Departures Read online

  “Very good,” Polydoros said. “What are your plans? Will you travel up to the ruins each day or had you planned actually to stay in Athens?”

  “Just how far inland is it?” Mithredath asked.

  “A parasang and a half, maybe.”

  “Close to two hours walk each way? In the little time I’d have in the ruins, how could I hope to accomplish anything? I’d sooner pitch a tent there and spend a much shorter while in a bit more discomfort. That will let me return to the east all the sooner.”

  “As you wish, excellent saris. After tomorrow, I shall be at your service.”

  “Why not go tomorrow?” Mithredath asked rather grumpily. “I can send my servants out at once to buy tent cloth and other necessities.”

  “You pardon, sir, but as I said, I am of a banking family. Tomorrow the monthly silver shipment from the Laurion mines south of here will arrive, and I’ll need to be present to help with weighing and assaying the metal. The mines don’t produce as they did when the great lode was found not long after Hellas came under Persia, but there will still be close to a talent of silver: forty or fifty pounds of it, certainly.”

  “Do what you must, of course,” Mithredath said, yielding to necessity. “I’ll look forward to seeing you morning after next, then.” He bowed, indicating that Polydoros could go.

  But the Hellene did not depart immediately. Instead he stood with a faraway expression on his face, looking through Mithredath rather than at him. The eunuch was growing annoyed when at last Polydoros said dreamily, “I wonder how the conquest would have gone, had the Athenians stumbled onto that silver before Khsrish’s” — he pronounced it Xerxes’, too-” campaign. Money buys the sinews of war.”

  A banker indeed, Mithredath thought scornfully. “Money does not buy bravery,” he said.

  “Perhaps not, excellent saris, but even the bravest man, were he naked, would fare badly against an armored warrior with a spear. Had Athens been able to build ships to match the Persian fleet, the Hellenes might not have fallen under the empire’s control.”

  Mithredath snorted. “All the subject peoples have their reasons why they should have held off Persia. None did.”

  “Of course you are right, excellent saris,” Polydoros said politely, wise enough to hide his true feelings, whatever they were. “It was but a fancy of the moment.” He bowed. “Till the day after tomorrow.” He hurried off.

  “I came to the proper decision.” Mithredath lifted his soft felt cap from his head and used it to wipe sweat from his face. “I shouldn’t care to have to make this journey coming and going each day.”

  “As you say, excellent saris.” With a broad-brimmed straw hat and thin, short Hellenic mantle, Polydoros was more comfortably dressed than Mithredath, but he was sweating, too. Behind them the eunuch’s servants and a donkey bore their burdens in stolid silence. One of the servants led a sheep that kept trying to stop and nibble grass and shrubs.

  Something crunched under Mithredath’s shoe. He looked down and saw a broken piece of pottery and, close by it, half-buried in weeds, a chunk of brick. “A house stood here once,” he said. He heard the surprise in his voice and felt foolish. But knowing this wilderness had been a city was not the same as stumbling over its remains.

  Polydoros was more familiar with the site. He pointed. “You can see a fragment of the old wall there among the olive trees.”

  Had he noticed it, Mithredath would have taken it for a pile of rocks. Now that he looked closely, though, he saw they had been worked to fit together.

  “Most of what used to be here, I suppose, has been carried off over the years,” Polydoros said. Mithredath nodded. Stealing already worked stone would be easier for a peasant than working it himself. Polydoros pointed again, to the top of one of the hillocks ahead. “More of the wall around the akropolis- the citadel, you would say in Aramaic-is left because it’s harder to get the rock down.”

  “Aye,” Mithredath said, pleased to find the Hellene thinking along with him. It was his turn to point. “That is the way up to the-the citadel? “ At the last moment he decided against trying to echo the local word Polydoros had used.

  The Hellene dipped his head, a gesture Mithredath had learned to equate with a nod. “Of course, it would have been an easier ramp to climb when it was kept clear of brush,” Polydoros said dryly.

  “So it would.” The eunuch’s heart was already beating fast; he had endured more exertion on this western journey than ever before in his life. Still, he had a job to do. “Let us go up. If that is the citadel, the ruins there will be important ones and may tell me what I need to learn of Athens.”

