by Tim Leach
‘You’d better step aside,’ one of them said. The guard looked past the slave, to Croesus. ‘We will do what we must. But you will not suffer.’
‘Let them past,’ Croesus said, his voice cracking. ‘I should not have run.’
‘What happened?’ Isocrates said.
‘He offended the king.’
‘How?’
The other man smiled bitterly. ‘How else? With honest words. But he will take our heads if we do not execute him.’
Isocrates nodded. ‘Listen,’ he said. ‘Report that he has been killed.’
‘Isocrates . . .’ the guard said reproachfully, shaking his head.
‘Just listen. You know how Cambyses favours Croesus,’ Isocrates said. ‘The king might change his mind. He might regret his decision. Think of the reward, when we present his favoured advisor back to him, alive and well, returned from the dead.’
‘And if he does not change his mind?’
‘Then you can come back and kill him later. I will keep him here, in this storeroom. Have men that you trust stand guard, if you like. He has nowhere to run to. Any punishment for this, it falls on me. Any reward I receive, I will give to you. What do you say?’
The guard looked at his companion. The second man shook his head. Isocrates reached into a fold in his robes, and took out a small, heavy pouch. ‘How long will this buy me?’ he said.
The first guard weighed it speculatively in his hand. ‘Four days,’ he said.
‘Four days it is,’ Isocrates said. ‘Thank you both.’
The guards turned to leave. The first man hesitated, then looked back. ‘Good luck, Croesus,’ he said.
Croesus put his head into his hands. ‘Thank you,’ he said.
‘Come on. Lie down here. Try and get some sleep. I will have to bar the door, but I will be back tomorrow with some food.’
‘Isocrates . . .’
‘Quiet, Croesus. We can talk tomorrow.’
3
On the first day, Croesus slept.
For the first time in almost thirty years he could rest without fear. No king would summon him to a midnight counsel. No assassins or rivals would come into his room to smother him. The next day would bring no more choices between life and death – in four days he would live or die, and there was nothing he could do to alter that. So he delighted in sleep, wandering from dream to dream, drifting occasionally to the half-awake state where the mind is alive, but without fear. On one of these sojourns into the waking world he woke to find food and wine placed next to his bedding. He ate and drank as quickly as he could, and returned to his dreams.
The next day, his sleep was lighter. The scrape of the plate against the stone woke him, and he looked across to find Isocrates there, replacing the food. Croesus sat up.
‘No word yet?’ he said.
‘No.’
‘What does he say about me in the court?’ Isocrates hesitated, and did not reply. ‘Tell me honestly.’
‘He laughs,’ Isocrates said. ‘He says he is glad to be rid of an old fool.’ Croesus looked away. ‘But who knows what will happen?’ Isocrates continued. ‘He will come to miss you.’
‘In four days?’
‘Who can say?’
Croesus nodded. ‘Perhaps it does not matter. I would have only a few years left to live. Nothing else will happen in that time. Nothing that will change the way my life has been.’ He looked up again. ‘Are you happy, Isocrates?’
‘Should I be, do you think? How does my life appear to you?’
Croesus smiled. ‘Ordinary. A life of hard work. Much suffering, and little to show for it.’
‘Ordinary,’ Isocrates said, weighing the word. ‘I have never thought of that.’
‘I remember talking to Cyrus once. About what we were afraid of, as kings with all the wealth and power in the world at our command. The one thing that scared us both.’
‘What was that?’
‘An ordinary life. A life spent doing nothing new, nothing remarkable, nothing that would mark a place in history. I was always afraid of this, afraid that I would come to the end of my life, and have nothing to show for it.’ He shook his head. ‘But I have always been a fool. I never learned to be wise, as you said I should.’
‘You think differently now?
‘I think every life is remarkable. When I was a king, I squandered lives as I wasted my wealth: on shows of vanity, on grasping at immortality. But even if I could be remembered for the rest of time, what would it matter? Surely, this world will end. The last man will die, and I’ll be forgotten with him. What difference if I am forgotten tomorrow, or ten thousand years from now? What is ten thousand years, against the eternity that will follow?’
