But it was to be a full nine years before Cyrus considered Lydia and the rest of his empire secure enough for him to move against the Babylonians.
It was not that Cyrus feared the military strength of Babylon. He was far from contemptuous of their strength, but he knew that the Babylonians had been no real match for the Persian army even before the might of what remained of the Lydian army was added to the Persian forces. Cyrus was also aware that in the few weeks before the battle against the Lydians, Croesus had made impassioned appeals to the Babylonians for assistance. Now that Lydia was part of the Persian Empire, the Babylonians were bereft of an ally that might otherwise have sprung to their aid.
Cyrus was confident his army could overwhelm the Babylonians, given that the Persians could somehow acquire a knowledge of how exactly to penetrate the extremely well-fortified city.
In the meantime, he wanted his empire to be as impressive as the legendary, almost mystical, city of Babylon itself, before he would attempt to conquer that very city.
In particular, Cyrus wished the Persian Empire to be as famous for its prosperity and agriculture as it was for its conquests. He had not taken over Lydia in order to plunder it; in fact he urged the men to whom he delegated the economic management of the empire to learn from the Lydians the secrets of successful commerce and the most productive kind of agricultural activity.
He was aware that founding an empire which benefited only the wealthy and powerful would be easy. The real talent, Cyrus knew, would be to create an empire that benefited everyone who lived within it.
This was what Cyrus wanted to achieve, and he had already begun making it happen. But now he wanted to continue making it happen.
Which meant planning and achieving successes not on the field of battle but in the countryside, where there was much to be done to make people more prosperous in the less fertile regions of the empire, and in many of the towns and cities, where trade and prosperity had suffered for many decades because of local rivalries and disputes with neighbours.
Such rivalries and disputes now having ended, Cyrus was convinced he could make his people even richer.
Yet while making all of the empire prosperous was vitally important to him, it was not enough. He also wanted the great Persian Empire to be a moral inspiration to the world.
He particularly wished his empire to be renowned for the quality he prized most of all: its tolerance of the creeds and cultures of all who lived within it.
Nine years.
Nine years that saw Cassadane present Cyrus with a son they called Cambyses, after Cyrus’s true father. Nine years that saw Cambyses grow until he was on the edge of young manhood.
Nine years that saw Cyrus bid an emotional farewell to Mandane, who died peacefully in her sleep two months before a visit Cyrus made to Harpagus at Sardis to tell him that the time had finally come to move against Babylon.
Nine years that saw Cyrus and his empire grow renowned throughout Asia, Europe, and even in India and the strange, exotic lands that lay yet farther east.
Nine years in which Cyrus never completely forgot Roshan, not for one moment of his waking life. She was rarely completely absent from his dreams.
As for Croesus, he died a few years after the conquest of Lydia. Cyrus, putting into practice, in how he treated the Lydian king and the former Lydian noblemen, his beliefs about extending tolerance and understanding to foreign people, had looked after Croesus well. He had given the former king a country house on the outskirts of Sardis, and a generous pension, on the understanding that he stayed out of politics.
This Croesus was only too happy to do. Soon after Lydia had fallen, his queen deserted him for one of the two suddenly enriched bodyguards. She informed Croesus, with a Nyssia-like indifference to her husband’s feelings, that she had been having an affair with the bodyguard for several months.
Croesus, who despite all his cowardice and weakness was an affectionate and uxurious fellow, was severely distressed by his wife’s abandonment of him. Before long however, he found consolation in the arms of an extraordinary person called Zanda: a Moorish dancer who had come to Lydia to perform at a celebration held by Harpagus to mark his accession to the governorship.
Zanda was as tall as the tallest of men, though she had the face (a singularly beautiful face), tanned skin, long flowing black hair, ample breasts and slim waist of a gorgeous Moorish woman. However, she was also rumoured to possess the organ regarded as the most obvious indicator of the male sex.
Whatever the truth of the matter, Croesus saw Zanda performing at Harpagus’s celebration and was instantly smitten.
Within a month, having hastily arranged to be divorced from his disloyal queen, Croesus married Zanda. It was said by many rumour-mongers in Sardis that Zanda had been careful to deny Croesus full relations until the wedding night, and that it was only then, in the privacy of their marital bed, that the former king discovered the truth about his bride.
