by Tessa Afshar
“We could speak tomorrow, if you wish,” I offered, feeling guilty for dumping my unpleasant news on him without giving him a chance to draw breath. “Perhaps you should rest after your long journey.”
“You expect me to rest after what I have seen and heard? I’ll not move until I get to the bottom of this mess.”
Bardia returned just then bearing the leather-wrapped parchments. To my relief, he was followed by Pari who bore a large tray of food. Shushan hadn’t had time to prepare an elaborate feast, but she had sent a warm dish of pureed eggplants and onions sautéed in olive oil, turmeric, and dried mint, along with fresh bread and strained yogurt. In her usual efficient manner, Pari set the tray up on a table near Darius. I expected him to wave her away with impatience and begin grilling Bardia and me. But the aroma of Shushan’s cooking proved too tempting and he dipped his bread into the eggplant and dropped the morsel into his mouth before Pari had a chance to hand him a napkin.
A deep sigh escaped his lips and he closed his eyes as he chewed. “No one cooks like Shushan, not even the royal cooks at Susa or Persepolis.”
I was glad to see him eat. For one thing, I was still feeling guilty for depriving him of any form of respite with my ill-timed revelations. For another, I knew he would be in a better mood with the taste of Shushan’s food on his tongue.
As if sensing my thoughts, he opened his eyes and gestured with his hand. “Please. Proceed.”
With painstaking detail, I laid before him the tale of our investigations. I explained how I had grown suspicious of Teispes, and how he refused to allow me into the records room. I tried to gloss over the way we took Teispes’s key by merely saying that we stole it from him.
“Wait a moment,” Darius said, halting my rapid narrative. “How did you do that? As I recall, he never removes the thing from around his neck. Or is that not true?”
“Oh, it’s true,” Bardia said.
I squirmed uncomfortably on the couch. I now had to tell my husband how I sneaked into the chamber of a man alone, and how I laid hands on him as he slept in his bed. Darius listened to my tale of indiscretion and theft with a sardonic gleam in his eye.
“My wife, it turns out, has greater talent than I was led to believe. Remind me to take you on our next military campaign. You can sneak into the enemy general’s tent at night and get me whatever information I need. And if perchance he should wake before you are finished, tell him he can keep you with my compliments.”
To my shock, Bardia, usually so respectful, shushed him. “He does not mean it, mistress. When he knows the full story, he will ask your pardon, I am sure.”
“He will not, I am sure,” Darius said, grabbing another piece of bread loaded with yogurt and eggplant.
Before we lost the thread of our conversation altogether, I picked up where I had left off and told of Caspian’s part in the plot. Darius roared with laughter, a sound I had never heard. I could grow accustomed to it, I decided.
“Clever beast. He saved the lot of you.”
“He did,” I admitted, “though he paid a price for it, poor fellow.” I described how I had found Teispes beating him. Darius turned pale. I could see it took all his control to keep from jumping up there and then to fetch Teispes and give him a taste of his own medicine.
I gazed at the dog who had saved me with such courage that night; he seemed strangely subdued and sleepy given that his beloved master was nearby after such a long absence. I reached over to pat his head. Darius must have had the same thought, for our hands connected in a brief caress over Caspian’s bristly fur. I pulled my arm back quickly and hid it in the folds of my skirt. I didn’t dare look up at Darius; I didn’t want to see his sarcastic expression. I wondered if he assumed I had purposely reached out my hand for an excuse to touch him.
He refrained from making one of his cutting remarks. “What happened after?” was all he said, and even that sounded bored.
So I told him about my discovery of the discrepancies in the accounts and showed him the ledgers that had caught my notice. I had to kneel close by his stool to explain the figures. The flowing pleats of my sleeve brushed his thigh every time I pointed out something on the parchment. Without warning, he grabbed the silk and moved it off his lap and stood up so abruptly that I lost my balance. With a thud I ended up sitting on my rump.
