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.’
Jocasta laughed. ‘You, Gorgo, were the architect of that victory. Themistocles was merely a stonemason.’
The Spartan queen shook her head. ‘Too much praise is like too much wine. I must go to bed. But I will keep Themistocles waiting one more day — if it means I can attend a certain wedding.’
She looked at my daughter — remember, we were guest friends, and my daughter had known her now for some years. ‘Sing us something, my child,’ she said. ‘We are old and silent.’
Jocasta laughed again, she was becoming immodest, by her own lights. ‘Yes, what shall we sing?’ she asked. ‘I thought men sang at these parties.’
Euphonia stood up and sang. But like most very young people, she sang to shock. And her voice was as beautiful as her mother’s had been.
And may Zeus’s pure daughter, she who holds securely the sacred wall, willingly, meeting my will, look upon me; and, grieved at our pursuit, come with all her might, a virgin to a virgin’s aid, to deliver me- That the mighty race of our honourable mother may escape the embrace of man (ah me), unwedded, unvanquished.
Brasidas, who loved my daughter, laughed aloud.
I sat up. ‘That is a song against marriage,’ I said.
My daughter tossed her head. ‘It is a song we sing at Brauron, when we are little bears,’ she said. ‘Some of the priestesses say men have no purpose but to break us and marriage is to women what taming is to horses.’
Gorgo forsook her mourning long enough to laugh her hearty, man’s laugh. ‘A fine song,’ she said. ‘I can see she is truly your daughter. But Euphonia, never let any child born of woman tell you that marriage breaks man or woman. Is all Greece stronger, or weaker, for the League we have made against the Persians?’
‘Stronger, of course,’ shot back my daughter.
‘So it is with marriage. Despite a thousand kinds of compromise, the result is stronger than either one was alone.’ She rose. Bulis rose with her like a shadow. She leaned over and kissed Jocasta. ‘I swear by Aphrodite I will not come as the Queen of Sparta,’ she whispered.
‘Thanks all the gods,’ Jocasta murmured. ‘I have enough troubles as it is.’
Anyway, that’s all I remember of that evening. I think Gorgo had another meeting with Jocasta, but that’s for another story and another night.
And then it was my wedding day.
It was bright and sunny, not quite warm — almost perfect for wearing a heavy himation in public. I had a magnificent one, a length of fabric I’d taken — to be honest, Hector had done the taking — two days after the battle. It had probably been Artemisia’s and she had the best taste I knew of, except Briseis. It was Tyrian red, with tasselled ends and gold-tablet woven borders. I didn’t have a zone rich enough to wear with it, but Cimon did. It is amazing how, no matter how much you prepare, something is forgotten, and Cimon sent back to ‘his’ house, first for a zone of gold, and then for sandals — how on earth had I expected to be wed in my military ‘Spartan shoes’?
His spare sandals were a rich white, so white I didn’t really know that leather could be so white. They had gold tassels and gold laces and, frankly, they looked ridiculous on my feet. Almost every toe I have has been broken, some four or five times. There are parts of me that are handsome still, and back then, at the height of my powers, I was accounted handsome, I think, but never for my feet.
In truth, I think part of getting wed is proving to your soon-to-be wife that you will wear whatever it takes. I wore the sandals and the zone. And as I stepped up into my chariot — alone, symbolically — I ran a fond hand over the bronze tyre of the wheel that I had helped forge.
And all my friends — I mean all of them, all that were living and, I think, a few of my dead — followed my chariot through the steep streets of Hermione, to the house where Archilogos waited. It was by then the edge of evening and the sun was setting red and mighty in the west behind the hills. I have no idea how I spent that day: looking for sandals, apparently. But I remember the light on the ships and the roof of the temple of Poseidon. I remember Aeschylus and Phrynicus becoming shrews as they matched wits against each other; I thought of telling them to be quiet, but I was old enough to realise that they were, in fact, enjoying themselves. And Styges was there, and Tiraesias and Hermogenes and Brasidas and Bulis, and Moire, and Ion who was too young to be one of my friends and was clearly more comfortable with the younger men, my sons.
And there they were, each more beautiful than the last, if I may say it of them. Hector’s hair was like a blond flame, long like a Spartan’s, and Hipponax, heavier, but strong and calm, with his ringlets oiled and a superb woollen himation that just possibly his bride had made for him. And there with me were most of my marines — Sitalkes was gone to find his wife at Corinth and missed it all — and many oarsmen, too. Kineas strode by one of my chariot wheels like a god and he made me think somehow of Neoptolymos, the friend of my youth, the Cretan.
There were so many men we filled the streets, and three chariots — I tried to take it all in, but Aristides has told me since that he and some of the more formally dressed men were only just leaving their houses because of the press when I was arriving in the courtyard of Archilogos.
We had arranged that each of us would go to our bride’s house, pick her up in our chariot and lead a procession of her dowry through the streets to the temple of Poseidon, where we would all make offering and sacrifice, and where, by the courtesy of the town’s elders, we were allowed to make a marriage feast inside the precinct, as it was the only area in the town large enough for so many.
And it seemed unreal to me that I was going to wed Briseis in this pretty little town that was not my own, or hers, amid the same men who I led onto enemy decks and through enemy formations, all wreathed, all laughing. There was Leukas, who had been born almost in Hyperborea, and there was Seckla, in a magnificent robe of shining white and gold (loot, I suspect, from one of the Carthaginians), and he was from so far south of Thebes (Thebes of Egypt, that is) that he said it was as far from his home to Thebes as it was from Thebes to Athens. And there was Ka, who wore, instead of a himation or a chiton, the skin of a leopard, a fabulous spotted cat, or perhaps it was two, but it made him look even more exotic and even less Greek.
Of course, he was almost a foot taller than all the other men, as well. It made him easy to find, in a fight. Ka was a contrast to Moire. Ka never tried to be Greek; Moire was as Greek as he sought to be.
Anyway, I couldn’t quite get my mind around the reality of it. The chariot rolled along well enough, and the horses, for horses, behaved themselves. Cimon was beside himself with what a fine team they were and how magnificent they’d be if he could only replace the offside horse with a bigger one. They were all grey, unmatched and yet somehow matched, and it’s true that the offside horse was smaller. But they filled the street, they obeyed me like slaves, and they didn’t upset my magnificent himation. Listen, when I was a slave boy on Hipponax’s farm, learning to drive a chariot, little did I imagine that the next chance I would have would be in the streets of a tiny town in the Peloponnese, on the road to wedding my master’s daughter!