Chapter 20 Echo
Echo
In an attempt to stave off trouble, Nabu returns straight to the farm with Kosmos.
Still, Echo, Dagos, and his eldest sons decide it’s prudent to keep a night watch.
The two freeloading aristokrats’ sons who’ve been staying at the school make hungover excuses to be elsewhere, but promise to return in a day or two.
The unspoken subtext is, they’ll return when they know it’s safe.
Hippias’s reaction is sure to be ugly, and if Echo didn’t feel so strongly about the Deed, she might’ve joined them.
Once the sun’s gone down, she and the other lookouts play knucklebones by starlight.
In the surrounding fields, farmers take advantage of the full moon to sow seeds while the crows are sleeping, ready for the more forgiving winter temperatures.
Unatti brings the lookouts blankets and sits with them, lighting a censer stuffed with lavender and mint, listening to the crickets.
None of them sleep, even when it isn’t their turn to watch.
‘Surely, he wouldn’t come at night?’ one of the boys asks.
‘A madman doesn’t know the time of day,’ Dagos replies.
Dawn arrives with cockerel crows and the bleats of stirring goats, and they agree to retire.
Still, Echo doesn’t dare stray too far from the front door, dozing on her favourite bench in the atrium.
A frog hops over her to reach the pool as the scent of baking bread rises from the kitchen.
Nabu emerges from Kosmos’s room, smiling sheepishly at Echo before shuffling towards breakfast.
So it is that Echo’s the one to receive the first messenger from town, sent by a tailor friend of Nabu’s with three bolts of heavy wool for winter cloaks. Nabu, Kosmos, and Echo dissect the accompanying note over breakfast, while Winji serves them an infusion of mountain herbs.
‘He’s never sent me a gift before,’ Nabu says. ‘Why now? Surely, it’s the one moment he shouldn’t.’
‘Maybe he doesn’t know what’s happened,’ Echo suggests.
‘He must do, or he wouldn’t have sent the messenger here,’ Kosmos counters.
‘Excuse me.’ Winji pipes up, jug of steaming herb infusion still in hand. She’s already taken a shine to Nabu, which is clearly overwhelming her remaining fear of Kosmos.
They all turn to her in surprise, but Nabu nods. ‘Yes, go on.’
‘Well, friends give each other presents when something nice happens. So, perhaps it’s because something nice has happened.’
Nabu raises an eyebrow at Kosmos. ‘An act of support?’
Kosmos nods. ‘Well, Echo, you said we’d need more friends in low places than high.’
‘Yes,’ Echo says, ‘but I worry this will anger Hippias.’
‘Anger him more, you mean,’ Nabu says, sipping his drink.
Flashy expressions of support might endanger those giving them, especially those already under Hippias’s suspicion.
Instead, throughout the morning a number of practical gifts arrive, accompanied by understated messages of friendship from Nabu’s acquaintances: a basket of eggs; a bag of root vegetables; feta wrapped in an oiled cloth; two jars of wildflower honey.
Kosmos’s contacts are wordier, the more thoughtful attendees of recent symposia and those who debate longest with him at the stoa mysteriously choosing this morning to pen letters arguing the latest merits of recent philosophical poems. Nabu’s presence isn’t directly referenced in any of them, but there are allusions to imbalance, tension, and power that imply Nabu and Kosmos’s reunion is a rebellion against Hippias’s forces of disharmony.
‘There’s been gossip in the gymnasion,’ Kosmos mutters, eyes re-scanning a letter from Harmodios’s brother. It’s a cool day, but dry and sunny, and they’ve made a nest of scrolls and ink in the courtyard. ‘Reading between the lines, I’d say our cowardice during the tyrannicides has been forgiven.’
Nabu manages a smile. ‘Let’s hope Hippias doesn’t find that out.’
‘Another letter,’ Dagos says, trudging through the atrium and handing Kosmos the papyrus. ‘This one has a fancy seal on it.’
Kosmos frowns at the blob of wax. ‘This is Kleisthenes’s seal.’
Echo gapes, the Not Here taking over. ‘Kleisthenes, descendent of nymphs and water gods, of the cursed and oft-exiled Alkmaionids, who will become the father of—’ She stops before the not-yet-coined ‘demokratia’ spills out. ‘That Kleisthenes?’
‘Yes,’ Kosmos replies, sitting back. ‘But he hates my family.’
‘So? Open it!’ Nabu says.
Kosmos breaks the seal and unfolds the papyrus, growing more astounded with every line. ‘It’s a note of encouragement and sympathy. He understands the difficult situation I’ve put myself in and offers support, but only if—’ He breaks off.
‘What?’ Nabu prompts him.
Kosmos looks up from the letter. ‘He wants me to publicly disown my family.’
‘Forgive me,’ Echo says, ‘but have you not already done that?’
‘Not out loud, in front of Athens.’
