The Gates of Athens Read online

  The crowd enjoying themselves on his silver had grown raucous over the previous few hours. The owners of the tavern were on the verge of tears as the group became louder and wilder with every passing moment. Yet when they saw Aristides had come, silence fell, the joy draining out of the room, so that they stared at him like bleary owls.

  Cimon felt anger surge and he stood up, then almost fell as the room swayed. Gripping the back of a chair, he steadied himself.

  ‘What do you want here, Aristides? Can I not drink in peace, with a few friends?’

  Aristides began to answer, but another thought struck the young man and he went on.

  ‘Or have you come to congratulate me? Well? You should.’

  ‘I have not,’ Aristides said, ‘though I wonder if your father would be as pleased as you seem to be.’

  ‘He would. Don’t you worry about that,’ Cimon replied. He looked pugnacious, his lower lip sticking out. Yet he had not lost all sense. He knew he was far too drunk to start a fight with anyone. Aristides was not a weak man.

  ‘You and Themistocles have deprived Athens of a strategos, a leader in war. Perhaps you think such men can be found on any corner of the city.’

  ‘Perhaps they can!’ Cimon said. ‘Perhaps I will be a strategos, like my father before me!’

  ‘I’m sure you will, unless the wine destroys you. Yet on this day, you have weakened Athens. You, for your vengeance; Themistocles, for what? Ambition? To remove a threat?’

  ‘My vengeance? My justice! Go on, old man, keep talking,’ Cimon said, threateningly.

  He was very obviously drunk and jabbed the air with a finger. One of his friends tried to grab his arm, but he shook them off as Aristides went on, infuriatingly calm and unafraid.

  ‘If the Persians land again, next summer, we will not have Xanthippus – and that is a great loss. I wanted to be sure you understood what you have done.’

  Cimon glared at him, arguments swirling, but not quite lending him the words he needed to answer. After a moment, Aristides nodded to himself and left. The young men in the tavern began to jeer, though they waited until he was out of the door. Cimon slumped into the chair and called for more wine.

  ‘I think…’ he said. ‘I think my father Miltiades would be pleased we took… measures. I think we should drink this place dry in his memory. This. This is our time.’

  A great cheer went up as he tossed a full pouch of silver to the owner. The man’s eyes widened and he sent his wife into the cellar to bring up all she could carry.

  25

  Xanthippus stood by the cart and two horses he would take north and then west, across the land bridge into the Peloponnese. Corinth would be his home for the years of exile. It lay no more than three days of travel from the estate and his children. It was outside the region of Attica and so fulfilled the letter of the law. He had no particular feelings for Corinth beyond that. It was not Athens. It was not home. For a man in his position, all the rest of the world was much the same.

  He was as ready as he could be. Ten days had been spent in feverish activity, passing on the work of a number of businesses to factotums and paid employees. It had been chaotic, but he’d left the family holdings in some sort of order.

  Agariste had brought the children out to him. With both a chest of silver and his personal armour and weapons on the cart, he had hired four hoplites to accompany him to Corinth. They waited respectfully to one side as the strategos knelt and embraced his youngest son, Pericles. The little boy was shaking with grief, Xanthippus saw, unable to comprehend why his father was being sent away. Ten years was unimaginable to a child of his age, a lifetime, just when he had begun to really see his father. Just when he had begun to try and emulate him. The little boy started to sob and was shushed by his sister Eleni, who let him press his face against her shoulder to keep him quiet.

  Xanthippus opened his arms to them both, crushing them to him, smelling grass and horses in their hair. He had spent more time with the children over the previous ten days than he had in the year before that. They’d followed him around like lost lambs and he’d found himself enjoying their laughter and talk. Even Ariphron, who had sided with his mother, seemed to have thawed. On that last morning, Ariphron was red-eyed, trying and failing to hold back tears.

  ‘I will see you all when your mother brings you out to me,’ Xanthippus said. ‘Just a little while to let me get settled. It will go quickly, I promise.’

