At any rate, Histiaeus's arrival was the last straw. I think that Miltiades imagined that he would become the leader of the Ionian Revolt – and eventually the tyrant of all Ionia. And they would have been better for having him, I can tell you, honey. He may have been a bastard about money, but he was a war-leader. Men loved to follow him.
I ramble. Here, mix some of that lovely water from the spring in the bowl, and add apples – by Artemis, girl, do you blush just for the mention of apples? What a delicate flower you must be – thugater, where did you find her? Now pour that in my cup.
We sailed away ahead of the first winter storm, and just as Heraklides predicted, we were soon snug on our couches at Miltiades' great palace at Kallipolis.
Aristagoras took his own retainers and fled to the mainland of Thrace. He had founded a colony there, at Myrcinus, and he abandoned the rebellion, or so Miltiades' informers reported. I wondered where Briseis was. She must be bitter, I thought – from the queen of the Ionian Revolt to the wife of a failed traitor in three short years.
The winter passed quickly enough. I bought a pretty Thracian slave and learned the language from her. I taught the Pyrrhiche to all my oarsmen, and kept them at it through the whole rainy winter, and we went together to celebrate the feast of Demeter, and the return of the sailing season.
I was another year older. I dreamed all winter of ravens, and when the flowers began to bloom I saw a pair rise from a day-old kill and fly away west, and I knew that it was an omen, that I should be going home to Plataea, but there was nothing there for me – I thought. I worried more about my oath to Hipponax and Archilogos, which goes to show what fools men are about fate.
In the spring, Histiaeus declared himself commander of the Ionian Alliance, and set the rendezvous of the fleet at Mytilene again, where he had, over the winter, made himself tyrant. He did it the simple way – his picked men infiltrated the citadel, then he killed the old tyrant with his own hands and every one of his children, too. Soaked in blood, he stepped forward to the applause – the terrified applause, I assume – of the town.
Miltiades told us the tale at dinner, shaking his head with disgust. 'Should have been you,' I said. I didn't mean it as flattery – simple fact. 'Not the killings – the lordship.'
He grinned at me. We were almost friends again – which is to say, he was unchanged, and I had almost forgiven him. Miltiades' land of the Chersonese was the most polyglot kingdom I'd ever seen – Thracians and Asiatics and Greeks and Sakje at every hand, at dinner and in the temples. If Paramanos was the only black man, he was not the only foreigner. He loved the place, and my fear about his loyalties began to relax. At any rate, that afternoon, we had been joined by Olorus, the king of the local Thracians and Miltiades' father-in-law.
He grunted. 'That Aristagoras,' he said. 'I visited him over the winter. He's a greedy fool, and if he keeps taking slaves out of the Bastarnae and the Getae, they'll kill him.'
Miltiades nodded. 'He is a greedy fool,' he said.
'Does he have his wife with him?' I asked, trying to sound uninterested.
He grinned. 'Now, that is a woman!' he said. 'By all the gods, Miltiades – count yourself lucky you didn't marry her. She is all the spine Aristagoras lacks.'
Miltiades shrugged. 'I met her on Lesbos,' he said. 'She is too intelligent to be beautiful.' He looked at me.
Heh, honey, that's how men like Miltiades like their women. Dumb. Fear not – I won't marry you to one of those. Miltiades' chief wife – he had several concubines – was Hegesipyle, as beautiful as a dawn and as stupid as a cow tied to a post. Olorus's daughter, in fact. I couldn't stand to talk to her. She had never read anything, never been anywhere – my Thracian slave was better educated. I know, because I taught her Greek letters in exchange for her teaching me Thracian, and then we read Sappho together. And Alcaeus.
Oh, I'm an old man and I tell these stories like a moth darting around a candle flame.
The point of telling you about that dinner is that Miltiades rose and told us that we would not be joining the rebels. 'The Ionian Revolt is only dangerous to the fools who play at it,' he said, and his bitterness was obvious. He was a man who sought constantly for greatness, and greatness kept passing him by.
Cimon was there. He had a lovely girl on his couch, I remember, because she had bright red hair and we all teased him about what her children would look like. Miltiades had red hair, too, remember.
He rose. 'So what will we do to win honour this summer?' he asked.
Miltiades shook his head, and he sounded both bitter and old. 'Win honour? There is no honour in this world. But we'll fill the treasury while old Artaphernes is busy with his rebellion.'
He had a grand plan for a raid down the Asian coast, all the way past Tyre to the harbour of Naucratis. I frowned when I heard it, because I knew the idea must have come from Paramanos.
We sailed after the spring storms seemed to have blown themselves out. We sailed right past the beach at Mytilene. They must have thought we were on our way to join them, but we didn't so much as spend the night. We stayed on Chios instead, and Stephanos gave money to his mother and impressed all his friends with his riches and then sailed away, and I was a little jealous of the ease with which he returned home and left. His sister was married now and had three sons, and I held one on my knee and thought about how quickly the world was changing. And I wondered if Miltiades was right, that there was no more honour to be had.
We fell on the Aegyptian merchants like foxes on geese. All the cities of Cyprus had fallen by then, and they didn't think there was a Greek within a thousand stades. We came out of a grey dawn, five warships, our rowers hard and strong from the trip south, and they didn't have a single trireme to protect them. I didn't even get blood on my sword. Greeks have a name for when a wrestler wins a match without getting his back dirty – we call it a 'dustless' victory. We took those poor bastards and we were dustless.
I took three merchants myself.
When a squadron came out of the port, too late to save their merchants, we scattered.
I ran south, at the advice of Paramanos. I dumped the rowers from the ships we'd taken on the low dunes of Aegypt and kept the gold and bronze and the gigantic eggs of some fabulous animal – Africa is full of monsters, or so I'm told. There was a slave girl, too – ill-use all over her, and a flinch reflex like a beaten dog. I kept her and treated her well, and she brought me luck.
We picked up another pair of Aegyptian merchants just north of Naucratis the day after the raid, ships inbound with no idea of what had happened. More silver and gold, and Cyprian copper. The bilge of Storm Cutter was filled so deep that we had a hard time beaching the ship, and rowing was a horror.
I beached again, carefully, fed my crew on stolen goat meat and sent the newly captured crewmen to walk back to Naucratis. Then I went west, to Cyrene. That was for Paramanos. He'd found a girl he fancied in the Chersonese, a free Thracian woman, and he'd decided to pick up his children, which filled me with joy – because that meant that he was committed to me. It was touch and go in Cyrene – the authorities knew us for what we were, but Paramanos was a citizen, and they chose not to tangle with my marines. His sister brought his daughters to the boat, clutching their rag dolls, the poor little things – they wept and wept to be put on a boat full of men, and hard men at that. But some things earn the smiles of the gods, and my Aegyptian slave girl turned out to be a fine dry-nurse. She was ridiculously thankful, now that she found she wasn't to be raped every night. And I have noticed this, honey – animals and people repay good treatment. And the gods see.