by Peter Green
When he spoke again it was almost in his normal voice. He smiled weakly. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘You have enough to trouble you without such fancies . . .’ He stretched out his hand and grasped hers.
She said in a low voice: ‘I am afraid.’
‘Afraid? Of your family? Of staying with me?’
She shook her head. ‘No, Alcibiades. Never that. I chose to go with you knowing very well what it would mean. It is you I am afraid for. You can shake off the past from your mind like a dog coming from water. But it is still there. You can forget, but your enemies cannot. Whatever you do now, sooner or later they will hunt you down.’
He shook his head. ‘Have you ever heard of Odysseus?’ he asked. ‘No: why should you? He was a king in Ithaca many years ago, and his enemies were more numerous than mine will ever be. Yet he came home in the end.’
‘Home?’
‘Why, yes.’ He leaned on his elbow and quoted ‘“Be brave, my heart; you have endured worse things than this.”’ He looked out of the window into the night.
‘A south wind,’ he said. ‘We shall have good riding weather tomorrow. What is this village called?’
‘Melissa.’
‘How far is it to Metropolis?’
‘Ten miles,’ she said. Then: ‘Did you hear something?’
‘How nervous you are . . . What should there be to hear?’
‘I don’t know . . .’ She got up and walked slowly round the room. ‘It’s past midnight,’ she said. ‘If you are well enough we can leave in four hours.’
‘I shall be well enough . . . Drunk or sick, I can still ride a horse. Besides, after Metropolis the going will be easier . . .’
But she still paced uneasily up and down.
‘You must sleep,’ he said gently. ‘You have not slept since we left Dascylium.’
‘Who will watch over you?‘
Alcibiades turned his head towards the doorway. ‘We are well protected,’ he said.
Timandra hesitated for an instant; then she sat down beside the bed once more. Alcibiades turned over towards her, and after a little slipped into a fretful sleep. Sher bent over him gently and laid her head beside his, stroking his cheek with soft fingers. She did not hear when the Arcadian’s sword slipped from his knees and clattered to the ground at his feet.
• • • • •
Alcibiades was the first to wake up, choking and coughing, the shreds of a confused nightmare still befogging his mind. The lamp had gone out and the room was in total darkness. Yet somewhere a reddish glow danced before his eyes, and when he tried to breath the air was thick and tainted. There was a roaring and crackling in his ears. Gasping, he flung off the coverlets and sprang to his feet. The acrid smell of burning timber came to his nostrils, and he stumbled blindly round the room trying to find the door. Behind him he heard Timandra cry out in terror.
His sword . . . where was his sword? He blundered into the curtains and pushed through them, naked as he was, on to the portico. A blast of hot air hit him in the face, and the flames licked downwards from the roof. Through the smoke, in the light of the burning building, he heard a clamour of voices, and saw figures darting backwards and forwards in the brushwood. Then he tripped against something soft; and looking down he saw the limp figure of the Arcadian, his limbs sprawling grotesquely, an arrow protruding from his throat. As he bent to pick up the sword that still lay beside the body another arrow whistled over his head and buried itself in the lintel of the door. The sword in his hand, he plunged back into the darkness of the house.
Timandra caught him by the arm. There’s no other way out—’ she began, and burst into a fit of coughing.
He brushed past her into the bedroom. ‘Get the bedclothes,’ he called. ‘As many as you can. Wrap them round your head and body. Keep close behind me . . .’ He grabbed at a handful of blankets and thrust them into her arms. Then he found his cloak and swathed his body and left arm in it. Sword in hand, he ran down the steps on to the open ground, and the dark figures scattered before him.
Timandra, who had followed him closely, now twisted aside in the darkness and plunged unnoticed into the cover of the trees at the instant the first arrow hit him. She saw him halt in his tracks with a sharp cry of pain and put up his hand to his shoulder. Then the air hummed with the twanging of bow-strings, and she shuddered and covered her face with her hands.
He stood for an instant, silhouetted against the burning house, swaying on his feet. Then the sword dropped to the ground, and he collapsed and lay still. When at last the Persian archers came forward cautiously and gathered round him, they found fifteen shafts standing clear through his body.
From her place of concealment Timandra now saw two tall figures come forward into the light, and the archers make way for them. They stooped over the body for a moment, and then rose to their feet once more.
