The harem comprised Dareios’s mother, his wives, his concubines who aspired to become his wives, young girls who aspired to become his concubines, superannuated hags who had once been concubines, female servants and slaves, the children of all these women, and the eunuchs who guarded them. The person who was unquestionably in charge of all these people was Dareios’s first wife, and therefore the empress, Stateira. And at the moment, Stateira was relieving herself in the lavatory, which meant that no one, except the attendants who were there to wipe her, was allowed to approach, despite the fact that the lavatory was a large, marbled affair with many cubicles for urination, defecation, washing, bathing, and sexual activity, which could easily accommodate dozens of people simultaneously.
These extended periods of lavatory unavailability, which could occur at random times throughout the day, were particularly hard on the younger children. As a result, they acquired a tendency to slink off to remote corners of the complex to relieve themselves. The effect was to give a subtle but unmistakable aroma to the complexes in Susa, Persepolis, Ekbatana, and Babylon that housed the harem at different times of the year.
Barsine was beginning to contemplate the possibility of finding a private corner somewhere but decided instead to distract herself by turning her thoughts to other matters. Her position in the harem was different from all the other women. She was not a wife, concubine, aspiring sexual partner, servant, or slave; she and her children were hostages held by Dareios as guarantors for the faithful performance by her husband of his military duties. She allowed herself a hopeful thought, imagining Memnon’s return as the victorious hero. The image played in her mind as a cheerful melody, rising above the background noise of her constant worry and the insistent percussion of her overstretched bladder.
An old eunuch poked his head into her cubicle. “You can go in now.” He was fat, soft, hunched over, and ugly. Barsine, by contrast, was stunning – a miraculous, exotic amalgam of the sleek, sable beauty of a Persian princess and the radiant intelligence of a Greek goddess. She was the product of a strategic marital alliance between one of the oldest noble houses of Persia and one of the ruling families of Rhodos. As sometimes happens by happy coincidence and random chance, she inherited the best traits, both physical and mental, that the genetic endowment of each family could offer. It was a bountiful legacy that would prove, nonetheless, unequal to the challenges fate had in store for her.
Barsine went off to pee. Her sigh of relief, and the bright tinkling sound of her water hitting the communal sludge below, mingled with the contented sounds and plops of ten other women relieving themselves companionably alongside her. Momentarily, she forgot about Memnon. She washed up, dressed in her daytime tunic, and rejoined her children in the cubicle they all shared.
The lives of the women in the harem were a paradoxical mixture of luxury and privation. The sprawling complex in which they lived consisted of large, airy common rooms, decorated with colorful glazed tiles and intricate mosaics, spectacular apartments for Stateira and her daughters and her mother-in-law, opulent sleeping chambers for Dareios’s other wives, comfortable rooms for concubines, and an endless warren of small, windowless, claustrophobic cubicles for everybody else.
Their meals, prepared by slaves and served on silver plates, in a gleaming marble and limestone communal dining room, were healthy, ample, and featured the bounty of the many lands ruled by Persia. Their clothing, made of linen and wool – soft, colorful, embroidered, and festooned with gold and precious stones – would have been the envy of the most fashionable ladies of Athens. All the wives and concubines owned, and sometimes even wore, great sunbursts of jewelry. There were more oils, unguents, perfumes, cosmetics, incense, and aromatic spices scattered about the washing and bathing rooms of the lavatory than in all of Greece combined. And best of all, wherever it was housed, the inmates of the harem had exclusive use of their own paradeisos, a magical garden filled with flowering trees, berry-bedecked bushes, aromatic plants, babbling streams, fish-filled ponds, chirping robins, strutting peacocks, and flashy pheasants – an oasis of tranquility amidst a hostile, nasty, mean, and violent wilderness.
