Christian Cameron: Salamis

Pardon me for once again wandering like a drunken shepherd, but I digress only to come to my point. It was in Hermione that week and that month, and not in Corinth, that the League began to look at the next step in the war.

It was, I think, two days before my wedding. I was fighting my own black mood; I remember asking my daughter if Briseis was well, I was so sure that Apollo or some sly god would snatch her and my happiness from me.

Euphonia put her arms around me. ‘She said the best thing,’ my daughter said. ‘She said she’d always wanted a daughter, and now she was getting a beautiful, talented girl without the pain of childbirth or the wakeful nights.’ Euphonia sat back. She was sitting by me in the garden of my borrowed house. ‘I thought to be offended, and then I thought that you, too, had me without the pain of bearing me or hearing me cry as a baby.’

Penelope, who was living in my house, put a cup of wine in my hand. ‘You were the best baby,’ she said wistfully. ‘My sons were loud and demanding, and you were always sweet-’

‘I pulled your loom over when I was six,’ Euphonia said.

There was a brief silence.

‘I thought Andronicus did that,’ Penelope said with that dangerous tone in her voice.

I remember looking out from the little portico where we were sitting, and seeing the marvellous stars, thousands and thousands on a perfect autumn evening. I thought we were going to have a row, and I was willing myself away.

But Pen just hugged my daughter. ‘Well, that loom is ashes now, my child,’ she said. To me, she said, ‘Your chosen wife gives more orders than any woman I’ve ever met. And spends more time on her appearance.’ She raised a hand to forestall my response. ‘Despite which, she is easy to like. Her clothes are going to cause a scandal in Athens, I promise you — she all but wears one breast bare! We’ll all have to exercise like Spartans to support them, I do declare.’

Pen, in fact, still had a fine figure, and ran for exercise, but I understood her comment.

‘Ionia is different,’ I said. ‘And she has led a different life from you.’

Penelope sat and hugged her knees like a much younger woman. She looked at my daughter.

‘Oh, I see! Adult things. I know how babies happen!’ Euphonia said. She tossed her head and flounced off. ‘Perhaps I should attend the Queen of Sparta? She always speaks to me as if I am an adult!’

I had grown wise enough as a parent to merely blow her a kiss.

‘She asked me,’ Penelope said. It was dark in our little porch with its beautiful columns and the fragrant garden. ‘She asked me how long I would wait to marry again.’

I blinked.

‘She said did I really want to sleep alone? And I knew I did not. Oh, brother, is that treason?’ Penelope was suddenly crying and I wondered, guiltily, if it was my place to comfort those in need just that week. Brasidas — the strongest man I knew — and now my sister, who, with Jocasta, was my model of strong women.

Yet, using silence to cover my confusion, I had to admit that loyalty to a dead partner could be very cold comfort. ‘I think you must do what seems best,’ I said.

‘That’s a cowardly answer,’ Penelope spat at me. ‘You mean I should do what is right? I’m asking you what is right!’

In fact, she was asking my permission to find someone, or to leave off mourning eventually. I knew it. I bit my lip. She was my sister and I confess I saw no reason for her — or any man or woman — to spend what could be a long life, alone or with her sons.

A voice floated out of the darkness. ‘My husband told me to find a good man and make strong sons, if he should die.’

That was Gorgo’s voice, and she came up the smooth, ancient steps to our little portico. With her were two Thracian women and Bulis — but her being out in the darkness would still have been a scandal in Athens.

In Hermione, though, there were no rules. I won’t belabour the point, but we were a nation at war; we knew we were riding the fell beast in a pause between two deadly engagements. Girls and boys flirted and even kissed and their elders winked at it. It was not like the Athens or Plataea of my youth.

We all knew we were living on borrowed time, I think.

At any rate, the Queen of Sparta, widowed in the same hour as my sister, came up the steps, and she and Bulis sat with us. Eugenios came and placed lit oil lamps on small tables, and cakes appeared. And more wine.

But not before Gorgo said her piece.

‘I will always see Leonidas as a demigod,’ Gorgo said. She neither choked with emotion nor sounded happy. Her voice was neither flat nor full, but almost light in its delivery, like an oracle. ‘But I will never compare him to any man who follows him into my bed. What is, is.’ She smiled at Penelope, who came and embraced her.

She looked at me. ‘We have all missed the Mysteries, have we not?’ she asked, by which she meant the Eleusinian Mysteries, which should have been celebrated the week of Salamis. And her statement, ‘what is, is’ is contained in the Mysteries, although I was not, at that time, an initiate.

Bulis looked at me. I waved, and Eugenios put wine in his hand, and then another cup by the Queen.

My daughter returned, looking smug. Behind her came Jocasta, pink by torchlight with embarrassment and secret joy at being out of her house after dark. And Aristides. And Brasidas joined us and sat close by Gorgo.

‘We meet in the darkness like conspirators,’ Bulis said.

Gorgo spoke, again like an oracle. ‘In the darkness, we can all pretend we were never here,’ she said.

Euphonia laughed and almost got sent to bed.

I’d like to say that we then went on to solve the League’s problems, but mostly we sat and watched the stars and drank wine.

Jocasta laughed softly. ‘I’ve always wondered what men do at parties.’

Aristides laughed. ‘You have? Really, this is quite a bit better than most symposia. For one thing, Eugenios mixes wine better than any host I know, and for another, each of us thinks before we speak.’

Jocasta leaned back so that her head rested on her husband’s shoulder. Even then, in the near dark and in the afterglow of a famous victory, Aristides looked shocked that his wife would touch him in public. It’s who he was.

‘The wine is going to my head,’ Jocasta said. ‘Tell me, men. Will we defeat the Great King?’

I remember the silence. Far away, a cat yowled. Closer, there was the scent of the fig tree, like cinnamon and honey on the wind that rustled the branches to tell us that winter was coming.

‘You know that Mardonius has the army in Thessaly?’ I asked.

Gorgo nodded, her profile sharp against the light of one of the oil lamps. ‘I know more than that,’ she said quietly. ‘I know from … a friend … that Mardonius, who, according to my source, seeks to be Great King himself, will seek to invade Attica again.’

Jocasta moaned. We all sat up.

‘He believes that, even now, Athens can be destroyed so thoroughly that her citizens will disperse or leave the League.’ She looked at Aristides. ‘And even now there are many in Sparta who speak of holding the isthmian wall at Corinth and leaving Boeotia and Attica to their fate.’

Bulis nodded silently.

‘Most of the peers who wanted to save all Greece,’ he said, ‘died with the King.’

We all sat silently and digested that.

‘Tomorrow I will meet Themistocles and escort him to Sparta,’ Gorgo said. ‘I hope that he, at least, as one of the architects of the Temple of Nike at Salamis, will help me to convince the ephors to march an army in the spring.’

Brasidas laughed. ‘The architect of the Temple of Nike,’ he said. ‘Why do the Athenians think women cannot be orators? That’s a beautiful phrase.’