Salamis

by Christian Cameron

  And I had escaped. They had had me, the Persians and Medes. My escape seemed to me a sign from Heracles, my ancestor, that I should fight. By Zeus, I have always taken omens as signs I should fight, I confess it. But why free me to die an empty death, or flee to some forgotten grave in Gaul?

  So the real question was how to make sure that the fleet fought and didn’t run. I knew that it came down to men – a few men. Really, it came down to two men – Adeimantus and Themistocles. Perhaps Eurybiades, but I thought him both sound and just. Adeimantus I thought a traitor, although I never heard a word from Mardonius or any of the Medes to suggest that he was. But he had just sixty triremes.

  Themistocles – was he a traitor? Or was he playing both sides for his own profit? Did he, in fact, even have a plan?

  I made my decision. It depended on Eurybiades. I suppose it says something about me, and the situation, that when the dice were thrown, I trusted a Spartan. I said a few words to Brasidas and the Spartan nodded and went off to my right, into the crowd.

  I walked around the outside of the council fire and moved cautiously through the crowd of Athenian captains behind the great man. Ameinias of Pallene recognised me, as did Cleitus. Both started.

  I pulled my chlamys over my head. Ameinias shrugged.

  Cleitus stepped closer. He was tense; his entire body conveyed his tension, so that my body reacted as if he was about to attack me. I didn’t believe he would, but such were our feelings for each other.

  ‘Where have you been?’ he hissed, an odd greeting from a sworn enemy. And in this case, ‘sworn enemy’ is not an empty phrase. He had sworn my death to Olympian Zeus. ‘Everyone is looking for you!’

  That told me a great deal. It told me, unless Cleitus was lying, that Themistocles had kept my capture a secret. To cover his own treason?

  I still don’t know.

  ‘I need to get to Themistocles,’ I said. ‘Victory and death depend on it.’

  Hate is akin to love, all the poets say it. Men who truly hate, men who have gone word to word and sword to sword, can know each other like lovers, or be as ignorant as fools. These are the only ways to hate, and Cleitus and I knew each other so well … He looked into my eyes by firelight and then he turned without a word and began shoving men out of my way.

  Just at that moment, I forgot that he was the engine of my mother’s death and saw that he put Greece before his enmity.

  Then I followed him. He burrowed through the retainers, the captains, the desperate men. Off to the left, I saw Siccinius and he saw me, despite my filthy chiton and the chlamys over my head like a beaten slave. His eyes grew wide and he started for his master.

  But he was too late. And Cleitus, as if he was my partner and not my adversary, stepped past Themistocles, blocking his view of the council and forcing him to turn by the sort of pressure you exert when you put a hand in a man’s face and make him be silent without speaking.

  Themistocles turned and saw me. His expression flickered. In that moment, I tried to read him – and failed. There was no open hostility, no guile, no obvious guilt.

  Just that flicker of change, as if, for a moment, he was several different men.

  Quietly, I spoke to him, leaning my head close. ‘My friend,’ I said, ‘I have just come from the Great King. We can talk here, if you like, or in private.’

  Cleitus couldn’t help but hear the words ‘Great King’. Again, our eyes met. What passed then?

  Both of us made decisions, that’s what passed.

  Themistocles sighed. ‘Always I am at your service, brave Arimnestos,’ he said. ‘Let us hold a private parley.’

  I took his hand like a maiden leading a man to a dance, and I would not let go of it. I pulled him free of the crowd, and when men began to follow, Cleitus – Cleitus! – bade them go back to the council.

  But Cleitus himself followed us under an old oak tree by the sacred well. There was a stone bench there and I sat. Themistocles sat.

  Cleitus leaned against the tree.

  ‘Your plan is working perfectly,’ I said. ‘Even now, the Great King’s ships are loading their rowers. They are on the way.’

  Cleitus folded his arms, but his right hand was close to the hilt of the small, Spartan-style xiphos he wore under his left arm.

  ‘My plan?’ Themistocles asked.

  ‘Your plan to force the Greek fleet to fight by luring the Persians into the bay,’ I said. ‘In an hour, they will be at sea.’

