I kid you not; the palace doors were solid bronze, burnished to perfection, and sure enough, the pillars on either side were covered in thick gold leaf. Once you stepped inside, the first thing you noticed was the colour of the walls - they were a sort of dreamy sky blue, painted plaster, with a narrow gilded frieze right at the top. On either side of the door were these incredible life-size statues of torch-bearers, marble painted in brilliant colours. The seats run all the way up along the walls - it's a big hall - each one with its own tapestry coverlet and footstool, as far as the doors that separate the hall from the inner room and stairs.
'This is incredible,' Dusa said, in an unusually subdued voice.
'Yes,' I said.
At this point, someone noticed we were there and pointed to us. At once a big, rather stout young man with thinning blond hair jumped up out of his seat at the far end and came towards us, making welcoming noises.
'You look like you've come a long way,' he said. 'Sit down, have something to eat and drink, take the weight off your feet. Or would you rather have a bath first, and then have something to eat?'
We opted for the bath first. Now, in other places when we'd had the chance of a bath, some female or other swooped down and hauled Dusa off into the inner room, where as often as not she had to make do with standing in a cauldron and having luke-warm water poured over her head. No such fussiness in Sparta; no, she got a proper bath of her own, with a gaggle of maids to shroud her in towels when she got in and out. You never saw such baths, by the way, and the olive oil for sloshing on afterwards was that lovely smooth green stuff you get from the first press of the nearly ripe olives, not the kitchen surplus we're used to. When we looked round for our dusty old clothes there was no sign of them. In their place were soft woollen tunics and cloaks, still smelling of cypress from the press.
After all that our heads were spinning a bit, but nobody seemed to notice, and we found ourselves sitting on chairs up at the top of the hall with the quality, not parked down at the draughty end. A girl came round with a silver jug and basin to wash our hands in; some of the young men brought up a table, the housekeeper brought out a great big basket of perfectly fresh wheat bread, while someone else carved long, thin slices off a smoked ham.
We were hungry, no doubt about that; and the food was first rate, and so was the wine that came after it. While we were filling our faces, the prince (we assumed it was him) sat watching us with a satisfied little smirk on his round face - you could see he enjoyed watching hungry people eat as much or more than eating himself. When we'd demolished everything they put in front of us and done severe damage to another basket of bread and plate of sliced ham, he asked us if there was anything else he could get for us; some apples, say, or a plate of honey-cakes.
We were tempted; but there would be time for that sort of thing later. As far as I could tell, the polite thing to do at this point would be to introduce ourselves, state our business and hopefully find out who we were talking to.
After I'd said my piece, the stout young man nodded a few times and thought for a moment. 'Games-players,' he said. 'Right. I reckon you'd better talk to my brother about that, he's the games player in our family.'
'Prince Theopompus,' I said.
The stout man nodded. 'But you're out of luck, I'm afraid,' he said. 'See, he's away right now.'
'Oh.'
"Course,' he went on, 'you're more than welcome to wait here till he gets back.'
'When are you expecting him?'
He thought about that, too. 'Definitely he'll be back in time for the vintage,' he said. 'Possibly before that, even. All depends; winds are a bit changeable this time of year.'
'Oh,' I repeated. 'That's a pity. We've got a long way to go yet, you see, and time's getting on.'
He frowned. 'Surely you can hang on till vintage,' he said. 'It's what, no more than a couple of months. You're more than welcome.'
Prince Theopompus, we found out eventually, was in Crete. Why he was there, I have no idea to this day; maybe he just felt like going there, for a change. His elder brother King Bias, the man we were talking to, wasn't a games-player, and he didn't know of any other games-players in the neighbourhood - he looked genuinely unhappy when he told us that, as if he'd have liked nothing better than to have had twenty chariot-racers brought to us on a chafing-dish, with a mint and watercress garnish. The best he could do, he said, was pass on our message to Theopompus as soon as he got back - he made me go through all the arguments in favour about four times, to make sure he'd got all the details straight, hadn't missed any of the nuances or anything. He was positive his brother would be thrilled beyond measure to take part; in fact it was a sure thing, a guaranteed certainty. We didn't believe a word of that, naturally; he was just trying to be nice, and the lengths he went to in stressing the point suggested that Theopompus had far better things to do with his time, not least of which was cleaning the wax out of his ears with his little finger.
