by Tom Holt
This particular Serenade was a truly terrifying spectacle. There were at least forty young men, armed with swords and torches, wreathed in myrtle and singing the Harmodius. The ten or so girls with them looked scared out of their wits, and I noticed that one of them was a free-born girl, whom they had presumably confiscated from one of the houses they had visited.
It was round her neck that Aristophanes was hanging, and he was clearly one of the leaders of this Serenade. He was yelling at the top of his voice — I think he was shouting orders, like a taxiarch — and his companions replied by cheering loudly and occasionally being sick. Callicrates and I stood very still and pretended to be doorposts, but they noticed us and stopped in their tracks.
‘Line halt!’ called out Aristophanes. ‘Spartans to your left front. No prisoners.’
Callicrates, who had been on Serenades himself when he was younger, knew better than to run, for they would have been sure to chase after us and beat us up or kill us if they caught us. Instead he stood his ground and said nothing, in the hope that they would go away. This usually works, but not always; and this was one such occasion.
‘Look, gentlemen,’ said Aristophanes, ‘there’s a Spartan over there who isn’t afraid of us. What’ll we do to him?’
His co-Serenaders made several excellent suggestions, and I could tell that Callicrates was beginning to get worried. Now I am not a brave man, as you will discover in due course, but I was too young to understand the real danger I was in, and besides, fear brings out the cleverness in me like nothing else. Also, some malicious God was urging me to rescue the poor free-born girl that Aristophanes was holding, since if he got her to himself for any length of time later on, her chances of a good or even reasonable marriage would be gone for good. Remember, I was then at an age where girls have that sort of effect, although now I regard them as an intolerable nuisance.
Anyway, I filled my lungs with air and called out, ‘Are you so drunk that you don’t recognise the Goatherd of Hymettus, from the Steading of Pisistratus?’
Then I raised the torch I was carrying so that he could see my face. Of course, there was no guarantee that he would recognise me after so many years, not to mention the effects of the plague; on the other hand, I was so ugly, particularly by torchlight, that recollection on his part might not be necessary to achieve the desired effect. But he recognised me all right, and nearly dropped his torch.
‘Have you still got that little Hecate?’ I asked. ‘Because if you have, you’ll need it. Remember the Thessalian spell, and the goat who broke your head, and my father who learned magic?’
Here I raised the torch over Callicrates’ head, and he, although he hadn’t the faintest idea what I was on about, did his best to look sorcerer-like and evil. Aristophanes turned his head to spit in his cloak for luck, and that gave the girl the chance she needed. She bit Aristophanes’ hand, he let go, and she ran over to us and hid behind Callicrates’ shoulder. At the time I took that rather hard, since it was me who saved her.
‘Tell you what I’ll do,’ I went on. ‘I can’t be bothered to put a spell on you, seeing as how it’s late and tomorrow is the Feast of All Witches. I’ll just take this goat of yours, in full and final settlement, and you can tell yourself what a narrow escape you’ve had.’
Aristophanes may have been terribly superstitious, but he wasn’t a complete fool and he realised that he’d been had. His companions seemed to tumble to it as well, although of course they didn’t know the joke, and they started sniggering. At any rate, their interest in killing us seemed to have evaporated, and I imagine they were starting to feel thirsty again. They started jeering at Aristophanes, who gave me a scowl that would curdle mustard. Then a thought seemed to strike him and he suddenly smiled warmly.
‘I think that’s very good and Athenian of you,’ he called back, ‘and since she’s your goat, of course, you’ll know all about her habits. You can keep her, mate, and welcome. Her name is Phaedra, daughter of Theocrates, and she lives just behind the Fountain House.’
At this, all the Serenaders burst out laughing, though I couldn’t imagine why, and the procession moved on, singing the Leipsydrion at the tops of their voices, leaving me, Callicrates and the girl standing there feeling greatly relieved.
We recognised Phaedra’s house from the way its door had been kicked in, and restored her to her parents, who had given her up for lost. In fact they were in floods of tears and were kneeling by the hearth pouring ashes on their heads when we walked in, and when they learned from Phaedra herself that she had been rescued before anything drastic had happened to her they were beside themselves with joy. Callicrates nobly ascribed the entire rescue to my quick thinking and they hugged me and washed my feet in perfumed water, which made me feel like Hercules restoring Alcestis from the dead.
‘Don’t mention it, please,’ I kept saying, ‘it was the least I could do, really it was.’ But of course I wasn’t looking at them but at the girl, who was blushing and glancing at me from under her eyelashes in the way girls do — I think they must learn the trick from their mothers at an early age. She was, on close inspection, rather a pretty girl, and I expect you can guess what was going on inside my idiotic little soul.
‘It’s positively the last time that man comes into our house,’ the girl’s mother was saying, ‘and I don’t care how much money he’s got, or who his rich friends may be. And he’s married already, so if he’d … why, we’d never have got Phaedra off our—’
At which her husband kicked her under the table and offered us some wine and honey in a loud voice. I should have taken notice of that ‘never’, but I was far too preoccupied to notice.