  The skin around Cleitus’s eyes tightened. Crow’s feet appeared at the corners of his eyes. He was a brilliant man – I think he understood everything.

  Themistocles sat very still. ‘What – how – how do you know?’ he asked.

  ‘Brasidas and I have just escaped from the Great King,’ I said. ‘We escorted a certain slave to the Great King himself, and he took us prisoners. Hostages.’

  ‘I knew nothing of this!’ he said suddenly. He was lying, and it was a foolish lie, but Themistocles was such an able politician and so contemptuous of other men’s minds that he thought – and perhaps he was right – that anything my friends said after the fact would be forgotten.

  I shrugged. ‘It is true. Not a few hours ago, I lay on my face before the Great King while his commanders discussed their attack and a spear was pressed into my neck.’

  ‘This is – incredible!’ Themistocles said.

  I almost hit him.

  His hands were shaking.

  Let me pause here, on the edge of saving Greece, and say again: I think he was as guilty as an adulterer caught in the act. So why not expose him?

  Think about it. If I exposed him, who would fight? The Athenians would shatter instantly into pro- and anti-Themistoklean factions. What? You think the democrats and the oarsmen would convict him out of hand? You must be joking. Facts? There were no facts. It was all intuition and supposition. Heraclitus did not train me to think for nothing. The only hope for Greece was to pretend that Themistocles had all along planned to force the Greek fleet to fight. Perhaps it was even true.

  Perhaps he intended the Greek fleet to cut and run – into the ­closing jaws of the Persians. Perhaps he imagined that the Corinthians and Peloponnesians would be caught and destroyed piecemeal, leaving Athens and Aegina in a powerful bargaining position and making his position tenable.

  It makes my head hurt.

  ‘The Persians will be at sea any moment,’ I said. ‘It’s time to reveal this to the fleet, so that we can prepare. To fight.’

  Themistocles allowed his eyes to meet mine. He was searching me. I knew, just the way a girl knows when a man is looking at her breasts and not into her eyes. He wanted to know what I knew.

  Cleitus tugged at his beard. ‘Reveal what?’ he asked.

  Themistocles stiffened, and then rose to his feet. ‘I have a plan to save Greece,’ he said portentously.

  Well, whatever else might have been true, from that moment he bent his will to save Greece.

  The gods play a role in most affairs of men, so it will not surprise you that they had some part in that night. The first was probably my rescue by Ka, but the most vital was to come. We were walking back to the council, which was still loud. My friend Lykon was speaking, promising the men of Athens that Adeimantus did not speak for all Corinthians. We were twenty paces from the firelight, near the outer ring of listeners where men stood to piss against the trees and slaves waited with wine skins. Out of the darkness came Aristides.

  ‘Themistocles,’ he said.

  ‘Aristides,’ the democrat answered.

  If I wanted to know what Cleitus and I looked like when speaking to one another, here it was – a tableau of mutual antipathy. Yet they had worked together from the first for the liberation of Greece. If I was correct, Themistocles had changed his mind or given up. But Aristides had not.

  ‘We are surrounded,’ Aristides
said. ‘Do you know?’

  ‘Surrounded?’ Themistocles asked.

  Aristides nodded. Behind him, two of his slaves held torches. ‘I left my Nike back on Aegina,’ he said. ‘I came with a pair of Aeginian triremes carrying sacred statues of their gods. Aeginian fishing boats reported to us after sunset.’ He looked around. Cleitus stepped closer, and other men began to gather; Cimon was there, and Xanthippus too. It was Aristides’ voice gathering them, his friends and his ­enemies too.

  ‘The entire Persian fleet is at sea,’ he said. ‘The beaches at Phal­eron must be empty. We came through the Egyptians. We were challenged repeatedly, but one of my oarsmen speaks Egyptian and Persian as well.’ He shrugged.

  Themistocles gave a false laugh. ‘Ah, Aristides, we may be adversaries, but you are the man to appreciate my cleverness. I have brought the Persians.’

