The Great King (38 page)

And then we were in the women’s palace. I knew what it must be as soon as we were in the doors – women smell different from men, and I don’t mean perfume. It was a different reek – laundry and kohl instead of sweat and leather.

We were taken down a short corridor and up two narrow flights of stairs where our spears were very inconvenient, and then into a room where we were in the presence of a dozen masked guardsmen. The room was lit by a hundred oil lamps and the walls were frescoed with pictures of bulls.

The guard parted to reveal Atosa, the Queen Mother.

I bowed to the floor, complete with my hand touching the stone.

She smiled, and her face was beautiful. She must have been only slightly older than forty, with access to every refinement, and she was lithe and smooth skinned. She wore long robes of silk, in layers, and her face was bare. She wore a silk tiara edged in gold and silk trousers that disguised very little of the shape of her legs, and behind her, on pillows, were a dozen of her ladies, each prettier than the last, with arched eyebrows and straight noses and sparkling eyes – I doubt that in fifty years of sailing the bowl of the earth I’ve seen so many beautiful women in one place.

Despite which, my eyes were only for the Queen Mother.

She stood looking at me. She gave me a small smile and the most fractional inclination of her head, and then she turned to Aristides.

‘You are the great lord of Athens, whom my son has chosen to ignore?’ she asked.

Aristides bowed. ‘My lady, I am an exile.’

She nodded. ‘I lack the time to play this kind of game, Athenian lord. My son is on the edge of a great error, and he is badly counselled.’

Aristides was not at his best with women. He was on edge – but he rallied. ‘My lady, I cannot pretend to negotiate for Athens,’ he began.

She snapped her fingers. ‘I do not care a fig for Athens,’ she said. ‘It may endure my son’s wrath or it may go on to future greatness, and it is all one to me, if only my son does not fritter away our birthright and our empire on overextending his power.’ She looked at me. ‘Mardonius intends to take you and murder you – tonight. His people and mine are playing a deadly game of hide and seek even now.’ She smiled. ‘My two unfortunate men are both making good recoveries. May I say that – despite any consequences – had you killed them, I’d have fed you to the dogs.’

I nodded. ‘I think your dogs would have found me stringy,’ I said.

‘I’m a little past my prime, myself,’ Aristides said – you can tell the depth of his discomfort by the fact that he actually managed a witticism.

She waved our attempts at lightness away. ‘I will not allow Mardonius any more power over my son.’

I had to try. ‘O Queen of Persia, is there any way in which we can – by explanation or discussion – prevent this war?’

She pursed her lips. ‘I do not want my son to commit an act that might damn him with our gods,’ she said. ‘And I would do much to help Artapherenes, who stood by my husband at all times. But please do not imagine that I wish to see anything but the destruction of Athens. Let every stone be torn from every other stone. Let her temples be destroyed as ours of Sardis were destroyed.’

So much for peace.

Only then – in the Queen Mother’s apartments in Susa – did I fully understand that we’d never had a chance. The Ionian Revolt, the burning of Sardis, the destruction of Euboea and the Battle of Marathon were like stepping stones across a raging torrent – and each step took us closer to the moment when the Great King’s armies marched.

‘I will save your lives,’ she said. ‘But I will applaud when I hear that the Acropolis is afire.’

Aristides bowed. ‘O Queen,’ he said, ‘Athens has done nothing but defend herself and her people from your husband and now your son. I am sorry for the wreck of Sardis. It was ill done. I was there, and I would have prevented it if I could have. Your own sometime subjects, the Ionians, were the guilty parties. And I stood on the plains of Marathon and did my best to stop Datis and his army from sacking Athens – after seeing how he destroyed the cities of Euboea and sold her citizens into slavery.’

She cut him off with a wave of her hand. ‘Please. Save your breath. I care nothing for your arguments, nor am I here to negotiate. I had you brought here because Mardonius would never dare search my apartments. Now you can escort me to my summer palace, and I will, I hope, never have to see you again.’

Cyrus bowed. ‘Great Lady, what of my men, and the other Greeks?’

She smiled. I suspected she would make a terrible enemy. ‘I have them all safe,’ she said. ‘The Spartans were taken on the very steps of the throne room. Your men, their horses and all their kit await you in the mountains.’

Aristides nodded. ‘Then, Great Queen, what can we do but offer our thanks – as enemies?’

