by Paul Waters
As I spoke I walked across the marbled floor to where he sat. He looked up at me, and then the lamplight caught his face.
‘But what has happened?’ I cried, staring at him.
He looked away, and passed his hand across his eyes. Without a thought of waiting to be asked, I sat down beside him on the couch.
A pitcher stood on the low table, and a cup, half full of wine. I cast about with my eyes, in case whatever disaster had befallen him lay there among the shadows. But there was nothing.
Then, in a voice of infinite sadness, he said, ‘It is over. I have nothing more to reach for.’
I stared at him, not understanding; but for a long while he stayed silent, with his head propped on his hands, looking down at the floor. From somewhere far off, through the open window, came dance-music and men’s laughter. It sounded suddenly harsh and unpleasant.
Eventually he drew a heavy breath and said, ‘I had a dream. It sustained me through my youth. It fed me when nothing else could.
It was the light that drew me on.’
He shook his head. ‘Listen to them. They have their freedom, but they do not understand how to keep it. It is no more than a word to them. They will squabble and bicker and make petty wars on one another just as before, until once again they find themselves enslaved. And yet I dreamt of this day, I lived to make this happen.
And what is it, Marcus? No more than an illusion, a lie, a child’s fantasy.’
‘A dream is not a lie,’ I said. ‘It made you what you are, and because of your dream, many men have followed you, and believed in you. Perhaps you are right and the Greeks will not use their freedom wisely. Yet they have it, and you gave it to them. Because of you, men who have not yet been born will climb higher than they thought possible; and when they grow weary, and feel they cannot go on, they will say to themselves, “Yet there was another, who took this path before me.” ’
He turned his face to me, and I went on, ‘There are times, in our dreams, or on the mountaintop, or in the moment of love, when we are touched by the hand of God, and we see the whole world as it should be seen, in its true proportion. It is in such moments that we know what is real. A shoot in springtime does not know why it grows to the light, and yet it grows; and so it is with men. There is no nobler task than to lead where others might follow, if only they would strive for it. You had a childhood dream, and tonight, because you dreamt that dream, and refused to let fools tell you it was not, Greece once more has her freedom. A man is not a god. But let him strive to be more than he is, and in doing so he will find himself.’
I finished, and afterwards Titus sat for a long time silent. Finally he leant forward and reached for the pitcher.
‘Here, drink with me,’ he said. ‘We have been a long way together, you and I.’
We drank, and did not speak. And as I sat there in the shadows, the thought came to me like the touch of loneliness that for all my wishing it otherwise, my words had not reached him. I thought of the day, long ago, when as a boy I had first set out from Praeneste at my father’s side, when he told me it was time I saw something of the world. That boy was gone, and in his place sat the man I had become. Did Titus not see what I saw, he who had given me part of his dream? I cannot say. But when he looked away I saw the brightness fall from his face, and his stricken look returned.
I thought, next morning, it was the sunlight streaming through the shutters that had woken me. Then I heard once again the rapping on the courtyard door.
I listened for the slave, but he must have gone out for provisions, or be sleeping still. Taking care not to wake Menexenos, I twisted off the edge of the bed, grabbed a towel, and walked out across the inner court to the door.
‘Oh, Marcus sir, thank God I have found you!’
I looked at the man. Though I knew his face, my sleep-hazed mind could not work out what he was doing here at the Isthmos.
‘Florus,’ I said eventually, blinking at him. ‘What is it? Why are you here?’
He stood in the doorway, staring at me. His face and travelling cloak were dusty. He looked as though he had ridden all the way from Athens.
‘What is it?’ I said again.
‘Why, anyone could have told him. I hardly need explain the danger to you, sir.’
He could not keep his plump hands still. He kept pressing one into the other, as if he were grinding wheat in his palms. Sharply I said, ‘Calm yourself, Florus. Sit down here. You have found me. Now tell me what has happened.’
