Salamis (26 page)

‘If that were so,’ I asked, ‘we would not be having this conversation, mighty king. But as it is, your fleet has lost to the League’s fleet twice, and never beaten it.’

‘He lies in everything he says,’ Ariabignes said. ‘Their fleet is fewer than three hundred trieres, and it has never beaten the fleet of the Empire.’

I met Xerxes’ eyes and held them. ‘I would guess that your slaves have chosen not to trumpet their defeats to you,’ I said.

‘Silence him!’ Mardonius said. ‘This is no turncoat, but one of their partisans.’

A spear was placed at my neck and I was kicked hard in the back of my knees and I fell. A man’s foot was placed in my back and I felt the point of his spear.

The only sound was that of Artemisia laughing.

I could see Xerxes’ feet and I could see under his chair. It was the oddest view of the room, and I remember thinking that Jocasta had the cleanest floors in Greece. And that I was going to die in the midst of public humiliation. And be thought a traitor.

In fact, I was so terrified, so very sure that this was death, that I had few coherent thoughts at all, and so there was room in the temple of my head for the cleanliness of the floor. I lay and waited for death, Artemisia laughed, and I looked at Xerxes’ very clean feet.

He adjusted his position, drawing his feet together under him.

‘What defeats, Greek?’ he asked. ‘Let him speak.’

‘Great King,’ I began. I had passed the point of no return. I was going to die and I had to see if I could help my comrades a little, sow some dissension, and goad him to the fight.

If Themistocles was not a traitor …

But I couldn’t see Cimon or Ameinias of Pallene, or Eumenes of Anagyrus simply following Themistocles blindly into treason, or so I hoped.

‘If you were to ride to Phaleron and review your fleet,’ I said, ‘you might find it smaller than you imagine, Great King.’

‘He lies!’ Mardonius and Ariabignes said together.

‘And if you were to count all the Greek captures on the beach, you might count them with the fingers of one hand,’ I added. In fact, they had captured almost thirty ships at Artemisium, but I knew he was unlikely to go and count. ‘If you were to climb Mount Aigeleos and look across the bay to Salamis, you might count the Greek ships on their beaches for yourself, and you might count the captures there – Phoenicians and Ionians.’ I couldn’t shrug, but I tried to sound derisive. It’s not easy with a man’s foot in your back and a spear tip pricking you in the cheek.

‘He lies!’ spat the King of Sidon.

‘He says nothing but the truth,’ Artemisia said.

‘What does a woman know of war?’ spat Mardonius. ‘Keep your words to yourself if you have nothing reasonable to say, woman.’

‘I know the difference between victory and defeat,’ the woman said. ‘Which is apparently beyond you.’

Silence reigned. I lay on the floor for the second time in two days and tried not to think.

Finally, the Great King sighed. ‘You did not break the Greeks at Artemisium?’ he asked.

Ariabignes was a son of Darius by a different mother than Xerxes, which made him both a blood relative and just possibly a competitor. He certainly showed fear. ‘We would have, given another day,’ he said. His tone betrayed him.

‘In another day you would have had no fleet,’ I said. ‘And I will be honest if others are not. Had we had another day at Artemisium, I would not be here!’ I remember every word – note that I spoke nothing but the truth, and yet …

‘Let the lady of Halicarnassus speak,’ Xerxes said.

She came and stood not far from me. She was dressed in women’s clothes, not armour, and she was tall, taller than most men, and well muscled, and had copper-red hair, whether by artifice or nature I know not. She stood where I could see her. ‘I think the Greek exaggerates,’ she said. ‘But only by a day or two. Great King, we have not beaten these Greeks. I am your majesty’s loyal slave and I promise you that the Greeks are masters of your fleet at sea.’

‘Silence,’ Xerxes said to the rising protests. ‘Why?’

Artemisia didn’t shuffle or hesitate. ‘You have many poor trierarchs,’ she said. ‘The Phoenicians are afraid to take further losses and it makes them cautious. The Egyptians hate you. Your only reliable ships are the Ionians, and your own Persians seem to hate us. These divisions mean that each contingent succeeds or fails alone.’

Well. Just then, I loved her. And she was saying what I had suspected; indeed, what I had observed.

