Alexander (Vol. 2) (36 page)

‘You have already interrogated him, I suppose,’ said the King as they walked.

‘Yes,’ replied Parmenion.

‘And what did he tell you?’

‘Simply what we already know. That the Great King had given him a personal message for a
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leader by the name of Amyntas.’

‘And nothing else?’

‘Nothing else. I had thought of torturing him, but then it seemed pointless – no one would ever entrust a simple courier with any information of any importance.’

‘And how did you manage to intercept him?’

‘It was all thanks to Sisines.’

‘The Egyptian?’

‘Yes. One day he arrived telling us he had seen a suspicious type in the merchants’ and women’s camp.’

‘So you knew Sisines already?’

‘Of course. He had worked for us as an informer during the first invasion of Asia, under your father’s orders, but I hadn’t seen him since then.’

‘And did this not seem suspicious to you?’

‘No, there was no reason for me to be suspicious – he had always been a reliable informer and had always been paid accordingly, as he was this time.’

‘You should have kept him,’ replied Alexander, obviously angered. ‘At least until I arrived.’

‘I am sorry,’ said Parmenion, lowering his head. ‘I did not feel it was necessary, and then he had told me he was on the trail of another Persian spy and so . . . but if I have made a mistake I beg forgiveness, Sire, I . . .’

‘It matters not. You acted as you felt you had to. Now let’s see this prisoner.’

In the meantime they had reached the shed where the Persian messenger was being held in custody and Parmenion ordered the guard to open the bolts.

The soldier obeyed and entered first, to ensure that everything was in order. But he came back out immediately, looking shocked.

‘What’s wrong?’ asked the general.

‘He . . . he’s dead,’ stammered the soldier, pointing inside the shed.

Alexander entered and knelt down by the body: ‘Call my physician straight away,’ he ordered. Then, turning to Parmenion, ‘Evidently this man knew more than he told you, otherwise they would not have killed him.’

‘I am sorry, Sire,’ replied the general, embarrassed. ‘I . . . I am a soldier. My place is on the battlefield; give me a task, even the hardest of tasks on the battlefield and I will always know exactly what to do, but in these intrigues I find myself out of my element. I am sorry . . .’

‘Never mind,’ said the King. ‘We will see what Philip thinks.’

The physician arrived and set to examining the messenger’s body.

‘Are there any clues?’ Alexander asked him after some time.

‘He has almost certainly been poisoned, and almost certainly it was with last night’s meal.’

‘Can you tell what type of poison was used?’

Philip stood up and had some water brought to wash his hands. ‘I think so, but I’ll have to open him up . . .’

‘Do what has to be done,’ ordered the King, ‘and when you have finished arrange for his funeral with the Persian rites.’

Philip looked around. ‘But there are no towers of silence hereabouts.’

‘Well, have one built then,’ ordered the King, turning to Parmenion. ‘There’s no shortage of stone and there’s no shortage of labour.’

‘As you wish, Sire,’ said the general, nodding. ‘Any other orders, Sire?’

Alexander thought for a moment and then said, ‘Yes, have Amyntas freed and reinstated to his rank. Only . . . be careful.’

‘Of course, Sire.’

‘Good. And now you may return to your massage, Parmenion. You must take good care of that shoulder. The weather is about to change again.’ And then he added, looking at the sky, ‘And it won’t be for the better.’

O
NE EVENING
,
ROUGHLY HALF-WAY
through the winter, Commander Memnon suddenly felt unwell. There came a deep sense of nausea, strong pains in his joints and kidneys and his temperature soared. He took refuge in his cabin – his body shaking, his teeth chattering – and he refused all the food that was brought to him.

He managed only to take a little warm broth every now and then, but he did not always keep it down. His physician administered medicines for the pain and had him drink as much as possible to replace the liquids he lost continually in perspiration, but he could find nothing that would cure him.

Memnon’s illness threw the entire crew into deep dismay, and many of them noticed the indifference of the new second-in-command, a Persian by the name of Tigranes, who up until then had led the Red Sea fleet. He was an ambitious, politicking man, who at court had never made any mystery of his disapproval of King Darius’s decision to entrust general command to a
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mercenary.

Tigranes took Memnon’s place when it became clear that the Greek was no longer able to fulfil his responsibilities. The new commander’s first order was to raise the anchor and to set a course southwards, abandoning the blockade of the Straits.

At that point Memnon asked to disembark on dry land immediately and Tigranes did not oppose the request. He also asked to be able to take five of his mercenaries with him, his most loyal soldiers, so that they might help him in the journey he was about to undertake. The new commander looked upon him with a certain amount of commiseration, convinced that the invalid would certainly never manage to travel very far, given the state he was in. In any case Tigranes wished him all the best in Persian and took his leave.

And so it was that a launch was lowered in the deep of the night. Six men were on board and the boat slipped through the water, driven by vigorous strokes of the oars, until they came to a small deserted inlet on the eastern coast of the Hellespont. That same night the six men began their journey – Memnon wanted to be taken to his wife and children.

‘I want to see them before I die,’ he said, as soon as they landed.

‘You won’t die, Commander,’ said one of his mercenaries. ‘You’ve been through much worse than this. But you just give the orders and we’ll take you wherever you wish, even if it’s to the ends of the earth, even if it’s to hell itself. We’ll carry you on our shoulders, if need be.’

Memnon gave a tired smile, but the thought of seeing his family once again seemed to restore some mysterious energy, a hidden force in him. One of his men went to look for some means of transport because their leader in any case was not fit enough to ride, and he returned the following day with a cart drawn by two mules, and four horses which he had bought on a farm.

