A Victor of Salamis 41Book III · The Song of the Furies
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Literature · Adventure
A Victor of Salamis 41
Book III · The Song of the Furies
DavisEnglish
Themistocles had started from Oropus with Simonides, a small guard of mariners, and a fettered prisoner, as soon as the Nausicaä’s people were a little rested. Half the night they themselves were plodding on wearily. At Tanagra the following afternoon a runner with a palm branch met them.
“Mardonius is slain. Artabazus with the rear-guard has fled northward. The Athenians aided by the Spartans stormed the camp. Glory to Athena, who gives us victory!”
“And the traitors?” Themistocles showed surprisingly little joy.
“Lycon’s body was found drifting in the Asopus. Democrates lies fettered by Aristeides’s tents.”
Then the other Athenians broke forth into pæans, but Themistocles bowed his head and was still, though the messenger told how Pausanias and his allies had taken countless treasure, and now were making ready to attack disloyal Thebes. So the admiral and his escort went at leisure across Bœotia, till they reached the Hellenic host still camped near the battle-field. There Themistocles was long in conference with Aristeides and Pausanias. After midnight he left Aristeides’s tent.
“Where is the prisoner?” he asked of the sentinel before the headquarters.
“Your Excellency means the traitor?”
“I do.”
“I will guide you.” The soldier took a torch and led the way. The two went down dark avenues of tents, and halted at one where five hoplites stood guard with their spears ready, five more slept before the entrance.
“We watch him closely, kyrie,” explained the decarch, saluting. “Naturally we fear suicide as well as escape. Two more are within the tent.”
“Withdraw them. Do you all stand at distance. For what happens I will be responsible.”
The two guards inside emerged yawning. Themistocles took the torch and entered the squalid hair-cloth pavilion. The sentries noticed he had a casket under his cloak.
“The prisoner sleeps,” said a hoplite, “in spite of his fetters.”
Themistocles set down the casket and carefully drew the tent-flap. With silent tread he approached the slumberer. The face was upturned; white it was, but it showed the same winsome features that had won the clappings a hundred times in the Pnyx. The sleep seemed heavy, dreamless.
Themistocles’s own lips tightened as he stood in contemplation, then he bent to touch the other’s shoulder.
“Democrates,”—no answer. “Democrates,”—still silence. “Democrates,”—a stirring, a clanking of metal. The eyes opened,—for one instant a smile.
“Ei, Themistocles, it is you?” to be succeeded by a flash of unspeakable horror. “O Zeus, the gyves! That I should come to this!”
The prisoner rose to a sitting posture upon his truss of straw. His fettered hands seized his head.
“Peace,” ordered the admiral, gently. “Do not rave. I have sent the sentries away. No one will hear us.”
Democrates grew calmer. “You are merciful. You do not know how I was tempted. You will save me.”
“I will do all I can.” Themistocles’s voice was solemn as an æolian harp, but the prisoner caught at everything eagerly.
“Ah, you can do so much. Pausanias fought the battle, but they call you the true saviour of Hellas. They will do anything you say.”
“I am glad.” Themistocles’s face was impenetrable as the sphinx’s. Democrates seized the admiral’s red chlamys with his fettered hands.
“You will save me! I will fly to Sicily, Carthage, the Tin Isles, as you wish. Have you forgotten our old-time friendship?”
“I loved you,” spoke the admiral, tremulously.
“Ah, recall that love to-night!”
“I do.”
“O piteous Zeus, why then is your face so awful? If you will aid me to escape—”
“I will aid you.”
“Blessings, blessings, but quick! I fear to be stoned to death by the soldiers in the morning. They threaten to crucify—”
“They shall not.”
“Blessings, blessings,—can I escape to-night?”
“Yes,” but Themistocles’s tone made the prisoner’s blood run chill. He cowered helplessly. The admiral stood, his own fine face covered with a mingling of pity, contempt, pain.
“Democrates, hearken,”—his voice was hard as flint. “We have seized your camp chest, found the key to your ciphers, and know all your correspondence with Lycon. We have discovered your fearful power of forgery. Hermes the Trickster gave it you for your own destruction. We have brought Hiram hither from the ship. This night he has ridden the ‘Little Horse.’(17) He has howled out everything. We have seized Bias and heard his story. There is nothing to conceal. From the beginning of your peculation of the public money, till the moment when, the prisoners say, you were in Mardonius’s camp, all is known to us. You need not confess. There is nothing worth confessing.”
