by Tim Leach
‘What should I do now?’ she said.
‘You should . . . I think that you should walk. It will . . .’ But Isocrates could not continue.
She nodded. ‘Will you help me?’
They lifted her to her feet, and, leaning on both of them, she began to pace the room, the way that a woman close to birth will be helped walk to speed the delivery, as if she is wandering in search of the child that lies within her. At the thought of that, Croesus wished that she could have known what it was to bear a child, that he could have looked at the son or daughter of his friends, have helped to raise it as a second father. To have held their baby in his arms, just once.
She stumbled, and her feet dragged uselessly on the ground.
‘My legs,’ she said. ‘I cannot walk any more.’
They carried her back to the bedding. She seemed to weigh nothing at all now; perhaps, Croesus thought, he and Isocrates had found some last reserves of strength to carry her, the way that a wounded warrior, hacked and bleeding and soon to die, will rise from the ground one last time to defend his closest companion.
She began to gasp for breath, the air whistling and rattling in her throat, and for the first time, there was panic in her eyes.
‘Do not be afraid,’ Isocrates said.
She sank down into the bedding, her hands pressed against her chest, as if hoping she could reach under her skin and work the lungs that could no longer move by themselves. Her eyes were still focused and in motion, but she no longer seemed to see him. For a moment, Croesus thought that she might, at the last, bring back some sight of the other side, might have a chance to speak of what she had glimpsed there. She opened her eyes a little wider, and seemed about to speak.
She had been so still for so long, her every living movement only fractional, that it took Croesus a long time to realize that, with a quiet kind of grace, she had cast off that most valuable of gifts as if it were nothing.
She was gone.
That night, in an alley behind the palace, they built a pyre. It was a strange collection of everything they could find that might burn; broken pieces of furniture scavenged from the palace, dried cattle dung, a scattering of hay, rags and cloth. They hoped that it would be good enough.
Stray dogs began to gather, sensing the presence of death, and they chased them away with thrown stones and curses. They could not dismiss the beggars who came to the pyre, eager to feel the warmth of a fire. But it did not matter, Croesus thought to himself. She would not have minded. Perhaps she would even be happy that at the last, even in death, she could give out one last gift, the comfort of heat. And so they did not act against this strange funerary procession of the lame and the mad and the blind, but left them gathered around the unlit pyre, and went inside to bring her out.
They washed her together, one last moment of shared intimacy. They marked her cold skin with oil, and then, these tender ministrations done, Isocrates took a knife and cut the tendons in her limbs, to prevent the fire from contorting the body into some gruesome reanimation on the pyre. Isocrates did this butcher’s work without hesitation, yet when it came to placing the coin between her lips, he could not do it. Perhaps for him, this token for the next world, more than anything, seemed to signify that she was truly dead.
Croesus took the coin. It was an old Lydian stater, marked with the bull and lion, minted in Sardis, in his home, long ago when he had still been a king. This might have been what had made Isocrates hesitate; he and his wife had met in that place, fallen in love there. In some way, the three of them had all longed together for that city, the home that none would see again.
He placed the coin gently between her lips. He brushed the hair from her face and rested his fingers on her closed eyes, tempted to open them and look at them one last time. He took his hand away, and he and Isocrates wrapped the thin body in what rags of cloth they had found, and carried her to the pyre.
They had no time for prayers or sacrifice. The guards would notice the gathering soon, drive them all away and cast her in some communal grave. It was a waste of wood, to burn a slave. A dangerous precedent, too, for what right had a slave to such sacred rites? And so Croesus lit the torch quickly, and gave it to his friend. It was the husband’s duty to light the pyre.
Isocrates held the torch limply in his hand, and made no motion to advance. The crowd of beggars fell silent and looked at him, expectant. After a time, Croesus reached forward, intending to take it back from him, but Isocrates shrugged him away, and with a careful, gentle motion, he reached down and touched it to the wood.
For a moment, Croesus felt the mad urge to undo what could not be reversed, to stamp out the flames and be sure that Maia was truly dead. He wondered if those stories of husbands throwing themselves onto their wive’s pyres showed that they too sought to beat down the flames, driven not by self-sacrifice, but a last, inconsolable desire for certainty.
The crowd sighed when the fire reached the body, and Croesus closed his eyes. He could hear Isocrates speaking in the Ionian tongue, but whether they were prayers or words of love, his own or borrowed from others, Croesus did not know, and was glad. They belonged to Isocrates alone.
Afterwards, they sat on the ground together with a skin of wine between them, waiting for the fire to cool so that they could gather the bones and ash. They passed the strong wine back and forth until the world pitched and yawed beneath them. In the dim light, Croesus could see Isocrates staring at the embers. He wondered if his friend had some impious desire to rush forward, to raise handfuls to his mouth and taste the ashy kiss of it. Perhaps he wanted to go further, to shape a body from the wood and ash and pray for it to return to life, the way an ancient sculptor, sick with love, had once created a woman of marble that the gods had made flesh. But this was not one of the old stories. There would be no miraculous undoing here.
