Stealing Fire (10 page)

I was well received, to be sure. Everyone was quite polite, though I felt that I often missed half of what was said, and resolved to learn Egyptian as fast as I might. Yes, of course everyone was glad to hear that the infant son of Alexander lived and was well. Yes, of course everyone was loyal to his satrap, Ptolemy. It was good to hear that Egypt should be governed by Egyptian law.

And yet beneath it all was a current I did not like. Something was wrong.

I did not get an idea until my fifth day in Thebes, when I woke before dawn to the sounds of servants outside in the courtyard, and the weeping of women. Peering from the window, it seemed that they were clustered around a body that had been brought in by two men carrying a sling, family and friends running to rend their clothes and lament over it.

Later in the day I asked my host about it.

The priest of Amon looked troubled, and he did not meet my eyes. “A peasant,” he said in Greek. “Nothing to be concerned about. Killed in a fall in the desert.”

“Ah,” I said. It was certainly true that one might be. The wadis on the western side of the river had steep cliffs. A man might fall to his death easily enough. But why the secrecy, the fear I saw in his face?

It was evening, and the lamps were lit when I retired to my chamber. One of the young servant women was standing on a stool hanging the freshly washed curtains at the window, though she begged my pardon when I came in.

“I did not mean to be still at my work,” she said, clambering down. “Please excuse, Gracious Lord.” I thought her Greek was rather better than her master's, and her eyes were red from weeping.

She stood about, as if waiting for direction. I wondered if she had been instructed to remain at my disposal, and if she found the thought of pleasing me so displeasing.

“Why do you weep?” I asked carefully. “Is it that the man who died last night was kin to you?”

Her dark eyes filled with tears. “My uncle,” she said. “Please, Gracious Lord, your pardon. I am unseemly.”

“No, not in the least,” I said, taking care not to come too close to her so that she might mistake me. “We may be foreigners, but we hardly consider it unseemly to mourn your uncle's death. Surely that is understandable. How did he die?”

“A lion,” she said, and dropped her face into her hands. “They say it was a lion.”

“A lion?” That a peasant man of no doubt some years should be out in the desert with a lion in the night seemed unusual.

“A lion,” she said, her voice choked. “We saw the claw marks where its talons had torn him.”

“Ah,” I said.

She looked up, and her young face was fierce and her voice low. “It wasn't a lion, Gracious Lord. It was the Night Spirits. They are back and they grow stronger! No one will go outside the walls at night now, unless they must. They come from the West, out of the Red Land, and they hate men! Already they haunt the other bank of the Nile. Take this as a warning, and do not go out at night or you will be like my poor uncle!” Sobbing, she ran from the room.

I
RETURNED TO
Alexandria with the flood, the Nile rising as we journeyed down her broad breast. We left the river before we reached Alexandria, for it was not being built on the river but rather on Lake Mareotis, where there was a better harbor than in the shallows of the river mouths. I was shocked by the change in seven short months since Ptolemy and I had left for Memphis.

When I had left, most of the streets were nothing but muddy tracks, stakes and rope marking out where houses and shops should go. Now it was a city.

To be sure there were still streets unpaved, still lots with nothing on them but a stake and a number, but from the dirt rose houses of mud brick, some painted and decorated a bit, or walls half finished with tents pitched in the middle of them to make a roof. The streets rang with the sounds of carpenters’ hammers, with the shouts of children running and playing, with the sounds of barter in a dozen languages in the makeshift markets. It was as though the baggage train were given permanence, the volatile movement of the camp rendered in brick instead of canvas. The scents of cooking rose on the night air. I could have sworn I smelled curried lamb.

I made my way to what was supposed to be the palace to report to Ptolemy, past awnings pitched on new paved courtyards, taverns serving wine to soldiers and townsmen alike. I even thought I saw a couple of Jews and wondered where they had come from. A vast building site stood empty, a sign on it proclaiming in Greek that it would soon be a gymnasium by subscription for the sons of the city, with tutors and coaches to be hired as soon as money permitted, please apply to Phaidon of Achillas’ Ile for prices and information, discounts to be given to fathers who enrolled more than one son at a time, and half price for the third.

