Of the six, only one was awake, his eyes like two small white stones in the darkness.
‘What happened?’ Isocrates said.
Croesus hesitated. ‘Go back to sleep,’ he said. ‘I am sorry that I woke you.’
‘You didn’t wake me. That idiot stepped on me when he came to wake you up. What happened?’
Croesus looked at the others. ‘Don’t worry about them,’ Isocrates said. ‘Nothing disturbs the sleep of a slave.’
‘Cyrus wanted to show me off to an ambassador,’ Croesus said. ‘A Spartan.’ He smiled bitterly. ‘Lakrines. The same one who came to see me, when I was king. You remember? The Gods have a cruel sense of humour.’
‘I remember him. What was that like?’
‘Humiliating.’ Croesus sat down and shook his head. ‘Every day, I think there is not another shame to endure. Now I am to be paraded. An exemplar of foolishness.’
‘Well, at least it is easy work.’
‘You think so?’
‘Ask the slaves in the mines, or the helots of Sparta. I’m sure one of them would be delighted to change places for a lifetime of humiliation.’
‘It might have stopped a war; at least that is what Cyrus said. I don’t think the Spartans will come now. That is something.’
‘Don’t be naïve. It might have stopped war with the Spartans. The wars in the north will come soon enough. Cyrus just wants them to be massacres, rather than battles.’
Croesus said nothing. Isocrates yawned. ‘What do you dream of, Croesus?’ he said.
‘What?’
‘I know you dream of something. Sometimes you cry out.’
‘Why do you want to know?
Isocrates thought for a moment. ‘I think I dreamed when I was younger. I don’t remember. I grew out of it, I suppose. I don’t think slaves dream much, as a rule.’ He paused, then added, ‘I am curious as to what it is like.’
Croesus lay down, and curled his arms beneath his head. ‘It is usually the same dream,’ he said, speaking slowly and softly.
‘Not always?’
‘No. I dream of many things. But usually, when I dream, I see a palace of fire.’
‘There’s nothing but fire?’
‘No. Everything else is dark. Like the sky without stars.’
‘You are in pain, I take it.’
‘No. Not at first. I can reach out to the walls, and they are quite cool to touch. The air is cold, like standing under trees in winter. I feel quite calm. There is no rush to move on. No fear.’ He paused, then said, ‘Perhaps it is worth what comes after in the dream, just to enjoy those moments of peace.’ He stopped again, expecting some sharp comment from Isocrates, but there was silence. ‘Are you still awake?’ he said.
‘Go on, I’m listening.’
‘I walk through the palace. It is like a labyrinth, and I take a different route each night. There must be thousands of paths through the maze. Ten thousand different combinations of turnings that I can take. I go a different way each time. I am nowhere near to exploring them all. But it doesn’t matter. Whichever way I go, I always reach the centre.’
‘What is there?’
Croesus shrugged. ‘People. They change every night.’
‘Am I ever there?’
‘No. Only the dead. My father. Sometimes I see Atys. Sometimes. .’ His voice trailed off.
‘Danae?’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I try to speak to them, but they never respond. They look behind me, and I know there is something terrible there. I don’t want to look, but I can’t help myself. I turn and see the pyre, and I know then that I have been a fool. That I never had a choice, and it was always going to end this way.’ He licked his lips, suddenly dry. ‘I can feel the heat then. All at once, from nothing. I try to cry out, but I feel the fire roar down my throat, burning away my voice.’ He paused. ‘That’s when I wake up.’
They lay in silence for a time.
‘You are not in danger of the pyre any more, you know,’ Isocrates said eventually.
‘Thank you.’
‘You misunderstand,’ Isocrates said. ‘Slaves aren’t worth the spectacle. Or the wood.’ He yawned again. ‘If you ever displease Cyrus, he’ll have you strangled instead.’ And with that, Isocrates rolled over and went back to sleep.
Croesus stretched out a hand and opened the tent flap slightly. He could see the first fringes of light in the east, the pale blue of the sky promising dawn. The next day would come soon. Another day of wondering if this was the day when Cyrus would grow bored or displeased. Another day of slavery, to add to the hundreds he had collected already. Perhaps, he thought, I will live long enough to have been a slave longer than I was a king. Thirteen more years, that is all it would take. I would rather die before that can happen.
He lay down to get what sleep he could before the new day came, and returned to his dreams of fire.
2
The first year had been the hardest.
After they had taken him down from the pyre and assigned him to the slaves’ quarters, Croesus was certain that this was some kind of a cruel joke, that Cyrus would keep him alive for a week, a month, before taking him back to the pyre, and that the other men of the court would laugh and wonder how Croesus could have been so foolish as to think he would be allowed to live. But after a time, just as the pure fear of death was fading, the second horror came to him; the humiliation of being at another man’s command, with less freedom than a dog. He thought of all the things that he could never do again, about how he would continue like this for months, years and decades. Forty years, perhaps, spent looking back at the wreckage of a ruined life. Living in fear was a terrible thing. Living without hope was something else entirely.
Isocrates had not spoken to him much in those first months. Perhaps it had been some kind of a test, to see whether Croesus would survive alone in his new way of life. Perhaps he had simply been too busy with his other duties. Whatever the reason, one day, Croesus came back to the slave quarters to find Isocrates waiting for him.
‘Sit down, Croesus,’ the other man had said. ‘I am here to teach you.’
‘To teach me what?’
‘To teach you how to live, of course. Now sit. We have much to discuss.’
Croesus had sat cross-legged on the ground. ‘You think I need your help?’
‘Yes, I do. And I think you are too proud to ask.’
‘Very well. And where do we begin?’ Croesus said, imagining Isocrates would start with some abstract principle.
‘We begin with your feet.’
Croesus had thought it a poor joke, but Isocrates was quite serious. He told Croesus that a slave’s death always began at the feet. Rushing around on one errand or another, wearing thin sandals or boots that were always on the verge of disintegration. Then came the blisters, which slowed you down. Beatings would follow, and the slave would become slower still, and never be able to rest. Blisters became open wounds. Then followed infection, exhaustion, and death.
Isocrates then spoke of the value of things. Where once Croesus had lived in a sea of coins and a labyrinth of rare artefacts, now he would learn to treasure a small piece of sharp flint, a good pair of boots, a handful of coins, a flask of good wine.
They spoke of much else that night, and gradually Croesus saw how he could survive in this new world. A world that lay alongside that of kings and courtiers, which he had lived in for most of his life. A world that ran parallel, but separate, as though he really had died on that pyre in Sardis, and had been condemned to wander the courts of kings as a ghost. A world in which he was invisible, unless he made a mistake.
After they had finished, and Isocrates rose to leave, Croesus found himself asking one last question. ‘Why did you come?’ he said.
Isocrates turned back, and gave a slight smile. ‘Maia sent me. Why else?’ Then the slave was gone, and Croesus was left to consider what he had been told.
He did not find the next day better than the one before it, but nor did he find it worse. The decline had been halted, for a time at least, and his mind had remained in this uneasy truce with itself for over a year now.