The Gates of Athens Read online

  He got a better response from that. He tugged his finger, the pain increasing until it popped back into place, relief washing through him. It would be sore for days, but he had needed the edge. There was still so much to do. After years of reports, the Persians were truly marching. They no longer attempted to hide their presence in Thrace and Macedonia, with huge food stores guarded by encamped regiments. More, the imperial fleet was out under sail and oar. There were new reports every day, and suddenly, after so long, time was short.

  ‘I call for an extraordinary vote,’ Themistocles said. ‘As befits a time of war. I cannot do this alone, gentlemen. I need seasoned leaders, experienced strategoi. I need Aristides…’

  The noise of the crowd trebled in an instant. Over that tumult, he saw Cimon glance sharply in his direction. Themistocles held his gaze, refusing to look away though the young man stood as if he had been struck, visibly stunned. Themistocles bellowed over the crowd.

  ‘And I need Xanthippus. I call an extraordinary vote – to overturn their exile. To bring them home.’

  He watched Cimon approach him and did not pull away as the younger man took his arm. He could smell wine on Cimon’s breath, but he did not sway or blink. In fact, Themistocles had the sense he was controlling great emotion. It spoke rather well for the son of Miltiades.

  ‘You truly need them?’ Cimon said.

  ‘I do. In peace, I would go on without both men. Can you imagine what calling them home will cost me in pride? Yet to save Athens? In war? Both men fought at Marathon, Cimon, with your father. Against that, my pride is just a rag. My city matters more.’

  Cimon nodded, moved enough by his words to clap him on the shoulder. It was a symbol of casual dominance, but Themistocles made no attempt to avoid it. The young man had surprised him yet again.

  The noise of the crowd was a clamour around them, with violence in the air. Scythian guards were shifting at the edges, reminding all the young firebrands of their presence.

  ‘Aristides and Xanthippus,’ Cimon said softly. ‘They might not come. If they believe you were behind their exile.’

  Themistocles smiled bitterly. He had wrestled with the idea for some time, but the same truth applied to them as to him.

  ‘If I know Aristides, he will have teased apart every whisper of memory until he is certain, at least to his own satisfaction. Still, they are Athenians, Cimon – and Athens is under threat. Nothing else matters. Not the law, not my pride, certainly not theirs. They will come. They have to – we need them. Now, help me win this vote.’

  31

  The sun was brutal in the valley. Months of hard labour had turned the men such a dark brown they looked like polished wood, especially when they shone with sweat. Many of them still had sections of flaking skin across their bare shoulders that came off in sheets. They had learned not to peel it away, revealing paler skin that would then blister. Instead, they worked and ate and slept, wearing just a cloth around their waists, or perhaps an old chiton tunic, black with dirt. They endured like soldiers, heaving posts upright and hammering them into the ground, drinking water and then sweating it out, stopping under a spreading plane tree to eat lunch when it was brought. It was a simple life and Xanthippus had thought it might have a sort of nobility to it. Felling an oak, sawing it into posts and then sinking those posts all the way around a huge cattle enclosure had seemed honourable work. He had watched the foreman, Pelias, as he explained the task to another, then joined the work crew for just two drachms a day.

  Pelias had been wary of him at first, seeing the scarred arms and manner of a soldier. Yet Xanthippus worked as hard as any of them, earning blisters and splinters, then calluses as the long summer days wore on. He had settled into the task, staying almost silent with the other men. He did not need companions or friends. They seemed to sense that in him and left him alone for the most part. One fool who had tried to take his bowl of stew had frozen when a hoplite knife appeared from nowhere, held against the warm flesh of his groin. The man had put the bowl down with more care than he had taken it up, though Xanthippus had not said a word, nor risen from his seat.

  There was a certain pride in feeding himself through his own labour. The coins he earned were not many. They could be held in a palm that was scratched and split and battered, but they were completely his. He could have had Agariste send funds each month from the family estates, but he preferred not to be a supplicant. Some things were more valuable than mere silver – his pride was one. As far as he had fallen, he was no man’s slave, to be fed and kept warm like a hound.

