The Last King of Lydia (28 page)

‘I am running out of time. I have wasted so much of my life.’

‘And yet here is a year you might not have had otherwise. What is so wrong with that?’

‘There must be something more for me to do. Some task greater than survival. I won’t find it sitting on this river bank. I thought perhaps I would find it in Babylon. Who knows if we
will get there now?’ He paused, pulling up grass by the handful and letting the blades fall through his fingers, like grains of sand. ‘Do you know what Solon said about happiness? He
said he only counted a man happy when he could see all of his life, and especially how he died. What do you think of that?’

‘He might have been right. About death, at least.’

‘You really think so?’

‘Perhaps that is why the Gods created us. They can experience everything we can, and much more besides. They can travel to the heavens and the underworld, transform into a bull, a snake, a
shaft of light, a river or a thunderbolt. Shake the earth and reshape the seas. But they don’t know death.’

‘Very poetic,’ Croesus said dryly. ‘I’ve never heard you talk so much, and with so little sense. This river has done strange things to you.’

‘Oh, but think about it a little. This event that we shape our lives around, and do everything to avoid. It is so crucial, but the Gods cannot understand it. So they create us. Through us,
they get to observe death in countless different ways, and never have to experience it themselves.’

Croesus sighed, closed his eyes, and tried to enjoy the heat of the sun on his face.

‘By the way,’ Isocrates said, after a moment, ‘Solon invented him.’

‘Who?’

‘Tellus.’

‘What?’

‘The happiest man who ever lived,’ Isocrates said lightly. ‘He doesn’t exist. In my language, do you know what Tellus means? It can mean perfection. Or death. There was
never a man called Tellus, who lived well and died happy. I suppose Solon thought it was a good joke.’

Croesus stared at him. ‘How do you know this?’

‘He told me, of course. After he had spoken to you. I wish he hadn’t . . .’ Isocrates smiled. ‘You can imagine how I felt when you asked me to find out more about this
imaginary man. Years of being terrified that you would remember, and I would have no answer to give you.’

‘If I had found out . . .’

‘Yes, I know,’ Isocrates said. ‘You would have had me dragged over a carding comb, or done something even worse. But you cannot be the death of anyone now, Croesus. Count that
as some kind of a blessing.’

Croesus looked over at Isocrates. The slave lay utterly at peace on the grass, shifting his face towards the sun. Croesus wished he could let his friend lie there as he was, content and
undisturbed. But he also knew that he would never again have the courage to ask what he had to ask if he did not ask it now.

‘It isn’t you who hurts Maia, is it?’ Croesus said, at last.

Isocrates was silent for a long time. ‘No,’ he said quietly.

‘Who is it? Who does it?’

Isocrates turned his face away. ‘It is whoever wants her,’ he said.

‘Why did you lie?’ Croesus said. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

‘What difference would it have made?’

‘If I had known, I would have—’

‘What would you have done?’ Isocrates said. ‘Tell me. I’m curious.’

Croesus hesitated. ‘I would have done something.’

‘You are a fool.’

‘Don’t say that.’

‘Those slaves and servant girls when you were a young prince. Some when you were a king. Did you think they wanted to be with you? I am sure they acted the part well enough. Not one of
them came to you willingly, you have my word about that. They were too terrified to refuse you. Think on that, before you start swearing revenge on these men.’

Croesus remembered his son’s wife after the funeral, the memory coming back sharply, like a thrust of pain in his chest. He had almost let himself forget it.

‘How can you stand it?’ he said instead. ‘How can she stand it?’

‘It is the way the world is. For a slave like her, anyway. You cannot change that, Croesus. You could not have done even when you were a king. You certainly can’t now you are a
slave. She has made her peace with it, as best she can.’ He hesitated. ‘So have I.’

‘Well, I can’t.’

‘You will have to.’

Croesus sat still and stared blankly ahead. ‘I don’t know what to say.’

At last, Isocrates opened his eyes, sat up, and looked at the man who had once been his master. ‘Then, perhaps, don’t say anything at all.’ He lay back down on the river bank,
and closed his eyes once more.

