoke like the head of the family conducting the normal marriage business but I could see in his eyes traces of the boy who had relied on his sister as the one constant in his life. Themistocles was oblivious to any such niceties.

“Good, I think considering what is soon to break over us we move quickly. I suggest to avoid further slanders Elpinice move for a time to my house. My wife will collect her before dark.”

Cimon nodded; I felt a twist of anguish wring my guts. She’d been correct as always: she was finally lost to me. He asked,

“And the wedding?”

“Quick as possible: best for everyone. Once the settlement’s handed over you can establish a respectable household and move towards your ambitions.”

Cimon nodded; I didn’t know he had any ambitions: last time I’d seen him he was still a boy.

“For now though, best that you go to ground like a fox sensing the hunt.”

From his face it was clear Cimon hadn’t followed this particular
stream of logic and I hadn’t the faintest idea what Themistocles was talking about. He looked at us with the expression of an Athenian dealing with slow-witted yokels from the hills. Then he spelt it out.

“Things are going to be quite lively over the next few days: maybe worse than lively. Starting tomorrow, if you need to understand further then get to the Agora early in the morning, you’ll be safe and in good company; it’ll be packed with democrat patriots. After that there may be a few scores settled and a few cracked skulls so you take Master Cimon somewhere safe, Mandrocles.”

I stared at him open mouthed.

“Take him home with you.”

“Home with me?”

“To the Piraeus of course. It’s all seamen living there so where could the son of the hero of Marathon be safer?”

I wanted to tell him about Aeschylus and Lyra but he forestalled me.

“The poet won’t mind anyway, he’s not there; he’s gone away for a few days to attend to some business of mine, and you won’t see the girl again unless you’re prepared to crawl on your hands and knees to her. So you take Cimon home with you tonight, best to be out of the city and avoid the prologue of this particular play which is going to start after dark.”

So that night we slept in the room above the bar overlooking the sea at Piraeus. There was no need to fear oversleeping: next morning, before Apollo’s chariot dragged the sun up out of the waters and into the sky, the whole of Piraeus was on the move. We dressed rapidly, snatched a cup of wine downstairs then joined the crowd moving towards the Agora.

As is often the case on these occasions, in Athens there was a festival mood but I’d learnt enough to know it could very quickly turn ugly. A group of rowers carrying oar loops to signal their democratic credentials recognised Cimon and
burst out cheering, which was carried out into the wider crowd by people who could have no idea what the cheer was for.

So it seemed we walked in the middle of an army of friends. By the Ceramicus our numbers were swelled by what appeared to be the whole artisan population of the city, and the ill-kept narrow lanes slowed our progress to a crawl. Eventually we could smell the stench of the Eridanos, the foul drain that moves across the Agora, and knew we were close to the action. All the seating in the Orchestra was taken so we stood near the back and waited for things to start. We’d learnt by now that this meeting had been called by Themistocles and his supporters to inform the people of close and present danger.

Themistocles was able to do this as his position of Strategos gave him the right. Since Marathon the role of the Archons had been circumscribed. They were now appointed each year by lot, so it was not a role from which a man could build a power base. The role of Strategos, the men who led the armies, was too important to be chosen by lot so were elected by tribe and could be re-elected. In this way there had been a subtle shift of power from the Archonate to the generals and many saw the hand of Themistocles behind this.

We hadn’t long to wait; in fact if my memory serves we’d just brought some honey cakes from a street seller when a tremendous shouting broke out near the dais and rolled backwards through the crowd. Themistocles.

He climbed up with a pronounced limp and a series of playacting facial grimaces intended to convey his pain clearly enough to those standing right at the back.

“Forgive me, Athenians, the spear and sword wounds I took fighting for the city of the Goddess make it hard for me to move as quickly as I once did.”

I knew this for a lie: he’d been moving easily enough
the day before. Most of the crowd loved it, however, and cheered. Not everyone though; someone shouted back angrily at him. I couldn’t make out what but Themistocles’s reply was crystal clear.

“Well, no one could accuse you of that, Kallixenos, the only place a spear would ever pierce you would be up the arse and then only because you asked for it.”

The roar of laughter at this drowned out anything else for minutes. Themistocles put up his hands for silence and then, exaggerating his limp even further, moved to the speaker’s post and began to explain what we were really here for.

I was told later by friends who were nearer the dais about something that was different about this assembly. There was a type of organisation to the way the great men arranged themselves, which was new.