  Xanthippus had been burned lean by his exile. He had written letters in the first couple of years, almost constantly. For the longest time, he’d tried to continue his life as it had been. How does a man spend ten years away from home? From his family, his city and everything he loves? He would be fifty by the time he was allowed to return to Athens, a period too long to just wait out. Xanthippus had understood at last that he needed to work, to train and remain fit, but also to occupy his hours. Time hung heavy on a man with no purpose. He had never understood before what a punishment too much time could be.

  Agariste had brought the children out to see him just once, a few months after he’d left. It had been a huge undertaking, or at least she’d made it seem as if it was. Her complaints about the days on the road had been a clear warning to him. He’d vowed not to ask again, until she offered. Of course, she had not. He had not seen his children for six years. Ariphron would be almost ready to join the Assembly. Eleni would be fifteen and Pericles would be thirteen, almost fourteen. It was impossible to imagine.

  ‘Hold it steady,’ Xanthippus said.

  The man gripping the post had a tendency to flinch as the hammer came down. He would have been better wielding the hammer, but Xanthippus didn’t trust his aim, not when it was his hands underneath. The man was not a mute, but like Xanthippus, he spoke only rarely.

  Over and over, Xanthippus brought the iron head down, pounding the post into the ground. They had covered an extraordinary amount of land with the fencing, so that it stretched right back to the farmhouse in the distance. Not that Xanthippus had seen the family. He was just a labourer, there to think and lose himself in heat and repetition.

  He sighed. He thought too much, he always had. There were times when he realised whole days had passed unnoticed, somehow sliding by. Yet they were mere instants, moments, not the great oceans he had imagined. He had taken up a dozen different jobs in his exile, from breaking horses to constructing a roof, to writing speeches for clerics in Corinth, men hardly able to believe one who looked like a carpenter could form letters as well as any temple scribe.

  ‘That’s it for today,’ Pelias called.

  The men didn’t argue. They gathered up the spades and hammers and tossed them onto the work cart, then formed a weary queue for the silver coins. Xanthippus took his with the rest, almost out on his feet with tiredness. He wondered if he could ever feel at peace.

  It was an hour’s walk to his home, on the edge of Corinth. By the time he reached it, his feet were like lead and he was walking almost in a daze. He needed food and perhaps a cup or two of wine.

  A cart and pair of horses stood in the road, with four armed men waiting. The scene brought him back to sharpness. His door was open! He could hear his dog whining at his approach. Xanthippus felt his hand drop to his waist, but there was only a pruning knife there, with a wooden handle. Even so, he took it up and held it ready to slash as he entered his home.

  Agariste was out of place in his little kitchen. He recognised her but still stood with a stunned expression. He heard the metallic sound as the knife fell from his grasp, but didn’t stoop to pick it up.

  ‘Agariste?’ he said, filled with dread. ‘You didn’t write, to say you were coming.’

  Her face was pinched and taut. She nodded as he went on, fearing the news.

  ‘Is it the children? Is Ariphron all right? Pericles? Eleni?’

  ‘They are all well, Xanthipp
us. I have come to bring you home,’ she said. ‘The Assembly voted.’

  ‘It has only been seven years,’ he said, trying to take it in.

  His eyes slid to the second person in the kitchen, watching him in silence with her hand over her mouth. His mistress, Alia, was of Corinth, a woman with two children and a dead husband who had passed away while she was still coming into her beauty. It was she who held his dog, though the big brown mastiff struggled in her grasp, unable to understand why he was not allowed to go to the master. Xanthippus held up a hand to quiet the dog’s whining. From the tension in that room, he guessed Agariste had understood her role in his household.

  ‘The Persians are coming, Xan. I thought…’

  To his horror, Xanthippus saw his wife’s eyes fill with tears. Agariste rose from her seat and pushed past him into the open air. He was left in the room with his mistress, standing like stone. As if her strength failed her, Alia opened her hand and the big dog bounded towards him, fussing and wriggling. Xanthippus had named the animal ‘Conis’ as he was the colour of dust. To any Greek, though, the name carried a shadow of death with it, of men returned to dust. It suited an animal as ferocious-looking as any monster Heracles had ever defeated.