For the sons of the city, I thought. Not for young Greek gentlemen. And how should it be? There were hardly any Greek women here. Most of the sons would have mothers of other nations, Persian or Median, Egyptian or Indian. Unexpectedly, I felt my throat close.

Here I should be nothing unusual, half Greek and half Carian. Here I would not have been a by-blow to sell off as a slave, but a son of the city. These boys would not be sold away as I had been, but go to school. They would read and write and see no difference between the son of a Carian and the son of an Indian. In course of time, they should marry one another's sisters, and we should be a new people altogether. Alexandrian.

If we had time. That was the question. Would this fragile thing prevail, or be burned to ashes in the first war?

Standing there in the night, beside a muddy lot that would one day be a gymnasium, I closed my eyes.

Oh my city, I prayed, oh spirit of the city, Spirit of Alexandria, I do pledge myself to this, that I shall do as best I can to preserve you for all the sons of our sons. I will do my best.

I felt the night wind curl around me, heavy with smells of raw wood and fresh fish, of cooking and horses and people. The city embraced me.

Home
, it whispered.
Lydias, you are home
.

Home, I thought. I have a home, and it is here.

And then I opened my eyes and went to report to Ptolemy.

I
DID NOT
expect him to be still in his office and still about his work. He looked up when I came in. “Oh, good, Lydias. You're back in good time.”

“I am?” I feared I had a mixed bag of news to tell him from Upper Egypt, and some of it could hardly be welcome.

Ptolemy put down the paper he was holding and gestured to the stool on the other side of the table from him. “Have some wine,” he said. “I need to talk to you. I've just had a letter from the embalmers.”

I poured some out from an amphora that stood near and added the water from the pitcher. “Embalmers?” I asked blankly. I could not think what embalmers he meant.

“When Hephaistion died, Alexander sent for the finest embalmers to preserve his corpse until the funeral. Those of course came from Egypt, from the priests of Anubis who are entrusted with such things. Since the King died a few short months after Hephaistion, the embalmers were still in Babylon. That's who was sent to preserve his body.”

“Oh,” I said. I had not given much thought to that, in the chaos of the palace in Babylon.

“They're still there with it now, and Manetho is in contact with them, as I am in contact with others highly placed in the King's entourage.” Ptolemy put his painted cup down on the edge of the table. “And so I've learned something unwelcome. Olympias has made common cause with Perdiccas.”

“Shit,” I said. “I thought they were deadly enemies, with Olympias wanting Alexander's body in Macedon and Perdiccas wanting it in Babylon.”

“Olympias hates Antipatros, the Regent in Macedon, more than she does Perdiccas. And Perdiccas has Roxane, and the only thing that Olympias cares about: that her grandson gain the throne of Macedon over any other contender and rule as king in Pella. To that end, she's made Perdiccas an offer he'll take.” Ptolemy paused, meeting my eyes. “Perdiccas will send Alexander's body to Macedon, and Olympias will send Perdiccas the only thing more important—Cleopatra, Alexander's only full sister, as his bride.”

I blew out a breath and took a sip of wine before I spoke. “We're screwed. What's the next move?”

Ptolemy nodded. “I've opened correspondence with Antipatros. He liked me as a boy, and he's agreed to send me his daughter Eurydice as my wife.”

“That helps some,” I said. Cassander's sister, I thought. I had never liked him at all, but perhaps his sister was not the same. Perhaps she wasn't a bloody-minded bully. She might be entirely different. There was no point in asking what Thais might think of this. It was a marriage of state, and had nothing to do with her. “Is that enough?”

“No,” Ptolemy said, putting his elbows on the table. “And here's where we come to your job.”

“I'm not much of an envoy for arranging marriages,” I said.

“Not that,” Ptolemy said. “You're going to steal Alexander's body.”

