Creation (83 page)

I have no idea whatever became of my sons. Caraka would have sent me messages if he had thought I was still alive. But I assume he believed Ambalika when she announced my death.

From the Egibis I used to get news of Ajatashatru. The war with Avanti proved to be quite as long and indecisive as the war with the Licchavi republic had been. Finally, in the ninth year of Xerxes’ reign, Ajatashatru died what was said to be a natural death. Since the succession was confused, the makeshift empire that he had created in the Gangetic plain promptly fell apart.

When I think of India, gold flares in the darkness behind the lids of these blind eyes. When I think of Cathay, silver gleams and I see again, as if I were really seeing, silver snow fall against silver willows.

Gold and silver; darkness now.

IN THE SPRING OF THE EIGHTH YEAR of the reign of Xerxes, I came up to Susa after six years at the east and at the east of the east. The eager young man who had set out from Bactria no longer existed. A middle-aged specter rode through the gates of Susa. I was surprised that people could actually see me. I was not at all surprised that no one recognized me. Since I had been given up for dead years before, I was a ghost to the court Worse, I was a ghost to myself.

But my sense of Unreality was soon dispelled or, rather, replaced by the unreality of the world that I had come back to. Nothing was the same. No, that is not quite true. The chancellery was the same, as I discovered when I was received in the second room by a sub-chamberlain whom I had known when he was wine bearer in the harem. He was a Syrian who liked to know everything. He was often teased because he asked so many questions. He was feared because he never forgot the answers.

“This is most unsettling, King’s Friend.” The eunuch used my last remaining title. The clerks of the first room had been quick to tell me that I was no longer king’s eye. “Naturally, we are pleased to see you. But ...” He did not finish.

I answered for him. “I’ve been legally declared dead, and my estate has been seized by the treasury.”

“Not by the treasury. Or at least only a small portion. Your distinguished mother has the bulk of your property.”

“She is alive?”

“Very much so. She’s with the court at Sardis.”

“Sardis?” I was surprised. “Since when does the Great King hold court at Sardis?”

“You’ve not heard
any
news?” The second room looks upon a garden. I noticed that spring was late.

“Very little. I know that the Greek wars were continued. I know that the Great King burned Athens to the ground.” I had learned this in Shravasti from an agent of the Egibis. “Beyond that I know nothing.”

“Much,” said the sub-chamberlain, “has happened.”

This proved to be an understatement. Shortly after I left for Cathay, Xerxes had asked the priests of Bel-Marduk to make him a present of certain gold objects in their treasury. “I asked for nothing of a sacred nature,” he told me. “Even so, they refused. I was altogether too lenient. I put nobody to death. But I did confiscate a number of gold odds and ends and melted them down to make darics to pay for the Greek wars. Then I went up to Susa.”

Several weeks after Xerxes left Babylon, one of the innumerable pretenders to that ancient throne was encouraged by the priests of Bel-Marduk to declare himself king of Babel, which he did. He put to death our hideous old friend Zopyrus. Then he himself was killed by a rival who held off the Persian army for more than a year. Finally, Babylon fell to Xerxes’ brother-in-law and best general Megabyzus, son of the murdered satrap Zopyrus.

“The Great King’s vengeance was terrible,” said the sub-chamberlain, shaking his head with awe. “He melted down the statue of Bel-Marduk so that no one can ever again take the statue’s hand. Then he tore down all the temples to Bel-Marduk and dismissed those priests that he did not kill. Next, he tore down the city walls. He razed the ziggurat. He confiscated the lands and property of the leading merchants—”

“Including that of the Egibis?”

“No.” The eunuch smiled. “Egibi and sons is now established here at Susa. Then the Great King split Babylonia into two satrapies and abolished the title king of Babel. Now he styles himself, simply, ‘Xerxes the Great King.’ Today Babylon is a provincial city, and a thousand years of history are at an end.”

“Where does the court winter now?”

“Persepolis.”

“Which is freezing in the winter.”

The eunuch sighed. “We are loyal slaves.” He intoned the usual formula, which I repeated.

When I asked what had become of all those tonnes of gold from Babylon, I was told that they had been used for the invasion of Greece. “Used—and used up, I fear,” said the eunuch. “Those wars have been ruinous!”

“But successful. Athens has been destroyed.”

