The Great King (36 page)

‘I hope you are an ill prophet,’ I said.

‘Everything has come about as I told that fool Cleomenes when he
first
started to challenge Persia.’ He shrugged. ‘I was a King of Sparta. War is my business. Without the direct intervention of the gods, Greece cannot stand against Persia.’ He shook his head. ‘Aristides has made himself very popular with the magi. His knowledge of Greek and Aegyptian philosophy will probably save his head. The magi are very powerful here.’

Brasidas got up. ‘I’ll go back with him,’ he said.

The former King of Sparta smiled. ‘It has been good to see you.’

They did not embrace. I had decided that Brasidas was his son, or perhaps his lover – I revised that.

We went back to another gate, led by the helot, who took me into the kitchen of the brothel, where I emerged into the common room to be heckled by a pair of Babylonian Jews for riding the best girl for three hours. I bought them wine and we were friends.

Brasidas watched it all with interest. On the way back to the palace compound, he shook his head. ‘So now I’ve been in a brothel,’ he said.

This from a man of thirty-five.

The Great King summoned us.

We dressed carefully.

The summons was to me, as the ‘Ambassador of the Greeks’.

Aristides as my mage.

The Spartans, as ‘heralds of the Spartans’.

These titles were settled by the court chamberlain, and I read into them that Aristides was not to be killed – because his being Athenian would never make the court calendar. In fact, despite being in every way the senior member of our party, he was being dismissed as a functionary.

But there is my name, in good Avestan – Airyaman Navazhar, of Palatay in Jawan. Noble-minded light-bringer – that’s me.

It was Mayu who appeared to lead us to the Great King. He shook his head at our naked legs and offered me his own trousers.

The king’s hall was roughly on the same layout as the palace in Babylon. We entered through a magnificent cloister of pillars – arcade after arcade, like the great trunks of an old forest of marble. We processed through the entry hall with censors and the major-domo, and we were with twenty other foreign guests to make the auspicious number of twenty-four. We were the least important and came last, after a delegation of noble Saka, who looked about them with thinly veiled contempt.

Or perhaps they were merely the nomadic version of Spartans, and gave nothing away. We passed up a short set of very broad, very deep steps. I’m guessing that the architect did that on purpose to make me feel small, but everything was on such a scale as to make me feel small.

We passed from court to court – through the first court, where the law was pronounced, to the second court, where sometimes the king’s mother held her own divan, and into the third court, where military matters were settled. Each one of them was as big as the temple of Artemis at Brauron. Everything was hung in Tyrian purple and decorated with pure gold, and after a while the eye simply declined to take it all in, although the frescoes – which were, as far as I could see, fired clay with permanent tints, done as tiles and assembled like a meta-mosaic – were superb – as good as anything in Hellas.

And then we processed back through the second hall to the first, just in case we were not sufficiently impressed.

Altogether, the whole was the size of the Athenian Acropolis. All gold, and purple and tiles.

And then we entered the throne room.

It was not so much a room as a corridor, with cross-corridors, like a huge iota or a tau. So from the entrance, you couldn’t see the men standing in the wings – the functionaries and soldiers and judges and scribes waiting for orders. You could only see him.

The Great King.

He wore cloth of gold and purple, of course, and on his head was a tiara of pure gold. He was a handsome man – but I didn’t know that at the time, because of the golden throne with the winged lions.

Much like Babylon. I think, had I not seen Babylon first, all this would have stolen my senses. Now it all seemed . . . extreme. Affected. And a little like the Persians aping the manners of the Babylonians, right down to the winged lions. I have no idea who had winged lions first. Having faced the more prosaic variety in tall grass, I had no wish to face one with wings.

Xerxes received each group of guests – accepted their gifts and promises of men and material for his war against Jawan. That was us. And we were waiting until last.

And it went on and on.

All told, we must have stood for four hours. I was delighted that I wore a linen chiton, and so, I can tell you, was Aristides. Our bare legs stood us in good stead. With the crowd of functionaries and the torches, it was as hot as any place I’ve ever been.

And as we drew closer to the throne, it seemed to me more and more likely that Demaratus was wrong. And we were going to die.

