A Victor of Salamis 26Book II · The Acropolis Flames
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Literature · Adventure
A Victor of Salamis 26
Book II · The Acropolis Flames
DavisEnglish
A few days only Xerxes and his host rested after the dear-bought triumph at Thermopylæ. An expedition sent to plunder Delphi returned discomfited—thanks, said common report, to Apollo himself, who broke off two mountain crags to crush the impious invaders. But no such miracle halted the march on Athens. Bœotia and her cities welcomed the king; Thespiæ and Platæa, which had stood fast for Hellas, were burned. The Peloponnesian army lingered at Corinth, busy with a wall across the Isthmus, instead of risking valorous battle.
“By the soul of my father,” the king had sworn, “I believe that after the lesson at Thermopylæ these madmen will not fight again!”
“By land they will not,” said Mardonius, always at his lord’s elbow, “by sea—it remains for your Eternity to discover.”
“Will they really dare to fight by sea?” asked Xerxes, hardly pleased at the suggestion.
“Omnipotence, you have slain Leonidas, but a second great enemy remains. While Themistocles lives, it is likely your slaves will have another opportunity to prove to you their devotion.”
“Ah, yes! A stubborn rogue, I hear. Well—if we must fight by sea, it shall be under my own eyes. My loyal Phœnician and Egyptian mariners did not do themselves full justice at Artemisium; they lacked the valour which comes from being in the presence of their king.”
“Which makes a dutiful subject fight as ten,” quickly added Pharnaspes the fan-bearer.
“Of course,” smiled the monarch, “and now I must ask again, Mardonius, how fares it with my handsome Prexaspes?”
“Only indifferently, your Majesty, since you graciously deign to inquire.”
“Such a sad wound? That is heavy news. He takes long in recovering. I trust he wants for nothing.”
“Nothing, Omnipotence. He has the best surgeons in the camp.”
“To-day I will send him Helbon wine from my own table. I miss his comely face about me. I want him here to play at dice. Tell him to recover because his king desires it. If he has become right Persian, that will be better than any physic.”
“I have no doubt he will be deeply moved to learn of your Eternity’s kindness,” rejoined the bow-bearer, who was not sorry that further discussion of this delicate subject was averted by the arch-usher introducing certain cavalry officers with their report on the most practicable line of march through Bœotia.
Glaucon, in fact, was long since out of danger, thanks to the sturdy bronze of his Laconian helmet. He was able to walk, and, if need be, ride, but Mardonius would not suffer him to go outside his own tents. The Athenian would be certain to be recognized, and at once Xerxes would send for him, and how Glaucon, in his new frame of mind, would deport himself before majesty, whether he would not taunt the irascible monarch to his face, the bow-bearer did not know. Therefore the Athenian endured a manner of captivity in the tents with the eunuchs, pages, and women. Artazostra was often with him, and less frequently Roxana. But the Egyptian had lost all power over him now. He treated her with a cold courtesy more painful than contempt. Once or twice Artazostra had tried to turn him back from his purpose, but her words always broke themselves over one barrier.
“I am born a Hellene, lady. My gods are not yours. I must live and die after the manner of my people. And that our gods are strong and will give victory, after that morning with Leonidas I dare not doubt.”
When the host advanced south and eastward from Thermopylæ, Glaucon went with it, riding in a closed travelling carriage guarded by Mardonius’s eunuchs. All who saw it said that here went one of the bow-bearer’s harem women, and as for the king, every day he asked for his favourite, and every day Mardonius told him, “He is even as before,” an answer which the bow-bearer prayed to truth-loving Mithra might not be accounted a lie.
