Long War 04 - The Great King

by Cameron, Christian

  There is a moment – just as in the Plataeans’ Pyricche – where we all step together, stomping our right foot heavily as we push. Our four feet were like one foot – or like hundreds, all together.

  And on the last step, we stopped. All together, and no shuffling.

  The Persians applauded us. Mayu hefted an aspis and made an odd motion with his head. ‘You couldn’t do any of that in combat, of course,’ he said. ‘You’d be too closely pressed together.’

  I translated for Bulis, who shrugged. It was a shrug of contempt. ‘Only militia and slaves huddle together,’ he said. ‘Our men keep their places in the line.’

  Quite a long speech for him.

  I’d like to say that the Persians were so impressed with us that they stayed home and didn’t invade Greece. But we all know that’s not what happened. Instead, Mayu made it clear that he thought our dance was pretty, but nothing to do with war, and over food and wine, Shahvir explained to me that Marathon had been a fluke caused by the unreliability of some of their Greek subjects.

  Well.

  Bulis sat in silence, and Brasidas asked for translations, and sometimes smiled. Sparthius looked angry, and drank too much. I suspect we were sullen – I was surprised at how hostile the Anûšiya were, and as we walked home, Cyrus apologised.

  ‘They are not gentlemen. Merely warriors. I see what your dance teaches.’ He shrugged. ‘I suspect in time, Mayu will see, too.’

  We cooled our heels for two weeks. It was a glorious time, and if I hadn’t been pining for Babylon, I suspect it might be one of the favourite times in my life. Everything at Susa was an adventure, and I tasted saffron, drank rare wine, eyed noble beauties, and saw the most beautiful horses I’d ever seen.

  Really, Persia is a fine place.

  A little less than two weeks after we’d arrived, Brasidas disappeared. He left a note to say that he was going to visit a friend. Bulis and Sparthius looked . . . knowing.

  And told me nothing.

  A few hours after he left us, Hector brought me a message he’d received from a slave.

  ‘A Greek slave,’ he said.

  It invited me to a meeting at a time and place. There was no signature.

  I have been a slave, and that gives me a natural tendency to caution in these matters. Besides, after our somewhat hostile reception by the Anûšiya, I had become aware that I was sometimes followed.

  I shrugged. ‘No,’ I said.

  The next day, a helot – I’d know those Messenian features anywhere – plucked at my elbow in the Foreigners’ Courtyard of the palace.

  I ignored him.

  ‘Just come with me?’ he asked.

  ‘No!’ I said. It had to be a provocation. They’d pretend there was a slave revolt, or ask for money – we all knew our turn with the Great King was coming, and we all knew about Xerxes’ little ways. He tested his guests. And then killed a few.

  ‘My master asks to see you,’ he said.

  ‘Who is your master?’ I asked.

  ‘Are you dense?’ he spat, in a very unslave-like way. ‘Demaratus!’

  I presented myself to the former King of Sparta in an olive grove six stades south of the city. His helot had taken me out of the palace grounds to a brothel. I chose a girl – none of your business – and was escorted to a room, from which I was then escorted out through another door to a waiting donkey, and we rode out through one of the military gates past the great bridge. That’s all I remember of the route.

  Demaratus, contrary to the propaganda of the last few years, was a handsome, older man, did not have a hunchback or a limp, and looked like what he was – one of the greatest aristocrats in the world. He was richly dressed, even in an olive grove. Brasidas sat under a tree, with a scroll, looking for all the world like an Athenian gentleman reading philosophy.

  I didn’t bow. He wasn’t my king. But I did present my wax tablet. ‘From Gorgo,’ I said. ‘Wife of—’

  Demaratus laughed. ‘I know whose wife Gorgo is,’ he said. ‘Are you ready to see the Great King?’

  I believe I shrugged.

  ‘I have spent a week flattering him into letting the two fool Spartiates live,’ he said. ‘The murder of his father’s envoys was an incredible insult at the time. Even today, it is widely remembered.’

  ‘And Aristides?’ I asked.

