The Wooden Walls of Thermopylae (31 page)

My hands sweated and I couldn’t keep still. I thought back to the first time I’d seen Athens: the day I’d stood on the deck of the old Athene Nike with Miltiades, Cimon and Elpinice waiting for permission to disembark. The city of the Goddess had seemed so strong, calm and safe. Now I was back on board waiting to escape, homeless again. What bitter humour the gods enjoy.

It ended quickly, a small group of armed men came skittering down on to the harbour. They were breathless and frightened. Their swords were bloody and some of them wore wounds. They were shouting, gabbling at us.

“Persians, Persian skirmishers are in the city, couldn’t hold them off; right behind us.”

They scrambled over the side as we were casting off. On reaching the harbour mouth we saw not more than half an hour away the forward squadron of the Persian fleet. Everything we feared was happening. The officer of the rearguard, a man I recognised from Xanthippus’s household and who’d been on the fateful mission to Aegina, clasped my arm and wheezed,

“Didn’t think you’d wait, owe you lads for this, Luck Bringer.”

Then he turned and vomited over the side. The sea gets to you like that. I’m going to have to put the next bit off,
reader: the emotion is too raw. So in the meantime let me clear up another myth about the old days: that story about Xanthippus’s dog.

You know, the one about how there was no room for animals on board and so Xanthippus’s faithful hound jumped in the water and swum after the boat all the way to Salamis and when it got there it just had the strength to lick his hand before it fell over, dead of exhaustion.

It’s all made up you know, part of the myth these families create about themselves. I know it’s not true because we were last out and there certainly weren’t any dogs swimming in front of us.

The Persian ships were either too tired or disinclined to give chase so we followed our distant fleet with its human cargo. Lysias was wiped out and dozing in the trierarch’s chair; the last two days he’d had no sleep. The rowers were resting and Ariston steered us, catching the offshore breeze. I was half asleep myself but, as officer of the hoplites, had to stay awake while Lysias caught some rest. Aeschylus was talking to me as much to help me stay awake as anything else.

He was talking about how crowds behave; comparing the women on the quayside to the followers of the God, Dionysus. When in frenzy they tore King Pentheus into little pieces. He began to chant some lines from the idea of a play he was working on, can’t remember them now.

Then he stopped.

“Mandrocles, look.”

I turned and followed the direction he was pointing: back to Athens. He always had better eyes than me; at first I couldn’t see anything. Then I could; smoke. Wisps of smoke over the lower parts of the city. I said,

“Looks like something’s happening around the Agora.”

“Not there, look up, look at the Acropolis.”

I did; now I saw what he saw. Above the crowning glory of our city the sacred temple of the Goddess Athena herself, smoke, clouds of black smoke.

“Athens is burning, Mandrocles; Athens is burning.”

Cheshire. Samos 2012-14

Nick Brown has an archaeological background and is the author of the highly acclaimed
Luck Bringer, Skendleby
and
The Dead Travel Fast
.

The Ancient Gramarye series:

Skendleby

The Dead Travel Fast

The Luck Bringer series:

Luck Bringer

The Wooden Walls of Thermopylae