Within six days the whole fleet, storeships and transports and all, are riding at anchor in Catana harbour, or drawn up on to the slipways; and the troops are quartered all about the city or encamped just outside it; and we’ve the free use of the arsenals and repair yards.
From Catana the squadrons comes and goes, sometimes about this ‘middle course’ business of making allies, sometimes bent on raids on the coast about Syracuse itself — small stuff; a few settlements pillaged, a few olive gardens fired; a few of our own men killed in clashes with the Syracusian cavalry.
There’s some that accuses Alkibiades even now, of pointless and wasteful raiding at that time; they underestimates the value of the small surprise attack, repeated again and again when and where least expected, the constant dagger-prick that keeps a man’s nerves jumping. They underestimates also the difficulties and dangers of keeping a war fleet too long and constantly to the ways of peace. Either it turns ugly, like a yard dog too long chained, or it goes to pieces and is useless when the time comes for using it.
We makes good friends from the first, among the little dark-haired red-brown men who claims to be the old stock of the island. And knowing the land as they do, and not loving the Syracusians overmuch, they makes good scouts. Only once I knows them fail us, and that’s when they brings us word that Camarina, far to the south, is ripe for plucking.
But even then, they’re only a bit ahead of time. There’s trouble for Syracuse ripening in Camarina sure enough, but not yet ripe; so we does what we can to help on the harvest, and back we heads for Catana yet again. I’m beginning to know those Straits as a man knows the way from his own door to the nearest wine shop.
Alkibiades doesn’t seem in the least put out. As I remember, he’s whistling half under his breath, standing beside me on the after-deck smiling to himself with eyes narrowed into the bright oar thresh. The wind being against us, the sail’s down, but we’re making a good pace under oars, and the rowers are singing in time to the stroke as they only do when they’re feeling good. There’s a feeling of luck about the whole ship.
‘And what are you so pleased about?’ says I. ‘We’ve not had much joy of Camarina.’
‘Not yet,’ says Alkibiades, ‘but it’s coming.’
‘So are the autumn gales! And what do we do then? Rot while we wait for spring?’
‘Don’t be so impatient, Pilot. It begins to come to hand. Catana has joined us, so has Naxos; Camarina — no not yet, but all the signs are there. Before Pyanopaion’s out we shall have Messana, and with any luck that will bring Camarina’s fruit to harvest. And after Camarina … Syracuse must be beginning to feel a little uncomfortable — a little queasy in the pit of the belly.’
‘There’s still the autumn gales,’ I says.
‘Surely. And the kingfisher weather between. With the first storms, Syracuse will feel more secure; soon she will relax her vigilance a little and begin to take things easily. Oh I know the ways of the Corinthian blood; their horses have more fire and more sense than their men … But you know the ways of ships and the sea, my dear, you’re no mere summer sailor.’ And he grips his hand on my shoulder and gives it a little shake; and then licks his lips against the salt and the drying wind, and begins to whistle again, softly but very merrily, the tune that the rowers were singing.
We rounds the last headland and comes in sight of Catana; and there in the harbour, lying alongside the outer mole, there’s a trireme that’s none of the fleet.
I feels as though I’d taken a small sharp jab in the belly, and I looks round quickly at Alkibiades, and sees his eyes widen all of a sudden; and he stops whistling. I looks back toward the outer mole; and catches the blue flutter of Athene’s owl on the new-comer’s stern pennant. But I don’t need that to tell me. Fifteen years and more I’ve served with the war fleets, I knows the Salamina, the Athenian state galley when I sees her.
The Trirarch
I never counted myself among the circle of Alkibiades’ friends; indeed I think not many of the senior Trirarchs would claim that honour. The young ones, such as Konon, the hot-heads flocked round him like bees round a pot of finest Hymetos honey, and in those days the fleet were his to a man; but that’s another matter. Still, I’ve spent more of my life with the fleet than most of my kind; the Commander of the Salamina has to be at least something of a seaman, with less time for politics accordingly. Maybe it was that … At any rate I didn’t much like my orders when the Council gave them to me. They were the kind of orders that leave a foul taste in the mouth after one has carried them out.
