Tydius said icily, ‘I scarcely think that you, who left the fleet in the hands of a drunken sailing master while you went raiding and whoring in Karia, are the one to talk to my colleagues and myself of discipline.’
I thought the trouble was coming then. For a moment I saw bloody murder looking out of Alkibiades’ eyes; but he mastered his clear desire to go for Tydius’ throat; too much was at stake. He said almost patiently, like a man talking to a half-witted child, ‘You seek to bring the Spartan fleet to battle, so; but if you lose the battle there will be no chance of another. Lysander will close the Propontis against the corn ships, and it will be the end for Athens as well as for you. Take the fleet to Sestos before it’s too late; with the protection of the harbour, you can choose your own time to fight; without it, the enemy can force battle on you at any time, and take you unprepared. Wait for Lysander to tire of the waiting game; he must do that sooner or later; keep scouts posted, and when he sails, intercept him.’
‘I am sure that my colleagues and I are extremely grateful to you for your — advice in this matter,’ Tydius began with savage irony; but Alkibiades had other things still to say.
‘I have a friend or two, a useful alliance here and there in these parts; I have not altogether wasted these years of exile. Three thousand tribesmen will answer to a trumpet sounding from my keeps. If we ferry them across, we can mount a land attack at the same time —’
‘We?’ said Adeimantus. ‘You would join yourself with us?’
‘The Thracians are not disciplined troops who will fight under any General set over them. They will follow me because they know me and have followed me before.’
Tydius leaned forward, both hands on the trestle table. ‘But we also know you, Alkibiades. Oh yes, we know you — you come here pretending great concern for Athens — you don’t care a feather in the wind for Athens unless you rule her. So you will lead these wild tribesmen of yours, and claim the lion’s share in the victory, and Athens will turn to you as her preserver and rush to the Assembly howling for your recall — you who led her young men to disaster at Syracuse for your own glory. (And not only her young men. You killed my father, Alkibiades, as surely as though you did it with your own hands.) You who betrayed her to Sparta. No thank you, Alkibiades; we who are the Generals now, will fight this campaign without your help in the way that we judge best. Now you had better go, before we remember that you are wanted by the Council at home, and feel it our duty to take you prisoner.’
Alkibiades drew himself up till suddenly he seemed to dwarf them all; and looked down on them from his immense height. ‘I regret that I have kept you from your supper so long. One often hears it said that the Spartans, never having had it at home, don’t know how to handle money; but Lysander, with the Lydian treasury to draw on, seems to have a remarkable understanding of where it will buy the best results.’
And he turned on his heel leaving them speechless — it was almost funny — and strode off to where his horse was waiting for him.
A whole crowd of us saw him off, walking out of the camp with him proud in the knowledge that we were probably wrecking our careers by doing so. Even Konon, who was rather senior for that sort of thing.
It was Konon who asked, ‘Could you really have produced three thousand tribesmen, or was that just to annoy our beloved Generals?’
‘Oh yes, I could have produced them,’ Alkibiades said. ‘I could have forced Lysander to break harbour in four days; five at the most. Except for the name, I’m King in these parts; a nice little barbarian Kingdom.’
We halted, just clear of the camp, and he sat his horse looking out across the straits a few moments, then round at us. ‘There’s nothing more I can do here. I wish there was for your sakes. As for your three Generals, I’d see them in Tartarus first! Keep your eyes open for trouble, and do what you can about the discipline among your own lads.’
He wheeled his horse and dug in his heels with a sudden savagery, and was away northward, lost almost at once in the dust-cloud and the gathering twilight. We stood there as long as we could hear the drum of his horse’s hooves, and then turned back towards the camp.
Konon stopped all further shore leave for his squadron that night, and sent a marine company to get back the men already in Sestos; and the Trirarch of the Paralos did the same. The rest shrugged their shoulders and went on as before.
It was the next day the Spartans came.
*
We put out in the morning as usual, to try to draw Lysander from harbour, and as usual we failed. And when we headed back, the two or three picket-boats followed us and hung about in mid-stream till our crews had disembarked and started cooking the midday meal, or scattered across country bound for Sestos, leaving the ships with only a handful of guards on board. Only aboard the Paralos and the eight triremes of Konon’s squadron, which rode at anchor instead of being run up the beach, we continued to man ship; and the few who went ashore to cook the food (there’d be none tomorrow, as far as we could see, unless we could come to some arrangement for getting a party into Sestos to fetch it) kept their weapons handy. The others jeered at us as they set off, asking what they should bring us back from the town, and where we thought tomorrow’s dinner was coming from.
But that day the Spartan picket-boats did not turn for home as soon as we were dispersed. We could not see, though we learned of it much later from one of the few escaped prisoners, that aboard one of the picket-boats a bronze shield had been hoisted up in the bows and was flashing the midday sun across the straits to the Spartans waiting for the signal to attack. Nor could we see across the straits from that low shore, with the dazzle of the sun on the water in our eyes, the crimson flutter of the flagship’s pennant ordering the ships to sea, and the whole Spartan fleet come racing out of harbour.
