The Great King (33 page)

The Master of the Palace, who seemed to be quite slow to Cyrus, provided me with a train of slaves – a dozen – and I took both Hector and his young apprentice, who had filled out on the road and shot up a foot with the plentiful meat that came from the bows of my Persian escort.

To make a better show – at the Master of the Palace’s suggestion – we rode horses.

This time, our greeting at the gate was utterly different, and we were ushered directly to the main hall after a very embarrassed captain of the guard had given me his personal apologies in the most astoundingly bad Persian. I left Brasidas to attempt conversation, and one of my multilingual borrowed slaves.

After all, it seemed like a golden opportunity to gather some information. I no longer believed we had a chance of convincing the Great King to keep his armies out of Greece, and that, in turn, meant that our next duty was the collection of information.

And then I went to meet Sallis’s sister.

The main hall was ablaze with torches and lined in heavy columns of green marble shot with white. Two of the columns had gold – actual gold – inlaid in them, and they framed the lady as she sat in splendour on a dais, surrounded by women in magnificent layered robes.

Not a fat merchant’s wife, then.

There were a dozen armoured men in the spaces between the heavy pillars. The warm air was spiced with incense, and the women around her were beautiful. She herself was no older than twenty-five, and she wore enough gold to pay a taxeis of mercenaries for a year. Her eyes were slightly slanted in the Eastern way, almond-shaped and black. Her brows were also jet black and they shone against her skin, which seemed as if it was golden in the torchlight.

I gave her the bow I had not given to Hydarnes, touching my right knee briefly to the marble floor.

She rose from her throne – it looked like a throne to me – and came forward and took my hand and kissed me – on the mouth.

‘A guest-friend of my brother! Staying with the Persians! I assume you found my house unacceptable, and I am mortified.’

A clever person can say one thing and mean another. She spoke excellent Persian – better than mine – and to me, her meaning was clear –
We’ve had a misunderstanding and it is time to move on.

Her kiss burned on my lips.

I met her eye, and like Gorgo, she looked back without flinching or dropping her eyes.

‘I am very sorry for any misunderstanding, my lady. Your brother asked me to carry his letters, but said nothing further.’

She smiled at me. ‘Of course he did not. And I understand that you are guests of the Great King, and thus it may be more politic to stay in the Great King’s palace and not share my poor food and flea-ridden beds.’ She curtsied. ‘I am flattered that you have come at all, and hope my poor house is worthy to receive you.’

I sighed. ‘I am but a foolish barbarian and your sarcasm is wasted on me,’ I said.

She leaned in close. ‘I have never found sarcasm to be wasted on a Greek,’ she said. She made a motion with her hand, and the soldiers marched away. ‘We will be served a private dinner. Will you dismiss your slaves?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘But several of them are not slaves. The young man and the boy are free men – my shield bearer and helmet bearer. Noble youths.’

Women came forward. ‘They will be suitably entertained,’ she said.

As private dinners go, it was tolerably public. I think I counted forty servants waiting on us. We dined in a tent made of gauze, which admitted the light of sunset and the breeze, but kept the insects at bay, although every tray of food coming into the tent probably brought a new battalion. We had six courses and wines, and as the evening wore on, the need for privacy seemed tolerably remote.

Despite which, Sallis’s sister Arwia was beautiful. It was more than beauty, however. I was captivated as soon as I heard her speak, and nothing about her was less than desirable, so that as the meal wore on, I had to count horses and stare at servants and at one point excused myself and walked around her garden.

Nor did the lady in question do anything to encourage me, beyond meeting my eye from time to time and laughing a great deal. Few things encourage a man like a woman who will laugh at his jokes.

She was a fine listener, and not just a slavish one. I have known women who ask questions automatically, because they have learned that it is their role to entertain men, and men like few things better than to talk about themselves. No – you needn’t deny it. But Arwia asked questions and then asked further questions, searching, probing – sometimes mocking, sometimes dismissive or even acerbic.

She would stare into my eyes and ask another question, and another, and it was as if she were getting closer to me. She was not. She sat cross-legged on the other side of a low table and each of us also had a sort of elbow table where slaves placed our wine. We were separated by the table and by cushions, as both of us half sat and half reclined, and for part of the meal, owing to a religious custom, she sat partially screened by a fine net.