‘Our Phaedra is the best girl in the whole of Attica,’ said Theocrates. ‘She’s got all the accomplishments, she can cook and she can sing, she even knows her Hesiod, don’t you, pet?’ He scowled at her till she nodded, and then gave me a long, meaningful look that nearly took the top of my head off; the sort of look that fathers usually only give young bachelors just before they get down to working out dowry figures. ‘And there’s ten acres down by the coast with her. Oh yes, the young man who gets our little girl will be very lucky indeed.’
I remember once I was out shopping and I saw this really handsome horse in the market. I stood there for a while and I couldn’t see anything at all wrong with it, and so I walked over and asked the dealer how much. Instead of answering my question he started off into a long and noisy encomium of the animal’s virtues, half-way through which the horse arched its neck across and bit me painfully on the arm for no apparent reason. In other words, when a salesman starts praising wares that look good enough without further description, put your hands over your ears and walk away. I didn’t know that, then. I think Callicrates did, because he started getting restive, but it was my moment, and I guess he hadn’t the heart to interfere. He just suggested that it was time we were getting along, and of course I ignored him. For Phaedra had brought the wine and honey, with grated cheese on it, and when I took the cup my fingers brushed against hers and seemed to burn as if I had inadvertently leaned on a hot tripod.
‘So who exactly was our noble assailant?’ Callicrates was saying. ‘Eupolis seemed to know him but he won’t let me in on the secret.’
Theocrates spat ostentatiously into the fire and replied, ‘That was Aristophanes son of Philip of Cydathene, the Comic poet. First thing in the morning, I’m going to see the Archon about a kidnapping suit.’
For a moment, I forgot even about Phaedra. ‘Aristophanes?’ I squeaked. ‘The Aristophanes, who brought on a Chorus of our allies dressed as Babylonian slaves and turning a treadmill?’
Theocrates sniffed disdainfully. ‘That’s an old gimmick,’ he said. ‘Cratinus did it in The Sardines, only you’re too young to remember.’
Then, of course, we started talking Comedy, and after that Tragedy, until it was dawn and time to go home. I remember walking through the streets in the pale red light and thinking that I must have died and been
born again as a God, the way the Pythagoreans say, since how else could I account for the fact that I had met the great Aristophanes and overcome him in battle, recited the parabasis of the play I was composing (which had seemed to amuse old Theocrates greatly) and above all, been given permission to call again whenever I liked, all in the space of one brief night? The last point could mean only one thing; that, if suitable terms could be worked out between our two families, I could become Phaedra’s suitor, since we were both the right age and unpromised and our families were compatible. It was only when I got home and climbed into bed that Aristophanes’ words about her habits flashed momentarily across my mind, and before I could consider them I was fast asleep.
Although many people have competed for the honour over the years, I still maintain that I am my own worst enemy.
CHAPTER FIVE
This book is rather like a cousin of mine called Amyclaeus, who has a truly appalling sense of direction. He’s bad enough in the country, but if you put him in the City he has no more idea of where he is than a blind man. To make matters worse, he himself firmly believes that he’s a born navigator and is always insisting that he knows a little short cut here or a back way there, which of course he doesn’t. But, because the Gods look after fools, he has this uncanny knack of eventually ending up where he meant to go, even though he has no right to end up there at all.
It’s the same with me and writing prose. I start off meaning to tell you a story, and then I get sidetracked with something that interests me, and I go wandering off all over the place; yet here we are, nicely on schedule, at the point where I have just met Phaedra and am just starting off on the long process of getting betrothed to her. In fact, we are here rather ahead of time; so, while we are waiting for the main stream of my narrative to catch up with us, I shall tell you about my first meeting with the Spartans.
As I was about to tell you before I started on about Cleon, I had inherited rather a lot of land as a result of the plague, and as soon as I came to understand what this actually meant, nothing would satisfy me but to go and inspect all this property myself. Philodemus and Callicrates approved of this notion by and large, since it’s right and proper that a man should take an interest in his possessions and not just leave them to a steward or a slave to look after, and so we set off for a tour.
Nowadays, of course, what with the amalgamation of holdings and the buying and selling of land for commercial motives, things are very different; in my day, virtually the only way land changed hands was by inheritance, and so most people with more than two or three acres to their names had little snippets of land here and there all over Attica, and I was no exception. Quite apart from my father’s lands in Pallene and Phyle (which were good properties, if a touch on the mountainous side), I had bits and pieces all over Attica, from Prasiae to Eleutherae and Oropus. Admittedly, none of these parcels of land was large, and with some of them you couldn’t put down a cloth to spread out a picnic without trespassing on the land of at least two neighbours, but that was more or less beside the point as far as I was concerned.
