Tyrant (18 page)

Dionysius was sentenced to death in his absence, since no trace of him had ever been found. Philistus artfully spread the word that he had died of his wounds and that his body had been secretly cremated at night by his friends along the marshy shores of the Cyanes.

A new popular leader rose up in the Assembly: his name was Daphnaeus and he boasted of killing more than twenty enemies during the terrible morning of the battle in the agora. He proclaimed that their victory had forever sanctioned the triumph of democracy and that no one would ever again dare aspire to tyranny in the future.

Daphnaeus’s boasting encouraged others to brag in the port taverns of how they had got their thrills between the thighs of that little whore, the daughter of the traitor Hermocrates. No one would have ever been so bold as to say such a thing about a woman who still had a husband or father or brother, but Arete’s memory was undefended and so anyone could get away with saying anything about her. But Philistus had eyes and ears everywhere, and plenty of money to spend: he was a wealthy man, and the Company had put their treasury in his hands as well. On the basis of the information he was getting, he diligently made a list of first and last names, addresses, professions, friends and associates, along with anything else he was able to gather.

Despite the losses it had suffered, the Company was in fact still strong and numerous, and when the news came out in great secret that Dionysius was alive and hiding in an inaccessible spot in the mountains, many offered to put themselves at his service.

At the same time, Philistus sent a trusted messenger named Demetrius to Asia to inform Dionysius’s younger brother Leptines, who lived in Ephesus, about what had happened.

A slave opened the door to his house, saying that his master was not in.

‘Well, where is he?’ demanded the envoy.

‘I don’t know; when he goes out at night, he never says where he’s going.’

Demetrius sighed. ‘I suppose that means I’ll wait for him here until he gets back. It’s a matter of the greatest urgency! You may as well bring me something to eat in the meantime, seeing as I haven’t had supper.’

The slave was reluctant to let the stranger in, but he didn’t have the courage to keep him out either. So he served him a plate of olives and a chunk of bread.

Demetrius began to eat, accompanying the food with a few sips of wine from his own flask. ‘Does he usually get back late?’ he asked.

‘Usually not before morning,’ admitted the slave.

But Leptines arrived shortly thereafter, panting, and bolted the door behind him. ‘Who are you, friend?’ he asked, without showing any surprise.

‘My name is Demetrius and Philistus has sent me to tell you that . . .’

But as he was speaking, Leptines had already opened a chest and was stuffing some clothes into a sack. ‘You’ll tell me about it on our way out of here. This city has become impossible! Have you got a boat?’

‘Yes, the one that brought me here . . .’

‘Good. Let’s get moving then. Husbands around here can get very touchy when they find you in bed with their wives. Even violent sometimes!’

They rushed out as the slave was shouting: ‘Master, what am I to do?’

‘Nothing!’ shouted back Leptines. ‘If anyone shows up, tell them I’ve gone. Keep anything you want from the house, and may the gods assist you!’

They had just rounded the street corner when a group of men armed with clubs reached the building and burst inside.

The two fugitives ran at breakneck speed down the dark streets of the city until they reached Demetrius’s boat, secured to the wharf with a couple of ropes.

‘The gangplank!’ ordered Demetrius, who had taken stock of the urgency of the situation.

The sailor on guard recognized him and lowered the gangplank to the ground so that they were able to scramble on board to safety.

Leptines drew a long breath, sat on a bench and, as if nothing had happened, turned to Demetrius. ‘Well then? How are things going in Syracuse?’

Demetrius turned to him with a serious expression. ‘Badly,’ he replied. ‘It couldn’t be worse. Your brother needs your help.’

Leptines frowned. ‘We won’t be able to set sail for a couple of hours. Tell me everything.’

Demetrius’s boat dropped anchor at the Laccius harbour ten days later, and Leptines hurried to Philistus’s house.

‘Where is Dionysius?’ he asked even before he had entered.

Philistus gestured for him to lower his voice and accompanied him into his study. ‘He’s safe.’

‘I asked you where he is,’ insisted Leptines with a peremptory tone.

‘I can’t tell you,’ replied Philistus. ‘It’s too dangerous. How long do you think your arrival in the city will remain a secret? If you wanted to find out where he was, who would you keep your eye on, knowing that his wife is dead?’

Leptines understood what Philistus was trying to tell him and gave up.

The night after the battle at the agora, Dionysius was handed over to friends from the Company who transported him by boat along the Anapus river for as long as possible, rowing against the current at first and then hitching it up to an ass, which ploddingly towed the boat along the shore. When the terrain along the river bed became too rough, his friends bought another ass from a farmer, fashioned a litter and laid the wounded man upon it, securing the frame to the two animals, one in front and the other behind. They continued slowly, avoiding violent jolts, all the way to the source of the river.

