The King and the Slave

by Tim Leach

  He imagined the Pharaoh receiving those endless emissaries, demanding a daughter that he could not bear to be parted from. Perhaps his spies had told him something of Cambyses; that he was strange, unstable; that he was not to be trusted as a husband. Impossible to refuse the king of Persia, unthinkable to agree to his request. And then the Pharaoh had thought of another way out. An impostor.

  ‘Who is she?’ Croesus said.

  ‘A whore, dressed as a princess. And I believed her.’ Cambyses leaned forward, put his head against the back of the throne and cried again.

  Croesus got to his feet, and felt his arms, in a father’s old instinct, stretch out towards the king. He took a step forward.

  Cambyses glanced over his shoulder. ‘Look at the ground! Don’t look at me! Don’t touch me.’

  Croesus did as he was told. ‘How do you know this, master?’

  ‘Phanes told me. That Hellene. Then she confessed everything to me. Begged me to spare her life.’

  There was silence. Croesus watched the kings hands tighten and loosen on the arms of his throne. From time to time, Cambyses would shake his head, mutter to himself. Or he would give a laugh like a bark, a sudden sob, tears that ended as abruptly as they began. He seemed to forget that Croesus was there, the old man hunched up, his ear still ringing from where he had been struck.

  ‘What will you do, master?’

  ‘Others must have known. The slaves, the servants. Some of the nobles too. Prexaspes has been helping me. We’ll have their names soon enough. But I know that you would not betray me. I believe that.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Croesus whispered. He did not know what else to say.

  ‘I did not believe it at first. But Harpagus told me you were innocent.’

  ‘Harpagus?’

  ‘Yes. I know that he must be involved. He lived when my father died. That makes him a traitor in any case.’

  ‘Where is he? May I speak to him?’

  ‘You wish to see him?’

  ‘Yes, master.’

  The king said nothing at first. Then: ‘I wish that you had not said that.’

  Cambyses clapped his hands at his bodyguards. When Croesus saw two men go from the room rather than one, he knew then what was to come. They did not need two men to escort Harpagus. They needed two men to carry him.

  When they returned, dragging a heavy weight with them across the stone floor, he was glad of the darkness in the king’s chambers. What the guards brought in and placed on the ground at the king’s feet resembled a piece of butchered flesh more than a man, and Croesus could not stand to look at him for more than a moment. Even in that half glimpse in the darkness, Croesus could see the white of the skull where the scalp had been peeled back, the reddish hollows where the ears had been cut away.

  The mutilated thing on the ground began to move. Harpagus breathed, a rattling, half choked sound, and pushed himself up from the ground with fingerless hands. He knelt on legs that could not stand and turned his head around the darkened chamber. At first Croesus thought the general was looking for someone who might help him to live, or to die. But when the general’s face turned at last towards Croesus, the old slave saw that Harpagus acted on empty instinct. He could see nothing, and never would again.

  ‘Harpagus,’ the king said.

  The blinded face turned to Cambyses. ‘My king,’ Harpagus said, and his voice was clear and distinct. They had cut away and broken so much of the man that it seemed impossible that he might still speak with such clarity. But his torturers had not touched his lips, his tongue or his teeth. They had reduced him to a thing that could do nothing but breathe and suffer, confess and denounce.

  ‘It is true, what you have said? Of how you conspired against my father? Against me?’

  The eyeless head nodded, defeated.

  ‘And Croesus? Did he betray me, as you did? As the others did?’

  A low moan broke from Harpagus, and Croesus was certain that now, at last, he would give the denunciation that would end this pain.

  ‘No,’ Harpagus said.

  ‘We must be certain. We will have to question you again.’

  ‘Do what you want. But that is the truth. I will not say otherwise.’

  ‘You see, Croesus?’ the king said, turning away from the ruined man. ‘This is how I know I may trust you.’

  Croesus looked at Harpagus, and did not reply. What act of stubbornness or loyalty or love had kept Harpagus from giving Croesus’s name? His mind would have tricked him by now; broken by pain, it would have made him believe that Croesus had committed some unforgivable act of treason, that he was only speaking the truth to give the old slave up. But he would not. And Croesus would never know why.