In fact, the longer we stayed in the house of King Bias, the more obvious it became that we were wasting our time. It stood to reason - why should a Spartan be interested in anything anyone else had to offer, when everything at home was the best of its kind? That didn't explain why Theopompus had gone to Crete; but the implication was that his motive was to confirm his instinctive belief that the rest of the world wasn't worth spit. As for the idea that someone from a place like this would ever drag himself all the way up to Elis in the hope of winning fame and glory - forget it. You might just as well expect Apollo to leave the golden houses of the immortal gods and try to get a job as a minstrel in a village manor-house somewhere up our way. Put in cold, crude terms: there was nothing in Elis, tangible or otherwise, that a Spartan could conceivably want.
Not that King Bias would have dreamed of saying that; it was one of those things that doesn't have to be said and probably can't be put into words anyway. The more he spoke, the more painfully obvious became the vast, unbridgeable gap between ourselves and this kind, patient, soft-spoken young man. It was a division on the same scale as the one that separates me from my shepherd. I happen to like my shepherd; he's very good at his job and we get along perfectly well. But we both know that when the sun sets, I go home to the Great House, while he curls up in a corner of the steading on a pile of reject fleeces; and if I dragged him into my hall and sat him down and poured wine into him, he'd think I'd gone mad, with good reason. What made it all the worse in this case was that King Bias was treating us not just as equals but as honoured guests, which made us feel all the more uncomfortable; hence the fact that we got out of Sparta the next day, and were extremely glad to be on our way.
CHAPTER SEVEN
There was a games-player in Amyclae (Gratus continued); Thootes, a high-jumper and discus-thrower - extremely good at both events, by all accounts, but only a very minor princeling, and therefore fated never to win anything. He was thrilled to bits to be asked and promised faithfully to be there; then, as we were leaving, he fell off the pen-rail he was sitting on and broke his leg.
A pattern, I felt, was beginning to emerge.
Anyway, from Amyclae we went to Therapne, only to find that Alastor had got there ahead of us and had persuaded the prince (Hippolochus; two-horse chariot) that we were lunatics turned out of Elis for bringing disgrace on a noble house. Hippolochus was very kind and polite, and told us to go to the crows in the nicest way possible. We thanked him, said that if he should happen to change his mind he'd be more than welcome, and went on our way with what little dignity we had left.
We struck out half a day on the Argos road until we came to a suitable spot - one of those weird old chambers, dome-shaped like a beehive or a dovecote, where the Giants used to bury their dead.
I don't know about you, but they give me the creeps. Your voice echoes inside them, for one thing, as if the damned building was agreeing with everything you say and repeating it after you, like those dull old men you try to avoid talking to in the square. They're also invariably as
dark as a bag inside - reasonable enough for a tomb, I suppose - and I don't like the fact that you have to go down on your hands and knees to crawl through the entrance tunnel.
We were stuck in that horrible old tomb for the rest of the day -I can smell it still, if I close my eyes - until eventually we saw Alastor and his men strolling along the road. We'd poked a hole in the side wall of the chamber, like burglars breaking into a house.
The mules nearly gave us away at the last moment; after standing still, good as gold, all afternoon they suddenly got restive and started pawing the dirt - one good bray and we'd have been wasting our time. Fortunately, the god had put it into Cleander's heart to grab some apples out of the jar when we were leaving Hippolochus' palace, and he shovelled them into the mules' faces and shut them up.
Even then; well, if ever you need to ambush anybody, don't hide in a beehive tomb, because crawling out inconspicuously is exceptionally difficult and you get your clothes absolutely filthy. Actually, Tachys and I got stuck and had to be pulled out by Dusa, who wasn't impressed; but we were 'not needed on the expedition', as they say, since Sarpedon and Cleander between them were so utterly terrifying, with their sudden whoops and flashing blades, that we'd only have got in the way.
