We came to the edge of the crowd around Horse Tamer. We plunged into the back of the crowd and Hipponax pushed people aside ruthlessly; he was in that hurry of spirit that drives a man to face something terrible and get it over, I imagine. And we trailed a few curses, except that the blood flowing over my left hip and the cuts all over Hipponax’s forearms made it obvious we’d fought, and no one cursed us twice.
We pushed forward and I could hear Xanthippus, good Athenian aristocrat as he was, giving a speech. Of course he was giving a speech.
Somewhere, Themistocles was no doubt also giving a speech.
And to be fair, so was Aristides.
That’s who they were.
Anyway, suddenly Hipponax slammed to a stop as if he faced a line of Phoenician spear points. I collided with him from behind.
A cry — an odd, barking cry — escaped him.
I pushed past.
There was Cleitus. He stood a few paces from Xanthippus.
And in his arms was Heliodora, his daughter.
Very much alive.
Of course she, a Brauron girl of eight summers’ experience, had swum ashore. In fact to this day, she derides us for ever thinking otherwise — eh, honey? I have often been told that I was a great fool, as was her lover, for imagining that a little three-stade swim would even be a challenge.
On that day, however, she tore herself from her father’s arms and threw her arms around my bloodstained son, who had been born a fisherman and was now publicly embracing the bluest blood in Athens.
Cleitus looked at me. ‘I gather your wastrel son kidnapped my daughter aboard your ship,’ he said calmly.
‘I gather that your daughter possesses all your arrogance,’ I answered.
His eyes met mine. ‘By Zeus, imagine our grandchildren,’ he said. ‘My arrogance and yours, my hubris and yours,’ he added.
But he offered me his hand.
By his orders, my mother died.
But she died a hero, after a misspent life. And as I have said before, revenge is mostly for weak men without enough to do. Like tend grapes and bounce babies.
I took his hand.
And there, on a beach in Attica, ended a feud that began in the market below the temple of Hephaestus in Marathon year, or perhaps before that, at the tomb of the Hero in Plataea. I won’t pretend it wasn’t mentioned again, in drunken anger, several times. I am only a man. But Achilles stood at my back in the fight at Salamis and put Simon’s shade to rest, I think, and I took Cleitus’s hand in the same spirit.
That was the beginning, for me, of the realisation that we had won.
So many defeats and so many wasted victories. But that day in early autumn, as the sun headed for the western mountains, the whole world looked different to me — to all of us, I think. The people of Attica saw hope fleeting by and began to believe they might return to their farms. And I? I saw my son, openly kissing Heliodora, and I thought of Briseis.
Briseis, whose needle case I had carried as a talisman. Who had called for me.
I suppose that I had thought of her earlier, as I had kept my Persian prisoner. I think that as soon as I heard him speak of Cyrus, I thought of how I might use him. And let me add, do him a favour as well.
At any rate, Xanthippus pressed my hand and said some pretty things to his crowd about Plataea and me, and then a cup of wine was pressed into my hand. I remember Hector, all false contrition, telling me of how he’d landed our first capture and then taken part in Aristides’ assault on Psyttaleia. He had Heliodora’s friend Iris under his cloak, she pretending not to be there and sometimes nuzzling his neck, so that they seemed one creature with two heads. And I remember lying beside Brasidas and listening to an old-style rhapsode sing the Iliad, and then hearing Themistocles make a speech to a great crowd on our beach, by torchlight. I remember Anaxagoras of Clazomenae and young Pericles talking about what the victory would mean, while my daughter, up far past her bedtime, snuggled against me and asked me to tell her what the battle had been like. The stars wheeled overhead and I was on my sixth or seventh bowl of wine when Cimon tugged at my chiton.
‘Council,’ he said. ‘Why aren’t you at it?’
So I rose carefully and moved my sleeping daughter into my tent. There was there enacted a brief scene straight from a comedy; Heliodora was in my tent and so was her mother. They were hissing at each other — that’s my memory, which both deny. My son, fully dressed, may I add, was reclining on my kline, his hand bound to his side and his eyes a little glazed in the lamplight — by poppy, I think.
I tucked Euphonia into bed beside her brother.
Heliodora thrust out her chin and whispered something very emphatically, and then leaned over and kissed my daughter — ah, I loved her for that, and for her fighting and rowing, now that she’d survived it — and then kissed my son in a very different way, and her mother made a noise of exasperation.
Her mother dragged her away.
Who was I to protest?
I went out into the star-strewn darkness and followed Cimon up the beach.
‘You angry at me?’ he asked.
I stopped. People believe the oddest things, especially after a fight. ‘No,’ I said.
He hugged me. ‘Good. It took me for ever to get the Corinthians into the fight. Your friend Lykon offered to fight Adeimantus on the spot and he still wouldn’t move. And when we did start rowing-’ he shrugged. ‘You weren’t the worst off.’
We both knew what it was like to make those decisions. Life and death for friends and foes, done without time to ponder or weigh.
We walked into the darkness in more perfect understanding than most lovers ever reach.
About halfway to the headland, he said, ‘We won.’
I think those were the only words we exchanged.
The council was confused and very loud — what a surprise.
Many of the navarchs were there, but not all. I embraced Lykon and Bulis, delighted that more of my friends had escaped the embrace of death.
Themistocles was talking, but then, he always was.
In fact, he was demanding that we rise in the morning and attack the enemy beaches at Phaleron to finish the job.
He went on and on. In truth, I think he was drunk — drunk on a heady mixture of wine and victory. Well, most of us were. But Themistocles lacked our years of fighting and he had seen the fleet rise and fight again and again at Artemisium. I think he imagined we’d come off our beaches the next morning, fresh as flowers or perhaps tired but capable. And he had a point.
‘Make no mistake,’ he said. ‘What is left of their fleet is still larger than our fleet.’
‘No ship that fought today will fight well tomorrow,’ I said.
Many men muttered agreement.
Cimon spoke up. ‘I had an easy day,’ he said, though most of us knew he was lying. ‘I’ll have a look at their beaches in the morning.’
I nodded. ‘I’ll go with you,’ I said. ‘But I’ll have to pull the best rowers out of four ships to row Lydia.’
I went to bed. Men drank well into the night and the crop of babies born nine months later suggests that drinking was not the evening’s only sport. Heh! I can see a pair of you from here.
Born in the summer of Plataea?
But I get ahead of myself.
It was sad and yet delightful to go to sea the next morning as dawn broke. I had Moire as my oar-master and Megakles in the steering oars and Giannis standing with Alexandros as marines. I’d sent young Kineas and old Giorgos to pick the best of the unwounded oarsmen, and many were the drink-fuelled curses that morning. And as we pulled away from the beach to meet up with Cimon I wondered briefly if we’d suddenly find ourselves off Massalia, or coasting along the tall white cliffs of Alba.
‘The Argonauts,’ I whispered.
Seckla smiled.
I’d like to say we did some great deed, worthy of being sung for ever — and the time was not wasted, as you’ll hear — but in fact we made our rendezvous with Cimon’s long black Ajax and rowed out of the Bay of Salamis against the wind, experiencing a little of what the Persians had felt the day before when the wind had been the other way, and then we pulled across the open water for Phaleron with our sails laid to the battens and ready to raise for the run back. The risk was very small.