  ‘You?’ Aristides asked.

  ‘I sent for them,’ Themistocles joked. He looked at me. ‘Ask Arimnestos.’

  Oh, he was clever. Aristides would never believe I was involved in a treason plot. Themistocles had just played me – again.

  I could not allow myself to care. This was for everything. ‘Now we have to fight,’ I said.

  Themistocles took Aristides by the hand. ‘You saw the Medes?’

  ‘Medes, Persians, Phoenicians and Egyptians, and far too many Greeks,’ Aristides said.

  Themistocles pumped his hand. ‘You must tell the council. No one will believe me. But all know how you hate me – you will be believed.’

  ‘Say rather that I will be believed because I do not make a habit of telling lies,’ Aristides said. It was true and false, too – Greeks have a foolish habit of believing men that they would like to be telling the truth, rather than those they know to be honest.

  Themistocles winced but did not let go of my friend’s hand.

  Cleitus came up behind me, and very softly said, ‘What in the name of black Tartarus is going on?’ he growled.

  ‘We’re saving Greece from the barbarians,’ I said.

  Cleitus laughed. ‘Not the first time,’ he said.

  I roared with laughter. Men turned, and saw me laughing, and before the gods, I embraced the bastard. ‘Too right, mate,’ I said.

  He returned the embrace and Aristides smiled in the torchlight.

  ‘If those two can be at peace,’ he said, ‘I will make peace with you. And it is only the truth, after all. Take me to the council.’

  So it was that Themistocles, the arch-democrat, led Aristides the Just, the priggish, snobbish arch-conservative and my best friend, to the rostra in front of three hundred captains. It was deep in the night.

  Themistocles pointed to the man standing ready to speak.

  ‘There is my nemesis, Aristides, returned from exile to speak to the captains,’ he said. ‘Pay heed, and know that I support his every word.’

  Aristides looked around. His eye met mine, and then passed over – he was never a man to wink. He was silent for long enough that men coughed and the silence became edgy.

  ‘The Persian fleet is already at sea,’ he said softly. ‘They are all around us. They have ships on the beaches opposite us to the north, and they have sent a squadron to close the western passages to the isthmus.’

  Now the silence was absolute.

  ‘There is no longer a choice to be made,’ he said. ‘I will argue nothing. Unless you choose to submit and be slaves, we must fight.’

  The silence stayed, and then a babble began, the usual Greek game of finding whose fault it must have been, might have been. It rose all about us, and then Eurybiades struck the speaker’s rostra with his staff – I remember the sound like a thunderbolt.

  ‘Are you children?’ he asked.

  He was going to say more, and Themistocles stepped past him into the firelight. ‘I have a plan,’ he began.

  ‘Silence, or I strike,’ Eurybiades said, raising his stick. He was angry, as any commander would have been.

  ‘Strike, but only listen,’ Themistocles begged. He actually bent his knee like a beggar requesting alms.

  Zeus, it was a masterful performance.

  There stood the Spartan, stick raised, and there the Athenian knelt before him in supplication.

  ‘Speak,’ growled the Spartan.

  Themistocles leapt to his feet. ‘The Persians think this is a land battle,’ he said. ‘They think that having their right overmatch our left will lead them to collapse us. They imagine that we will fight with our lines spread east to west. They don’t know the waters, and their ships will have been at sea all night, their hulls damp, men tired. We can win.’

  Say what you will – and I have – once he was committed, he was brilliant. I saw it immediately. Other men had to be convinced; some had to hear the whole thing two or three times, and all the while Eurybiades was sending the lesser men to bed, and ordering heralds to wake the rowers an hour before sunrise.

  It was not in any way my plan, although in its relation I knew that my words had played a part. Certainly Themistocles planned to use the dawn chop and the breeze, but his notion that we could form the trap by backing water, despite having inflicted two defeats this way at Artemisium, was entirely his own. He told them that the Great King expected the treason of whole bodies of Greeks and thus would expect us to flee.

  Well. I still had an eye on the Corinthians.