I liked them even less when I stood facing Alkibiades on the after-deck of his flagship in Catana harbour. I gave him the salute his rank demanded, and I remember my face felt stiff, as though I were wearing an actor’s wooden mask.
He stood watching me through the eyes of his own mask. He said pleasantly, ‘My dear Trirarch, what brings you so far from home waters?’ But his mask was not quite perfect, and I saw a muscle flicker once in the angle of his jaw.
That insufferable red-headed master of his was close beside him, and the young men of his staff. Even the stern rowing benches were so close that one could as good as feel the rowers’ breath on one’s ankles. There is seldom much privacy to be had in a warship. And I knew I could not risk telling him there, because I could not see, behind his mask, how he would take it. I said, ‘A matter best kept between ourselves, I think. You have quarters in the city where we may speak in private?’
He made a small courteous gesture. ‘One of Catana’s leading citizens, finding his health demands a long stay in the country, has most kindly put his house at my disposal. May I offer you its hospitality?’
We went ashore in the Salamina’s boat, that being already alongside; and walked through the city. I think we even talked —a casual, well-bred talk of surface matters — only he never once asked for news from Athens.
In the long andron of the house, he sent for wine and saw it mixed to his satisfaction, then dismissed the slave, a pretty boy of the island breed, with eyes like a deer, saying that we would pour for ourselves. When the boy was gone, he poured the Libation still standing, with as much punctilious grace as though he were host at some rather decorous party.
He dipped the wine from the krater into two beautifully painted cups, and not until, cup in hand, we had taken couches facing each other across the low table, did he say at last, ‘Now, tell me of this matter best kept between ourselves.’
I said, ‘I am sent by the Council of Archons to invite you to return with me to Athens.’ And my voice sounded wooden in my own ears. The voice of a man who is no actor, speaking lines learned by heart.
‘For what purpose?’ Alkibiades asked politely.
‘To answer to the old charge of blasphemy,’ I said.
The air in the room seemed to grow thick and hard to breathe, as though there was a storm coming. The room was filled with an intense, high-pitched silence. He had known, in the moment when our eyes met on board the Icarus, I was sure of that; but there is knowing and knowing. Then he raised those thick golden brows. ‘Do you know, for one moment I thought you said “to answer to the old charge of blasphemy”!’
‘I did.’
‘But that’s an old charge indeed. It blew up before the expedition sailed; and I was confirmed in my orders to sail, none the less.’
‘With the charge against you still to be tried on your return.’ He set down the beautiful wine cup in his hand, ‘Am I under arrest?’
‘No, no. My orders are to request —’ I stumbled over the word as though I were a callow boy — ‘to persuade you, with all respect and courtesy, to return. No more.’
‘And if, with equal respect and courtesy, I refuse?’
‘I think you would be wiser not to refuse.’
‘In fact, your orders are to bring me back to Athens with as little disturbance as may be; but to bring me, none the less.’
‘Something like that,’ I said.
He spoke again after
a short silence. ‘Nikomedes, we have not been close friends nor drinking cronies — which is maybe as well for you — but I think you have not counted yourself among my enemies?’
‘You do not lack for enemies,’ I said. ‘But not many of them are to be found in the fleet or the Army.’
‘That I believe.’ He glanced across at my wine cup, which I had not yet touched. ‘Then drink with me, man, and tell me, in Typhon’s name, what has been going on in Athens since the fleet sailed.’
The irony of the situation struck me. ‘Is it fitting, do you think, to sit drinking with a man one has come to —’
‘Carry back to drink the hemlock? You’re over-particular for these days, Nikomedes.’ He picked up his own cup again, and drank off a good half at a gulp. ‘Tell me what I asked.’
So I drank likewise, and told him, examining the black-painted wrestlers on my cup while I did so, for there are times when to watch a man’s face is an unwarrantable intrusion.
