Salamis (7 page)

I purchased horses at the beach. It was a sudden inspiration, directly from Poseidon, no doubt. Many of the refugees waiting to take ship were prosperous people and, as I said, they brought all their animals, but there was no way that all the herds of Attica could fit into those ships, much less be fed on the grass of Salamis. I picked up six horses – all fine animals – for a song, and was blessed into the bargain by the gentleman who owned them. I think he really didn’t want to slit their throats. And I had armour and weapons and three men to move quickly. I promised him that he could have them all back at the end, if all went well.

He was right to fear the slaughtering knife for his animals, though. That’s just what a small body of hoplites was doing to any animal that could not be loaded, butchering them on the spot for meat, and burning the carcasses. Athens meant business: she was not leaving grain or animals to feed the Great King’s army. She was, in a terrible way, destroying herself to hurt her enemy.

But once we left the shore, Attica was a strange land indeed. It was empty. Not only were all the people gone, but so were most of the animals. As we took the road for Plataea over the mountains, I remember passing the tower at Oinoe where my brother died and seeing a cat sleeping in the sun on a wall. That cat was almost the only living thing I saw that day.

Plataea was already emptying by the time I arrived. We made the ride in one day and came in the dark. But Eugenios was there to take my exhausted mare and there were beds made up and sweet-smelling blankets and we collapsed into them, and in the morning there was warm milk heavy with honey and fresh bread.

But there wasn’t a hanging on any of the walls, and the chests that held all my spare armour and all my fine cups and plates, my bronze platters and some nice pieces of loot from my days of piracy – they were all gone. So were the better pieces of Athenian ware, like the krater with the painting of Achilles receiving his armour from his mother, and the kylix with Penelope weaving at her loom, from which our fresco painter took his model.

All gone.

Eugenios smiled in quiet triumph. ‘I sent a mule train to the isthmus under Idomeneus’s orders,’ he said. ‘The slaves packed as soon as your message came.’ He bowed his head. ‘I would like to come with you, lord, if you are going to fight the Persians.’

In fact, there were several dozen men who came that morning, slaves released from service, or sent by their masters. Plataeans are surprisingly generous – many men freed slaves to build the walls in Marathon year, you will recall, and now several of the richer men were freeing farm workers to help Athens. Slaves and servants have a world of their own – look around you, thugater – you think they only talk to you? And Eugenios, my steward, had organised it all.

But I never expected packing my house to be my real task. I had people for that, people trained by Jocasta. And in my very clean kitchen, the great lady of Athens looked me in the eye and said, ‘Antigonus died with the King of Sparta. We heard yesterday. Your sister needs you.’

So I took my new mare and road over the Asopus to Thespiae, and there I found Penelope. She had already cut away a great slice of her hair in mourning and her eyes were red with weeping. She didn’t say anything, certainly nothing accusatory.

She just stood in her house-yard with her arms around me while her slaves packed. She cried a little.

The first words she said were, ‘They mutilated his body.’

By then, we had all heard that the mighty King of Persia, King of Kings, reigning over kings, was a petty tyrant who had ordered the heads of the last five hundred hoplites to fight all hacked off, and their bodies cut up. I won’t even describe it. It was – atimnos
.
Dishonourable. Stupid, too. No Greek who heard of the mutilation of the King and his companions would ever forget it.

It is perhaps one of the curses of warfare that men do such stupid, horrible things and think themselves strong, when in fact, all they prove is that they are weak.

But it told us another story, too. That the Great King intended to mutilate us.

‘Come with me to Salamis,’ I said. ‘Come and help me take care of Euphonia.’

Penelope didn’t smile or laugh or make a joke. ‘I’ll be ready in the morning,’ she said. She shrugged. ‘I think people will need me at the isthmus,’ she said. ‘Your daughter is in good hands.’

‘There’s a rumour that there are Saka cavalry at Thebes.’

We both spat.

‘Come with me now,’ I said. ‘I don’t want to leave you for the Medes.’