A CLEVER PLAN

I
'm going to what?” I asked dumbfoundedly. It does not do to ask your commanding officer if he has lost his mind.

“Steal Alexander's body,” Ptolemy repeated.

“How am I going to do that?” The picture it presented was simply grotesque. “Just pick it up and walk off with it? Surely there are guards, and it's not as though no one would notice him missing…” I could hardly imagine it. Alexander lay in Babylon, in the palace of the Great Kings, the greatest hero of the age. There must be attendants, servants, guards…

Ptolemy poured more wine into my cup, making it stronger. He looked at me sideways with dark humor. “No, not just pick him up and walk off with him. A mummy is a heavy thing, anyhow. I don't know if you've ever picked one up.”

“I can't say I have,” I said, wondering if he'd been lifting mummies for practice, or if it were merely his usual thoroughness.

For good measure he added more of the wine to his own cup, sipped from it, and set it down. “Perdiccas agreed to send the King's body home, to Olympias in Macedon. To that end, he's had a huge hearse constructed. It's enormous, with gilded everything and a gold sarcophagus weighing about the same as an ox. It takes forty horses to pull it, or some absurd number like that. It's guarded by a good eight hundred men.”

“That makes it so much easier!” I said, lifting my hands to my head. “Thank you so very much! Now it all seems clearer!”

Ptolemy laughed and touched his cup to mine. “Lydias, I swear to you I am not mad! Listen to what I have in mind, and then tell me if you think it's impossible. We will take it apart together.”

“I'm listening,” I said, spreading my hands. “I've never known you to be mad before.”

Ptolemy grinned and took a sip. “The plan is this: the hearse cannot travel quickly. It's too large and too heavy and can only go by Royal Roads. And it cannot travel the mountains in poor weather. It must cross Asia in summer, because even a little ice or mud will make the mountains impassible. It's too late in the year to leave Babylon and make the journey now.”

“True,” I said, thinking of the mountains near Miletus and the uplands along the Royal Road to Gordion. We did not even travel the horse fair circuit except in spring and summer, and that was without heavy wagons. Summer was already ending in the uplands, and in a few weeks rains would come. It was not too long before they would wake to ice in the mornings in the high mountains. Here in Egypt it was easy to forget that winter was coming.

“It will have to leave Babylon in the spring next year, so that the passes are clear. How would you go?”

I closed my eyes a moment, seeing the maps in my mind. “From Babylon I'd take the Royal Road to the coast and then turn north onto the Royal Road to Gordion, the way the dispatch riders go. It's the smoothest road with the gentlest grades, which would matter dragging a huge hearse. Then from Gordion I'd turn north toward the Hellespont, instead of taking the route through the cities of Ionia. That would minimize my time within striking distance of the sea.”

“And the closest point to us?”

“Not very close,” I said. “There's no reason to go as far south as Tyre, or even Damascus. I suppose the closest would be near Issos, where the road comes down out of the mountains and turns north.” I could see that pass in memory, the road cutting cleanly between steep cliffs, then broadening as it breached the last rampart and descended to the plain. It was there that Darius had chosen to face Alexander all those years ago. It was a very good place for an ambush.

“You're going to hijack the hearse,” Ptolemy said.

I opened my eyes and nodded slowly. “Where the road comes out of the hills and comes down toward the sea.” I picked up my cup again and took a drink. “A few problems. That's not Egyptian territory, or anywhere close. If we seize any controlling position or garrison anything nearby, Perdiccas will know exactly what we're doing, and either won't send the hearse at all or will send it with an enormous escort.”

Ptolemy shook his head. “We can't garrison. It's got to be fast. I'm going to send you with an all-cavalry force. Enough to overwhelm the escort, but not enough to take and hold towns. You've got to do it quickly.”

“And turn south for Egypt,” I said. The road turned north, but it also ran south, to Tyre and the cities of the coast, to Ashkelon and Gaza and finally Pelousion. That was the way I had come when I had left Babylon with Thais. I knew that road.

