Of Merchants & Heros (39 page)

Of course he could not be seen to complain directly of Titus’s success; he railed instead at the young tribune for disturbing him when any fool could see he was overladen with cares of his own. ‘Do you think I have time to listen to all this?’ he spluttered. ‘Just give your cursed dispatches to the clerk and get out of my sight.’

We were standing a little way back from the harbour, in a grove of oak and cypresses behind the temple of Hermes. As it happened, Doron was present. He had arrived just before the messenger. Even he could see that Lucius was making a fool of himself, and with hissing whispers and tugs at his cloak he tried to calm him. For once, I think, everyone was glad he was there. But then, all of a sudden, Lucius rounded on him and at the top of his voice shouted, ‘Stop pawing me like some dog-bitch, can’t you see I’m busy!’

Silence fell like a lead weight. The pilots and captains and clerks exchanged appalled glances. The young tribune stared and swallowed.

Then Doron began to wail – a high-pitched keening sound – crying out between his sobs that Lucius did not love him, that he was all alone far from his mother and without a friend in the world.

He had made an art of such things; Lucius was like soft potter’s clay in his hands. He rushed to him and flung his arms around the boy’s heaving shoulders, and led him off into the grove, saying as he went, ‘Come, my little bird; Lucius is sorry; here, dry your tears,’

leaving the messenger staring after them as if he had seen some dread apparition.

That winter I spent in Athens.

A nervous air hung over the city. People were asking what had become of the hoped-for victory. The fate of Abydos was in everyone’s mind.

Menexenos’s father welcomed me back to his home almost as a son. It touched my heart. But it grieved me to see the change in him.

In the months since I had last seen him he had become suddenly old. He walked with a stoop. His grey hair had turned to white, and when I spoke to him his attention drifted.

I asked Menexenos whether he was ill.

‘He is weary to his soul,’ he said, ‘and perhaps that is a kind of sickness. He has not been the same since the loss of the farm.’

‘The crops will grow again,’ I said, ‘and we can rebuild the farm.’

‘That’s what I tell him. But he says that when a man grows old enough, he begins to see everything for a second time: he says he has seen too much.’

I was about to give some easy answer, but in the end I said nothing. Kleinias was old and had seen much. It was not for me to explain away his sadness.

We had gone walking out to the gardens of the Akademy, and had paused near Plato’s tomb.

The grass and shrubs had begun to grow again in the places where they had been burnt; but the old marble still bore the scorch- marks of Philip’s ravaging, and it would be many years before the planes and tall cypresses and shading myrtle groves were as I had first seen them.

I dabbed with my foot at a little clump of autumn flowers and said, ‘A man can never go back to anything, can he Menexenos? There is only ever onwards.’ I shook my head. It seemed a cold, empty vision.

Menexenos stepped up and touched my cheek, so that I turned and looked at him.

‘Remember that?’ he said, nodding across the scrub.

I looked. The landscape had changed so much I had almost forgotten. Not far off stood the little altar to Eros, like a standing stone in a burnt field.

‘Of course I do,’ I said, smiling, suddenly filled with love, and the memory of love.

‘Only the gods do not change,’ he said, ‘which is why I honour them. A man must have solid ground upon which to build his home.

Otherwise what are we? Windblown chaff, carried along by every chance eddy and current. No, there is no going back. But what would that be, but a return to ignorance? The task of each day is to strive for what is real, a constant return to the light.’

We walked along the path to the altar. The shadows were lengthening; the sun had already dropped below the western spurs of Parnes, sending shafts of light fanning out and upwards. Bats darted among the broken walls that had been the gymnasion and Plato’s school, and somewhere a solitary bird was singing, its call unanswered.

At the altar we paused, each of us resting his palm on the cool, golden marble, our hands close. I looked out towards the river.

‘Eros,’ I said. ‘Love. Yet love is not a god.’

‘He is a daimon – a spirit; he leads us out of ourselves, and towards what is true.’

I smiled. ‘He led me to you.’

‘And me to you. But it is only a beginning, not an end. What we have, we have because of that perfect place that is always beyond.

That is where Eros leads, if we are wise.’

I nodded, and not for the first time reflected that he saw so much further than I. His vision fed and sustained me, and sometimes, in moments when my mind was clear – on a mountain top, or beholding some thing of beauty – I caught a glimpse of what he saw.