  ‘Croesus? You wish to speak to him?’

  ‘No, master.’

  ‘No? Then we have wasted our time.’ Cambyses raised his hands, ready to clap, to send Harpagus away and begin the torture again.

  ‘Wait,’ Croesus said. He swallowed, his throat dry. ‘Let me kill him for you, master. You would honour me.’

  ‘I did not think that was your way, Croesus.’ The king paused for a moment, weighing the decision, a man’s life at his whim. Then, he said, ‘As you wish.’

  Croesus hesitated. ‘May I have a blade, master?’

  ‘A blade? What business has a slave with a blade?’

  ‘Master?’

  ‘Do what you want with him. But you shall have no assistance from me.’

  Croesus felt the bile rising, and swallowed hard to keep it down, and felt a coward’s longing to take back what he had said. He stepped forward until Harpagus was at his feet, until he was close enough hear the soft, persistent gasps of a man for whom even to breathe is pain. Croesus gripped the back of the kneeling man’s head, held it close against his body. He could go no further. He had never killed a man. He did not know what to do.

  He felt the man at his feet shift slightly. Looking down, he watched as Harpagus lifted what remained of one hand high up on his throat, marking the place. Then the stump moved to Croesus’s hands, and guided them to that place. Harpagus said a word, so softly that Croesus could not quite hear it at first.

  Harpagus spoke again. ‘Please,’ he whispered. ‘Please.’

  His thumbs went into the throat, his hands clasped tight around the neck, and Harpagus, who a moment before had seemed almost dead, burst into sudden, terrible life.

  The ruined hand beat against Croesus’s face and chest, shattered legs shook and jerked and fought to stand, the body fighting against a mind that wanted only to die. Croesus found a hate for that stubborn instinct of life, fighting for itself even when only suffering remained for it. He went to his knees, forced Harpagus against the ground, and knew a feeling more powerful than love or mercy or disgust. More than anything else that he had ever wanted, he wanted this moment to end.

  He lifted Harpagus’s head and brought it down against the ground, again and again. He beat his friend’s head open against the stone.

  Even when, at last, Harpagus lay still, Croesus kept his thumbs pressed against the throat for a long time, for fear that he might be mistaken, that he might release his grip, only to hear the man gasp and rattle his way back into life. He knew he would not find the courage a second time.

  When there could be no more doubt, he stood, his legs strong and steady. He found Cambyses regarding him, the king’s head drawn back, his mouth slightly parted; stilled and muted by what he had witnessed. I have never killed a man, Croesus thought, and he has never seen one die. Croesus met the king’s gaze blankly, and promised himself that, no matter what happened, he would not look away first.

  The king’s head dropped. ‘Give him water,’ Cambyses said.

  Croesus felt a bowl of water being pressed into his hands. He took it, but made no move to drink. He knew he would retch if he tried to swallow anything.

  ‘Your hands, Croesus.’

  He stared down dumbly, and saw that there was blood on his hands. He poured the water carefully
, and washed the blood away. He lifted his hands to his face, found a speckled spray on his cheeks, and wiped that away too.

  ‘Will you grant me a boon,’ said Croesus, ‘for the service I have done you?’

  ‘Whatever you ask, Croesus.’

  ‘There are two other slaves who knew nothing of this conspiracy. I know this to be true. They are loyal, and they love you. Will you spare them?’

  ‘Two.’ Cambyses said nothing for a time. Then: ‘I suppose that I may spare two. Give me their names.’

  ‘Isocrates. And Maia.’

  The king paused again. ‘I did not know you could do something like this,’ Cambyses said, staring at the broken body on the floor. ‘You did it for love of me, I think?’

  ‘Yes, master. For love of you.’

  The king nodded slowly. ‘I will let them live, if you say they may be trusted. But only those two.’

  I am glad I never killed a man before this, Croesus thought. What a fool Cambyses was to let an old man know this power. ‘What will we do now?’ he said.

