The Flowers of Adonis

by Rosemary Sutcliff

  ‘And you?’ I said.

  He smiled deprecatingly, but his eyes never wavered out of line with my own. ‘I am only your lieutenant in this.’

  *

  Somehow I got the Council summoned again, before noon, and somehow the thing was done. I put Alkibiades’ own arguments to my fellows and after much discussion got the vote for the squadron to sail. Getting Alkibiades back into his appointment was still more difficult; I got to the stage of pointing out that a man’s private morals had nothing to do with his gifts as an admiral or a diplomat — which had little effect. I also suggested that Sparta might be a healthier and more peaceful place for quite a lot of us, if our Athenian friend was out of it — which had rather more.

  I got both votes eventually, and sent the order off to Chalcidius (I had previously sent him private word to stand by), and next morning the little fleet slipped out to sea; Alkibiades aboard the flagship and that red-polled pilot of his with him. I made the rather surprising discovery that I should find life less amusing if I were never to see Alkibiades again.

  I never have.

  11

  The Citizen

  Everyone knows how we first heard of the total destruction of our forces outside Syracuse, from a Sicilian merchant who talked about it in a barber’s shop, thinking we already knew. It’s a tale that doesn’t bear telling again. It seems to me now, looking back, that it was all that long hopeless winter and late into the next spring before we heard anyone laugh again. And then suddenly all Athens was rocking with laughter at the news that Alkibiades, left behind as a semi-hostage for the success of his own plans, while the Spartans were wrecking Attica, had amused himself by cuckolding the King of Sparta. How we could laugh like that, with even something of our old shocked delight in him, with the sorrow of Syracuse still upon us, I don’t know. But we did. Men would stop each other in the street, grinning with hunger-pinched faces, and clap each other on the shoulder and say, ‘Have you heard?’ Laughter is a strange thing, almost as strange as love.

  It was soon after, that our athletes (we had managed to keep a few of our best in training, mostly youngsters serving their first year as Ephebes, who are never taken for fighting overseas) sent back word from the Isthmean Games, of the whole Peloponnesian fleet waiting at Corinth to be portaged across the Isthmus. That could mean only one thing, fighting on our own threshold or in the Aegean. We scraped together every quickly available fighting ship, including the Thetis and the Halkyone, which, since they had been acting as dispatch-vessels for Demosthenes, and in home waters at the time, had escaped the Syracuse disaster; and we continued to intercept the enemy fleet and drive them ashore below Epidauros.

  It was our first success for so long that it went a little to our heads, as wine goes to the head of a hungry man.

  Then came more news, unbelievable — no, it would have been unbelievable of any other man — that Alkibiades was away from Sparta with a squadron of five ships, to raise the Ionian islands in revolt. Chios had welcomed them with open arms, declaring for Sparta almost before his ships were past the mole; and other islands and mainland cities of Ionia were following their lead.

  I think a good many of the ordinary folk of Athens began to wonder, as that summer wore on, just how wise we had been in turning against Alkibiades three years ago. It had been generally accepted by now that the mutilating of the Herms had been the work of Corinthian agents, hoping to cause such consternation in the city that the expedition against Syracuse would not sail at all. And as for the charge on which he had been tried in his absence, found guilty and condemned to death — the priests had publicly cursed him, and the curse by the order of the Council of Archons, had been inscribed on tablets of iron, that it might last for all time. And he had turned, not unnaturally, to our enemies, and had prospered. Apollo Far-Shooter! How he had prospered! It was we who had suffered. That could only mean that the curse had been an unjust one. I had always been one of those who believed the case against him to be a false one, rigged by his enemies; now, more and more citizens were coming to the same belief; and even my father, not much given to doubting his own judgment, was beginning to have a doubt or two.

  A good many of us in Athens, then, would have been glad to call him home from his Spartan allegiance, but of course it could not be done. The proud city of Athens to go crawling on her knees to one angry man, and then as like as not be refused … I could imagine how his eyes would look.

