Alkibiades stood on the sea wall and looked down, with a face carved out of stone. Even his eyes were stone. The bos’n saw him and came forward. There was a bloody clout round his head, ‘Sir —’ he said, ‘Sir —’ and could get no further.
Alkibiades jerked his head toward the shape under the sail-cloth. ‘Antiochus?’
‘Yes, sir. We thought better keep him aboard until they’ve made his grave, seeing that Admiral Thrassylus has taken over his quarters — your quarters. Do you wish to see him, sir?’
‘Yes,’ said Alkibiades, and climbed stiffly down on to the deck. I hesitated a moment, and then went after him.
The bos’n himself pulled back the piece of sailcloth, and Antiochus lay there; the wreck of Antiochus, hacked and gashed like his ship, with a black hole in the base of his throat and all the front of his jerkin stiff and black with his blood. His eyes were wide open to the winter sky. I have seen many dead men in my time, usually they look curiously empty, often surprised, a few looked as though they had looked on horror, a few as though they saw the face of a friend. But Antiochus had met death snarling like a wild beast, and his face was frozen into an appalling mask of frenzy and despair.
I gave back a step, I could not help it. One of the seamen said. ‘Cor! I hope I never sees a deader with a face like that again.’
Alkibiades never moved. After a long silence, he said, Was he drunk?’ and the hardness of his voice shocked and startled me.
‘Drunk or mad,’ the bos’n said; and I heard him swallow convulsively. ‘After the Spartan fleet came out on our trail, he shouted back to the look-out was there any sign of the Icarus? He did that about three times, and when the look-out shouted back no, for the third time, but that reinforcements were putting out from Samos, he gave a great cry, and shouted out something about being fooled and how he should have sent scouts to make sure, no matter what the orders were — sheer gibberish it was, sir, no man could make head nor tail of it. Then he orders us to put about, and ram the leading Spartan. And the last I saw of him alive he was up with the marines at the bows, fighting like some kind of madman. One of them told me he flung his sword into the sea and fought with his bare hands. It was as though —’
‘As though what?’ Alkibiades said coldly as the man hesitated. ‘As though he wanted to make sure of not living through the fight.’
Alkibiades made a sudden strangled sound in his throat; but when I looked round, his face was as still as Antiochus’ and as grey. It was like seeing a dead man looking at a dead man. I thought suddenly how they must have looked at each other that first time of all, when the boy Antiochus caught and returned to the boy Alkibiades his escaped fighting quail. And for that one small matter in the midst of this great one of defeat and disaster, I could have howled like a dog.
And being turned to small things, I saw that he had lost one of the heavy silver and coral ornaments from his ears; the other lying still gay and jaunty among his blood-matted hair. And without knowing it until I heard my own voice, I spoke the brief pointless thought aloud.
Alkibiades said, ‘He has lost more than an earring. He has lost me twenty-two ships, and I rather think my last hope of salvation. Cover him up again.’
And he turned away without a backward glance.
Back on the sea wall, he said to me, ‘Will you see about asking Admiral Thrassylus to move his things back to his old quarters? I shall be needing mine again, for a short while, at least.’
That night, back in his own quarters, he sent for me, but when I got up to the house above the town, he seemed to have no particular orders to give me. I think it was only that he did not want to be alone. Maybe there were too many ghosts to squeak and twitter in the dark corners of his mind to make solitude bearable; and because I had been with him earlier, my name came quickest into his head.
He gave me wine, and poured some for himself, but left it untouched on the table, and began to walk restlessly up and down. Not the to and fro leopard-pacing that I had seen in him once or twice before, but a patternless ranging about and about the room, pausing a moment to hold his hands to the brazier, then moving on, to the door, to the shuttered window, back to the brazier. ‘The Gods have forsaken me,’ he said. ‘If they had not, I should have returned one day earlier. One day would have been enough.’
‘When was Alkibiades ever one to care much for any Gods beyond his own luck?’ I said.
He swung round on me. His face was not dead any more, but full of a desperate life; ‘Do you know how much you sounded like Antiochus when you said that? I tell you, Night’s Daughters are baying on my trail.’
Then he seemed to pull himself together. He went on ranging to and fro, but his voice, when he spoke again, was his own.
‘When news of this reaches Athens, I’m done. And I don’t doubt there’s a report on its way already, painting everything as black against me as maybe. The fleet is crawling with Kritias’ and Cleontius’ agents; do you think I don’t know that?’
‘Best get your own report in quickly, then, sir,’ I said. ‘You can ride out the loss of twenty-two ships.’
‘But not the loss of prestige. What good will any report of mine do without a victory to back it? Athens has grown accustomed to victories; she’ll accept nothing else from me.’
‘It wasn’t your defeat,’ I said. ‘Antiochus took the squadron over to Ephesus, and against your orders.’
‘It was I who gave him the command in my absence. Most of the senior officers were against me before. Those that weren’t are against me now, because I set a mere seaman over them. The few hours since we landed are enough to show me that the whole fleet is going rancid on me, because I have let them taste defeat.’
‘Not the whole fleet,’ I said quickly.