‘Ship for ship, we are better sailors than most of theirs, and any ship of Sidon can beat any Greek in a race or probably any other contest. But my father used to tell me that what made the Greeks mighty and made the hoplites great was that no one fighter had to be particularly skilled, but only the whole of all the hoplites needed to know the way to fight as a group. And this is what I observe with the Greeks – they fight in answer to a single will, as horses yoked together to a chariot, whereas your ships fight the way foals race, each according to his own will. Is this not humorous, Great King? Your will rules all of us, and yet your fleet is leaderless; the Greeks are all democrats and little men, and yet their fleet acts according to a single will. Worse, because of their cohesion, they pack in close and make the sea battle into a land battle. They put more marines on their decks than many of your ships, and the lack of manoeuvre in close tells to their advantage, as we are the better seamen.’

Silence.

The woman had silenced a dozen men, all tried warriors. Of course, what she said was true – and damningly accurate.

Xerxes leaned forward and put his chin in his hand. ‘What do you recommend, Artemisia?’

She looked down at me. ‘If you can take the Greek fleet by treachery, do so. Their captains are as superior to yours as men are superior to women in matters of war.’

I remember laying there and thinking,
but you are a woman, and the wisest captain here.

‘Is that all your advice?’ Mardonius asked, his voice silky. It seemed to me that he wanted the woman’s destruction and saw her walking straight into the Great King’s bad graces.

She looked at him, her head high. ‘Break the Greeks with time and money and avoid another contest at sea or by land. Every fight makes them look better, puffs up their sense of their own importance, brings them allies and admiration – little Greece contending with the might of the Great King? Whereas, with time and gold, you can let their natural fractiousness rule them and their league will collapse, then you can impose any peace you want.’

‘A woman’s advice!’ Mardonius said with deep contempt. ‘Stay in the bedroom where you belong, comb your hair and speak not concerning things beyond your babies and your hand mirror. The Great King needs to show his power and crush these maggots so that other men know his might. That is how a man thinks.’

Artemisia let half her mouth smile. ‘No, Mardonius. That is how
you
think. I am a woman and I have born babies, with more pain than you will ever know in battle. And I say unto you – you squander the children born of women and yet your way will fail against the Greeks; I protect the children of women, and yet my way will bring triumph for the Great King and for the Empire.’

She spoke like Athena herself and I wondered: in the Poet there are moments when gods and goddesses take the mouths of mortals. My heart soared, because I could see that Athena had already pronounced the Great King’s doom, and yet, as the gods love to show mortals their folly, the Parthenos spoke, herself, through this woman, giving him the best possible advice. Even I, listening to her, approved. She was more dangerous than Mardonius. I think it is lucky for Greece that she was almost forty years old, her face lined with laughter and life. She was attractive enough for her age, but not much younger than Xerxes’ mother. Had she been twenty and beautiful …

But she was not.

Xerxes’ sandals moved again and I looked up in time to see him smile. He put out a hand and placed it on the elbow of Mardonius. ‘She speaks well, and from love of me,’ he said. ‘You believe the Plataean?’ he asked.

She looked at me. In one enigmatic half smile I saw how little I fooled her. She was
wise.

But she bowed her head. ‘I believe he tells the truth,’ she said.

Diomedes spoke up. ‘He was at sea, fighting us, just a few days ago!’ he said. ‘He is our enemy!’

Xerxes looked around the room. ‘Is this true?’

I spoke up. ‘It is but three days since I threw a spear at this lady,’ I said.

Xerxes laughed. ‘Ah!’ he said.

Mardonius looked at me. ‘Let me give him to the Immortals. They will beat the truth from him.’

Diomedes said, ‘Great King, give him to me. I have promised that this man, who was once a slave, would meet a vile death. I will wring from him anything he has to say that will serve you.’

Apparently, men at Xerxes’ court demanded deaths of other men all the time, because the Great King ignored them as if they were small boys. ‘Three days ago you threw a spear at one of my captains in a sea fight,’ he said. ‘Today you kiss my slipper. Why?’

I thought of Themistocles. ‘Because three days ago I still believed that the westerners, the men of the Peloponnese, would fight; now I think that they will abandon us – perhaps they already have. So I agreed with Themistocles to make a different offer to you, and have peace.’

