At any rate, Hector and I lay on a couple of kline and mocked ourselves to Brasidas and Cyrus and Aristides, who were entertained. Aristides actually broke through his reserve and had to swing his feet to the floor as Hector described the Hero of Marathon, stammering to a bored Babylonian slave driver.
But that was not the end of the letters. Before the evening came and the oil lamps could be lit, the very same major-domo appeared, ushered in by the Master of the Palace, a Persian gentleman who’d greeted us on arrival and had scarcely been seen since.
Aristides was still there, helping Hector with his rhetoric.
The major-domo threw himself on the floor at my feet.
I laughed. Greeks always do, when foreigners do this thing. It’s comic. A man’s arse sticks up in the air — anyway, it is most certainly not Greek.
But the Persian fetched Cyrus, and we had a four-sided conversation, from which I eventually understood that the major-domo had mistaken me for an unimportant slave, and his mistress, upon reading the letters, had sent him with a sword that I could use to kill him if I so desired.
The Master of the Palace — yet another Darius, of course — told me that this was merely good manners, and assured me that I was welcome to kill the man.
‘Are you a slave?’ I asked the man.
He raised his head. ‘No, lord.’
‘He sounds like a slave to me,’ Aristides said.
I raised the man and took the sword. ‘Translate for me,’ I said to one of the Babylonian slaves. ‘In Greece, from where I come, one of the greatest sins a man can commit is to treat a free man like a slave. We call it hubris.’
The man closed his eyes and tensed his neck muscles.
‘But no one is allowed to execute a free man for hubris.’ I shrugged. ‘I forgive you. I am a foreigner and you had no idea who I was.’
It was a superb sword. It was made with that pattern welding that the chalcedonies do so well. The hilt was odd — not my style at all, with no cross-guard to protect the hand. I gave it to him.
‘Please keep the sword, master, as a gift from my lady. And I thank you for the gift of my life, and it would be my extreme pleasure to escort you to her. In fact,’ he said, suddenly quite cheerful, ‘in fact, unless you have another engagement, she insists.’
His change of demeanour was very much in keeping with everything and everyone I knew in Babylon. They were. . mercurial.
I took a little trouble over clothes and cloak, although without trousers I looked like a freak to every man and woman on the streets — no one wants to wear an embroidered wool cloak on a hot summer night in Babylon. I wore the sword I’d been given.
The Master of the Palace, who seemed to be quite slow to Cyrus, provided me with a train of slaves — a dozen — and I took both Hector and his young apprentice, who had filled out on the road and shot up a foot with the plentiful meat that came from the bows of my Persian escort.
To make a better show — at the Master of the Palace’s suggestion — we rode horses.
This time, our greeting at the gate was utterly different, and we were ushered directly to the main hall after a very embarrassed captain of the guard had given me his personal apologies in the most astoundingly bad Persian. I left Brasidas to attempt conversation, and one of my multilingual borrowed slaves.
After all, it seemed like a golden opportunity to gather some information. I no longer believed we had a chance of convincing the Great King to keep his armies out of Greece, and that, in turn, meant that our next duty was the collection of information.
And then I went to meet Sallis’s sister.
The main hall was ablaze with torches and lined in heavy columns of green marble shot with white. Two of the columns had gold — actual gold — inlaid in them, and they framed the lady as she sat in splendour on a dais, surrounded by women in magnificent layered robes.
Not a fat merchant’s wife, then.
There were a dozen armoured men in the spaces between the heavy pillars. The warm air was spiced with incense, and the women around her were beautiful. She herself was no older than twenty-five, and she wore enough gold to pay a taxeis of mercenaries for a year. Her eyes were slightly slanted in the Eastern way, almond-shaped and black. Her brows were also jet black and they shone against her skin, which seemed as if it was golden in the torchlight.
I gave her the bow I had not given to Hydarnes, touching my right knee briefly to the marble floor.
She rose from her throne — it looked like a throne to me — and came forward and took my hand and kissed me — on the mouth.
‘A guest-friend of my brother! Staying with the Persians! I assume you found my house unacceptable, and I am mortified.’
A clever person can say one thing and mean another. She spoke excellent Persian — better than mine — and to me, her meaning was clear — We’ve had a misunderstanding and it is time to move on.
Her kiss burned on my lips.
I met her eye, and like Gorgo, she looked back without flinching or dropping her eyes.
‘I am very sorry for any misunderstanding, my lady. Your brother asked me to carry his letters, but said nothing further.’
She smiled at me. ‘Of course he did not. And I understand that you are guests of the Great King, and thus it may be more politic to stay in the Great King’s palace and not share my poor food and flea-ridden beds.’ She curtsied. ‘I am flattered that you have come at all, and hope my poor house is worthy to receive you.’
I sighed. ‘I am but a foolish barbarian and your sarcasm is wasted on me,’ I said.
She leaned in close. ‘I have never found sarcasm to be wasted on a Greek,’ she said. She made a motion with her hand, and the soldiers marched away. ‘We will be served a private dinner. Will you dismiss your slaves?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘But several of them are not slaves. The young man and the boy are free men — my shield bearer and helmet bearer. Noble youths.’
Women came forward. ‘They will be suitably entertained,’ she said.
As private dinners go, it was tolerably public. I think I counted forty servants waiting on us. We dined in a tent made of gauze, which admitted the light of sunset and the breeze, but kept the insects at bay, although every tray of food coming into the tent probably brought a new battalion. We had six courses and wines, and as the evening wore on, the need for privacy seemed tolerably remote.
Despite which, Sallis’s sister Arwia was beautiful. It was more than beauty, however. I was captivated as soon as I heard her speak, and nothing about her was less than desirable, so that as the meal wore on, I had to count horses and stare at servants and at one point excused myself and walked around her garden.
Nor did the lady in question do anything to encourage me, beyond meeting my eye from time to time and laughing a great deal. Few things encourage a man like a woman who will laugh at his jokes.
She was a fine listener, and not just a slavish one. I have known women who ask questions automatically, because they have learned that it is their role to entertain men, and men like few things better than to talk about themselves. No — you needn’t deny it. But Arwia asked questions and then asked further questions, searching, probing — sometimes mocking, sometimes dismissive or even acerbic.
She would stare into my eyes and ask another question, and another, and it was as if she were getting closer to me. She was not. She sat cross-legged on the other side of a low table and each of us also had a sort of elbow table where slaves placed our wine. We were separated by the table and by cushions, as both of us half sat and half reclined, and for part of the meal, owing to a religious custom, she sat partially screened by a fine net.