‘At first — this you know — there were only vague rumours and suspicions; even after the slave came forward to bear witness. If they had put you on trial when you demanded it, they knew that they could scarcely have made the charges stick; and so, I think, did you.’ I glanced up then, and found him waiting for my look with perfect understanding and something very like amusement.
‘Go on,’ he said.
‘But as soon as you were out of the way, your enemies in the Council — Kritias and his faction, Androcles the Orator, I believe most eagerly of all — went to work more thoroughly. The destruction of the Herms became joined to those mock Eleusinian Mysteries — nobody seems quite clear how that came about — and both have grown in men’s fears to be part of a great conspiracy, to overthrow the Democratic state and bring back the rule of the Oligarchs.’
‘They were saying that before the fleet sailed.’
‘No so widely, not as a certainty.’
‘So it has become that, now, has it? And yet, you know, it seems an unlikely charge to lay at my door. All men know my Democratic leanings. Why, man, it’s one of the chief things that you and your kind hold against me.’
He was right in that; a good many of us feel that rule by a few men with understanding of their task and the fitness for it that comes of good birth and the administering of large estates, is better than rule by the common herd, wise man, fool, honest and rogue alike. But it was not the moment to be drawn into political argument. ‘All men know, or at least they guess, that when Alkibiades says Democracy, he does not mean quite what the modern Democrat means by it,’ I said. ‘But be that as it may, the mood and mind of a city is a somewhat unpredictable thing, and prone to faithlessness.’
‘Faithlessness?’
‘Everyone accused of being in any way linked with you in this has been thrown into goal without trial. Oh yes, even well-respected citizens, on the unsupported word of any known rogue who chooses to accuse them. So have any friends of yours who have dared to raise a voice in your defence. Athens hasn’t been a very pleasant place, these past few months.’
Alkibiades said, ‘The gutter curs!’ very softly, but with extreme vehemence; and then, ‘Between these walls, I will admit the mock Mysteries. We were drunk, and the fools’ play went further than we intended. But we never mimicked the Forbidden Thing. That I swear.’
‘The slave who gave evidence had the whole thing to the last detail,’ I reminded him. But still I knew that he had spoken the truth.
‘The slave who gave the evidence could have been primed by someone else. There are always those, not many, I grant you, who will declare even the Forbidden Thing for enough gold. It is my word against his; and I scarcely think they’ll dare to give more weight to the word of a slave than to the word of Alkibiades.’
‘There’s still the mutilation of the Herms, to throw into the scales against you.’
‘The mutilation of the Herms I utterly deny any part in.’
‘Deny it to the Council when you get back,’ I said.
‘What need? What possible means have they of bringing it home to me?’
‘The evidence of witnesses; and more than one, this time.’
‘Witnesses?’
‘Notably two, Diocleides, I believe one of them is called, and the other Teucer. They have been very busy in all this, and suddenly rather rich.’
‘Fake witnesses.’
‘Maybe, but they swear to having seen the Herm breakers at their work, and to have recognised you and your friends.’
‘How, in the dark?’
‘By the light of the moon,’ I said.
I remember there was a long silence. Alkibiades was frowning a little, circling his cup and watching the swirl of the wine in it. Then he looked up, and said slowly, ‘But there was no moon that night.’
‘No,’ I agreed.
He was silent again. Then he got up, and carrying his wine cup with him, crossed to the open doorway. Dusk had come, and beyond the door the sky that was clear crystal green behind the acanthus tiles of the roof ridge across the courtyard was flushed every now and then by a reddish glare. ‘Etna is restless tonight,’ he said. Then, ‘And even that did not smash the case?’
‘No.’
