The Last King of Lydia (12 page)

‘Are you pleased, my lord?’ the craftsman asked.

‘I have never heard of a greater offering,’ the king said. ‘It is magnificent, and I thank you. But there is one thing I haven’t seen. The second statue?’

‘Of course, my lord. Just this way.’

Away from the furnaces, almost lost in shadows, was another perfect likeness in gold, this time of a woman. Croesus circled it, counter clockwise then clockwise, studying it from every angle,
paying particular attention to the familiar face. He reached forward and traced his hand across the cool golden skin, to see if his hands could find some fault that his eyes could not. He shook his
head. ‘It is remarkable,’ he said. ‘Has she seen it?’

‘Who, my lord?’

‘Maia, of course.’ Croesus looked again at the statue. ‘You carved her in gold,’ he continued, ‘but have not shown it to her?’

‘No, my lord.’ He hesitated. ‘We did wonder, my lord, why you asked for a statue of a slave. Perhaps you could enlighten me? It would settle a wager.’

Croesus smiled, but did not look at the craftsman. He stared into the empty golden eyes of the statue. ‘She can’t have children,’ he said.

‘My lord?’

‘She can’t have children. She told me that once. So I thought I would give her immortality in some other way.’ Croesus shrugged. ‘A whim of your king. Pay it no mind. You
have done very well.’

‘I’m sure there is plenty more we can do,’ the craftsman said. ‘What else, my lord? Name anything.’

‘No. This is perfect. Wait.’ Croesus thought for a moment, then nodded. ‘My wife has some very fine necklaces. I shall have them sent down to you immediately. They will be a
fine addition to the offering.’

‘Your wife? Won’t—’ the craftsman began to say. He checked himself.

Croesus affected not to hear. ‘When will it all be finished?’ he asked.

‘Three weeks.’

‘Very good. We shall dispatch it all in a month.’

‘A month, my lord? Why the delay?’

The king’s smile broadened. ‘It will take another week to bring the animals into the city once your work is finished. A gift of this size requires an appropriate sacrifice to mark
its departure, don’t you think?’

The main square in the lower city was vast, designed for great public occasions. But on this occasion, it was not large enough. The scale of the sacrifice was
unprecedented.

Twelve thousand sheep, goats, bulls and pigs, each flanked by the head of a household, filled the square and packed every street that led into it. Even the rooftops were alive with women and
children, for everyone in the city had come to bear witness.

Above them all, on the balcony of the palace, Croesus looked down on the streets of the lower city far beneath him. He inhaled the smell of Sardis, listened to the sounds that filtered, faint
and distorted, from the streets below him. The air was thick with the earthy stink of the animals, the chatter of the people as they waited for the ritual to begin. There had been many arguments
between neighbours as to where they would stand, who would be closest to the central square and claim the greater glory. Some had been settled with fistfights, others with quiet bribes to nearby
soldiers or priests. The poorest stood cramped in the side streets and back alleys, the richer shopkeepers on the main thoroughfares, the nobility in the centre square itself. All waited for the
king.

Croesus signalled, and the soldier beside him blew a single, long note from the bullhorn that was slung round his neck. The chattering roar of the people ceased. Each of the twelve thousand men
gripped the hair of the animal at his side and looked up to the king. They did not wait for him to speak, for he was too distant for them to hear him. They awaited a sign.

Croesus glanced over to the other side of the balcony. The goat, its coat pure white, ruminated calmly next to him. Sensing the king’s gaze, it inclined its head to face him. Its black
rectangular pupils passed over Croesus with little interest, until it caught sight of a roll of parchment thrust into his belt. It lunged forward, its lips parted and snuffling for the paper, but
Croesus pushed its questing nose away, letting his fingers trail down through its coarse wisp of beard. He took a silver cup of water from the edge of the balcony and raised it high in the air as a
signal to those who waited below.

In the square and the streets beneath the citadel, each man took a cup of water, lifted it high, and poured it over the head of the beast in front of him. Each animal, feeling the water running
over its head, instinctively nodded as if in unwitting agreement, giving its consent for the sacrifice. Croesus lifted his curved knife. Twelve thousand blades shone an answer back to him.