On the other hand, the women’s paradise was also a soul-sapping place of confinement. They were separated from the corrupt but vital world outside by a tall, impenetrable wall. Unless they had children, they had almost nothing useful to do with their time. They spent their days primping, gossiping, abusing the slaves, intriguing against one another, clenching their sphincters, and dreaming of the “call,” when they might be summoned into the presence of the emperor to satisfy his sexual needs. They spent their nights being abused by the eunuchs, or by higher ranking women, or simply abusing themselves. And most of them had no realistic hope of ever leaving their ornate prison alive.
Barsine was one of the lucky ones. She had four children to keep her busy, two servant girls, and a genuine hope of eventually leaving the harem. On the other hand, she had no friends, no privacy, and no books to read. Unlike most of the women in the harem, including Stateira herself, Barsine could read. In fact, she was able to read and write in two languages, Greek and Persian, and could speak in three more. Ironically, although a daughter of a venerable Persian aristocrat, she grew up at the Macedonian court in Pella. She received a surprisingly good education for a girl and possessed a lively, inquiring mind. Her life had been rich in experience, activity, unexpected reversals, and misfortune.
Barsine was three years old when her father was forced to flee to Pella, on the barely-civilized periphery of the Greek world. She enjoyed a happy childhood, mingling with the children of the Macedonian court. She was an occasional playmate of a young boy named Alexandros. When she was twelve, the family returned to Hellespontine Phrygia, thanks to the efforts of Mentor of Rhodos. Her father, wishing to express his gratitude, gave his twelve-year-old daughter in marriage to the 41-year-old soldier of fortune, who also happened to be the younger brother of Barsine’s mother. Fortunately for Barsine, her uncle refrained from consummating the marriage for the time being.
Mentor was away on military duty most of the time and the lively young bride, who was rapidly blossoming into a ravishing beauty, attracted the attention of Mentor’s younger brother Memnon, who was “only” 36 years old at the time. Memnon decided to do his fraternal duty and consummate Mentor’s marriage on behalf of his absent brother. When Barsine became pregnant, a couple of years later, Mentor forestalled any potential intra-family strife by conveniently dying, apparently of natural causes. Of course, in Persia the art of poisoning had reached unprecedented heights and Barsine never knew how natural the causes of Mentor’s death actually were. Memnon acted with characteristic dispatch and married the young widow before the child was born. He was 39 and his niece and new mother was 15. The child grew into a beautiful little girl.
Surprisingly, it turned out to be a happy, loving, and fecund marriage. As Barsine sat in her cubicle in Ekbatana, worrying about her husband, she had four children: three girls, aged six, four, and two, plus a brand-new baby boy. She was all of 21 years old.
It was time for the mid-morning communal meal. Barsine left her children in the care of the servant girls and made her way up the covered walkway toward the portico leading to the dining hall. She passed between the stone griffins guarding the entranceway and stepped into a large, light, airy room, whose walls were tiled with a veritable menagerie of enameled terra-cotta lions, bulls, eagles, griffins, sphinxes, and other fantastic animals, sculpted in low relief and glowing with iridescent, luscious, outlandish colors.
She reached her assigned seat on a bench toward the back of the hall in the nick of time, nodding to her companions on either side, but remained standing, as did all the other women in the room. Stateira, trailing her large entourage, swept regally into the hall and seated herself on the raised dais. All the women, including Barsine, threw themselves to the hard, sandstone floor and remained prostrate until given permission to rise by the empress’s official crier. Then they sat down
and immediately fell into animated conversation with their neighbors. Barsine listened carefully but she rarely participated in these discussions.
The diners were served strictly by rank, with Stateira receiving her food and drink first. Her morning wine, splashing around in an exquisite golden kylix placed on a silver tray, was carried to her by her cupbearer, a beautiful young girl, no more than twelve years old, wearing a sparkling white chiton, reaching to the floor and decorated with bright embroidery.
As the girl made her way up toward the throne, she tripped on a step. She tried to regain her balance, staggered toward the empress, with the cup swaying precariously on her tray, and ended up spilling some of the wine on Stateira’s shimmering silk garment. An ear-splitting screech issued from the empress’s throat. “You stupid boob! Look what you’ve done.”
