Eunuchs only keep their boyish voices if you cut their stones away while they’re boys, honey. Cut them older and they’re just angry men.
While the guards watched us with arrows on their bows, the eunuch instructed us on how to greet the king. It didn’t matter, as it turned out — as soon as we were taken into the garden, soldiers of the Immortals slammed us to the ground.
A foot was placed on the middle of my back and a spear point placed in the hollow at the base of the back of my skull where the neck meets it. It was very sharp.
I could see nothing but Siccinius. I couldn’t even see Brasidas, and I despaired; I wished I had told Themistocles to go himself (which had occurred to me). You know why I didn’t?
I didn’t really trust him.
‘The Great King bids you speak,’ said a voice. It wasn’t someone I knew.
Nor was the voice directed at us.
I heard Cyrus. I should have expected that he would be there. I suppose that I should have expected what he would say, but I was shocked.
‘Great King, King over Kings, Lord of Lords, these three miserable Greeks are nothing. They are a bold ruse by your enemies to attempt to pull a hood over your eyes. I can’t even guess to what lengths the Greeks would go, or what foolishness they intend. I can only say that I know two of these men, and they are lying.’
I knew Xerxes’ voice as soon as he spoke.
‘Cyrus, captain of Artaphernes of Sardis, are you not?’ he asked. His voice was careful and controlled, and yet I swear he hinted that as a captain of Artaphernes, who had been against the war, he was not fully to be trusted.
‘I have that honour,’ Cyrus replied.
Xerxes cleared his throat. ‘Bring me a cup of wine with honey,’ he said. ‘Tell me what message they bring?’
By the Lord of the Silver Bow and my ancestor Heracles, I’d have given a year of my life to be able to see. I thought the next voice might be Mardonius, although we’d been told he was south and west by Megara.
‘They bring an offer of fealty, King of Kings, from that rascal Themistocles.’ The voice was smooth, cultured, deeply Persian, and held the kind of malicious humour that delighted the oriental mind. ‘The slave on the left is Siccinius, Great King. Him we have seen before.’
Even in that moment of terror and apprehension, I noted that the Great King had seen Siccinius before.
For the first time it dawned on me that I had been used. That Themistocles might be a traitor and he was actually telling the Great King the truth — he was betraying the fleet.
Zeus, god of free men, protect me, I thought.
‘The man on the right is a Spartan soldier who fought against you, Great King, in the war in Babylon. He fled and survived, but he is utterly your enemy.’ This from Cyrus, my so-called friend. Perhaps he didn’t mention me to protect me.
Brasidas shocked me, even in that state. ‘You lie,’ he said clearly. ‘Send for your ally Demaratus, King of Sparta, and ask him who I am.’
Cyrus took a step and was stopped by the Immortals. ‘I do not lie!’ he said. ‘These are dangerous men who intend no good thing for you, Great King!’
‘Be silent,’ Xerxes said. ‘I have been told repeatedly that Athens would have traitors. I have also sent for Hippias.’
There is something horrifying about lying on a mosaic floor for long minutes, a spear in your neck and your hands bound. It was cold, and it was, in its own way, agonising.
I thought of Hippias, whose lustful advances I had avoided when I had been a slave as a boy. He’d been a loathsome worm then.
Hate can help you, in despair. I hated Hippias as a traitor, as a tyrant, and as a fat, ugly man, and that hate buoyed me up. It’s not pretty to say — better that I had been suffused with a desire for glory, or love for Briseis, but in all that time on the cold floor I never thought once of Briseis.
And then he came, fatter, uglier, and more perfumed than I remembered. He was like a caricature of himself. I saw him as he passed across the area of wall my eyes could see.
He made the full proskinesis on the floor and then rose, his fat arse an embarrassment to all Greeks.
‘How may I serve the Great King?’ he asked.
Mardonius spoke again. ‘Demaratus has been tested many times and found loyal,’ he said. ‘He predicted that men of Sparta would come to him. Let us send for him as well.’
Xerxes nodded and pointed at an Immortal. I assume he ran — certainly it seemed no time at all before I heard the deposed Spartan king’s voice.
‘Great King?’ he asked, without much formality. Unlike the worm, Hippias, he didn’t abase himself, but merely bowed deeply, one hand to the floor, like a Persian nobleman.
‘Unpick this riddle for me,’ Xerxes said. ‘Here is your man, Brasidas, with a suspicious character and a slave. The slave claims to offer me the allegiance of Themistocles the Athenian. The other two are guarantors of this pact, or perhaps offered to me as hostages.’
‘Or it is a trick-’ Cyrus took a breath.
Xerxes all but patted Hippias like a dog. ‘This slave comes to me from Themistocles. He brought this letter. Read it and tell me what you think?’
Hippias took the tablets and read them. It took him a long time; I don’t think his Persian was very good. Demaratus read the letter in half the time.
‘I think his offer is genuine,’ the old tyrant said, delighted. ‘I told you men would come over to you when they saw how powerless they were!’
Xerxes chuckled. ‘You promised me they would throw flowers when I entered Athens, and that men would demand that you be restored to power,’ he said with Persian honesty. ‘I have not seen any flowers, and there was no one left in Attica to demand your restoration, so I’m delighted that in this, at least, you are correct.’
‘Great King, if they had not driven the common people into the ships with whips, there would have been cheering crowds to greet your arrival.’ Hippias spoke unctuously, the way one would speak to Zeus, if Zeus came to earth.
Demaratus grunted.
‘You disagree?’ Xerxes asked.
Demaratus made some noise. I couldn’t see him, but I’m going to guess he gave a Laconian shrug. ‘If the offer were genuine, surely Themistocles would have come in person? I did.’
Cyrus’s voice rose. ‘Great King, I beg permission to speak.’
Xerxes made a noise in his throat. ‘Speak, then.
‘Great King, all these Greeks are liars. They do not see lying as a sin, the way we do. This Themistocles — what can he gain by betraying his own fleet?’ Cyrus paused and then threw me to the wolves. ‘Great King, the man in the centre is Arimnestos the Plataean, who was their ambassador at Persepolis. You remember him? Can we imagine him as a traitor?’
Xerxes chuckled. ‘Is it he, indeed? Well, some of his arrogance has been rubbed off him, anyway. Arimnestos, not so stiff-necked now, are you? Speak, Plataean. Speak well for your life. What do you here?’
‘Great King, you have burned my city. I have come to save what I can,’ I said.
‘You have come to serve me?’ Xerxes asked.
‘Great King, ask Cyrus — indeed, ask Artaphernes how often he has asked me to command his ships or his soldiers. I have never been an enemy to his house, or yours, Great King. Or why do you think the Greeks chose me as ambassador?’
Xerxes coughed. ‘Cyrus? What say you to that?’
Cyrus paused. ‘It could be as he says,’ he admitted slowly. ‘In which case I will owe him a great apology. But ask him only this, Great King. Ask him to swear an oath to the gods to be your slave.’
Xerxes laughed aloud. ‘Cyrus, you are to be commended for your caution, but you have said yourself that Greeks are great liars and one oath more or less will not keep them from plummeting into the great darkness. These men speak our tongue but have no idea how men should behave. Siccinius? What does your master bid me do?’
Siccinius spoke up. ‘Great King, my master bids you do what you would have done anyway — attack! In the dark of the moon, bring your forces into the Bay of Salamis so that the Greeks are surrounded on every side, and then fall on them in the dawn. My master will lead the ships of Athens over to you — he will change sides, and the League will collapse. He asks only that now that you have fulfilled your vow to destroy the temples of Athens that you will allow him to restore them.’