He rolled the parchment and threw it on a table. “Fine. I can see there is unusual activity. It does not prove he is a thief, however, though he certainly needs to explain himself. Do you have more?”
“We do.”
Before I could divulge the secrets of Teispes’s pastime on Mondays, Bardia told him about the loose flagstone on the garden steps.
“You think he intentionally tried to hurt my wife? That’s beyond belief, Bardia. The man would have to be mad.”
“Or very brazen. My grandson is the one who discovered the stone. He told us it was pulled out by someone on purpose.”
Darius sank back on the stool. “Gobry would know. He’s had ample training. I can scarcely believe this. But why?”
“He must have discovered the missing parchments,” I said. “He was warning us to leave him be.” I had moved back to the couch, a safe distance away from my husband. “Anyway, Gobry agreed to do a bit of spying for us in Ecbatana. We had assumed that Mandana’s twins belonged to Teispes. But it turned out we were wrong.”
I described Gobry’s findings and Bardia filled in the details of our spying trip into Persepolis. Thankfully, he omitted to tell my husband about my short career as a courtesan.
Darius was silent for a long time. I could see that he was trying to digest the ramifications of our revelations. The profound betrayal. The cost of it to people he loved. The damage of it to his estate. And the fact that his own carelessness had allowed Teispes’s duplicity to go on for three interminable years.
At his feet, Caspian tried to rise, then fell. He did this several times. At first I thought he was drunk from the wine, until I noticed his unnaturally fast breathing. He seemed to have trouble drawing air into his lungs. All of us rushed to his side.
“What’s the matter, boy? What’s wrong with you?” I cried.
Suddenly the hound began to quake in great jerking motions, his massive body shuddering with uncontrollable movement.
“He’s having a seizure,” Darius said. “Has this happened before?”
“Never! What should we do? Can you not help him?” I began to tremble, looking at the poor creature’s suffering.
Darius shook his head. After a few moments, the shaking seemed to stop. A large glob of spittle came out of his mouth. He shook twice more before losing consciousness. Darius went rigid. He bent his head and sniffed the dog’s mouth. “Bitter almonds,” he said and turned to look at Bardia. Something passed between them in that look, something I didn’t like.
“What does it mean?” I asked, horror sinking me to the ground.
“Tell me, Sarah, what has he eaten today?”
“He ate what I ate at dinner.”
“What you ate?” Again I saw that indefinable secret pass between the two men. They turned to gaze at me. Darius’s green eyes were intense and unflinching. “Did he eat anything else?”
I remembered the spilled wine. “He drank of the wine Teispes brought me earlier, remember? And the dates too.”
Darius rushed over to the almost empty goblet and began to sniff it. “Bitter almonds,” he said again, cryptically.
I put Caspian’s head on my lap and began to stroke his now inert body. “But what does it mean? Why is he so sick?”
Darius crouched in front of me. “Sarah.” I was too miserable to pay him any mind. He tangled his hand in my hair and forced my head up until I focused on him. “Did you drink of the wine, Sarah?”
“Why?”
“Because it was poisoned.”
Chapter Sixteen
“Poisoned?” I remembered Teispes knocking on my do or, and delivering the tray with a pleasant smile. “Of course. It wa
s Teispes.” I felt completely paralyzed as I beheld Caspian’s unconscious form, his belly rising and falling with fast, shallow breaths.
“Did you drink any of it?” Darius asked again, and now I understood the intensity of his manner.
“No. No, I didn’t.”
Darius let out a breath and let me go. “Does he always deliver your food personally?”
“No. This was the first time. He said he wanted to ask my pardon, and that he was sorry he had followed your orders to treat me with contempt.”
“I gave no such order.”
I shrugged. “He said he came to make peace. His mistake was that he brought me a copy of the Epic of Gilgamesh from your library. I became too engrossed in the story to touch the food or the wine. I would have drunk it soon enough, but then you came. And Caspian got to it first.”
