Creation (50 page)

“Universal monarch.”

“I shall be the
first
universal monarch. I dream of pearls and silk—of islands and Cathay!”

If Darius had been ten years younger, and I had been ten years older, I am convinced that all the known world that mattered would now be Persian. But, as I had guessed, Darius never again led the clans into battle. In less than five years, he would be lying next to his father in the rock tomb outside Persepolis.

MARDONIUS RECEIVED ME ABOARD A HOUSEBOAT moored to the new palace quay. The commander in chief of the armies and the navies of the Great King looked pale and fragile, and even younger than he actually was. He lay in a hammock that was suspended between two beams. As the boat responded to the river’s currents, the hammock swayed of its own accord.

“When the boat rocks, the pain is less,” Mardonius said as I crawled down the ladder to his quarters. The festering leg was bare, swollen, black. Two slaves fanned away the flies. A brazier of burning sandalwood could not disguise the smell of rotting flesh that filled the cabin. “Ugly, isn’t it?”

“Yes.” I was to the point. “Cut it off.”

“No. I must have two legs.”

“You can die of this sort of rot.”

“The worst is over. Or so they say. If it isn’t ...” Mardonius shrugged; then grimaced with pain from the effort.

All about us, we could hear the usual sounds of a busy port. Men shouted and hawsers creaked and the circular Babylonian boats made a slapping sound as they moved against the river’s current.

“Doesn’t the noise bother you?”

Mardonius shook his head. “I like it. When I shut my eyes, I think I’m still with the fleet. Do you want to sail with me next spring?”

“To Thrace?” I don’t know why I was so tactless as to mention the place where not only was he wounded but a part of his fleet was lost in a storm.

Mardonius frowned. “Yes. Thrace, too. Where your relatives are now in rebellion.”

“Abdera may be in rebellion, but not Lais’ family. They are all pro-Persian.”

“I met your grandfather. I had no idea he was so rich.”

“I’ve never met him, I’m sorry to say. I do know that he was always loyal to the Great King.”

“He’s Greek.” Mardonius tugged at the cords of his hammock to make it swing along a wider arc. “Why have you been exciting Xerxes with those tales of India?” Mardonius was accusing.

“He asked me. And I told him. If you like, I’ll tell you the same stories. Our future is in the east.”

“That’s because you were brought up on the eastern frontier.” Mardonius was irritable. “You have no idea what Europe is like. How rich it is—in silver, grain, people.”

“Darius tried to conquer Europe, remember? He was badly beaten.”

“That’s treason,” said Mardonius, with no attempt at lightness. “The Great King has never been defeated.”

“Just as his commanders are never wounded?” I always spoke as an equal to Mardonius. I don’t suppose that he liked it, but since he and I and Xerxes had been as one for so many years, he could hardly complain. Finally, Mardonius was more fond of me than I was of him. This always gives one an advantage. Since I could never command an army, I was no threat to him. He also thought that he could influence the advice that I gave to Xerxes.

“That was a stupid mistake.” Mardonius shifted his weight in the hammock. I tried not to look at the leg and, of course, looked at nothing else.

“There’s no reason why
you
couldn’t lead the armies into India.” I was absolutely committed to the so-called eastern policy and have never wavered from it to this day. But Mardonius was the sole executor of the western policy. He did not have an easy task. The Great King had lost interest in Europe after his defeat on the Danube; his days were spent fretting about the northern tribes, and thinking up new ways of making money. By and large, Darius had had no real desire for further conquests until I fired his imagination with my tales of India and Cathay.

For several hours Mardonius and I argued in that stinking cabin, whose constant rocking made me somewhat ill. Although Mardonius knew of my private audience with Darius, he was too shrewd to ask me what had been said. Perhaps he already knew. There are not many secrets at the Persian court. It was already common knowledge that I had come down to Babylon with Xerxes.

“I want Xerxes to lead the next Greek expedition. I’ll be second In command.” I could see that Mardonius thought that he was being subtle. “Atossa won’t let him go.” I was not at all subtle.

“But Amestris will make him go.” Mardonius smiled. “She is a great influence on our friend.”

“So I’ve heard. Does she want him to go?”

“Of course she does. She hates seeing me get all the glory. I don’t blame her. That’s why I’m willing to share the credit for the conquest of Europe.”

