A Victor of Salamis
“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.
Democrates took the cup.
CHAPTER XLI
THE BRIGHTNESS OF HELIOS
The day that disloyal Thebes surrendered came the tidings of the crowning
of the Hellenes’ victories. At Mycale by Samos the Greek fleets had
disembarked their crews and defeated the Persians almost at the doors of
the Great King in Sardis. Artabazus had escaped through Thrace to Asia in
caitiff flight. The war—at least the perilous part thereof—was at end.
There might be more battles with the Barbarian, but no second Salamis or
Platæa.
The Spartans had found the body of Mardonius pierced with five lances—all
in front. Pausanias had honoured the brave dead,—the Persian had been
carried from the battle-ground on a shield, and covered by the red cloak
of a Laconian general. But the body mysteriously disappeared. Its fate was
never known. Perhaps the curious would have gladly heard what Glaucon on
his sick-bed told Themistocles, and what Sicinnus did afterward. Certain
it is that the shrewd Asiatic later displayed a costly ring which the
satrap Zariaspes, Mardonius’s cousin, sent him “for a great service to the
house of Gobryas.”
* * * * * * *
On the same day that Thebes capitulated the household of Hermippus left
Trœzene to return to Athens. When they had told Hermione all that had
befallen,—the great good, the little ill,—she had not fainted, though
Cleopis had been sure thereof. The colour had risen to her cheeks, the
love-light to her eyes. She went to the cradle where Phœnix cooed and
tossed his baby feet.
“Little one, little one,” she said, while he beamed up at her, “you have
not to avenge your father now. You have a better, greater task, to be as
fair in body and still more in mind as he.”
Then came the rush of tears, the sobbing, the laughter, and Lysistra and
Cleopis, who feared the shock of too much joy, were glad.
The _Nausicaä_ bore them to Peiræus. The harbour towns were in black
ruins, for Mardonius had wasted everything before retiring to Bœotia for
his last battle. In Athens, as they entered it, the houses were roofless,
the streets scattered with rubbish. But Hermione did not think of these
things. The Agora at last,—the porticos were only shattered, fire-scarred
pillars,—and everywhere were tents and booths and bustle,—the brisk
Athenians wasting no time in lamentation, but busy rebuilding and making
good the loss. Above Hermione’s head rose a few blackened columns,—all
that was left of the holy house of Athena,—but the crystalline air and the
red Rock of the Acropolis no Persian had been able to take away.
And even as Hermione crossed the Agora she heard a shouting, a word
running from lip to lip as a wave leaps over the sea.
In the centre of the buzzing mart she stopped. All the blood sprang to her
face, then left it. She passed her fingers over her hair, and waited with
twitching, upturned face. Through the hucksters’ booths, amid the
clamouring buyers and sellers, went a runner, striking left and right with
his staff, for the people were packing close, and he had much ado to clear
the way. Horsemen next, prancing chargers, the prizes from the Barbarian,
and after them a litter. Noble youths bore it, sons of the Eupatrid houses
of Athens. At sight of the litter the buzz of the Agora became a roar.
“The beautiful! The fortunate! The deliverer! _Io! Io, pæan!_”
Hermione stood; only her eyes followed the litter. Its curtains were flung
back; she saw some one within, lying on purple cushions. She saw the
features, beautiful as Pentelic marble and as pale. She cared not for the
people. She cared not that Phœnix, frighted by the shouting, had begun to
wail. The statue in the litter moved, rose on one elbow.
“Ah, dearest and best,”—his voice had the old-time ring, his head the
old-time poise,—“you need not fear to call me husband now!”
“Glaucon,” she cried. “I am not fit to be your wife. I am not fit to kiss
your feet.”
* * * * * * *
They set the litter down. Even little Simonides, though a king among the
curious, found the Acropolis peculiarly worthy of his study. Enough that
Hermione’s hands were pressing her husband, and these two cared not
whether a thousand watched or only Helios on high. Penelope was greeting
the returning Odysseus:—
“Welcome even as to shipmen
On the swelling, raging sea;
When Poseidon flings the whirlwind,
When a thousand blasts roam free,
Then at last the land appeareth;—
E’en so welcome in her sight
Was her lord, her arms long clasped him,
And her eyes shone pure and bright.”
After a long time Glaucon commanded, “Bring me our child,” and Cleopis
gladly obeyed. Phœnix ceased weeping and thrust his red fists in his
father’s face.
“_Ei_, pretty snail,” said Glaucon, pressing him fast by one hand, whilst
he held his mother by the other, “if I say you are a merry wight, the
nurse will not marvel any more.”
But Hermione had already heard from Niobe of the adventure in the
market-place at Trœzene.
The young men were just taking up the litter, when the Agora again broke