It was while the army lay at Platæa that news came which might have shaken Glaucon’s purpose, had that purpose been shakable. Euboulus the Corinthian had been slain in a skirmish shortly after the forcing of Thermopylæ. The tidings meant that no one lived who could tell in Athens that on the day of testing the outlaw had cast in his lot with Hellas. Leonidas was dead. The Spartan soldiers who had heard Glaucon avow his identity were dead. In the hurried conference of captains preceding the retreat, Leonidas had told his informant’s precise name only to Euboulus. And now Euboulus was slain, doubtless before any word from him of Glaucon’s deed could spread abroad. To Athenians Glaucon was still the “Traitor,” doubly execrated in this hour of trial. If he returned to his people, would he not be torn in pieces by the mob? But the young Alcmæonid was resolved. Since he had not died at Thermopylæ, no life in the camp of the Barbarian was tolerable. He would trust sovran Athena who had plucked him out of one death to deliver from a second. Therefore he nursed his strength—a caged lion waiting for freedom,—and almost wished the Persian host would advance more swiftly that he might haste onward to his own.
Glaucon had cherished a hope to see the whole power of the Peloponnesus in array in Bœotia, but that hope proved quickly vain. The oracle was truly to be fulfilled,—the whole of “the land of Cecrops” was to be possessed by the Barbarian. The mountain passes were open. No arrows greeted the Persian vanguard as it cantered down the defiles, and once more the king’s courtiers told their smiling master that not another hand would be raised against him.
The fourth month after quitting the Hellespont Xerxes entered Athens. The gates stood ajar. The invaders walked in silent streets as of a city of the dead. A few runaway slaves alone greeted them. Only in the Acropolis a handful of superstitious old men and temple warders had barricaded themselves, trusting that Athena would still defend her holy mountain. For a few days they defended the steep, rolling down huge boulders, but the end was inevitable. The Persians discovered a secret path upward. The defenders were surprised and dashed themselves from the crags or were massacred. A Median spear-man flung a fire-brand. The house of the guardian goddess went up in flame. The red column leaping to heaven was a beacon for leagues around that Xerxes held the length and breadth of Attica.
Glaucon watched the burning temple with grinding teeth. Mardonius’s tents were pitched in the eastern city by the fountain of Callirhoë,—a spot of fond memories for the Alcmæonid. Here first he had met Hermione, come with her maids to draw water, and had gone away dreaming of Aphrodite arising from the sea. Often here he had sat with Democrates by the little pool, whilst the cypresses above talked their sweet, monotonous music. Before him rose the Rock of Athena,—the same, yet not the same. The temple of his fathers was vanishing in smoke and ashes. What wonder that he turned to Artazostra at his side with a bitter smile.
“Lady, your people have their will. But do not think Athena Nikephorus, the Lady of Triumphs, will forget this day when we stand against you in battle.”
She did not answer him. He knew that many noblemen had advised Xerxes against driving the Greeks to desperation by this sacrilege, but this fact hardly made him the happier.
At dusk the next evening Mardonius suffered him to go with two faithful eunuchs and rove through the deserted city. The Persians were mostly encamped without the walls, and plundering was forbidden. Only Hydarnes with the Immortals pitched on Areopagus, and the king had taken his abode by the Agora. It was like walking through the country of the dead. Everything familiar, everything changed. The eunuchs carried torches. They wandered down one street after another, where the house doors stood open, where the aulas were strewn with the débris of household stuff which the fleeing citizens had abandoned. A deserter had already told Glaucon of his father’s death; he was not amazed therefore to find the house of his birth empty and desolate. But everywhere else, also, it was to call back memories of glad days never to return. Here was the school where crusty Pollicharmes had driven the “reading, writing, and music” into Democrates and himself between the blows. Here was the corner Hermes, before which he had sacrificed the day he won his first wreath in the public games. Here was the house of Cimon, in whose dining room he had enjoyed many a bright symposium. He trod the Agora and walked under the porticos where he had lounged in the golden evenings after the brisk stroll from the wrestling ground at Cynosarges, and had chatted and chaffered with light-hearted friends about “the war” and “the king,” in the days when the Persian seemed very far away. Last of all an instinct—he could not call it desire—drove him to seek the house of Hermippus.
They had to force the door open with a stone. The first red torch-light that glimmered around the aula told that the Eumolpid had awaited the enemy in Athens, not in Eleusis. The court was littered with all manner of stuff,—crockery, blankets, tables, stools,—which the late inhabitants had been forced to forsake. A tame quail hopped from the tripod by the now cold hearth. Glaucon held out his hand, the bird came quickly, expecting the bit of grain. Had not Hermione possessed such a quail? The outlaw’s blood ran quicker. He felt the heat glowing in his forehead.
