The Flowers of Adonis

by Rosemary Sutcliff

  *

  From Samos, when we returned to refit, the Admirals sent home a long and glowing account of the victory — they had had it read publicly to the fleet, I suppose for the good of our morale, which was stinking like stale fish by that time. Seventy of the Spartan League fleet had been sunk, the blockade of Mitylene lifted, freeing Konon and his squadrons to rejoin the main fleet. Athens was again mistress of the Eastern Aegean. They forgot to mention that we had lost more than five thousand men.

  The Citizen

  In summer we got late news of the Athenian victory at Arginussae, and for days all Athens was drunk with the taste of it. The great statue of Athene of the Spear in the High City was hung with garlands of myrtle. It seemed a long time since we had tasted victory, and I think to many of us, the knowledge that we, the Athenian people, could gain a victory without Alkibiades brought an almost superstitious relief.

  Then rumours of a darker and more ugly side to things, which had not been in the General’s report, began to drift in, tarnishing the brightness. Some seamen from the ship that had brought the report, drunk and talkative in the Piraeus wine-shops, started it; the stories of heavy Athenian losses, men left to drown who could have been saved, sinking ships left to their fate in bad weather, in the haste of the commanding officers to get the victorious fleet back to harbour … But it was Theramenes, returning in haste, and alone, who brought the full account, and laid formal accusations against his fellow commanders. I suppose he saw what was coming to them, once the story got out, and that seemed to him his best chance of saving his own skin.

  It was after Theramenes’ return that the names of the lost ships were known for certain. And among them was the Halkyone. When I heard it, I wished that I could have known, could have taken my leave of Theron in a different way, said something, perhaps, set their full value on those last moments before he went on board. It is a foolish wish, but most of us have wished it, at one time or another …

  One day as I was making up the day’s accounts before closing the shop, a man stepped in the doorway. I looked up to tell him that I was just about to close; and it was Theron! Theron or his tattered ghost; his face haggard, his hair that I had known bleached with sun and salt streaked now with grey. Having said goodbye to him in my heart, I thought for an instant that it was his ghost; and I suppose he must have seen the look in my face, for his own cracked into a travesty of the old grin, and he said, ‘No, only from Samos.’

  But the grin slipped awry, and I thought he swayed a little as he spoke. Something that had held me for the instant frozen loosed its hold, and I was round the end of the serving table and had my arms about him. I think I was near to crying. ‘Theron! You’re back! I’ll never believe another General! Theramenes said the Halkyone was sunk!’

  ‘You can believe him in that, anyway,’ he said, and began to cough a little on my shoulder.

  I hauled him through into the chamber behind the shop, and sat him on the bench where once I had sat another ghost, the Arkadian, home from Syracuse. I splashed raw wine into a cup, and made him drink it before I would let him say any more. When he had drunk, and looked a little less grey, I remember sitting down beside him and saying carefully, ‘The stories are true then?’

  ‘Mostly they’re true,’ he said.

  ‘How did you get away? Were you not on board?’

  ‘I was on board all right,’ he said, and leaned back against the wall. ‘So far as I know I was the only man on board to get ashore.’

  I was silent a little, then I asked what brought him back to Athens.

  ‘The voices of drowned men crying out to me to tell the Athenian people how they died,’ he said. ‘But it seems that story is here before me.’ And he turned his head against the wall and coughed again, and suddenly my hand on his shoulder was flecked with blood.

  ‘You’re ill,’ I said, ‘wait while I call Vasso; she’s the only house slave I have now, but she’ll look after you.’

  ‘I’m well enough,’ he said impatiently. ‘I got smashed against the ship’s gunwhale when she sank, and broke something inside. It’s mending now. Give me some more wine and let me clean up a bit, and then I must be getting on home.’

  ‘You have not been home yet?’

  ‘No. Your door comes before mine on the way up from Piraeus; and I thought maybe you’d send word to my sister for me, so that she won’t think I’m a ghost, too.’

  But I think he wanted the excuse to rest, among other things.

