The Last King of Lydia

by Tim Leach

  Croesus swallowed, and let his eyes drop back to the ground. ‘For the boon you granted me, I asked you to send my chains to Delphi,’ he said slowly. ‘I had made many sacrifices to them. They told me if I went to war I would destroy a great empire, and that my people would rule Lydia until a mule sat on the throne of Media.’ He shook his head. ‘I wanted to know why their God had betrayed me.’

  ‘And what did they tell you?’ Cyrus said.

  He closed his eyes against the memory. ‘They told me that the great empire I was to destroy was my own. And that you, the child of a Mede mother and a Persian father, were the mule that the prophecy described.’

  Cyrus looked back at the emissary. ‘Your prophecies are no use against me,’ he said. ‘Look what your Oracle did for Croesus. You think that you can travel across the sea, and wage a war against me without consequence. Have an adventure in the East. If you win, you can take my empire. If you lose, why, then you may retreat, and come back another time. Croesus thought the same. You think I am too far away to come and wage war against you. You are wrong. Cross the sea to face me, and after I have broken your army, I will travel halfway across the world to find your cities and burn them to the ground. That is my promise to you.’

  ‘Cyrus—’

  ‘You may tell your kings,’ Cyrus continued, ‘that if they come here, I will put a collar on them both and have them kneeling at my side, like this slave who was once a king. Tell them I am a king who makes slaves of kings. Perhaps, one day, your people will win a great victory against mine. But not yet.’ He made a small gesture with his hand. ‘You may go.’

  The Spartan opened his mouth to speak, but, looking once again at Croesus, he hesitated, and remained silent. He bowed, looked for one last time at the man who had been king of Lydia, then turned and marched out of the circle and into the darkness. There was silence in the court.

  ‘Do you think that will succeed?’ Cyrus said to Harpagus, when the emissary was out of sight.

  Croesus had never seen Harpagus smile. His lips seemed to twitch; perhaps this was as close as he got to a true smile. ‘I think it will,’ the general said.

  ‘A fine performance, my lord,’ Cyraxes said. Others began to speak in praise, but Cyrus waved off the compliments.

  ‘We shall see what comes of it. It pains me to play the ignorant Eastern king. But a man who has never heard of the Spartans will have no fear of going to war against them.’ He yawned. ‘Have our people watch him until he has left the country, and send word to our contacts in Sparta. If they are going to come, we must know of it. Send for that man Tabulus as well. It is about time we gave him his orders. We’re going to put him in charge of your old kingdom, Croesus.’

  Croesus did not reply. Cyrus looked at him, and for the first time Croesus saw hesitancy on the king’s face, something close to regret. Or perhaps he only imagined that he saw it.

  Croesus bowed deeply, to hide his shame. ‘I am here to serve, master,’ he said.

  Later, Croesus returned to the tent, stumbling with exhaustion as the first sign of dawn appeared on the horizon. He entered carefully. He did not want to wake the others.

  When Cyrus had told him that the Persians did not like to keep slaves, he had thought it a piece of empty rhetoric. Yet he had spoken truthfully, for in Persia it was only those who were most unfortunate, those cursed by the Gods, who found themselves the property of other men.

  Half a dozen slaves shared the tent with him. They were the favourites of the court, each with his own particular function, some quality that made him too valuable to set free. One young man was the lover of a Persian nobleman, pampered and spoiled by his infatuated master. A few years of beauty were left to him before he would be discarded for another and cast out to be a catamite for the soldiers; he spent his days staring at his reflection in pools of water and polished stones, watching for the slightest sign of ageing. Another of the slaves had been a poet as a free man, and was lucky that Cyraxes had a weakness for the epic. But the old man never liked to hear the same poem twice, and so the poet chased around the camp searching for a poem he did not know, or spent hours in the tent in a fever of forced composition. Each of them, like Croesus, was a plaything of one nobleman or another. Existing to entertain, and surviving on a whim. A single mistake would be enough for them to be cast out.

  Of the six, only one was awake, his eyes like two small white stones in the darkness.

  ‘What happened?’ Isocrates said.