At last, the fire died. They gathered what remained into a clay jar, sifting the ash for bone. They made their way through the corridors of the palace, staggering with wine and grief and leaning on one another for the comfort of it as much as necessity. Exhausted as he was, his age heavy upon him, to Croesus the palace seemed gargantuan, a kind of endless labyrinth. Perhaps this was what the next world was like, he thought, wondering if at this moment Maia’s spirit wandered restlessly in a place like it. He discarded this thought as soon as it came upon him, for it was too light in the palace. He could imagine the afterlife only as a place of darkness.
In the slaves’ quarters, they made their way to an empty corner, and lay down beside each other, in a mutual embrace. Croesus thought of the night, only a few years before, when the three of them had slept beside each other. Now, close as they were, there was a ghostly absence there between them. There always would be.
Whether it was for hours or moments, whether they talked or remained silent, whether they fell asleep against one another or remained awake, Croesus could not afterwards have said. He only remembered the comfort of another suffering soul placed beside him, the moment kept in his mind like some half-remembered dream that resists all recollection, yet shapes the life that follows it.
2
Afterwards, they spent barely a moment apart.
With Psamtek dead and Prexaspes cast out of favour, Croesus had expected the king to summon him. But no word came, for the king was entirely concerned with the coming of his child. A son: Croesus had heard that the king insisted it would be a son. He had no use for an old man, when a new life was so close to being born.
The old slave remained with his friend in the belly of the palace, part of the machinery of cooking and cleaning that kept the royal court running. Croesus, as old as he was, learned to work with his hands. In truth, he knew himself to be more of a hindrance than a help. But none would deny him his place at Isocrates’s side. They passed most days in silence together, for nothing more, it seemed, needed to be said. When they did talk, they spoke of times long past, preserving memories they seemed on the verge of losing. They never joined the gossip of
the other slaves, concerned as it was with the present. What in that world could be of consequence after Maia’s death?
It was only after a month of this, when they rested between tasks, sharing a bowl of drinking water as if it were wine, that Croesus found the courage to ask what had truly happened to Psamtek.
Isocrates took a long swallow of water. ‘You do not believe he was a conspirator.’
‘No,’ Croesus said. ‘He had no such ambitions. What did you do?’
‘I did not kill him, if that is what you think.’
‘But you made him take his own life.’
‘Yes.’
‘Why?’
‘For you, I suppose.’
‘For me?’
‘I thought that he would have you put to death, eventually. I could not allow that.’
Croesus did not reply, at first. He regarded his friend, and wondered how it was possible to know a man for decades, and yet feel that you scarcely knew him at all.
‘What have I done to earn this from you?’ Croesus asked.
‘Psamtek told me that I had a slave’s mind. That I cannot break free of it. That every act I perform is one of subservience to a master. That could be true. But I think we love the people that we love. We will do anything to protect them. And there is nothing more to it than that.’
Croesus tried to find something to say in response, but other words, distant and indistinct, made their way into the chamber. They both went still, and listened. Sound carried far within the stone-lined corridors of the palace. Those with private business to discuss had often been undone by the echoes of their speech reaching unfriendly ears. There were even rumours that the near-blind king had stripped hangings and altered the architecture, converting the palace into an echo chamber that no words might escape from.
And so, with the rest of the slaves, Croesus and Isocrates listened to the king and his sister argue. These screamed altercations had become so common over the past month that all had learned to ignore them, as those who live by the sea no longer mark the rolling of the waves, or the mountain people become attuned to the echo of the wind.
Croesus and Isocrates could not make out the words, only the tone and rhythm of what was being said: the way that a sharp comment was seized upon, an explanation demanded and an insult given in return, building like a gathering storm. It was a pattern that Croesus and the slaves were well familiar with. But this time the voices did not fade, instead reaching a new intensity, speech giving way to wordless cries of hate, as if some transformation had occurred above them, the way the gods were said to sometimes change men into beasts at the height of their passion. There was a final pitched scream of rage or despair that could not be identified as belonging to a man or a woman. Then, there was silence.
Those who had prayed for argument to end now prayed to hear the voices begin again, to hear footsteps moving above them, to hear anything instead of that absence of sound. But there was nothing.
Eventually, a single set of footsteps made its way slowly through corridors and down staircases. The slaves listened to this, and argued where the messenger might be headed. Some said towards the priests’ quarters, others that the sounds were headed towards the gate of the palace. But one by one they fell silent, as they realized that the footsteps were making their way, unmistakably, towards where the slaves worked.
At last, the servant, pale-faced and trembling, came into view.
‘You must come to see the king,’ he said to Croesus.
‘What has happened?’
‘You must come to the king at once.’
As he followed the servant up through the palace, he knew what must have occurred. But he still could not let himself fully believe.
He passed the king’s bodyguards, and came to the corridor before the king’s chamber. At the other end of this corridor was a set of stairs, and it was here, sitting on the top step like a child at play, that Croesus could see Cambyses. The king seemed to be staring at something at the bottom of the stairs. It took Croesus a long time to find the courage to walk to the king. He could see that Cambyses did not sit there shaking with grief or rage, and he did not speak. He sat with a particular kind of stillness, as if afraid the slightest motion would startle the world back into life, as if by remaining entirely unmoving, he might somehow undo what had been done.