  ‘So that’s it?’ Alia said. ‘I thought you said we had more time.’

  She was being brave, he realised. Just that morning, they had lain in bed together, as they had for the best part of four years.

  ‘I never lied to you,’ he said softly, patting and rubbing the dog. ‘You knew I would go back to Athens, to my family.’ He made himself say it. ‘To my wife.’

  He could hear the creak of harness and cart outside and was suddenly fretting. Seven years! Had Agariste expected him to live like a hermit? It was too long for a man to spend alone. He could only thank Athena there were no children to bring back. That thought chilled him. He held out his palm to Conis and made him sit.

  ‘Alia, if it turns out you are pregnant, bring the child to me. It would be a citizen of Athens and I can…’

  ‘I am not pregnant,’ she said.

  She spoke with such certainty, he guessed she too took the herbs and tea that bled children away. His women all seemed to shrink from bearing his children. For a moment, just a heartbeat, he wanted to strangle her. He was not a weak man, however. He mastered himself.

  ‘The house is yours, to sell as you wish. Conis too. There is a little gold and silver in my cloak, upstairs. I must go, Alia.’

  ‘Because your wife calls you back to her skirts,’ she said, a note of acid creeping in.

  ‘Because my city calls me,’ he said. It sounded like an excuse and he would not allow it. ‘And because my wife has come, yes. I never lied, Alia.’

  ‘You did, Xan. You lied with every touch.’

  He stared at her for a long time and then went out, stepping up beside his wife without a word. As the cart moved away from the home he had known for seven years, he heard Conis whine. Xanthippus shook his head, too tired to think. He gave a low whistle. If someone tried to hold that dog then, he knew they would have been dragged across the room. He looked back to see the big beast barrelling down the road after him, leaving a wake of rising dust. Though he was weary, though Agariste sat with a face like thunder, the sight of his dog’s massive head and wide grin lightened his heart. Conis howled as he ran, until Xanthippus put out his arm and the dog leaped up to him and was heaved on board, trying to lick his face with all its might.

  Neither Xanthippus nor Agariste spoke again as the road took them east, to the narrow border that separated the Peloponnese from the rest of Greece. Soldiers of Sparta had built a huge barrier there, with just a narrow gate and a resulting queue of carts and people that stretched back half a day. After they had waited for a time, Xanthippus reached across and took his wife’s hand. She yanked it away from him, so he spoke instead to the dog.

  ‘Conis? This is Agariste. She is my wife and you will protect her and keep her safe. Do you understand?’ The dog made a sound partway between a whine and a cough. ‘Good boy.’

  Xanthippus lay back and closed his eyes, lolling and dozing. Agariste said nothing, staring coldly ahead until they passed the barricades and staring Spartan guards, then turned the cart towards Athens.

  * * *

  Aristides sipped a tisane of jasmine and mint, satisfied with his morning’s work. The batch of pots coming out of his kiln were exactly as he had imagined, a blue glaze that reminded him of the sea on a summer’s day. He had proved the colour would remain true and he had a dozen packed in, with charcoal banked underneath and the bricks hissing and chinking under an intense heat. There was peace in their creation and it pleased him to sell them in the markets of Ithaca.

  The population of the island was small and he had more simple glazed plates stacked in his workshop than would ever be bought, but he caught his own fish and had restored a little one-roomed place that suited him. It looked as if Odysseus himself might have walked past it when he returned from his adventures. Aristides had taken work in a dozen places to learn the crafts to restore his home. His kiln had come from first attempts to make tiles. He’d volunteered in a potter’s for the best part of a year until he had the skill and knew how to find the right clays and make the charcoal.