‘It is your father, sir. Your stepfather, I mean. I did not know what else to do. I have been on the road since yesterday, and looking for you since the dawn. They have taken him, and I don’t know what to do, if only I had—’
‘Who has taken him, Florus?’
‘Why, pirates. Did I not say? The pirates have taken him.’
I sat him down, and managed to calm him somewhat, and eventually, bit by bit, I got it out of him. The previous day – or the day before, he could not remember – a ship had docked at Piraeus carrying a sailor from my stepfather’s ship. The sailor had been freed by the pirates – so he claimed – in order to bring back to Athens the ransom demand. Most of those on board had been killed. But not Caecilius. The pirates, seeing he was a rich man who would command a high price, had spared him; they would let him live until the next moon. After that, if there was no gold, they would cut him up and feed him to the fishes.
‘Curse him!’ I cried. ‘I told him to keep out of Asia; I told him no good would come of it.’ But then, as if a god had touched me on the shoulder, I shivered, and my hands went cold, and looking him in the face I said, ‘What pirate, Florus, was this? What was his name?’
But even then I knew.
He shifted, biting his lip, and looked down at the pattern in the tiles at his feet, avoiding my eyes. I remember that pattern. It was of Herakles, wrestling with the Kretan bull.
‘You know how it is,’ he said, making a helpless gesture, ‘everyone talks of him, but in truth it could be any pirate—’
But then, looking up, he saw my face and said, ‘It was Dikaiarchos.’
In my mind the past came crowding in – the Libyan with the gold hoop earring, the girl stepping to her death, and my father’s headless corpse. I shivered as if from fever, and felt a clenching in my stomach. I remembered Mars the Avenger, and my cry to heaven, sealed with blood on the altar of my ancestors. Such bonds could not be broken; they were part of the deep structure of the world, and now Dikaiarchos was part of me.
My head was ringing. I pressed my palms to my eyes, and saw blackness and images of death. Through it I became aware of Florus, babbling on about gold and payments. Angrily I shouted, ‘Shut up Florus! There will be no gold!’
He looked at me in horror. ‘But sir, but Marcus sir, if you don’t pay they will kill him. He is your father!’
‘No; curse you! He is not. I told him not to go. Let him answer for his actions!’
He drew his breath to speak again, but then I saw his eyes move.
I looked round. It was Menexenos, standing in the doorway to our room. He was naked still. His hair was tousled from sleep.
‘Good day, sir,’ said Florus, switching from Latin into his bad Greek.
I do not know how long Menexenos had been listening; but he must have understood enough. Quietly he said, ‘You must go; you know that.’
Our eyes met and locked; but I could not speak.
He said, ‘You must end it, or he will consume you.’
‘No, Menexenos. I can leave it. It is past. Caecilius brought this on himself.’
His eyes studied my face. After a pause he said, ‘This has nothing to do with Caecilius. You know that. If not now, then it will be some other time. You cannot turn away.’
I shook my head. But in my heart I knew he was right. And as my mind raced, crowding with the shades of the dead, beside me Florus talked on, words I no longer recall.
We sailed from Korinth. Titus said, ‘Take whatever you need.�
� I took a skilled crew and a small fighting force. And Menexenos.
We sailed under an immense cloudless springtime sky, over a lapis-blue sea between rocky, wooded islands. A strangeness had descended on me, like the still before a tempest, and for long periods I sat silent in the bow of the ship, reflecting on how my father, and inexorable fate, had first brought me to Dikaiarchos; and now my stepfather, in his blindness and his greed, was bringing me back. The time had come to repay blood with blood, to avenge my father’s shade: it was what I had prayed for; it was the dark anger that had fashioned my life and made me different from other men. And yet, on the threshold of what my soul had burned for, I felt cold and reluctant and full of foreboding. I frowned down at the light-flecked water dancing below the bow, as if, beneath the shining surface of the sea, there lay concealed some answer to the mystery of my life.
