Glory and the Lightning (82 page)

“Before the gods, I swear it also!” Thucydides quavered, and his eyelids fluttered as if he were about to faint. He began half to retch, half to sob. He looked at Polycrates, then he caught the younger man’s arm to keep from falling. His white hair rose like a mane in the worst fright he had ever felt in his life. “Why should anyone—” He could not continue for a moment. “Why should anyone murder Pheidias?”

“I do not know,” said Pericles, in the most terrible voice anyone had ever heard him use. “But as you two were part of the plot to destroy him you are also capable of murder, if that will serve your purpose.”

He had accomplished what he had desired: He had shaken them to their very marrow and rendered them feeble and petrified and helpless. Perjury and bribery were one thing; assassination was another. Before they could recover their sense of self-protection and seek to lie to him, he said, “You see my captain and my soldiers. It is lawful to execute murderers on the spot, if they confess. Why do you then not confess and die easily, and not face trial, public ignominy and public death? You, Polycrates, are a man of a noble house. You would prefer private execution to exposure to the eyes of the populace when you die. Iphis!”

Iphis stepped forward. Polycrates regarded him with ghastly terror, and retreated a step. Pericles lifted his hand as if to restrain his captain.

“And before you die, Polycrates, it will be revealed openly that you had your wife’s name forged on the public records as an Athenian. Therefore, she is not your wife; she is your concubine, and your sons are illegitimate. They will inherit nothing from you, and your family will shun them forever afterwards.”

Then all Polycrates’ last resistance disappeared, and he fell to his knees before Pericles and clasped his hands beseechingly and wept and said, “Lord, have mercy on the helpless, if not on me—who am innocent of murder and knew nothing of it! I will die gladly to spare those I love from infamy and shame—”

“You did not spare Pheidias, whom I loved. Why, then, should I spare you, who killed Pheidias?”

Polycrates groaned over and over. He bent, still on his knees, and beat his head on the stone floor until it suddenly bled. Pericles gave a signal to Iphis, and the soldier seized Polycrates by the neck and dragged him to his feet. Tears and his blood ran down his face. He repeated, “I am innocent of murder! Do with me what you will, but spare my wife and children! I am not afraid to die; I fear only the destiny of my family. You have sons, lord, and so you are not insensible to their fate—”

Thucydides stood shaking and whimpering and wringing his hands. Pericles gave him a glance of awful loathing, but he spoke only to Polycrates.

“It may be that you did not murder Pheidias, or give orders for him to die and that you did not know that his death was plotted. I will accept that for a moment. But you did forge the public records of the treasury that Pheidias was a thief, that he had received boundless sums for the glorious work he has done. You did accept a bribe for that evil work. You were threatened with exposure concerning your wife and sons.”

Polycrates wiped the blood and sweat and tears from his face with the back of a palsied hand.

He said in a despairing tone, “Yes, that is true. I would have resisted the bribe, however I lusted for the money. I confess that in the end I even convinced myself that it was indeed true, that Pheidias had looted the treasury with your consent, lord. Yes, I confess that, for were the sums not enormous which were poured out on the acropolis? I had my conscience to overcome first, before I could accede to pressure. The bribe alone—yes, I might have resisted that. But I was threatened by exposure of my illegal marriage to my beloved wife, and that I could not resist.”

Pericles’ pale lips tightened. The man’s obvious agony was beginning to affect him. So he turned to Thucydides.

“What part did you play in this most monstrous plot, you senile old wretch?”

Thucydides whimpered, “I never knew. Mercy, lord. I was maddened by your extravagance. I confess that. I hated you, I confess that. So I joined in the conspiracy against you, to strike at you through Pheidias. But, murder! Gods, not murder!”

Pericles leaned back in his chair and considered him with intense hatred.

“Had Pheidias been found guilty, through the force of Polycrates’ forgery, and your accusations and conspiracy, he would have been executed. And that would have been murder, would it not?”

Thucydides wagged his head and whimpered louder. “No. I would not have thought it murder. It would have been execution. But, I was assured that almost the most that would happen to Pheidias would be exile, or imprisonment, and public disgrace. I had nothing against Pheidias as a man or an artist. There was only your extravagance. Again, yes, I hated you. You had me prosecuted as a usurer—” He had become incoherent and now he could only utter whining and incoherent sounds.

