Athenian Steel (Book I of the The Hellennium) (35 page)

Of course, it was all a facade.

The routine, the compliance, the discipline
ushered in by the arrival of Brasidas were only a cover for the
digging of an escape tunnel. Two tunnels, in fact, on account of
the large number of prisoners. Due for completion by winter's end,
the tunnels were to terminate not just outside the wall of the
prison compound but further off, in places chosen in stolen glances
through and over the wall, where the escapees might emerge into the
cover of densely packed homes.

Styphon was discreetly emptying a load of
loose earth from the pocket created by the fold of his prison smock
over its rope belt when an Athenian guard emerged into the prison
yard and made a line for him. Keeping his nerve, Styphon let the
last of the dirt fall whilst slowly turning to face the oncoming
guard.

"Come with me," the guard said. His hand
rested casually on the club slung at his hip. The jailers wisely
did not carry edged weapons, lest one be taken and used by the
prisoners who greatly outnumbered them.

Under the suspicious gazes of his fellow
prisoners, Styphon followed the guard into the building which
housed the bulk of the jailhouse offices. When the door was closed
and latched behind them, another Athenian came up and bolted irons
connected by rattling chains onto Styphon's wrists and ankles.

"You have a visitor," the second Athenian
said.

The announcement set Styphon's mind at ease:
his summons did not concern the tunnels.

The guards brought him to the same small
interview room in which, until his replacement by Brasidas, he had
sat in one day each month to confer with a Spartan envoy allowed in
by the Athenians. Once, some sixteen months ago, he had shared the
room with the general who had put him here, Demosthenes.

The visitor who waited across the table now
was neither of those. In the eyes of any Spartan, the man now
present was the prototypical Athenian: meticulously clean-shaven
with fluffy waves of womanly brown hair, an intricately decorated
chiton that would be the envy of any Persian princess and porcelain
fingers that looked as if they might break off were he to wrap them
around a spear. The nails he intermittently tapped on the table
were devoid of the tiniest speck of dirt.

Styphon sat. The door was shut behind
him.

"I know how much you Equals hate idle
chatter," the visitor said, "so to be sure you listen to me instead
of humming battle paeans in your head, I shall not bother with any.
I am Alkibiades. You may have heard of me."

Styphon had not. Even if he had, he would
have given the same reaction, which was none. The effeminate fool
paused, as if playing role in one of the dramas his people adored
so much.

"We share an acquaintance," the Athenian
resumed. "You named her, I am told. Actually I am rather more
acquainted with her than you are, I think, unless–well, I digress.
I come to tell you that she kept the promise she made to you on the
island. Your daughter Andrea is here in Athens, and has been for a
year."

However much Styphon had reviled this
arrogant ladyboy from the moment he laid eyes on him, he now could
not help but take an interest in his words. Not that he would let
that show, if he could help it.

The blowhard proceeded: "I am caring for the
girl as if she were my own. Her tutors are Thalassia and the wisest
man in Athens, Socrates. Maybe you have heard of him? No?"

Alkibiades shrugged, oblivious to the
boiling of Styphon's blood at the thought that his offspring might
be raised by this worthless preener.

"No matter. I have not forgotten that she is
Spartan, and neither will she. I was suckled on Lakonian tit, not
that I would insult you by saying that makes me even half-equal to
an Equal. But I do know and respect your ways. I know you let your
females shed their clothes and compete in games," he put a
manicured hand over his heart, "a practice of which I
wholeheartedly approve.

"Maybe you already knew that Andrea is quite
the little runner. And her mind is no less fleet. It is as though
she is a grown woman and a child in the same skin. One minute a
quiet intelligence lurks behind her eyes; the next she is up to
mischief." He laughed sharply. "And gods help any child who insults
her. Or insults Sparta!"

Some revelation creased Alkibiades' smooth
brow. "Shit," he remarked to the tabletop, "she is just like a
miniature–"

The end of that comparison went unspoken. He
looked back and nodded earnestly.

"I just thought that a father should know
such things."