If indeed this was so, Croesus did not abandon Zanda or annul the marriage. Quite the contrary; Croesus was said to look happier after his marriage to Zanda than he had ever been even when he was king of Lydia. He enjoyed two years of happy marriage to her, and one night died in his wife’s arms during, it was said, a particularly strenuous bout of love-making. By the time the servants had come into the marital bedroom to offer assistance, Zanda was fully dressed, and so the mystery of her precise nature was not solved even then.
Cyrus was happy for Zanda to live on in Croesus’s home. He regarded Croesus’s widow as a friend, and usually paid her a visit when he was in Lydia and had time to see her. But he never discovered the truth of the rumours about Zanda, and while he imagined she would have been happy to have told him had he asked, he was too courteous to do so. While Cyrus was a perfectly competent and eager lover to his wife Cassadane, deep down he had never lost his shyness and reticence about matters relating to private life.
He was only too aware of this, for Cassadane had often teased him about it.
Cyrus had often wondered whether Roshan might have cured him of this shyness, if he had married her.
But he hadn’t, and now it was too late.
Asha, his hair cut so it only reached the top of his shoulders rather than falling six inches or so below them, and with the bells in his hair temporarily removed out of respect for Nabonidus, king of Babylon, looked levelly at that fabled monarch.
‘And who exactly are you?’ Nabonidus demanded, through his interpreter.
The Babylonian king was, Asha knew, about fifty years of age though he looked at least ten years older. Nabonidus had a lean, joyless, ascetic appearance. His face was gaunt and grey. Asha had no difficulty in believing what Cyrus had told him: that the king was an ardent worshipper of the Babylonian moon-god, whose name in the Babylonian language was Sin.
The Babylonian king wore a robe as pale, Asha thought, as the moon itself. Nabonidus, Asha saw, had the cold look of a dedicated scholar who preferred studying the past to living in the present.
‘I am an emissary from the Persian army, your Majesty,’ Asha said, ‘sent by the great emperor Cyrus to parley with you. Your own emissaries told the Persians you would permit one of us to return with them to speak with you. I am only a common soldier. I was one of many who volunteered to come to speak with you here in Babylon, and the emperor was gracious enough to select me.’
King Nabonidus looked hard at Asha. ‘You hold no particular military or political rank in the Persian army?’
‘No, your Majesty,’ Asha lied. He hated lying. But he heartily despised Nabonidus, even though he had only just met him, and this made lying easier. Cyrus and Asha had agreed that the truth about Asha’s true rank must be kept from Nabonidus, who would otherwise surely hold Asha in Babylon and seek to ransom him. Cyrus had, however, said he wanted Asha to be the emissary, and that he trusted Asha’s ability to find a point of vulnerability in Babylon’s defences.
‘My emissaries,’ Nabonidus said, ‘tell me that a force of more than thirty thousand Persians, including the ten thousand soldiers known as the “Immortals”, has made its camp about a day’s march south of Babylon, by the banks of the our river. Is that correct?’
‘Yes, your Majesty.’
He knew that was no lie. Cyrus and the army were indeed encamped south of Babylon by the Euphrates, which flowed north to south through Babylonia, and through the heart of the great city of Babylon itself before discharging itself into sea. The evening before, Cyrus had spoken privately to Asha.
‘I have gambled that by bringing the army this far, our proximity will frighten Nabonidus into yielding Babylon, and his throne, to our Empire,’ Cyrus said. ‘But if he does not, we shall have to find another way to take Babylon. The city’s walls are tall and impregnable, and I do not intend to waste the lives of my men finding out what I know already: that the walls will be impossible to breach unless Ahura-Mazda were to blow them down. We must discover some point of vulnerability, or we shall have no choice but to lay siege to Babylon.’
‘At least that’s an option for us,’ Asha said.
‘Yes,’ said Cyrus, ‘but Nabonidus’s stores within the city of grain and other food are known to be enormous. We might be obliged to lay the siege for a long time. And meanwhile, how can we feed our own army if we have a lengthy siege? If we take food from the Babylonians who live here in the surrounding countryside they will soon hate us, and how does it profit us to create hatred in the hearts of the people whom we want to bring into our Empire?’
