For a moment my spirits lifted. Then I did the maths.
‘Nice idea, but I think his prison was near the Acropolis. And Socrates won’t be arrested until at least another ten or twelve years in the future.’
‘The future,’ said Dinu with a bitter laugh.
‘Yeah,’ I muttered as one of the guards shoved me forward, ‘I don’t see us having much of a future now.’
18
Golden Boy
A few steps into the Agora our guards steered us to the left so that we were now walking past a stoa, a covered walkway where people could take refuge from the heat of the day. I had visited a reconstructed stoa in Athens the year before. This one was longer, thinner and shabbier.
On our right was a massive dirt field dotted with shrines and statues: the Market Square. A broad road flanked by plane trees cut across it. The trees, shrines and statues all cast inky-black shadows in the moonlight.
It seemed to me there were plenty of places to hide. I was wondering how far I would get if I made a break for it when the sound of strange buzzy music behind us made our guards stop and turn.
The golden glow of torchlight trembled on the ground and a moment later a procession came into the Agora after us.
There were ten of them.
Girls and boys in their teens and twenties. Not much older than me and Dinu. Only two of them looked over thirty.
In the lead were two pretty flute-girls with crinkly dresses, fringed shawls and pinned-up hair wrapped in cloth bands. Then came two boys in short chitons, followed by four young men in short cloaks over chitons. Taking up the rear were two older men. They had short beards and flowered garlands but no chitons, only blanket-like cloaks. One of the men was short and stocky, with curly dark hair. The other was tall, blond and muscular. When they saw us they stopped playing music, held up their torches and stared at us open-mouthed.
I suppose we must have looked pretty strange: two butt-naked boys standing in the flickering torchlight, guarded by two stripy archers.
Holding out his torch, the blond guy came closer with his head cocked to one side. He was obviously the leader, for the others followed. Up close, I could see he was movie-star handsome. He wore some kind of purple cloak like Jay-Z might wear a Superman cape, letting it drag on the ground. His skin was tanned, his body ripped and the yellow torchlight made the hair beneath his garland shine like gold.
‘My dear Scythians!’ He took another step forward, staggered and managed not to fall. ‘Where are you taking these beautiful boys?’ He was obviously drunk and this gave him a strange way of speaking, mixing up his Ls and his Rs. ‘They’re delightful!’
‘General!’ stammered Scythian Number One. ‘These are runaway xlave and thieve.’ He was gazing at the blond guy just like I would stare if the actor who plays Thor walked into our local Tesco.
‘We are taking them to the Xtate Prison,’ added Scythian Number Two. He also seemed star-struck.
The Scythian had pronounced the man’s name strangely: Al-kib-YAH-day. But suddenly I realised who he was. I looked at Dinu and we both said together: ‘It’s Alcibiades!’
‘From Ancient Greek Assassins!’ confirmed Dinu.
‘And also from Plato,’ I said. ‘This guy was a friend of Socrates! Remember the excerpt from the dialogue we studied in Rome? This could be our chance to escape!’
I needed to think of a clever ruse.
But Alcibiades got there first.
‘Why, those are my slaves!’ he slurred. ‘Thank you for bringing them back to me!’
The first Scythian frowned. ‘How can that be, xir? We caught them in the Temple of the Maiden. They were wearing clothing, jewellery and weapon pillaged from Athena.’
For a moment Alcibiades just swayed gently with his head still cocked to one side. Then he laughed.
‘Of course you did!’ He gestured vaguely with the flaming torch. ‘It was a challenge I set them. They were going to bring some treasures to me as proof of their loyalty, and then return them in the morning.’ He winked at Dinu and said, ‘Right, boys?’
Dinu looked blank – maybe the Greek was too advanced for him – but I played along: ‘Yes, master! We did just as you said.’
I nudged Dinu and he echoed me: ‘Yes, master!’
‘Boy! Give me silver!’ lisped Alcibiades. Without turning, he clicked his fingers impatiently.
