The Great King (12 page)

Like Athenian aristocrats, come to think of it.

Greeks. Power-mad fools.

The Spartans brushed past us and went off into the firelit darkness, and I was left pondering . . . well, everything I just said.

Hector appeared. He bowed, and Cimon paused, so I paused too.

Cimon smiled at the boy. He was good – like his father, he was never too great to charm someone rather than merely command them. ‘Speak, boy. What was all that about?’

Hector looked at me for approval. It was the oddest thing – we were on the steps of the great temple of Zeus, with all the judges of the games standing just above us in the lamp-lit interior of the great stone building, looking like supernatural judges themselves. Cimon decided to keep them waiting.

Cimon was far more an aristocrat than I.

I nodded to Hector.

‘The King of Sparta,’ Hector said carefully. He paused. ‘Actually, the king’s friend. But the king—’

‘One of the kings,’ Cimon said. ‘Sparta is blessed with two.’

Hector nodded and bobbed his head. ‘Yes, sir. One of the kings, and his wife, wanted to enter their friend’s chariot. Late. Apparently they did not want to train their horses here, but chose to exercise them in Lacedaemon. To be truthful, sirs, I had trouble following the argument.’ He shrugged, as boys will, even when being polite. ‘The king claimed he had permission, and the judges refused him, and his friend.’

‘Because he is late?’ Cimon asked.

Hector bowed his head. ‘That’s what I understood.’

Cimon frowned. ‘Arimnestos, why do these things happen to you? Now this is a matter of state. Not just about a few men pushing their athletes. You understand?’

I understood. Turning Polymarchos and his athlete down – that might be a small matter. Cimon and I had been prepared to put pressure on the judges. That made it a larger matter, but still small enough.

The King of Sparta?

That was a very big matter.

And bureaucrats hate to back down.

We climbed the rest of the steps. Young Astylos stood, disconsolate, by the end table. There were twelve judges, and they stood at their tables – some had scrolls, two had tablets of wood, and the archon stood alone.

A herald recognised Cimon. He’d clearly already spoken to Hector, so he raised his rod and announced us formally.

The judge-archon nodded. ‘What matter brings you to the tribunal of Elis?’ he snapped.

Polymarchos bowed. ‘Sir, these are my witnesses to the power of the storm that shipwrecked us on Sicily. This is Arimnestos of Plataea, who rescued us, and this is Cimon, son of Miltiades, victor of Marathon—’

‘I know who they are,’ spat the judge. He looked like a man who had had a long, difficult day. He glanced at me.

‘Sir,’ I said. ‘It was one of the worst storms it has been my ill-luck to encounter. I was blown all the way to the coast of Africa. Sir, I have sailed outside the Pillars of Herakles, my ancestor.’ That’s me, laying it on thick. ‘This was as bad a storm as I have seen.’

Cimon nodded. ‘I concur with everything he said. On the one hand, a heavy storm, and on the other, the coast of Sicily would have been a worse place from which to be blown than our position in the Illyrian Sea.’ He smiled at his little rhetorical flourish – his one hand, other hand construction.

The judge narrowed his eyes. ‘It seems to me that if Poseidon sends such a powerful storm, it is because he doesn’t want an athlete to be at the games.’

Cimon nodded. ‘The gods may have such disagreements. But Zeus is the god of judges as Poseidon is the god of the sea, and it is in the hands of Zeus—’

‘Are you telling me the will of Zeus? Or my duty as a judge?’ the man spat.

I had a brief flash, by all the gods, of the edge of my sword carving the man’s neck. Why is it that small men, given a little power, will behave like petty tyrants? For a few days, this elder of Elis, a tiny city, had power over men like Leonidas of Sparta and Cimon of Athens. Instead of being honest and humble . . .

Pah. I could see what he’d look like as his head fell off my blade. He made me that angry.

I thought Polymarchos was going to burst into tears. All that training, wasted – because of a storm, some rapacious Sicilians, and a dozen fools in the Peloponnesus.

Astylos had given up. I know how it is – when the fates are against you, and you know that you cannot win. He managed a smile.

I decided to brazen it out. ‘I can name a dozen athletes who have been allowed to enter late – even this late,’ I said. To be honest, I couldn’t name one, but I was willing to bet that Cimon could. ‘Unless you have some personal interest, sir, I think you need to explain yourself in detail.’ I snapped that at him in my storm-at-sea voice.

