Tim Leach - The Last King of Lydia

He shook his head. ‘Sleep is a luxury for a slave. Your husband taught me that.’

‘A maxim he observes rather too well,’ she said, and sat down beside him. ‘He would have spent this whole day asleep in bed, if he had had the wit to take Cyrus up on his offer.’

‘Did you enjoy the gardens?’

‘They are wonderful. Built for a woman, or so they say.’

‘I can’t believe that’s true.’

‘Oh, I am sure they don’t like to say so. But I heard it from one of the old Babylonian slaves. I believed her.’

‘Is that so?’

‘No need to sound so sceptical. I suppose it offends you, to think of something so remarkable being built for a woman.’

‘Tell me the story.’

‘Well, they say the king’s wife was a Persian princess, and she pined for her home when he brought her here to be his queen. He doted on her, and built this — a little piece of Persia in the heart of the city.’ Maia nodded approvingly. ‘He must have been quite a husband.’

‘Don’t you think Isocrates would do the same for you, if he had the chance?’

She snorted. ‘He would see it as a terrible waste, building me an impossible garden because I was unhappy. Would you have built this place for Danae, if she had asked?’

‘Yes. I would have done anything for her. It’s an easy thing to say, isn’t it? But it wasn’t true then. I did little enough for her when she was alive. And I could have made her so happy. She did not ask for much.’

‘I am sorry, Croesus. I shouldn’t have spoken of her.’

‘I don’t think of her often enough. Especially now. I can barely remember what she looked like. Isn’t that terrible?’ He let his head fall and closed his eyes, and for a moment she thought he was going to weep. But when he opened his eyes again, they were clear and dry.

‘We were wrong about Gyges,’ he said.

‘What do you mean?’

‘I thought it was the waiting outside the city that was driving him mad. It wasn’t.’

‘Then what is it?’

‘The city itself.’

She said nothing for a time, turning the idea over in her mind. ‘Of course,’ she said softly.

‘I didn’t understand before. He hated Sardis, and smiled when it burned. He was happy out on the plains, by the river.’

‘It is cities he hates. What they do to people.’

‘Yes. Now he will be here for years. He is already forgetting how to speak. He will go mad here.’

She shook her head. ‘I won’t allow it.’

‘There is nothing you can do.’

‘Maybe not. But I’ll try.’ She paused. ‘When did he first speak?’

‘It was at the fall of Sardis.’

‘What did he say?’

‘ “Do not kill Croesus.” He saved my life. I don’t know why.’

‘He loves you, Croesus. That is all.’

He breathed deeply, tried to breathe away the pain, the shame of an error that could never be corrected. ‘I never gave him a reason to,’ he said, his voice unsteady.

‘It does not matter. He still loves you.’

‘I don’t think so. Not any more. Take care of him, will you? I don’t think he will see me again.’

They sat silently for a time, listening to the passing of the Euphrates, looking out over the impossible gardens, built long ago to heal a broken heart. Croesus stared up at the sky, and saw that there was still some time to go before the end of the day. He had a few hours left.

‘Can I ask you something, Maia?’ he said.

‘Of course.’

He hesitated. ‘I know the truth.’ He gestured to the dim, half-healed bruises on her face. ‘About those.’

A shiver of tension ran through her. Then she sighed, and shook her head. ‘I wish you had not said that.’

‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

‘I liked it better that way,’ she said. ‘Isocrates always knew that he would have to share me. I liked it that you didn’t know.’ A ghost of a smile moved across her lips. ‘You are an innocent, Croesus. In spite of all that has happened to you. There are terrible things that happen every day, and you do not notice because you can’t imagine people can be so cruel. That is what I like about you. When I am with you, I can pretend these things don’t happen either.’ She paused. ‘Now that is ruined, too.’

‘Why do they do it? You are not. .’

‘Not beautiful?’

Croesus looked away and said nothing. She shook her head.

‘Why do you men ever do anything?’ she said. ‘You are just the same, Croesus. That is what you want too, isn’t it? To possess things. To control them.’

He stared at the ground. ‘You should not fight them,’ he said slowly. ‘If you did not fight them, they would not hurt you so much.’

‘That is the best advice you can give?’

‘I suppose so.’

‘Well, I don’t fight them. I gave that up long ago. Sometimes they beat me anyway. Because they can, and they like it.’

‘I. .’

‘Croesus, you are a good friend to me. To me and my husband. But there is nothing you can do about this. And you know it. You are not trying to help me. You are trying to make yourself feel better.’ Her voice shook, then steadied. ‘And that is wrong.’

He hesitated. ‘Does it get easier?’

‘No. It gets worse. I try not to think about it.’

‘I won’t talk about it again.’

‘Yes, you will, Croesus. I know you too well.’ She reached over and touched him on the shoulder. ‘Come on. Let’s go back.’

They walked out of the gates of the garden. Out on the streets, the first fires were being lit, and from here and there came the echoing sounds of wine casks being broached, the sweet scent of cooking meat, as Babylon began to prepare for its evening meal.

Maia started out back towards the palace, but Croesus hesitated.

‘Is something wrong?’ she said.

‘I am going to stay a little longer.’

She paused for a moment, then nodded. ‘As you wish.’ She smiled. ‘Goodbye, Croesus. Thank you. It was a good day.’

He watched her go, waiting until she had disappeared into the maze of streets. He began to walk in the opposite direction.

He made his choices at random in the winding paths of Babylon, losing himself deliberately, yet also looking for something. Before long his wanderings brought him to the entrance of a tall building. A temple. And inside the temple, something else — if the stories he had heard were true. Suddenly nervous, he toyed with the idea of going back to the palace. Of forgetting this desire.

He walked into the temple, to find a woman he could buy.

He remembered Sardis. There, one had only to walk through the working quarters to find a woman prostituting herself, like all impoverished, pragmatic Lydian women, to secure a dowry. In Babylon, where all things were made beautiful or sacred, the women gathered in the temple, and the selling of their bodies took on the quality of a religious rite.

At least once in her life every Babylonian woman had to visit a temple, sit down there, and go to bed with the first man who threw a coin in her lap. The tall and beautiful women would sit only for moments before being claimed. The young men of Babylon clustered outside the temple gates, watching the women who entered the temple to fulfil their duty to the Gods, drawing lots as to which of them would choose first. The ugly and the deformed, when their time came, had much longer to wait.

There were stories of women who spent years in the temples, waiting for some man to cast a coin in their laps and free them. Some, it was rumoured, spent the rest of their lives there, growing uglier with age and bitterness, bowed over lower with time like a dying tree on a river bank, until their hearts gave out.

He did not know how or when or why this ritual had begun. If it were a divine decree handed down from gods to men at the beginning of time, or if the cruel joke of an old king of Babylon had somehow found its way into law and now remained, protected for centuries by force of habit, by a stubborn refusal to think differently.