by Tim Leach
Prexaspes raised his hand and touched the jewellery that hung from his throat, as if it were blood that had been transmuted into gold. ‘I follow his commands,’ he said. ‘I cannot change the will of the king.’
‘You must try.’
‘You forget. I am merely the replacement of another man. And simple enough to replace myself.’
‘I have not forgotten.’
At this, Prexaspes turned from him. He went to a chair and sat in it heavily, rested his head in the palm of one hand. Croesus felt like a youth as he looked at Prexaspes, a man less than half his age.
A flicker of motion distracted him from deeper within Prexaspes’s chambers. He turned his head slightly, and found a child staring back at him. The boy was perhaps nine or ten years old, born before his father had become a murderer. Croesus remembered his face now, for the boy was one of the many sons of the nobility who served in the court of the king, learning their fathers’ trade first-hand. The child looked at them with a shy curiosity. He would have to unlearn that, Croesus thought, if he were to survive. The king’s palace was no place for the curious.
Prexaspes turned around, and angrily waved his son back into the chamber. The child gave one last, fearful look at Croesus, then he slunk away.
‘You understand?’ Prexaspes said, when the boy had gone. ‘It is different. For a man like you . . .’
‘A man with no family, you mean. An old man. My life is worth less than yours.’ Croesus nodded towards the empty doorway, the absent child. ‘I wonder if he knows that his father is a coward.’
‘You cannot shame me, Croesus.’
‘So I can see. Very well. Go and be with your family.’
‘Good luck, Croesus. I will save you, if I can.’
‘I think your protection is worth little.’
‘You are right. But I will try.’
‘Why?’
‘Harpagus asked me to.’ Prexaspes dropped his head, unable to hold Croesus’s gaze.
‘Do they always confess?’
‘Yes.’
‘Even though they know you will kill them when they do.’
‘They know we will continue until they do.’
‘Does it lessen your guilt,’ said Croesus, ‘to hear them speak those lies? Perhaps you tell yourself they might even be true.’
‘I do not believe them. But to see how they all give up their friends, their family . . . I suppose I think less of them for that.’ He lifted his head again. ‘All men are cowards, Croesus. That is what I have learned. There is no ideal that will not be sacrificed for fear of pain, and death.’
‘They all give names when they are asked?’
‘Eventually. All except Harpagus. He did not give your name. He was a man from another time.’ Prexaspes paused. ‘Where will you go?’
‘To the king.’
‘You should not do that.’
‘There is no choice.’
‘No. I suppose not.’
Croesus waited for a time, to see whether Prexaspes would speak again. But he did nothing but sit there in silence, his eyes blank, perhaps reliving some crime or another. Croesus wondered if it were the most recent killings that haunted him, or if it were the killings from years past that grew and grew in significance the older they were, as if the dead became more restless the longer they were sealed beneath the ground. Croesus left him sitting there, lost in his memories, and went in search of the king.
Outside Cambyses’s chamber, Croesus stood in silence. Within, the king would be reviewing the preparations for the wedding. Perhaps he had commissioned a poet to tell him stories of the ancient kings and gods who had married their siblings, or the beasts in the fields that cared nothing for the taboo of kinship.
Croesus had heard that great heroes meeting on the battlefield will pause in silent confrontation, fighting through every possibility in their minds before either man throws the first spear. In this way, they already understand the outcome of their duel, who will live and who will die, before they begin to fight. As he stood there, he thought of what he might say to the king – whether he would beg and plead, or reason, or shout and rage. The words now came into his mind unhindered, and he imagined each of these conversations through to the end. They all concluded in the same way. Every one, pursued long enough, led to his own death at the hands of the king.
But that should not matter. He should still make the attempt, he thought, as he stared down at his hands, the skin slack and near translucent. Most men did not live to be half his age. His heart might go still in his sleep that very night, his lungs close with sickness, his mind be blanked with fever. If he should run from this place only to die tomorrow, he would have preserved his life for the sake of a single day. To live was to acquiesce to the blasphemy, to give it his silent consent. He should be like those warriors who fear cowardice more than death or defeat, their great Law commanding them to stay in formation no matter what happened, to fight and die with no thought of retreat. Why should he still seek to cling to life?
He looked up at the door and tried to find the will to enter, to speak his way to the death that waited for him behind it. But he could not do it. The king had gone to a place where words could not reach him, beyond hope or reason. Croesus knew then, at last, that words had failed.
6
No public feasting accompanied the wedding day. It was barely spoken of inside the palace, let alone in the streets of the city. The rumours had reached the people of Memphis, but meant little to them, for it was not unknown for the Pharaohs to marry their sisters. Some of the Egyptians said if the king were to become more like the Pharaohs, perhaps he would be kinder to the people of Egypt, others that, if Cambyses took on their customs, it meant that he would never leave.
