“You saved my life. I can never thank you enough,” she said. She spoke Aramaic, the language of the Eastern peoples, which I had learned a smidgen of from the natives in Libya. “My name is Ariatozah, but everyone calls me Aria. I am from Susa.” Persia. “And you are..?”
She could have been the daughter of a Macae fishmonger, I could not have been more smitten. “Eury,” I said simply.
“Battus.”
She stood looking at us both, taking in our measure. Switching to the Berber tongue that is common in Libya she said, “Battus. King. You must be a Nasamone. I know by your hair. And you, with your golden locks, must be Dorian. Eury, you say? More like Euryleon.” The wandering lion.
She smiled at me in such a way that a wind brushed my heart, filling me with a jumble of heretofore untapped emotions. Her skin was not as dark as Battus’s, but darker than mine and untouched by scars or the marks of disease. She had dainty hands, a small nose and all of her teeth when she smiled. Quite different from the Dorian ideal of the fair haired and fair skinned Aphrodite. Yet so beautiful, just looking at her face had my pulse racing as fast as when the lion charged at us from across the beach.
“What are you doing out here alone?” I scolded her like Battus did his brother Orydes. It never failed to amaze me how people like the Persians took their women along with them on campaign. The Spartans liked to joke that one of the advantages of going to war was getting away from their wives for a while. “This is not the kind of place you should be walking unescorted.”
A Spartan girl would have been annoyed at the inference that she could not take care of herself, but not this girl. “You are right of course. My parents have been arguing since we left Tyre, and I just wanted to escape. So I did a foolish thing. I came out here to collect herbs.” Spilled across the sand were purple saffron, white heliotrope and the bright orange root of the Curcuma longa plant. “I didn’t intend on walking this far.” She swallowed hard, shuddered and looked down at the large cat. “When I saw this huge beast come crashing through the bushes—it was so close—I didn’t think I had a chance...” Looking up she smiled at us. “When I get home, I shall offer a special gift to the one god Ahuramazda in thanks for sending you when he did. I couldn’t believe it when I made it to the water. Then when I looked back, there you were. It was as if you dropped out of the sky to rescue me.”
“We will walk you back to your camp,” Battus said.
“All right. Please just let me collect my herbs. Otherwise all of this will have been in vain.”
The girl went to her fallen flowers, I went to fetch my thrown javelin, and Battus went into the jungle to find a suitable wooden branch and vines that we could use to carry the lioness back to the wadi.
“Why are your people here?” I asked her once I retrieved my weapon from where it stood stuck in the sand.
“My father is on his way to Carthage,” she said picking up a heliotrope, idly sniffing the white flowers. “Why? I don’t know. A mission for my uncle, I suppose.”
“Your ships are beached only an hour’s march from my people. The Spartans are on their way here, right now. We need to get you back to your camp, fast. Your father needs to set sail. Immediately.”
She hurriedly picked up a branch containing blood-red mulberries. “The Phoenicians told us we were close to a new Dorian colony, but my father camps where he pleases. He is not afraid of anything.”
“Sounds like my father. Let’s pray they never meet.”
“You are hurt,” she said noticing the scratches on my chest.
“I’m fine.” My arm could have been bitten off, and I would not have admitted any discomfort in front of this girl.
“I have an herb here, we call it meadowsweet. It will help heal…”
“There’s no need. We have to go.”
“All right,” she said as we walked across the beach. “Do you know the story of the mulberry? Why the berries are red?”
“No.” Battus and I knelt by the lioness and working quickly tied its front and back paws to a sturdy pole.
“It’s one of my favorite stories,” the girl said smiling gaily. “About an Assyrian named Pyramos and a Babylonian named Thisbe. Their people were at war and their parents forbade them to marry. So they agreed to meet secretly beneath a white mulberry tree. When Pyramos arrived he found Thisbe's shawl in the jaws of all things, a lion. Thinking she’d been devoured he plunged his sword through his own heart. When poor Thisbe got there and found Pyramos dead she killed herself with her dagger. The mulberry tree soaked up their blood and its berries were turned from white to red.”