The Athenian's expression was open, sincere,
and Styphon had to admit to himself that his opinion of the fool
had risen since the start of the interview. As for Andrea, Styphon
had spared thoughts for her from time to time while rotting in his
cell. While she certainly could have a better keeper than this
princess seated before him, she could surely do worse. Her current
situation sounded better for her than what she would face in
Sparta, at any rate. Cruelty toward cowards and their kin was
enshrined in Lykurgan law, and Sparta's children could be crueler
even than her grown men and women.

However, gratitude to this preener did not
preclude attempting to pry information from him. After a long,
stony silence which should seem nothing strange to anyone claiming
familiarity with Spartan ways, Styphon summoned up an ability he
rarely exercised, that to deceive.

"I appreciate your coming to tell me of
these things," he said. It was not quite a lie. Hyperbole, perhaps.
Almost certainly it was what the princess, an ego-stroker for
certain, had arrived hoping to hear. "I have worried for Andrea,
and it lifts my spirit to learn she is in good hands. I very much
hope that the gods will let me out of this place one day to see her
again."

Alkibiades was quick to insert, "Would that
I could bring her here, but as you may imagine, there is a need for
discretion."

"On both our parts."

This was the truth, undiluted. It would not
do for Brasidas to learn of Andrea's 'defection' or how it had come
about.

Styphon resumed, less honestly, "I know we
are enemies, Athenian. But on our shared love for the girl, perhaps
you might tell me: is there any talk of what is to be our
fate?"

The visitor appraised Styphon with a pensive
frown before apparently deeming there to be no harm in
answering.

"I would not worry too much," he said. "You
are too useful as hostages to kill. The problem is–for you, anyway,
not us, and least of all me–the problem is that given our recent
victories, few voters have interest signing a treaty, which is your
only path home. The exception is..."

He trailed off, as if catching his loose
tongue. But he had caught it too late; there could be only one
'exception' in these cells.

Styphon leaned forward, chains dragging on
the floor. "If it is Brasidas you mean," he said conspiratorially,
"he may be my superior and my countryman, but he is no friend. I
ran this place until he came. Now his word is the only thing
separating me from death, and I fear the barrier may fall any
day."

Another, briefer appraisal, and Alkibiades
smiled. "There is talk of executing him," he divulged. "It would be
madness, of course. He is too valuable, and not to mention it would
doom the next Athenian strategos to find himself in Spartan hands.
But then, Kleon has a talent for making madness sound as reason."
He chuckled. "I am a little jealous of it, actually. I shall surely
vote for it. Reason is overrated." His light expression grew grave
as he urged, "Keep yourself alive another month, Styphon. 
 You may yet find yourself a tyrant again." He grinned, teeth
agleam. "Tyrant of Shitopolis, sure. But better that than its fool,
right?"

The real fool present, the Athenian, rose
from his chair.

"It was a pleasant chat," he said. "I hope
the next time we have the pleasure, Andrea can be present with us.
Somehow, somewhere. I have learned of late something that I only
suspected before: that nothing is impossible."

The princess punctuated those final, hopeful
words with a knock on the doorframe. An invisible iron bolt slid
back, the door was opened from without, and Alkibiades' presence in
the tiny room was replaced by that of the guard. While returning to
the yard, Styphon pondered carefully his next move. Plenty of men
had seen him taken into the prison office. Likely someone had
already reported the summons to Brasidas. That left no option but
to go straight to the general himself and make a report, lest it
seem he was hiding something.

All eyes were on him as he returned. Meeting
some of the hardest of those eyes with his own dark gaze, he
marched straight to Brasidas. The general shared a cell meant for
twenty in the overcrowded jail with just the twelve members of his
honor guard. Six were present. The most senior put a hand on
Styphon's chest, barring his way.

"You know the drill, dog," the guard warned.
Behind him, Brasidas looked down his sharp nose with neither
approval nor disapproval, but no intention of interfering.

Swallowing his pride, a task which had
become easier by the day since Sphakteria, Styphon lowered himself
to his hands and knees in the open cell door. To howls from the
honor guard and not a few kicks in the rear, he crawled forward,
the ends of his long, matted hair gathering pebbles and dust from
the floor of packed dirt.

