“How dare they?” Xerxes demanded.
“Oh, they are nothing if not impudent,” Artaphernes observed. “Have you forgotten that they ‘warned’ Cyrus to keep out of Greece? No one here had even heard of them at the time. An insignificant city, but a singularly self-important one.”
“Self-important? You call a people that could murder two ambassadors carrying an offer of peace and friendship ‘self-important’? A strange choice of words, uncle! I call such men barbarians. Did you not hear the account Zopyrus made of their brutality?”
“Zopyrus was badly shaken.”
“As I think we all would have been, uncle, under the circumstances,” Xerxes told him primly.
Artaphernes raised his shoulders and conceded, “No doubt you are right, but I would advise you to hear these men out nevertheless.”
“Why?” Xerxes asked sharply. “I have half a mind to ―”
“I know what you have a mind to do, and understandable as it is, I still advise you to hear them out.”
“Give me one reason why I should.”
“Curiosity, your magnificence, curiosity.”
At first Demaratus did not credit the rumors that two Spartans had come to Persepolis, but then his own attendant returned with too many details for Demaratus to dismiss them. He reported which guesthouse they were in and that they were traveling with their attendants: two black men, an Egyptian, and a marine.
“Did you see them yourself?” Demaratus wanted to know.
“I caught a glimpse of them.”
“And?”
“They wore their hair long and their beards short and had red cloaks.”
“Brilliant. Tell me something I don’t know!” Demaratus scoffed. “Do you know who they are?”
“No.”
“No one mentioned any names?”
“No.”
“The second house, you said?”
“Yes.”
Demaratus dismissed his man, but the thought of two countrymen less than a mile away was too much for him. He could not sit still; he started pacing around his own quarters speculating on whether they had come to submit earth and water after all. It was the only sensible thing to do, of course, but in his heart he hoped that his former subjects would not cave in after their display of defiance.
Of course, they should never have murdered the ambassadors. Demaratus had been deeply embarrassed by that, especially since Darius had sent for him and demanded an explanation. Indeed, Darius had required him―a king!―to kneel for over an hour while he insulted and abused Demaratus for his former subjects’ behavior. Demaratus had been forced to repeat over and over that this could only have come about because the Spartans were kingless at the time. They were like wayward children, he told the Great King―like willful, disobedient children. Eventually Darius had accepted this argument and allowed Demaratus to withdraw without further consequences. But it had been a near thing….
No, the Spartans should not have murdered the ambassadors, but nor should they submit earth and water. If these men were here to do that now, Demaratus reasoned, then he would be ashamed of his homeland yet again. It was bad enough to kill ambassadors in the name of freedom, but worse to commit the crime and then barter away their freedom anyway!
And why else would they be here? It must be obvious to even an idiot like Leotychidas that nothing less than abject submission would avert the rage of Xerxes. Xerxes was more determined than his father had been to crush Greek defiance and bring Hellas under Persian hegemony. Xerxes would have moved against Greece two years ago if the Egyptian revolt hadn’t forced him to divert troops and ships to Egypt.
Maybe he should go to these men and tell them to return home. He should at least find out who they were, Demaratus convinced himself, and without another thought he strode out of his apartments.
No one was guarding the apartment assigned the Spartan ambassadors, and no one was there to announce him, either. Demaratus plunged into the inner courtyard and there drew up, looking about uncertainly. A man came to the doorway of one of the chambers, expecting a messenger from the Great King. “Demaratus!” he exclaimed in shock.
“Son of Nicoles?” Demaratus answered uncertainly. He recognized the face, but was uncertain of the name.
“Damn you!” Bulis barked back, coming out of the chamber. “Damn you!” Bulis was taller than Demaratus, and he came to stand very close so that he towered over the former king. “Isn’t it bad enough that you abandoned your duties and your city? Do you have to crawl up Persian asses―”
“How dare you talk to me like that?” Demaratus cut him off with a roar of injured pride. “I am your rightful king!”