  ‘Athens is doomed,’ the former King of Sparta said. ‘Everyone in this city lost someone on that beach. Athens will be destroyed. All the omens foretell it. But I would see Sparta saved.’

  I frowned. ‘Aristides will be killed?’ I asked.

  Demaratus looked at Brasidas reading. ‘If I have my way with the Great King, all of you will be loaded with presents and sent home,’ he said. ‘He is . . . mercurial. Curiously not in control of himself, for a man with such power. Oddly in need of the good opinions of others.’ Demaratus shook his head. ‘He is not Darius, but then, almost no one is.’

  I must have looked surprised. He raised his eyebrows.

  ‘Not what you expected, Plataean?’ He shrugged. ‘I can never go back to Sparta. I was treated worse than a helot. But I will not be an agent of my city’s destruction.’ He waved the tablet at me. ‘With your permission, sir?’

  I stood back and watched him turn away. He went to Brasidas, and they talked for a moment – there was a loud snap – and then both of them were looking at something. The former king nodded.

  ‘I broke your tablet – foolish of me. I’ll send a new one with you. For Gorgo, you understand.’ He nodded.

  I nodded in turn. It’s not always good to tell people everything you have guessed.

  ‘May I ask one more question?’ I asked.

  He laughed. ‘Plataean, I am retired – an old man. I have nothing but time.’

  ‘Is there anything we can do to induce the Great King to make peace?’ I asked.

  He didn’t hesitate. ‘No,’ he said. ‘The coin is tossed. The soldiers are ordered and the fleets are gathered. Your arrival at this time is viewed as a piece of foolish effrontery. A year or two ago – perhaps. Now – if it were not for me, you’d have been refused, seized as enemies, and crucified.’ He shrugged. ‘Perhaps not you. Artapherenes got you a safe conduct by name. That means something here.’

  As always, Artapherenes saved my life.

  I nodded. ‘I never thought we could make peace,’ I said. ‘But it seemed worth a try.’

  Demaratus scratched his beard. ‘I truly doubt that Xerxes can move an army from here to Corinth and then seize Corinth – much less reach Lacedaemon,’ he said. ‘But Athens will fall. Sparta . . . can hold.’

  ‘I hope you are an ill prophet,’ I said.

  ‘Everything has come about as I told that fool Cleomenes when he first started to challenge Persia.’ He shrugged. ‘I was a King of Sparta. War is my business. Without the direct intervention of the gods, Greece cannot stand against Persia.’ He shook his head. ‘Aristides has made himself very popular with the magi. His knowledge of Greek and Aegyptian philosophy will probably save his head. The magi are very powerful here.’

  Brasidas got up. ‘I’ll go back with him,’ he said.

  The former King of Sparta smiled. ‘It has been good to see you.’

  They did not embrace. I had decided that Brasidas was his son, or perhaps his lover – I revised that.

  We went back to another gate, led by the helot, who took me into the kitchen of the brothel, where I emerged into the common room to be heckled by a pair of Babylonian Jews for riding the best girl for three hours. I bought them wine and we were friends.

  Brasidas watched it all with interest. On the way back to the palace compound, he shook his head. ‘So now I’ve been in a brothel,’ he said.

  This from a man of thirty-five.

  The Great King summoned us.

  We dressed carefully.

  The summons was to me, as the ‘Ambassador of the Greeks’.

  Aristides as my mage.

  The Spartans, as ‘heralds of the Spart
ans’.

  These titles were settled by the court chamberlain, and I read into them that Aristides was not to be killed – because his being Athenian would never make the court calendar. In fact, despite being in every way the senior member of our party, he was being dismissed as a functionary.

  But there is my name, in good Avestan – Airyaman Navazhar, of Palatay in Jawan. Noble-minded light-bringer – that’s me.

  It was Mayu who appeared to lead us to the Great King. He shook his head at our naked legs and offered me his own trousers.

  The king’s hall was roughly on the same layout as the palace in Babylon. We entered through a magnificent cloister of pillars – arcade after arcade, like the great trunks of an old forest of marble. We processed through the entry hall with censors and the major-domo, and we were with twenty other foreign guests to make the auspicious number of twenty-four. We were the least important and came last, after a delegation of noble Saka, who looked about them with thinly veiled contempt.

