Of Merchants & Heros (48 page)

He was, indeed, more a part of Pasithea’s idiosyncratic family than a servant, and he talked of her with fond affection, and pointed out with broad smiles, as he led us through to the garden, the garlands he had woven round the columns, of violet and dark hyacinth, in honour of Menexenos’s victory.

The supper-couches had been set out on the terrace, and Pasithea was waiting there. She kissed Menexenos on the cheek, saying, ‘At last, the victor! This evening, my dear, you shall share a couch with me.’ She was dressed exquisitely as always, in a dark, shimmering robe of silk and taffeta, and on her breast a necklace of woven gold, inlaid with red cornelian.

I was seated with one of the other guests, one of Pasithea’s female friends from Korinth, a cultured young courtesan who had recently come back from Alexandria in Egypt, and was full of its marvels. In the corner a single musician sat under the arbour, picking out a tune on a lyre, and, all about the garden, lights glimmered from tiny shaded lamps.

I looked towards Pasithea and Menexenos. Already they were deep in conversation. I smiled to myself. Truly, I thought, she had made an art of pleasure.

Presently, when Niko had served the wine, she raised her cup and toasted Menexenos, saying, ‘You won, my dear. I knew you would. And now I want to hear all about it.’

So he told her of the race, adding at the end, ‘But I knew the Aiginetian was faster. He only lost because he hated Thorax more than he cared about winning.’

‘Well maybe he
was
faster,’ she replied. ‘But what of it? Whatever it takes to win the race, clearly it is not speed alone.’

She let out a happy sigh and smiled, and in the silence the music sounded gently. Everything – the setting, the delicate food, the cool wine – was perfectly balanced, designed to heighten the senses, not overwhelm them.

‘What now, Pasithea?’ asked Menexenos. ‘Will you stay in Korinth?’

She cast her eyes around the shadowy walled garden with its flickering lights and dark climbing shrubs. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘For now I shall stay. I shall enjoy my garden, which I have missed; I shall entertain my friends, and I shall improve my mind. What more could I ask? I thank the gods for such a life . . . And you, Menexenos, what will you do?’

He turned and met my eyes. ‘Marcus wants me to go to Italy, to meet his mother and sister.’

She nodded and smiled, and said, ‘Is that so? Well it is about time.’

They talked on, and, with happiness in my heart, I watched them.

He sat with his broad, muscular hand unconsciously upon the hem of her robe. His eyes were bright with wine and pleasure. They might almost have been lovers.

He had dressed that night in his best white tunic, the one with a border of meandering squares; and in his thick bronze hair he wore a spray of myrtle. I thought how he had changed me, with his example, and with his gentle, constant love, which was like a rock upon which I could build my life. A sadness touched me. I shook my head, and took up my wine-cup. For me the world held nothing so dear.

Somewhere on the high wall, beyond the pool of light, a bird suddenly cried out, crow-like, harsh and discordant. No one seemed to notice. The girl beside me was talking on about her visit to Alexandria; but before I turned to answer her I made a quick private sign against the gods of night, who lie in wait for the unwary. The crow-call had reminded me, lest ever I should forget.

Later, shortly before we left, Pasithea touched my arm and said, ‘Where is Titus tonight, Marcus?’

‘Titus?’ I answered. ‘Why, I don’t know. I expect he’s celebrating somewhere, since that is what all of Korinth is doing.’

‘Do you think so?’ she said quietly. ‘Why don’t you call in and see him? Something tells me he will be at home.’

I made some light answer, saying the last place he would be was his own quarters, when there must be a thousand parties he had been invited to. But there was something – a momentary look – that fixed these words in my mind; and after, walking back with Menexenos and the link-boy, I told them to go on ahead, saying I would catch up later, and turned off to the house where Titus was staying.

At the gate I greeted the guard – a man I knew – and took some time to ask after his comrades. Then, eventually, I drew the air of the warm night into my lungs, looked around, and said, ‘Is Titus back from celebrating yet? I wanted to wish him well.’

‘Why no, Marcus sir. He never went out.’

‘Then he has friends here?’

‘Not that either. He is alone.’

I found him in his workroom. The only light came from a single lamp, glimmering in the corner. He turned upon hearing the door, to see who it was.

‘Why there you are!’ I said brightly – I had drunk more than usual that night, and was in the sort of mood where the whole world is beautiful. ‘Are you ill, or what is it? Tonight you are the toast of all Greece, and yet you sit in the dark alone.’

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?’