To do them credit, Alastor's men showed more common sense than most people would have done in their position: they dumped the stuff they were carrying without a word and ran like hares, leaving Himself standing there like a boundary-marker looking mustard at us.
'What the hell do you think you're playing at?' he asked.
Uncle Sarpedon made a wonderful growling noise, like a stray dog; fortunately, Cleander got in front of him so Alastor couldn't see the blood-curdling faces he was pulling, else Alastor would probably have burst out in giggles and then there really would have been blood in the dust.
'Friendly warning,' Cleander replied. 'Go home. Stop buggering us about. It's hard enough as it is without you interfering.'
Alastor grinned. 'You aren't going to kill me,' he said. 'You've got more sense.'
It was Cleander's turn to pull a ghastly face. 'We wouldn't, no,' he said. 'But the ruthless band of thieves and cut-throats reported in this area...
'Oh, sure.' Alastor lifted his head. 'You mean the ones you attacked without provocation back in Mila?'
We weren't making much of a job of it, I could tell. Cleander was taken off guard by that, and like a fool allowed Alastor to see it. 'You hear a lot, don't you?' he said.
'I've got donkey's ears, like King Midas,' he replied smugly. 'Really, you're making too much of my part in your failure. So far I've hardly had to lift a finger, you've done it all by yourselves. Amazing, really,' he went on. 'If anybody had told me that anyone, even a bunch of deadheads like yourselves, could make a mess of inviting fanatical games-players to a chance-of-a-lifetime event, I'd have hurt myself laughing. But by the gods, you've managed it. I'm impressed.'
I couldn't let that pass. 'Hang on,' I interrupted. 'Forgive me, Alastor, but you make it sound like you think this games thing is a good idea.'
He nodded. 'It is,' he replied, 'no doubt about it. Brilliant idea. Amazes me nobody's thought of it before. Really and truly, I hope that you don't make such an utter balls-up of it, or I don't do such a wonderfully thorough job of spoiling it, that the whole thing dies a death and can't be resurrected later. It'd be a dreadful waste.'
Cleander nearly fell over. 'You like the idea?' was all he could manage to say.
'What's not to like?'
We let him go after that, before he could hurt us any more.
We went to Prasiae, following the nice, well-marked road. The road isn't the quickest way from Therapne to Prasiae. Guess who was waiting for us when we got there?
The Prince of Prasiae was no great loss; a marginal boxer and wrestler, I can't even remember his name now. What did get on our nerves was being arrested and shut up in a cowshed while whatever-his-name-was's men went through our luggage in search of the various items Alastor claimed we'd stolen from him. Since Alastor had a fairly shrewd idea of what was in the presents stash - as you'd expect; he'd owned half of them himself at one time or another, we all had - it was hardly surprising when his description of his lost property fitted (item) one small bronze cup embossed with a ploughing scene, handle slightly bent, (item) one silver-gilt dagger with old-style gate-shaped hilt, enamelled, some enamel missing, (item) one gold grasshopper brooch, end of pin snapped off. The rest of his stuff, he explained, we must've disposed of along the way or buried somewhere under a tree-stump. It wasn't the things themselves, of course, it was the sentimental value - some of them had been given to him by dear friends (which was true, in a sense, of the brooch; he'd had it from my father, who got it back many years later, minus the pin-end).
Unfortunately, the Prince of Prasiae was one of those interfering, can't-leave-well-alone types who takes an interest in justice, even when it's nothing to do with him. We were hauled out of our cow-shed, lined up in the city square with a couple of dozen day-labourers and jobbing tradesmen gawking at us, and told how utterly wicked and contemptible we were. If it wasn't for the generosity and nobility of spirit of our victim, who'd made a point of stressing that we were of the better sort (or what passed for it in Elis), he'd have had us strung up from the rafters as an awful warning. Instead, this fatuous idiot said, he'd let us off lightly by confiscating the stolen goods (to be returned to their rightful owner) and the rest of our surplus property, doubtless the loot from other malfeasances, which were forfeit to the majesty of the Zeus-descended lords of Prasiae.
