The Philosopher Kings (26 page)

The nine judges were sitting on raised seats down on the stage. Neleus was among them. The other three from the ship were Klymene, Ficino, and Erinna. From the city were Nikias, immediately recognizable as Neleus's father, Aristomache, and three strangers. I wondered if it would be good or bad that the ninth judge was from Lucia. It was the most likely outcome of choosing by lot. There were ninety of us and more than three thousand of them.

Father was wearing his cloak, pulled back over his shoulder to show the two swords through his belt. Phaedrus carried the lyre. Everyone fell silent when they saw us and then a murmur went through the crowd, which parted to let us pass. It was like a play, and I felt that we should have had time to make costumes before our grand entrance, or at least re-dye our kitons so that we all matched. I would have put us all in black and gold, but any unified color would have done. As it was we were hopeless. Father's cloak was pink, embroidered with scrolls and suns, one of Mother's favorite patterns. His kiton was plain white, as he generally preferred. Phaedrus's kiton was blue, embroidered six inches deep with four different patterns, and mine was a faded yellow embroidered with red Florentine lilies.

There was no sign of Kebes.

We walked down one of the clear aisles and onto the stage. The judges were sitting toward the farther side, on a row of chairs. In the center was a strange piece of wood, almost as tall as I was and about half that broad, with two iron loops bolted into it at the top and another two near the bottom. It was just one straight upright, not a cross, but it had something of the same feel as the crucifix outside the temple. I had no idea what it was for.

Aristomache came forward and introduced the judges to us. The three strangers, two women and a man, were strangers to Father too, it seemed. Their names were Sabina, Erektheus, and Alexandra. Everyone wished each other joy. Erinna was biting her lip, looking very serious.

“I wonder if Kebes is even going to show up,” Phaedrus muttered, but just then there was a stir in the crowd, and there was Kebes at the top of the slope, still dressed in his costume from the day before, with the Phrygian cap pulled down on his broad forehead. A woman and a boy came with him, carrying a strange assortment of things I couldn't quite figure out.

“Why would she have given him those?” Father murmured.

“Who? Mother?” Phaedrus asked.

Father laughed shortly. “No indeed. Athene. It's an instrument she invented and then discarded because it made her look so ugly playing it. It's called a syrinx, or pan-pipes.”

I'd never seen anything like it. It consisted of a set of hollow tubes of different lengths bound together. “Like a whole set of flutes?” I asked. Wind instruments were banned at home, because Plato thought they made people soft.

“Yes, sort of,” he said. “And what do the others bring?”

The woman was carrying a little folding stool. The boy had a bag, which he set down on the left of the wooden thing and unfastened. Inside were a set of leatherworking knives and a number of leather straps.

“Afraid, Pytheas?” Kebes asked.

Father laughed, because of course he wasn't afraid at all. I wondered if he half-wanted Kebes to kill him so that he could go back to being a god and stop needing to figure out mortality from first principles. But what was the threat in a wooden pole and a set of little knives? The crowd seemed to know, because they had fallen silent as soon as the boy undid the bag. Torture, I thought, just as Father had said. Erinna was frowning at the bag. She asked Ficino something and screwed up her face at his reply. Klymene shook her head.

Kebes's eyes swept over the judges. He nodded to the woman, and she and the boy moved back and climbed up the first set of stairs to sit down in a clear space on the first bench on the edge of the crowd. Father set down his swords on the opposite side of the wood from the bag, took his lyre from Phaedrus, and nodded coolly to us. “See you later.” Phaedrus moved back, but I moved forward to embrace him, being careful of the lyre. “Win,” I said. “What he said was an insult to the honor of all three of us.”

“I'll do my best,” he said. “Fascinating as it might look in the art of later times, I find I have very little desire to be skinned alive.”

I looked back at the tools with a start of horror. Once he had pointed it out I could imagine it all too easily. Bound to the wood by the iron rings and the straps, and then skinned alive. How horrible! Even worse than crucifixion. Surely all incarnate gods didn't have to end up dying in horrible ways? Surely? Aristomache said Yayzu had come back in his divine form, but she hadn't mentioned what he'd done to the torturers afterward. I hoped it was something really appropriate.