They sat, silently together, and listened to the sound of the dying river.

A year before, the Gyndes had looked like a sea that stretched to the horizon. Now, the ruined hulls of boats, previously lost in the depths, squatted in the shallow water like
monstrous skeletons. The muddy banks, exposed to the sun for the first time in centuries, teemed with crabs and insects scuttling hesitantly in the open air, distrustful of the new world in which
they found themselves. A shallow, uneven trail of water was all that remained of the great river.

The army stood at the water’s edge, restless like a pack of children, eager to march on to Babylon. But first, so Cyrus had said, there was a promise to keep.

The king held up a hand for silence, and the deafening sound of the army ceased.

‘My people!’ the king said. He paused, waiting for his words to pass back through the ranks of his men. Each sentence he spoke took many minutes to reach the rear, as it was
whispered from one man to another until it reached the supply train, where the words faded and died. None cared to share the speech with the slaves.

‘Our priests are all in agreement,’ Cyrus continued. ‘The omen of the horse has been overcome. The curse is lifted from our army. We are free of it. Babylon awaits us –
the greatest prize this world has to offer. Shall we take it?’

Croesus winced at the sound of the army’s roar, and Cyrus raised his hand for silence once again.

‘There is one more matter,’ he said. He pointed at the river. ‘I promised, one year ago, that I would lay this great river so low that even a woman could cross it without
getting her knees wet.’ He smiled. ‘Let us see if that’s true.’

He raised a hand and waved, as though ordering his cavalry to advance. At his gesture, the women of the camp came forward through the ranks and assembled at the water’s edge.

There were thousands of them. Most were slaves or servants, or village women who had run away after one man or another and had become common property of the soldiers. But there were a few wives
and concubines of generals and officials amongst them, mixing unashamedly with the common women.

Croesus was not used to seeing them all together. He tried to pick out Maia from the mass. He couldn’t see her, but there was one figure he did recognize. Cyrus’s wife Cassandane was
poised on the bank, ready to run. She stood quite apart, saying nothing to the other women; Croesus saw a man standing beside her.

It took him a moment to recognize her son, Cambyses, full grown now, who looked around uncertainly at the gathering of women, watching for any who might laugh at his mother or, worse yet, might
laugh at him. He stood near her protectively, but also, perhaps, so as to be protected by her, as she hitched up her skirts and prepared to run. Her face was so solemn that it made Croesus
smile.

‘She is taking this seriously,’ Croesus said to the king. ‘I would have thought a race like this would be beneath her.’

Cyrus smiled. ‘She likes to win,’ he said. ‘Like me.’ The king turned to the mass of women, and raised his voice. ‘Gold for any who make it back with dry
knees,’ he said to them. ‘And more for the fastest.’

He let his hand fall, and the women went forward into the river.

Some ran as fast as they could, hoping to outpace those behind them. Others worked carefully, moving more slowly on the fringes of the pack, splashing water against the knees of their rivals,
defending their own exposed skin with the hems of their robes. Others seemed to ignore the contest entirely, and used the occasion as an opportunity to gather food; moving slowly, squatting over
the water, hooking out fish that gasped and floundered in the shallow water.

The army cheered and shouted obscenities at the women as they ran. Their shouting almost drowned out the sound from the river, but occasionally, when the cheering died down for a moment, Croesus
could hear the women in the water. He could hear them laughing.

They reached the far bank of the river, and for a moment Croesus found himself thinking that they might not return. That they might keep running, striking out to found some new country of their
own, and leave the men to continue their wars without them. Croesus wondered what kind of a world that would be. Just for a moment, they seemed to hesitate on the far bank, on the brink of that new
world, before they turned and began to run back towards the army. Out in front, by a short distance, was Cassandane.

In the water, the women had been equal; Cassandane had been forced to work harder than most, as many of the others went out of their way to try and push her into the water, given a rare chance
to try and humiliate one of their betters. But she had dodged past them all, weaving through the crowd, running harder than the rest, until she regained the bank of the river, victorious.