“Exactly how much of Europe do you expect to acquire?” This was a real question. In those days we knew even less than we know now about the extent and variety of the western lands. Phoenician traders had given us a good idea of the ports or potential ports along the northern coast of the Mediterranean. But the interior of that densely forested and largely empty continent was then, as it is now, a mystery, not worth unraveling—in my view, of course.

“On principle, we should destroy Athens and Sparta and bring the inhabitants here, as we did the Milesians. Next, I would occupy Sicily. It is an enormous island where we can grow enough grain to feed all Persia, which will make us less reliant on this damned barley.” Mardonius made a face. “If you want to understand the Babylonians, just think of barley—and palm wine. They live on nothing else, and look at them!”

“They’re quite handsome, as black-headed people go.”

“I’m not speaking of beauty. I don’t want prostitutes. I want soldiers, and there are none here.”

But soon there were. Almost the entire Greek faction at court joined us in the cabin.

The aged Hippias and I embraced. “This will be my last campaign,” he whispered in my ear. Although he was old and the teeth in his mouth were loose, he could still ride a horse as if he and the horse were one. “I dreamt last night that my mother held me in her arms. That is always a good sign. I am now certain that I shall soon be in Athens, offering a sacrifice to Athena.”

“Let us hope so, Tyrant.” I was polite.

Demaratus was not. “Let us hope that there is a campaign.” The Spartan looked at me without pleasure, and the others took their lead from him. Even Milo’s rosy face was sad at the thought that I might be, truly, an enemy.

As I excused myself, Mardonius insisted that I come see him again. “Next time I’ll have a map of Europe for you, of the sort that should gladden any king’s eyes.” He laughed. The Greek conspirators did not.

The sun was hot as I climbed the steps from the wharf to the low gate that marks the end of the avenue of Bel-Marduk. Here my guards and herald were waiting. I had almost forgotten them. I was still not used to the pleasures and annoyances of high rank. It is one thing to be honored in a strange country like Magadha where one knows little of the people and cares less, and quite another to walk or ride down the main avenue of Babylon, attended by guards whose swords are drawn, and by a herald whose clear voice proclaims, “Way for the king’s eye!” And way is made. People shrink as if from a fire that might burn them, which the king’s eye is.

When the court is at Babylon, the city is overcrowded. The temples are busy not only with religious services and ritual prostitution but, most important of all, with money-changing and money-lending. It is said that banking was invented by the Babylonians. This may be true. But it is also true that, elsewhere, and quite independently, the Indians and Cathayans have worked out their own systems. I was always struck by the fact that the interest rates in each part of the world are usually the same. Yet there has been little or no regular contact between the three lands. I find this truly mysterious.

I made my way on foot through the narrow, winding side streets. Thanks to the herald and the guards, I was able to reach the main offices of Egibi and sons without too much jostling—and spitting. The black heads take revenge on their Persian masters by spitting on them whenever a sufficiently large crowd provides adequate cover.

The façade of the world’s most important banking establishment is a featureless mud wall in which is set a plain cedar door with a small window. At my approach, the door opened. Black slaves with ritually scarred faces bowed me into a small courtyard where I was met by the head of the family, a smiling little man named Shirik. When my herald proclaimed the presence of the king’s eye, he dropped to his knees. Respectfully, I helped him up.

Shirik was amiable, watchful, and entirely unimpressed by me. He showed me into a long high room whose walls were lined with shelves on which were stacked thousands of clay tablets. “Some of those records go back more than a century,” he said. “To the days when our family first came to Babylon.” He smiled. “No, we’ were
not
slaves. There is a legend that we were Jewish captives, brought here after Jerusalem fell. But we were never slaves. We had established ourselves in Babel long before their arrival.”

We were joined by Fan Ch’ih and the Cathay man who served Shirik. We sat at a round table, surrounded by clay tablets that represented millions of sheep, tonnes of barley, stacks of iron and nearly all the archers ever minted.

I think that I might have done well at banking had I not been so carefully trained to be neither a priest nor a warrior. Although I have the Persian noble’s contempt of tirade, I lack his passion for war and hunting and drinking wine to excess. Although I have a priest’s deep knowledge of religion, I am not certain
what
is
true. Although I once heard the voice of the Wise Lord, I confess now in my old age that to hear and to listen are two different things. I am puzzled by creation.

