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.