‘Woohoo!’ shouted Dinu and Xanthus cheered too.
But at the word ‘Sicily’ I felt a chill pass through my body and the pine tree started to tip strangely.
‘Oh my God!’ I gripped the branch and willed myself not to faint. ‘It’s the Expedition to Sicily!’
‘What does that mean?’ said Dinu. We were speaking in English.
‘Everybody’s been talking about Syracuse,’ I said, ‘which means nothing to me. But the herald just said Sicily.’
‘Sicily?’ said Crina. ‘I read about that in one of my books.’ Then she reached out and gripped my arm. ‘Oh my God. Is that the guy who came up with the idea? I thought his name was Al Sibees!’
‘Al-sib-EYE-uh-deez in English, but Al-kibee-AH-deez in Greek,’ I said.
‘Oh no!’
‘What are you talking about?’ Dinu pulled himself up and his face appeared below us, framed by pine needles.
I took a deep breath. ‘Alcibiades has just convinced the Athenians to let him lead the fleet to Sicily in order to get their gold and then defeat the Spartans once and for all.’
‘What’s so terrible about that?’ he said.
I took a deep breath. ‘The Sicilian Expedition is destined to be the biggest military disaster in the history of Athens. It will ultimately cause her downfall.’
Dinu was looking at me with wide eyes.
I leaned closer to him. Even though we were speaking English I lowered my voice. ‘Don’t you remember? Magister Gerardus wrote the figures on the whiteboard. The Athenians will lose two hundred ships and twenty thousand men will die.’
‘Oh my God!’ breathed Crina. ‘Twenty thousand men!’
‘I’ve got to warn him!’ said Dinu suddenly. The branches of the pine sprang back as he started to climb down out of the tree.
‘Dinu!’ I cried as he landed in a puff of dust. ‘Don’t tell him! It’s one of the biggest disasters in the history of the world. If you stop him, you’ll definitely change the future!’
But I was too late; Dinu was already running down the dusty slope of the Pnyx.
39
Wild Chicken Chase
What would you do if you knew you could stop thousands of people dying, but by doing so you would create a future that did not contain your friends or family? And knowing that you yourself would also vanish in a puff?
Solomon Daisy had warned us that changing major – or even minor – historical events could have far-reaching and unthinkable consequences. That was why he had given us the third rule of time travel: As little interaction as possible.
If Dinu reached Alcibiades and convinced him not to go to Sicily, the three of us would certainly vanish, because history would have been changed forever.
Crina and I jumped out of the tree and, without even a backwards glance at Kid Plato or Simona, we pelted after Dinu.
Luckily there were five thousand citizens – that is, freeborn men over the age of eighteen – between Dinu and Alcibiades.
Luckily Dinu’s blond hair stood out among all those dark heads.
Unluckily he was heading back to the Agora with thousands of others. Crina and I lost sight of him somewhere between the South Stoa and the mint, the same buildings I had glimpsed shortly after landing the night before.
The Agora was already full of chattering groups of men, each with an opinion on Alcibiades and his virtues and vices.
‘Where did he go?’ gasped Crina. ‘Alex, we have to find him or he’ll change the future!’
I nodded, out of breath. ‘And the moment … he changes the future … we’ll be dead.’
‘There!’ She pointed towards the north. ‘Look – he’s going that way, moving fast.’
We ran past now-familiar stalls and altars and finally emerged at the Herms crossroad. I recognised the Painted Stoa, where I had first seen Socrates and found Crina.
‘Now where?’ I panted.
‘There! See his blond head? Going into that big arch!’ Crina pointed west towards a monumental gate. ‘Is that the Dipylon Gate?’ she asked me.
‘I think so. But how do you know?’
‘Athens on Five Drachmas a Day, of course!’
We must have left the boundary of the Agora because now I saw women washing clothes in some kind of stream on our left. I realised it was the channelled Eridanus river. On the right-hand side of the road other women stood at tall looms, weaving bright cloth. They were unveiled and some wore lots of make-up.