They were almost halfway over, coming at racing speed when we saw them; when we saw death bearing down on us, with the foam curling back over the grinning rams, and the spearmen on the foredeck — and our own ships unmanned and the crews scattered over the countryside.
From Konon’s foredeck the trumpet sounded, and others of the fleet took it up, sounding Alarm and Recall. The squadron’s few men ashore came roaring down the beach leaving the half-cooked meal over the fires, and waded out to us, and we dragged them aboard even as the anchors came up. The Generals were yelling orders with nobody to yell to. All across country little dark figures were coming at the run without a hope of making the ships before the Spartans were upon us.
It was not that we lost the battle, and with it our last chance for Athens and ourselves, as Alkibiades had warned our Generals just one day ago. It never came to a battle. It was just a bloody massacre.
A few ships got off the beach — ships with half a crew and no rowers, with one bank of rowers and no troops. It was shrieking chaos. The men streaming back from inland had left their weapons behind in camp; a few got on board but were cut down by the boarding Spartans before they could arm. Others turned and ran — and were hunted down and slaughtered among the mud flats and barley stubble. There was nothing we could do, nothing, nine ships in fighting trim against the whole Spartan fleet. We could have stayed and died with the rest, and added to Athens’ loss by just nine ships — we came near to losing the Marathon as it was; she was boarded but managed to fling off the Spartans who sprang aboard — but we knew the old seaman’s adage, that anything saved from a wreck is gain; and I think we all knew the orders we were going to get from Konon, before he gave them.
Two hours after the first shock, we broke off the fight, and headed across to Lampsakus. There, so easily that there was a kind of hideous comedy about it, we picked up the sails of the Spartan fleet. Sails and masts are generally lodged ashore in time of action, but when it comes to a chase, sails and oars have the advantage over oars alone! As it turned out, we need not have troubled, though. For as we staggered south down the Hellespont, with the marks of fighting on us and the evening wind in our captured sails, Lysander made no move t
o follow us. He was busy along the bloody shores of Goats’ Creek. He had a hundred and seventy Athenian ships and could afford to let nine go.
We heard later that the fleet was wiped out — that was never in doubt — and our three Generals and three thousand troops, seamen and rowers, taken captive and executed; the rest were simply dead or missing. But at the time we knew only that the long war with Sparta was over, and Athens was over too.
That night the Paralos parted from us and headed for home — you can make Pireus in two days from Sestos with a crack ship — to carry her the news.
The Whore
My Lord came back from the hills southward after dark, riding as though the Hounds of Night were after him. He would not eat; but that night he got more drunk than I have ever known him. So drunk that when he slid from the bench he lay where he landed, and slept there, sodden and fouled and uncaring. And I did not call the slaves or one of the garrison to help me get him to bed, for I did not want them to see him so; though in Thrace it is common enough to sleep in one’s muck under the table. Still, he was not of Thrace. So I covered him where he lay, and watched beside him.
When he woke, he went and cleaned himself without a word, and came back, lurching, his eyes like balls of blood in his head, and flung himself down on the bed-place. But almost at once he staggered to his feet again; and all that day he walked up and down the keep chamber, walked and walked, like a wild thing padding to and fro the length of its cage.
I sat huddled in the corner; I dared not leave him, I dared not try to make him rest. I simply crouched there with his hound bitch who he had kicked out of the way, shivering against me, until at last, still huddled there, I slept.
I woke to hear the bitch whining softly. It was long after dark, and the keep chamber was quiet of footsteps for the first time that day. There was a strange red glow in the sky beyond the narrow window, and My Lord was standing there, looking out. And his quiet was as frightening as his pacing had been.
I got up and crept to him, the bitch following me. He never moved, and I did not dare to touch him. The red glow was fierce behind the hills southward. And at last I said, ‘What is it that is on fire?’
He said quiet quietly, in a queer level voice that seemed to have no rise or fall in it at all. ‘They are burning the Athenian camp. There is no need to be afraid of Athens any more, Timandra. I think she’s dead.’
24
The Whore
After the Athenian Navy was wiped out at Goats’ Creek, there were no Athenian ships left in the Propontis or the Hellespont. And the forts that My Lord had built to be the links in a chain joining the Athenian settlements of the North to their home city, would become only little rocks, sundered from each other, and with the storms beating over them, until at last they must be overwhelmed. So I thought, for one whole night, that he would abandon them and take to the hills. And maybe he would let me ride with him again.
But next day, an Athenian fugitive came stumbling through the gate. First the one man alone, then two together, one supporting the other, who had an arm half hacked through below the shoulder. For many days the trickle went on. ‘It is for this, that you will not take to the hills, but bide here where the Spartans may be down upon us at any time,’ I said. ‘It is for these men, who are not worth it, that you wait in Pactye, that they may know where to find you.’
He cocked an eyebrow at me, leaning lazily against the wall, with another man’s blood on his hands and forehead. ‘You have been listening to old seamen talking. You should never believe anything a seaman tells you, it is always coloured by sentiment. I object to being chased from my own hearth by the mere shadow of Lysander.’
