The Last King of Lydia Read online

‘Would you like a woman? Or a young man, if you prefer?’

  ‘I am almost eighty. A dried-up old man. I have very little to offer a woman these days. Or a man, for that matter. I think you mock me.’

  ‘Not at all. There is no predicting the appetites of an old man – they can be the most voracious of all. I once had to bring in half a dozen women in succession before a seventy-year-old Thracian could be satisfied.’ Isocrates laughed at the memory. ‘He was an old goat.’

  ‘Well, I am not he,’ Solon said. ‘But I will accept a massage. This old body aches.’

  ‘Very well. That is a service I can perform myself.’

  Solon undressed and lay on a stone bench at one side of the chamber. As he began to massage the old man, Isocrates found him almost insubstantial, the slack flesh moving aside at the slightest touch, presenting bone.

  Solon felt the hesitance of the hands working across his shoulders. ‘I suppose I feel like death, don’t I?’

  ‘Like a plucked chicken with not enough meat on it.’

  Solon laughed. ‘You are a good soul, Isocrates. I like you. Do you enjoy working for your master? Is he good to you? If not, perhaps I can buy you for myself.’

  ‘He is good to me, and to my wife.’

  ‘You have a wife?’

  ‘Yes. We met in this household.’

  ‘Unusual for a slave. Or is the custom different in Lydia?’

  ‘No. It is forbidden. But Croesus permitted it, as a reward for my services.’

  ‘And children? Have you been grateful enough to provide your master with more property?’

  ‘No.’

  The tone of his response was cold and final, and Solon chose not to press him further. ‘So, how did you come to rise to such a prominent position?’ he said instead. ‘Were you a high-ranking man before you became a slave? Forgive me for saying so, but you do not look like one.’

  ‘No. I was a baker, when I was first taken as a slave. So was my wife. We met in the kitchens here.’

  ‘Ah. That makes sense. Your massage does have something of the kneading board about it. I feel like a particularly damp piece of dough beneath your fingers. How does a baker get from the kitchens to the throne room?’

  Isocrates finished on Solon’s shoulders, and began to work his way down the Athenian’s back. ‘Perhaps you have heard about what happened at the succession of my king?’

  ‘I heard something. There was a half-brother causing trouble, as I recall.’

  ‘That’s right. Pantaleon. Croesus was his father’s choice as heir, but when the king died, Pantaleon tried to usurp the throne. His stepmother and other conspirators came to me, gave me poison, and instructed me to kill the king.’

  ‘I had heard there was a baker involved in this story. That was you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You used it to poison them instead, did you not?’

  ‘Yes. They were staying in the palace at the time, and it was simple enough for me to serve them with their own poison.’

  ‘Remind me not to make an enemy of you,’ Solon said. ‘They would have made you a rich man. Perhaps even a free man. Instead you became a murderer. Why do it?’

  Isocrates hesitated, his hands pausing for a moment on the old man’s back. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘I think you do.’

  ‘Croesus is an innocent,’ Isocrates said, after a moment. ‘And they were such schemers. It didn’t seem right, to murder an innocent man to put people like them into power. And those who use poison surely deserve to die by it. Is that a proverb?’

  ‘It should be. So, you are a baker, a poisoner, now the personal slave of the king. You have many talents, it seems.’

  ‘I like to think so.’

  ‘I am not sure he is worthy of you. I cannot tell you the number of courts that I have visited where the slaves had more wit than their masters. I have begun to think that perhaps our cities would be much improved if the masters and the slaves were to change places overnight.’

  ‘You do my master wrong.’

  ‘He asked me the most foolish question today. Sitting there with a look in his eyes like a shy boy in front of a beautiful girl. I thought he had some profound dilemma to present to me. A good philosophical puzzle, perhaps. Instead he asked me to name the happiest person I had ever met.’

  ‘And you didn’t say him?’

  ‘No. I told him it was Tellus. That vexed him.’

  ‘And who is Tellus?’

