The Goddess of Buttercups and Daisies (11 page)

Luxos arrived home, very depressed. ‘I was so close to having my poetry heard! A plague on Alcibiades and his aristocratic drunken revelry.’

He sat down heavily on one of the two rickety wooden chairs in his single room. ‘I’m going to complain to Aristophanes.’

Metris looked dubious. ‘That might not be the best idea. I think he was annoyed because everyone thought he invited you to the symposium.’

‘How do you know that?’ asked Luxos.

‘I heard him say “Now everyone thinks I invited that idiot Luxos to the symposium”.’

‘Oh.’

‘At least we got food,’ said Metris brightly, emptying the bag of supplies they’d filched from the party.

Luxos slumped in his chair. It had been a relief to eat, after a long period of hunger, but that pleasure had now worn off. ‘Maybe everyone’s right. Maybe I don’t deserve to be a poet. No one’s ever going to listen to me.’

‘Could you put on your own play?’

Luxos shook his head. He was normally an optimistic youth but his optimism had been crushed by the evening’s events, and by the pervasive cloud of unhappiness that now lay over Athens. The presence of Laet was having a baleful influence on everyone.

‘You need money to pay for the chorus and the costumes and everything. The city only gives you funds if you’re the right sort of person.’

‘Right sort of person?’

‘Not the grandson of a slave and son of an oarsman.’

‘Oh.’

They sat in silence. In the peace of the night they could hear the tide lapping around the harbour outside. Metris smiled. Uniquely in the city, the nymph was unaffected by Laet. Her good humour had not dimmed.

‘It would be so good if you could do the reading before Aristophanes’ play. Maybe you could ask him again?’

Luxos shook his head. ‘He’ll never give me that spot. He’s already offered it to Isidoros.’

‘Then what about one of the other comic poets? They might let you read before their play is staged. Or maybe Eupolis needs a good lyric interlude?’

Luxos looked thoughtful. His frown eased. ‘That’s not a bad idea. Maybe I’ve been wasting my time with Aristophanes. He is a fellow Pandionis, but it’s not like he’s ever been that helpful. I should offer my services to Eupolis and if he says no I could try Leucon and Cratinus.’

Metris ran her fingers through his tousled blond hair.

‘Why did you do that?’ asked Luxos.

‘I just felt like it.’ Metris embraced him, and they lay down together on the small bed, an ancient item which, Luxos noticed, had never felt as comfortable as it did when he lay there with Metris in his arms.

Outside, it was stifling. As if Helios himself had decided to add to the city’s problems, the sun blazed overhead making it far too hot for the time of year. It added to the general unhappiness. In the small shrine at the harbour, Bremusa spoke to the Goddess Athena through her altar.

‘You were right, they’re trying to kill Aristophanes. I can’t believe there’s so much fuss over a play.’

‘Peace is a grave matter in Athens these days.’

‘Isn’t he meant to be a comedian?’

‘Yes,’ said the goddess. ‘But nowadays Aristophanes does like to think of himself as a man with a message. Really, I preferred his earlier, funny work.’

‘I can’t stand him. You know I had to give him a place to sleep last night because he was too drunk to get home? It’s outrageous. I’m an Amazon. It’s against my sacred Amazon creed for a man to spend the night in my room.’

‘It’s not, actually. You just made that up.’

‘Well, I still don’t like it.’ Bremusa ached from sleeping on the floor. It was another annoyance. Too much time in a comfortable mansion on Mount Olympus had made her soft.

‘I’m afraid I’m not doing much good here, Goddess. Laet is causing chaos all over the city and I don’t know how to stop her.’

‘Is the nymph Metris unable to calm things down?’

Bremusa laughed bitterly. ‘Metris? She spends all her time with Luxos. She claims they’re in love.’

Athena was annoyed. ‘I didn’t send her to Athens to fall in love.’

After Callias’s symposium Aristophanes had his worst hangover since Alcibiades’ twenty-first birthday celebration, a momentous forty-eight hours of overindulgence which had gone down in legend. He was late for rehearsal, and the people bustling around made him feel nauseous.

‘Sorry I’m late, Hermogenes, I have a hangover worthy of Dionysus himself.’

He told a junior assistant to bring him a hangover cure. ‘And if Luxos appears, poke him with a spear.’

‘Good time at Callias’s symposium?’ asked Hermogenes.

‘Mostly good. Didn’t end so well.’

‘I’m glad you’ve finally arrived. We’re just about to rehearse the scene where the giant statue of the Peace Goddess is hauled out of the cave, flanked by the beautiful maidens, Harvest and Festival.’