In the past, with all the pushing and jostling, people were all mixed up. The speakers sat with their family and friends who would mainly be members of their tribe. Since Marathon even this had been relaxed as most of them had fought together there. When they’d held the stitched up assembly that decided to arraign Miltiades, the proposers were scattered all across the range of the benches.

Not now. Those who supported Themistocles and his ideas for the Piraeus and a larger fleet to combat Aegina and the empire sat together. Men from different tribes, many of them new men, interspersed with merchants and some of the city’s best trierarchs. They sat as a block and must have arrived early to manage this. On the other side, not quite as organised but recognisable, were Hipparchus, Megacles, Aristides, and Kallixenos with their supporters. Interestingly Xanthippus was close to them but not quite with them.

This wasn’t the arrangement for a debate about land, family and status. It was about power but also about something else: about something that Themistocles had begun
to call decisions of the city, or policy. So they sat together in ranks the same way they would have lined up in hoplite armour to fight a battle.

Looking back, reader, you can see a pattern to the way things changed but when it’s all new and you’re in the middle of it there is no pattern: just excitement and confusion.

Once the crowd finally went silent Themistocles waited a further moment to extenuate the suspense then began.

“I’m, as you know, a simple man who speaks his mind so I beg my Alkmaionid friends who stood with me at Marathon to forgive me for my simple message and failure to match their fine and elaborate speeches.”

Everyone knew this was a gibe but no one knew where it was going.

“The city of the Goddess is in grave danger. Danger made worse by the fact that we can only see the tip of it. But behind that tip, stretching away into the dark is a force far greater than any we have seen. You know the tip is that nest of vipers Aegina. But do you also know that the surface of Aegina is crawling with agents of the Great King? Are you aware that their well-fortified harbour is packed with Persian warships?”

He was interrupted when someone shouted,

“Darius is dead.”

“Perhaps, but it may just be rumour. But what I have just said is fact. Fact that was brought here by the leader of our peaceful mission to Aegina, no less a man than the noble Xanthippus who fought on the wing at Marathon.”

As with all his speeches Themistocles introduced elements to unsettle his opponents before getting to the real point. This singling out of Xanthippus for praise was particularly effective. Hipparchus rose from his bench, shouting,

“Make your point, son of Neocles, or give way to someone who will.”

Themistocles directed his most irritating smile at Hipparchus and playfully wagged his finger before replying.

“Be patient, son of Charmos. I intend to give way far sooner than you’d imagine. My only purpose in speaking to you today is to put some questions to the heroic citizens of a heroic city. When I have asked these questions I can think of no one more fitted to answer them than you, given your kinship with the late but unlamented tyrant Hippias who so recently visited our city with his Persian friends.”

This, as Themistocles must have anticipated, provoked violence. Hipparchus attempted to climb onto the dais but had to be restrained by his friends; weapons were drawn and scuffles broke out across the Agora. I was in no position to defend myself so was grateful that we were surrounded by a phalanx of seamen all of them democrats and supporters of Themistocles. Eventually order was restored and he was able to proceed with his questions. Characteristically he threw something else into the mix first.

“My questions concern the island of Aegina where I must tell you these last days a young hero of Marathon was attacked by a pack of thugs set on him by a traitor. Aegina, the island whose leaders almost soiled their robes in their haste to deliver the earth and water demanded by the servants of the Great King.”

He paused again, regarding the crowd with the expression of someone wanting to tell a great truth to his friends. This time no one interrupted. What he’d said about Aegina was too near the knuckle and we were at war. So an edgy silence endured until he asked the questions he’d promised.

“Athenians, ask yourselves, how many seaworthy fighting ships have we?”

People shuffled about uncomfortably but no one answered.

“I’m sure I can’t be the only one who knows. Well, I’ll tell
you anyway: depending on how quickly we can effect repairs we have between forty three and forty seven. Now ask yourselves, how many have Aegina?”

Again no answer.

“Our expedition led by Xanthippus counted seventy nine in the harbour and reckon there are at least ten more. That of course does not include the numerous Persian warships. Do you remember what happened last time their fleet raided us?”

There was an outbreak of angry shouting: Themistocles waited till it died down before raising his voice to full pitch and bellowing so loud it felt like an earthquake.

“They burnt Phaleron, the open bay where our defenceless ships were beached. They humiliated us under the angry gaze of our Goddess. And we had more ships back then because we lost good ships fighting besides the Ionian Greeks against the Persians whilst those –”