The Flowers of Adonis

by Rosemary Sutcliff

  I checks in the doorway, and maybe I gives back a step; and he looks up. ‘Why that face?’ says he.

  ‘Oh yes, I’ve cut my hands. It’s no great matter; more wine than blood — see, it has almost stopped. Did the Trirarch of the Salamina send you up here?’

  I pulls myself together. Quite a pull it takes, too. ‘I’m told we’re recalled to Athens. I came up for your orders.’

  ‘And my orders, Pilot, are that we sail for Athens at whatever time the Salamina decrees,’ he says, and his smile gets more like his own. ‘I’m recalled to Athens to stand my trial for blasphemy. You too, Pilot; you remember that second strophe? I’ve always warned you against keeping low company, and this time you’ve kept it once too often.’

  Well, I haven’t thought of that side of it. And he looks at my face and his smile broadens. ‘I don’t imagine you have much to fear. It’s me they’ve set the hounds on, not you. All the same, I’ll not blame you if you go missing before the Icarus sails. Nikomedes I know can furnish us another pilot.’

  I don’t bother to answer that one — don’t think he really expects an answer. I’ve followed Alkibiades too long to go round protesting dog-like devotion. ‘You’re going back, then?’ I says. I’m none so sure what I was expecting, but not that, anyway.

  He hesitates for just a flicker of time. ‘Shall we say I’m accepting the invitation. You will remember I demanded a trial before the fleet sailed, and it was refused me.’

  Says I, ‘I’ve told you, and I’d tell you again but that you’ve no need of telling: you have only to say the word, and the troops will rise for you as one man.’

  He ups with his eyebrows. ‘My dear, you’re almost as much of a fire-eater as Shoe-Leather Lamachus! If the troops were to rise, here in enemy territory, the full strength of Syracuse, with Corinth and Sparta to back them, would be down on our undefended backside by suppertime.’ Then even the pretence of laughter goes out of him. ‘I could have given Syracuse to Athens, and then — all the rest; all that, by the Gods, I swear they’ll never get now. But there are a few things I find are still beyond my powers, though doubtless I shall come to them in time; and that is one of them … Tomorrow morning I formally hand over my command to Lamachus and Nikias. Have the Icarus ready for sea, Pilot.’ He looks at his hands, and dabs a still oozing cut on the purple stuff of his mantle. ‘Antiochus, you know the little one-eyed weasel who keeps the wine shop beyond the temple of Apollo? Will you send for him to bring me some of his best wine. Tell him it will be made worth his while.’

  ‘Surely there’s enough here in the house, however drunk you want to get,’ says I. The house doesn’t look the kind to go short of the needful things of life.

  ‘But I’ve a fancy to taste the Golden Lily’s wine brought by the shopkeeper himself. Ah — before you go, will you pass me my tablets — on the chest over there?’

  I all but throws them at him. Only one word he’d have to say, just one word. And he’ll not say it.

  All night we waits for Alkibiades to change his mind and give the order, and it never comes.

  The Wine Shopkeeper

  Me, I’ve nothing specially against Syracuse; but there’s no denying the Athenian force that came against them was good for trade in those first months after we opened the city to them, sailors and fighting men being notoriously thirsty; and that tall blue-eyed godling their General, him they called Alkibiades, the thirstiest of the lot. I did him the odd service from time to time; girls and such like, and he’d always pay well. Besides, there was something about him. Don’t ask me what it was, but I’ll not deny I was sorry when suddenly all Catana was buzzing with the news that he was being hauled back to Athens to face a trial for blasphemy. But all the same, I was in two minds about going when that great red-headed pilot of his came rolling into the Golden Lily and bade me bring him up a jar of my choicest Etruscan wine to his lodging immediately. Bring it up myself, mind, and the shop fuller than it had been for months. But in the end I thought, ‘It will take more than a blasphemy charge to keep that one down; and when he comes back, maybe he’ll remember them that did him a good turn when things looked black for him.’