A chest of clothes stood open by the entrance. He dragged forth the contents—women’s dresses and uppermost a white airy gauze of Amorgos that clung to his hands as if he were lifting clouds. Out of its folds fell a pair of white shoes with clasps of gold. Then he recognized this dress Hermione had worn in the Panathenæa and on the night of his ruin. He threw it down, next stood staring over it like a man possessed. The friendly eunuchs watched his strange movements. He could not endure to have them follow him.
“Give me a torch. I return in a moment.”
He went up the stair alone to the upper story, to the chambers of the women. Confusion here also,—the more valuable possessions gone, but much remaining. In one corner stood the loom and stretched upon it the half-made web of a shawl. He could trace the pattern clearly wrought in bright wools,—Ariadne sitting desolate awaiting the returning of Theseus. Would the wife or the betrothed of Democrates busy herself with that, whatever the griefs in her heart? Glaucon’s temples now were throbbing as if to burst.
A second room, and more littered confusion, but in one corner stood a bronze statue,—Apollo bending his bow against the Achæans,—which Glaucon had given to Hermione. At the foot of the statue hung a wreath of purple asters, dead and dry, but he plucked it asunder and set many blossoms in his breast.
A third room, and almost empty. He was moving back in disappointment, when the torch-light shook over something that swung betwixt two beams,—a wicker cradle. The woollen swaddling bands were still in it. One could see the spot on the little pillow with the impress of the tiny head. Glaucon almost dropped the torch. He pressed his hand to his brow.
“Zeus pity me!” he groaned, “preserve my reason. How can I serve Hellas and those I love if thou strikest me mad?”
With feverish anxiety he sent his eyes around that chamber. His search was not in vain. He almost trampled upon the thing that lay at his feet,—a wooden rattle, the toy older than the Egyptian pyramids. He seized it, shook it as a warrior his sword. He scanned it eagerly. Upon the handle were letters carved, but there was a mist before his eyes which took long to pass away. Then he read the rude inscription: “ΦΟΙΝΙΞ : ΥΙΟΣ : ΓΛΑΥΚΟΝΤΟΣ.” “Phœnix the son of Glaucon.” His child. He was the father of a fair son. His wife, he was sure thereof, had not yet been given to Democrates.
Overcome by a thousand emotions, he flung himself upon a chest and pressed the homely toy many times to his lips.
After a long interval he recovered himself enough to go down to the eunuchs, who were misdoubting his long absence.
“Persian,” he said to Mardonius, when he was again at the bow-bearer’s tents, “either suffer me to go back to my people right soon or put me to death. My wife has borne me a son. My place is where I can defend him.”
Mardonius frowned, but nodded his head.
“You know I desire it otherwise. But my word is given. And the word of a prince of the Aryans is not to be recalled. You know what to expect among your people—perhaps a foul death for a deed of another.”
“I know it. I also know that Hellas needs me.”
“To fight against us?” asked the bow-bearer, with a sigh. “Yet you shall go. Eran is not so weak that adding one more to her enemies will halt her triumph. To-morrow night a boat shall be ready on the strand. Take it. And after that may your gods guard you, for I can do no more.”
All the next day Glaucon sat in the tents and watched the smoke cloud above the Acropolis and the soldiers in the plain hewing down the sacred olives, Athena’s trees, which no Athenian might injure and thereafter live. But Glaucon was past cursing now,—endure a little longer and after that, what vengeance!
The gossiping eunuchs told readily what the king had determined. Xerxes was at Phaleron reviewing his fleet. The Hellenes’ ships confronted him at Salamis. The Persians had met in council, deliberating one night over their wine, reconsidering the next morning when sober. Their wisdom each time had been to force a battle. Let the king destroy the enemy at Salamis, and he could land troops at ease at the very doors of Sparta, defying the vain wall across the Isthmus. Was not victory certain? Had he not two ships to the Hellenes’ one? So the Phœnician vassal kings and all his admirals assured him. Only Artemisia, the martial queen of Halicarnassus, spoke otherwise, but none would hear her.
