We sailed south, into the same seas that had been so storm-tossed a month before, but now it was early summer, and the seas were packed with ships — Italiote traders, Illyrian tin ships, Corinthian merchantmen and warships, and Athenians — Athenian ships on every hand. We camped on beaches all the way down the coast of the Peloponnese, rowing all the way under the new summer sun and into constantly adverse winds, and my rowers, fat and hung over from a week at the Olympics playing at being gentlemen, discovered a new talent for grumbling.
But we weathered the Hand, the local name for the promontory, and turned east into the Laconian gulf and the wind changed, and our voyage took on a little bit of a holiday air. We camped on Kythera, enjoyed a feast of greasy mutton, drank the execrable local wine, and probably left a population increase. From Kythera we sailed across the blue water, our oars dry, all the way into Hermione, and spent the night under the pine trees by the temple, listening to a pair of musicians who were training there — beautiful stuff. A pair of oarsmen — Nicolas and Giorgios, who’d been with me since Iberia — left the ship to make a pilgrimage to Epidavros, and I wished them well and directed them to rejoin at Athens if they so desired, and we went due east for Athens, give or take a point, and had sweet weather, making the long blue water crossing in a day and a night so that we raised Piraeus with the rising of the sun.
So I had a week sailing home and another four days crossing the mountains to listen to Draco and Styges and all the other Plataeans tell me about how I should handle my family.
The long and short of it is that my cousin Simonalkes — you may recall him, as he murdered my father and sold me into slavery — took our family farm. When I returned in the year after the sack of Sardis, he hanged himself rather than face justice — or my spear. In Marathon year, his eldest son teamed with my Athenian enemies — actually, not my enemies but those of Miltiades — and came and sacked our farm and killed my mother. Simon, son of Simonalkes, died with Teucer’s arrow in his eye, and we reaped his mercenaries like ripe barley, and I thought that was the end of them, but Simonalkes had other sons — three more, in fact, and Simonides, his second son, had come with Achilles, his third, and Ajax, his fourth, and occupied our farm. They came with force and money, and the archon, Myron, denied them citizenship at first, but they paid fines and went to the shrines and were, for the most part, forgiven.
I was, after all, dead, as far as anyone knew.
Styges, born a Cretan, wanted me to go back, collect some of my men and his master Idomeneaus, and go and wipe them out like a nest of hornets in a vineyard.
Draco wasn’t so sure. I think we were in Attica, near my father-in-law’s estate east of Oinoe, and camping in a sheepfold — the ship was left under Megakles and Leukas and Sekla in Piraeus, with orders to take a cargo no farther than Corinth and run it, and return to Piraeus. I’d wasted a day filling out paperwork for a number of men — such as Sekla, and Megakles — to hold Metic status in Athens, and I had Alexandros and a dozen oarsmen with me crossing the mountains — and Brasidas and Sittonax, who was as delighted to chase Greek girls as he was to chase Gaulish maidens. Giannis went off with Cimon — with the best will in the world I couldn’t employ every young man. He was eager for adventure, and Cimon was pointing his bow for Thrace.
Draco sat on a folding stool and shook his head. ‘You have become a lord,’ he said. He smiled, but his tone was sad. ‘Armed men at your tail, and ships, and cargoes. Like a little Miltiades. And all the great men know you — Cimon and Aristides and Themistocles and even the King of Sparta.’ He drank some good Attic wine and frowned. ‘I’m not sure I should have told you to come home. What can little Plataea offer you?’
In truth, I was thinking of Apollonasia, if that was her true name, whom I’d bedded against the very stone on which I was perched and who had, as far as I can remember, turned into a raven and flown away. My thoughts were not on Plataean politics, but I tore myself from her imaginary arms to listen to the old man speak, and when he asked what Plataea could offer me, I said, ‘A home?’ or something similar.
I wasn’t so surprised, either. Listening to some of the younger men who had competed — Antimenides, son of Alcaeus of Miletus, for example, who had placed in the final heat in the diaulos and whose javelin throw had soared like a falcon — or Teucer’s son Teucer, whose boxing was very good indeed — listening to them told me that my cousins were neither universally hated nor really very bad men. And listening to all the Plataeans reminded me — prompting a smile — that I had lived out in the wide world for a very long time. Plataeans can be ignorant hicks with the best of them, and Teucer’s views on men loving other men would have made him a laughing stock among his father’s friends — young Teucer flinched every time he saw men embrace. Sekla rolled his eyes.
But the next day, after we passed around the flank of Kitharon and rode down through the narrow streets of Eleutheras, none of that mattered, because I was home. Home is where all the fields look right and the grass has that smell and girls. .
For an old man of thirty-five, my mind ran to women a great deal. And to farms.
Boeotia is beautiful. It is a different beauty to that of Attica or Italy or Sicily.
We rode over the last arm of Kitharon. I did not stop to make sacrifice at the peak. Perhaps I should have, but I did not want to see black offerings there from my cousins. I had begun to flirt with the idea of reconciliation.
Does that give you pause? But consider. I have been a warrior all my life, and I have killed many men, but then, returning from Sicily — and Alba — I was tired of blood. I had killed Simonalkes and I had killed Simon — killed them, or caused them to die. One for Pater and one for Mater. Little Plataea — a town of five thousand citizens when it is at its very strongest — is not big enough for a blood feud. To my mind, I had two choices.
I could collect Idomeneaus at the shrine, walk down the road, and kill them to a man — men and children and possibly their women, too. That would end it. Leave none alive to grow to manhood and come back to wreak revenge. Nor did I doubt that I could do it — in my head, or with my arm.
That is who I am, child.
But if you have been listening, you know that for years I had been trying — really, since I went to speak to the god at Delos — trying to reduce the blood on my hands.
We came over the little ridge, then, and past the little mud-hole in the road where I had trapped the bandits. And we could see the low beehive tomb where old Leitos lay enshrined, and Styges ran ahead to warn his former master — and sometime lover — Idomeneaus, who had once been a kohl-eyed catamite and was now one of the deadliest men in Greece. Or the world. And who young Teucer thought a great man. .
I roll my eyes, too.
Draco waved goodbye and headed down the road, but all the young men stayed at the shrine with me for the night, and before the afternoon was many hours older, we had other men I knew coming up the ridge from the town — Ajax, who had fought against us in Asia, but was now a friend, and Bellerophon, who had been with us at Marathon, and Lysius, a veteran who had stayed and watched the town walls while we went to glory at Marathon. Idomeneaus hugged me until my ribs were threatened, and then demanded my whole story.