A young voice, harsh and expressionless, said: ‘This is the man. Our task is done.’
‘He died well, Bagaeus.’
‘A fool can always die well.’ The tall man seemed to hesitate. Then he observed: ‘There’s one dangerous tongue that can wag no longer.’ He walked towards the house, shielding his face with his cloak. When he came back, he said: ‘The other fellow is dead also. We have nothing to fear.’
‘And the girl?’ asked Susamithres.
‘She’s probably still in the house. In any case she knows nothing.’
With an incoherent cry, a man broke from the group and plunged desperately into the flaming building. Bagaeus watched him go unmoved. ‘His daughter is hardly worth the fetching now, I should have thought,’ he said.
Timandra sank to her knees half-fainting as shriek after shriek rose above the crackling of the fire. Then, abruptly, they ceased.
Susamithres said in an unsteady voice: ‘Do you plan to go back to Pharnabazus now?’
‘Most certainly. What danger is there? And besides . . . Alcibiades was not the only one who needed . . . watching. Yes, I think we should certainly return to Dascylium. In fact’—he paused as an idea struck him—‘we might well make a gesture for the benefit of our Satrap. He has a suspicious nature. I should not like any doubt left in his mind that our mission has been carried out.’
‘He won’t thank you for that,’ said Susamithres.
‘Perhaps not. But Lysander will.’
He drew his long curved scimitar, and the blade gleamed red in the light of the flames.
‘I shall take back some proof of this deed with me,’ he said. He stepped forward, grasping the sword with both hands, and raised it high in the air. It took him three strokes to sever the head from the body of the corpse.
Then he picked it up carelessly by its hair and tossed it to one of the archers standing by. ‘Pack that in my saddlebag,’ he said, wiping the blade of his scimitar on a wisp of grass. ‘And wrap it well. I dislike blood.’ He turned to the silent group of men who had done his work for him. ‘Well,’ he observed, ‘your family honour has been pleasantly avenged. Your sister is dead, and her father with her. I must thank you for the zeal with which you have done what I required of you.’ He turned back to Susamithres.
‘If we ride now we can be well on our way by daybreak,’ he said. ‘I don’t think there is anything further here to detain us.’ He walked away into the darkness, Susamithres beside him, their three attendants following close behind. One of these carried a blood-stained bundle. None of the rest moved or uttered a word till they were out of sight. From down the hill-side there presently came the sound of hooves. Then these too died away into the distance. After a while the group of Persians silently followed them down the winding trail between the trees. The fire had not roused the neighbourhood; no one was stirring in the village.
Dawn was breaking when Timandra came out into the open and moved slowly towards the mutilated body of the man she had loved. The fire was dying down now. Only occasionally there would come a loud crack and a puff of smoke as charred timbers collapsed. Slowly the light spread o
ver the hillside, and from the valley came the first faint sounds of morning. Then a slight breeze began to blow, barely ruffling the surface of the grass. Softly, imperceptibly, a fine cloud of ash was carried from the ruins and settled on the two motionless figures. When the sun rose above the trees it could not distinguish between them; for the living woman was grey with the greyness of the dead.
THE END
Author’s Postscript
Within the formal limits imposed by the novel, Achilles His Armour is a true story. I have invented no characters, though I have given names to two who were anonymous. On the other hand, where positive evidence was lacking, I have filled in the gaps according to what seemed probable. There is no source, for example, which says that Alcibiades went to Sicily in 427 b.c.; but it is nowhere expressly stated that he did not. His life, in fact, from 429 to 425 is a mysterious blank; I have associated him during that period with actual historical events in which he might be reasonably supposed to have played a part.
Ancient historians do not concern themselves overmuch with the minutiae of their characters’ private lives. This is always a difficulty for the historical novelist, to whom such details are essential if he is to present a credible picture of his subject. Fortunately Alcibiades is an exceptional case; he is probably better documented than any other ancient Greek, chiefly on account of his notorious reputation, which provided excellent copy for the gossip-writers. To take two random examples, the stealing of Anytus’ gold plate and the curious dream Alcibiades had on the night of his death are both vouched for by ancient writers. But his relationship with Aspasia, the reader should be warned, is the author’s theory, adduced to make sense of a number of puzzling psychological problems: problems which form the main excuse for writing about Alcibiades at all.