  So I hands the shop over to Helen, my woman, and I takes a jar of my best Etruscan, and off I goes.

  Seemingly somebody had left word with the doorkeeper, so there was no trouble about getting in. And then there I was, standing in the doorway of a big room opening off the summer court, and blinking at a pool of lamplight on the table, with a pair of hands in it; all cut, they were, and there was wine or blood or both all over the table, and the pieces of a broken cup. And they were writing, amid all the mess, just as if it wasn’t there at all. I knew them for Alkibiades’ hands by the great gold signet ring that he always wore. But for that I’d not have been sure it was him, in the first moment, for when I looked beyond them, his head was bent so low over the tablets that I could hardly see his face at all (and one eye isn’t as good as two, whatever they may say, especially after dark).

  When he had finished writing, he looked up. ‘Ah, Demetrios, you have been quick. Come in and set down the wine.’

  So I came to the table and set down the jar in its stand; and he lays down his stylus, closes the leaves of his tablets and knots the crimson thread, all very deliberate and slow, and sort of gentle. Then he softens the ball of beeswax in the lamp flame and seals the knot with his ring.

  Then he sits back and smiles, like a man finished with a job well done. ‘I am returning to Athens tomorrow, but I had a whim to taste your Etruscan wine again before I go; and I find it — inconvenient, to go into the city tonight.’

  He put money on the table. ‘That’s for the wine and your trouble. But there’s another matter, a message to be delivered.’ And he jingled more money in a little embroidered leather bag.

  I grinned. ‘A girl is it, My Lord?’

  ‘Not this time, Demetrios,’ he said. ‘I believe Alexandros the magistrate is still in the city, though lying low with the rest of the Syracuse party? You told me once that he bought his wine from you.’

  ‘Yes, General, still here, though he keeps to the house as close as any virtuous great lady, these days.’

  Alkibiades dropped the purse on to the table beside the tablets. ‘The message is for him.’

  I looked at the purse. It looked reasonably full, and it had made a satisfying jingle as he tossed it down. But still — ‘It won’t mean trouble?’ I said.

  ‘Not for you, not for Alexandros.’ Alkibiades picked up the tablets and sat weighing them in his hand. ‘Give him this from me; and bid him see that it reaches Messana — the Chief Archon — as quickly as possible.’

  That rocked me back a bit, and it was a moment before I could find enough tongue to speak.

  ‘What is it, Demetrios?’

  ‘Your pardon, Lord, but — he being all for Syracuse, and you being who you are, won’t he be wondering a bit …’

  ‘Demetrios of the Golden Lily,’ says he, ‘don’t tell me you have not heard why I am being summoned back to Athens? Remind Alexandros that Athens has called me back to stand trial on an old trumped-up blasphemy charge; and I think you’ll find he will not wonder any more.’

  The Soldier

  It only needed one word from him. One word, and the whole Athenian force would have gone roaring up in revolt. We waited all that night for it to come. I hope Nikias and Lamachus spent a sleepless night; I know we did, feeling the whole of Catana, city and fleet alike, working under us like yeast. And we grew sullen and uneasy as the time of darkness passed and the one word did not come. Antiochus looked like murder as he set about readying the trireme for sea. Normally, with the Icarus sailing shortly after noon, I would have had to have my lads back on board early in the day. But we returned only to report departure and collect our kit. This was no time to be sending home even one ship’s complement of marines, and we had been transferred to the land forces. So I got my lads up to the Agora instead, to hear him formally hand over his command; and we pu
shed our way through the crowd to get as near to him as possible, just in case. We hadn’t quite given up hope, even then. Several of his staff had done the same, and we made a kind of unofficial bodyguard about the foot of the rostrum.

  He did it beautifully. Dignified yet a little amused, as though the whole thing was some ridiculous mistake that could quite easily and quickly be sorted out. He seemed as confident of being swiftly back with us again as most men are that the sun will rise tomorrow. He paid a most generous tribute to the qualities of his fellow Generals (I didn’t dare catch Corylas’ eye, having too often heard Alkibiades’ real opinion of his fellow Generals), and he wished them all success in the campaign during his absence, Nikias looked yellower than usual.