We were certainly being humiliated. All the other delegations were brought wine, beer and water. We were not. All the other delegations were offered dates and sweetmeats and honey – we were not.

No one would look at me, or meet my eye.

Slowly, inch by inch, we moved down that long, dark cavern of a hall towards the gold-lit man in the robes. He sat six feet off the floor, and his feet rested on a table.

Finally, the Saka threw themselves full length in front of him and mumbled something. They began their own ritual – gifts, which looked to me like braided halters but turned out to be horses. And promises of ten thousand horsemen to ride against Jawan.

The Great King spoke platitudes, and they echoed from the ceiling. He sounded like a god.

I thought his architect had been heavy handed.

I also thought that, had I been taken directly into the sacred presence of the Great King, all this might have struck me harder, but four hours of waiting wilted even fear. From time to time, when the line moved, my heart would race. I was ready to die. But then, I’d grow bored.

Even summary execution can seem dull.

I also occupied my time translating what I could hear and understand for Aristides and the Spartans. Early on, I was told to be quiet by a chamberlain, whom I ignored. Later, Cyrus emerged from the crowd to tell me not to speak.

‘You translate, then,’ I said.

Cyrus winced. ‘It is the custom of the King’s Presence not to speak,’ he said.

‘You are speaking,’ I said.

He smiled. ‘I am a full Persian.’

I went on translating aloud, and in fact I began to raise my voice slightly.

Aristides spoke under me, twice – once to agree with the Spartans that if they took us to kill us, we would die with dignity and not struggle. The other time, to agree that we would bow, but not perform the proskynesis.

And eventually, the Grand Chamberlain motioned me forward.

We had no gifts.

I happened to have gifts, in fact, and several functionaries had
offered
us gifts to give. Just to make the ceremony work.

But Bulis insisted that we were not offering any form of submission, and Aristides agreed, and now, in that moment, it was my time to explain this to the Great King.

First, I bowed.

There are many forms of bow, in Persia. You can incline your head – equal to equal. You can bow at the waist. You can bow so deeply that your right hand brushes the ground.

You can throw yourself on your face.

I had observed – in four hours – that the Persian nobles bowed with one hand touching the floor, and all the ambassadors, who were after all making or renewing formal submission, performed the full proskynesis and threw themselves on the floor. Some crawled forward and kissed the table on which the Great King’s feet rested.

I decided on my course and I went forward with the Grand Chamberlain, and when he brought his arm down on my shoulder, I slipped it – he wasn’t a fighter – and I bowed at the waist and placed my right hand fully on the floor.

Like a great nobleman.

Or a friend of mighty Artapherenes.

The silence wrapped me like a shroud.

What I didn’t know was that behind me, neither Aristides nor the two Spartans so much as twitched. They didn’t even incline their heads.

Oh well. I’d been a slave among Persians, and I couldn’t make myself be that rude. I rather admire the Spartans in retrospect, but at the time I made my choice, and they made theirs.

One of the chamberlains grabbed at Bulis, and attempted to force his head to the floor, and Bulis threw him – softly, over his hip – and then laid him quite gently on the floor.

The Great King laughed.

‘I see you are my jesters, today,’ he said. ‘That was a fine throw, although Nasha is hardly our finest wrestler.’ He leaned forward. I was so close to the throne that I could hear the gold cloth rustle. ‘Why do you not bow?’ he asked. He pointed at the Anûšiya, who were ready, spears raised, to kill us.

Bulis spoke – although we’d all agreed I’d do the talking.

‘We only bow to gods,’ he said. ‘You, Great King, are after all but a man.’

Bulis said the words – in Greek.

I got to translate them.

Xerxes looked away. He was, in fact, looking at someone I couldn’t see, in an alcove by the throne. Demaratus, I’d lay any wager.

He smiled. ‘What curious men you must be.’ He shook his head. ‘You are Spartans?’ he asked.

‘We are heralds of the kings,’ Bulis said, through me.

‘And although you have kings, you do not bow?’ he asked.

We all nodded.

He shook his head and frowned like a man who mislikes a bitter taste.