I swallowed, nodded, and climbed the stairs to sit in the front row by Phaedrus, on the other side of the arena from Kebes's friends. I looked over at the judges. Neleus smiled at me reassuringly. Erinna was frowning again. I looked down at the little knives where they were laid out so neatly. Everyone in the crowd seemed to recognize them. This must be something they did often enough to have the tools for it. And, most disturbing of all, they came crowding into the colosseum and brought their children to watch.

Kebes had seated himself on a camp stool and was tapping his fingers impatiently. Father stood still and looked at Aristomache.

Aristomache came forward and said something quietly to both men. They both shook their heads. She sighed, and held both hands forward to the crowd, palms out. “You are here to witness a formal musical challenge of one original composition, for any instrument,” she began. Everyone immediately fell silent, except one baby whose crying sounded loud in the sudden stillness. The acoustics were wonderful. “Between Pytheas of the Just City and Matthias of Lucia. The victor is to do what he wants to the vanquished. Will you two show mercy, as this is just a personal quarrel, and give up this enmity and compete for a prize?”

“Never,” Kebes said.

“There is a place for vengeance in my religion,” Father said.

Aristomache looked pained, and so did some of the other judges from Lucia.

“An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth,” Kebes said, clearly quoting something. “Christianity has room for vengeance too, especially upon heathens and heretics.” At the word “heretics” there was a stirring and muttering in the crowd.

“Can't you forgive?” Aristomache pleaded.

“And what have I done to you anyway, beyond existing?” Father asked, mildly, his words pitched perfectly to be heard everywhere in the colosseum. Even the crying baby fell silent.

“This isn't a trial,” Kebes snarled at Father. “We're not here to rehearse grievances. And while Lucia is a Christian city, this is permissible by our laws. It's a free contest, freely entered into.”

Aristomache sighed and raised her hands again. “The judges are chosen and will swear.” Weirdly, she now put her palms together. “I swear by Yayzu and his Heavenly Father that I will judge fairly and by the laws, and not be swayed by prejudice, friendship, or the feeling of the crowd.”

It was the strangest oath I ever heard, halfway between the oaths judges take in a capital case and an artistic competition. It became clear as the others swore that the matter of which gods would hold the oath had been left to personal preference. The odd mix of phrases didn't sound any more normal when Ficino swore by all the gods, or Erinna by Apollo and the Muses. Klymene swore by Zeus, Apollo, and Demeter, which was the conventional trio at home for holding significant oaths. Neleus swore by all gods on high Olympos, which cleverly left out Father, since he was right here. Nikias swore before high holiness, which could have meant anything. Alexandra swore by Yayzu and Marissa, Sabina by Marissa alone, Erektheus by blessed Yayzu and Saint Lucy. Father, who had stood impassive through all the rest, even when he was named, winced a little at that.

Then Kebes came up, putting his palms together. “I swear by God, and Marissa, and Saint Matthew, and by my own true name, that I shall abide by the decision of these judges. Whether it be for me or against me I shall submit myself to whatever follows.” His voice boomed out confidently. I couldn't understand what he thought he was doing. He was swearing in truth, without reservations. He believed he would win and get to skin Father alive, but how could he?

Father followed him forward and swore the same oath, calmly and clearly, calling on Zeus, Leto, and the Muses. It seemed an odd choice of gods, but not inappropriate. He couldn't exactly swear by himself.

“We shall draw lots for who will begin,” Aristomache said.

“No, you go first, Pytheas,” Kebes said.

“No, you.” Father made a gesture of elaborate courtesy and the crowd laughed.

“We will draw lots,” Aristomache said again, firmly. She shook a bag. “Black or white?”

“White,” Father said.

Aristomache sat down again and held out the bag out to Nikias, who pulled out a stone without looking and held it up to the crowd. It was white.

Without waiting for anything more, still standing where he was, in a graceful pose with his cloak draped neatly to leave his arm bare, Father began to play.

