Tides of War (57 page)

I passed the correspondence back to Polemides. His aspect conveyed clearly that he shared this condemnation articulated by his aunt, and to such a depth as to preclude contravention, at least now, at this hour. I felt him slip from me as a corpse upon dark water, when the boat hook fails of purchase and one’s vessel, driven by its way, passes on, to put about no more.

The jailer returned; I was released. I crossed the Iron Court to Socrates’ cell and passed, in that company, the remainder of the evening. Our master’s days were now down to three. The sacred ship returning from Delos had been sighted off Sounium that morn; her arrival at Athens would put a period to the reprieve which had thus far postponed his execution. One anticipated the vessel this night. She did not turn up, however. A dream of Socrates had predicted this. A fair woman in white robes had appeared to him, he recounted to us gathered that evening, and addressing him by name, declared,

A terrible despair gripped my heart, communicated in part from Polemides, whose recollection of the hours of our country’s fall coincided with the pending execution of my master, which to me stood as a second and more calamitous overthrow, for it forecast, I felt, not alone the passing of our sovereignty but the ideal of democracy herself.

I passed out of the prison last of all that night. I had made up my mind to speak in person with Polemides no more, nor even convey his wishes to the authorities. He had made his choice; let him enact it. The passageway out stood silent save a carpenter framing a door in the prison shop. I glanced in. The iron bands I took at first for some sort of hinge or brace. At once I recognized the instrument.

It was no door.

It was the
tympanon,
upon which Polemides would be executed. He would be affixed to the plank, naked, the instrument itself then elevated upright with the man bound upon it. No one would be permitted to approach,
or bring aid of any kind; only the executioner would remain, to apply the torment prescribed by the court and to certify the condemned’s demise. The carpenter haled me in, yarning amiably as he worked. He must, he imparted, fabricate a fresh device for each execution. “You’d not believe what runs out of a man’s guts, sir. The dead comes off light as a doll.”

He showed me how the instrument worked. Four cramp irons imprisoned the victim’s limbs, a fifth yoke of chain cinched his throat. Turning pegs tightened this, choking the breath. No blood, that was the apparatus’s strong point.

I asked if this particular device was for Polemides. The joiner didn’t know; it was not his practice to inquire. One convicted of treason, though, he observed, may not be buried in Attica or “any land of which the Athenians are masters.” The corpse would be cast out, unburied, for the dogs and crows.

The carpenter considered this appliance the latest in humane treatment. “Better than chucking ’em into the Dead Man’s Pit, like the generals after Arginousai. That was bloody frightful. My father made the traps for that. No one had never done six at once, so three had to wait. That was horrible, ’cause you could hear the sound as the first three hit. The younger Pericles and Diomedon went off without no shroud. None of ’em spoke a word, just Diomedon. ‘Let’s get it over with.’”

Best of all things, Theognis says, is never to be born

Some days previous, succeeding my second interview with Eunice, I had summoned my bloodhounds Myron and Lado and, proffering a premium, spurred them to redouble their efforts to discover the particulars of the homicide with which our client was charged. Nor did my sleuths tarry, but presented themselves two mornings later. They had found a man, a sailor at the time. An eyewitness. He would not testify in person as he owed money and did not wish to advertise his presence in the city. For a consideration, however, he would dictate an affidavit and swear an oath to its truth.

Here is that document. The man identifies himself as a citizen of the district of Amphitrope and former petty officer of the fleet:

Two dawns remained before Socrates must drink the hemlock. One could not sleep but thrashed nightlong, only to doze as in a nightmare at dawn’s pallor.

It was at this hour my attendant knocked, reporting a young man at the gate. The lad refused to give his name, but importuned my attendance most earnestly. The youth had a sum of money, my servant accounted, which he wished to deliver into my keeping.

Curiosity drew both my sons with me to the threshold. The lad, when we opened to him, appeared just a stripling, sixteen at most, and slight as a stalk. I invited him within.

“No thank you, sir. I come only as a representative of certain concerned citizens. Quite a body, if I don’t say.”

The child was so earnest that one almost laughed, his oration offered with the stilted solemnity of one composed in advance and committed to memory.

“I wish,” he declared, “only to place these funds in your hand, Captain, on behalf of Polemides the son of Nicolaus of Acharnae, for you to employ in his defense as you see fit. I am young, sir, and have no experience of the courts. One cannot but imagine, however, that certain expenses may arise….”

That which he proffered was no mean sum, but above a hundred drachmas. A run of silver tetras, newly minted, struck me at once, and my sons, as stolen in a lump.

“How does a twig like you come up with a load like this?” my elder inquired.

“It rings, don’t it?”

His accent was a double for Eunice’s, his brow and eyes hers as well.

So this was the runaway.

“Indeed it does, young man.” I hefted the loot. “And what shall I use it for—to bribe the jurors?”

“Those I represent, sir, accede to your wisdom.”

“And these concerned citizens…what precisely is their interest in this case?”

“Partisans of justice, sir.”

One began to assimilate details of the youth’s lineaments. His cloak was that overlong type called a “street-sweeper,” and though it had been brushed perhaps as recently as last evening, the dusty stain of its hem gave it away. Beneath its folds no doubt the boy’s feet were unshod.

“Have you had dinner today, young man?”

“Indeed, sir. A gut-buster!”

Both my sons laughed. “Mind a stiff puff doesn’t strike you broadside!”

Again I invited the boy in. Again he declined. I held out the money. “Why not take this to Polemides yourself?”

At once the child began to stammer and withdraw. Clearly we had strayed from the turf of his prepared presentation.

“I think you should,” I insisted. “A prisoner in distress will be much heartened to learn of friends who uphold him in his cause.”

“Just take the jack, Cap’n.”

“I’ll tell you what I’ll take, young man.” At a gesture, my sons seized the lad. “I’ll take you and this sum to the magistrate and let him decide where you got it.”

“Let off, fuckers!”

The youth fought like a wild beast; it took both my boys, outstanding wrestlers, to pin him. “Now, my young friend. Will you come with me to Polemides, or shall we knock at the archon’s gate?”

Approaching the prison, the boy became agitated. “Will they search me, sir?” And he stripped a dagger from beneath his arm and a Spartan
xyele
from a sheath on his thigh.

In the corridor approaching the cell I halted. The boy’s face went to chalk. “Ain’t you coming in, Cap’n?”

“You’ve played your part manfully thus far,” I reassured him, and, setting a bolstering hand upon his shoulder, prompted him forward.

From where I stood I could not see Polemides within the cell, but only the boy at the threshold as the turnkey opened and the lad hesitated, peering in as
if at a caged brute he feared might rush upon him. I confess that, when the child found courage and vanished within, I discovered my eyes burning and a thickness about my throat.

Father and son remained all morning, or at least beyond the hour I waited, across the way at the refectory of my ancient comrade, the marine archer Bruise. My sons had gifted the boy Nicolaus with a packet of kit articles, including shoes and a new tunic, ostensibly to be passed on to his father but, we hoped, one that his pride would permit him, out of our sight, to retain for himself.

Instead by noon the kit was returned to our gate, intact, with a note thanking us, and no more.

Leaving Socrates’ cell that night, the party of his companions crossed the Iron Court to the chambers of Lysimachus of Oa, Secretary of the Eleven. The master’s execution would be tomorrow. The hemlock, at his request, would be administered at sunset. The secretary showed us the bowl, plain wooden with a cover; apparently the juice altered composition, exposed to the air. It must be consumed at once, in a single draught if possible.