He stopped again in his pacing, and turned to look at me. For a moment something distantly related to a smile flickered at the corners of his mouth. ‘It has taken quite a lot to make you forgive me for Astur’s death, hasn’t it, my Arkadius?’
Then he returned again to his ragged pacing. I watched him in silence; and presently I saw his head go up. ‘I have one chance left — to score out the defeat with a resounding victory. I have called a Council of senior officers for tomorrow. If we can get Lysander out from Ephesus once more —’
He left the sentence hanging in the air; and I heard my own voice saying dully, ‘Do you think he’ll come, now that he must know you’re back in command?’
He spoke with his back to me. ‘No, I don’t. He’s not a fool; and as for me, my old luck has deserted me. I always said that I should know when it went … Nevertheless, it’s the once chance, and I must take it; I’ve no choice.’
*
We took the whole fleet that was still seaworthy, and cruised across and across before Ephesus as we had done when we first returned to Samos. We kept it up for a day, two, three, four — I forget how many. Of course Lysander never came out.
The Citizen
In Gamalial that year I married off my sister to a master stone-mason. It wasn’t much of a marriage for her, and certainly my father would not have cared to see it. But Eudemius was a good enough fellow, and I was fortunate to get her a husband at all, in those days when young men were hard to find, and so many girls were having to go without — especially as I could only afford to give her a very small dowry. And she was willing enough, being a sensible girl though given to tears, and asking little of any husband save that he should give her a great many babies.
So it was a cheerful enough wedding in a quiet way — or it would have been, but that one of the groomsmen arrived later after the bride had been brought from the women’s quarters, in her saffron veil and myrtle wreath, by all the women of both families. He seemed to have forgotten for the moment that he had come to a wedding at all, and said had we heard the news? They were talking of it in the Agora as he came through, and he had stopped to get details, that was why he was late. A fight off Ephesus and an Athenian defeat — more than twenty ships lost it was said
—
Somebody said stupidly, ‘But Alkibiades is never defeated.’ And somebody else said, ‘He didn’t do too well at Andros.’
‘It wasn’t truly his defeat this time,’ said the latecomer getting, as it were, his second wind. ‘Though he must take the blame for it. It seems he got bored and went off raiding, with the joys of the Karian pleasure houses thrown in, leaving that drunken pilot of his in command — Antiochus, isn’t it? — and he took the fleet out to bait the Spartans and succeeded better than he’d bargained for.’
There was a whole lot more, the wildest, ugliest stuff; and suddenly the bridal garlands and the scent of storax on the family altar seemed a piece of empty play-acting. But my sister was on the edge of tears, and the wedding must be carried through. I caught Eudemius’ eye, and the message passed between us; we got the groomsmen and the questioning, exclaiming guests back into order, and the wedding went forward, until all things had been done and we sent the newly-married pair with their guard of groomsmen off to the bridegroom’s home under a shower of sugared almonds.
When the last guest had departed, I turned back to the empty room to help Vasso clear up the debris. I picked up one of the comfits and began to eat it, but under the sugar it was a bitter almond.
*
Next day the Archons summoned the Assembly. I have seldom seen a fuller turn-out than came streaming up from the lower city. No need for the police with their red-painted ropes to get people to attend that day.
And before the full Assembly, the fleet officer who had brought the new — Thasos, his name was; it has had an unpleasant ring in my ears ever since, and I could never call a child by it — stood up on the Speaker’s Rostrum and told his story — and a damning story enough.
He told how Alkibiades, into whose hands we had given our whole war effort, our whole future, instead of carrying out his function with a sense of the noble responsibility laid upon him, had let the fleet fall into slack undisciplined ways, despite all that their officers could do to keep control of them; had finally turned them over to the command of a drunken sot who had never even commanded a galley, while he went off to Karia, raiding and whoring. Where now, the man demanded, was Alkibiades’ high-flown promises of Persian neutrality, if not a Persian alliance? Had we, the people of Athens, heard of the string of forts that he had built along the Thracian shore of the Propontis? What possible reason could he have had for their building, unless they were for a refuge against the day when Athens finally tired of his treacheries and cast him out — a refuge which would also furnish perfect bases for raiding the corn fleet. Alkibiades had always been half a pirate. The man’s voice ranted on and on; it was vile, scurrilous stuff; but looking back on it now, there was probably something of truth in what he said, just enough of truth to make the dirt stick and though his style was appalling, he was one of those crude natural orators who know how to sway a crowd.
And yet I don’t think it was because of anything he said, that we voted as we did. I think it was simply because Alkibiades had failed. Our bold and bonnie conqueror who could succeed in anything, lead us anywhere, who had given victory after victory to whichever side he served. And we could not believe that he would have failed if it had been in his whole heart to serve us truly now. We had forgiven him treachery, but we could not forgive him defeat — it had begun when we heard the news from Andros; the news from Ephesus completed it. So we bayed for his blood like a wolf pack. I remembered his riding out by the Piraeus Gate on the morning that the fleet sailed for Sicily; I remembered the instant when his blue gaze had met mine as he rode by; and the Gods help me, I voted with the rest.