  So I gave him more wine and called for Vasso to fill the bathtub with hot water, and helped him to clean up. His breast and belly were a mass of livid bruises, with a half-healed, crusted place under the ribs that he would not let me touch, but salved himself with the ointment I gave him. I pretended that Vasso’s legs were no longer up to the trot and I was too busy to warn his sister at once, and so made him rest a little longer. By the time I let him go he looked a little less like a ghost, but not much; a clean ghost at all events, wearing my best tunic, which was ridiculously too small for him.

  *

  The Archons sent to recall the Generals who had been in command at Arginussae, to answer to the Athenian people for leaving their men to drown. They came — all save Thrassylus, who wisely made his escape when the summons reached them — and were called to appear before the Assembly.

  I went round that evening, as I had often done since his return, to spend a while after supper with Theron. But his sister Myrrhine met me in the outer doorway and drew me aside. ‘I hoped that you would come,’ she said. ‘He will not listen to anything I say.’ She had long ago given up keeping her veil close with me, and I could see the trouble in her face.

  ‘What is amiss?’ I said.

  ‘He says he will go to the Assembly tomorrow to give evidence — and he’s ill.’

  ‘Is it the damage he had from the wreck? He says that’s mending.’

  She shook her head. ‘It is not. Oh, he’d say anything rather than trouble to have it seen to, rather than trouble about anything but his revenge on those men up there tomorrow — may they all rot —’

  ‘They probably will,’ I said. ‘I’ll do what I can, but I never yet came out the victor in any battle with Theron.’

  And of course I did not that time either, when I went through into the little courtyard, and found him huddled in the last of the sun like an old man. ‘What is this I hear about your going up to the Assembly tomorrow?’ I said, sounding like a mother hen in my own ears; and in his too, I think, for he looked up at me and laughed, and said, ‘Dear clucking Timotheus. Has Myrrhine been filling you up with her own fears?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘But I can see without help from Myrrhine that you’re about as fit as a newborn babe to go up to the Pnyx and stand all day in that crowd.’

  ‘I’ve given in my name as a witness,’ he said. The laughter went out of his mouth, and I saw by the set of it that nothing I could say or do would shift him a hair’s breadth from his purpose.

  I changed my ground. ‘Have you been to the Priests of Esculapius, yet?’

  ‘Why should I? It’s mending, I tell you.’

  ‘It’s not,’ I said flatly, ‘and you know it’s not.’

  He shrugged impatiently. ‘It’s this cursed cold wind; it catches me across the ribs, that’s all. Oh, for Poseidon’s sake, Timotheus, stop buzzing round me like a bluebottle round a stranded fish!’

  ‘I’ll make a bargain with you,’ I said. ‘I’ll leave off buzzing; I’ll stand by and let you do your best to kill yourself tomorrow — though I’m not vouching for Myrrhine — if you’ll promise to come to the Esculapian with me the day after if you haven’t succeeded.’

  He was silent a moment. Then he said wearily, ‘Have it your own way.’

  The next day we went up together to the Assembly, and when he took up his position in the clear space before the Speaker’s Rostrum left for witnesses and those who had some part to play in the day’s proceedings, I kept as near to him as I could. But he seemed t
o have cast off the old man of yesterday, and stood rock-steady on his feet again; so that I hoped it had been only the east wind after all.

  The great space was filling up as the crowd gathered; the Generals were brought up through a lane kept open for them by the police with their red-painted ropes, the Archons and magistrates took their places. One can see the Assembly gather so often that it ceases to make much mark on one’s mind and passes almost unnoticed across eye and ear, especially if one has other things to think about. And so it was with me that day; chiefly concerned with Theron, I took in little of what went on around me until the Generals were brought in. Then the sudden uproar breaking through the ordinary formless voice of a great crowd brought me to sudden awareness of what was going on about me. Half the crowd seemed to be shouting for blood and the other half for fair play, until all fell quiet as the herald raised his trumpet and the Priests stepped forward to make the opening sacrifice.