The mortified girl threw herself down at the empress’s feet, her entire, slight body shaking violently, and attempted to apologize.
“Manakes, Oebares,” Stateira screamed. Two young, tall eunuchs appeared and prostrated themselves before the empress. “Fifty lashes,” she said calmly and resumed eating her breakfast.
The young guards lifted the whimpering girl to her feet and dragged her out of the hall. She had finally found her voice and was loudly begging for mercy. Neither the empress nor the other women in the hall paid her the slightest attention.
The whipping post was in the middle of the yard, not far from the portico. They could all hear the first strike of the whip, followed by a loud scream. It didn’t seem to interfere with anyone’s appetite. The blows continued at a steady pace, while the shrieks grew louder and more inarticulate. Barsine, in violation of all protocol, rose from her seat and ran to her children. She found them sitting on their bed, hands clapped over their ears. The girl’s screams were now more or less continuous, rising and falling with the rhythm of the blows. Barsine’s baby began to cry. She picked him up, sat down next to her girls, and tried to comfort them. The animal howling was growing weaker. Barsine’s daughters were weeping. She watched them, silent tears coursing down her cheeks. Finally, the girl fell silent, although the blows continued methodically for a long time thereafter. Barsine closed her eyes and swore to rescue her children from this hellhole.
*******
I was thinking about Memnon, as we emerged from the woods on the other side of the small mountain. With all due respect for Aristandros and his “interrogation” of the prisoner, it was impossible for us to know where Memnon was at that moment and we certainly had no way for us of capturing him. My objective for this mission was to bring all my men back alive.
Yeah, but what’s my objective for me? On the surface, this was a simple question. Ever since I’d gotten stranded in this time and place, and ever since I’d accepted the fact that no extraction team was coming to rescue me, I’d set myself three goals: One, stay alive; two, comply with the Prime Directive; three, get back home. In practice, these goals proved to be unexpectedly challenging. Admittedly, I was still alive but clearly, if some people had their way, my state of animation was subject to change at any moment.
As far as the Prime Directive was concerned, I had already failed, as I now realized, but that didn’t diminish my determination not to violate it again. For a moment, I’d told myself that, having violated the Prime Directive and having thus altered the flow of time, I was now free of its strictures. Unfortunately, upon further reflection, it struck me as lightning that just the opposite was true. The only benefit of my inadvertent transgression was to drive home the magnitude of the challenge ahead of me.
The final goal – to get back home – seemed equally daunting. The escape hatch, the portal to my return, was thousands of miles and many years away. I will make it, I told myself, with more aspiration than conviction.
We rode through the pass and descended into a narrow valley, bisected by a stream and hemmed in by mountains on all sides. From a military perspective, this topography bore an uncomfortable resemblance to a kill zone, with my company in the role of sitting ducks, even if we were ducks sitting on horses. But we had finally reached flat terrain and my men and their mounts needed a break. I called a halt, told my scouts to fan out, giving the rest of the men a chance to eat and the horses a chance to graze. The stream seemed clean enough, so I let both men and horses quench their thirst, making sure that the horses drank downstream from the men.
I scanned the sky for any trace of smoke, either from the campfires of escaping soldiers or the cooking fires of any nearby homesteaders. My hopeful gaze took in nothing but blue skies, with a diaphanous garnish of cirriform clouds high overhead. What was worse, the sun was just beginning to fade behind the treetops crowning the ridge to our west. I was not looking forward to spending a night out in the open, without much gear to set up camp, cowering in an indefensible position.
Perversely, I was almost hoping to encounter some people. There had to be refugees taking the same route. It would’ve been preferable to see them, rather than be surprised when we least expected them. It also seemed odd that this fertile, well-irrigated valley apparently lacked any permanent inhabitants. Up to that point, we’d seen nary a soul nor any sign of habitation, not even a trace of cultivation. After a short break we pressed ahead, southward, between two ridgelines.