‘You do not believe there is another world?’
‘No. That is easy to believe, when death is far away. But I can feel the truth, now that I am close. There is nothing beyond.’
Isocrates stood. ‘I must go. Some of the others have begun to suspect.’
Croesus nodded absently. ‘Thank you, Isocrates. Please do not risk yourself by coming back here again. I do not need any more food. I have two days left to live. If he pardons me, well, we shall eat a good meal together. If he does not, then what does it matter?’
Isocrates nodded. He placed a hand on Croesus’s head, like a priest giving a blessing, then he walked away.
Croesus did not weep, or return to his dreams. He lay back down, and tried to lose himself in memories.
On the third day, Croesus woke to hear the bar being lifted from the door. When it opened, Isocrates alone entered the room. Croesus wondered if Isocrates meant to put him to death himself – a last act of kindness for a friend.
‘Well?’ Croesus said.
‘It is time.’
‘Time for what?’
‘The king wants you,’ Isocrates said.
‘Are you sure?’
‘He did not sleep last night, and spent all day crying out for you. He will not make any decisions, receive any emissaries. The men of the court do not know what to do. They pray for a miracle.’ At last, Isocrates smiled. ‘It is time to come back from the dead, Croesus.’
‘He might change his mind again when he sees me.’
‘He might. But that is a chance we will have to take.’
Croesus closed his eyes, and was silent for a long time. ‘Thank you, Isocrates,’ he said at last. ‘Let us go and see the king.’
A collective intake of breath announced his return to the court. The king, slouched despondently on the throne, looked up in alarm at the sound. With his eyes as weak as they were, he could not tell what could have provoked such a response. He saw only that a new pair of dim shapes had entered the room. ‘What is it?’ he said. ‘Tell me what is happening!’
Silence followed his demand. Croesus and Isocrates looked around the court, but saw that none would announce them. ‘Croesus is here, master,’ Isocrates said.
‘That’s not possible. He is dead. I killed him.’ Tears swelled in the king’s eyes, and Croesus saw that he had been wrong before. The king could still cry.
‘You are trying to trick me,’ Cambyses said. ‘Make a fool of me. I will kill you for it, I swear.’
‘I am here, master,’ Croesus said softly.
Croesus felt a tight pain in his chest at the love, the desperate, needful love he saw in Cambyses’s eyes. Croesus was quite certain that Cambyses still could not see him. The king was simply deciding what he wanted to see.
‘I am glad,’ the king said. ‘I am so very glad that you live, Croesus.’ He smile grew broader. He turned his near-sightless eyes back to Isocrates. ‘You . . . what is your name?’
Croesus saw the trap closing. He opened his mouth, trying to find the words that might turn aside the king’s will. But nothing came. ‘Isocrates, master,’ his friend said.
‘You,’ Cambyses said. ‘You lied to me. You betrayed me. My soldiers told me what you said. You’re the one that told me that he was dead.’
Cambyses stood, and extended a single finger, levelled at Isocrates. ‘Tomorrow, you die the way traitors die. You die by fire.’
4
In the cell, dressed in the white robe that he would die in, Isocrates slept. It was shortly before dawn, though day or night meant little in that windowless chamber. Only faint torch light, seeping in from around the frame of the door, offered any illumination. A rich stink came from one corner of the cell which generations of prisoners, by common consensus, had chosen to use as a latrine, and in the opposite corner, Isocrates was curled up against the bare floor. In spite of everything, he seemed to sleep soundly. And from the shadows, Croesus watched his friend dream.
Croesus’s bribe had been taken by the guards some time before, and yet he found he did not have the heart to wake his friend. Somehow, even hours before his death, nothing seemed so right as this, to treat it as any other night, to refuse to extract every sensation from his final moments. Even at the last, Croesus thought, it seemed his friend still had something to teach him.