  Croesus hesitated. ‘Go back to sleep,’ he said. ‘I am sorry that I woke you.’

  ‘You didn’t wake me. That idiot stepped on me when he came to wake you up. What happened?’

  Croesus looked at the others. ‘Don’t worry about them,’ Isocrates said. ‘Nothing disturbs the sleep of a slave.’

  ‘Cyrus wanted to show me off to an ambassador,’ Croesus said. ‘A Spartan.’ He smiled bitterly. ‘Lakrines. The same one who came to see me, when I was king. You remember? The Gods have a cruel sense of humour.’

  ‘I remember him. What was that like?’

  ‘Humiliating.’ Croesus sat down and shook his head. ‘Every day, I think there is not another shame to endure. Now I am to be paraded. An exemplar of foolishness.’

  ‘Well, at least it is easy work.’

  ‘You think so?’

  ‘Ask the slaves in the mines, or the helots of Sparta. I’m sure one of them would be delighted to change places for a lifetime of humiliation.’

  ‘It might have stopped a war; at least that is what Cyrus said. I don’t think the Spartans will come now. That is something.’

  ‘Don’t be naïve. It might have stopped war with the Spartans. The wars in the north will come soon enough. Cyrus just wants them to be massacres, rather than battles.’

  Croesus said nothing. Isocrates yawned. ‘What do you dream of, Croesus?’ he said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I know you dream of something. Sometimes you cry out.’

  ‘Why do you want to know?

  Isocrates thought for a moment. ‘I think I dreamed when I was younger. I don’t remember. I grew out of it, I suppose. I don’t think slaves dream much, as a rule.’ He paused, then added, ‘I am curious as to what it is like.’

  Croesus lay down, and curled his arms beneath his head. ‘It is usually the same dream,’ he said, speaking slowly and softly.

  ‘Not always?’

  ‘No. I dream of many things. But usually, when I dream, I see a palace of fire.’

  ‘There’s nothing but fire?’

  ‘No. Everything else is dark. Like the sky without stars.’

  ‘You are in pain, I take it.’

  ‘No. Not at first. I can reach out to the walls, and they are quite cool to touch. The air is cold, like standing under trees in winter. I feel quite calm. There is no rush to move on. No fear.’ He paused, then said, ‘Perhaps it is worth what comes after in the dream, just to enjoy those moments of peace.’ He stopped again, expecting some sharp comment from Isocrates, but there was silence. ‘Are you still awake?’ he said.

  ‘Go on, I’m listening.’

  ‘I walk through the palace. It is like a labyrinth, and I take a different route each night. There must be thousands of paths through the maze. Ten thousand different combinations of turnings that I can take. I go a different way each time. I am nowhere near to exploring them all. But it doesn’t matter. Whichever way I go, I always reach the centre.’

  ‘What is there?’

  Croesus shrugged. ‘People. They change every night.’

  ‘Am I ever there?’

  ‘No. Only the dead. My father. Sometimes I see Atys. Sometimes . . .’ His voice trailed off.

  ‘Danae?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I try to speak to them, but they never respond. They look behind me, and I know there is something terrible there. I don’t want to look, but I can’t help myself. I turn and see the pyre, and I know then that I have been a fool. That I never had a choice, and it was always goin
g to end this way.’ He licked his lips, suddenly dry. ‘I can feel the heat then. All at once, from nothing. I try to cry out, but I feel the fire roar down my throat, burning away my voice.’ He paused. ‘That’s when I wake up.’

  They lay in silence for a time.

  ‘You are not in danger of the pyre any more, you know,’ Isocrates said eventually.

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘You misunderstand,’ Isocrates said. ‘Slaves aren’t worth the spectacle. Or the wood.’ He yawned again. ‘If you ever displease Cyrus, he’ll have you strangled instead.’ And with that, Isocrates rolled over and went back to sleep.

  Croesus stretched out a hand and opened the tent flap slightly. He could see the first fringes of light in the east, the pale blue of the sky promising dawn. The next day would come soon. Another day of wondering if this was the day when Cyrus would grow bored or displeased. Another day of slavery, to add to the hundreds he had collected already. Perhaps, he thought, I will live long enough to have been a slave longer than I was a king. Thirteen more years, that is all it would take. I would rather die before that can happen.