  ‘You grow senile, I suppose.’ Cambyses sat heavily in his throne, cradled his head in his hands. ‘We will go to Egypt, of course. I do not want to. But there is no other way to answer this shame. Is there, Croesus?’

  ‘Perhaps . . .’ Croesus fell silent. The king’s words had sounded like a genuine question, yet even in the darkness Croesus could see a watchful glitter in the king’s eyes. The question was a trap. Cambyses was learning to set them – Croesus would have to learn, and learn quickly, to avoid them. ‘No, master.’

  ‘My father conquered many nations, but none as great as Egypt. If I conquer Egypt, will that make me a greater king than my father?’

  Croesus saw that the truth would not help him. ‘Yes,’ he said.

  ‘Thank you. I will spare your friends. And you. But no other. Now, leave me.’

  The slaves fell silent when Croesus returned to the chamber. A hundred sets of eyes turned towards him, all filled with hope that the chosen man, the favourite of the king, might have won them their lives. He dropped his head, unable to meet those eyes of the dead. A low moan passed through them. They understood what it must mean.

  Isocrates had not moved at all, or so it seemed; he sat back on his haunches, his head against the wall. Only his eyes moved as Croesus approached, and Croesus saw the briefest flicker of pain or fear in them. Then it passed.

  ‘You tried,’ Isocrates said quietly. ‘I thank you for it.’

  Croesus sat beside him, and said nothing for a time.

  ‘You are safe,’ he said, after a time.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘The king will spare your life.’

  A pause.

  ‘And Maia?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘The others?’

  Croesus closed his eyes. He was so tired. It took him a long time to find the courage to look at his friend.

  ‘I thought you had learned to be one of us,’ Isocrates said. ‘But I see that you are still a king. Still willing to choose who is to live and who is to die.’

  ‘You do not know what I have done for you.’

  Croesus saw the other man’s eyes looking over him, searching for an answer. Where they found the blood, on his hands or face or knees, Croesus did not know, but he saw then that Isocrates understood.

  ‘Is this the end of the killing?’ Isocrates said.

  ‘No. The beginning of it.’

  ‘Then will you do what you must?’

  Croesus did not reply. He lay down, and rolled to face the wall, and thought of the promise he had made to Cyrus. To teach Cambyses, to protect him, to make him a great king. Now, he thought of how he must break that promise.

  He heard Isocrates stand and go to the others, to give them the words that Croesus did not have the courage to speak.

  Croesus let exhaustion take him. He fell asleep to the sound of the other men weeping.

  When he woke, there was silence. The slaves had gone.

  ‘You. Stop.’

  ‘How may I serve you, my prince?’

  ‘What is your name?’

  ‘Croesus, my prince.’

  ‘Of course. My father has so many slaves here in Babylon. Who can remember them all? But I suppose that I should remember you. You are not like the others.’

  ‘I am of no consequence.’

  ‘That is not true. I remember seeing you when I was a boy. You had a kind face, then.’

  ‘Not an unkind one now, I hope.’

  ‘What? I cannot see. Come closer.’

  ‘My prince, there is no need to—’

  ‘Be quiet. Yes. It is still kind.’

  ‘I am glad, my prince.’

  ‘Did you know that sometimes my father would strike me? When I displeased him.’

  ‘I—’

  ‘And when we came to Babylon, he let a priest beat me. A ritual, he said. An honour.’

  ‘I am sorry that you have suffered.’

  ‘When he struck me as a boy, I thought of you. That kind face. I wondered what it would be like to have you as a father.’

  ‘You have a much greater man as a father than me.’

  ‘My father has many wives. I perhaps will have many fathers.’

  ‘It would be a poor prince indeed who had a slave for a father.’

  ‘It pleases me to think of you that way.’

  ‘I am pleased to be thought of at all. I have no sons left to me.’

  ‘Is that so terrible?’

  ‘To be an old man who has lost his children . . . I suppose there must be worse fates. But I cannot think of them, my prince.’