  He smiled as he sipped the drink, breathing in scented steam. He had built the roof first, to get him out of the cold and rain. After that, he’d shaped a door and hung it on leather folds, then later, working in a forge in town, he’d bartered his labour in exchange for iron hinges and a handle. That first door had warped and he’d had to sell a few plates for seasoned wood to replace it. Each piece of the house had come from his own mind and hands. Though it was tiny, it was perfect, close by the shore, where fishing boats came in and unloaded their catch. In exchange for a hot drink or some loaves from his kiln, they would leave a fish or two. Greeks understood hermits, after all. Aristides had let his beard grow long, though there was no wild look to his eyes, nor visions to disturb his sleep. When he sat still in the evenings, watching the sea, he was at peace. Most days, the same red cat came to sit with him. Aristides had not given her a name, as he thought he was not her master. Still, he fed her scraps and had taught her to give him one paw and then the other.

  Out on the sea, he saw two triremes race. He watched idly, noting the eyes painted on the prows rise and fall in the swell. The trierarchs were competent enough, though he had little expertise in the tactics of the sea. Beyond accounting for the costs involved, anyway. Those he did know. For a time, Aristides amused himself estimating the cost of creating the ships, then crewing them with rowers. Assuming a full complement of men, it was a staggering total. Only Athens could have kept so many at sea.

  When the ships came closer to the shore, he saw they both bore banners of an owl, symbol of Athena. That brought a pang, almost a nervousness. He had not thought of the terms of his exile for a long time. Yet some part of him had counted the years. They had not come for him.

  One of the ships dropped anchor further out. The other dipped her oars with superb precision, surging for the beach. It seemed they were intent on making a landing. Aristides glanced back at the kiln he had built against the wall of his little house. If the glaze was to develop, he knew he would have to pump more air in, working leather bellows to drive up the heat. Temperature seemed to affect the final colour, though he had not yet understood how.

  The galley drove up and up the beach, seemingly unstoppable, like a knife blade cutting through the sand. It slowed at last and only the twin rudders still rested in the surf. Aristides watched as hoplites threw rope ladders and walkways down to the sand, clambering out. Some local lads had been mending their nets and stood with mouths open, not yet sure if they should run or cheer.

  Aristides shot another glance at his forge. He could hear the plinking sound of stone growing cool. He needed to get back there and build it up. A forge had to be tended, everyone knew that. Yet he stood rooted, unable to turn away from Athenians after so long.


  The trierarch himself, the captain of the galley, climbed down and called something to the fishermen. They pointed to the dirt track that led up the hill, though the town was visible from the coast. A sacred place to Greeks, with red roofs, white walls and a wide shore. Aristides wondered… His thoughts were interrupted by the trierarch himself.

  ‘You, sir, we seek the Athenian, Aristides. He is said to reside on this island. Do you know him?’

  ‘I am Aristides,’ he replied.

  The captain blinked, but recovered quickly, as befitted a military man.

  ‘It is an honour to meet you, kurios. It is my duty to tell you that your exile has been ended by order of the Assembly.’

  Aristides put down his cup and took a long breath. Without another word, he walked past the captain and his men. After a moment of confusion, the captain shrugged and followed him. In a short time, the ship was towed out into deep water. Behind, on the shore, the kiln Aristides had built was left to grow cold, his pretty blue pots forgotten.

  32

  The council building had been built around a meeting chamber. Open to the Agora along one edge, it held the five hundred Athenians chosen by lot each year from the ten tribes. For a few days each month, they sat on white stone benches to discuss the administration of the city, from the fleet and mines to murder cases. The most pressing matters would then be presented to the Assembly for a public discussion and vote.

  It was a light and airy place, with sun streaming in and the noise of the market nearby. Themistocles had intended to lounge on one of the benches as Aristides and Xanthippus were shown in, a figure clearly and magnificently unworried. Yet when the doors were opened, he found himself rising to his feet as if pulled on a rope.

  The two men who entered looked fit, he thought. In comparison, Themistocles was paler than either of them. He said nothing as the councillors backed from the room and closed the doors. He had asked for a private meeting, though he thought there would still be ears somewhere. The only true privacy lay under the sun, in the open air.