Well, we were dragging our feet out of town, with our one remaining mule, when Alastor came scurrying up behind us with a complicated look on his face. And you know what? He apologised. Although (he said) what he'd done was entirely fair in the context of the game, and in any case we'd started it by jumping out on him and scaring off his no-good companions, nevertheless he felt that the prince had been unduly harsh, not to mention greedy and rapacious, in leaving us with so little; without at least a few presents to give, he went on, we wouldn't be able to claim hospitality on our journey home, and he didn't want our deaths or destitution on his head. As a token of goodwill, therefore, would we please accept (item) this charming bronze cup, (item) this attractive dagger, and (item) this exquisite gold brooch?
And you know what? We took them, and were grateful. We didn't say so, of course, we weren't that demoralised; but by that point our hearts were so empty that this simple act of kindness cut us to the quick. When I say 'we' and 'us', of course, I'm not counting Uncle Sarpedon, who expressed a strong wish to see Alastor eat all three items, even though he'd just had dinner. But Cleander and Dusa didn't say anything, just mumbled and looked away. I think I rustled up a very small smile from somewhere, like a hill-farmer giving alms at the Lady's festival. And Tachys- Tachys asked Alastor if he could go along with him. Now, under normal circumstances, those would have been the last words ever to pass through the gate of his teeth. But remember, we'd just spent a very long time shut up in a cowshed with Tachys, and he'd helped pass the time by explaining to us exactly what we'd done wrong from the moment each of us was born. The thought that, if the food ran out or his boots fell to bits, Tachys might favour Alastor with a similar explanation was almost enough to cheer us up as we parted company.
'To the crows with both of them,' Uncle sighed, as we flopped under a lonely fig-tree a thousand paces or so outside the town. 'Doesn't matter any more, in any event. One less straggler, one less whining voice on the way home-'
'Who said anything about going home?'
It was Cleander, of course, who came out with this wonderful remark. Who else?
I lifted my head. 'Of course we're not going home,' I said. 'Perish the thought. May the gods scrub the stains of it off the floor of my mind. Of course, we've got nothing to eat, almost nothing to give as presents, that bastard - beg pardon, those two bastards - following us round like a sausage-maker's dog. Apart from that, everything's just f
ine. Onwards to glory, say I.'
Cleander gave me that look of his, the one I've somehow managed not to strangle him for since we were both kids. 'Fine,' he said. 'So you'd rather go crawling back to King Leon while there's still good leather left on your soles, and tell him we gave up because of one miserable setback? I can picture him now. What was it, Gratus? he'll say. Attacked by pirates, all your gear washed away by a river in spate, got the fever and had to be carried home on a shield? No? What was it, then? Must've been something really serious-'
For once the gods put exactly the right words into my mouth. 'Shut up, Cleander,' I said.
'He's right, you know,' Dusa chimed in.
'Of course I'm right,' I said, 'only this clown here-'
'Not you,' said Dusa. 'Him.'
We all looked at her, as if the god had suddenly turned her into a rosebush.
'Don't all look at me like that,' she said. 'Oh, come on, Cratus, why do you think I insisted on coming on this jaunt in the first place?'
'To annoy me,' I said.
'Mostly, yes. But why else?'
I shrugged. 'Curiosity? To see the cities of the Sons of the Achaeans and understand their minds?'
She smiled. 'Don't be ridiculous,' she said. 'No, I came on this trip to look after you two, make sure you didn't come to harm or pack the whole thing in the first time you stubbed your toe or missed breakfast. And that's what I intend to do.'
I'd have laughed out loud if she hadn't been glaring at me. But it was like the story of the other Medusa, the one who could turn people to stone with a single glance.
Olympiad Tom Holt Page 16