“You might once have been my king, but you’re an ass-licking bugger now!”
“You gave me no choice!” Demaratus protested, his face red with outrage. “You voted for that piece of slime Leotychidas! You let him humiliate me!”
“Nothing humiliates you so much as eating Persian shit!” Bulis countered. “And the stink of it on your breath makes me sick to my stomach!” Bulis opened his mouth as if he were literally going to vomit on Demaratus, but instead delivered a ball of spittle directly into his face. Then he turned on his heel and stormed out.
Demaratus was left cooking in his own rage. With revulsion he wiped the spittle off his face with a corner of his himation, his head filled with inarticulate insults and excuses and counterarguments. It was several moments before he realized a second man was in the little courtyard. This man was sitting on the edge of the fountain, looking as if he had been there for some time. Demaratus pulled himself up straighter and stared at him, his brain again searching furiously for a name.
“Sperchias, son of Aneristus,” the man helped him out.
“Of course. Sperchias. You are one of Leonidas’ friends.”
“I am privileged to count myself among his friends, yes.”
“A singularly dishonest man!” Demaratus declared, with a flash of temper that lit up his eyes.
“Leonidas? Dishonest?” Sperchias was taken aback by the accusation. There were many men in Sparta who disliked Leonidas for various reasons―mostly because they did not like his policies, especially those with respect to the perioikoi and helots, but he could think of no one who would deny Leonidas’ integrity.
“What do you call it? Telling me to my face that he did not want his brother’s throne, only to turn around and murder for it!”
“Murder?” Sperchias was flabbergasted. “Have you gone mad? Or is that the way the Persians tell the story?”
“You don’t expect me to believe Cleomenes truly tried to flay himself alive!”
“You, of all people, ought to know just how mad Cleomenes was.”
“Mad, perhaps, but someone put a knife in his hand, and we know who profited….”
“Leonidas was more than a hundred miles away the day his brother died. If you’re looking for a murderer, look no farther than Brotus.”
Demaratus grunted, unable to deny the logic of what Sperchias said, despite his fury with Leonidas. Instead, he tried to justify himself yet again. “It need never have come to this. If Leonidas had only listened to me. If he had made the first move, we could have been kings together. We would have made a good team.”
Sperchias sighed and nodded, conceding to an astonished Demaratus, “I know, but you know as well as I do that Leo can’t be pushed into things. He has to find his own way in his own time.”
“All very well for you to say! You haven’t been robbed of your rightful inheritance, humiliated, and driven out of your city. You are the confidant of a ruling king, an ambassador! You can go home to Sparta!”
Sperchias smiled bitterly and remarked in a soft voice, “Actually, I can’t.”
“What do you mean? Why not?”
“I have come here to die―to make reparation with my life for the murdered Persian ambassadors.”
Demaratus could only gape at him. He had never thought of Sperchias as in any way heroic―until
this very minute.
Samias and Taiwo helped Sperchias prepare for his audience with Xerxes. They came unbidden and with a certain sheepishness, ashamed that they had forgotten themselves the day before and had laughed so heartily. But Sperchias made no mention of the incident and seemed hardly to notice the two servants. While Samias polished his bronze armor a final time, Taiwo oiled Sperchias himself, rubbing the oil deep into his skin with strong yet gentle fingers. Taiwo clipped and filed Sperchias’ fingernails and toenails as well, while Samias clipped his beard and then solemnly combed out his hair. Finally, Taiwo ran his oily fingers through Sperchias’ hair, divided it into sections and, with great concentration, set about braiding it very tightly in neat, straight rows. Samias, meanwhile, pressed Sperchias’ chiton and himation. Together they helped him dress, Samias kneeling before his master to snap the greaves in place. As he stood to hand his master his helmet, tears were welling up in his eyes.
“I’ve asked Leonidas to emancipate you, Samias, as soon as you return.”
“Master!” Samias gasped.
“It was the least I could do,” Sperchias told him.