Cyrus walked to his wife. He drew close, placing his hands to her sides. She looked up at him and said nothing. He let his hands run down her hips, knelt in front of her, and ran them down her
bare legs. He cupped her knees for a moment then looked at his palms. Smiling, finding them dry, he lifted them high and showed them to the soldiers. Then he took his wife by the hand, and led her
away to their tent.

Watching them, listening to the army howl their praise for their king, Croesus could not help but wonder about the performance he had just witnessed. How much was for show, and how much was
genuine? He doubted if Cyrus himself even knew any more where performance ended and the truth began.

From the banks of the river, he saw Maia coming to him, her husband at her side. Isocrates, perhaps inspired by the king, had for once allowed himself to display affection in public, a single
hand curled protectively around her waist.

‘I looked out for you, but couldn’t see you,’ Croesus said. ‘Did you succeed?’

‘Yes. Look,’ she said, and lifted her skirts to show her dry knees.

Croesus turned away, and she laughed. ‘Such a shy old man. We slaves can’t afford that Lydian modesty of yours.’ She turned to Isocrates. ‘What do you think? I
couldn’t finish first. Some of the soldiers’ harpies are little more than girls, and they could outrun me. But I finished with my knees dry. What does that make me?’

‘Crafty and tricky, is what you are,’ he said.

‘Like your husband,’ Croesus said immediately.

Maia grinned. ‘He has you there.’

Isocrates shook his head, but a smile danced briefly across his lips. ‘Come on. We need to get ready.’ He looked out across what remained of the river. ‘We’ll be going
soon.’

Croesus looked out on the lights of the distant city.

When he was a king, an emissary had once brought him a set of Indian diamonds inlaid in black cloth, arranged to take the shape of Sardis at night. He remembered how the torchlight had lingered
on those priceless stones, the way his eyes had connected the separate points of light together to re-create his home.

Even in the darkness, reduced to a scattering of fires and torches, Babylon seemed more beautiful than other cities. He wondered if that were deliberate, if the council of Babylon strictly
regulated the torches that were used and where they could be placed, in order to present the city’s most handsome face to those who camped outside the city, watching it and wishing they could
be inside it.

The Babylonian army had been routed over a week earlier, but the city had still not surrendered. He wondered what its people felt, looking out at the army squatting beneath their city. He
remembered gazing down on the same army from his own city. Then, he had felt only despair, the impossible desire to undo what had been done, to relive his life in differently, and make a better
choice.

But Babylon was different. Perhaps they were pleased to be separated from a world that was not worthy of them, the way heroes and even entire cities were said to have been spirited away by the
Gods, thus freed from the imperfect earth. It would bring an end to contamination by the foreigners who came to gawp at their treasures, the emissaries from lesser nations who came to barter and
bargain and plead and threaten, the migrants who tried to find work and make a life for themselves in a city that was already overcrowded. For those who had already established the perfect city,
what use was the rest of the world?

‘Free of your duties?’ a voice said behind him. He started in surprise. He had not heard Maia’s approach.

‘For a moment,’ he said. ‘And you?’

‘The same.’

She looked up at the city walls, and Croesus turned back to follow her gaze. The thick walls towered high, the battlements fringed with white paint like a snow line, as though they were laying
siege to a mountain range. They might as well have been, he thought, for all their army could achieve against those walls.

‘How long will it take?’ she said.

‘Ten years, they say.’

‘They are well prepared.’

‘They have known Cyrus was coming for a long time.’

‘Ten years is a long time for them to live on bread and barley beer.’

‘It is a long time to stay out here,’ Croesus said. ‘Then again, your husband was lecturing me, by the Gyndes, on the virtues of waiting.’

‘Ah, yes. That old refrain.’

‘You have heard it yourself ?’

‘Many times.’

‘Well, I don’t want to wait here. I don’t want to die looking up at Babylon. I feel as though I have been dreaming of it my whole life. Don’t you want to see
Babylon?’

‘One place is the same as another for a slave.’

‘Now you do sound like Isocrates. I don’t believe you,’ he said. He gestured towards the city, like some charlatan conjurer directing villagers towards his stall.
‘Everything began there. If there is an answer to be found, it must be in there. They have been looking longer than anyone else. What do you say to that?’