Memnon

by Oden, Scott

  Memnon disembarked as the crew joined their captain’s paean to Thetis.

  Despite the weather a knot of men made their way down the mole to where Memnon stood. Some might have had business with the pious shipmaster, such as small cargoes from Lesbos to claim or letters to deposit for the return trip, but Memnon could tell that the fellow leading the group, a servant dogging his steps, was there for him. The man’s cloak billowed out behind him, revealing the polished bronze breastplate and leather kilt of a soldier. He stopped at a respectful distance and raised a hand in greeting.

  “You are the Rhodian called Memnon?”

  “I am.”

  “Very good! I am Kritias, a captain of the Basileus’s Guard. My lord has instructed me to escort you to his palace.” The officer motioned for his servant to take Memnon’s chest. “Follow me, sir.” He abruptly turned and marched back the way he had come, scattering those men who had been in his wake.

  With courtesy, if not actual friendliness, Kritias led Memnon up from the harbor and through the lower slopes of Assos. Though years had passed since his last visit, a brief stop on his way north from Phoenicia to Macedonia, he could discern little in the way of change. Even in the throes of winter the city buzzed with life, like a beehive tipped on its side by a careless gardener. Citizens and foreign residents scurried on their errands, pausing at stairheads and on street corners to share the latest news—from Philip’s victory in Thrace to Athens’s decision to dispatch its most popular general, Chares, to the aid of Diopeithes in the Chersonese. Memnon shook his head. Chares. With that fool in the region instances of piracy in the Aegean would soar but he expected little else would be done.

  Memnon trailed Kritias across the agora—its crowded public spaces constructed on the Doric order rather than the Ionic—and up another flight of steps. Once atop this next terrace, the Rhodian paused and looked away to the west. An offshore wind ruffled his hair and cloak. From his vantage point, halfway up the hillside between the harbor and Athena’s temple, Memnon could see down to the twin turrets of the Lekton Gate; beyond them, he caught sight of the necropolis, a monumental park thick with sculptures and steles—his father’s among them.

  Are you proud of us, Father? Are you proud of your sons?

  Ahead of him, Kritias stopped and turned. “Sir? What is it you see?”

  Memnon stirred at the sound of his voice. “A memory, nothing more,” he said, motioning the captain to continue on to the palace.

  In truth, Assos had no residential buildings deserving of the term ‘palatial.’ Most of the houses in its terraced neighborhoods were squat and unlovely, built of mudbrick and clay covered in thick lime stucco. Some had touches of color—yellow and red-striped awnings above the door or a window box overgrown with herbs—but the rest formed an indistinguishable warren with boundaries dictated by the demands of the landscape.

  Hermeias’s palace was only called such because its occupant styled himself a king; it lacked extravagance because he also styled himself a philosopher, molded in Plato’s image. His palace sat at the center of the terrace, surrounded by offices of the court functionaries who governed the city in the king’s absence. Save for a columned portico guarded by bronzeclad pikemen, it looked identical to every other block of houses.

  “I must ask you to surrender your knife, sir,” Kritias said as they neared the portico. Memnon did so willingly. “It will be kept safe and returned to you once you leave. My duty also requires that I search you for hidden weapons. I mean no disrespect. If you will permit me?” Again Memnon acquiesced; indeed, he expected no less. Despite his philosophical pretensions, Hermeias’s rise to power involved the murder of his predecessor, Eubulus—a very anti-Platonic solution to the removal of a tyrant with Persian sympathies. Memnon held his arms away from his body as Kritias ran practiced hands up his flanks in search of hidden blades.

  “Does Hermeias fear for his life?”

  “Our Basileus is a cautious man,” Kritias replied, “and no matter how benevolent the ruler, there are always those envious of his position and desperate enough to contemplate murder to achieve their ends. For my part, I would not want the example of the Athenian tyrannicide to be repeated in fair Assos.”

  Not again, you mean, Memnon thought.

  Finding nothing amiss, the captain nodded and gestured for the door wardens to allow the Rhodian entry. Memnon was ushered into a stonetiled vestibule, where a courteous slave took his cloak, and thence into a long, narrow room full of natural and artificial light. Shelves lined the walls, partitioned into niches holding countless scrolls. Clerks bustled between the shelves checking and double-checking scroll tags. Some they removed from their niches and carried to a table for a trio of scribes to fair-copy.