Nabonidus was receiving Asha in the splendid royal palace, a massive structure of polished limestone in the heart of Babylon. Asha was aware that his brother Raiva had often made visits to Babylon, in his capacity as a merchant. Indeed, Cyrus – knowing this – had insisted that Raiva come along on the Babylonian expedition to advise Cyrus on the geography of Babylonia. Raiva, by now one of the richest men in Persia, had travelled in considerable style, in a splendid caravan and accompanied by a number of beautiful female servants.
Asha knew that the origins of Babylon were lost in the haze of the past when history did not exist. He also knew that the Babylonians, renowned for being the most cultured people in the region, had learned to write down their language in cuneiform long before the Persians mastered that skill.
Asha was also aware that the fertility of the Euphrates supported a large population used to living a prosperous and industrious life, cultivating the land and living quietly and contentedly on the fruits of that cultivation. He also knew that much of Babylonia was intersected with little canals and artificial tributaries of the river for conveying the water over their land for the purpose of irrigation. The Babylonians were an ingenious people.
Nabonidus’s library was stuffed full of tablets and scrolls that lay on innumerable wooden shelves.
‘So, Emissary, your master truly believes I shall simply relinquish Babylonia, does he?’ Nabonidus said, again through his interpreter, who was as gaunt and grey-faced as Nabonidus was.
‘No,’ said Asha, ‘he does not. He simply urges you to consider that it would be a reasonable thing to do.’
‘Ah, yes,’ said Nabonidus, ‘that word “reasonable” is one of your master’s favourites, is it not? The good King Astyages of Media was obviously not reasonable, for I hear he was murdered by his treacherous former general Harpagus, the commander of your army. My neighbour and ally Croesus was also evidently unreasonable, and now Lydia belongs to your master, too. Tell me, what exactly does your king wish me to do so as to be reasonable?’
Asha shrugged. ‘Your Majesty, my emperor does not want war with Babylon. He simply asks that you grant him sovereignty over Babylonia and agree that your military forces will fight for the united army of the Persian Empire when called upon to do so. Cyrus does not wish to loot or ruin Babylon. Indeed,’ Asha drew a breath, then said, ‘last night, just before I set out on my mission here, my emperor personally told me, his humble emissary, that he has great admiration for Babylon, and the industriousness of your people and the quality of your horticulture.’
‘Do not be impertinent,’ Nabonidus retorted sharply. ‘Our Hanging Gardens are a wonder of the world. You may call them by their name.’
‘I am using the word my master used.’
Nabonidus just stared at Asha. Finally Nabonidus – his grey, cold-looking, ascetic lips invested with a contemptuous curl – said, ‘I have no doubt that your master, the Persian emperor, has no true appreciation of the fruits of civilization such as our magnificent Hanging Gardens. How could he, when he was, I understand, born a lowly peasant, the son of an impoverished goat-herd?’
Asha said nothing. He knew he had to remain calm in the face of this grave insult to Cyrus.
Nabonidus nodded. ‘Yes,’ he added, ‘your master was once a mere peasant, for all that he has gained much since then by military conquest.’
The king paused for a moment to clear his throat, then said:
‘However, you may tell your master that Nabonidus, the king of Babylon, is prepared to make him an annual payment of one thousand gold bars, with one-half of the first instalment to be paid now and the remaining half in six months’ time, and further instalments to be paid in full on each annual anniversary of the agreement. In return for the payment, Persia is to leave us alone.’
It occurred to Asha, not for the first time, that kings outside Persia could be more stupid than anybody would ever have believed possible.
‘Your Majesty,’ Asha said, ‘my master does not seek tribute, gold, silver, or anything else from you. He merely asks for your friendship and loyalty.’
‘He seeks my friendship?’ the king echoed through his interpreter, ‘when he is threatening to rob me of my kingdom?’
‘He merely seeks sovereignty over your nation, and for your soldiers to fight for him,’ Asha said.
‘That is robbery under a different name,’ the king hissed. ‘My offer is a generous one. If you repudiate it, I shall assume you have been given instructions in advance to refuse such an offer.’
Asha said nothing. The king, exasperated, looked hard at him. Still, Asha made no reply.