‘Very well,’ he said. ‘Speak your piece, men of Lacedaemon.’ He said the last very well – he’d practised it.

Bulis nodded to me.

I said, ‘O King of the Medes! the Lacedaemonians have sent these men to your court, in the place of those heralds of thine who were slain in Sparta, to make atonement to thee on their account.’

Xerxes nodded. And tugged his beard and looked again to his right – and then to the left. I could not see who stood on the left.

He straightened himself and leaned forward. ‘I do not concern myself with the impieties of the foreigners,’ he said. ‘It is not for me – Great King, King over Kings – to act like the Lacedaemonians, who, by killing the heralds, have broken the only laws which all men hold in common. As I hold you in contempt for such barbarism, so I will never be guilty of it myself.’ He leaned forward more. ‘I will make war on you, and wipe you from the face of the world, and I will
not
, by killing you, allow the gods to let you escape from the consequences of your outrageous impiety.’

I confess I still think it was a noble answer – for all that it was composed by Demaratus, as a slap at the policies of Cleomenes. That is how it was – four thousand stades from Athens, we saw Spartan diplomacy play out in the throne room of Darius.

Xerxes motioned at the Spartans – dismissal. He wasn’t angry. But he ignored them, and when a pair of guards motioned for them to leave – they turned, and left. Both were in shock. They were prepared to die with dignity, but ill prepared, I think, to be treated as contemptuous wrongdoers.

They were evicted.

The Great King turned his liquid brown eyes on me for the first time.

‘And you,’ he said. ‘You were a slave?’ he asked.

I smiled. ‘I was,’ I agreed.

‘And you have saved my friend Artapherenes from death – and saved the entire delegation of noble Persians travelling to Tyre in Libya.’ He waved. ‘Why have
you
brought me no gift?’ He meant – I seemed to have more sense.

I bowed again. ‘My lord, I am not rich enough to give you any more of a gift than I gave when I saved your envoys.’

He looked away, and smiled, and looked back. ‘You sound more like the other Greeks I know – a ready answer for everything. Will you serve me?’

I shook my head. ‘As a man – in any way my lord commands. As a Greek? Never.’

Cyrus – just at the edge of my peripheral vision – gave a nod, and I knew I’d made a good answer.

Xerxes smiled – he was charming, for a tyrant – and nodded. ‘Strong words – the better to
negotiate.
Isn’t that the Greek way?’

He looked off to his left, and I saw a man – I’d seen him at a distance in the Foreigners’ Courtyard, surrounded by soldiers. Mardonius – the king’s most trusted counsellor and the most open advocate for war with Greece.

Now, at a signal from the king, he came forward to stand beneath the throne. He bowed low – but did not quite throw himself on the floor. He wore long robes of white and red, with red trousers. He was heavily muscled, like an athlete, and yet I found him faintly ridiculous in his trousers – some habits of thought are difficult to overcome.

‘What level of power or wealth will buy you, Greek?’ he asked. His Persian was different from the king’s. He spoke a northern dialect of Persian. He was one of the few courtiers to wear a sword.

The guardsmen were still standing with their spears in both hands, points aimed at me, like men hunting wild boar on the flanks of Kitharon. But I truly doubted that Xerxes would kill an accredited ambassador, more especially one with a safe conduct.

I bowed again. ‘Great King, I am neither a wealthy nor a powerful man – so there is no point in offering me such things.’

Behind me, Aristides snorted.

Xerxes had to know that Aristides was the true ambassador – the man of wealth and power. Yet he ignored him. I suspect that Xerxes’ hatred of Athens blinded him as effectively as my notions of men in trousers blinded me.

Aristides leaned forward and very quietly, in Greek, whispered, ‘Mardonius is going to seek to trick us into something – an impiety, or an outrage.’

I could feel that, as well.

By one of those ironies so dear to the gods, Mardonius was in the same position that Cleomenes had been with the Persian ambassadors. He wanted war – and if he could arrange to kill me, he’d have put the Great King in a position from which he could not withdraw. I saw this – a little too late, but better late than never – as Aristides spoke.

Mardonius bowed – again – to the king. ‘May I question this Greek, Great King?’ he asked.