  I cast my vote with the rest of the hurriedly called Assembly. Twelve ships were detached from those blockading the Peloponnesian fleet, and the dwindling store of gold in the treasury was put to good use, getting together and fitting out another thirty — new galleys near to completion, old ones that had been judged not worth another refit, a few bought from neighbouring states.

  It had to be done quickly. From Chios the revolt was spreading like a stubble fire, and if it was not stopped short, we must go down beneath the ruins of our Aegean Empire. We gathered up our hearts and did what must be done as though we made plans for a great victory, and not to stave off defeat. Suddenly the mood of the city was both grim and gay. We were thrusting out once more from the position we had held too long with our backs to the wall. But in these later years I have wondered whether it would indeed have been so impossible to make some approach to Alkibiades while the fleet was fitting. It would have been humiliating, but it might have saved Athens. And then again, in these later years, I have wondered whether Athens was already not worth saving …

  The Oligarchs had quite other ideas; headed by such men as Kritias, who would gladly let Sparta in, if only they might rule Athens for the new overlords. But at the time we knew nothing of this. We knew only that we were making our last desperate throw, loosing our little polyglot fleet to the relief of Chios.

  But it seems that the human heart is very narrow, except among the few great ones like Socrates, and we must remember always the events that shake the world by small personal joys and sorrows of our own. So I remember of that time, chiefly, that my friend Theron returned with the Halkyone, and that with the Halkyone he went away again, leaving me still to help my father in the perfume shop.

  The Seaman

  Aye! It was good to feel the lifting deck of a galley under foot again, and taste the salt spray and see the dazzle of the oar-thresh after two long years and more on the beach. If I live to see a hundred summers, it’s that one — not the autumn that came after, mind, but that summer, that I’ll remember of them all.

  Chios was only the beginning; from our base there, Alkibiades and Chalcidius swept down on port after port. The Lion was our galley; Chalcidius hoisted his pennant on the Agamemnon, but I think most people forgot that we weren’t the flagship, and wherever the lion figurehead and the sail with its sun-coloured beast appeared, men burst into cheering, seeing freedom within their grasp for the first time since their grandfather’s day, and not recognising it, poor bastards, for a mere change of masters.

  Athens lets loose on us twelve galleys under Strombichides from the blockade of the Allied Fleet, to strengthen Samos the foremost of their remaining islands, and from somewhere they scrapes up thirty more to re-take Chios.

  But we runs them out of Chian waters and down to join their friends in Samos. And then towards high summer, we takes twenty or so of the Chian fleet to swell our own squadrons, and leaving the rest to hold Chios, we’re off and away to spread the revolt to Miletus. We puts out in squally weather, and has quite a trip of it, with one thing and another. The Athenian squadrons puts out after us as we heads down the western side of Samos, and gives chase all the way to Miletus; hare and hounds. Normally in weather like that and with the possibility of action, the mast and mainsail would have been struck and we’d have relied on the fore-sail and top bank of oars; but Alkibiades says to me, ‘Are ye seaman enough to give her full sail without capsizing her, Pilot?’ And him grinning like a schoolboy with his hair flying all on end.

  ‘I am,’ I says, ‘but I don’t know about th
e rest.’

  ‘We’ll risk it,’ says he, and we crowds on full sail, and the Lion leaps forward, taking the wind, and we scuds down on Miletus like a skein of wild duck — and makes harbour five good mile ahead of the Athenian fleet. I suppose its best seamen had gone at Syracuse.

  Miletus was ready for us, and the first thing we sees as we sails in between the stone lions at the harbour entrance, is the Spartan Lion flying from the Arsenal.

  That evening, having come up, and found Miletus closed to them, the Athenians makes camp along the shore of Lade across the straits. We saw their camp fires strung between the water line and the smoky darkness of the hillside scrub, between the beached galleys. But we lies soft in Miletus, our galleys, save for those standing off, on patrol duty, drawn up safe on to the strands and slipways, our men billeted in the city. Alkibiades and the Admiral had one of the largest houses in Miletus for their own use. The floor in the andron was tessellated with an elaborate design showing Leda and the Swan. Chalcidius’ face when he saw it was the funniest thing I’d seen in years. He was a good fellow, Chalcidius, Spartan or no, and not at all a bad seaman, but when he was shocked he looked as some tarts do when they don’t consider you’re treating them like a proper lady. And he was shocked by that pavement — not by the clear intentions of the swan, I don’t mean, tho’ a randier swan than that one I never saw, but at the sheer immorality of all that expensive luxury just for walking on!