Her eyebrows raised. ‘Ah! Nicely said. Let us go. I have been pining for the mountains.’

We moved fast, and I have very little to relate beyond a tale of fatigue and near-complete disorientation. We filed down the main stairs and formed the escort around her litter, and she was carried in state across four courtyards to the royal stable block, where, to my astonishment, she mounted a horse.

She rode as well as Gorgo, or better. She rode astride, and she seemed one with her horse – and all of her decorative ladies mounted as well, a cavalcade of beautiful centaurs. Horses were brought for each of us, and Aristides proved an excellent horseman – no surprise.

‘Put the Greeks in the middle,’ the queen said. ‘They do not ride like us.’

Well – I suppose it is true. There was something . . . organic about the way Persians rode. We were stiffer. But then, I’ve never loved horses. Aristides did, and even in the torchlight he looked more like a Persian than I did.

Some things cause me more fear than others. I’ve never been great at public speaking – although I can manage a good thing on occasion – and this sort of escape probably caused me more fear than all the battles I’ve ever seen. We were stopped four times by soldiers – but on each occasion, a single glimpse of Atosa was enough to render the guards impotent, and our little caravan wound down the hill, through the streets, and out the northern gate. We rode in the moonlight along the river, and when the sun rose, we were already in rockier terrain, and there were hills rising on our left.

We rode all day until we reached an extensive horse farm. We changed horses in a stable attached to a fine estate, where Cyrus found his entire cavalry detachment, and I found the Spartan envoys, as well as Brasidas, Nikeas and Hector.

There was a great deal of back-slapping. I’m not sure, until we found each other in a barn north of Susa, that any of us expected to make it out alive.

Cyrus joined us where we were gathered. He drew me aside.

‘Atosa is leaving in half an hour. She intends to ride north into the hills. I would like to leave her here and go north and west across the Masabadan – the land of the Medes. By staying in the hills, we can avoid most of their searches and slip up the Euphrates to Dura.’ He waved at his men. ‘With twenty of the best, we’ll be fine – especially as Atosa has offered me sixty horses. A rich gift indeed.’

He watched me for moment. ‘You hesitate?’ he asked.

‘I had hoped to return via Babylon,’ I said.

‘Arwia’s palace will be watched – indeed, it was watched before you ever arrived. She is a snake, that one. She, not her husband, should have been given over to the sword.’ Cyrus shrugged. ‘I would not advise you to pass Babylon. Or rather – I will not go there, and I’m willing to compel you to come with me. I promised Artapherenes.’

I shrugged.

‘I promised Briseis, as well,’ Cyrus said.

‘Let me talk to my friends,’ I said.

I walked back to Brasidas, Aristides, Bulis and Sparthius. The two Spartan heralds were not good riders, but they’d had almost two months to harden, and they were better than they had been.

I laid out the choices for all of them.

Sparthius pointed at my trousers and laughed. ‘It really is hard to take you seriously that way,’ he said.

I pointed at his.

Aristides frowned. ‘Gentlemen, we are not schoolboys. Arimnestos, our duty is to return with what we have learned.’

I shrugged. ‘I confess I might be self-interested, but my thought was that Greece might be saved in Babylon.’

Brasidas nodded. ‘I think the same. Babylon is smoking like a pile of sticks just before they ignite.’ He narrowed his eyes. ‘I think I know how to provide the spark.’

I suspect I looked jealous. ‘You?’ I asked.

He laughed. ‘I have a message for a certain lady of Babylon from a former King of Sparta. Not all plots concern you, Plataean.’

Neither of the other two Spartans looked surprised.

But Aristides took me by the shoulder. ‘Brasidas knows his way around this plot,’ he said.

I looked at him, and he smiled. ‘I do, at that,’ he said. ‘I’ll go to Babylon. You go home and make the Greeks move.’

I suppose I might have protested more – but to be honest, I had had enough of the East. Babylon was a lush memory, but it was not a place for me.

Aristides – the least underhanded of men – nonetheless was the one to point out the flaw in our plan. ‘Cyrus will not want us to send aid to Babylon. He may be willing to help us, and happy to do Mardonius a disservice, but he’s still a loyal Persian officer.’

Brasidas cursed.

We all stood there under the sun, tired, dispirited despite our escape, in alien territory, heads down.