For a second they stood awkwardly, staring at each other. Then Sperchias turned and strode out into the courtyard, where Bulis was already waiting.
The two Spartiates mounted the grand steps to the royal terrace together. At the top of the stairs, hundreds of Persian courtiers milled about awaiting a summons, but at the sight of the two Spartans they parted and drew back with a rustle of whispers. From the back of the crowd erupted a few catcalls of “murderers” and “barbarians,” but the royal steward, who was leading them, ignored the calls. With great dignity he led the Spartans to the central of three wide, wooden doors. Without a word, these swung open to admit them.
They found themselves in a vast hall filled with wooden pillars that soared upward for a hundred feet. The pillars were set in stone bases on which were depicted scenes from palace life: the Great King receiving tribute, the Great King sitting in judgment, the Great King reviewing his troops, the Great King reviewing his fleet, the Great King sacrificing to Ahuramazda ….
Ahead of them was another building, so that the entire hall was nothing but a covered forecourt. This second building had towers at the corners, and a company of Immortals was lined up across the front of the façade. Sperchias already knew a great deal about the Immortals from conversations with various people they had encountered during the long voyage. He knew that the total strength of the elite unit was ten thousand, but that nine thousand of these were archers and only one thousand were spear bearers, or more accurately, “shielded spear bearers,” as his interlocutors had stressed. The shielded spear bearers, he had been told, were all sons of noblemen, so that this unit was the elite of the elite―rather like the Spartan Guard.
Unsurprisingly, the Immortals guarding the audience chamber of the Great King were from this unit, and they were splendid young men―tall, tanned, broad-shouldered, and straight. Somewhat more difficult to appreciate was their dress, from their crocus-yellow leather shoes to their turbans of the same color. In between they wore tight trousers under a thin, tight gown that reached almost to the ground in the rear but was caught up in a broad belt in front, providing more freedom of movement. The upper body was encased in a tight-fitting shirt with sleeves snug to the elbow and then long, full, and hanging. Their clothes were cut from a shiny pale-blue material covered with bright yellow sunbursts. Wicker shields hung from their left shoulders onto their backs, and they stood with the orb-like silver butts of their spears resting on their left feet. They held their spears extended at arms’ length, with both hands, one over the other, grasping the shaft as they stared straight ahead.
They stood wonderfully still when on parade like this, Sperchias thought as he passed between them, but would they show as much fortitude facing a Spartan phalanx? It was an idle thought, a flash of foolish bravado, designed to give himself courage. Certainly he would not live to see such an encounter―unless they let the shades out of Hades now and again to drink the blood of battlefields….
The royal audience chamber was lined with columns topped with animal heads, while the plaster walls were decorated with frescoes depicting lions, bulls, and flowers. What an eclectic combination, Sperchias had time to think, before one of the Immortals, who had turned and entered the room with them, put a heavy hand on his shoulder and tried to force him to the ground. On his right, a second Immortal was doing the same thing to Bulis.
Only then did Sperchias register that, at the far end of the hall on a raised platform, a man sat on a throne. The throne was so far away that he had not immediately registered the fact that he was in the royal presence. Both Sperchias and Bulis responded instinctively to the heavy hands on their shoulders. Like wrestlers, they twisted away and stiffened their backs in resistance.
“Bow down!” came the order, barked from a man in the same uniform as the guards but with an even larger turban, evidently some kind of officer.
“No!” Bulis retorted.
“It is not our custom,” Sperchias tried to explain.
“You are in the presence of the Great King!” the officer insisted. “Bow down!”
The guards lent force to his words: one pushed down on Bulis’ shoulders and the other on Sperchias’.
“He is not our king!” Bulis insisted, trying to pry the guard’s fingers off his shoulders.
“We do not bow even to our own kings,” Sperchias explained. “Spartans worship no man like a god.”