  At the far end of the room, a dark-haired man sat behind a desk of polished wood, a crackling fire on the hearth behind him. He raised a sheet of parchment up to the light and read aloud in a clear voice: “ ‘Consider further what a disgrace it would be to allow Asia to be more successful than Europe, non-Greeks more prosperous than Greeks, to let the dynasty of Cyrus, a foundling, win the title of Great King, while that of Herakles, a son of Zeus, is given a humbler style. None of this can be permitted. It needs to be altered to the exact opposite’.”

  “I pray I am as eloquent in my dotage as Isocrates is in his,” Memnon said by way of greeting, his face a smiling mask of politesse.

  Hermeias, the Troad’s eunuch king, glanced over the edge of the parchment, a twinkle in his eyes. “You recognize the piece from that small excerpt?”

  “Isocrates’ Address to Philip, of course,” Memnon said. “The call of an old sophist for the unification of Hellas and the destruction of Persia. I read it years ago. A remarkable bit of writing.”

  “It is, indeed.” Hermeias put the parchment aside. He stood and came out from behind his desk. “Ah, Memnon! It has been too long!” He embraced the Rhodian as though they were lifelong friends.

  Gelded in his youth, it was plain Hermeias had mastered his appetites at an early age, avoiding the habit of other eunuchs who let a love of food replace the pleasures of the flesh. He kept himself trim, and thus had aged far more gracefully than other men, even those who shared his condition. Gray frosted his close-cropped black hair, and an old scar cut diagonally across his face, beginning above his left eye, crossing the bridge of his nose, and continuing down his right cheek—a sword cut gained in battle against the Carians, dispelling the myth that geldings lacked martial fire.

  Nor did Hermeias’s dress lean toward the kind of extravagance one might expect from a eunuch. He wore a simple Ionic chiton, cream-colored, stitched with a border of plain black thread. The signet ring on his right index finger was the only touch of gold on his person; its sardonyx seal bore the carved image of Athena, in her guise as the goddess of wisdom, with an owl perched on her upraised palm.

  “I’m amazed you remembered me at all,” Memnon said.

  “Who could forget the youngest—and I daresay the brightest—of good Timocrates’ sons?”

  “You are too kind,” Memnon replied, sloughing off the needless flattery couched in a lie. In the old days, Hermeias would not have known Memnon if the Rhodian passed him on the street. Mentor and Artabazus, alone, had dealings with the eunuch’s former master, Eubulus, an Ephesian banker turned tyrant—and by extension with the eunuch himself, who was Eubulus’s pet sophist and favorite Ganymede.

  “Come,” Hermeias said. “Sit and drink with me. No doubt crossing the straits in midwinter has left your nerves ill at ease. I will have mulled wine brought to us.” He turned to his clerks and scribes and waved them out. “That is enough for today. Have Sthenelos fetch us a good Chian, or is Thasian more to your liking, Memnon? No, no, make it Chian.”

  “You have your former master’s palate for fine wine,” Memnon said.

  For a split-second, Hermeias’s mask of courtesy slipped, giving the Rhodian a glimpse of the naked rage and ambition lurking beneath. The eunuch mastered these emotio
ns as swiftly as they appeared. “My one indulgence,” he said, his smile returning. The men sat on couches and made small talk as a servant arrived with two steaming mugs of wine. Their conversation resumed after the servant left.

  “Your invitation to join you for the Lenaea was wholly unexpected,” Memnon said. “I didn’t think an independent and energetic ruler such as yourself would want to associate with the brother of a Persian officer. By rights, our very positions should put us at odds.”

  Hermeias cocked his head to the side. “It would be true, perhaps, if we chose only to approach it from the narrow perspective of possible competitors. But, for all our differences, we—you, your brother, and I—share one inalienable trait: we are Greek. It would be a sad world, indeed, if fellow Greeks could not put aside their differences long enough to participate in the very festivals which bind us as a people.”

  “Well spoken,” Memnon said, raising his mug in salute. “It’s that same sentiment that allows the warring factions of Hellas to unite in celebration of the games at Olympia.”