A shadow of grief touched my heart. The gods may be for ever, I thought, but for men time is short, and time for love shortest of all.

I had already noted that we were alone. I took his hand and drew him to me, and before he could speak again I closed his mouth with a kiss.

Only my stepfather Caecilius seemed untouched by the general air of gloom. At the house where he was staying in Piraeus there was a constant traffic of merchants and their agents; men with suspicious eyes, who would fall suddenly silent when I passed. They came from Ionia, from Sidon and Antioch, from Sicily, and from vaguely mentioned cities in the north that bordered Macedon, cities that were allies, or near-allies, of Philip.

They were the sort who wait to see which way the wind is blowing before deciding where they are headed. I have always despised such men. I perceived, on my visits to that house, that while we fought to free Greece from tyranny, a whole community of men throve in the shadows, feeding on corruption, and the sufferings of others.

One, a rich merchant from Thebes called Tyrtaios, was my stepfather’s favourite at that time, and they spent long hours together working on some secret business. In general, nowadays, he and I kept a safe distance between us. But one day he announced he was holding a banquet for his friends, and said he wished me to attend.

I was minded to refuse, but Menexenos said it would seem churlish, after I had been away for so long. And so, reluctantly, I went.

Tuchon the Phoenician was there, whose house it was, reeking of Lydian oils and laden with heavy jewellery; there was a trader from Lesbos, and another from Byzantion. But it was Tyrtaios the Theban who was the guest of honour, and I guessed that whatever deal they had been working on had been concluded. I steeled myself for an evening of heavy drinking and gross amusements. These I was prepared for. In the end, though, it was the conversation itself which took me by surprise.

Tyrtaios was a man of about forty-five, with shrewd cold eyes and the demeanour of one for whom concealment had become a habit.

Unlike showy Tuchon with his garish jewels and odious scents, Tyrtaios did not dress up. This was not, I sensed, through poverty, but because it suited him not to draw attention to himself.

The wine began to flow even while the first course was still being carried in, each raising his cup to the other with conniving nods and looks of triumph.

At first, the conversation was as dull as I had expected, all talk of trade and property and possessions. The evening dragged on. I wished I were with Menexenos. The main dishes were served. When the slaves had finished and withdrawn, Tyrtaios observed smoothly, ‘Well I think we all agree that Titus has overreached himself this time.’

There were nods and a general rolling of eyes. ‘Pride before a fall,’

intoned the Byzantine.

‘And, in between,’ said my stepfather, ‘there is business to be done.’ He winked at Tyrtaios and added, ‘Fortune favours the brave.’

‘Quite so, Caecilius, quite so. And from what I hear in the street, it is not only we who now see the folly of supporting him and his stooge Attalos. The Athenians have backed a lame horse, yet again, as indeed your own fine son here can testify.’

At this, the man from Byzantion said, ‘Well they are not to be trusted. When the Romans crossed to Sicily, they said it was to drive out the Carthaginians . . .’

‘Exactly,’ nodded Tyrtaios. ‘And now the Carthaginians are gone, but the Romans are still there. Where is the Sicilians’ liberty now?’

He gave a light, sophisticated laugh, and over the rim of his wine-cup he cast his eyes among the guests, making sure they had taken his point.

I looked away. Could Caecilius have misjudged me so badly that he supposed I would to listen to this? I forced myself to bite my tongue. But then Tyrtaios said, ‘But I sense, Marcus, you do not agree.’

‘No, sir,’ I said turning, ‘since you ask me. I do not agree.’

Caecilius gave me a warning look. Tyrtaios arched his eyebrow in overplayed surprise. ‘Do you deny, then, that the Romans are still in Sicily?’

‘We went to Sicily because Hannibal was there. It was the Sicilians who chose to become our enemies, not we theirs.’

‘Of course it is natural for you to feel for your own.’ He gave a patient smile, the kind a teacher might give a dullard pupil. ‘But if the people of Sicily decided to support Hannibal, who is Rome to tell them they may not? And now look at Korinth. Rome cannot expect to march on every free city it chooses.’

‘The Korinthians are not free. They are hostages to a band of cut- throats and pirates, with Philip as paymaster.’