“I am glad,”—great beads were on the prisoner’s brow,—“but you do not realize the temptation. Have you never yourself been betwixt Scylla and Charybdis? Have I not vowed every false step should be the last? I fought against Lycon. I fought against Mardonius. They were too strong. Athena knoweth I did not crave the tyranny of Athens! It was not that which drove me to betray Hellas.”
“I believe you. But why did you not trust me at the first?”
“I hardly understand.”
“When first your need of money drove you to crime, why did you not come to me? You knew I loved you. You knew I looked on you as my political son and heir in the great work of making Athens the light of Hellas. I would have given you the gold,—yes, fifty talents.”
“Ai, ai, if I had only dared! I thought of it. I was afraid.”
“Right.” Themistocles’s lip was curling. “You are more coward than knave or traitor. Phobos, Black Fear, has been your leading god, not Hermes. And now—”
“But you have promised I shall escape.”
“You shall.”
“To-night? What is that you have?” Themistocles was opening the casket.
“The papers seized in your chest. They implicate many noble Hellenes in Corinth, Sicyon, Sparta. Behold—” Themistocles held one papyrus after another in the torch-flame,—“here is crumbling to ashes the evidence that would destroy them all as Medizers. Mardonius is dead. Let the war die with him. Hellas is safe.”
“Blessings, blessings! Help me to escape. You have a sword. Pry off these gyves. How easy for you to let me fly!”
“Wait!” The admiral’s peremptory voice silenced the prisoner. Themistocles finished his task. Suddenly, however, Democrates howled with animal fear.
“What are you taking now—a goblet?”
“Wait.” Themistocles was indeed holding a silver cup and flask. “Have I not said you should escape this captivity—to-night?”
“Be quick, then, the night wanes fast.”
The admiral strode over beside the creature who plucked at his hem.
“Give ear again, Democrates. Your crimes against Athens and Hellas were wrought under sore temptation. The money you stole from the public chest, if not returned already, I will myself make good. So much is forgiven.”
“You are a true friend, Themistocles.” The prisoner’s voice was husky, but the admiral’s eyes flashed like flint-stones struck by the steel.
“Friend!” he echoed. “Yes, by Zeus Orcios, guardian of oaths and friendship, you had a friend. Where is he now?”
Democrates lay on the turf floor of the tent, not even groaning.
“You had a friend,”—the admiral’s intensity was awful. “You blasted his good name, you sought his life, you sought his wife, you broke every bond, human or divine, to destroy him. At last, to silence conscience’ sting, you thought you did a deed of mercy in sending him in captivity to a death in life. Fool! Nemesis is not mocked. Glaucon has lain at death’s door. He has saved Hellas, but at a price. The surgeons say he will live, but that his foot is crippled. Glaucon can never run again. You have brought him misery. You have brought anguish to Hermione, the noblest woman in Hellas, whom you—ah! mockery—professed to hold in love! You have done worse than murder. Yet I have promised you shall escape this night. Rise up.”
Democrates staggered to his feet clumsily, only half knowing what he did. Themistocles was extending the silver cup. “Escape. Drink!”
“What is this cup?” The prisoner had turned gray.
“Hemlock, coward! Did you not bid Glaucon to take his life that night in Colonus? The death you proffered him in his innocency I proffer you now in your guilt. Drink!”
“You have called me friend. You have said you loved me. I dare not die. A little time! Pity! Mercy! What god can I invoke?”
“None. Cerberus himself would not hearken to such as you. Drink.”
“Pity, by our old-time friendship!”
The admiral’s tall form straightened.
“Themistocles the Friend is dead; Themistocles the Just is here,—drink.”
“But you promised escape?” The prisoner’s whisper was just audible.
“Ay, truly, from the court-martial before the roaring camp in the morning, the unmasking of all your accomplices, the deeper shame of every one-time friend, the blazoning of your infamy in public evidence through Hellas, the soldiers howling for your blood, the stoning, perchance the plucking in pieces. By the gods Olympian, by the gods Infernal, do your past lovers one last service—drink!”
That was not all Themistocles said, that was all Democrates heard. In his ears sounded, even once again, the song of the Furies,—never so clearly as now.
“With scourge and with ban
We prostrate the man
Who with smooth-woven wile
And a fair-facèd smile
Hath planted a snare for his friend!
Though fleet, we shall find him,
Though strong, we shall bind him,
Who planted a snare for his friend!”
Nemesis—Nemesis, the implacable goddess, had come for her own at last.
