The Last King of Lydia (24 page)

Croesus felt a quickening fear as he approached that place where death stood close by, capricious and unpredictable. He made his way past the tents that held the sick and the wounded, to the
place that was looked on with fear even by those who lived and worked there. It was a single white tent, set apart from the others: the home of the insane.

There were not many, only a few dozen. Some had survived wounds to the head on the battlefield, others had been struck down by apoplexy or fever, and had awoken with half their minds gone. There
were others who had suffered no injury at all, but the slightest sound of war – the creaking of leather armour, the thud of a spear against the ground or a bowstring pulling taut –
would send them into a shaking panic that took hours to coax them from. Perhaps there were, hidden amongst them, some who merely feigned madness, preferring to be imprisoned than to chance their
lives in war, seeking to grow old amongst the insane.

It had been many months since Croesus had seen Gyges. He could visit only when he had coin with which to bribe the guards, or when some other favour or opportunity presented itself. He made his
way past the slow, shuffling figures of the men whose minds had been broken by war, and sat down beside his son.

Gyges had changed little. Croesus did not understand how it was that his son, who had resisted any attempt to restrict his movements in the palace, was able to stand being confined to this tent,
and yet somehow Gyges seemed more content here than ever he had in Sardis. He sat next to his son in silence for a time, struggling, as always, to know how to begin.

‘Cyrus will let me visit as often as I like now,’ he said at last. ‘How often should I come, do you think?’

Gyges did not respond.

‘I have pleased the king,’ Croesus said slowly. ‘Though I think I made an enemy of Harpagus. He is angry that the king took my advice and not his. But what can he do while I
have the king’s favour?’

Beside him, Gyges shifted a little, as though in discomfort. ‘Perhaps this talk of politics bores you. I am sorry.’ He hesitated. ‘Maia wishes she could see you,’ he
said. ‘They still won’t permit it. They say they won’t allow a woman amongst the mad, some foolish custom of theirs. She misses you.’ He paused. Gyges was staring ahead into
thin air, giving no sign he had heard anything that his father had said.

Croesus shook his head. ‘You won’t talk to me. I still sometimes wonder if you talk to the Gods, you know,’ he said. ‘If you are a prophet.’

‘I am no prophet.’

Croesus started, feeling the shock of the words pass through him. Gyges had spoken ever since the fall of Sardis, but his words came rarely, as if he had only a limited number to use, like an
archer in a siege who must make his dwindling ammunition count. ‘What are you then?’ he said.

Gyges shrugged, and looked away.

‘Are you happy?’

Gyges hissed in irritation.

‘You think it is a foolish question,’ Croesus said. Then he paused. ‘I can be content at least, serving this king,’ he said. ‘If things do not change.’

‘They will change,’ Gyges said, almost absently. Then he turned away, and looked at the grass, like a king dismissing an out of favour courtier. The conversation was over.

Croesus stood and brushed the dried grass from his knees. He hesitated before going. In two years, he had teased out perhaps twenty sentences from Gyges. Each time he had seen his son, the
encounter had been as inconsequential as this one, and yet he was still possessed by the same sensation that had taken hold of him at the fall of Sardis, when Gyges had spoken for the very first
time, the sense that there was some mystery that his son understood that he did not.

Perhaps, he thought to himself, it would be revealed in action, in touch, not in words. He hesitantly reached a hand out towards his son.

Gyges flinched away. He had once permitted his father to touch him, when Sardis fell and death appeared certain for both of them. But it seemed it had been a single gift, and Croesus made a
promise to himself there, before he left Gyges to the company of madmen, that he would not try to embrace his son again.

His son had denied he possessed any gift of prophecy, yet the change he spoke of followed his words.

News soon came of the collapse of the Lydian insurrection. Of armies that had disappeared overnight, their thousands of men melting back to towns and farms and burying their weapons in the
forest; of rebel counsels that had preached independence and patriotism, now dissolved into desperate denunciations and pleas of loyalty to the Persian king. The usurper Pactyes had fled with his
gold to some foreign haven, to live out his life in dreams of what might have been. The rebellion was over.