  “As you say, excellent saris.”

  On reaching the top of the akropolis, Mithredath felt a bit like a conqueror himself. Not only was the ancient ramp overgrown, it was also gullied. One of the eunuch’s servants limped with a twisted ankle; had the donkey stumbled into that hole, it probably would have broken a leg. Mithredath was winded, and even Polydoros, who seemed ready for anything, was breathing hard.

  Rank grass and weeds also grew on the flat ground on top of the citadel, between the stones of the wrecked wall, and over the lower parts of the destroyed buildings the Persians had sacked so long ago. One of those buildings, a large one, had been unfinished when Athens fell. Marble column drums thrust up from the undergrowth. Mithredath could still see scorch marks on them.

  In front of those half columns stood a marble stele whose shape was familiar to the eunuch-there were many like it in Babylon-but which did not belong with the ruins around it. Nor was the inscription carved onto that stele written in the local language, but in Aramaic and in the wedge-shaped characters the Persians had once used and the native Babylonians still sometimes employed.

  A thrill ran through Mithredath as he read the Aramaic text: “ ‘Khsrish, King of Kings, declares: You who may king hereafter, of lies beware. I, Khsrish, King of Kings, having pulled down this city, center of the rebel Yauna, decree that it shall remain wilderness forevermore. You who may be king hereafter and obey these words, may Ahura Mazda be your friend and may your seed be made numerous; may Ahura Mazda make your days long; may whatever you do be successful. You who may be king hereafter, if you see this stele and its words and follow them not, may Ahura Mazda curse you, and of your seed more may there not be, and may Ahura Mazda pull down all you make as I, Khsrish, King of Kings, have pulled down this city, center of the rebel Yauna.’ “

  “A mighty lord, Khsrish the Conqueror, to have his decree obeyed down across the years,” Mithredath said, proud to be of the same Persian race as the long-ago King of Kings, though of his own seed, of course, more there would never be.

  “Mighty indeed,” Polydoros said tonelessly.

  Mithredath looked at him sharply, then relaxed. Polydoros was, after all, a Hellene. Expecting him to be overjoyed before an inscription celebrating the defeat of his forefathers was too much to ask.

  The eunuch rummaged in one of the packs on the donkey’s back until he found a sheet of papyrus, a reed pen, and a bottle of ink. He copied the Aramaic portion of Khsrish’s inscription. He presumed the Persian text said the same thing, but could not read it. Perhaps some magus with antiquarian leanings might still be able to, perhaps not. The present Khsrish would care only about the Aramaic. Of that the eunuch was certain.

  He looked at what he had written. He frowned and compared the papyrus to the text carved into the stele. He had copied everything written there. Still, something seemed to be missing.

  Perhaps Polydoros could supply it; he was a native of these parts. Mithredath turned to him. “Tell me, please, good Polydoros, do you know the name of the king of Athens whom Khsrish the Conqueror overcame?”

  The Hellene frowned. “Excellent saris, I do not. The last king of Athens whose name I know is Kodros, and he is a man of legend, from long before the time of Xerxes.”

  “I might have known this was going too smoothly.” Mithredath sighed. Then he brightened.”It was to learn such th
ings, after all, that I came here.” He scratched his head; he did not approve of loose ends. “But how is it you know of this-Kodros, you said? — and not of the man who must have been Athens’s last king?”

  “Excellent saris,” Polydoros said hesitantly, “in the legends of my people Kodros is the last king of Athens.”

  “Ridiculous,” Mithredath snorted. “Someone must rule, is it not so? This Athens must have been an enemy worthy of Khsrish’s hatred for him to destroy it utterly and afterward curse it. Such an enemy will have had rulers, and able ones, to oppose the King of Kings. How can it have lacked them for all the time since the death of Kodros? Did not one lead it all those years? I cannot believe that.”

  “Nor I,” Polydoros admitted.

  “Very strange.” Mithredath glanced over to the unhappy sheep his servants had urged-and dragged-up the overgrown ramp. “Here, before Khsrish’s victory stele, seems as good a spot as any to offer up the beast.” He drew the dagger that hung from his belt and cut a spray of leaves from a nearby bush. He put the leaves in his cap. “They should be myrtle, but any will do in a pinch.”