‘By the Gods! The Council do want my head, don’t they.’ He even sounded amused. But there was no amusement in his voice when he spoke again. ‘They refused me my trial because they could not count on turning the troops against me. So they let me off the leash, to be called back presently, with the Army and the fleet safely out of the way — very neatly done, really; I don’t think I could have thought of anything neater, or dirtier, myself. But the people …’
He said it quite quietly, nothing in his voice except a faint note of wonder. But I remember that as he spoke, suddenly the whole sky was suffused with a livid copper glare such as hangs above the furnaces in the street of the armourers but a thousand times more intense. It was as though all that lay concealed beneath this wrought and polished quietness of Alkibiades, the fires of Etna — the fires of Tartarus — were showing forth in his stead.
It has seemed to me since, that I should have had misgivings then; should have thought that I’d been a fool not to arrange for some of my own men to be within hearing. He was younger than me and as quick on his feet as a cat, and could probably have got me down before I could so much as cry out. And after that he had only to call up a few of his own troops. He could have had the whole Athenian force in revolt on his behalf by midnight. But at the time I had no misgivings at all, not of that particular kind. I had too much faith in Alkibiades’ sense of the pattern and the fitness of things.
He turned from the doorway at last. The evil copper glow was dying out of the sky, leaving the deepening night blue dark, unreadable beyond the yellow lamplight.
He said, ‘I accept your invitation to return to Athens with you — in my own ship and with my own crew.’
‘That shall be as you wish,’ I said. ‘But you will understand that I must put my second master on board.’
‘And why?’
‘Alkibiades, your own master is named with you in the charge.’
He nodded. ‘Poor old Antiochus. He would be, of course. Nevertheless, I sail in my own ship with my own crew — and my own pilot.’
He still spoke quietly, rather too quietly for Alkibiades; and I had been ordered to avoid trouble at all costs. I said, ‘Very well.’
‘When do we sail?’
‘At first light.’
‘Too soon. I must hand over officially and in public to my fellow Generals. If I slip away on the morning tide, the troops will say that I have been taken by force, no matter how little disturbance there is.’
Then it was my turn to be silent. Increasingly I felt that Alkibiades and not I was in charge of the situation.
‘You shall be there to see how beautifully I shall behave; what happy sentiments I shall express as to my swift return, with all this foolish misunderstanding quite cleared away. That way, there will be no trouble.’
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And I knew that he was right.
‘I will arrange all things as you wish for tomorrow morning. Meanwhile, I must ask you not to leave this house.’
‘Of course. You have my assurance,’ Alkibiades said pleasantly. ‘In any case, I shall be fully occupied here. I intend, if it does not in any way interfere with your plans, to apply myself exclusively to the task of getting drunk tonight. Oh, quite quietly; more beautifully and imperially and obliviously drunk that even I have ever been in my life before.’
But as I went out, I had a curious and unpleasant sensation between my shoulder-blades, and I glanced round at Alkibiades standing beside the table. I think I have never seen such a devil looking out of a man’s eye before or since.
5
The Seaman
They tells me that the Icarus is ordered back to Athens, and no more. But when I says that I takes my orders from the Commander and no one else, the Trirarch of the Salamina makes no objection to my going up to Alkibiades’ quarters. Maybe they thinks we’ll be easier to keep an eye on, both together. I don’t know.
So then, officially, I don’t know a thing, when I hands over to my second and goes ashore. But I’ve a fair idea; and I’m not the only one. Young Arkadius looks like a sick monkey. Anyways, you can’t keep that kind of thing quiet for long, certainly not in any company as close knit as a fighting fleet. The city’s running over with it, too; and by the time I gets to the house I knows just about as much as the Salamina’s Trirarch himself.
I’d not have been surprised to find Alkibiades under guard. But there’s no sign of a sentry on the street door, nor anywhere else that I can see. Seemingly the whole dirty business is being carried through in the most gentlemanly way. I’ve never understood the ways of gentlemen. And when I goes into the room, there he is, sitting at the table, quite alone. He’s broken his favourite drinking cup, the one with the chariot race on it that he always uses. Crushed it as though it was a duck’s egg, and cut his hands again and again on the jagged shards, so that his blood was mingled with the spilled wine on the table. He’s smiling down at the mess — and it’s the kind of smile you might expect of something that turns into a wolf when the moon is full.