leather bag, roled my spare cloak tight and walked out into a
quiet night in Ephesus. I had decided that if I could not have her,
I might as wel test myself or die. It is curious that we do our
strangest thinking while we are under the influence of deep
emotion. Suddenly I was not a trierarch or a lord. I was a young
man bereft, angry, seeking death.
That is love, my friends. Beware of the Cyprian, beware.
Ares in his bronze-clad rage has not the power.
I see consternation on your faces – I can only assume that
none of you have ever been in love – you, thugater, I’d put a
sword in you if I thought that you had, you minx! But listen to
me. Love – the al-consuming fire that Sappho tels of, the
dangerous game of Alcaeus, the summit of noble virtue and the
depth of depravity described by Pythagoras – love is al. The
gods fade, the stars grow pale, the sun has no heat to burn, nor
ice to freeze, next to the power of love.
When she said that she had written to me from boredom, she
struck me with a rod of humiliation. No lover can accept such a
blow and remain the same.
I have had many years and many night watches, and the long
hours before a hundred fights to think about love, and how each
of us might have been, if we were not such proud and insolent
animals.
I think – close your ears, girls – I think that men come to love
though a mixture of lust and chalenge, while women come to
love through a different mix of lust and wonder at their own
power – and desire to subdue another. As with Miltiades and
Dionysius, and many others locked in a competition, there is
more dross than gold in the ore, but what is refined in the fire is
finer than either of the lovers could have made alone. Men come
to love by chalenge – the chalenge of sex, the chalenge of
holding the loved one against al comers, the chalenge of being
the better man in the lover’s eyes.
Briseis never ceased to chalenge me. Her company never
came free, because she valued herself above any mortal, and her
favours were the reward for heroic action, heroic determination
– heroic luck. The idea that she would summon me from
boredom was a mortal insult to both of us.
So I shouldered my pack and went down the hil, past the
sentries on the wal and out of the main gate. The moon was
bright enough that I never stumbled. I was walking to Sardis.
The Persian capital of Lydia – the heart of the enemy’s power.
Did I say I wasn’t eighteen any more? When Briseis is
involved, honey, I’m always eighteen.
Or perhaps fifteen.
I walked al night, and al day the next day. I climbed the great
pass alone, my head almost empty of thought from exhaustion,
but I stopped and poured a libation for the men who died there
fighting the Medes. At the last moment, speaking my prayer, I
added the Medes who had falen there – to my spear, and to
others. My voice hung on the air, and I shivered involuntarily.
The gods were listening.
The gods were listening.
I walked down the far side of the pass in a daze, and I didn’t
stop to eat or rest, and by the evening of the third day, I came to
Sardis. Just as on my first visit, the gates were open. Unlike my
first visit, I didn’t kil anyone.
Sardis is a great city, but not a Greek city. There are Greeks
there, and Persians, and Medes, and Lydians – a swarthy,
handsome people, and the women are dark-haired, with large
eyes and beautiful bodies, which they don’t trouble to hide.
I was not of this world when I entered the gates. I must have
looked like a madman, but Sardis had plenty of them. My
Persian was stil good, and I spoke it rather than Greek, and men
made way for me. Most probably thought that I was one of the
many prophets who afflict Phrygia, wandering and foreteling
doom.
In my head, I was locked in a fearful fantasy, where the
waking world of shops and handsome women merged with the
chaos and death of the battle I had fought here. In the agora, I
looked from booth to booth, trying to find the dead men I knew
must be lying there.
I sound mad, but even as I was having these thoughts, I knew
Heraclitus to tel him that I had found a place where the stream
ran twice – that I could be in two times at once, merely by
running a few hundred stades without rest or food.
My next memory is of sitting in a cool garden, eating lamb. It
is a curious thing – one I have experienced al too often – that as
soon as the rich, sweet food passed my lips, the curious half
soon as the rich, sweet food passed my lips, the curious half
world of battle and gods vanished and I felt like a man again.
I was sitting across a broad cedar table from Cyrus, now
captain of a hundred noble cavalrymen in the bodyguard of
Datis.
I ate ravenously, and he watched me carefuly – a healthy
mixture of friendly concern and suspicion. We’d crossed swords
often enough in the last years for him to know perfectly wel
where my sympathies led. On the other hand, I had saved his life
and his master’s, and that means more to a Persian than mere
nationality.
He watched me eat, and he put me to bed, and the next day
his slaves awakened me, and I ate again. I was young, bold and
healthy – I recovered swiftly.
On that second day, he was waiting in the courtyard.
‘Welcome to my house,’ he said in Persian.
I knew the ritual, so I made a smal sacrifice – barley cakes –
to the sun, and ate salt on bread with him.
