“Listen, Arsinoe or Istafra, whichever you are,” I said. “At this moment we have more important things to do than to argue. After all, we have the rest of our lives for that. Even if I had the means to purchase all the clothing that you mentioned, they would fill at least ten baskets and we would need more donkeys and drovers to transport them. We must leave as quickly and inconspicuously as possible. For the time being you will wear Aura’s clothes and assume her countenance until we reach Himera. Once there, I will see what I can do for you.”
“How can I wear the coarse clothes of a lowly Siculian girl?” she demanded. “How could I appear before the people without ornamenting my hair? No, no, you don’t realize what you are asking of me, Turms. I am ready for any sacrifice in your behalf, but I could not imagine that you would expect such humiliating sacrifices of me.”
Her face was pale in the lamplight because I had abducted her from bed as she was. A tear dropped from her eyes and rolled down her cheeks. I tried to explain that Aura, after all, had been the wife of a Greek physician and that Mikon had been able to provide a moderate wardrobe for her. True, Aura had been so young that she had not found it necessary to redden her lips and color her eyes, but she, Arsinoe, could use Tanakil’s paints to make herself seem younger.
That I should have left unsaid, and my only defense is that at that time I did not understand women.
“So you consider me decrepit!” she began, and our argument was sharper than any previous exchange. To my horror the gray dawn began to creep into the room and the first cock crowed somewhere in the city before I succeeded in calming her.
Without daring to open my mouth again since I seemed always to say the wrong thing, I hastened to awaken Dorieus and Mikon and then ran to explain everything to Tanakil.
As an experienced woman she immediately understood the inevitable and did not waste time in fruitless accusations. Quickly she clothed Arsinoe in Aura’s best garments, gave her her own bead-embroidered shoes because Aura’s shoes were too large, and helped her to paint her face to resemble Aura.
Then she lashed awake her servants, packed her goods and settled her account with the innkeeper. As the sun was coloring the peaks of Eryx a rosy red, we were already hurrying across the city and reached the wall just as the sleepy guards were opening the gate. We left the city without being stopped, and as we started down the circling pilgrims’ road our horses whinnied and donkeys brayed with joy.
Tanakil had made room for Arsinoe in her own litter. When we were halfway down the mountain the sun was up, the sky smiled with twinkling blue eyes, and the calm sea called to the ships with playful waves to begin the sailing season. The barren mountain cone had turned green, in the valley black and white oxen were plowing the fields, farmers were spitting seeds into the earth and the land was gay with flowers.
Mikon was still so confused from his wine-drinking that he followed us involuntarily, swaying like a sack on the back of a donkey. When he saw Arsinoe he sighed heavily, addressed her as Aura and asked how she was. He apparently had either forgotten Aura’s death or considered it but a drunken hallucination. Presumably he thought that everything was as it should be, although he did not appear as contented as he had during the previous days.
I myself did not dare to talk to Arsinoe during our entire descent down the mountain. But when we had reached the valley and were watering our animals before turning onto the road to Segesta, she drew aside the curtain and called to me softly.
“Oh, Turms! Is the air really so delightful to breathe, and is it possible that ash-smeared bread can be so delicious? Oh, Turms, never have I been so happy! I believe I really love you. You will never again be as cruel to me as you were this morning, will you?”
We turned onto the road to Segesta and finally reached Himera safely. True, the trying journey had made us irritable, but at least we were alive and no one had pursued us. Immediately upon our arrival in the city, at Dorieus’ suggestion, we sacrificed the largest cock in Himera to Herakles.
Book Five
Voyage to Eryx
1.
Our return to Himera attracted no attention. Five we had been when we set forth and five returned. So consummately had Arsinoe assumed the countenance and demeanor of Aura that Mikon, his perception dulled from days of drinking in Eryx, actually believed her his wife. It was with difficulty that I banished him from Arsinoe’s resting place whenever he sought to exercise his conjugal prerogatives during the journey.
More important matters than our return occupied the people of Himera. A courier ship had braved the spring storms to bring news to Sicily of the fall of Miletus. The Persians, after a long siege, had taken the city by storm, plundered and burned it, and killed or enslaved its people. At the King’s express command Miletus had been leveled to the ground for its part in the rebellion. It had not been easy to destroy a city populated by hundreds of thousands, but the army had managed to do so, aided by engines of war and thousands of Greek slaves.
So ended the dance of freedom. Other Ionian cities suffered somewhat less. True, Greek tyrants again ruled, but the conquered cities experienced no worse than the usual slaughter, arson, raping and looting. But when the revolt had been quelled, the natives were, as always, more merciless than the strangers, and the reinstated tyrants so effectively purged the dancers of freedom that those who had been wise enough to flee to the west with their families and property could be counted fortunate indeed.
Such were the tales told of lonia. I, who felt that I had already discharged my duty in the rebellion, was not greatly moved by the fate of Miletus. But it must be said that much that was luxurious, refined and pleasurable in life disappeared forever with the destruction of Miletus. We drank a toast to its memory in Tanakil’s best wine, Dorieus and I, but we did not go so far as to cut our hair in mourning. That, we felt, would have been hypocrisy.
From Dionysius we obtained more dependable information, for as one who was himself well versed in the art of exaggeration he could easily strip senseless rumors to their core.
“Athens is not yet in ruins,” he said reassuringly, “although many swear that the Persian king himself has sailed to undertake retaliation for the Athenians’ raid on Sardis. But that will take many years. The Persian must first strengthen his hold on the islands, and launching an attack on the mainland of Greece requires lengthy preparations. It is said, however-and this I well believe-that he has instructed his favorite slave to whisper frequently into his ear, ‘My lord, forget not the Athenians.’
“That is how matters stand,” concluded Dionysius. “With the fall of Miletus the eastern sea is now the Phoenicians’, and the unnumbered ships of lonia are now Persian. Should the mainland fall there would remain only this Western Greece caught betwe’en Carthage and the Tyrrhenians. For that reason it would be wisest for us to retrieve our treasure from Krinippos’ vaults with all haste and sail for Massilia as though we had already arrived. Perhaps during our lifetime the clutch of the Persian may extend even to there.”
Mikon raised his hands in horror. “Surely you exaggerate, Dionysius! I know from history that no one, not even Egypt or Babylon, has yet ruled the entire world. For that matter, no one could conceive of Egypt’s fall. I was perhaps twelve when the rumor swept the islands that the great King Kambyses had conquered Egypt. My father, who was a learned man, refused at first to believe it, but when the truth could no longer be denied, he said that he had no desire to live in such times. And so he swathed his head in a cloth, lay down on his bed and died. Then they began to make jars ornamented in red in Attica as a sign that the world had turned upside down. But not even Darius could vanquish the Scythians.”