  ‘If your children are gone, they cannot disappoint you. You do not have to see them fail. That is what my father thinks of me.’

  ‘You will be a great king, my prince.’

  ‘Perhaps.’

  ‘Forgive me. I must go to the king. He has asked for me.’

  ‘My father meets with his generals today, does he not?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Will there be another war?’

  ‘There will always be another war.’

  A Silent Desert

  1

  The desert of Sinai.

  This land should have been empty of life, an airy tomb filled with the bones of the dead. Yet, here and there, when the winds were still, the sand was marked with the tracks of camels where some caravan of the desert people had passed. It was a place where life had to stay in constant motion, and to stay still was to die.

  A lone traveller, or a dozen men – these could cross the desert, with a good guide and good fortune. Digging out the hidden plants of the desert and draining the moisture from them, taking some mouthfuls of dirty water from a wadi to buy another few hours of life beneath the burning sun. At the end of the desert journey, the traveller’s skin would be blistered from his body, his tongue bulging from his mouth with thirst, his eyes swollen shut from the cutting wind, but a man could come to the other side with his life. No army could make the crossing, or so it had always been said.

  The Sinai had stood impenetrable for centuries, letting in only the explorer, the merchant’s caravan, the desert nomads, and repelling all invaders with natural force, the sun the solitary watchtower and the vultures the only guards. Here, at least, cities and civilization were rejected, the farmer and the soldier refused passage.

  Yet now an army marched across it, filling this place of silence with a quantity of sound and motion that had been unheard and unseen in it since the world was born. Perhaps, from a distance, the army would appear as a shimmering on the horizon, an indistinct phantom born of thirsty eyes. Perhaps this sea of men might be seen as a sea of a different kind, and some lost nomad, his waterskin empty and familiar wadis dried up, would come running towards them, his arms spread open, hurrying towards his death. To find a sea of water in the desert was still more likely than to find an army here.

  It was the king of Palestine who had given them the key to the desert. Cambys
es had gathered his troops in Pasargadae, promised them a miracle, and begun the long march to the south and west. They moved on, through Syria and Phoenicia, stopping only to take tributes along the way, greeted by fawning ambassadors and nervous pontiffs eager to win favour with the new king. In Phoenicia they assumed they would stop, gather ships and take to the sea, for that was the only way to enter Egypt from the east. The men spoke fearfully of it, for meeting the long ships of the Egyptians in waters their enemies knew so well seemed a fool’s death.

  Yet they left Phoenicia on foot, marching on until they reached the edge of the Sinai. They waited there for three days, staring out at the uncrossable expanse, waiting for the miracle their king had promised them. On the morning of the fourth day, thirty men came out of the desert. Their leader beckoned to the Persians without speaking, then turned their camels back the way they had come. A shudder of fear seemed to pass through the army, as if it were one man being beckoned to the executioner’s ground. But the will of the king ruled over it, and the soldiers stepped hesitantly onto the boundless sand.

  That first day, just as they were on the verge of collapse, they came upon stones marking the ground. They dug with their daggers, helmets and bare hands until they found treasure – a fortune of water, wrapped in dark leather and buried in the the desert. It was a gift from the king of Palestine, hidden by the nomads, bought with the gold of the Persian kings. When they dug it up, the water was almost boiling and tasted of the hot leather it had been kept in, but it was more delicious to them than the sweetest wine of the Cyclades.

  They erected canopies at noon to escape the midday sun, slept in shivering heaps at night to fight off the cold, waiting for the dawn. Then they woke and marched, looking out for the stones that marked the water, until they were at the very centre of the desert, the halfway point of the journey, when there truly was no turning back. They would make the crossing or they would die in that place.

  When he stared at that army in the centre of the Sinai, Croesus thought of how unnatural it was. An army in a desert. A great gathering of men dedicated to destruction, passing through a land where there was nothing to destroy. Was there anything more futile? Perhaps only if there were another army gathered here to fight over the worthless desert, men killing men for a prize that existed only in the minds of their kings.