He nodded at my bag and gear. ‘You are carrying a fortune,’
he said. My gold and glass Aegyptian bottle was sitting before
him on the table. He twirled his moustache. ‘It pains me, but I
must ask you how you come to be here.’ He looked into my
eyes. ‘And why.’
Slaves brought me a hot drink. Persians drink al sorts of
things hot, because mornings are often cold in their mountains, or
so I’ve been told. This had the aroma of anise, and tasted of
honey. I held his gaze, and I decided that having come al this
way, I would behave as a hero and not as a spy.
way, I would behave as a hero and not as a spy.
‘My lord,’ I said, ‘I wil tel you everything, and to the utmost
degree of honesty – like a Persian, and not like a Greek. But let
me first say three things. And then you may decide if you need to
know more.’
He nodded. ‘Wel spoken. Please, be my guest.’ He waved
at bread and honey, which he knew I loved, from the days when
I was Doru the slave boy, and he and his friends fed me just to
see how much I could eat. He raised a hand. ‘I doubt not that
you wil tel me the truth. But lest you misunderstand – I know
exactly who you are. You are a great warrior.’ He smiled.
Persians don’t lie, and it was a genuine grin of admiration. ‘I
&nbs
p; often dine for free or am given gifts of wine because I can tel
stories of when I knew you as a boy. It is an honour to be your
friend.’
I stood. Persians are very formal. ‘It is an honour to be the
friend of Cyrus, captain of the hundred that guards Artaphernes,’
I said.
He blushed and rose, and I saw that his right arm was
swathed in bandages. ‘Wounded?’ I asked.
‘Yes,’ he sighed. ‘A petty skirmish over horses at Miletus.’
‘Last autumn, at the edge of winter?’ I asked.
He nodded.
‘I was there!’ I said.
He nodded. ‘I know, young Doru. So – you wil tel me three
things. I must hear them.’
I sat back and warmed my hands with the ceramic cup ful of
hot tea.
‘I serve Miltiades of Athens,’ I said carefuly.
Cyrus nodded.
‘I love Briseis, daughter of Hipponax, wife of Artaphernes,’ I
said.
Cyrus started, and then slapped his knee. ‘Of course you
do!’ he said. ‘May Ahura Mazda blast my sight – I should have
known.’ Then he schooled his face. ‘He is my lord, of course.’
‘I am in Sardis seeking news of how Datis wil fight us,’ I
said. ‘But the bottle of scent is for Briseis, and the money is my
Cyrus drank tea, looking at the roses that grew up the wal of
his courtyard in the morning sun. ‘If I arrest you,’ he said, ‘you
wil be sent to Persepolis. The Great King has heard your name.
You wil be a noble prisoner and a hostage. In time, you might
rise in court and be a satrap – you might command me.’
I shrugged.
‘Or I might kil you. You do not deny that you are the enemy
of my master?’ He raised his eyebrow.
‘No. Nor do I deny that I am here to learn your weaknesses.
You see – I am a bad Greek.’ I laughed.
He did not laugh. ‘I never thought to say this – but a smal lie
on these matters would have let me sleep better.’
I shrugged. I had the advantage that I didn’t care. I never
loved the Ionian Aliance, friends. They were mostly East Greeks
to me, soft-handed men who argued about firewood while the
flames of their fire died. They had great men among them –
flames of their fire died. They had great men among them –
Nearchos and Epaphroditos come to mind. But Briseis had hurt
me, and I cared for nothing.
But – my role as a hero required me to speak.
‘Instead of a lie, I’l give you a truth. I am here as a private
man. I seek to give my gift to Briseis, and speak with her in
Ephesus. I make no war on Sardis.’ I frowned.
‘Unlike the last time, you rebel!’ He slapped his knees again.
‘I was sword to sword with you in the marketplace!’ He looked
around. ‘Does she love you, Doru?’
I shook my head. ‘I don’t know, Cyrus. I have loved her –
since I was a boy. And she loved me.’ I shook my head. ‘Once,
she loved me.’
‘You have lain with her?’ Cyrus asked. Persians are not shy
about such things.
‘Many times,’ I assured him.
He nodded. ‘She loves my master,’ he said. He twirled his
moustache again.
Now – I have to go off the tale again, to explain that among
Persians, adultery, a mortal offence among Greeks, is something
of a national aristocratic pastime, like lion-hunting. So my
passion for his lord’s wife made me al the more Persian, to
Cyrus. I wasn’t in a mood to calculate and manipulate – but I
knew that this simple truth would render my mission for Miltiades
almost incidental.
‘Why?’ I asked.
‘He ruined her mother, of course.’ Cyrus knew it as wel as I.
We had both been there. ‘I would say – to a brother – that she
We had both been there. ‘I would say – to a brother – that she
tastes the forbidden because it is forbidden. That she loves
power, but not Artaphernes.’