“Oh, yes! Yes!” But the eunuch’s enthusiasm was plainly false. Close questioning revealed a part of the story which is so well known here at Athens that I only repeat it, Democritus, to give you a glimpse of how it looked to the other side.

Xerxes himself commanded the invasion. He proceeded overland from Sardis. With him were three of the six army corps, or sixty thousand men—not six million or whatever number Herodotus came up with in order to flatter the Athenians. The entire fleet accompanied the army.

The Greeks were in a state of panic. Since the oracles at Delphi and Athens all agreed that the Great King was invincible, it was suggested that the Athenians might be well advised to surrender their city and move onto Italy. As an afterthought, the oracle at Delphi said that the city’s wooden walls might be of use. That was when the ill-favored and ill-regarded Themistocles chose, somewhat tortuously, to interpret the phrase wooden walls to mean wooden ships.

But the eunuch from the chancellery only knew the court’s version of the war, which he told me. “Exactly two years ago this month, the Great King was at Troy, where he sacrificed a thousand cattle to the Trojan goddess.”

This was a shock. I had just been delighted to learn that Xerxes by rejecting the titles pharaoh of Egypt and king of Babel had rejected those countries’ gods. But then, for reasons of drama rather more than of politics, he had made a crucial sacrifice not to the Wise Lord but to a Trojan goddess whose name not even the eunuch could remember.

“But the point to the sacrifice was well taken, King’s Friend. As you know best of all, the Great King has learned by heart a good deal of the Greek Homer. So, after the sacrifice, he stood among the old ruins and said, ‘I shall avenge Troy, destroyed by invading Greeks. I shall avenge my ancestor, Priam the king. I shall avenge all Asia for the wanton cruelties of the Greeks. As the Greeks attacked Asia to bring back a Spartan whore, I shall attack them in order to wash out a stain of dishonor that has been upon us for so many generations. Athens will burn, as Troy burned. Athens will burn, as Sardis burned. Athens will burn, and I myself shall set the torch. I am retribution. I am justice. I am Asia.’ ” Then the armies of Persia crossed the Hellespont into Europe.

Xerxes’ rationale for the invasion of Greece was ingenious. Since there is not a Greek anywhere on earth who does not take personal pride in the barbarous attack that his ancestors made on the Asiatic city of Troy, the Great King now held all the Greeks responsible for the sins of their ancestors. Xerxes was quite sincere in all this. He truly believed that, sooner or later, the gods—which don’t, of course, exist—demand a strict accounting for any evil done them.

At first, the war went well. Fleet and army in perfect coordination came down the coast of Thessaly. En route, a king of Sparta was killed with all his men. Four months after Xerxes made his speech at Troy, he was in Attica. The Athenian leader Themistocles ordered the evacuation of the city. Most of the men went on board those ships which were, he said, Athens’ wooden walls. Carefully, Themistocles conformed to the letter if not the spirit of the oracle at Delphi, and most Athenians chose to agree with him. They had no choice. Since the Persian forces were invincible, it was either flight by sea or death on land.

In the presence of Xerxes, the city of Athens was burned to the ground and Troy—not to mention Sardis—was avenged. Meanwhile, Themistocles was in secret communication with Xerxes. The Athenian commander made the usual Greek requests for land and money, and Xerxes was more than willing to indulge this wily enemy. As a demonstration of good faith, Themistocles told Xerxes that since the Greek fleet was preparing to set sail for Sicily, Xerxes must attack immediately if he wanted a total victory. Curiously enough, only Queen Artemisia suspected a trap. She had, by the way, got her wish, and personally commanded the forces of Halicarnassus. Although she was incompetent in the field, she was a shrewd analyst of the Greek mind. Incidentally, whenever Artemisia went into battle, she wore an artificial beard, modeled on Mardonius’ natural one. Although deeply annoyed by this travesty, he never complained.

Despite Artemisia’s warning, Xerxes gave the order to attack. One third of the Persian fleet was lost because of the disloyalty or incompetence of certain Phoenician captains. When Xerxes rightly punished these officers, the remaining Phoenician and Egyptian commanders deserted and Persia was left with half a fleet. Yet on land we were supreme, and Attica was ours. Nevertheless, the double-dealing Themistocles was given credit by all the Greeks for a great naval victory. What began as an act of treachery on his part ended as the so-called salvation of Greece.