  The truth was different. The roads were very dangerous between the cities. Each trip would have to be an armed expedition, moving slowly, interrupting all their lives. Xanthippus knew he would be lucky to see his children once or twice a year, and then only if Agariste willed it.

  ‘We don’t want you to go,’ Pericles said.

  Xanthippus nodded. The words were like a knife under his ribs. He didn’t want to go either.

  ‘The law is the law, son. I have my life – they have not harmed me. I can live anywhere but Athens and the region of Attica. It’s not so hard, not really. Except that it takes me from you. That is…’

  He could not continue. Xanthippus knew very well that there was no appeal. If he returned to Athens during the ten years, he would be executed. The law was iron and he could not stay a single day longer. He had told himself he would show only a quiet dignity in the face of that implacable truth. There was nothing to be gained by tears and wailing, so a man could only go well to his fate.

  It was still hard to embrace his children one by one, to see their confusion and tears tug at something deep in him. He touched a finger to his eye, wiping weakness. Then he knelt and drew all three into an embrace, all arms and bowed heads and tears, wordless in his grief.

  ‘You look after your mother and sister now,’ he said to Ariphron and Pericles. ‘Understand me? You are my representatives in the family. You will be grown men before I cross this gate again. You must be ready to take your place in the Assembly then.’

  ‘I will destroy it,’ Pericles muttered.

  His father laughed.

  ‘No. You’ll know by then that there is nothing like it in the world. The rule of intelligent men, of lawful, decent men. Accepting no superiors, so that we are all equal before the law. It is not without flaw… but in all my life, I’ve seen nothing better.’

  Pericles nodded, though he could not accept it. The children stood back and Xanthippus turned towards Agariste. His young wife had twisted a fold of her dress to rope in her hands. She too was red-eyed, but it was different from simple loss. Her gaze accused.

  They had argued until they were hoarse the night before. She was too used to power to meekly accept her husband being exiled. Even then, Xanthippus could see the stubborn set to her jaw. Her uncle would never have accepted such a result, she had told him. If he loved her at all, if he forgave her as he said he did, Xanthippus would not accept it either.

  He had told her it would mean his life to stay one day more. The Assembly would not be denied, not once it had voted.

  ‘Please stay,’ she said.

  He took the hands she held out to him.

  ‘I cannot, Agariste,’ he replied wearily.

  ‘Stay and fight the decision.’

  ‘It would mean civil war, my love.’

  The last two words caught her, so that she froze. He had not used the term of affection since the night he had found her with blood staining the sheet.

  ‘Well? What of that? It would be worth it for you,’ she said.

  ‘No, love, it would not. We would not win that war – not when it would be fought against Cimon, son of Miltiades, against Themistocles, perhaps even against Aristides. We would lose everything – and you and the children would never be safe again. It is just ten years.’

  The words were hollow. Ten years away from Athens! From plays and markets and politics and arguments and trials. From the beating heart of Attica and all Greece. Ten years from the great port of Piraeus and trading all over the Aegean. Ten years from gymnasia and the men who took
up armour and spear to defend her. There was nowhere like the city of Athena. His life ahead was ashes.

  ‘I am sorry about the tea,’ she whispered.

  He nodded, bowing his head so he could touch his cheek to hers.

  ‘I know. I am sorry too – and about the way I reacted. There is nothing like losing everything to remind a man what he values.’

  He kissed her deeply, drawing her into his arms.

  ‘Ask Epikleos for anything you need. He will help – and you can trust him. I will send word when I have a place in Corinth. Come out to me then, with the children.’

  ‘I will count the days,’ she said. She raised her head to be kissed again and he tasted tears on her lips.

  ‘There, no more,’ he said gruffly. ‘I must be on my way.’

  He broke free of his wife and patted the cheek of each of the three children, seeing how they were already growing taller. He climbed up to the seat on the cart and readied himself.

  ‘Goodbye,’ he called down to them.

