Creation (19 page)

I have never enjoyed myself more than I did during the weeks that it took us to travel from Babylon to Sardis. Mardonius was an enchanting companion. Since both of us missed the company of Xerxes, much of the affection that each felt for the absent friend was transferred to the other.

Every night we would pitch our tents beside one of the post houses that are set at thirteen-mile intervals along the fifteen-hundred mile highway from Susa to Sardis. Then we would go carousing. I even developed a taste for palm wine, a potent drink much favored in Babylonia.

I remember one particular evening when Mardonius and I and several girls who traveled with the baggage train decided to see how much palm wine we could drink. We were sitting on the parapet of the so-called Median wall, an ancient structure that was crumbling into the dust from which its bricks and asphalt had been shaped. I can still see the golden full moon above me as I rolled along the parapet. I can still see the equally golden sun blazing in my eyes as I lay in a sand dune at the base of the high wall. During the night I had fallen off the wall; soft sand had saved my life. Mardonius was amused. I was ill for days from the palm wine.

We kept the Euphrates to our right as we moved up-country to the sea. I was impressed, as never before, by the extent and diversity of our empire. We rode from the hot and heavily irrigated countryside of Babylonia through the desert land of Mesopotamia to the forested high country of Phrygia and Caria. Every few miles the landscape changed. The people, too. The low-land river people are small, dark, quick; they have large heads. In the mountains the people are tall, pale, slow, with small heads. In the Greek coastal cities, there are extraordinary racial mixtures. Although Ionian and Dorian Greeks predominate, they have intermarried with blond Thracians, dark Phoenicians, papyrus-pale Egyptians, Physically, human variety is quite as startling as is the sameness of human character.

For obvious reasons we did not turn off the king’s highway at Miletus. Instead, we left the road at Halicarnassus, the southern-most of the Great King’s Greek cities. The inhabitants of Halicarnassus are Dorian Greek, and traditionally loyal to Persia.

We were received graciously by King Lydagmis, who quartered us in his sea palace, a damp gray stone barracks of a building that dominates the coast. Mardonius and I shared a room with a view of the high green island of Cos in the distance. I was always at the window. For the first time in my life I beheld the sea. I must have mariner’s blood in my veins—from Lais’ Ionian ancestry?—because I could not stop staring at those agitated purple waters. Driven by autumn winds, thick waves struck the base of the sea palace with such a roar that I could not sleep at night, while in the intervals between the striking of the waves, I could hear—if I strained my ears, and I did—sea foam frothing and whispering beneath my window.

Mardonius thought my fascination with the sea absurd. “Just wait till you set sail! You’re bound to be sick. Magians always are.” From boyhood, Mardonius liked to refer to me as the Magian. Since he was a good-natured youth, I never resented too much the epithet.

In those days I knew Mardonius so well that in a sense I did not really know him at all. I never examined his character, the way that one does with new acquaintances or with those important personages one is privileged to observe at a distance.

Since Mardonius was to become world-famous, I suppose I ought to try to recall what he was like when we were young and—most important—what he was like when we were in Halicarnassus and I began to realize that he was not just another young nobleman whose only distinction was his family’s rank and his position as table companion to Xerxes.

I had always known that Mardonius was swift to take advantage of whatever situation he found himself in. He was also deeply secretive about his actions, not to mention motives. One seldom had the slightest notion just what he was up to. He never willingly revealed himself. But at Halicarnassus I discovered a good deal about the sort of man he was. Had I been more attentive, I might even have begun to understand him. Had I understood him ... Well, there is no point in speculating on what might have been.

What was, was this.

Twenty of us were entertained that night by King Lydagmis. An insignificant-looking man in his fifties, Lydagmis lay upon a couch at the far end of the room; to his right was the Great King’s brother Artanes; to his left was Mardonius, the second highest-ranking Persian in the room. The rest of us were arranged in a semicircle before the three principals. Slaves brought us each a three-legged table loaded with every sort of fish. That evening I ate my first oyster, and saw but did not dare to eat a squid, seethed in its own ink.