At last, Croesus walked twenty paces forward, and stood beside the king. He looked down at the broken figure at the bottom of the stairs. The pale ankle, crooked upright in an inhuman geometry. The arms that were curled, instinctive and maternal at the last, around the full, unwanted belly. He hoped that she had died quickly.
‘So,’ said Croesus. ‘You still have not killed a man.’
‘No.’ The king’s face was twisted in pain, but he did not weep. Croesus wondered if this was the next stage in the degradation of his eyes. Cambyses had little sight left, and now it seemed that tears were lost to him as well.
‘I never wished for this,’ the king continued, speaking softly, as though afraid he might wake the woman who lay at the bottom of the stairs. ‘I have always hated those who hurt women. I thought them the worst of men.’ He stopped, and wiped at his dry eyes, as though imagining the tears were there, willing them to flow. ‘But she would not be quiet. She said such terrible things. She was cruel to me. I told her that I loved her, and told her to be silent, to think of her child, if she would not think of herself. But she would not listen. I did not mean to.’ He paused for a moment, then asked: ‘Why did she do it?’
‘She wanted to die.’
‘It is more than that. She wanted me to kill her. Wanted her death on my hands.’
‘Yes, she did.’
‘I wanted the child. The love it would give to me. That is truer than anything else in the world, the love of a child for its father, is it not?’
‘It is the mother that is loved in that way, Cambyses,’ Croesus said. ‘The father must earn that love.’
‘Is that true?’
‘Yes.’
‘I see,’ Cambyses said. ‘Leave me, Croesus. You are a comfort. But you cannot advise me on what I must do now. You are a creature of empty words.’
‘Master, you should . . .’ Not. The word hung there, unspoken. The utterance that would take a moment to say, and that would bring his death.
The old slave turned, and began to walk away. Then he stopped and looked back over his shoulder, down the stairs to the body at its base. At Parmida, and her unborn child. She must have brooded on this plan ever since the wedding, thinking over and over of the words that she would use, refining and perfecting them like a bladesmith at the forge. The arguments that he and the other slaves had heard had been experiments, testing her brother’s boundaries, finding the words that would drive him to murder.
He wondered what, at last, had made her do this. Perhaps she had heard of Maia’s death, and could not face the thought of raising her child without the slave’s kindness. Or perhaps a bond between them had kept the queen clinging to life, the way that a grief-stricken man may be kept from suicide at the thought of how his mother would suffer. Now that Maia was gone, she had been free to die herself.
‘This must stop,’ Croesus said quietly.
The king lifted his head. ‘What?’ he said, like a man waking from deep dreaming.
‘You are a butcher of your own people, Cambyses. Of your sister. Of . . .’ Cambyses raised his hand, his palm towards Croesus, his face strangely imploring, but Croesus continued, ‘Of Bardiya.’
‘Of Bardiya,’ Cambyses repeated.
‘If you are to kill them all, whom will you rule over? Will you hold court with ghosts?’ Croesus felt tears in his eyes, but he blinked them back. ‘Let me teach you,’ he said. ‘Please. There is still time.’
Cambyses did not say anything. He sat there, his weak eyes alive with thought, and Croesus wondered if, perhaps, the king saw clearly for the first time the world that he had made. How it could be remade in another way. Cambyses looked up
at him. ‘Wait here, Croesus,’ he said. Then he stood, and, with a deliberate calmness, walked to his private chamber and went inside. Croesus stood still, his mouth parted a little in surprise.
He heard the footsteps returning, hurrying a little faster now. It was that hint of eagerness that betrayed the king’s intentions. It was then that Croesus remembered the bow.
Cambyses came from his chamber, his bow in his hand and an arrow already nocked. He stopped and leaned forward, his eyes wide and straining. His failing gaze picked Croesus out, and the king howled, raised the bow and drew back the string.
But Croesus had already started to run. He heard the straining of the wood, the whistle and snap of the arrow, but he was halfway down the stairs by the time the king could loose his shot. He almost stumbled over the body of the queen, catching a last glimpse of the terrible expression on her face. He heard that howl again from behind him, but words came with it. The king’s voice, over and over again, screaming out a death sentence.
Through chambers and down staircases, past the terrified, startled faces of noblemen and slaves alike, he ran without hope. There was nowhere that he could go to, no place he could hide where the king would not catch him, no words of reasoning that he could use to buy back his life. But there was nothing else that he could do but run, and listen to the heavy tread of the guards pursuing him, drawing ever closer.
At last, he reached the place he had, almost unthinkingly, been heading towards. Isocrates was there waiting, his eyes wide in alarm, his mouth moving and forming words, imploring Croesus to tell him what had happened. But Croesus could not speak. He could only bend double, drawing breath into empty lungs, wondering at how his body, so soon to die, could still be so hungry for air. Over the pounding of blood in his ears, he could still hear the running steps of his pursuers. Isocrates heard them too. He took his place at the doorway, feet shoulder width apart, and knees slightly bent, like a wrestler waiting for the signal to begin. Two guards came running, slowing to a halt in front of Isocrates.