The Lost Army (21 page)

‘In saying this, he had accused the King of being a liar. In front of twenty or so witnesses. In other words, he signed his own death sentence.

‘When they saw the eunuch’s satisfied grin, the others understood what was in store for Mithridates. They dropped their eyes, and the master of the house said, “Such big talk! Let’s leave these matters to others and worry instead about eating and drinking and enjoying ourselves tonight. No one knows what tomorrow may bring!”

‘Mithridates’s death was orchestrated by the Queen Mother who, once again, asked her son to allow her to avenge his offended honour. Mithridates’s friends tried to get him out of trouble using the excuse that he was drunk, but the eunuch quoted the old adage about there being truth in wine, claiming that under the influence of drink one speaks the truth. None of those present at the banquet dared to disagree.

‘Parysatis devised an even more perverse end for Mithridates: the torture of the two chests.’

At the thought of having to listen to more atrocities I begged Durgat to interrupt her story because I had neither the courage nor the strength to listen, but a voice I knew well rang out behind me.

‘Well, I am curious to hear about it, and I know you know enough Greek to make yourself understood. I heard you speaking when our men captured you.’

Menon of Thessaly was standing behind me, and perhaps had been there for some time, although I hadn’t noticed.

‘Get out,’ I said. ‘Xeno could be back at any time and he won’t like it if he finds you here with me.’

‘I’m not doing anything wrong,’ replied Menon. ‘And I know you’re a friend of Melissa’s, that gives us something in common.’

He was holding a cup of palm wine in his left hand. The cup was made of fine ceramic, like those that the Greeks use when they take their meals. I’ve never been able to understand how he kept his cloak so white and how such rare, delicate items could travel with him without being damaged. The girl went on speaking in Greek: I had not expected that, and was really surprised. She must have been a precious commodity at the Queen’s court. I turned to leave.

‘Too tender-hearted or too weak-stomached to listen?’ commented Menon sarcastically. ‘You’re not familiar with the torture of the two chests? I’ll tell you about it myself. You know, before we left I had to brush up on the habits and customs of these countries, just so that I’d know what to expect if I was taken prisoner. This is what she’s talking about. They take you out into the middle of the desert, someplace where the sun beats down all day long. They tie your hands and your feet and put you into a kind of chest, you know, the ones they use for leavening bread dough. Just big enough to contain you sitting down. Then they place another chest on top of that one, only this one has the end cut out so that your whole head sticks out of it. Then they spread a thick paste of milk and honey all over your face. That’s just the thing for flies, wasps, horseflies, you name it. They come from every direction to enjoy the meal and so in moments your face is completely covered by those revolting insects. But that’s not all. Spiders, centipedes and beetles all come to join in the fun. And ants, thousands of starving ants. You can’t move because you’re closed up in that wooden coffin, and once the honey is finished, the insects don’t stop. They continue on your face and in no time at all, they’ve turned it into a bloody mask.’

‘That’s enough!’ I shouted.

‘Leave if you want,’ replied Menon. ‘No one asked you to stay.’ But I did stay. I don’t know why but that horror had a strange effect on me, like a poison that slowly makes you drowsy yet torments you at the same time. I realized that human beings were capable of doing this, and worse. I couldn’t walk away, it wasn’t right. I had to be aware of everything that life may hold in store. Your existence can be totally serene, I thought, you might be blessed with children, a person who loves and respects you, a lovely house with an arbour and a garden, like the one I’ve always dreamed of. And yet something can happen that will make you forget about the happiness of a lifetime in a matter of hours, and make you sorry you were ever born.

Menon’s voice continued, soft and low, telling his cruel story. ‘. . . And that’s still not all. Every evening, when night and darkness liberate you for a brief time of those teeming hosts, dinner time comes around. They feed you, yes they do . . . can you believe that? Drink, too. Lots of it. They force it down your throat. If you won’t open your mouth they pierce your eyes with pins, so that when you scream they can stuff more food into your mouth, and make you drink. So that after two or three days you are buried in your own excrement inside of that boiling coffin. The worms devour you alive, little by little. You can smell the stench of your own dying flesh and you curse your heart that keeps on beating and you curse your mother who brought you to life and you curse all the gods in the heavens that she didn’t drop dead before she spat you into the world.’

