Creation (9 page)

“Magian!” I imitated as best I could the voice of Zoroaster. “ ‘I sacrifice only to the undying, shining, swift-horsed sun. For when the sun rises up, then the earth, made by the Wise Lord, becomes clean. The running waters become clean. The waters of the wells become clean. The waters of the sea become clean. The standing waters become clean. All the holy creatures become clean.’ ”

The Magian made a gesture to ward off evil while my fellow students stared at me, appalled and frightened. Even the dullest realized that I was calling the swift-horsed sun down from the sky to be my witness.

“ ‘Should not the sun rise up,’ ” I began the last part of the invocation, “ ‘then the devas will destroy all things in the material world. But he who offers up a sacrifice to the undying, shining, swift-horsed sun, he will withstand darkness, and the devas, and that death which creeps in unseen ...’ ”

The Magian was muttering spells to counter me.

But I could not have stopped if I had wanted to. In a loud voice I launched the Truth against the Lie. “ ‘As you stand for Ahriman and all that is evil, I cry out to the sun that you be destroyed, first, in time of the long dominion ...’ ”

I never got to the end of my anathema.

With a scream the Magian fled, and the others followed.

I remember standing for a long time alone in the classroom, trembling like a new leaf in an equinoctial wind.

I have no idea how I got back to the courtyard with its ghosts of chickens.

I do know that word of what I had said and done echoed from one end of the palace at Susa to the other and, shortly before nightfall, I was commanded to wait upon Queen Atossa.

IT IS SAID OF THE PALACE AT SUSA THAT no one knows where all the corridors lead. I believe this. It is also said that there are exactly ten thousand rooms, which I very much doubt. I daresay that if Herodotus were told this story, he would report that there are twenty thousand rooms.

I recall being led through what seemed to me to be at least a mile of narrow, musty, ill-lit corridors whose floors are stained an ominous dark red. Yet we never once left the women’s quarters, soon to be denied me: at about the age of seven, Persian boys are removed from the harem and turned over to the male members of the family. Since Lais was my only relative at Susa, I was allowed to live in the harem until the fairly advanced age of nine. Not that Lais and I could be said to have actually lived in the harem. Except for servants, we saw no court ladies in our squalid annex.

Two uncommonly tall and thin Babylonian eunuchs received me at the door to the private apartments of Queen Atossa. One of them told me that before the queen’s entrance, I was to lie face down on an elaborate Indian carpet. As the queen entered the room I was to wriggle toward her and kiss her right foot. Unless told to rise, I was to remain face down until dismissed. Then I would wriggle backwards across the rug to the door. At no point was I ever to look directly at her. This is the way a suppliant is expected to approach the Great King or his surrogate. Members of royal or noble families are expected to bow low to the sovereign while kissing the right hand, as a sign of submission. If the Great King is so minded, he will allow a favored personage to kiss his cheek.

Protocol was particularly strict at the court of Darius, as it tends to be whenever a monarch is not born to the throne. Although the court of Darius’ son Xerxes was far more glittering than that of his father, protocol was much less intrusive. As the son and grandson of Great Kings, Xerxes did not need to remind the world of his greatness. Yet I have often thought that had he been as ill at ease with sovereignty as his father, he might have survived as long. But when it comes to fate, as the Athenians like to remind us in those tragedies that they are forever mounting so expensively at the theater, one cannot win. At the height of a bald man’s fame, an eagle is bound to drop a turtle on his head.

Lais says that at the age of eight I was unique, the true heir to Zoroaster, and so on. Although she is naturally prejudiced, others seem to agree that I was unusually bold and self-assured. If I gave this impression, I must have been a skillful actor, for I was in a state of terror most of the time—and never more so than I was on that chilly evening when I lay face down on the red-and-black rug in the queen’s apartment, my heart racing, as I awaited her entrance.

The room was small, the only furniture was an ivory chair with a silver footstool, and a small statue of the goddess Anahita. In front of the statue, a brazier contained burning incense. As I breathed the heavy scented air I shuddered uncontrollably. I knew where I was: I was in the hands of a deva-worshiper.