  Polydoros watched Mithredath lead the sheep over to the marble pillar and set the dagger against its neck. “Just like that?” the Hellene asked. “No altar? No ritual fire? No libation? No flute players? No grain sprinkled before you sacrifice?”

  “The good god Ahura Mazda does not need them to hear my prayer.”

  Polydoros shrugged. “Our rites are different.”

  Mithredath cut the sheep’s throat. As the beast kicked toward death, he beseeched Ahura Mazda to help him succeed in his quest for knowledge with which to glorify the King of Kings. He was forbidden to pray for any more personal or private good, but with this sacrifice had no need to do so in any case.

  “Does your god require any of the flesh of you?” Polydoros asked as the eunuch began the gory job of butchering the carcass and setting the disjointed pieces on a heap of soft greenery.

  “No, it is mine to do with as I will. A magus should pray over it, but as none is here, we shall have to make do.”

  “Is that garlic growing over there? It will flavor the meat once it’s cooked.” Polydoros licked his chops.

  Mithredath felt saliva flow into his own mouth. He turned to a servant. “You can get a fire going now, Tishtrya.”

  “What are you doing?” Polydoros asked the next morning.

  “Looking through the notes I made before I left Babylon,” Mithredath said. “Here, I knew there was something that would tell me who ruled here when the first Khsrish came. An old tablet says he led Demos of Athens into captivity. Who is this Demos, if Kodros was the last king here?”

  “ ‘Demos’ isn’t a who, I’m afraid, excellent saris, but rather a what,” Polydoros said. “Whoever wrote your tablet wanted to celebrate the King of Kings, as you do, but did not know the Hellenic tongue well. ‘Demos of Athens’ simply means ‘the people of Athens.’ “

  “Oh.” Mithredath sighed. “If you knew the trouble I had finding that-” He shuffled scraps of papyrus, briefly looked happy, then grew cautious again.”I also found something about ‘Boule of Athens.’ Someone told me e was the feminine ending in your language, so I took Boule to be Demos’ wife. You’re going to tell me that’s wrong, too, though, aren’t you?”

  Polydoros dipped his head. “I’m sorry, but I must, excellent saris. ‘Boule’ means ‘council.’ “

  “Oh.” The eunuch’s sigh was longer this time. “The people of Athens, the council of Athens-where is the king of Athens?” He glared at Polydoros as if the young banker were responsible for making that elusive monarch disappear. Then he sighed once more. “That’s what I came here to find out, I suppose. Where are we most likely to find whatever records or decrees this town kept before it came under the rule of the King of Kings?”

  “There are two likely places,” Polydoros said after a visible pause for thought that made Mithredath very much approve of him. “One is up here, in the citadel. The other would be down there”- He pointed north and west — ”in the agora, the city’s marketplace. Anyone who came into the city from the countryside to do business would be able to read them there.”

  “Sensible,” Mithredath said. “We’ll cast about here for a while, then, and go down again later. The fewer trips up and down that ramp I take, the happier I shall be.” When Polydoros agreed, the eunuch turned to his servants. “Tishtrya, Raga, you will be able to help in this enterprise, too. All you need do is look for anything with writing on it and let me or Polydoros know if you actually find something.”

  The servants’ nods were gloomy; they had looked forward to relaxing while their master worked. Mithredath expected little from them but did not feel like having them sit idle. He was surprised when, a few minutes later, one of them came trotting through the rubble and undergrowth, waving excitedly to show he had found something.

  “What is it, Raga?” the eunuch asked.

  “Words, master, carved on an old wall,” Raga replied. “Come see!”

  “I shall,” Mithredath said. He and Polydoros followed the servant back to where his companion was waiting. Tishtrya proudly pointed at the inscription. The eunuch’s hopes fell at once: it was too short to be the kind of thing he was seeking. He turned to Polydoros. “What does it say?”

  “Kalos Arkhias, “the Hellene replied. “ ‘Arkhias is beautiful. ‘ It’s praise of a pretty boy, excellent saris, nothing more; you could see the like chalked or scratched on half the walls in Peiraieus.”

