The Flowers of Adonis

by Rosemary Sutcliff

  And then of course the thing happened that was bound to happen. Word of the intended pulling out reached Gylippos. I’ve often wondered if one of Nikias’ soothsayers had anything to do with that … And now, reported our Spartan scouts triumphantly, the Syracusian and Corinthian fleets had formed a barricade of ships across the harbour mouth. The Athenian fleet was trapped.

  ‘They may break out yet,’ I says.

  Alkibiades says nothing. I’ve never known him so silent as in those few days. And it’s Endius our host who says, ‘They may try.’

  And then only a day or so later another report comes in.

  Demosthenes had tried his break-out and been driven back with hideous losses in men and ships. What were left of the Athenian force had begun a retreat overland, leaving their dead and wounded behind, and making, probably, for Catana. We heard few details at the time, of that ghastly three-day retreat. Everyone knew the details later, when the few survivors began to crawl home. I’m glad I didn’t know at the time; I think I’d have broken the habit of a lifetime, and left Alkibiades to his Royal woman and whatever ugly death was brewing up for him in Sparta, and gone off and turned honest pirate.

  About the end of Boedromion a fast penteconta came in to Gythion and the word went round that she brought despatches from Gylippos, and that the last fighting of the Syracuse campaign was over. The Council of Ephors met that same day. But Alkibiades, who I could have sworn would demand to join them in the Senate House to hear the reports from Syracuse, whistled a couple of Endius’ hounds to heel and went off hunting. The evening meal in Mess was long over when he got back with a pair of bloody hares to show for his sport. I saw him cross Endius’ courtyard towards the rooms that had long since become our established quarters, and went to forage in the cookhouse. Partly that was to put off the moment of going after him, for I wasn’t looking forward to telling him the news from Sicily, which had been all the talk in Mess that evening.

  But when I got back to our billet with a bowl of bread and olives and cold pig-meat, Endius was with him — that was Endius’ year as one of the five Ephors — and I saw that he already knew. The air in that room was crackling, so that if I’d been on board ship, I’d have expected to see the masthead blue with cold-fire.

  Alkibiades looks round at me and says, (Ah! Food! The hunting was so good I forgot about supper.’ And then, ‘Endius has come like a good host eager for his guest’s pleasure and entertainment, to bring me the news of the Athenian fleet and Army.’

  I says, ‘There isn’t an Athenian fleet or Army, any more,’ and set down the bowl, and a cup of raw wine — I’m thinking he’ll not be wanting it watered that night.

  ‘So you have heard it, too.’

  ‘Maybe not in such accurate detail,’ I says.

  ‘So, we can finish hearing the tale together. Endius, my dear fellow, please go on. Demosthenes tried to kill himself, you said.’

  Endius nods. ‘He was too weak to do the job properly. A messy business — in the belly; but he was taken alive out of the olive garden where he made his last stand. He had almost got his lot through to safety; they were within sight of the sea again, only a few miles south of Catana.’

  And I thinks for the moment there’s a note of regret in his voice; almost admiration, you might say.

  ‘And Nikias and the other party?’ Alkibiades asks.

  ‘Cut to pieces at the river ford. Nikias was taken alive, too. Not quite right in the head, I gather.’

  ‘Was that in Gylippos’ report, too?’

  ‘No; the account of the penteconta Commander. However, you’ll not have the embarrassment of coming face to face with your fellow Generals here in Sparta. Gylippos says he had hoped to bring them back as living captives — it would certainly have added to the triumph of his own return — but the Syracusian Assembly was not in favour of that idea. The executions were duly carried out, and the bodies left bound to stakes outside the state prison. The dogs and the kites won’t have left much of them by now. The rest of the Athenian captives have been sentenced to the stone-quarries outside the city. It seems that it is always difficult to keep them fully manned, the life expectation being considered shorter than in your own silver mines.’ He smiles at that — leastwise he shows his teeth. It’s one of the very few times I ever sees Endius smile. ‘Your advice was good, my friend.’