“To-morrow the war is ended,” a cup-bearer had told a butler in Glaucon’s hearing, and never noticed how the Athenian took a horseshoe in his slim fingers and straightened it, whilst looking on the scorched columns of the Acropolis.
At length the sun spread his last gold of the evening. The eunuchs called Glaucon to the pavilion of Artazostra, who came forth with Roxana for their farewell. They were in royal purple. The amethysts in their hair were worth a month’s revenues of Corinth. Roxana had never been lovelier. Glaucon was again in the simple Greek dress, but he knelt and kissed the robes of both the women. Then rising he spoke to them.
“To you, O princess, my benefactress, I wish all manner of blessing. May you be crowned with happy age, may your fame surpass Semiramis, the conqueror queen of the fables, let the gods refuse only one prayer—the conquest of Hellas. The rest of the world is yours, leave then to us our own.”
“And you, sister of Mardonius,” he turned to Roxana now, “do not think I despise your love or your beauty. That I have given you pain, is double pain to me. But I loved you only in a dream. My life is not for the rose valleys of Bactria, but for the stony hills by Athens. May Aphrodite give you another love, a brighter fortune than might ever come by linking your fate to mine.”
They held out their hands. He kissed them. He saw tears on the long lashes of Roxana.
“Farewell,” spoke the women, simply.
“Farewell,” he answered. He turned from them. He knew they were re-entering the tent. He never saw the women again.
Mardonius accompanied him all the long way from the fount of Callirhoë to the sea-shore. Glaucon protested, but the bow-bearer would not hearken.
“You have saved my life, Athenian,” was his answer, “when you leave me now, it is forever.”
The moon was lifting above the gloomy mass of Hymettus and scattering all the Attic plain with her pale gold. The Acropolis Rock loomed high above them. Glaucon, looking upward, saw the moonlight flash on the spear point and shield of a soldier,—a Barbarian standing sentry on the ruined shrine of the Virgin Goddess. Once more the Alcmæonid was leaving Athens, but with very different thoughts than on that other night when he had fled at Phormio’s side. They quitted the desolate city and the sleeping camp. The last bars of day had long since dimmed in the west when before them loomed the hill of Munychia clustered also with tents, and beyond it the violet-black vista of the sea. A forest of masts crowded the havens, the fleet of the “Lord of the World” that was to complete his mastery with the returning sun. Mardonius did not lead Glaucon to the ports, but southward, where beyond the little point of Colias spread an open sandy beach. The night waves lapped softly. The wind had sunk to warm puffs from the southward. They heard the rattle of anchor-chains and tackle-blocks, but from far away. Beyond the vague promontory of Peiræus rose dark mountains and headlands, at their foot lay a sprinkling of lights.
“Salamis!” cried Glaucon, pointing. “Yonder are the ships of Hellas.”
Mardonius walked with him upon the shelving shore. A skiff, small but stanch, was ready with oars.
“What else will you?” asked the bow-bearer. “Gold?”
“Nothing. Yet take this.” Glaucon unclasped from his waist the golden belt Xerxes had bestowed at Sardis. “A Hellene I went forth, a Hellene I return.”
He made to kiss the Persian’s dress, but Mardonius would not suffer it.
“Did I not desire you for my brother?” he said, and they embraced. As their arms parted, the bow-bearer spoke three words in earnest whisper:—
“Beware of Democrates.”
“What do you mean?”
“I can say no more. Yet be wise. Beware of Democrates.”
The attendants, faithful body-servants of Mardonius, and mute witnesses of all that passed, were thrusting the skiff into the water. There were no long farewells. Both knew that the parting was absolute, that Glaucon might be dead on the morrow. A last clasping of the hands and quickly the boat was drifting out upon the heaving waters. Glaucon stood one moment watching the figures on the beach and pondering on Mardonius’s strange warning. Then he set himself to the oars, rowing westward, skirting the Barbarian fleet as it rode at anchor, observing its numbers and array and how it was aligned for battle. After that, with more rapid stroke, he sent the skiff across the dark ribbon toward Salamis.