“Sad story,” Battus said, lifting the front end of the pole and I the back.
“Good love stories usually are,” Aria said twirling her mulberry branch.
“The boy was stupid,” I said. “Impatient. If he had waited, mulberries would still be white.”
The girl looked at me curiously. “It’s only a story.”
The beast was heavy, several hundred stones weight, but neither Battus or I were willing to complain in front of the girl. My friend led the way as we trudged through the soft sand in the direction of Qaryat.
“We need to move faster Battus.”
“I’m going as fast as I can.”
The girl fell into step beside us.
“I’ve heard stories about the Spartans,” Aria said. She walked so close I could smell the sage she carried in her arms. “You train from birth to be soldiers. You can see in the dark like cats… your women dance nude in your public festivals… and you eat a black broth made from the blood of your enemies. No wonder people are afraid of you. Is that all true?”
“Not completely,” I said, mesmerized by a pair of sparkling brown eyes. The thin material of her clothes had dried quickly in the sun, and was no longer clinging to her body, but there was something about her, the way her hips moved when she walked, that was distracting. “If I tell you a secret, do you promise not to tell anyone else?”
“Of course.”
“I am about to tell you one of my people’s best kept secrets. The reason why the Spartans are such great warriors.”
“What?” Aria asked.
“The recipe for our famous black broth.”
Battus glanced over his shoulder at me, wanting to hear this.
“There is blood in it. But not human blood. I know some people think we slice up our helots and sprinkle them in our stew. That’s not true. They use animal blood. From the morning sacrifices in the temple. Along with vinegar, pork and salt. That’s it. Now you know the secret of our power.”
“It doesn’t sound very tasty.”
“It’s not meant to be. Our lawgiver Lycurgus said anything that tastes that awful, has to be good for you.” The Spartiates were always greatly amused when a Corinthian or Athenian asked to sample a bowl of our black broth and couldn’t finish it.
“What about the rest?” Aria asked, shading her eyes against the sun with a handful of flowers, looking up at me.
“All true. Spartans are forbidden any profession other than soldier. As a part of our training, we are not allowed to use torches at night. So we learn to see in the dark. And our women do not wear as many clothes as you Persians.” She was covered from neck to wrists to ankles in purple silk. “Why were you wearing a mask?”
Aria stopped walking and lifted her hand to her face. She patted her nose, cheeks and chin, and looked in horror at her bare feet. “I need to go back! You’ve got to help me find my veil and my shoes. Otherwise Achaemenes will be angry. I could not bear his wrath.” She took a few steps backwards.
“Wait!” I said. Battus and I dropped our heavy burden on the sand. “There isn’t time to go back.”
“I have to go back!”
“If you love your father and your mother, forget your shoes. Otherwise they are going to be dead.”
“I will die of shame if they see me without my veil!” the girl cried taking a few more steps westward.
I ran after the str
ange girl and grabbed her wrist.
She looked wide-eyed at where my hand tightly gripped hers.
Realizing I might be breaking some sort of custom among her people, I let her go. “Covering your face is more important than the life of your kin?”
She rubbed her wrist, walking back in the direction from where we’d come. “You don’t understand. In Persia, when a woman is unmarried she must hide her face when she is in public. To protect her modesty and her virtue.”
“We’re not in Persia! Your virtue is safe.”
“Where are you going!?” Battus yelled after us.
“And when a woman does marry, she wears a veil so that only her husband can enjoy her beauty.”
“Who is Achaemenes? Your husband?”
“Achaemenes is the son of the satrap of Lydia. He is a terrifying man, and one of my suitors.”
One? It angered me to think there might be several men out there in the world seeking to marry this tender flower. But why wouldn’t there be? She was of marriageable age, the daughter of a Persian lord, and a rare, exotic beauty.