Crina and I gratefully reached the shade of the massive gate, with its high, vaulted roof. I thought I saw the glint of Dinu’s yellow hair up ahead too, so we hurried on, passing under another big arch and back out into blazing sunshine. Now we were in the graveyard among the tombs, for we were outside the town walls. A few dozen men were hurrying along the road, presumably on their way home to tell their families about the Assembly. Most of them were making their way on foot, but one guy rode a small but fast-moving donkey.
He was wearing a straw hat.
A yellow, brimless straw hat that looked just like blond hair.
‘Oh no!’ Crina gasped. ‘I took us on a wild chicken chase. I feel so stupid.’
‘Don’t feel stupid.’ I rested my hands on my knees to catch my breath. ‘I thought it was him too. Maybe it will be all right. Maybe Dinu will decide not to tell Alcibiades something that will change the course of history.’
Crina merely raised an eyebrow and I had to laugh.
‘Prepare to go kerpluff,’ I said, only half joking. ‘But seriously, we’d better find him.’
Still breathing hard from all the running, we turned and headed back towards the big Dipylon Gate in silence.
Suddenly Crina stopped. ‘Alex, listen.’
‘What? Do you hear Dinu? Or Alcibiades?’
‘No. I hear nature.’
She was right. It wasn’t silent at all. In addition to the rhythmic chirp of the cicadas, the air was full of the sounds of insects and birds.
‘Alex, when was the last time you heard a bird sing in London?’
I shrugged. ‘Ducks on the river?’ I said. ‘Pigeons on the pavement?’
She touched my arm. ‘Listen! What’s that one called?’
‘Dunno. My mum used to call them “twig birds”. You know: little birds that hop about on twigs?’
Crina cocked her head. ‘I know that purring one is a turtle dove … and the one up high is a skylark. And the bees! Can you hear the bees buzzing?’
‘Yes, I can hear the birds and the bees.’ I waggled my eyebrows at her but she didn’t notice.
She was pointing at something moving by the side of the road. An old tortoise pushed through the wildflowers and weeds at the foot of painted tombs. A small rodent – possibly a shrew – skittered across the road.
I could smell green leaves cooking in the sun and sweet flowers and the faint turpentine scent of pine.
Perhaps because we could be snuffed out of existence at any moment, the world had never seemed so full of life.
‘It is amazing,’ I said.
Crina nodded. ‘This is what the world is supposed to be like. Full of birds and insects and plants and creatures. It’s like this in my grandmother’s village in Romania. There’s so much life. England could be like this too.’
‘Is that why you go on all those marches and wear your eco T-shirts and stuff?’ I said.
‘Yes. We need to do everything we can to save the world – if it’s not already too late.’
As we left the road and wandered among the tombs, Crina asked me the names of the flowers and plants we could see.
‘Those little yellow ones are buttercups,’ I said. ‘And there are some red poppies. We have those in England too. But I don’t know that white and purple one. Or the one with spiky leaves.’
A white butterfly did lazy loops through the shimmering heat of the afternoon.
‘Did you know that the Greek word for butterfly also means “soul”?’ I said. ‘Psyche.’
‘That�
��s beautiful,’ she said, and after a pause, ‘Alex, do you believe in the soul? I mean, like Socrates does? As a part of you that will never die but will fly off into the air?’
‘Until last night I wasn’t sure,’ I said. ‘But after I inhaled the incense and listened to the gong, something inside me floated up and I could see myself from above.’
‘That happened to me once when I was little,’ she said. ‘I remember watching my grandmother’s goat give birth. In my memory of it, I can see myself.’
And then she said something that took me by surprise.
‘Alex?’
‘Yes?’
‘Tell me about Plecta?’
40
Soul Butterflies
Plecta was a girl I had met in Roman London.
Even though I only knew her for a few hours I had loved her.
I kicked a pebble and watched it disappear among the wildflowers at the base of a column tomb. ‘You’ve read my diary. What else do you want to know?’
