The Great King (29 page)

But if Aristides wanted to tell the voters of the assembly what they were doing when they exiled him, the display of his two warships – only the very richest men could own warships – fully manned with citizen oarsmen whose wages he paid, and protected by marines who were his ‘gentlemen’ . . .

Let me pause in my story for a moment. I, in fact, owned three warships and a round ship. Those of you who have been listening know that I didn’t
pay
for any of them except the merchanter. I took them from other men. When I took slaves, I often used them as oarsmen for six months or a year in lieu of the price of their freedom. I have been a pirate for most of my life – a pirate whose actions were often sanctioned by Athens or one of the other states. But Aristides was a true aristocrat, who spent his fortune on the good of his city, sponsoring athletic contests, contributing to temples, paying for the chorus in the Dionysian plays, and buying warships.

Themistocles didn’t come to gloat. But Phrynicus did, and he was one of the orator’s closest friends. He came down to the beach and hugged me, and he gave Aristides a letter. They talked for some time, and in the end embraced.

I tried not to stare, but what I saw confirmed my notion that Aristides’ exile was, at some level, contrived.

I had Harpagos and Moire under me as trierarchs, and Megakles as the captain of the
Swan
. Aristides had Heraclides, one of my oldest mentors, as his second trierarch.

With five triremes and a stores ship, we were probably the most powerful squadron in the Aegean that summer, and the pity of it was that we were bound on nothing more profitable than an embassy to the Great King – and even I suspected that pillaging some Egyptian ships and a few Carthaginian or Tyrian freighters would
not
enhance our reception at Susa.

But as we ran along the coast of Euboea and east to Skyros, on the balmy summer zephyrs, the sea was full of potential prizes, and my oarsmen looked at me as I stood amidships – watching a pair of Carthaginian biremes bound for the Hellespont, watching a Tyrian merchantman wallow in the soft breeze, downwind and easy prey.

When they grumbled, I’d catch someone’s eye and point to the wreath of olive at the bow.

I had in mind a little scouting on my way to Tarsus. In fact, all the men who could navigate were scratching their heads. Tarsus is south of Rhodos and around the corner from Cyprus and beyond.

On the beach below the temple on the rock – I never caught its name – Aristides and I laid out our plans for our officers.

‘Our first intention is to see if Xerxes is really building a canal behind Mount Athos,’ Aristides said bluntly. ‘Second, to see if he is bridging the Hellespont.’

Bulis’s face gave nothing away, but Sparthius laughed. ‘So – we’re suddenly hoplites in an Athenian naval expedition?’ he asked.

Aristides got along well with both of my Spartans – of course he did. He admired their way of life. So he shook his head. ‘Nothing of the sort. On the one hand, we all learn about how advanced the Great King’s plans are; on the other hand, we look at his defences. The sailing season is young. We have more than a month to reach Tarsus and start inland.’

I have to mention that, before I knew that Aristides was coming, I had made the plan to go to Susa or Persepolis via Tarsus. There were a number of reasons for this, but the most important was simple distance. It is much easier to travel by sea than by road. Most Greeks going to the Great King went to Tarsus, which placed a man almost two-thirds of the way to Persia, or at least to Babylon.

I had also dispatched letters – to Artapherenes, to Briseis, and to my friend Cyrus, asking for letters of safe conduct and permission to use the messenger stations on the Royal Road.

When Aristides announced his intention of joining us, I told him of my plans, and he agreed.

‘I had no notion of safe conducts,’ he said.

And that was that.

The sailing weather was perfect. But keeping my men together – that was harder. The voyage offered no chance of heavy profit, but once news of our intention to scout the Great King’s preparations made its way down to the oar benches, every man knew that we were running risks.

So that night on Skyros, when we were done briefing the officers, I assembled the oarsmen – all of them – and gave a speech. I can’t quote it – but I told them the truth. I told them that we were the first ships of a free Greek navy. That we had to do what we were doing for every free man and woman in all of Greece. And that it was just as important for them to behave themselves well in Asian ports as it was for them to row well as we slipped along the Thracian coast.

When I was done, no one cheered, but they walked off into the darkness in a sombre mood.

Aristides shook his head. ‘You could be a fine orator,’ he said. ‘Your voice is high pitched, but you make men listen.’

