A Victor of Salamis 33Book III · The Stranger in Trœzene
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Literature · Adventure
A Victor of Salamis 33
Book III · The Stranger in Trœzene
DavisEnglish
Despite exile, life had moved pleasantly for Hermippus’s household that spring. The Trœzenians had surpassed all duties to Zeus Xenios—the stranger’s god—in entertaining the outcast Athenians. The fugitives had received two obols per day to keep them in figs and porridge. Their children had been suffered to roam and plunder the orchards. But Hermippus had not needed such generosity. He had placed several talents at interest in Corinth; likewise bonds of “guest-friendship” with prominent Trœzenians made his residence very agreeable. He had hired a comfortable house, and could enjoy even luxury with his wife, daughter, young sons, and score of slaves.
Little Phœnix grew marvellously day by day, as if obeying his mother’s command to wax strong and avenge his father. Old Cleopis vowed he was the healthiest, least tearful babe, as well as the handsomest, she had ever known,—and she spoke from wide experience. When he was one year old, he was so active they had to tie him in the cradle. When the golden spring days came, he would ride forth upon his nurse’s back, surveying the Hellas he was born to inherit, and seeming to find it exceeding good.
But as spring verged on summer, Hermione demanded so much of Cleopis’s care that even Phœnix ceased to be the focus of attention. The lordly Alcmæonid fell into the custody of one Niobe, a dark-haired lass of the islands, who treated him well, but cared too much for certain young “serving-gentlemen” to waste on her charge any unreciprocated adoration. So on one day, just as the dying grass told the full reign of the Sun King, she went forth with her precious bundle wriggling in her arms, but her thoughts hardly on Master Phœnix. Procles the steward had been cold of late, he had even cast sly glances at Jocasta, Lysistra’s tiring-woman. Mistress Niobe was ready—since fair means of recalling the fickle Apollo failed—to resort to foul. Instead, therefore, of going to the promenade over the sea, she went—burden and all—to the Agora, where she was sure old Dion, who kept a soothsayer’s shop, would give due assistance in return for half a drachma.
The market was just thinning. Niobe picked her way amongst the vegetable women, fought off a boy who thrust on her a pair of geese, and found in a quiet corner by a temple porch the booth of Dion, who grinned with his toothless gums in way of greeting. He listened with paternal interest to her story, soothed her when she sniffled at Procles’s name, and made her show her silver, then began pulling over his bags and vials of strange powders and liquids.
“Ah, kind Master Dion,” began Niobe, for the sixth time, “if only some philtre could make Procles loath that abominable Jocasta!”
“Eu! eu!” muttered the old sinner, “it’s hard to say what’s best,—powder of toad’s bone or the mixture of wormwood and adder’s fat. The safest thing is to consult the god—”
“What do you mean?”
“Why, my holy cock here, hatched at Delphi with Apollo’s blessings on him.” Dion pointed with his thumb to the small coop at his feet. “The oracle is simple. You cast before him two piles of corn; if he picks at the one to right we take toad’s bone, to left the adder’s fat. Heaven will speak to us.”
“Excellent,” cried Niobe, brightening.
“But, of course, we must use only consecrated corn, that’s two obols more.”
Niobe’s face fell. “I’ve only this half-drachma.”
“Then, philotata,” said Dion, kindly but firmly, “we had better wait a little longer.”
Niobe wept. “Ai! woe. ‘A little longer’ and Jocasta has Procles. I can’t ask Hermione again for money. Ai! ai!”
Two round tears did not move Dion in the slightest. Niobe was sobbing, at her small wits’ end, when a voice sounded behind her.
“What’s there wrong, lass? By Zeus, but you carry a handsome child!”
Niobe glanced, and instantly stopped weeping. A young man dressed roughly as a sailor, and with long black hair and beard, had approached her, but despite dress and beard she was quite aware he was far handsomer than even Procles.
“I beg pardon, kyrie,”—she said “kyrie” by instinct,—“I’m only an honest maid. Dion is terribly extortionate.” She cast down her eyes, expecting instant succour from the susceptible seaman, but to her disgust she saw he was admiring only the babe, not herself.
“Ah! Gods and goddesses, what a beautiful child! A girl?”
“A boy,” answered Niobe, almost sullenly.
“Blessed the house in Trœzene then that can boast of such a son.”
“Oh, he’s not Trœzenian, but one of the exiles from Athens,” volunteered Dion, who kept all the tittle-tattle of the little city in stock along with his philtres.
“An Athenian! Praised be Athena Polias, then. I am from Athens myself. And his father?”
“The brat will never boast of his father,” quoth Dion, rolling his eyes. “He left the world in a way, I wager five minæ, the mother hopes she can hide from her darling, but the babe’s of right good stock, an Alcmæonid, and the grandfather is that Hermippus—”
“Hermippus?” The stranger seemed to catch the word out of Dion’s mouth. A donkey had broken loose at the upper end of the Agora; he turned and stared at it and its pursuers intently.
“If you’re Athenian,” went on the soothsayer, “the story’s an old one—of Glaucon the Traitor.”
The stranger turned back again. For a moment Dion saw he was blinking, but no doubt it was dust. Then he suddenly began to fumble in his girdle.
“What do you want, girl?” he demanded of Niobe, nigh fiercely.
