on the bluff above the river.
“What my comrade and I speak now,” the knight began, “comes neither from the kings nor the magistrates of Lacedaemon, but alone ourselves, as private individuals. Will you attend and repeat nothing?”
The hair stood up on my neck.
“We'll ride back on shoe leather,” I replied, dismounting.
Telamon's hand drew me up.
“These gentlemen wish to speak of business, Pommo. I for one am in business.” He rapped my knee to cool me. It obliged nothing to give ear to a proposition of employment.
“Would you call yourself a patriot?” Endius resumed, addressing me.
I would return to Athens with the dawn, if that was what he meant.
“I mean would you defend your city against her foes? Would you count your life as nothing, if expending it preserved your country's freedom?”
Trusting the gods, I replied, I would hope to save both.
He smiled, glancing to Telamon. My mate held silent. Lysander spoke, addressing me.
“You have said you would sacrifice your life against the enemy which threatened your country. I believe you and honor this, as any would. Now let us pursue the supposition. Were a great pestilence to advance upon your nation, a famine, say, or affliction…”
“Say it straight out, friend.”
“… would you strike as boldly? Say that with a single blow you might preserve…”
“Do you take me for a homicide, Lysander?”
Endius broke in with heat. “Who slays a tyrant is no murderer but patriot. A deliverer of his country, as Harmodius and Aristogeiton!”
“Gentlemen, gentlemen.” Telamon raised a hand. “We speak of commerce, not passion.”
Endius ignored this, continuing to me with fire. “Would you not name him savior, who cleansed his homeland of this scourge?”
“Endius!”
This from Lysander, sternly.
With effort Endius brought himself under control. “Let us speak straight then. No more fencing. You have eyes, Polemidas; you are not stupid. Your country's enemy is not Sparta. Her real foe lies twined within her own bosom. Not ourselves, but that thrice-crowned serpent whose ambition, fueled to fever pitch, would by its excesses destroy her.”
“Do you fear him so much, Endius?”
“I fear and hate him. And love him too, as you.”
He turned away. For long moments none spoke.
“What would be this patriot's portion,” my mate broke in, “who purged the breast of Athens of such a viper?”
“All you see.”
This from Lysander, indicating the olive groves and fields of barley. Telamon whistled.
“A noteworthy incentive. But how long would this savior live to enjoy it?”
“Beneath our aegis, all his years.”
“Since when does Sparta,” I inquired of both Peers, “trouble herself so with the well-being of an enemy?”
“Enough!” Endius barked. “Will you kill him?”
“I'd sooner you both, and for half the price.”
The Peer's knees dug so hard that his mount began to spook.
Lysander must reach across and seize the bridle.
“Relent, my friend,” he addressed Endius. “We will not convert our comrades here tonight. Perhaps they are correct. If Athens is indeed our nation's foe, then our role, yours and mine, must be to succor all by whose agency she may be brought low.” He smiled, looking me in the face. “May heaven prosper our friend who wears the triple crown.”
Telamon and I dismounted. Endius wheeled above us on his balking mount. “Hear this now; I will speak a prophecy. One day Athens will lie broken, her fleet sunk, Long Walls razed, widows and orphans wailing in the streets. All this shall come about by the instrument of one man… ”
I burned to cut him off with something sharp, but at his words my blood ran chill; I could summon no rejoinder.
“What crime is it, brothers,” Endius continued, “which the gods abominate beyond all? Not murder. Not treason. Pride! To quench this, Zeus himself looses his bolts of heaven.” He wheeled above us, elevating his palm. “Mark this testament, which I pronounce this night in your hearing.”
The knight drove his heels; man and mount spurred off.
Lysander lingered, motioning to the squires, who sprang onto the backs of the beasts which had borne Telamon and me to this promontory. Before our vantage the groves and fields sprawled silver beneath the moon.
“Enjoy the prospect, comrades,” Lysander spoke. “Perhaps on this account we shall do business at another hour.”
XIV
After the Games we trekked home to Athens, my brother and I, employing the four days to reacquaint ourselves. I had wages due and sent Eunice ahead on the ferry, via Patrae and the Isthmus; she would be safe traveling with Telamon and Chowder. Others of our coop had set themselves to try the city as well. There would be work with the new fleet for Sicily.
Home again my brother and I at last disinterred from their unquiet berth the bones of our father and sister, and I those of wife and child, and set them to rest in the tomb of our ancestors at Acharnae. Perhaps now they would find peace. For myself, standing upon the earth that had borne the sons and daughters of our family time out of mind, I was stricken with such grief that I could not keep my feet even for the interval of the rite but sank to a knee, overcome.
Tell me, Jason, what is this power by which our native soil possesses us and holds us captive? We think we have seized it but it has taken us. It belongs not to us, but we to it.
I had spent few seasons on the farm as a boy. My aunt took me into the city at four; by ten I was abroad in the Upbringing. I never really knew my father's father or his cousins and brothers. I made their acquaintance now, largely by standing, with Lion, up to my ears in their debt.
You have run a farm, Jason. None who hasn't knows the meaning of poverty. In war at least one's wages pass one night in his fist before scattering to the wind. The farmer doesn't get even that. Before a seed is in the earth, the husbandman has mortgaged his crop, so that even if his harvest bears a bounty and he loads for market with prime figs and pears, the profit may not even wave how-do-you-do before it is whisked away by the counting clerk, the tax collector, and his own cranky kin. To say that a man owns a farm would be preposterous, were it not so cruel. One carries it, like an ox or an iron anchor, on his back.
The soldier thinks he knows fear. Tell that to the farmer. I have corked off at battle's eve and snoozed sound as stone; now on my landsman's bunk I tossed, sleepless as Cerberus. The farmer greets the dawn with one query only: what calamity has struck overnight? I never knew how many ways a sheep could run ill, or a spring turn sour.
Something is always breaking on a farm. You start mending at dawn and don't quit till midnight. Troy herself never suffered such assaults. Fungus infiltrates the farm, as mold, blight, mildew, rust, and dry rot; one duels canker and palsy, ague, colic, distemper.
Every creeping thing is the enemy. On the tramp I swatted insects and never thought of them more; now