‘Yes, master.’ Like a magician, one of the boys stuck his forefinger in his mouth, pulled out two silver coins and handed them over. I guessed he was a slave.
‘Here!’ Alcibiades staggered forward and handed a shiny wet coin to each of the Scythians. ‘I will speak to the priest in the morning and sort everything out.’
The Scythians looked at each other and then at the coins in their hands. Then they shrugged, grinned and each put his coin in his own mouth, between gum and cheek.
And then – St Nektarios be praised! – they cut us free.
A moment later they had disappeared into the inky shadows.
‘Girls!’ cried Alcibiades in his strange slurred baby talk. ‘Lend these two your shawls. We’re not in the palaestra.’
Giggling, the two pretty flute-girls pulled the fringed shawls from around their shoulders and handed them to us. Dinu got the green one and I got pink. I was about to protest about getting the girly colour, but then I shut up. Anything was better than being naked.
The flute-girls played a jaunty tune as we started to tie the shawls around our waists.
‘Girls, help them out!’ laughed Alcibiades.
Giggling, the girls showed us how to wrap the shawls. Like a bath towel when you’ve just come out of the shower, only with one end over our left shoulders.
Alcibiades leaned forward, his head still tipped to one side.
‘Now,’ he said, pushing his garland up out of his eyes, ‘who are you and what are your names?’
‘I’m Alexis and this is Dinu, short for Dionysius,’ I stammered. We had previously agreed to use popular personal names close to our own, which were of Greek origin anyway.
‘I’m Alcibiades, as you know, and this is my friend Antiochus the famous admiral. Tell me, Alexis and Dinu: are you really runaway slaves?’
‘No, sir,’ I said. ‘We seek Socrates, the lover of wisdom, the wisest man in Athens.’
‘Socrates,’ echoed Dinu.
‘Ah, Socrates!’ Alcibiades stood up and slapped his thighs and turned away in mock distress. ‘The bane of my life!’
He didn’t seem drunk now.
‘We would very much like to meet him,’ I said. Then I added, ‘Also, we left Dinu’s sister Crina in the temple of Athena on the Parthenon. We need to let her know we’re all right and to stay put and wait for us.’
‘We shall do both!’ The general clapped his hands together and then lisped, ‘Presently I will send one of my slaves to fetch your sister. And together we will try to find Socrates. But just now we’re off to a special ceremony of death and rebirth. Come!’
Death and rebirth?
Dinu and I exchanged a quick look of alarm. And even though it was a warm night, I shuddered.
19
Gong Bath
Landing in the past at night made ancient Athens seem even stranger and more dreamlike.
The flute-girls led the way down the broad tree-lined road I had first spotted when we came into the Agora. It was now at least two hours after midnight and the full moon splashed inky-black shadows onto the road.
I knew from Athens on Five Drachmas a Day that this must be the Panathenaic Way, a famous road that led from the Acropolis to the Dipylon Gate. Sometimes there were chariot races here and religious processions involving almost the whole population.
But tonight there seemed to be nobody else alive in the world, just our strange little jingly, jangly torchlit procession.
After a while we turned off to the right and Alcibiades banged on the double doors of a two-storey house with a herm outside. Almost immediately the doors swung open and we p
assed into a torchlit courtyard.
A stocky man with a grey beard and a younger round-faced guy with hardly any beard came to greet us. Both of them were wearing long chitons rather than blanket-cloaks.
‘Are these the initiates?’ Greybeard frowned at us. ‘I thought you were bringing four, not six.’
Alcibiades nodded at me and Dinu. ‘These two are sent by the goddess.’
‘Surely they are too young?’
‘And yet I came upon them in the Agora, naked and godlike in their beauty.’ He turned his head and murmured something into the older man’s ear.
Greybeard nodded. ‘Then they are obviously meant to participate. You did well. Are you still willing to lead the ceremony?’
‘I am,’ said Alcibiades.
‘Good.’ He turned to us. ‘Once you are clean, you may come into the andron.’
A slave in a knee-length tunic and with shoulder-length hair came over to us with a pitcher, basin and a linen cloth draped over his arm.