"Leave us," Brasidas said to his guard,
silencing them, more or less. When they were alone, Brasidas
commanded, "Sit up and speak, dog."

Styphon fell back onto his haunches before
his pitiless master and related tonelessly, "An Athenian by the
name of Alkibiades visited me."

"Perikles' ward." Suspicion lit Brasidas'
keen eyes. "Why should he come to you and not me?"

"I have no idea, sir," Styphon lied, and
swiftly moved on. Though the prospect of seeing Brasidas dragged
off to face the garrotte before a cheering Athenian mob was not
without its allure, the sense of obedience drilled into him from
birth forced the truth from him: "He says that their Assembly will
soon consider your execution."

Brasidas failed to appear shocked by the
pronouncement. He directed a blank stare over Styphon's head and
mused, "Execute me, hmm? Do you gather that this Alkibiades is a
traitor?"

"He gave a few reasons for sharing the
information with me," Styphon improvised. "Spartan sympathies, the
belief that you are too valuable to kill, distaste for the
politician behind the proposal."

All true, of course, but none the truth
itself: that the information had been coaxed from Alkibiades by
means of a bond best kept secret.

Pursing his lips, the polemarch sank into
thought while absently twisting strands of long, straight hair
between thumb and forefinger. Momentarily his focus returned, and
he said to his kneeling dog, "I rather suspect you are hiding
something. But never mind that. Our escape needs a new timeline. I
think we might just make do with one tunnel instead of two, don't
you?"

Gamelion, the winter month which drew its
name from the fact that most Athenians considered it ideal for a
wedding, was fast approaching, but no one involved in this
particular union, not least the groom, saw fit to delay the
ceremony until then. And so, only a few short weeks after their
betrothal, declarations were made and witnessed in the law courts
that both parties were the legitimate offspring of two citizen
parents, and Laonome's keeper Autokles gave her willingly into the
guardianship of her new lord, Demosthenes of Thria.

The 
gamete
, the wedding feast
thrown by Autokles, was as small an affair as could be managed when
one of the principals was a person of some renown. At its
conclusion, Laonome was borne in a garlanded wagon trailed by a
small entourage of singing and dancing women to her new home in
Tyrmeidai. By the time it had completed its passage through the
interlying demes, the procession had swelled with enough
clingers-on to clog the streets for blocks. In Athens, few men (and
fewer women, where weddings were concerned) were willing to pass up
the chance to join in a celebration of any kind.

Having gone on ahead from the banquet,
Demosthenes awaited the arrival of his bride at his home alongside
his two slaves, both of whom were dressed in their finest. As
slaves, of course, they could not participate in feast or
procession. Eurydike seemed genuinely excited, while Thalassia's
expression, if he read it right, which was hardly certain, held a
glimmer of pride at having made it happen.

When the sound of flutes and singers came to
ear, Eurydike raced to the window hoping to catch first glimpse of
the procession.

"It's here!" she cried, and ran back to take
her place at her adoptive sister's side, a step behind her
master.

The wagon drew up and halted in front of
Demosthenes' garden, its followers choking the street. The bride's
chief attendant, the 
nympheutria
, Chrysis, descended
from the wagon and extended an arm to help Laonome down in her
flowing, borrowed gown of gold-trimmed yellow. Her hair was molded
into elaborate ringlets piled high on her head, and draped over it,
partly obscuring her face, was a veil of translucent Amorgos silk.
She walked the garden path under gently swaying palm fronds to
reach the open doorway in which her husband waited.

At the threshold, with Chrysis gathering up
the gown behind her, Laonome lowered herself and raised a
braceleted forearm above her head. Demosthenes responded by
clasping the proffered wrist, drawing the bride to her feet and
walking her through the doorway and to the hearth of her new home.
In Sparta it was said they clung even more closely to the ancient
practice of bridal abduction, but today, in Athens, this was the
civilized remnant of a barbaric past.