Putting a pouty look on her face that no Spartan woman would ever deign to stoop to, the Persian girl moved away from me, saying, “Please help me find my shoes. I think I lost them in the water.”
Much later I would wonder at the insanity of the moment. The girl was more concerned with some ridiculous custom requiring her to hide her face and her feet—than the fact that the Lacedaemonians were about to descend like demons on her people. I stuck my javelin in the sand and chased after her. Once more I grabbed her wrist. She tried to break my grip, but I tightened my hold.
“Come back.”
“No!” the girl said, trying to twist and pull her arm out of my grasp.
“Well, now that I’ve seen your face,” I said, feeling giddy just to be holding her wrist, “I guess you’ll have to marry me.”
“What!?” My words so stunned the Persian girl that she stopped struggling. The gods must have twisted my thinking, as I took her round hips in my hands and lifted her up off the ground. She was certainly lighter than the lioness. I threw her over my left shoulder.
“Put me down!”
“When you promise not to run away.”
“I have to get my things!”
“Then you stay where you are,” I said carrying her. When she tried squirming to get free and hit my back with her fists, I gave her broad bottom three quick, sharp slaps. “Keep still!” I had no right to do that, but among the Spartans, unseemly behavior was always dealt with immediately with corporal punishment. The girl let out a scream of shock and pain, but stopped struggling.
“You can’t do this!”
“He’s doing it,” Battus said, once more picking up his end of the lion.
With the girl over my left shoulder, I stooped down and slipped my end of the pole over my right shoulder. Standing I lifted the lioness up off the ground. With the girl speaking rapidly in Aramaic to herself and Battus shaking his head, we trudged east once more.
The girl hung limply over my shoulder for a short while. “All right,” she said. “You’ve made your point. Just put me down. I promise I won’t go back.”
I bent forward and deposited her bare feet on the sand. As soon as I put her down, she slapped me across the face. “Don’t ever do that again.”
“All right,” I said wincing. Next time it would be over my other shoulder.
I opened my eyes to see Aria bending down, tearing a strip of silk cloth from around her ankle, revealing a shapely calf. She covered her face with the material and tied it behind her head. Veiled again.
“Keep marching,” I said. “You promised.”
Looking annoyed the girl walked for several minutes in silence. “You ruined my herbs.”
“Sorry. We’re trying to save your life.”
“You don’t hate Persians?”
“I don’t hate you.” Quite the opposite.
The girl considered this. “I should hate you, for what you just did. No one has ever handled me that way before. Not even my own father.”
“I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
“One moment you say you are going to marry me, and the next…”
Battus stopped and I bumped into the lion. The ground shook with the pound of hooves. Coming straight at us down the beach were six riders on Arabian horses. Battus let down his end of the pole, grabbed for an arrow and notched his bow. “Here they come. And you lost your spear.”
So I had. I’d been so distracted by Aria that I’d forgotten to retrieve my javelin, leaving me defenseless but for a knife. I sat down my end of the pole. The tree line was not far. Battus and I could easily make it into the safety of the woods.
The girl walked calmly toward the horsemen. Holding up her hands in both directions—at the horsemen and us, she cried, “It is one of my father’s captains. Please put down your weapons. Let me speak with them. Please. No fighting! I will tell them you rescued me, and they will honor you.”
Battus and I lowered our weapons, but did not put them down. If we had been alone we would have bolted into the trees. But in Aria’s presence, our feet remained rooted to the ground.
Turning toward the riders, back straight, Aria walked toward the line of Persian horsemen. I should have been running away, and instead stood there, mesmerized by the sight of a woman’s round backside swaying side to side.
“It is a sin to hide such a pretty face,” I whispered.
Battus grunted. “It would be a bigger sin to die here. Let’s run for the trees.”
“No. Wait. Let’s see what happens.”