Very, very quietly, Hector spoke up. ‘You could . . . just say . . . you are going . . . er . . . back to Demaratus at Susa.’ Hector flushed. ‘I’m sorry, lords. But Cyrus knows that Brasidas . . . knows the Spartan king.’

Brasidas brightened. He smiled again, and Bulis tousled the boy’s hair.

‘Odysseus born again.’ He looked at Brasidas. ‘How will you get to Babylon? You don’t speak any language but Greek.’

‘It won’t work,’ I said. ‘You’ll never get there from here.’ I stared at them. ‘We have to go somewhere near Babylon – remember how far across the plain you can see it? Then Brasidas slips away and we cover for him by dressing Niceas here as a gentleman. We only need to give Brasidas a day’s head start.’ It occurred to me in a single breath – that I could slip away in the same way – and that I’d be missed much sooner than the taciturn Brasidas.

At parting, the queen sent me a guest-gift. Her chamberlain delivered it.

‘My mistress sends you this, a treasure of our house, that no Greek will be able to return to his people empty handed from the court of the Great King. She says – go, return to your homeland, and tell them of all you have seen, and the glory of the Great King, and tell them to give their earth and water and become loyal subjects.’ He bowed deeply – as if I were a great noble – and handed me a cedar box inlaid in silver.

I handed it to Niceas without looking at it.

The chamberlain sneered. ‘It will be the handsomest treasure in Greece. And you are too foreign to look at it? Or are you Greeks merely dead to beauty?’

Aristides vaulted into his saddle like a man twenty years younger. ‘We have beautiful things in Greece,’ he said. ‘Hills, valleys, waterfalls, the sea, and women.’ He shrugged. ‘We’re not much for treasures.’

Bulis laughed. ‘We’re too poor!’ he called.

And we rode away, leaving the chamberlain to his contempt. Myself, I think it was one of Aristides’ prettiest speeches.

So in the end, we all rode together, dressed as Medes – up into the high country west of Susa, up the valley of the Eualaeus, past the walls of Hulwan, and then down into the plains at Me-Turnat, a journey of almost fifteen days – some days so slow that at the end of the day we could see the previous day’s campsite in the clear air, and always short on water. We slept on the ground and hunted every day, and I was astounded to watch the facility with which the Persians shot from horseback.

Me-Turnat to Babylon is five hundred stades, and the roads were well marked. Indeed, we saw a column of spearmen, and when I spoke to their officer, he described his travels and in the process told us exactly how to reach the great city in the middle of the plain.

We began to ride due west across the plain, and summer was ending. In the mountains it had been cool, but here, despite the sun, the heat was also less, and the turning of the seasons reminded me that I had another two months’ journey to reach the coast, unless we took the Royal Road, which Cyrus feared to take. Even as it was, he wanted to skirt the plain instead of crossing it, staying at the fringes of the highlands.

When we reached Dura on the Tigris, the gods took a hand in our affairs, and sent us a pair of Phrygian merchants with a convoy of goods travelling by river to Babylon. They spoke Greek.

We pooled our money and Brasidas vanished on to the docks. There was no time or place for long farewells. I was afraid – afraid I was sending him to his death, and afraid that I was sending him to my fate when I could have done his job better. But Aristides was unrelenting in his insistence that my role was to get them all back to Greece. They were my ships, and, as he pointed out, my relationship with Artapherenes.

I watched him vanish into the untimely autumn rain with mixed feelings.

Late that night, Cyrus awakened us and dragged us out into the inn’s courtyard, on to horseback, and we were away, still blinking away sleep. He himself was already wet to the skin, and we rode north, cold, wet, miserable, and wondering what had occasioned this untimely ride. As the sun began to rise in a pale grey imitation of daylight, he came back down the column to me.

‘Apologies, old friend. The Great King has not forgotten you, and there are cavalrymen on the roads. Someone talked.’ He shrugged. ‘It is hard to hide half a dozen Greek men, no matter how I dress you.’

I passed this on to the other Greeks.

Aristides said quietly, ‘It couldn’t be better, despite the lost sleep. All we need to do is pretend that we don’t know where Brasidas is, either.’

I had a hard time adjusting to Aristides the schemer – a man I’d have said was unable to tell a falsehood of any kind. As it proved, he was full of deceit for those he perceived as his enemies. The next morning, he had me tell Cyrus that we’d lost Brasidas, and there followed a certain amount of bad playacting as we worried about him.