But all I saw was reflected sunlight and dancing spray, and the shadow of my own form moving on the water.
Eventually I put these brooding thoughts from my mind, still unresolved, and prepared for battle, sitting with Menexenos and the others on the deck, waxing the straps of my armour, oiling my sword.
We came at length to a small island close to Paros, where Florus had said the ransom must be sent. As we drew close, the captain pointed to the land and said, ‘What’s that?’
Everyone looked. On the white sand of a long curving bay stood two crude structures, fashioned from rocks and driftwood.
‘They are altars to Lawlessness and Impiety,’ I said, remembering. ‘He sets them up wherever he goes. It amuses him.’
‘Does he not fear the gods?’
‘He laughs at them. He says there are no gods.’
The captain, a pious Roman, shook his head and said no more.
The island was covered with a forest of pine, a pale-green canopy with, here and there, white marble outcrops showing through. We looked carefully, but saw no sign of movement; but we knew there would be spies, concealed and watching, from somewhere among the wooded high-points. We sailed deliberately on, as if we were passing by, taking care to look like a merchant-trader; then, in the last of the dusk, we turned about and made landfall on the far side, in a small inlet concealed from view by rising cliffs.
We set no fire that night, but rested by the ship, beneath the waxing moon; and next morning, with the first glimmer of dawn, we set off on foot along the track which led inland between the pines.
The pirates had made their encampment below a low treeless promontory that commanded views of the eastern and southern approaches. The place had once been someone’s farm; there was a courtyard and a well, and a low-roofed red-tiled house, and terraces of vine and olive, neglected and overgrown.
We crept up through the scrub to the stone gateway of the enclosure. It was early still. They had not even posted sentries, so confident were they of their security.
‘You would think they owned the whole island,’ muttered the Roman captain beside me.
‘They do,’ said Menexenos. ‘They will have enslaved or driven off the inhabitants long ago. No one challenges them; they think they have nothing to fear.’
We found them at their food. There were about thirty of them, outnumbering us three to one, deserters from foreign armies, common criminals, urban rabble, clad in mismatched stolen clothes, the kind of men I had seen before at Korinth and in Epeiros.
They were used to scoring victories over defenceless civilians: they were no match for a well-disciplined force of Roman troops, few though we were. I fought with hard, cold determination, and all the time I was searching for only one man – and nowhere did I see him.
When the fighting was over and the few prisoners were kneeling in submission, I grabbed one of them by the matted strands of his filthy hair, and jerking his head back held my sword-point to his throat. ‘Where is he?’ I shouted, ‘Where is Dikaiarchos?’
At first he tried to pretend he did not know what I was talking about. But when he realized I would kill him, he spat on the ground, and sneered, ‘You will never catch him. You cannot defeat him.’
I cast him forward into the dirt, and leaving the others scrambled up the path between the stepped terraces. Below me, on the far side, down a steep track, the pirate ship lay beached and unattended. I cast my eyes about in frustration. The bay – an inland bay – stretched in a long curve northwards, enclosed by a sandy peninsula ending at a headland, which gave onto the open sea. The distance was, I guessed, about two miles; and halfway between me and the open sea, moving with almost serene purpose on the sheltered water, was a small sailing cutter, with one man at the helm, evading me once again.
For a moment I stared in silence. The captain came up, with Menexenos.
‘Can we catch him?’ I asked. ‘Can we bring the ship round?’
But I knew, even before he answered, that it would take too long.
I stared out at the small receding craft. Even before I knew clearly what I intended, my hands were at the straps of my armour.
‘Here, take my sword.’
I began pulling off my cuirass and boots.
‘I’ll come with you.’
‘No,’ I said, staying his hand, which had already moved to his own armour-straps.
His eyes met mine.
‘It must be alone, him and me . . . If I can catch him.’
I gave him a final press on the arm, then turned and bounded down the steep path; and when I reached the beach I began to run.