Cimon raised an eyebrow, but he let me play my dice.

‘Personal interest?’ The old man’s saliva actually struck my shoulder, he was sputtering so hard. ‘Are you accusing me of . . . acting against the will of the gods?’ He shook his head. ‘I am the archon of the games. I do not need to explain myself to you.’ He waved his hand.

‘Yes, you do,’ I said. ‘Or I’ll come back with Themistocles.’ It was an odd threat – but I knew he’d invited many famous men – to discuss the Persians – and I suspected he’d have more power with these men than Cimon.

Cimon, in the meantime, leaned down and spoke in the ear of the Italian athlete.

Then he nodded to me, and turned on his heel.

The judge said, ‘How dare you – stop that man!’

But he was too late. Everyone had watched Cimon’s expression of contempt – turning his back on the judge – and they’d missed Astylos slipping through the columns into the temple proper. He was in the sanctuary – from which he could not be removed by force.

Cimon spoke in a voice of iron. ‘He will stay in the sanctuary until we have been heard. In an hour, every Hellene on the plain of Olympia will have heard that you are barring competitors to influence events.’

‘I will return with Themistocles,’ I promised.

We walked down the steps. They were shouting behind us – but not at us, or at Astylos. The judges were shouting at each other.

‘It’s about the chariot race,’ Cimon said as soon as we were clear of the temple. ‘It must be. No one cares about anything else these days. The Spartans have kept their entry a secret. It must be a powerful entry. But the pretext used to disqualify them is the late-entry thing – I’m sure of it. Your man is simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.’

‘By about thirty days,’ I admitted.

Polymarchos had the good grace to look abashed. ‘Gentlemen – I’m sorry to have involved you in this.’

I shook my head. ‘It’s not really about you. I’m for Themistocles. You?’ I asked Cimon.

Cimon made a very odd face. ‘I will present myself to the King of Sparta,’ he said.

It was a busy night.

Athletes had to be entered before the parade, which happened before the opening sacrifices. That gave us two more days, but Cimon said, in parting, that he thought we’d have to make our case as the sun rose.

I went to Themistocles immediately. Sometimes the gods smile at the affairs of men – I found his tent with some difficulty, only to be told that he was drinking with the Plataean, Arimnestos. So I walked back to my own camp with my feet aching – a sailor can lose his love of the land very quickly – and I found him singing – very well, let me add – and at the centre of the party I had left some hours before.

I waited until he was done and had been well applauded before I cornered him.

‘I was surly earlier,’ he began. ‘I came back to apologise and found you gone, but your man Harpagos—’

‘Not my man any more. Very much his own man.’ I couldn’t help myself.

But Themistocles the democrat applauded. ‘Yes – these are foolish notions of patronage of which we should rid ourselves. Well put. He is his own man. Exactly. But at any rate, he insisted I was welcome – that any Marathon man was welcome.’ He smiled, somewhat the worse for drink. ‘I tried to do my bit.’

I laughed. Drunk, Themistocles was still a pompous arse, but somehow a much better man. He had a ridiculous garland of ivy on his brow and a big bronze wine cup – a Boeotian kontharos cup – half full of wine. My wine.

‘I need a favour,’ I blurted, ‘but I suspect I’ll do you one, just in asking.’

He nodded. And smiled. Greeks love a bit of messy logic.

‘Is Leonidas of Sparta your ally?’ I asked.

He played with his beard. ‘Yes,’ he admitted.

‘He has arrived with a late entry into the games – a chariot in the four-horse event,’ I said. ‘The tethrippon.’

Themistocles was suddenly very sober. He sat up, his garland of ivy a little askew, and narrowed his eyes. ‘And the judges have declined to let his team race,’ he said. ‘Look, I may not have loved the man, but he was brilliant. He saw it in a moment. Syracusa or Aegina – or both. They both have teams in the four-horse race. And they both hate Sparta.’ He met my eye. ‘At least, right now.’ And he leered. ‘And other reasons,’ he added enigmatically.

‘A friend of mine is trying to enter the foot racers, but he’s being prohibited on the same grounds,’ I said.

Themistocles took his garland off and put it carefully on the ground. ‘Well,’ he said. ‘You are correct, Plataean. You have done me a favour. With a little care, I have the power – the friends – to remedy this, and thus do a favour for Sparta and for Leonidas.’ He met my eye. ‘I won’t forget this.’