Shirik came to the point. “I am willing to finance a caravan to Cathay. I am impressed by Fan Ch’ih. So is my colleague, from the neighboring duchy of Wei.” Shirik indicated his yellow assistant, an unprepossessing creature with a blind eye, pale as moonstone. Shirik was precise in all his references. He knew that Wei was not a kingdom but a duchy. To the extent that he was able to obtain the information that he needed—no, craved—he got everything right. Except for Darius, I have never met a man with such a passionate interest in the details of this world. “Naturally, there are difficulties,” said Shirik, beginning to place the borrower on the defensive.

“Numerous but surmountable, Lord Shirik.” Fan Ch’ih was now beginning to learn to speak a sort of Persian that nicely complemented Shirik’s own oddly accented but entirely fluent Persian. Shirik was Babylonian, and to this day the people of Babel avoid learning Persian on the never admitted ground that, sooner or later, the Persians will either go away or be absorbed by Babylon’s older and superior culture.

For a time we discussed the approaches to Cathay. The safest seemed to be overland from Shravasti to the mountain passes. We were all agreed that the sea route is endless, and that the trail from Bactria to the east is not passable because of the Scythian tribes. While we talked, Shirik moved the ivory disks of an abacus so swiftly that they made a blur like a hummingbird’s wings.

“Naturally, a single caravan is worthless.” Shirik offered us wine in solid-gold cups whose bright grandeur was in startling contrast to all those dusty tablets that lined the walls, so like the tumbled mud bricks of some dead city. But then, those unprepossessing but entirely alive tablets had made possible the golden cups.

“Let us say that the caravan reaches Lu or Wei. Let us say that a second caravan returns safely to Babylon with goods whose value are in excess of what was sent out. Let us say that all this happens, even though the odds are seven to one that the first caravan will not arrive and eleven to one that if it does, the return caravan will never reach Babylon.” I assumed that he had, somehow, worked out these odds on the abacus.

“But I am willing to gamble. For five generations it has been the dream of our family to open a route between Babylon—that is, Persia—and Cathay. We have always had our connections with the Indian kingdoms.” Shirik turned to me. “The merchant-banker that you did business with at Varanasi is a valued colleague of ours. Of course, he and I shall never meet in this world, but we manage to correspond once or twice a year, and do what business we can.”

It took less than an hour for Shirik to make his offer to me. “We believe that this enterprise would be a great success if you were to accompany the caravan as the Great King’s ambassador to the Middle Kingdom. As you know, the Cathayans still pretend that their empire exists.”

“It does,” said Fan Ch’ih, “and it does not.”

“An observation,” said Shirik, “worthy of the Buddha.” I was amazed to hear the name of the Buddha cm. the lips of a Babylonian banker two thousand miles from the banks of the Ganges River. There was little that Shirik did not know about the world he was obliged to deal with.

“I would also suggest, most humbly, that you take your leave before the start of the spring campaign.”

“There will be no spring campaign,” I said.

Shirik smiled his gentle, secret smile. “I cannot contradict the king’s eye! I am too humble, Lord. So let me say that should there be, by some miracle, a combined land-and-sea attack on Eretria and Athens, the expense of mounting that invasion will be enormous. Should such a campaign take place, Egibi and sons will be obliged to make their contribution, ever so gladly, gladly! Let me say. But in light of these military expenditures, I would suggest to the king’s eye who honors us with his presence today, that he whisper in the ear of that glorious sovereign whose eye he is, that an embassy should be sent to Cathay before the Persian fleet leaves Samos.”

“There will be no Greek war this year.” I was firm in my ignorance. “I have spoken—” I almost made the error that the courtier must never make: repeat in public a private conversation with the Great King.

“—to the Lord Admiral Mardonius, yes.” Swiftly, Shirik saved me from indiscretion. “Your dearest friend, after your truly dearest friend, the Lord Xerxes the crown prince, the viceroy of Babel ... Yes, yes, yes.” He treated me rather the way that a Greek philosopher who happens to be a slave will treat his master’s son. He was both subservient and imposing, courteous and contemptuous. “Yes,” I said. “I have just come from Mardonius. There will be no war. He’s not physically able to lead the expedition.”