At last, Isocrates woke on his own, one side doubtless numbed by the hard ground. He rolled over, and found Croesus watching him. ‘I hoped I would see you again,’ said Isocrates.
‘Are you afraid?’
Isocrates closed his eyes. ‘For a long time, I thought I was ready to die.’
‘Yet now you are afraid.’
‘Yes,’ Isocrates said.
Croesus watched him for a time. ‘Can I tell you something, Isocrates?’
Isocrates nodded.
‘For a long time, it has been impossible for me to be happy,’ Croesus said. ‘Yet I still want to live. Even locked away in that cellar, waiting and hoping for Cambyses to change his mind. Even now, with you about to die in my place, I still want to live. Even though there is no happiness left for me in this life. Do you know what that means?’
‘Tell me.’
‘It means that happiness is not why we live.’
‘What do we live for, then?’
‘I do not know.’
The silence returned. Isocrates sat with his back against the wall, head bowed. Croesus stood, irresolute, trying to make his decision. More than anything, he wanted to leave that place. To live. But he knew that he could not do it.
‘Give me your robe,’ Croesus said. ‘We do not have much time.’
‘What?’
‘I have bribed the guards. They will let you out. Come on, give me your clothes.’
‘What am I to do when I am free from here?’
‘You are going to take my place, and I will take yours.’
‘We look nothing alike.’
‘Cambyses is the only one that matters,’ Croesus said. ‘He is mad, and he’s almost blind now. If he says you are Croesus, who will dare contradict him? The truth is what he says it is.’
‘Why would you do this, Croesus?’
Croesus looked away. ‘I have lived long enough,’ he said slowly. ‘I was not much of a king. I was not a good father to my sons, or a good husband to my wife. I have not been a good friend to you. But this is something I can do.’
Isocrates shook his head. ‘Croesus . . .’
‘Do you remember Solon?’
Isocrates hesitated. ‘Yes. I remember.’
‘To die for what you love is a good thing. A good death.’
‘You are afraid,’ Isocrates said. ‘I can see it. You must not do this.’
‘Yes, I am more afraid than you are. You are brave, and I am a coward. You have tried to do much for me, Isocrates. It was not your fault that I turned out this way. A miserable old man at the end of his life. Let me do this for you.’
Isocrates tried to speak. He sobbed instead – a sudden gasp of shame and grief. ‘Forgive me,’ he said softly.
‘What for, you fool? Come on, give me your robe. The guards will not stop you. But there is no time left.’
Isocrates pulled the white robe up over his head and handed it to Croesus, felt the old man press his own simple clothes into his hands. They stood together naked for a moment, each holding the identity of the other in their hands. Then they dressed, and each became another man.
Isocrates could see the world only dimly through his tears. Like Cambyses, he thought suddenly. He saw a shadow that was the shape of his friend moving towards him, felt arms tighten around him in a brother’s embrace. Then, feeling the shame might drive him mad, he stumbled to the door, past the guards who looked away, not wanting to be to witnesses to the deception. He heard the door close behind him.
He ran out into the corridors of the palace. He had just a few hours before dawn.
Croesus lay on the floor of the cell, and waited for the sun to rise. This will be the last time I wake, he thought. The last time I will feel my mind coming to life. I will never sleep again. I will never have another dream.
He heard the footsteps scrape to a halt outside the cell, heard the bar being lifted, and knew that it was time. He stood as the door opened, and recognized the guards who had come to take him: the same two men who had pursued him through the palace, whom Isocrates had bought his life from. They nodded to him in greeting, and understanding. One of them silently handed him a skin of wine.
Croesus took it, swallowed a mouthful of the strong, bitter drink, and tried to hand the skin back. The guard shook his head. ‘You had better drink it all,’ he said. ‘We still have time.’
They waited as he finished the wine, showing no sign of impatience or boredom. They did nothing but lean against the cell wall and stare into space, enjoying a rare moment’s peace.