The banquet hall was a long room in the somewhat bleak and always—to my eye—unfinished Dorian style. Molding rushes were strewn about the floor from which sea water never ceased to ooze. It is no wonder that the rulers of Halicarnassus are prone to those diseases that stiffen the joints.

Just behind Lydagmis was a chair on which sat the king’s daughter, Artemisia. She was a slender blond-haired girl. Since her husband was constantly ill, she would dine with her father as if she were his son or son-in-law. She was said to have a brother, who was mad. As a result, under Dorian law, she was herself the king’s actual heiress. Like the others, I could not keep my eyes off her. For one thing, it was the first time that I had ever dined in the presence of a lady other than Lais. My fellow Persians were equally intrigued.

Although Artemisia did not speak unless addressed first by her father, she listened very carefully to what was said and comported herself modestly. I was too far away to hear a word that she said. But I did learn how to eat a sea urchin from observing the delicate way she plucked the flesh with her fingers from the center of the bristling shell. Even today I cannot eat a sea urchin without thinking of Artemisia. Although, to be precise, I no longer eat sea urchins. They are too dangerous for the blind. Perhaps that explains why I have not thought of Artemisia for so many years.

There was a good deal of wine drinking in the Dorian manner, which is like the Thracian. A horn filled with wine makes the rounds. One drinks deeply from it before passing it along to one’s neighbor. The last drops in the horn are always sprinkled on the person nearest the last drinker. This messy gesture is thought to bring good luck.

When I went to bed, Mardonius was not in the room. At dawn when I awakened, he was beside me in the bed, sleeping soundly. I waked him and proposed that we visit the port.

I do not think that there is any part of the world quite so beautiful as the coast of Asia Minor. The land is craggy and full of odd inlets. The hills are heavily wooded, while the coastal plains are fertile and well watered. In the distance, sharp blue mountains look as if they had been erected as special fire temples for the worship of the Wise Lord; yet in those days the Wise Lord was unknown in that beautiful if spiritually deprived part of the world.

The port was filled with every sort of ship, and the air smelled of that pitch mariners use to caulk hulls and decks. As the fishing boats docked, the men would throw on to the shore nets filled with writhing shining fish, and the merchants on the quay would start to haggle. The noise was deafening but cheerful. I like seaports.

Just before noon or at the time of the full market—a Greek phrase that I first heard in Halicarnassus—a tall mariner came toward us from the mole. Gravely, he saluted Mardonius, who introduced me to Scylax. Mardonius took it for granted that I knew the name, but I am ashamed to say that I had not heard of the man who was even then the finest navigator in the world. A Greek from nearby Caria, Scylax was often sent on expeditions by Darius. It was he who charted the southern ocean of India as well as the westernmost parts of the Mediterranean. It was he who persuaded Darius to build the canal between the Mediterranean and the Arabian Sea. When Xerxes became Great King, he wanted Scylax to circumnavigate all Africa. Unfortunately, the Carian was too old by then to make the voyage.

“Is there to be a war?” asked Mardonius.

“You should know, Lord.” Scylax squinted down at Mardonius. Like so many mariners, his eyes were always half shut as if he had stared once too often at the sun. Although the skin of his face was Nubian-black from weather, the neck was white as sea foam.

“But
you
are Greek.” Mardonius’ manner was always wry with those he chose to regard, no matter how temporarily, as equals. “What is Aristagoras doing?”

“He’s not been here. He’s in the north, they say. I doubt if he’ll come this far south. We’re Dorian, you know. We have our own king. There are no tyrants here.”

“How large a fleet does he have?”

Scylax smiled. “No matter how many ships Aristagoras has, he will manage to sink them all.”

“He is not sea lord?”

“No, he is not sea lord. But”—and Scylax frowned—“if Histiaeus were at Miletus,
he
would be sea lord.”

“You really think him able?” Like the rest of the young courtiers of our generation, Mardonius took for granted that those men at court who were older than we must of necessity be inferior to us in every way. Youth tends to this sort of vain foolishness.

“I know him well. So does the Great King. Darius is right to keep him nearby. Histiaeus could be a dangerous man.”

“I shall remember that.”

Scylax excused himself, and Mardonius and I walked up the steep and narrow streets that lead from the crowded fish-smelling port to the sea palace of Lydagmis.