When he had washed our feet – I felt a bit bad for him, but it was a relief to be rid of the dog poo between my toes – he showed us into a banqueting room lit by hanging oil lamps. There were deer skins on the floor, dark-red walls and six dining couches, three on either side of the room right up against the walls.
At the far end a bronze tripod stood beside a wooden table. On the table were a jug, a deep type of cup that I knew was called a skyphos, and a whip.
Alcibiades, now dressed in a long white chiton, took up position between the table and the tripod.
Greybeard took the silver pitcher from the table and began pouring something into the skyphos, held by Round Face.
‘Does this remind you of anything?’ I whispered to Dinu in English.
‘The Mithraeum ceremony?’ came his almost silent reply.
‘Exactly!’ I said. ‘It must be some kind of initiation.’
Then Alcibiades took the whip from the table. It had a plaited leather handle and three long leather straps.
I suddenly remembered how the priest of Mithras had pretended to attack initiates with a bow and arrows, and a sword.
Dinu had a queasy expression on his face. ‘What’s the horsewhip for, dude?’
‘No idea.’
Alcibiades slowly lifted the whip. But instead of calling one of us forward for a beating, he used the handle to strike the rim of the tripod’s bronze bowl.
A deep tone filled the room.
It wasn’t a tripod. It was a gong. Or maybe it was a tripod and a gong.
Round Face was taking round the skyphos, making us all drink from it.
Was it hemlock?
When he brought it to me, I hesitated: the combination of gong noise and pine-smoke from the torches was making me dizzy.
‘Don’t worry,’ said Round Face. ‘It won’t hurt you.’
I didn’t want to argue. Instead I touched the cup to my lips and pretended to take a sip. It smelled like barley water with honey. And something bitter.
‘What is it?’ I asked.
The gong was still sounding, rising and falling. Its sound made every cell in my body vibrate.
‘It’s called kykeon,’ said the man. ‘The barley reminds us that we partake of the goddess Demeter and the honey is as sweet as Persephone.’
‘There’s something bitter too,’ I said.
‘That is a special herb. It will help you see the goddess.’ He swirled the liquid in the goblet and took it to Dinu.
One of the young men who had already drunk from the cup suddenly swayed and steadied himself against a couch.
This distraction gave Dinu the chance to also pretend to drink.
Alcibiades was still making the gong hum. Even though I hadn’t drunk any of the potion, the sound seemed to change colour. Its deep vibration seemed purple-brown, then changed tone to become the colour of pale wheat, then green and finally blue. My mind went still. I could no longer tell where my body ended and the sound began. My gran sometimes does something called a gong bath at a yoga studio in Camberwell. Now I totally got it.
With no warning, Greybeard doused his torch. At first I saw only darkness. Presently my eyes adjusted to see that it wasn’t totally dark. Seven little oil lamps were still burning and their light seemed to rise to the heavens.
They were bright enough for me to see smoke rising from the extinguished torch like a joss stick when the flame goes out. I was hypnotised by the pine-scented ribbon of smoke twisting up to the ceiling.
The smell and the deep humming of the gong was making me dizzy, so I stretched out on the nearest couch.
‘Move over.’ Dinu lay down beside me. ‘This is amazing,’ he murmured. ‘Better than church.’
He was right. It was amazing. Part of me seemed to float up out of my body along with the lights.
I was actually looking down at myself, lying next to Dinu on a Greek banqueting couch.
I remembered the strange ceremony we had witnessed in Roman London, and my revelation that it was a way for the soul to know where to go once it left the body.
Was this the same sort of thing?
Before I could decide, a velvet blackness embraced me.
Some time later, the crowing of a rooster brought me out of a deep sleep.
For one heartbeat I didn’t know where I was.
Then I smelled the stale smoke from a pine-pitch torch and remembered. When I sat up, I got another shock: the room was empty.
Alcibiades was gone.
And what was even worse, so was Dinu.