  ‘An Athenian, like any other.’ Solon smiled. ‘Your Croesus, he is a decent man, and not a bad king by all accounts. But he’s a fool.’

  ‘He’s no fool.’

  ‘Then what is he?’

  Isocrates shrugged. ‘Inexperienced.’

  ‘Ah. There you have it. He hasn’t seen much of the world, has he? An innocent man. That’s why he thinks he’s happy.’ Solon paused, turning the thought over. ‘Thank you, Isocrates. You have given me the answer I was looking for.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘There was something in his character that I couldn’t quite understand. I am thinking of writing something, you know, on the characters of kings and of their closest slaves. The chapter on Croesus would have been incomplete without that little observation of yours.’

  Isocrates finished his massage at the base of the other man’s back, stepped backwards, and bowed. Solon sat upright, stretched and muttered appreciatively.

  ‘My thanks to you,’ Solon said. ‘In return, I shall give you something.’

  ‘My duty is my reward.’

  ‘I doubt that’s true. I have no coin to give you, but perhaps you will accept a secret.’ And before the slave could respond, Solon leaned forward and spoke a few words in his ear.

  Isocrates stepped back and looked at the other man warily. Solon smiled. ‘I know slaves have little use for other men’s secrets,’ he said. ‘My apologies.’ The old man yawned.

  ‘You are tired,’ the slave said. ‘I will leave you.’

  ‘Yes, I am tired. Sleep comes easily when you are as old as I am. Practice for what lies ahead.’ Solon rubbed at his face. ‘Thank you for your company, Isocrates. I don’t suppose I shall see you again. I doubt that your master will spare you during the rest of my stay here.’

  ‘You are right. Good luck with your writing.’

  ‘Oh, that.’ Solon waved a hand dismissively. ‘I will never finish it. I’ll die long before it is done, and if it is not finished by me it will have to be burned. There is nothing more dangerous than leaving a half-finished work behind when you die. Some fool will come along and finish it for you, and your legacy is tainted.’ He paused. ‘A shame, though. You would have warranted a most interesting chapter to yourself. Instead, you will be forgotten by history.’

  ‘The only slaves that are remembered are those who were foolish or treacherous, or died badly. To be forgotten is not so bad.’

  Isocrates went to leave, but stopped at the doorway. Solon looked up at him. ‘Something else?’

  The slave turned back. ‘I am curious. Why start your work, if you know you will never finish it?’

  Solon paused. ‘I remember, a few years ago, at one court or another, listening to a boy recite a poem. It was quite beautiful. After he had finished, I asked him to teach it to me. Another man in the room looked at my grey hair – what is left of it – and asked me why I was bothering to learn the poem, old man that I was. I told him, “So that I may learn it and then die.”’ He shrugged. ‘What else is there to do?’

  Isocrates kept his head low and his pace steady after he left the guest chamber. He looked at no one as he walked through the narrow corridors of the palace, and paused only to flatten himself against the wall when someone approached.

  As he walked, he felt eyes pass over him briefly, then slip away just as quickly. He wondered whether any of those men and women, if asked about it an hour later, would say that they they had seen him at all. He doubted it. They would not be lying. They had simply trained themselves
not to see him or any other slave, any more than one would notice a door or a well that one used every day. If any of them had noticed him, they would have assumed that he was running an errand for his king. None would have suspected that he might be running an errand for himself.

  It took him some time to find whom he was looking for. There was no predicting what her movements would be, where she would be found or even if she could be found at all. Many times, he had squandered what free time he had travelling from one room in the palace to another, chasing phantoms through the corridors of Sardis. This time, he was fortunate. After only a short search, in a small courtyard at the gate of palace, he found Maia, the slave who watched the king’s second son.

  As always, she was with her charge. He watched as the boy slowly paced around the dusty courtyard. The guards who stood near by were careful to stay away from him. Any other mute they would have laughed at and toyed with, and so, unable to mock a royal prince and not knowing what else to do with him, they tried to ignore him. They watched Maia instead.