  Pericles and Eleni went to their mother’s skirts and Ariphron raised a childish hand in farewell as Xanthippus snapped the reins and forced the horses into a trot. The four hoplites mounted and took up formation around him, ready to fend off thieves or vagabonds. Xanthippus told himself he would not look back, but then did so anyway, watching the little group grow smaller until he could no longer see them against the glare of the sun.

  * * *

  In the spring, Aristides walked through the streets of the Ceramicus, on his way back from the port. He had gone down to the Piraeus to examine the accounts and the progress being made on the great fleet. They were used to him by then and had learned to answer his questions quickly and politely. It helped that he had replaced six of the port officials for corruption, appointing men he knew and trusted.

  There was still waste; that was the nature of a great project. Wood they had purchased was found to be rotten or riddled with worm. Oil and tar was spilled with alarming regularity, while men lost tools at an extraordinary rate. Aristides suspected some of those were being taken home or sold in the local markets, but it was hard to prove. The city had to replace them, with the costs all written on good Egyptian papyrus and kept for the records.

  Aristides smiled at the memory of so many new keels, so much industry and labour. It was true he had argued against spending the Laurium silver on ships, but in the main it was to act as a check on Themistocles rather than from any true disagreement. Arguments had to be tested and teased out. It was the only way to be sure they were sound. In his heart of hearts, Aristides thought Athens would always need ships. The threat of Persia had not ended at Marathon, he was certain. Nor at Paros, where Miltiades had failed to dig them out of their stronghold with the point of a knife.

  There were rumours of garrisons marching in Ionia, drawn to the far west of the Persian empire, where the coast looked out over a dozen islands ruled by Greece. Merchant traders returned with tales of brash Persian warriors appearing in the markets there, of Persian officials selling licences for all sorts of activities – and woe betide anyone who could not produce his piece of slate or pottery when visited by the tax inspectors.

  To Aristides, it felt like a fist slowly closing – the influence of an empire, where once the cities of that far coast had been either Greek or independent. It worried him, more than he could say. He was due to present the accounts of the port to the council that afternoon. He toyed with the idea of making a more general speech about the rise in Persian activity.

  The thought was a sour one. If Themistocles was present, as he always seemed to be, he would challenge Aristides on each point, brash and funny if he chose, or patronising, as if lecturing a child. The man’s arrogance was overwhelming, but perhaps even Themistocles would accept the empire was coming closer. In the past, King Darius had hardly acknowledged the far west, thousands of miles and hundreds of cities from his palaces and the heart. That had changed with the Ionian revolt and the burning of Sardis – then changed again with Marathon. King Darius had set his face against Greece then. He no longer drowsed and drank peach juice and forgot the distant reaches of the empire. His attention had shifted.

  Aristides brushed the thought away, as if a fly had touched his face. Roads stretched across all Persia, with messengers carrying letters and jewels and tales of the interior. Trading caravans took slaves and scented oil to create perfumes as rich as any in the world. They returned with tales of monsters and men clad in gold, of striped cats as large as any lion, or huge animals with tusks tipped in silver. More than half would be fantasies and stories, told to entertain, but for a man who knew how to sift dust from good grain, there was always something to be heard at Piraeus.

  Aristides had listened to a captain trying to sell his ship to the council, as the man discussed his last trade trip to the east. He had filled his ship with a cargo of ambergris, which could be burned as incense or made into perfumes. The man had been quite a character, a Roman, with peacock feathers cut short to fit his hat and a face so deeply seamed by sun and wind that it looked like stitched leather. Aristides had been drawn to the strange cargo of black lumps being heaved out of the hold. The captain had already found his purchaser and he was in a fine, ebullient mood when Aristides leaned on a rail next to him. From that man, he had heard rumours that the Persian king had grown too ill or too old to campaign. It was the second time Aristides had been told such a thing, but it was impossible to know for sure. Rumours fed on themselves, like a snake biting its own tail. Men who should have known better confirmed false reports simply by hearing them more than once, or in two cities along a coast. It was hard to know if a smear of truth lay at the centre of such things – or whether it was good or bad for Athens.