I might have rushed to her defence – except that his words
struck me as truth.
‘To lie with the mother and the daughter is a sin in Persia,’
Cyrus went on. ‘Many of us want him to leave her.’
I took a breath and let it go, and the balance changed.
‘Let me go, and I wil try to take her with me,’ I said.
‘Hmm.’ He put his hand on the table. ‘I am caught between
what I want for my lord and what he wants. I wil not be the
agent of corrupting his wife. Despite my misgivings.’ He
contemplated me and combed his beard. ‘I find I cannot order
your death, although, to be honest, I have a feeling that would be
best for the King of Kings.’
I remember shrugging. A foolish response, but then, what
should a man do when his death is proposed?
‘Swear to me that you wil do nothing to harm my master,
and that you wil leave this city in the morning,’ he said.
I put my hand in his. ‘I swear that I wil return to Ephesus
tomorrow, and once there, my only purpose wil be to see her
and leave,’ I said. If your wits are quick, you’l see how ful of
holes my oath was.
We clasped hands, and he finished his tea. ‘I have business in
the marketplace,’ he said. ‘Gather al the news you like. It wil
only discomfit you. You cannot fight the Great King. His power
is beyond your imagination. I should send you to Persepolis as a
prisoner – I would be doing you a favour. But I wil let you see
prisoner – I would be doing you a favour. But I wil let you see
your doom – and then let you go to it. Perhaps you wil save a
few Greeks to be the Great King’s subjects.’ He pointed out the
gate. ‘Go – learn. And despair. And leave Briseis to her own
end, is my advice.’
We embraced like old comrades. It is odd how we saw each
other only in snatches, here and there – and how he had known
me, not as a great hero, but as a slave boy – and yet we were
ever friends, even when our swords were bloody to the wrist
and we swung them at each other.
Never believe that Persians were lesser men. Their best were
as good as our best – or better.
His permission – and it was that – to go and spy in Sardis chiled
me, and I dressed and went out into the agora.
I passed from booth to booth, buying wine at one, a packet
of herbs at another, listening to the gossip and the news.
I had been a slave, and I knew how to avoid being watched.
Cyrus may have loved me, but he was a professional soldier, and
before the sun was above the low houses, I knew he had put
two men to watch me – Lydians, dark-haired men. One had a
bad scar on his knee that gave him away even at a distance when
he walked, and the other had the habit of crowding me too close
– afraid he’d lose me.
I had learned about such things when I was a slave. Slaves
folow each other, aiming at masters’ secrets. Masters train
slaves to folow other slaves, also searching secrets out. Slaves
take free lovers and have to
hide – or vice versa.
I noticed them before I completed my first tour of the shops
and stals of the agora, and I lost them by the simple expedient of
walking into the front of a taverna on the corner of the agora and
passing through the kitchens to exit at the back.
Then I walked up a steep street to the top, sat in a tiny wine
shop and watched my back trail the way a lioness watches for
hunters. I watched for an hour, and then I walked through an
aley spattered with someone else’s urine and walked down the
hil on another narrow street until I came to the street of
goldsmiths. I went into the second shop, kept by a Babylonian,
and examined the wares. He had a speciality – tiny gold scrol
tubes, for men who wore amulets of written magic. They were
beautifuly done. I bought one.
The owner had a Syriac accent, a huge white beard like a
comic actor and more hand gestures than an Athenian. We
haggled for a cup of tea and then a cup of wine. I was buying a
tube of gold, not silver or bronze, and my custom was worth ten
days’ work, so I played at it as long as he wanted to, although
our haggling was largely done in the first five exchanges.
He wrapped it in a scrap of fine Tyrian-dyed leather.
‘Miltiades sent me,’ I said after I counted my coins down.
‘I should have charged you more,’ he shot back. But he
raised an eyebrow and winked. And put my coins in his coin
box. ‘I’l send for more wine. I thought the Greek had forgotten
me.’
‘When we lost Ephesus, we lost the ability to contact you,’ I
‘When we lost Ephesus, we lost the ability to contact you,’ I
said.
He made a face. ‘I have written some notes,’ he said, and
went upstairs into his house. I could hear him talking to his wife,
and then moving around. Finaly he returned.
‘These are written in the Hebrew way,’ he said, ‘and no one
– no one not a sage like me – could ever read them.’ He smiled.
‘Would you like a nice spel to go with your pretty amulet,
soldier?’
‘It’s not for me,’ I said.
‘Beautiful woman?’ he asked. ‘You’ve been her lover for
many years. And she loves you. And both of you too proud to
surrender to the other. Eh?’
I stared at him, open-mouthed.
‘Not for nothing am I caled Abrahim the Wise, son. Besides,
it’s not exactly a rare story, is it?’ He laughed wickedly. And