“Two obols.”
“Take two drachmæ. I was once a friend to that Glaucon, and traitor though he has been blazed, his child is yet dear to me. Let me take him.”
Without waiting her answer he thrust the coin into her hands, and caught the child out of them. Phœnix looked up into the strange, bearded face, and deliberated an instant whether to crow or to weep. Then some friendly god decided him. He laughed as sweetly, as musically, as ever one can at his most august age. With both chubby hands he plucked at the black beard and held tight. The strange sailor answered laugh with laugh, and released himself right gayly. Then whilst Niobe and Dion watched and wondered they saw the sailor kiss the child full fifty times, all the time whispering soft words in his ear, at which Phœnix crowed and laughed yet more.
“An old family servant,” threw out Dion, in a whisper.
“Sheep!” retorted the nurse, “do you call yourself wise? Do you think a man with that face and those long hands ever felt the stocks or the whip? He’s gentleman born, by Demeter!”
“War makes many changes,” rejoined Dion. “Ai! is he beside himself or a kidnapper? He is walking off with the babe.”
The stranger indeed had seemed to forget them all and was going with swift strides up the Agora, but just before Niobe could begin her outcry he wheeled, and brought his merry burden back to the nurse’s arms.
“You ought to be exceeding proud, my girl,” he remarked almost severely, “to have such a precious babe in charge. I trust you are dutiful.”
“So I strive, kyrie, but he grows very strong. One cannot keep the swaddling clothes on him now. They say he will be a mighty athlete like his father.”
“Ah, yes—his father—” The sailor looked down.
“You knew Master Glaucon well?” pressed Dion, itching for a new bit of gossip.
“Well,” answered the sailor, standing gazing on the child as though something held him fascinated, then shot another question. “And does the babe’s lady-mother prosper?”
“She is passing well in body, kyrie, but grievously ill in mind. Hera give her a release from all her sorrow!”
“Sorrow?” The man’s eyes were opening wider, wider. “What mean you?”
“Why, all Trœzene knows it, I’m sure.”
“I’m not from Trœzene. My ship made port from Naxos this morning. Speak, girl!”
He seized Niobe’s wrist in a grip which she thought would crush the bone.
“Ai! Let go, sir, you hurt. Don’t stare so. I’m frightened. I’ll tell as fast as I can. Master Democrates has come back from Corinth. Hermippus is resolved to make the kyria wed him, however bitterly she resists. It’s taken a long time for her father to determine to break her will, but now his mind’s made up. The betrothal is in three days, the wedding ten days thereafter.”
The sailor had dropped her hand. She shrank at the pallor of his face. He seemed struggling for words; when they came she made nothing of them.
“Themistocles, Themistocles—your promise!”
Then by some giant exercise of will he steadied. His speech grew more coherent.
“Give me the child,” he commanded, and Niobe mutely obeyed. He kissed Phœnix on both cheeks, mouth, forehead. They saw that tears were running down his bronzed face. He handed back the babe and again held out money,—a coin for both the slave girl and the soothsayer,—gold half-darics, that they gaped at wonderingly.
“Say nothing!” ordered the sailor, “nothing of what I have said or done, or as Helios shines this noon, I will kill you both.”
Not waiting reply, he went down the Agora at a run, and never looked back. It took some moments for Dion and Niobe to recover their equanimity; they would have believed it all a dream, but lo! in their hands gleamed the money.
“There are times,” remarked the soothsayer, dubiously at last, “when I begin to think the gods again walk the earth and work wonders. This is a very high matter. Even I with my art dare not meddle with it. It is best to heed the injunction to silence. Wagging tongues always have troubles as their children. Now let us proceed with my sacred cock and his divination.”
Niobe got her philtre,—though whether it reconquered Procles is not contained in this history. Likewise, she heeded Dion’s injunction. There was something uncanny about the strange sailor; she hid away the half-daric, and related nothing of her adventure even to her confidant Cleopis.
Three days later Democrates was not drinking wine at his betrothal feast, but sending this cipher letter by a swift and trusty “distance-runner” to Sparta.
“Democrates to Lycon, greeting:—At Corinth I cursed you. Rejoice therefore; you are my only hope. I am with you whether your path leads to Olympus or to Hades. Tartarus is opened at my feet. You must save me. My words are confused, do you think? Then hear this, and ask if I have not cause for turning mad.
“Yesterday, even as Hermippus hung garlands on his house, and summoned the guests to witness the betrothal contract, Themistocles returned suddenly from Eubœa. He called Hermippus and myself aside. ‘Glaucon lives,’ he said, ‘and with the god’s help we’ll prove his innocence.’ Hermippus at once broke off the betrothal. No one else knows aught thereof, not even Hermione. Themistocles refuses all further details. ‘Glaucon lives,’—I can think of nothing else. Where is he? What does he? How soon will the awful truth go flying through Hellas? I trembled when I heard he was dead. But name my terrors now I know he is alive! Send Hiram. He, if any snake living, can find me my enemy before it is too late. And speed the victory of Mardonius! Chaire.”
“Glaucon lives.” Democrates had only written one least part of his terrors. Two words—but enough to make the orator the most miserable man in Hellas, the most supple of Xerxes’s hundred million slaves.
