The Last King of Lydia (21 page)

No one stopped him on his journey across the camp, the few sentries he passed nodding to him without interest. They were used to the king’s slave being summoned at all hours, day and
night. Distant at first, then drawing closer, he saw the ring of torches that identified the king’s open-air council for that night.

Cyrus ruled a nomad’s court, and whether it was in a forest clearing or the burned-out palace of a conquered king, he did not seem to care. He had spent his life as a king travelling at
the head of an army, never remaining in the same place for more than a few days, for Cyrus was the only centre the kingdom had, his army its capital city. Not content with the half-dozen throne
rooms that Croesus enjoyed in Sardis, he travelled through his empire scattering thousands of them, seeding the earth with ghostly courts that were used once and never again, marking his kingdom
like an animal.

Cyrus’s court that night was bounded by a circle of tall torches thrust into the ground. At the edge of this circle, his bodyguards slouched on the ground like idle dogs, as if mocking the
rigid attention of the ordinary soldiers. Croesus had seen them move fast enough to know that their indolence was merely an act. In the centre, a leaning stone the height of a small child served as
a throne: the only feature that marked this circle out from the arid plains that stretched out in every direction.

When Croesus had left the court a few hours before, dismissed by the king to go and sleep, the gathering had been relaxed. A few issues of future strategy lightly discussed, without any sense of
impending catastrophe. But there was now an air of near panic. The men of the court spoke over and across each other all at once. Some shouted each other down, others gathered at the edge of the
circle and whispered to one another. Only Cyrus was calm, waiting patiently and silently in the middle of the circle like a man waiting for a storm to blow itself out. He alone noted
Croesus’s arrival.

‘Ah, Croesus,’ he said, his slightly raised voice a sign for the others to fall silent. ‘How good of you to join us.’

All eyes turned to Croesus. He dropped his eyes to the ground. ‘You sent for me?’

‘Yes I did. Cyraxes? Tell him.’

The old man cleared his throat. ‘An emissary from Sparta has reached the camp,’ he said. ‘We didn’t know he was in the country, let alone this close to us.’ He shot
a glance at Harpagus. ‘Our spies, it seems, are not as infallible as some have claimed.’

Harpagus ignored him. ‘I still think we should dispose of him. We have nothing to fear if he doesn’t report back to his master.’

‘Kill an emissary? Can you think of a more foolish idea?’

‘He knows too much.’

‘And whose fault is that?’

‘You don’t have to repeat what we all know,’ Harpagus said. ‘If you have nothing else to say, keep quiet.’

‘It is your failing that—’

‘Enough.’ Cyrus did not raise his voice, but the word cut through the air and brought silence with it. The king turned to Croesus and smiled thinly. ‘So. The Spartans are
considering an expedition across the sea.’

‘What happens if they do?’

‘They will join with the Ionians, and we cannot stand against such an alliance. If they come, I expect we will fight a bloody war and be destroyed, Croesus. More fathers burying sons, as
you once said.’

‘What can I do?’

Cyrus pointed to a place beside his throne. ‘Kneel at my side, and don’t speak unless I tell you to.’

Slowly, his body still unused to responding to such commands, Croesus did as he was told.

‘Good.’ Cyrus looked at Harpagus. ‘Admit him to our presence.’ He looked around the circle. ‘And the rest of you, be quiet. You stink of fear. If you can’t
control yourselves, then leave.’

The court settled, and a single figure approached from the darkness. The bodyguards gave him the briefest of glances as he passed them, but Croesus saw them tense, their hands disappearing into
the folds of their robes.

Croesus looked at the emissary, and recognized the man. It was Lakrines, the Spartan who had come to his court, many years before, when he was a king who could still dream of empires. The
Spartan’s hard face had not changed, though now he wore his hair long, down far past his shoulders, and Croesus wondered what strange new custom had prompted the change. He dropped his head
and studied the ground, but Lakrines paid no attention to a slave. He had eyes only for Cyrus.

The Persian king looked at the emissary and said nothing, stretching out the silence at his leisure. ‘You bring a message?’ he said at last.

‘I do.’

‘And what is it?’

‘The kings of Sparta command you to withdraw from these lands, and return to the east, Cyrus. That is all.’

Cyrus stared at him blankly for a moment. Then he asked, ‘Who are the Spartans?’

