Departures

“I’m about to. Here: ‘It seemed good to the council and to the people’… boule and demos again, you see?”

“A plague on the council and people!” Mithredath broke in. “Who in Ahura Mazda’s name was the king?”

“I’m coming to that, I think. Let me go on: ‘With the tribe of Antiokhis presiding, Leostratos serving as chairman, Hypsikhides as secretary-’ “

“The king!” Mithredath shouted. “Where is the name of the king?”

“It is not on the stone,” Polydoros admitted. He sounded puzzled. Mithredath, for his part, was about ready to grind his teeth. Polydoros continued. “This may be it: ‘Aristeides proposed these things concerning the words of the prophetess of Delphi and the Persians:

“ ‘Let the Athenians fortify the citadel with beams of wood as well as stone to meet the Persians, just as was bade by the prophetess. Let the council choose woodsmen and carpenters to do this, and let them be paid from the public treasury. Let all this be done as quickly as possible, Xerxes already having come to Asian Sardis. Let there be good fortune to the people of Athens.’ “

“Read it over again,” Mithredath said. “Read it slowly so that I can be sure I have your Yauna names correct.”

“Not all Hellenes are Ionians,” Polydoros said. Mithredath shrugged. How these westerners chose to divide themselves was their business, and he did not care one way or the other. But

Khsrish, back in Babylon, would think of them all as Yauna. And so, in his report, Yauna they would be.

Polydoros finished reading. Mithredath’s pen stopped its scratching race across the sheet of papyrus. The eunuch read what he had written. He read it again. “Is, ah, Leostratos the ruler of Athens, then? And this Aristeides his minister? Or is Aristeides the king? The measure is his, I gather.”

“So it would seem, excellent saris,” Polydoros said. “But our words for ‘king’ are anax and, more usually, basileus. Neither of those is here.”

“No,” Mithredath said morosely. He mentally damned all the ancient Athenians to Ahriman and the House of the Lie for confusing him so. Khsrish and his courtiers would not be pleased if Mithredath had traveled so far, had spent so much gold from the King of Kings’ treasury, without finding what he had set out to find. Nothing was more dreadful for a eunuch-for anyone, but for a eunuch especially-than losing the favor of the King of Kings.

Mithredath read the translated inscription once more. “You have rendered this accurately into Aramaic?”

“As best I could, excellent saris,” Polydoros said stiffly.

“I pray your pardon, good Polydoros,” the eunuch said. “I meant no disrespect, I assure you. It’s only that there is much here I do not understand.”

“Nor I,” Polydoros said, but some of the ice was gone from his voice.

Mithredath bowed. “Thank you. Help me, then, if you will, to put together the pieces of this broken pot. What does this phrase mean: ‘it seemed good to the council and to the people’? Why does the stone carver set that down? Why should anyone care what the people think? Theirs is only to obey, after all.”

“True, excellent saris,” Polydoros said.”Your questions are all to the point. The only difficulty”-he spread his hands and smiled wryly-”is that I have no answers to them.”

Mithredath sat down on a chunk of limestone that, from its fluted side, might once have been part of a column. Weeds scratched his ankles through the straps of his sandals. A spider ran across his instep and was gone before he could swat it. In the distance he heard his servants crunching through brush. A hoopoe called its strange, trilling call. Otherwise silence ruled the dead citadel.

The eunuch rubbed his smooth chin. “How is Peiraieus ruled? Maybe that will tell me something of Athens’s ways before the Conqueror came.”

“I beg leave to doubt it, excellent saris. The city is no different from any other in the empire. The King of Kings, may Zeus and the other gods smile on him, appoints the town governor, who is responsible to the satrap. In the smaller towns the satrap makes the appointment.”

“You’re right. That doesn’t help.” Mithredath read the inscription again. By now he was getting sick of it and put the papyrus back in his lap with a petulant grunt. “ ‘The people,’ “ he repeated. “It almost sounds as if they and the council are sovereign and these men merely ministers, so to speak.”

“I can imagine a council conducting affairs, I suppose,” Polydoros said slowly, “though I doubt one could decide matters as well or as fast as a single man. But how could anyone know about what all the people of a city thought on a question? And even if for some reason the people were asked about one matter, surely no one could expect to reckon up what they thought about each of the many concerns a city has every day.”

“I was hoping you would give me a different slant on the question. Unfortunately, I think just as you do.” Mithredath sighed and heaved himself up off his makeshift seat. “I suppose all we can do now is search further and hope we find more words to help us pierce this mystery.”