‘Come on,’ the first guard said when Croesus had drained the skin. ‘We had better go. Can you walk?’
‘I think so,’ Croesus said.
Without asking, the soldier put his arm under Croesus’s arm. ‘Lean on me,’ he said. ‘There is no shame in it.’
As they passed through the dark corridors of the palace, Croesus tried to recall the moments of his life, to enjoy them one last time. But no memories came. It was as though he had been born in the cell that morning, to die an hour later. It did not matter, he thought. What did his memories count for, when they would soon cease to be? Had he died an hour after his birth, his life would have counted for just as little.
Outside the palace gates, Croesus saw the crude pyre looming. He remembered that other pyre, when he had been saved at the last moment by the king’s reprieve, and felt the first tears of fear rising up and spilling from his eyes. He knew then that he would not be able to die well, that he would not find the courage he needed so desperately. That he would die begging for his life.
The guard at his side felt his fear, and Croesus felt the arm around him tighten, a brotherly half embrace. ‘Courage, Croesus,’ the man whispered to him. They tied him to the pyre, and waited for the dawn.
Croesus looked out, and saw that only a small crowd had gathered. There was scant spectacle in the execution of a slave. There were a few curious traders, willing to lose a little business for a free morning’s entertainment, but most of them were children who had slipped away to watch something forbidden. He looked at the crowd, examining each face in turn, but he could not see Isocrates. The tears flowed more freely from his eyes. He had hoped that his friend would be there.
The dawn came. The guards lit their torches and placed them at the base of the pyre. The dry wood caught, and the crowd fell silent in anticipation. The first coil of smoke reached Croesus and he recoiled from the scent.
Almost three decades had passed since the pyre in Sardis, yet the smell, the sensation was so suddenly, immediately familiar that Croesus was seized by a paralysing fear, by a thought that would not let him go. It was the thought that perhaps he had never escaped that first pyre, that his life with Cyrus and Cambyses, Maia and Isocrates, had all been nothing more than a final, feverish imagining, the last desperate effort of a dying mind to save itself.
But something was different this time. He could not feel his hands or his feet. He felt cold. He ran hi
s tongue over his lips, found some last drop of wine hiding in the cracked skin. When his tongue touched the liquid, he felt a metallic taste growing strong and heavy in his mouth. He remembered the secret tastes of poisons he had learned as a king, and had forgotten as a slave. How could he have drunk the wineskin without noticing that old taste? How had he not guessed that Isocrates would give one last gift to him at the very end, that of a gentle death?
His head hung heavy, and fell against his chest. He would sleep soon, he realized. Perhaps, in the moments before the poison took him, he would have time to dream again. A dream spanning years, maybe even decades, in that impossible way that one can sleep for moments, but seem to imagine a lifetime. One last dream before he died. A whole life lived again.
With a wrenching effort, he lifted his head to look at the world a final time. Out there in the crowd, he saw Isocrates looking back at him. He tried to open his mouth to speak, to thank Isocrates, to thank the world, perhaps, for letting him live and dream there for a time, but his heavy lips could not form the words. He let his head drop down again, and found he could no longer even see the fire that was growing beneath him.
At the very last, he might have managed a bare fraction of a smile.
‘Croesus?’
The voice was hesitant, uncertain; a child calling for a parent in the darkness. There was no answer.
‘Croesus?’ Cambyses said the name again.
For a moment, Isocrates wondered if he should mimic Croesus’s voice and mannerisms, to truly play the part of his dead friend. But no, he thought. Let us see how mad this king truly is.
‘I am here, master.’
Cambyses turned his milky eyes towards the sound. In that ruined mind of his, Isocrates thought, there is a mind that dreams, that imagines a better world. Perhaps, in this, he is the happiest of men. He has only to dream it, and for him it is so. He wants me to be Croesus. And so I am Croesus. His mind can work miracles. He has brought a dead man back to life.