With this news, the Persian army divided, like some wandering tribe grown large and cumbersome, in which the young break away, restless and dissatisfied, to build a new world of their own. Half
were to go to the western coast, to conquer the scattered cities of the Ionians. The others, to the east, to see what other lands Cyrus might add to his empire.

When the break was announced, Croesus had thought that he would go with the king. And yet when the names were read, of who in the court would go east and who would go west, he was told that he
would now serve Harpagus.

He looked around at the men of the Persian court, seeking some explanation, but no one looked back at him. What interest would they have in the comings and goings of a slave? Then Harpagus
caught his eye. The general looked at the slave, and, for the first time, Croesus saw him smile.

‘He requested me,’ Croesus said. ‘That’s what I was told. What can that mean?’

Isocrates did not reply.

‘I would understand if it was Cyrus’s command. But why would Harpagus ask for me?’

‘You ruled over the Ionians. Perhaps he thinks you can be of use to him.’

‘No. He thinks I am a fool. I cannot make sense of it.’ Croesus hesitated. Even in the darkness of their tent, Isocrates would not look at him. ‘You know something, don’t
you?’

‘Yes.’ But it took him a long time to speak again. ‘They say he murdered Astyages.’

‘What do you mean?’ he said.

Isocrates shrugged and looked away ‘That is what I have heard. It is what the other slaves say, anyway.’

‘Gossip. Idle talk.’

‘Slaves know more about what really happens than anyone, Croesus.’

‘Why would he kill him? Tell me that.’

‘Astyages became the king’s closest advisor, after being taken as a slave. Closer even than Harpagus, or so they say. Then Astyages killed himself, just as he was beginning to win
the king’s favour. It makes no sense.’

Croesus thought on this, seeking some way out of the trap. He found none. ‘What should I do?’

‘I don’t know. How much time do you have?’

‘We leave tomorrow.’

Isocrates said nothing.

‘How did he do it?’ Croesus said.

‘Poison. That’s what they think, at least.’

Croesus nodded slowly. ‘That’s good.’

‘That’s good?’

‘If poison is the method he favours, he will have a hard time getting it to me.’

Isocrates shook his head. ‘I wish you had made an enemy of any other man. He is cleverer than you, Croesus.’

‘Yes, I know. But he has something to lose. Unlike me. That’s something.’ Croesus hesitated. ‘I don’t suppose I shall see you again, after tomorrow.’

Isocrates said nothing. Croesus rose, turned, and walked out into the night.

He passed through the tents of the army, watched the flickering of firelight on the bored young faces at the sentry fires, kept to the shadows and listened to the talk of soldiers fighting
sleep, passing the time until dawn.

He could not believe that he had grown attached to this army, that he almost considered it a home. An army at peace could be mistaken for a gathering of nomads, wanting nothing but to travel and
be free. An army at war he knew to be something else entirely.

He thought of escape. Of slipping past the fires and out into the wilderness, and finding a new life in a place where they had never heard of Croesus and the mistakes that he had made. But even
if he could have made his way past the soldiers on watch and out of the camp, he knew nothing of how to live off the land, and he had no allies to run to. No man would take in a runaway slave,
unless they wanted a slave for themselves, and he had no value as a worker in a house or in the fields. He knew only kingship, and war.

He thought of Harpagus, his little smile of triumph. Then he tried to think of nothing at all.

When Croesus woke in the morning, the patch of ground beside him was empty and cold. Isocrates had gone. Croesus could not blame him. Amongst the slaves, it was understood that
one’s own life was always more valuable than that of a friend. There was no shame in leaving a doomed man to die.

But when he walked towards the southern edge of the camp, where half the army was preparing to leave and ride west, he discovered that he was wrong. Isocrates and Maia were both waiting for him
on the main path that ran through the encampment.

‘You shouldn’t be here,’ Croesus said. ‘There will be trouble for you.’

Isocrates waved off his concerns. He took Croesus’s hand, and Croesus felt the familiar metallic shapes settling into his palm. He looked down on a scattering of gold and silver coins. A
pittance for a king. A small fortune for a slave.