We talked of the coming war. Since we had no information of any kind, we were not unlike the schoolboys that we had so recently been and, as schoolboys will, we discussed what great deeds we would one day do when we were grown. Happily, the future was—and always is—a perfect mystery.

At the sea palace, Mardonius turned to me and said, “There is someone who wants to talk to you. Someone who cares deeply about the Wise Lord.” Although Mardonius never dared make fun openly of the religion of the Achaemenids, he had Atossa’s gift for delicate offensiveness whenever the subject came up.

“I am a follower of the Truth.” I was severe, as I always am when others expect me to reflect the Wise Lord’s wisdom.

To my astonishment, we were led by two old women to the apartments of Artemisia. In those days, eunuchs were unknown at Dorian courts. As we entered the small room Artemisia rose to greet us. Close to, I saw that she was not altogether plain. She motioned for the old women to withdraw.

“You must sit,” said Artemisia. “I give you my husband’s greetings. He wanted to receive both of you. But he is not well. He is in the next room.” Artemisia pointed to a carved wooden door crudely set in an undressed stone wall. The only arts that the Dorians know are warfare and thievery.

Artemisia then proceeded to ask me some perfunctory questions about the Wise Lord. It was not until I had given my dozenth perfunctory answer that I realized that Mardonius had slept with Artemisia the night before. Now he was using me so that he could make a respectable visit in daylight on the plausible ground that nothing could be more natural than for a king’s daughter to discuss religion with the prophet’s grandson.

Annoyed, I ceased to answer the girl’s questions. She hardly noticed. She kept staring at Mardonius as if she wanted to devour him then and there the way that she had so deftly managed to ingest a series of prickly sea urchins the previous evening.

When Mardonius saw that I was not going to be helpful,
he
talked religion to her, and she listened solemnly. But eventually Mardonius ran out of religious texts. He knew as little of the Wise Lord as I did of his beloved Mithra.

Finally, the three of us just sat there. While the lovers stared at each other I pretended to be lost in a vision of the world at the end of time of the long dominion. I do this very well. Better, even, than my cousin the current heir of Zoroaster, who always looks as if he were about to try to sell you a camel’s pack of rugs.

King Lydagmis entered, without fanfare—to say the least: he positively crept into the room. Startled, we leapt to our feet. If he knew that Artemisia and Mardonius had made love on the floor of that very room the previous night, he betrayed nothing. Instead, he treated us with all the gravity befitting a host who knows how to receive the Great King’s table companions—or companion. Mardonius dined with Darius. I never did. Later, of course, I was to be Xerxes’ table companion until the end of his life. This was a great honor, since I was neither royal nor one of The Six.

“Cyrus Spitama is the grandson of Zoroaster,” said Artemisia. She was not in any way embarrassed by the situation. Plainly, Mardonius was not the first to enjoy her.

“I know. I know.” King Lydagmis was benign. “I was told that you had received these two fine young princes. Obviously they have so charmed you that you’ve forgotten you were to ride with me in the park.”

Artemisia was suddenly apologetic. “I
had
forgotten. I am sorry. Can they come too?”

“Of course. If they like.”

“Come where?” asked Mardonius.

“We’re hunting deer,” said Artemisia. “Join us.”

So that curious day ended with Mardonius and me hunting invisible deer with Lydagmis and Artemisia. The girl rather showily rode ahead of us, cloak streaming in the wind, javelin at the ready.

“She’s like the goddess Artemis, isn’t she?” Lydagmis was proud of his Amazonian daughter.

“More beautiful, more swift,” said Mardonius, not looking at me.

Since Artemis is a chief devil, I made a sign to ward off evil; and succeeded all too well. Artemisia was promptly swept from her horse by a low branch. As I was nearest the lady, I heard her curse like a Dorian cavalryman. But when Mardonius came within earshot she began, softly, to weep. Tenderly Mardonius helped her to remount her horse.

On the inland road from Halicarnassus to Sardis we discussed Artemisia at some length. Mardonius admitted that he had seduced her. “Or the other way around,” he added. “She’s very strong-willed. Are all Dorian ladies like that?”