Each of her countrymen had a short bow and quiver slung over their backs, but they made no move to threaten us. They drew their mounts in before Aria.
“Princess, thank goodness we’ve found you. You had your father and mother worried.”
Battus and I looked at one another. Princess?
“I am fine Bagibania. These two gentlemen saved me. Come see the beast they slew.”
The men trotted closer on six of the largest and finest horses I’d ever seen. Their mounts whinnied and reared when they smelled the lioness. Calming their steeds, the riders circled us where we’d laid the regal beast on the sand. Several of the men dismounted to get a closer look. Each of the bearded, turbaned men glanced at us with admiration. “Our thanks noble sirs. Lord Mardonius will want to thank you personally. Utana. Gallop back to camp and tell them we found her.”
“Wait!” I cried in my feeble Aramaic. “Tell him that a large force of Dorians are on the march. You’d better get your ships to sea. Otherwise your people will be massacred.”
The Persian called Bagibania climbed back up onto his horse. He looked down at my blond hair curiously, undoubtedly wondering how I knew these things, and if he should kill me. Instead he shouted at Utana. “You heard him. Ride!” He held his hand down to the girl. “You can ride behind me m’lady. If what this boy says is true, we need to make haste.”
“A moment captain,” Aria said and approached me smiling, saying so only I could hear, “I am sorry I struck you. You were doing the right thing.”
“It’s all right.” I’d never kissed a girl before. Never even thought about the subject. But at that moment I wanted to grab the Persian girl’s shoulders like I’d grabbed her hips, rip away her veil and kiss her on the mouth. Of course I didn’t. I didn’t have any experience kissing girls, and for all I knew such an action would get me filled with arrows.
Instead the girl surprised me, by reaching up on her tip toes and lightly hugging me. “I will never forget you Euryleon.” Gently she rubbed the side of her silk covered cheek against my face. First one side, and then the other, reminding me of my father’s hound Cerberus and how he wagged his tail excitedly and sometimes wiped his wet snout against me when I came home from hunting. Only this was a lot nicer. I began to rub my face back against hers, but she had already moved away. It lasted only a heartbeat, but it was a moment I would remember forever.
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br /> I felt like going up on tip toes myself, until she did the same with Battus. I could not hear what she said to him. Later he told me, they were words of thanks. She reached up and rubbed her cheek against both sides of his face as well, making me realize this was simply a parting ritual among Persians. Not quite the special moment I’d imagined.
“All right Bagibania. Now I am ready.” She reached out her hand, grabbed the Persian captain’s forearm, and the man swung her easily up behind him on the rump of his white speckled mount.
The Persian girl looked back at us, watching us pick up the lioness. With her veil covering her face it was maddeningly impossible to tell what was going on behind her brown eyes. Did she smile, frown or yawn? I watched as she galloped off clinging to the waist of the Persian captain, feeling strangely jealous.
A warning trumpet sounded up the beach at the Phoenician camp. Utana must have sounded the alarm.
As we trudged through the sand with our burden, Battus said, “You do realize we are helping our enemies escape?”
“I know.”
“Your father will beat you.”
“He doesn’t have to know everything.” I’d often heard Phile say, There is wisdom in knowing when to remain silent. This seemed like one of those times. “You don’t have to lie. Just keep quiet.”
“All right. But when we meet your father. I will not lie for you. You do the talking.”
“Look. There they go.”
We watched as the first Phoenician trireme rolled down the sand to splash and glide across the light blue sea. The oars on the port and starboard sides rose together, and came down together, slapping the water like a single hand clap. Even an enemy warship was an awe-inspiring sight.
“Sometimes I don’t understand you Hellenes,” Battus said shaking his head. “You should have kept quiet back there. Your father would have slaughtered them. You could have kept the girl as a slave.”
Such a thought had never crossed my mind. Nor could I imagine the Persian princess as a slave. It just didn’t seem right. “It is better this way.”
The Wandering King Page 8