Bulis lay on the sand by my fire, his head on his hands. ‘You believe that?’ he asked me.

‘Yes,’ I said.

He nodded. ‘Do you think we can defeat the Great King?’ he asked.

‘Yes,’I said.

‘Good. So do I. So do all the Spartans. It is the other Greeks for whom I have concerns.’

We spent the next night at sea. We had the store ship, and she had a bricked hearth for cooking. It is not easy to feed six hundred men out of one hearth, but with cold meat and bread, we got them fed.

We laid to for as long as it took to get a good rest and get food. I spent the entire time worrying about that fire on
Swan.
Fire, at sea, is not man’s friend.

Then we ran almost due north. I had the stars as a guide, but these waters were relatively unfamiliar to me. Not so for Harpagos or Moire, who had sailed to Thrace for slaves and hides and everything else all the years I’d been gone. I followed the Pole Star as the Carthaginians taught, and in the dawn, Sekla slapped my back and called me the king of navigators as Mount Athos rose out of the sea, due north.

Our warships stood off, well over the horizon from any but a watcher on Athos’s highest peak, or the gods themselves, and the tubby
Swan
bore in as if sailing for the Chersonese. We sailed parallel and a little farther out to sea – a standard trick of piracy when scouting a potentially profitable coast.

We didn’t have to close the Athos peninsula to see the Persian preparations. Megakles did, because he’s an excellent sailor and a daring man, but before the mainland was more than a smudge, we could see the shipping all along the coast – small boats, round ships and galleys.

Perhaps fifty sails in view. For the wilderness of Thrace, that was . . . incredible.

We swept north on a favourable wind for Thassos, and I began to have real apprehensions about the Persian invasion.

As in – was it imminent?

Nor did I any longer think our five ships were the strongest squadron in the Aegean.

We had our sails down as soon as we began to see warships, and we rowed – oarsmen cursing – under bare poles. Aristides had a different rig from mine and unstepped his masts.

Nothing irks an oarsman like rowing when the wind is favourable for sailing.

I lived in fear, moment to moment, that the Persian fleet would send ships to look at us. We were too far for me to see what ships they were, but I had to guess most of them were Phoenician.

All afternoon, I cheated my steering oars to the north and east, trying to be invisible, while one tiny sailing ship did the work, going right in among them. In late afternoon we landed on Thassos and bought sheep from shepherds so barbaric we couldn’t understand their Greek. We had all our marines in armour, and Aristides – an old campaigner – taught me a new trick by building a small tower on the headland, which would give us precious warning of an attack.

But we were not disturbed in our sleep, and in the morning we watched the sun rise in the east and we dried our hulls, all our cargo stacked in the bright sun on the beach – waiting for Megakles.

And waiting.

Noon passed, and the oarsmen slept, and the Spartans ran up and down the beach. My marines didn’t exercise – they were still on duty, sleeping in watches. As Bulis – well ahead of his friend – turned at the rocky promontory to run back, I saw him pause.

He was saying something to Brasidas.

Brasidas shrugged and continued towards the tower – really, just a set of poles tied together with a floor of boughs, but it placed a man at treetop height.

Bulis came running back down the beach, but during the time that he and Brasidas spoke, Sparthius had passed him, and now they were both sprinting, flat out, for the campfires and the line of boats. Men got up from their midday naps to cheer the Spartans, who looked like gods.

And that started a whole set of contests. Men wrestled and boxed and even fenced with oars – a very popular and very dangerous oarsmen’s game.

I stood on the beach and worried.

I was still in shock at what I had seen the day before.

After midday, Aristides came with several of his young men. He sat on a rock, and his hypaspist poured wine from a skin.

‘You worry too much,’ he said, but he had the same lines under his eyes as I had.

I shrugged. I remember looking around at his friends – I didn’t know most of them, although I knew his nephew, and I knew Aeschylus’s younger brother and of course I knew Heraklides. ‘I saw a great many Persian ships yesterday,’ I said.

Aristides rubbed the top of his nose – a much-imitated facial tic in the Athenian assembly.

‘One thing to hear of it and another to see it,’ he said.

