The Wooden Walls of Thermopylae by Nick Brown

you are burying your sons killed in a desperate but failed defence. Ask yourselves this. Ask why didn’t we build the safe harbour Themistocles wanted? Ask where is the new fleet of triremes he begged our leaders to build, the fleet that would have saved us?”
    He paused, leaving us on the edge. I’d seen him do this before, milk every last drop like a good goatherd will. Only then, in a softer but still audible voice, did he deliver the killer blow.
    “And to respond to those questions I’ll give way to the man most qualified to give you the answers because he more than anyone is responsible for them: Hipparchus, son of Charmos.”
    He turned his back, stepped down from the dais and walked away from the Agora. Behind him there was an outbreak of shouting as the fighting began.

Chapter Nine
    Three days later, just before dawn, Aeschylus walked into our room waking us. He was travel-stained and weary but something else as well. I tried to work out what it was as he talking to Cimon. I’d avoided his gaze: I still felt too much shame. I think he was embarrassed too; these things can hang between men like an invisible curtain. Didn’t stop him speaking though.
    “If you’re capable of feeling shame, Mandrocles, you should feel it now. That poor girl didn’t deserve your spite. Treat the ones who love you like that and soon you’ll stand alone. Now get out of that bed, I need to sleep.”
    I got up and headed for the stairs where Cimon was waiting. Aeschylus called after me.
    “Wake me in three hours, I’ve information Themistocles needs. You can come with me if you can manage to forget your own problems for a moment.”
    Cimon shouted,
    “And me, do I come?”
    “You make your own decisions, son of Miltiades.”
    He turned his face to the wall and was asleep in seconds. Cimon and I wandered down to the bar; there were already drinkers in there, no one slept well last night, there’dbeen skirmishes throughout the hours of darkness as the unstable city prepared for another revolution of the wheel. Then Cimon loped off towards where the Athene Nike was beached and I wandered, with a large honey cake warm from the baker’s oven, to a bar near the construction site that Piraeus was turning into. I sat outside with a cup of hot spiced wine letting the rising sun warm my aching bones.
    I couldn’t shift the blackness from my soul, the Gods had buried it too deep; but I felt the first imperceptible flicker of direction. Above me the sun caught some of the gleaming new marble on the Acropolis. I stared at it, looking for some message that maybe I could be forgiven, but instead tears began to trickle down my cheeks. I rubbed at my eyes with honey smeared fingers. The crying made me feel better; I didn’t understand why.
    Now, all these years later, I’ve seen too many brave men break down and weep or sit in silence for years not to understand that it’s just the price of courage. You hang on and hang on and later, when there’s no need to hang on, you break. So I sat and stared out over the waters watching boats dragged off the beach into the sea until it was time to wake Aeschylus.
    Cimon was there before me, they went silent as I entered.
    “You’ve suffered more than I thought, Mandrocles: go to Lyra, talk to her, she will understand.”
    I didn’t answer, however it appeared we’d begun to rebuild our friendship. But we couldn’t get anything out of him concerning his whereabouts over the last few days even though we pestered him all the way to the Ceramicus. Themistocles was in great high spirits when we arrived. His brother was there and a number of hangers on who seemed to have attached their fortune to the rise of the Demos.
    “Welcome, Athena’s greatest poet; tell me, were you successful?”
    Aeschylus smiled and gave a typically elliptical answer.
    “If you chose to hang about the Piraeus, in a couple of days you’d find out.”
    Themistocles laughed and clapped him on the shoulders several times