Xerxes did not blame Themistocles for the debacle. How could he? The Greeks did not win. The Persians lost, thanks to those Phoenician captains. Themistocles then warned Xerxes that the advance guard of the Athenian fleet had set sail for the Hellespont, with orders to destroy the bridge between Europe and Asia. In order to protect the bridge, Xerxes hurried overland to Byzantium. On the way, he stayed overnight with my grandfather at Abdera, a great honor as well as a source of endless political trouble for Lais’ family. Even to this day, they are known as medizers.

Xerxes left one army corps in Greece, under the command of Mardonius. A second army corps guarded the long overland route from Attica to the Hellespont. A third army corps was used to maintain order in the Ionian cities.

Since Mardonius still controlled the Greek mainland, all those Greek leaders who were opposed to the administration at Athens came to his headquarters at Thebes. The anti-Persian Greeks were totally demoralized. Nevertheless, Mardonius was obliged to burn Athens a second time, as a lesson to the conservative party. Of all the Athenians, they alone refused to accept the Great King as their master. The demoralized conservatives continued to beg Sparta for help, but none was forthcoming. Traditionally, Spartans are faithless allies. Also, and perhaps more to this particular point, Sparta’s leaders are usually in the pay of Persia.

For a time it looked as if Mardonius had succeeded in his mission. But then the Spartan regent Pausanias became greedy. Suddenly, finding the moon in an auspicious position, he led the Spartan army into Attica and asked Mardonius to make him a present of a chest of gold, upon whose receipt he would withdraw. But Mardonius wanted a total victory over Sparta and its Greek allies. He did not pay the gold. He, too, was greedy—for honor. By allowing his ruling passion avarice to be overruled by love of glory, he destroyed himself. It is always a mistake to act out of character.

Mardonius attacked the Spartan army. The Spartans were routed. But when they tried to flee, they found that the road back to the Peloponnesus was blocked by our troops and that their supplies of food had all been seized. Mardonius had got his wish. Greece was his. But he wanted to make one final triumphant gesture. Astride a white charger, Mardonius led the final attack against the remnants of the Spartan army. In the melee, the white charger was killed and Mardonius was thrown to the ground. Before he could get to his feet—a slow matter, for he was very lame—a Greek smashed in his head with a rock. So died my friend Mardonius, who had dreamed of the sea-lordship of all the isles, who had wanted to be master of all the Greeks. If any death can be called good, Mardonius’ was. Not only did he die instantly, he died believing that he had got his wish and that Greece was indeed his. Mysteriously, the body was never found. Over the years, Mardonius’ son was to spend a fortune in the search for his father’s bones.

On the field of Plataea, the false Pausanias was declared the savior of all Greece. Meanwhile, Ionia had gone into rebellion, and Mardonius’ army corps—commanded now by Artabazus—was obliged to return to Asia, where a good part of the Persian fleet had been destroyed on the beach of Cape Mycale. Worse, two Persian army corps had been overwhelmed by Greeks. It is ironic that the decisive military victory which the Greek allies could never achieve on their own ground in Europe was unexpectedly theirs less than a hundred miles to the west of the Great King and his court at Sardis.

With amazement, I listened to the sub-chamberlain’s account of all the disasters that had befallen Persia. “And that is why,” he said, as if in explanation, “the Great King will not come up to Susa until the beginning of summer, when his son Darius is to be married.”

“The Greek wars are over,” I said. What more could be said? Mardonius is dead, I thought to myself. Youth is over.

The sub-chamberlain shrugged. “They say that Pausanias wants to make himself king of Greece. If he should try, we may be in for a very long war indeed.”

“Or for a very long peace.”

We were joined by an elderly eunuch whom I had known when I was a child in the harem. Warmly, we greeted each other. Then he said, “You may attend her now.”

“Her?” I looked at him stupidly.

“The queen mother, yes.”

“Alive?” I could not believe it.

Nor could Atossa. She had shrunk to the size of a child’s doll—and like a doll’s, the head was now far too large for the fragile, diminished body.

Atossa lay in a silver bed at the foot of the statue of Anahita. As I prostrated myself she raised one hand for an instant; then let it fall onto the coverlet. Thus was I greeted.