“Silence,” he said again; then, “Go, and take those men with you.” He pointed to the prisoners, who had been craning in anguish to hear the outcome. “I am a Syracusan. I do not hold fellow countrymen to ransom. And I have no other use for them. Take them away.”
It was not till envoys and freed men were wading back through the river, and I saw him at leisure, that I ventured up with my bag of letters. He thanked me, courteously but shortly, and gave it to one of his officers to look after. I said, “Here is one more, sir, which I thought you would want by itself.” And I gave him Plato’s.
He took it, thanking me. As I saw, he was on the point of putting it with the others; then he noticed me looking, and perhaps it brought things back. At all events, he opened it and read it. It was short, as I had known from its thickness. There was no change in his face.
“Thank you, Nikeratos,” he said. “I am obliged to you. There is no answer.”
20
I NEARLY RODE STRAIGHT BACK TO MESSENE, to take ship for home. Leontini would be crowded three to a bed; and I sickened at the thought of Syracuse. However, I had come a long way. Everyone in Athens would ask for news, and I should look a fool to have run off. Besides, I had written to Menekrates that I was coming; he could be trusted at least to have minded his own business, and I would not need to break bread with one of Dion’s enemies.
At his door, however, the porter told me he was on tour in Italy; my letter had missed him and lay unread on his table; his wife and sons were at her father’s. Wishing once more I had not come, and now travel-weary, I walked round the New Town to find an inn. The porter had expected him home shortly; I would stay awhile in the hope of seeing him. It was windy weather, and I had had enough of the sea.
The city was fuller than ever of party warfare, the leaders chosen in Dion’s place each having his faction; they had united briefly in an interest common to them all. I was told that Dion, while they were stoning him out of the city, had pointed towards Ortygia, whose ramparts were crowded with watching men. But no one heeded him.
Having found a quiet clean inn, I went to bed early. But I had had enough to keep me wakeful and, when almost off, was disturbed by someone in the next room weeping. I listened for some time to see if anyone came to comfort her, but she seemed quite alone. It was no affair of mine, whether she was some woman of the house or a hetaira; she must be one or the other, to be by herself here. If she had been noisy, I might have thought less about it; but the way she smothered the sound disturbed me, and I could not rest. People were still about; I found a servant and asked who had the room. A young man, he replied, from Athens.
I went back upstairs. I could have sworn it was a woman—a man’s weeping is harsher as a rule—but it explained the wish to hide it. I hesitated no longer, but took my lamp and scratched at the door. The sobbing went on, unheedingly. I tried the latch, and finding it give went quietly in.
All I could see upon the bed was dark hair and a cradling arm. Disturbed by the light, however, my neighbor started up with a gasp, clutching the sheet. Disheveled, with drenched eyes and features blotched by many tears, the face made me stare, it was so like one I knew. “Forgive me,” I said, “but I am an Athenian, Nikeratos the tragic actor. They say you come from my city. You are in trouble. Can I help?”
“Niko! Oh, Niko!”
I walked over to the bed. I could scarcely believe my eyes; but they were right.
“Axiothea! In the name of all the gods, what are you doing here?”
She looked as glad to see me as a friendless child its mother; and, more like that than anything else, I sat down and took her in my arms. I had guessed the truth already, before she poured it out. All her men friends were with Dion; she had thought how the world was being changed while she sat at home like a housewife, had quarreled with Lasthenia, who had thought it madness, and slipped away. The voyage had been wretched for her; though often taken for a youth she had never tried to sustain the role, or thought what it would be like on shipboard. Nobody shaves at sea; they had taken her for a eunuch, which she had had to confirm and bear the sailors’ jokes. Then, when at last after a bad crossing she got to Syracuse, it had been just in time to see Dion driven out like a dog.
Shaken already by the voyage, she found everything scared her: the soldiers, the beggars, the young drunks coming from the wineshops, the agents who canvassed her for their factions, the pimps offering her girls or boys. Every moment she expected to be caught out and stoned by the crowd. She had meant to join her Academy friends who were with Dion, hoping they would admire her boldness; in this wilderness beyond the olive groves they seemed just men among men, who would despise her folly and find her a burden they were ashamed of. Now in any case they had left for Leontini. She was quite alone.
I told her what I had seen, and that Dion was safe. “I saw him at Assembly,” she said. “He has changed, Niko. But who can wonder, among such people?”
“He was born among them. I suppose, in Syracuse, it is hardly his fault he did not know them. If he had, he might have done no better, just given up beforehand. As it is, he and the people are like figures in a tragedy, who come together meaning well, but are born to work each other’s ruin. Neither is without good; but they are fated never to find it in one another. Dion has more virtue; but he has suffered less. Only a god could judge justly here.”
“Is there justice,” she said, “anywhere under the sun?”
“Come, dry your eyes,” I said. “You’ve read too much, my dear, before looking about you. You can take the word of a man who has been poor: goodness is there, and with the world what it is, that’s proof enough to my mind that the gods exist; I don’t see how else you can account for it. But goodness is like money—a city only has so much; you have to start small and build up the capital. It’s no use to overspend the assets, then when the bank goes broke to get bitter and believe in nothing.”
“Now you are here, dear Niko,” she said, smiling, “I can believe.”
“That’s better. You never called me that before. Smile again! Here we both are in Syracuse, with time on our hands, and who knows when you’ll travel so far again? You can’t hide in a hole till you sail home. So wash your face in cold water, get some rest; I want my boy friend to do me credit; and tomorrow we’ll see the town. Knock on my wall if anyone tries that door; why didn’t you lock it?”
“The bolt is warped; I was afraid to complain, in case the landlord looked too hard.”
“Well, now you can leave such things to me. Sleep well.”
Next morning I got her out of doors, and we spent some days seeing Syracuse. She had always been a slender girl, without much bosom; the journey had left her far too thin for her sex, but quite interesting for a youth, as some of our acquaintance showed us. If she blushed, I explained that she had been reared by a pro-Spartan father in the strictest decorum. She never spoke before her elders. When we were alone again, neither could help laughing. To keep up the joke, I bought her the latest fashion in keepsakes, a brooch with a flying Eros, and we went everywhere hand in hand, to warn off rivals. Apollodoros was the name she went under.
I showed her the theater and its machines (the caretaker was most obliging) and my gold leopard in the shrine. Then we went down to the waterfront, whence we viewed Ortygia and its catapults, a use for mathematics which surprised her, as it would have done Pythagoras, I daresay. Dion’s siege wall was still unfinished; they had not touched it since he left. One end was still rough piles, brush and timber. The garrison inside had raised the flanking walls of the first gatehouse to overlook it. I showed her, under the water-stairs of Ortygia, where the spring of Arethusa comes up fresh into the sea. “They’ll never lack water,” I said, “but it seems certain they’re short of food. It can’t last much longer.”