Mission to Marathon (3 page)

‘I don't know, I don't know at all. We must consider it. It could be the death of your grandmother, a journey like that.'

He hadn't realised that the Persian invaders might come across the straits from
Euboea. But he took the warning very seriously. He had great respect for his younger brother in Athens. Lycon's sculpture had brought him important friends and anyhow that city was a place where news came streaming in from everywhere. If he had heard that the Persians were likely to cross over to Marathon…

‘We have got to think, Philip. And quickly.'

He wasn't used to that. A farmer had problems sometimes and had to plan. But they usually came with the seasons, not with the speed of a hurrying boy.

They reached the house. Auntie had food ready and a cup of goat's milk. Nycilla had gone to see if Grandmother was awake yet. If so, she would be told of Philip's arrival. But not a word about why he had come – or about the Persians.

‘She has aged greatly since your last visit,' Philip's aunt explained.

‘She can walk only a few steps. She is very weak,' said the farmer.

At any time Philip would have been sad to hear this. In this present crisis he was full of
foreboding. It sounded like a possible death warrant.

He gulped down his milk and Nycilla took him in. Grandmother looked better than he had feared. Her eyes were pale but had a glint in them. She welcomed him warmly, full of questions about his family. She even remembered old Davus.

Mercifully, she didn't ask why he had come. His uncle would deal with that tricky question. But time pressed.

He had to wait until his cousins came back from working in the fields and the problem could be discussed freely out of her hearing.

His uncle and aunt were emphatic. There was no hope of getting her safely to Athens now. Even in a comfortably padded wagon, crawling at a snail's pace along the lower track to the city, she might not survive the journey.

‘And the Persians might come any day, your father tells me,' said Nearchus. ‘They are famous for their light cavalry.'

‘They've brought thousands of
them
,' said Philip.

‘And once they're ashore they'll be galloping along that road catching up with fugitives!'

Most of the villagers would be too sensible to use that road. They would take to the hills where Persian horsemen would be unable to follow them. But how could Granny take to the hills?

Her son and grandsons might carry her bodily, struggling up those steep winding paths with their uncertain footholds. Could she stand the strain? And then the days and nights exposed on the unsheltered mountain tops? Ordeal enough to any one, even the young and healthy. Probably fatal to an old woman in her state.

They were at their wits' end. Suddenly Nycilla came up with the answer. ‘The cave! Couldn't we hide her – couldn't we
all
hide – in Pan's Cave?'

At once there was joy and relief on every face.

‘Clever girl!' cried her father. ‘Why didn't I think of that myself?'

‘We could hide lots of things,' said her brother Lichas. ‘If the Persians come they'll loot the whole village, probably burn our houses too.'

There was no sense in upsetting Grandmother yet. Let her enjoy another night in her own bed. But at the first sign of the invaders tomorrow Nearchus and his sons could pick up that bed, use it as a litter, and carry her up the valley to safety. Even with that burden, picking their way ever so carefully up the zigzag path, they should not take much more than an hour.

Tonight, though, there was plenty to be done. Nycilla and her mother would sort out everything that would be needed – food supplies, quantities of olive oil, both for cooking (if they dared risk a fire) and for the little saucer-shaped lamps they would need to light the darkness of the cave.

Philip joined his uncle and cousins in carrying things. Bags of flour and beans, armfuls of bedding and spare clothing, skins full of wine. Walking at a normal pace they managed two journeys each before night fell.

‘We may be wasting our time,' Nycilla grumbled, though it had been her idea in the first place.

‘We must be thankful if we are,' said her father.

It was Philip's first visit to the cave. Nycilla explained that it had always been out of bounds to children lest they lose themselves inside or otherwise come to harm. Also when they were small, it would have been a long way from home.

Seeing it now, he was struck by its beauty. Outside, it looked a mere crack in the
limestone cliff. Once within, you realised how lofty and spacious it was, stretching on mysteriously into the very heart of the mountain.

Even now, at the end of the hot dry summer, occasional drops of water splashed down from overhead. They seemed to creep lazily down the thin shiny fingers of rock that dangled there like icicles.

‘Some drops never seem to fall off,' said Uncle. ‘I think they dry and turn solid and make the stalactite longer.' That was the word for these rocky icicles.

The drops that fell to the floor dried in the same way and over the years stood up spikily, like upside-down stalactites, only these were called stalagmites.

‘They're beautiful,' said Philip.

‘You'll have time enough to admire them,' said Lichas grimly, ‘if we're all cooped up in here for days with the Persian army raging about outside.'

Between them they shifted most of their food stores and the family's cherished possessions. ‘Think yourselves lucky,' Nearchus told his sons when they grumbled,
‘that it's not your Uncle Lycon's workshop we're clearing.'

Next morning they were thankful they had stuck to their work so long.

Philip and Nycilla gladly obeyed her father's bidding and walked up the mountain to get a clear view out to sea. What they saw sent them racing down again.

The blue straits were dotted with black specks – at that distance looking like water-beetles – coming over from the long island opposite. War galleys and transports, there must be hundreds of them.

The foremost vessels were heading for the northern, left-hand side of the bay, where a long, very narrow, strip of land stretched out into the sea.

‘They're making for the other side of the Dog's Tail,' the girl panted. ‘It'll give them the best anchorage. And shelter from the wind.'

From the near side of this cape, the bay swept back towards them in a curve for five or six miles. From the water's edge to the foot of the mountains on which they were
standing the land stretched out, more or less flat, for a width of two or three miles. Parts of this were marshy, particularly to the left, close to the Dog's Tail, so hardly anyone built houses there. Like Nycilla's family, most people had their homes on the lower slopes of the hills.

Just as well, thought Philip, now that the nightmare of barbarian invasion had become real!