  There was a long silence after he’d finished speaking. Alkibiades sat staring straight before him at the opposite wall as though he was looking through it into a black pit. Then he smiles too — so nearly that old lazy smile of his that anyone not knowing him as well as I do might have thought it was the same. He leans back, rocking on the hinder legs of his stool, and picks up the wine jug. ‘My advice was good, as to both Syracuse and Dekalia. I shall drink to Agis remembering that my advice was good, when he returns.’

  ‘It’s more to the point to drink to the Ephors remembering,’ says Endius, pointedly.

  ‘Yes, I was forgetting. Does the King — Kings, count for anything in Sparta?’

  ‘Only in the field,’ says Endius, ‘and in the Queen’s bed.’

  And there’s a long look passes between them. Then Endius excuses himself as courteously as a Spartan can, and goes his way. ‘He knows about you and the Queen,’ I says, when he’s gone. ‘Oh yes.’

  ‘Was it a threat?’

  ‘Not so long as our interests run in double harness. Endius has little liking for Agis — something to do with a son, I believe. Moreover, under that dour face of his, he’s that rare thing, a Spartan with a sense of humour.’

  ‘It would be his sense of humour that made him take such pains to be the one to bring you the news from Syracuse?’ I says.

  ‘No, that was his interest in human behaviour. He was curious to see if I would squirm,’ says Alkibiades sweetly. He picks up the gutted carcasses of the two hares, which he must have brought in with him and dropped on the ground at his feet; and looks at them with a faint distaste as he gets up. ‘How very bloody — I should have remembered to give them to a slave for the cook-house.’ Then he flings them across the room with such force that they smashes against the farther wall, spattering blood and mess across the lime-wash and leaps apart and back from it again to lie in two small huddles of fur and blood and broken bones on the floor.

  Then he walks out past me into the night, like a man who is going to vomit.

  10

  The Spartan

  In the days after our victory off Syracuse, Alkibiades puzzled me. I like to know what pulls the strings inside a man, but with Alkibiades I never succeeded. He had come to us for the breaking of his own people, and now that they were as good as broken you’d have been expecting him to be crowing like a painted Persian gamecock, instead of which I really wondered for a time if he was going to fall a pray to Night’s Daughters. His moods swung between black silence and the kind of wild gaiety which is laughter flung in the face of the Gods. And the Gods do not tolerate impiety. I saw men step aside to avoid treading in his shadow.

  He seemed unable to be still a moment, ranging the countryside like something in a cage. The amount of his freedom had been left to my discretion, so long as he did not cross the borders; and I used my discretion to the full, giving him a couple of my best hunting dogs and the run of all Lacedaemon. It was that or chaining him up in the inner courtyard.

  I kept my spies on him, of course; that was how I knew how seldom he spent his nights, now, with the Queen. It had always amused me to watch Agis being cuckolded; and besides it gave me a useful hold on Alkibiades if I should need one at any time. It was becoming clear to all beholders, whenever she appeared in public, that under the folds of her chiton, Timea’s belly was swelling up like a water-melon; and there were a few raised brows; but the story was already seeping out that Agis had been drunker than he knew, on his wedding night, and that by the time the earth-shock came, he had already sowed his wheat. Those of us who knew Agis best found that story something hard to swallow; but so long as nobody
knew for sure, my hold remained good and strong.

  It seems a pity that I never needed to use it; I’m a man who hates waste.

  With Sicily safe again, and our troops firmly dug in to Attica, it seemed, that autumn and winter, that suddenly all the world wanted an alliance with Sparta. Pharnobazus the Satrap of Phrygia sent us a couple of Greek exiles by way of envoys, seeking our aid in stirring the Athenian cities of the Hellespont to revolt; and it was from them we first heard that Lesbos had already appealed to Agis for help in throwing off the Athenian yoke.

  ‘It seems that Syracuse has raised a wind of freedom among the Islands,’ said one of my fellow Ephors. ‘But it is strange to say the least, that no report of this has reached us from Agis himself.’

  ‘Agis your King sent no report, so far as is known,’ said one of the exiles. ‘He has sent officers to Lesbos with a promise of ships to follow.’