Aristophanes nodded, winced, reminded himself not to nod again while he had a hangover, then followed Hermogenes over to the stage. He was eager to see what the prop-makers had come up with. For a successful comedy at the Dionysia, good props were vital. The flying beetle was an excellent start, but they needed more. The rehearsal space contained a rough replica of the stage they’d be using, with a small building in the back, and a trapdoor towards the front. Both could be used in various ways, and for this scene the trapdoor represented the mouth of an underground cavern. It was undecorated at the moment, but when the play was staged they’d put rocks and branches around it for better effect.

In
Peace
, after Trygaeus flew to heaven on the giant dung beetle, he seized the chance to rescue the Goddess of Peace from a cave, where she’d been trapped by War. All the Athenians onstage at the time, represented by the eighteen-man chorus, were to pull her out of the cave at the end of a rope. At the theatre there was a mechanism for raising objects hidden beneath the stage so they appeared through the trapdoor. It was an impressive effect, if the company got it right. When the Goddess of Peace emerged through the trapdoor, freed by honest Athenians, Aristophanes was expecting it to create quite an impression. As he arrived at the stage, the chorus had finished their dialogue and were straining mightily on the rope. At least they were meant to be. Aristophanes wasn’t convinced there was a lot of straining going on.

‘Put some effort into it!’ he said. ‘Make the audience think you’re working!’

As the chorus weren’t professionals, but ordinary citizens recruited for the Dionysia, it made life a little harder for Aristophanes. He couldn’t yell at them in quite the way he’d have liked. They set to it well enough, however, and gave a reasonable impression of men straining to pull something heavy from the ground. The trapdoor opened. With a final, mighty effort, the chorus pulled the Goddess of Peace from the cave. Or at least they would have, if the Goddess of Peace was actually a shabby children’s doll, no more than ten inches tall.

Aristophanes stared at the pathetic little artefact.

‘Hermogenes, what is that?’

‘Our statue.’

‘But it’s a child’s doll.’

‘I know, but it’s all we’ve got.’

‘What do you mean “it’s all we’ve got”? You told me the statue-maker was sending over the real one today.’

Hermogenes shrugged. ‘He sent a note saying he wasn’t letting us have it till we paid him.’

‘This is no good! I can’t send my chorus onstage with a child’s doll for a statue! The audience will riot.’

Aristophanes’ head was pounding. ‘I feel dreadful. For a rich man, I’m not certain Callias serves good quality wine. What the Hades are we going to do about this statue?’

Hermogenes looked hopeless. ‘Can you pay the statue-maker?’

‘No.’

‘In that case, I don’t know.’

‘What sort of assistant are you? Find a solution!’

Hermogenes was too competent to be bullied. He stood his ground, informing Aristophanes that as writer and director, it was his responsibility to make sure the play was well enough funded by their producer. Aristophanes scowled at him. Hermogenes was right. The playwright felt like exploding in anger at everyone on stage, but realised there wasn’t any point. It wouldn’t help, and it would only make his hangover worse.

‘Well where are the beautiful maidens that are meant to accompany the statue?’ he growled.

Hermogenes pointed to two male actors, both in poor physical shape, wearing very unconvincing female costumes and masks.

Aristophanes shuddered. ‘Is everything in this production designed to humiliate me?’ He looked round for the junior assistant. ‘Didn’t I ask you to bring something for a hangover? Stop dawdling!’

He turned to Hermogenes. ‘We can’t put the play on like this. We’ll never get out of the theatre alive. You know what a drunken rabble that audience is. By the end of the festival all standards of decency will have disappeared. Have you ever been hit by an onion thrown from the back row where the sailors’ wives sit? I have. I don’t intend to let it happen again.’

‘Then you probably shouldn’t look at the latest phalluses,’ said Hermogenes. Aristophanes looked over to where two gloomy-faced actors were trying, unsuccessfully, to erect their fourteen-inch penises. There was something obscenely hopeless in the way they were working the drawstrings inside their tunics, to little effect. And not, reflected Aristophanes bitterly, obscenely hopeless in a funny way. He shuddered again. The junior assistant arrived back at a run, carrying a goblet.

‘Your hangover cure.’

‘Fine. Now bring me some wine, and make it quick.’

Hyperbolus met Euphranor before they entered the assembly. They talked quietly, standing a little aside from the mass of white-clad Athenians making their way inside. Some distance away, lines of Scythian archers were walking down the main streets carrying ropes daubed with red paint. It was a crime to miss the democratic assembly. All male citizens were obliged to attend. Anyone tardy enough to turn up with red paint on their tunic was liable to a fine.

‘Something went wrong,’ said Euphranor. ‘Aristophanes survived.’

‘Whose fault was that?’

‘The assassin’s, I suppose,’ said the weapon-maker.

‘Where did we hire him?’

‘Through the priestess Kleonike.’

Hyperbolus scowled; he looked fierce, with his shaggy black hair and beard. It was an expression he often wore while speaking at the assembly. ‘So we’re depending on a woman now?’