She thought a moment, and then she nodded. With surprisingly little fuss she gathered two women and her children and their Thracian nurse and they all mounted horses. Ajax, one of my steadier men from former times and a near neighbour, gave me his handclaps that he’d see her goods safely to Corinth. The phalanx was marching all together, with a long column of baggage carts sandwiched in between, as we’d practised.

And I wasn’t going with them.

I took my sister and her people back to Plataea as the sun went down, the fifth day since we’d left the beaches at Artemisium. There was a watch on the walls of my town and the only people left in it were the freedmen coming with me to row, the rest of my sailors, all armed and having a bit of a feast, and the rearguard of the phalanx under Alcaeus and Bellerophon. They had a hundred men, more or less, to cover the rear of the town’s goods, which had left already.

They’d planned it all without me. Which was as well, because the roads from Thebes were choked with refugees, and Plataea’s gates were shut for the first time in many years.

I left Jocasta with Pen and went to my forge. Styges was there, loading the last of his tools for the baggage train. He was not going back to Salamis with me; many of the Epilektoi were going to the isthmus to be the core of the Plataean phalanx in the new League army. I did not need so many marines on my remaining ships.

He looked up when I came in. Darkness had already fallen and he had a dozen lamps lit to provide light, wasting oil that he would lose anyway, I suppose.

‘Eerie, isn’t it?’ he asked me. ‘So quiet.’

I nodded and pulled out my greaves. In the last fight at Artemisium, someone had put a spear point into my left greave. Or, just possibly, my own sauroter – the bronze point on the butt of a Greek spear – had penetrated the armour. It can happen, when you shift grips. Either way, I had a hole in the armour the size of the tip of my little finger and I needed it repaired.

It was really just an excuse. I needed to do something with my hands. Mourning for loss is an odd thing. It can come and go. I knew that when the King of Sparta fell I had probably lost Briseis, and now, talking to Penelope, seeing her tears, feeling the weight of the loss of her husband – a good man – it was all more real to me.

I knew in my heart that the Athenians would fight for Salamis. I suspected that Adeimantus would make sure that the rest of the allies left them to die alone. I was determined to die with them.

I needed a little time with my god.

‘Fire hot?’ I asked.

Styges smiled. ‘There were still coals when I came back. Tiraeus must have done some work when he came back, and the slaves have been steady. I sent a shipment of finished goods away yesterday.’

It was, after all, our business. We all shared it, although I had paid down the capital to put up the building.

‘Where is Tiraeus?’ I asked. He had not come out to fight at Artemisium. No shame to him – the town picked five hundred men by lot to stay.

‘He took the first mule train towards Corinth, the night Idomeneus arrived.’ Styges frowned. ‘Why do I know all this and you do not?’

‘I’ve been with my sister,’ I said, and explained.

At any rate, I went to the bellows and pumped while he packed fine engraving tools into a leather bag. I told him about Xerxes mutilating the bodies and we both cursed. Probably helped me make the fire hot. When the fire was fierce enough, I rooted around the floor looking for some scrap bronze.

‘This place is too clean,’ I joked.

Styges shrugged. ‘You haven’t been here,’ he said. ‘What are you doing?’

‘Patching greaves,’ I said.

He nodded, looked at mine, and admired the perfection of the workmanship. ‘You made this?’ he asked.

‘No,’ I admitted. ‘A man named Anaxikles, as young as you are yourself. The best armourer I’ve ever seen.’

Styges sniffed. ‘Not so good that you didn’t take a spear point through his work, however.’ He tossed me a rectangle of neatly hammered bronze plate, thinner than parchment. I bent it back and forth between my hands and decided it was suitable.

He grinned. ‘I reckon anything right for mending pots will mend armour.’

I spent a happy hour shaping and planishing my patch. It was a simple process, but soothing. I marked a line right on the greave with a scribing tool for the lower edge of the patch, so that it would always go to the same place as I tried it. Then I began to shape it, first with a simple crease down the middle to match the central ridge on the greave – see here, thugater, where the front of a good greave is like the prow of a ship? The prow of the ship turns water, but the sharp angle at the front of the greave mimics the line of a man’s shin and turns the points of weapons, too.

But of course, the blow had struck where the sharp line of the shin bends away into the soft curve of the top of the foot – a very complex shape, and one that requires forming both by pushing and pulling the metal.