“You are in Persia now!” the officer retorted, and with a gesture, two more guards joined in the effort to force Sperchias and Bulis onto their knees. Bulis was struggling so violently he had no breath to speak, but Sperchias raised his voice as his legs gave way. He called down the length of the hall. “King of the Medes! Your men can force my head to the floor with their greater strength, but such a bow is meaningless! What matters is only what a man does freely!”
Sperchias and Bulis were on their knees now, but still struggling against the guards. The latter were indeed trying to force Bulis to touch his forehead to the floor. Sperchias’ guards, on the other hand, seemed stunned by the fact that he dared address the Great King. A glance at the officer, however, suggested that the latter had seen some signal from Xerxes at the far end of the hall.
“Speak!” the officer hissed in Greek to Sperchias. “Why are you here?”
“We are here to make reparation for the ambassadors we Spartans murdered.”
“How can you make reparation for dead men?” Xerxes’ voice reverberated down the length of the great audience chamber. The voice was not as deep as Leonidas’, Sperchias found himself noting, and it had a hint of contempt in it―which only made Sperchias sit up straighter and look directly at the man on the distant throne.
“With our lives!” Sperchias answered. This time it was his voice that echoed down the length of the hall, and even the guards went still.
Bulis used the moment of shock to shake off the guards and, like Sperchias, sit on his heels looking down the length of the hall at Xerxes.
Xerxes was not alone on the raised platform. He was flanked by two other men in elaborate court robes with long, carefully coifed beards. One of these leaned forward and whispered something in Xerxes’ ear. Xerxes did not look at his adviser, but he raised his right hand and snapped his fingers.
Abruptly their guards were pulling them up. They were marched up the length of the hall and brought to the foot of the stairs leading to the throne platform. Sperchias felt his heart beating in his chest and found it hard to breathe. He was terrified of what would happen next.
Opposite him was a young man, too young to be a full citizen in Sparta. He was handsome, with a high brow, a fine straight nose, dark brown eyes, and rich brown hair. He smelled of yew oil and incense. His eyes were outlined in black to make them larger; his lips were painted red. He wore a golden diadem, much heavier than Greek victory wreaths, which sat heavily on his brow. He als
o wore a gold collar made of multiple strands of gold woven together, alternating with strands of coral and lapis lazuli beads. Multiple gold bangles clattered on his wrists, and rings adorned every finger. His robes were of brightly dyed silk studded with golden bangles that shimmered and trembled when he moved.
“What is your name and station?” the young man asked Sperchias in a haughty voice.
Sperchias bowed his head respectfully and announced, “I am Sperchias, son of Aneristus, and my colleague is Bulis, son of Nicoles. We are full Spartan citizens, as our former king Demaratus can verify.”
“Are you noblemen? Men of property?” Xerxes wanted to know.
“We are both,” Sperchias assured him.
“Why did your king pick you to be slaughtered? Why you and not someone else?”
“Our king did not pick us or send us here,” Sperchias answered.
“And could not have made us come if he had wanted to,” Bulis added gruffly. “We are here of our own free will.”
Xerxes’ eyes shifted briefly to Bulis and then settled again on Sperchias. “If your king did not send you, why are you here?”
“As I said before: we are here to make reparation for the murder of your emissaries. To offer up our lives in payment.”
“We do not understand. Who sent you, if not your king?”
“Sparta has two kings, but the kings do not make policy. Sparta’s citizens in Assembly make policy. It was the Spartans that killed your ambassadors, and the Spartans who make reparations, not our kings.”
“The Spartans―collectively.” Xerxes sounded skeptical, or was it contemptuous?
“Yes.”
“And why did they collectively choose you?”
“They did not; we chose ourselves,” Sperchias insisted, but, because Xerxes looked as if he did not understand, Bulis added, “Have you never heard of volunteers? Does no one in your Empire ever do anything of his own free will?”
Xerxes raised his eyebrows and his expression lifted somewhat, as if he were intrigued, even pleased. “You volunteered to come here and offer yourself as sacrifices?”
A Heroic King Page 38