  Or perhaps they were merely the nomadic version of Spartans, and gave nothing away. We passed up a short set of very broad, very deep steps. I’m guessing that the architect did that on purpose to make me feel small, but everything was on such a scale as to make me feel small.

  We passed from court to court – through the first court, where the law was pronounced, to the second court, where sometimes the king’s mother held her own divan, and into the third court, where military matters were settled. Each one of them was as big as the temple of Artemis at Brauron. Everything was hung in Tyrian purple and decorated with pure gold, and after a while the eye simply declined to take it all in, although the frescoes – which were, as far as I could see, fired clay with permanent tints, done as tiles and assembled like a meta-mosaic – were superb – as good as anything in Hellas.

  And then we processed back through the second hall to the first, just in case we were not sufficiently impressed.

  Altogether, the whole was the size of the Athenian Acropolis. All gold, and purple and tiles.

  And then we entered the throne room.

  It was not so much a room as a corridor, with cross-corridors, like a huge iota or a tau. So from the entrance, you couldn’t see the men standing in the wings – the functionaries and soldiers and judges and scribes waiting for orders. You could only see him.

  The Great King.

  He wore cloth of gold and purple, of course, and on his head was a tiara of pure gold. He was a handsome man – but I didn’t know that at the time, because of the golden throne with the winged lions.

  Much like Babylon. I think, had I not seen Babylon first, all this would have stolen my senses. Now it all seemed . . . extreme. Affected. And a little like the Persians aping the manners of the Babylonians, right down to the winged lions. I have no idea who had winged lions first. Having faced the more prosaic variety in tall grass, I had no wish to face one with wings.

  Xerxes received each group of guests – accepted their gifts and promises of men and material for his war against Jawan. That was us. And we were waiting until last.

  And it went on and on.

  All told, we must have stood for four hours. I was delighted that I wore a linen chiton, and so, I can tell you, was Aristides. Our bare legs stood us in good stead. With the crowd of functionaries and the torches, it was as hot as any place I’ve ever been.

  And as we drew closer to the throne, it seemed to me more and more likely that Demaratus was wrong. And we were going to die.

  We were certainly being humiliated. All the other delegations were brought wine, beer and water. We were not. All the other delegations were offered dates and sweetmeats and honey – we were not.

  No one would look at me, or meet my eye.

  Slowly, inch by inch, we moved down that long, dark cavern of a hall towards the gold-lit man in the robes. He sat six feet off the floor, and his feet rested on a table.

  Finally, the Saka threw themselves full length in front of him and mumbled something. They began their own ritual – gifts, which looked to me like braided halters but turned out to be horses. And promises of ten thousand horsemen to ride against Jawan.

  The Great King spoke platitudes, and they echoed from the ceiling. He sounded like a god.

  I thought his architect had been heavy handed.

  I also thought that, had I been taken directly into the sacred presence of the Great King, all this might have struck me harder, but four hours of waiting wilted even fear. From time to time, when the line moved, my heart would race. I was ready to die. But then, I’d grow bored.

  Even summary execution can seem dull.

  I also occupied my time translating what I could hear and understand for Aristides and the Spartans. Early on, I was told to be quiet by a chamberlain, whom I ignored. Later, Cyrus emerged from the crowd to tell me not to speak.

  ‘You translate, then,’ I said.

  Cyrus winced. ‘It is the custom of the King’s Presence not to speak,’ he said.

  ‘You are speaking,’ I said.

  He smiled. ‘I am a full Persian.’

  I went on translating aloud, and in fact I began to raise my voice slightly.

  Aristides spoke under me, twice – once to agree with the Spartans that if they took us to kill us, we would die with dignity and not struggle. The other time, to agree that we would bow, but not perform the proskynesis.

  And eventually, the Grand Chamberlain motioned me forward.

  We had no gifts.

  I happened to have gifts, in fact, and several functionaries had offered us gifts to give. Just to make the ceremony work.

  But Bulis insisted that we were not offering any form of submission, and Aristides agreed, and now, in that moment, it was my time to explain this to the Great King.

