lord's hands digging in the earth with mine. We did a proper job.
'Not much to burn,' Miltiades said, when I began to pile up the winter's supply of wood in the yard. It was old wood, and a little rotten. He hadn't cut more, nor had he burned much, last winter. This was the wood I had cut while training.
I piled it high. I was tempted to burn the cottage, but I knew that another man would come to mind the tomb. Why ruin it for him?
Then I went in and spread my cloak on the floor. I lifted his corpse and put it gently on the good wool. Some pieces of him fell away. I was not squeamish. I filled my cloak and carried him into the yard. I put copper coins in the empty sockets of his skull and set the bag of my cloak and his bones on top of the woodpile, then Miltiades got a flame going with his fire kit.
'He was a great warrior,' Miltiades said. 'Twice he saved my life in the haze of battle. Once he saved my ship. And he could sing poetry like a bard. He was a gentleman like the heroes of old. May his shade go with theirs, to the island of the blessed, for he was all the old virtues together in one man.'
Then I wept. I said a few halting words, and the flames rushed up and consumed him.
But he lives in my words, honey. Honour him. He made me. In a way, he made you. Because he put the skill of arms in me, and because of him, I am not dead. His death was the beginning of everything that went wrong.
Miltiades and I went back home. You might think that I'd have shouted at Pater, but I didn't. Pater knew – that is, he knew when we were riding away, the day he took me from Calchas. He knew what would happen, and he told the truth. We didn't kill him. We were like a sword left lying in a tavern, and then used in a murder. We were the instruments of his death.
I think some of Calchas passed through the skin of my hands and into my heart. I think I became a man while I carried his body, light as dried bone, out to the yard to burn him on his pyre. Is that just memory playing tricks?
Mater had never met him, but she wept for him, nonetheless – odd, in a way. He had no use for women, and yet a woman who had never known him mourned him. Somehow, it was fitting.
We kept a three-day vigil at our home, as if he'd been family, and Miltiades joined in – or led us – and that bound him to us even more, and us to him. He sat with Mater and read to her and told her she was beautiful. She drank a little and flirted harmlessly.
Then Draco and Theron came back, riding donkeys.
They came into the yard, failure written on their bodies like words on papyrus. Draco dismounted first and he didn't meet Miltiades' eyes, but told the story simply and quickly. The Spartans had derided the three of them, called them peasants and rebels, and told them to take their petty attempts at democracy to Athens, where such things are welcome.
Draco wasn't a broken man, but he was changed by the experience. He was used to being taken seriously, and he'd been treated like a boor and a dolt. He complained long and hard. Indeed, for the rest of his life, he complained of the treatment he received in Sparta.
Myron came later. He complained less, but his resentment was hotter. Perhaps, as a farmer and not a craftsman, and as a member of an old family that claimed descent from the gods, he actually thought of himself as an aristocrat. Anything is possible. But the insults of the Spartans made his blood boil. The difference was that he never spoke of it again. Neither did Theron. For other reasons, as you shall see.
Epictetus followed, and then the archon himself. He had a horse, although it looked like a sorry beast beside the fine mounts Miltiades had brought.
Mater wanted to know who had arrived, and I went up to the women's quarters to tell her.
'Your father is about to find out why a man like Miltiades has cooled his heels for five days in our house,' she said. 'Will you grow to be a man like him? Like Miltiades? Or just another good craftsman like your father? Poor man. I led him to this. I couldn't just be the wife of a smith, and now we're about to be part of a political game.' She gulped wine. 'I should fall on a sword like your teacher. He knew what he was about.'
I sighed and left her.
I served the wine that night, when they decided to send the 'salt tax' to Athens. Miltiades sent his slave with them and stayed with us, well over the border from his home city.
We didn't have to wait long.
The events of that summer were like one of the storms that roll down the valleys of Boeotia. First you see the storm – the black clouds rising like the strongest towers, spiralling up over the mountains – and then you hear the thunder. And when the thunder comes, honey – you run, or you get wet. At first it seems very far away – a murmur on the far horizon, and perhaps a prayer to the storm god. Then, before you know it, unless you are in the barn or house, you'll be wet through your cloak and chiton in an instant, as the lightning flashes every few heartbeats and crashes to earth – sometimes all around you – and the wind rips branches from the trees and the end of the world seems just one bolt away.
When the men of Plataea sent Myron to Athens, the storm was still a tower of darkness on the horizon, and we were blinded by our own desires. But the desires of men are nothing when the gods send a storm. The first drops of rain were falling, and only Miltiades knew how big the storm was. And he didn't tell us. Athens sent a deputation back in a week, riding on horses over the trade road. They brought a decree welcoming Miltiades back and they brought us a treaty. The men of Plataea signed the treaty, promising to stand by Athens, and Athens promised the same. The men of the city went to the Temple of Hera and swore together in the sacred precincts. Pater went, and my brother. I was too young.
It was a magnificent summer. I remember them coming back from the temple, all the men of our valley in their long clothes – chitons and the big cloaks we wore then. They made a beautiful procession. I thought that this must be how the king of Persia looked.
The sun was high and the sky had the magnificent blue that is so hard to remember on a rainy day like this. We were all proud that Athens wanted us. And the men from Athens acted as if we were men of worth.
I remember that time as happy. Perhaps it is just by contrast with what came after.
The men of Athens went home and Miltiades went with them. Pater went back to work on an order for spear points. Draco went up the mountain with both his sons to cut oak for wheel rims. Myron went home to watch his slaves reap his barley.
I began to form my first cup.
It wasn't going badly when the Athenian herald rode up the valley, summoning us to war.
Two weeks. That's how long we had before the storm broke. I never doubted that I would go with the men. I went as a shield-bearer, of course – a hypaspist – I was too young to fight as a hoplite. These days men take slaves, but in those days, it was more acceptable to take boys just short of manhood to carry your equipment.
Hermogenes went for his father and I went for my brother. My father took a slave.
We never thought to refuse the Athenians. And aside from my mother, who wept and railed against the fates, there were few who saw how completely the Athenians had duped us. They were not saving us. We were marching to protect them. But no one said so.
We took less than a week to muster. We might have mustered faster, but our farmers needed to get their crops in. It was already known in the polis that Thebes intended revenge – that we were viewed as rebels. They might come and burn our crops if we didn't bring them in. It was bad enough leaving grapes on the vines and olives on the trees.
I have no idea whether any man suggested that we either forget our alliance with Athens or simply send a minimum of men. We were proud peasants, and we sent the whole of our muster over the mountains. Men like Myron worked like slaves to get their harvest in. I remember working in the fields with Hermogenes and our slaves, already feeling like a man at war. I drank wine with the men in the evening and hoped that they would present me with an aspis and put me in the taxis. Farmers freed slaves to fill out the ranks, but I was not invited.
We went across the mountains after the feast of Demeter. We marched up the same road that passed the shrine, and every man in the ranks touched the tomb, and I thought of Calchas. We'd heard that the Spartans and all their Peloponnesian allies had marched around the south end of the mountain and entered Attica. Boys like me feared that we would be too late.
War is something a man should want to be late for. We crossed into Attica, and the Spartans were sitting across the stream from the tower at Oinoe, a fortification the tyrants of Athens had built against this very kind of
