The Ionia Sanction (22 page)

“The treasure of Polycrates, what happened to it?”

“It disappeared without a trace. Locals say it was hidden in a place only Oroetes knew. All that remains are a few pieces, like the ones you saw in my office.”

Themistocles looked up to the stone Polycrates and said, “He was the most powerful man of his day, yet you’ve never heard of him. If a man like Polycrates can be forgotten in only sixty miserable years, what hope is there for any man?”

*   *   *

I’d agreed to ride with Cleophantus. I hoped it would be a chance to talk to one of the family alone and get a few leads on who killed Brion. I met him at the stables, where he had the horses ready and waiting. The horse he’d selected for me was like the animal I’d been taught on as an ephebe: older, smaller, and more docile than Ajax.

Cleophantus stood beside the tethered horses. He wore—I could barely believe it, but it was true—he wore … trousers.

“Here, put these on,” he proffered me a copy of his bizarre garment.

I boggled. “You’re not serious, are you?”

“Sure I am. Listen, Nico, I told you the other day the Persians are better on a horse than we Hellenes. One of the reasons is they wear these things. Your chiton just wraps around you; when you sit a horse there isn’t much between you and the horse’s back, so anything faster than a walk makes your balls bounce around a lot. You know how uncomfortable it is. Trousers fix all that by holding all the necessary bits in place, and there’s all this tough material between you and the animal. You’ll feel better for it. Trust me, I’ve been doing this for years.”

I looked at the trousers dubiously. One of the worst insults you can throw at an Athenian is to accuse him of wearing trousers. It’s a way of saying he’s Medized, gone over to the enemy.

“I can’t,” I said. “You know the old saying.”

Then I went bright red. For Cleophantus’ father had Medized, and Cleophantus lived off his father’s traitorous actions, and Cleophantus wore trousers.

The poor man stood there, silent. He knew how it looked.

“I’m sorry, Cleophantus. I didn’t mean it like that. I just meant, well, you know … Oh Hades, just hand me the accursed things.” I snatched the trousers from him.

I held them up and studied the holes for a moment. I knew what I had to do, in theory. I raised my left foot, balancing on the other. To get the foot in I had to lower the trousers, which made me overbalance. I tried again, using a hand to hold on to the stable gate for balance. That was when I discovered you need both hands to hold open the top hole. Both hands then, and do it quickly before there’s time to fall.

My foot became stuck halfway down the leg. I fell flat on my bottom.

A squeal of laughter pealed from the hayloft. I looked up. Asia rolled back and forth, unable to contain her mirth.

“It’s all very well for you to laugh, girl. You don’t have to wear these things.”

Asia jumped down from the loft. She wore trousers.

“Do you want me to show you how?”

“No,” I said hurriedly. I stayed on my bottom, stuck my legs in the air, and laboriously threaded my feet through the tubes. Undignified, but I had no farther to fall. I should have done it that way the first time.

“You’re supposed to take your sandals off first,” Asia said judiciously.

I ignored her, pulled myself up on the horse next to Cleophantus, and rode away as quickly as I could.

Cleophantus took my arm as we departed the palace gates and said quietly, “Nico? What you said about wearing trousers. It’s true. I know it’s true. But what do you do when it’s your own father? And when everything’s going so well?”

“When he’s providing you with a life of luxury? I understand, Cleophantus. I don’t know what I’d do if I were you.”

He muttered, “Unfortunately, I do,” more to himself than me.

By mutual consent we dropped the subject and rode on in the pleasant sunshine. It was a glorious day, a good day to be alive.

Cleophantus knew the countryside well. We rode along the main road heading east, until we came to a rough trail that went due south. Cleophantus urged his mount along it and I followed, more I suspect because my horse was used to following than for any command of mine. Rough shrub soon gave way to green and fertile pasture, disturbed only by low, rolling hills that presented no difficulty.

Cleophantus must have been mulling over the talk of Medizing, because as we rode side by side he said, “It’s this land. It corrupts you.”

“What do you mean?”

He shrugged and looked away, and I thought for a moment he wouldn’t answer. Then he said, “Here we are at the eastern end of Ionia. We’re not in Hellas, but we’re not in Persia either. We’re in the lands between, where the Hellene ways and the Persian are all mixed together. Persian habits, Hellene habits, people can pick and choose. They might have taken the best of both, but usually it’s the worst.”