But it was a small patch and soon enough I had it where it would drop over the original like a mask on an actor’s face.

Then I had to planish it to make it as smooth and nice as the original. Anaxikles had been a master at planishing whereas I always found it a little dull, but that night, in an empty Plataea, I worked the bronze willingly, tapping away to make it smooth with my best flat hammer, and then cutting the patch with a file and then polishing it again with a linen cloth full of pumice, and again with ash until it glowed.

And then I punched fourteen holes around the edges and used them to mark fourteen more in the damaged greave itself. By then, Styges was done and his two slaves were waiting for me while I drove the tiny rivets home, nipped them short and widened their ends into conical sockets I’d made with a tool. It was not master work, but it was good, solid work, and when I polished the rivets so flat that they were nothing but faint circles against the bronze, I felt that I had done honour to my god and to Anaxikles who made them. I poured a libation to Hephaestus, and sang one of his hymns, and then I sent a prayer that Lydia and Anaxikles were happy and healthy.

I looked at that greave with real satisfaction. I remember the darkness, the silence, the smell of the burning charcoal, and the spilled wine and the bronze.

Styges was the last man left. We had a ceremony to put out the fire.

‘The Persians will no doubt destroy the town,’ Styges said.

I nodded. ‘Styges,’ I said. ‘I don’t plan to come back. If –
when
Athens loses – I won’t stay alive to see what comes after.’

Styges nodded. ‘Idomeneus said the same, last night,’ he said.

‘Just so you know.’

Styges nodded again, his young face silhouetted against the darkness by the orange glow of the last of our forge fire.

Then we said the prayers and cursed the Persians. Fire has power, and so does darkness, and any time a man willingly extinguishes fire, he has power.

Or so Heraclitus said.

We walked down the hill in a sombre mood, to my house. North of us, near the small acropolis, I could hear oarsmen singing. I hoped they were welcoming our new freedmen … who were only going to be free a few days anyway, before they died. I hoped a few days of wine and freedom had some value.

The world was as black as my forge.

We rose with the dawn and joined the rearguard at the gates. Styges closed the gate from inside and then came over the wall on an orchard ladder, which we broke to smithereens. No need to make it easy for the Medes to take our town.

Aristides took his wife and went with the column to Corinth. He had many friends there. There was a rumour that all the exiles were to be recalled and indeed he’d been with the fleet at Artemisium. But he meant to follow the law – he always followed the law.

‘We might fight before you come back to us,’ I said.

Aristides shook his head. ‘I doubt it. The Great King’s fleet will not move so fast, and besides, Themistocles will have to convince the Corinthians to fight at Salamis.’

I said nothing. Neither did he.

Neither of us believed that Corinth would fight.

In the end, Pen chose to go with Jocasta – mostly, I suspect, because they were both women.

I held her for a long time and then I gave her an ivory scroll tube that held my will and all my plans for Euphonia.

She bit her lip. ‘I can’t lose you, too!’ she said.

I said nothing. Aristides turned his head away. Even Styges tried to be somewhere else.

‘You think you will lose?’ Penelope asked. ‘You think …’

I was in armour. I motioned to Hector to bring my shield. Penelope understood, and she took wine and blessed it – she was a priestess of Hera – and poured it on the face of my aspis, cleaning it. A little flowed through a place where a Persian arrow had penetrated, at Artemisium. Then she wiped it with a clean cloth, and I took it.

She was dry-eyed, as a proper matron must be.

She touched my hand once more, and then – we were gone.

I had one more encounter that morning. We rode away toward Cithaeron and Athens, and we passed my cousins on the road. Simonalkes, younger brother to the Simonides who Teucer killed, and Achilles, and Ajax. Simonides was tall and cautious, and Achilles – what a terrible name to give a boy – was not very bright and very aggressive. They had a wagon and two oxen and all their wives on donkeys. They were walking, and I was riding the opposite way.

I thought to ride by them, but it was too awkward. I was in armour, of course, on a horse. At any rate, I dismounted.

‘You are going the wrong way,’ Simonides said – with a little ill will, I thought.