I remember laying there and thinking, but you are a woman, and the wisest captain here.
‘Is that all your advice?’ Mardonius asked, his voice silky. It seemed to me that he wanted the woman’s destruction and saw her walking straight into the Great King’s bad graces.
She looked at him, her head high. ‘Break the Greeks with time and money and avoid another contest at sea or by land. Every fight makes them look better, puffs up their sense of their own importance, brings them allies and admiration — little Greece contending with the might of the Great King? Whereas, with time and gold, you can let their natural fractiousness rule them and their league will collapse, then you can impose any peace you want.’
‘A woman’s advice!’ Mardonius said with deep contempt. ‘Stay in the bedroom where you belong, comb your hair and speak not concerning things beyond your babies and your hand mirror. The Great King needs to show his power and crush these maggots so that other men know his might. That is how a man thinks.’
Artemisia let half her mouth smile. ‘No, Mardonius. That is how you think. I am a woman and I have born babies, with more pain than you will ever know in battle. And I say unto you — you squander the children born of women and yet your way will fail against the Greeks; I protect the children of women, and yet my way will bring triumph for the Great King and for the Empire.’
She spoke like Athena herself and I wondered: in the Poet there are moments when gods and goddesses take the mouths of mortals. My heart soared, because I could see that Athena had already pronounced the Great King’s doom, and yet, as the gods love to show mortals their folly, the Parthenos spoke, herself, through this woman, giving him the best possible advice. Even I, listening to her, approved. She was more dangerous than Mardonius. I think it is lucky for Greece that she was almost forty years old, her face lined with laughter and life. She was attractive enough for her age, but not much younger than Xerxes’ mother. Had she been twenty and beautiful …
But she was not.
Xerxes’ sandals moved again and I looked up in time to see him smile. He put out a hand and placed it on the elbow of Mardonius. ‘She speaks well, and from love of me,’ he said. ‘You believe the Plataean?’ he asked.
She looked at me. In one enigmatic half smile I saw how little I fooled her. She was wise.
But she bowed her head. ‘I believe he tells the truth,’ she said.
Diomedes spoke up. ‘He was at sea, fighting us, just a few days ago!’ he said. ‘He is our enemy!’
Xerxes looked around the room. ‘Is this true?’
I spoke up. ‘It is but three days since I threw a spear at this lady,’ I said.
Xerxes laughed. ‘Ah!’ he said.
Mardonius looked at me. ‘Let me give him to the Immortals. They will beat the truth from him.’
Diomedes said, ‘Great King, give him to me. I have promised that this man, who was once a slave, would meet a vile death. I will wring from him anything he has to say that will serve you.’
Apparently, men at Xerxes’ court demanded deaths of other men all the time, because the Great King ignored them as if they were small boys. ‘Three days ago you threw a spear at one of my captains in a sea fight,’ he said. ‘Today you kiss my slipper. Why?’
I thought of Themistocles. ‘Because three days ago I still believed that the westerners, the men of the Peloponnese, would fight; now I think that they will abandon us — perhaps they already have. So I agreed with Themistocles to make a different offer to you, and have peace.’
‘You sell them to me?’ Xerxes asked.
I raised my head more, and looked at him. ‘No,’ I said. ‘They will betray themselves and you will take them.’ It was the sort of defensive they did it to themselves crap I’d heard from other traitors.
‘I think perhaps my cousin and my brother are mistaken in you,’ Xerxes said. ‘Take him outside where he cannot hear us. I will decide his fate later.’
I was pulled ungently to my feet and pushed out of the room. Diomedes stopped us under the portico by the simple expedient of standing in the way of my Sakje guards.
‘Doru,’ he said, almost caressing me with his voice, ‘I will buy you from the Great King. Rest assured that I will.’ He pursed his lips and leaned towards me. ‘I will have you raped by my slaves, do you hear me? And then I’ll feed your polluted corpse to pigs. That is what I promise you, Doru.’
As he spoke, the veneer of his urbanity peeled away and his spittle flecked my face, as hot as his hatred.
I’d like to say that I met his eyes calmly and snapped some retort — I’ve thought of many over the years — but age has granted me a little honesty, and I have to say that his words made me afraid — to die in so much shame, and be thought a traitor too?
But I managed to keep my head high. I made as if his words puzzled me, and the Sakje pushed me along.
‘You are dead and defiled even now, Greek!’ he shouted.
One of the Sakje said something to the other, and they both grunted.
As soon as we were clear of the main building, Brasidas flicked his eyes at me. ‘Old friend?’ he asked.
I was shaken, and trying hard not to show it. ‘Yes,’ I said.
‘No talk!’ the larger of the two Sakje said.
The next two hours were unmemorable, except that they were miserable. The Sakje didn’t leave us, and did not allow us to talk. We could see and hear nothing of what went on inside Aristides’ house, and we simply sat. I think I remember Brasidas going outside with one of the guards and relieving himself.
A troop of Immortals arrived up the back road that servants used for deliveries in happier times and began to replace the guards around the perimeter of the small estate. They did it with a great deal of talking and even some argument.
After they were done, an officer went into the house, and then the captains began to emerge. Each had a tail of one or two men, and it was … instructive … to observe them from so far that their comments could not be heard and they were, themselves, merely a sort of mime. They postured a fair amount, once all their flunkies were gathered. I wondered if I looked like this from a distance, if this was merely an ugly part of command. Perhaps this was what the vaunted Spartan discipline avoided.
I saw Diomedes gather a pair of hoplites, both in full armour, and by full I mean head-to-toe bronze, the kind I wore for serious fighting. He put his arms around them both like a port-side gang boss in Syracusa, and he spoke to them briefly, and then he came among the cook’s garden — it filled the back of the house, and all these memories are touched with the scent of oregano…. Anyway, Diomedes came along the edge of the garden and walked up to the summer house and looked in. He called out to one of the Immortals who was still on guard, and the man pointed his spear at the shed.
Diomedes and his two soldiers came towards us. The Immortal headed back towards the alley behind the estate. The Great King was going, and taking his guards with him.
Diomedes would have no witnesses.
In Persian, I said to the older of the two Sakje men, ‘This man is my enemy and means me harm.’
He looked at him, tilted his head to one side for a moment, and then shrugged.
I repeated myself, more slowly. This time I pointed at Diomedes for effect.
Diomedes stopped outside the shed door. It was propped open by a piece of wood — the axle of a chariot, I believe.
‘Take him,’ he said. He pointed to the two hoplites.
One began to push in.
I stepped back, and the older Sakje man raised his bow, drew it, and put the arrow in Diomedes’ face. He said something. It was in his own barbaric tongue. Then, in Greek, he said, ‘Away! Go!’
Diomedes had counted on force and effrontery. ‘Just give him to me,’ he said.
The younger Sakje put a bone whistle between his teeth and blew. Both hoplites froze.