‘Well?’ Maia’s voice brought him back. ‘What did you say?’
‘I told him to send his people around Lydia. To encourage the playing of musical instruments, promote trade, and encourage them to long for fine fabrics and jewels. Make them wear long tunics and high boots, like musicians and catamites. Turn them into a nation of poets and merchants, not warriors.’
She raised an eyebrow. Croesus continued, ‘I told him that if he did this, through edicts and rewards and threats, he would see them turn into women, not men, and they would never rebel against him.’
She laughed. ‘I was thinking quickly,’ he said. ‘They were about to put my people in chains.’
‘What did he say?’
‘He was silent for a long time. Eventually he said, “Soft lands breed soft men.” That’s when I knew that he would try.’ Croesus remembered the quiet smile of the Persian king, his eyes alight with possibility. ‘I can’t believe that he agreed, but he did. We are to go on a campaign of change. Spreading harps and drums, encouraging new fashions, subsidizing trade and making the owning of weapons unfashionable. Turning men into women.’
‘What did Harpagus say to that?’
‘He swore in some language I didn’t understand. Then he walked away. I don’t think I have ever seen him so angry.’
‘All the servants are scared of him. They say Death took him over a long time ago. When you look into his eyes, you see Death looking back at you. Not a man.’
‘He scares me too. Sometimes I see him watching me at court. I asked Isocrates if I should be concerned, but he said there was no danger there.’ This was, in fact, only a partial truth. Isocrates had told him not to be concerned, but there had been a doubt in his voice. When Croesus pressed him, he had said nothing more.
‘I feel ashamed at what I have done to my home,’ Croesus continued. ‘But they will survive as free people. That is something.’
‘Why be ashamed?’ She smiled archly. ‘I think it will be an improvement. The world would be a better place if it were filled with soft men.’
‘That’s not the world we live in.’
‘So men like you always say. Are you to be rewarded for your work?’
‘I am. I can’t stay long. Cyrus has invited me to his private quarters tonight.’
‘Such an honour!’ she said. ‘You have done well. I don’t recall that Isocrates ever received such an invitation from you.’
Croesus shook his head. ‘That is more a reflection of my ingratitude than his lack of service.’
She laughed, and they fell together into a comfortable silence. He found that this love of silent company was shared by both Isocrates and Maia, and he wondered if they spent what little time they had alone together in wordless communion. It was alien to him, and at first he had always tried to fill such silences with idle talk. Now he let them continue unbroken.
He remembered the first time he had spoken to her as a slave, not long after Isocrates had come to give him his lesson in servitude. She too had taught him much, though not in the direct and practical fashion of her husband. She led by example, teaching him to take rest and pause whenever he could, to rediscover the value of laughter, for a slave a more unusual treasure than any other. The first time they had spoken he had asked her about Danae. Afterwards, when she had told him what she had seen, he wished he had not asked, that he did not know of the chase through the palace, the desperate plunge from its highest point on to the rocks below. He could have imagined a better end for her. Now, when he did not dream of fire, he dreamed of his wife, falling away from him.
He looked at the sky, and saw that the moon was up. ‘I must go. The king expects me.’
She nodded. ‘If you have a favour to ask him,’ she said, ‘will you-’
‘I know what you are going to ask.’ He paused. ‘If the king permits me, I will go to see him.’
‘It has been so long. They won’t allow me to go. I worry about him.’
‘I know, Maia. I will ask. I am sure Cyrus will let me. He is a good man, I think.’
She rolled her eyes. ‘Well, you know my thoughts. I don’t trust any king. He should spend some time in the kitchens or the fields, to teach him the meaning of hard work.’
‘He did, when he was younger. He was raised by farmers, or so the story goes.’
‘A story he cultivates to win favour. I don’t imagine that pampered man has worked a single day in his life.’
Croesus winced. ‘I don’t suppose I would want to know the kind of things you said behind my back, when I was still a king.’
‘No. You wouldn’t,’ she said.
He rose to go, but hesitated. He could see, though he did not want to, a fresh bruise on her cheek.
He remembered that he had spoken to Isocrates about those marks, when he was still a king. He had not found the courage to do so again as a slave.
He turned away from Maia, and tried to forget his cowardice.
When Croesus stepped into Cyrus’s tent, he crossed the threshold by only a few feet before he stopped and stared at the ground, awaiting instruction.
‘Relax,’ he heard Cyrus say. ‘You are here to be rewarded. Look around you.’
Croesus looked at the walls of the tent. Each was divided into dozens of panels, each panel embroidered with a different image. Cities, seas, farms, deserts, castles and temples. Some of them he recognized — the city of Pteria, now destroyed, living on only in this image. The sea view from Phocaea. He felt a coldness settle on him when he saw Sardis on its steep-sided hill, its buildings a mixture of Lydian and Persian design: the city as it would be rebuilt in a generation’s time. In this tent, Cyrus could look on his whole empire.
Half the panels were still blank.
‘Much work to be done,’ Cyrus said. ‘With your help, of course. Come.’ He beckoned Croesus into the next chamber.
The king’s personal tent, a vast construction when viewed from the outside, seemed even larger from within, a honeycomb of fabric chambers, a palace that was built anew every night.
The next chamber was a small one. In an ornate wooden chair, studded with precious gemstones, a woman sat, two children at her feet.
Croesus recognized Cassandane, one of Cyrus’s wives, and as beautiful as they all were, with golden eyes set high on a heart-shaped face, silver bracelets moving against dark, delicate wrists. Beside her, the two young boys knelt on the floor playing knucklebones. The younger played with a carefree ease, whilst the elder was hunched over, his eyes intent, the way children see significance in a game that no adult can understand. By them, a wax tablet lay untouched. A lesson ignored for a game.
Cyrus cupped his wife’s face in his hands and kissed her. ‘I have missed you,’ he said.
She accepted the kiss, then looked at him archly. ‘It would have been better if you paid more attention to me than to that Egyptian who shares your bed at night,’ she said.
He shrugged. ‘She pleases me.’
‘And I?’
‘You please me also.’
She shook her head, and her smile lay somewhere between anger and tolerance.
The older boy glanced up. ‘An Egyptian has hurt you, Mother?’
‘No, Cambyses,’ she said, ‘it isn’t like-’
The boy reached out and put a finger to her lips. He nodded gravely. ‘Don’t worry. When I am king, I shall destroy Egypt for you. Would you like that?’
‘You are your father’s son, you bloodthirsty beast,’ she said, laughing. She examined her visitor. ‘Cambyses, Bardiya. This man serves your father.’
‘You mean he is a slave?’ said Bardiya.
‘Yes. But an important one.’
‘There are important slaves?’ Cambyses said dubiously.
She looked Croesus over. ‘So some say.’
Croesus knelt down beside the boys. He remembered what it was he had loved about his own children when they were small. Like a coin, a child was all possibility. He smiled at Cambyses, the heir to the empire, charmed by the boy’s bright eyes. He stretched out a hand to touch the child on the head.