We clasped hands, and he finished his tea. ‘I have business in the marketplace,’ he said. ‘Gather all the news you like. It will only discomfit you. You cannot fight the Great King. His power is beyond your imagination. I should send you to Persepolis as a prisoner — I would be doing you a favour. But I will let you see your doom — and then let you go to it. Perhaps you will save a few Greeks to be the Great King’s subjects.’ He pointed out the gate. ‘Go — learn. And despair. And leave Briseis to her own end, is my advice.’
We embraced like old comrades. It is odd how we saw each other only in snatches, here and there — and how he had known me, not as a great hero, but as a slave boy — and yet we were ever friends, even when our swords were bloody to the wrist and we swung them at each other.
Never believe that Persians were lesser men. Their best were as good as our best — or better.
His permission — and it was that — to go and spy in Sardis chilled me, and I dressed and went out into the agora.
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 buy it.’
‘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 goyim, there are great men.’ He finished his work, and he sat still for a moment, and then he passed his hand over the tiny scroll, rolled it tight and put it in the tube. ‘Like most young men, you are in a war between the man who acts and the man who thinks. Take my advice and think more.’ He tucked the scroll tube into the red leather. ‘Six hundred ships — ready for sea by the feast of Artemis in Ephesus. Datis will command them. Gold to every lord on every island — watch for treason. Understand?’
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.