Silently a carved cedar door opposite me opened. With a rustling sound Queen Atossa entered the room and sat in the ivory chair. I crawled toward her, my nose pushed this way and that by the rough folds of the rug. Finally I saw two gold slippers set side by side on the footstool. In my panic I kissed the left slipper. But the Queen did not appear to notice my mistake.

“Stand up.” Atossa’s voice was almost as deep as that of a man. She also spoke the elegant old Persian of the original court of Anshan, an accent seldom heard nowadays at Susa or anywhere else for that matter. Listening to Atossa—so the old courtiers used to say—one heard again the voice of the dead Cyrus.

Although I was careful not to look at the queen directly, I did look at her out of the corner of my eye. She was a startling sight. No larger than I, she was like a fragile doll on whose neck had been set, most incongruously, the large head of Cyrus, the curve to whose Achaemenid nose so resembled that of a rooster I had got to know in our courtyard that I almost expected to see nostrils like slits set atop the bridge. Atossa’s hair or wig was dyed red; and the large gray-red eyes were surrounded not by normal white but by a red as fiery as her hair. Although she had some incurable disease of the eyes, she never went blind, lucky woman. Thick white enamel covered her face in order to hide—everyone said—a man’s beard. She had tiny hands; each finger was heavy with rings.

“You were named for my father the Great King.” The style of the old court made it impossible for a member of the imperial family ever to ask a question. For those unused to court life, conversation could be most confusing since direct questions always sounded like statements while answers tended to sound like questions.

“I was named for the Great King.” I then recited all of Atossa’s titles, the optional as well as the obligatory ones. Lais had instructed me with great care.

“I knew your father,” said the queen when I had finished. “I did not know your grandfather.”

“He was the prophet of the Wise Lord, who is the only creator.”

Two sets of eyes shifted briefly to the smiling statue of Anahita. Like a blue snake, the incense rose in coils between Atossa and me. My eyes watered.

“So you said in the schoolroom. You frightened your teacher. Now tell me the truth, boy. Did you put a curse on him?” This was a true question, very much in the style of the modern court.

“No, Great Queen. I have not the power—that I know of,” I added. I was not about to let slip any possible weapon. “I merely serve the Wise Lord, and his son the fire.” Was I really so wise, so prodigious at eight years old? No. But I had been well coached by Lais, who had made up her mind not only to survive but to prevail at Susa.

“My father the Great King Cyrus worshiped the sun. Therefore, he worshiped fire. But he also worshiped the other high gods. He restored the temple of Bel-Marduk at Babylon. He built temples to Indra and Mithra. He himself was much loved by the goddess Anahita.” Atossa inclined her head to the bronze statue. The idol’s neck was garlanded with fresh summer flowers. I took this to be some sort of sinister miracle. I did not know that at Susa flowers are grown indoors all winter long, a luxury invented by the Medes.

Atossa questioned me about my grandfather. I told her as much as I could about his revelations. I also described his death. She was particularly impressed to learn that I myself had heard the voice of the Wise Lord.

Although Atossa and her Magians were followers of the Lie, they were obliged to recognize that the Wise Lord was a singularly powerful god if only because the Great King himself had proclaimed from one end of the world to the other that his crown and his victories had come to him as a gift from the Wise Lord. Since Atossa could hardly oppose her husband, Darius, she approached the entire subject with understandable caution.

“Zoroaster is venerated here.” Atossa spoke without much conviction. “And of course you and your mother are ...” In search of the right phrase, Atossa frowned. Then she uttered an elegant old Persian phrase which does not translate at all to Greek but means something like “most dear to us in a cousinly way.”

I bowed very low, wondering what I was supposed to say next. Lais had not prepared me for so much civility.

But Atossa did not expect an answer. For a long moment the queen stared at me with those curious blue-red eyes. “I have decided to move you to better quarters. You must tell your mother how surprised I was to learn that you had been living in the old palace. That was a mistake. Those who made it have been punished. You may also tell her that before the court moves to Ecbatana, I shall receive her. It has also been decided that you will attend the first section of the palace school. You will be taught with the royal princes.”

I must have shown my delight, for the queen seemed less delighted.

