“Are there any of these krypteia at Olympia?” Diotima asked.
“If there are, I’ll discover it and let you know.”
“How?” Markos asked. He probably thought that if he couldn’t find the answer, then no woman could, not even a queen.
“I have my sources, young man, and they’re not for you to question.”
Markos bowed his head.
“The head man at Athens, who is it these days?” Gorgo asked.
“Athens is a democracy,” I said at once. “We’re all the head man. No one’s vote counts for more than anyone else’s, no one can tell us what to do, and we share the decisions.”
“Don’t give me that rubbish,” said Gorgo. “I was doing power politics when you sucked on your mother’s teats.” Diotima stifled a laugh. “Now, tell me who leads Athens.”
“Pericles,” I said, reluctant to admit it to an outsider.
“I’d heard the same,” Gorgo said. “The son of Xanthippus, isn’t he?”
“Yes.”
“I know Xanthippus. Not as great a man as my late husband, of course, but a good man. He would have made a reasonable Spartan. Tell me, is the son like the father?”
“Pericles?” I was nonplussed for a moment. How would one describe Pericles? “When Pericles talks, people listen.”
Gorgo grimaced. “I know the type. I wager he’s untrustworthy.”
“Er …”
“That’s the problem with these elected rulers,” Gorgo said. “They always make short-term decisions to make themselves look good. The ephors are the same. Now if Athens had a king to run things, no one would be under pressure to get re-elected, and the people could be ruled well for the long term.”
“What if the king’s not too bright?” I objected.
“Then they listen to me. I’ve advised the Spartans since I was eight years old.”
“Eight? The Spartans listened to a child?” I couldn’t believe it. “What could an eight-year-old possibly have to say?”
She smiled grimly, but answered in a matter-of-fact tone, “I advised my father, the king, not to invade Persia, which he was considering. It was my first move into foreign policy. One of my better decisions, too, if I may say.”
“I’m impressed, Queen Gorgo,” Diotima said. “For all your life, the Spartans have followed your advice, while I, who live in a democracy, have no chance of being listened to. How is that you Spartan women are the only ones who can rule men?”
Gorgo turned her eagle eyes on my wife. “It’s because we’re the only ones who give birth to real men.”
Diotima looked Gorgo in the eye. “We’ll see about that,” she said.
There was nothing more to say. We turned to depart.
“Athenian!”
I stopped. “Yes, Queen Gorgo?”
“I like your woman. Bring her back sometime.”
Markos said he had things to attend to at the Spartan camp. Diotima went to look for Socrates, whom she’d volunteered to keep an eye on and then neglected. A child was safe enough at Olympia, but she thought she’d better at least confirm he was still alive. I went straight to Pindar. Whatever had happened at Nemea, it was clear we needed to know about it.
Pindar was easy to find, because the afternoon of the second day is reserved for religious rites. I found him in the Sanctuary of Zeus, where he stood upon an unoccupied stone pedestal and declaimed poetry. He might have been a statue himself, the way he stood with his back straight and clutched the front of his formal chiton in a dignified manner.
A small group of men and women had clustered about.
He saw me but ignored my hand waves to come down.
“… Not every truth is the better for showing its face undisguised …”
I waved so frantically that a respectable woman beside me thought I was a madman and stepped away. It had no effect on Pindar.
“… and often silence is the wisest thing for a man to-whoa!”
I dragged him off his pedestal.
“My apologies, everyone,” I told the crowd. “The great Pindar has been summoned.” A few muttered, but there were plenty of other attractions, and the people moved on.
“Summoned by whom?” Pindar demanded. “If it’s anyone less than a head of state, the Furies will be as nothing compared to my wrath-”
“We need to talk,” I said. “I need information.”
“You? You dragged me away for yow?” I led him by the arm. “Where are you taking me?”
“Do you like to drink?” I asked.
“I’m a poet.”
“I’ll take that as a yes.”
We stopped at the nearest wine cart. Olympia was dotted with the things. They wheeled in at first light, sold wine by the cup at amphora prices, then disappeared when it was too dark to count the coins.
“What’s your best wine?” I asked the man behind the cart. He was dark and covered in warts. From the way he wobbled and his eyes glazed over, I guessed he’d been at his own wares.
“Got some from Lampsacus lying around,” he slurred. “Lampsacus is in Ionia,” he added helpfully.
“Yes, I know.” I bought the wine and didn’t worry about the cost. If Pericles and Pleistarchus were both so desperate to avoid a war, one or the other of them could fund me for a few cups of wine. Pindar followed me while I carried a cup in each hand to the shade beside the Heraion, the Temple of Hera. We sat on a bench that was, miraculously, unoccupied.
I said, “Pindar, I have a question for you. Gorgo says that, straight after the competition at Nemea last year, Arakos complained to her. He said there were irregularities. One-Eye told me to ignore rumors before I’d even heard them. This has come up too many times now. What really happened?”
Pindar fixated on only one point. “Gorgo?” he said. “Queen Gorgo’s at Olympia? I had no idea. You want to avoid Gorgo, Nicolaos. She knows people who kill people. Lots of them.”
“You’re too late,” I told him. “We’ve already spoken to her. She seems quite nice, once you get past her innate feelings of total superiority.”
He rubbed his chin. “Her feelings are well founded. I do have great regard for both her and her glorious husband. I viewed the battlefield, you know, before the bodies were buried. I never saw such carnage before or since, but one thing I can tell you: every Spartan who died sent a hundred Persians to Hades before him.”
There was something I’d always wondered about that most famous of last stands. “Tell me, Pindar, is it true you wrote the epitaph for the Three Hundred? ‘Passerby, go tell the Spartans that here, according to their law, we lie.’ ”
They were the best-known lines of poetry in the world, but no one who’d been present when the memorial stone was raised had ever claimed the credit.
“I’m not going to talk about that,” Pindar said without hesitation. “The late, great Simonides and I were both on the mission to praise the fallen. We agreed the deeds of the heroes were greater than the words of any poet and swore never to reveal the author. It might not even have been either of us; other poets were there too.”
The way he said it, I knew this was a rehearsed line that he’d repeated many times. I wasn’t surprised. Everyone wanted to know who wrote those lines. It told me something else about Pindar: for all his massive ego, the man was a patriot.
“Gorgo’s contribution to the war was as great as her husband’s,” Pindar said. “When the Persians gathered their army to invade, a Spartan then exiled in Persia sent us a warning. The Persians would have stopped him, so he had to write in secret. He scratched his invasion alert on the backing board of a wax tablet, which he covered over with fresh wax, and then sent it home. When an apparently blank tablet arrived in Sparta, none of Sparta’s so-called wise leaders understood the meaning. They took it to Gorgo. She deduced at once that there must be a secret message, ordered the wax removed, and so read the warning to prepare for war. We’d all be Persian slaves today if it weren’t for her clever deduction.”