  But it was a good plan, simple enough, with the flexibility so that if the weather went our way, he’d make use of it, and if the day was calm, we had alternatives.

  Aristides, without a ship, as his beautiful Athena Nike was still being repaired, added a wrinkle. We had far more hoplites than we could fit on ships. Aristides was given command of all the hoplites left on Salamis. He said he would attempt to take the two islets in the middle of the straits. Neither is very considerable, but the larger is big enough for a thousand men to stand in formation and archers on that island would be able to wreck our centre. We gave him all the pentekonter and all the fishing boats.

  In fact, once the decision was made to fight, we moved along at a great rate. I want to say that it was Eurybiades who decided to fight. He never called for another vote. Perhaps he thought it was obvious or perhaps he was tired of oratory. I know I was.

  We trudged back to our camp and I laid out my panoply and woke two of my slaves to shine it. I planned to wear the whole thing – shin guards and thigh guards and arm guards and everything. To shine like a god. Because in war, these things matter.

  And then I rolled in my cloak and went to sleep without another thought.

  Part II

  The Razor’s Edge

  When all Greece was balanced on the razor’s edge

  we protected her with our souls, and here we lie

  Cenotaph to the dead of Salamis

  I woke from a dream so erotic that I might have been on the point of an indiscretion, and pondered what the gods meant by sending me a dream of making love to Jocasta, for whom I had infinite respect but towards whom I had never felt the least attraction. But my ­waking mind found the notion humorous, and I rolled out of my cloak looking more like a satyr than a man and threw myself into the sea. I dried myself with my linens in the darkness and woke Seckla, and all around me men blew life into campfires.

  I sent Hipponax up the ridge to see what could be seen from our watchtowers, and I walked along the beach until I was sure that the Athenians were in motion. Xanthippus was civil enough and already in his armour, while I was still naked and my hair wet from my swim, but I felt better for it, and better still when Hector put a horn cup of mulled wine in my hand.

  The first kiss of dawn touched the sky and I put on my best chiton, milk-white wool with purple stripes and red embroidery, ravens and stars. Then I put on the leather straps that went around my ankles to protect them from the slap of the greaves against my in
step, and then I snapped the greaves over my shins, cursing the way they cut into every old wound and new scratch from my last outing. Hector knelt behind me and buckled them on, and then he put armour on my left thigh – the thigh most likely to be hit. Sometimes I wear armour on both, but usually I do not.

  Then he hinged open my beautiful bronze thorax that Anaxicles had hammered out of new bronze back in Syracusa, what seemed like many years before. He closed it and slid the pins shut, slipped the arm guard on my right forearm and the shoulder guard on my right shoulder. No man needs a guard on his left shoulder or forearm – that’s what the aspis covers.

  Many men were gathered there. It was like a ceremony and a festival, too. I was Achilles being armed, or Ares, or mighty Ajax or Diomedes, or one of the Immortals or the heroes, and the dawn gilded my bronze and made it glow red, as if I’d spilled a fiery immortal blood. Hector brought my helmet and Hipponax, back from his mission and looking furtive for some reason, reported that the Peloponnesians were already arrayed and putting rowers into their ships, and also reported, somewhat unnecessarily, that the Brauron girls were awake and singing hymns. He put my aspis on my arm, and then he and Hector armed together. Brasidas came out of his tent armed, and Idomeneus, who looked more like a god than any, with his perfect body and shining bronze and his old-fashioned high crest nodding like Hector’s in Iliad. And Achilles’ namesake, my cousin, did us no disgrace, despite his recent wound and his surly ways, but he ran down from the upper beach fully armed, and his bronze also lit up in the new sun.

  But against our bronze, most of the rowers were naked, or wore loincloths. But the top-deck rowers on Lydia had helmets and thorax of captured Persian linen, stitched tight and hard with embroidery, or quilted, or beautiful leather spolas taken off Ionian ships, or tawed leather yokes made in Athens or Massalia, and spears. A few even sported swords, or axes, or little maces with bronze heads. They watched us arm, as if our bronze plate protected them as well as us – and I like to think it did.