The emissary must have anticipated many responses, but not this one. Eventually, he smiled thinly. ‘You are joking, I think.’

‘I have never heard of you.’

‘We are the greatest warriors in the world, Cyrus. The most powerful of the Hellenes. You would do well to listen to us.’

‘Your fame, I’m afraid, has not crossed the sea to reach me. I think you are a long way from Sparta, to be giving commands to a king.’

‘I have seen your army. We have little to fear from you.’

‘Perhaps you should speak more carefully.’

‘We both know you won’t harm me, Cyrus.’

‘Do we?’ Cyrus looked off into the distance and said nothing for a time. Without looking back at the emissary, he said, ‘Tell me, what lies at the centre of your
city?’

The Spartan narrowed his eyes. ‘A market square, where the tradesmen gather. What does that matter?’

‘I thought so. You see, in Persia, we have no such thing. We do our business behind closed doors. We do not make a god of trade. You claim to be great warriors. I do not know your people,
but I have no fear of a nation of men who have a place to meet, swear this and that and spend all day cheating one another. Yours is a nation of merchants, not warriors.’

‘You cannot frighten me with insults, Cyrus. We have the blessing of the Gods. Our oracle says that we will win a great victory if we fight against Persia.’

‘Really?’ Cyrus said. ‘Tell me, did they say
when
you would achieve this great victory?’

The Spartan hesitated. ‘No.’

‘Croesus, look up,’ Cyrus said. ‘You recognize this man, Spartan?’

‘Yes.’ Lakrines inclined his head slightly. ‘I am sorry to see you this way, Croesus.’ He looked back to the king. ‘I suppose it is true what they say, if you would
treat Croesus like this.’

‘And what do they say?’

‘That every man in Persia is a slave to the king.’

Cyrus laughed. ‘Tell this man of prophecies, Croesus,’ he said. ‘Tell him about the favour you asked from me, two years ago, when I made you my slave.’

Croesus swallowed, and let his eyes drop back to the ground. ‘For the boon you granted me, I asked you to send my chains to Delphi,’ he said slowly. ‘I had made many sacrifices
to them. They told me if I went to war I would destroy a great empire, and that my people would rule Lydia until a mule sat on the throne of Media.’ He shook his head. ‘I wanted to know
why their God had betrayed me.’

‘And what did they tell you?’ Cyrus said.

He closed his eyes against the memory. ‘They told me that the great empire I was to destroy was my own. And that you, the child of a Mede mother and a Persian father, were the mule that
the prophecy described.’

Cyrus looked back at the emissary. ‘Your prophecies are no use against me,’ he said. ‘Look what your Oracle did for Croesus. You think that you can travel across the sea, and
wage a war against me without consequence. Have an adventure in the East. If you win, you can take my empire. If you lose, why, then you may retreat, and come back another time. Croesus thought the
same. You think I am too far away to come and wage war against you. You are wrong. Cross the sea to face me, and after I have broken your army, I will travel halfway across the world to find your
cities and burn them to the ground. That is my promise to you.’

‘Cyrus—’

‘You may tell your kings,’ Cyrus continued, ‘that if they come here, I will put a collar on them both and have them kneeling at my side, like this slave who was once a king.
Tell them I am a king who makes slaves of kings. Perhaps, one day, your people will win a great victory against mine. But not yet.’ He made a small gesture with his hand. ‘You may
go.’

The Spartan opened his mouth to speak, but, looking once again at Croesus, he hesitated, and remained silent. He bowed, looked for one last time at the man who had been king of Lydia, then
turned and marched out of the circle and into the darkness. There was silence in the court.

‘Do you think that will succeed?’ Cyrus said to Harpagus, when the emissary was out of sight.

Croesus had never seen Harpagus smile. His lips seemed to twitch; perhaps this was as close as he got to a true smile. ‘I think it will,’ the general said.

‘A fine performance, my lord,’ Cyraxes said. Others began to speak in praise, but Cyrus waved off the compliments.

‘We shall see what comes of it. It pains me to play the ignorant Eastern king. But a man who has never heard of the Spartans will have no fear of going to war against them.’ He
yawned. ‘Have our people watch him until he has left the country, and send word to our contacts in Sparta. If they are going to come, we must know of it. Send for that man Tabulus as well. It
is about time we gave him his orders. We’re going to put him in charge of your old kingdom, Croesus.’