Out of the corner of my eye I saw Crina looking at me. ‘Did you really love her? It wasn’t just Tittles? You know, Time Travellers’ Love Syndrome.’
Another butterfly swam dizzily past the painted grave markers.
‘I’ve been thinking about that a lot,’ I said. ‘I think it was real. Did you understand Socrates earlier at Simon’s, when he was going on about how the soul is the most important part of us and how we should keep it pure by doing what is right?’
‘A little bit. But I’ve read about that too.’
‘Well, I know it sounds cheesy, but Plecta had a really beautiful soul. It shone out of her and made her beautiful.’
I glanced at Crina. Her head was down, but I could see her cheeks were flushed.
I took a deep breath. ‘Kind of like you,’ I said.
Her head came up and she looked at me. Up close I could see her brown eyes weren’t brown at all but grey with flecks of blue and yellow.
‘You think I have a beautiful soul?’
I didn’t trust my voice so I just nodded.
Her face was flushed. ‘God, this heat,’ she said shyly.
‘I know.’ I gave a nervous laugh. ‘My throat is as parched as a sock fresh from the tumble dryer.’
‘Look! That must be the Sacred Gate. And it has a fountain!’
We had emerged from the tombs onto a broad road leading to a slightly smaller version of the Dipylon Gate. Sure enough, I spotted a marble fountain beside the arched entrance.
When we reached it, Crina hesitated. ‘Is it safe to drink?’
‘Let me test it,’ I said. ‘I’ve already drunk from a fountain in the harbour.’ I took a sip then drank deeply then plunged my whole head into the basin.
‘That is so good!’ I said when I came up for air.
Crina also drank and immersed her head. When she rose up again there were tiny beads of water sparkling on the tips of her eyelashes.
As we moved into the big cool space of the Sacred Gate I saw about two dozen potters’ stalls selling everything from tiny votive figures to big kraters: the mixing bowls for wine.
‘Look, Alex, this must be the potters’ district.’
‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘I always imagined it outdoors like in Ancient Greek Assassins, but it’s much nicer here in the shade.’
But when we left the relative cool of the covered gate for the blast furnace of the afternoon, I noticed there were potters here too. A whole street of them, in fact. They were mainly tanned young men in linen loincloths. Some were stamping clay in watery pits. Some sat on the ground, spinning the potters’ wheels on which their masters shaped the vases. A few sat in the tiger-striped shade of split-reed awnings, delicately painting unfired pots. I could see black smoke from the kilns rising up from behind the white cube buildings.
‘I love Greek vases,’ said Crina.
‘You do? How do you even know about them?’
‘I found a lot on the Internet when I was prepping for this trip. The pictures on them are like graphic novels.’
‘I know!’ I said. ‘My gran says the vase-painters of Athens were geniuses on a level with Picasso.’
‘If Picasso had illustrated comic books,’ said Crina.
I stared at Crina. The last hour had been a revelation.
‘Look!’ Crina pointed. ‘A girl potter!’
We stopped for a moment to watch a skinny girl with pinned-up black hair painting a big pot on an upturned basket before her.
‘See?’ I said. ‘Maybe ancient Athens isn’t so bad after all.’
‘She’s probably a slave,’ muttered Crina. ‘Shall we go ask?’
‘I think we’d be better off running,’ I said. ‘It’s our friends from last night.’
‘What?’
Silently I pointed to the two archers. I recognised one of them from the night before.
And Archer Two recognised me.
‘There they are!’ He notched an arrow. ‘Xtop them!’
41
Water Nymphs
We ran.
Without thinking I grabbed Crina’s hand just like Finn grabs Rey’s hand in Star Wars: The Force Awakens.
Unlike Rey, she did not let go.
‘How do you know where you’re going?’ she cried, as I pulled her off the Street of the Potters down a shadowed, stinking alley.
‘I don’t!’ I gasped. ‘But if I can just keep the Acropolis in sight I’ll know roughly where we are.’