  First, I bowed.

  There are many forms of bow, in Persia. You can incline your head – equal to equal. You can bow at the waist. You can bow so deeply that your right hand brushes the ground.

  You can throw yourself on your face.

  I had observed – in four hours – that the Persian nobles bowed with one hand touching the floor, and all the ambassadors, who were after all making or renewing formal submission, performed the full proskynesis and threw themselves on the floor. Some crawled forward and kissed the table on which the Great King’s feet rested.

  I decided on my course and I went forward with the Grand Chamberlain, and when he brought his arm down on my shoulder, I slipped it – he wasn’t a fighter – and I bowed at the waist and placed my right hand fully on the floor.

  Like a great nobleman.

  Or a friend of mighty Artapherenes.

  The silence wrapped me like a shroud.

  What I didn’t know was that behind me, neither Aristides nor the two Spartans so much as twitched. They didn’t even incline their heads.

  Oh well. I’d been a slave among Persians, and I couldn’t make myself be that rude. I rather admire the Spartans in retrospect, but at the time I made my choice, and they made theirs.

  One of the chamberlains grabbed at Bulis, and attempted to force his head to the floor, and Bulis threw him – softly, over his hip – and then laid him quite gently on the floor.

  The Great King laughed.

  ‘I see you are my jesters, today,’ he said. ‘That was a fine throw, although Nasha is hardly our finest wrestler.’ He leaned forward. I was so close to the throne that I could hear the gold cloth rustle. ‘Why do you not bow?’ he asked. He pointed at the Anûšiya, who were ready, spears raised, to kill us.

  Bulis spoke – although we’d all agreed I’d do the talking.

  ‘We only bow to gods,’ he said. ‘You, Great King, are after all but a man.’

  Bulis said the words – in Greek.

  I got to translate them.

  Xerxes looked away. He was, in fact, looking at someone I couldn’t see, in an alcove by the throne. Demaratus, I’d lay any wager.

  He smiled. ‘What curious men you must be.’ He shook his
head. ‘You are Spartans?’ he asked.

  ‘We are heralds of the kings,’ Bulis said, through me.

  ‘And although you have kings, you do not bow?’ he asked.

  We all nodded.

  He shook his head and frowned like a man who mislikes a bitter taste.

  ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘Speak your piece, men of Lacedaemon.’ He said the last very well – he’d practised it.

  Bulis nodded to me.

  I said, ‘O King of the Medes! the Lacedaemonians have sent these men to your court, in the place of those heralds of thine who were slain in Sparta, to make atonement to thee on their account.’

  Xerxes nodded. And tugged his beard and looked again to his right – and then to the left. I could not see who stood on the left.

  He straightened himself and leaned forward. ‘I do not concern myself with the impieties of the foreigners,’ he said. ‘It is not for me – Great King, King over Kings – to act like the Lacedaemonians, who, by killing the heralds, have broken the only laws which all men hold in common. As I hold you in contempt for such barbarism, so I will never be guilty of it myself.’ He leaned forward more. ‘I will make war on you, and wipe you from the face of the world, and I will not, by killing you, allow the gods to let you escape from the consequences of your outrageous impiety.’

  I confess I still think it was a noble answer – for all that it was composed by Demaratus, as a slap at the policies of Cleomenes. That is how it was – four thousand stades from Athens, we saw Spartan diplomacy play out in the throne room of Darius.

  Xerxes motioned at the Spartans – dismissal. He wasn’t angry. But he ignored them, and when a pair of guards motioned for them to leave – they turned, and left. Both were in shock. They were prepared to die with dignity, but ill prepared, I think, to be treated as contemptuous wrongdoers.

  They were evicted.

  The Great King turned his liquid brown eyes on me for the first time.

  ‘And you,’ he said. ‘You were a slave?’ he asked.

  I smiled. ‘I was,’ I agreed.

  ‘And you have saved my friend Artapherenes from death – and saved the entire delegation of noble Persians travelling to Tyre in Libya.’ He waved. ‘Why have you brought me no gift?’ He meant – I seemed to have more sense.