We deposed him from his command, and voted three Generals in his place. His new house was ordered to be sold up from the bed linen in the press to the Thessalian horses in the stables. There was even some debate as to whether or not he should be recalled to answer a treason charge; but mercifully that last degrading absurdity was dropped.
And all the while, after the vote was cast, I was remembering another face, the man behind it shining through his ugly and comic flesh, and heard Socrates’ deep voice saying, ‘If he fails, we shall break him.’
The Rower
He went from us on a clear cold morning towards the end of Gamalial. He took his leave of us kindly, like an old friend going on a journey, and we stood by sullenly and let him go. He had failed us, and we wanted no more of him. We had followed him for a God, and he was only a man after all, and we felt ourselves defrauded.
Perhaps under the new Admirals who were coming to take his place, we should get our pay regularly — there were those among us who said so — and maybe a little glory to warm our cold hands at, beside. But as the Icarus pulled away from the mole, the morning seemed to turn colder, and dreary, as though the sun had gone in.
We did not know where he was heading, though I think most of us would have guessed northward toward his old hunting grounds.
We have never seen him again.
The Whore
I waited for him a year in the fortress of Bisanthe, and there was no comfort in my flute, and the days were long, and the nights lonely when I woke in the dark and flung out an arm and felt the bed cold and empty beside me. I could have had others to warm it, there’s more than one of the little garrison; and others from outside the walls, even the village headman, found means to let me know that they were willing. But when the chief’s woman pleasures other men, that is when the trouble starts; I have seen it among my own people; and there would have been no pleasure in it for me.
Sometimes I would let down my hair at the New Moon, and make the old singing magic, the Woman Magic, and pour the black dye into the palm of my hand and try to see where he was, and what he was doing, and how things went with him, in the dark shining surface. But though once or twice I saw his face for an instant, and lost it again, I never saw anything that could give me news of him.
Once in the summer a passing ship put in to land a sick man. And he told us when he began to mend, that Alkibiades was in a fair way to becoming Tyrant of Athens.
And I thought, ‘If he wins his gamble, I have lost mine.’ And then pushed the thought away from me, and when it would not go, put on my riding dress and had out the mare he had given me, and rode hard along the coast, trying to outride it; until two of the rough-riding garrison came after me and headed me off like a break-away colt; asking me what I thought I was doing to be riding alone so far from the fort, and what good it would be if himself came back to find me in the woman’s tent of some out-land chief. But in my heart, I doubted then if he would ever come back.
The summer passed, and the land between the mountains and the marshes as pale with barley and then brown with sun-burned stubble, and then green under the autumn rains. And the winter came again.
And then one day at the time of the year when the light grows longer and the cold more sharp, I heard a great noise of voices and running feet. I ran to the window and forced back the shutters that had been closed against the wind, and looked out. In the westering light I saw the Icarus coming in to the long reedy harbour-creek below the fort.
I wanted to fling open the door to the outside stair and run, just as I was, down and down until I fell at his feet, but I knew the foolishness of that. I closed the shutters again and lit another lamp. I stripped off the old tunic I wore, and pulled on the one of fine violet wool with black and crimson borders that I had kept laid by against his coming. I painted my eyes with the green malachite I had not troubled to use since he went away, and put on the jewellery that he had brought me from time to time, the bronze waist-belt all in one piece that must be sprung on as one springs a bracelet, the ropes of coral and amber, the earrings of silver chains and disks that chimed like a flight of bells when I moved my head. If I had been a virtuous Athenian wife, I know that I should have fled first to see what food was in the house, then to spread clean coverings on the bed. But I have never been virtuous, nor Athenian, nor a wife. I was Alkibiades’ woman, and my way was
the way of the mistress and the companion. I had plenty of time, for he was a long time coming; there must have been many things that he had to see to. And when all was done, I stood waiting by the fire, shivering a little, but not with cold.
I heard his feet on the stair, and the door crashed open letting in a wild buffet of wind that filled the room with smoke. And I saw him standing against the racing sky, with the wind plucking at the muffling folds of his cloak. He forced the door shut behind him and came to the fire. I do not think he was even aware of me until we were within hands’ reach. And then he looked at me, and said, ‘Timandra, you are here.’ But his eyes were clouded and he made no move to touch me.
‘You bade me to come up and wait for you at Bisanthe, did you think I would be still at Pactye?’
He said, ‘I think I was not sure that you would have waited for me at all. Everything else has deserted me. I am so tired, Timandra, and so cold.’
I ran to the chest in the corner and pulled out the new goatskin coat with its border of running stags that I had worked for him in the waiting time, and came back and thrust him into it. It was meant for out of doors, but he was grey with cold — and cold seemed to come out from him as it does from the dead. Then I made him sit down on the cushioned bench by the fire, and piled on more wood; and shouted down the stairway to the slaves to bring up whatever was best of the food we had, and wine.
When I came to him again, he was sitting forward, his hands to the flames, and the flame-light shine through his fingers so that they seemed edged with dim red fire, and I saw the dark shadows of the bones within. I knelt down and began to chafe his hands between my own while I waited for the slaves to bring the food.
The Flowers of Adonis Page 35