‘If, emissary, your master is so foolish as to try to invade Babylon he shall fail,’ Nabonidus said. ‘Our walls are made of stone many paces thick. You have already seen how high our walls are. They cannot be breached by any mortal army.’
Asha knew he shouldn’t rise to this challenge, but he couldn’t resist it. He cleared his throat, then said:
‘I never went to school, your Majesty, for I was born a peasant too, in the same small town as where my emperor Cyrus was born. Oh, and my parents, who were hard-working, innocent farmers, were murdered by the soldiers of the man you call the good King Astyages. Since those days, I have tried to make up for my lack of education. I have, for example, heard about the Trojans, who when besieged by the Greeks, were confident their walls could not be breached. Yet breached they were.’
‘Only because those cunning snakes the Greeks resorted to crude subterfuge!’ Nabonidus retorted via his interpreter. ‘A wooden horse, indeed! The Trojans were fools to admit it into their city. But I am not a fool.’ Nabonidus’s voice rose to an almost hysterical shout. ‘Our walls shall never be breached!’.’
Asha said nothing, but recalled the advice Cyrus had given him the previous evening. Under no circumstances lose your temper. In negotiation, the most important skill is the need to keep calm. The first side to lose their temper normally loses the upper hand.
That being so, Nabonidus seemed well intent on losing. He was breathing hard, and even some touches of ruddiness had leaked into the grey of his countenance. Nabonidus began pacing around his library like a mad man, breathing faster and faster, and occasionally snatching little glances at Asha.
Finally the king came to a standstill only a couple of feet from Asha, who saw at once the anger and seething resentment that he knew so often lurks close to the surface in the soul of the outwardly ascetic and repressed man.
‘If your master, this former peasant Cyrus, whom some misguided fools call Cyrus the Great, will not have my gold,’ said Nabonidus, ‘he shall certainly not have my kingdom. I shall defend Babylonia to my dying breath, and so shall my army and my people. All my people love me, for I am their guardian. They know that I shall always… ‘
But as the interpreter was speaking these words in Persian, Asha suddenly cleared his throat rather loudly. The interpreter, startled by this, fell abruptly silent.
‘Your Majesty,’ said Asha, unable to resist interrupting, for his love for Cyrus was so great that he detested hearing him abused, ‘not all your people love you.’
The interpreter, hearing these words, looked fearful. But Nabonidus barked an order at him, and instantly the interpreter translated Asha’s words into Babylonian for the king’s benefit.
‘What… what do you mean?’ the king demanded of Asha.
‘I mean,’ Asha returned, ‘that most of your people worship the god Marduk, the patron deity of the city of Babylon. You do not heed their requests for more temples to be built devoted to Marduk, but you try to force the worship of your moon-god Sin upon them. You also oblige many of the people of Babylon to work as forced labourers. As for the Jews, you keep them here in a state of semi-slavery, when they wish to return to their homeland.’
‘You slanderous villain!’ Nabonidus cried. ‘Your master Cyrus is a peasant… you are his mere mouthpiece and by your own admission a peasant too… I shall not have a peasant denouncing my beloved god Sin. As for the Jews, they are vermin and infidels and should consider themselves lucky I permit them to live in Babylon at all!’
Asha made no reply. He knew he had gone too far. But he realized now that it had been fortunate he had, as Nabonidus’s fury meant that the Persian intelligence about the internal dissent to Nabonidus’s rule was correct. This being so, Asha thought, Nabonidus’s rule would probably not, after all, survive a long siege, nor perhaps even a short one.
That is a point of vulnerability, Asha thought. Now all I have to do is to get home alive.
Nabonidus stared in revulsion at Asha, then marched to the door of the library. He flung the door open, barked harsh words of command, retreated back into the library and looked with unabashed hatred at Asha. A moment later, twelve fully armed Babylonian palace guards burst into the library, their swords drawn.
Asha was unarmed. He knew that fighting the guards would be futile: even he, unarmed, could not overcome a detachment of a dozen armed guards. Surely no man could, except perhaps Cyrus. Asha hardly ever felt fear; he had trained himself not to feel such a restrictive emotion. His dominant feeling at that moment was surprise at just how foolish Nabonidus could be.