As soon as the first Persians disembarked there would be raiding parties fanning out all over the plain. It might be death for any Greek caught there, man, woman or child. Or future slavery, which might be worse.

By the time the invaders reached the hills the people would have had time to escape inland, carrying possessions and driving their stock in front of them. The Persians might console themselves by burning empty houses, but it would hardly be worth their while to chase after the fugitives, even if their officers allowed them.

The children had no need to shout warnings as they reached the first cottages. The alarming news Philip had brought from
Athens yesterday had gone round the whole neighbourhood and put everyone on the alert. The rush of refugees had begun as other people had sighted the first ships and brought word of them.

Philip's aunt was making Grandmother comfortable on her bed. The men stood waiting to carry her up the valley to the cave.

‘Even if she'd been fit for the journey to Athens,' said Uncle, ‘I think the Persians would have caught up with us.'

Most of their neighbours, if they had no one sick or disabled, preferred to put more miles between themselves and the invaders. Some thought of shelter in the marble quarries. Others might cross the whole mountain range and make their way down into the friendly country on the other side.

It was a mercy, for their grandmother's sake, that there was this well-hidden cavern so handy for her refuge.

Once Uncle had seen her safely installed there, he became the hard-working farmer again, angry at this threat to his land and crops and the interruption to all the jobs waiting to be done.

Some it was impossible to tackle with the threat of the Persians hanging over him. Others it would be pointless to do if the enemy immediately came along and wrecked everything. But in a few days or weeks they would be gone – and the land would remain.

‘And so must we,' he told the family sternly. ‘Philip will keep his eyes open, but you must all be on the alert. No risks! There's so much at stake.'

There had been jobs waiting to be done. There always were. The men would work as best they could, not showing themselves to any observer at a distance, keyed up and ready for immediate flight.

‘You must be our watchman,' Nearchus told his nephew. ‘Sit among those bushes up on the hill. Take this horn – give us a good long blast if you see any soldiers coming this way. Then get back to the cave. Only don't let 'em see you.' He turned to Nycilla. ‘You can keep him company, so long as your mother doesn't need you.'

The two of them passed the next few hours pleasantly enough, shaded and screened by
the bushes, talking in low voices but never taking their eyes off the plain spread at their feet.

In the distance, beyond the long low spit of land, the moored vessels became an ever-thickening mass. Squadrons of cavalry began to thread their way across the marshy pastures at that end of the bay, but none of them swung alarmingly inland towards the encircling foothills. Rather did they keep parallel with the curving shore, dipping into the stony bed of the dried-up Charadra and pushing forward into the broad plain that backed the middle of the bay.

‘This is where they're going to have their camp,' Philip whispered.

The horsemen were fanning out and coming to a halt, till they formed a thin line reaching to the water's edge. Into the space they guarded, columns of foot soldiers were now pouring as they disembarked from the ships. Tents were going up. Soon smoke was rising from innumerable fires.

Some of the figures were near enough for the sharp-eyed cousins to study them in more detail. They looked brightly dressed,
in longer, more colourful clothes than the Greeks. There was less gleam of armour. Instead of splendid bronze helmets like those Philip had helped to polish for his brothers they wore dull padded headgear. Instead of bare legs, covered in front with metal greaves from the knee downwards, the barbarians wore cloth garments, often with separate legs, down to the ground.

It must be their sheer numbers, thought Philip, that had made them such conquerors. They were like giant bees, swarming over the plain.

He exchanged glances with Nycilla. They shared a sudden urge to creep away and get back to their own folk.

In the evening they went back for another look. The invaders seemed to be settling down for the night. Once darkness fell they would not stray far from the light of their camp fires, for every step would take them into the perilous unknown. By tomorrow they would be sending out foot patrols. They would search the deserted village, plunder and probably destroy the houses.
But if they saw no signs of life they might not trouble to trudge far up the hills.

‘Look!' said the girl suddenly. She pointed to the southern end of the bay, where the main road to Athens vanished into the wooded foothills. The sunset flashed back from a column of crested helmets. ‘Glory to Athena!' gasped Philip. The goddess of wisdom, special protector of his city, must be going to save them.

The Greeks were coming! They raced back to the cave with their good news.

‘Not tonight,' Nearchus insisted.

Those Greek troops must have come from Athens. They would have made a forced march, they must be vastly outnumbered, they would be in no state to attack the Persians, who by now were securely installed in their camp.

And ‘not tonight' applied equally to any idea of making contact with the new arrivals. It was too risky in the dark. Both sides would have patrols out. The Greek camp would be ringed with alert sentries. You might be killed before you were identified as a friend.

Uncle agreed that, when dawn came, Philip would be the best person to go. As a boy
he would not look too dangerous.

‘And a girl will look even less dangerous,' said Nycilla. She was delighted when her father said she could go. She could show Philip the path through the woods so that he didn't need to cross the open ground. From what they had seen last night it looked as though the Athenians had halted just where the road came out of the woods at a spot called the Sanctuary of Heracles.

They started at first light, slipping through the gloom under the trees. Soon they were picking up the faint smell of smouldering camp fires. Suddenly a tall shadow moved in front of them and challenged them in a friendly tone.

‘I am Philip, son of Lycon, the sculptor,' Philip answered. ‘I think my brothers will be with you. This is my cousin, Nycilla.'

Even amid these thousands it proved quite simple to find Lucius and Callias.

Philip knew the company in which they served, along with the other men of their neighbourhood. Philip was soon greeting his brothers, surrounded by friendly and familiar faces.

‘We wanted to go and find you last night,' said Callias, ‘but nobody was allowed to leave camp.'

‘And it had been quite a day,' said Lucius.

‘You wouldn't have found us anyhow,' said Nycilla. She explained how they were taking refuge in the cave.