That was in King Ochos’ day. We survived his reign, though he was a great killer. It was through keeping faith with his young son Arses, against Bagoas the Vizier, that my father died.
At my age, I might have overheard less of the business, if the Vizier had not borne my name. It is common enough in Persia; but being the only son and much beloved, I found it so strange to hear it pronounced with loathing, that each time my ears pricked up.
Court and country lords whom, as a rule, we hardly saw twice a year, were riding up the mountain track every few days. Our fort was well out of the way, a good place to meet. I enjoyed seeing these fine men on their tall horses, and felt an expectation of events, but not of danger, since none of them owned to fear. More than once they sacrificed at the fire-altar; the Magus would come, a strong old man who could scramble the rocks like a goatherd, killing snakes and scorpions. I loved the bright flames, and their light on the polished sword-hilts, gold buttons and jeweled hats. So it would all go on, I thought, till I could join them as a man.
After the prayer they would take the sacred drink together, and talk about honor.
In honor I had been instructed. Since I was five and had been brought out from among the women, I had been reared to ride and shoot and abhor the Lie. Fire was the soul of the Wise God. The dark Lie was faithlessness.
King Ochos was lately dead. If his sickness had killed him, few would have cried; but it was said that had been nothing much, it was his medicine he had died of. Bagoas had been highest in the kingdom, next the King, for many years; but young Arses had lately come of age and married. Ochos, with a grown heir and grandsons, had begun to trim Bagoas down. He died soon after this was seen.
“So now,” said one of my father’s guests, “the throne comes down by treachery, even though to the lawful heir. Myself, I acquit Arses; I never heard anything against the boy’s honor. But his youth will double Bagoas’ power; from now on, he might as well be King. No eunuch before has climbed so high.”
“Not often,” my father said. “But sometimes this lust for power will rule them. It is because they will see no sons.” Finding me near him, he took me in his arm. Someone uttered a blessing.
The guest of highest rank, whose land was near Persepolis but who had followed the court to Susa, said, “We are all agreed that Bagoas shall never rule. But let us see how Arses deals with him. Young though he is, I think the Vizier has reckoned without his host.”
I don’t know what Arses would have done, if his brothers had not been poisoned. It was then he set out to count his friends.
The three princes had been much of an age. All three had been very close. Kings mostly change to their kin; Arses did not. The Vizier distrusted their private councils. Both the younger, without much time wasted between, got cramps in their bellies and died.
Soon after, a messenger came to our house; his letter bore the royal seal. I was the first person my father met, when the man had gone.
“My son,” he said, “I shall soon have to go away; the King has called for me. A time may come—remember it—when one must stand for the Light against the Lie.” He set his hand on my shoulder. “It’s hard for you to be sharing your name just now with an evil man; you will not for long, God willing. And that monster can’t hand it on. It is you who will carry it down in honor; you, and the sons of your sons.” He lifted me up and kissed me.
He had the fort strengthened. It had a sheer cliff one side, and a gatehouse over the mountain track; but he had the walls raised a course or two, with better slits for the archers.
On the day before he was due to leave, a party of warriors rode up. Their letter carried the royal seal. We were not to know it came from a dead man’s hand. Arses had gone his brothers’ way; his infant sons were smothered; the male line of Ochos was wiped out. My father looked at the seal, and ordered the gates to be opened. The men rode in.
Having watched all this, I went back to some boy’s business in the orchard below the tower. There was some shouting; I came to see. Five or six men dragged through the door a man with a dreadful face. Its center was red and empty; blood streamed from it into his mouth and beard. He had been stripped of his coat; both shoulders dripped blood, for his ears had gone. I knew him by his boots; they were my father’s.
Even now, sometimes I think how I let him go to his death without a word, struck dumb with horror. I suppose he understood; when he spoke it was to the purpose. As they led him on, he cried at me in a loud harsh voice, horribly changed by the wound where his nose had been, “Orxines betrayed us! Orxines, remember the name! Orxines!”
With the mouth open and shouting, the face looked more frightful than before. I did not know I heard the words it uttered. I stood like a post, while they pushed him to his knees, and pulled his head forward by the hair. It took them five or six sword-strokes, to cleave through his neck.
While they were about this, they forgot to watch my mother. She must have run straight up the tower; the moment he was dead she leaped from it, so they lost their sport with her. She screamed as she fell; but that, I think, was because she saw too late I was there below her. She struck the ground about a spear-length away, and her skull burst open.
I hope my father’s spirit saw her quick death. They could just as well have taken his ears and nose when his head was off. The Vizier, when they brought it him, would never have known the difference.
My sisters were twelve years old and thirteen. There was another of about nine, by a second wife of my father’s who had died of fever. I heard all three of them shrieking. I don’t know if they were left for dead when the men had done, or taken away alive.
At last, the captain of the troop set me on his horse and rode with me down the hill. Slung to his saddlecloth was the bloody bag with my father’s head. I wondered, with what power of thought was left me, why he had had mercy on me alone. I learned the answer that same night.
He did not keep me long, being in need of money. In the dealer’s courtyard at Susa, city of lilies, I stood stripped naked, while they drank date wine out of little cups, and haggled over my price. Greek boys are reared without shame and used to nakedness; we have more modesty. In my ignorance, I thought one could fall no lower.
Only a month before, my mother had scolded me for looking in her mirror, saying I was too young to be vain. I had no more than glimpsed my face in it. My new owner had more to tell. “A real thoroughbred, the antique Persian strain, the grace of a roebuck. See those delicate bones, the profile—turn round, boy—the hair shining like bronze, straight and fine as silk from Chin—come here, boy, let him feel it. Brows drawn with the fine brush. Those great eyes, smudged in with bister—aha, pools to drown love in! Those slender hands you won’t sell cheap to sweep floors. Don’t tell me you’ve been offered such goods in five years, or ten.”
At his every pause, the dealer told him he did not buy at a loss. At last he reached his final offer; the captain said it was robbing an honest man; but the dealer said there was the risk to reckon for. “We lose one in five when we geld them.”
Geld them, I thought, while the hand of fear closed the gate of understanding. But I had seen it done to an ox at home. I neither spoke nor moved. I begged for nothing. I had learned better than to hope there was pity in the world.
The dealer’s house was strong as a prison, with courtyard walls fifteen feet high. On one side was a shed, where they did the gelding. They had purged and starved me first, which is thought to make it safer; I was led in cold and empty, to see the table with the knives, and the frame with splayed-out legs to which they bind you, with old black blood on it and dirty straps. Then at last I threw myself at the dealer’s feet and clasped them crying. But they made no more of it than farmhands of the bawling bull-calf. They did not speak to me, just strapped me down, talking across me of some gossip in the market, till they began and I knew nothing, only the pain and my own screams.