It did not screen her eyes, or her voracious questions.

‘You are Jawan?’ she asked, quite early.

We had to feel our way through Jawan, which turned out to have a meaning not too dissimilar to ‘Ionian’. In fact, it turns out to be the Babylonian/Assyrian word for Greeks – if you allow that Asian Ionians are Greeks.

When I thought about it, it was rather the way we kept expecting Persians to behave like their cousins, the Scythians.

We then passed half an hour as I described the Greek world, and the Mediterranean. She listened with perfect attention and at one point summoned a slave to write some things down.

‘Where is Sparta?’ she asked. Sparta was, it turned out, the only western Greek city of which she’d heard, and when I told her that it was scarcely a city, but more like an assembly of four rural towns, and that the greatest cities in the Greek world were Athens and Corinth, she shrugged. She’d heard of Corinth, and sent a slave to get a jar, which proved to be the old Corinthian ware of my grandfather’s time.

‘There used to be just such a pitcher on my mother’s table,’ I said.

‘What happened to it?’ she asked.

‘My brother knocked it off the table with his elbow,’ I admitted.

‘Ah! You have a brother. How old is he?’ she asked.

In truth, I scarcely ever thought of him, but I said, ‘He has been dead since I was thirteen. Twenty years or so.’

‘How did he die?’ she asked, tearing at a round of unleavened bread with which to take her next course of food.

‘A Spartan killed him,’ I said.

‘And then your people were conquered by the Spartans?’ she asked. ‘And yet you are the lord of the embassy, and the Spartans are your servants.’

I think I nearly spat my wine, and I’m glad that none of my Spartan friends were there to hear her. ‘We are allies,’ I said. ‘The Spartans never conquered us. We came to an equitable peace.’

She snorted. ‘Equitable peace?’ she asked. ‘What’s that?’

Occasionally I used the wrong Persian word. It was not my first language, or hers, so we had some very funny confusions.

And through it all, she ate. This woman, who was not very much above five feet in height, managed to eat every bit as much as I ate. She drank wine, and the wine was particularly odd – heavily spiced, with odd ingredients. The more of it I drank the more awake I became, the more fluent I felt, and the more intoxicated I became with my hostess.

Her eyes had begun to shine in a way that women’s eyes are spoken of by the poets, but seldom appear. I had just paid her some compliment – flattered her beauty, I suspect, and she put a hand to her mouth and giggled like a girl.

‘Among the Jawan, do you use the poppy in wine?’ she asked.

I shook my head. ‘No. We water our wine, and sometimes we add spice or honey if the wine is a trifle off. Poppy juice is for medicine.’

‘Hemp seeds?’ she asked. ‘Lotus flowers?’

I shook my head. ‘I have heard of all these things being given to wounded men,’ I said, ‘Or women in childbirth.’

She giggled again.

We drank more wine.

We had some amazing confection of ground pistachio and almond in honey – at least, that’s what I think it was. It filled me with energy, and I began to talk very quickly. By then we were on to war, and I was explaining – probably with wide-mouthed pomposity – the manner in which Greeks made war.

She nodded. And asked about our siege equipment.

‘How would a Greek army go about taking Babylon?’ she asked.

I remember being amused. ‘No Greek army could get here,’ I said.

‘We have had Jawan mercenaries. Good men – as good as Carians. Head to toe in bronze.’ She was lying back, now, and her eyes were almost slits.

‘And you have an army many times as great as any Greek army I’ve ever seen,’ I said.

She waved dismissively. ‘The Persians beat us like a drum,’ she said. ‘They killed my oldest brother and my husband. And unlike you, my dear, I do not forgive or forget.’

A slave came and removed the screen that separated us, and the table.

Another slave put an iced dish next to me. I ate it. It was superb. It was iced berries in some sort of frozen water, like snow. It may even have been snow. On a hot summer night amidst incense burners, an iced drink makes you feel you are one with the gods.

‘If the army were beaten, my Greeks would still not be great enough to surround this city,’ I said.

She was half asleep. ‘The Persians can surround us utterly. They can bring a hundred thousand men – two hundred thousand.’