He inclined his head. ‘So you say. Certainly it suits Rome to have it believed.’

Caecilius coughed loudly. ‘The boy is young and na ve.’

‘Yet there is charm in youth, even if there is folly. So let the boy have his say. Freedom for each man to speak his mind is the Athenian way, I am told. And since we are in Athens . . .’ The others joined in his laughter. ‘But perhaps,’ he went on, ‘you have no more to say on the matter. I understand. I hear from Caecilius that you are a friend of Titus, and I am sure no one would blame you for supporting your benefactor, especially when he has made you a tribune. Perhaps, though, when you are able to consider these matters with a more dispassionate eye’ – casting an amused look around the room – ‘you will begin to see that I am right.’

‘You were not at Korinth, sir, and you were not at Abydos. But you are here. So walk beyond the walls and look with your own eyes at the desecrated shrines and burnt-out farms, for that is the kind of freedom Philip offers the Greeks: obey or die.’

Tyrtaios flinched. For an instant I caught a glimpse of the real man behind the mask. Caecilius saw it too. Sharply he said, ‘Marcus, you will apologize.’

But now my anger was up. I cast my eye over the silken hangings and damask cushions and dishes of expensive food, and I thought of the good men who had laid down their lives so that these rich merchants might sit here and sneer, safe in the knowledge that they would never be called upon to fight. I thought of Priscus’s son, who had died at Trasimene. I thought of Abydos, and of the men who had fought at my side at Korinth.

‘Apologize?’ I said. ‘Surely Tyrtaios hopes for Philip’s defeat as much as you or I, or why is he in Athens, which is, after all, at war with Macedon. But forgive me, sir, if I do not stay. All of a sudden I feel sick. It must be something in the food.’

So much for Tyrtaios. Soon I had more serious matters to concern me. A summons came from Lucius. He had taken a house for the winter in the expensive quarter of Athens, in the same neighbourhood as Pomponius, near the gardens of the precinct of Zeus.

He gave me a cold look when I was shown in to his workroom; there had been few pretences between us since the day at the walls of Korinth. He pushed a scroll across the table at me, as a man might push away a dish of food that disgusted him. ‘That is for you,’ he said.

I took up the scroll and glanced at its outer cover, and recognized Titus’s broad hand. Then I looked again and frowned.

‘What?’ said Lucius, as if he had been expecting this.

I said, ‘The seal is broken.’

‘I know.’

There was a tense silence. We both stood regarding one another.

But then the quiet was broken by the sound of Doron’s voice, coming from somewhere within the house, shouting angrily at the slave, demanding to know where his boots had been left – the red calfskin ones, his favourites. Distracted by this shrieking, Lucius blinked and looked away.

‘It was I who broke the seal,’ he snapped. ‘I read the letter. I am your commander, and I have every right.’

Doron’s voice once again echoed down the passageway. I said, ‘Shall I read the letter now; or do you prefer to tell me what it says, since you have read it?’

He gave me a sharp narrow-eyed look, sensing insubordination.

But I had been careful with my tone, and after a moment he huffed and said, ‘It seems my brother wants you to go to Nikaia. Philip has asked for a conference, and, since you have met Philip, he thinks your presence there will be useful.’

Nikaia is a little fishing town on the Malian gulf. I went by sea, in a fast military cutter. Titus met me at the jetty, and introduced me to the delegates from our allies who had gathered there. There was a representative from King Attalos called Dionysodoros; there was the admiral of the Rhodian fleet, Akesimbrotos, who had fought with us at Eretria and Korinth; and there were two men who had been sent by the League of Achaian cities. They greeted me with well-bred military courtesy. The final delegate, however, a discontented- looking, overdressed man, whom Titus introduced as Phaineas, the leader of the Aitolians, stared at me so intently that it bordered on rudeness, and I was left wondering whether he had somehow heard ill of me, or held some grudge. Later, when we were alone, Titus enquired whether I had brought a letter from Lucius. He looked crestfallen when I told him I had not.

‘What, nothing at all?’ he asked.

I looked down and frowned, and rather than hurt him with the truth, said I was sure Lucius would have written if there had been time; he had been much occupied with the withdrawal from Korinth, and seeing to winter quarters.