Darius became a whirl of motion. “Bardia,” he said, his voice calm, but commanding, “do you have a purge we can give him? It’s probably too late already, but we should try.”
“I don’t know how it would work on a dog, master. It might just send him over the edge.”
“It’s a chance we must take. He’ll die anyway, if we do nothing.”
I couldn’t hold back a cry at that news. I laid my head against Caspian’s and wept. Bardia said quietly, “I’ll fetch the herbs right away.”
Darius rushed to the door. One of his men stood at attention outside my chamber. I overheard enough of his command to know that he had sent the man to arrest Teispes.
When he returned, he knelt by Caspian. Gently, he began to rub the dog on its chest. “Do you think he is suffering?” I asked.
“Not anymore. He is in a deep sleep.”
I nodded. I had begun shivering and I couldn’t stop. Darius’s hands on my shoulders made me jump. I realized that he was wrapping me in my cloak. He must have risen with the silence of a cat, for I never noticed his movements. He came back to crouch before me.
“You’ve grown to love him?”
I nodded. He had been my champion through danger and my companion through many lonely hours.
Darius pulled the cloak closer about me and settled the fabric around me until I was covered from neck to feet. “Thank you,” I whispered. He rose to fetch a blanket with which he covered Caspian.
“He is the brightest dog I ever had,” he said. “And the most faithful.”
I realized that although he wasn’t weeping, he too was mourning; he merely held his grief deep inside. “I’m so sorry,” I said. “Perhaps if I had managed this affair in a different way, he wouldn’t have been hurt.”
“This is not your fault. It is that man’s doing and he shall pay for it. What manner of evil would unleash such murderous behavior? What will become of Persia if our men turn into cheats and murderers? And to think I gave him the run of my household.”
There was a knock on the door. In days past I would have just bid them enter, but the palace was now milling with Darius’s men and I could not very well ask one of them into my apartments. Without comment, Darius rose to open the door. “It is your maid. She wishes permission to enter.”
Of course with Darius in my room, Pari couldn’t barge in unannounced as was her wont. “Oh, please tell her to come in. She loves the dog too.”
Pari entered; wordlessly we clasped each other in a comforting embrace. More commotion at my door drew our notice. It was Darius’s man, reporting that Teispes was missing.
“They searched everywhere,” Pari whispered in my ear. “There’s no sign of him, and one of the horses is missing too. He must have left in a hurry.”
Darius came to give the same report. “I must go and find him. The sooner we leave, the better our chance of apprehending him.”
“I think I know where he has gone. His courtesan’s lodgings in Persepolis would be my guess. He will think himself safe there, not realizing that we followed him and know about it.”
“It’s a good starting point,” Darius conceded. “Even if he hasn’t gone there directly, he is bound to try and get in touch with his hetaira. I will post a few men at the house. We’ll catch that rat sooner or later.”
I gave him the directions. “Will you go yourself?” I asked, trying to keep my voice from wobbling.
“Of course.”
“My lord, I … I don’t know what to do for the dog. When Bardia comes with the purge I mean.” From what Darius had said earlier, there was not much any of us could do. But at least he had some training in the healing arts from his years of study at the palace. If any of us could help Caspian, it was he.
He chewed on his lip. I knew the struggle before him: the need to capture a man who had wronged him grossly, to bring him to justice and end the trail of his destruction, or to remain and do what he could for a beloved animal.
My heart melted with relief when he said, “I will stay.” I was too distraught to know my own feelings then, but I believe that was the moment I began to fall in love with Darius Passargadae, the man who despised me for my public betrayal.
He was accustomed to command on the field of battle. He knew how to organize and mobilize under pressure. By the time Bardia arrived with his bag of herbs, Darius’s men were on their way in three separate detachments—one bound for the house of Teispes’s hetaira, another searching for general clues, and the last back to Ecbatana to arrest Teispes’s brother and gather evidence from Mandana.