  He was in full armour save for his helmet, which he had under his arm, but as always except on horseback, he wore, not the regulation military chlamys but one of his long mantles gathered in great folds across his shoulder and forearm and trailing a carefully casual corner on to the ground. He trailed it from step to step after him when he descended from the rostrum; he trailed it after him through the dust and garbage all the way down to the harbour, carrying his head as though there was a crown of golden laurel on it, and talking pleasantly to the Trirarch of the Salamina, by the way.

  We followed him down; his staff, who he had turned over with his command to his fellow Generals, and the Icarus marines. We should have been reporting to our new company by that time, but I don’t think any captain of hoplites would have been foolish enough to question our movements just then.

  We were angry and wretched, feeling ourselves somehow betrayed, that he should leave us like this, to the leadership of Shoe-Leather Lamachus and the priest-ridden Nikias, when he must have known that if he had said that one word, he need not have left us at all. But still, we followed him.

  He went on board without once looking back, laughing at something Nikomedes had said. We might not have been there at all. And the last we saw of him, as the Icarus followed the Salamina to sea was a figure in a crocus-purple cloak leaning casually against the after-deck rail, and watching the circling gulls about the masthead.

  ‘He’ll be back,’ we said, ‘he’s got some plan.’ But we did not quite meet each other’s eyes, and something of the heart was gone out of us.

  I looked at the boy, Astur, who chanced to be standing next to me, and saw that he was indecently near to tears. I had had little real contact with any of the staff lads before, they came of a somewhat different world to mine; though of course, physically, war galleys being what they are, we had spent a good deal of time packed close as spearheads in a barrel. But seeing him swallow, and his chin begin to quiver under the new dark chicken-down of his beard, I wanted suddenly to reach out a hand in comfort. But above all I wanted, with an aching intensity, as one wants such things for the beloved, that he should not cry now and have to remember it afterward. So I edged up closer and muttered, ‘Behave! Or we shall have Phaedo’ (he was one of the most notorious womanisers in the camp) ‘tumbling you in the bushes by mistake!’

  He looked round at me; his chin cocked up and his brows whipping together in anger. For a moment he looked as though he would walk away. But I knew that at least he would not cry now. And then he swallowed; and his face lightened into that quick smile of his that left it so grave again the moment it was gone.

  It had never happened to me before, and so I had never realised that falling in love could be so quiet and simple a thing.

  A few days later, news reached us that a pro-Athenian party in Messana had been discovered and rounded up. It seemed that they had been planning to hand over to us the city and the great harbour that we needed so sorely. Alkibiades had known it all. And Alkibiades had sent word to the Chief Magistrate before the Icarus sailed, betraying the whole plot. So we lost Messana. I don’t really know what happened to the men who had made the plot and trusted him with it; but I believe they got the hemlock. I hope it was that; it’s an easy death. Presumably that side of it didn’t matter much in his scheme of things, so long as it cost Athens dear enough. They say there was a girl among them, too.

  I think if it hadn’t been for Astur, I would most truly have wished myself dead in the brush that we had with some Syracusian cavalry, before ever the word came from Messana …

  The Priest

  There have been strange things happen to me, in the thirty years that I have served the Sanctuary of Poseidon here at Thurii.

  All men who tend the Sanctuaries of the Great Ones alone and at night have known such things. Strange comings of the spirit, strange sights and shadows in the altar flame, certainties that one has but to turn and look behind one, and the Splendour and the Terror will be there. Once, when I turned so, it was a ewe with her lamb at heel, strayed in from someone’s flock. But there was the one night — the one night when for a space I thought that the Blue Haired One himself had indeed come to me.

