The Persian Boy (47 page)

Next day he chose priests and envoys, and offerings for the god. The embassy left the day after.

After this he was much calmer; his madness healed a little from day to day, though all lived in fear of it. His friends made donations towards the funeral. Eumenes gave the most, no doubt remembering when his tent burned down; he would still walk a mile to avoid crossing Alexander’s path.

To throw off sorrow, I rode out to the hills. From there I looked back, and saw the sevenfold walls stripped of their glories, seven rings of black; and I wept again.

-28-

TIME PASSES, all things pass. He ate, and began to sleep, and to meet his friends. He even gave one or two audiences. His shorn hair began to grow. He would talk to me, sometimes, of daily things. But he did not recall the embassy on its way to Siwah.

Autumn drew to winter. It was past the time when the kings had been used to leave for Babylon. There were embassies from half over the empire and beyond, on their way to meet him there.

The Egyptians had worked their skill upon Hephaistion. He lay in a gilded coffin, on a dais hung with precious cloths, in one of the state rooms. The trophies of arms, the dedications, were set up around him. They had not swaddled and cased and masked him, as they do it here in Egypt. A body they have treated, even unwrapped, will keep the features of life for many ages. Alexander often went to visit him. Once he took me, because I had worthily praised the dead, and lifted the lid for me to see him. He lay upon cloth of gold, in the pungent smell of spices and of niter; he would blaze like a torch, when they came to burn him in Babylon. His face was handsome and stern, the color of darkened ivory. His hands were crossed on his breast; they rested on the shorn locks of Alexander’s hair.

Time passed; he could talk to his friends now; and then his generals in their soldiers’ wisdom, doing what I could not, brought him the medicine that had power to do him good. Ptolemy came to him, to say that the Kossaians had sent to demand their tribute.

They were a tribe of famous brigands, who lived about the passes between Ekbatana and Babylon. Caravans which took that road would wait till they were big enough to hire a regiment of guards. Every year, it seems, even the kings had been raided, till they’d agreed to pay a sackful of gold darics before the autumn progress, to buy the Kossaians off. This toll was overdue, and they had sent to ask for it.

Alexander’s “What?” was almost like old times. “Tribute?” he said. “Let them wait. I’ll give them tribute.”

“It’s very difficult country,” said clever Ptolemy, rubbing his chin. “Those forts are eagles’ nests. Ochos could never reduce them.”

“You and I will, though,” said Alexander.

He set out within seven days. Any Kossaians he killed, he? said, he would dedicate to Hephaistion, as Achilles had done the Trojans on Patroklos’ pyre.

I packed my things without asking. He had given me no more of those hidden looks; he took me for granted, all that I asked just now. I had accepted in my heart that he might never take me to bed again, lest it grieve Hephaistion’s spirit. That mourning had become an accustomed thing. I would live, if I could be near him.

In the passes, Alexander split his force between himself and Ptolemy. Up here it was already winter. We were an army camp, as in Great Kaukasos, moving light as the forts fell one by one. Each night he turned in, no longer brooding, but full of the day’s campaign. On the seventh day, for the first time he laughed.

Though the Kossaians were robbers and murderers, without whom mankind is better, I had dreaded for his sake some sick-brained, furious slaughter. But he’d been brought to himself. Certainly he killed when battle called for it; perhaps Hephaistion was pleased, if the dead like blood as much as Homer says. But he took prisoners as his custom was, and held the chiefs for bargaining. His mind was as clear as ever. He saw every goat-track to the eagles’ nests; his ruses and surprises were an artist’s work. Artists are healed by their art.

After one such triumph, he gave supper in his tent to his chief officers. I said beforehand, easily, “Your hair wants trimming, Al’skander,” and he let me take off the ragged ends. That night he got rather drunk. He had never done it since the death; it would have been base to drown that grief. Now he did it in victory, and as I helped him to bed my heart was lighter.

We moved on to the next stronghold. He set the siege-lines. The first snow whitened the tops, and the men drew close round the fires. He came in glowing from frost and flame, and greeted the guardian squires as he used to do. When I brought the night-lamp, he reached out and drew me by the hand.