  He lay down to get what sleep he could before the new day came, and returned to his dreams of fire.

  2

  The first year had been the hardest.

  After they had taken him down from the pyre and assigned him to the slaves’ quarters, Croesus was certain that this was some kind of a cruel joke, that Cyrus would keep him alive for a week, a month, before taking him back to the pyre, and that the other men of the court would laugh and wonder how Croesus could have been so foolish as to think he would be allowed to live. But after a time, just as the pure fear of death was fading, the second horror came to him; the humiliation of being at another man’s command, with less freedom than a dog. He thought of all the things that he could never do again, about how he would continue like this for months, years and decades. Forty years, perhaps, spent looking back at the wreckage of a ruined life. Living in fear was a terrible thing. Living without hope was something else entirely.

  Isocrates had not spoken to him much in those first months. Perhaps it had been some kind of a test, to see whether Croesus would survive alone in his new way of life. Perhaps he had simply been too busy with his other duties. Whatever the reason, one day, Croesus came back to the slave quarters to find Isocrates waiting for him.

  ‘Sit down, Croesus,’ the other man had said. ‘I am here to teach you.’

  ‘To teach me what?’

  ‘To teach you how to live, of course. Now sit. We have much to discuss.’

  Croesus had sat cross-legged on the ground. ‘You think I need your help?’

  ‘Yes, I do. And I think you are too proud to ask.’

  ‘Very well. And where do we begin?’ Croesus said, imagining Isocrates would start with some abstract principle.

  ‘We begin with your feet.’

  Croesus had thought it a poor joke, but Isocrates was quite serious. He told Croesus that a slave’s death always began at the feet. Rushing around on one errand or another, wearing thin sandals or boots that were always on the verge of disintegration. Then came the blisters, which slowed you down. Beatings would follow, and the slave would become slower still, and never be able to rest. Blisters became open wounds. Then followed infection, exhaustion, and death.

  Isocrates then spoke of the value of things. Where once Croesus had lived in a sea of coins and a labyrinth of rare artefacts, now he would learn to treasure a small piece of sharp flint, a good pair of boots, a handful of coins, a flask of good wine.

  They spoke of much else that night, and gradually Croesus saw how he could survive in this new world. A world that lay alongside that of kings and courtiers, which he had lived in for most of his life. A world that ran parallel, but separate, as though he really had died on that pyre in Sardis, and had been condemned to wander the courts of kings as a ghost. A world in which he was invisible, unless he made a mistake.

  After they had finished, and Isocrates rose to leave, Croesus found himself asking one last question. ‘Why did you come?’ he said.

  Isocrates turned back, and gave a slight smile. ‘Maia sent me. Why else?’ Then the slave was gone, and Croesus was left to consider what he had been told.

  He did not find the next day better than the one before it, but nor did he find it worse. The decline had been halted, for a time at least, and his mind had remained in this uneasy truce with itself for over a year now.

  It was remarkable, he thought, that one could transform a king into a slave so quickly. He was even ashamed to find that there was now some comfort in the numbing simplicity of his life, the freedom from any kind of choice. But occasionally, at the edge of his mind, the feeling came that he was only buying time. He knew that there was no happiness in this way of life, and that life without happiness was no life at all. He took care not to follow that line of thought too far. When the army left Sardis and went in search of other lands to conquer, Croesus began to lose himself in repetition.

  Each morning, waking with the dawn, he would at first lie still, enjoying a rare waking moment when his time was his own, waiting for the fear of being punished to outweigh the rebellious pleasure of stillness. He would listen to the muted, familiar sounds of the army waking around him, the soldiers and slaves readying themselves for a day’s back-breaking labour so that the army could drag itself forward just a few parasangs, could crawl its way across the land, heading to the west.

  He would rise and check his feet as Isocrates had taught him, then unroll the small piece of cloth that served as his treasury, taking an inventory of the coins and tools and small luxuries that were all he owned. After accounting for all his possessions, he secreted them one by one into the hidden pockets he had stitched into his tunic. The servants stole from their masters when they were certain they could get away with it, and they stole from one another as a matter of habit.