  “Exactly!” Hermeias leaned closer, adopting the mien of a conspirator. “I will be honest with you, Memnon. I also wished to speak with you because your brother’s unique position in the Great King’s hierarchy intrigues me. I find the subject of Persian politics to be endlessly fascinating! Perhaps you will share some of your anecdotes with me during the festival?”

  Memnon apprehended something in the eunuch’s studied enthusiasm, an implied understanding that their shared Hellenic ancestry trumped any perceived allegiance to a barbarian king. Without realizing it, Hermeias tipped his hand. Memnon’s smile widened and he inclined his head, a gracious guest to his host. “It would be my pleasure.”

  “Excellent!” The eunuch clapped and his steward entered. “You must be exhausted. I have taken the liberty of having accommodations made ready for you here, at the palace. Sthenelos will show you to your rooms. I must attend to state business tonight, which unfortunately means leaving you to dine alone. Do you still have friends in Assos?”

  Memnon drained his wine. “None I can recollect, but think nothing of it, good Hermeias. I would beg a favor of you, though. I have an errand I must run—one I have put off for far too long—and I should require a lantern to light my way.”

  Both men stood. “That is an odd request,” Hermeias said. “What errand could draw you away so soon after your arrival, I wonder?”

  “A family matter,” Memnon replied. “I must attend my father’s grave.”

  The eunuch clicked his tongue against his teeth and nodded. “Of course. Assos does homage to all of its honored dead, without fail, but the reverence of a community cannot replace that of a son. Sthenelos, see our guest has whatever he needs. I will personally instruct Kritias to look for your return after dark. And now to business.” With a smile and a nod, Hermeias swept from the room.

  Memnon’s own smile faded; his eyes hardened as he watched the eunuch’s departure. Our business is only just beginning…

  BEYOND THE LEKTON GATE, THE DEAD WAITED IN DEEPENING SHADOW. Statues decorated the tombs of the great and mighty—nude athletes frozen for all time in poses of victory, armored soldiers bidding their wives and mothers farewell, sailors watching the horizon from the prows of ships long since claimed by Lord Poseidon. Smaller monuments marked the graves of lesser men and of women, hung with grave wreaths or sprays of flowers woven with locks of mourners’ hair, their offering bowls empty and overturned. Their painted steles revealed something of the deceased’s personality. One depicted a man with his sons, and another, a woman at her dressing table combing her hair. A child played with his favorite ball for eternity while an elderly couple enjoyed their small stone garden. The dead waited, but they did not fret over their fates.

  In the smoky yellow light of the lantern Memnon made his way to his father’s grave. Timocrates’ stele captured his spirit perfectly. He stood on a plinth, declaiming to a sea of upturned faces. Though not the most elaborate monument in the necropolis, it was of exceptionally higher quality, wrought of Parian marble by the hands of the Athenian master Praxiteles.

  Under the watchful eyes of sentries atop the Lekton Gate, Memnon knelt and placed the lantern on the ground beside him. He carried a basket prepared by Sthenelos for the occasion with everything he would need to pay homage to his father’s shade—a flask of oil and one of wine, a honey-cake, a new offering bowl, and a fresh wreath. He lifted the old wreath off the grave and put it aside, replacing it with the new, and did the same with the old chipped offering bowl. A cold wind fanned the flames of his lantern.

  “Forgive me, Father, for my absence,” he said. “Long have I been away, toiling in lands not my own for causes unworthy of my efforts. Soon, perhaps, I can return you to your beloved Rhodes, where men would doubtless raise their voices in admiration of your deeds.” Memnon placed the honey-cake in the offering bowl. Next, he uncorked the oil flask and used its contents to anoint the stele. “May you be blessed in Hades’ realm, and if down there the good have merit, then may you be raised up to sit beside Hades’ dread and beautiful Queen.”

  Finally, Memnon picked up the wine flask. “Do not think ill of me, Father, for straying so far from the path you had envisioned for me. Though I never became an Alcibiades or a Pericles, I am something those men never could be—a son of Timocrates. That honor is enough for me. May Zeus Savior and Helios watch over you.” He poured his libation into the dead grass at the base of the stele.