The shadow line of the setting sun was creeping toward us at an alarming rate when one of our scouts came galloping back. “Smoke ahead, sir.” He pointed toward the vanishing point where the mountains seemed to choke off the valley. I couldn’t see any smoke but I took his word for it. We proceeded slowly and silently into the gathering twilight.
Soon enough, we could all see the slender strand of smoke trailing off into the darkening sky. Tracing the wisps back to their point of origin led us to a small farmstead, hidden in a birch grove, on the right bank of the creek. A tall wattle-and-daub wall surrounded what appeared to be a fairly sizeable compound. We saw only one opening in the wall, a small gateway completely barred by a pair of stout oaken doors.
Seleukos and I rode up to the gate and dismounted. I hit the double door a few times with the pommel of my sword. No response. Several of my men joined us and started to kick and pound on the wooden panels. They didn’t seem to be inflicting much damage on the door but the ruckus they raised was beginning to spook our horses.
Kleitos, tired of watching our futile efforts, maneuvered his horse next to the wall, removed his sword and armor, and threw them on the ground. Then he stood on his stallion’s withers and reached up the wall as high as he could. Even when he rose to his toes, though, his fingers fell a little short. Undaunted, he leapt upward, catching the top edge of the wall and then, by pulling, scrambling, and extensive cursing, managed to hoist himself to the top.
Coincidently, at exactly the same moment, a small flap in the door swung open, revealing a pair of wary eyes.
“We come in peace,” Seleukos called out in Aramaic and then repeated the sentence in Persian and Greek.
“We’ve got nothing left,” an old man’s voice responded in a vaguely Greek dialect. “The soldiers took it all.”
“He’s lying,” Kleitos informed us from above. “I can see chickens in the courtyard.”
The old man slammed the flap shut. We could hear his steps retreating from the door.
“What else can you see?” I asked Kleitos.
“The thing I’m standing on is the roof of the gatehouse. There are buildings leaning against the outer wall on all four sides but I don’t see any people, except for the old guy who just ran into one of the mud huts. ... Oh, oh. He’s back out, carrying his bow and a bunch of arrows. You guys had better break down that door before he manages to shoot me.”
“Old man,” Seleukos called out. “We’re Macedonians. We’re not going to hurt you but you’ve got to open up right now. If we have to break the door down, we will kill everybody inside.”
An arrow came whistling over the wall.
“Can you jump down and open the gate from the inside?”
I asked Kleitos.
“Nah, it’s too high; I’d probably break a leg. Plus, this geezer is gonna shoot me while I’m in the air. Just hurry up and break down the door.”
“Here.” I tossed a bow up to him, followed by an arrow. “Take the guy out.”
“I missed,” Kleitos said after a moment. “Toss me another one.”
The next thing we heard was the scraping sound of the two halves of the door being pulled apart. We saw a hunched but wiry old man, bald head, scraggly white beard, and blazing eyes. “Take what you want,” he spat. “Just leave us alone.”
“We’ll pay for anything we take.” I kept my voice low and even. “Mostly, we need shelter for the night. We have our own food, which we’re glad to share with your family.”
He shrugged, whether with doubt or resignation, I couldn’t tell. “Haven’t got much room.” My men pushed him aside and poured in through the gate. “But I’ll do my duty as your host.”
A number of buildings lined the perimeter wall but none large enough to hold all my men. Having little choice, we made ourselves comfortable in the courtyard, around an improvised campfire, and put the horses in the two empty stables, in the gatehouse, in the reception room, in the large dining hall, in any space that could hold them. It turned out some of those spaces held people within. They came pouring into the courtyard, squawking like the chickens we had scattered a moment earlier.
Mostly, they were women, a score of them, ranging in age from ancient to bursting with youth, plus dozens of kids, plus a few old men. There were no men of military age. The old man, who was evidently the head of this community, tried to herd them back into whatever rooms had been left unoccupied by our horses but it was a futile task.
“Let them join us for our meal.” I patted the ground next to me. Eventually, the old men and the children sat down among us, while women went off to the cookhouse.
The old man started to talk, without looking at me. “My name is ...”
Flood Tide Page 5