Then the knives fell, digging and cutting and sawing, and waves of blood poured out like an onrushing tide. The air was filled with the screams of the dying animals as they slumped to their
knees and the blood boiled up through their mouths. A moment later the sound was drowned out as the people of Sardis roared in celebration.

The king’s hands trembled, and a priest stood nearby to second his attempt if he faltered. But he had been well instructed and made no mistake. He reached forward and opened the
animal’s throat with a single cut.

The goat gave a single barked bleat, of confusion more than pain. It dropped its head and choked, then fell to its knees. It moaned mournfully, shivered and rested its head on its forelegs. It
watched its own hot blood spread out around it like a crimson blanket. Its eyes grew dim, and then half closed, a tiny glint of gold visible through the thin slit of the eyelids. It lay still, and
waited to die.

Croesus blinked back sudden tears. He put his hands into a basin of water, watched the tendrils of blood eddying into the water like smoke through the air. He shook his head, and smiled
uncertainly at his wife. ‘Well, it is finished.’ She said nothing in response, and Croesus turned to his slaves. ‘Prepare this’ – he gestured at the carcass –
‘for my evening meal. Minus the Gods’ share, of course.’

He watched them take the beast away, and felt a kind of weary relief. This sacrifice committed him. The moment for doubt, the moment when he could have changed his mind, was past. The pressure
of choice had lifted, and now he had only to follow the course through to the end. He turned to share the thought with his wife. But when he looked back, Danae was gone.

For a single, irrational moment he thought she must have thrown herself from the balcony down into the square below, passing from the world with a single sudden step. Then he saw a long piece of
fabric fall back into place over one of the entrances to the balcony, disturbed by her passage. He hurried inside to follow her.

Far below the balcony, the streets of Sardis were wet with blood. The stones of the square were thick with the holy gore, which mixed with the earth and dried in blackish whorls. The priests
walked calmly through the crowd, finishing off wounded animals where an inexperienced hand had botched the job.

The rooftop onlookers came forward, daubing their foreheads with the blood that ran on the ground in shallow streams. A swarm of prostitutes who had waited at one side of the square as the
sacrifice was prepared now advanced in a surge of incense and clinking jewellery, trying to entice the men to honour the Gods in another way. Children dipped their hands deep in the blood and tore
off through the streets, chasing each other and tagging every wall and doorway with tiny bloody hand prints, spreading the mark of the Gods to every corner of the city.

Inside the palace, Croesus pursued his wife.

Like a figure in a dream, her pace seemed to slow and hasten along with his. At any moment that he seemed on the verge of reaching her, she somehow drew further away from him. He almost called
out to her, but realized that he had no confidence that she would respond to command.

Finally, after following her through the rooms and corridors of the palace, he found her waiting for him at the entrance to the women’s quarters.

‘Well?’ he said. ‘What is it?’

She looked at him, her eyes disbelieving, and under her gaze, he felt a sudden shame. ‘I am sorry,’ he said. ‘I have not been kind to you.’

‘You haven’t been anything to me,’ she said. ‘A husband, or a king. Ever since—’

Croesus bowed his head and raised a hand, palm forward. He gestured to a cushioned couch in the corner of the room. ‘Sit with me. Please,’ he said.

They sat together in silence, and as they did, Croesus tried to remember how to speak to his wife. Once he could have said anything to her. He thought back, tried to think of the last time they
had spoken that had not been at some official function, a private conversation that had not been merely an empty exchange of pleasantries. He could not. He had let her become a stranger to him.

She broke the silence. ‘Why are you doing this?’ she said.

‘Doing what?’

‘Fighting this war. And don’t speak as you do to the others. Of glory or honour or necessity. They may believe it, but I don’t. It’s about you. It’s always been
about you.’

‘I considered peace,’ he said. ‘I knew it is what you would wish for. But I realized that it might never come again. That I might pass my whole life without another
chance.’

She shook her head. ‘For what?’

‘What is more real than this? What matters more than a war?’ He paused. ‘I wish there could be something else. But there is not.’