  It was the day of the Feast of Families, and wherever one looked in Athens, one saw women in mourning for husband and fathers and sons lost at Arginussae; and that, working on the grief and anger of the people, weighted the scales against the Generals from the first. (I have heard it said that the amount of mourners in the streets was Theramenes’ doing, but that’s as maybe.) None the less, there was a time during the trial, when the verdict might have gone either way.

  The Senior Archon opened the proceedings as President of the Assembly, and Theramenes’ charges were read out. Damning enough, they sounded, while the hard, heavy phrases fell into the listening silence. Then one by one, the Generals stood forward to speak in their own defence; Charminius, young Pericles … Thrasybulus made the best job of it, forging a most convincing defence from the weather conditions and the necessity for getting the rest of the fleet back to safety before they lost still more ships. Only when he told how, on reaching land, he had instantly taken the most seaworthy galleys out again on an attempted rescue operation, he spoiled it somewhat by trying to throw the blame back on to Theramenes, and on to Thrassylus, who of course was safely out of it anyway.

  I saw several of the Trirarchs and pilots, waiting to be called, exchange glances; but when they came to give evidence they bore him out, at least as to the worsening weather and the state of the fleet making it imperative to get the rest into shelter. It may even have been true for anything I know, I who am no seaman.

  The trial dragged on, with long speeches from the Councils for Prosecution and Defence, while the crowd grew more and more restive, and the sun was well over towards the west, when Thrasybulus, who as Senior General had at most times acted as spokesman for the rest, was asked if he had anything more to say. He stood forward once more on the Speaker’s Rostrum, and I thought, as well as I could see from where I stood, that for the first time that day he looked like a man who had begun to hope, for the first time, too, his voice had an almost confident ring. ‘Citizens of Athens, you have summoned myself and my fellow Generals to stand before you on trial for our lives, charged with our failure to save drowning men who the seas made it impossible for any mortal power to save; but there is one thing that has found no mention in all this day. I would ask you to remember it, when you come to vote us life or death: that in the hours before the failure of which we are accused, we sank you seventy Spartan League ships, and once more broke for you the power of Sparta in the Aegean.’

  I remember the silence after he had spoken. In the uproar about the drownings I think a good many people had forgotten the victory. It is often so, with a crowd. I felt them stir about me; I felt doubt growing, and opinion begin to swing. That was the moment when the trial might have gone either way.

  And then Theron stood forward, claiming the right to speak.

  He mounted the steps to the Rostrum, and stood there with his sandy, grey-streaked head braced high; and on being asked his name and for whom he spoke, replied steadily as though answering some kind of roll-call, ‘Theron, Son of Menander, starboard side bow oar of the Halkyone, sunk at Arginussae.’ Then, turning to the crowd, he cried out in a voice I had never heard him use before, and hoped never to hear him use again, ‘I speak for the drowned!’

  Quiet briefly, his harsh voice cracked and straining, but making himself heard — certainly he had all the silence that any orator could ask for, he told the story again, from the viewpoint of the men left to drown. Told how he himself had got ashore clinging to a bit of deck planking, and how men he knew had cried out to him, if he made the shore, to take word back to Athens, of how they had died.

  When he had done, the Council for the Defence protested that sad as was the fate of those drowned, such things happened in war, and that nothing was altered of the Generals’ defence. ‘It was a choice between sacrificing the few or risking sacrificing the many.’ He submitted that for the men they now saw before them on trial for their lives the choice had been hard, but they had heard expert witnesses give their opinion that it had been right.

  But the mood of the crowd was swinging again.

  And then Theron, still standing on the Rostrum though drawn to one side, shouted out in that hoarse dreadful voice, ‘Alkibiades would have turned back for us!’

  And that did it. There was a moment’s utter silence. I have never heard such a silence in a great crowd; and I saw the confidence and the hope go out of Thrasybulus. And then there was a roar — ‘Kill them! Kill the swine! They left our lads to drown, give them a taste of their own physic!’

