The Wooden Walls of Thermopylae Read Online Free Page B

finished mocking me.
    “A chicken would have shown more intelligence than Mandrocles did leaving the Bald Man’s: he didn’t even question me.”
    He grinned across at me.
    “And don’t try telling anyone you knew it was me either. You had no fucking idea, cluck cluck cluck.”
    Theodorus and he started imitating chickens in a farm and clucking till tears ran down their faces. Simple creatures, seamen, amused by simple things, but I gave in and laughed with them. Eventually they grew tired of laughing every time one of them said Cluck Bringer and we settled down in the stern with a flask of wine.
    “Don’t worry, this isn’t the stoat’s piss the bald man deals out to the customers he’s not scared to cheat. You can consider yourself lucky this comes from the amphora of a great man.”
    I was too tired for riddles and it must have shown.
    “Okay, you’re safe here boy. If we’d got to you earlier and you hadn’t gone missing I’d have put you up at my place. What made you do something as stupid as go back to the house and draw attention to yourself. You got noticed; that’s why we had to go through all that play acting with Eubulus. I bet you were surprised when he turned up.”
    I didn’t know what to say, didn’t understand any of this.
    “We thought you be sensible and go and hide up with Aeschylus or your little pornoi, that’s where we looked, the house was the last place and as we daren’t turn up there we had to come up with someone who could; Eubulus, hates us and hates the general. But then again Athens is a surprising place. Not that you’re going to be seeing much of it for a bit.”
    I asked why.
    “Because the man whose wine you’re drinking says you’re to sail with us on a little mission at dawn tomorrow.”
    “Why? Where to?”
    “What’s the most dangerous place for an Athenian, especially a democrat, outside of the Persian Empire?”
    I answered, remembering what Themistocles had said before the Paros debacle.
    “Aegina of course.”
    “Got it in one, the chicken’s using its brain at last.”

Chapter Three
    The boy Ephialties, named after the rabid democrat by his radical grandmother, has just brought me a lamp and some wine so I can continue to write as the light fades. It is necessary to use all the time there is: I don’t think there’s a great deal left to me.
    The boy has gone now, a wild lad although he means well – but something familiar about him disturbs me. He reminds me of his grandmother when she was younger, the same eyes. But something else, something that slips away every time I get near; retreating to the back of my mind where it sits and stirs echoes.
    His grandmother was a flute girl I used when we were younger. No, that’s not fair or true she meant something to me and gave me much more. There was a time when I thought we would, perhaps be together: well if Pericles, onion head, can live with a pornoi openly then why shouldn’t I? But then she got with child and was secretive about it. Got with child when I was almost ready to … well what’s the point in raking it all up, all the hurt and anger. She came to talk to me about it, about the child, but I was about to sail and decided to forget her.
    Perhaps I should have listened, perhaps if it had been a decent man’s child I could have … but I sent her awaythen joined the ship. It was for the best. When I got back wounded she sent to me asking to bring the child, wanted to show him to me. I was wounded; confused, I refused to see her.
    He was killed, the boy, her boy, in an action years later during the Eurymedon campaign. Strange that was my last fight too. Ephialties wasn’t born when his father sailed and his mother died in labour so she, the grandmother, Lyra, brought him up. When he’d grown a bit I was sickening and she suggested he come and help out. He reminds me of someone but it keeps slipping away. I can’t write any more. These memories tear at me.
    Forgive me for those ramblings I