He kept the land gate of Pactye always open and guarded in those days and nights; and it was well into the winter before the thinning trickle of fugitives dried up altogether. He gave them shelter, money from the gold that the cities had paid for his protection, help to get away into the hills or back to Athens, sometimes a grave. The man with his arm hacked through died next day, and there were others who crawled to Alkibiades as a dying hound crawls to his master’s hand.
Once or twice they brought news of the world outside, but not often. Men on to the run seldom gather much news. The tribesmen brought news sometimes, as they had always done; and the tunny fishers, once they knew that My Lord would pay for it. And so before long we heard that Lysander was going the round of the regained Athenian settlements, setting up Spartan Governors everywhere, but that he was giving safe-conduct for the journey to every Athenian who chose to return to Athens, rather than remain under Spartan rule.
After that, when fugitives came to us, seeking to get home, we had only to send them to Sestos or Perinthos, with all signs of their fleet service carefully stripped away, and leave the Spartan Governors to do the rest. But My Lord’s face grew very grim, and the lines on it seemed more harshly cut than ever.
A little while after the news of Lysander’s mercy reached Bisanthe — we had returned to Bisanthe by then; the fugitives came there just the same — Heraklides and the master of the Icarus came seeking word with My Lord.
That time he remembered my presence, and bade me go and fetch the last of the Samian wine.
I went out as though to fetch it, but I lingered at the head of the stairway with my ear pressed against the door, for I did not trust them. I’ve no knowing why, but for the first time, I did not trust them.
My Lord’s voice said, ‘What is it that you come to tell me?’
And there was a small silence; the kind of silence in which men look at each other, unsure who is to speak. Then Heraklides said, ‘Sir, we come to ask your leave to take advantage of Lysander’s safe conduct.’
‘I thought it might be that,’ said My Lord. ‘I have seen it in your eyes for many days. I can only thank you for remaining faithful to me so long.’
The master said, ‘Sir, it is not that we would break faith with you; but many of us have wives and children. We have been long away; and it may be that this is the last chance that we shall have of returning to them.’
‘You realise, of course, why Lysander is encouraging any stray Athenian to crowd back into the city?’ And then he gave a kind of roar, ‘Great Gods! Are you quite fools? Do you mean to tell me that the most wooden-headed rower doesn’t see what is going to happen? Lysander will be blockading Athens before the dark of the year — the more mouths that flock into the city the sooner the stores will give out and the Council be forced to ask for terms.’
And again there was silence, and then a sound from the pilot that was like a groan. And then he said, stubbornly, ‘We still have our wives and children. Athens will need men to fight for her.’
I listened for My Lord’s voice, it was quiet again, and lazy and warm with the old lisp. ‘I take it you speak for the garrison also?’
Heraklides said, ‘Yes, sir.’
My Lord said, ‘So. I have led men in my time, but never against their will. You are free to leave for Sestos tomorrow.’
And then he laughed, and the laughter cracked a little in his throat. ‘Ah now, never wear such funeral faces! I’ve no wife and — no child to speak of, waiting for me to go and be besieged with them at home, and the Olympian Twelve forbid that I should hold back those that have. We have known good times and bad together, let us drink to the good and drown the memory of the bad, and part friends, as we have been so long.’
I ran then, to get the wine; and later, from the little room below that I had made my own, I heard them playing kotabos with the dregs in the cups, very gay; but the gaiety had somewhat the sound of heartbreak in it.
Next morning I woke alone in the great bed-place long before dawn, and saw through the cracks in the shutters the fierce red flicker of fire close at hand. I leapt from under the covers and ran to the window embrasure, thinking of attack, and looked out. I saw the guard turret above the narrow anchorage outlined against a red flare from below, and a flight of sparks leapt into the air and streamed away on the gusting wind
. I remember a little cold rain was spitting past between me and the flames, not enough to damp down a fire once it was got going; and realising suddenly that they were burning the Icarus on her slipway.
My heart wept as though it were for some great chief on his funeral pyre, with the jars of oil and wine and honey and his favourite woman at his side, and his slain horses piled about him. The smell of burning was in the air, and I thought once I caught the waft of incense.
The rain had turned to sleet, in the grey light of the morning, when her crew and the Athenians among the garrison straggled out through the gates and headed for Sestos.
The Citizen
We closed the port of Piraeus as soon as we knew that we had no ships to hold it, leaving only the harbour at Munychia without a boom, for the corn ships if any got through to us. A few did; those that had started early and passed down the Hellespont before Goats’ Creek; a couple from Cyprus. Then Lysander, fresh from making the rounds of our old colonies and settling his own Governors in them, came down with close on two hundred triremes to blockade us from the sea. King Pausanius had already marched his Spartan troops up over the Isthmus, right to our walls; they camped in the Academy Gardens and closed the road to Megara. Agis was down from Dekalia and had closed the road to Thebes.
The Flowers of Adonis Page 40