  She was not one of the beautiful slaves. Plain-faced and heavy-set, Maia had little to draw the wandering eye to her. When, on occasion, Isocrates was asked by another slave why he had chosen her as his wife, he would say, and only half in jest, ‘Because she’s patient.’

  It was a quality that well suited her to her task as the boy’s guardian. For the most part, she left Gyges alone, staying just out of arm’s reach. Occasionally, judging his mood, she would move quickly to pick up something for him to play with. A loose reed, a cracked piece of pottery, a rag of cloth, whatever came to hand. He was known to reject any toys that were given to him, accepting only these improvised, adapted objects which he used for games that no one else could understand.

  Isocrates watched them together, his wife and the boy, as they moved around the courtyard in a strange, broken dance, sometimes drawing close, but never touching. For a moment, he allowed himself to imagine that it was his son at play there, not the king’s.

  Maia looked up for a moment from her charge, and saw her husband standing in the doorway. He smiled, opened his mouth to call to her, but her eyes warned against it. She made a slight gesture with her hand. He looked up, and saw, from a balcony, the king of Lydia looking down on the courtyard.

  Croesus was watching Maia playing patiently with his son. Sometimes, a hint of a smile worked its way on his face, when Gyges acted like any other child, absorbed in his own secret games and invented world. Then the boy would turn away and hiss or moan, make the alien sounds that no other child made, and the king’s half-smile would twist in on itself – whether from pain or disgust, Isocrates could not tell. For the most part, the king’s face was unreadable. Perhaps he was trying to pretend to himself that he too was watching another man’s son.

  A sound from the courtyard made Isocrates look back to Maia and Gyges. He saw her crouch down by one of the piles of rubbish that were scattered on the ground. It was not until she started moving backwards, still crouched, that he saw she had found a stray dog hiding there. She coaxed it out with patient words and gestures, and it came forward warily, blinking at the sun.

  It was an ugly thing, its coat uneven with mange, its left ear little more than a ribbon of scarflesh from one fight too many. Maia led it past Gyges. The boy ignored it at first, but when it drew close, he reached down and ran a shuddering hand through its coat, gentle and forceful in turn. At his touch, the dog turned back and licked at his hand, a brief moment of affection, before it wandered away, sniffing at another pile of rubbish for some stray bone or hunk of rotten meat to chew on.

  Gyges smiled, a brief, brilliant smile, and gave a gasping noise that might have been his version of a laugh. With a motion as natural as it was unexpected, he reached out and took Maia’s hand. She was too surprised to react or pull away, and Gyges passed a finger over her palm, once, before he started back, turned away, and wandered to the other side of the courtyard as though nothing had happened. Isocrates looked up to the balcony, and saw that the king had averted his eyes from this sight.

  Taking his opportunity, Isocrates walked across the courtyard. Maia turned away from him as he approached, and curled one hand behind her back. Without slowing as he walked past, he reached out to her and, for an instant, let his fingers pass over hers. A passing touch and he was gone, walking between the guards and through the doorway to another quarter of the palace. He wondered how many days it would be before he could steal another touch from her.

  Before he went back into the palace and back to his duties, he risked a glance over his shoulder, to see if Croesus had seen him. But the king had gone.

  4

  That night, Croesus dreamed with the clarity of a prophecy.

  He dreamed that he was born deep under the earth. He passed centuries in the still dark, feeling the slow expansion and contraction of the ground beneath him, listening to the discordant sounds that echoed down from the surface as cities rose and fell, seas were born and died. He rested, and was at peace within the earth.

  But then light and air broke into his home. Bronze picks cut him away, loaded him onto carts, and took him from the place of his birth. He was a piece of iron, removed from his mountain tomb to become a slave to men. He travelled for many days over mountains and hills, through small towns and villages where blacksmiths and tradesmen tried to buy him. His owners would not sell; he was of a noble lineage, too good to be beaten into a horseshoe or part of a plough. Soon, the convoy crested a hill that was familiar to him from his waking life, and looked down on the city of Sardis.

