I got rid of my kithara, and went and laid my hand on her shoulder. “My child, I am sorry. Some great mistake has been made, we can be sure. But we must all obey the Archon for the present. It is better that you go home.”
I looked round for the mother. Her neighbors were not struck dumb as the girls had been. Hissing whispers were everywhere; some were not even whispering. I beckoned her to come and take the girl away. As she got up, leaving her fan behind, I saw she was near fainting; but after all, she was not the widow of Proxenos for nothing. She kept on her feet, though the girl was holding her up as they went out. The women’s chatter rose, mixed now with titters.
There was a stir by the gate. A man was shouldering through the crowd to them. I had never seen Proxenos transformed with anger; but it seemed that I saw him now. The rage in Harmodios’ face was a boy’s no longer.
He put an arm round his mother, who at once threw all her weight on him; here was the man of the family. The other hand he held out to his sister. She paused a moment, fumbling with her basket. He took it from her and threw it on the ground, and led them both away. I don’t think that he looked at her.
I watched them go. Then I went up the steps to Hipparchos.
He was staring after them. When he became aware of me, he’d forgotten that I’d been summoned. His face was like a mask of clay, from which his bloodshot eyes asked how I dared accuse him.
“You sent for me.” In public, I should have called him Sir.
That brought him partly to himself. I was supposed to have been told why the girl must be sent away, and to have gone back and dismissed her. I had saved him this trouble, a thing he could hardly complain of; but now I was here, he did not know what to do with me. It was a messenger he had wanted, not a judge.
He said, “We will speak about this later.”
It was all I’d left him to say; but I had been in no hurry to come, and now was in none to go. I stood and looked at him. No, it would not be true to say I no longer knew him. I had known him a long time. All I saw now I’d known; but only as a man can know that his lynx kitten is getting bigger, not really believing that its claws are growing too. He had been much praised, much loved, and much of it deservedly. His sense of his deserts had grown. Now he was sure that what he desired, he deserved, and anyone who denied it merited punishment.
Whatever he’d become, it was not a fool. He had read me, as I’d read him. His bitter look said, Yes, I knew I could tell you nothing.
I said, aloud, “I should have been told of this.”
Thessalos leaned over. “How could we know she would dare show her face?” Hipparchos lifted a hand at him. I thought he’d brazen it out, but he fell silent.
Hipparchos said, without insolence or anything else one could put a name to, “Simonides, you are a poet but not a priest. This matter has been settled by those whose place it is. We are here to serve a goddess. The High Priestess is waiting. Let the rite proceed.”
I looked past him at the altar beside the porch, wreathed in its olive garlands, with the servers by it to take the offerings laid on it. There indeed stood the Maiden’s Maiden, robed in pure white, waiting to bless each girl as she did her reverence. A tall old lady, with a well-scrubbed, innocent virgin’s face, now looking severe as only innocence can. What could she know of all this, except that it was unseemly? Ever since she was a girl as young as these, she had served Athene Parthenos. It was for others, who knew the world, to see that the shrine was not polluted. Her work was holiness, not justice.
I went down the steps, and beckoned my pupil for my kithara. He slung it on me, his eyes begging that everything should be well. I met them, and shook my head, and looked up towards the priestess. He understood. The goldsmith’s apprentice knows that gold can burn; but there is always a first time for feeling it.
The girls were ready. They had closed the gap in their line. I signed to the flautist, and struck the first chord of the hymn. Their fresh voices rose, all together on the note, saluting the city’s Guardian, who gave us the olive for our wealth, craftsmanship for our beauty, music for our joy, and justice to make us great. Gracefully they went up singing, carrying their pretty baskets to the altar.
However, the grey eyes of Athene do not miss much. She knew, that day, that she was an offering short. It seems she did not forget it.
4
WE WILL SPEAK OF it later, he had said. Very well, let him send for me.
A day passed; then a second day; and I began to guess what it meant. He would never send for me, not about this. Time would go by, new things would happen in the city. Then one day he would send for me, and greet me as if none of it had ever been. In silence we were to agree that it was all forgotten.
I thought of Athens, the center of the world; of songs I’d made and would make, which foreigners would only half understand. I thought of Bacchylides, who now that Ionia was gone must be here, to hear the best. I thought of the victory chariot I’d become so used to mounting; of the tripod I had dedicated to Apollo. I thought of the man who had been my friend.
When next he sent for me, all the old charm would be back again—with just a feeling that it might be taken away, if one showed oneself ungrateful. I would drink and sing and talk with him, never speaking of what I knew; and when the next thing happened, I would have got into the way of it. Everything just the same; except that my friend would have become my master, with whom I must seem friendly to get my pay.
I had my men’s chorus to rehearse. There were some fine voices that year; while they sang I could forget the rest. But only then.
Bacchylides was my pupil, which gave him all a son’s right to know my mind. We were walking back from a rehearsal, which he’d come to hear, when I found myself saying, “After the festival, I shall have to see the man, whether he sends for me or not.”
He looked at me across the kithara, which he was carrying home for me. He was in no doubt what it meant. “Everyone thinks you stood up to him very well.”
“For me it was not enough.”
“You didn’t see yourself.”
“Who’s ‘everyone’? The boys from the gymnasium? It will mean very little, you know, to most people in the city. The majority will take it that the Archon knew what he was about. Many will be glad to see an oligarch’s daughter set down. Only a handful will know the truth. This is a matter between me and myself. And you.”
I knew that by now he was feeling desolate; but he said stoutly, “I’ll go wherever you go. Don’t worry about me.”
“Not even that. If I leave Athens, it won’t be like traveling to the festivals. I can’t sit down in Euboia and let my life go by. I shall take my chance in Thessaly. For a time, at least, you would have to go back to Keos. I owe that to your parents.”
“To Keos!” He almost shouted it. People looked round. “Uncle, I promise you, on Keos I’d go mad.”
“No, you would not. You would make some songs, to sing me when we meet again, and obey your parents, so that they think well of my instruction. As soon as I have a settled home, it will be yours wherever it is, as long as I live, or you want to share it. But I’m not taking you to a land without law like Thessaly.”
He looked round. “You said ‘if’ at first. Now you’re talking as if it were all settled.”
“Perhaps I was. You were there; you saw it all; you know the girl was innocent. What do you think yourself that I ought to do?” I was not exhorting him; I really wanted to know.
He saw it, and paused in thought “If you stayed, would it mean you had to tell lies?”
“In my songs, do you mean, or in my speech?”
“In the songs, of course.”