  ‘Agis,’ I said, ‘has been too long away from Sparta. He is forgetting the limits of the King’s power.’

  A few days later came envoys from the island of Chios, with representatives of Tissaphernes the Lydian Satrap, on much the same errand with regard to the more southerly Ionian coast and islands. Tissaphernes’ trouble was that he had lately received somewhat pointed demands from the Great King, for the yearly tribute which Persia had collected from the Hellenic cities of Ionia until, for many years now, the Athenian Navy had made its collection impossible. So, Tissaphernes wanted Spartan aid to raise rebellion in the Ionian Islands.

  I listened to them with the rest of the Ephorate, through a couple of days of long drawn-out discussions. And by the end of the second day it seemed to me that the time had come to call in Alkibiades. What had emerged from those long hours in Council was that neither Persian Satrap had any mandate from the Great King, who was not in the least interested in helping us or the Athenians, but very interested indeed in getting back the islands lost to Athens eighty years before. And also that neither Satrap had any use for the other, but that each was out to buy us for themselves. Tissaphernes offered a drachma a day for every man we would send against Chios; Pharnobazus’ renegade Greeks brought twenty-five talents down, to be ours if we would send a Spartan fleet up to the Hellespont.

  On the face of it, Pharnobazus offered the most in immediate results. With Agis in complete control in Attica and cutting off all land supplies, a Spartan fleet in the Hellespont, cutting off the Black Sea corn ships, would finish Athens within half a year. But on the other hand any expedition in that direction would be bound to come under the supreme command of Agis himself, and there would be nothing in it for Endius. But a victory, even if somewhat slower in coming, by way of the Ionian Islands, might have a great deal in it for the Ephorate in general and for Endius in particular, if he could make himself the moving spirit behind it.

  My fellow Ephors were all tending to the other view, which was inconvenient to say the least of it. Alkibiades, I felt reasonably sure, would see the thing much as I did, for the very simple reason that he must know by now that Sparta was growing unhealthy for him. It was not only the Queen; men were jealous of his advice that had proved so insufferably successful; they were growing afraid, as men do of too much success (which is interesting and amusing when one comes to think that he was little more than a hostage at the time). The sooner he was out of Sparta the better for his health. And while the Hellespont offered him no more than it did me, Ionia was old hunting ground to him; he had, I knew, powerful friends in Ephesus and Miletus, and would be the obvious choice to go as adviser with a Chios fleet.

  So I put it to my fellow Ephors that Alkibiades, who knew the Aegean as we, a land power, could never do, and whose advice had proved sound before, should be brought in as an outside adviser. They didn’t care for the idea, and it took most of another day to work them over. But I managed it at last, and Alkibiades was duly called in.

  He cast his vote for Chios, and did it with a blazing speech in Council that won the day for us. Chios was the foremost of all the Ionian Islands, he argued, so powerful that her fall would set the whole Aegean Empire crumbling, while her sixty ships would form a valuable addition to the Spartan Navy. Those same ships which would make her, if she were left under Athenian domination, a danger in the rear of any fleet operating in or around the Hellespont. He talked a good deal about liberating the islands from Athenian tyranny; that went down well with the Council, for we Spartans have always had a fondness for such liberations.

  At the end of that fourth day, the Council voted for forty-five ships, five of our own, the rest to be drawn from our allies, for an expedition against Chios at winter’s end; and Alkibiades was appointed to sail with the Spartan squadron, as personal adviser to our Admiral.

  So Pharnobazus’ Greeks departed in a fury with the twenty-five talents, while Tissaphernes’ envoys went home looking like cats that have got at the fish-trap. Alkibiades and I had each got what we wanted.

  The Seaman

  ‘But why did you do it?’ I says. ‘You were out to smash Athens, and you know as well as I do that cutting off the corn ships would finish the war before next summer is out.’

  ‘I’m not much interested in a quick Spartan victory that will leave me in worse case than I am now,’ says Alkibiades. ‘I am condemned to death in Athens; and I think, Pilot, that I am condemned to death in Sparta. If the fleet sails for the Hellespont I remain here, caged and sooner or later the sword will fall. So the fleet sails for Chios, and I sail with it. I am safely out of Sparta, and yet I am still in the forefront of Sparta’s war thrust against Athens.’