I wept as I listened to his story. Such horror! I thought that even that poor wretch had been born of a mother who nursed him, held him in her arms and covered him with kisses and caresses, ensuring that his childhood would be filled with all the joy a child can have, not realizing that it would have been much better for him had she drowned him in a bucket as soon as he was born, before hearing his first wail.

It took Mithridates seventeen days to die.

The story wasn’t finished. Durgat said that there was one more man who still had to pay his dues. The eunuch who had taken it upon himself to decapitate, maim and impale Cyrus’s lifeless body. His name was Masabates and he was as wily as could be. He’d seen the way the other two had ended up and he realized that he was choice prey for that tiger. Not only was he careful to do no boasting, but he avoided any situation in which talk turned to Cyrus and shied away from any person who had had anything to do with anyone who had ever known Cyrus or even remembered him in any way. If the discussion strayed in that direction he simply left, alluding to one of the many tasks he was responsible for as a loyal and emasculated servant of the King. It seemed impossible to trap him, but the man-hunter was more cunning than he was. She let time pass, and began to behave as if Cyrus had never existed. She surrounded her surviving son with tenderness and solicitude, even making sweets for him with her own hands, or so she’d have him believe. She seemed sincere. She played the part of a mother resigned to the fact that only one son remained for her to shower her affection on. The one thing that truly melted the King’s heart was the kindness and warmth the Queen Mother had begun to show for her daughter-in-law, Artaxerxes’s beloved bride Queen Statira, whom she had never been able to abide. Parysatis even found time to join the King in his favourite pastime: throwing dice.

‘I’ve never heard of anyone using loaded dice for the purpose of losing,’ Durgat told us, ‘but that’s exactly what the Queen Mother did to achieve her goal. She bet one thousand gold darics and lost them all. She paid this enormous sum without batting an eye but requested a return game, which took place a few days later, one quiet evening after dinner in the garden of the summer palace. A fountain burbled softly and a nightingale warbled his song from the jasmine-scented hedges.

‘This time around it was Parysatis’s turn to name the stakes, and she decided they should play for a servant. A servant owned by whoever lost. Each of them could rule out five names, choosing from their most loyal and devoted servants, so as not to be deprived of a person close to their hearts.

‘Parysatis has calculated well. Masabates was not among her son’s top five. This time the dice were loaded to allow her to win, and when she claimed Masabates as her prize the King immediately realized that he had condemned a faithful servant to a horrible death, but a king’s word is carved in stone, and can’t be taken back.

‘The Queen Mother had him flayed alive and ordered his skin to be hung from a reed trellis where he could see it. Then she had him impaled using three intersecting poles. His death was quicker than Mithridates’s but no less painful’ This happened just a few days before Durgat had been captured at the villages with the other servants and their escort.

Durgat said that she had been present, with a basket of figs in her arms, when the King complained to his mother that she had inflicted a horrible death on a good servant. The Queen Mother shrugged and said, ‘What a fuss over a worthless old eunuch! I didn’t say a word when I lost one thousand gold darics in a single game.’ Then she took a fig from Durgat’s basket, peeled it with maddening slowness and bit into it, curling her lip just like a tiger does.

As Durgat was finishing her story Xeno appeared and found himself face-to-face with Menon of Thessaly. ‘What are you doing here?’ he asked curtly.

‘Just passing through,’ replied Menon.

‘Pass some other way,’ replied Xeno, frowning. I saw Menon’s hand slip to the hilt of his sword and I shot him a look to stop him. He shook his blond mane and grinned. ‘Another time, writer. Our day will come. While you’re waiting, have your lady friend tell you a story or two. You’ll find them interesting.’