Well, my uncle and my cousin humoured me as far as Eleutherae, but their patience was worn down almost to the lettering, as the saying goes, and I can’t say I blame them; I must have been a quite insufferable companion, with my perpetual boasting and self-preening. For I would insist on examining every last inch, and it was getting on towards the time of year when sensible people were moving back towards the City. We had seen virtually everything there was to see except for a tiny patch of land on the very slopes of Cithaeron — half an acre if that —which had been thrown in as a makeweight in a marriage-settlement about four generations back, and where there had been a few stringy old olive trees the last time anybody had bothered to look.
We were staying at an inn at Eleutherae, and reports were already coming in of the approach of the Spartan army on their annual holiday. As soon as Philodemus heard about this, he paid the bill and gave orders for our mules to be loaded up.
‘We aren’t leaving yet, are we?’ I asked. ‘We haven’t seen the property on Cithaeron.’
‘Don’t be a fool,’ said Philodemus, ‘you heard what the shepherds said. The Spartans will be up here soon.’
‘I don’t care,’ I said. ‘I’m going to see my land.’
‘Eupolis,’ said Philodemus patiently, ‘one of the great things about land as opposed to Spartans is that it stays put. There’s a good chance that it’ll still be there in the summer when the Spartans have all gone home. If you insist we can come back then. Now, we are going home.’
‘You can if you like,’ I said. ‘I’m going to look at my land.’
‘Eupolis,’ replied Philodemus, not so patiently, ‘you can do what you like. Callicrates and I are going home while we still can. If you want to stay here and get killed, that’s a matter between you and your soul.’
What with seeing all that land I had become exceptionally arrogant, and I replied to the effect that neither I nor my soul were going to be kept from taking possession of what was ours by a load of Spartan garlic-eaters. Then Callicrates tried to reason with me — he always had more patience with idiots than his father — and that just made me more stubborn than ever, since when he explained it I could see I was in the wrong. Then Philodemus flew into a temper and stormed out. Callicrates stayed where he was.
‘Aren’t you going too?’ I said grandly.
‘Don’t make things worse,’ said Callicrates angrily. ‘I can’t leave you here on your own, there’s no knowing what stupid things you might do.’
‘You suit yourself then,’ I said. ‘First thing in the morning, we’re going to take a look at my property.’
And we did. Callicrates said that if we were going to do this stupid thing, we might as well do it in the least stupid way possible, so he woke me up about two hours before dawn, bundled me into my sandals and hat, and led the way off up the mountain.
I don’t know if you’ve ever been to Cithaeron, but if you haven’t I can assure you that you haven’t missed anything. It is an indescribably miserable place, even when dawn breaks over it, and the thought that he was risking his life just to give an idiot a guided tour of half an acre of it did little to improve Callicrates’ temper. He wasn’t talking to me and I was damned if I was talking to him, so we stomped along in silence like an old married couple who have quarrelled on the way to market. After what seemed like a hundred years of difficult walking we came to a rocky outcrop with three tree stumps on it, and Callicrates stopped in his tracks, flung his arms wide and said, ‘This is it.’
‘Is it?’ I said.
‘Yes,’ replied Callicrates.
‘How do you know?’ I replied. ‘It looks just-the same as everything else.’
‘I recognise that mortgage-stone over there,’ said Callicrates, pointing to a lump of rock sticking out of the earth. ‘It’s one of the few they never got around to pulling up in Solon’s time. It’s the only interesting thing on the whole of Cithaeron, and I came up here when I was a boy to see it. Can we go now?’
‘Hold on,’ I said. ‘I want to have a look at this ancient monument of yours.’
‘Oh all right then,’ said Callicrates. ‘But for God’s sake hurry. You realise anyone for miles around can see us up here.’
I wandered over and had a look at the stone. It was nothing but a pillar of rock with some very old writing on it which said something like ‘Mnesarchides to Polemarchus; one sixth’.
‘Satisfied?’ Callicrates asked. ‘Or do you want to take measurements?’
Of course I wasn’t the slightest bit interested in a slab of old rock, but just to irritate Callicrates I made a great show of examining the thing minutely, as if I was carried away by the historical significance of it. While I was doing this, I noticed the smoke.
The first thing that struck me about this smoke was that it wasn’t like chimney smoke at all; it was coming up in a big cloud, and it was black. I had seen smoke like that once before, when our ne
ighbour’s barn caught fire when I was a boy.
‘Callicrates,’ I said, ‘come and look at this.’
‘Don’t fool around, Eupolis,’ said Callicrates. ‘I’ve had just about enough of you for one day.’
‘There’s smoke coming from over there,’ I said. ‘What do you think it could be?’
Callicrates followed where I was pointing and his mouth dropped open. ‘There’s a little farm over there,’ he said, ‘I went there once. One of those little places. Belongs to a man called Thrasydemus.’
We looked at each other for a moment. For my part, I admit I was terrified, the way I had never been before in my whole life. Far away in the distance, I could hear the sound of flutes, and everyone knows that the Spartans march to war to flute music. Either that, or it was the God Pan; and I would be hard put to it to say which I would least like to encounter.
‘Let’s go home,’ I said. ‘I don’t like it here any more.’