We shared the wine, and I heard that Aeschylus’s younger brother was planning to go into politics, that the youngest man was actually my enemy Cleitus’s youngest sibling Alcibiades. He was a handsome devil, and he had that look – arrogance, yes, but also a total disregard for the opinions of others – that sets young men apart and makes them so easy to hate. He and his older brother Cleinias were both followers of Aristides. They were also rich and powerful enough to own ships, and they were with us to ‘learn the ropes’. Athenian aristocrats worked pretty hard, back then.

The two Alcmaeonidae watched me like hawks, but their fascination wasn’t devoid of respect. If Aristides even deigned to notice, he paid them no heed.

And while I thought all these thoughts, distracted for the first time in hours, Megakles crept over the horizon in his little
Swan.

‘Elaeus is
full
of ships,’ Megakles shouted, before he leapt over the side of
Swan
and swam ashore like the fisherman he was.

Naked and dripping, he emerged like Poseidon himself. ‘There’re
fifty
warships in Elaeus bay, and another six or seven rowing guard. All Phoenicians. Nicolas saw two more hulls he thought that he knew – Samian Greeks.’

‘Could be worse,’ I said. Athens had as many ships. Aristides and I exchanged looks and then we were off, gathering our athletic oarsmen, pulling down the tower, and racing to sea – like pirates.

From Thassos we ran downwind, under sail, to Samothrace, and we kept the shoreline out of sight to the north all the way. We saw fishing boats twice, but no more warships, and we made camp on the south side of Samothrace, with a tower and guards, and doused fires as soon as the food was cooked.

And in the dawn – a cold, grey dawn with rain in it – we were off again, this time running under sail into the mouth of the Hellespont. If the Medes saw us – well, they saw us. You cannot hide in a body of water six miles wide.

It was late afternoon by the time we were near Troy. And now, despite our efforts at stealth, it was impossible to hide our presence. We had fishing boats all around us from the towns on the Bosporus, and we had a dozen military triremes – Ionian Greeks – patrolling the waters in the difficult, choppy sea just south of Troy.

I watched the ships as we ran in, looking for a sign that one of them was Archilogos, once my master, then my friend, and now my sworn enemy. It was hard to define how we all knew that these were Greek ships and not Phoenicians or Carthaginians or Aegyptians, but Sekla knew, I knew, and Aristides knew, and we ran down on them with all our rowers at their stations and all of our marines in harness.

They paid us no heed at all, so with a flash of oars, we turned on the opposite tack and sailed north into the main channel. I can only assume that they thought we were part of the Persian fleet. Why would they not?

Who expected Athenian ships in these waters? Cimon and Miltiades had been driven from here six years before.

We ran north, but again, we already knew what we would find.

The reality, however, was far more chilling even than what we had seen off Mount Athos.

First, the narrow Hellespont was choked with shipping. I stopped counting at a hundred boats – warships, merchant ships, fishermen. Access to the Euxine makes this one of the busiest pieces of water under the sun – I had lived and sailed here for years – but this was extreme.

And fifty stades north of Troy, we came in sight of the greatest concentration of shipping I had seen since we fled from the Persian fleet in the disaster at Lades.

I turned to Leukas, at the helm, and made a turning motion with my hand.

‘Ready about!’ Leukas screamed. Marines on the top deck threw themselves flat so as not to go over the side – neither triremes nor trimiolas have railings on most of the deck – and the deck crew ran about like ants in a disturbed nest trying to get the mainsail down.

The port-side rowers reversed their cushions, and Hector signalled frantically to Harpagos, the next ship aft of us.

There were at least two hundred warships at Abydos on the Asian side. I didn’t wait to learn more.

Xerxes was coming.

Two days later, we were sitting in the palace in Mythymna, on Lesvos. My hands had stopped shaking, but the terror was real. We had seen three hundred warships. Off Mount Athos, it had been possible to see an Athenian fleet stopping the Great King’s fleet, but with three hundred ships already at sea, and they only the harbingers . . .

‘It doesn’t matter whether he’s going to build bridges or simply ferry his army a taxeis at a time,’ I insisted to Aristides. The Athenians were a talkative lot, and they were debating what the great fleet meant, and whether Xerxes was really bold enough to try and bridge the Hellespont.