Despite being in favour of the war with Persia, Aristides fought the creation of a large and powerful Athenian fleet tooth and nail, rising every day in the assembly to rally the old families and the aristocrats against Themistocles. Men said he planned to take the tyranny to stop the democrats.
Men like Peisander thought that would be a fine thing.
We stayed another night with the aristocrat, and then Phrynicus and I and his charming wife rode slowly down towards the sea, crossed the ridges until we could see the magnificent acropolis rising in the distance, and then down again into the city.
‘Themistocles wants to build walls,’ he said.
His wife rolled her eyes.
‘He has been a good friend to us!’ Phrynicus insisted.
‘As long as you write his panegyrics,’ she commented. She smiled at me. ‘He is caught in the middle. He was friends as a boy with both.’
‘You know that when Themistocles was a boy, he was not allowed into the main gymnasium because his mother was foreign,’ Phrynicus said. ‘So he took to exercising at a small palaestra just outside the old walls by the statue of Herakles. More and more of us went there with him, until it turned out we’d basically taken all the students out of the main gymnasium.’ Phrynicus shot me his wry smile. ‘I think we gave him a taste of power and he’s never looked back.’
‘And Aristides was one of the boys who saw him shut out of the aristocratic gymnasium?’ I asked.
Phrynicus wrinkled his nose. ‘Can you imagine Aristides the Just doing any such thing? But they’ve always been rivals. Rivals for girls and sometimes boys, rivals for commands. Aristides is a far better soldier. Themistocles is a better orator and, frankly, sees farther ahead. Aristides is more honourable. Themistocles is more capable of making the hard decisions. Aristides is a better negotiator.’ He rolled his right hand back and forth as he read off this litany.
‘Together, they make one perfect man?’ I asked.
Phrynicus’s wife snorted.
I went and lived with Paramanos, who was very prosperous and had a fine house in Piraeus, with a dozen slaves and sixteen rooms in two storeys — three wings around a tiled courtyard, very elegant. I didn’t recognise it at the time, but my greatest disappointment in Plataea had been that Hermogenes and I were no longer close friends. There was some wall between us — and I blamed silver and fame.
I had no such reserve with Paramanos, and that was all the odder, as we had not started friends and, in fact, we had been closer to allies than philoi. He’d been my slave and then my freedman — helmsman in my ship, and then sub-captain. Now, as a rich Athenian merchant — Miltiades had arranged citizenship for him and his Cyrenian-born daughter — we were peers.
Paramanos had purchased the contract of a beautiful young hetaera — five years. He confessed to me in private that he would probably offer her marriage. She was younger and, like Gorgo and the priestesses at Brauron, very open. She sat in a chair while we dined, made jokes both coarse and clever, and played. She also told Paramanos when he had had too much to drink and laid out for him what he needed to do to help his daughter along towards her wedding.
I liked her. We flirted and debated some philosophy and she fairly doted on me when I said that I had known Heraklitus. She was, for a woman, very well read — she was better educated than some Athenian men.
But I digress.
I had to sail to Sparta to pick up my charges, and time was of the essence because I needed good sailing weather. But — obedient to my orders — none of my ships were available. Storm Cutter and Lydia were both running small cargoes. Paramanos’s Black Raven had once been my ship — but it was Paramanos’s ship now, and he regularly carried silver to the Ionians and brought back dyed wool — an excellent trade for a fast, well-armed ship.
So I had days to wait, and I politicked for Aristides. I went up to the city from Piraeus and visited the assembly. Oh — I was a citizen of Athens. I can’t remember whether I’ve said, but after Marathon, Athens had made me — and a dozen other Plataeans including my brother-in-law — Athenian citizens. Perhaps the finest thing was that they had the priestess of Athena Nike pray every morning for the ‘City of Green Plataea’. I know, because I so swelled with pride when I learned this that I rose the next morning in the dark and walked up to the town. I was the only worshipper in the temple — nothing so fine as what is now planned. Afterwards, an acolyte came and took my donation.
‘Are you by any chance a Plataean?’ he asked, and I grinned and admitted I was. He was delighted.
As I left the little temple, I noted that I was being followed. I did nothing about it — I went down the other side of the acropolis, past the festival site, and walked into the area where the rich had their homes — like a little parkland in the city. My two followers moved from wall corner to wall corner. If they had simply strolled, they’d have been much harder to spot.
I was alone — rare for me, but I hadn’t wanted Brasidas or Alexandros or any of the others at my shoulder in temple. So I moved as if unaware of my tail, and went to Aristides’ house.
We embraced, but we’d just been together for two weeks, and Jocasta gave my hand a squeeze — like a massive embrace from that very proper aristocratic lady. I heard it all over again, but Aristides was resigned and clearly was working to bring Jocasta to this point of view. I had never seen open discord between them, but Jocasta was sufficiently moved to disagree — flatly — with her husband in front of a third party. Aristides looked hurt.
I pretended not to be there.
Eventually, Jocasta walked away to see to a servant’s injury. Aristides waited until we could hear her bare feet on the marble of the foyer, and then he leaned close.
‘I have to say this, my friend. Themistocles and I are not friends — but I have accepted this exile. I will go with you to the Great King. Athens cannot be seen to send an ambassador. But a man in exile — a conservative?’ He nodded.
And I understood.
It had always seemed odd to me that, whatever their differences, these two leaders of the resistance party were at loggerheads. I had smelled the rat, but I hadn’t come to the correct conclusion.
‘You should tell Jocasta,’ I said. ‘She keeps all your other secrets.’
I said it deadpan, and he, being Aristides the prig, didn’t find it funny. But I did.
Eventually, I left, being unwilling to invite myself to dinner. I’d had three cups of wine and I wore no weapon, and so I picked up one of Aristides’ sticks by the door and flourished it at him. ‘I need to borrow one,’ I said.
‘He never leaves home with them,’ Jocasta said. ‘But every time he visits our farms outside the walls, he walks home with a new one.’
‘I like them!’ Aristides said ruefully.
You might think that, as one of the richest men in the world, Aristides could be allowed to own as many walking staffs as he liked — but if you think that, you’ve never been married.
They were waiting in the near-dark, just north of Aristides’ house, and they had knives.
I slipped through Aristides’ house as silently as a thief and left by the back gate, which Jocasta held for me while looking as if she doubted my sanity.
I poured a little oil on the fire by saying, ‘Your husband has something to tell you,’ and once out through the back gate I walked through the alley — used only by slaves and tradesmen — with twelve-foot stone walls towering over me on either side. It was almost dark.
I lay down at the corner and looked around it at ground level. That’s how I know there were four of them, all well armed. I assumed they were sent by bloody Cleitus, of the Alcmaeonidae. I didn’t feel like fighting three younger men, and besides, I didn’t need to fight them.
I slipped across the alley and vanished into the sacred precinct of the unfinished temple of Olympian Zeus. The Pisistradae had started it and left the drums for the columns lying around like children’s toys. Young couples came to. . well, to use the columns. I was treated to more than my share of erotic breathing as I crossed the space, and emerged on the east slope of the acropolis, which I skirted. Twice I doubled back in the dense street grid, and I sat in one of the fountain houses, watching my back trail. Things you learn as a slave stay with you for life.