I sighed with relief. ‘Themistocles, all I ask is that my man, Astylos, be allowed to race. I don’t know him. But I owe his trainer.’

Themistocles rose to his feet. He lacked much of the immense dignity of Leonidas, but he was fit, with muscles upon muscles, and he, too, looked much younger than his years. They shared something, those two.

He walked off into the darkness. I turned to Polymarchos.

‘What can be done is done,’ I said. ‘Have a cup of wine.’

In the dawn, we were all arrayed together in our best – I wore my Tyrian red cloak embroidered with ravens, and Cimon wore a garment so deeply died it seemed to vibrate – somewhere between red and blue. Themistocles wore a deliberately humble garment, a plain boy’s chlamys in soft white wool – to show his body. And Leonidas of Sparta eclipsed us all, just by the way he stood.

We were waiting for the dawn ritual to be completed in the sanctuary – where, even then, my young athlete had been awake all night, clinging to a cold pillar – hardly the best training regimen for a man in his prime. But Cimon put my hand in the king’s.

‘Leonidas,’ he said. ‘This is Arimnestos of Plataea, son of Chalkoteknes, son of Simonides. He led the Plataeans at Marathon . . .’

The King of Sparta seized my arm in a two-handed embrace. ‘What a pleasure it is to meet you in person,’ he said. ‘I am told that you, too, are a son of Herakles?’

I was almost speechless. The King of great Sparta knew of me? I think I stood there for two breaths, my mouth working like that of a fish out of water.

But Leonidas was too well bred to let me flounder. ‘You are perhaps the most famous fighter against the Medes of all Hellenes,’ he said. He smiled at Cimon. ‘With the possible exception of your father, of course.’

I can’t do justice to the way in which he said these things – forcefully. No one could mistake his comments for flattery. He spoke like a judge at a murder trial – and yet, there was almost always a wicked gleam in his eye, as if he knew a secret jest. Or perhaps found himself funny. He claimed he never wanted to be king, and I think that may be true. Perhaps he found it . . . odd, and comic, to be king.

I recovered. ‘Oh, my lord, I am merely another spearman,’ I said, or something like that. ‘The hero of the Plataeans is not Ajax or Achilles, but only Leithes, who gathered other little men around him to stem the rush of mighty Hector.’

He nodded. ‘I remember the Plataeans,’ he said. He smiled pleasantly enough and then extended his great right arm to show a scar on his bicep. ‘A Plataean spearman gave me that,’ he said with a rueful laugh. ‘In the Agoge, they told us that boys learn better from pain.’

As it proved, that was quite a long speech for him.

We walked up the steps, but the deal was done. The judges – with a great show of humility – admitted the Spartan team to the four-horse contest. Everyone made sacrifices to the gods.

It was all done in an hour, and the sun was a red disc on the horizon. Except that nothing had been said of my athlete.

Themistocles didn’t make me ask. He nodded easily to the chief judge. ‘I think there is another athlete who has been awake all night awaiting your clemency,’ he said.

The judge wavered for a fraction of a heartbeat – long enough for me to realise that this vain old man was considering poor Astylos out of pure spite.

Themistocles raised an eyebrow. ‘I would hate to have to bring all these men together again,’ he said. His eyes were hard as rock – as hard as those of a man killing his way through defeated enemies. There was no mercy in them at all.

The judge considered resistance.

‘But I will,’ Themistocles said, his voice mild. In that moment, I saw who he truly was – a man who loved the exercise of power. For itself. I have known men – aye, and women – who live for the release of sex, for the balm of music – for the moment when you elude an enemy’s spear and plunge your own into another man’s guts – aye. All those.

In that moment, I saw that Themistocles lived for this.

The judge flinched. ‘Of course your Italian boy can run. If he can stay awake.’

Themistocles smiled at me, as if to say: Now you owe me.

See? Hellenes, at the games of the gods. All fair and above board.

To be honest, age dims the memory. They were beautiful days, once I got used to the smell, and if there is a better life than lying in the sun with a broad straw hat and all your friends watching young men run their hearts out, I don’t know what it is. After we won our case with the judges of Elis, I was elated – it is hard to describe – and I went and spent money in the market. Then I went for a run of my own, because I knew I had too much spirit. I ran a good distance – thirty stades or so, up and around the mountain and back. And went back to the market, collected my ivory Athena and my pair of fancy gold brooches from a delighted craftsman, and went to my tent to strigil and oil. I felt like a god.