Funny, how these men talk of Athens as if it’s a thing that can be gathered, held, and defined.
Is Unatti ‘Athens’ to them? Or the bees in the ivy?
Or the sunshine? Echo knows she isn’t. Even in her own eyes, she’s ‘Athens’ only for a moment, her task being to enter it, change it, and leave as swiftly as she came.
Nabu grunts. ‘What more would he have you do? Pin a notice in the agora?’
‘He doesn’t specify,’ Kosmos says, rubbing his forehead.
‘Gods, what a mess. His support could be useful, but it might also be dangerous. Siding with Kleisthenes would be publicly betting against my father’s rule.
After Aristogeiton, Kleisthenes is the biggest rebel in the polis.
’ Kosmos turns to Echo. ‘What do you think I should do?’
Nabu looks curiously between them, new to Kosmos’s grudging respect for Echo. She closes her eyes, sailing the Not Here in a boat made from Hazel’s palindromes: neveroddoreven, saltanatlas …
‘In the long future, Kleisthenes will be a more reliable supporter, however there is a difficult road before he becomes that. Your father will give you more stability in the short term, but he will not be in Athens for many more years.’
‘Then both are risky.’ Kosmos sighs. ‘What would you do, Nabu?’
‘What I could live with,’ Nabu replies. ‘But I’ve always said Kleisthenes is at least capable of intelligent conversation.’
Kosmos barks a laugh. ‘Kleisthenes it is, then!’
A shadow fills the open front door, accompanied by a hesitant knock.
Nabu frowns at the new arrival. ‘Is that you, Hanno?’
‘It is,’ Hanno replies, but when he steps from the atrium into the courtyard, his face doesn’t reflect their joy at seeing him. He looks at his feet, jumbling his message. ‘Your father sends for you. You are to come directly, now, with me.’
Kosmos’s shoulders droop, and he rubs his mouth, covering the scar on his lip. He stands, starts to walk away, then returns and leans on the back of a chair. ‘Give me a moment to organise my household.’
Hanno nods, a reluctant mouthpiece for the tyrannos. ‘Only a moment.’
Echo expects Kosmos to flit among his scrolls, send final missives to his symposium friends, or oil his hair.
But the knucklebone of his character has rolled away from its ferocious Hippias-like facet to show a new face, the one which smiled at Hanno’s approach, apologised to Nabu, and gave Winji and her siblings new clothes.
‘Unatti!’ He draws her away from dusting the shrine in the atrium. ‘You, Dagos, and the children must make yourself scarce. Stay with friends in town until you hear it’s safe to return. Understand?’
‘Yes,’ Unatti says, glancing at Hanno, ‘but how will we hear?’
‘It will be very obvious.’ Kosmos gives her a tight smile. ‘My father is not a subtle man.’
Unatti nods, gathering her children and racing to the kitchen.
Kosmos turns to Nabu. ‘If it were up to me, I’d tell you to go with them.’
Nabu shakes his head. ‘I’m coming with you.’
‘Nabu—’
‘Don’t even try convincing me.’ Nabu holds up a hand. ‘Besides, I left an excellent liver in my room at your father’s, and I fancy a spot of divination.’
‘And I suppose you’re going to be just as stubborn, Echo?’ Kosmos asks.
‘Yes, but do not start to think that we are friends,’ she says with a smirk. ‘I am just following the Deed where it takes me.’
‘I’ll be sure not to take your presence personally.
’ Kosmos’s easy smile blooms. He’s a mess, hair unruly, with dirt from the goat pen dusting the hem of his plain chiton, but he’s himself, and whatever Hippias is about to throw at them—arrest, execution, exile—there is no better state in which to meet the future.
It’s a bustling market day, and though three young men and a messenger are easily overlooked in the crowds, Kosmos’s friends from the stoa spot them.
Several of them huddle around to hear about Hippias’s summons, making the sign of the horns and shaking their heads. ‘What will he do?’ one of them asks.
‘I don’t know,’ Kosmos replies. ‘Maybe exile, but we can set up a school anywhere!’ Echo’s heart skips a beat. The timeline might not like that.
‘Have you been drinking from the Lethe?’ the same friend asks. ‘He could do much worse than exile you all.’
There’s a hum of agreement, and another friend says, ‘Yes, you must get out of here. Run for Sparta like the other outcasts, you’ll find welcome there.’
Kosmos shakes his head, arms crossed. ‘I will not run.’
The second friend turns to Nabu in exasperation. ‘And you’re really going with him?’
Nabu raises an eyebrow as if it’s ludicrous to think he’d be anywhere else.
Hanno breaks up the conversation, sending the friends back to the stoa, and leading them onward to the tyrannos’s house. A couple of doors down, Hanno stops and looks Kosmos in the eye. ‘It’s not my place, but your friends are right. You should run.’