In the palace, the nobles were divided. There were a few who could not stand to witness the ceremony and who pleaded sickness, or invented emergencies that they had to attend to. Most who were present saw the chance to demonstrate their loyalty, or else were too afraid to stay away, and so they put on their greatest finery, fixed smiles on their faces, and prepared to applaud the king’s choice. There were some who celebrated for themselves, for every man with a daughter had dreaded that she might be taken as a wife of the king, had lived in fear of the day that the king might summon them and request a betrothal which they would be unable to refuse, had even hidden their daughters away on private estates, or denied that they even had daughters at all. This blasphemy, at least, was some temporary protection.
It was not until the hour before the ceremony that Croesus, at last, found the courage to see Parmida. Doubtless it was supposed to be forbidden, but the guards did not seem to care as he passed them, and neither Parmida nor her slaves acted to expel him. And so, in silence, he watched as a slave painted her face, and clasped pieces of jewellery to her wrists and throat as if they were golden shackles. Another scattered perfume over her, the way one might offer incense for a sacrifice. Parmida sat quite still. She wore the look of one who knew that they were coming to a point of ruin; the moment where all happiness will be taken from them, but that they will still live on afterwards, defeated. Croesus wondered if he had looked like that, many years before, when he had been condemned to die.
At last, she turned her painted face to look at him. ‘It is time, isn’t it?’ she said.
‘Yes.’ He glanced again at the slaves in the chamber, but did not find the two faces he was afraid that he might see.
‘They asked to attend on me,’ she said, in answer to his thoughts, ‘but I did not wish them to be here. To see this.’
‘They serve you well?’
‘They have become dear to me,’ she said. ‘I understand why you wished for them to be saved. And I understand, now, why they wish to have nothing more to do with you.’
‘He told me once he would never force himself on a woman.’
‘And you were a fool to believe him.’
‘I did all that I could to prevent this.’
‘Did you sp
eak to Cambyses?’
‘He would not have listened.’
‘You did not speak to him.’
‘No,’ he said. He wondered how it was that she did not cry. Perhaps it was the thought of weeping the kohl to black rivers, of being painted again, and weeping again. She had withstood this dressing, this sham of a celebration, once already.
‘Should I have taken my life, do you think?’
He did not reply.
‘I think I should have done,’ she said. ‘But I am too afraid to die. Even though I know that I cannot endure this.’
‘You will not have to.’
‘You cannot stop this.’
‘Yes. I can. I will.’ He paused. ‘Do you understand?’
She looked at him, confused, but after a moment, he saw that she did. Her mouth parted slightly; perhaps to ask him questions, to ask him if he was sure. But she did not speak. She was afraid, he supposed, of the answers that he would give. Afraid that he would, at the last, change his mind.
She could not meet his gaze any longer, and looked down at the rings on her fingers. ‘Will it be tonight?’ she said.
‘Yes.’
She closed her eyes. ‘Do you want me to give them a message? After . . .’
‘Maia and Isocrates?’
‘Yes.’
‘No,’ he said. ‘They will know what it means.’ He shifted where he stood, suddenly restless, eager to begin and for it to be over. ‘You must go now. He will be waiting for you.’
She stood then, and, her head held high like a condemned man showing defiance at the last, she went to meet her brother.
Croesus watched the wedding in a kind of trance. From time to time he would try to look more closely, to mark what was happening, but he always felt his gaze sliding away, refusing witness. At last, he closed his eyes, and tried to experience it as the near-blind king might, listening to the chants of the priests as they called on the gods to sanctify a crime, the hollow cheers of the crowd as they acclaimed the king that they feared so much.
He waited for the ritual to conclude, for the toasts to be drunk and the sacred words said. He waited for the guests to disperse, stumbling and dull-eyed, like men returning from battle. He waited until he was almost alone in the great chamber of the palace, as other slaves moved around him extinguishing the fires and taking away the wine. He left the chamber, and followed the path his master would have taken a little while before, through the corridors of the palace, towards the king’s private chamber.
He wandered past walls that had once been marked with the names of ancient kings, now scratched out at the king’s command, bringing ten centuries of Pharaohs one step closer to the Second Death. He looked at the statues of gods that had been beheaded and defaced. They might have been taken to the dungeons, he thought, and put to whatever tortures one could inflict on stone, to draw speech from gods that had fallen silent. The king had tortured a corpse. Why not a statue?
The palace was still and silent. It reminded him of his own palace, so long ago, when the Persians were storming the walls and his city burned around him. Then too he had wandered the corridors alone. Such silence was rare in the palace of the king, a place of a thousand conspiracies and intrigues, feuds and love affairs. Only in celebration or disaster, or this celebration that was a disaster, did the palace return to stillness.
As he drew nearer and nearer to the king’s chamber, his pace began to slow. He wondered if he would ever reach his destination, or if he would wander the palace endlessly, the way one does in dreams, exploring labyrinths with the impossibly slow pace of one walking underwater; if his cowardice would lead him astray, making him forget the path.
But he turned into the passage that led to the king’s chamber, and saw that all was as he had expected. The bodyguards stood at the end of the corridor, not outside the chamber door where they normally stood. For one night only, they gave the king his privacy.
Now would be the time for them to stop him, to ask him questions to which he could give no answers. But they did not stop him as he walked past, and he saw that their heads were nodding with the strong wine they had drunk. Perhaps even these men, inured to the worst kinds of violence, needed to forget the blasphemy that was being committed.