  Well, he didn’t have to walk on it long; only till a messenger to Tissaphernes had time to go and return; then the two of them are away to Sardis — Alkibiades exchanging the fleet officer for the diplomat as easily as a man might change his mantle — in search of the alliance with the Satrap that we must have if the Ionian revolt is to get anywhere.

  I spends most of my time down at the harbour while they’re away, seeing to re-fitting and careening and drying out. After half the summer at sea, the galleys are timber-sodden, and green as spring grass below the water line, and sluggish as so many cows in calf. And a good few of them have taken damage of one sort or another in the fighting. So I’ve plenty on my hands.

  Well, so I was down at the harbour overseeing the lashing of the Lion’s new hull-cable, when Alkibiades comes strolling down to see how the work goes, as though he’s never been away. I gives the needful orders to my leading topman, and we strolls on together along the foreshore and out on to the mole, well beyond earshot of the docks and slipways. Below us, the water laps green at the foot of the wall, changing blue and then deep as cuttlefish stain far out. Across the straits, the Athenian fleet’s still strung along the shore.

  ‘Well?’ I says.

  ‘Well?’ says My Lord, leaning against the plinth of the great stone lion and watching the gulls.

  ‘How did you fare?’

  ‘Well enough.’

  ‘What manner of man did you find him?’

  ‘Tissaphemes? Stoutish, in the way that a man who lived hard in his youth runs to flesh when he starts to take life easy. Eyes sticky and soft in his face like fresh dates; mouth like a woman’s. Too fond of wearing rose colour and it doesn’t suit him.’

  ‘What manner of man to treat with?’ He knows well enough what I’m after; but he’s in one of his blasted fantastical moods.

  ‘A trifle slow to bring to the point; he was beginning to make a new garden below the palace paradises they call them — a delightful place; shade and water everywhere; and the most charming little pavilion with pillars of gilded cedarwood, and at first he seemed too interested in my opinion as to the best placing of his young frankincense trees and oleanders, to show much interest in the making of treaties.’

  ‘To Hades with the oleanders!’ I says. ‘Did you get round to the treaty in the end?’

  He looks at me, pained. ‘Really, Pilot! You have been too long in Sparta and picked up Spartan manners! In Sardis we do these things with an exquisite leisureliness quite beautiful to behold. It is like a game of draughts played with rose-quartz and crystal pieces. Oh yes, we got round to the treaty at last.’

  ‘So?’

  He begins quoting, softly, and by the sound of it, word for word. ‘Whatever country or cities the Great King has, or the King’s ancestors had, shall be the King’s. And the King and the Spartans together shall prevent those revenues from them which formerly the Athenians enjoyed, falling henceforward into Athenian hands. The war with the Athenians shall be carried on jointly by the King and by the Spartans, and it shall not be lawful for one to make peace with the Athenians except both agree. If any revolt from the King, they shall be enemies of the Spartans and their allies; and if any revolt from the Spartans and their allies, they shall be enemies of the King in like manner.’

  ‘That sounds pretty binding,’ I says.

  He smiles at the wheeling gulls. ‘There are ways and ways. One could drive a four-horse chariot through it if need be.’

  ‘If you say so — just as long as Tissaphernes doesn’t understand that too.’

  ‘He probably does. But it needs to hold for only a short while to do its work.’

  ‘What was that first bit again?’ I says after a moment.

  ‘Whatever country or cities the Great King has, or the King’s ancestors had, shall be the King’s.’

  I gives it time to sink in, but when it’s sunk it still means what I think it means. ‘But that’s the whole of Ionia, islands and all! It’s the Athenian Empire!’