Croesus did not reply. Cyrus looked at him, and for the first time Croesus saw hesitancy on the king’s face, something close to regret. Or perhaps he only imagined that he saw it.

Croesus bowed deeply, to hide his shame. ‘I am here to serve, master,’ he said.

Later, Croesus returned to the tent, stumbling with exhaustion as the first sign of dawn appeared on the horizon. He entered carefully. He did not want to wake the others.

When Cyrus had told him that the Persians did not like to keep slaves, he had thought it a piece of empty rhetoric. Yet he had spoken truthfully, for in Persia it was only those who were most
unfortunate, those cursed by the Gods, who found themselves the property of other men.

Half a dozen slaves shared the tent with him. They were the favourites of the court, each with his own particular function, some quality that made him too valuable to set free. One young man was
the lover of a Persian nobleman, pampered and spoiled by his infatuated master. A few years of beauty were left to him before he would be discarded for another and cast out to be a catamite for the
soldiers; he spent his days staring at his reflection in pools of water and polished stones, watching for the slightest sign of ageing. Another of the slaves had been a poet as a free man, and was
lucky that Cyraxes had a weakness for the epic. But the old man never liked to hear the same poem twice, and so the poet chased around the camp searching for a poem he did not know, or spent hours
in the tent in a fever of forced composition. Each of them, like Croesus, was a plaything of one nobleman or another. Existing to entertain, and surviving on a whim. A single mistake would be
enough for them to be cast out.

Of the six, only one was awake, his eyes like two small white stones in the darkness.

‘What happened?’ Isocrates said.

Croesus hesitated. ‘Go back to sleep,’ he said. ‘I am sorry that I woke you.’

‘You didn’t wake me. That idiot stepped on me when he came to wake you up. What happened?’

Croesus looked at the others. ‘Don’t worry about them,’ Isocrates said. ‘Nothing disturbs the sleep of a slave.’

‘Cyrus wanted to show me off to an ambassador,’ Croesus said. ‘A Spartan.’ He smiled bitterly. ‘Lakrines. The same one who came to see me, when I was king. You
remember? The Gods have a cruel sense of humour.’

‘I remember him. What was that like?’

‘Humiliating.’ Croesus sat down and shook his head. ‘Every day, I think there is not another shame to endure. Now I am to be paraded. An exemplar of foolishness.’

‘Well, at least it is easy work.’

‘You think so?’

‘Ask the slaves in the mines, or the helots of Sparta. I’m sure one of them would be delighted to change places for a lifetime of humiliation.’

‘It might have stopped a war; at least that is what Cyrus said. I don’t think the Spartans will come now. That is something.’

‘Don’t be naïve. It might have stopped war with the Spartans. The wars in the north will come soon enough. Cyrus just wants them to be massacres, rather than battles.’

Croesus said nothing. Isocrates yawned. ‘What do you dream of, Croesus?’ he said.

‘What?’

‘I know you dream of something. Sometimes you cry out.’

‘Why do you want to know?

Isocrates thought for a moment. ‘I think I dreamed when I was younger. I don’t remember. I grew out of it, I suppose. I don’t think slaves dream much, as a rule.’ He
paused, then added, ‘I am curious as to what it is like.’

Croesus lay down, and curled his arms beneath his head. ‘It is usually the same dream,’ he said, speaking slowly and softly.

‘Not always?’

‘No. I dream of many things. But usually, when I dream, I see a palace of fire.’

‘There’s nothing but fire?’

‘No. Everything else is dark. Like the sky without stars.’

‘You are in pain, I take it.’

‘No. Not at first. I can reach out to the walls, and they are quite cool to touch. The air is cold, like standing under trees in winter. I feel quite calm. There is no rush to move on. No
fear.’ He paused, then said, ‘Perhaps it is worth what comes after in the dream, just to enjoy those moments of peace.’ He stopped again, expecting some sharp comment from
Isocrates, but there was silence. ‘Are you still awake?’ he said.

‘Go on, I’m listening.’

‘I walk through the palace. It is like a labyrinth, and I take a different route each night. There must be thousands of paths through the maze. Ten thousand different combinations of
turnings that I can take. I go a different way each time. I am nowhere near to exploring them all. But it doesn’t matter. Whichever way I go, I always reach the centre.’