I had no interest in Teispes anymore. My whole attention was focused on the creature that lay dying before me. Bardia and Lord Darius made up an infusion of herbs, discussing between them the advantages of mixing one over another, and poured it down Caspian’s throat. How the poor dog retched! He hardly had any strength and I worried that the struggle to empty his stomach would be enough to kill him. Several times he choked and Bardia and Darius had to manually help open his throat. I was astounded by my husband’s patience and gentleness. Was this the same man who had sat next to me at our wedding, fuming with cold bitterness?
Finally, there was no more in the dog’s stomach to purge. We could only wait.
“It’s a good sign that Caspian has survived this far, mistress,” Bardia assured me. “He is strong.”
I sat with Caspian’s head on my lap hour after hour, counting his breaths, praying he would survive. I must have fallen asleep some time during the night, for I awoke with a start. My head was on Darius’s shoulder, and I was leaning heavily against his side. I turned to him hoping to find him asleep and unaware of my transgression, but found him watching me.
“Pardon.” I scooted away, putting a bit of distance between us. He said nothing, but continued to watch me as if I were a puzzle he could not make out.
“How is he?” I asked. My throat felt parched and scratchy.
“The same.”
Bardia had gone to sleep in a corner of the room, wrapped in one of Pari’s blankets. Pari too was asleep at the foot of my bed, where Caspian usually lounged. I looked longingly at a flagon of pomegranate juice that sat on a desk nearby, but I did not want to disturb the dog’s rest by moving his head. To my astonishment Darius rose and poured some into a silver goblet and brought it over to me.
“I … thank you.” We sat in silence for a while. Having witnessed his kindness, I felt emboldened to ask, “What brought you home? I thought you were in Ecbatana for the summer.”
He sighed. “The queen.”
He said no more, which was cruel. He must have known that I was writhing with curiosity. I could not resist prodding, “The queen?”
“Yes. You know, King Artaxerxes’ wife. I believe you are somewhat acquainted with her.”
“I believe I am. So that queen sent you home? Why? Were you naughty?” That would teach him to try and torment me.
He smiled into his goblet before taking a deep swallow. But he said nothing to satisfy my curiosity, the wretch. Not a man to be goaded into giving information, I concluded.
“Bardia said you cleaned his cottage for him. With your own hand, he said.�
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The swift change of topic caught me off guard. I shrugged. “He wasn’t supposed to know. Pari did much of the work.”
“I thank you for that.”
I looked at him through the veil of my lashes. “I didn’t do it for you. I did it for him. He has become very dear to me.”
“You were right; you have done me a good turn, and I am grateful for it. But it doesn’t undo the past, Sarah. It doesn’t make what you did disappear.”
Sometime in the night my hair had come undone from its elaborate arrangement and now it fell about my back in loose curls. I bent my head until a curtain of hair hid my face. I didn’t want him to see how much his words hurt.
Darius leaned back. “Let me tell you how I came to hire Teispes. His uncle held the post of my steward before him. When his uncle passed away, Teispes was very helpful to me in the chaos following the loss of a trusted steward. I hired him on the strength of these circumstances: his connection to my last steward, who was as honest a man as the world has to offer, and his own good service to me when he had little to gain by it.
“Even bad men can have trustworthy connections. Even evil men are capable of doing good upon occasion.”
“You mean you can’t trust me merely because you have seen a better side of my nature. For all you know my current actions are as much of an anomaly as Teispes’s behavior after his uncle died.”
“I’m not soon going to forget becoming the butt of every courtier’s joke because of what you did. Nor can I respect a woman who would so publicly humiliate another for the sake of her own ends. How can I place confidence in you when you will not even admit what those ends are, but hide behind feeble excuses?”
I stroked Caspian’s head. “What if you’re wrong? What if you are being cynical rather than perceptive?”
“Sometimes the two are the same. The best a man can do is weigh the evidence before him and make the wisest judgment he is capable of. This I have done with you.”