  “Nasty buggers,” Tishtrya muttered under his breath in Persian. Polydoros’ eyes went hard for a moment, but he said nothing. Mithredath upbraided his servant; at the same time he made a mental note that the Hellene understood some Persian.

  The search resumed. The citadel of Athens was not a large place; a man could easily walk the length of it in a quarter of an hour. But how many such trips would he have to take across it, Mithredath wondered, to make sure he missed nothing? Assuming, of course, he added to himself a moment later, anything was there to be missed.

  Polydoros sat down in the narrow shade of an overthrown chunk of masonry and fanned himself with his straw hat. He might have been thinking with Mithredath’s mind, for he said, “This could take forever, you know, excellent saris.”

  “Yes,” was all Mithredath cared to reply to that obvious truth.

  “We need to plan what to do, then, rather than simply wandering about up here,” the Hellene went on. Mithredath nodded; Polydoros seemed to have a talent for straightforward thinking. After more consideration Polydoros said, “Let’s make a circuit of the wall first. Decrees often go up on the side of a wall so people can see them. It is not the same in Babylon?”

  “It is,” Mithredath agreed. He and Polydoros made their way back to the ramp up which they had come.

  They walked north and east along the wall. Mithredath’s heart beat faster when he saw letters scratched onto a stone, but it was only another graffito extolling a youth’s beauty. Then, when they were about halfway along the northern reach of the wall, opposite the ruins of some many-columned building, Polydoros suddenly pointed and exclaimed, “There, by Zeus; that’s what we’re after!”

  Mithredath’s eyes followed the Hellene’s finger. The slab Polydoros had spied was flatter and paler than the surrounding stones. As they hurried toward it, Mithredath saw the slab was covered with letters in the angular script the Hellenes used for their own language. If this was someone praising a pretty boy, he’d been very long-winded.

  “What does it say?” the eunuch asked. He fought against excitement; for all he knew, the inscription had been ancient when Khsrish took Athens.

  “Let me see.” Polydoros studied the letters. So, in his more ignorant way, did Mithredath. He could see that the stone carving here was more regular than the scratchings his servants and he and Polydoros had come upon before. That in itself, he suspected, marked an official document.

  “Well?” he asked impatiently. He took out
pen and ink and papyrus and got ready to transcribe the words Polydoros was presumably rendering into Aramaic.

  “This is part of what you seek, I think,” the Hellene said at last.

  “Tell me, then!” Had he been a whole man, Mithredath’s voice would have cracked; as he was what he was, it merely rose a little.

  “I’m about to. Here: ‘It seemed good to the council and to the people’… boule and demos again, you see?”

  “A plague on the council and people!” Mithredath broke in. “Who in Ahura Mazda’s name was the king?”

  “I’m coming to that, I think. Let me go on: ‘With the tribe of Antiokhis presiding, Leostratos serving as chairman, Hypsikhides as secretary-’ “

  “The king!” Mithredath shouted. “Where is the name of the king?”

  “It is not on the stone,” Polydoros admitted. He sounded puzzled. Mithredath, for his part, was about ready to grind his teeth. Polydoros continued. “This may be it: ‘Aristeides proposed these things concerning the words of the prophetess of Delphi and the Persians:

  “ ‘Let the Athenians fortify the citadel with beams of wood as well as stone to meet the Persians, just as was bade by the prophetess. Let the council choose woodsmen and carpenters to do this, and let them be paid from the public treasury. Let all this be done as quickly as possible, Xerxes already having come to Asian Sardis. Let there be good fortune to the people of Athens.’ “

  “Read it over again,” Mithredath said. “Read it slowly so that I can be sure I have your Yauna names correct.”

  “Not all Hellenes are Ionians,” Polydoros said. Mithredath shrugged. How these westerners chose to divide themselves was their business, and he did not care one way or the other. But

  Khsrish, back in Babylon, would think of them all as Yauna. And so, in his report, Yauna they would be.

  Polydoros finished reading. Mithredath’s pen stopped its scratching race across the sheet of papyrus. The eunuch read what he had written. He read it again. “Is, ah, Leostratos the ruler of Athens, then? And this Aristeides his minister? Or is Aristeides the king? The measure is his, I gather.”