I looked around, surprised by the quality of hate focused at me. Perhaps I am dispassionate when I make war; certainly, I have made a business of it sometimes, and I feel little hate and even some compassion for my victims — once they are beaten. But Diomedes bared his teeth, almost in a snarl — fair enough, since I tried to turn him into a temple prostitute once, his hate did not surprise me, but the look on Ariabignes’ face was remarkable: a rictus of anger. And Mardonius’s brows were furrowed, his mouth set, as if we were about to go sword to sword, edge to edge.
I had no friends there.
And I was supposed to act the part of the traitor?
I thought of Odysseus. It is hard, forcing your mind when men hate you. When your cause appears hopeless. Or, just possibly, my mind focused well because my cause was hopeless.
‘It is a better fleet than yours, Great King,’ I said.
With that, the anger on faces was translated to hisses and mutterings, with the sole exception of a woman’s laugh, which cut through the other sounds like a sword through spider web.
Artemisia was laughing.
‘Tell us what is so funny,’ Xerxes said, somewhat pettishly.
Artemisia was apparently without fear — or at least, without fear of the Great King. She gave the slight shrug of a modest woman and cast her eyes down. ‘I thought this Boeotian bumpkin you all described was a great liar,’ she said. Then she chuckled, a lovely sound. ‘I find instead that he tells the truth, and thus I suspect he may be what he claims.’
‘You think the Greek fleet is greater than ours? These rebels?’ Xerxes asked. It’s worth noting here that to the Persians, we were all rebels against the authority of the Great King. Xerxes turned to me. ‘How many ships in your fleet?’ he asked.
I met his eye. ‘Almost four hundred trieres,’ I said. ‘Some pentekonters and triakonters, too.’
Xerxes sat back and clasped the arms of what had once been Jocasta’s favourite chair. I could not tell whether he was genuinely relieved or mocking relief, as if what I had said had no worth.
‘My fleet is more than twice the size,’ Xerxes said. ‘So I have little to fear.’
‘If that were so,’ I asked, ‘we would not be having this conversation, mighty king. But as it is, your fleet has lost to the League’s fleet twice, and never beaten it.’
‘He lies in everything he says,’ Ariabignes said. ‘Their fleet is fewer than three hundred trieres, and it has never beaten the fleet of the Empire.’
I met Xerxes’ eyes and held them. ‘I would guess that your slaves have chosen not to trumpet their defeats to you,’ I said.
‘Silence him!’ Mardonius said. ‘This is no turncoat, but one of their partisans.’
A spear was placed at my neck and I was kicked hard in the back of my knees and I fell. A man’s foot was placed in my back and I felt the point of his spear.
The only sound was that of Artemisia laughing.
I could see Xerxes’ feet and I could see under his chair. It was the oddest view of the room, and I remember thinking that Jocasta had the cleanest floors in Greece. And that I was going to die in the midst of public humiliation. And be thought a traitor.
In fact, I was so terrified, so very sure that this was death, that I had few coherent thoughts at all, and so there was room in the temple of my head for the cleanliness of the floor. I lay and waited for death, Artemisia laughed, and I looked at Xerxes’ very clean feet.
He adjusted his position, drawing his feet together under him.
‘What defeats, Greek?’ he asked. ‘Let him speak.’
‘Great King,’ I began. I had passed the point of no return. I was going to die and I had to see if I could help my comrades a little, sow some dissension, and goad him to the fight.
If Themistocles was not a traitor …
But I couldn’t see Cimon or Ameinias of Pallene, or Eumenes of Anagyrus simply following Themistocles blindly into treason, or so I hoped.
‘If you were to ride to Phaleron and review your fleet,’ I said, ‘you might find it smaller than you imagine, Great King.’
‘He lies!’ Mardonius and Ariabignes said together.
‘And if you were to count all the Greek captures on the beach, you might count them with the fingers of one hand,’ I added. In fact, they had captured almost thirty ships at Artemisium, but I knew he was unlikely to go and count. ‘If you were to climb Mount Aigeleos and look across the bay to Salamis, you might count the Greek ships on their beaches for yourself, and you might count the captures there — Phoenicians and Ionians.’ I couldn’t shrug, but I tried to sound derisive. It’s not easy with a man’s foot in your back and a spear tip pricking you in the cheek.
‘He lies!’ spat the King of Sidon.
‘He says nothing but the truth,’ Artemisia said.
‘What does a woman know of war?’ spat Mardonius. ‘Keep your words to yourself if you have nothing reasonable to say, woman.’
‘I know the difference between victory and defeat,’ the woman said. ‘Which is apparently beyond you.’
Silence reigned. I lay on the floor for the second time in two days and tried not to think.
Finally, the Great King sighed. ‘You did not break the Greeks at Artemisium?’ he asked.
Ariabignes was a son of Darius by a different mother than Xerxes, which made him both a blood relative and just possibly a competitor. He certainly showed fear. ‘We would have, given another day,’ he said. His tone betrayed him.
‘In another day you would have had no fleet,’ I said. ‘And I will be honest if others are not. Had we had another day at Artemisium, I would not be here!’ I remember every word — note that I spoke nothing but the truth, and yet …
‘Let the lady of Halicarnassus speak,’ Xerxes said.
She came and stood not far from me. She was dressed in women’s clothes, not armour, and she was tall, taller than most men, and well muscled, and had copper-red hair, whether by artifice or nature I know not. She stood where I could see her. ‘I think the Greek exaggerates,’ she said. ‘But only by a day or two. Great King, we have not beaten these Greeks. I am your majesty’s loyal slave and I promise you that the Greeks are masters of your fleet at sea.’
‘Silence,’ Xerxes said to the rising protests. ‘Why?’
Artemisia didn’t shuffle or hesitate. ‘You have many poor trierarchs,’ she said. ‘The Phoenicians are afraid to take further losses and it makes them cautious. The Egyptians hate you. Your only reliable ships are the Ionians, and your own Persians seem to hate us. These divisions mean that each contingent succeeds or fails alone.’
Well. Just then, I loved her. And she was saying what I had suspected; indeed, what I had observed.
‘Ship for ship, we are better sailors than most of theirs, and any ship of Sidon can beat any Greek in a race or probably any other contest. But my father used to tell me that what made the Greeks mighty and made the hoplites great was that no one fighter had to be particularly skilled, but only the whole of all the hoplites needed to know the way to fight as a group. And this is what I observe with the Greeks — they fight in answer to a single will, as horses yoked together to a chariot, whereas your ships fight the way foals race, each according to his own will. Is this not humorous, Great King? Your will rules all of us, and yet your fleet is leaderless; the Greeks are all democrats and little men, and yet their fleet acts according to a single will. Worse, because of their cohesion, they pack in close and make the sea battle into a land battle. They put more marines on their decks than many of your ships, and the lack of manoeuvre in close tells to their advantage, as we are the better seamen.’
Silence.
The woman had silenced a dozen men, all tried warriors. Of course, what she said was true — and damningly accurate.
Xerxes leaned forward and put his chin in his hand. ‘What do you recommend, Artemisia?’
She looked down at me. ‘If you can take the Greek fleet by treachery, do so. Their captains are as superior to yours as men are superior to women in matters of war.’