The mercenaries held a meeting along the way and decided that one of them should go on ahead to the Great King’s Road to send a message to Barsine, so that she might start travelling towards them. In truth there was no hope that their commander would last the journey to the palace at Susa, almost a month away.

For some days the illness seemed to have granted a truce and Memnon began eating again, but come evening the fever would rise once more, burning his temples and his very mind. He became delirious then and from his lips came the cries of a whole life spent in combat, in clashes, in frightful pains inflicted and received, the moans and the tears of lost hopes and vanished dreams.

The most senior of his soldiers, a man from Tegea who had always fought alongside him, looked upon him then in anguish and worry as he wiped his brow with a damp cloth and grumbled, ‘It’s nothing, Commander, it’s nothing at all. It won’t be a stupid fever that brings down Memnon of Rhodes, it won’t . . .’ And it was almost as though he was trying to convince himself.

The man who had been sent on ahead reached the road of the Great King at the bridge on the river Halys, which was said to have been built by Croesus of Lydia, and there he learned that they would not have to go all the way to Susa. King Darius had finally decided to give the insolent young
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who had invaded his western provinces a lesson, and he was advancing now towards the Syrian Gates with half a million men behind him, hundreds of war chariots and tens of thousands of horsemen. The entire court was with him too, and Barsine was certainly among them. Thus Memnon’s call travelled as quickly as the light of the fires and the reflections of the bronze mirrors from mountainside to mountainside, as fast as the headlong gallop of the Nysaean steeds until it reached the Great King under his marquee of purple and gold. And the Great King called for Barsine.

‘Your husband is gravely ill,’ he announced, ‘and he has asked for you. He is coming along our Royal Road and hopes to see you one last time. We do not know if you can reach him before he dies, but if you wish to try then we will give you ten Immortals from our guard, as your escort.’

Barsine felt her heart shrivel in her breast, but she remained impassible, not even shedding a single tear. ‘Great King, I thank you for having given me this sad news and for giving me permission to leave. I will go to my husband immediately and I will have no peace, I will neither sleep nor rest until I reach him and embrace him.’

She returned to her tent, changed into a felt bodice and leather trousers which made her look like an Amazon, took the best horse she could find and set off at a gallop, followed by the guards the Great King had assigned to her, who struggled to keep up with her.

She travelled for days and nights, resting only for a few hours every now and then while horses were changed or when she could no longer feel her limbs due to the fatigue. And then one evening, at sunset, she saw a small convoy advancing jerkily in the distance along the semi-deserted road – a covered cart drawn by two mules, escorted by four armed men on horseback.

She spurred her mount on until she was level with the cart, leapt to the ground and looked inside – Memnon lay dying on a pile of sheepskins. His beard was long and his lips were cracked, his hair unkempt and ruffled. The man who until a short time previously had been the most powerful in the world after the Great King had been reduced to nothing more than a wretch.

But he was still alive.

Barsine caressed him and kissed him tenderly on the lips and on his eyes without knowing whether or not he recognized her, then she looked around, anguish-stricken, searching for some shelter. In the distance, up on a hill, she saw a stone house, perhaps some landowner’s home, and she asked the men of her escort to go and ask for hospitality for some days, or some hours . . . she knew not for how long.

‘I want a bed for my husband, I want to wash him and change his clothes, I want him to die like a man and not like an animal,’ she said.

The chief of the guards obeyed and shortly afterwards Memnon was transported to the house, where the Persian owner welcomed him with full honours. A bath was soon warmed and Barsine undressed her husband, washed him and dressed him in clean clothes. The servants cut his hair, Barsine perfumed it and applied a refreshing compress to his forehead before putting him to bed and sitting alongside him, holding his hand.

It was late now and the owner came to ask if the fine lady might care to come down to supper to eat with the men who had accompanied her, but Barsine courteously declined.

‘I have ridden day and night to be with him and I will not leave him now even for an instant for as long as he lives.’

The man left, closing the door behind him, and Barsine returned to her position alongside Memnon, touching him and moistening his lips every now and then. It was shortly after midnight when, exhausted by the fatigue, she dozed off on a chair and remained there, falling in and out of sleep for some time.

Suddenly she thought she heard her husband’s voice in her dreams, but the voice continued to repeat her name, insistently: ‘Bar . . . si . . . ne . . .’ She sat up with a start and opened her eyes – Memnon had woken from his torpor and was looking at her with his big, blue, feverish eyes.

‘My love,’ she murmured as she put out her hand to caress his face.

Memnon stared at her with a wild intensity and seemed to want to say something.

‘What do you want? Please speak.’

Memnon opened his lips again. It was as though some vitality had suddenly flowed into his limbs and his face seemed to have re-acquired the virile handsomeness it once had. Barsine moved her ear as close as possible to his mouth so as not to miss a single word.

‘I want . . .’

‘What do you want, my love? Whatever . . . anything, my beloved.’

‘I want . . . to see you.’

And Barsine recalled the last night they had spent together and she understood. She stood up purposefully, moved backwards slightly so that her body was illuminated as much as possible by the light of the two lamps that hung from the ceiling of the room and began to undress. She took off her bodice, undid the laces that held the Scythian leather trousers in place. And in doing so she also undid all of her innate modesty, so that she stood there naked and proud before him.

She saw his eyes moisten, and two large tears ran down his sunken cheeks, and she knew that she had interpreted his wish correctly. She felt his gaze caress her face and her body slowly, sweetly, and she felt that this was his way of making love with her one last time.

Memnon said, with what was left of his voice, ‘My boys . . .’ and he sought her eyes to pass on to her in one last burning and desperate look all that was left of his life and his passion for her, then he let his head fall to the pillow and took his last breath.