“You really don’t like the Persians?”

He shrugged. “There’s a lot to admire about them; the way they sit their horses, for one. They have an obsession for telling the truth, which I like. You’ve seen some of their wealth; if you traveled on to Susa, it would astonish you. You’ve eaten their desserts.”

“But?”

“But the casual brutality of their laws, the arrogance they display in their might without seeming even to realize; when you get down to it, they’re just not us. I like you, Nicolaos. I like having a man here I can relate to, with the likes and habits of a decent Athenian.”

“What about Archeptolis?”

“He’s … well, he doesn’t have the habits of an Athenian.” Cleophantus couldn’t bring himself to say “Medized.” “I try hard, but I can’t bring myself to like the Persians or their ways.”

“Except for the trousers.” I smiled.

“Except for the trousers.” He laughed. “But that’s practicality, not … not … how men are.”

“I know what you mean,” I assured him.

Cleophantus hesitated for a moment, then said, “I mean no offense, Nicolaos, you seem like a regular fellow, but a few times at dinner, you seemed to have a hint of the same air of secrecy and sudden death about you that surrounds Father all the time … and Barzanes.” Cleophantus shivered.

“You don’t like Barzanes?”

“Does anyone?”

“Nicomache perhaps?”

He laughed, but grimly. “She hates him more than anyone else. Barzanes is infatuated with her, has been since the day he arrived. He walked into the palace and he was supposed to be talking to Father, but he couldn’t keep his eyes off my sister. I thought then the man must be human. Goes to show how wrong you can be.”

“Then why the betrothal?”

“If you were an exiled Athenian, would you pass up the chance to become related to the royal house, no matter how distantly? It doesn’t matter how unhappy Nicomache is, that wedding’s going to happen.” What he said closely matched what I’d said to Diotima.

He shifted in his seat, which for a horseman like Cleophantus was an admission of great inner turmoil. “Barzanes scares me, and I don’t mind admitting it. Meanwhile my father’s shut in his office working night and day. Why couldn’t I have had a normal father?”

“My father’s a sculptor. When he’s in the middle of a piece he likes, he bars the door and won’t allow anyone to disturb him. I’ve known him to work through the night by the light of a torch. I’ve known him polish and cut and polish for days like a man obsessed.”

Cleophantus sighed. “I wish my father was a sculptor. You don’t know how lucky you are. Being the son of the mighty Themistocles is a burden: the man who saved Hellas, the smartest man in the world, some call him. The Great King thinks so. Did you know, after the wars, the Great King set a bounty on Father’s head of two hundred talents? Two hundred talents. Can you imagine any man worth that much? Father earned it merely by walking into the court of the man who most wanted him dead. When he walked into the Persian court of his own will, the Great King embraced Father and gave him the bounty he’d offered for his capture or death.

“How’s a normal man like me supposed to live up to a hero like that? If I achieve anything, anything at all, perform any deed, I know I’ll be compared to what Father did, and I’ll be found wanting. I’m not stupid, but I know I’m no smarter than the next man. I’ll always be the inferior son.”

“It’s a problem,” I conceded. “So what are you going to do?”

Cleophantus shrugged. “If I’ll never be good enough, why do anything at all?”

That explained why Cleophantus wasted his time here, living off the fat of his father’s success. We’d rounded the top of a hill and spread out before us was—“What in Hades is that?” I asked.

Cleophantus looked at me as if I were mad. “It’s a river, of course.” Then, “Why, that’s right, I should have realized. You’re from Athens. You’ve never seen a large river before. The Illisos in Athens is a small stream compared to this.”

I sat on my mare for some time, letting her crop the grass of the hilltop, while I watched the huge flowing mass of water pass by us below. So this was a river. I thought of the words of Heraclitus: “You can’t step in the same river twice.” I mentioned it to Cleophantus. He laughed. When he forgot to be depressed, Cleophantus had a happy, carefree laugh. He said, “If your philosopher meant this river then he was dead right. The damned thing changes direction every year. We haven’t been here that long, less than ten years, and it’s changed its banks more often than I can count.”

“What do you mean, changes its banks?”

“See those great loops?”

I did indeed. The river swerved left and right in sweeping arcs, never going in a straight line. I said, “It flows like a drunken sailor.”

