Our client Polemides, it turned out, appeared briefly at Athens as well, which episode must be related, as its consequence affected if not the course of the war, then a direction she might have taken had events transpired otherwise.
Polemides resumed his tale on the twenty-eighth of Hecatombaion, Athena's Day, by coincidence the date his own son-named Nicolaus after his father-appeared at my door, beseeching me to take him with me to the prison. But this chronicle must hold a moment. Let us return to the Hellespont…and Polemides' narration: News of Endius' peace mission [Polemides resumed] had reached the straits two days before Alcibiades' ships returned from their detour to the tombs. Many celebrated, believing the war over.
I had tied the skin on pretty good myself, when a summons interrupted the spree. I was instructed, by Mantitheus in Alcibiades' name, to pack my kit, informing no one, and report to him at his command post, late, after the secretaries had departed.
I recall the night as well for another reason, an encounter with Damon, the young Cat's Eye. I must put a point here, that is, my own retirement from service to Alcibiades personally. I had begged off; I couldn't take the pimping. I now served the younger Pericles on the Calliope.
It was like this. Many competed to provide their commanders with feminine flesh. Certain officers had become professional procurers, importing from as far as Egypt. Any beauty stumbled on in the field would be tossed in a bag and presented at his superior's threshold. Sometimes our commander needed two or three a night, just to get to sleep. That was his business. But I could no longer station myself at his doorstep, fending spurned mistresses and aspiring suicides. He laughed when I proffered my resignation.
“I'm astonished you lasted so long, Pommo. You must love me more than I thought.”
This night, returning after the secretaries, I encountered the Gat's Eye, Damon. He had a girl with him, his fiancee, he said. He wished to show her off to Alcibiades. Would I let him in first? I glimpsed enough of the maid's face to see she was a beauty, though no comelier than any of scores who had worn a groove in the courtyard heretofore. Damon and the girl went in. I waited. My turn came.
The place was cleared out, not even junior officers or marines present.
“An embassy was dispatched to Endius this morning on the Paralus,” Alcibiades began, “to convey the generals' official response to the Spartan proposal of peace. You'll be unofficial.
From me only.”
I would carry no papers, Alcibiades informed me, register at no frontiers, and impart my intelligence to no one save Endius himself.
Interrogated upon my task, I may give any story so long as it was false. Alcibiades asked if I knew why he sent me and none other.
“Because Endius will believe you. You need do nothing, Pommo, only be yourself. A soldier on a soldier's errand.”
It came down to this: if Alcibiades could deliver Athens, could Endius deliver Sparta-to end the war and fight as allies in the conquest of Persia?
He laughed. “You don't even blink, Pommo!”
“I have known you a long time.”
“Good. Then listen closely. After Cyzicus, when we slew Mindarus, I had expected the Spartans to send Endius out in his place, or Lysander, who are far their ablest commanders. That they have made Endius peace envoy means his party has fallen.
Lysander will abandon him, if he hasn't already.
“You need waste no time convincing Endius of the wisdom of the course I propose; he has grasped it for years. His reaction, however, will still be suspicion. He will think I seek to command this coalition. Tell him I yield to him, or whomever he appoints in his stead, and if he laughs, which he will, and says he knows I scheme already to displace whatever luckless son of a whore sails across my bows, laugh back and tell him he's right. But that will be then, and such whore's son will have had time to prepare.
“Tell him the ephors have outsmarted themselves electing him as envoy; now I may not come home until I have swept my country's enemies from the sea. He will know this. The point is that then will be too late. If he can bring his country over, it must be soon, or the demos at Athens, inflamed by the victories I will bring them, will make such demands as Sparta may never accede to.
“If Endius asks you of Persia and her vulnerability, tell him what you have seen with your own eyes. No Persian fleet may stand up to Athens' navy, and no land force to Sparta's army. Darius ails.
Succession struggles will tear the empire apart.
“That being said, Endius will assume that simultaneous to this embassy to himself I also dispatch ambassadors to the court of Persia reproposing alliance with them, as I know his countrymen have messengers on the track now to the Great King. Say only that I must play my hand as he his, but Necessity casts the final ballot; someone must trust someone sometime. God willing, it will be he and I.
“Find out what you can of the parties at Lacedaemon, but do not press him on this. He will know what can be done, nor do we need to. Inquire, however, of the feasibility of recruiting Lysander, or even Agis. I welcome either or both. Endius will realize of course that such an alliance between our cities will produce further war between us if it succeeds. Tell him I would rather fight that war then than this war now, which can only destroy us both and leave our mutual enemies triumphant by default.”
What if Endius required me to return with him to Lacedaemon to repeat this overture to others of his party?
“Do so. My needs are for the most and best intelligence you can acquire. No sight-seeing now. If you are spotted at either city, our foes will know you come from me and to whom I have sent you.
The audacity of the stroke gives it a chance. The faintest glimmer, premature, dooms it.”
He issued me money and passwords, assigning a ship to bear me as far as Paros, from which I must proceed on my own. I drew up upon departure. “Are you serious about this, Alcibiades? Or am I hanging my ass over for some ruse or gambit?”
As ever when he laughed, his face regained the flush of youth.
“When we return home, Pommo, which we shall in due course, Athens will hand herself to me on a plate. We will stand then upon the utmost promontory of peril, as expectations of such an order will be released as to make their disappointment a calamity surpassing even Syracuse. Do you know why I call the men and the fleet the Monster? Because they must be fed, tomorrow and the next day, and if they are not, they devour you and me and then themselves.”
He pronounced this lightly, as a gambler long since wagering home and treasure sets without qualm his own life upon the cast. I perceived then, and believe now, that his intrepidity was of an order not of men, but of gods.
“Defeating the enemy is child's play alongside feeding this monster, which itself is nothing alongside the demos of Athens, the Supreme Monster, particularly inflamed as she will be upon our return in glory. Do you understand, my friend? We must place before this monster an enterprise worthy of her appetite.”
He laughed, bright as a boy. “This is how destiny works. As this, tonight at the intersection of Necessity and free will.”
I heard a rustle from the chamber and, turning, glimpsed in shadow a female form advance and recede.
“Now go, old friend,
…nor let dawn o'ertake you, untossed upon the winding main.”
Passing that tavern calling itself Conger Eel, I descried young Damon, alone, drunk and getting drunker. I asked where his girl was.
“I am an imbecile,” he declared. “And merit an imbecile's desserts.”
XXXII