He handed the canteen to Eugenios, who drank it and burst into tears. ‘I was born free,’ he admitted. ‘Indeed — oh, bless you, my lord.’
‘I’ll see to it you are made a citizen of Plataea if we survive all this.’ I was gruff. I had not expected hard-eyed Eugenios, terror of my slaves and lord of my household, to weep.
I think that, in truth, I hate slavery. Oh, I have a phalanx of slaves, do I not? But I free them, too. Some men are better and some are worse, that much I acknowledge. But enough better to own another?
I’ve been a slave.
Eugenios wouldn’t snuggle into the cleft with us. His ideas of social station were stronger than Cimon’s. Mock if you will.
I stepped out into the blowing spray and rain, and threw my chiton over my arm like a boy training to be an orator. ‘Hear me, oh Cimon,’ I said.
He laughed and drank my wine.
‘First, before I deliver my argument, let us set the course of our own judging. Are there, on all the seas, any two men who have faced the Persians and the Phoenicians and the Egyptians more often than we?’ I asked.
‘My father,’ he said. ‘Miltiades. And perhaps that prig Aristides. And your friend Diodorus of Massalia, for all that I loathe him.’
‘Better than we? Or merely the same,’ I asked. ‘Your father I allow.’
‘Then I shan’t quibble,’ Cimon, son of Miltiades, said with a smile. ‘We have faced them most often.’
‘And does that not make us, in the matter of fighting the Persians at sea, the wisest?’ I raised a hand to forestall argument. ‘If perhaps we had been beaten often, I’d confess that the frequency of our fighting was worthless, but you and I have more often than not triumphed.’
Cimon nodded. ‘You want me to agree, and of course I do. But I’m sure that Pythagoras would debate with you whether the frequency of our contact or even our triumph had anything to do with wisdom.’
‘He might, but let’s remember that he was against eating bacon and beware,’ I said, and Cimon roared.
‘You have missed your calling, my friend. You should go stand in the agora and preach like a sophist.’ He winked at Eugenios.
I was play-acting, mostly to raise his humour. ‘Very well then, I’ll pass on the agora, which today is probably full of Persian Immortals uncaring of my heights of wisdom, and we’ll agree that you and I are as fit to judge the capability of the Great King’s fleet as any two men.’
Cimon laughed again. ‘I have that sinking feeling I get when I listen to Aristides make a speech in which he wins every point but makes all the undecided men hate him, and our party,’ he said.
‘Very well, then. Here is why we will defeat the Great King’s fleet,’ I said. ‘First, and simplest, because we have done so already, not once but twice.’
Cimon bit his lip. ‘But they have replaced their losses and then some.’
‘Have they replaced their hearts?’ I asked. ‘By your own admission you kept the sea eight days with ten ships facing all of them — and they only managed to take one of yours while you sank, crippled or captured five.’
He shrugged. ‘So? What is five ships among a thousand?’
‘Answer me this, doubter! If one single Ionian ship had come into our beaches at Artemisium and offered a fight or tried a raid, how many ships would have launched and fought her?’
He winced. ‘A hundred.’
‘Yet you went right in off their beaches,’ I said. ‘They are afraid.’
Cimon shrugged. ‘I want to believe you.’
‘The Ionians are probably the weakest part of their fleet,’ I asserted.
Cimon shook his head. ‘The best and worst,’ he said. ‘There are fine captains and ships among them. Don’t go beak to beak with the Queen of Halicarnassus — Artemisia.’ He stroked his beard. ‘There’s a woman with a fine helmsman. They say she’s Xerxes’ Greek mistress. I’m not sure.’
‘But the ship we took yesterday?’ I asked.
‘Not very good,’ he admitted.
‘Yet it was leading the chase for your ships, while the Phoenicians and the Egyptians — who have every reason to hate the Great King — lagged well back in the narrows.’ I waved at the Lesbians, sitting disconsolately in the rain. ‘What am I to make of that?’
Cimon laughed. ‘You are persuasive,’ he said, laughing. He almost sounded … guilty.
‘My last piece of evidence requires only that you believe me,’ I said. ‘Yesterday, when I came out of the morning sun into their flank, I saw them cringe.’
‘You took everyone by surprise,’ he said.
‘First, most of their ships, more then twenty ships, turned a point or two away,’ I said. ‘Then, when three of their ships turned out of the general chase, the rest used the time they bought to get closer to the coast. None of them was trained well enough to manoeuvre at close range against me, and in fact all their hulls are wet through and slow.’ I grinned like the wolf I am at times. ‘I had them in speed, in tactics, in rowing quality, and they knew it. They were like boys facing men. And that was their best.’
Cimon was smiling steadily now. ‘I’d forgotten how you can be, Plataean,’ he said.
‘And last is a matter of tactica,’ I said. ‘The number of ships means nothing. We saw this at Lade, even. Confess it; you defeat the first line and the rest run. It is always this way. The Phoenicians distrust the Ionians and loathe the Egyptians. The Egyptians want to defeat the Great King and be independent. Every Ionian ship has men on board, oarsmen and marines, who were our comrades at Lade.’
‘By Poseidon, Arimnestos, you make me feel as if it is the Great King who is to be pitied, not the Athenians!’ Cimon crossed his arms.
‘Say rather: the Greeks,’ I said. ‘You Athenians have taken to forgetting, in your desperate hubris, that you have allies.’
He winced. ‘We will never forget Plataea,’ he said.
‘In this case, the ally I would remember is Aegina,’ I said. ‘They have almost fifty ships available and they have decided to fight.’ I deflated myself. ‘Even if the Peloponnesians run.’
I’m not sure that I changed Cimon’s mind. I know I made him feel better.
But Poseidon sent us a better sign. Well — first I think that I should say that my elation was not just from the combat and the deed of the day before. Archilogos had waved at me.
You smile. I sound like one of you girls, delighted that the handsomest boy waved? No. Archilogos was the friend of my childhood and he had been my foe for many years. I had sworn never to do him harm and such oaths have power. This was the first time he had offered me anything but violence in return and I was irrationally cheered. I replayed the moment over and over, trying to test it for more or less meaning. Had he actually waved? Was he merely pointing me out to his archers?
Come to think of it, thugater, you are correct, I am sounding like a blushing maiden. But I loved him. The weight and injustice of his hate lay heavy on me. So I took his wave as a sign. I took the whole encounter as a sign. I was no longer despondent. In an hour of manoeuvre and combat I had allowed myself to be convinced, completely, that we had the upper hand, regardless of the numbers.
And then, on the ninth day out from Salamis, the sun was rising on a glorious day. The wind had lowered after sunset and the rain had stopped, and when I rose to piss in the night the stars were out and we had a gentle westerly.
We rose in the darkness and warmed ourselves at our fires and ate re-warmed mutton stew and some oysters. There was no wine. I got up on a rock and addressed the oarsmen, which I now did almost every morning.
‘Today we should get back to Salamis,’ I said. ‘It’ll be rowing all the way. And the Persian fleet is just over there.’ I waved at the distant dark coast of Attica, as the eastern sky behind me began to lighten. ‘But you are all better men than they. Just row. Fear nothing. If they come at us we can always turn south.’