  ‘I’m only a seaman,’ I says, ‘I can’t keep up with all this. Where do you hope that it will get you?’

  ‘Who knows?’ he says. ‘The islands are my old hunting ground as they are yours, Pilot; and they are in the melting pot. A bold man — the right man — might do almost anything with them, if he was not afraid to take his opportunities as they come.’

  He’s all on fire with the new idea, the new venture, like a wind rising after a flat calm; and I sees plain enough that for the moment at least, he’s thrown off Syracuse like an old cloak, lest it hampers him in what comes next.

  The Queen

  Long before the baby was born, I knew that I had lost my love. At first I told myself that it was the news from Syracuse, and would pass; and waited for him to come back. He did come, sometimes, but it was as though a drawn sword lay down the bed between us — no — even when he lay in my arms it was there; the dead, all the Athenian dead at Syracuse that lay between us …

  And then all Sparta was about the preparations for an expedition against Chios, and he was to sail with the Admiral as adviser; and then when he came to me, he was bright-eyed and eager and laughing once more, but when I held him it was as though I held his outward shell in my arms, and nothing more, while the man himself was already away on his new venture, mind and heart and hopes set far ahead among the islands and the shores of Ionia where I could never follow.

  I prayed for a son, in those days; in the long dreary winter nights when he did not come; prayed for a son as never women prayed before: ‘Great Mother! Ancient One, Reed crowned, give me a son!’ for I thought that maybe a son would do what I could not, and draw him back to me.

  Our son was born in the spring, some weeks early, so that it was a bare ten months that I must admit to carrying him. It was lamp-lighting when I began to bear him, and the first light of morning was hanging barred with gold beyond the high window when the last pang came upon me, and I felt as if part of my own body were being torn out of me. I had worked hard all night, bearing down whenever Panthea told me to, though all my body cried out in revolt, to withhold itself from the pain. And then came that last wild pang, and something cried weakly, and for a moment I thought it was myself and was too weary even to be ashamed, though it is as shameful for a woman to cry out in childbirth as for a warrior to cry out under the spear. And then I knew that it was not me that cried, but the live thing that had tumbled out bet
ween my straddled thighs. His child, and so eager for life that it could not wait for the midwife’s hand nor the cutting of the cord, but must suck in the air and begin living while it was still joined to me.

  They lifted it away from me, wiping my mouth with thin wine. ‘It is a boy,’ they said, ‘a fine boy.’

  Later, when I had slept, and when the room had been purified and smelled of salt and hyssop and no more of hot blood, and they had washed him in cold water and wine, they gave the baby to me to hold. So little and so sweet-smelling curled in my arms. I remember I snuffed the back of his neck as a bitch snuffs her newborn pups; but I thought, ‘Now he will send me word. When he hears that I have borne his son, surely he will send me word — and then he will come.’

  But the days passed and the nights passed and he sent no word, and he did not come.

  The Ephors came and looked him over to be sure that he had no defect in him and was worth keeping; and on the third day the families gathered in the andron of the King’s House; my father and mother and my sister Dionyssa who was married herself long since, and the kin of Agis’ line. And again the fore-porch pillars were garlanded, with olive this time, for a son — and the Priestess of Artemis wearing her tall crown of reeds, took the babe from me and carried him seven times about the hearth, and gave him his name. Leotichides, which is a Royal name. And so he came back to me, passed and accepted and marked as the next King of Sparta.

  Such ceremonies are for the family only, and Alkibiades, who of all men should have been there, must be lacking. But after, I thought, ‘Now he will come. Surely he will come.’

  But the days passed and the nights passed and still he neither came nor sent me any word. And in less than a month the Chios squadron would be sailing. Already the Corinthian and Allied Fleets were gathering at Corinth. I grew desperate and my milk failed so that a wet-nurse must be brought in to feed the baby, who seemed never to be satisfied. And at last I let go all that was left to me of pride, and begged Panthea to get word to him that I must see him or I should go mad.