Tides of War, a Novel of Alcibiades and the Peloponnesian War

XLV

Two dawns remained before Socrates must drink the hemlock.

One could not sleep but thrashed nightlong, only to doze as in a nightmare at dawn's pallor.

It was at this hour my attendant knocked, reporting a young man at the gate. The lad refused to give his name, but importuned my attendance most earnestly. The youth had a sum of money, my servant accounted, which he wished to deliver into my keeping.

Curiosity drew both my sons with me to the threshold. The lad, when we opened to him, appeared just a stripling, sixteen at most, and slight as a stalk. I invited him within.

“No thank you, sir. I come only as a representative of certain concerned citizens. Quite a body, if I don't say.”

The child was so earnest that one almost laughed, his oration offered with the stilted solemnity of one composed in advance and committed to memory.

“I wish,” he declared, “only to place these funds in your hand, Captain, on behalf of Polemides the son of Nicolaus of Acharnae, for you to employ in his defense as you see fit. I am young, sir, and have no experience of the courts. One cannot but imagine, however, that certain expenses may arise…

That which he proffered was no mean sum, but above a hundred drachmas. A run of silver tetras, newly minted, struck me at once, and my sons, as stolen in a lump.

“How does a twig like you come up with a load like this?” my elder inquired.

“It rings, don't it?”

His accent was a double for Eunice's, his brow and eyes hers as well.

So this was the runaway.

“Indeed it does, young man.” I hefted the loot. “And what shall I use it for-to bribe the jurors?”

“Those I represent, sir, accede to your wisdom.” “And these concerned citizens…what precisely is their interest in this case?”

“Partisans of justice, sir.”

One began to assimilate details of the youth's lineaments. His cloak was that overlong type called a “street-sweeper,” and though it had been brushed perhaps as recently as last evening, the dusty stain of its hem gave it away. Beneath its folds no doubt the boy's feet were unshod.

“Have you had dinner today, young man?”

“Indeed, sir. A gut-buster!”

Both my sons laughed. “Mind a stiff puff doesn't strike you broadside!”

Again I invited the boy in. Again he declined. I held out the money. “Why not take this to Polemides yourself?”

At once the child began to stammer and withdraw. Clearly we had strayed from the turf of his prepared presentation.

“I think you should,” I insisted. “A prisoner in distress will be much heartened to learn of friends who uphold him in his cause.”

“Just take the jack, Cap'n.”

“I'll tell you what I'll take, young man.” At a gesture, my sons seized the lad. “I'll take you and this sum to the magistrate and let him decide where you got it.”

“Let off, fuckers!”

The youth fought like a wild beast; it took both my boys, outstanding wrestlers, to pin him. “Now, my young friend.

Will you come with me to Polemides, or shall we knock at the archon's gate?”

Approaching the prison, the boy became agitated. “Will they search me, sir?” And he stripped a dagger from beneath his arm and a Spartan xyele from a sheath on his thigh.

In the corridor approaching the celli halted. The boy's face went to chalk. “Ain't you coming in, Cap'n?”

“You've played your part manfully thus far,” I reassured him, and, setting a bolstering hand upon his shoulder, prompted him forward.

From where I stood I could not see Polemides within the cell, but only the boy at the threshold as the turnkey opened and the lad hesitated, peering in as if at a caged brute he feared might rush upon him. I confess that, when the child found courage and vanished within, I discovered my eyes burning and a thickness about my throat.

Father and son remained all morning, or at least beyond the hour I waited, across the way at the refectory of my ancient comrade, the marine archer Bruise. My sons had gifted the boy Nicolaus with a packet of kit articles, including shoes and a new tunic, ostensibly to be passed on to his father but, we hoped, one that his pride would permit him, out of our sight, to retain for himself.

Instead by noon the kit was returned to our gate, intact, with a note thanking us, and no more.