“I, then, of a surety, was intended to be your victim. That is so?”

The silence of the two men was more of a confession than words.

The King Archon spoke for the first time to the culprits. “You, Polycrates, of an aristocratic family, would have sworn most solemnly before me today that Pheidias was guilty of peculations. You, Thucydides, would have declared that Pheidias was also guilty of sacrilege, though even the market rabble has not yet reached that conclusion. Neither of you dared to attempt the assassination of your Head of State openly, or to defame his character openly. But you plotted to do that through Pheidias. This, in my opinion, is worse than murder. Alas, that there is no adequate punishment for both of you!”

Now he rose in the full dignity of his official robes and said to them with bitter sternness: “I am your judge, before the gods. Before me, Polycrates, you would have committed perjury against an innocent man, for his destruction. You are more guilty than your companion, Thucydides, who is very old and considers money sacred, and is of a lowly house through his mother. Therefore, I now put you both under arrest and confine you to prison to await a public trial, where all will be exposed and nothing hidden.”

“A moment,” said Pericles. “I need the names of your fellow conspirators, for they shall not escape my own judgment. Speak, Polycrates. You have nothing to lose now.”

But Polycrates hesitated, for he was of an aristocratic house. It was Thucydides who took a trembling step towards Pericles and cried out, “I will name them, lord, if you will have mercy on me! I am an old man, white of hair and beard, and I would die in prison. Have mercy!”

Pericles said, “I will promise you nothing, but I will take into consideration that you have made a full confession of your guilt, and that you have not withheld the names of your guilty companions.”

He lifted his pen and drew parchment towards him. “Well?” he said. Thucydides glanced swiftly at Polycrates, who could only stand, the blood trickling down his face.

So Thucydides named them. The King Archon listened in silent horror, for several were his friends and one was married to his niece. Once or twice he made a gesture of despair and sickness. Pericles wrote down each name as Thucydides mumbled it, still wringing his hands. When Thucydides stopped speaking, Pericles contemplated the names he had written and his eyes had the blank look of a statue staring at the sun.

He said, most quietly, “Polycrates, I thought that I, and I alone, knew of your illicit marriage. I never told you I knew. I had pity, as you did not have pity, or gratitude for my appointing you keeper of the treasury. If you remain alive and are tried, that marriage will become public knowledge. I assure you of that. If you are not tried, your companions will keep their own silence, for they are of your class. They will also believe that you never betrayed them, and so will not speak.”

He then turned to Thucydides. “I do not wish you tried, either, for you might blurt out the pathetic concealment of Polycrates. Yes, I call it pathetic, for do I not, myself, love a foreign woman? You are not to be trusted in open court, Thucydides. So, you must leave Athens at once, for self-appointed exile, for life. And,” again his voice rose dauntingly, “if you speak of Polycrates, and his family, then even in exile you will be sought out and you will die.”

Thucydides, overcome with feverish joy, clasped his hands and beat them against his bearded chin. “Lord, may the gods bless you for your mercy! I will leave, today, today, with no word to anyone, not even my kindred!” Tears of both exhaustion and relief spurted from his eyes.

Pericles made a mouth of total disgust. He said, “You have not told me which man it was who bribed Polycrates.”

Now Thucydides himself hesitated, for he had withheld the name of Callias out of fear of Pericles, himself, for was not Callias the son of Pericles’ rejected wife? Callias might hate Pericles, and Pericles detest Callias, but he was the brother of Pericles’ sons. He was in a dilemma, and again he darted a glance at Polycrates. But Polycrates had bent his head and appeared to be meditating.

“Was it you, Thucydides?” said Pericles.

Terrified again, fearful that the mercy offered him would be withdrawn if Pericles believed him guilty, the old man exclaimed, “Lord, you must not be angry, for have I not confessed and given you the names of the others? Lord, the man who bribed Polycrates and threatened him was—was—Callias, brother to your sons.”

There was a prolonged silence in the room, while all stood as statues, even Iphis and the soldiers. Then Pericles said, without any emotion apparent at all, “I should have guessed it. Yes, I should have known.”

He laid the pen down on the table with a steady hand. He began to roll the parchment as if he was not aware of those about him.

Finally he looked at Polycrates and now Polycrates looked at him steadfastly. The blood was clotting on his forehead.