I offered no art that night, or no more than had become my nature; only the tenderness from which pleasure springs of itself like flowers from rain. I had to rub my eyes on the pillow to hide my tears of joy. I saw on his sleeping face the marks of madness and pain and sleeplessness; but they were wounds turning to scars. He lay at peace.

I thought, He has rebuilt the legend in everlasting bronze. He will keep faith with it, if he lives to threescore and ten. Hephaistion’s regiment is always to bear his name whoever may command it, just so he will be forever Alexander’s lover; no one else will ever hear, “I love you best.” But in that shrine will be only the legend dwelling; the man will be hissing blue flames, then dust. Let his place be in Olympos, with the immortals, so long as my place is here.

I stole off softly, before he woke. He was attacking the fort at daybreak; he would not have time to think of it overlong.

The Kossaians had never been hunted in midwinter, in all their wicked history. The last forts, starved out, surrendered in return for the captives’ freedom. It had all taken forty days. Alexander garrisoned the strong-points along the pass, pulled down the rest, and the war was over. The caravans poured through. The Royal Household was sent for, to come down to Babylon. Already hard red buds gemmed the bare bushes shedding their snow.

But for his madness, he could have wintered down there, in the mild season, planning the new harbor and the Arabian fleet. Now he’d be there when the Persian kings would have been thinking of Persepolis. All through the Kossaian war, the troops of embassies had been kicking their heels, awaiting him.

They met him when he pitched camp beyond the Tigris. He had made ready for them in state; but no one had been prepared for what really came.

They were not just from the empire, but from most of the known world; from Libya, with a crown of African gold; from Ethiopia, with the teeth of hippo-camps and the tusks of enormous elephants; from Carthage, with lapis and pearls and spices; from Scythia, with Hyperborean amber. Huge blond? Kelts came from the northwest, russet Etruscans from Italy; even Iberians from beyond the Pillars. They hailed him as King of Asia; they brought disputes from far beyond his frontiers, begging his wise judgment. They came with dedications, asking oracles, as Greeks go to the greatest shrines of their gods.

Most of these distant folk must have looked for a man of towering stature; some of the Kelts were as tall as Poros; yet none left his presence wondering why he was what he was. He was equal even to having the earth laid in his hands.

Indeed, in our time his face has changed the very faces of the gods. Look where you like, at the statues and the paintings. All the world remembers his eyes.

It helped his sickness, to be seen for what he was. After all he’d suffered, the Greeks were muttering that he’d reached a fortune above the human lot, and the gods are envious. To one such I said, “Speak for your own. Ours is Great King and envies no one; he rejoices in light and glory. That’s why we offer him fire.” No wonder the Greeks have envious gods, being full of envy themselves.

For three days he had no time for grieving. He went on exalted in his mind, remembering Siwah, and thinking of the west, whose peoples he’d now first seen. But sometimes his face would change, as if sorrow touched his shoulder, saying, “Had you forgotten me?”

In the river plains, already the corn pricked the rich earth with green. Babylon’s black walls lay along the flat horizon, when to our last camp on the road a man came riding. It was Niarchos, from the city. Though his hardships had left their mark, you could now see he was only forty; yet he looked care-ridden, to me. Oh no, I thought; don’t bring new troubles just when he is better. So I stayed to listen.

Alexander welcomed him, asked after his welfare and the fleet’s; then said, “And now tell me what’s wrong.”

“Alexander, it’s the Chaldean priests, the astrologers.”

“What’s amiss with them? I gave them a fortune to rebuild the Zeus-Bel temple. What are they after now?”

“It’s not that,” Niarchos said.

Though I could not see him from where I was, I felt a sinking. It was not his seaman’s way, to beat about.

“Well, what, then?” said Alexander. “What’s the matter?”

“Alexander, they read me my stars before we marched to India. It all came true. So just now I went again. They told me something that . . . upset me. Alexander, I knew you when you were so high. I know your birthday, the place, hour, everything they need. I asked them to read the stars for you. They say Babylon’s in a bad aspect for you now. They were coming out on their own account, to warn you off. It’s a lee shore for you, they say. Unlucky.”

There was a little pause. Alexander said, quietly, “How unlucky?”

“Very. That’s why I came.”

A shorter pause. “Well, I’m glad to see you. Tell me, have they finished building the temple?”

“They’re barely past the foundations. I don’t know why.”