“Right. Those loops change all the time. Usually they get bigger and bigger, pushing outward. Sometimes the loop becomes so large it collapses, and the water takes a shortcut across what used to be dry land, before the new path begins looping out again. It plays havoc with the farmers, I can tell you. That land you’re looking at right below us is new. A whole loop collapsed here six months ago. The farmers love it when that happens because the new soil is always rich. See how green and strong the plants are? Of course, it was bad luck for the farmer who owned this land.”

“Owned? Past tense?”

“He fell into the new waterway at night and drowned. It’s easy to do in the dark when the riverbank isn’t where it used to be.”

“What’s this river named?”

“They call it the Maeander.”

We rode the trails for the rest of the day. It was a pleasant way to spend the time, and I found Cleophantus was good company. He was older, but compared to me he was an inexperienced child.

As we rode back toward the palace late that afternoon, side by side, Cleophantus said without any preamble, “I suppose you know a lot of ways to kill people.”

“I do?”

“Well, it’s only a guess.” He sounded diffident. I would be too if I said crazy things like that.

He continued with, “I know why you came to Magnesia.”

“To deliver your sister back to your father.”

“You don’t have to pretend with me, Nicolaos. I
know
.”

“Know what?”

“So you’re saying your presence here has nothing to do with a certain letter, which may have arrived in Athens?”

That stopped me dead. “What letter?”

This had to be a trap. Barzanes must have coerced Cleophantus into asking these questions, hoping I’d loosen up with a fellow Hellene. No real conspirator could be as clumsy as Cleophantus.

Our path had taken us into the foothills, close to the necropolis, the city of the dead.

I realized then we had taken a very indirect route home. I hadn’t thought anything of it until that moment. After all, this was supposed to be a fun ride.

Cleophantus said, “This way,” and turned his mount sharply, straight into the necropolis. It occurred to me a necropolis is the perfect place to hide a body. I followed after a moment’s hesitation, but while his back was to me I used my right hand to check that my dagger was in place, as was the backup I kept hidden beneath my chiton.

We passed row after row of stele, memorial stones, all poking out of the ground and inscribed to speak to the passerby. Some were engraved with an image of the dead.

A woman standing with an arm raised in greeting:
Agesilla, wife of Timacrates, well deserving of him. She died bearing his son.

Xaribolos lies here. I raised four sons and many daughters, and lived to seventy-five.

Some men, wealthier, had commissioned statues of the dead, or even monuments.

Two boys made of stone, standing side by side with an arm around each other:
Criton, son of Thrasybolous, erected this for his two sons, Dexiphanes, age five, and Criton, age four, who drowned in the river.

Cleophantus wound past all of these graves, row upon row of the dead, and upward along the narrow path of trodden dirt, bordered by high, tough grass. The place was silent but for the whistle of the wind, the thud of hooves, and the occasional snort from our mounts. Well, in a necropolis, silence was preferable to the alternative.

Directly ahead, high above us, rock tombs were cut into the hills themselves. I’d heard of rock tombs, but never seen one; Athens doesn’t have them. They are family graves that have been cut deep into the side of a solid hill by hand. The rock tombs of Magnesia stood in a ragged row, high and proud above the necropolis, with the outside faces chiseled, carved, and painted to resemble the façades of temples. All but one showed signs of wear: faded paint, or a certain loss of definition in the fine features where wind and rain had worn the carving. The exception was the last in the row, either new or freshly maintained. Its lines were sharp, complete; its paint bright; the effect astonishing. From a distance, I could have sworn it was the front of a real building.

I saw the path up the hill was a dead end, in more ways than one.

“Cleophantus, where are we going?”

He didn’t answer, but dismounted at the first of the temple outlines. Now that we were closer I could inspect the work. As the son of a sculptor, I was fascinated. Someone had actually carved Ionic columns out of this solid rock, and temple roof outlines and metopes and friezes. This was quality artwork. I ran my fingers along the stone, feeling the erosion. They would have done better to have picked a hill made of marble, though I supposed valuable marble would have been mined. The paintwork up close was in poor condition, but that was to be expected, no paint could last on stone exposed as this rock face was. Even so, these tombs beat the burial urns we Athenians used any day. When I died, I wanted to be put in one of these.