“You are a brave man, for all your venality, Polycrates, and all your crimes against a good and innocent and illustrious man. Yes, you might have resisted bribery, but not the shame of your family. You see that I am merciful, after all.”

Polycrates bowed in silence, and his face was the face of a dead man.

“You understand entirely, Polycrates?”

“Yes, lord,” Polycrates replied. His smile was heart-broken but unshaken. Thucydides stared. Polycrates was more guilty than himself, yet Pericles had spared him and he gaped and frowned. Polycrates was not even condemned to exile!

“You may both leave now,” said Pericles and turned in his chair away from them. Then he said to Polycrates, “Go in peace. Embrace your family.”

When they had left the King Archon said in a wondering and tremulous voice, “I have deeply wronged you, myself, Pericles, and I beg your forgiveness, for you are a noble man.” He stopped and smiled a little. “For all you are also recklessly extravagant!”

But Pericles said nothing, and after a compassionate glance at him the King Archon departed also.

Polycrates did indeed embrace his beloved family that night, then retired to his chamber, alone. Then with a firm hand he plunged his dagger into his heart and quietly died. His suicide was never explained.

Callias was followed a few nights later when he went to one of his disreputable haunts near the sea, wrapped as always in a cloak and hood. He was murdered in an alley. His murderers were never found, but it was said that he had been slain by robbers, who had taken his purse.

The other conspirators were deluded that Polycrates had died rather than implicate them, so in gratitude they did not betray him in his death. As for Thucydides—where was that old vulgarian? No one ever saw him again. He had fled, they concluded, when he had heard of Polycrates’ suicide. Therefore, the only two witnesses who could have brought them to trial had vanished. But when Callias was murdered, ostensibly by thieves, they guessed a little of the truth, if only a little. As for the stranger who had poisoned Pheidias, he was to remain undiscovered.

One by one they silently left Athens for prolonged absences, and a number of them did not return. But the rumor they had begun, that Pericles had had Pheidias poisoned, was believed by the market rabble.

CHAPTER 16

Paralus requested permission, through a slave, to speak to his father in Pericles’ library. When the permission was given Paralus entered the library where Pericles, his face like gray marble, was studying some war maps and plans of strategy. His heavy and white-streaked mane gave him an implacable look as it fell over his brow and ears, and he was no longer Head of State in his appearance but again an indomitable soldier, for the war with Sparta and her sister city-states had suddenly broken out in tragic thunder and fire. Athens had never been so ominously threatened since the Persian wars. He looked up at Paralus almost as if he did not see him, then motioned to a chair. He returned to his maps. He wore a thick robe of crimson wool and a brazier burned warmly near him, for it was winter, and snow already lay heavily on the far Macedonian mountains and the air in Athens was as sharp as a sword to the flesh and a dull sky overlay her blasted hills. Pericles’ feet were encased in fur-lined high boots, and his hands were chill and he rubbed them for a moment, absently, not taking his pale eyes from the maps.

Paralus did not sit down. He merely waited, gazing at his father, his face strangely resembling Pericles’ own, for all his dark remaining eye. Pericles continued to study the maps, frowning. However, he was well aware that his son stood near him in silence. He was thinking. He heard the clang of iron-shod shoes outside on stone, as his soldiers guarded the house. The lamplight flickered in a draft; the woollen curtains were not quite drawn over the windows and the moon stared in, pure white ice drifting on a black sea.

Since last summer, when Pheidias and Callias had both been murdered, something had changed in Paralus. He had never been garrulous like his antic brother, now in command of a huge garrison of soldiers guarding the approach to Athens. Paralus was not subject to abrupt changes of moods, as was Xanthippus, and his humor was more ponderous, for all it was telling. He was steadfast and somewhat slow, in comparison with Xanthippus’ volatile and witty nature. He was never noisy and he spoke only when he had something to say. Still, he had become more and more quiet since last summer, and his natural gravity had increased and often he appeared abstracted. Pericles, despite his awful problems, had finally become aware of this, though he had not remarked on it. Like Paralus, he never invaded the secret thoughts of others, except Aspasia’s, for to him she was a second heart, a second mind, a second spirit. Even his loved sons never approached him as closely as she did; she was, to him, his own flesh.