Years later, when Atossa and I were friends, she told me that the actual decision to improve? things for my mother and me came not from her but from Darius himself. Apparently one of Lais’ messages had got through to Hystaspes. Furious, he had complained to his son, who had then commanded Atossa to treat us with all due honor.

“But,” said Atossa, twenty years later, bestowing on me her most charming black-toothed smile, “I had no intention of obeying the Great King. Quite the contrary. I was going to put you and your mother to death. You see, I was entirely under the influence of those wicked Magians. Hard to believe, isn’t it? How they poisoned our minds against the Wise Lord and Zoroaster and the Truth! Why, I was actually a follower of the Lie!”

“And still are!” In private, I was always bold with Atossa, which amused her.

“Never!” Atossa nearly smiled. “Actually, what saved you was that scene you made in the schoolroom. Until then hardly anyone had heard of you or your mother. But when the word started to spread that Zoroaster’s grandson was in the palace, launching curses at the Magians. ... Well, there was no way you could be ignored, or killed.

“I mean, if you and your mother had been discovered at the bottom of a well, strangled—which is what I had in mind, the fever takes too long—Darius’ other wives would have blamed me and then he would have been irritated. So I was obliged to change course. Just as Lais was trying to save her own life and yours, I was trying to make my eldest son the heir to Darius. If I had fallen into disgrace, the Persian empire would have gone not to my son but to Artobazanes, who has not a drop of royal blood, any more than Darius did.”

“Or Cyrus the Great,” I added. The old Atossa could be played with up to a point.

“Cyrus was hereditary chief of all the highland clans.” Atossa was serene. “He was born the Achaemenid. He was born lord of Anshan. As for the rest of the world ... Well, he conquered that in the normal way, and if his son Cambyses had not ... died, there would have been no Darius. But that is past. Today Xerxes is Great King, and all things have turned out for the best.”

Atossa spoke too soon, of course. All things turn out ill, in the end. But that is the ill nature of things, to end.

Lais and I moved into the new palace. Unknown to us, we had been lodged originally in a part of the kitchen of the old palace. Although I now attended the first section of the palace school, I did not meet my exact contemporary Xerxes until that summer, after the court moved to Ecbatana.

The first section of the palace school proved to be no different from the second except that there were no Greek boys to talk to. I missed them. I was not treated badly by the young Persian nobles, but I was hardly made to feel at home. Of course, to be precise, I was not at home. For one thing, I was not a noble. For another, my peculiar status as grandson of Zoroaster made both teachers and pupils uneasy.

Because of the anathema that I had hurled at the old Magian, I was thought to have supernatural powers and though, for a time, I denied that I was in any way different from the others, I soon realized that the secret of power—or in this case magic—resides not in its exercise but in its aura. If my schoolmates wanted to think of me as a magic-worker, then I would let them. I also found it useful to
see
,
suddenly, the Wise Lord. Whenever I did, the Magian teachers shuddered and I would not be called upon to recite what I did not want to recite. All in all, none of this playacting did me any harm. If one is not supported at court by a powerful family, it is best then to be a protégé of the Wise Lord.

Queen Atossa kept her promise. Before the court removed to Ecbatana, she had received Lais. The fact that Lais did not annoy her with disquisitions on the Truth versus the Lie pleased her no end. Lais has always had the gift of knowing what it is that people most want to hear. She can charm anyone. Although she would ascribe this to witchcraft, I suspect that she is simply more intelligent than most people—the ultimate magic.

Since the queen was a devotee of witchcraft, Lais obliged her with every sort of potion and spell and Thracian nonsense—not to mention subtle philters and poisons. Nevertheless, despite the queen’s patronage, Lais’ position at court was based on the fact that she was the mother of the grandson of Zoroaster, the scourge of every sort of deva—not to mention magic. This meant that whenever I found the queen and Lais staring into a smoking cauldron and muttering spells, I would accept Lais’ explanation that they were simply experimenting with some exotic medicine. Early on, I realized that what is
not
said at court can never turn, as if by—yes, magic, into a sharp knife in the dark or a draught of some slow poison.