A few moments later the Acropolis disappeared behind a hill.
‘Sod’s law,’ I muttered to myself.
We carried on running, past feta-cube houses, with a hill rising behind them on the left and the city wall on our right. Perched on top of the hill, I saw trees and between them the columns of a temple. Not the Parthenon but the Temple of Hephaestus, where the metal workers had their stalls.
‘I think that’s the Market Hill!’ I glanced over my shoulder and saw the floppy Smurf hats still on our trail.
I pulled Crina down a street of sawing, hammering carpenters, then right down another alley, then left along the city wall again.
Turning onto one road, we saw a herd of pigs coming our way. They were big – proper hogs – and they filled the whole street from one side to the other, squealing and grunting and jostling each other. If we hadn’t dived into an alleyway between two houses, we would have been driven back towards our pursuers.
Then I caught sight of the Acropolis above a red-tiled roof and I knew which way to go.
Heading towards it, we came into a street full of the clinking of metal chisels on stone: the Street of the Marble Workers. At the crossroads stood the State Prison.
‘I know where we are!’ I cried. ‘Simon’s house is just up ahead.’
‘Wait!’ Crina grabbed my arm. ‘We can’t go straight there, in case the guards are still following us! If they find out that Simon offered us shelter, then he and his children might get in trouble.’
‘What do you suggest?’
‘Hide somewhere to see if they’re still on our trail!’
‘Good idea. But where?’
‘There!’ Crina pointed at two girls coming out of the fountain house we had passed earlier. This time she was the one who took my hand. She pulled me up the street to a little red-roofed building on our right.
Plunging between two columns, we found ourselves in a cool, dim space with the echoing sounds of girls’ singing above the splash of water and the gurgle of drains.
The two girls fell silent a moment after we entered. They held water jars on the edge of a marble trough, tilted to catch the water gushing out of lion-head spouts in the wall. They glanced at each other and then giggled.
‘Chairete!’ I panted. Greetings. Then I turned and peered out from behind one of the columns.
‘Can you see them?’ whispered Crina in my ear.
‘No, I think we’re safe. Oh, wait!’ I leaned out a little further. ‘Uh-oh! They’re coming this way. And they’re stopping to look in all th
e shops.’
I turned and looked around the dimly lit space with its wobbling rings of light on the ceiling. The two fountain basins, one on each side, were about the size of coffins. That gave me an idea. ‘Please!’ I said to the girls. ‘Guards are searching for us, but we are innocent. Help us hide?’
After another shared glance the girls giggled and inclined their heads for ‘yes’.
‘Touch our heads when they come?’ I said. Again they tipped their heads.
‘You get into that basin, Crina!’ I pointed. ‘I’ll get into this one. If the girl touches your head, go under and hold your breath as long as you can.’
She looked at me, wide-eyed. Then she nodded and jumped boldly into one of the troughs.
I jumped into the other.
I would have squealed, but the icy chill of the water had taken my breath away. I ducked under, and resurfaced dripping and gasping.
One of the girls had come over to my trough.
She smiled sweetly. Then she emptied her jar over me. ‘What the …?’ I muttered. Then I understood. She needed the jar to be empty for when the guards came.
As she repositioned her water jar, I grinned with chattering teeth and nodded my thanks.
In the trough opposite I saw Crina’s dripping head rise up. She gave me a wobbly smile and a thumbs-up.
Then the two girls did a clever thing: they resumed singing.
It was a song about a girl going to the well. The chorus was something to do with Artemis.
It seemed like ages. My arms and legs were starting to go numb. Then my girl widened her eyes and patted my head with her free hand. I knew what that meant.
The archers were here.
I took a deep breath, held my nose and sank as deep into the chilly water as I could.
42
How to Save the World
They say a plunge in icy water is good for your muscles after a long run. They say it also boosts your immune system. They say that a dunking in cold water can even give you a feeling of euphoria, which comes from the Greek word for blissful happiness.
Adventure in Athens Page 12