He laughed. “I do. They’ve been drawing the sacred tax for the temple upkeep, ever since Xerxes pulled it down. For generations. They must be the richest priests on earth. They thought I’d never be back, and it could go on forever. No wonder they don’t want me through the gates.”

Niarchos cleared his throat. “I didn’t know that. But . . . they told me I’d be in ordeal by water, and live to be honored by a king, and marry well with a foreign woman. I told you at the wedding feast.”

“They knew you were an admiral and my friend. Wonderful! Come to supper.”

He arranged for Niarchos’ lodging, and finished his day’s work.

At bedtime, he looked up at me leaning over him, and said, “Eavesdropper! Don’t look so woebegone. It serves you right.”

“Al’skander!” I fell on my knees beside him. “Do as they say. Never mind if they keep the money. They’re not seers, they don’t need to be pure of heart; it’s a learning they have. Everyone says so.”

He reached and ran a lock of my hair between his finger and thumb. “So? Kallisthenes had learning, too.”

“They’d be afraid to lie. ?All their honor’s in true predictions. I’ve lived in Babylon, I’ve talked to all sorts of people in the dancing-houses-“

“Have you indeed?” He tugged at the lock softly. “Tell me more.”

“Al’skander, don’t go into the city.”

“What’s to be done with you? Get in, you’re not fit to sleep alone.”

The Chaldeans met him next day.

They came in their sacred robes of a shape unchanged for centuries. Incense was burned before them; their wands bore the emblems of the stars. Alexander met them in his parade armor, all Macedonian. Somehow they persuaded him to come apart among them, with only the interpreter. Chaldeans have almost their own language, and Babylonians don’t speak good Persian either; but I hoped enough would reach him to move his mind.

He came back looking serious. He was not one of those who think God has no name but the one they heard in childhood.

They had begged him to march east; which would have taken him to Susa. But all his dearest concerns were fixed in Babylon; the new harbor, the Arabian voyage, Hephaistion’s funeral rites. He was still in doubt of their good faith. Old Aristander was dead, whom he could have asked to take the omens.

At all events, he said that since the west was unpropitious, he would go round the city on the eastward side, and reach the South Gate that way.

There is no Eastern Gate, and we soon knew why. That side, we came to a great stretch of marsh, treacherous and full of pools. The Euphrates seeped round into it. He could still have made a greater circuit, even if it crossed and recrossed the Tigris, and come back up the Euphrates. But he said impatiently, “That settles it. I’m not squatting like a frog in a swamp to please the Chaldeans.” Since the embassies, he knew the world’s eyes were on him. Perhaps that really settled it. At all events he turned back, by north and west.

Still he did not enter the gates, but camped up river. Then he heard more embassies were coming, this time from Greece. Anaxarchos, ever officious, reminded him that Greek thinkers no longer believe in omens. It touched his pride.

The Palace had been long prepared for him. As he drove through the gates in Darius’ chariot, ravens fought overhead, and one fell dead before his horses.

However, as if to confound the auguries, the first news that met him was of life and fortune. Roxane had traveled straight down from Ekbatana to the Palace Harem. When he visited her there, it was to hear that she was with child.

She had known already, at Ekbatana; she told him she had waited to make quite sure. The truth, as I have no doubt, was that it was at the time of his madness, and she’d been afraid to give him news that would bring him near her.

He made her all the accustomed gifts of honor, and sent her father the news. He himself took it quietly. Perhaps he’d given up the thought that she would conceive by him, and had meant, in due time, to breed an heir from Stateira. Perhaps his mind was on other things.

When he gave me the news, I cried, “Oh, Al’skander! May you live to see him victorious at your side!”

I grasped him in both hands, as if I had power to defy the heavens. We stood in silence, understanding each other. At last he said, “If I’d married in Macedon, as my mother wanted, before I crossed to Asia, the boy would have been twelve by now. But there was never time. There is never time enough.” He kissed me and went away.

It was torment to me to have him out of my sight. I watched him move among the half-forgotten splendors known to my boyhood. Then, I had come here light of heart. Now fear and grief hung on me like a sickness. Why had he listened to the Chaldeans, obeyed their warning and then defied it? It is Hephaistion, I thought, reaching out to him from the dead.