Again breaking out of character, Asteria explained to me slowly and carefully, as if speaking to a dense child, "Among Lydians, even men, it is considered to be a deep disgrace to be seen unclothed."
I felt my face heating up, as she paused and stared at me pointedly. All this time I had never been sure whether or not she had recognized me at Cunaxa as I watched her struggle out of her robe and escape naked behind the Greek lines.
"The queen mentioned nothing to her husband," Asteria continued, "but at daybreak, she summoned Gyges. She had often in the past spoken with him alone on official matters, and he was accustomed to responding to her call, thinking nothing of it. So this time as well, he obeyed her summons, not suspecting that she knew of his indiscretion the night before. Arriving in her presence, he knelt down before her with his head bowed, as was the custom in the Lydian court.
"'You have committed a foul deed, Gyges,' she said sternly, casting a baleful eye at the terrified soldier and holding the point of a large dagger to the back of his neck, 'for you have seen me naked, thus breaking the sacred mystery that holds between man and wife. You now have a choice. Kill the king, thereby assuming the Lydian throne and becoming my lord; or die now at my hands. In either case, you will never again obey my husband's unlawful orders.'
"'Poor Gyges remained motionless, in shock. Quickly recovering, however, he begged the queen not to force him to choose such a thing. But the queen had set her heart, and the more he pleaded not to kill or be killed, the harder she pressed the dagger to his neck. Finally, seeing no alternative, he gave in. 'If I must be forced to commit a foul deed for the second time in two days, then I choose to save my own life over my master's. Tell me how you wish me to kill him.'
"'You must attack him,' she answered, 'on the very spot where he showed me naked to your prying eyes, and you must wait till he is asleep, to ensure your success.'
"When night fell Gyges, seeing he had no alternative but to slay his master, hid behind the same door as he had the night before, this time with the queen's own dagger in his hand. The king entered first, as was his custom, and then the queen, who again, slowly and deliberately, took off each garment in the full light of the lamp, laying them on the chair as Gyges watched. After undressing completely she paused for a long moment, motionless, her full body visible to the watching soldier. He again could hardly contain his trembling from the combination of fear and lust, the two most violent urges that possess a man, both of them rising from the loins and up through the belly, feeding on and gathering strength from each other, constricting the chest, stopping the breathing, closing the throat, drying the lips and making the head swoon. The queen stood there in the light, as if giving him the opportunity to gaze upon her, and to strengthen his heart for the task, as he contemplated the reward that would be his after successfully completing his mission."
Again Asteria paused, staring hard at me with what seemed to be a mixture of desire and reproach. I reached my hand toward her face, but she shook her head distractedly, as if breaking a spell, and with a shrug indicated a note of finality.
"Of course you know the rest," she concluded with a wry smile. "Gyges stabbed the king to death in his sleep. Candaules' pale, plump wife passed into Gyges' happy hands, as did the kingdom, which was later approved by the Pythia at Delphi. Generations later, Gyges' descendant, King Croesus, brought on Lydia's war with the Persians and eventually its downfall."
This latter event was, of course, precisely the story that Xenophon had recounted to Aglaia on the road to Delphi so long ago. The chiastic structure of the sequences and genders amused me, but after a moment another thought occurred to me, clouding my spirits, and I brought it up to her only half in jest.
"Do you mean to say then, that since I saw you naked, I would have either had to have killed Cyrus myself and taken you as my wife, or you would have killed me?"
She smiled serenely. "You were ignorant of Archilochus; perhaps you know your Homer?
"Truly you are a wicked man, but not short on brains.
How could you say such a thing, how could you even imagine it?
As heaven and earth are my witness-I swear
I would never plot any harm to you. Trust me when I say
My heart is not iron. I have only compassion."
"You know too much," I muttered. "And it is you who are wicked. I refuse to play dueling quotations with a woman."
"That was Calypso, comforting Odysseus, in case you were unsure," she cooed sweetly, patting my hand, "and I would venture to say that it is not I who know too much, but you who know too little."
"Calypso was a nymph who nearly drove Odysseus mad," I said peevishly, "and I sympathize with him deeply. I asked a simple question. It is a mark of intelligence, not to mention good breeding, to say no more than is necessary but to tell at least what is required. You skirt the issue. Would I have had to kill Cyrus, to prevent you from killing me, my good queen?"
"Perhaps it is fortunate, dear Gyges," she said, "that Cyrus died the way he did, saving you the trouble. After all, I am Lydian."
At this she mashed her lips against mine in a clear sign that our verbal jousting had come to an end, for which I was grateful. As I ran my hands down her sides and waist, however, I was given pause when I again felt the large dagger in its sheath at her belt, which since her first night with me at Cunaxa she had never been without.
The next morning we felt the first frost of winter's approach, and as the pale sun rose we could make out a broad, open plain ahead of us, through the northern mountains to the country of the Kurds, and beyond that Armenia, a large and rich territory bordering the Black Sea where supplies would be plentiful. The Kurds, however, were a force terrifying to the troops. Word had spread among the men that several years earlier a Persian invading force of a hundred and twenty thousand men had entered the mountains to subjugate them, and not single man had returned alive. The only clue as to their fate was a donkey that had been set loose to wander from the Kurdish border back into Persian territory bearing an enormous sack on its back. When the animal was found by Persian scouts and the sack cut open they were horrified to find one hundred and twenty thousand human prepuces, dried and strung from a long wrought chain like those worn by Kurdish slaves. We hoped the story was an exaggeration, but it was impossible to say.
Xenophon offered sacrifice to the gods, for we feared that the mountain passes across the plain might already be occupied by Kurdish forces anticipating our arrival. The gods sent us an eagle, which circled the camp once and slowly drifted away over the northern peaks.
The army left at midnight.
CHAPTER THREE
THROUGH THE COLD clear night we marched in silence, each man keeping his own thoughts, each enveloped in his own fears. Terrified of hearing at any moment the thundering hoofbeats of crazed, fur-clad barbarians descending upon us in the darkness with torches and razor lances, we churned across the unprotected plain, and by sunrise we had reached the cover of the mountains. Even this shelter was deceiving, however, as we found in the days after. While traveling through the canyons and steep mountain passes, the army was forced to string out in an exposed line miles long, leaving us open to lightning attacks by small bands of Kurds, who would melt back into the rocks after their murderous raids, to the fury of our frustrated hoplites.