  The crowds bustled in the Ceramicus, buying pots or hawking their wares to those who might. That part of the city was noisy and brash at the best of times. Each little workshop or house held pottery wheels, always squeaking, driven by pedals forcing them round and round. The potters there were always covered in dust and slip, on their skin and in their hair. They were said to pedal in their sleep, even. Those who did not make pots called out prices, competing for custom in constant chatter.

  Aristides found the clamour wearing when he wanted to just walk and think, but the Agora lay ahead and he knew he would be able to find a quiet spot there. He thought he might walk to the Areopagus and see what arguments were being presented to the juries. That day was a trial day and the city was busy as always, with jurors from demes miles around swelling the crowds.

  Ahead of him, a man stood in the centre of the road, peering at something in his hand and swearing to himself. Aristides began to edge to the side rather than intrude on the ramblings and madness of another, but the fellow noticed him and put up a hand.

  ‘Can you write, kurios? Can you help me with this?’

  Aristides saw it was a piece of pottery in the man’s palm, a triangle broken from some failed or unloved bowl. The road through the Ceramicus was made of shards much smaller than the one he held, the result of centuries of firing clay and discarding the broken pieces.

  ‘What do you want to do?’ Aristides said.

  The fellow’s change of expression was instant, like a child. The smile was reward enough and Aristides was glad he had stopped.

  ‘I’d like to scratch a name on this ostracon, so I can vote today.’ He held up a potter’s nail, used to mark designs in the cheapest vessels before they went for firing.

  ‘And you cannot write?’ Aristides said. It was not a great surprise, though he saw the man was embarrassed as he nodded.

  ‘I never learned, kurios. Can you do it for me? It won’t take more than a moment.’

  ‘Of course. Tell me the name and I will write it for you.’

  Aristides took the piece and the long iron nail from him, holding it like a stylus. He looked up then as the man leaned close and touched his finger to the clay.

  ‘Aris… tid… es,’ the man said.

&n
bsp; Aristides froze.

  ‘There is to be a vote of ostracism, then?’

  ‘Yes, kurios. If you could put the name…’

  ‘Today? For Aristides?’

  The man nodded, frowning at the delay. Aristides raised one eyebrow.

  ‘Do you know this Aristides?’ he asked.

  The man shook his head, then leaned to one side and spat on the red earth at his feet.

  ‘No, but I hear his name all the time. “Aristides the Just”, “Aristides the Honourable” – what does he know of the lives we lead, eh? I am sick of all of them.’

  ‘I see,’ Aristides said faintly.

  ‘Will you write it, then?’ the man said, tapping the shard with his fingernail.

  Slowly and carefully, Aristides scratched his own name into the clay.

  ‘There. It is done,’ he said, handing it back.

  The man beamed at him, squinting at it.

  ‘Thank you, kurios. You are a good man.’

  Aristides went past him, to the end of the road and into the Agora. The Pnyx was not too far off and he could see crowds gathering there, looking clean after the dust of the Ceramicus. It had touched the hem of his robe, Aristides realised, darkening it further and staining the skin of his hands. Perhaps the potter had thought he was one of them, his robe patched and old, without oiled hair or gold rings or any sign of wealth.

  With a heavy heart, Aristides walked towards the Pnyx and made his way to the heart of the vote. It did not surprise him to see Themistocles there, with Cimon not far off. The young man was visibly drunk again, Aristides noted. Cimon swayed as he stood on the great flat stone and his eyes were glassy. Aristides shook his head at the sight. Grief was a corrosive force in a man’s life. It had to be denied like any weakness, not drowned in wine. Still, Cimon was not his client, nor even a friend. His fate would be his own. It still rankled to see such a promising young man ruined, but that was the way of things. Some rose and some were destroyed. It seemed that, today, Aristides himself might fall.