He left, the wind billowing up under that absurd white cloak. Like the sail on a boat.

I
ASKED
D
URGAT
whether she’d rather return to the Queen or go on with us. ‘You’re free, if you want to be. You must decide for yourself. If you come with us, I think we’ll be on the coast in a couple of months. There are incredible cities on the seafront, the climate is good and the fields are fertile. You might find a good man who will marry you, and raise a family.’

Durgat lowered her eyes for a moment without speaking. She was a pretty girl, with pitch-black hair and eyes and a dark complexion. She dressed with a certain flair and was even wearing ornaments: a drop of amber at her throat hung from a silver chain.

‘You’re very good to offer to take me with you, but I know I’m safe where I am now. You just have to close your ears and your eyes, obey always, even when you’re not told to do anything, predict the Queen’s needs and satisfy her every desire, and all is fine.’

I couldn’t believe I’d heard the words ‘all is fine’ from a person who’d had a close encounter with the unimaginably ferocious acts she’d just told me about, a person who was at the service of a human beast who was capable of immense cruelty and of sudden, devastating mood changes. I realized that a person deprived of her freedom and her dignity can grow accustomed to anything and everything.

Durgat continued, ‘You’re doing this because you’re in love, I can see that, and I understand you. I’m not used to this kind of life. But . . . that’s not the only reason . . .’ she broke off, looking straight into my eyes with an intense expression.

There was a message in her eyes, as there had been in mine when I silently implored Menon not to draw his sword against my Xeno. She wouldn’t say another word; she had already warned me that she found it best to close her ears and her eyes. So, best not to hear and not to see . . . what? What was it that she knew but couldn’t tell me? What Durgat had given me was a gift that I couldn’t understand or benefit from. I didn’t press her to say anything more because her expression was eloquent; it was impossible for her to go any further. She’d already given me what she could and the mere idea that she might be considered responsible for a prohibited revelation was more than enough to sew her mouth shut. Precisely because she’d decided to return to her cage.

‘I’ll ask Xeno to leave you here in the village. Your people will find you when they pass through, or you’ll be picked up by Tissaphernes’s men who are camped one parasang east of here.’

‘I’m very grateful to you. Believe me, I would have liked to stay with you and become your friend. You’re a lot like I am, you know? Maybe because we speak the same language and come from similar places. I’m from Aleppo.’

‘Maybe,’ I replied, and my gaze sought the point that had just caught her attention. Something up on a low hill, behind the villages: it was Menon’s white cloak.

Xeno called me and I joined him, and began preparing our supper.

He realized that my mind was somewhere far away. ‘What are you thinking about?’ he asked.

‘That girl that we found here, the one who had been captured,’ I answered. ‘I promised that you would free her.’

‘I don’t think so! You’re too jealous to let another woman share our tent, and a pretty one at that. Am I right?’

‘Of course you are.’ I smiled. ‘You know me well! Then can I tell her that she can go back to where she came from?’

‘Yes, tell her that. Let’s hope that nothing bad happens to her.’

‘Durgat belongs to the Queen Mother Parysatis. She has only to say her name and her path will clear, even in the middle of a pack of wolves, believe me.’

‘Fine, then.’ But he continued to steal looks in my direction; he must have sensed that my mind remained elsewhere.

When evening fell a stiff wind came up, snapping the loose edges of the tent and rustling the palm fronds so loudly that I couldn’t fall asleep. I couldn’t get Durgat’s enigmatic expression out of my mind, that intense look she gave me when she stopped talking.

There was something she couldn’t tell me, something she knew but couldn’t say. Why? Something dangerous, a threat that hung over our heads, something she’d overheard in the chambers of the Queen Mother or in the King’s pavilion. What else could it be? But we knew we were up against danger every day; a sudden attack, an ambush, running out of food or water, poisoned wells . . . so many dangers lay between us and the sea. What threat could be more serious than the many we’d already experienced?