  At noon, the two Athenian triremes put into the harbour. That was usual enough, Greek vessels are forever putting in to the harbour to take on water and provisions for the long seaway across to Korkyra. But my serving-boy, returning from an errand into the city, brought back word that the trireme with the lion’s head prow (I knew by that, that he had been down to the harbour for a good look, instead of coming straight back to the Sanctuary as I had told him), was the flagship of Alkibiades the Athenian General, and that she was taking Alkibiades himself back to face a blasphemy trial in his own city.

  I had heard of this Alkibiades, especially since the fleet came west; the great war-host that was to conquer all Sicily for Athens. And with all else, I had heard of the shadow hanging over him. It is long ago, so long, and I begin to forget the details — or maybe it is not long enough, for as I grow older I find that I remember very clearly the things that happened when I was a boy, and often cannot remember the things that happened yesterday or last year at all — but it was something to do with the Eleusinian Mysteries; and he was supposed to have castrated all the Herms in Athens before the fleet sailed. But what reason could any man have to do such an accursed thing? Deliberately to call down upon himself the hounding of the Gods? Or — what reason for another to falsely accuse him of it? No, no, I grow confused and I forget. But the rest, I remember well.

  It was one of those nights with a little fretting wind that brings the sound of the sea right up into the Sanctuary, and makes the big lamp that burns always as a guide mark for shipping jump and flare against the wall. The back wall of the Sanctuary is always black with lamp-smitch, no matter how one tries to keep it clean. One does one’s best, one does one’s best; but it is never enough. What was I saying?

  The wind was making a deep lyre-string hum that came and went among the branches of the sacred pines, as I went across from my own little house to make the midnight sacrifice and see to the lamp. I left the boy sleeping. The time was near when he would have to learn to perform all the rituals, night as well as day; so that he might follow after me when I grew too old, as I followed after my master. But not yet; young things need their sleep.

  I trimmed and refilled the lamp, but nothing could steady the flare and flutter of it while that wind blew. I cleaned the black streaks of soot from the bronze reflectors on the wall so that they shone out bright again, and cleared the feathery white ash of the evening’s sacrifice from the altar (but the wind had blown most of it away long since), and laid and kindled the fresh bed of pine chips, and scattered into the small new flames the brittle brown tear-drops of Korax. The scented smoke rose and feathered away on the wind; and I raised my arms with the smoke and began the Invocation to Blue Haired Poseidon. I was not yet halfway through, when I felt the first touch on my spirit of something, someone, some presence drawing near to me out of the night at my back. The hair on my neck rose, and a coldness and a stillness came upon me, such as comes upon men when the Gods are near; and my own voice raised in the Midnight Prayer echoed like a stranger’s in the empty places of my head.

  And then I
heard a long light footstep, and a brushing through the tamarisk scrub; and then a silence hollow under the wind. I finished the prayer, and turned round.

  For one heartbeat of time, I thought that the God had come to me, even to me, Phyloctetes the priest of His Shrine.

  He stood naked on the edge of the lamplight, with all the windy sea-sounding dark behind him. His eyes in the leaping light were like holes in his face with the dark sea showing through. His hair was wet and wild and clung about his neck, and the drops from it trickled and shone on his breast and shoulders. He was beautiful with the potent and terrible beauty of a stallion, and full of power. I was an old man even then, and it was many years that I had served His Sanctuary, and such shocks are not good for an old man … And then I saw the other man behind him, a big ugly man with a drunkard’s nose, naked as himself save for the barbarian ornaments of coral and silver swinging in his ears, and carrying a dripping bundle under one arm.

  He was so completely of the flesh, that second man, that I knew the first, too, was man and not God.

  I said, ‘What is it that you seek, here in Poseidon’s Sanctuary?’

  The first man came forward into the full light, and I saw that if I were to take him for a God, I should have taken him, not for Poseidon but for Dionysus, the older Dionysus of the corn and the beasts of the wilderness. He moved long and light, like a mountain leopard.

  He said, ‘Bravo, priest! No time wasted on needless words. We seek food and an old cloak — two old cloaks; later, a ship sailing for the Peloponnese. But in the first moment, sanctuary.’