He was at the helm of the cutter, looking ahead to the place between the rocks where the lagoon let out into the sea. His wild blond mane of hair stirred in the breeze. Here in the open I could feel it, warm and dry, blowing up from the southwest; it favoured him, but not quite, so that, as he advanced, he was forced to tack and attend to the sail.
My bare feet struck on the hard white sand. I paced myself, preserving my breath and strength. At the nearest point, where my running could bring me no closer, I halted, pulled off the rest of my clothes, all except my belt and dagger, and went crashing into the water.
I think he turned then, but with the glare, I could not be sure. I ploughed through the shallows, then began to swim, making for the point ahead of the cutter where the wind was taking it. Even then I had no clear idea of what I should do; yet I felt the unfolding of my destiny, as if some powerful hand were drawing me on.
The cutter was nearing the headland and the open sea; wind filled the sail; a bow-wave appeared as it picked up speed. I raised my head as I swam, gauging the distance between us. Dikaiarchos was making one final change of course to take him through the rocky strait; the cutter would cross my path: but only once, and it was moving faster than I could swim. I knew, if I missed him, there would be no second chance.
The black hull bore down on me like some skimming sea- creature, closer and closer, until I could make out the fine detail of the painted eye etched in white on the bow. And then, when it was almost upon me, its direction changed, only slightly, but enough to pass me by. I ducked down and swam, but even as I swam I sensed its passing, and when I looked again it was the receding stern I saw.
I threw myself after it, but I knew it was useless: I could not match its speed. Then I saw something moving and splashing beside me in the craft’s wake about a spear-length away; I screwed up my eyes against the glare, thinking at first it was a fish or bird. Then I saw. It was the mooring lanyard, trailing in the water, which, in his haste, Dikaiarchos had not pulled aboard. The knot in it was snagging on the surface. I lunged forward and grabbed at it.
The lanyard, slimy with weed, slipped through my hands; but then, near the end of its length, my hand found the knot which had been hopping and dancing on the water. The line jerked tight, my body surged forward, and in the cutter, Dikaiarchos, feeling the movement, looked round.
I pulled myself along the rope and hooked my arm over the bulwark, and at the same time he sprang from his place by the helm.
A knife flashed in his hand, and he brought it down hard at
the place where, an instant before, I had been clinging on. The blade lodged in the wood with a shudder. He had struck with such force that he needed both hands to pull it free, and this gave me a moment to regain my hold – but only a moment, before, once again, he brought down the blade, aiming for my hands and forearms where I was trying to hold on. Each time he struck out I was forced to let go, first with one hand, then the other, as I tried to avoid him. My hands slipped and slid on the varnished wood. Then suddenly, in the midst of this, the cutter gave a violent lurch as a wind-flaw caught the sail and the untended helm swung round. Dikaiarchos staggered back; and I, with a shout of frustration, lost my grip altogether and fell crashing back into the water.
I watched bitterly as the black hull raced away from me. I could see him fighting with the sail-rope and the helm, and glancing urgently ahead. And then I saw why. In his struggle to dislodge me he had missed his course: he was no longer heading for the gap of open sea, but for the jagged grey rocks that rose up on one side of the headland. With an angry swipe he threw the helm hard over. The cutter veered sharply round, avoided the rocks, and ran skimming up onto the sand of the long beach.
He leapt out, but he did not run. He stood waiting, watching with narrowed eyes while I swam to shore and climbed naked from the water.
‘I can see,’ he called out, when I was near enough to hail, ‘that I shall have to kill you.’
I advanced along the sea-strand, brandishing my dagger in my fist.
‘Fight me!’ I yelled. ‘And kill me if you can.’
He laughed. ‘What am I to you, Roman? Do you want gold? Is that it?’
I threw his laughter harshly back at him.
‘Even now, do you not know me?’
He regarded me, slitting his eyes against the glare of the white sand.
‘Remember Epeiros!’ I cried. ‘You killed my father there.’
He shrugged.