‘You sell them to me?’ Xerxes asked.

I raised my head more, and looked at him. ‘No,’ I said. ‘They will betray themselves and you will take them.’ It was the sort of defensive
they did it to themselves
crap I’d heard from other traitors.

‘I think perhaps my cousin and my brother are mistaken in you,’ Xerxes said. ‘Take him outside where he cannot hear us. I will decide his fate later.’

I was pulled ungently to my feet and pushed out of the room. Diomedes stopped us under the portico by the simple expedient of standing in the way of my Sakje guards.

‘Doru,’ he said, almost caressing me with his voice, ‘I will buy you from the Great King. Rest assured that I will.’ He pursed his lips and leaned towards me. ‘I will have you raped by my slaves, do you hear me? And then I’ll feed your polluted corpse to pigs. That is what I promise you, Doru.’

As he spoke, the veneer of his urbanity peeled away and his spittle flecked my face, as hot as his hatred.

I’d like to say that I met his eyes calmly and snapped some retort – I’ve thought of many over the years – but age has granted me a little honesty, and I have to say that his words made me afraid – to die in so much shame, and be thought a traitor too?

But I managed to keep my head high. I made as if his words puzzled me, and the Sakje pushed me along.

‘You are dead and defiled even now, Greek!’ he shouted.

One of the Sakje said something to the other, and they both grunted.

As soon as we were clear of the main building, Brasidas flicked his eyes at me. ‘Old friend?’ he asked.

I was shaken, and trying hard not to show it. ‘Yes,’ I said.

‘No talk!’ the larger of the two Sakje said.

The next two hours were unmemorable, except that they were miserable. The Sakje didn’t leave us, and did not allow us to talk. We could see and hear nothing of what went on inside Aristides’ house, and we simply sat. I think I remember Brasidas going outside with one of the guards and relieving himself.

A troop of Immortals arrived up the back road that servants used for deliveries in happier times and began to replace the guards around the perimeter of the small estate. They did it with a great deal of talking and even some argument.

After they were done, an officer went into the house, and then the captains began to emerge. Each had a tail of one or two men, and it was … instructive … to observe them from so far that their comments could not be heard and they were, themselves, merely a sort of mime. They postured a fair amount, once all their flunkies were gathered. I wondered if I looked like this from a distance, if this was merely an ugly part of command. Perhaps this was what the vaunted Spartan discipline avoided.

I saw Diomedes gather a pair of hoplites, both in full armour, and by full I mean head-to-toe bronze, the kind I wore for serious fighting. He put his arms around them both like a port-side gang boss in Syracusa, and he spoke to them briefly, and then he came among the cook’s garden – it filled the back of the house, and all these memories are touched with the scent of oregano… . Anyway, Diomedes came along the edge of the garden and walked up to the summer house and looked in. He called out to one of the Immortals who was still on guard, and the man pointed his spear at the shed.

Diomedes and his two soldiers came towards us. The Immortal headed back towards the alley behind the estate. The Great King was going, and taking his guards with him.

Diomedes would have no witnesses.

In Persian, I said to the older of the two Sakje men, ‘This man is my enemy and means me harm.’

He looked at him, tilted his head to one side for a moment, and then shrugged.

I repeated myself, more slowly. This time I pointed at Diomedes for effect.

Diomedes stopped outside the shed door. It was propped open by a piece of wood – the axle of a chariot, I believe.

‘Take him,’ he said. He pointed to the two hoplites.

One began to push in.

I stepped back, and the older Sakje man raised his bow, drew it, and put the arrow in Diomedes’ face. He said something. It was in his own barbaric tongue. Then, in Greek, he said, ‘Away! Go!’

Diomedes had counted on force and effrontery. ‘Just give him to me,’ he said.

The younger Sakje put a bone whistle between his teeth and blew. Both hoplites froze.

Diomedes suddenly had a dagger in his hand. He didn’t turn it on the Sakje, but suddenly thrust at me, holding the dagger like a sword.

I got both hands on his wrist, thumbs up. He leaned against me, pushing at the blade, and got my back against the shed wall.

But I got the arm against the shed wall and my body across it, and in one twist I had the dagger. I tossed it to Brasidas even as the rest of the Sakje wrenched open the door.