  Sighing, Memnon gathered up the old bowl and wreath and placed them in the basket. As he rose to his feet, however, a flash of movement out beyond the ring of his light caught his eye, an impression of silvery-gold hair. Memnon’s breath caught in his throat. Did Hermeias send a spy? He raised his lantern higher.

  The light flickered on a man-high stele of yellowish marble.

  “Zeus!” the Rhodian said, chuckling. “Now I’m jumping at shadows.” He gathered up the basket, waving to the sentries as he retraced his steps through the Lekton Gate and into the city. No doubt word of his every move had already made its way to Hermeias’s ears.

  Memnon reached the palace near the end of the first watch, three hours after dusk, and was shown to his rooms by one of the eunuch’s household slaves. Tidy and well kept, the accommodations followed the philosopherking’s bias against excess—a sitting room with divans and a table, and a bedroom with a low mattress, bolsters, and thick furs. His travel chest sat in the corner, untouched.

  In the sitting room, a fire roared on the hearth. Platters of food awaited sampling on the heavy oak table and a pitcher of mulled wine stood ready. Memnon, though, ignored these temptations. Nudging a divan closer to the hearth, he sat and removed the old grave wreath from the basket.

  Memnon studied it by the light of the fire, his eyes narrowing. Its flowers were dry and crackling, bound together by a fillet of fine gray wool. He turned the wreath over in his hands, knowing exactly what he would find. On the underside, someone had stitched another scrap of wool over the first to form a pocket. It was recent work, and hastily done. Memnon plucked out the threads. From between the two pieces of fabric a tiny scrap of parchment fluttered to the floor. The Rhodian tossed the wreath into the fire, bent to retrieve the parchment. He could see it bore three words written in a strong hand:

  All is ready.

  Memnon exhaled. “You’re a good man, Omares,” he whispered. The Rhodian touched an end of the parchment to the fire and watched as it burned, then ground the ashes between his thumb and forefinger …

  “By the dog of Hades, Memnon!” Aristonymus threw his hands up in exasperation. “How can you remove the eunuch if not by assassination? True, it will call for tense times and loss of life, but such things must be part and parcel of the Troad’s reunification.”

  Memnon tapped his map of the region. “No. I reject your hypothesis. I believe I can return the Troad to the Persian fold without bloodshed. It’s going to require a bit more planning, a dash of creativity … and earn
ing the eunuch’s trust.”

  Aristonymus laughed. “Would you listen to yourself? You sound like a madman! If you think Hermeias’s trust is such an easy commodity to earn then you’ve obviously taken leave of your senses and should be bundled off to Sardis, and back to your brother, without delay!”

  “I’m perfectly sane, cousin,” Memnon replied, smiling. “Perfectly sane and perfectly sure that I can not only earn Hermeias’s trust, but that I can earn it in the span of a single hour.”

  Aristonymus’s laughter failed. He stared at the Rhodian’s smiling face, bereft of humor, and his eyes narrowed. Something about his kinsman’s vast reserve of confidence gave him pause. Was he privy to some mystery no other man could see? “An hour, you say? How?”

  Memnon’s gaze returned to his map. “There is a man in Assos I’ve known since the days of Artabazus’s rebellion. He was one of Mentor’s officers and as good a man in a pinch as any I’ve met. In turn, this man knows dozens of others in the city who are in desperate straits, men of the former regime who have been persecuted and driven to the depths of poverty by the eunuch’s reign. I’m certain he can find the perfect pawn for this game we play.”

  “What is the perfect pawn?”

  “A man,” Memnon said, “who is both courageous and a fool.”

  THE NEXT DAY, THE DAY OF THE LENAEA, DAWNED CLOUDY AND COLD. Memnon rose early to break his fast with Hermeias in the eunuch’s study, their conversation constantly interrupted by ministers clamoring for their king’s attention. It struck Memnon as odd that a self-professed philosopherking did not give more thought to the everyday problems of his rule, but Hermeias breezed through his affairs in a manner the Rhodian could only describe as informed neglect. If one of his ministers said he needed a talent of silver for some ridiculous purpose, the eunuch trusted the man at his word. Those who embraced the teachings of Socrates and Plato he considered beyond reproach, while the eunuch treated better men who espoused the causes of rival sophists as enemies of the state.