  The President of the Assembly made no attempt to control the situation; I imagine he had too much respect for his own skin. Only one of the Senators held out against this mockery of justice. I knew the voice, though I could not see the speaker. It was Socrates.

  And suddenly I felt sick at what we were doing.

  There must have been many in that vast crowd who felt the same sudden shock of self-disgust; but many and many more were beyond the reach of Socrates’ stand for justice; too many who had lost sons and brothers. They shouted and cat-called, yelling to the man who was holding up proceedings to get back to his stone-cutting which was the trade he understood; and in the end, finding that there was no shaking him, they overruled him and it was proclaimed that the vote would be taken as though in his absence.

  Theron had come down from the Rostrum; and I had worked my way through to him again by that time, where he stood in the midst of the knot that had gathered round him to ply him with questions, now that they knew him for a survivor. He looked round at me, his face heavy and almost stupid with the effort that he had called out of himself; and I looked back. Neither of us said anything, but he knew what I thought. And when the voting time came, he dropped in his black pebble and I my white one into the pot next to each other.

  The death sentence was duly passed, and ordered to be carried out the same day. I did not look at the men who had suddenly no more future than a little bowl of hemlock. They were led away under guard, among the howling of the mob; and the heralds, when they could make themselves heard, announced the next business of the Assembly; the election of the Generals to succeed them.

  Theron was rocking on his feet, with a dirty greyness stealing over his face. I said, ‘Come away. You’ve helped to kill five men, that’s enough for one day.’

  He nodded, and let me take his arm and thrust a way for both of us through the crowd; the clotted mass of faces and faces and faces that had the stupid, avid look of those who have eaten and drunk too well, and then found a bloody street accident to stare at.

  We got clear at last, and headed for Theron’s house, that being the nearest. His sister was there in the courtyard, preparing the evening meal. She looked at our faces and asked no questions. Theron went straight to the brazier and crouched over it, he seemed always to be cold, these days. Myrrhine brought a little well-watered wine for us; and we sat for a while in silence. At last I said, ‘We have done an evil thing. We have made a mockery of Athenian justice.’

  He said, ‘It’s not the first time,’ and took a drink and
set the cup down, wiping the back of his hand across his mouth. ‘When anybody says Athenian justice, I want to vomit. I suppose there was such a thing once, maybe in our fathers’ day.’

  ‘One of those men we condemned today had his own galley wrecked under him,’ I said.

  ‘He was saved.’

  ‘Maybe he wishes he hadn’t been, now; maybe the name of Athenian justice makes him want to vomit, too.’

  Theron looked up at me slowly. ‘You needn’t drink with me, if you’d rather not.’

  ‘We’re all guilty, come to that,’ I said.

  ‘You cast a white pebble. You can stand back and say, “I’m clean”.’

  ‘It isn’t so easy to escape the guilt of one’s city.’

  ‘I’ll put up with a little guilt for the sake of my mates that I saw drown,’ Theron said, and he began to cough, pressing his hands over the left side of his ribs. A shallow, dry cough that left blood on his lips.

  I stayed on, partly with the instinct one has to be with a friend who is sick, partly because in our differing ways we were both waiting for the same thing, and though neither of us said so, we were bound up in some way to wait for it together.

  Myrrhine called us indoors and fed us both, and lit the lamp, then went to her room. Theron had a little money from the government while he was sick, since the injury had been got on fighting service; but for a rower it was very little, and Myrrhine as good as kept the household going by selling her weaving — for which reason I had taken care not to eat with them before.

  It was soon after the lamp was lit, and while the window still showed green with the last of the daylight in the dim lamp-tawny wall, that we heard the voices in the street — the sound that news makes when it runs from tongue to tongue, and men gather at corners and women come to doorways to hear it and pass it on.

  We looked at each other, then Theron called his sister, and bade her go out and bring back word. She took up a pitcher as though going to the well, and drew her veil across her face — in that one thing she held to the old days when she had been the daughter of a well-to-do merchant, not the sister of a fleet rower — and slipped out.