  ‘Yes,’ says Alkibiades.

  ‘Name of the Dog! How did you get Chalcidius to sign away Sparta’s prospects of pouching the Athenian Empire?’

  Alkibiades brings his gaze down from the wheeling gulls. ‘The Spartans are none too well versed in any history but their own. I don’t think Chalcidius was very clear in his own mind as to how much of the Aegean Darius’ forebears did in fact hold.’ He smiles, reflective like. ‘I like Chalcidius, despite the fact that he’s worthy and straightforward and simple, which should make him a quite distressingly dull companion. But there’s no denying that he is worthy and straightforward and simple: I don’t think he was too clear about anything by the time Tissaphernes and myself had finished our talks.’

  I can imagine it. But back in Sparta there’s keener brains than Chalcidius — Endius, for instance.

  As though he sees that showing in my face, Alkibiades says, ‘There’s no need for Sparta to receive too exact a copy of the terms of the Treaty. They’ll be just as happy without. As I said, a four-horse chariot can be driven through it if need be, but probably Endius is the only man in Sparta with the wit to see it.’

  *

  It wasn’t more than a few days after that that Samos revolted and overthrew the Oligarchs. The island and the city had been governed by Oligarchs from time out of mind, but I suppose the strange winds that were blowing through the Aegean that summer whipped them up. At all events the people rose against their government, helped by the crews of the three Athenian triremes that happened to be in port at the time. I have heard it said they wiped out some two hundred nobles and banished twice as many more. At all events Samos became a democracy overnight, and closer bound to Athens than ever before.

  In a queer sort of way, that change-about of Samos is like a sort of turning of the tide.

  Through the rest of that summer and on into the autumn, the fighting is mostly a tangle of skirmishing that swings first this way and then that. But as time goes on, a thing I’d not have believed possible begins to happen; Athens begins to regain something of her power at sea! If I hadn’t been on the wrong side, I’d have cheered! It’s not all their own doing, of course; the islands have had time to think, and seemingly some of them’s got around to the idea that there isn’t much freedom lying about loose, after all, and if it comes down to a choice of overlords, Athens might still be better than Sparta. So when Athens starts to send out whole new squadrons for their recapture (the Piraeus shipyards must have worked harder that summer than I reckon they’ve worked in the memory of man!), they don’t put up much
resistance — not as much as they’d have put up three months before, anyway. Next thing we know, the Spartans have sent out a second fleet to join the Allied squadrons that had broken out from Epidauros by that time, and the Athenians have hunted them half across the Aegean and got them penned at Chios. So there’s Chios blockaded again, by the other side. Lesbos and Clazomenes goes next; and all of a sudden, between drink and drink as it were, Samos has become the base and rallying point for a whole new Athenian Navy.

  Soon after that, Chalcidius gets himself killed in a land brush with the Athenians before the Walls of Miletus. I liked him better than any other Spartan I ever had dealings with; but with him out of the way, Alkibiades has the undivided command of a small Spartan and Chian fleet — the only Allied Fleet still at sea in the Aegean — and we has a lively time of it the rest of that autumn. But we were too small to do much more than play gadfly on the flanks of Athens, until storm-weather put an end to serious sea warfare for that year, and we were forced to lie up in Miletus till spring.

  One day in late autumn, going up from looking to the Lion in dry dock, I daunders along the harbour wall, having nothing else to do in a hurry, and stops to watch a couple of fisher lads mending their nets. There’s an Argolid trader made fast to one of the jetties (the deep draught trading tubs can always keep to the seaways later in the year than a war galley), and while I’m watching, a strange seaman who looks as though he might belong to her comes up to speak to them. They talks a few moments, and then one of the fishermen looks up and sees me and points, as though he would say, ‘See, there he is now.’ And the man from the trader comes quickly towards me.

  ‘You are Antiochus, pilot of the Lion?’ says he.

  ‘I am that,’ says I.

  ‘Where can I find Alkibiades?’

  ‘And what would you be wanting with Alkibiades?’