  Before he left the tent, he would look enviously at the other slaves. They had learned to sleep until the very last moment, in order to take as much rest as they could, rising just in time to hurry to their tasks. Perhaps, untroubled by dreams, it was easier for them to sleep that way. He wondered if he would ever manage to forget his dreams and sleep as they did.

  Then he parted the cloth of the tent and emerged to another day of servitude.

  He had lived this peripheral life, numb and inconsequential, for the better part of two years. He thought that twenty more might pass in such a way, until news came from the east that would place him at the centre of things once again.

  Lydia had rebelled.

  Croesus saw that Cyrus was not angry at the news. He had never seen the Persian king in a rage, and even now, a faint sense of frustration was all that was apparent, the frustration of a man facing a problem that was well within his powers, almost insultingly so, but that would take time and precious energy to solve.

  ‘Now,’ said the king, ‘explain to me again what has happened, Cyraxes. And perhaps, more importantly, how we have allowed it to happen.’

  ‘Pactyes—’

  ‘A man you recommended to me.’

  ‘Yes. He has declared himself ruler of Lydia, and bought himself an army. He is besieging our regent—’

  ‘Tabulus.’

  ‘Yes. He is under siege in Sardis.’

  ‘What did Pactyes use to buy his army?’

  ‘Gold.’

  ‘The gold that we gave him.’

  Cyraxes bowed his head. ‘Yes.’

  ‘You see, Croesus? Your riches haunt me still.’ Cyrus looked back at his courtiers. ‘How did this happen?’

  No one answered, and Cyrus divided his gaze equally between Harpagus and Cyraxes. ‘I should have known that there was something wrong,’ the king said eventually, ‘when you both agreed that he was the man to trust. It was unprecedented – an appointment without an argument. Now I see there is much to be said for precedent. But what is to be done now? Harpagus?’

  ‘His army won’t
be able to resist ours. A single battle is all it will take to rout them.’

  ‘You are certain?’

  ‘Quite certain. A man like Pactyes assumes that loyalty can be bought.’

  ‘And it cannot?’

  ‘It can for a battle. Not for a war. His mercenaries cannot compare to our soldiers.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Your men don’t follow you for the gold,’ Harpagus said matter of factly. ‘They follow you because they love you.’

  ‘How kind of you to say so,’ Cyrus said. ‘Very well. Take half the army. You will travel faster that way.’ Cyrus held out a hand, and a servant handed him a skin of wine. He drank, and passed it back. ‘So, what do we do afterwards?’

  Harpagus frowned. ‘What do you mean, sire?’

  ‘For such a practical man, Harpagus, you surprise me. What do we do about Lydia?’

  Silence fell, and every one of the courtiers turned to look at Croesus, kneeling at the king’s side. Cyrus did not. ‘If they can rebel so soon after we have conquered them,’ he continued, ‘they will rise again. Unless we can discourage them in some way.’

  Harpagus nodded. ‘I see. After we have defeated them, I would suggest we enslave them. We can repopulate the cities and towns with migrants from the east. Let the Lydians become a race of slaves.’

  ‘I have no love for slavery, Harpagus.’

  The general looked pointedly at Croesus. ‘The Lydians do. Doesn’t that make it a fitting punishment?’

  Cyrus nodded slowly. ‘Well, Croesus?’ he said.

  ‘Master?’

  ‘You have raised a proud people in a rich land, Croesus. That presents me with a problem.’

  Croesus took a deep breath. ‘Master. I ask you not to do this.’

  ‘You can beg all you like, it won’t—’

  ‘Harpagus, quiet,’ Cyrus said. He turned back to Croesus. ‘I’m afraid he is right. Begging won’t do any good. I am open to an alternative, if you can convince me. But I don’t see one.’

  Croesus opened his mouth to speak again. He hesitated. It had been so long since he had any influence over a life other than his own. He had forgotten what it was to have the fate of a nation depend on his words, and he found he no longer had a taste for it.