The Last King of Lydia (22 page)

‘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 going 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.

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.

He must have been the greatest murderer that Lydia had ever seen. Tens of thousands killed in the war to the east, thousands more dead at the fall of Sardis. Who was he to plead for mercy, or
restraint?

He thought of the generations who would be born and live in the country that had been his. Sons and daughters who would haggle and trade in the markets of Sardis, raise crops and hunt for gold
on the banks of the Pactolus, playing in the water and dreaming of oceans that they would never see. Hearing stories of the Lydian kings, and above all of the fool Croesus, who had gambled their
freedom for his vanity and lost. It was not the future he had wanted for his people, but it was a future, nonetheless. A future that was about to be taken from them.

He had been the last king of Lydia. Perhaps now his country would die with him, its people taken as slaves, taken to serve wherever their masters sent them, their stories forgotten, their
language lost, their history turned into myth. An entire civilization conquered, and destroyed.

This was a last service he could perform for them – he could ensure that they might live free from kings and wars and slavery, for one more generation.

He looked up again, and began to speak.

‘What did you tell him?’ Maia asked.

Croesus smiled, and looked at her thoughtfully.

He wondered how many words he had spoken to her when she served him as a slave. He did not think they would number much more than a hundred, as if his son’s mute nature were somehow
infectious. Then, she had been an invisible convenience. Now, on the rare occasions when they were both free from responsibility, they gathered to share their stories. She would recount the
intricate politics of the field kitchens and supply wagons, he the petty debates of the court. They could not decide which of them lived in a more tangled network of alliance and betrayal.

She alone of all the slaves and servants seemed to wish to speak with him, and one night he had asked Isocrates why this might be. Isocrates had muttered something to the effect that she had
always been fascinated by unusual creatures, and that a slave who was once a king certainly qualified as such. That was the only answer he would offer.

‘Well?’ Maia’s voice brought him back. ‘What did you say?’

‘I told him to send his people around Lydia. To encourage the playing of musical instruments, promote trade, and encourage them to long for fine fabrics and jewels. Make them wear long
tunics and high boots, like musicians and catamites. Turn them into a nation of poets and merchants, not warriors.’

She raised an eyebrow. Croesus continued, ‘I told him that if he did this, through edicts and rewards and threats, he would see them turn into women, not men, and they would never rebel
against him.’

She laughed. ‘I was thinking quickly,’ he said. ‘They were about to put my people in chains.’

‘What did he say?’

‘He was silent for a long time. Eventually he said, “Soft lands breed soft men.” That’s when I knew that he would try.’ Croesus remembered the quiet smile of the
Persian king, his eyes alight with possibility. ‘I can’t believe that he agreed, but he did. We are to go on a campaign of change. Spreading harps and drums, encouraging new fashions,
subsidizing trade and making the owning of weapons unfashionable. Turning men into women.’