Asha soon discovered that Nabonidus was even more stupid than he’d proved himself to be so far, for a few moments later, Asha found himself grabbed by three of the guards and frogmarched outside the palace and into its grounds that backed onto the Euphrates. By the time they reached the western bank of the river, which flowed south, he was still held tightly by the guards.
Nabonidus arrived some minutes later; evidently he regarded it as undignified to walk at too fast a pace. His interpreter was with him.
At the riverbank, Nabonidus came over to Asha. Suddenly, to Asha’s amazement, speaking fluent Persian, the king whispered in his ear.
‘You think yourself very clever,’ Nabonidus hissed. ‘But I am cleverer than you. For you see, your brother Raiva is a close friend of mine. He sent a message to me via my people in the countryside. He told me you would be coming here as an emissary of your peasant-king, and denying who you really are. You are Raiva’s foolish younger brother Asha, the leader of the Immortals. You shall never see Persia again.’
‘You… you speak Persian,’ Asha stammered.
‘Yes, fool, I do,’ Nabonidus whispered hoarsely. ‘I have long benefited from the trade between our countries, and I have found it useful for my enrichment to learn your coarse peasant language.’
Asha, breathless with astonishment at hearing the full extent of his brother’s treachery, was speechless. The next thing he knew was that the king shouted out an order. A moment later, the guards who were holding Asha tossed him into the Euphrates.
Asha, hitting the warm water and knowing what was likely to happen now, instantly used all his strength to dive as deep as he could.
He was not quick enough.
He saw a volley of Babylonian arrows racing toward him through the water like demon-fish. He dodged them as well as he could, but two struck him: one in the left forearm, the other in his right thigh.
The pain of the arrows was dulled by the water, but the two brutal piercings of his body were still agonizing.
Asha knew at once that his chances of survival were slim. He knew he had only one thing in his favour: that the flow of the river was southward and rapid, and the Persians lay in that direction. If he could somehow survive the journey, if he could avoid bleeding to death… he would see his wife and son again, and could denounce his evil brother to Cyrus.
Then, even through his pain, a terrible thought occurred to Asha: If Raiva can betray me, what betrayal might he have wrought on Lady Roshan?
His thoughts sped on. I told Raiva I was being asked to take the tablet to Cyrus. Raiva came to see me at my home, and I left the tablet on a table when I went into the kitchen to speak to Farna-dukta.
Whatever was in the tablet I took to Roshan, it must have made her want to end her life. Cyrus told me his tablet contained a marriage proposal. He said he believed Roshan killed herself because in a moment of madness she did not think he would ever think of her as his equal. But… what if that was not true? What if… Raiva somehow switched the tablets when I was not in the room, and replaced it with some other tablet of his own composition?
Asha knew that cuneiform tablets could easily be forged, because everyone wrote cuneiform in much the same way. That was why the cursive signature was so important.
But what if Raiva somehow found a way to imitate Roshan’s signature…? He must have had several examples of it, in tablets from her to him declining his offer of marriage.
The idea that Raiva could do such a thing felt even more appalling to Asha than his arrow-wounds that were now bleeding freely, but now he knew that Raiva had betrayed him, his own brother, Asha realized that it was, in fact, perfectly possible Raiva could have stooped so low as to betray Cyrus, and Roshan.
After all, Asha thought, as the pain of the arrow-wounds bit even deeper, Raiva, my brother, betrayed me.
Asha knew he absolutely had to get back to the Persian lines and speak with Cyrus.
He knew he couldn’t use his hands to stem the bleeding from the two arrow wounds, because he had to swim as fast as he could before surfacing. He also knew he couldn’t hold his breath much longer.
The river’s flow swept the brave, betrayed, suspicious, bleeding, already exhausted Asha beyond the grounds of the royal palace and through the centre of the great city with its tall buildings and busy streets. The Euphrates was wide here. Some fishermen and ferry-men in their boats called out to him, obviously unaware of what had happened. But Asha knew that to leave the river or ask anyone for their help would be equivalent to committing suicide.
After several agonising minutes, during which Asha was losing blood all the time, the river brought him within sight of the huge, massy city walls. Asha felt even more certain that he must surely die, for here the river surely went through small holes in the walls, and how could he pass through them?