‘No king on earth can feed two hundred thousand men and all their slaves and pack animals,’ I said.

She sat up. ‘Yes, he can,’ she said. ‘He can fill the plains from here to Ninivet with men. The Great King can raise a million men – and feed them.’ She lay back. ‘I know. You must believe me.’

I shrugged. Always humour a lady. ‘I’m not sure there are a million Greek hoplites,’ I said. ‘Or even a hundred thousand.’

She shook her head lazily. ‘But you have a great fleet,’ she said.

I thought of Athens and Aegina – mortal foes. ‘Only if we can agree among ourselves,’ I said.

About this time it began to dawn on me that I was very drunk. And further, that all the lights were gone except the oil lamps on our elbow tables. And finally – that we were alone.

She rose on one elbow and looked at me. ‘You have fewer than a hundred thousand soldiers?’ she asked.

I nodded.

‘And ships? Five hundred triremes?’ she asked.

‘In the whole world of the Hellenes, there are not four hundred triremes,’ I said. ‘Perhaps if we were allied to Gelon of Syracusa.’

‘He is Jawan?’ she asked.

It was my turn to wave dismissively. ‘Not really,’ I answered.

‘How many soldiers does
your
city command?’ she asked, and for the first time she leaned towards me. Her unbound breasts pressed down against the fabric of her gown – a very fine linen.

‘Fifteen hundred on her best day,’ I said proudly.

She laughed – surprised and not well pleased. ‘And the Spartans?’ she asked.

I shrugged. ‘Five thousand Spartans. Perhaps thirty thousand Peloponnesian allies.’ I leaned forward too.

I knew she was working me for information. But I could not see her as an ally of the Great King. And I wanted her. I just kept leaning a little closer.

She laughed, and her breath was warm and wine-scented on my face. ‘You will fight the Great King with four hundred ships and fifty thousand men!’ she said. ‘You are insanely stupid or very brave.’

I leaned one more inch and put my lips on hers.

For a long time – perhaps three or four beats of our hearts – our lips just touched.

And then she gave a little moan of pleasure and rolled off her pillows and into my arms.

We kissed for a long time. I had just moved my hand to roll my thumb around her nipple when she looked up into my face.

‘How soon could your fleet attack?’ she asked.

Perhaps the most erotic question I’ve ever been asked.

No one interrupted us. Allow me to say that as a nobly born widow in Babylon, the lady had no strictures to her behaviour – she entertained me quite publicly, and bragged that she’d set a fashion for having a foreign soldier as a lover.

Let me also say that she was beautiful. Her shoulders and neck were muscular – she was, in fact, a passionate huntress and archer – and her great dark eyes and shining black hair were magnificent.

She never stopped. In the middle of the most indecent intimacy, she would turn her head almost all the way around and say, ‘Where do the Jawans get their golden hair?’ or equally, ‘Can you sail from the Jawan seas to our sea?’

Her passion – besides the obvious – was revenge on Persia for the death of her husband, whom she had obviously loved very much. He had been a senior military commander, and had been executed. She could tell me about him while I fondled her. She could chat about the possibility of a Babylonian revolt . . . Never mind. I’ll make you all blush. And it was the possibility of the Babylonians revolting again that got me to tell all this in the first place.

She wanted me to bring my fleet to the aid of her city.

I related all this – less the salacious details – the next day to my Athenian and Spartan friends while we played Polis in the sunshine. I had had no sleep at all, and somewhere deep in the morning, Arwia had admitted to me that I’d been drinking drugged wine since the evening began.

Brasidas snorted his wine.

Bulis looked away.

Sparthius laughed his easy laugh. ‘Trust you to get a princess while the rest of us are bitten by insects.’

Aristides raised an eyebrow. ‘I will leave to the side the abrogation of your responsibility to your guest-friend for the preservation of his sister’s honour,’ he said coldly.

For perhaps the first and last time, Bulis rolled his eyes.

I looked down. ‘I promise you that the lady’s reputation will suffer no harm from me,’ I said. ‘Customs here are different.’

Aristides sniffed.

Bulis leaned towards me. ‘If the Babylonians are really ready to revolt,’ he said. He looked around.