They paid no attention to him. What harm could an old slave do?
His traitor heart beat hard, as though it sought to break within his chest rather than allow treason. Croesus forced himself to walk slower still, as though he were half asleep, wandering to his sleep rather than to his death. The door was close now. He found his breath coming in shallow rasps, the world swimming before his eyes. Life was waiting for him beyond this place, a world of thought and sensation that it was madness to abandon, and he almost walked on, past the door and towards whatever months or years might remain.
Instead, he stopped in front of the door, his breath steady and vision clear once more, and felt the courage of a hopeless man. He knew they would break him afterwards, as they had broken Harpagus. He wondered whom he would name, in the terrible, unknowable depths of pain that he would discover before the end, that place where all courage, hope and love are lost.
He knew he would not give up Isocrates, or Maia. That was all that mattered.
He rested his hand against the door, and readied himself to go within.
‘Croesus.’
The voice came from behind him. He went quite still, not believing it at first.
‘Croesus,’ the voice said again, and now there could be no doubt.
Croesus let his breath out, a little gasp of loss. He turned slowly, and his fearful gaze found the man who was calling to him.
It was not a guard or a slave, a god or a ghost that had stopped him at the last. It was Psamtek, staring back at him from the shadows of the passageway.
‘Come with me, Croesus.’
Croesus could not speak. His eyes flickered back towards the door.
‘Come with me, Croesus,’ Psamtek said again. ‘Or I will call to the guards.’
Psamtek began to walk away, not even waiting to be sure that Croesus would follow him. Perhaps he had seen the relief in the old slave’s eyes.
The moment before he followed the Egyptian, Croesus thought that he could hear something from deep within. A woman’s voice, soft but distinct, crying out for help.
7
Bardiya stepped up the gangplank on to the ship and left the land behind him. Immediately, as was his habit, he went to the prow, so that he could stand so far forward and tilt his head in such a way that not a single piece of the ship could be seen; so that he could look out and feel that he was travelling unassisted across the water.
They were to sail downstream, following the flow of the Nile to the northern cities of Egypt. What business he had there he did not yet know, but Cambyses had been insistent that he must go. Perhaps some rebellion was stirring, or there was some stubborn local governor who needed to be flattered with a royal visitor. Whatever it might be, Bardiya had been hurriedly dispatched that morning, with the promise of more commands to follow.
He heard a sound behind him. He turned, and on the dock he saw one of his sister’s slaves, a man whose name he did not know, calling out from the dock of Memphis. He seemed to be calling to the ship, a roll of parchment in his hand, and for a moment Bardiya considered asking the captain to stop, to row back. But he kept silent; the message would follow them on the next ship out. Doubtless it was merely some last farewell from Parmida. It had all happened so quickly, he had not had the chance to say goodbye.
He had heard rumours in the hours before he left that a wedding was coming. Perhaps it might even be hers. He wondered whom she would be married to, which of the nobles of the court had finally won her hand. He supposed that it was likely to be someone that he disapproved of; he had noticed the noblemen avoiding him in the past few weeks, conversations falling silent when he approached. He suspected a secret was being kept from him, but Memphis was a city of many such secrets – a man did not have tim
e to unravel them all.
They had not been sailing for long when Bardiya noticed that something was wrong with the motion of the ship. It was drifting out of line, heading towards the shore. At first, he assumed that it was a random eddy of the water that was pushing them aside, that the sailors would notice and correct their course. There was no port near by, no reason for them to stop. But they persisted off course, and when he looked back, he saw that the steersman was, quite deliberately, turning towards shore.
Something else had changed. His bodyguards were staring at him. Their eyes should have been anywhere else; studying the sailors to watch for an assassin hidden amongst them, staring up or downstream, to observe other ships that could have been a danger. But they looked only at him. They were drawing close to the shore now, and, rounding a dune and riding to the bank of the Nile, Bardiya could see a single man on a horse, his face covered against the sand and sun. Bardiya did not understand yet what that lone rider could mean, but he found himself afraid. Trapped as he was on the ship, he wanted to get as far away from that man as possible.
But when he turned, he found the bodyguards drawn up in a silent line against him. Bardiya stepped forward, and for the first time in his life, the men did not part before him. He stood there, disbelieving for a moment. He put a hand between them and tried to force them aside, convinced that they would surely part at his touch. No man moved. Bardiya half drew his sword, and in an instant a hand was at his throat, and a foot swept his legs for under him and sent him to the deck. They took his sword from him as easily as one would take a stick from a child.
It was an impossible blasphemy. It was death to lay hands on the brother of the king. But they stood in a circle all around him, and, at last, he understood. He tore at the deck of the ship with his fingers, as though hoping, impossibly, to break his way through to freedom, or to dig his own grave. He cried out, begging for a mercy that he knew could not come, for a brother who was not there to hear him. He waited to see which one would come forward, but none of them moved. Bardiya stood and hurled himself against them, and they forced him back again and again. But none drew a weapon. The true blasphemy was reserved for another man.