But then, as he came to the walls, Asha, even in his pain and distress, and hearing as he did the beating of the wings of Ahura-Mazda’s angels, saw, in a moment of stupendous revelation, how the Babylonians protected themselves from invasion by their river. As he saw that, he knew that if only he could make it to the Persian lines, the days of Babylon being an independent city would be numbered…
Some time later, Cyrus, puzzled as to how Asha’s mission was progressing, received a sudden visit from one of Asha’s servants.
‘Your Majesty… we have just dragged my master, the leader of the Immortals, out of the water of the great river! He is gravely injured, and we all fear his soul shall soon be with Ahura-Mazda. He said he will speak to no-one but you.’
Cyrus just ran. Barely a minute later, he was with Asha. There was a crowd of Persian soldiers around the fallen warrior, but the crowd parted for the great king.
The face of the husband of Farna-dukta and father of Ariya was as pale as parchment. Asha was lying on the grass close by the river bank. A healer was attending to his wounds.
Cyrus saw an entire arrow sticking in Asha’s left forearm; there was part of another sticking out from his right thigh.
Asha’s head was being cradled by Tiridaad, a caption of the Immortals. At once, Cyrus took over the cradling. Someone called out for somebody to fetch ‘his brother, the merchant.’
‘Asha, Asha, speak to me,’ Cyrus said, ‘What happened?’
Asha coughed. Blood dribbled out of his mouth.
‘Cyrus,’ Asha murmured, ‘Nabondidus… he ordered me to be thrown into the water. He… he told his men to shoot arrows after me.’
Cyrus glanced at the healer, avoiding Asha’s gaze as he did so. The healer shook his head gravely.
‘Cyrus… listen,’ Asha murmured. ‘Outside Babylon… there is a great iron portcullis where the river flows under the wall… to the south. They have narrowed the river there, also. Yet the portcullis does not reach to the bottom of the river, but stops about a man’s height above the bottom.’
‘Asha, how do you know this?’ Cyrus asked.
‘Because… to get out of Babylon, Cyrus, I had to swim deep, deep under the portcullis. Your army could easily…’
He fell silent.
‘Yes, I see,’ Cyrus murmured. ‘And on the north side… ‘
‘There will surely be one there, too,’ Asha gasped.
Cyrus knew at once how Babylon could be won, remembered Roshan and her little garden in their village of Paritakna, and how he had tried to help her…
He cradled his beloved friend’s uninjured arm. ‘Asha, you shall get well. Just try to stay strong.’
‘No, Cyrus, no… I’ve lost too much blood. Cyrus, I can see Ahura-Mazda. He is golden, shimmering, beautiful… His angels are coming for me… there are bells in their hair. But the angels are not warriors; they are singing to me.’
Asha drew a frantic, tortured breath. ‘Cyrus, listen, my brother is… ’
But he fell silent.
‘What?’ Cyrus asked. ‘Your brother is what?’
‘My brother is a… ’said Asha, but he did not have the strength to say it. When, a few moments later, he spoke again, he murmured, so quietly that only Cyrus could hear him, ‘Cyrus, listen, Lady Roshan… she may be…’
‘She may be… what?’
But Asha coughed, then breathed like a rasp sharpening a sword.
Cyrus, appalled and astonished to hear Asha say Roshan’s name, stared down at his friend in amazement. A sudden memory of all four of them – Roshan, Asha, Raiva and himself – playing together in the dusty village square of Paritakna sprang into Cyrus’s mind.
‘What is it, Asha? What are you trying to say?’
Asha’s eyes stared blankly upward. He coughed again, then again. Finally, hoarsely, he murmured, ‘Farna-dukta… Ariya… I love them.’
‘I know it, Asha,’ Cyrus said. He was in tears. ‘I know you do. But what were you trying to tell me about Roshan?’
But Asha said no more. He gurgled.
Cyrus saw the light of life die in his friend’s eyes as clearly as when the sun suddenly sets beneath the summit of a mountain.
The knowledge that Ahura-Mazda would take good care of Asha did not console Cyrus at all.
He wept uncontrollably.
As he did, the crowd parted and Raiva, well-fed, plump and sleek, appeared. He stared down at his dead brother.
‘He should never have volunteered to go to Babylon,’ said Raiva, calmly shaking his head.
Cyrus, breathless, his eyes full of tears, just glared at him.