“For Egypt,” Ptolemy said.

“It won't be fast,” I said. “Not after I have the hearse. Then I'll be stuck moving at a slow walk. It's a long way. And as soon as Perdiccas hears he'll pursue.”

Ptolemy nodded seriously. “And there is no knowing exactly where he'll be when he hears, or how fast he'll come. He could be in Susa or Babylon, or he could be much closer. If I were Perdiccas…”

“You'd come after us with only cavalry, hell for leather,” I said. “Figuring that we'd be all cavalry too, because we couldn't have gotten any heavy infantry there in time.” I took another deep drink, my brow furrowed. “It's too far. He'll catch us before we make Egypt. If we get a good lead, we may make Ashkelon or Gaza, but Gaza's fortifications don't amount to shit since we knocked holes in the walls ten years ago. There's a gap in the curtain wall you could drive a herd of cattle through. I can't hold Gaza with cavalry.”

“I know,” Ptolemy said. “If you make Pelousion it's different.”

I shrugged. “Oh, Perdiccas could try to take Pelousion with cavalry until the moon turns green! The problem is that I can't make Pelousion. It's too far. Once I'm stuck with the speed of the hearse, it will take me weeks down the coast instead of days. He'll catch us well short of Pelousion.” I looked at him. “How many men were you planning to give me?”

“How many do you need?” he asked. “You'll have to hold him off.”

“Depends on the size of the initial escort too,” I said. I thought about the cavalry that had stayed with Perdiccas in Babylon, the men who had once fought beside me. “I shouldn't think he'd have more than fifteen hundred or two thousand to send, not right away. He'd have to pull some in from Susa and points east to find more than that, all cavalry. And he won't want to do that. Speed is more important.”

“We have nine hundred and fifty-six,” Ptolemy said. “Counting every man. The survivors of Hephaistion's Ile and my own. Krateros’ Ile stayed with him. That total includes some Persian horse archers who came over for dynastic reasons, and a few men out of this unit or that who didn't like Perdiccas. I could give you something like eight hundred, one full-strength Ile.”

“And Perdiccas can't do better than twice that,” I said thoughtfully. “Not if he wants to move immediately. And it's realistically more like a thousand he'll actually send, or twelve hundred.”

“I can't tell you how to do this, Lydias,” Ptolemy said, pouring more wine. “I can't tell you where you'll meet him, or how many men he'll have. You're going to have to work it out as you go.” His eyes met mine firmly. “That's why this needs to be you.”

I took a deep breath.

“You can work independently. You can think for yourself. And you'll have to. There are too many ways this could go.”

I steepled my hands before my face, rested my chin on my fingers. “To get the most time it will have to be a complete surprise. If they send a messenger to Perdiccas before we actually have the hearse, it will cut days off his response. It has to be completely clean. Just how good are these embalmers of yours?” I frowned. “And are they likely to know the schedule and the guard strength? Anything about the camp or the marching order?”

Ptolemy shook his head. “They won't even be with the procession. They asked permission to return home to Egypt, and Perdiccas gave them leave to go. They have to go now, and they'll be back before the hearse leaves Babylon. He's not stupid. He knows they're Egyptian, and that having them accompany the body is asking for trouble.”

I shook my head.

“Fortunately, they're not my only contact,” Ptolemy said. “There is someone more highly placed who will be accompanying the body. He'll know the details of the march. If you can reach him it will simplify matters a great deal.”

“Who's that?” I asked, knowing I asked Ptolemy to give me the man's life. Perdiccas would not hesitate to execute a traitor immediately.

He did not hesitate, only dropped his voice a tone involuntarily. “Bagoas the eunuch, who was Alexander's.”

