I passed from booth to booth, buying wine at one, a packet of herbs at another, listening to the gossip and the news.
I had been a slave, and I knew how to avoid being watched. Cyrus may have loved me, but he was a professional soldier, and before the sun was above the low houses, I knew he had put two men to watch me — Lydians, dark-haired men. One had a bad scar on his knee that gave him away even at a distance when he walked, and the other had the habit of crowding me too close — afraid he’d lose me.
I had learned about such things when I was a slave. Slaves follow each other, aiming at masters’ secrets. Masters train slaves to follow other slaves, also searching secrets out. Slaves take free lovers and have to hide — or vice versa.
I noticed them before I completed my first tour of the shops and stalls of the agora, and I lost them by the simple expedient of walking into the front of a taverna on the corner of the agora and passing through the kitchens to exit at the back.
Then I walked up a steep street to the top, sat in a tiny wine shop and watched my back trail the way a lioness watches for hunters. I watched for an hour, and then I walked through an alley spattered with someone else’s urine and walked down the hill on another narrow street until I came to the street of goldsmiths. I went into the second shop, kept by a Babylonian, and examined the wares. He had a speciality — tiny gold scroll tubes, for men who wore amulets of written magic. They were beautifully done. I bought one.
The owner had a Syriac accent, a huge white beard like a comic actor and more hand gestures than an Athenian. We haggled for a cup of tea and then a cup of wine. I was buying a tube of gold, not silver or bronze, and my custom was worth ten days’ work, so I played at it as long as he wanted to, although our haggling was largely done in the first five exchanges.
He wrapped it in a scrap of fine Tyrian-dyed leather.
‘Miltiades sent me,’ I said after I counted my coins down.
‘I should have charged you more,’ he shot back. But he raised an eyebrow and winked. And put my coins in his coin box. ‘I’ll send for more wine. I thought the Greek had forgotten me.’
‘When we lost Ephesus, we lost the ability to contact you,’ I said.
He made a face. ‘I have written some notes,’ he said, and went upstairs into his house. I could hear him talking to his wife, and then moving around. Finally he returned.
‘These are written in the Hebrew way,’ he said, ‘and no one — no one not a sage like me — could ever read them.’ He smiled. ‘Would you like a nice spell to go with your pretty amulet, soldier?’
‘It’s not for me,’ I said.
‘Beautiful woman?’ he asked. ‘You’ve been her lover for many years. And she loves you. And both of you too proud to surrender to the other. Eh?’
I stared at him, open-mouthed.
‘Not for nothing am I called Abrahim the Wise, son. Besides, it’s not exactly a rare story, is it?’ He laughed wickedly. And began to make tiny dots on a piece of vellum.
He was making a pattern — a tiny pattern, meticulous and perfect. Of course, he was a goldsmith, and such men can always draw.
‘The Persians?’ I prompted him.
He peered at his work. ‘Datis is forming his fleet at Tyre,’ he said. ‘He intends to have six hundred ships.’
I confess that a curse escaped me, despite my new-found piety.
‘That’s not the worst of it, son,’ Abrahim continued. He glanced at his notes, and shook his head with his lips pursed. ‘Datis has approached each of the islands — and all the leaders — with money. Gold darics. Sacks of them.’ He looked at his work again. ‘I saw the money caravan come through from Persepolis — not three weeks ago. Datis is determined to take Miletus and break the rebellion — even if he has to
‘What of Artaphernes?’ I asked.
Abrahim shrugged. ‘I am an old Jew of Babylon, and I live in Sardis,’ he said. ‘Don’t ask me about Ephesus. I don’t live in Ephesus. Datis comes here, and his money and his plans come on couriers from Persepolis. Artaphernes is a different animal. He strives to be great. Datis seeks only to win and curry favour.’
‘Artaphernes’ wife is my love,’ I said. Whatever prompted me to say that, I’ll never know.
‘Briseis, daughter of Hipponax?’ Abrahim asked. He looked up, and our eyes met, and it was as if I was looking into Heraclitus’s eyes. Eyes that were a gate into the secrets of the logos. The man had seemed comic, even while bargaining. Now I felt as if I was in a presence. His eyes stayed on mine. ‘You, then, are Arimnestos. Ahh.’ He nodded. ‘Interesting. I am pleased to have met you.’
I shot an arrow at random. ‘You know my master, Heraclitus,’ I said.
He nodded. ‘I do. Even among the
I nodded. ‘Do I. . owe you something?’ I asked.
He laughed. ‘I am a Jew, boy. The Persians broke my people, and I will help any man who is their foe.’
I clasped arms with him, and in his doorway, he called me back.
‘I don’t know you, boy,’ he said. ‘But I will try to give you advice, nonetheless. Go straight to your own people and never see her again. My scroll cannot protect you from — from what is between you.’
I smiled, embraced the old Jew and went back to the agora, where my shadows picked me up with obvious relief. I let them accompany me as I bought Philocrates a fine knife, and Idomeneus a bronze girdle, and my sister a pair of fine scissors — something the men of Sardis make to perfection. I bought myself a lacquered Persian bow — and then, on impulse, another for Teucer. I bought sheaves of arrows, and I bought a horse — a fine gelding, saddle, bridle and all. It is good to have money. Buying things makes you feel better when someone has just told you that the enemy has six hundred ships.
I bored my shadows to complacence, and then I walked back to Cyrus’s house.
We ate together. Cyrus was quiet and so was I, but we were good companions, pledging each other’s healths, and saying the prayers and libations together.
‘You are as sombre as I am,’ he said at the end of the meal.
‘The rumour of the market says that your Datis has six hundred ships and a mule train of gold,’ I said.
‘What did you expect, little brother?’ Cyrus asked, and he was sad — as if the victory of his master was an unhappy event. ‘You cannot fight the Great King.’
I shrugged. ‘Yes we can.’ I thought of the beaches full of ships at Samos, and the training. ‘Ship to ship, we can take any number of Aegyptians and Phoenicians. Were you at Amathus?’ I asked.
He shook his head. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Artaphernes and I were campaigning in Phrygia.’
I nodded. ‘I took four enemy ships that day, Cyrus. If Datis gathers six hundred ships, half of them will be unwilling allies — like the Cyprians. And after we beat him, the Persian Empire in Ionia will be at an end.’
Cyrus shook his head. ‘It is a noble dream,’ he said. ‘And then all you Greeks will be free — free to be tyrants, free to kill each other, to rape and steal and lie. Free of the yoke of Persia, and good government, low taxes and peace.’ He spoke in quick anger, the way a man speaks when his son or daughter is thoughtless at table.
Now I had to shake my head. Because I knew in my heart that he spoke the truth. The world of Ionia had never been richer — or more at peace — than when Persia ruled the waves.
‘The freedom you prate of benefits the heroes,’ Cyrus said. ‘But the small farmers and the women and children? They would be happier with the King of Kings.’ He drew his beard down to a point, twirled his moustache and grunted. ‘We grow maudlin, little brother. I fear what will happen when we win. I think there will be a reckoning. I think this revolt scared my master, and even the Great King. Blood will flow. And the Greeks will know what an error they have made.’
I swirled the wine in my handleless cup and felt Persian. But I had one more arrow in my quiver, despite the way my head agreed with everything he said.
‘Cyrus?’ I asked, when he had been silent a long time. It was dark in the garden, and no slaves were coming.