20
Bed and Breakfast
I blinked around the deserted banqueting room. Last night it had been a scented three-dimensional map of the infinite cosmos, with stars and moons and planets. Last night my soul had floated up out of my body.
Now it was just a room with six couches, a bronze tripod and the faint smell of incense.
I felt groggy and disoriented. Had it all been a dream? Was I really in ancient Athens? Was Crina all right? And where was Dinu?
Outside, the cock crowed again.
As I slid off my couch, the pink shawl almost slipped off. Clutching it around my waist, I hurried out of the stale dining room.
Relief washed over me along with the cool air of the courtyard. The milky-blue light of dawn showed me nine men sitting on two benches either side of a long table.
One of them was Dinu, his green shawl draped like a mantle around his shoulders.
‘Alexis,’ he called in Greek. ‘Come. Eat. It’s good.’ He moved up the bench to make a space for me.
As I came closer, I caught the scent of fresh bread and tangy vinegar. The men were dipping hunks of bread into silver bowls and drinking from actual golden goblets.
I tied my pink shawl around my waist, so it wouldn’t slip off, and sat beside Dinu. ‘What are you doing?’ I muttered in English. ‘We’re not supposed to eat!’
‘I don’t care,’ he whispered back in English. ‘I am starving. Besides, what’s the worst that could happen?’
‘We know exactly what will happen,’ I muttered. ‘And it is the worst.’ But I gazed longingly at half a dozen big chunks of bread and a shallow silver bowl of what looked like wine. There was a silver platter with a few cubes of goat’s cheese and some olive pits.
Alcibiades sat across the table from us. His blond hair was damp and bound in a blue headband instead of last night’s garland. In the growing light I could see a few fine wrinkles at the corners of his eyes, which were bright blue. I guessed he was about thirty-five.
A slave brought me a surprisingly heavy gold goblet, full of diluted wine by the smell of it.
I hesitated.
Then I remembered that the Romans used to add wine to water because it makes it safe to drink. Apparently the wine kills most bacteria. Though of course they didn’t know that. All they knew was that drinking water on its own could make you sick or even kill you.
I was about to quench my thirst when Dinu muttered, ‘They all poured out a litt
le of their wine first; you probably should too.’
I dribbled a libation onto the packed earth of the courtyard and said in Greek, ‘Thank you, Dionysus, for the wine.’
Greybeard, Round Face and Alcibiades all nodded approvingly, so I drank.
The wine was well-watered: tart and refreshing. It cleared my head but gave me a slight buzz as well.
The slave returned with a fresh platter of goat’s cheese cubes and little black olives and set it before me.
My stomach growled.
I looked at all the men chewing their bread with obvious enjoyment.
‘Come on,’ I told myself. ‘You can do it. You’ve fasted for more than three days before. Be strong!’
Alcibiades cocked his head and raised his eyebrows at me. ‘Aren’t you hungry?’
‘No,’ I lied, but my growling stomach told the truth.
‘Breaking the fast is part of the initiation,’ he lisped.
‘It’s true,’ said Greybeard. ‘Also, our custom in Hellas is to offer hospitality to strangers.’
It took me a moment to remember that ‘Hellas’ was the ancient Greek word for Greece.
‘And if you refuse to eat,’ continued Greybeard with a smile, ‘I will be deeply offended.’
That was when I gave into temptation and broke the second rule of time travel: I tucked into the food.
21
The Charioteer
The olives were small, black and bitter. The cheese smelled like a flock of goats. Bread dipped in vinegar was just a soggy version of salt-and-vinegar crisps.
It was the best breakfast I’d ever had.
My stomach gurgled with happiness and I felt my spirits lift.
What a wonderful thing food is!
A slave was taking away the empty platter when the double doors of the courtyard swung open and a strong whiff of horses was followed by one of Alcibiades’ slaves leading in two horses yoked to a small, light chariot.
‘Master,’ he said to the general. ‘Xanthus has gone to the Temple of the Maiden to make sure the girl named Crina waits there for you. He will stay and protect her. And here is your chariot, as requested.’
Adventure in Athens Page 6