Since Alcibiades’ life coincided exactly with the zenith and decline of Athenian power (his career in fact reflects this decline in the most remarkable way) sources are copious. We have two narrative historical accounts that between them cover the entire period: Thucydides’ History of The Peloponnesian War and Xenophon’s Hellenica, both of them nearly contemporary with the events they describe. The most notable contemporary document apart from these is the speech of Andocides, defending himself against a charge of complicity in the profanation of the Mysteries. Plutarch, though he wrote many hundreds of years afterwards, had access to other contemporary accounts which have not come down to us; and his Life Of Alcibiades is invaluable for those personal details which we do not find in more general historians. I have also drawn largely on his Lives of Pericles, Nicias, and Lysander. The picture is completed with speeches made by Lysias and Isocrates, in the fourth century b.c., a handful of inscriptions, Plato’s Dialogues (the Symposium in particular), Xenophon’s Memorabilia, and details gleaned from Aristophanes, Diodorus Siculus, and such encyclopedic writers as Athenaeus or Aelian. The Life of Alcibiades written by the Roman author Cornelius Nepos, though on the whole agreeing with Plutarch, does provide one or two valuable fresh facts: he is, for example, the only source to mention the Arcadian.
In addition, my debt to modem scholarship is necessarily incalculable. Without the ready help it gave me, my task would have been almost impossible. I would particularly like to acknowledge what I owe to M. Jean Hatzfeld’s brilliant monograph Alcibiade: Étude sur l’Histoire d’Athènes à la Fin du Ve Siècle. Those familiar with this work will readily perceive where I have borrowed M. Hatzfeld’s solutions of vexed historical problems. The Mutilation of the Herms is only one instance. I have also consulted G. F. Hertzberg’s Alkibiades: Der Staatsman and Feldherr, and the Alkibiades of F. Tager.
Other works freely used include G. M. Calhoun’s Athenian Clubs in Politics; B. W. Henderson’s The Great War Between Athens and Sparta; Professor D. S. Robertson’s Greek and Roman Architecture; the monographs on Sparta by Humfry Michell and Miss K. M. T. Chrimes; Volume V of the Cambridge Ancient History; Professor W. K. C. Guthrie’s The Greeks and their Gods; M. L. W. Laistner’s History of the Greek World 470—-323 b.c.; Professor A. W. Gomme’s edition of the First Book of Thucydides; and A. R. Burn’s Pericles and Athens. To the authors of all these books, and any others which I may have forgotten to mention, I extend my grateful thanks.
I must also mention those standard works of reference which are as invaluable to the novelist as they are to the scholar: The Cambridge Companion to Greek Studies; The Oxford Classical Dictionary; Paully-Wissowa’s Real-Encyclopädie der klassischen Altertumswissenschaft; and Daremberg and Saglio’s Dictionnaire des Antiquités grecques et romaines. I should like to thank the staff of the Cambridge University Library, and the Librarian of the Classical Faculty Library, Cambridge, for their unfailing help and courtesy in a project which lay somewhat outside their normal sphere of action; Mr. Robert Graves, for his advice and encouragement;
Mr. Arnold Edinborough, Mr. and Mrs. S. J. Papastavrou, and Mr. and Mrs. Andreas Cambas for reading my manuscript and making many invaluable suggestions. But my greatest debt of all is to my wife, without whose support and encouragement this book would never have been written at all; or if it had been, would have been immeasurably worse than it is.
Lastly, my grateful thanks to my publishers, who not only wisely induced me to reduce an unwieldly manuscript to two-thirds of its original length, but by their most helpful and constructive criticism considerably improved what remained.
Peter Green
Cambridge—Akeley Wood—Chelsea
1952-1955
PHOTO BY RONALD SHERIDAN
Peter Green, well-known novelist, translator, and student of the classics, was born in London in 1924. Educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, he early aspired to be an actor, but later succumbed to his scholarly loves and became Director of Classics at Cambridge University. Since 1953, when he turned to free-lance writing, he has been a prominent contributor of reviews and articles to major periodicals in England. With his wife, the novelist Lalage Pulvertaft, he now lives in Greece, which also served as the setting of an earlier book, The Laughter of Aphrodite.