The place was enchanting: a spring of crystalline water in the middle of a meadow full of multihued oleander blossoms and intensely scented broom. It was surrounded by towering rock walls perforated by a great number of niches dug by the most ancient inhabitants of those lands to bury their dead close to the sky.

Someone had been told to expect their arrival. A rough-hewn frame was lowered to the ground with a creaky pulley by the light of the moon. His friends laid Dionysius gently upon it and tied him on to it with leather straps, then shouted up to have him hoisted. They watched as the fragile bed of intertwining sticks swayed in the void over their heads. It reached a dizzying height and was pulled into a recess in the rock, as dark and gloomy as the eye socket in a skull.

The men had managed to bring the task assigned them to completion with skill and shrewdness, and they headed back now to report to Philistus on the outcome. Dionysius was in good hands, in a shelter as hard to reach as an eagle’s nest, in the middle of the mountains. The man whose care he had been entrusted to was a native Sicel from the interior, a medicine man venerated and respected by his people. Philistus trusted him more than he did the doctors of Syracuse; although they were expert surgeons, accustomed as they were to cleaning, cauterizing and stitching up the wounds of the warriors returning from the battlefield, they were not as good at curing the insidious infections that could burgeon from a wound.

Dionysius lay between life and death in that isolated place for days and days, often sunk in a deep slumber provoked by his severe loss of blood, helped along by the sleeping potions that the old Sicel mixed up for him with wild honey. When he finally regained consciousness, the first sensations that struck him were a circle of light crossed by clouds and by birds in flight, the twittering of skylarks, the fragrance of broom and the song of a woman that seemed to come from inside the solid rock that surrounded him.

Then she appeared to him: her skin was golden from the sun, her eyes and hair were pitch-black and she had the curious, fleeting glance of a wild creature.

T
HE STRANGE APPARITION
vanished instantly. Perhaps she had been a figment of a dream. Or perhaps one of the many likenesses that Arete took on to visit him when his soul was stabbed by the thought of her.

He fell back with a groan on to his bed and probed his wound with his left hand. The scar was still sore to the touch, but almost dry. He touched his face as well and realized that his beard had grown long and thick. He was so weak that any movement made him break out in a sweat and strained the beating of his heart. He found a bowl of water and drank it down in big gulps, then dragged himself to the opening of his strange refuge and looked outside.

He found himself on the rim of a precipice. Down below, the sun flashed intermittently on a pool of pure water at the centre of an expanse of flowers. The long branches of a plane tree stretching over the spring swayed in the wind, intercepting the golden reflections of the sun. Dionysius felt dizzy, sucked in by that luminous abyss. He felt that he might at any moment plunge down like a lark inebriated by the sun, thus banishing the intolerable anguish that rose from his heart as he realized how bottomless his solitude had become.

He was yanked back by a hairy hand and a sharp voice calling him back to reality. ‘If you want to die, you’ll have to wait until after your friends have paid me. I promised I’d give you back in one piece.’

‘Who are you?’ asked Dionysius. ‘What is this place?’

‘It’s no affair of yours who I am. This, my friend, is a cemetery.

Just the right place for someone given up as dead.’ He spoke a rough but understandable Greek, with a heavy Siculian accent.

‘How long have I been here?’

‘A month. And it will take another month before you’re back on your feet.’

‘I want to go down there by the water; I think it would do me good. I can imagine the scent of those flowers. And I need to bathe – the smell in this place is revolting.’

The old man set down a basket with some bread and cheese. ‘Eat. You worry about getting your strength back and I’ll let you go down there very soon. Use the water in that bag to wash for now,’ he said, pointing at a goatskin hanging from a nail.

‘Has no one come looking for me?’

‘More then once. But you were in no condition to see or to hear. The man who had you brought here will be coming tomorrow.’

‘Philistus?’

The old man nodded. He looked Dionysius over once and then left through a crevice at the end of the cave, closing a kind of wooden gate behind him.

Dionysius waited until he had gone, then plucked the cork out of the goatskin and poured the water over himself, savouring the pleasure of that rudimentary bath. He ate and then, exhausted again, stretched out and fell deeply asleep.

Philistus arrived the next day towards evening and was brought to Dionysius’s refuge. They embraced each other warmly, but then fell silent; neither of the two wanted to let the lump in his throat betray his emotion.

It was Philistus who spoke first. ‘Your brother’s back, have you heard? We’re busy preparing for your return and—’

‘Who did it?’ growled Dionysius.

‘Listen . . . you must listen to me, understand? I’ve always given you the right advice, haven’t I? Do not allow yourself to be driven by rage; you mustn’t take what happened personally. What happened was political, can’t you see that? Whoever unleashed those dogs wanted to ruin you, to annihilate you, even if you managed to survive the wounds on your body. They are only too aware of your courage, of your will power. They know how you, your ideas, hold the people in sway, especially the young. And they’re afraid of you. They know that no one could stand up to you in the Assembly.’

‘I want their names,’ repeated Dionysius in a low voice.