I've said that Father invented music, and it's true. I wasn't really worried. All the same, we'd spent a long time the evening before discussing what he ought to play. For an audience that contained a large number of Yayzu worshippers, it shouldn't be a religious theme. Similarly, it shouldn't be something overtly Platonic. Phaedrus had suggested he play his song about the Last Debate, and it would have been a good choice, except that it was a subject that excited strong feelings for and against. We discussed elegies and love songs and praise songs. Father had written them all. “What we want is something everyone except Kebes will like,” I had said. We'd pretty much agreed that he'd play a song he had written years ago about the sun going down and a bird flying on toward the dawn. It's a song about death and hope, of course, but it's also about a bird and a sunset, and the tune is marvelous.

Of course, Father being Father, he didn't play that at all. He had written it, yes, but lots of the people there had heard it already. Erinna quite often sang it herself. What he sang was completely new. I'd never heard it before, and I'm fairly sure he composed it especially for the occasion, maybe even on the spot. It had a pretty, complex melody, with chords that would be much too hard for most people, and then the words made a harmony, twining around it. It was in the Phrygian mode, of course. From the first note everyone was caught in the silence. The song was about me. Or rather, it was about arete, about personal human excellence, and how it was what we all wanted to attain, and how, being human, we so often fell short but went on from there, and kept on trying, and achieved amazing things. The images were all about building cities and lives, using Plato's parallel that sees cities and souls as analogous. I had tears in my eyes by the end of the first verse, and that was before the incredibly uplifting chorus.

It was such a wonderful song, and such a wonderful performance of it, that I almost forgot to look at Kebes. He stayed sitting there, smiling slightly, not at all worried. It made no sense. However good he was with his pipes, he couldn't possibly top this. Did he think Father would hesitate to kill him? Or did he have a deeper plan?

When Father finished the crowd surged to their feet, clapping with all their hearts. Father bowed to them and stepped back, his face calm and composed, opening his hand to Kebes. And Kebes didn't even wait for them to settle down, he grinned, blew a note, and then another, and then a whole ripple of clear fast notes, puffing out his cheeks.

Of course he couldn't sing while he was playing. The syrinx is a breath instrument, so Kebes's tune had no words. But he was good. He had me tapping my foot almost at once. As for the crowd, already on their feet, half of them were dancing. It wasn't Phrygian or Dorian, it was some other mode altogether, a music I'd never heard, one Plato banned from the Republic, a music made of night and laughter and swaying rhythms. How could Athene have invented such an instrument? It was erotic, haunting, dangerous. Father's song had been a call for Platonic excellence. This reached out to the parts of people Plato most wanted to suppress. And yet, these impulses were undeniably part of life too. I looked at Erinna, and looked away again. I don't know how long Kebes played. It wasn't the kind of music that has measures. It built to a climax, hung there, and toppled back with a sigh. The crowd sighed too, and then clapped and stamped and cheered. Phaedrus and I were the only ones sitting, apart from the judges. Father's face was completely expressionless, as if carved from marble.

“That was the strangest thing,” Phaedrus murmured as the crowd slowly subsided. “Do you think Father had heard one of those before?”

“He knew what it was,” I said. “He knew Athene made it. He must have.”

“I've never heard any music remotely like it,” Phaedrus said, more loudly.

One of the women nearby leaned over, breaching the space between the two of us and the rest of the crowd. “Myxolydian, that was, and it's a syrinx,” she said, helpfully. “It is different when you're used to calm Platonic music.”

It certainly was.

The judges were disputing and couldn't seem to come to an agreement. I could see hands being waved. Erinna was shaking her head. Klymene was frowning hard. One of the strangers was pointing at the crowd, and Aristomache was looking reproving. “Who do you think will win?” I asked the woman who had explained about the Myxolydian.

She was a middle-aged woman, and she had two children sitting with her. I couldn't tell whether she was one of the Children or one of the rescued locals. “It's terribly hard for the judges,” she said, “because they're condemning one of them to death, and there's no getting away from that after that exchange at the beginning. I'm glad I wasn't chosen. They're judging between such very different things. Matthias has been winning all the musical competitions here for years. Everyone loves the syrinx. Once you have a syrinx and a drum and somebody with a low voice singing, you can have wonderful dancing after dark. But what Pytheas sang—who could vote against that?”