if by chance in a wine shop at the edge of the Agora, where well-to-do men used to cement business deals.
Themistocles didn’t meet my eye. Miltiades, on the other hand, rose to his feet and embraced me.
‘Money well spent,’ he said. ‘Pardon my doubts of you, friend. I will always be in your debt.’ He gave me a broad wink. ‘I don’t think these other gentlemen liked their taste of your politics.’
Themistocles spat. ‘I do not want to live in a state powered by blood,’ he said.
‘And yet you seek increased power for the lowest class,’ Miltiades answered. ‘What do you expect?’
Themistocles glared at me. ‘I expect them to learn to be men of honour, and to stand in their places and vote — not cudgel each other like thieves.’
But Aristides shocked me. He took my hand and embraced me. ‘I thought to hate you,’ he said. ‘I considered asking for a writ of banishment against you.’
Themistocles looked at him as if the gods had taken his wits. ‘But you did not?’
Aristides shook his head and sat. ‘Drink wine with us, Arimnestos,’ he said. ‘I invited Cleitus to join us, but he declined. I wanted all the factions.’ He almost smirked. ‘Perhaps their faction isn’t worth having today.’
‘They’ll be back,’ I said.
‘So they will,’ Aristides agreed. ‘But no amount of Persian gold will buy them the mob now.’
‘And for that, you forgive this foreigner who used violence to achieve his ends?’ Themistocles asked.
Aristides shrugged. ‘In former times, when a city had reached a point of stasis — civil war — the leading men would invite a foreigner, a lawmaker, to come and save them.’ Aristides smiled. ‘My wife told me that I was being a fool, and that I should see the Plataean as a man who came to Athens and restored order.’
I looked around at all of them. ‘You see me as a killer of men,’ I said. ‘But I was trained by Heraclitus of Ephesus, and I know a little of how cities work. Athens has too many poor, and too few rich, for the rich to control the poor with fear and silver. Too many of Athens’s poor are seamen and oarsmen. They’re not cowards, as all of us around this table have cause to know. And they have no reason to love Persia.’ I shrugged.
‘I know all that,’ Themistocles said. ‘I don’t need some eastern-trained foreigner to tell me.’
‘You know it all,’ Aristides said, ‘but despite that, you did not act.’ He turned to me and smiled. ‘I prefer the rule of law, Plataean.’
‘I am a man of property, too,’ I said. ‘Not as rich as you lot, but I have a good farm, a forge, horses. I, too, treasure the rule of law. But when one side controls the laws, the other side must appeal to another court.’
Aristides nodded. ‘We all wish to ask you to leave the city now.’
I smiled. ‘You are going to run me out of town after all?’
Aristides nodded. ‘We have to. You killed ten men — and most citizens know how. You will be welcomed back soon enough.’
I rose to my feet. ‘Gentlemen, I have fought for Athens, bled for Athens and now I have schemed for Athens. The depth of your thanks never ceases to amaze me.’
Aristides shook his head. ‘Don’t be like that, Arimnestos. If you were one of us, we would all now fear your power. Since you are an ally, we can ask you to leave, and trust you again in the future.’ He said this as if it made sense, and in a way it did. But I was hurt, too. I had planned a brilliant campaign, and the only person who thanked me was Irene, wife of Phrynichus.
‘What can we do for you, Arimnestos?’ Miltiades asked.
I had the good grace to laugh. ‘Nothing, unless it is to make sure that Phrynichus doesn’t starve while you all plot the future of Athens.’ And then I had a thought. ‘Perhaps I will have something after all. I have in my hand a set of manumission papers for a slave girl. They’ve all been signed by a magistrate — how about if you all sign them?’
Her name, it appeared on the tablets, was Apollonasia — quite a mouthful for a twist-foot slave girl from Boeotia, but Apollo’s daughter she certainly was. And all three of them — the three most famous men of their generation — put their stamps and their names across the magistrate’s mark on her tablets.
It was the best gift I could give her. I went and fetched her, and introduced her — her eyes cast modestly down — and each swore that they would remember her.
She walked with us, out of the city. I stopped on the Acropolis hill to say farewell to Phrynichus, and I stopped in Piraeus to say farewell to Agios and Paramanos, and I stopped at Eleusis to say farewell to Eumenios, who I’d barely seen, because in Attica, eighty stades is reckoned a great distance. Cleon came with me, of course. And on our last night in Attica, at Oinoe, where my brother died, she came into my blankets, and kissed me.
‘I’m going in the morning,’ she said. ‘I’ll be a farmer’s wife in Attica, and my sight tells me I will see you again. I was a vessel to lead you, and now I am free.’
I murmured something, because I was hard as rock and wanted to have her, and I didn’t need any of her moon-gazing female nonsense just then, but she bit my shoulder hard to get my attention.
‘You owe me,’ she said. ‘Give me a child of yours, or I’ll curse you. Again.’
So I did.
In the morning, she was gone. I did hear of her again, and I know who she married and who our child grew to be, as you’ll hear eventually, if you all keep sitting here.
But I’ll say this of her in eulogy. She was a hero, as much as Eumeles of Euboea or Aristides. She was a vessel for the gods, and she stood her ground, and when they treated her like shit, she did not become shit. Eh?
I can never lose the notion that if I had gone back for her, the Greeks might have won at Lade. Foolishness. But I still carry the guilt for leaving her to bloody Cleitus for a year.
And he didn’t send her to a brothel because he was
I’m an old man and I have few regrets, but she is one. And when she lay with me that night and took my seed — I felt better. I won’t say otherwise. Much better.
When I awoke in the first light, she was gone, but sitting on my leather bag, where her dark head had lain just hours before, was a great black raven. It cawed once, and the beat of its wings frightened me, and then it rose into the sky with a cry.
I lay still with my heart beating hard, and my body felt lighter. Indeed, when I rose from my blankets, my hip and lower leg hurt less — much less. I’ve never run the stade since Lade, but from that moment I got something back. Something more than mere muscle and tissue.
11
My third return to Plataea was the easiest. Perhaps my fellow townsmen were becoming accustomed to my travels, or perhaps Simon, son of Simon, had just lost his supporters in Thebes and had no money with which to blacken my name. In any event, I went back over Cithaeron in winter, froze my arse in the high pass and made a sacrifice on the family altar nonetheless, and came down to green Plataea in time for spring harvest.
The truth is that Plataeans can be ignorant hicks, and it’s possible that the winter was so cold that they never noticed I was gone.
Either way, I was there for the first harvest, the barley harvest, and my spirits were high — whatever the raven gave me, it was strong. I settled Cleon on a small farm in Cithaeron’s shadow, and he seemed happy enough. I ploughed my fallow land with Hermogenes, and won his grudging praise for my unstinting work. I made new props for grape vines and I pruned everything I could get a sickle to. I gathered all my male slaves and on the spot freed the two Thracians who had been with me since my first return, and then told the rest exactly how they could work their way to freedom.
When the spring farm work was done, I threw myself into the forge, making pots and pitchers and cups and temple vases with Tiraeus and Bion. For twenty days, my forge was never silent. Even Hermogenes worked the forge, and that was rare, because despite his skills, he’d become a farmer first and foremost.
At the feast of Demeter, we danced the Pyrrhiche and I eyed the new crop of boys-become-men with the wary amusement that men have for boys. They preened and slunk away by turns, and lost their heads whenever a pretty girl walked by. Despite which, by the end of the festival, I had a notion of who was worthy and who was worthless, and where they might stand in the phalanx.