‘Use them carefully. I am sorry I couldn’t get more,’ Isocrates said. ‘There are few who will lend to a slave.’

‘Thank you, Isocrates.’ He bowed his head, and tried to smile. ‘I will have lived a few years longer than I should have, anyway. I suppose that’s something.’

‘Self-pity doesn’t become anyone, least of all you, Croesus.’ Isocrates placed both hands on the other man’s shoulders. ‘He will have to catch you first. Stay alive
until the wars end. That is all you have to do.’

Croesus turned to Maia, but before he could speak, she embraced him and kissed him on the forehead. ‘Take care,’ she said. ‘We will see you again in a few years.’

He opened his mouth to reply, but found nothing to say. A heavy hand closed over his shoulder. He turned and saw a soldier behind him. The Persian was barely awake, rubbing sleep from his eyes
with his free hand and resting his spear in the crook of his neck.

‘Come on,’ he said. ‘We are late.’

As they passed through the encampment, they came within a hundred paces of the tents of the sick and the mad. Some way distant he saw Gyges wandering aimlessly; a guard followed him closely,
escorting him. Croesus raised his hand, in greeting and in farewell. Gyges looked up and saw him, but did not respond. There was a moment when their eyes met, and then his son returned to the tent
of the madmen.

It could be that he did not care that his father was going to his death, but Croesus tried to believe that there was another reason for his son’s indifference. He wanted to think that
Gyges knew something that he did not. That Croesus would live, and that they would see each other again.

Half of the Persian army broke away, with Harpagus at its head. They rode west, back towards the country where, once already, Croesus had cheated death.

The army drew up on the hills overlooking the coast, above the paired harbours of Phocaea.

It was the first of the cities that Harpagus intended to conquer, the most northerly of that cluster of Ionian settlements. Their inhabitants’ ancestors had fled wars in Attica and the
Peloponnese, and had travelled to make new homes by the sea, wanting no more than to live in peace.

There must have been some reason, Croesus thought, why he had brought war to this place when he was a king, had sought to tame this poor and divided people. He could not think of it, and did not
know what it was that now drew Cyrus and Harpagus to the place, to put the Ionians to the sword once again, other than some kind of historic inevitability, the way that kings always seem drawn to
repeat what has been done before.

Croesus saw the people of Phocaea gathered on the walls, staring up at the Persian army. They must have lived their lives in fear of the sea, he thought, in fear of a towering wave, sent by some
angry god, that would drag their city beneath the water. Now here was a wave that came from the land, a sea of spears and men and horses that would sweep over them and drown them all.

He looked across at Harpagus. ‘Fine walls,’ was the general’s only observation, delivered with grudging respect. He dispatched his emissary to deliver the terms of surrender.
They stood silently on the hill, and waited for the Phocaeans to say no.

‘Well?’ Harpagus, when his man returned.

‘They ask for a day to consider our terms.’

Harpagus grunted in surprise. ‘What do you think, Croesus?’ There was a taunting edge to his voice. ‘I don’t see any reason to wait. We can take the city in a
day.’

‘Do you care what I think?’

‘Let us pretend that I do.’

Croesus looked out at the harbour, and remembered what little he knew of the Phocaeans.

‘Wait,’ he said. ‘Where is the harm in that? It is only a single day. The army can rest. And the Phocaeans might change their minds.’

‘They won’t,’ Harpagus said. He shrugged. ‘But as you wish.’

Long before dawn, Croesus made his way through the sleeping army, and returned to the hill that overlooked the city and the sea. There was no moon, and he could see almost
nothing of the settlement below. There were just a few points of light, where a torch had been lit or a fire still burned, as though the night sky had laid a part of itself over the city like a
veil, covering it with darkness and a scattering of stars.

Croesus sat and wrapped his arms around his knees. He shivered, and waited for the dawn.

When the wind blew towards him, Croesus could hear the sounds of the city. Ropes drawing taut, water lapping against hollow wood, the creak of carts through the streets, arguments between
families in an unfamiliar language, orders given in hard whispers.

The sun finally rose behind him, and it broke over a vision from a myth. A city on the water.