Of course I knew who Bagoas was, though I had never actually talked to him. He had been Alexander's favorite, and as such had possessed considerable influence at court. He had come to Alexander with the rest of Darius’ trappings when we had conquered Persia, and though he had been a favorite of the Great King, that was before, he had lost nothing by it. He was beautiful, of course, but more than that he was discreet and calm, able to smooth over small troubles and set the touchy Persian nobility at ease with just the right level of deference and respect, just the right gestures from the King. Like a Greek hetaira, he could be counted upon to make certain that all the proper things were done.

Alexander had used him well. The Persian nobility had expected to find Alexander a boorish conqueror eager to sate himself on luxury, ruining half of what he touched like a pig in the house. Instead, they were greeted by Bagoas with precisely the shade of formality their status required, ushered into the presence of Alexander, the new Great King, who took their prostrations as his due and behaved in all ways as one would expect the King to. And instead of going home to foment armed rebellions over insults paid, they were pleasantly surprised. Much of this was due to Bagoas, who had the King's ear.

Of course this was the very reason why others hated him. A beautiful Persian gelding at the King's side? What could be more indicative of the depths Alexander had sunk to? First he wore trousers sometimes, and then he held audience for Persians in the Persian style. But having a eunuch about, like some sort of Eastern king, was really too much.

Myself, I saw little harm in it. It was, like the palaces and the food, something that came with Persia. And like the palaces and the food, Bagoas was certainly nice to look at. I could admire beauty, even if I had not been of a rank to be running to royal audiences.

Now I raised an eyebrow to Ptolemy. “You trust him? What does he have to gain with you that he doesn't gain from Perdiccas? After all, Perdiccas is from the pro-Persian party too.”

“It's not just Perdiccas’ side. It's Roxane's,” Ptolemy said. “She tried to kill him more than once when the King was alive.” He shrugged. “Jealousy.”

“You know this?” I asked. We were taking a huge risk on the word of someone I did not know.

Ptolemy's eyes were grave. “I know this. I was there when it happened, once, and when the King found out. She hated him because Alexander trusted him more.”

If Hephaistion had been jealous of Bagoas, I had not seen it. But then no one was trusted more than Hephaistion.

“If you're sure he can be relied upon,” I said.

Ptolemy nodded. “Bagoas needs to get out of Babylon and away from Roxane. Like Olympias, she has a long memory and she's proven that she's capable of poison. His days are numbered if he stays near her, and he'd be a fool to actually accompany the hearse to Macedon, where he would spend his days as a figure of fun or as a toy for Cassander. He's better off here by a long shot.”

“What did you promise him?” I asked.

“That he would be a funerary priest of Alexander, and that he would have a pension here in Egypt, to stay by the King and tend him.” Ptolemy shrugged. “Little enough. But it was what he asked for.”

“Then I suppose we're settled,” I said.

A
ND SO IT
was that I passed the winter in Alexandria, watching the city grow around me and drilling relentlessly the men who would ride with me.

The embalmers arrived at midwinter, with further details about the hearse if not about the escort. It was the size of a small ship, with the same breadth, made in the form of an Ionic temple. The entrance was at the rear, so the draft animals would not foul the stoop, between two golden lions. Inside, the roof was barrel-vaulted like a tomb rather than flat like a wagon, and the sides were painted in magnificent jewel colors, one side showing Alexander on his horse leading the Companions, another a fleet of galleys under sail. A third showed war elephants preparing to charge, and another showed Alexander in the guise of Great King, in his magnificent chariot. Lord of Greece, lord of Persia, lord of India, and lord of the Middle Sea—all that he had been. Except Pharaoh of Egypt. That was not lost on me. Perdiccas might extol glories which he intended to claim, but he did not hold Egypt and did not think he would.

Politics, I thought. All is politics. And what am I becoming that I see politics in the funeral murals? More than a simple soldier, for all that's what I thought I was. Now I must become a general. Upon this raid on the funeral procession the fate of the kingdom might rest.

While the fields of Egypt greened before the harvest, we drilled and practiced, making one Ile of the men of different units who must come together. We may face some rebel claimant, I said. No man there knew what we planned. Perdiccas must not hear the faintest whisper in advance.