‘My father once told me that only a fool chooses war,’ she said. ‘He said that in peace, sons bury fathers, but in war, fathers bury sons.’

‘We buried our son in peacetime.’

‘And now you ask others to bury theirs.’

‘Perhaps you are right,’ he said quietly. Then: ‘I wish I still had a son.’

‘You have a son.’

‘But not an heir. I want to make a mark on this world, before I leave it.’ She opened her mouth to speak, but he continued: ‘Lesser men can be content with . . . I don’t
know . . . I honestly don’t know how a slave or a common man can look back on his life and feel it worth anything. Fifty years of scratching at a field, haggling in the market. But I can do
something remarkable.’

‘We could be happy,’ she said. ‘Did you think of that? We have all the wealth of the world. You could spend it on anything you like. Why spend it on a war?’

‘What could we buy that we do not have already? Spend it on the people? The greatest festivals are soon forgotten, and even if I were to make the streets of Sardis run with gold, what
difference would it make? There’s no glory in throwing money to the poor.’

‘And there is in this?’

‘People remember wars, don’t they?’

‘A name on a map, Croesus. That’s all you’re fighting for.’

No,’ he said. ‘It is a signature written on history. It lasts for ever. Atys should have been my legacy. I shall leave an empire behind instead.’

She sat in silence. At last, very quietly, she said, ‘Do as you please. When this war is over, if you are still unhappy, come to me again. Perhaps then you will see how wrong you are.
Perhaps it is only then that you will try and find a way to be happy with me. And your son.’

She stood, and before he could find another word to say, she walked away into the women’s quarters, the one place in the palace where he could not follow her. He listened, and thought he
heard laughter from somewhere within, before all sound of her was lost.

He waited on the couch for a time, to see if she would return. When she did not, he rose and walked back out onto the balcony.

The sun was low in the sky, the red light echoing the carnage of the sacrifice. The stone floor of the balcony had been scrubbed clean and no trace of death remained, but when he looked down at
his hands he found blood dried beneath his fingernails. He picked at it and rolled it to powder between his fingers, and then looked down on the streets below.

He saw a fire burning in the centre of the square, ringed by a dozen priests in heavy white robes. Piled beside them were the fat and bones of the twelve thousand dead – a mountain of
offerings over which the flies swarmed in a cloud of black motion. All around the square, the people of Sardis had returned to the rooftops, having shed their bloody tunics for their finest
clothing, ready to observe the next stage of the sacrifice.

For over an hour, the priests fed the offerings to the Gods. The unburned bones piled thickly around the fire, and it came to resemble one of the mass funeral pyres that are to be found at the
end of a great battle. The crowd watched in respectful silence as each sacrifice was offered, though here and there he saw mothers hushing bored children with sharp warnings and slaps. The only
other sounds were the roar and crackle of the fire, and the deep, throaty chants of the supplication the priests made to the Gods.

When all of the meat had been offered up to the fire, the time came for the second sacrifice: the gift of gold.

Croesus watched as the gates of the palace opened beneath him, and a convoy of a dozen carts rolled out, each one piled high with wealth from the heart of the palace, much of it from his own
private quarters. Gold cups and silver-edged plates, elaborately crafted wooden chairs, heavy weaves of rare fabrics that had travelled from half the world, gilded couches studded with jewels. Each
cart held more wealth than most of the people of Sardis would have seen in a lifetime.

The priests cleared a path for the carts, until the convoy was at the edge of the fire. The men with the first cart crouched down and laid their hands upon it, rocking it back and forth on its
axles once, twice, three times. The third time, they gave a wordless cry and thrust it forward, their legs pushing hard against the stone and driving the cart towards the fire. They released it a
few feet from the edge and skidded to a stop as the cart plunged forward, rocked up over the wood at the edge, tipped to one side and fell into the heart of the fire.

One by one, the remaining eleven carts followed, and the fire flared up, brighter than before. Soon, the cushions of the couches were blackening in the heat, the wood popping and cracking, the
inlaid gold melting and running in priceless rivulets down to the bloody ground. Golden goblets warped and melted, finely worked leather belts cracked and disintegrated into ash.