Christian Cameron: Salamis

‘And you? Are you now destitute?’ she asked.

I sat on a rock and dragged her down beside me. ‘Perhaps,’ I said. ‘I won’t really know for weeks and perhaps longer. Until I see how many of my ships survived the autumn.’

She nodded. The moon was high and I could see the signs of age on her face.

Not that I cared.

‘I was a fool,’ she said. ‘I was a fool to aim at worldly power when I might have spent my youth with you.’ She looked me in the eye and shrugged. ‘But we are what we are. I never wanted home and hearth. I wanted to sail the earth and sea as my brother did.’ She shrugged.

‘Where are your sons?’ I asked her.

She leaned closer to me. A chill wind blew across the sand. ‘They went as horsemen with the army, thanks to Artaphernes. My husband, not the viper his son.’

I nodded. I had a hard time imagining that — if they were indeed of my blood — they loved horses.

‘I was a fool,’ I said. ‘To want the life of the spear and ship when I could have been a bronze-smith in a shop, and been happy. But only with you.’

We sat in silence.

‘We are not so old,’ Briseis said. ‘I almost feel I might be beautiful, in the right lighting.’

I laughed. ‘Lady of my heart, truly, I never fought better than I fought today. So I am young in the midst of being old, and I invite you to join me. Tomorrow, the aches and pains-’

‘Hands off, improvident suitor!’ she said, quoting Homer. She leapt up. ‘My mother warned me about boys like you,’ she said. ‘Don’t follow me.’

And she walked off into the darkness.

And I drank wine with my people and Archilogos, who I found drinking with Seckla, of all people.

Early the next morning, Harpagos’s funeral pyre lit the dawn and we shared wine and poured more on the fire. And as if the fire was a beacon, Artemisia’s ships joined us on the beach of Chios one by one — the Red King, and her own swift ship. Archilogos we already had by us.

We met them on the beach. I was crowned with laurel from the funeral, clad only in a himation, without arms, and Brasidas the same. But the rest of our marines — thirty of them, at least — were full armed.

Artemisia was not in armour either. She was dressed like a slightly outlandish matron, in purple and saffron peplos and chlamys, and her clothing was beautifully embroidered, with her magnificent red hair as an ornament, so that one could easily see she was a queen. And she, despite being tall, floated over the sand and didn’t seem to stumble or wallow as many of the rest of us did.

Briseis was by me. She was, of course, a priestess of Aphrodite, and Harpagos, like many men of Chios, was a devotee and an initiate, so that Briseis had said the rites and sung the hymns. She was very plainly dressed in a dark chiton, long and slim as a dark flame, with a single stripe of brightest white.

We all came together from our opposite ends of the beach.

I had an olive branch, as did the Red King, for all that he was in full armour and had a sword on.

‘I have your son,’ I said.

‘And I yours,’ Artemisia said.

But she was looking at Briseis.

It struck me — in a moment of wonder — that they must know each other, as they were of an age, from the same social class, and from cities not so very far apart.

Briseis laughed. ‘Artemisia!’ she cried. ‘You!’

She turned to me. ‘We were at Sappho’s school together as girls,’ she said.

And the other woman shook her head. ‘The circle of the world seems vast,’ she said. ‘And yet, the compass sometimes seems very small.’

I had her son and his military tutor brought down the beach. ‘I release your son and his ship as well,’ I said. ‘And I have done better than my part of the bargain. I include two sons of Xerxes I found on the beach at Ephesus.’

To be fair, Seckla took them prisoner while Brasidas and I were racing up the hill.

The Queen of Halicarnassus laughed like a man and kissed both my cheeks.

‘You are the most honest Greek I have ever met,’ she said.

‘Foolish, more like,’ the Red King said. He had my son Hipponax by the elbow and he gave him a gentle shove. ‘I hope, Plataean, when next we meet, that we do not have all these women and children between us.’

I looked at him. His old-fashioned Corinthian helmet gave me little of his face. ‘Are we enemies?’ I asked. ‘Do you owe me some vengeance?’

He laughed. ‘No,’ he said. ‘But men say you are the best warrior of the Greeks. You are too old to hold that title. I will strip it from your dead hand.’ He bowed. ‘Do not think I do not honour you, Arimnestos of Plataea. But I will be the best spear in the world.’

He nodded, helmet still firmly on his head, turned, and stalked away with a dozen scarlet marines at his back.

As we prepared to leave the beach at Chios, a fishing smack brought us word that Artaphernes, son of Artaphernes, had come into Ephesus with a regiment of Lydian cavalry and found us gone. The fisherman told us that Artaphernes rode his horse into the sea, looking towards Chios, and cursed my name.

It’s good for men to know who you are. Powerful enemies show that you haven’t wasted your life, don’t they?

The next evening found us on the beach at Tenos. Now, you may recall that the ships of Tenos came over to us just before the fight at Salamis and the island had declared for the League of Corinth. So we found Megakles safe and happy enough, with a mountain of food ready to serve out to my oarsmen.

We half-emptied the hull and ate ourselves to repletion, and then weathered a nasty day of squall after squall to pass up the west coast of Andros where we could see much of the League fleet on the beach.

I had no temptation to land and place myself at Themistocles’ service. Listen — he may have been the greatest of the Greeks, or a traitor. But I could not trust him, and it was clear to me that, having beaten the Great King, he would now go from hubris to hubris.

I wanted no part in the loot of Andros. The island was poor sand anyway. But Moire and Harpagos’s nephew Ion felt differently, and I saluted them and sent them on their way to join the League fleet. Naiad surprised us by declaring that they would winter with the Greek fleet, if we could feed them, and we could.

And Briseis had moved to her brother’s ship. To say I burned for her is not to do justice.

My dreams were dark, though I had Briseis, and Archilogos warmed to me, day by day. Leukas was alive, and far from dead.

I should have been with the gods — the victory, the pursuit, the accomplishment of the dream of a lifetime.

Instead, for the whole of the voyage home, I was haunted by the dreams of the past, the deaths of those I’d loved and hated. I think I feared more on the voyage home than the voyage out. A day of dark skies and low squalls all but unmanned me, so sure was I that the gods would now take from me what they had briefly granted.

That is, all too often, the way of the gods. Is it not?

Megalos, again. The last time that autumn, and my squadron limped in after a long day skirmishing with Poseidon’s winds. No man sang or drank wine on the beach that day — we fell into dreamless sleep, too tired to do more than pour libations and fall on straw. And in the morning, sore from days of rowing, we pointed our bows straight into a strong wind — and pulled.

But towards the hour when a man goes to the agora to see his friends, the winds relented of their torments and we got a light breeze from the north — cold as a woman’s refusal, but gentle enough that we chose to raise sail and run slantwise, south by west, across it. And gentle as that wind was, it lasted the day and saw us to Aegina — and the next dawn it waited for us, and wafted us, without another thought of ugly death, across the Aegean Sea to Hermione.