Euphranor mopped his brow. The heat was overpowering. ‘She’s done all right for us so far. The peace conference is falling apart.’

‘I suppose that’s true.’ Hyperbolus nodded. ‘Once I’ve spoken in the assembly today it’s going to fall apart a lot quicker. I’m going to accuse Nicias of taking bribes.’

‘Has he been?’

‘Who cares? Damned aristocrat, I’ll see him ostracised before I’m finished with him.’

They were interrupted by two citizens, both elderly, who wanted to thank Hyperbolus for the food he’d sent them. The democratic faction had been organising the collection and distribution of supplies for impoverished citizens, and the elderly pair were grateful for the help they’d received. Hyperbolus accepted their thanks politely, and wished them well as they made their way into the assembly.

The heat was oppressive, far too hot for April. No one could remember the temperature rising so sharply before. The mood was sombre, with undertones of anger. Everyone knew that their situation was becoming desperate, and the meeting was likely to be stormy. No one expected it to end in any sort of agreement. The atmosphere in Athens had worsened quite dramatically in the past few days. Nothing was going well, and nobody could agree on anything. None of those assembled expected today’s meeting to be any different to the last. Hyperbolus would hurl abuse at Nicias, accusing him of cowardice, corruption and selling out the city to the Spartans. Nicias would in turn lacerate Hyperbolus and his associates, till it seemed an absurd notion that the Athenians could ever sign a treaty with Sparta, when they themselves were so bitterly divided.

Bremusa had become used to the odd looks she received while walking round Athens. Although upper-class Athenian women tended to remain indoors, out of public view, there were plenty of women on the streets – vendors, tavern employees, dock workers, hetaerae, slaves and others. None looked like the Amazon. Her hair was longer, and she wore it loose and unstyled. She had dark leather armour and leggings. The leggings alone were enough to mark her out as a barbarian. No Athenian of either sex would ever wear trousers. They were the mark of the uncivilised.

After a few days, though, it did seem to Bremusa that she was receiving less attention. Perhaps people were becoming used to her. Or perhaps they had more pressing matters to worry about. The atmosphere of frustration and annoyance was tangible. It was more than just the despair caused by the never-ending war, and the failure to make progress in the negotiations. Something else was weighing Athens down. Bremusa knew that Laet’s baleful influence was permeating the city.

The woman is a curse. I’ve never encountered anything like it. If she continues roaming around like this, something very bad is going to happen
.

Bremusa looked for Metris. It took a while to locate her, but eventually she came across her at the entrance to the Long Walls that ran down to Piraeus. She was sitting with two children, amusing them by making daisies and buttercups appear beneath their feet. The children looked happy. At least someone in Athens was.

‘Hello, Bremusa! I’ve been playing with my new friends. This is Plato, he’s nine, and Xenophon, he’s eight. We’ve been having a picnic.’

They looked like a grubby, unintelligent pair of children to Bremusa, though they did seem happier than the last time she’d encountered them, when they’d been fighting on the beach. She noticed their nanny, slumbering peacefully on a bench nearby.

‘Athena wants to see you.’

From the tone of Bremusa’s voice, it should have been obvious that Metris was in trouble, but the nymph was too impervious to the world around her to notice. It didn’t occur to her that the goddess might be angry with her.

‘All right,’ she said, cheerfully. She looked down at her companions.

‘I’ll see you again later. We can play some more.’

Plato and Xenophon waved goodbye to their new friend. Bremusa had to admit that she’d rarely seen happier-looking children than those two at that moment. The nymph obviously did have some powers of spreading contentment. If only she could apply herself, she might be able to do something to thwart Laet, or at least ameliorate the effect of her malign influence.

When they arrived at the private shrine, the goddess herself appeared. Metris greeted her as cheerfully as a woman meeting a friend for a pleasant shopping trip.

‘Thanks for sending me to Athens! I do so like it here!’

The Goddess Athena glared at her. ‘What’s this I hear about you and this Luxos the poet?’

‘He’s really nice!’ enthused the nymph. ‘He has lovely blond hair and he writes beautiful poems.’

The goddess was not impressed by either the lovely hair or the beautiful poems. ‘Didn’t I instruct you assist Bremusa?’

‘I needed to comfort Luxos. He was upset after —’

‘Silence! You’re not there to comfort Luxos, you’re there to help bring peace!’

Metris fell silent, for the first time realising that all was not well. She looked a little abashed.

‘Sorry, Goddess.’

Athena leaned forward. ‘Metris, listen well. You are to stay with Bremusa and assist her. You must have no more distractions. I forbid you to see Luxos again.’

Metris quailed. ‘But —’

‘Enough! Now do as I say! Apply yourself to the task I set you or I’ll make you regret it.’

Metris was upset as they left the shrine. Bremusa was pleased. It was time someone talked some sense into the young fool.