  In the armourer’s forge, he sweltered in the fire. He turned red, then white with the heat, but he felt no pain, even as the hammer fell on him and pounded him flat. He felt his form become sharper and sleeker. He was changing into something deadly, something beautiful.

  He had to await his destiny, hanging in an armoury deep within the palace. Somehow, the wait in the armoury, though it spanned only a few years, was far more painful than the centuries he had slept in the earth. Could there be a worse fate than to be moulded into something remarkable, only to waste away the years unused, to rust and break and be discarded? Occasionally his metallic pulse would quicken as human hands took hold of him, but it was only to be cleaned and sharpened or paraded in ceremony. At night, when men slept but forged iron could talk freely, he and his companions in the armoury spoke of the duels they would fight, the great battles that they would win, if only they were given the opportunity.

  He witnessed the coronation of his waking self as king of Lydia. Borne by a soldier on the walls of Sardis he watched the parade go past, watched as the new king waved to the cheering crowds and smiled at the chanting of his name. As a man, that day had meant everything to him. As a weapon he felt only the hope that he might finally go to war. A new king always went to war.

  The wars came, but he remained in his armoury, growing older and weaker. As the years passed, some of his fellows descended into a senile madness, boasting of wars they had never fought, claiming to have been the personal weapons of renowned warriors who had died centuries before. Some rusted, were taken away, and never returned. Croesus wondered if he would prefer that fate, to be cast out to rust and dissolve back into the earth, rather than this eternity of waiting. But that was not his destiny.

  He was taken from the armoury, bundled with half a dozen of his fellows, covered with hide and strapped to the side of a pack animal. For days he jolted along the road, listening to the excited chatter of his companions, roused from their stupor and going at last to war. He lived in darkness, shielded from the elements, waiting. He was reminded of his first days beneath the earth, and he prayed that the journey would not end, that he would remain for ever in this same exquisite state of anticipation.

  But the battle came at last, the air alive with the screams of fearful men, the animal cries of the enemy, the sound of iron against iron, iron through skin, iron into bone. He circled the edges of the conflict, waiting patiently. He felt the
practised hand that gripped him with a dry palm, waiting to make a throw that would count.

  The entire world stood still. His master let him fly, and he felt the air roar, sensed a single figure growing large and filling his world.

  He struck deep, tasted blood. Buried in flesh and bone, he could feel the dying heart beat through him, and knew that the wound was mortal. His master’s hand gripped him once more, and with a single motion he was pulled loose and hung suspended above the body of his enemy. He saw the face of the man he had killed.

  It was his son, Atys.

  Croesus woke. He sat alone, his wife far away in her own private quarters, and shook silently in his bedclothes until he found the strength to move. He went to a basin of water and washed his face, swallowed a goblet of wine. He could still feel his son’s blood on his face, still taste it on his lips.

  He cried out for his guards. They entered the room in a moment, checking the corners, prodding the curtains with the tips of their spears, their hands running over Croesus to search for a hidden wound. He waved them away. ‘Listen to me.’ He voice trailed off, and his eyes flickered across the bodies of his guards. He saw the iron daggers and iron short swords strapped to their waists, the iron-headed spears they clutched in their hands. He thought of the thousands of iron weapons in Sardis, of a death waiting in every part of the palace.

  ‘Leave all your weapons here,’ he said. ‘Then go to my son and guard him with your lives.’

  They exchanged uncertain looks. ‘Guard your son without our weapons?’ one of them asked.

  ‘Yes,’ Croesus said, ‘exactly that. Go, now.’

  It was not for them to question the king further, and so they placed their weapons before him and left to obey their orders. Croesus sat on the stone floor and ran his hands over the blades, trying to feel for anything that felt familiar. He held each one up in turn to his ear, as though hoping that it might whisper its name to him. In his dream, each of the weapons had spoken with a different voice, and the individual patterns of the iron had been as diverse and familiar to him as the faces of his own family. Now they all looked the same, had no voice of iron to mark them apart. He spent the rest of the night crouched there, cradling the blades in his arms, trying to discover if one of them might be the weapon that would kill his son.